What Happens Between Sense Perception And When Critical Thought Kicks-In?
The moment after Reality is perception-altered but before our critical thinking begins would seem to be the closest we can get to actual Reality. Although it has already become our personal reality (due to processing by our senses), it's must be considerably purer than what happens once the full monte of our intellect transforms it into some convoluted dystopia.
Mediators concentrate on this moment and often find it to be a portal to another place altogether. What is happening in this moment and where does it lead?
Mediators concentrate on this moment and often find it to be a portal to another place altogether. What is happening in this moment and where does it lead?
Comments (82)
This is an unusual question. I am not sure how you are imagining the discussion to proceed but the thought that springs to my mind is that of the blank sheet of paper when one begins to put thoughts to paper. Often when one starts to think about an idea it is not with pen or paper in hand, but the whole generation of thought seems an important process.
When I have been working on ideas for some project I often feel that I have to psyche myself up, usually with a few cups of coffee. I think about it as being about the whole creative process, and it feels like going into another dimension for a time, and bringing back the treasured gems of the other reality. But that is my experience of generating ideas and I am aware that others may experience it very differently.
Considering the issues involved, thinking is an incredibly over-rated (albeit necessary) activity. But since this is where our 'self' hangs, it's pretty much non-stop fun and games.
I was curious as to whether there were people (other than those who meditate) out there who had given this any thought.
Jack, what other reality do you refer to?
I can imagine that you are a bit disappointed by having only one response so far. Perhaps the question is one that is a rather unusual slant, but it could just be that your thread is a slow starter.
I have to be careful when I speak of an 'other reality' because it is frequently taken for mysticism on this forum and I am not sure that it even is. I am talking about entering into the world of thought. This can involve meditation, but can just be about thought itself. I think many people who write on the forum dislike the whole idea of meditation but in some ways I am not sure that there is a real difference between what it is in practice from focused concentration.
I think it's a portal to Naive Realism.
I've been a dedicated Zen student for the past 30+ years, so meditation is a subject with which I am quite familiar. There are several types of meditation practiced, but generally speaking, when most people think meditation, they are attempting to clear their minds (via the various teaching methods).
The interesting thing about meditation is that it is purely experiential (as is everything real).
I am not sure what you mean by that.
I think that it may be a subject of debate in itself whether the meditators really go to another place or not, or whether this is a mythical belief. I know that I am someone who dabbles in meditation and sometimes 'feel' that I am going to other dimensions, and I have even discussed the idea of fourth and fifth dimensional in a couple of threads on art but I am not sure how these stand up for scrutiny of rigorous philosophy analysis.
I began reading your message while I was replying to Josh. It is interesting that you have all that experience of meditation. I have mainly attended meditation workshops and have done my own meditation techniques at home in improvised form.
One form I have tried is a lesser known form known as transmission meditation. It was developed by a rather unusual thinker, Benjamin Creme. I found the meditation really helpful although I am not saying that I think that all the ideas of Creme are particularly creditable. One main difference is that in this meditation practice the person is focusing on the ajna point, located in the centre of at the level of the eyebrows.
One reason I would say that I question the idea of entering another reality is that the whole idea of transmission meditation is about energies levelled down from the divine hierarchy. I realise that this whole idea could be seen as complete nonsense by many, but when I practiced this meditation I found it really helpful. However, I realise that you are a practitioner of Zen meditation, so what you are talking about is probably different entirely.
I am not saying your idea of meditation as an 'exotic experience' and of being 'a doorway to richly interpreted and subjectively mediated experience' is wrong. It is a good argument, but how can you know, for sure? What you are saying is just as much an interpretation as the person who sees the matter from the more exotic point of view.
Very interesting. I try not to get too caught up in intellectual particulars because they come and go like everything else.
I was using portal in a generic sense as different types of meditation have differing goals (or none at all).
And what actually happens during (real) meditation is unknowable (just like everything else :).
Although Zen requires a major commitment, there are many types of meditation that are practiced by hundreds of millions worldwide. The power gained when realizing that body and mind are one and the same is alone worth the price of admission!
Human beings crate art - and discuss art in terms that make it inconceivable they 'see' different things. Human being create traffic lights, and wire plugs, and play video games - all of which would be impossible if reality were subjectively constructed.
The subjective nature of perception and apperception is wildly exaggerated in order to support subjectivist philosophy; favoured over objectivism since Galileo, because an objective reality had troubling implications for the Church. The Church arrested Galileo, and tried him for heresy - while his contemporary, Descartes became pet philosopher in the court of Queen Christina of Sweden.
A Cartesian, subjectivist bias can be identified through hundreds of years of Western philosophy, to the modern day. Now, it's the left that are heavily into promoting subjectivism; in support of postmodern moral and epistemic relativism. But it's wrong.
The organism is evolved in relation to reality and has to be right to survive. We cross the road together, look in a shop window together, see some TV's, and laugh at the same time when someone gets hit with a custard pie. Our perceptions are the same, and our psychological understandings are fundamentally similar because they are true to an objective reality. If they weren't, we could not survive!
I would say I view meditation as experiential. Perhaps it is not too important to question whether the zone we can enter into is objectively real or not. Philosophical analysis is important but perhaps it has it limits and that appreciation of experience is important too. But that is not to say that your question is not important because philosophy can be about understanding process and not just metaphysical.
I suspect though that your question is rather loaded. I don't see what any knowledgeable person would have to say about
Quoting synthesis
or
Quoting synthesis
or
Quoting synthesis
The subject of the OP doesn't seem to have anything to do with any of that.
Evolution doesn't explain a lot of things and the senses are very poorly understood (if at all).
Quoting counterpunch
Everything is wrong, so I can definitely agree with you there. Even if you possessed the skills necessary to be right (which nobody has), you would only be right one moment (and then everything changes).
Quoting counterpunch
Objective reality explaining this is analogous to guaranteeing the completion of a 70 yard hail Mary pass on the last play of a football game.
Think about what life would be like if man really understood what was going on!
Everything you can know happens in that moment just before your critical thinking kicks-in. This is why it is so important to remain completely present and not get lost in rehashing the past or fantasizing about the future.
I also think that mindfulness is useful, especially in conjunction with some meditation. The particular aspect of mindfulness that is useful in my experience is the whole process of observing the flow of thoughts which enter into our psyches.
Sure it does. That moment between what you sense as reality (Reality altered by you senses) and when your critical thinking engages (your mind begins to alter what you have sensed) is the crux of the matter. This is where what you can know happens. It's why your first impression is so often the correct one (depending on how focused you happen to be).
It's before thinking. It's seeing things as they truly are (albeit sense-altered) which is what you want for all kinds of reasons, perhaps the most important being so you can respond appropriately. This is an aspect of meditation that is a total bonus as it is a "portal" to this level of being.
In the meditation process itself, the historical Buddha chose sitting meditation for his disciples because sitting creates pain and the studying (observing) the nature of pain is paramount to the understanding of the 'self.'
First impressions are no less biased than later impressions , in fact they are more so. With regard to understanding and getting along with others, relying on first impressions is often disastrous. Getting to the truth about other people takes work and is a never-ending process
Perhaps this is just your experience.
It makes a great deal of sense to me that what you can know happens before your critical thinking engages because what is spit out after "processing" suffers from layer after layer of faulty analysis, no fault of the person doing the computations, just a comment on our inability to access reality.
[quote="Joshs;496456]"Getting to the truth about other people takes work and is a never-ending process.[/quote]
You could spend the next sixteen billion eons attempting to understand the simplest of things and could never come close because it is what it is because of an infinite numbers of events leading up to it.
Imagine trying to understand another person! This is perhaps the great of all human folly.
Ah. It's all coming back to me. Haven't we done this before? Me, killing myself to explain - and you steadfastly refusing to understand, and yet responding - nonetheless. You could just not respond y'know!
Quoting synthesis
Well, you are for sure! And subjectivists generally. You must understand that recognising science as an increasingly valid and coherent understanding of reality; recognising that facts have a causal and functional truth value is important to the continued survival of the human species.
