Another deleted post. Outta here then. All the best guys, I enjoyed it otherwise.

AFK for a time guys. Sorry for any lack of responses

AFK for a time guys. Sorry for any lack of responses

AFK for a time guys. Sorry for any lack of responses

Welcome dude.

As a cat watches expectantly, but wordlessly by a mouse hole? — unenlightened

That brought to mind those short Japanese haiku poems.

Maybe the kind of background anthropomorphism describes is a way we secretly relate to the world all the while. Although admittedly, I tend to swear more at lifts than compose them poetry.

Back in the 1980s and early 1990s when gay men generally died of AIDS in prolonged suffering, some claimed to be grateful for AIDS because they had found meaning in life. (The guys saying this were the ones still walking around. The ones who had reached end-stage weren't expressing gratitude.) — Bitter Crank

I remember hearing an early HIV +ve guy interviewed on this. He said the diagnosis really shook him (unsurprisingly). Although traumatised, for months his mind took on kind of vivd high - seemingly wringing out every last drop of sentience in the time remaining.

Luckily for him, retroviral drugs came online in time. Now he's back to experiencing all the petty irritations and trivialities with the rest of us. Welcome back dude!

I think the term "valid" is usually reserved for an argument structure.

But it's possible I am afflicted by opposing of states pedantry and accuracy.

Yeah, that last bit. Gives you the willies! ("willees"?)

Could it be the case that the so-called "hard problem of consciousness" is nothing more than a consequence of ill-conceived notions?
"Experience" being a central one. "Consciousness" being the main one. The "subjective/objective" dichotomy being another pivotal one. All three are involved. None of them are adequate for taking account of what's going on in the minds of thinking and/or believing creatures...
— creativesoul

Yeah, that notion got kicked around a lttle yesterday I think

By the way, if there's anyone reading this who is worried they might actually be a pZombie themselves, please don't hesitate to share your feelings about it here!

Alas the Guru effect.

Even at its best it's a very poor substitute for one's own faculties. It its worst it devolves into a 'psychological game' (e.g. R.D. Laing) where one participant exchanges autonomy for freedom from the discomforts of uncertainty and responsibility. The other exchanges genuine intimacy for the pleasure of power. Not long afterwards we're all drinking the Cool-Aid.

And at the same time sidestep the dreaded guru pitfall for that matter

Yeah. Here at the end of history it's not like the world really needs the luxury of widespread critical thinking skills. (wink)

It's kind of hard to speak for all Buddhism, since its practice is so fantastically diverse. But it's true that some of the more 'hard-core' schools have views like this.

Although I don't think they'd let you/me off the hook for personal responsibilty so easily. Those guys are more pragmatic than that.

A while back on wikpedia it was pretty much open slather to edit other's texts. A lot of superflous waffle got cut this way. Anyway a culture of minimalism took hold. Eventually entire entries got deleted.

Up the front the content for "Aardvark" got wiped and replaced with the text "One ugly animal'. Since then the procecess of censorship has been censored quite a bit.

I am not so sure Philosophy is sunk. — Cavacava

I heartily agree. <Hands over one of the many small buckets littering the hulll>

I seriously toyed with the notion of working in this field. So I did my Philo degree back in the early 90's (in a second-tier, formerly leftish Australian university). Did ok.

Most of the faculty were blessed with exceedingly competitive instincts. Something they delighted in exercising, not only upon on each other, but also upon their undergrad students.

I went on the do other kinds of teaching. Until a couple of days ago I hadn't written a single word on a philosophical topic.

So it is with confidence I can say that university has made a lasting impact upon its students.

Yeah. If I wasn't just stuck in this era of history I'd be looking down the barrel like a dead donkey at some other kind of cultural excess. Could be power, art, religion etc. This one's a doozy though I reckon.

This is no help at all. Yes, I know. "Want" is a synonym for "desire." Never mind. When a discussion starts spinning it's wheels in definitions, which happens a lot on the forum, it's time to bail. — T Clark

Sorry dude.

Speak up Kym. — T Clark

Oh ... right. Desire was it?

