A Phenomenological Critique of Mindfulness
How do such normative affectivities as 'unconditionally intrinsic goodness', 'spontaneous compassion', 'luminosity', 'blissfulness', ' a calm and peaceful life guided by the fundamental value of nonviolence' emerge as ultimate outcomes of a mindfulness philosophy of groundlessness? Aren't they motivated by a sort of 'will to goodness', a preferencing of one affective dimension over others? It would seem that groundlessness for Evan Thompson doesn't apply to the thinking of affect and desire. Despite Francisco Varela and Evan Thompsons's claim (In The Embodied Mind) that nihilism cannot be overcome by assimilating groundlessness to a notion of the will, they appear not to recognize that the positive affectivities they associate with meditative practice are, as dispositions of feeling opposed to other dispositions, themselves forms of willing.
In The Embodied Mind, Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson assert that Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger's phenomenologies produce ‘after the fact' theoretical reflections that miss the richness of immediate concrete pre-reflective experience as present in the here-and-now. But Varela and Thompson's separating of being and becoming in their empirical approach leads them to misread these phenomenologists, and as a result to mistakenly give preference to mindfulness approaches which fall short of the radicality of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. Varela and Thompson follow Husserl's method of reduction up to a point, stripping away acquired concepts associated with a naive belief in the independence of subject and object. They don't complete the reduction though, allowing subject and object to occupy separate moments.
Varela and Thompson succeed in reducing materialist physicalism to fundamental co-dependency, but still find it necessary to ground intentional processes in a foundation of temporary self-inhering objectivities (the “arising and subsiding, emergence and decay” of transitional forms which inhere in themselves for a moment before relating to an outside). Varela and Thompson found the affectively, valuatively felt contingency of particular acts of other-relatedness in what they presume to be a primordial neutral point of pre-reflective conscious auto-affective awareness.
But the phenomenologists show that attention, as a species of intention, is sense-making, which means it is sense-changing. Attention is affectively, valuatively and meaningfully implicated in what it attends to as co-participant in the synthesis, creation, constitution of objects of regard. As auto-affection turns reflexively back toward itself, what it finds is not the normative sameness and constancy of a neutral positivity( blissful, self-less compassion and benevolence toward all phenomena) but a newly sensing being. Mindful self-reflexivity, expecting to find only what it put there, instead is confronted with the self-displacement of its being exposed to and affected by an other. The basis of our awareness of a world isn't simply compassionate, empathic relational co-determinacy, but the motivated experience of disturbing CHANGE in relational co-determinacy.
In The Embodied Mind, Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson assert that Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger's phenomenologies produce ‘after the fact' theoretical reflections that miss the richness of immediate concrete pre-reflective experience as present in the here-and-now. But Varela and Thompson's separating of being and becoming in their empirical approach leads them to misread these phenomenologists, and as a result to mistakenly give preference to mindfulness approaches which fall short of the radicality of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. Varela and Thompson follow Husserl's method of reduction up to a point, stripping away acquired concepts associated with a naive belief in the independence of subject and object. They don't complete the reduction though, allowing subject and object to occupy separate moments.
Varela and Thompson succeed in reducing materialist physicalism to fundamental co-dependency, but still find it necessary to ground intentional processes in a foundation of temporary self-inhering objectivities (the “arising and subsiding, emergence and decay” of transitional forms which inhere in themselves for a moment before relating to an outside). Varela and Thompson found the affectively, valuatively felt contingency of particular acts of other-relatedness in what they presume to be a primordial neutral point of pre-reflective conscious auto-affective awareness.
But the phenomenologists show that attention, as a species of intention, is sense-making, which means it is sense-changing. Attention is affectively, valuatively and meaningfully implicated in what it attends to as co-participant in the synthesis, creation, constitution of objects of regard. As auto-affection turns reflexively back toward itself, what it finds is not the normative sameness and constancy of a neutral positivity( blissful, self-less compassion and benevolence toward all phenomena) but a newly sensing being. Mindful self-reflexivity, expecting to find only what it put there, instead is confronted with the self-displacement of its being exposed to and affected by an other. The basis of our awareness of a world isn't simply compassionate, empathic relational co-determinacy, but the motivated experience of disturbing CHANGE in relational co-determinacy.
Comments (80)
I would love to discuss mindfulness but your post is so theoretical. Are you opposing mindfulness, because it is extremely hard to make sense of what you are writing partly due to the way you write. I think the point you are missing is that mindfulness is about engagement with the senses and experience itself. We are not just beings of the head, engaging in theoretical constructs and the whole point of mindfulness is to bring us back to our senses, for our own wellbeing.
I would say that mindfulness does involve thoughts as well. It can involve the awareness of the thoughts as they arise in our heads. We can watch them arise, like aspects in the natural world rather than become passive victims. In particular, in states of depression people can almost experience negative thoughts as a concrete reality. Mindfulness enables people to see the limits of thought. Mindfulness is a technique for helping people to cope in life and I don't see how a phenomenological theory could help here.
Could you give me a sense of your understanding of phenomenological theory?
The main point of the OP is that Varela and Thompson claim that ‘unconditionally intrinsic goodness', 'spontaneous compassion', 'blissfulness', ' are values that ensue from mindful disengagement from intentional activity in the world. In other words, that these values precede all other values , and guide us fundamentally when we recognize the groundlessness of the concept of self and the interconnected of all things.
I agree with Nietzsche that no value can institute itself as some pure, original ground of all other value, whether that value be unconditionally intrinsic goodness or benevolence or spontaneous compassion.
Varela and Thompson claim phenomenology needs mindfulness because Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger’s accounts produce ‘after the fact’ theoretical reflections that miss the richness of immediate concrete pre-reflective experience as present in the here-and-now.
“Husserl's turn toward experience and "the things themselves" was entirely theoretical, or, to make the point the other way around, it completely lacked any pragmatic dimension.” “Indeed, this criticism would hold even for Heidegger's existential phenomenology, as well as for Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of lived experience. Both stressed the pragmatic, embodied context of human experience, but in a purely theoretical way.” (Embodied Mind)
Varela and Thompson's claim that Buddhist-originating practices of mindful awareness reorientate experiencing from a phenomenological ‘after the fact' theoretical stance to the immediate here and now centers on its techniques of attentive meditation.
I’ m arguing that they misunderstand phenomenology.
