Inflate or destroy self?

@fresco,

Quote:

If you follow up the Varela line you encounter the Merleau-Ponty argument about the nebulous boundaries of the body e.g. in consideration of the status of the blind man's stick.

So where does that lead you?

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I admit to attempt to cash in on your dissatisfaction with 'Brian science' Embodiment theories are but the first step away from the brain. Extrapolation beyond that tends to follow.

My dissatisfaction is due to many proponents of neurosciences being narrowly materialistic. They forget that it's all about information and knowledge. Just because information can be written down on mater does not mean mater causes or determines information. Rather, it's often the other way round.

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@igm,

igm, you wrote upthread:

Quote:

When the person we love (perhaps our mother) dies, does our love die with them... or does it continue?

Now, why would you love ANYONE if no one actually exists? If your mother's self keep changing and is never the same, and does not exist, why would you love all these different persons that she is? What does it even mean to love anything or anyone, if your self does not exist?

Things always change but as we say in France: plus ça change, et plus c'est la même chose... (The more things change, the more they remain the same)

Maybe the real illusion is change. Maybe we're much much more stuborn and inflexible than we think we are.

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@Olivier5,

...jumping forward you could bypass matter altogether then...in this particular situation Fresco has a point...while for obvious reasons mind cannot justify mind, there is no reason whatsoever to think it needs be material in the classical sense of the wording material implies...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

If mind is information, it needs to be written down somewhere in order to have some degree of permanence, like a song needs to be written down on score, vinyl or mp3 in order to endure.

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@igm,

Quote:

We all seem to experience a 'self' but it's just an illusion made more tangible by language.

If you could get away from your religion--your "beliefs"...you would easily see that this sentence should read:

"We all seem to experience a 'self' but it may be just an illusion made more tangible by language. "

When you finally get to where you see that...you will be home.

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@igm,

Quote:

Is the self permanent? To me it cannot be permanent because everything I examine is constantly changing.

For a person who seems determined to suggest there is no self...you certainly place a high significance on "your" self.

Perhaps "self" is not dependent upon any perceptions of it.

Maybe the REALITY is that we humans like ants in the grand scheme of things...and our abilities of perception not nearly up to the job of making determinations on questions like: Is the self permanent?

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@Olivier5,

...very good I agree...my take, and its mere opinion, is that information is written down on 1 a dimension space string describing all sorts of phenomenal interactions including all other dimensions and time itself. I also believe this string of information is finite but emulates infinity by describing causal relations within a self enclosed loop...while I would automatically admit information needs at its core to be something I wouldn't describe that "somethingness" as "material" as our phenomenal account and experience of the world is of a 2 order category...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Not sure we're talking about the same thing. What string? Why must it be 1 dimensional, rather than say, a sort of cloud?

For me, it must be written down on our nervous system. I mean this quite literally, like a poem is written down on paper. Doesn't mean the code is straightforward, or linear, or local -- e.g. unlike computer memory, human memories don't seem to be "stored" in one discrete place in the brain, rather they can be 'reconstructed' from a number of starting points in a network -- nor that it must all be symbolic in nature. It's probably infinitely more complex than anything we can imagine right now, so I would urge against jumping to a particular code or writing system, in the absence of evidence.

But as a matter of principle, I believe our thoughts have their own causality and get "translated" or "written down" on matter somehow, e.g. when we decide to raise our arm or when we memorize something.

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@Olivier5,

No no no..I'm not talking of brains alone...I am talking of the all reality where brains are also contained...brains as any other organized pattern bottom line are systems, structures of information...as for the Master system itself its simplest description would be in binary code zero's n one's, dots n not dots...I am looking for something anterior to geometry itself, the simplest of the simplest where the all system and phenomenology, cause n effect are already described including the very rules and operational parameters of geometry...you don't need nothing more then 1 dimension space to have all that including sub master sets with all other dimensions n time itself...and as you probably have already noticed I take Occam Razor's very seriously...

...I usually take as a counter this is reductionism of the worst kind but since there is no time in my view this counter is flawed in reasoning...

