Videocy/Literacy

[Dennis Mahar]

Same shit diffrent day covers idealism.
limits to thought.

[Dennis Mahar]

Never said bliss wasn't conditional Pam.

mind generates environment, pleasure, activity used well enough.
it's a powerful little fucker
It can tell you to kill yourself and your parents and you will.

[Kunga]

It is not its things that consciousness of no-self considers ignorant, it's its reaction to its things that it considers ignorant and rightly so. Since consciousness is the sum and total of all its things, when it emotionally reacts to its things as it does in moments of reciprocity, kindness for kindness, anger for anger, it does so in ignorance. To reflect this truth is not to look down on others, for in truth, 'other' does not exist, rather, it is what it is, a reflection of truth.

Well, this whole conversation is reacting...but in it's ignorance...clarification is acquired...like purifying gold.
Emotions can be studied for what they are(reactions), and also used in the process of clarifying.
Without this baggage (like heavy weights), our convictions of what is truth, can be fuzzy.
To directly experience the folly of our ignorance, will enable Wisdom to emerge more clearly.

[Bobo]

• the postulation of "real existence of man and nature" only "through sense experience" is a position worthless as "real" is here just the truth of Marx and 19th century concepts of human nature.

So let us for once be more cautious, let us be "unphilosophical": let us say that in all willing there is firstly a plurality of sensations, namely, the sensation of the condition "AWAY FROM WHICH we go," the sensation of the condition "TOWARDS WHICH we go," the sensation of this "FROM" and "TOWARDS" itself, and then besides, an accompanying muscular sensation, which, even without our putting in motion "arms and legs," commences its action by force of habit, directly we "will" anything.

• here Marx his new "essence": the theoretically and practically sensuous consciousness of man and of nature. But do not ask about causality please! That's too abstract...spoiling the sensuous consciousness of eye-nature.

Genius involves the living actuality of the intelligible subject. History manifests itself only as a social thing, as the " objective spirit," the individuals as such playing no part in it, being, in fact, non-historical. Here we see the threads of our argument converging. If it be the case, and I do not think that I am wrong, that the timeless, human personality is the necessary condition of every real ethical relation to our fellow men, and if individuality is the necessary preliminary to the collective spirit, then it is clear why the "metaphysical animal" and the "political animal," the possessor of genius and the maker of history, are one and the same, are humanity.

• ideology needs a eschatology, for Marx it's the "actual phase necessary for the next stage of historical development".

But that's also a problem of all 19th century "materialist" science and its counterpart Romanticism. Marxism might have been largely abandoned but the ideas on love and nature certainly have flourished.

So how did the 19th century views on love and nature flourished? How does one lose what is already given?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Bobo, indeed, Nietzsche too was very 19th century in many ways. Although in your quote he's really talking about self preservation and the flight-fight responses. It's more psyche and body centric and there's a simple enough link with Buddhist notions of desire and craving as part of the body-form ("there is suffering"). Still a long way from the atomism of "man and nature".

It's unclear why you bring up Weininger and his "timeless" (!) personality. For him that is the main condition and driver of the true individual while the "social thing" is just historical being. Do you mean Weiniger is anti-Marxist? It's clear to me here and all over his book that Weininger promotes the individual genius or "the spiritual" as cause and diminishes thereby any collective in that context.

So how did the 19th century views on love and nature flourished? How does one lose what is already given?

I'll answer that after you've explained some of your own views on those subjects. :) Without quotes.

[Bobo]

To do that you would have to choose a set of causes within causality. (Humanity in Weininger's quote)

[Dennis Mahar]

Marxist idealogues with mind on fire scorched the earth wherever they showed up. Murdering, raping, pillaging.
Upon seizing power party officials lived like emporers, tyrannising the rank and file into abject slavery.

Co-operative model huh Pye?

how about same shit different day for deluded mind?

[Leyla Shen]

Diebert wrote:

Do you mean Weiniger is anti-Marxist? It's clear to me here and all over his book that Weininger promotes the individual genius or "the spiritual" as cause and diminishes thereby any collective in that context.

Insofar as this particular quote goes, it seems to me that there is indeed a distinction here between genius ("metaphysical animal") and individual ("political animal"); genius being "the timeless personality" (so, enduring) and the individual being non-historic. Combined, we are arrive not only at collective spirit but, (idealised) humanity.

[Dennis Mahar]

Oh, then we've got an umbrella term and a basis for designation.
Imagine that.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Insofar as this particular quote goes, it seems to me that there is indeed a distinction here between genius ("metaphysical animal") and individual ("political animal"); genius being "the timeless personality" (so, enduring) and the individual being non-historic. Combined, we are arrive not only at collective spirit but, (idealised) humanity.

