Action and the Soul

Miscellaneous General
41

[quoteuser=“Clayton”]
Ataraxia - the state of complete contentment where all action ceases - is unattainable
[/quote]

That is because you are framing “action” in a dualistic mindset. The seeming contradiction of “acting without acting”, is due to how you are conceptualizing “action” in the first place.

[quoteuser=“Tao Te Ching”]

When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises
When it knows good as good, evil arises
Thus being and non-being produce each other
Difficult and easy bring about each other
Long and short reveal each other
High and low support each other
Music and voice harmonize each other
Front and back follow each other
Therefore the sages:
Manage the work of detached actions
Conduct the teaching of no words
They work with myriad things but do not control
They create but do not possess
They act but do not presume
They succeed but do not dwell on success
It is because they do not dwell on success
That it never goes away

[/quote]

A bit more food for thought: Dependent Origination

I look forward to your next post.

42

I’m claiming agnosticism regarding the existence of absolute Truth and I will refute any positive claim to the existence of absolute Truth as over-reaching.

They absolutely do arise from our cognitive limitations. The problem is that our cognitive abilities are all we have. I simply cannot transcend the limits of my own mind. I can only comprehend whatever I can comprehend. Even if you had attained this Enlightnment you speak of and you could see Absolute Truth just the way I can see flowers and hills, that would do me no good whatsoever because this knowledge of Absolute Truth could not be shared by proxy. If you say, “Ah, but there is a path by which you, too, can attain Enlightenment” I’m willing to try it as far as it goes even though I already know that it’s doomed to failure from the outset.

On the subject of the existence of Absolute Truth, I’ll re-word your quote slightly: “I believe Truth might exist but, if it does, we can never know it.”

No, the validity of my perceptions is beyond question. This is not a fact about my perceptions but a fact about me… they are beyond my ability to question. To me, they are a brute fact in the sense that I cannot be more certain about anything than I am about the validity of my perceptions. Reason is a superior method not of validation of perception but of comprehension of the particulars of perception into their universals… the laws by which they operate.

This is only possible because the world (my perceptions) operates according to laws or rules. If it did not, there would be no patterns for me to perceive. Because I can perceive patterns, I know that the world that I perceive is lawlike. Note that this is ultimately a probability statement - if you think of the set of “all possible patterns”, one of those patterns would be the patterns I perceive in the world. There is some non-zero probability that I could be experiencing random noise and just happened to have experienced that part of random noise that looks like it has a pattern. However, this probability is so small that it might as well be zero, especially by comparison to the (quantifiably) more likely proposition that what I see is the result of lawlike behavior.

I’m not wholly averse to resigning my methdological materialism. For example, I frequently wonder if there is merit to the Pythagorean view that the Universe is Number, that is, that the Universe is itself a perfect abstraction (not, as in the Platonic view, an imperfect reflection of a perfect abstraction). Part of the Pythagorean motivation for wondering this was the difficult-to-explicate correlation between math and physics. Modern physics and mathematics certainly give us many, many more reasons to suspect this is the case than the Pythagoreans ever had.

But what does it even mean for the Universe to be a “perfect abstraction” since abstractions are, as far as I know, something that happen only within the human mind. The answer: I haven’t got a clue. There seems to me to be an infinite regress hidden in this… if we say “the Universe is geometry”, where is the geometer? If we say “Universe is number”, where is the calculator? If we say “Universe is computation”, where is the computer? Of course, this problem is inherent in any ontology… materialism/etc. escape this problem only by treating the Universe as an ultimate given.

I am a mystic regarding the fact of existence. However, my mysticism is circumscribed and extends no fruther than that.

Yes to the first half, no to the second half. The existence of Ultimate Truth is 50/50… maybe it exists, maybe it doesn’t. But we know we cannot know Ultimate or Absolute Truth. Or let me say it this way, if we can know anything, we know that we cannot know Ultimate Truth.

Clayton -

43

Yes to the first half, no to the second half. The existence of Ultimate Truth is 50/50… maybe it exists, maybe it doesn’t. But we know we cannot know Ultimate or Absolute Truth. Or let me say it this way, if we can know anything, we know that we cannot know Ultimate Truth.

If this is skepticism, or some primacy of epistemology as a “thing in itself worth considering” (i.e. idealism) / Humean empircism it doeasn’t work / is wrong. There is no passive aggressive disposing of nonsense with grammatical tricks - there is primitive force:i.e. human action/ that which is unique / creative.

We are creative- destructive mutants who create and are created ex nihilio, that are not subject to “biology or psychology as a thing in itself” as these subjects exist as a necessary consequence of our action. We are not the subject of causes; it is not “If A than B” - but “If A and B than it must be so”. It is a world that states if society, freedom, epitemology, truth, lies, knowing, not knowing, or whatever you want to call relevant is a fact and matters- the same holds true for me as well.

We assert our will and will change language (or any other form of currency) when it is necessary. There is no need to worry about doubting truth, just affirming your fact / power (which is what we always do).

As Ludmann Lachmann states - Austrian economics is the “world of Nietszche” - of the will to power / consume. A kaledescopic world of facts, expectations, and perspectivism. It is the German subjectivist view - not the view of English scientism.

From the 1st two primitive perspectivists (one the disciple of the other):

“Everything flows”

  • Heraclitus

“Man is the measure of all things”

-Protagoras

44

No. At least, I reserve my skepticism only for claims that I can be sure are false.

Yes.

No.

I don’t think anything I’ve said is a “grammatical trick.”

Hm, you’re going to have to back that one. It sure feels to me when I fall down a flight of stairs that something entirely outside of my control is acting on me… I sure as hell am not choosing/acting to be beat unconscious by the stairs.

Perhaps these paras are too highly compressed… I’m not following the line of discussion.

