Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
Glostik91
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Glostik91 »

David Quinn wrote: True, it does not describe the situation precisely. But it can rustle up a sense of how free the spiritual life is.
That's fair enough.
Yes, our brains, our neural pathways, our habits, our past experiences, our genetic make-up, etc - all of it shape how we experience the world in each moment. Every being experiences the world in its own unique way.
To be more precise, these things shape how we understand the world. Every being understands the world in its own unique way. Concerning experience, there may be a being that experiences the world with different intuition, a being which does not experience the world via space and time. If there is such a being, communication or experience of such a being would be entirely impossible for us.
The mouse-in-itself is a meaningless concept. It's like a square circle or a married bachelor, an impossibility. Mouses appear when the circumstances are ripe and then they disappear again. What else is there?
Yes, it is a meaningless concept, and there is nothing to know here. Even if there is such a thing as a square circle or a married bachelor, we would not be able to recognize, understand, or experience it. It is a dead end in the truest sense of the words, and anyone who wishes to understand something outside of the parameters of causality is on a fool's errand indeed.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Glostik91 »

jupiviv wrote: Both intuition and concepts are fundamentally webs of causality, just like everything else. If concepts are causal relations, but intuitions are not, then it follows that the latter has no cause; that isn't possible.
Understand what I am saying here. Understanding is causality. Experience is intuition. When I am transmitting the concept of intuition to you, I am using a concept. I am bidding you to understand intuition. The only way you can come to an understanding of intuition is via causal process, for example geometry.

But think about your own actual conscious experience. Think within and show me where is causality? Are you some sort of p-zombie following a set of fatal instructions, or do you more likely experience this odd thing we call free will, the notion that you are the one deciding what you want to eat tonight?

Do you directly experience this idea of causality? Show it to me. Show me a 'tree.'
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by jupiviv »

Glostik91 wrote:When I am transmitting the concept of intuition to you, I am using a concept. I am bidding you to understand intuition. The only way you can come to an understanding of intuition is via causal process, for example geometry.
According to the distinction you have made between "understanding" and "intuition", there is no relation between them whatsoever, because understanding is supposed to be the category of all relations/causes. A relation between the category of all relations and another category would necessarily have to exist outside of the former, which is logically impossible.
Do you directly experience this idea of causality? Show it to me. Show me a 'tree.'
I directly experience causality itself, not the "idea" of causality (whatever that is). Causes are things, and therefore causality, or all possible causes, is all possible things.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Glostik91 »

jupiviv wrote: According to the distinction you have made between "understanding" and "intuition", there is no relation between them whatsoever, because understanding is supposed to be the category of all relations/causes. A relation between the category of all relations and another category would necessarily have to exist outside of the former, which is logically impossible.

I directly experience causality itself, not the "idea" of causality (whatever that is). Causes are things, and therefore causality, or all possible causes, is all possible things.
Perhaps I am just not capable of communicating it properly.

Let me ask a question. Do you know what free will is? Do you experience free will? Whether you think it is real or illusory, do you at least feel that you have to be the one to go out and do things for anything to get done?
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Glostik91 »

Eric Schiedler wrote:Glostik91 (and others who are interested),

As far as I am aware, Julian Jaynes never wrote about wisdom and genius. If he did so, please point out the relevant passages.

Julian Jaynes worked on a theory to explain the empirical evidence of the development of cognitive functions in humans.

His definition of consciousness is the emergence of the narrative of self-existence. This is in contrast to any awareness an organism may have of perceptions or sensations, which is the use of concepts, again, in his model. Thus, in his theory, humans were capable and in fact did develop many civilization projects without the use of a sense of self but by other methods such as heuristics (trial-and-error). This is one of many implications, and many of the others attempt to explain the emergence of quizzical human behaviors such as religion, cruelty, addictions, the construction of ancient monuments, etc.

Furthermore, in no way that I can tell, did Jaynes' description and explanations imply or state that this internal narrative of the self was independent of causal processes. Thus, this explanation of consciousness does not warrant an interpretation of special significance as an empirical fact - consciousness in this model is quite ordinary phenomena.