But that doesn't explain the reason why the quote would matter. Bobo never explains anything, just introduces ambiguity. And you're not explaining much here. Does it counter Marx ("the nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production")? Did it counter my statements?

Perhaps some more understanding is needed of the terms so eagerly introduced by the power of quote.

Schopenhauer's "animal metaphysicum", the notion that philosophy begins in wonder, about death and suffering mostly, or "evil" in general. This fuels the need to understand, no justify it metaphysically: wisdom (of invisible things: beyond known physics and sense, not science). This all based on Aristotle's writing about the practical uselessness of "metaphysics" [edit: like Plato's "Forms"]. Something especially Marx struggled with. but Weininger elaborates:

Yet, exactly this makes for the gravity and the greatness of the idea of culture: culture must emanate from individuality, and hold its own in the universal forum of value that is beyond the personal. The ens transcendentale [transcendental being], the “animal metaphysicum” [metaphysical animal], is therefore nothing other than the "polis-dwelling animal” : the human being. Thus the celebrated question of all sociology is answered: Which came first, the individual or society? Both are there at the same time, together from the beginning. -- Weininger, On Last Things

The mentioned "polis dwelling animal", or political animal, is from Aristotle's notion of human being as first and foremost political community member, citizen or city dweller and only individual as a result of that. So it seems Marx his notion is based on human as political animal since Marx writes about the human being as the sum of his social relations, a human essence being "the ensemble of the social relations" (Theses On Feuerbach 6).

Again the question, do we have to see Weininger as opposing, modifying or confirming the way Marx or Aristotle defines human essence?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Leyla, now for your older post.

The idealist premise that nature and man (and with it, “self”) are pure/abstract truths, i.e., exist inherently or ultimately (!)

This must be a mistake. The premise of any abstract-hood would automatically mean they do not inherently exist. From all things an abstract does certainly not exist inherently somewhere. The idealist proposes actual existence of the "ideal form", in front of him ("as is") or outside the cave. Not as pure abstract at all but the abstract serves as reference.

materialism, i.e., dualism as reality, reality from which all abstractions are made possible, even the absolute ones. There is no other way the self can exist non-inherently/in any form, deluded or otherwise!

Something does not "exist" non-inherently. The idea of that whole world is that it does not exist - only in some abstract or practical sense (practical in the sense that the abstract allows for interactions to gain meaning and use value). The way your materialism/dualism functions as absolute reality where all abstraction are birthed from is a nice idea but causality itself as principle destroys that quickly. It's a meaningless reality simply because the description "dualism" remains a non-material metaphysical concept just as much as it might be "material".

(This explains why you and Dennis, and Dennis and others, occasionally get on, and occasionally don’t, by the way.)

Perhaps it's because "they" all engage in some level of metaphysics while you right now are reasoning from the viewpoint of materials, literal , inherent forms of existence. Or in more familiar GF terms: you're a woman so it comes naturally for you to reason that way. As it did for Marx! Another one who is no philosopher although he's clever and does provide interesting analysis of "what is" in his context.

][therefore] You must also hold on to the circular movement sensuously perceptible in that progress by which man repeats himself in procreation, man thus always remaining the subject.

So man becomes, by this grand act of linear, specious reasoning, eternal subject without objective existence! Are you really trying to tell me that this is what is meant by “no-self”?

It still looks a lot like the notion of no-self but executed quite poorly.

Or if you want to hold on to your abstraction, then be consistent, and if you think of man and nature as non-existent, then think of yourself as non-existent, for you too are surely nature and man. Don’t think, don’t ask me, for as soon as you think and ask, your abstraction from the existence of nature and man has no meaning. Or are you such an egotist that you conceive everything as nothing, and yet want yourself to exist?

Clearly for Marx, non-existence in pure subjectivity was not an option to consider. And for those who would consider just that, he claims they forfeit the possibility to abstract, he claims "meaninglessness". And therefore Marx has to introduce new meaning and essence. Well, it's an ideology after all and in that context understandable and perhaps even usable.

[Pye]

Dennis asks: Co-operative model huh Pye?

Mine is a comment of future possibility, rather than the misfired marxist helmet of history pulled down over the ears. One need look no further than their own lives to measure any effects of socialist praxis on their immediate species well being. I'm positing that in future, more of it will probably be needed.

Dennis writes:
Armature and what hangs off it aren't different as you seem to suggest.
One and the same.
You ARE your winning formula.

existential critter of no rank at all.

yes, and a winning formula, also to be seen as such. As you say, it's not nothing, this emptiness.