Quoting synthesis
I thought you were just stupid. But turns out you're kind of a dick! Some sort of lefty, subjectivist, dumb act - that in fact is a piss take. You're mocking me. But I'm serious; humankind's relationship to science is mistaken, and that's why we're in trouble. We use science, but don't observe a scientific understanding of reality. We apply the wrong technologies for the wrong reasons - because what we believe is wrong. Well, what you believe is wrong!
Quoting synthesis
I don't claim to know what's really going on. I mean, is Australia still on fire? Or has it burst into flames again? You don't want to help develop a rationale that would allow for the application of technology on the basis of scientific merit - rather than primarily for profit, okay! Who am I to puncture your happy, clappy bubble of epistemic relativism? But you could at least have the decency not to waste my time!
Yeah, I think we have, but I do understand. And I am responding but it's not what you wish to hear.
cp, you're a smart guy, so I could argue with you 'til the cows come home and for what? If you understand how thinking works, then you can win any argument. That's no fun.
[quote="counterpunch;496499]"Everything is wrong, so I can definitely agree with you there. Even if you possessed the skills necessary to be right (which nobody has), you would only be right one moment (and then everything changes).
— synthesis
Well, you are for sure! And subjectivists generally. You must understand that recognising science as an increasingly valid and coherent understanding of reality; recognising that facts have a causal and functional truth value is important to the continued survival of the human species.[/quote]
Look at all of the assuming you are doing. You are talking in relative terms, if A, then B, therefore, A+1 does not equal B, so on and so forth. We have spoken about science before and I told you that I use science every day in my profession but that doesn't mean I see it as anything but a rudimentary tool.
Your facts and your causality and all the rest are here today and gone tomorrow. Consider transcending such a mundane way of looking at things and see them as being fluid.
[quote="counterpunch;496499]"Objective reality explaining this is analogous to guaranteeing the completion of a 70 yard hail Mary pass on the last play of a football game.
— synthesis
I thought you were just stupid. But turns out you're kind of a dick! Some sort of lefty, subjectivist, dumb act - that in fact is a piss take. You're mocking me. But I'm serious; humankind's relationship to science is mistaken, and that's why we're in trouble. We use science, but don't observe a scientific understanding of reality. We apply the wrong technologies for the wrong reasons - because what we believe is wrong. Well, what you believe is wrong![/quote]
cp, relax. Why all the hostility? You have no clue what I am about because you refuse to listen to what I am telling you. Instead, you have already figured it out ahead of time. And what is it that you think I believe?
[quote="counterpunch;496499]"Think about what life would be like if man really understood what was going on!
— synthesis
I don't claim to know what's really going on. I mean, is Australia still on fire? Or has it burst into flames again? You don't want to help develop a rationale that would allow for the application of technology on the basis of scientific merit - rather than primarily for profit, okay! Who am I to puncture your happy, clappy bubble of epistemic relativism? But you could at least have the decency not to waste my time![/quote]
cp, you're one of the more interesting folks here, but you need to calm down.
Think about it this way. There are two different ways to consider things, one knowledge-based that is constantly changing due to the idea that all things knowable are changing, the other being Absolute in nature, unchanging but unknowable (intellectually).
[quote="counterpunch;496499]We use science, but don't observe a scientific understanding of reality. We apply the wrong technologies for the wrong reasons - because what we believe is wrong.[/quote]
Tell me more about this.
Okay, but let us go back to your OP. You say:
Quoting synthesis
The natural implication from this is the impossibility of anything we can reasonably call truth. That's something various people want for political purposes - religious people, the politically correct/subjectivist left, the capitalist right. Truth is beset on all sides. But to my mind, science now constitutes a highly valid and coherent understanding of the middle ground reality we occupy - and that matters!
It doesn't matter how the universe began, or if matter is composed of tiny strings. That's racing off to the absolutes to deny the truth value of things we can reasonably know enough about to know - and that matters to our continued existence.
Quoting synthesis
Oh, go drown yourself! What kind of fucking nonsense is that. Try that shit in traffic court - when you run a red light. Well your honour, subjectively - it was perceived as green!
Quoting synthesis
Because you're the one who gets to come over as reasonable - and I'm ranting and raving, but I'm right, and you are very, very wrong on something that really matters.
Quoting synthesis
I read the OP. I said - I disagree, and explained why. I don't know why you want to crap all over the idea of truth. I suspect it's a lefty, post modernist, subjectivist, moral and epistemic relativism underlying political correctness thing, but you could as easily be a Bible basher!
Quoting synthesis
I sometimes dream about humankind's future.
Quoting synthesis
No. That's a false dichotomy. In fact; ceteris paribus, knowledge proceeds from "less and worse" toward "more and better" over time. We now know more things with more certainty than we ever have done before. We are threatened with extinction because of people like you, who would undermine truth for political advantage. It needs to stop. We need to act on the basis of what's true or our species is going to die, horribly!
What do we know with certainty?
[quote=""counterpunch;496499"]recognising that facts have a causal and functional truth value is important to the continued survival of the human species.[/quote]
How bout , recognizing that facts are pragmatic hypotheses that are subject to continual revision and that can lead to better ways of making sense of the world , not because they copy reality, but because allownusntoningeract with a changing world more effectively. That allows for scientific progress within a subjective model of truth.
Quoting Joshs
The bacterial theory of disease, plate tectonics, evolution, the nitrogen cycle, heliocentrism, the electromagnetic spectrum, photosynthesis, thermodynamics... need I go on?
Now add them all together and you get a scientific understanding of reality. Yes?
Is that the same as the religious, political and economic ideological understanding of reality from which you draw your identity and purposes? No! It's very different.
And which understanding of reality do we use when making decisions about which technologies to deploy, and which to withhold? I'll give you a clue:
70,000 nuclear weapons!
No, it’s my turn. If you read carefully in the history of science, you’ll find that it is not a cumulative enterprise , as if there are fixed truths floating out there in the world and all science does is scoop them up and add little by little to our store of knowledge. That’s a 19th century view of science. Science creates a theoretical framework within which to make sense of observations, but this framework shifts over time in qualitative ways , so that, for instance , relativistic physics is not simply an addition to Newtonian physics , and Darwinian evolution is not simply an expansion of Lamarckism biology. Every scientific fact that you think is certain now who’ll likely be understood in a qualitatively different way 100 years from now.
I’ll quote my favorite psychologist , George Kellly:
“ If the scientist is one who imagines himself accumulating nuggets of ultimate truth he will place his primary research emphasis on the unassailability of his
fragmentary findings. If he supports something at the .05 level of confidence he is encouraged; if he pushes it to the .01 level he is gratified; if it turns out at the .001 level he is ecstatic; and if it reaches the .0001 level he wonders how one writes an application for the Nobel prize.
The research objective of such a man is to nail something down, once and for all. His eternity is in his data. If he is a psychologist he will regard mankind as an accomplished fact, not as a current enterprise.But if the experimenter sees himself exploring only one of many alternative
constructions of man, with the best ones yet to be devised, he will be on a continual lookout for
fresh perspectives emerging out of his research experience. What values he places upon his
hypotheses will lie in the fertility of the experience in which they engage him, rather than in the certainty and parsimony of the explanations they offer. He will design his experiments to make his experience an optimal one. Thus he can not lose sight of the fact that he is himself the principal subject of his own experimental intervention.
His psychology will not then be so much
a study of what inescapable state impales man at this immature moment in history as it will be an
exploration of what man may next become. He will approach his task with the horizon-scanning
vision of a constructive alternativist rather than with the squint of an accumulative fragmentalist.”
Quoting Joshs
That's just plain wrong, and quite unpleasant. Firstly, all scientists understand perfectly well that scientific conclusions are held to be provisional - in lieu of further data. Even principles they can know with sufficient certainty to build an internet from. Who knows? Maybe one day, someone will open up their computer and catch the magic pixies at work. Until then, Boolean logic circuits will have to suffice as a understanding.
Secondly, things do work. We can apply scientific principles to create technologies that work, and they work better the closer they approximate the underlying scientific principles. So those principles must be true of reality.
