If you cannot see the assumption-riddled arrogance in that rather emotive and almost evanhellical, irrational claim, then you will begin to see why folks like 180 Proof and I suspect many others, will slam doors in your face. Don't ossify so strongly FrancisRay. If you don't bend sufficiently then you are much easier to break.[/quot
I feel the same about people who think the earth is flat. It's an inabiliiy to think the issues through.
I understand why you think I'm, being dogmatic, but this is my view and I;m sticking to it. Materialism is for people who are incapable of understanding metaphysics, just as a flat earth is for people who are incapable of understanding astronomy. . . — universeness
If we're speaking about Middle Way Buddhism then I'd say 100% sure. I'd bet my life on it. — FrancisRay
Do you have no concerns that this could be labeled an almost fundamentalist or evanhellical position to take? — universeness
My 0.0001% credence level that a god exists, is my very important defense against an accusation that I am a fanatical atheist ( folks like Jamal have accused me of being a fanatic on certain issues in the past.)
In one of his sermons Meister Eckhart, a Christian Bishop, pledges his soul on it. — FrancisRay
I give a similar 0.0001% credence to the proposal that humans have a soul. There is currently zero evidence to support such a claim.
'This indicated that his confidence was grounded in knowledge and not speculation. — FrancisRay
For me, this is another example of the 'jumps' you seem to make. Perhaps 'leaps of faith,
might be a more appropriate and less offensive phrase. I think such 'leaps of faith' are based on pure speculation and certainly not any 'knowledge'
If you, me and Mr Eckhart, were in the same room with each other (just a fun thought experiment), what do you think he could have said or done to convince me that your 'middle way Buddhism,' was the most important 'truth' about the universe?
As a Catholic from the 13th-14th century, I reckon he would want us both burned at the stake. Me for my apostacy and you for your heathen Buddhism
Why do you leap to conclusions about a topic you don't study and think is not worth studying. By the time theosophy was invented mysticism had been around for thousands of years.I think all mystics are theosophists, and must accept such characters as Rasputin and Aliester Crowley as members.
They believe in 'magic,' but I accept that many mystics see the transcendental or the esoteric as hidden (occultist) knowledge about the physics/workings of the universe that scientists have yet to discover.
Okay/. Here goes. First - would you agree that all metaphysical questions are undecidable, and that this is because all their extreme answers are logically indefensible? This can be verified from a survey of philosophers, or by working through a number of such questions. If so, then I'll move on the to the next step of a proof. . . . — FrancisRay
'The next step of a proof! Wow! I can only be excited by such a claim! Do you realise that if you have such a proof that 'middle way Buddhism,' IS the facts about the nature and workings of the universe, then you could be up for a Nobel prize in the future?
I look forward to your 'next step,' I genuinely do, I am not attempting to ridicule by stealth here.
also require some preliminary philosophical chat regarding the imo, very overburdened term 'metaphysical.' My example would be, would you say that when Copernicus challenged the geocentric model with his heliocentric model, he was making a metaphysical claim,
due to comparison with the accepted/orthodox physics of his time? The heliocentric model then became the accepted/orthodox physics, due to the subsequent overwhelming evidence to support it. So, that which may well be labeled metaphysical, as it is sooooo contrary to the accepted physics of the time, can become accepted physics, once sufficient evidence is demonstrated in support.
In this sense, string theory, CCC, many worlds theory, and even Sheldrakes morphic resonance etc, could all be labeled metaphysical, in the sense that they are projections of physics 'above' or 'beyond' currently accepted experimentally demonstrable, predictive, falsifiable physics.
If this is an acceptable use of the term 'metaphysics' then this would suggest that some questions that might be categorised under the overburdened term of metaphysics are not 'undecidable.'
BUT, please don't let that mean that you will not offer the second step of your proof!
It predicts that all metaphysical questions are undecidable and gives answers for all such questions. — FrancisRay
Is the answer that there is no answer? If so then 180 and FrancisRay are in agreement. If not then perhaps FrancisRay can tell us what these answers are. — Fooloso4
In my opinion, when someone makes an appeal to a particular doctrine they should provide an explanation of what it is being said and how they understand it. Looking back I see 180 Proof makes this point. — Fooloso4
I fully agree. — universeness
There is no empirical method for proving that consciousness exists. — FrancisRay
{quote]You are claiming to know a fact that you cannot possibly know. The recent work by folks like Stuart Hameroff in conjunction with Roger Penrose. An attempt to find common ground between quantum mechanics and human consciousness, demonstrates to me, that we will always tug against your statement above. I think it's unwise to think that the scientific method will never crack at least the 'how' of human consciousness. — universeness
In what way is behaviorism or its past popularity proof that there is no empirical method that can prove consciousness exists?
