Is truth subjective or objective?

val

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How so?
Because the concept of a thing in itself means a thing not perceived. Or, in Kant's Critic, how the thing IS, beyond our perception of it.

Right.

A world, perceivers such as us have no access to. Of course I don't' buy it. I agree what JLNobody said a little above, "There are no things-in-themselves".

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As for a word distinct of observers, and observers distinct from the world:
I think that is Leibniz idea of the "monad".
Kant refused it and I think he was right. Observers are in the world, not looking at it from the "outside" through a window.

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And why do you say that a perceiver must be in it-self?

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I can only perceive myself as a phenomena, that means, in space and time, in relation with other things.

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In fact,that was the reason why Kant, in the "Transcendental Dialetic" - the last part of the Critic - refused traditional metaphysical concepts, like the soul. Those concepts have no possible correspondance in our experience.

Yes and we have to be so bold as to go beyond Kant, Smile

If the self, as consciousness or observer, is unmanifested, non-phenomenal, that which has experiences transcends the phenomenal world. As JLNobody is fond of saying, "We don't have experiences, rather we ARE experienced. We, as phenomena, (including anything observable) are objects to a transcendent observer, yet not transcendent.

We as observers are invisible, We are the Invisible Man/Woman.

Have a look in a mirror, the reflection in the mirror is not the reflection of that which is looking. The mirror lies...

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truth?
I think truth is like being pregnant. You can not be "just a little pregnant.
Ken

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Yes, we do not HAVE experiences; we ARE experiences. Who has the experience? No-one has them. The problem with our thought is that we seem to require an agent for everything. "I" see; "it" rains, etc.
Pardon the repetition: There is no ME to have experiences, but this refers to what zen folks refer to as "little mind" or ego. My true self, they would say, has no self-ness; it is not a separate thing by/in itself. The Hindu metaphor of Atman has always appealed to me as the transcendent observer. Atman has the experience, not ego. Atman is a facet of Brahma(n). Atman consists of all the forces and conditions (all the necessary and sufficient causes) producing the experience, e.g., gravity, sunlight, occipital lobe, light waves/particles, etc. etc. ad infinitum. It IS ad INFINITUM since everything that exists in the total or ultimate Reality is the observer of "my" experiences. And what is being experienced? All that IS Brahma: Brahma IS the experience. The process is ultimately circular and in that sense absolute and self-contained; everything else is dependent and conditoned. Through me (and you) Brahma, as Atman, is perceiving or realizing aspects of Itself. Atman and Brahma are one; hence the circularity of the process.
It is, therefore, not only physically impossible but philosophically meaningless for little mind to see itself, i.e., for the "observer" to observe itself. It doesn't exist as a separate subject. This also might help to understand the famous vedanta saying "Tat tvam asi"--That (which you see) tvam asi (is you).
--edited on 2-15-05

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Does that mean that Kant (or you) believe that our experience is the end all and be all of reality?

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JohnB

Kant did not believe experience was total reality. He used "noumena" for that part of reality which he said could not be "experienced". JLN however puts forward the nondualist view that the "experiencer" and "the experienced" are one and the same. In fact Husserl who followed on from Kant said that any concept of "noumena" should be "bracketed" as being irrelevant to descriptions of "reality". JLN also makes the point stressed by Wittgenstein that the word "have" as in "to have an experience" misleads us into a separation of "subject who posseses" and "object" by analogy with sentences like "I have a dog". Note that similar arguments (about language as a strait-jacket) could be made for the words "design" or "purpose" when discussing "God".

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twyvel

What is a perceiver?
In the case of human beings, nothing more than a man in his presence in the world. Men are only in the presence, their "essentia" is to be among stimulus, dealing with them. We are always experience.
I would not go so far as JL Nobody when he says there are no perceivers, only experiences. In fact, Nobody said - and I agree - that when someones dies, he takes his world with him.
We can speak about external stimulus because we live in any moments of our lives interacting with them. Most of times we do that according to what Heidegger calls "the manual", that means, the rules given by language, education, explanatory concepts. As I said in another topic when we look at night to the sky we only see little bright lights. Saying "stars" is already a way to deal with external stimulus according to the manual.
But, in Kant's first Kritik - thanks Nobody Smile

- the fact that we see little bright lights is already a configuration of something exterior, since the possible conditions of that perception are space and time. Our perception is dimensional.