Eric Schiedler
I remember when I was studying theology years ago, I came across a passage in the book of Jude which quotes from the apocryphal book of Enoch. My pastor and theological professors thought that even though the quoted passage was canon, the book of Enoch is not given any credibility by it.

I agree with Jaynes concerning what I quoted of him and more; I could quote more from his book. The part which states consciousness is not necessary for problem solving for instance. The experiments he talks about seem entirely reasonable to me. But I hope this doesn't mean I consider Jaynes divinely inspired canon.

I never quite understood Jaynes' idea of bicameralism considering there are people alive, walking around, seemingly just as conscious as you and I who only have half a brain. There is a surgery called hemispherectomy where they go in and literally remove the entire left or right half of the brain in order to cure devastating seizures in some people. How could it be said that consciousness is a lateralized function of the brain when there are perfectly normal conscious people walking around with literally only half a brain?
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Glostik91 wrote:Whether the object exists or does not exist, the raw experience of the object in question is similar.
Any invocation of "raw experiences" is not going to help your argument. Might just as well invoke god, heavenly vision and the like.
I can dream of genie, but genie does not exist. Why does genie not exist? Because genie was a dream. It is a way of understanding things. Without understanding like this, we would not understand a difference between an experience where things don't exist such as a dream and a state where things exist such as a waking state.
It would seem someone declared: I just dreamed of genie. In that sense there's no difference between someone declaring he just dreamed about a thing or declaring having experienced the raw thing itself.
Intuitions of time and space are the raw conscious construction in which we are conscious. Existence/nonexistence is a separate matter regarding our understanding of the raw conscious construction.
That's rather similar to saying molecules and atoms are real things but tables and chairs are not. It's just displacing the topic! Intuitions of time and space, much like microscopic particles, are hard to quantify or examine. One just declares them to be fundamental. It's in the end a version of existentialism: one declares the human subject first and in your case you are defining the subject as intuition or localization within time and space. It's not an objectionable stance but it's important to not muddle it up.
Glostik91 wrote:To Jupiviv: Let me ask a question. Do you know what free will is? Do you experience free will? Whether you think it is real or illusory, do you at least feel that you have to be the one to go out and do things for anything to get done?
That sounds like arguing for the self or ego, as focal point of actions, as agency. It's the prime topic of this forum, for sure.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Eric Schiedler »

Glostik91,
Glostik91 wrote:I never quite understood Jaynes' idea of bicameralism considering there are people alive, walking around, seemingly just as conscious as you and I who only have half a brain. There is a surgery called hemispherectomy where they go in and literally remove the entire left or right half of the brain in order to cure devastating seizures in some people. How could it be said that consciousness is a lateralized function of the brain when there are perfectly normal conscious people walking around with literally only half a brain?
On a bit of tangent, I wouldn't say people with half a brain are "perfectly normal" but tests would likely demonstrate severe limitations in their cognitive abilities. But that's beside the point of Jaynes theory.

My interpretation of the theory is that Jaynes is not talking about brain size or half-brains but about brain structure as it relates to thought. He references the idea of parts of the brain because in his time he had the evidence that neurobiology said that speech is located in certain lobes in one brain hemisphere; but that point seems rather incidental, even though neurobiologists now believe speech functions are scattered in both hemispheres.

More importantly, Jaynes theorized that humans, before having the ability to create a narrative of self-identity, experienced their own thoughts as verbal hallucinations, or thought-commands from others who might have been ancestors or gods. There are more details but the verbalization of thoughts by the brain lobes involved in speech (Wernicke’s area or Broca’s area, for example) created these hallucinations and were not experienced as particularly distressful. These hallucinations gave people orders on how to organize society and, as you said, in general solve problems. His theory further states that it is this type of function can eventually “break down and cross the barriers between the lobes” and the voices inside the mind become realized as one’s own voices.

This might seem bizarre but is not too far fetched as nearly everyone can relate to the experience of having a conversation in their own mind with the voice of another person.

