That's true, but not relevant to this issue. It is sufficient that we can imagine a hypothetical observer mentally breaking the thing into parts. The key point is that a thing has the capacity to be mentally split into parts at any time.David Quinn: A thing always has the capacity to be mentally divided into parts.
So even though to you, in a particular moment, a thing might appear as a unity, another person could easily come along and conceive of it as having parts.
Jason: The existence of other people's consciousness, let alone the contents of their consciousness, is uncertain.
The answer I gave above also applies here.DQ: Or your own mind could do this in the very next moment.
Jason: You're making uncertain assumptions and predictions about a future state. The only certainty is in the way things actually are divided at the present moment. That alone invalidates your argument, but also in a similar way: how do you know the "thing" you see undivided one moment, is definitely the same "thing" that is divided the next moment?
DQ: And regardless of whether you perceive a sphere as a unity or not, the fact still remains that such a sphere couldn't possibly exist without its two halves.
Jason: That's nonsensical and you are contradicting yourself. A unity is not divided: by definition. A unity does not have halves: by definition. And you previously said that all parts are mental projections, so if my mind perceives a sphere as a unity then it simply is a unity, there are no halves that "really" make up the sphere beyond my mind's perception of the unity-sphere. You need to make up your mind on this issue one way or the other, and stick to it.
Again, the fact that a sphere has the capacity to divided into parts at any time is the key point. That you might be blocking out the existence of this capacity while conceiving of it as a unity doesn't matter. The fact still remains that if Nature suddenly took away half of the sphere, the sphere would no longer be there. The continued existence of the sphere in the next moment is dependent upon Nature not doing this.
DQ: I'm not denying the appearance of boundaries in our moment-to-moment experiences. Indeed, it is only through the appearance of boundaries that consciousness can operate and we can distinguish anything at all. But nonetheless, these apparent boundaries only find their existence in the moment of their appearing to us. They aren't really "out there" in the world. They are simply a product of our conceptual frameworks.
Jason: Yes all we have is momentary appearance, that being the case, if boundaries exist in the moment then they are the very bedrock of what reality is. I find that your philosophy and book in general repeatedly try to cast boundaries in a light that suggests that they are unreal, imaginary, delusional, projected and so on, and I think that's one of the dominant and fundamental flaws with your ideas and/or your teaching style/arguments.
Maybe we are at cross-purposes here. I agree with you that in a particular moment the boundaries that we experience form the bedrock of reality. But this doesn't conflict with idea that boundaries are imaginary projections.
The fact that our minds contribute so much to what we experience in any one moment doesn't make it any less real in an experiential sense. All my point does is throw light on the nature on how these experiences are created.
It helps people break free of the idea that things inherently or objectively exist. If a person can see that all beginnings and ends in nature are illusory, then he is a position to understand the interconnectedness of all things - or better yet, the formless nature of all things. When a person realizes, for example, that the boundaries of his own self have no more substance than the lines of longitude and latitude that we project onto the earth, then that can be a powerful, life-changing insight.J: Secondly, reality includes within it the mind, and if we take your belief that the mind creates boundaries, then reality must also therefore include the boundaries that the mind creates.
DQ: Yes, so when I say that there are no boundaries in reality, I am meaning it in the sense that there are no boundaries outside of what our minds "choose" to project onto reality at any given moment.
J: If there is nothing but/beyond/behind direct appearances of the moment, then why use the words "project onto reality"? That gives the impression that there is something beyond that can be projected onto. It suggests that appearances and boundaries are less real, because they are projected over real reality.
The mind/physical dichotomy is very real for most people, and thus one's teachings and guidance have to be tailored to that end.The imagined dichotomy of mind-projected-boundaries vs/onto realer-unitary-reality is a fantasty. There is just momentary appearance, which in the end means simply "there are boundaries", end of story.
It is virtually impossible for a person to understand your point without going through all the intermediate stages. Indeed, that is the essential purpose of my book, to help people through the intermediate stages.