Varela and Thompson's dissatisfaction with the phenomenologies of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger stems from their belief that phenomenology begins from intentional and reflective acts as derived and secondary constructions built on top of the immediate neutral pre-objectifying awareness performed by the act of mindful attention. Phenomenological approaches can only indirectly point to this immediacy ‘from the outside' via theoretical reflective and intentive modes. Intentionality is the formation of conditioned habit, and attention is the mind's immediate access to the field of experience prior to the construction of causal relations. Varela and Thompson's belief that the neutral observational awareness of groundlessness afforded by mindfulness techniques gives immediate access to the here and now makes mindfulness an observation rather than a creation mechanism. That is to say, meditative attention gives neutral access to the immediate richness of changeable experience without itself comprising a constitutive, sense-making activity. It is instead a sense-observing process.
I’m not trying to discredit mindfulness , only to refute
Varela and Thompson’ s claim that the mindfulness tradition has the resources to go further
than phenomenology in accessing the immediacy of the here and now. I agree with phenomenology that there is no such thing as an immediate present.
My disagreement centers on the assumption that there is such a thing as neutral attention. Phenomenology sees attention as creation and transformational, so mindfulness doesn’t traffic in pure non-intentional awareness , but is already invested, motivated and desiring.
“...meditation is thought to support a “bare attention”, or “passive observational stance”, unobtrusive enough to avoid disturbing target experiences or coloring their description with theoretical preconceptions” (Thompson, Lutz and Cosmelli, 2005, pp. 69-75). Mindful meditations is “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally” (Kabat-Zinn 1994, p. 4). ” Mindfulness registers experiences, but it does not compare them. It does not label them or categorize them. It just observes everything as if it was occurring for the first time. It is not analysis which is based on reflection and memory. It is, rather, the direct and immediate experiencing of whatever is happening, without the medium of thought. It comes before thought in the perceptual process (Gunaratana, 2002, p. 168). (Davis and Thompson)
“...with the full achievement of Samatha, one disengages the attention from the previous meditative object, and the entire continuum of one's attention is focused single-pointedly, non-conceptually, and internally in the very nature of consciousness.... Only the aspects of sheer awareness, clarity, and joy of the mind appear, without the intrusion of any sensory objects (Wallace, 1999, p. 182). (Thompson, Empathy and Consciousness, 2001)
If it's nonjudgmental, I wouldn't expect any sort of goodness to come from it.
I just think you are being too theoretical. You need to back up what you are saying with reference to the experiences of life in order for the argument to have any convincing merit.
Do me a favor and simply correct your
your sentence to read “You need to back up what you are saying with reference to the experiences of life so that I can understand it “
Your wording smacks of anti-intellectualism.
I sit here and non-judgementally detach my awareness
from being invested in intentional attachment to objects. I maintain my awareness in pure self-reflexivity. It brings a sense of peace and bliss, But what happens as I continue to maintain this state of mind? I suggest that my felt awareness will shift constantly and with it my valuations. So mindfulness is a form of concentrated intentionality , not an overview that is neutral.
I find that the opposite happens to me. If I try to meditate, I start off with many distractions, ranging from worries to distractions from noise or being too cold or too hot, or many others. I have to switch off the thoughts gradually and, only then, can I reach a peaceful, or blissful state.
I think the way we all experience these states differently is one of the problems with all the techniques and underlying philosophies. What works for one person is different for every individual and at different times in life. I was even told by one professional, but do not know whether it is really true, that if someone in an extremely anxious state tries too hard to switch off through relaxation techniques it can trigger psychotic experiences.
So which is it? Non-neutral it nonjudgmental? Can't be both.
If that's true, then you start out unbalanced. You're pushing the things you hate behind you and reaching to grasp the things you love. You're in motion on your way to defeating nihilism, right?
I guess what I’m trying to say is that when you mediate
you don’t ‘switch off’ thinking, you shift your focus to a particular kind of abstractive thinking that doesn’t let itself
dwell on particular objects. And I’m saying the bliss and peacefulness comes from the contrast with the state you just left behind you. Getting drunk can achieve
that. also.But once you have made the transition from everyday concerns to meditative focus, the meditative
state becomes its own source of comparison , and you will notice textures and shifts in mood within the experience.
I agree with what you are saying and it makes more sense than the theoretical beginning of your thread. I think you could probably blend theory and reflections more in your writing.
And you could probably deepen your knowledge
of philosophical jargon. Not trying to be snarky, just reminding you that it works both ways. I agree that on this forum it would be a good idea for me to avoid allowing the language to become too theoretical, at least for most readers . But in the right academic venues the writing that appeared to you to lack convincing merit would be perfectly understandable. I just want to make sure you’re not saying that ALL densely theoretical arguments are faulty or lacking in some way. Becuase that would apply to most of the philosophical authors that are most valuable to me.
You’re saying that by claiming mindfulness is non-neutral I’m doing the above? No, I’m not giving preference to love over hate. I’m saying that all manner of valuations are implied in a mindful attitude . And I don’t think that amounts to nihilism.
Not sure I understand. We may have to turn this into a real conversation. It seems more like a cross between a tweet and a haiku. I’m going to call it a twaiku.
I just meant that if there are ”all manner" of valuations, there would be some nihilism. It's a manner of valuation, right?
I am in no position to criticise you or certainly not the published authors which inspired you. What I would say is that I think the use of jargon if not written with great care can alienate a lot of readers.
Personally, I could use and improve my reading of certain terminology,but for what purpose and benefits? Even in my own academic studies, I was encouraged to go beyond that.
In the past, many philosophers and other thinkers were accustomed to writing in jargon, in closed circles of their own fields,but I think that the future of philosophy will not be able to go in that direction if it is going to survive as a discipline of creditablility, rather than be thrown into the recycling bin as a lost relic. Of course, the past texts are important but, surely, we need to go beyond them, rather than replicate them, in order to face the perils and the challenges of the Twentieth First century.
Since when are affective experiences those of which we cannot speak? We speak them in our attitudes, expressions, gestures. Since when is an affective experience non-intellectual? Affective sense IS the basis of all intellectual meaning. We could
speak and understand nothing if speech were not affectively attuned. It is Varela and Thompsonwho do not understand affectivity to the extent that they split it off from intention.
Keep in mind, Varela and Thompson are making a
very specific intellectual claim, that one valuative stance ( neutrality, peace, benevolence) can be fundamentally
associated in a privileged way with mindful attention, in opposition to other affective valuative stances.
How does that work? Defeating nihilism by realizing there are all manner of valuations?
Sattipatthana Sutta - 'the way of mindfulness' - source text from Pali Buddhist canon.