I have a suggestion. Why don't you come clean - and explain your real reasons for not wanting science to be true. Is it the lefty thing? Or the Bible thing? Maybe you're a climate change denier, or an anti vaxxer or something. Anyway, you're not being honest - because suggesting:
Quoting Joshs
...is myopic. It relies on the actual ignorance of ages past, and the progress toward more and better knowledge over time, to suggest that progression must continue forever. The idea of plate tectonics, or the bacterial theory of disease will not be understood a different way 100 years from now. Those are facts - held to be provisional as a matter of scientific method - that always allows there could be other factors at play - but utterly unlikely to continue to change over time, because now we know.
There is moral relativism (to which you refer) and just plain ole relative (to which I refer). You cannot deny that things are relative. And although all things knowable are relative (how can they be otherwise), this doesn't mean that within the context of social relationships, there is not moral correctness. The Left is what it is...so consumed with change that they must destroy everything they touch.
I agree that it is the middle where the truth of the political resides.
Quoting counterpunch
You seem to be quite worried about our existence. Why? Are you long humanity?
Quoting counterpunch
You don't understand. In order to transcend the mundane, you must learn to go back and forth between the relative and The Absolute. You and your ideals live in The Absolute while you transact business in the relative. The red light is still red when it needs to be. Otherwise, all possibilities exist.
Quoting counterpunch
My friend, you want to be right, you will be alone. You live "right" in the world (of knowledge), you live neither right nor wrong in your own space.
Quoting counterpunch
Everything comes and goes. Again, why are you so concerned with the longevity of our species? I've always seen our species as a pesky surface nuisance that the planet will deal with in its own time.
It's a short ride, so try to enjoy your life and not be so concerned about everybody else.
Well then, that's where we differ. I see humankind as only the second qualitative addition to the universe in 15 billion years. We start with about 10 billion years of floating rocks, before life occurred, and in the last few thousand years, human intelligence - able to look back at reality, and experience it. I think that's special - and something that needs to play out. I think we have a duty to exist - a duty to our ability to know. If we are not intending to survive, then everything is absolutely trivial. In the absence of truth, human existence is just a nihilistic wank into the sports sock of oblivion - as opposed to a loving consummation for the purposes of reproduction.
What is your working definition of reality?
Nothing wrong with that. So many people have no idea what to believe in. You might want to balance that burden with something a bit lighter...nearly any distraction will do. :)
Quoting counterpunch
Like I said above, good for you. Please keep in mind that there are many paths on which people have been able live wonderful lives. Not everybody can be the Captain of Star ship Earth! (I say this with admiration for your tenacity).
People are incredibly diverse in every way. The biggest mistake we can make is to assume that our personal truth is The Truth, the quickest way to alienate others is in implementing this assumption by attempting to impose your reality on others. Let people find their way in their own time.
In the meantime, enjoy the conversations! There are a lot of really nice people out there even if they don't quite agree with your assessment of things.
Why can't reality be simply "all that exists"?
Why can't personal reality simply be an interpretation of reality?
Why must me muddy a stream that when left alone runs clear and clean?
Thanks for your response.
I was curious because you expressed something about reality being perception-altered.
So, I still don't have a clear story of what you were trying to communicate. No worries.
Oh, then you mistake my intent. You are on a philosophy forum, making observations about truth, then you asked for it. Politics and economics - they too need to attend. But some little old lady been praying at the same Church all her life, I've no desire to disenchant her - even if I could. This is not about popular belief. It's about philosophy and political theory.
Quoting synthesis
You didn't say 'good for you' above. I've no desire to disturb your life. If I have my way, I can save the world without ordinary people hardly noticing, but not you. The ideas you expressed above are part of a suite used extensively by the left; I actually don't know where you stand politically but you paint in their colours. The left are using the climate crisis an an anti-capitalist battering ram. They do want your wonderful life to change, for the worse.
Quoting synthesis
I'm a philosopher; truth matters, and if you can't handle the truth - it's you that's alienating me. The normative value is with me here. Your attack on truth in the OP is why I responded to you - you need to stop that. Reality is NOT subjectively constructed, functional truth is possible - and it's important to the continued survival of humankind.
Quoting synthesis
Not for long!
Let me help you out a bit. I consider myself a philosophical anarchist (neither right nor left) and, as well, have been a dedicated Zen student for over 30 years.
Politically, I view the struggle between liberal and conservative as one where the former desires change (which is essential) whereas the latter seeks to preserve what still works (most for themselves but there's nothing wrong with that).
The truth of the political matter is in finding the proper balance between these forces. Nothing works politically in the West anymore (especially here in the U.S.) because both sides have become radicalized (particularly the left). This will work itself out in time although it might get quite ugly.
The Zen side of me is where you are having difficulties. You have to understand the relative and The Absolute from this perspective. You are an objective reality kind of guy but I ask you, what is objective reality when we can only perceive subjectively? Not only that, we can't get anywhere close to any kind of reality for all kinds of reasons paramount among them being that we have no access to the present.
What is referred to as Absolute Reality is that which is unknowable and unchangeable, e.g., Truth, God, Love, etc. These are things that can be sensed or perhaps felt inside but can never be subjected to empiricism.
As mentioned, I understand science and use it professionally every day. I will always maintain that science is simply a tool that points the way to the truth of the matter but can never be the truth itself (as truth only exists moment to moment to which we lack access).
There are two types, Reality and reality.
Quoting Tres Bien
If we can agree ( for this conversation), Reality is things just as they truly are. The problem is that we have no access this Reality for all kinds of reasons you might be familiar with...such as the idea that we cannot access the present (perception time-lag among other things).
So if Reality is things as they truly are, what happens when we use our sense of sight? How close to Reality Is the image created in our visual cortex? Who knows, but we must assume that the processing creates a fair degree of alteration, Reality being transformed into our personal reality because who knows how different one observer's image is from another? Is your appreciation of a 542nm light wave the same as everybody else's? Seems unlikely.
So this is often referred to as relative reality, i.e., relative to what ever is changing it (essentially everything) and it changes constantly as do all things perceptual/intellectual.
Absolute Reality is that which is unknowable and is unchanging, e.g., Truth and God. It is that which we have no access intellectually but we can be in it's presence. This is quite different than the everyday reality we use to conduct the business of our lives.
When I use the term scientific truth, I refer to the body of knowledge, established through forming hypotheses and testing them in relation to empirical observation, and then refining those hypotheses, to better account for the observed results - and so on and so forth. Objective reality is the world at large, in contrast to subjective experience; the inner world. There's no great mystery to it. There are epistemic limitations I'm very well aware of, but science now constitutes a highly valid and coherent body of knowledge of the world we occupy, relevant to the sustainability of human existence.
Quoting synthesis
No, I don't. I positively eschew the absolute as superlativism. It's wrongheaded to race to the other end of the universe, look back at us - and tell us what's true. Truth begins at our fingertips - and is built from the bottom up. I'm not interested in speculations upon things I can't know anything about. If humankind lives long enough, maybe we'll find our way there eventually, but right now, it's simply irrelevant.
Quoting synthesis
That's a Zeno's paradox of an objection. Practically speaking, we have access to the present - if only because we can anticipate the future. Logically, the arrow will never reach the target. In reality it does.
Quoting synthesis
How do you know? I thought 'we' had no access? If it's unknowable, how do you know its unchangeable? Do you mean feelings? Why do you want to pull the esoteric wool over your own eyes? Is reality not special enough for you?
Quoting synthesis
Science is not just a tool. It's also an understanding of reality; one that's been decried as heresy since Galileo, forgotten and ignored. Even as we have raced ahead technologically - we remain ideologically primitive. Science as a tool of ideology gave us 70,000 nuclear weapons at the height of the cold war. Science as as a tool gave us climate change - and the McRib sandwich! Science as a tool is a menace - because our purposes are not scientifically valid. We need to be responsible to a scientific understanding of reality - particularly in our application of technology, in particular, energy technology!
Now we have arrived at the heart of the matter. "How do you know?"
I don't know. But then again, I don't have to know. What you do know (getting back to the original point of this thread), you know before your critical thinking kicks-in so that's all you need to know.
