Reality

fresco; did the child have 'down' syndrome?
ech, politically incorrect to extreme!

BoGoWo you just got an A in Engish but flunked "Citizenship".

well i'll count my successes dearly; the "A"s the best yet, and i never could find that 'mainstream' to launch my 'citizenship' canoe into!

No, that's not the key issue, fresco. You and your non-dualistic cohorts use traditional logic just as much as I do. The only difference is that I admit it and you deny it.


I know no such thing. I don't believe that an infinite regress is necessarily involved in that sort of definitional question. But I am glad to see that, by adverting to an "infinite regress," you have so neatly illustrated my point about your continued reliance on traditional logic.


You know nothing of my profession, and I consider it an insult to be told that I make a career of engaging in the "selective manipulation of facts."

And this isn't the first time someone has decided to take a cheap shot at me as a lawyer. I have been the target of a number of completely unwarranted aspersions and accusations as the result of having divulged my profession on this list. Most of them, like yours, are not only gratuitous but also childishly inane. But don't worry, fresco, I won't be asking you to reveal your professional bona fides so that I can launch my own malicious and ill-informed attacks on you. I'm proud of my career, and I don't mind being the target of such puerile barbs: they reflect less on me than on the person hurling them.


No, you are, in fact, so thoroughly bound to "facts" and "logic" and "objectivity" that you can't loose yourself even if you tried. And you don't try.


I don't think I've ever accused you or the rest of the trinity of "guessing" or being "confused:" that's more Frank's bag. Indeed, I don't think you're confused, I think you're wrong.

Hmm... straight denials don't seem quite up to your usual standard.

I really had no idea you were so attached to "the baggage" Joe. What was that maxim about "camels passing through eyes of needles...?"

And if you are right, it seems that most of the general public have somehow got the wrong impression about lawyers. I wonder how that came about !

Fresco, what part of "you're wrong" didn't you understand?


"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24). Honestly, fresco, you can't even get your metaphors right.


It's really no mystery: there are many stupid, misinformed people out there. The mystery is why you'd want to be counted among their number, fresco

I don't believe in reality, i've taken to many drugs to be fooled by that claptrap . . .

O.K. Joe so you are a poor successful lawyer, not a slow camel laden with baggage. Thanks for clarifying that picture.

truth
Well, I see that in my absence this thread has wound down. That's probably for the best; we all know what our arguments are by now, even if we do not understand them. But it was a great run. I thank you all. I learned something from everyone--including myself.

JLN, I have just been waiting - patiently - for your promised answers to my questions:

Where do the brute facts that we apparently perceive come from, if not from a brutish reality? Who or what creates the illusion/delusion, and why? This is the fundamental question that you all continue to ignore.

If "I" had any influence over reality, there certainly wouldn't be any brutes causing mayhem for the rest of us. So who is responsible?

If the world is not inherently DIVIDED into objective and subjective, why do we perceive it to be so? Why do we ALL think dualistically unless we spend years unlearning how to?

I would also like to see twyvel's response to these questions.

truth
Terry, I did respond to your questions. And I saw that it WAS posted, but I cannot find it now. Let me try to express it again. Thank you for your patience. First, regarding "brute facts, we do not mean the same thing by the phrase. Brute facts are not produced by brutish people or reflections of a brutish reality. Where do they come from? They come from us, from our epistemology. Brute here means "bare." They are seen by naive realists to be "bare truths," given, irreducible and elementary bits of empirical reality. As I suggested earlier, facts are little theories. When we say 2 plus 2 equals 4, this may be a useful 'truth" but it is not a "fact" in the sense that I present it here; it is a theory, albeit a solid one for most purposes. But "two" and "four" are themselves "little theories." We do not see two or four in nature; they are numbers we construct and use for certain purposes. From the pragmatist's perspective, the "facts of experience" are not given; they are exerperiences that we take to be facts. Etymologically, someone pointed out to me, a "fact" is something MADE (factore, as in "factory" or arteFACT). We humans make facts and fit them with other facts (making little theories, as it were, and fitting them together to form larger theories. All our efforts in this regard are purposeful; they reflect purposes and values that make up our meanings. All discourse and investigation, no matter how abstract, expresses purposive behavior. To ignore all reference to human purpose and value robs it of human significance.
Regarding the subject-object split, the universal sense of being separate from a world of objects, and even including ourselves as one among those many objects, is related to this purposiveness of knowledge. I said in the other, lost, effort, something to the effect that we treat ourselves as objects (ego-selves) because it serves survival functions to do so. This means that we "dualistically" identify separate "things" in the world and purposely pursue them for their nutritional value or avoid them for the danger (or whatever other value) for US. If we did not behave as if there were a distinct and separate self to protect, feed, make secure, etc. we probably would not have survived as a species. But this does not mean that the worldview of objects (that includes "this," "that", "those", "I", "me", "my", "mine", "us" and "them", "ours" and "their's") is philosophically valid. It is a necessary fiction. Physical survival required that we construct that perspective and live accordingly, but philosophical transcendence and spirtual fulfillment requires that we go beyond it, that we recognize it for the mythical--albeit useful--construction that it is

