Destroy My Belief System, Please!

@Krumple,

Krumple wrote:

Razzleg wrote:
Oh, JLN, please provide an example of "choices" without "choosers"...Please disprove agency via meaningful agrammatical practices...Please describe the circumstance that allows "you" to "agree" with Krumple v. an alternative, sans agency...

Your understanding of both grammar, usage, and context is weak...

There are several ways to examine it. But if it never goes examined it is easy to be mistaken for agency. I'll attempt to show you what I mean using my re-occurring thought experiment.

Imagine you are born without any of your senses working. You are blind, deaf, can't taste or smell and your sense of touch all don't work. Your body is kept alive but you have absolutely no way of experiencing anything. The concept of self would never arise because the concept relies on the concept of "other". This is me and this is not me.

Even though there is absolutely no way for you to KNOW this, Krumple, you are presenting it as fact.

You shouldn't be. You may be entirely mistaken about this.

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Here is another example. If your arm were severed from your body and lay on the ground at your feet. Would you say that is still your arm? After all it is just a mass of cells laying on the ground. If it decomposed and became nutrients in the soil would you still say it is your arm? If those nutrients were adsorbed into plants would you still say it was your arm?

No...but that does not mean the things were not your arms at one time. What is your point?

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What is the point of these thought experiments?

Apparently...to try to make your guesses about REALITY seem logical...instead of just guesses.

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They are an attempt to turn your examination inward to look for where the self exists. If you examine it long enough you will discover there is no place that a self persists.

This is like a Catholic talking about transubstantiation.

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There is an inflow of information through the senses but we are NOT this data. However; we react as if we are the data. This is why you say things like, I see this, or I hear that. You are trying to claim that you are experiencing a piece of data. No the data arises flows and ceases. No where is there a self that is experiencing the data.

We are taught the concept of self through our sense data. We attach to this concept as if it were real and important. The fact of the matter is, all there is, is the data. Nothing else.

Perhaps...but perhaps not.

That is the concept that seems to elude you, Krumple.

You present your musings as though you are revealing from on-high.

Present them as possibilities...rather than as the reality. Then it will make sense.

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@Krumple,

There is no way you can explore anything and not exist at the same time, Krumple. People who fall for the "I can't find my self when I look for it therefore it does not exist" are like dogs chasing their tail. Their tail is there, and part of them at all times, yet they can never catch it.

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@Olivier5,

They are simply blinded by unintentional ignorance.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier, the self is a feeling of being a subjective object, a perspective of sorts. So if you cannot find this object, its subjective counterpart tends to vanish--and as they say in the zen literature you are likely to experience a degree of "enlightenment" (freedom from the delusion of being a self, a kind of little creature within).
You have to admit that Krumple's thought experiments are clever--and possibly true.

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@JLNobody,

I cannot admit anything if I don't exist. So if we are not selves, you and I (and Krumple), what are we?

Krumple's first thought experiment is a variation of the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment, and it means to prove that the construction of a self depends on sensory stimuli... Even if that was proven true in an actual experiment, so what? The self does not come ex nihilo? Big deal. Tell me: what does come ex nihilo in this world? Plus his thought experiment actually does not make it particularly logical or clear that a self would not develop without senses. It just postulates it as this big leap of faith.

I did not understand what the second one (the arm chopped) was supposed to prove.

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@Olivier5,

God created man. Then woman from man.

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@Olivier5,

Meditate (reflect intently) on what you mean by a self. By "reflection" I mean to focus on the experience of it rather than thinking of the idea of it or as a necessary word in a sentence based on the relation between a subject and a predicate.

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@Olivier5,

Without re-reading Krumple's second experiment, I think he was referring to the principle of identification. I am (or identify mySELF with) my mind, my stomach, my arms, eyes and legs, etc.. But what is the ontological status of these objects of identification when they have rottem and become one with the soil? Whatever that is is it different from before, when they were part of my living body?

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@JLNobody,

You don't believe in heaven?

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@JLNobody,

My question was simple: what are we, you and I (and Krumple)?

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@JLNobody,

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But what is the ontological status of these objects of identification when they have rotten and become one with the soil? Whatever that is is it different from before, when they were part of my living body?