Mindfulness in Plain English, Henepola Gunaratana, 1991 - the book that introduced mindfulness meditation to the English-speaking world.
cultural values are meaningless. The rejection of metaphysical Christian values in the West led to nihilistic movements. Nietzsche tries to show that the will to power is the ground of the necessity of value-positing and of the origin of the possibility of value judgment. The principle of value-positing comes out of the ground of Being as Will to Power. Will to power is a kind of life
force, whose aim is to always overcome itself. Life is a postive force of self-overcoming, not meaningless but always formative of new values. This is only nihilistic of your notion of meaningfulness depends on a universal metaphysical grounding of value.
You're conflating discursive explication and explanation with the kinds of evocation to be found in poetry. You're making my argument for me.
Quoting Joshs
Their claim makes perfect sense if it is recognized that partiality, conflict and malevolence are made possible by the divisiveness that comes from the notion of separation that is inherent in discursive thought.
Could be. That would be cultural-values-nihilism, as opposed to moral nihilism, or this kind of nihilism, which is what I think Nietzsche was talking about most of the time:
"“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
3 What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11 No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them."
--Ecclesiastes 1
Quoting Joshs
I don't think so. After the Enlightenment, the stories in the Bible seemed like fairy tales to many people. There were a lot of responses to that, but there's never really been much of a nihilistic movement. Instead there's been a lot of attempts deal with nihilism, either by inventing new mythology, mythologizing something like the psyche, or burying nihilism with entertainment and mountain climbing.
I don't think Nietzsche was talking about rejecting nihilism, but about facing it. I don't believe he thought many people are capable of it.
Quoting frank
From Heidegger: “Nietzsche's thinking sees itself as belonging under the heading "nihilism." That is the name for a historical movement, recognized by Nietzsche, already ruling throughout preceding centuries, and now determining this century. Nietzsche sums up his interpretation of it in the brief statement: "God is dead."
In a note from the year 1887 Nietzsche poses the question, "What does nihilism mean?" (Will to Power, Aph. 2). He answers: "That the highest values are devaluing themselves."
This answer is underlined and is furnished with the explanatory amplification: "The aim is lacking; 'Why?' finds no answer."
According to this note Nietzsche understands nihilism as an ongoing historical event. He interprets that event as the devaluing of the highest values up to now.
Nietzsche understands by nihilism the devaluing of the highest values up to now. But at the same time he takes an affirmative stand toward nihilism in the sense of a "revaluing of all previous values." Hence the name "nihilism" remains ambiguous, and seen in terms of its two extremes, always has first of all a double meaning, inasmuch as, on the one hand, it designates the mere devaluing of the highest values up to now, but on the other hand it also means at the same time the unconditional countermovement to devaluing.
the empty place demands to be occupied anew and to have the god now vanished from it replaced by something else. New ideals are set up. That happens, according to Nietzsche's conception (Will to Power, Aph. 1021, 1887), through doctrines regarding world happiness, through socialism, and equally through Wagnerian music, i.e., everywhere where "dog
matic Christendom" has "become bankrupt." Thus does "incomplete nihilism" come to prevail. Nietzsche says about the latter :
"Incomplete nihilism : its forms: we live in the midst of it. Attempts to escape nihilism without revaluing our values so far : they produce the opposite, make the problem more acute" (Will to Power, Aph. 28, 18)
“Nietzsche understands the metaphysics of the will to
power specifically as the overcoming of nihilism. And in fact, so long as nihilism is understood only as the devaluing of the highest values, and the will to power, as the principle of the revaluing of all values, is thought from out of a re-positing of the highest values, the metaphysics of the will to power is indeed an overcoming of nihilism.”
Their claim is based on a model of attention as separate from intention. If one shows this separation to be untenable, as the phenomenologists have, then Varela amd Thompson’s notions of attention as neutral and thus ‘peaceful, breaks down along with it.
Contrary to Varela and Thomson's assertions concerning the primacy of neutral attention, Husserl's and Merleau-Ponty's discussions of the philosophical history of the concept of attention would appear to place Varela and Thompson's theory of attention within the context of empiricist and idealist orientations put into question by phenomenology.
In their depiction of an independence between the objects of awareness and the mind's attending to it via a neutral re-objectifying observational stance, Varela and Thompson share features with empiricist(sensualist) and idealist(intellectualist) philosophical approaches to the concept of attention.
Merleau-Ponty states:
“We must now show that its intellectualist [idealist] antithesis is on the same level as empiricism itself. Both take the objective world as the object of their analysis, when this comes first neither in time nor in virtue of its meaning; and both are incapable of expressing the peculiar way in which perceptual consciousness constitutes its object. Both keep their distance in relation to perception, instead of sticking closely to it. This may be shown by studying the history of the concept of attention.”
“...in a consciousness which constitutes everything, or rather which eternally possesses the intelligible structure of all its objects, just as in empiricist consciousness which constitutes nothing at all, attention remains an abstract and ineffective power, because it has no work to perform. Consciousness is no less intimately linked with objects of which it is unheeding than with those which interest it, and the additional clearness brought by the act of attention does not herald any new relationship. It therefore becomes once more a light which does not change its character with the various objects which it shines upon, and once more empty acts of attention are brought in, in place of ‘the modes and specific directions of intention'.(Cassirir)
Merleau-Ponty explains that to attend to any experience is not merely to shine a neutral light on it, but to articulate a new sense, the ‘active constitution of a new object'. It is to identify a new figure and in doing so, to transform the sense of the previous figure along with its background.
“Attention, therefore, as a general and formal activity, does not exist.” Rather than there being a general capacity for neutral observation, a universal kind of attention necessary for any moment of consciousness, “it is literally a question of creation. “ “Attention is “a change of the structure of consciousness, the establishment of a new dimension of experience, the setting forth of an a priori... To pay attention is not merely further to elucidate pre-existing data, it is to bring about a new articulation of them by taking them as figures. “
“The miracle of consciousness consists in its bringing to light, through attention, phenomena which re-establish the unity of the object in a new dimension at the very moment when they destroy it. Thus attention is neither an association of images, nor the return to itself of thought already in control of its objects, but the active constitution of a new object which makes explicit and articulate what was until then presented as no more than an indeterminate horizon.”
Husserl, like Merleau-Ponty , sees attention as an intentive act of creation rather than “a light which does not change its character with the various objects which it shines upon.”