Of course not.Are you suggesting that a newborn human, maintained physically (perhaps by non-communicative machines,) but not interacted with by any other sentient, would not be conscious?
I don't understand this sentence. You are surely not suggesting that neuroscience is 'just a lot of speculation.' That would be a bit irrational IMO. In what way does neuroscience, not study 'the actual phenomenon?'
typed in two search engine questions:
'What name is given to the study of the phenomenon of consciousness?' and I got sentences such as:
Consciousness is currently a thriving area of research in psychology and neuroscience.
In philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness is to explain why and how humans and other organisms have qualia, phenomenal consciousness, or subjective experiences.
“Consciousness” is the name that scientists give to a phenomenon of brain function.{/quote]
There is no empirical way to study consciousness. It's a thriving area of speculation.by people who cannot even solve the hard problem.and believe consciousness is a brain function. So far this hands-off approach has explained exactly nothing. . . . . .
.Next, I tried 'Is the study of the actual phenomenon of consciousness called mysticism?'
I read this extract from here, as an attempt by someone called
Bryce Haymond, in Sept 2019, to link the study of consciousness with mysticism.
I have underlined the sentences that I think the author is trying to propose are important 'concepts.'
The Mysticism of the Hard Problem of Consciousness
The hard problem of consciousness may lead us to an irreducible mysticism in the nature of the mind and body, namely that they are two sides of the very same one thing....
Many people today seem to believe that the brain causes conscious experience, as a friend recently expressed it to me: "I don’t understand any literal concept of mind that isn’t physical."
His friend is not alone. I don't see the relevance of his friend's lack of imagination. . .
In other words, it is thought that neurons in the brain fire (have an electro-chemically triggered action potential), which cause us to experience something. The neurons firing is the cause of what we experience. It’s thought that the mind is basically physical, and that physicality is the source of all conscious experience. This might be called materialism or physicalism, that everything reduces to the physical cosmos, including consciousness.
Exactly. There is no empirical method to decide this question.But neither has ever actually been shown to be the case. Science currently knows of no causal mechanism or connection whatsoever that explains how firing neurons cause conscious experiences, or vice versa.
For example, how does a network of firing neurons cause our experience of the color red, or the taste of chocolate? No one knows. Or, conversely, how does the smell of coffee cause a storm of neural activity in the brain? No one knows.
This dilemma has been called the “hard problem of consciousness.” We simply do not know how or why firing neurons and conscious qualia (experience) are related, or if one even causes the other.
...This may be what is known in philosophy as dual-aspect monism (or double-aspect theory), which may be closely related to dialectical monism (or dualistic monism).
This is a radical possibility, because it also means that mind and matter/energy are at some level one and the same entity, and not two separate things as we often think. In the spiritual traditions they might express this same reality by saying that spirit and body are one.
So to return to my friend’s statement, “I don’t understand any literal concept of mind that isn’t physical,” I replied,I don’t understand any concept of mind that is physical. Mind is non-physical (or spiritual). Brain is physical.
However, and this is perhaps a paradox that can never be fully understood, I think the spiritual and physical, mind and body, consciousness and matter/energy, are One.
The cosmos and consciousness are perhaps One, the Holy (Wholly) One, as attested by so many spiritual and mystical traditions throughout history. The physical and spiritual sides to this One may be irreducible manifestations of its singular Self. And we are That Divine Self.
The words I have emboldened above are part of the problem of using a word like mysticism. The Christians will often use the door to sneak their irrational god of the gap jumps into a discussion about neuroscience and not mysticism. I see no compelling reason at all to connect the study of human consciousness to the word mysticism, especially when even places like Wikipedia define the word as:
Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute, but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning.
It may also refer to the attainment of insight in ultimate or hidden truths, and to human transformation supported by various practices and experiences.
For me, this is a brave claim/conviction indeed. May I ask you for a percentage credence level that you would currently assign to all the 'truths' put forward by Buddhism and/or Buddhists, as a kind of 'general' or 'ad hoc' metric? For example, I consider myself more in line with hard or strong atheism, in that I am 99.999% personally convinced that the supernatural has no demonstrable existent.
Would you be willing to state that you are 100% sure that the main tenets of Buddhism are sound? — universeness
I am happy for you if you have found a doctrine of life (Buddhism), that you find so compelling and that has acted as a strong bulwark for you, as you face life's inevitable personal adversaries, but, as perhaps an annoying skeptic. I have to ask, what are these sums you are talking about?
How can you be so sure you are adding them up correctly?