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Nobody

Saying we do not have experiences, we are experiences, supposes a previous idea: I am not the reference of any possible experience.

As you know, I have a very different conception. I don't think we can talk about experience without an "I". Experience means exactly interaction, but that interaction starts with me, with my presence in the world. That presence is not only sensorial, it is also conceptual: my experience of a tree is not only visual, it is also conceptual, because I "see" a tree, not only an optical construct. I have a set of references to deal with experience: if I am travelling and see a mark in the road that says "New York" I experience something that is not the mark/thing, I experience a message, exactly the same way as if someone was near the road saying: this is the way to New York. But if I am going to repair that mark, I only see a metallic object, not a message.
I am in the center of my experience, not because the existence of things depends on me, but because the way I experience them depends of what I am. Without an "I" there are no experiences.

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Val, what you say is entirely reasonable. But consider the following framework, and see if it cannot operate side-by-side with yours. I live by both; I find it easy to live, like an amphibian, with both simultaneously. When I said that when one dies he takes the content of his life with him, I did not mean to suggest that that "content" is external to him, and, as such, something he can literally "take" with him. That content IS him, and that's why it goes when he goes.
The lights that we call stars are, as you acknowledge, not themselves stars. They are just experiences which we interpretively objectify as stars (out there in the great beyond), or consider empirical evidence for inferring the objective existence of stars. The Aztecs saw them as dangerous cosmic forces that would destroy the world if not kept at bay by the sun. They were wrong and we are right, but both are no more than interpretations of sensorial experiences. According to Kant's critique and the everyday common sense or Naive Realism model this seems obvious. But its obviousness represents the fabric of our consciousness, not the world "out there."
You say that my proposition that we ARE our experiences and not just the possessors OF experience presupposes a self as a logically necessary subject of objective experiences.
I and other nondualists have agreed in many places that the so-called center of experience or EGO has been an essential basis for our survival as a species. Without the ability and propensity to construe reality as consisting of objects, some to be pursued because of their value for our survival and some to be avoided, we would probably not have survived--other animals have other tools for survival and therefore have no need for EGO. And of course, as you say, we cannot TALK about experience (of the reality of objects) without the complementary counterpoint of "I". Indeed, that's built into the grammar of most languages. Its functional value is essential, as I say, but philosophically speaking (at least when we push philosophy to its "mystical" conclusions), this "I" is an illusion, a heuristic fiction to be sure, but fictional nevertheless. You say that "Without an 'I' there are no experiences." Look very carefully (past the screen of your conceptual grid) and you will still have experiences. They may no longer be dualistically meaningful and no longer effable, but they may be even more valuable to you in their nondual "emptiness", what the buddhists call "sunyatta."

-edited around six hours later.

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Nobody

If we are using the word "ego" as synonym of identity, then I must insist that all living species have that sense of identity. A plant reacts to insects, wind, water, other plants, in an interaction that is only possible because the plant reacts as an entity different from water, insects or other plants. A plant interacts within the initial conditions of it's identity, like, for example, it's "interest".
And there is intentionality too. A snail can see a plant good to eat - although we don't know what is a plant to a snail - and not see a hammer in the floor, closer to him than the plant. Because he doesn't care about hammers.

Is it possible that your "monism" has the perfect example in someone in deep coma? Smile

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val

Do you think consciousness, or whatever it is that observers, can be observed?

Apart from theory, reporting on your own first person experience, can you as observer observer the observer you are?

If it is possible to observer that which observes, what is it that is observed?

Or is it the case, that because observing is always observing it is by definition, theory and experience that it cannot be observed. In other words, whenever a self as observer goes looking for itself it can only ever find the objects of it observations and never the observer that it is.

