Inflate or destroy self?

@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

is there a gap between us ? do you need help climbing up ?

Certainly, there is, as far as your cosmology (time, space, etc.) is concerned. But I am not really interested in modelling the universe, anyway... At some point in my youth I lost interest in astronomy, more or less when I discovered biology. String theory Mshring Msheory... :0)

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@Fil Albuquerque,

"Real patterns"...! Laughing

......No "real patterning"

Think about what happens when people "see Jesus"" in the Turin Shroud. It is impossible NOT to see it once you have seen it once. This is the bedrock of Gestaltism,...of constuctivism(Piaget)...of paradigmatics(Kuhn)...etc

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@JLNobody,

Quote:

from the anti-dualistic perspecdtive there is no point in negating subjects since they do not exist.

Puzzling. How would you define your "anti-dualistic perspective"?

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@fresco,

lmao Fresco so what ? a pattern is a pattern so what ? Its not like some few geeks have this hallucination on self and most of the world lives happily with a no self...your comparison is no less then hilarious...are you suggesting the phenomena of self is not a phenomena ? perhaps you believe culture does not exist either...that would be funny to see...confusing a false positive were there is nothing but a superposition on top of noise with a true pattern is a low level comment...but even false pattern recognition can be itself traced to a pattern of behaviour in the subject...itself a pattern within the pattern of a self.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

If ever there comes a time on which I go from Filipe to Sarah Palin in 1 minute I will be happy to agree there is not sufficient cohesion for the idea of a self being at work, till there keep up the effort of making a solid point...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

You don't get it. A pattern has no ontological status in its own right. There is "selfing" not "self".....there is "thinging" not "things"....there is "phenomenoning" not "phenomena". And all these ing-ings are social processes transacted in language which acts as a set of shifting selective filters.

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@fresco,

Yeah I suppose it all come out from nothingness..your temporal time perspective is sounding pretty smart right now...I suppose there is no triangles squares circles and no parabolas to...society is yet another pattern pal on your account there is no society either nor anything to transact about...be coherent in the least if you deny one thing you might just as well deny them all... Laughing

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil reports: " I can empathise with what JL is trying to convey in a metaphorical way...but not when he is trying to take it seriously".
I take it very seriously. Indeed, I systematically meditate on the non-dual nature of immediate experience every day. The difference between our perspectives in this regard is that, while I take mine very seriously, you seem to take yours for granted. And so long as you take it for granted you will not see it for the problem that I claim it is. But who am I too preach to you about what you do not consider a program Question

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@JLNobody,

Quote:

I systematically meditate on the non-dual nature of immediate experience

Meaning?

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@Olivier5,

That's a long topic. I can refer you to books, but, since it is more than discursive philosophy, you would have to see for your self in actual meditative practice...and unless you are exceptionally talented in such matters, it would take years.

BTW, I've had some serious typos in this thread. Once I said program instead of problem and another time I said suspect instead of suspend...

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@JLNobody,

...you are aware I was referring to your need of removing the "self" out of the equation right ? I don't have a dualist view of it as I state is a pattern among patterns but I don't refute its particularities as you do...I don't lose nothing regarding social communion either...my view is far more mild then you seam to realize...I try hard at a reconciliation for years on this matter...you guys are the ones dumping a logic model as shortcut to get at the place we both want to be...you think I would ever cherish n praise a dualist model ? think again...I just have been stating that mind is not in control...the problem is you and I have a different notion of what I mind is doing...my model is not a freedom model pretty much resumes all our differences...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

I wish you a successful reconciliation. I'm sure there are many ways to achieve it.

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

That's a long topic. I can refer you to books, but, since it is more than discursive philosophy, you would have to see for your self in actual meditative practice...and unless you are exceptionally talented in such matters, it would take years.

Respectfully, JL...that may be a big part of the problem. This "systematic meditation on the non-dual nature of immediate experience" (or whatever) may be nothing more than what Christian philosophers have done...which is to "blindly guess" an answer to REALITY; accept it as true...and then find as many ways as possible to justify the blind guess as possible.

Non-duality MAY BE THE REALITY, JL.

It certainly holds...and has for a long time held...a great deal of appeal for me.

But I do not simply accept it as the REALITY...and then "meditate" to reinforce and justify the acceptance to the point where I start considering the "acceptance of a blind guess" as revealed truth; as REALITY.

Really. I suspect you are deluding yourself...not with non-duality, but with the notion that it is self-evident upon sufficient reflection and consideration.
Fact is, with enough "reflection and consideration"...damn near anything can seem to be affirmed and sustained as TRUTH.