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@Olivier5,

I think you should see where the reading gets you if you proceed with it.
I'll leave discussion of "information" to Fil. He is familiar with my take on it.

In general, I've enjoyed your level of discourse but I don't think we can get any further discussing sub-issues of the "no-self/disunified self" paradigm from the intellectual level alone. Please refer to JLN's illustration of experiential data in order to see why I say this. If such experiences are unknown to you, or rejected by you, we are never going to agree.

Regards fresco.

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@fresco,

As I said, I don't bank on phenomenology. For all the millions of pages written about Dasein and stuff, very very little has emerged that's of value, IMO. And that's because our mind is not meant to understand itself. Rather, it is meant to fool itself, more often than not. The mind functions based on productive lies, or at best useful approximations. So I won't follow on Merleau-Ponty. I'd rather use my time chasing more modest goals.

I agree with everybody else that the ego needs constant deflating, mine included. But not destroying. If you want to make a case for a non-self, be my non-guest. While I find it interesting to deconstruct the self in order to understand it, to me it doesn't follow that it should be destroyed or negated. One can dismantle a car in order to understand it better, but it doesn't mean the car is not useful as constructed.

One's mind is a terrible thing to loose. But something tells me you haven't lost yours yet; you're just toying with the idea. :-)

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

as for the Master system itself its simplest description would be in binary code zero's n one's, dots n not dots...

errr... maybe not. Maybe the world is so infinitely rich that it cannot be put in nice little boxes labelled 1 or 0... I certainly hope so.

According to string theory, every single particle can be modeled as an infinite string. Now, how many particles are there in the universe???

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@Olivier5,

Upaya - look it up... if you'd like to of course...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upaya

++++++++++++

Also, on the subject of love or loving kindness:

The feeling we call love is ubiquitous and innate and unbounded but the notion of a self makes it selfish.

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There are few humans more selfish, more self-centered and less "loving" than infants. I suspect that igm really has no useful experiences of the human condition.

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@igm,

Quote:

The feeling we call love is ubiquitous and innate and unbounded but the notion of a self makes it selfish.

Don't you need an object of your affection, though?

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Quote:
The feeling we call love is ubiquitous and innate and unbounded but the notion of a self makes it selfish.

Don't you need an object of your affection, though?

To start with one perhaps begins with one's Mother and then gradually spread it out from there... the feeling won't 'dry up' eventually you will feel loving kindness even for your enemies and eventually all sentient beings... but this practice is just the start... it is just conventionally true but the feeling is real in a direct sense... words of course don't do it justice you have to try to do it and see what happens...

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@igm,

I'm totally with you there. Love for the cosmos and all - no kidding. I don;t express it in Buddhist terms but I can feel the feeling. Yet when you love your mother, you love a particular person, a "self", and you expect that self to be somewhat stable and by and large predictable. If that person would suddenly change into, say, a vampire or a cockroach, you'd feel disappointed. I know I would.

In short, change is not a problem, it's always within limits. It does not mean selves do not exist. You can trust your innate sense of self, and the sense that you remain yourself over time, even though on an intellectual level you may be puzzled by some aspects of it or another. I can be puzzled by a leaf of lettuce but still trust it exists...

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@Olivier5,

That's where we see things differently... and that's ok...

For me the love I have for my Mother is just a sign that a selfless innate love is behind it.

My Mother changes within limits that mean I can still always call her Mother but in reality everything about her is impermanent... in a way my love put into words and deeds, is my wish that she be happy and that comes from being free of selfishness and of course by extension the limiting notion of a self.

The feeling, is what we call 'love'... but of course love itself is beyond words and beyond selfishness.

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Quote:

Where the self is, love is not.

J. Krishnamurti

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Quote:
Where the self is, love is not.
J. Krishnamurti

What is the sound of one hand clapping, Little Grasshopper?

Is there any chance whatsoever that J. Krishnamurti every got anything wrong?

1 Reply

Inflate or destroy self?

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