“Attention is one of the chief themes of modern psychology. Nowhere does the predominantly sensualistic [empiricist] character of modern psychology show itself more strikingly than in the treatment of this theme, for not even the essential connection between attention and intentionality-- this fundamental fact: that attention of every sort is nothing else than a fundamental species of intentive modifications-- has ever, to my knowledge, been emphasized before.” “Dazed by the confusion between object and mental content, one forgets that the objects of which we are ‘conscious', are not simply in consciousness as in a box, so that they can merely be found in it and snatched at in it; but that they are first constituted as being what they are for us, and as what they count as for us, in varying forms of objective intention...One forgets that.... an intending, or reference is present, that aims at an object, a consciousness is present that is the consciousness of this object. The mere existence of a content in the psychic interplay is, however, not at all this being-meant or being-referred-to. This first arises when this content is ‘noticed', such notice being a look directed towards it, a presentation of it. To define the presentation of a content as the mere fact of its being experienced, and in consequence to give the name ‘presentations' to all experienced contents, is one of the worst conceptual distortions known to philosophy.”(Ideas I).
My argument would be that the kinds of evocation to be found in poetry and discursive explication are different ways of going about the same general task, which is to express a construal about some aspect of the world. There are more or less impressionistic or evocative forms of articulation, tighter or looser constructions of meaning, empirical, poetical, literary styles of expression, but they are different ways of going about the same general
aim.
Affectivity isn’t some ineffable quality before or outside of language. It IS language.
So, for you, there is no per-linguistic affectivity? If so, this would seem to contradict some of your arguments in your 'Private Language' thread.
For me there is a fairly clear distinction between explanatory and evocative locutions.
For me , the irreducible basis or ‘unit’ of all experience is the construct. A construct is a dimensional axis by which we experience an event in terms of a way in which it is similar to and a way in which it differs from a preceding event. Affectivity simply pertains to what one might call the hedonic aspect of the the structure of a construal. Constructs can be verbal or pre-verbal. a pre-verbal construct already contains most of the essential features ( it is a means of pragmatic expression, it is subject to correction, it is not ostentive, it formed in reality to an outside environment) of a verbal construct , except that we aren’t able to put it into words. It is a meaningful sense of a situation, both in affective and intentional terms.
Did you go beyond that? Do you think you have assimilated the ideas of the American pragmatists, the phenomenologists?
Quoting Jack Cummins
We can’t go beyond the past texts until we understand them. 120 years ago, Dewey and James pointed to an exciting new way to understand psychological phenomena. They were ignored by mainstream psychology for 80 years, as Freudianiam and behaviorism ruled. Husserl began publishing in 1892. He was ignored by mainstream psychology for the past 100 years, as first behaviorism and then Cartesian approaches in cognitive science dominated. Only since the 1990’s has his work, and the writings of phenomenological writers like Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, been re-discovers by a small but growing group of researchers in perception (Alva Noe) , theories of schizophrenia, autism , depression, ptsd, empathy, consciousness( Shaun Gallagher, Matthew Ratcliffe, Jan Slaby, Thomas Fuchs, Dan Zahavi).
Was Husserl ignored because he wrote in ‘jargon’, or because people weren’t ready to absorb the content of his ideas? What the hell does that really mean,anyway’ they were accustomed
to writing in jargon’? Why do you think that is? Just for
the hell of it? Because they were being cultish? Because it made them feel special? To annoy you? Perhaps they chose the only kind of language they could come up with to express an entirely original view of the world. You could say that Darwin did the same without the jargon, but he stood on the shoulders of Hegel , who got there before him.
Did Einstein or Newton write in ‘jargon’, or did they choose a vocabulary precisely suited to express what they were trying to convey? I suggest that jargon is a accusation often thrown around to blame the author’s style for one’s failure to grasp their ideas.
I see your point and I would say that the argument both in favour of or against jargon can work depending on your standpoint.
I admit that I have not read that much phenomenology. That is because it is not the background I come from. I have studied more psychology than philosophy. However, I have done philosophy modules but not in phenomenology. That is not to say that I don't plan to read in that direction ever but at the moment I am reading the books which I have first. Probably, whether I read it will depend on how important it stands out for me because we cannot possibly read all areas of thought. I am particularly interested in the research into schizophrenia and autism, so my reading could go in the direction of phenomenology.
In favour of the use of jargon I would say that it can enable specialists to use specific language which navigates complex matters. It has reference points and enables a sophisticated discussion in certain areas of ideas.
On the other hand, it can be used as a form of mystification. I am not suggesting that you are using it in the way that I am about to speak of but I am speaking of a danger. That is when people use jargon to sound really clever and taken to its extreme is when people think that if their writing is so not comprehensible to others it is sign that they are so clever that others cannot understand them. I am not saying that the philosophers you aspire to have done this, but I certainly think that some philosophy has gone in that direction.
I would say that jargon has its role and certainly specialised topics can benefit from it. There is nothing wrong with being a bit esoteric at times.However, I think jargon is sometimes best used with caution unless if it is about only communicating with an exclusive community. Perhaps I was taught entirely wrongly in my academic studies, but I was encouraged to use some jargon, but sparingly.
I don’t know if it’s used that way deliberately, but it is a sign of badly thought-out ideas, and there is a lot of that in philosophy. There will always be a few who know how to use language to express important original ideas, and then unfortunately there are the followers of the masters who in some cases try to ape their style in ridiculous fashion.
So, we probably agree. I have enough problems in conversations in real life when I use words people haven't heard of, such as the basic ones of philosophy. I end up having to explain the words. When I write I want to be understood because I would not be writing unless I was trying to communicate and explain an idea I have.
A sensory construct is the way that the things we experience meet with our extant construct system. That meeting is the new construct. There are no ‘things’ outside of that meeting between subjective and objective poles of the construct , and the extant system is itself changed by that meeting, that dimensional axis of similarity and difference. The world always changes our construction system as a whole, but that world is itself
co-defined by the expectations the system brings to experience. Quoting Janus
A construct is not deliberately constructed, it is as much passive as it is active. Perception is always interpretive, but that doesn’t make it ‘deliberate’. We don’t will ourselves to see a visual shape as that shape, but it is still a construction.
Is our "extant construct system" itself not just another construct according to you? To know that all we experience is a construct, you would need to know reality itself and be able to compare it with our constructs to see the difference. By your own argument you cannot do that, which makes your claim seem groundless.
Quoting Joshs
We have, can have, no direct knowledge of how we come to experience a common world of things and events. The apparent mind-independence of things and events leads me to think the most plausible explanation is that the things and events are real, not merely our "constructions". I just don't find your arguments compelling.