All the rest is BS. Remember, people have lived for a long time and they made due with all kinds of explanations that were just as bizarre as the ones we spout today. All knowledge changes constantly. Nothing that is thought to be true today will be thought to be true tomorrow (literally, as some part of it [no matter how minuscule] has changed).
What is knowable to our intellect is fluid, so those who excel at life have figured out how to go with the change (and thrive because of it). Those who attach to this, that , and the other thing, suffer.
reality & Reality >?<
Is that another false dichotomy?
Could we not add re-ality, real tea, your reality, my reality, pseudo-reality, artificial reality, junk reality, trippy reality, real reality, really real reality, sorta reality, almost reality, and lastly, REALLLLY phoquing dumb erality?
I apologize. I really don't get it.
Quoting synthesis
In science, we can say we know x within the parameters of hypothesis, experiment and observation. It's not a claim to absolute knowledge. Its logical form is akin to "if y then x" - and any decent scientist knows this. You say you're a scientist, but also a student of Zen, and you're on a philosophy forum. I think you're confusing senses of the word 'know' and arguing inappropriately. In practice, there must be a great many things you know - and rely on knowing in your work. Not in an absolute manner, but with regard to the contingent nature of the theoretical underpinnings of the facts in question. Come on, be honest - this Zen act is wearing thin.
Quoting synthesis
Why are you doing this? You cannot believe that. Do you really imagine the bacterial theory of disease, plate tectonics, thermodynamics, evolution etc - are going to be overturned? Who's interest do you think you're serving with such nonsense? Is it a religious thing? Is it a post modernist thing? Wanna fit in with the cool kids?
Quoting synthesis
So you would walk humankind into an avoidable climate and ecological crisis and say to your children - sink or swim, because you think humankind will be better for it? That's convenient for you. I bet that takes a load off. And all you have to do is close your eyes and pretend its not happening because nothing is true - and everything else is BS. Seems less Zen and more - me first, and devil take the hindmost! Is that it? Are you a self serving greedy bastard, hiding your irresponsibility and savage appetites behind a thin layer of eastern mysticism?
Trying to explain Zen to somebody is like attempting to explain Love to somebody who has never experienced it. I apologize for doing a poor job.
I am actually a physician and I deal with very serious health issues. Although I understand the science of my specialty, the most important part of my understanding is what I cannot understand, that is, there is very little known about how the body actually works, so even what is "known," is not known well. But (again), even this knowledge is changing, changing, changing all the time.
Zen act? There are very few people who delve deeply into Zen (it is a very arduous practice), but those who do are well-compensated.
Quoting counterpunch
cp, first you might want to try and really understand where I am coming from before you assume you know anything about me. I've found that most people are actual pretty darn nice regardless of their philosophy or politics. After all, most are just trying to get by the best they can.
I didn't ask about Zen. I mentioned it only insofar as I'm trying to get past it to a place of honesty, and it seems to me - that Zen isn't honest. Admittedly, it's a behaviourist perspective - looking at the black box of Zen from the outside and implying thought from behaviour. I don't need to understand it because I see what it does to people. I find it immensely frustrating.
Quoting synthesis
Medical science seeks to achieve the impossible; that is, to defeat death - and it's only in that context you can assert very little is known. In fact, medicine has a very good understanding of how the human body works.
Quoting synthesis
By becoming insufferable, dishonest, sidestepping, condescending apologists who are too "enlightened" to ever experience a genuine human moment? You're not the first practitioner of Zen I've encountered, so don't imagine this is directed solely at you - but what comes across is weird and creepy, like they have something to hide.
Quoting synthesis
I'm pretty damn nice too, but sometimes you've got to break things before they can be whole. That was far too Zen like for my liking, but it's true! So, what about it?
Quoting counterpunch
Quoting counterpunch
Let me answer your question, honestly:
Quoting synthesis
200 years ago - people couldn't have imagined an aeroplane. It is not honest to base your argument in the actual ignorance of ages past - and use the advance of knowledge over time, to imply that we still don't know anything. The aeroplane flying overhead is not flying on faith. It's science. A quick glance around your living room, at the electric lights, the TV, the telephone, the computer, the internet connection - should be sufficient evidence to prove we do know things.
Nonetheless, 200 years from now humankind may be extinct - because we have used science as a tool, and not acknowledged science as the means to establish valid knowledge of reality. 500 years from now, still extinct. 10,000 years from now, still extinct. This is our one shot to establish humankind as a long term presence in the universe, and recognising the truth value of science is our best bet - so why are you crapping on it?
So far, you have established that you are an expert in both Zen practice and medicine. I. OTOH, who have practiced Zen over three decades and medicine over four decades claim to know very little. What does this tell you?
Quoting counterpunch
That's not Zen at all, but that's another story (it's barely what might be referred to as popular Zen). You have a lot of anger which is expected from someone who believes they know just about everything and confronts a world where (he believes that) nobody else seems to know much of anything.
Quoting counterpunch
cp, do you think it is a possibility that you just don't get what I am talking about?
Quoting counterpunch
I realize that you feel as if this is a prescient moment in the history of mankind on this planet (and maybe it is), but chances are that things are going to keep on going on. I think it's great that you are trying to help out in your way, but what I would say to you is chat with a bunch of older folks that have been around a lot longer than you and see what they think (and why). Although things are pretty screwed-up at the moment, the sky is not falling, so relax a little bit. The world needs calm, not more hysterics.
What this tells me, at last - is that you're evading the question again. You opened a thread specifically to cast doubt upon our ability to establish valid knowledge of reality. I explained why you're mistaken, remember; the evolutionary argument: the organism must be correct to reality or die out. The perceptual argument: we have traffic lights and art - and all sorts of objective, common meaningful signs symbols and experiences that refute utterly the idea of a subjectively constructed reality. The causal argument: scientific principles can be applied to create technologies that work within a causal reality, and so the principles on which the technology is based must be true to reality! So, what I'm asking is why you opened this thread - because I find it difficult to believe you can believe what you say you believe. I didn't ask you about Zen, and I didn't ask you about medicine. I asked you about what you wrote in the OP.
Quoting synthesis
I do claim to know what I'm talking about with regard to this topic. I've been concerned with the question of the continued survival of the human species for a very long time, and have identified the causes of the threat we face - and what's necessary to address it. In short, our problem is that we have not recognised science as the ability to establish valid knowledge. We have used science as a tool, but our purposes are ideological, not scientific. We rejected science as truth in defence of primitive ideologies while science gave machine guns to monkeys! That can't end well. We need to recognise science as truth and act accordingly to survive. The 'you and I' of this, are irrelevant to me. I care as much about blowing my own horn as I do about hurting your feelings. There's so much more at stake.
Quoting synthesis
The window of opportunity to address the climate and ecological crisis we face is closing fast. We seem to see progress on the issue, but sadly, Biden's approach is misconceived. It's an approach informed by left wing environmentalist - limits to growth theory, in turn informed by Malthus Essay on Population. Malthus was wrong. 200 years and 8 billion people better fed than ever before prove Malthus was wrong. Resources are a function of the energy available to create them. Yet Biden is about to spend $2 trillion on windmills and solar panels, that will not meet US demand for energy, less yet the rest of the world, that will barely take the edge off carbon emissions, and that will last 25 years - and then burn out, burying us in tech scrap.
Because the energy from wind and solar will be insufficient, it will be expensive, and because it won't reduce carbon emissions sufficiently, it will be necessary to reduce demand in other ways - by imposing taxes on food, energy, travel and so on. It will require increasingly authoritative governments to impose unequal burdens on society, and in the world - burdens that hardly touch the rich, who spend a relatively small proportion of their incomes on food, energy, travel, but that really hurt the poor - and seriously damage poorer countries. Poor people breed more, and so there will be ever less resources spread between more and more people by ever more dictatorial government. So yes, this is a prescient moment.
There is a better way - a way to secure a prosperous, high energy sustainable future for the human species. If only we saw ourselves as such - as a species evolved on this planet, with a common interest in survival. But because we ignored science as an understanding of reality to maintain religious, political and economic ideologies; even as we used science as a tool for military power and industrial profit - and have justified that by denying science as truth with all kinds of subjectivist anti-science, anti truth propaganda - it's very unlikely we will ever see beyond ourselves to the truth of reality, and agree to survive.