Well, I for one will try my best to respond to what you state, and not jump to any conclusions about your sanity. — universeness
I wanted to post about this sentence separately.
No physicist I have read about can demonstrate the concept of 'nothing.' There is no experiment in physics, that can currently demonstrate any example of 'nothing.' — universeness
Folks like Carlo Rovelli certainly posit that time is a very localised experience, in that, even when I am talking to a person standing right next to me, there is a notion of me, sensing that person, from their past, rather than their present. This is because there is a tiny duration, before I see each frame of their movement or hear their words of register their touch etc. So in this sense I cannot experience YOUR present, I can only experience my own. So time is, in a sense, a unique experience for all humans.
But what do you specifically mean by the words I underlined above?
They seem to me, on an initial reading, to be stating the obvious, in that experiment and the scientific application of empiricism, is currently, our best method of discovering new truths, or arriving at new 'realisations' about the nature of consciousness (human consciousness in particular). — universeness
Perhaps I am missing your point. But in what way does this suggest that physics is coming ever closer to the mystics?
The Rupert Sheldrake proposals regarding his 'morphic resonance,' come to my mind.
Can rats, who have never taken part in the maze experiments that Sheldrake goes on about, really learn how to best traverse these mazes via 'morphic resonance?' All rats, everywhere on the planet?
That seems quite 'mystical' to me.
Do you think that Sheldrake's work, does contain some real physics-based truth behind it, at a quantum or 'fundamental' level?
It is part of my current convictions to initially respond with, :roll: , when anyone proposes anything related to 'mysticism,' depending on how that word is being employed. — universeness
I then try my best to give the proposer the benefit of the doubt and listen more to what sense/level of logic versus skepticism, they are using in what they are proposing. I suppose you could even label such, their epistemology.
I would certainly push back, if you are suggesting that 180 Proof, is an example of the persona you are trying to describe in the sentence I have underlined from the quote above.
He has been a member of TPF for 8 years. Think about how exasperated he must be at times, with the woo woo mob that he has had to deal with in that time. I have only been here for a year or so, and I have also become a bit more unforgiving towards the more extreme peddlers of woo woo.
Not factual in the sense of being about objective things or states-of-affairs. I don't mean it in the sense of not being true - far from it! - but not being about empirical facts. As Edward Conze says, 'the wise men of old have found a wisdom which is true, although it has no empirical basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody." Why? because it depends on insight. — Wayfarer
I'm very much influenced by my reading of Advaita and (also Buddhist) non-dualism, although that mostly amounts to reading about it, with some regular meditation over periods of years. But I don't think it is an easy thing to explain. — Wayfarer
Recently I've discovered an excellent Advaita teacher, Swami Sarvapriyananda, of the Vedanta Society of New York, who has many online videos and discussions with other philosophers (some can be found here. I particularly liked his conversation with idealist philosopher Bernardo Kastrup.) He is articulate, educated, and philosophically literate. Indeed the Vedanta Society of New York was originally founded by Swami Vivekandanda in the late 1800's and has had a profound influence in America and beyond.
Nevertheless I don't believe that the teachings of Advaita are easy to convey, as they demand a deep kind of perspective shift or insight. They are not trying convey factual information, but a fact about existence, which is said to be obscured by avidya, ignorance. And 'piercing the veil of ignorance' is the fundamental teaching of Advaita. It's simple in the sense of not being complicated, but it's not necessarily easy to grasp.
ust in case you think I had not read this response you gave. I have, but it did not answer the questions 180proof asked imo. — universeness
I think that's a loss to all members here, as you seem to have a lot of knowledge of Eastern philosophy.
Perhaps you get exasperated too easily, we all get frustrated when we are challenged but it is very important to stand your ground, if you give a damn about who else might read these exchanges on TPF. — universeness
]Perhaps 180proof is still waiting for you to answer his two questions:
i. What 'facts of the matter' do "the nondual doctrine of the Perennial Philosophy" explain?
ii. What 'predictions' can be derived from this "Perennial" explanation which can be experimentally falsified? — 180 Proof
and we can all judge for ourselves who the idiot between you and 180 Proof is based on your exchange on this thread. I for one — universeness
This is what thinkers, particularly philosophers, do, Francis: we disturb the peace (i.e. smug givens, unexamined assumptions, etc). You're right, though, I am "not interested" in unwarranted, or dogmaric, beliefs; I prefer to dialectically discuss speculative ideas. Go vegitate in an ashram if philosophizing disturbs you. — 180 Proof
↪FrancisRay
You say "Perennial Philosophy" explains but you do not give (or summarize) the explanation. You also say it "predicts"; but in the absence of any intelligible explanation, your "predictions" are just unwarranted claims (i.e. just-so stories). I'd hoped you would have answered both of my questions; apparently, however, New Age talking points is all I'm going to get. :yawn: — 180 Proof
i. What 'facts of the matter' do "the nondual doctrine of the Perennial Philosophy" explain?
