The Philosophy of the Self.

Why am I a phony? What have I claimed to be that I am not? If you have nothing more than crude insults to offer at this point, I see to reason to try and interpret your statements. I know what a priori means, without a dictionary (but I'm not claiming to know anything about Latin, so don't start off on your phony tangent now) but I'm not sure what you meant by it. It's always best to be precise with one's language, especially when one isn't making much sense anyway - isn't that so? As for learning it by myself, you're particular brand of philosophy seems so far-fetched and mythical that I doubt any amount of learning will brainwash me enough to believe it.

Fresco, in response to that list, I would think that a person seeing culture or a cultural group as something that is an extension of themselves would be a higher level of existence rather than a lower one - that is, a more broad one. As an individual, you only need to unite your arms and legs and various organs - to implicate other people into your identity I think is a more advanced step.

JL, I know what he is saying, I just don't know what drives him to say it. None of you have provided any back up or any reason for anything you've said - presumably some withered philosopher in some ancient text said it many centuries ago and you all go and take him (certainly not a "her") at his word because he's dead but for some reason still exerts some sort of coercive force over the so-called "educated" world. Fresco, since you are the self-titled citation God, who is this philosopher, and by what right does he attempt to dominate our minds and think for us, when we are perfectly capable of doing it on our own? What are his reasons, if he had any? What are yours for following him blindly? What do you have to offer to this discussion other than your pithy insults? (All this is, of course, directed at anyone who thinks to respond.)

Joe - Godwin's law is only true if you believe in it. If we ignore the comment, it goes away. There you go, twyvel, now there's something that only exists if you actively perceive it, since its meaning and form are created by our minds.

truth
Rufio, whatever.

It's not meant to be condescending to you, JL, unless you're prone to start flinging insults as well.

JLN

I can't put my hand on it right now but I think Capra's: "The Tao of Physics" is the classic work which deals with the analogy between Quantum Mechanics and Buddism. (Similarly a book called "The Dancing Wu Ling Masters") It is worth noting that Richard Dawkins is in a long line of critics who attempt to throw cold water on such "mystification".

There's also a book called, "Quantum and the Lotus"
(excerpt)

"..One of the authors, Trinh Xuan Thuan, is an astrophysicist who was born a Buddhist and the other, Matthieu Ricard, is a Western scientist who became a Buddhist monk. These two friends conduct readers on a thought provoking journey of discovery that began with their meeting at an academic conference in 1997 and expanded into a correspondence that plumbed the depths of scientific and spiritual expression."

I should read it again, but I remember where the monk is asked the point blank question (biasly put), Surely you're not saying that there is no physical world out there?"

And the monks reply is, "Of course not"………..

There are a lot of similarities with JLNobody's position and the monk's. But personally the monks reply was disappointment. Anyway it's quite a good read, though not the kind of book I'd read over and over again as reference etc.

While I can see the attraction of non-duality, I found "The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness" by Antonio Damasio to be more believable regarding the biological origins of our sense of self. Core consciousness is separate from extended consciousness, which invokes memories and higher cognitive functions. They are generated by specific parts of the brain and can be impaired by injury to it.

If the ego-self is an illusion, why would anyone delude themselves into thinking that they could no longer think? Why would whatever is responsible for our illusionary sense of self want to make us suffer in an apparently dual universe where most people live out their entire lives without enlightenment? Or are billions of naïve materialists just illusions?


IMO, a physical universe that exists independently of human thought is the most logical ultimate cause of the reality that most of us seem to perceive.

Granted that the mental images generated by our minds are only a representation of that universe (colors exist only in the mind, not as an inherent property of photons of a certain frequency), but millions of years of evolution favored beings whose constructions of reality were accurate enough to allow them to find food, attract mates, and escape predators.

Socially constructed realities do not have to be perfectly accurate as long as they are believable and allow the society to function effectively in its environment. It doesn't matter to farmers whether the sun is carried across the sky by Apollo or is a star orbited by the earth. It makes no difference to most people whether the universe is made of waves, particles, strings, energy, God's Word or "nothing." What matters is satisfying needs and relating to others, and any belief system that allows them to do so is real to them.