The energy is there, in the interior of the earth - endless amounts of high grade clean energy we could use to capture carbon and bury it, desalinate water to irrigate land - and so protect forests and natural water sources from over exploitation, we could produce hydrogen fuel to meet all our energy needs, recycle, farm fish - and our species could survive long into the future, maybe find out what this strange old universe is all about.
Quoting synthesis
Do you think it's possible you don't?
I think it varies more widely between humans than most will admit, and maybe that's why we're so reluctant to get into the details. Deep, honest introspection gives a lot away, though it will probably be key for empowering disciplines such as neuroscience to truly progress rather than merely exploit.
So tell us in the most neutral, noncontroversial way possible, what is the mental content that presents itself to your mind, as a practiced meditator, before performing a cognitive act with resemblance to reasoned decision making or relatively intellectual problem solving?
I don't know anybody who does not take science very seriously (even the devoutly religious). Perhaps it is you who has raised science above the gods, themselves, made mere mortals appears heretical. What you misunderstand is not what I believe, but how I believe it (the nature of its truth or existence).
If your belief system is considerably different than the vast majority, you are going to have to understand that you are flying solo. It's that way for all alternative thinkers. You have to figure out a way to make a difference despite the fact that you are not going to be able to convince anybody that your way is, "The Way" (even if it is!).
Quoting counterpunch
If you buy what Einstein had to say, E =MCxC, then all matter is energy so this issue should be pretty low on the list of things to worry about. Technology should provide ways to extract energy (from everything) at a very low cost in the not so distant future.
cp, I get what you're saying but simply believe that your are doing a great deal of assuming. Prognostication is as difficult as it is because 99% of what determines future events has yet to take place. So that's why I tell you to relax. Things will work out like they will for an infinite number of reasons we are simply incapable of understanding. I know you believe that if humanity just does x, then y, then z, everybody lives happily ever after, but I don't see it that way.
You do the best you can to get your own act together after which you try to help others. What else can one do in this world (that was rhetorical :)?
I can only relate my own meditation experience (please keep in mind that I am not a Zen teacher and there are many types of meditation). In Zen, the object is to keep a clear mind. The beginning student is often confronted by a whirlwind of thoughts that arise during meditation. As s/he becomes more "accomplished," these thoughts begin to attenuate (the ideal being a completely quiet mind), allowing thoughts to come and go, without attachment.
A small percentage of students get to the point where their minds are very, very quiet or even still. I believe this is what you refer to in your question, that is, what is happening in the quiet mind? Here's the idea...
If you are able to perceive without allowing your critical thinking to kick-in, then you are seeing the truth as close as is possible, that is, your mind has not intellectually altered what you perceive. The value of this is many-fold of which I am incapable of explaining but what I will tell you is that it enables the practitioner to respond to all kinds of stimuli more accurately. This is the enormous benefit of mindfulness.
Here is a great example used by a wonderful Zen master who still teaches. (I'll paraphrase) He likens Life (or reality) to a train we are riding while staring out of the windows watching the world go by. As long as we keep watching, everything is fine, things come and things go, things come and things go. All of a sudden, we see something that we really like (maybe a very beautiful person, a wonderful idea, or perhaps something equally horrible) and we jump off the train. We have now attached to this person/idea as the train (reality) continues heading on down the track. The fact that we have created our own reality that is different from actual reality is what causes the suffering (as eventually the real reality comes crashing down on our heads).
So let's say I am with a patient and they are telling me their history. If I can keep a clear mind andreally hear what they are telling me (instead of my mind going a million miles an hour trying to figure everything out before they are able to finish), then I can apply my knowledge/experience to best help this patient.
Most people alter all perceptual stimuli in real time. They really never perceive without immediate intellectual alteration. The little voice in their minds never stops.
Have I been able to answer your question?
That makes sense. I'm curious about this section:
Quoting synthesis
Can you experience stimuli that weren't previously even entering into consciousness after you become a proficient meditator, or is it merely controlling your focus within the same cognitive context? Does awareness "expand" somehow? Can a Zen guru for instance induce hallucinations in a new, very specific way and then control them?
I claim simply, that truth matters. Religious, political and economic ideologies are not true. Science is true. You claim truth is not possible. You're wrong for the reasons stated.
Quoting synthesis
My concern is not so much that I will fail, but that I will succeed in inflicting a disenchantment that casts man into a nihilistic, anomic abyss. Your resistance to obvious logical inferences, and truth as a norm frightens me. Your attempt to cast me as some kind of extremist - when it's you who believe things that are not true, does not bode well. You see, I thought it would matter. I thought identifying the problem - which I have, and showing it's possible to secure a better future - would matter. But it doesn't, because you can't admit you're wrong.
Quoting synthesis
This is incorrect. There are two ways to extract equivalent energy from matter - nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. Fusion cannot work in earth gravity; at least, not in a way that produces more energy than it consumes. Fission is regular nuclear energy - with all the problems that entails. These are not solutions to our problems.
Quoting synthesis
Don't pull that "I see what you're saying" bit now - because there's been no indication whatsoever that you do. According to you, EVERYTHING I've said has been wrong. There isn't one instance above, of you acknowledging a single point I've made. Which in itself is disconcerting. Either I'm completely delusional - or your resistance is unreasonable. And if your resistance is unreasonable, here, on a philosophy forum where discussing ideas like truth is our supposed purpose - how will I ever get through to anyone else?
What you don't get is that there's a mechanism; a causal relation between the validity of the knowledge bases of action and the consequences of such action. Acting on invalid knowledge, extinction is an inevitability. It's cause and effect. There's no way around it. The organism MUST be correct to reality to survive, and we're wrong. You insist on it!
These would be questions best posed to a teacher, but...
Please understand that Zen is nothing special. The student is cultivating awareness and it is this clarity which allows for insight/wisdom. Meditation expands the students awareness (which is simply every day life and nothing more). I have heard stories of meditators who have developed usual "skills" but I can not speak to them.
As a student of Soto (Japanese) Zen going back to Dogen in the 13th century, he saw enlightenment as simply the ability to see things clearly, nothing more.
I didn't say that truth doesn't matter. I just said there are different versions of the truth (aren't you married? :) You only see one truth. I see two. I hold myself to very high ethical and moral standards so it is not like I do not live truth, I just see its ever changing nature. The truth which is knowable changes like everything else. The Absolute Truth does not change because it is not knowable and exists in moments outside of time. Do you understand this?
Quoting counterpunch
You won't find more than a handful of people who might agree with me, but that's ok. You are extreme only in that you have thought this out to a degree that few have. Most people (as you well know) don't spend a great deal of time thinking deep thoughts).
And I do understand that you are attempting to show me the light, and I appreciate it; but that doesn't mean I am going to buy your version of reality. Why would I? Although you believe that you have "figured it out," soon enough both of us will resume our roles as so much dust in the wind.
Quoting counterpunch
So fission and fusion is the end of the energy conversation? Seems unlikely.
Quoting counterpunch
cp, you mistake words (thinking) for truth. The answers are not written down. Realization is non-intellectual. You know for reasons you will never understand.
And you have to consider that perhaps George Carlin was correct when he speculated that humanity's rason d'etre was to create plastic, that somehow Mother Earth needs plastic! :) Seems a likely as any of the other bizarre reasons people come up with (pick your poison).
I have argued this thesis many times, and one of the regular objections I get is based in Hume's - is/ought divide. The 'is' are facts. The 'ought' are values. It is argued, regularly, that science 'is' facts. Facts don't tell us what we 'ought' to do. I disagree - because I understand the problem very well. But you simply disregard the distinction, and instead posit a distinction between knowable truth and absolute truth. Which one of these is it that you conflate with morality?
