Inflate or destroy self?

LOL. What do I care? I answered your post, didn't I? I even got you to admit it was purely semantic and not in the least substantive... That was fun. You were so busy bitching, you forgot to argue your case about traffic lights, which I suppose had to do with beliefs as important to facitate social contracts. An important point which you failed to make because you pitched your delivery a tad too shrill and allowed me to ridicule you.

Chill out, baby. You're better than this hysterical persona you put up here.

No, i made no such admission about it being "all semantics." That you were unable or unwilling to see the distinction i was making is not evidence that you "got me" to agree with you. I used the traffic light example not longer after that, and i will likely continue to use it, because it clearly demonstrates beliefs which people hold based on knowledge and experience.

You're a legend in your own mind. How can you even stand to live life with all of us, when we are so far below your nearly mystical, mental powers.

You crack me up.

Hi, Frank. Hope all is well.

Thanks for putting us back on track.

What seems to be the problem with the "existence of a (unified) self thesis"? It works just fine for billions of human beings...

When I asked what you point was, you said it was simply to stress that the definition I was "trying to impose" was "flawed"... Nothing more. That's semantic.
http://able2know.org/topic/213421-8#post-5323887


Rather, I crack you open.

Do you know what flawed means? Do you know what impose means? No, that was not about semantics, and i admitted to nothing of the kind.

Of course, if you translate everyone's criticisms of you into admissions of error, it must make you feel wonderful. I guess that's better than relying on drugs.

I know that nobody can impose anything onto anyone on a message board, and therefore that your accusation was a lie... and that's a fact.

Put the dog on the stand !

Does unity work fine ?

The case for disunity:

How else can we "account for" the different personae which inhabit the same individual who has so little control of their appearance ?. ....the priest who is also the child molester....the Hitler who was also the dog lover...the fresco who chastises his son one day and apologizes to him the next

How else can can there be a legal defence of a crime committed whilst "the balance of the mind was disturbed"...or the the social observervation "she was acting out of character.

Who are those bizarre "selves" which occupy our dreams ? And who are the participants of those internal dialogues ? And do we not know that two people who married as A and B, and get divorced when Y and Z come to the fore?

Could it not be the case that "self" is predomantly a legal entity with social responsibilities attached to one's name which together with selective memories, holds the fragmented cast together ?

They all are the prove that there is command at play...that there is in each moment an emerging directing solidified consensus...a winner among selves !
Your account on self not existing is similar to saying there is no President of the United States because there is a Senate or because he might be out in the next elections !

The general concept of self works in some ways and not in others. It is, with cultural variations, a universal notion. Individuation seems to be necessary for the species' very survival. But when it comes to the human potential for spiritual fulfillment it is a major obstacle: Hence the spiritual movements of Hinduism and Buddhism (not to mention the "mystical" elements of versions of Christianity, Islam and other religions).
I hate to write long drawn out discussions on this topic. It's mainly a problem of the lack of energy I experience at my advanced age. So let me just drop isolated impressions.
I am impressed by the clarity and explicitness of Olivier's existential pessimism of alienation. I used to suffer from the sense of isolation until I realized that while "I" could never be one with another. The very desire for a complete (100%) fusion with anything outside of myself was a symptom of my attachment to the illusion of the egoself (or small mind as some zennists call it). There is perhaps the "mystical" realization of one's unity with all things, at least as we experience them. Put another way, one can see that his experiences are not OF entities separate from him; instead he can see that his experiences ARE him. As the Upanishads say, You are your experiences (Tat Tvam Asi).
It's a problem of culture--namely its grammar--that forces us to talk about experience as if it consists of objects happening to subjects. Nietzsche referred to grammar once as the metaphysics of the masses. I can see that. But of course we cannot do without Culture, Grammar, and the EgoSelf. We simply have to deeply recognize their constructed nature.
When one attempts to relieve himself of his sense of separateness from the World, he suffers inevitable frustration until the time when he realizes that he has never ever been separate from his experience--the very ground of his being. Meditation is simply the persistent and meticulous (non-intellectual) examination of the nature of one's immediate experience, which he eventually realizes IS his true ever-changing (unmediated) Self, his ego-less being.