It's like the smeller trying to smell what smells, the hearer attempting to hear what hears or the taster trying to taste what it is that tastes Etc. Or the thinker trying to think of what thinks.

Can you as seer see that which is seeing these words? Can the seer actually see itself?

Many, including, fresco, JLNobody and myself on this thread recognize the infinite regression involved in such endeavor; that whatever observes transcends all observations.

And as Huang Poo, a Zen master said, "And remember the perceived cannot perceive."

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twyvel

As I see it, I can be object of my own consciousness, my eyes can see my eyes - in the mirror - as phenomena. But, I agree with you, that, as an observer I cannot observe my self. That means I cannot be simultaneously subject and object of my experience. When I take "Val" as object of my experience, that "Val" is an object like a plant or a stone, under the observation of the "Val" observer - but this Val observer is not exactly what I call "I".
But that leads us to accept that in all experience we are the point of depart, the initial condition. And we can only "unveil" our being - I am using Heidegger's words - through our experience. Our being manifests itself in the presence - the dasein, the "being there". The being is in our presence in time and space, in our intentionality, in the "manual", the "care" (things can appear as given, or as choosed), in the limit of death (as knowledge or assumption-fear) ... I cannot reach the being I am, because when I say "I" I am talking about an "it" - and there you are right. But if I try to approach the being, I can only do that in the conditions of my experience.

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val

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As I see it, I can be object of my own consciousness, my eyes can see my eyes - in the mirror - as phenomena. But, I agree with you, that, as an observer I cannot observe my self.

1. The eyes reflected in the mirror are not that which is looking. The mirror lies to the extent that a mirror can only reflect phenomena, and only some phenomena, and as you have agreed, that-which-observes is non-phenomena, or noumena, that is, if it cannot be observed.

2. If phenomena are observer dependent; no observation , no phenomena, then when looking in the mirror (or any time) I have no eyes, head face etc. except as mirror reflection, meaning it's not a reflection.

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That means I cannot be simultaneously subject and object of my experience.

Right. It seems few get this point, which is that subject-object dualism is a contradiction.

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When I take "Val" as object of my experience, that "Val" is an object like a plant or a stone, under the observation of the "Val" observer - but this Val observer is not exactly what I call "I".

Consciousness. (JLNobody would/has/does call this I-observe Atman which as he has noted is somewhat distinct yet one with Brahman, the manifestation).

Atman is pure witness, unmanifest, unevolving, unborn, undying, (Ken Wilber).

According to this perspective there's a mistake, why it occurs, who knows. But the mistake is, this non-being-observer mis-takes itself to be an object (or composite of objects); certain objects, sensations of body, thoughts etc, that are split of from other objects, other beings and objects as the world. In the splitting-off an ego-body-self is created which appears as a real Self in which consciousness is merely one of its attribute.

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But that leads us to accept that in all experience we are the point of depart, the initial condition. And we can only "unveil" our being - I am using Heidegger's words - through our experience. Our being manifests itself in the presence - the dasein, the "being there". The being is in our presence in time and space, in our intentionality, in the "manual", the "care" (things can appear as given, or as choosed), in the limit of death (as knowledge or assumption-fear)

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I cannot reach the being I am, because when I say "I" I am talking about an "it" - and there you are right. But if I try to approach the being, I can only do that in the conditions of my experience.

Nondualism.

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What a great exchange, guys. And Tywvel, your comment, "...I cannot approach being if I as non-being (I-observer) am one with it. It's closer to me then my own skin, so to speak", brings to mind the Buddha's "I have truly obtained nothing from complete, unexcelled Enlightenment."