Quoting synthesis
I can die content with having done my duty - even if I fail, and humankind blunders onward toward the abyss. It's not my fault. I prefer to belong to a species with a future in the universe, for then my existence would matter as part of an intergenerational chain - stretching back into the mists of history, via the evolution of life, unto the physics of the universe from which life springs. And stretching forward, into the future - following in the course of truth, to other stars? To other dimensions? Unto God? I don't know. What I cannot live with is being a willing member of a species that uses science for its own unscientific ends; a species that destroys its environment to pleasure itself, and so renders itself extinct. Such an existence is meaningless.
Quoting synthesis
Fission and fusion are the beginning and end of the equivalent energy conversation. E=MC2. The equivalence of energy and matter. Fission or fusion; neither of which are the answer to our needs. The answer to our needs is the giant ball of molten rock upon which we stand. And, I think you'll like this - there's something spiritual about humankind intelligently employing the energy of the earth to maintain the balance of life upon its surface. Instead, it's very sad - that we decried science as heresy, shamed science to maintain religious, political and economic ideology, denied science any moral authority, even as we used science to drive industries that extract resources without regard to the balance of life.
Quoting synthesis
I don't claim to know what I don't know. I claim to know what I do.
By Sharanjit Leyl
BBC News
The world is heading for mortality rates equivalent to the Covid crisis every year by mid-century unless action is taken, according to Mark Carney. The former central banker said the investment needed to avert millions of deaths was double current rates. But with governments ploughing billions into keeping economies afloat, a question mark hangs over whether the recovery will be green enough.
The answer lies in smarter investment, Mr Carney said.
Mr Carney, who is tasked with persuading policymakers, chief executives, bankers and investors to focus on the environment, said: "The scale of investment in energy, sustainable energy and sustainable infrastructure needs to double."
"Every year, for the course of the next three decades, $3.5 trillion (£2.5tn) a year, for 30 years. It is an enormous investment opportunity."
He said the answer lies in a global pot of $170tn of private capital which, he says, "is looking for disclosure". Banks, investment funds and individuals increasingly want to know how their money will be used.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55944570
https://youtu.be/uQSoaiubuA0
To maintain the ordered structure of anything, from a sandcastle to a civilisation - it is necessary to expend energy. To strike a balance between a civilisation worth having, and a viable natural ecosystem - we need limitless amounts of clean energy to spend to extract carbon from the air - and bury it, to desalinate water to irrigate land for agriculture and human habitation, and to recycle waste.
The flow of heat from Earth's interior to the surface is estimated at 47 terawatts (TW). Current world energy demand is roughly 16 TW. The Earth naturally emits three times the world's energy demand as heat, and will continue to do so for a very long time to come. The limitless source of clean energy we need is right beneath our feet. That's the good news. The bad news is it's difficult to get to.
Drilling technologies developed by the fossil fuel industries, I believe, can be employed to tap into geothermal energy on a large scale, sufficient to meet and exceed global energy demand. This can only work at specific suitable geographic locations, and consequently, distributing this energy would require conversion of electrical energy to hydrogen, then piped as a gas, or shipped as a liquified fuel. Hydrogen fuel can be burnt in traditional power stations to produce electricity, thus utilizing the larger part of existing national energy infrastructures.
A lower energy "green" approach implies more disorder, and ultimately, the failure of human civilisation.
It leads to itself, after all, when you encounter a thing in the perceptual moment it is already taken up in thought. A glance is inherently interpretative, so talk about what it is that is separate from thought becomes an exercise in metaphysics: No one has ever witnessed a "thoughtless perceptual object".
On the other hand, there is "presence" there that is not thought (see Kierkegaard e.g.). That we can apprehend this as it is rather than AS something else, language and logic, is, I think, indicative of our own meta-self.
Facts only exist momentarily (as all things are changing). This means that by the time you are able to conceive of such, then process such into a fact-being, it is already gone. POOF. Of course, you really can't come anywhere close to ascertaining the information necessary to come up with your fact, but for most humans, close enough seems to be close enough.
Quoting counterpunch
Well, perhaps you can lower your goals/expectations a bit and just hope for cleaner water or some such thing. When you bring time into the equation, things get much less clear.
Quoting counterpunch
So you have decided for everybody else what is meaningful?
Quoting counterpunch
I have no problem with geothermal but you really can't believe that all forms of energy have been discovered?
Quoting counterpunch
From where I sit, science IS religion. What exactly doesn't science control at this point?
Quoting counterpunch
Well, so does everybody else. Problem is, understanding is dependent on clarity which few possess (and even then it is quite shallow for reasons I have suggested previously).
Let's say you are driving down the freeway with thousands of other happy motorists. On this particular morning, traffic is moving quite rapidly (say 80mph), and because it is more or less bumper to bumper at such a high speed, you are having to concentrate a great deal because the guy behind you is texting his girlfriend, the woman on the left is putting on her makeup and the guy on the other side is stuffing a massive jelly doughnut down his gullet in one bite. Another day in Paradise (LA).
There are literally an infinite number of stimuli coming at you each moment. Do you believe that your brain is taking the time to "think" about all of these stimuli and then figure out what to do or are you just "doing it."
Then there's really no point reading the rest of your post. Poof. It's already gone.
One has to see that the claim there is an interpretative backdrop, a "predelineation" in place that defines the world when you are in your daily affairs do not reveal themselves in the explicit conscious event. They are implicit, just as the confidence that the sidewalk beneath your feet is solid to the step in every step you take is present even though you are not explicitly attending to it: You have stepped many times on many sidewalks, the aggregate effect of this making for the current confidence. We have such "aggregate consciousness" in all of our affairs, otherwise we would be like James' "blooming and buzzing" infantile perceivers.
You're driving? Is this some primordial event, or rather: is it learned, practiced and familiar that in the space of the moment only seems immediate?
You are correct in a real sense, what the point?, but we don't live in the real (either reality or reality), we live in the intellectual human world, and because of that we must "adapt" to all of these personal realities.
If you are able to do this with skill, you become quite sociable. If not, then you have to be either satisfied with your own reality and watch TV, play computer games, read, or any of the other activities that characterize people who don't particularly subscribe to most people's reality (including myself).
Says who? Sounds like psycho-babble to me.
Quoting Constance
What you can learn, takes place before your critical thinking mind engages. Once it kicks-in, it alters reality into your personal reality which is simply incapable of figuring out much of anything. After all, how long would it take you to figure out the forth root 35467.94324 to the tenth place in your head? Compare that to the non-thinking mind that can process an infinite amount of information each moment.
I once watched a man driving in a stake. He was some distance away across the railway tracks. He struck the stake with a hammer, and a second or so later the sound reached me, by which time he was striking down again. In fact, light travels faster than sound. In reality, the light reached my eyes before sonic vibrations reached my ears. My perceptions were not out of step with reality. I perceived what actually happened.
A train comes toward you ringing its bell. The sound is high pitched. It passes by and the pitch drops to a lower register. This is because the sound waves of the train coming toward you are compressed - whereas, the sound waves of the train moving away are stretched out. This really happens, in reality. If you did not understand this, you might conclude there were two bells. Yours is a two bell explanation of reality!
The "non thinking mind"? And what is this if not a thought in your head about something you observe. Note that every time you take up something about consciousness, you do so IN consciousness: "non-thinking" is a unit of language you learned, and when your understanding turns to identifying this, it turns where? to more language.
Did you think this was about the mysterious processes that underlie language and thought? TELL me what they are, emphasis on "telling". The point is, at best, observations show that actuality is not a language event, but such things are "empty" to the understanding if the attempt is made to conceive of them outside of language. The understanding is a "bundled" affair in which thought and sense intuition come together, as a piece, if you will. You may, as I see it, posit that there such things apart from what thought can say, speculate, analyze and so forth, and I think this right, but then you will be on the threshold of metaphysics, and would referring to affairs beyond what can be witnessed.
cp, thank you for making my case. Cause and effect. Considering the idea that even the simplest of things is caused by an infinite number of events preceding, how can you possibly understand what brought this event into being? This is one of the reasons why we can not understand anything (and especially why we cannot understand another person). And this has been understood for..ever. Wisdom from every culture includes the idea that "judging" is amoral (because you can not understand it or them).
So I am not denying that Reality/reality is causal, just that we have no access to its understanding.