To get back to the OP, your critique of mindfulness, it seems to me that you simply haven't the experience of altered states of consciousness to qualify you to critique them. So your critique seems to be an empty intellectualization of something you actually don't understand because you lack the practical experience.
Yes, you’re right , there is no grounding to our construct system other than the system itself. Reality to any experiencer is what is consistent with thechannels of organizing events that their construct system applies. If an event lies partly outside the range of that system, the system will have to be reorganized so as to find a way to make sense of it. If an event lies entirely outside the range of the system, it will not even be seen.
So the real, and truth, are ideal limits, and we can make progress toward them through successive approximations. But what we are making approximations toward is not an independent reality. our approximations don’t UNCOVER what was presumed to be already there in an independently existing world. Rather, our approximations help to UNFOLD that reality.
The universe is not a static entity but a development. The asymptotic convergence of ‘outer reality’ and human formulations, then, is not a progressively more exact inner mirroring of an outer causal machine , but our participation in its unfolding. We can make up any old notions we want, but some will work better than others, and the criterion of ‘working’ is a pragmatic goal-oriented criterion, as the pragmatists argue.
The self-organizing systems and ‘enactivist’ crowd also say this with their notion of structural coupling between organism and environment, where what constitutes environment canopy be understood outside of the aims of the organism that interacts with and helps to create it.
This would be an example of radical or postmodern constructivism. A less radical version of constructivism can be found in Piaget.
He writes:
We now only need to situate reality with respect to these mechanisms-that is, the object as such, existing prior to knowledge, compared with what it becomes once it gets encompassed within the framework of necessities and possibilities constructed by the subject (without being modified, however, in its intrinsic characteristics, which remain independent of the subject). At first glance, reality may appear completely absorbed or "consumed" at its two ends by these constructions of the subject: at the start, it is reduced to nothing more than a particular case among other possible ones, and at the end, it finds itself subordinated to necessary ties. But, in either case, it becomes much richer by being better understood and promoted from the lower rank of an observable to the higher rank of reality interpreted.
An ambiguity might result from the distinction we make between the object as it is and the object as interpreted by the subject. It would be to equate it with Kant's distinction between the thing in itself (noumenon) and the thing as revealed (phenomenon). But this would be false, since the subject in her cognitive activities comes to know and to reconstruct the object in increasingly adequate ways. However, every progress also opens up new problems so that the object becomes more and more complex and, in this sense, retreats as the subject approaches it.
This means that the absolute difference between subject and object diminishes as a function of successive approximations. But there always remains a relative distance, with the object staying in a state of "limit," which is quite different from an unknowable and immutable noumenon.”
So Piaget begins from the idea that something independent of the organism is the starting point for its constructive activity. But the evolution of knowledge is a continual decentering of previously incorporated meanings within ever more differentiated schemes of
reciprocity. So understanding is not the mirroring of an outer reality so much as it is the contructing of ever more integrated and differentiated schemes
of relation. The ideal limit of objectivity has to do with the increasing variety of ways that we can interact with the world , not what it supposedly is ‘ in itself’ .
I should add that Piaget’ s model of affectivity shares
much in common with mine.
“In our view, it is dangerous to start off by dissociating behavior into two aspects, affective and cognitive, and then to make one the cause of the other. Understanding is no more the cause of affectivity than affectivity is the cause of understanding.” They are two aspects of the same process.
I agree with you that Varela and Thompson have misconstrued the implications of the present moment. If there is a feeling present, and there is in their conclusions, then it is phenomenal - similar to ordinary consciousness. But I would not dismiss the present moment and mindfulness on that basis alone.
A focus on the present moment is a mental exercise to disengage from temporality. The present moment is very deep - the plank length of time is 10^?44 seconds, so it is not something many, if anybody, can reach. But in the attempt to do so one dives into the moment. Initially the depth is quite superficial such that one can reflect upon it, such as Varela and Thompson do, so not so different from ordinary consciousness, but with practice, at greater depths the report is that the situation ( I wont call it an experience ) is ineffable. There are no first person reports back from such depths. Third person reports are of people continuing to meditate long after the class has ended. I have heard a few claims that this can go on for days. I cannot verify such claims, but in my own practice much has been achieved in the present moment. I acknowledge it is a highly subjective first person perspective, but as you state yourself subjectivity is the nature of experienced reality - the third person perspective is invaluable as a conceptual tool, but it is not something anybody can ever experience.
It seems to me the present moment is a validation of Temporality, in that it is possible to disengage from ordinary consciousness by willfully disengaging from the change experienced over time, so I don't quite understand your tack.
How would you characterize your basic metaphysical model? Mine would be that cognition is a disruption / disintegration of the state of a system, met in consciousness by an opposing force biased to integrate. These would be the two poles of consciousness - not quite binary or equal or opposite, but two elements causing a circular mechanism. The feelings we feel are an expression of the bias to self organize - they relate to the continuity of self. Cognition is normally of external elements, it is in itself disruptive to the state of a system, but more so are its inferred consequences. These either disrupt or affirm the state of a system, so are unpleasant or pleasant. Self is composed of multifactorial elements, it has its own biological and experientially constructed momentum.
In Varela and Thompsons case, they focus attention on an internal state which is already integrated and ordered, so an affirmation of self, so pleasant sensations result, from the perspective of my model.
I dont understand this. If the feeling present in mindfulness is one of all-encompassing interconnectedness then it is not "similar to ordinary consciousness". That doesnt entail that it is not phenomenal though, as far as I can tell.
It is similar in that it is phenomenal. If it is phenomenal then the normal mechanism of thought is occurring, so difficult to distinguish from ordinary deeply subjective states.
I am an advocate of mindfulness. I believe ordinary conscious states are also deeply subjective, and mindfulness is a tool with which one can interact with and alter that subjectivity. I also believe it is a way to disengage with consciousness at the deepest level of practice, and so various levels of depth of mindfulness may be progressively altered states of consciousness.
Phenomenological philosophy after Husserl introduced a notion of time that may appear strange. They begin by pointing out that time measurement involves measuring change of some variable against a background that is constant. Foe instance, measuring the movement tod an object in space. The space-time grid is understood as the fixed background against which we measure the change in some factor that exists within that fixed frame. On that basis , we can measure change in consciousness or awareness if we take these to be some sort of object changing ( or not changing) relative to a background, such as the cognitive system inside of the body inside the physical space-time frame.