Ah, I just found the other version of this message; it's in the thread, "JL Nobody Misses You" here in the Philosophy Forum.

JLN,

Terry's take up of "brutish behaviour" was in part in response to my statement that "we as dualists" were responsible. The point missed by him is that the dualistic separation of subject from object has spin-offs into "us-them" where "they" become "dehumanized objects". History abounds in such examples. Terry's argument tends to be that "he" is not a party to such dehumanization but I say we are all potential "brutes" given "certain circumstances".

Terry also claims that dualsim is the "natural" mode. "If it isn't correct why do we do it". I think here is an appeal to perhaps the mechanistic aspects of evolutionary theory. He may be "correct" in epitomizing dualism in this way. It fits into the current paradigm. But philosophers aspire to transcend "base instincts". There are counter arguments based on the rejection of "causality" at the epistmological level by comparison with other explanatory modes such as teleology, which Terry appears to be unaware of. He is similarly unaware of, or chooses to reject the point that dualism simply does not "work" any more at the cutting edge of research.

I address these remarks to you because he is likely to reject your own argument from first principles i.e. that "facts exist".

JLN, I do know the different meanings of "brute." That was an attempt at humor which should probably have included an emoticon.

If we were not already distinct, separate objects, why would we need to learn to think of ourselves as such in order to survive?

Does the spirit/mind/soul require an organic brain/body to exist, or not? If not, did minds decide to imagine bodies for themselves and just dream the material universe into illusionary existence? If it is just an illusion, how come it can so easily kill us?

If we are not separate from anyone or anything else, how come we don't know what other people are thinking? Why is it so hard to communicate our ideas? Why are some people as dumb as rocks, while others have brilliant insights?

If children have to learn to separate themselves from the rest of the world, do animals? They certainly act as if they are dualists!

What makes you think that the non-dualistic viewpoint is somehow more "true" than dualism? I understand that your experiences make you "feel" that it is true, but do you find any intellectual justification for the idea? I suppose you will say that non-dualism "transcends" the need for verification.

Fresco, I am a "she" not a "he," and as such not prone to the brutish tendencies caused by an overabundance of testosterone.

There is no scientific research that does not "work" in the context of dualism. Perhaps you misunderstand the Copenhagen Interpretation (one of many) of quantum mechanics, in which the act of observation affects the outcome, but both the observer and the wave function of the particle are separate entities in an objective reality.

Terry

Apologies for the gender shift !

I agree that QM starts from a dualistic separation of observer-observed but the ensuing results (like nonlocality) are problematic. To quote Niels Bohr:

<<Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.">>

As for nondualistic research, there is a whole area concerning of "life science" where "individual entities" have no meaning except as part of an orgaizational structure. In this area "life" "cognition" and "perception" are all considered to be isomorphic exemplars of organizational processes which cannot be "explained" by conventional causality. For example the concept of "order" as a property of living entities is a semantic co-extension of the concept of "disorder" as in the second law of thermodynamics. Thus "order" and "disorder" are two sides of the same coin. We cannot define one without the other, in the same way that we cannot define the observer without the observed etc.

To quote Heisenberg:

"What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."

