@Frank Apisa,
Quote:our senses can fool us...so I do not put quite as much trust in them as you do. Wouldn't want to trust my senses, for instance, on what is going on with the sun and the moon...or the shape of the place we live on.
Our senses can indeed fool us, they are not perfect and they have their quirks and blind spots, but IMO thet usually serve their 'purpose' pretty well. 'Purpose' not in the finalist, intelligent design sense, but in the Darwinian sense of bringing a survival edge. And the only thing you need to do to see with your own eyes that the earth is round is to take some altitude. From any airliner, the thing looks pretty round to me... From space even more. Not that I've been there myself but I tend to trust scientists and astronauts, generally.
(disgression: that's another assumption or belief of mine: 'the scientific method is the most reliable method we presently know of for understanding our universe.' You can debate and pierce philosophical holes in that statement until it looks like a bad guy in a Tarentino movie, I will still believe in it. Call me naïve.)
Quote:Olivier: If these things didn’t exist, we obviously wouldn’t be discussing the issue in the first place.
Frank: I disagree. This entire thing I call "the universe" could be an illusion of my mind...or of a combined minds of which I share a part. No way I can tell for sure...and it certainly does not seem impossible to me. So...I do not do "believing" on that possibility. In any case, it may exist only Fin an illusion...and we could easily be having a discussion in an illusion. Jury is still out for me.
Technically, if the universe was an illusion, EITHER you OR I would 'dream' it, including dreaming the other debater. So it would be you and your dream of me, or (I should rather think) I and my dream of you discussing. Not you and I in the traditional sense, i.e. not 'we'.
But that's a technicality. If I was 'dreaming' you and the rest of the world, I would be shocked beyond words by my creative abilities. The world is a masterpiece, really. And I can't build an Ikea bookcase in less than 5 hours? What gives? I would also find it quite lonely in here...
If I believed the Matrix was feeding me a virtual reality, I would try to wake up to join Neo and learn Kung Fu. I would jump from the Empire State Building for instance... :-)
If I believed in the universe, I would be in owe at its beauty. I would be able to have loads of fun (and then less fun) in it... I would like it a lot. And then sometimes less. But there would be so much learnibg to do...
I don't technically know what option is 'true'. I just chose to believe in the third one because the other two sound very very speculative and very very unlikely to me.
Quote:Lot's of non-dualists here would probably take a position quite near mine in this matter.
Non-dualist? I am a monist, if that's the same thing.
Quote:O: ...and I see its referent as a necessary element of our psyche, just like hydrogen is a necessary element of water. I further think that deconstructing our psyche is a risky endeavor, in as much as we're not sure to be able to reconstruct it later. It's like putting apart a mechanical clock: fun to do but you often lose the clock as a result.
F: I do not understand this. If there is a point you do want me to see here, you'll have to break it down for me.
Glad to.
I see SOME beliefs -- you call yours assumptions or ideas or guesses but I rush to say there's a category of assumptions that defines or describes our world view, our frame of reference would say Cyracuz, and that we care more deeply about them and they are more deeply ingrained in us than the usual random guess, and sorry but I need a word for these more fundamental assumptions -- as built in us, in our psyche. I call them mind axioms. Like the idea that the universe exists, that time exists, or trust in our senses. These are inate traits, coded genetically not only in humans but also in many animals, IMO. and the mind cannot function well without them, which is why they are in us in the first place. It's like bits and pieces of our operating system. Don't tamper with your mental OS too much.
I further posit that other types of belief (strongly held assumptions) also serve a purpose. Think of it in terms of the definition proposed at the root of this thread. Our mind is like a legal system. There is a constitution, a
framework that changes very slowly (i.e. the 'belief' or paradigmatic level) and within it, there are laws that can be approved or annulled easily (ideas or assumptions). The framework level provides structure and a modicum of stability, necessary for the whole system to function.
In short, mind axioms should not be tampered because you're gona break your own mind. And other beliefs may well serve a valid function in structuring our mind.