J: Third, pure direct experience at this exact moment shows that there is no lack of boundaries - this is beyond doubt.
DQ: Yes, the appearances of each moment are undeniable.
J: Agreed, so why imagine(or phrase ideas like) there is some reality that is beyond our perception of momentary apperance, upon which we "project" boundaries?
Because the average person locked within the conventional mindset, still being spellbound by the idea that the physical world objectively exists, will have more chance grasping the intermediate truths that I phrase.
In Buddhism, these intermediate truths are called "relative truths". They are truths which, while ultimately false, deal effectively with the issues that are being grappled by those who are still lost within gross delusion.
Another example of a relative truth is, "All things are created by the mind." While this is false from the ultimate perspective, it nevertheless has the capacity to help people break free of their attachment to materialism and objective existence.
Another example of a relative truth is, "There is only momentary appearance".
How would you account for the fact that the same physical object can have different boundaries, depending on how you look at it?DQ: The fact that boundaries can change from moment to moment is proof enough that they are mentally-created.
J: If that's sufficient proof, then you have certainly set a low bar for proof in this particular instance.
I don't consider certainty as a necessity to progress. It is the end goal of philosophy to reach certainty within a full understanding of the nature of Reality, but for the most part a person breaking free of his delusions is going to be relying on intuition and leaps of faith, rather than on any rock-like certainty. It is only later, when he reaches the end, that he can look back and see the absolute certainty of the steps he has made.DQ: For example, one person might conceive of the earth as ending at the surface of its land and oceans, while another person might conceive of it as ending at 50km above the surface where the atmosphere thins out. Who is right?
J: This is no proof whatsoever if you consider certainty as a necessity to progress in philosophy, which I do.
Rigidly tying yourself to absolute certainty at the very beginning can easily lead to the curtailing of your progress. The chances are, you will end up staying put in the only certainty that deluded people can ever know about - which is that experiences are happening.
DQ: Where a thing's boundaries are imagined to exist is dependent upon how one conceives of the thing in question.
J: If boundaries are absolutely certain and undeniable appearances, it is ridiculous then to say they are "imagined". Imagined compared to what? There is nothing imagined because there is no alternative, there is no hidden "non-imaginary" reality beyond these so called "imagined" boundaries.
Are you denying that the mind plays a role in shaping what we experience in each moment?
Jason: Whilst I think that fact alone lays to rest your argument, there is another problem in your argument. In your reply to my question above, you said that "it partly comes from many years of experiencing the way that seemingly-firm boundaries easily dissipate with a change of perspective". In other words, these recurring patterns of experience, from your past, give you reason to believe this. Yet if we look once again at your book, in the very same chapter we have been disussing, you write(about David Hume's ideas):
Quote:
"When we observe a match being struck to produce fire, for example, we cannot be certain that the striking of the match was the actual cause of the fire. Our minds merely observe a succession of events - first, the match being struck and, second, the flame erupting into being - and it is only through our past experiences of watching a similar succession of events that enables us to assume the two are causally linked. But we can never be sure that this assumption is valid."
So here in your book you are actually arguing the exact opposite of what you argue in your last reply to me! In your book, you say that recurring patterns of events from the past, cannot validly be used to form the sort of assumption that you have given in your reply to me. In other words, just because in the past you often found that boundaries changed when your perspective changed, you cannot validly assume that these two changes are linked.
DQ:You're right that one cannot use past empirical experience as a basis for proof. Empirical experience can only suggest truths. It cannot prove them beyond question.
Jason: So your proof is invalidated then. My very point was that part of your argument in your last post was based on the use of something resembling the scientific method, which went something like this:
1. The last fifty times my perspective changed, boundaries changed also.
2. There must be a link.
3. I'll assume therefore that boundaries are caused by perspective.
As I say, empirical experiences can suggest truths, but it is only later with logic and infinite understanding that these truths can be proven or disproven in an absolute sense.
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