Quoting counterpunch
Why are you assuming that either of those explanations are correct? How about if the wave/particle theory of light goes up in smoke and is replaced with the ding/splork theory? Science is in its infancy, always changing like everything knowable.
I see science as a tool because it gets you part of the way, just like a hammer helps you build a house, it cannot preform all the tasks necessary. You should open your mind a bit and consider all things as part of the whole. I am assuming you are not a religious person, but do you have any spiritual stirrings inside?
Of course it is. The intellect can only point toward meaning, never convey truth.
Quoting Constance
Have you ever been in love? Can you TELL me what that is about?
There are things which are simply beyond the reach of our intellect (pretty much everything :). To me, to be forced to live in a world defined by our critical thinking alone truly defines what my mentor used to tell me repeatedly, "Man makes his own Hell on this Earth."
There's no need to thank me for giving you an opening for one of your mad ideas. I was talking about the actual implications of causality. If that rings a bell that induces you to drool, it's purely incidental.
Quoting synthesis
By controlling for causal factors. In medical experiments, for example - half a test group are given sugar pills and the other half a drug. The difference between them can thus be attributed to the presence of the drug. I would have imagined someone pretending to be a doctor would know this already.
Quoting synthesis
I suppose it depends on what you mean by understand. Psychologically, a person is an incredibly complex thing. A person has unique qualities - not least, a personal history another person can never wholly appreciate. That said, we can say that human beings are a biological organism, that they evolved in tribal groups, and there are consequent psychological parameters. We can know there are 206 bones in their body, a cardiovascular system, a nervous system, a digestive system. We know they inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, ingest food and excrete waste, and so on and on. Some people even have a brain!
Quoting synthesis
Amoral or immoral? Do you know the difference? I have my suspicions. It's only natural that I would, but expressing them....being judgemental, is probably what religions warn against.
Quoting synthesis
So explain traffic lights. Red - stop. Green - go. People see the signal and act accordingly. If reality is subjectively constructed how is that possible? Your experience must be the same as mine.
Quoting synthesis
Because the explanation explains the evidence. If an alternate explanation explains the evidence better, then science adopts it. That's how science works. Consider this series: the Bible, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein. They each developed theories of planetary motion - each one an improvement upon the previous ones. Each theory explained more, with a greater accuracy of prediction. That's what science has been doing for 400 years; that's how science knows.
Here's the problem with the view you expressed in the OP. If reality is subjectively constructed, why didn't my brain synchronise the sight of the man hitting the stake with the hammer, with the sound of the man hitting the stake with the hammer? Why, if reality is subjectively constructed - does the sound of the train ringing its bell sound high pitched coming toward me, and lower pitched moving away? If reality is subjectively constructed, why doesn't my brain iron out these peculiarities? And why, does someone stood beside me experience the same thing? The only logical explanation is that they occur in reality, and both I and the other guy experience reality as it really is. It's how traffic lights work. Face it; subjectivism is unreasonably overblown. I know why. I also know it will kill us all.
Quoting synthesis
Science as a tool - of motives such as yours. That is our doom. Science used as a tool with no regard to a scientific understanding of reality. You are a fool. You are surrounded by technological miracles - technologies that work within a causal reality, and yet you insist science knows nothing - and then tell me to open my mind. It is beyond parody.
Quoting synthesis
Very well; consider this. Life sprang into being as a consequence of the action of physical forces on chemical elements. (The first addition to the universe in 10 billion years.) Life evolved by means of natural selection - in relation to a causal reality. The organism had to be correct to reality or it would die out. Its basic physiology had to inhale the air, to extract oxygen, to decompose foods, to provide energy, to send signals along its nervous system, to move toward food and away from danger. The behaviour of the organism - like the way a bird builds a nest, (before it lays eggs; not because it knows and plans ahead, but because all the birds that didn't are dead, because they were wrong) - also had to be correct to reality.
Generation after generation a billion times over, life evolved, each little advantage saved in the genetic bank and passed on to the next generation - before one particular branch of one particular type of primate, about 200,000 years ago - happened upon intellectual intelligence. (The second addition to the universe in 15 billion years.) Generation after generation this animal struggled to survive, to breed, and to learn new things and pass on its accumulated knowledge through culture. Starting naked, with nothing but sticks and stones, humankind built all this using the knowledge accumulated - so that you could take to your computer keyboard, and insist, over and over again that we know nothing, and then imply that I am spiritually bereft because I think science is valid knowledge of the reality from which life springs, and that our species needs to be correct to a scientific understanding of reality in order to survive. I guess it depends on how you define spiritual.
Of course, you're right. I only add that what is spoken is brought into understanding. I can talk about being in love, explain the physiology of it, throw in adjectives and metaphors, and so on, but these just dance around what is in itself, entirely beyond the saying. All things are like this, as you say, not just love, or intense emptions, but everything: my dog and cat, the clouds in the sky, the cup on my desk, and so on.
I claim we live in transcendence, for all things are a presence that is irreducible. This is not a popular idea, though.
cp, you need to grow-up. Thanks for the conversation.
What do you mean by this?
Quoting synthesis
Your lack of grace in defeat deprives me of the privilege of being magnanimous in victory, you dick!
The issue hangs on consciousness having this underpinning that is not available to thought, which is I think clearly true. BUT: the actual generative source for experience can never be observed, for it would require consciousness to do this, and consciousness is supposed to be the object of our inquiry, and cannot be the means, for that would be question begging of the worst kind. So as far as underpinnings, all experience, consciousness, the self, and the like are grounded not in something observable waiting for a more powerful microscope, but in "something" entirely off the map: unobservable, yet the necessity for positing it does not thereby reduce to nonsense. Transcendence is simply there, always already there , discoverable perhaps only in the, if you will, experience of experience, which is a loose way to talk about self consciousness: the standing apart from affairs, observing that you observe, or think or feel, and this kind of thinking takes the matter even further away from familiar thinking.
Being that I can find no evidence that we can have access to reality on any level, the key becomes gaining the skills to "go with the flow" as best as is possible and I have found meditation to be (by far) the best method for myself.
And I agree that most people are not so happy when you challenge their sense of being grounded in the familiar, particularly when it comes to subject matter such as self and reality.
A nice practical approach. But if one wants to go into it more deeply, it takes sacrifice. I mean, time reading phenomenology, or meditating two hours a day. Both, I think. But honestly? This entails giving up "the world"! weird to say, but that is what happens when you go into such matters with real, say, genuine intent, for then, the thinking, the meditative revelatory experiences, all pull one to a different gravity other than popular themes. As I see it, few can do this, give up the world. Intellectuals take to the lectern, meditators usually just want to find peace, but to really close down the institutions that fill one's head as a member of society, this is a different course of life. Takes motivation.
I came to Zen after a very intensive five year philosophical journey that rendered me completely spent (intellectually).
My introductory (Zen) readings suggested two ideas that I have found prescient, the first being that if you are seriously going down this path, you will do it alone, the other being complementary, "To get everything, you must first give everything up."
It's been over three decades now and I can tell you that both have been true for me. If it is the truth you seek, prepare to go it alone. There are very few people who have the energy/will to delve deeply into the philosophical, and almost nobody willing do the same in the non-intellectual.
Yes, that makes perfect sense to me.
The world is a language and cultural construct. When one is with others, structures of language and culture are engaged, reinforcing the reality these create. Pulling away from others is like annihilating the world as we know it, the one of distinct values and conversational possibilities that fill time and interests.
Interesting to consider Derrida, obliquely, that is: to step into a moment in time is to be in a compromised reality, for what makes the mundane event, whatever it is, mundane, is the familiarity, the recollections. It wasn't always like this. When we were very young the world was not so thick with knowledge and experience. But at any rate, to observe a lived moment and to know how the actual encounter is instantly seized upon by recollection, what is clear is that the sense of reality is genuinely compromised by a reified past that clutches on the presence of what is there. And its hold is so strong that for most there is never the slightest clue that the language and concerns the past creates are conditioning the present at all. It all is just one big seamless reality. Meditation is an annihilation of this body of presuppositions that are always already there, IN all of our daily affairs, implicitly.