An example in 2017 is the tribe of the Toraja on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. In the present day, these people believe their dead relatives are not dead but sleeping. They believe it literally and live with the desiccated corpses in their homes for years and decades. This can not be dismissed as a group of naive people being taken in by a cult leader because, particularly in ancient times, humans world-wide practice similar religious rites. Jayne’s theory would predict that these tribespeople are probably “bi-cameral”. They have intact brains but have not developed a narrative of self-identity in their minds, at least not fully. I don’t know if an experiment on these people would be ethical, but it is a theory that takes their odd behavior seriously.

If this is a reasonably accurate explanation, then these tribespeople would likely be quite poor at logic. They would not be capable of the reasoning functions available with the use of logic, even though many of their other brain functions would be present. Perhaps their children, raised by outsiders, could develop a breakdown of the bicameral mind. But for the moment, the adult tribespeople can probably not escape their own delusions through the use of logic.

If I may extrapolate further, logical reasoning with a fully developed narrative of self-identity would be needed for genius, and every single one of the great geniuses of the past demonstrates a clear sense of an “I” in their dialogue and writings. We don’t really have a record of a genius speaking about God instructing them about Mind or Tao as if that man as a prophet were possessed by the voice of God. The recorded evidence is quite different and these types of prophets that said they were given commands by God do not seem to have developed genius.



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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Glostik91 »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote: Any invocation of "raw experiences" is not going to help your argument. Might just as well invoke god, heavenly vision and the like.
In order to be more precise I should have said pure intuition instead of raw experience. Intuition of the object is what I was referring to.
It would seem someone declared: I just dreamed of genie. In that sense there's no difference between someone declaring he just dreamed about a thing or declaring having experienced the raw thing itself.
I don't think this is a difficult idea to understand, but I think my way with words is failing me.

A dream is an experience of something. A waking state is an experience of something. The something in the dream state is considered to nonexist. The something in the waking state is considered to exist. Existence is part of the way in which one comes to an understanding of something. Other ways to understand a thing are in terms of parts/whole, large/small, on/off, etc. These are categories of relation i.e. causality.
That's rather similar to saying molecules and atoms are real things but tables and chairs are not. It's just displacing the topic! Intuitions of time and space, much like microscopic particles, are hard to quantify or examine. One just declares them to be fundamental. It's in the end a version of existentialism: one declares the human subject first and in your case you are defining the subject as intuition or localization within time and space. It's not an objectionable stance but it's important to not muddle it up.
Both pure intuition and understanding are lenses by which we come to intuit and understand the real object - the object as it is in itself. You're mistaking my use of 'raw experience' or 'raw consciousness' here.

I am neither saying that the raw experience/pure intuition, or understanding is the thing in itself nor is not the thing in itself. This is important. I am not saying that molecules and atoms are the real thing. I am not saying that molecules and atoms are not the real thing. I am saying it is wholly unknown whether molecules and atoms are the real thing. The noumenon, the thing in itself, is wholly unknown. Lasciate ogne cognitionis, voi ch'entrate
Glostik91 wrote:To Jupiviv: Let me ask a question. Do you know what free will is? Do you experience free will? Whether you think it is real or illusory, do you at least feel that you have to be the one to go out and do things for anything to get done?
That sounds like arguing for the self or ego, as focal point of actions, as agency. It's the prime topic of this forum, for sure.
We experience free will, we don't experience causality. We must distinctly and particularly conceive the connection between any two conscious moments or areas in time or space. This isn't an argument for or against agency. It's an argument about causality and whether or not we experience it.

I see a ball 'A' hit another ball 'B', I might say that it seems like the A ball hit the B ball causing it to move, but this isn't necessarily the truth. It's possible something else entirely caused the B ball to move. The exact same thing occurs when I want to make a decision. I experience free will because I don't experience causality.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Glostik91 »

Eric Schiedler wrote:Glostik91,

On a bit of tangent, I wouldn't say people with half a brain are "perfectly normal" but tests would likely demonstrate severe limitations in their cognitive abilities. But that's beside the point of Jaynes theory.
mhm http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/girl-wit ... -an-adult/
My interpretation of the theory is that Jaynes is not talking about brain size or half-brains but about brain structure as it relates to thought. He references the idea of parts of the brain because in his time he had the evidence that neurobiology said that speech is located in certain lobes in one brain hemisphere; but that point seems rather incidental, even though neurobiologists now believe speech functions are scattered in both hemispheres.