I can move my arm at will when it is part of my body, and it sends me (my mind) all sorts of info all the time. In that sense it is mine. I will not be able to move my arm at will if it is cut off, buried and rotten. So there is an obvious difference between those two cases.

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@anonymously99,

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God created man. Then woman from man.

And yet, every man that ever lived came out of a woman's womb... The Genesis 2 myth seems to be turning reality upside down to justify women's subjugation to men.

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@Thomas,

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Believe in facts if the balance of the evidence supports them, and for no other reason.

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Believe in values if acting on them will tend to increase the overall surplus of happiness over suffering, and for no other reason.

what is evidence? this has probably been raised before, but the nature of humanity is that the balance of evidence is always variable. the concept of evidence assumes that humans do have the capability to assert things as facts or knowledge. the concept of fact and knowledge implies that there is a 100% probability of its truth, and not a flicker less. however, the entirety of facts and knowledge that have been compiled and accepted as facts by humanity are not completely 100% probable, only 99.9999ish. the precise location of any particle is never 100% probable. no human perception can be taken as 100% fact, as we know various distortions are possible such as hallucinations in every sensory field, meaning any sensory perception could possibly be illusory.

the idea that we as humans still accept billions of things as facts is merely because in our limited lifespan in time, many things keep occurring without exception (sun rising and falling, planetary movements, seasonal changes etc), and so we just accept them as absolute facts, when they are not. we accept gravity as universally true only because in linear time, we have never observed it not being true. but what if a certain chemical reaction caused all matter to lose its gravitational property somehow?

now that i have destroyed the 'evidence' part of your belief system, i will attempt to destroy the 'believing' part itself.

your request was to 'destroy your belief system'. this implies that you feel that you are in control of your belief system, and that if some greater evidence is presented to you, it is possible it can get destroyed. this is ultimately false, because the idea that you can control your beliefs is always an illusion. the 2 tenets of your religion are essentially involuntary aspects of your intellect, and all human intellects. no human can HELP BUT to believe things which the so-called 'balance of evidence' favours. they also cannot HELP BUT to attempt to maximise happiness.

if you can see that the belief process happens involuntarily in all humans, then you have essentially destroyed it already. you have destroyed its validity, and you are allowing your intellect to challenge all beliefs and therefore maximise your 'understanding' of 'reality'.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Quote:
God created man. Then woman from man.

And yet, every man that ever lived came out of a woman's womb... The Genesis 2 myth seems to be turning reality upside down to justify women's subjugation to men.

Definitively so.

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@Olivier5,

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I can move my arm at will when it is part of my body, and it sends me (my mind) all sorts of info all the time. In that sense it is mine. I will not be able to move my arm at will if it is cut off, buried and rotten. So there is an obvious difference between those two cases.

if you cut your arm off, you will still be alive probably, and lose identification with the arm. the arm rots and becomes part of the rest of the universe, undifferentiated anymore as a separate life form. you continue to exist as a human body and identify with it. then when your human body dies, your whole body becomes part of the rest of the universe. there is no longer a specific part of the universe for 'your consciousness' to identify with.

so if you believe, as you probably do, that 'your individual consciousness' is a discrete, separate thing from the rest of the universe/reality, then of course, death of the body means total loss of yourself.

if you accept that you are unaware about from where the property of individual consciousness arises, and that you lose it every night in sleep, then it is possible that there is something deeper than individualised consciousness which persists in deep sleep and even possibly after death.

so if i submit that pure, contentless awareness, the foundation from which consciousness appears, is the property of all matter in the universe, then it is very possible that the 'dead body' is only devoid of specialised individual consciousness, but remains a part of the universal 'body' and total awareness.

right now, you have many dying and dead cells within your body. but your entire body is still alive, you experience it as such. if you choose to focus your awareness on one part of your body, you can at any time.

similarly, if the entire universe is one body, little life forms like humans may be dying all over the place. but they just recycle with the whole thing and form more life, just like cells do once they die within your body. the universe could just be focussing its own awareness into each life form while they are alive, which constitutes our 'experience' between birth and death. each individual claims the experience as their own, but in reality there is a higher power causing it all, just like each cell in the body has its own function and separate life, but is serving a larger overall scheme.