1 Reply

@JLNobody,

Quote:

That's a long topic. I can refer you to books, but, since it is more than discursive philosophy, you would have to see for your self in actual meditative practice...and unless you are exceptionally talented in such matters, it would take years.

That sounds like a cop out. If you had been thinking and meditating about this for years, you would be able to explain it clearly and succintly. It looks like you haven't a clue of what you're talking about, or that you are exceptionalky untalented in such matters.

Mind you, what I would like you to clarify is only this non-dual or anti-dualistic thing. I suppose that means what 19th century philosophers called "monism"... But if indeed the cogito is proof that there is such a thing as "thought", as you conceded upthread, and if the world is made of just one substance, does it mean then that the world is made only of thoughts?

I.e. are you an idealist monist?

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@Olivier5,

I have not been meditating for years but I have done a lot of thinking and writing about the subject. I understand exactly where JLN is coming from having arrived there myself via an academic route as an experimental psychologist. As far as I am concerned, the only writer I had then studied who got close to understanding of cognition was Piaget, despite later pedagogical criticisms. Significantly, he pointed out that" inner" and "outer" states are two sides of a single coin, and that "logical thought" was merely one by-product of "maturation" (the evolutionary sequence possible of state transitions). So in order to account for "logical thought" Piaget's system was transcendent of it.

So counter to your claim of a "cop-out", if you compound such a break-through about "logic" in psychology together with the metalogical developments in physics (complimentarity...non-locality etc) you might be able to see why parallel meditational claims for transcendence now have additional semantic import beyond that of "a mere belief system". Obviously there is a plethora of modern philosophy too which further supports such views.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

I have not been meditating for years but I have done a lot of thinking and writing about the subject. I understand exactly where JLN is coming from having arrived there myself via an academic route as an experimental psychologist. As far as I am concerned, the only writer I had then studied who got close to understanding of cognition was Piaget, despite later pedagogical criticisms. Significantly, he pointed out that" inner" and "outer" states are two sides of a single coin, and that "logical thought" was merely one by-product of "maturation" (the evolutionary sequence possible of state transitions). So in order to account for "logical thought" Piaget's system was transcendent of it.

So counter to your claim of a "cop-out", if you compound such a break-through about "logic" in psychology together with the metalogical developments in physics (complimentarity...non-locality etc) you might be able to see why parallel meditational claims for transcendence now have additional semantic import beyond that of "a mere belief system". Obviously there is a plethora of modern philosophy too which further supports such views.

Wow...that was one of the finest universal appeals to authority I've ever seen attempted.

You are a genius, Fresco.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

...and if the world is made of just one substance, does it mean then that the world is made only of thoughts?

I.e. are you an idealist monist?

It could be argued that the material world is reducible to the nature of thoughts but then equally that thoughts can be further reduced to abstract processes, patterns in an abstract world...in such view there is no distinction between having thoughts which represent patterns and having parabolas triangles or squares...eventually one can even imagine that geometry can possibly be reduced to mathematics...why would thoughts plead a special case ? Can we know more about thoughts and what they truly are then we know about anything else ? I don't see how...the best argument against Descartes, is that the experience of thought is no proof of what thought is, less alone the "I"...and yet none of it refutes these patterns as full flagged phenomenal reality's per se ! If the whole is uncaused any within the whole is just as valid and uncaused as the whole...funny enough, extreme idealism results exactly in naive realism...

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@Frank Apisa,

Not me....Piaget certainly was. He was publishing acclaimed scientific papers as a child. Yet even geniuses have their limitations as I clearly pointed out...a point which you of course ignored.

Here a tee-shirt you haven't got yet.

Quote:

Frank doesn't know, so nobody knows !

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Not me....Piaget certainly was. He was publishing acclaimed scientific papers as a child. Yet even geniuses have their limitations as I clearly pointed out...a point which you of course ignored.

Here a tee-shirt you haven't got yet.

Quote:
Frank doesn't know, so nobody knows !

Ahhh...it should read, "Frank acknowledges when he doesn't know...not everybody does!"

But good thought!

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

It could be argued that the material world is reducible to the nature of thoughts but then equally that thoughts can be further reduced to abstract processes, patterns in an abstract world...in such view there is no distinction between having thoughts which represent patterns and having parabolas triangles or squares...

Precisely the idealist monist position: the world is made of information, logic, mathematics, thoughts... But I want to know if that's FL's position.

Quote:

eventually one can even imagine that geometry can possibly be reduced to mathematics

The reduction of geometry to algebra (or vice-versa) is already done. Old news even.

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Inflate or destroy self?

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