More importantly, Jaynes theorized that humans, before having the ability to create a narrative of self-identity, experienced their own thoughts as verbal hallucinations, or thought-commands from others who might have been ancestors or gods. There are more details but the verbalization of thoughts by the brain lobes involved in speech (Wernicke’s area or Broca’s area, for example) created these hallucinations and were not experienced as particularly distressful. These hallucinations gave people orders on how to organize society and, as you said, in general solve problems. His theory further states that it is this type of function can eventually “break down and cross the barriers between the lobes” and the voices inside the mind become realized as one’s own voices.
As I said? I believe I said consciousness has nothing to do with problem solving. I believe this is even stated in the first chapter of the book. I don't mean to come across as combative; I just want to be understood.
This might seem bizarre but is not too far fetched as nearly everyone can relate to the experience of having a conversation in their own mind with the voice of another person.

An example in 2017 is the tribe of the Toraja on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. In the present day, these people believe their dead relatives are not dead but sleeping. They believe it literally and live with the desiccated corpses in their homes for years and decades. This can not be dismissed as a group of naive people being taken in by a cult leader because, particularly in ancient times, humans world-wide practice similar religious rites. Jayne’s theory would predict that these tribespeople are probably “bi-cameral”. They have intact brains but have not developed a narrative of self-identity in their minds, at least not fully. I don’t know if an experiment on these people would be ethical, but it is a theory that takes their odd behavior seriously.

If this is a reasonably accurate explanation, then these tribespeople would likely be quite poor at logic. They would not be capable of the reasoning functions available with the use of logic, even though many of their other brain functions would be present. Perhaps their children, raised by outsiders, could develop a breakdown of the bicameral mind. But for the moment, the adult tribespeople can probably not escape their own delusions through the use of logic.

If I may extrapolate further, logical reasoning with a fully developed narrative of self-identity would be needed for genius, and every single one of the great geniuses of the past demonstrates a clear sense of an “I” in their dialogue and writings. We don’t really have a record of a genius speaking about God instructing them about Mind or Tao as if that man as a prophet were possessed by the voice of God. The recorded evidence is quite different and these types of prophets that said they were given commands by God do not seem to have developed genius.
I remember once reading somewhere (I forget where) that ancient scholars would always read books and scrolls aloud. No one actually read silently. I'm probably wrong, but I think it was St Augustine who was one of the first to start reading quietly to himself. Is this a step in the evolution of consciousness between bicameral and modern? Perhaps, but I think that this theory of consciousness is off. I would classify those remote tribal peoples as conscious. I would even classify most animals as conscious.

Kant was known to have said Hume's writings awakened him from his dogmatic slumber. Is this an example of one escaping one's own delusions through use of reason? Perhaps it is and therefore perhaps it is possible for tribespeople to do so if given a good cause. What exactly separates a man who believes wholeheartedly in young-earth creation science (for instance) and a tribesperson who believes a dead loved one is merely sleeping? Is the young-earth creationist also "bi-cameral"? Hm, I'm not sure about that one.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Eric Schiedler »

Glostik91 wrote:Perhaps, but I think that this theory of consciousness is off.
It seems that's what everyone that doesn't understand Jaynes' theory says about it. If you paraphrased the theory to understand it and said you had evidence against it and perhaps even an alternate theory of the development of consciousness then you might have a case. Alternatively, you can just ignore Jaynes' theory if you stick to philosophical discussion; it's certainly not a necessary theory for that purpose.

As it stands based on your discussion with other members above, you don't have a correct understanding of consciousness yourself, either an empirical one or one based on philosophy.