Note please no one said your experiences are not real, they are happening to you, of course they are real ! What as been said, was that even your own reality, not just outside you, even if we are one with nature itself, is itself an object, it is what it is, not wine ! Same with self, it doesn't matter that there are several selves or that self is changing...it matters that in each point in time and even over time a pattern of self dominates...same with dominant culture among cultures !
That all said and explained I would agree the "little ego" it is indeed limiting, as it stops us from getting a sense of communion with the world !

I question the equivalence on the basis that I question the psychological unity of the president. The fact that one of the "selves" takes the role of temporary chairman hardly guarantees effective "control". In essence we are a committee.

Worth repeating as one of the most significant antitheses of naive realism.

Yeah sure...that doesn't change an emergent winner...I don't need to oppose your view to make a point and you know it !
I also know who I am talking to...in your case I don't need to explain myself twice...that's why you have twice as much responsibility on what you set off to say...you might confuse less clever people while doing the work of defending your lobby !

Interacting entity's are never separate...n that DOESN'T make a case against objectivity either ! Perception is itself objective in the perceiving, it is a thing which happens to subjects ! Subjects are themselves objects in what they are being ! Reality to which we belong is itself yet another object ! We are one with nature but that doesn't mean we are in control of anything for the same reason on your account there is "no self"...when you guys say the world is one with us you give the impression there is an "I" controlling what the world is being...even when in fact the World is just being, including the being of our own insufficient perceptions on the world or ourselves !

What I think you miss is a point made by Maturana about "observation" i.e that it is always verbal and after the event. In other words the ontological status of the "self" you hypothesize is not the actual "experiencer/experience" that JLN has indicated. It's an epiphenomenon equivalent to a newspaper reporter.
I note you have done a follow up but it looks confused to me. The meditational state is transcendent insofar that it is holistic with respect to all perceptual events...ultimately there are no events handlable by a reporter !

If such was the case there would be no perception, nor reality...reality being exactly what it is, the unified object it is, accounts for epiphenomena itself...epiphenomena are REAL phenomena ! Being wrong about something (knowing) is itself right (nature made it so as if we knew everything we would be mute dead, a bit like "God", incompleteness is fundamental)..."Self" a dominant recurring pattern among patterns is phenomenally happening ! No way around it !

First of all, that “entity” or “entities” is (are) all within one single physical body. A body with one single social existence, one single DNA, and one single interconnected brain. Well, technically there are at least two brains, but they are connected with very powerful cables.

Second, probably as a result of 1 above, whatever different sources of thought that may exist within one body (allowed/supported by one brain platform) can speak to one another inside one mental space, which other individuals cannot access, and often called “conscience”.

Maybe if our corpus callosum was severed, the discussion would stop and our unique body would harbor two distinct minds, but as built, whatever mental diversity exists within one individual can be discussed, and possibly reconciled in one single synthesis. Hence a sense of unitary self.

In my experience, the different sources of thought in my mind do not sound like different people. They all sound like me, myself and I having a discussion: the shy me, the bold me, the smart me, the stupid me, the filthy me, the holy me, the aspirational me, the cynical me, etc. I recognize these guys as me, and more importantly, I see their mix as me.

And I know I can change and evolve, but still remember the person I was as a child, the fears and hopes I had, by and large. I remember all the Tintin, all the Lucky Luke I read as a child. I recognize them now when I read them to my son. I remember I wanted to become an astronomer and read so many astronomy books. I remember the day I decided not to become an astronomer, the sense of loss I got but also the desire to live a more exiting life that motivated me. So there’s a sense of continuity there. Because it’s one brain that’s supporting all this, it’s not two dozen brains, and it’s the same brain year after year. Though it changes too, its general structure maintains itself and it can store information on the long haul.


Can’t you see that you apologize to your son because you chastised him? Can’t you see that a priest can be a child molester precisely because he chose to be a priest, and to live in chastity which is an inhuman, self-hating, and almost impossible choice to stick to? And that Hitler may have loved his dog because he hated people and needed some sort of compensation?

People are never as contradictory as they seem.

Part of what you say can be deemed "an emergent truth"!. There is no ultimate reality, only the ephemeral relativistic reality described by (human) reporters. There is no object/state which "observes this" unless you evoke an anthropomorphic god. The "self" as objectifier has been transcended at that level and has no ontological status.