Phenomenology , however, believe that there is no fixed referent for the measuring of time. We have constructed an abstract system of space-time based on a geometric model of objectively as bodies within a spatial frame.
But our construction , upon which physics is based, is an idealization. There is in fact no fixed referent anywhere.
The origin or zero point of time is not objective space-time within which a body and mind exist , but the conscious experiencer. It makes no sense from a phenomenological perspective to say that awareness ‘takes time’ like an object changing within a fixed frame.
This may make it sound like for the phenomenologists there is nothing but chaotic flux, but as you know, they have managed to put forth perspectives that involve intricate ordering to experience. But it is an order based on a notion of irreducible change that cannot be measured against a background reference frame. This idea cannot be assimilated to notions of time
in relativistic or quantum physics. Physics is still a science based on objective realism, and its relativities only make sense against a space-time reference frame.
Phenomenology doesn’t believe that one can disengage from consciousness since that which is doing the disengaging pre-supposes consciousness.
For phenomenology , consciousness IS change, it a mechanism or process sitting IN time that can be unplugged. That’s the objective empiricist view of consciousness.
Heidegger does a much better job than I do of explaining this view of time as temporality. I highly recommend you read his section on time in Being and Time. You can get the pdf of the entire book online free.
Out of at least two possible sources: a deeply internalized humanism (the beliefs "people are basically good", "life is worth living", "the universe is a welcoming place for me and everyone else"), or/and a selective internalization of Buddhism.
Quoting Joshs
And possibly Buddhism, too. At least in some Buddhist circles, "bare attention", "nonjudgmental awareness" and so on are heavily criticized. See, for example, the work of Thanissaro Bhikkhu or N. Nyanamoli Bhikkhu.
The Satipatthana Sutta has already been linked to earlier. When one meditates, one is supposed to meditate within a frame of reference, and not just navel-gaze. One is supposed to have "appropriate attention" which has a very specific meaning.
See here, for example: Mindfulness Defined by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Buddhist meditation also begins with intentional and reflective acts. There is no such thing as "immediate neutral pre-objectifying awareness" in early Buddhism.
The mindfulness tradition can go further than phenomenology only because it has smuggled along things from Buddhism, without admitting to them.
And many Buddhists agree.
I've found your explanations extremely helpful, so thanks, but I will check it out. I originally couldn't see how systems would interact with time, but then it dawned on me that nonequilibrium systems must store energy for a future time, so they are engaged with time from the word go. Whilst equilibrium systems are cognizing change, nonequilibrium systems are cognizing change over time.
There is still a bias amongst all this fundamentally. The universe is biased to self organize. Fundamentally organization occurs because of a biastowards organization, rather then chaos.
This leads me to think that it is not information that is fundamental, but emotional information - any thoughts?
Can it go further than phenomenology? How?
Why can't experience be phenomenal even if the "normal mechanism of thought" (whatever that is meant to be) is not occurring?
Presumably further in the sense of getting closer to making an end to suffering; or at the minimum, going further in the sense of simply having more things to do, more activities at one's disposal.
The normal mechanism of thought is occurring. The way I understand the phenomenologists argument is, If the normal mechanism of thought is occurring then the experience of mindfulness can be accounted for in normal ways - as a deeply subjective state.
I would counter, If the normal mechanism of thought is occurring, and I understand normality to be equally deeply subjective, then mindfulness is a valid experience. I would go further and ask if they are equally valid experiences, then why can not some of that "all-encompassing interconnectedness " willfully spill over into normal experience. I believe mindfulness has the power to enact such possibilities.
I was agreeing with Joshs in regard to Varela and Thompson's conclusions specifically, not dismissing mindfulness entirely. I regard mindfulness as very valuable tool, and I would encourage everybody t practice it.
I'm still not really clear on what is meant by "normal mechanism of thought". In the altered states of consciousness I have experienced, through music, painting and writing practice, meditation and psychedelics, the everyday ways and tracks of thought (which themselves are obviously not always the same but could be thought to occur within a kind of 'range') are altered in different ways and degrees such that they may no longer seem to be in that 'range'.
You could say those states or any mental state are "subjective states", but in another sense they are all objective states insofar as they are actual. So I don't much favour the whole subjective/ objective kind of thinking.
As far as I can tell @Joshs claim is that the feeling of "all-encompassing interconnectedness" ought not to give rise to any particular kinds of affections. So it could produce feelings of love and compassion or equally murderous rage according to that claim; I think this is obviously false. The feelings and ideas of interconnectedness lead to an expansion of the feeling and idea of self, and the affections naturally associated with this expansion are love and compassion.
My understanding of the normal mechanism of thought is roughly outlined in the previous post. I would say what you are describing is a making of unexpected connections, but I would assume you are cognizing and integrating them in a similar way to what you normally would - so your normal consciousness is at play, but is being altered in some way. That something can be said about the state suggests normal consciousness was present. It managed to cognize something. But yes you are right it is being pushed and pulled in different ways, however it maintains some integrity and creates some story from the experience.
The feelings and ideas of interconnectedness INITIALLY lead to an expansion of the idea of self, because they represent a transition, a contrast to, and departure from what went on before them in one’s consciousness, the experience of everyday normalcy and sameness. They are an expansion beyond that specific prior state.
In order to continue to feel that sense of expansion and love, one has to up the ante, to go beyond that prior realization. Once the particular ( and it is always particular) concept or feeling of interconnectedness ceases to be the novelty that it initially represented, once it is no long the improvement but instead the new normal, then the mood of achievement shifts, and with it the affects of love and bliss, to the predictability of boredom or restlessness or complacency. After all, there are a lot of ways of experiencing interconnectedness, It isnt an end in itself but merely a beginning.
You may have noticed that the first experience with a hallucinogen may have been the most profound and intense. One may then spend years trying and failing to recapture the intensity of that initial experience of mind expansion. The problem isn’t with the drug , it’s that once one’s mind has learned from the initial sense of discovery and enlightenment, it will never be as impressed with the same ‘trip’ again. Enlightenment always has to be a NEW enlightenment. It has to build on what came before, not just duplicate it.
I imagine the first time Varela made the discovery of the groundlessness of the self and the interconnectedness of all reality it was like a first drug trip. Eventually he was forced to ask ‘now what’? Where do I go from
here? How do I build on this insight? From that point onward , as he lived his life built upon the insight of the interconnectedness of all things , he would have noticed that it is possible to interact with ones world with that implicit insight always in the background of one’s consciousness , and yet still feel all the everyday feelings of tension with respect to that world one is interconnected with. What he apparently didn’t realize from this was that it is not the mere realization of interconnectedness that leads to bliss or love. It is the IMPROVEMENT in one’s experiencing of that interconnectedness.