I encourage you to keep developing your philosophical understanding of consciousness, however.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Glostik91 »

Eric Schiedler wrote:
Glostik91 wrote:Perhaps, but I think that this theory of consciousness is off.
It seems that's what everyone that doesn't understand Jaynes' theory says about it. If you paraphrased the theory to understand it and said you had evidence against it and perhaps even an alternate theory of the development of consciousness then you might have a case. Alternatively, you can just ignore Jaynes' theory if you stick to philosophical discussion; it's certainly not a necessary theory for that purpose.

As it stands based on your discussion with other members above, you don't have a correct understanding of consciousness yourself, either an empirical one or one based on philosophy.

I encourage you to keep developing your philosophical understanding of consciousness, however.
I don't need to create a whole alternate theory to see flaws in Jaynes'. I understand that Jaynes defines consciousness in a narrow sense, that being introspection. If a human being can perform all of these various tasks without consciousness then it is conceivable that there were, at one time, human beings who did most of the things we do – speak, solve problems, form concepts, reason, etc – but who were without consciousness. The bicameral person is one who unknowingly experiences introspection. Essentially the right hemisphere communicates with the left hemisphere when a decision has to be made via auditory hallucination.

So take a bicameral human and examine the brain. It would be no different from ours. We're only talking a few thousand years here. Evolution had not the time to change the human brain. We know that the brain does not have significant lateralized functions. Take a human and remove half of the brain. A relatively normal human emerges, a conscious human. The brain is capable of shifting functionality in order to compensate for the loss. How could it be said that just a few thousand years ago, the human brain functioned so differently? How could it be said a time travelling bicameral man would lose function if half of his brain were to be removed? Whatever function was lost, why could it not be shifted in order to compensate for what was lost?

In the same vein, Jaynes' theory proposes that the two hemispheres were connected differently, that the right hemisphere's communication with the left exhibited a disconnect in comparison to the modern brain. The right hemisphere would communicate with the left in the form of auditory hallucinations instead of normal self-generated inner voice communications. Again, evolution has no time to perform such a drastic change in the brain. The human brain a few thousand years ago is not going to be very different to human brains today.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Glostik91 wrote:In order to be more precise I should have said pure intuition instead of raw experience. Intuition of the object is what I was referring to.
Pure or raw, the invocation sounds similar. In case you're interested in the term, at this forum I wrote quite a few times about intuition, including Spinoza's and Nietzsche's usage.
A dream is an experience of something. A waking state is an experience of something. The something in the dream state is considered to nonexist. The something in the waking state is considered to exist. Existence is part of the way in which one comes to an understanding of something. Other ways to understand a thing are in terms of parts/whole, large/small, on/off, etc. These are categories of relation i.e. causality.
It's not clear how you'd come to distinguish between dreaming and waking states, or illusions and reality for that matter. A dream can be perfectly reasonable and understandable and surely, at least during the dream, it's rarely being questioned. Normally only after waking up, one concludes it must have been a dream, since it suddenly discontinued without a trace. But how to reason on this within a dream itself? Did you ever find yourself reasoning within a dream on the probability of it being a dream? These are interesting moments (aka "dream lucidity").
Both pure intuition and understanding are lenses by which we come to intuit and understand the real object - the object as it is in itself. You're mistaking my use of 'raw experience' or 'raw consciousness' here.
You are asserting an actual thing which just needs to be "uncovered" or studied then? Again you clearly use "raw" and "pure" as quality of observation. Like wiping your camera lens or buying more gear, getting various angles and wider lens, HD immersion?
I am not saying that molecules and atoms are not the real thing. I am saying it is wholly unknown whether molecules and atoms are the real thing. The noumenon, the thing in itself, is wholly unknown.
If it's wholly unknown, it doesn't matter at least until we could relate to it somehow, don't you think? Exit noumenon.

The question however was if you can have a "real thing" in the first place, logically. Not if the observation, the lens of the display is the thing or if the thing is the combination of all kinds of little question marks bound together.
We experience free will, we don't experience causality.
That's just a declaration! Just as easy to say we experience in everything cause and effect but no free will in anything.