ii. What 'predictions' can be derived from this "Perennial" explanation which can be experimentally falsified? — 180 Proof
Is this a response to my having said that distinctions begin with consciousness? You have expressed it here in reverse; that mind (not consciousness) begins with distinctions, and I think that works too since we can say they are co-arising. So, I take it that for you mind is intentional consciousness, and by 'consciousness" you mean satchitananda? — Janus
I am not getting your drift here—I see the question as decidable two plus two does not equal either three or five. If the question is whether reality is foundationally matter or mind, or something else, we cannot answer; and that is what I mean by undecidable. — Janus
The closest we might get to a decision there would be to say the question is inapt, that no answer we give can state the actuality.
I think the same goes for this answer. We don't know, discursively, what "being. consciousness, bliss" is, so discursively speaking it is a non-answer.
One might enjoy an altered state of consciousness wherein one feels and thinks intuitively "Oh, this must be the satchitananda the sages speak of", but this remains an experience, open to different interpretations. Another person might say "I saw God". These kinds of experiences are ineffable and discursive interpretation necessarily distorts them because thought and language are inherently dualistic, and such experiences, in fact I would say all experiences, are inherently non-dual.
... though I'm not convinced we should expect any discursive or analytic investigation to be able to see beyond intentional consciousness.
One might have an experience that convinces one that one sees beyond intentional consciousness, but the belief that one sees beyond intentional consciousness is itself a dualistic interpretation of a non-dual experience.
Yes, I think this is analogous to what Hadot says about some ancient philosophies: that they were systems of ideas designed to be aids to spiritual transformations and realization, not discursive propositions to be debated.
rancisRay
Phenomenology is the business of describing how things appear to be, not explaining anything in terms of metaphysical theses. — Janus
Such a theory is so obviously false that it only make sense if understood as ironic or metaphorical. — plaque flag
To say that consciousness is fundamental is to propose an answer to a metaphysical question. I had thought you agreed with me that metaphysical questions are undecidable, which I take to mean they cannot be definitively answered. — Janus
'Consciousness' is just a word. What do we mean when we say consciousness is fundamental?
Our notion of consciousness finds its genesis in understanding consciousness as intentional consciousness wherein there is always something that consciousness is of.
If this is right, the idea of consciousness is necessarily dualistic, and thus would have no place in non-dualism.
It is also worth noting that in the context of Buddhism the Yogācāra or "mind-only" school is only one among many schools. And the salient question is whether it was meant to be an ontological position rather than a phenomenological explanation of experience and a conceptual aid to practice.
We could equally say that being is fundamental, but 'being' is also just a word, and also misses the non-dual mark.
I agree in the sense that it can clearly be seen that metaphysical questions are undecidable, and in that sense, it is a realization rather than a view. On the other hand, like any proposition, it is open to being negated, so someone can always hold the (erroneous or myopic) view that metaphysical questions are decidable. — Janus
Just so you know, that's not an innovation on his part. It's standard axiomatic set theory. — plaque flag
This source [ Theodore Kiesel ] places Heidegger's primary breakthrough at the lecture KNS 1919: THE IDEA OF PHILOSOPHY AND THE PROBLEM OF WORLDVIEWS. — plaque flag
All is הֶבֶלl . — plaque flag
I agree that we don't have to be a great thinker in the sense of obtaining a great breakthrough that'll get us in the canon.
If you don't understand metaphysics then you don;t know whether one would have to be a great thinker to do so.
— plaque flag
I agree that facts are important, but we also have to think (reason carefully from or on the facts.)
That's just it. I simply take experience as experience, as 'real.' It's you (in my view) who are simply deciding to ignore this or that aspect of experience. — plaque flag
It tries to give meaning to a metaphor --- or to a tendency to treat some experience as somehow 'unreal.' — plaque flag
As I see it, we all see the same world, but we do see from different positions. You see the world and understand metaphysical questions are undecidable so that the claim fits or articulates the world.
You give offer your testimony. But (as I've stressed elsewhere), saying that P is true is just saying that you believe P. Is just claiming P. Your testimony is your testimony. And that's it. — plaque flag
Before long you;ve got people who are content merely believing that someone is Enlightened but not really concerned to get there themselves. The belief in the distant possibility suffices (hence the envelope being the letter — plaque flag