That is, those kinds of feelings of pleasure that result from enlightenment take continual effort. Pleasure isn’t passive but instead innovative, which is tough to sustain. Most of the effort, and reward, on the part of the meditator takes place when they initially put themselves in the meditative state. From that point on , they have to continually discover something new in the experience in order to keep it from slipping into meaninglessness.
:up:
Quoting Joshs
This would be the normal western / phenomenological interpretation. In Yogic philosophy, pleasure is not entirely dependent upon externalities but can also be experienced at will. It is not so difficult to do, what is difficult is to allow yourself the mindset that makes it possible. This is where mindfulness comes into its own as a tool to explore such possibilities.
What concept of "enlightenment" are you talking about?
The actual Buddhist one, nibbana?
Because by the standards of early Buddhism, what you're describing isn't enlightenment/nibbana, it's something that isn't even the first jhana. It's more like getting to the point of pleasantly zoning out.
I was referring strictly to @Janus’ formulation of the feeling expansion of self.
As a very serious Zen student for the past 30+ years, allow me quote the famous Tang dynasty master, Huang Po:
"Open your mouth and you have already lost it."
Words are used only to point in the direction where you can obtain direct experience. Once you understand, words lose their meaning.
When truly with your lover, do you look deeply into their eyes so they can realize the magnitude of your caring or would you present them with a dissertation on the theory of language and meaning as it applies to love?
Words/ideas are extremely important tools, but they have serious limitations.
I don’t distinguish between words and experience. Words are not ‘tools’ that represent thought. Language IS thought, and thought IS experiencing. So the ‘serious limitations’ of language are a reflection of the serious limitations of experiencing. Yes, certainly one can make a distinction between verbal and non-verbal language. Not all implicit meanings we experience are clear enough to articulate verbally. But they are still a form of language.
Quoting synthesis
I would attempt to ‘communicate’ my feelings through non-verbal and perhaps verbal language. But my non-verbal expressions are not more ‘direct’ or ‘ pure’ or ‘immediate’ than language. This is an old Western philosophical prejudice privileging the ‘immediacy’ of speech over writing , gesture over speech. All communicating is mediate and interpretive. I think assuming that eye contact and expressions of bodily intimacy directly and unambiguously conveys one’s feelings to another is a recipe for disaster.
You know this from experience? And even if this has been your experience what leads you to conclude that it must be the experience of others?
Quoting Joshs
Actually this hasn't been my experience at all. I've taken psychedelics many times (well over 150) and some of the most "profound and intense" experiences were some of the last. I think you are drawing conclusions based upon unwarranted generalizations. The same goes for meditation. In fact the experiences with meditation, when I was able to 'breakthrough', were also more intense later rather than earlier. My experience is that "enlightenment" (I don't like that term: I prefer "the altered state") is paradoxical; always new and yet always the same; it is not subject to the ordinary logic you seem to be wanting to apply to it.
My experience is that the unexpected connections are precisely not made in the "normal" way, they don't feel 'normal' at all. Having said that I'm not sure what your conception of "being made in the normal way" is. It may be different for each person, so if you say it is like that for you, I can only accept your word on it.
Quoting Pop
I don't see it that way. According to my experience of altered states what can be said is that nothing can really be said. But I may be able to make a painting or write a poem that, for me at least, evokes that ineffable experience. It is ineffable only insofar as nothing propositional or determinate can be said about, or on the basis of, the experience. For me this is what poesis (making) is all about; evoking (showing) what cannot be literally said.
Actually I think the same can be said about "ordinary everyday" experience; what we can say about it doesn't really capture the lived quality of the experience, but when we are caught up in those propositional attitudes, those banal "normal associations", the feeling tone of the experience is mundane. When we are not caught up in those associations the experience is more or less altered and we, to various degrees, 'wake up'.
Experience takes place then words attempt to capture the experience. The difficulty lies in the idea that the intellect is simply incapable of accessing reality, i.e., what takes place between the experience, the perception of the experience, the processing of the experience, and then transferring such information into language in order to express ideas or feelings creates multiple barriers and filters and opportunities to render the actual experience unrecognizable (and that's only one facet of the issue).
Quoting Joshs
How do you know that?
.
What made them profound? What did you learn from them, and what made them different from the psychedelic experiences that weren’t as profound( assuming the same
drug and dosage)?
Quoting Janus
What made for the change from the earlier to the later? What accounts for the undependability of the experience?
Quoting Janus
It seems to be subject to some kind of logic in your mind:you said it can come or not come , depending on certain variables, and there is something the same about all the experiences.
If you achieve ‘breakthrough’, to use your words,
is the experience from that point on like a plateau ? Is it monolithic? If it gives feelings of love or peace or bliss, is does this feeling persist as exactly the same homogenous tone of feeling thoughout the experience, or does it have modulations and textures?
Look up ‘Alva Noe’ or Shaun Gallagher’. Your characterization of such terms
as language , perception and information seem to point to a rather outdated view of cognition.
Profundity in this context is a matter of feeling, not intellectual complexity and conceptual density or depth.
Quoting Joshs
The inability to "let go". Being stuck in the cycle of ordinary associations, no matter how intellectually sophisticated they might be. I think that's fairly obvious.
Quoting Joshs
It can be any number of shades of feeling associated with bliss, love, beauty, awe, reverence and insight. You are trying to reduce it to analysis; cannot be done. IF you had these experiences yourself you would know that.
Maybe I have had these experiences myself but have a way of dipping into them and extracting sayable sense from them, not to analyze or reduce them , but to expand and enrich them. Eugene Gendlin‘s focusing provides one such method.
Quoting Janus
Feeling is a kind of knowing or understanding.
I do know that any feeling, no matter how profound, is an ineffective guide to life if one cannot find a way to articulate it further, to carry it forward into expanded senses of knowing. Putting it into words doesn’t destroy it , it is richer than the words , but the words are based on it and can point back into it.
Maybe you have. As I said it may well be different for each of us, so better not to generalize. I do doubt that "sayable sense" could mean anything like a determinate analysis; but you are free to provide one if you can. If "sayable sense" is meant to be more akin to poetry, then I would agree.
I think one's own feelings are very often, even mostly, if they are not negative, effective (precisely because affective :wink: ) guides to life; although obviously one cannot expect one's own feelings to be an effective guide for others unless some way to communicate them (make affective by exemplification rather than explication) can be found.