One can experience a self but it's not a given either. It's possible to claim that no self is being experienced. How to answer to that?
I see a ball 'A' hit another ball 'B', I might say that it seems like the A ball hit the B ball causing it to move, but this isn't necessarily the truth. It's possible something else entirely caused the B ball to move. The exact same thing occurs when I want to make a decision. I experience free will because I don't experience causality.
Same form of reasoning could annihilate the idea of experiencing a self, as agency or being and the various choices being made.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Glostik91 »

Pure or raw, the invocation sounds similar. In case you're interested in the term, at this forum I wrote quite a few times about intuition, including Spinoza's and Nietzsche's usage.
What I mean by pure is that pure intuition or pure understanding for that matter are a priori. A pure intuition is knowledge regarding the world independent or untainted by empirical facts.
It's not clear how you'd come to distinguish between dreaming and waking states, or illusions and reality for that matter. A dream can be perfectly reasonable and understandable and surely, at least during the dream, it's rarely being questioned. Normally only after waking up, one concludes it must have been a dream, since it suddenly discontinued without a trace. But how to reason on this within a dream itself? Did you ever find yourself reasoning within a dream on the probability of it being a dream? These are interesting moments (aka "dream lucidity").
While dreaming the existence or nonexistence of the experience usually isn’t considered at all. One who dreams never considers the things within the dream to exist, and whenever it is considered, lucidity is achieved, or the person wakes up. When awake can one think in terms of existence/nonexistence concerning the dream and realize that the things in the dream didn't exist.

It is important to also understand that the things in the dream may exist. We can have no knowledge concerning the dreamed object in itself.
You are asserting an actual thing which just needs to be "uncovered" or studied then? Again you clearly use "raw" and "pure" as quality of observation. Like wiping your camera lens or buying more gear, getting various angles and wider lens, HD immersion?
The actual thing cannot be ‘uncovered’, studied, or known in any way.

I wouldn’t extend the metaphor of lens that far. If one were to adjust a lens, the experience of the object would be altered, but they would not actually gain knowledge of the object in itself.
If it's wholly unknown, it doesn't matter at least until we could relate to it somehow, don't you think? Exit noumenon.

The question however was if you can have a "real thing" in the first place, logically. Not if the observation, the lens of the display is the thing or if the thing is the combination of all kinds of little question marks bound together.
It matters concerning the limitations of knowledge. If by 'real thing' you mean a thing as it truly is in itself, then no one can know whether one can have a real thing. If by 'real thing' you mean a thing which exists, then yes, a real thing can be had.
That's just a declaration! Just as easy to say we experience in everything cause and effect but no free will in anything.
A declaration which I further explained just after it was said.
One can experience a self but it's not a given either. It's possible to claim that no self is being experienced. How to answer to that?

Same form of reasoning could annihilate the idea of experiencing a self, as agency or being and the various choices being made.
annihilate the idea

The concept of the self or free will is as you put it easily annihilated via pure understanding of causality, but this in no way verifies the actual case, that this is the case of a noumenal self.

We are speaking in terms of ideas, concepts, understanding. We cannot speak in terms of pure intuition, only concepts concerning pure intuition. For instance there is the spatial intuition of space, and there is the understanding of space. The intuition of a circle, for instance, is a drawing of a circle, whereas the understanding of a circle is concepts such as pi*r^2. There is no way that one can gain intuitive knowledge of a circle by explanation. One will never recognize a circle to be a circle via explanation. If you want to teach someone what a circle is, you put pictures of a circles in the textbook.

Another example is color. There is the pure intuition of color, and there is the understanding of color. The pure intuition is color you see before you, and understanding is the various explanations of color such as a scientist describing wavelengths of light or a poet describing color with metaphor. The various colors can be understood to be products of types of eyes, but color in the general sense that things look different is of pure intuition.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by A.R._LaBaere »

Perhaps there is no infinite, and no wisdom.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Dan Rowden »

What argument would you propose for there being no infinite?
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Pam Seeback »

A.R._LaBaere wrote:Perhaps there is no infinite, and no wisdom.
Because things (objects, thoughts, images, etc.) arise with the conditioned (memory) I, technically you are correct, there is no (independent) thing called "the infinite" or "wisdom" that can be known in and of itself. "Infinite" and "wisdom" are both things of a complex narrative of consciousness, just as are "boat", "demon" and "sunshine" with the only difference being that the former two are of the inner formless narrative whereas the latter three are of the outer sensed narrative.