It gets interesting when the acknowledging of this makes its way into the actual perceptual event and one begins to realize that harbored within one's interior has always been something primordial. Kierkegaard calls this the eternal present. He never meditated of course, but knew how far he was from actually realizing this himself, endlessly self deprecating.
One of the issues many meditators deal with is the divide you accurately describe above, that is, existing in the relative (intellectual) when in the world of knowing and human interaction, and The Absolute (or thereabouts) when one is in meditation. As you may be aware, the goal of any structured meditation is to hone your practice to the point where you bring it into everyday life, so eventually the divide narrows.
Quoting Constance
Very interesting. I'll have to give that some thought as it's been a while since I've delved too much into that sort of thing. What I did get out of my readings many years ago was that simplicity is truth, and Simplicity is Truth. The simpler ideas become, the closer to the truth they get, because it is the process of intellectualization that drives them (anything knowable) further and further into obscurity. Peel back layer after layer of meaning, and there is the truth at its core...the quiet mind.
Quoting Constance
I'll have to go back and read some of his work. Again, it's been a long time but I do remember enjoying his words.
How seductive it can be to attach to a superbly crafted thought or a very beautiful image, but in the end, we must all learn to allow these temptations to go from whence they came and remain quiescent.
If you bring it into everyday life, then you will live in a different world. And very, very few will understand you.
Meditation makes you into something of a cult of one, for even those who share your interests remain outside. And it is not selfishness, as some might suspect. Just the opposite.
Quoting synthesis
I wish I could do this better. But in my favor, I am a bit of a natural. Buddhists talk about detachment and I have always known exactly what they meant. The quiet mind is an openness to the world. I can't say I know how this works with great clarity, but as I see it, to look out into things the sense of "I" is an opaque interpretation and the hardest part of meditation is to undo the self that is "quiet" for we think we know what it is to be quiet but don't. The self, relaxed and controlled, is still tacitly interpreting the world; this is what it means to "know" (Reminds me of Dionysus the Areopagite's Cloud of Knowing. Christian mystics, like Eckhart, were not far from this matter here. One does have to put aside all the Christian metaphysics, same as with Kierkegaard).
I think Derrida is the final philosopher. He deconstructs the self in essence telling us such an idea is constructed like everything else. Constructed in time (time: a concept also constructed, which is the basic idea of hermeneutics). Caputo (See his "The Weakness of God) claims this is where negative theology leads (the East has its "neti, neti" method; the West calls this apophatic theology). I have read that Zen looks at the "space between moments" to identify liberation. They are all talking about the same world, the same encounter, from Husserl to Hinduism.
I am by no means adept in any of this, but I do know what it is like touch on that immaculate clarity and freedom. I take all of this seriously because I naturally inclined to do so. It is like a calling. Much work to do. Worth every moment.
Meditation, like everything else, is a circle game. You end up back where you started with a new perspective. One of the last things to let go of is the thought that somehow you are "different." It is said that when the historical Buddha reached the apogee of enlightenment, he said, "I have achieved absolutely nothing," meaning that it was only his ability to quiet his mind that had changed.
Quoting Constance
"Burn the Buddha" is the phrase many use to sum-up the situation. The paradox of Buddhism (the religion) is that what makes it so inviting creates massive attachment for most of its followers. The Buddha understood that very few would intuitively, "get it," and created The Path.
I was drawn to Zen because it gets down to the heart of the matter. There is only one lesson in Zen, meditate. Everything there is to get you will derive from your practice. The words are simply pointing the way. You would be amazed at how many people who have been students for many, many years refuse to understand (more that they simply cannot give up critical thought for even a moment).
Quoting Constance
I wish I was adept in philosophy so I could carry on an intelligent conversation with you but it has been so many years ago and its importance has waned. I am a follower of the Tang Dynasty Chan masters (as are many) and Huang Po is perhaps my favorite master of the "shit or get off the pot" style of teaching. I completely fell into line when I read his words...
"Open your mouth and you have already lost it."
I believe the true liberation in Zen (for me) was the realization that not only can you put down the burden of having to figure everything out, but there is nothing to figure out. It's all right there if only you can open your eyes and still your mind.
You see, I disagree with this, at least the way it is stated. I won't bring a lot of names into it, but keep it close to simple sense making. Being in love: what IS this? And what is horrible torture? The dimensions of our existence go deep into the extremes. Meditation does not take one away from this into a neutral pain free existence, rather, purifies this struggle down to an essential, palpable joy. Buddhists talk about emptiness, but I have always taken this to mean empty of rigorous interpretative tendencies of being a person in the world. As far as the nature of experience, there was a fullness, a completeness. What one achieves is an absolute nothing in thought and belief, in the distractions that would pull you this way and that, but not in the content: a uniform bliss that issues from one's "Buddha nature" which is always there, always has been, but cluttered with and occluded by engagements, the source of our misery and our foolishness" these are empty for all we can say is thereby conditioned by language and language takes us into the very world of differences we are trying to escape.
And to me, there is no question, meditation IS an escape, it is THE escape; it is death with a pulse.
Near death experiencers are fascinating to me. Never used to be, but lately they are coming out of the closet. And the first thing I notice is that these guys are NOT lying or deluded. Few take them to be philosophically within the bounds of credulity, but they're wrong. I think they have a lot to tell us about meditation, the goal of which is unqualified happiness.
Quoting synthesis
Burn the Buddha. Meister Eckhart infamously prayed to God to be rid of God. I think he understood attachment in the way you describe. Attachment at the basic level is conceptual and affective, these are joined. One way to look at it: philosophy in its truest form is deconstruction: tearing down the illusions that we know the world. Meditation, on the other hand, and this has to be looked at closely, is the pursuit of affect: we meditate to pursue, not conceptual or propositional wisdom, but a higher, more profound experience or affect, that is, emotion. I know, Buddhists don't talk like this, like Christians talk about God's love, but they are living in the same world and it is just the terminology that is different. Love is just happiness, joy, bliss; and meditation seeks this, off the charts!
Quoting synthesis
Philosophy is purely pragmatic: just to point the way, as you say, and I think this is right. Jnana yoga is the way of deconstruction, and it does work, but is limited. It can open a door. The most effective philosophy is apophatic, for once one goes through a review of all the assaults on common sense philosophy presents, one is led to see that the world is utterly transcendental, and this can be revelatory. Alas, most philosophers are transfixed by their own cleverness, which is, frankly, fun, if you're good at it. But it goes nowhere.
Quoting synthesis
I have always taken Zen to be where one goes if one is absolutely committed, I mean, solidly on the road to "understanding" at the most basic level. What one witnesses in this path must require extraordinary discipline but what one "sees" must be just extraordinary. Not, I would say, a "nothing" but a living in the pure present. I can only imagine. I have had intimations, which is why I have so much respect for it. There is in this something that far surpasses all other things.
There are many types of meditation and some are designed to bring joy, but this is not Zen (which I believe gets to the core). The idea in Zen is to simply be with whatever comes your way. Good comes, you experience good, bad comes, you experience bad. No discrimination. The idea is not to be happy or joyful (feelings that create further karma), instead, it is to simply 'be.'
Quoting Constance
Actually, it is the opposite, a portal to things as they truly are (or at least as close as we can get). When you are able to see the truth of the matter, what is there from which to escape? Living without fear means that you can embrace all experience, the good to enjoy, the bad to learn from and grow.
Quoting Constance
Some forms of meditation do pursue what you describe above, but if you dabble in the knowable, you must be willing to take the bad with the good.
Quoting Constance
Actually, it goes straight to Hell!
Quoting Constance
The interesting thing is that most students attracted to Zen are highly intelligent (which makes it more difficult to give up critical thought) and have searched a great deal. The truly committed almost always come from a very serious life event (I lost my son five days after his birth).
It does take a great deal of commitment and sacrifice but the rewards (for me) have been incalculable. Although I feel as if I have been alone for a long, long time (even though I am happily married), it's the price you pay for discovering a way to live life moment to moment, without fear, without remorse, with the goal of helping others along their path your guiding light.