Literature, employing metaphor, parable and profoundly affective depictions of human life, is most effective for this; much more effective than philosophy. That's probably why there is a Nobel prize for literature and not for philosophy. Philosophy is limited to exposing and correcting errors of reasoning and creating schematic worldviews, with the former function being more useful in my opinion. (Although the latter is not without artistic interest). That's my two cents anyway.
I take your point. It may well be that we construe differently, but consistent with constructivist theory and phenomenology we would each have only one way to do it with. So if something is construed - it was done in our normal way. We could not have invented a whole different system of comprehension on the spot and used that to understand something about our situation - according t the theory. Joshs described the theory very well previously, but basically we can only construct upon what has already been constructed, or we can only understand that which we are familiar with already - that can e understood in terms of our already established understanding. When something falls partially outside our established understanding, then we have to reorganize our understanding to account for it. But when something falls totally outside our established understanding, then we are blind to it, which might be the case when mindfulness is close to or ineffable.
You may be describing a situation close to ineffable and somehow an impression stuck, so I have to take your word for it. I would be hesitant to take Varela and Thompson's word for it as they, as originators of the theory have a vested interest, and they seem to describe a fairly superficial situation, that can be variously accounted for.
Quoting Janus
You previously mentioned psychedelics, and perhaps this is the cause of our dissonance. I was really only referring to mindfulness. I have not tried them ( but I'm curious :smile: ). According to the theory, perhaps in this case, it is I who am blind!
This whole area is pretty fuzzy in my mind. The problem seems to lie in the first person vs third person view. The OP is from a third person phenomenological "objective" high ground view, arguing that
phenomenology deems the first person view to be subjective, as if the phenomenological view is somehow itself immune to subjectivity. If we understand self organization is the central mechanism of everything, then all views are biased towards the viewer, indeed can only be seen from their perspective / knowledge / construct system, and we know that all views are deeply subjective, given the weight of beliefs that they are based on.
So what to make of this? I would say that all views are experientially valid, but some are supported by theory whilst others are not. So theory cannot invalidate the first person experience. It remains a valid first person experience despite being theoretically unsound, and it must be so to maintain the integrity of the self in question - according to the theory, as I understand it.
When i read stuff like Hägglund’s This Life, Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, Peterson’s 12 rules, Spinoza’s ethics (as well as Hayes Get out of your mind and Nilsonnes Vem är det som bestämmer i ditt liv, great CBT psychologist books on mindfulness) -
Do I only read stuff, and reflect upon it , do I not sharpen my philosophical knives, do I not do Philosophy?
Why would "we each only have one way to do it with, though" ? I am not aware of any compelling argument for that conclusion.
Quoting Pop
I think novel constructions are possible; indeed commonplace. Actually I prefer to think in terms of associations rather than constructions, and the possibilities for association are infinite as far I can see.
Quoting Pop
I am not super familiar with Varela and Thompson; I was responding only to Joshs claim that altered states where the feeling is of universal inter-connectedness would not naturally give rise to expansive positive emotions such as love, compassion, empathy and so on as opposed to hate, indifference and antipathy. I still haven't seen any compelling to support that claim. If you reject a theory on the basis that its originators have a vested interest in it, you would be rejecting most, if not all, theories it seems.
Quoting Pop
I think the same kinds of altered states may be realized with meditation as with psychedelics, but perhaps not as reliably :wink: .
Quoting Pop
I wouldn't say that first person experience is "theoretically unsound". All theories that are couched in terms of causation are theories form the third person perspective. Theories from the first person perspective are given in terms of reasons if they are attempting to explain acts in terms of volition or purposes.
Our so-called normal experience is replete with purpose and desire I would say, so that is its logic, whereas the altered states are more or less free of purpose and desire; so that is a good reason to think the logics are definitely not the same in my view. Of course it is a continuum of experience rather than a neat divide between different states of experience, so I am not advocating any idea or ideal of purity.
And I believe this is aided more by great literature (and music and art study and practice, meditation and psychedelics) than by philosophy. Both are desirable though; sharpening of the critical faculties and cultivation of the affections. However one can live a good life, ethically speaking; while holding central beliefs that from a philosophical point of view, are absurd, just as one can have the sharpest critical intellect, hold few absurd beliefs, and yet be a total arsehole.
According to Piaget's constructivism, knowledge is accumulated piece by piece, where the next piece is constructed upon the previous piece. The theory is rock solid in my mind. It has been extensively studied since the sixties. I would put it on par with E=mc2. The theory implies that there is only one system of knowledge accumulation and interpretation at play, so when we say we perceive something, we have only one way of doing it. This is consistent with being a singular self, which psychedelic's may indeed challenge?
Quoting Janus
I agree, but they always have to be constructions, so an addition to previous knowledge, constructed in accordance to the already existing structure / system of understanding in place. The information has to be integrated to the whole of knowledge, and in order to do this it must use the whole of knowledge to interpret the information.
Quoting Janus
I don' get a feeling of universal connectedness from mindfulness at all. I get that feeling from a knowledge that self organization is a singularity everything is involved in and everything arises out of.
Quoting Janus
I try to scrutinize everything to the nth degree, as much as I'm able to. There is more to it, but its a bit much to unload here.
Quoting Janus
That may be so. I tend to think that headspace is limitless. I think meditation can be practiced in many different ways and with many different results. I tend to use it more for personal mind control ( to turn off thinking ), rather then for exploring altered states.
I'm glad you have found something that gives you a feeling of universal interconnectedness. I feel sad that we should have to look to altered states for such a feeling. :cry:
I still don't know what you mean by "only one way of doing it" or why only one way follows from knowledge being cumulative. The theory implies that knowledge is cumulative, which seems intuitively obvious. But why only one way of accumulation?
So what good does listening to music and eating magic mushrooms do?
It's preferable if you cite your source: https://philarchive.org/rec/SOFAPC
If you're not the author of this, that's plagiarism.
I said it was one thing that can give that feeling, not that it is the only thing. And I don't believe it's the same for everyone anyway; for some people altered states may be states of paranoia and feelings of isolation. So no need to feel sad. :smile:
Quoting Janus
Its the knowledge accumulated that constructs the system, The constructed system then becomes the prism through which we interpret the world. It becomes a world view. Every self only has one world view through which to see the world. No?
Further, the constructed system is not just a world view, it is everything we know about the world, so effectively is the world. This explains why there are different interpretations of reality, because there are different constructions of it.