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twyvel

In my perspective, the fact that I am the beginning of my experience, reveals the being that is "in me", although I can never reach it.
I see the being, not as an universal manifestation, even less a metaphysical entity, but as my "originary" identity. In fact, as an "I" I interact with the world from "the inside of me". My perception is dimensional but also intentional.
Most of the time, I interact according to the "manual",that means, I accept things as given and move around them using the learned codes. I push a button without thinking of what I am doing. The same when I walk, drink a glass of water, open a door.
When I interact with given things according to codified proceedings, the manual, I am far from the being - I prefer the german word Sein - and become more and more a thing between things.
But if the door doesn't open, the codified behavior is useless. I must see the door as something strange, something that is not in me because it resists.
It is in those moments, when our presence is more "originary" that the Sein projects irself in the care, the fear, the curiosity. In those moments I reject the codified "I/it".
The Sein is in me. Better, the Sein is what "I" am. It is not my biological structure - then the "I" is nothing more that a given thing - not even my ideas, it is "behind" all that, but revealing itself by the simple certitude that being Val I am not JLNobody or Twyvel or a turtle. Val is unique, but the Val that is taping this doesn't know why. He just knows.
Once again I must precise I am not talking about metaphysical entities like the soul. I am talking about the Sein I am in the origin, and that only manifests itself in the presence (or existence, but this word has bad connoctations due to "existencialists").

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Val, your position does seem to be a philosophical elaboration of the ordinary perception of ego. You present it as a Descartian homucular internal ego-being (one's core self) who is looking out at the world through two eye-windows. There is an objective world "out there" and a subjective being "in here", the ego. You say you do not see this being as a universal manifestation (like the metaphorical Atman of my model), even less a metaphysical entity (like a Christian soul I assume). You say very clearly that,
"In fact, as an 'I" I interact with the world from 'the inside of me'". Your model is not mystical; it seems to be dualistic/existentialist. Am I overstating or mistating your position?

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Nobody.

No. Nothing to do with Descartes dualism, or existentialism.
There is not the being in here and an objective world out there.
My being is already out there, in the ways I deal with things. I cannot reach my "I", because doing so it becomes an "it". I am only in my presence in the world. But the fact that I think of me as an "I", the fact that I am not passive in my interaction with external stimulus shows there is a "Sein" that only manifests itself in the ways it deals with experience. I live in experience and only in experience, but it is MY experience.
You can ask: would do you mean by "MY". I don't know.

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Sounds nondual val

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twyvel wrote:

Sounds nondual val.

(sometimes you sound nondual, sometimes you do not).

Perhaps it is not a question of contradiction but of different levels of perspective.
When I talk about what I think I am, or do, when I say "I did this, or that" I am talking about an it. I project myself into a given thing. During this discussion, instead of "I" I could have said "you", or "human being", or "us".
There is a difference between the reasoning about me, and to be me (but, of course, reasoning about me is already a way of being me).
In the first case we can say there is a dual perspective, because I can only speak about "I" making it an object.
In the second case, I mean, "being there" in the presence, it is in me that the experience occurs. The presence is always my presence. Of course I cannot reach the identity,the "Sein", because when start doing that I must change that identity in a given identity.
I am not saying that there are two different moments of existence. Only two different levels of thinking it, that appear to my reasoning about my presence.

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Val, I agree with your statement that "There is a difference between the reasoning about me, and to be me (but, of course, reasoning about me is already a way of being me)." It is impossible to talk about yourself without linguistically objectifying yourself. I understand that; it's part of the tyranny of language. But to say, as you did that "it is in the me that... experience occurs" is to give "me", (the presumed subject-of-experience), a reality apart from, and preceding, experience. I would say the reverse: it is out of linguistically constituted experience that the illusion of me, (the subject of experience) emerges. That does not happen when one meditates on pre-reflective, extra-linguistic immediate experience.

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Nobody

I don't think that "the me" is an illusion. I believe in my identity, the being I am. And when I say that is in me that experience occurs, I don't mean any "reality apart from and preceding experience": it would be impossible, since I don't accept any kind of reality external to experience. But this experience has a referential: me. Before being a concept - "before" as logical precedent, not temporal -, the "sun" is something that interacts with my eyes, my brain. I am the reference of all my experience, not because I am external to it, but because it's meaning is in me. I give a meaning to the world being in the world.

About meditation, as you know, I have no empathy with eastern religions or philosophy.

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Is truth subjective or objective?

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