Is man's inner-outer conditioned narrative real or is it an illusion, does it have meaning or none at all, perhaps this is what you are implying in your statement of negation? If I am on target, as I have come to understand it, ultimately, these questions of reality are moot. Thoughts come, thoughts go, ergo, they are experienced as true and real and meaningful for that effected moment. The important question then (as I see it) is, what is the nature of the experience of the I-narrative's previous moment? Was it welcomed or not welcomed? With the next question being, if the narrative effect was deemed unwelcome how can one's future narrative be changed to reflect that which is welcomed?

It bears stating that simply by manifesting the words "infinite" and "wisdom" you have acknowledged their existence in your mind. Negation is not annihilation. Which brings us back to the ultimate folly of questioning the reality/illusion of things.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by encode_decode »

A.R._LaBaere wrote:Perhaps there is no infinite, and no wisdom.
Dan Rowden wrote:What argument would you propose for there being no infinite?
I would also like to see the proposed argument for there being no infinite.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by visheshdewan050193 »

say, there's this piece that needs a bit of explanation.

"To answer this, let us assume for the sake of argument that a particular thing, such as a positron-electron pairing, just pops into existence out of nothing whatsoever. Initially,there is an empty void, and then suddenly, there it is: a brand new pairing. Now imagine the existence of a hypothetical force which is powerful enough to prevent the pairing from arising. It is easy to see that if such a force were to exist in a particular location,then no pairings would be able to arise in that location. The natural impulse of the Universe to spontaneously produce a pairing would be negated by the existence of the force. The creation of the pairing necessarily depends on this force not being there at the moment of its creation.

It does not really matter if such a force actually exists or not. Just the fact that we can imagine its existence is enough to validate the argument. It proves that quantum particle pairings are indeed dependent upon the right causal conditions for their arisal, the same as anything else in the Universe"

Why is the fact that an imaginary force is enough to validate the argument? Is it because that it is impossible to rule out causes empirically with a 100% certainty?
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

visheshdewan050193 wrote:Why is the fact that an imaginary force is enough to validate the argument? Is it because that it is impossible to rule out causes empirically with a 100% certainty?
Not as much any empirical fact but a logical act: any caused or "spontaneous" arising forces or pairings would ultimately rely on the universe to allow it or like in this case: no blocking by another counter-force or de-pairing.

We could describe now even the requirements for the only possible exception: an unstoppable force, which nothing in the universe can stop from occurring and does not need even the universe or any particular condition for it to come into existence. The only candidate for this, again logically, would be the universe itself, in the sense of everything in its totality.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by visheshdewan050193 »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote: Not as much any empirical fact but a logical act: any caused or "spontaneous" arising forces or pairings would ultimately rely on the universe to allow it or like in this case: no blocking by another counter-force or de-pairing.
If you're banking on a logical explanation of causality for this, it would basically imply that the particle pair (treating it as one thing or 'A') is caused by the rest of reality (not 'A'). It doesn't really sanction the idea of imagining the absence or presence of a depairing force that can be said to be a specific cause for the particle pair to exist. If such an imaginary force is treated as 'the rest of reality' (since it does present an appearance), I suppose then it could be justified.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Pam Seeback »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
Not as much any empirical fact but a logical act: any caused or "spontaneous" arising forces or pairings would ultimately rely on the universe to allow it or like in this case: no blocking by another counter-force or de-pairing.
visheshdewan050193 wrote: If you're banking on a logical explanation of causality for this, it would basically imply that the particle pair (treating it as one thing or 'A') is caused by the rest of reality (not 'A'). It doesn't really sanction the idea of imagining the absence or presence of a depairing force that can be said to be a specific cause for the particle pair to exist. If such an imaginary force is treated as 'the rest of reality' (since it does present an appearance), I suppose then it could be justified.
A and not A is a logical tool to help dispel the ignorance of existent things, however, A and not A is not an ultimate truth on how things are caused.