And to quote Capra:

"Systems thinking involves a shift from objective to "epistemic" science; to a framework in which epistemology . "the method of questioning" - becomes an integral part of scientific theories."

truth
Terry, if Fresco's last post did not at least stimulate in you a suspicion of the fallacy of dualism or a desire to expand your perspective....well, what can I say?
Of course the mind (or spirit) requires a brain to exist, but that's because they are corrolaries of each other. Like order and disorder they are co-dependent ontologically. Minding is braining and braining is minding. Our very awareness of neurostructures and functions is minding. Dualism creates the division; non-dualism ignores it--or recognizes its fictional status. We are not separate "objects" in a world of distinct things; we are facets of a complex and dynamic uni-reality. Nietzsche called himself a dialectical monist; I think he was saying something similar.
You and I are not distinct; we have been distinguished by our minding activities. We have turned our primordial experience of an undifferentiated aesthetic continuum into a differentiated aesthetic continuum, to use the language of F.S.C. Northrup.
The Maya used the image of an abandoned sea shell to symbolize the number zero. This was, of course, because the shell is empty. Think about the "emptiness" in the shell. It is a particular emptiness, just as the hollow of a large bell is a particular emptiness, an emptiness that is co-existent and co-functional with the bronze shell of the bell. Both are ESSENTIAL as a UNIT for the music of the bell to occur. Destroy the sea shell or the bronze bell and you still have their empty sides, but now that emptiness is no longer a particular or specific emptiness; it has become the universal emptiness. You and I non-existed an eternity before our birth and we will non-exist an eternity after our death. But what about now? Have we stopped that pre-birth and after-life eternity? No. I see us as non-existing RIGHT NOW, in the sense that we are not really static "objects" in empty space; we are processes permeated with emptiness. We are non-local realities, co-existent with all things. I am trying to show you that our true nature consists in our one-ness with everything. You and I are (and don't let this repel you, please) connected, not separated, by the space that you see as dividing us and I see as uniting us--indeed as defining our unity, our non-dual essense.

JLN, It is not a matter of expanding my perspective, but of believing what I think I see when I do. :wink:

I am still a bit confused by the difference between twyvel's view of non-dualism and yours.

Twyvel seems to think that there is no objective reality and everything we think we have learned about brains is just part of an illusion.

You seem to accept a physical reality but insist that any distinction between objects in that reality is an illusion.

Neither of you answered the question of who or what generates the illusion, and why.

I agree that "we are facets of a complex and dynamic uni-reality" in the sense that we are all part of the same universe which is mostly "nothing" but is given the appearance of "something" by complex interactions between tiny bits of matter/energy which we do not fully understand.

But I do not understand how anyone can deny that these bits can form distinct clumps of matter that exist and behave independently of at least some of the other clumps. Nothing that happens on a planet in the Andromeda galaxy "today" can affect any human being. We will all be dead and gone long before information about the event could reach us.

And if "We have turned our primordial experience of an undifferentiated aesthetic continuum into a differentiated aesthetic continuum" how did "we" learn to differentiate the continuum, and why did we choose to do so?

If dualistic thinking is necessary for survival, what makes you think it is somehow fictional?

Sea shells and bells are not "empty." The resonating vibration of the air inside them is necessary for the full range of sound that we hear. If the space around a bell was truly empty, there would be no sound. But I know what you mean.

You said, "I see us as non-existing RIGHT NOW, in the sense that we are not really static "objects" in empty space; we are processes permeated with emptiness."

Agreed that the mind is something like the sound of the wind blowing across the top of a bottle. The sound only exists when the process is active. But the bottle exists even when the wind is not blowing.

I agree that we are - in a sense - connected with everything that it is possible to physically interact with, but non-locality has only been demonstrated for particles for which the entanglement is still intact, and not everyone agrees that non-locality is the correct interpretation anyway.

In your experience of non-duality, what have you learned? If it is nothing more than a "feeling" of connectedness without being able to obtain any new information, what is the point? Why is each person alone in their head, unable to share innermost thoughts with those we really care about, if we are all part of a unity?

I have no idea what you're talking about. Please be more specific about the research to which you refer.

Terry wrote:

This is a thought". This thought is occurring right now; it can be observed in the actual form, "This is a thought", which appears to be occurring in a general location around the top of the head, behind the eyes.

"This is a thought"Great Illusion[/i]. And it is an illusion by the mere observation that it appears that something; all observables, are separate from nothing; the observingIS consciousness or IS consciousing; is a function or process as opposed to a solidified object, (as JLNobody and frescoJLNobody

Hey...the Christians have got the mystery of the trinity...so I guess these other beliefs are not all that weird.