So when various you's bring forth their winning formulae, you just want to remind them that's what they're doing? Or did you want to correct something about their winning forumlas as not-so winning, in your estimation? You probably just want to keep reminding that's what we're doing, so no rug gets stuck under no feet? Would that be it? If you don't have a problem with winning formulas as winning formulas, why would it need variously repeated? you know, like there's a problem there or something?

Project/person indeed not apart. So isn't there always a "what" to listen to? To reject the what is to reject the what-we-do in your own winning formula.

[Pam Seeback]

Never said bliss wasn't conditional Pam.

mind generates environment, pleasure, activity used well enough.
it's a powerful little fucker
It can tell you to kill yourself and your parents and you will.

Yes, you do acknowledge bliss is conditional when you are reasoning the nature of bliss, but this is not how you present bliss while you are in bliss. Inquiring minds want to know: why do you feel the need to tell us you are in bliss?

[Cahoot]

But for the reasons above and many more, I have not been able to measure these quantum changes as progressive, or even very effective - at least for my own philosophical aims. Presently, they manifest as quite the opposite to me. They've gotten in the way. If consciousness and linguistics are as deeply related as many of us suspect, then succoring the appetite for videocy will well and truly change what it means to be wise or reasonable, much less enlightened. Perhaps intelligence itself will have to take on a new form in response to its confinement to the megamachine.

In adapting education to the tools, I think that in introductory courses at the undergraduate level videocy is more efficient than print in awakening interest in a topic when it focuses on the relevance of the topic to daily life.

Once awakened, print is more efficient at channeling interest into studies.

*

Video of a reading.

Thomas Sowell – Human Livestock
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VvliKHA1u8

[Dennis Mahar]

Winning formulas are protective shields.
suits of armour.

since beginningless time mind has been in control.
it actually tells you who you are and what to do
it imputes the world
its a complete fuckwit.

[Cahoot]

its a complete fuckwit.

Why that meaning?

[Dennis Mahar]

There it goes
justifying its thing.

its empty and meaningless that its empty and meaningless.

Spirit or Infinite IS.

[Leyla Shen]

Diebert wrote:

Leyla: The idealist premise that nature and man (and with it, “self”) are pure/abstract truths, i.e., exist inherently or ultimately (!)

Diebert: This must be a mistake.

Must it?

The premise of any abstract-hood would automatically mean they do not inherently exist. From all things an abstract does certainly not exist inherently somewhere. The idealist proposes actual existence of the "ideal form", in front of him ("as is") or outside the cave. Not as pure abstract at all but the abstract serves as reference.

An interesting premise.

Reference to what? Another pure abstract standing in front of him (“as is”)/outside the cave? Among the smoke and mirrors?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Reference to what? Another pure abstract standing in front of him (“as is”)/outside the cave? Among the smoke and mirrors?

Well, the old "pointing to the moon" business I suppose. That's not just about some "tao" or ultimate, it's supposed to say something true about all what's knowable. The abstract "in front" and the abstract "him" and the abstract "cave" will lead to the abstracts "over there" or "right in front".

Now the idealist premise is not that nature and man or ideal are, i.e. embody pure or abstract truths, but that one can only address the notions as such. The "ideal" or truth of the matter is permanently inaccessible or depending on the type of idealist really. Or like in Wikipedia: " epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing". The only thing that a more Platonic approach might add is that an abstract would trump any plain sense experience as far as the quality of addressing reality.

[Cahoot]

There it goes
justifying its thing.

its empty and meaningless that its empty and meaningless.

Spirit or Infinite IS.

How’s that working out for you?

[Dennis Mahar]

Just between you and me cahoot,
What's the spirit of that.
(;

[Leyla Shen]

" epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing". The only thing that a more Platonic approach might add is that an abstract would trump any plain sense experience as far as the quality of addressing reality.

Ironic, isn't it? The genuine idealist--the true philosopher--is actually a materialist, knowing as he does that the only thing you can know is necessarily a mind-dependent thing, and from this it is only such a one who is able to distinguish subjectivity from reality.

[Dennis Mahar]

Pam,
Practically speaking, the imputing mind generates environment, body, enjoyments, activities.
if the base of imputation conceives of I me mine as the status quo, life looks dangerous.
what does empty of I look like as the basis of imputation.
In respect to environment etc..

[Pam Seeback]

It is at ease and in joy.

[Dennis Mahar]

Both views are applied tho' right?
A cup is still a cup.
oh what fun.
the winning formula is still applicable.