This is why the concept of a void is to be clearly understood to be just that, a concept. At no time does a void actually exist. Instead, the causality is ever causing effects with no separation between the two. Which means at no time do things pop into existence or present an appearance and at no time is there nothing.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by visheshdewan050193 »

Pam Seeback wrote: A and not A is a logical tool to help dispel the ignorance of existent things, however, A and not A is not an ultimate truth on how things are caused.
.

I think QRS would disagree with you on that, as would I. If a thing depends upon another thing for its existence, the other thing automatically becomes a cause for its existence. Thus for anything A, everything that it is not (not A) becomes a cause.

What do you mean by 'ultimate truth on how things are caused'? Are you proposing some sort of intrinsically existent 'first cause' for everything? Or are you referring to chains of causality that we observe in nature (things transforming appearance or other properties to become other things) - that causality is some independent principle or force driving the transformations?
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Pam Seeback »

The reason for reasoning A and not A is singular: to stimulate the insight that no one distinguished form is absolute, breaking the delusion of the ego at the centre of form making. When this insight is fully absorbed, the reasoning tool of A and not A is dropped. How the causality ultimately works is unknown. Mentally a beginning thing can be reasoned, but mental beginnings are just that, mental/imagined.
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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by visheshdewan050193 »

"How the causality ultimately works is unknown."

Well, any supposed mechanism or thing behind causality would be boiled back into the principle right away, so I think the question is misplaced. It's like asking what the hidden void that Quinn talks about really is - saying that it is an unknowable mystery is not an admission of ignorance, it's just that the question is based on unfounded grounds.

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Re: Examining The Wisdom of the Infinite

Post by Serendipper »

encode_decode wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2017 1:33 am
Russell Parr wrote:Now, the ego isn't bad in itself. It is a necessary part of our being. But as far as perspective goes, it is severely limited. To be enlightened is to have the ability to see through one's ego, to put it in its proper place within the greater, or ultimate, perspective.
I don't know about the ego so much Russell - I would need further proof of its value - I don't even really experience "awe". I could have a couple of faculties missing.
Hi old pal! Some serious deepness in this thread, eh? :) As best I can tell, the ego is the desire to get one-up on the world and there is no way out of that game. Even if you walk away, you're doing so to be better. There is no resignation because the game is the point. The mask doesn't come off until you're dead (and maybe the play goes on from there; who knows.).

Some folks can pursue zen without realizing they are now the character in the play who is pursuing zen. I suspect the pursuit of enlightenment can only end in the realization that there was nothing to realize except that the game is all there is and the game that's found wasn't as fun as the game that was forsaken.

"It is the height of stupidity to be searching for the donkey you're already riding." Spare 30 seconds https://youtu.be/cOIbalP7dj8?t=1h27m36s

The Masters claim they have nothing to teach because there is nothing to know... tat tzam asi. Go have fun, unless fun is figuring out the game, which is just another game not meant to be taken seriously as if you're going to get one-up on the world by learning some mystical stuff and thereby fooling yourself with the profligation of a fictitious persona.

The only innocent motivation is fun and if adopting that philosophy is a means of improving yourself, then it's not fun. Fun = purposeless, mindless. I think, in the end, it's realized that the pretending to improve oneself is fun; the only difference is it's seen for what it is: a game.

Regarding why this isn't taught in school, well, kids know it by default and it must be trained out of them. I knew more about zen at 10 than I do now. "School" comes from schola which means "leisure". We go to school to be put to work which is the antithesis of the word. A scholar is one who has nothing better to do than observe all the irrelevancies of life, which is fun.

But either way, it wouldn't matter what is taught in school because a game is a game and this one is just as good as any other. If enlightenment were well-known, then it wouldn't be enlightenment, but common knowledge and we'd have to find some other way to think we're ahead of everyone else (including our previous self) and that returns us to where we are now.

Jesus revealed the ego of those standing in the front of the churches making the biggest effort to worship and congratulated the fellow in the back who took a more humble approach. After realizing their error, everyone went to the back and suddenly they were all in the front again ;)
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