If nothing exists outside of our minds, where did we get the idea to imagine it, and why?

truth
Rufio, I have absolutely no desire or need to insult you, and it makes me uncomfortable to see you insulted by others, even when you appear to be attempting to diminish them. They may even feel that you are trying to emasculate them--if they are prone to that insecurity. But when people debate others who think in terms of radically different paradigms (i.e, different metaphysical assumptions) they are prone to talk past each other to the point that both sides see the other as being "not even wrong." It is very frustrating and non-productive. People can argue about paradigms, of course, but that raises the level of debate to that of metaphysics, and very few thinkers are ready to jump into that murky pond. We prefer to simply live with our assumptions as see the others' as "wrong-headed" which is, I think, the only "insult" I leveled at you, and for which I now apologize. My "whatever" response to you simply meant to say, "O.K., let's just live with our differences."

truth
Terry, I'm sure we are all very grateful for your thoughtful post. I particuarly like your pragmatic conclusions. You say you can see the attraction of non-duality, but seem to think that non-dualists are talking about a non-dualism in terms of the structure of the external world. I personally feel that when we THINK about the external world we MUST do so dualistically; that is the nature of thinking. But mystics acknowledge the unity of the universe only in the sense of the interdependence of all its forms (expressions)--witness the notion of Indra's Net. But mystics do--according to my limited understanding--focus on the damage done when we believe that Reality is itself ultimately separate from us. It is our mental dualism that mystics decry. The ego-self IS an illusion, but it is a necessary one. I do not think that human evolution would not have advanced as far as it has without language and ego consciousness. It IS functional for physical survival, BUT it is a major block to spiritual fulfillment. What is to be done then? A famous zen master once told me that he DOES have a sense of his separation from the world, BUT he also sees (doesn't just think) that that is a delusion, a delusion that he must treat as a necessary or heuristic fiction. I'm translatling very freely here because of the limitations of his English. He DID say that his ego is something he "sees through". It is sufficiently transparent that it does not block his awareness of his unity with that which he is seeing--THROUGH the ego delusion. We normallly only see our "objects" of perception and conception WITH REFERENCE to an opaque ego. There is no reason to think that people who have seen through the ego CANNOT THINK.
I agree with you that the only way to THINK about, and empricially investigate, the cosmic picture is to procede under the assumption that the universe is OTHER than our mind. Our minds are opposed to that external reality. To mystics, however, it is OBVIOUS (meaning an immediate perception, not a cognitive conclusion) that this is mythical, albeit a necessary myth for the purpose of "knowledge." The religious perspective sees the world as ultimately no more than what we experience. Even our cognitive conclusions about the objective world are experiences. One cannot imagine how one can have "mindless--objective--knowledge." One cannot defend this position intellectually, for this would force the mystic to defend nondualism dualistically. So, as I said to Rufio above, we end up with the frustration of trying to argue across fundamentally different paradigms. We cannot argue that nothing exists ourside our minds, but when we look very carefully--in the process of meditation--we see that, nevertheless, that is so. I do not want to shrink the universe to the size of my mind, nor try to expand my mind to the size of the universe. No such efforts are necessary in the nondualist mode of experience. When using the term, experience, I refer to "perception" (insight or intition) which is always nondualistic rather than cognitive understanding which is always dualistic. To illustrate: When I raise my head and look at, and experience, the sky, there is no dualism. But when I consciously look "up" I am already thinking in terms of "not-down."
Your pragmatism, is my intellectual bias. All thinking has simply to work to fulfill some intended function; it does not have to "grasp" some absolutely True reality. Only the mystical mode does that, IMHO.

truth
Twyvel, .
It is sometimes said that All knowing is a function of the knower. That seems to be obvious. But we must add a qualification. All knowing is a function of an INTERESTED knower. We understand for the power it gives us; this is the basis of that most realistic of epistemologies of truth: pragmatism. In the case of mysticism, however, "knowing" must be disinterested, in the sense that true "knowing" is known by a noone.
JLNobody

JL - sure. I just think it might be interesting to discuss this all sometime. And some of the people here are in need of some emasculating, I think.

truth
Aha, I thought so.