Ok I was snoozing there, hoping you'd wake me gently when you'd all settled on the definition.
I haven't followed all the to's amd fro's, but what I meant was desire as any kind of want. Not bad in itself (essential really for living things) but when it gets elevated as a central cultral idol there's sure to be trouble afoot.

pZombies ....It was Insane denial of the purpose of Consciousness. — SteveKlinko

Lol, my first uni study was Psychology run by a rampant B.F Skinner loving behaviourist who would have no truck with the mention of any mental states. Oddly, he was also a rampant Freudian.
Strange world this one.

Few years back I found myself working with fiesty philosophy graduate and earned some contempt when I let slip that I might be a panpsychist. "So you believe that table is sentient?" he barked in the staffroom. In reality I slunk away in embarrased silence.

These days I'd hope to at least say "Not right right now, but just wait around a bit will you?". The point being that over time pretty much all atoms will get a go as they're cycled through the system. The table-form we were looking at was just a temporal anomaly really.

So there's the time dimension to consider too.

You talk about how the west has "corrupted" Buddhism. Does me using the Tao Te Ching the way I do corrupt Taoism? Did the Taoist religionists corrupt Taoist philosophy? Did Martin Luther corrupt Catholicism? Does New Age claptrap corrupt everything it touches? Well, yes to that. Can you suggest alternative sources for westerners to get the insights eastern philosophies provide? I'm reading a paper now discussing whether the Tao is the same as Kant's noumenon. The difference, of course, is that Lao Tzu describes it in 80 short verses while Kant takes volumes and volumes and still can't get it right. — T Clark

No, I don't think this is an experiment doomed to failure. In fact I suspect the Greeks got a lot of their ideas via the silk road. So perhaps there's an artificial E-W division anyway. But there's many a pitfall to had. The one I mentioned is the one I've experienced first hand.

I wouldn't have the gall to try and guide anyone to sources insght. I have so very little myself. Just now I'm trying out subscribing to a philosophy forum! Good luck with your investigations though.

Okay so to subscribe to the logical possibility of zombies you have to subscribe to strong anthropic mechanism first? As in it's all bottom up cognition and you can have a complete mechanistic description like billiard balls colliding with each other.
I've always suspected the zombie argument is really an argument against reductionism where if the argument was rephrased to allow for top-down causation the problem would vanish. That's really why Descartes mental substance exists because he had already decided that mechanism was sufficient to describe everything else, including the other animals. — JupiterJess

This is awkward for me since I'm secretly a determinist with a predilection for bottom-up explanation wherever possible (Occam's razor etc.). Yet, no Zombies for me!

Weird, hey?

The Unversal Mind Topic
I think I've already hinted that I have a lot respect for the phenomenon of mystical experience - however tainted it can become by culture etc. The universal mind experience is one the seems to crop up again and again cross-cultures. So I'd suspect there's probably really something to it.

But since I'm not in that club, I'll have to make do with philosophy for now.

So far the only grasp I've got on it is along the lines of this: The phenomenon of consciousness is a subset of the phenomenon of information. That's something I certainly can see is omnipresent. Thinking now of thousands of gradations of sentience occurring throughout the animal kingdom, then the plant kingdom, mcro-biota and so on. Then even simpler information as transferred and stored mechanically in molecules and viral crystal structures, then down to the acoustic vibrations in the surrounding furniture that reflect my banging on this typewriter – itself a kind of model of the world.

In this way I can see consciousness as information omnipresent, but very concentrated in places, for example in a human's sentience.

Do you think this take on it is on the right track. Or am I barking up the wrong tree do you think?

Wouldn't this suggest that the bottom-up model is missing something? — Marchesk

It certainly does. The Zombie position is not one I agree with. I'm pretty sure Chalmers disagreed with it too. But rather, he was laying out all the possibilities before proceeding with his argument.

But you must admit, the image of a Zombified greek philosopher is pretty cute.

Yeah. I find it easy to use use some terms a bit fast and loose. Itchy trigger finger.

