guest_of_logic wrote:
John, thank you. This is the first post you've addressed to me in which I feel like you're actually responding to me rather than just talking at me. It's a breath of fresh air. I think you'll do even better with practice (I know that might sound patronising - I'm sorry about that, but I also think it's true).
Lol well in my opinion I would rather we were both just "talking at" each other as if it were a normal conversation, but you guys are into forum formality so I'm giving in.
guest_of_logic wrote:
Where I came up with this idea is obvious - it's part of our everyday experience: our intuitive, natural experience is of a three-dimensional physical world in which individual consciousnesses are located separately within those three dimensions. Why I suggest it as a reason to prefer my view of reality over yours is because it is hard to imagine what would be the case if this were not true in some way, not necessarily in the intuitive way we experience consciousness-within-a-three-dimensional-physical-world, but in some sense of dimensionality, some way in which consciousness is "within" or "located in" something. I mean, what is the alternative? I seem to recall you writing something to the effect in that thread of "It's just magic, it can't be described". OK, fine, I can't logically refute that, but in what way is "magic" a better or more plausible explanation than the concrete one that I've offered, which just happens to match our intuitions too?
Your natural experience is of sensations/mental formations, technically it is of a "sensational" world which apparently correlates to a "physical" external to sensations/mental formations world, one that we disagree on the existence of.
You are again implying that there must be some "place" for consciousness to reside and that the alternative of "no place" is somehow less plausible.
If you take into account the point being made I think you will see that it is saying that all these apparent "places" and ideas are rather located "within" or "reside" in consciousness.
(This point here you should be able to grasp perfectly well and to it's fullest degree as you have personally experienced "places" which reside "within" consciousness and not external to consciousness (Dreams, imaginative experiences). So hopefully my meaning comes through here)
guest_of_logic wrote:
So, again, this is not a knock-down argument against your view, but it does make it far less plausible.
I did have a better grasping of the point you were trying to make once you mentioned the first person shooter idea, there is a platform on which all individual consoles/PC's are "meeting", without this shared platform there would be no possibility for interacting with other players, it is this platform itself that makes such interaction possible, without this central server there is no shared platform.
Not to devalue the point you have made, but originally when I said "consciousness is harder to distribute in programming" or something a rather, I was being a little sarcastic, implying that such imaginations of the way a computer programmer might distribute playing experience using a central server bears no real relation to how consciousness might work.
Although I have grasped the point you were trying to make I don't think it is one you should put in too high a regard when considering consciousness.
guest_of_logic wrote:
Other than the reasoning I've just shared with you, it simply makes more intuitive sense to me, and this, probably more than that reasoning, is why I take the view that I do. I experience my physical body in a way that makes it extremely difficult for me to view it as a mere apparition of the mind; it is alive with tangible energy, both "ordinary" and spiritual energy.
Although you do agree this apparent "aliveness" is known only so far as your experiences?
And that you cannot be certain of it's "aliveness" outside of these experiences?
The point that is trying to be made, and I do believe this to be the truth, and hence one that I can lead both you and Pye to the realization of given enough time and cooperation, is that all apparently individual "objects", such as the body, are not truly individual or separated from other "objects", nor do they truly exist, but are really only particular manifestations of transient sensation/feeling. Which is always changing and altering and hence all these objects which you may perceive to contain a certain level of permanence in structure or form, do not actually contain this permanence.
That this perception is only there due to your experience of those structures/forms which appear to be in existence right now. (But are actually in no more existence than the horn on a bunny one might see in a dream, although while seeing that bunny, one might be convinced of it's "more reality".)
In other words, in the future, and you may see the plausibility of this, it is not so wild a notion to say that you might look back on your experiences now as if they were nothing more than a dream.
I would also like to restate again that the realization I am trying to bring you to is a very uncommon one known as awakening and must be accompanied by wakeful observation of your own conscious experiences. (Meditation and contemplation) The Buddha described that such enlightenment would only happen to one in a million people without the help of an enlightened teacher. Another of his more clear descriptions:
"Objects are discriminated by the ignorant who are addicted to assertion and negation, because their intelligence has not been acute enough to penetrate into the truth that there is nothing but what is seen of the mind itself." - Buddha Gautama
This "non-reality" is most easily perceived when past-association and familiarity is absent from the mind. (These being factors that cloud your perception) An empty mind is an open one.
If you were to try and demonstrate that you weren't in the middle of a room existing only of the mind, aka, an imaginative or dream-like experience, how would you do so?