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

Olivier, the self is a feeling of being a subjective object, a perspective of sorts. So if you cannot find this object, its subjective counterpart tends to vanish--and as they say in the zen literature you are likely to experience a degree of "enlightenment" (freedom from the delusion of being a self, a kind of little creature within).

You seem so very certain of this. How do you know you are not the one deluding yourself?

Why not stop offering your blind guesses (and the blind guesses of your Zen masters) as incontrovertible truths...and instead acknowledge them as merely blind guesses that may or may not be correct?

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@carnaticmystery,

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if i submit that pure, contentless awareness, the foundation from which consciousness appears, is the property of all matter in the universe

I have been thinking about something a bit similar to this but couched in less religious terms:

1. The capacity to structure and adopt complex, semi-stable forms is a property of matter as we know it. (a property which various Genesis myths try to explain, where gods shapes chaos into a structured universe, sometimes having to fight hard for it).

2. That property allows life to happen, it makes it possible (though it still does not explain it ie it's a necessary but not sufficient condition for life). Life is basically the capacity to replicate a complex structure through reproduction.

3. As soon as life emerged from inanimate matter (however that happened), the capacity to collect and analyse information about the (structured) environment became a key survival strength. The bacteria who "knew" in which direction there was more lactose or whatever they fed on, and could travel in that direction, survived and multiplied better than the bacteria who could not tell where food was.

4. From 3 to the emergence of species able to process complex, symbolic information, there's only a small step. It's just more of the same thing.

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@Frank Apisa,

O.K., let's say they are near-sighted (rather than blind) "guesses". Does that make them less worthy of your consideration? I'm not certain of anything in the epistemological sense of absolute knowledge. But little by little I have come to form a general orientation to life with which I am more and more comfortable. I should not be so aggressive in my presentation of my worldview--it's not something I wish to "defend" only to share.

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@Olivier5,

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if i submit that pure, contentless awareness, the foundation from which consciousness appears, is the property of all matter in the universe

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I have been thinking about something a bit similar to this but couched in less religious terms:

there were no religious terms or implications in my statement, unless you consider the word 'pure' religious, but i don't.

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1. The capacity to structure and adopt complex, semi-stable forms is a property of matter as we know it. (a property which various Genesis myths try to explain, where gods shapes chaos into a structured universe, sometimes having to fight hard for it).

2. That property allows life to happen, it makes it possible (though it still does not explain it ie it's a necessary but not sufficient condition for life). Life is basically the capacity to replicate a complex structure through reproduction.

3. As soon as life emerged from inanimate matter (however that happened), the capacity to collect and analyse information about the (structured) environment became a key survival strength. The bacteria who "knew" in which direction there was more lactose or whatever they fed on, and could travel in that direction, survived and multiplied better than the bacteria who could not tell where food was.

4. From 3 to the emergence of species able to process complex, symbolic information, there's only a small step. It's just more of the same thing.

your 4 points are well understood in science today, and this is of course how animate life evolved from inanimate. however, you did not address the awareness or consciousness aspect of existence, and how it has arisen. my speculation that blank awareness is the property of all matter is based on the experience of consciousness, especially deep sleep or unconscious states. in deep sleep or unconsciousness, one is basically like an inanimate life form for that time period. so it makes sense that our consciousness reverts back to whatever inanimate life consciousness is like.

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

O.K., let's say they are near-sighted (rather than blind) "guesses". Does that make them less worthy of your consideration?

I consider all guesses. Nothing wrong with guesses...the best of science depends on them all the time. I make guesses.

But present them as guesses...or at very least, do not present them as truths being revealed.

Whether there is a self or not...is not something that can be figured out, JL. You constantly asserting that there is no self...is nothing more than a blind guess...totally blind, not just myopic.

When you start presenting the notion as one of the possibilities (which I often do)...our argument ends. At that point we will be in substantive agreement.

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I'm not certain of anything in the epistemological sense of absolute knowledge. But little by little I have come to form a general orientation to life with which I am more and more comfortable. I should not be so aggressive in my presentation of my worldview--it's not something I wish to "defend" only to share.

Feel as comfortable as you want. Theists often arrive at a comfort zone because of their guesses. And like you...they want to share.

But share guesses and possibilities rather than supposed revelations from on-high.

1 Reply

Destroy My Belief System, Please!

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