Have you read any Schopenhauer? — schopenhauer1

No I haven't. That's another big hole I need to bung up in this leaky boat. Any good/short/accessible intro text you'd recomment for beginners?

Hi guys!

I didn't think to look for a welcome thread. Too self-obsessed I guess. Anyway this is a really nice set up. And the people are surprisingly .... well ....nice ... so far. That can be tricky.

And make that a warm howdy doody from me to all other greenhorns!

Gee up now boy!

More lip service. Reducing eastern philosophies to "practical mental exercises" while ignoring the fact that they represent a metaphysics in some ways in exact opposition to those represented in western approaches. — T Clark

Wow, that's tough love right there. Yes, this has become a big problem since it's introduction to the West. The 'cultural corruption' I mentioned, but glossed over, has included a reduction of mindfulness practice to a means of improving youself and achieving you desires. The irony, the irony.

Actually, my interest goes a little deeper than that. I've got a weakness for metaphysics that a good Zen teacher might like to beat out me. Anyway if you are interested in my half-baked grasp of Buddhist metaphysics I'd invite you to join the discussion of the thread called 'Consciousness - What's the Problem'. Especially today's dialogues. I'm just a tryer though so keep your expections low.

Thanks, I'll get down to reading that link properly.

Meanwhile I must confess I've been at a loss to take on the idea of Universal Mind.
1. It seems so far that mind is only seen manifest in local structures (sentient organisms). So, there are are only localized POVs. Not very universal.
2. It also seems that evolutionary pressure mandates endless fabrications of 'self'. Which, as discussed, seems the very antithesis of universal consciouness.

Or maybe I've mis-conceived of it. Whaddya think?

Hi Jess. Do you mean to imply there are actually women on this forum? I was wondering.

I don't think the zombie argument has ever been expressed to my satisfaction ... — JupiterJess

The term belongs first I think to Chalmers. But nevertheless good old Wiki gives a concise overview of various ways it has been used. Me, I just like the mental image the "Philosophical Zombie" paints in my head. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

If you mean how I meant to use it, then I can clarify that at least:
At first sight, consciousness seems redundant. Seemingly a person or animal could react to the world 'normally', without the intervening step of internal consciousness. Kind of like a machine following an algorithm, or the Behaviourists’ black-box model of stimulus-in / response-out. But dead inside, like a Zombie. This notion raises the question of "why do we need consciousness?"

Leaving aside just now the increasing probability that you are reading a response from a bot-algorithm, I at least feel confident that you lot out there have internal experiences as well.

But then I would say that.

I think we are perhaps in agreement just there. Except maybe you might be a tad more optimistiic tham me about achieving full understanding. But I like the pragmatists' approach of just saying "Damn it let's just give it a crack anyway".

OK thanks for the link. I'll let that sleeping dog lie just here. But PM me if you do want to open that discussion.

Meanwhile I checked of the thread you opened: Eleven pages of response. Nice one.

Would 'delusion' be a better term? Consciousness is deluded? I scratch about for the correct words in this area (check the x-ray)

Thanks for that vid.

My take on the issue is that the mental construction of 'self' is one of the "interesting distorting fictions" I've been circling around. We can't be too hard on it though, because without it we can't filter our perceptions enough to survive as organic beings. Nor can we be adaptively selective in what actions we make. Without self, all distinctions cease - hence the void, shortly followed by death if we keep it up. With a self, isolation and confusion are inevitiable. A comic-tragedy really, at least to those like, me far less skilled in compassion than Thich Nhat Hanh.

As for the fireworks, I don't want to drive the discussion off topic, but I may have to issue an erratum.
Looking for articles I'm thinking It may have been his colleagues he was talking about, rather than his students. But that was from around 1987 so you'll have to cut me some slack there.

Yeah, it's just a lack of various god-like powers that is hampering my effectiveness to make any kind of changes really.

You just need to check again on my x-ray occasionally

BTW, I attended a small audience of Thich Nhat Hanh's in Sydney, years ago. He discussed the issue of his students' self-immoliations during Vietnam's crisis. Any thoughts or feelings on this matter yourself?