I'm not on a crusade to turn any of you into anything. I couldn't care less what you do with your life or your brain or anything like that. I just think it's interesting to discuss things with people who disagree with me. If everyone agreed, where would that leave me?

JLN highlights the issue of "paradigm shift" in his discussion of Terry's post. It is indeed disconcerting to "realists" when they are told that "causality" is a pychological construct which fails to account for contemporary (quantum mechanical) views on the world. Similarly disconcerting are the views of philosophers of language such as Wittgenstein who argue that "I" as "an experiencer" of the world has no "place" in that world. (...shades of Russell's paradox and meta-logic).

Now what would be detractors from these spectacularly influential paradigms should ask themselves is what holds them back on the philosophical equivalent of a "flat earth view" ? I put it to them that it is the fear of losing their favorite tools of "prediction and control" i.e. "causality" and "objective facts"...but it is freedom from fear and the need to control that transcendental views of the self seek to offer.

Good points fresco,

It gets down to fear of loosing them 'self', the ' I ', the ego, the doer of the world. Prediction, control, causality etc. apply to the apparent physical body as well.

Absent a 'self' the nature of the world and it's activities are impersonal. We are dreamt characters without volition, simply becasue there are no characters. When one drops the sense of being a 'doer' it probably is a great relief, and as you say, "freedom", the experience of freedom is observed.

truth
Yes, Fresco VERY good points. I wrote a response but made the mistake of using the "preview" function to edit it and lost it. My point was simply to add that the fears the objectivist/naive realist has in addition to loss of ego-self (a kind of death fear) and tools of 'prediction and control' is that he does not and cannot function within exotic frames of reference. His provincialism reflects a kind of intellectual xenophobia.

I do not do this lightly, but I will break my self-imposed, post-kuvasz silence here because twyvel finally said something that I understood!

If "all is one," then how do you know that?

Certainly, if you're serious in suggesting that everything is a unity, then presumably you can't distinguish yourself from anything else. If the "I" is not contrasted with the "not-I," then you can have no self-awareness (as Fichte pointed out), but, more importantly, you can have no awareness at all. Either everything is "you," in which case all your perceptions are nothing more than self-reflections (and thus you resemble nothing so much as a Cartesian "brain in a vat"), or you are committed to a type of solipsism -- and I see no reason to argue with a solipsist who doesn't agree with me.

If, on the other hand, you are positing this "all is one" in some sort of metaphysical "we're all connected" kind of way, then your proof fails, since any such proof rests on an implicit acceptance of the "not-I." In particular, your notion that there is no "observable self" cannot rest on mental experience, since "observation" and "experience" are either direct sensory knowledge, and thus manifestations of a mind that recognizes the "not-I," or else they're the idle musings of a solipsistic potted brain.

In sum, your "all is one" can only rest on a metaphysical basis, not an epistemological one. And you can no more "prove" your metaphysics by means of logic than I could "prove" the existence of God by the same methods.

I must be some sort of hybrid. I am very materialistic but I also don't feel 'other' than all of the universe and its contents, material or (not sure of right word, so I will say 'nonmaterial'). But, the universe and I are not an equation; it is more than I am united with it. I understand that my sense of self is in my philosophic way.

I find the quantum mechanics discussions a philosophic jump for me but am not hostile to them, am listening with interest.
While not denying the philosophic value, or epistemological value (epistemological is a word among many I need to learn here) of the philosophy fresco and jln and twyvel are talking through, it is fairly foreign to my own well developed (to me) material ways of apprehension of the world.

Anyway, one of these days I will print out this thread and sit down in a comfy chair and try to understand.

Fresco, I agree that the "I" could probably be considered separate from the world in some ways of looking at it - if it weren't for social interaction, we might all feel that way. As for needing objectivity and causality for philosophy - that's not just true of realists, but of all philosophers and scientists of natural phenomena. If we are not allowed to predict things about the world we live in, how else are we supposed to study it?