I can’t disagree with those quotes.

Clayton -

45

I’m going to assume I misread. Your response makes me think we are at two very different lines of thinking - and that we will only be talking past each other. This is something only future posts and discussions could help clarify.

Other than that I just want to point out that by “grammer trick” - I mean that is all pure skepticism is (which you are not, and I thought you may have been - which shows how I have misread)

46

[quoteuser=“Clayton”]
I’m claiming agnosticism regarding the existence of absolute Truth and I will refute any positive claim to the existence of absolute Truth as over-reaching.
[/quote]

Fair enough. I can’t say my viewpoint is very different in this regard. Although I have faith, that certainly is not evidence, nor is it an argument.

[quoteuser=“Clayton”]
They absolutely do arise from our cognitive limitations. The problem is that our cognitive abilities are all we have.
[/quote]

Says who? Have your thinking processes not changed over the course of your lifetime? Is wisdom not gained?

[quoteuser=“Clayton”]
I simply cannot transcend the limits of my own mind. I can only comprehend whatever I can comprehend.
[/quote]

Perhaps, but since we are staying agnostic here, I would say there is another side to that coin. Altered state of consciousness. I’m not sure if you consider this as “transcending the limits of your own mind”, or not.

[quoteuser=“Clayton”]
Even if you had attained this Enlightnment you speak of and you could see Absolute Truth just the way I can see flowers and hills, that would do me no good whatsoever because this knowledge of Absolute Truth could not be shared by proxy. If you say, “Ah, but there is a path by which you, too, can attain Enlightenment” I’m willing to try it as far as it goes even though I already know that it’s doomed to failure from the outset.
[/quote]

Yes, understanding and pursuit of gnosis is certainly a personal quest. Also, if you are certain an endeavor is “doomed to failure” before you begin, I would argue that you aren’t actually trying to accomplish that task at all, LOL!

[quoteuser=“Clayton”]
On the subject of the existence of Absolute Truth, I’ll re-word your quote slightly: “I believe Truth might exist but, if it does, we can never know it.”
[/quote]

As both of our minds work today, I would agree with this statement. But again, I view this as simply a limitation of our own ignorance, rather than proof of the unattainability of Truth.

[quoteuser=“Clayton”]
No, the validity of my perceptions is beyond question. This is not a fact about my perceptions but a fact about me… they are beyond my ability to question. To me, they are a brute fact in the sense that I cannot be more certain about anything than I am about the validity of my perceptions.
[/quote]

Interesting idea, but I am left to wonder why that certainty is necessary when dealing with your analysis of inputs. In an altered state, perception is much different than what might be considered a “normal” state. To me this raises the question,

“Well, if I can have two radically different interpretations of what can be assumed to be the same “raw data” (photons hitting my retina, for instance), which one is valid, or “more valid”?”

[quoteuser=“Clayton”]
Reason is a superior method not of validation of perception but of comprehension of the particulars of perception into their universals… the laws by which they operate.
[/quote]

So much for agnosticism…

[quoteuser=“Clayton”]
This is only possible because the world (my perceptions) operates according to laws or rules.
[/quote]

You’ve got it all backwards. There were no “laws” until somebody observed something enough times to feel confident that they had discovered a universal constant, and named that phenomena “gravity”, or whatever. The “laws” you are referring to are just projections. Nature does not need to validate itself to us. It is we who must validate our constructs and concepts against It.

[quoteuser=“Clayton”]
If it did not, there would be no patterns for me to perceive. Because I can perceive patterns, I know that the world that I perceive is lawlike. Note that this is ultimately a probability statement - if you think of the set of “all possible patterns”, one of those patterns would be the patterns I perceive in the world.
[/quote]

Again, all of the patterns observed are of your own making, whether perceptualy, or cognitively. I imagine a schizoid sees some far different patterns!

The infinite regression is sensical, if you are willing to assume that all of our cognitive reference points are illusory, because this regress is essentially demonstrating the ultimately immaterial nature of these concepts. It is like waves washing away a sand castle.

The problem with attempting to explain Ontology with dualism is the necessity of classification, which is impossible if what you are trying to classify has no counterpoint against which to be compared. It’s that whole “law of identity” stuff.

Reality is a

Than what is there that is a? Something that is not real? Since it is not real, how can it be used as a reference?

Reality itself is un-classifiable (primary), so it cannot be shoehorned into a logical (binary) system. I suppose this is why materialists just assume,

“Reality is.”

Which I agree, but I would say that “Reality” cannot be discovered by first-glance perception, either. As you’ve been saying, we are designed to survive on the savannah, not wax poetic on the nature of God or the Universe. Our input set is tuned in survival mode, not enlightenment mode.

[quoteuser=“Clayton”]
I am a mystic regarding the fact of existence. However, my mysticism is circumscribed and extends no fruther than that.
[/quote]

Care to expand on this a bit?

[quoteuser=“Clayton”]
Or let me say it this way, if we can know anything, we know that we cannot know Ultimate Truth.
[/quote]

Aw, don’t sell yourself short, kid! It’s a very empirical, non-scientific method, but it seems to me that enlightenment is just a “myth” that this “myth” has many independent origins. We rely on intersubjective consensus to shape our interpretation of the world around us, why not carry that over beyond the material?

47

There you go. I think that sums up our disagreement - you have faith that there is Ultimate Truth and that it is knowable. I am agnostic regarding the ontological status of Ultimate Truth and I think in the 20th century we have succeeded in proving that Ultimate Truth is not conceivable by human beings, even in principle.

It seems to me that altered states of consciousness are degenerate, not transcendent. For example, when dreaming, I am generally not able to solve even basic math problems (OK, I actually had this dream once where I correctly did binary division on 4-bit numbers… that was one weird dream). It would seem to me that in a “higher” state of consciousness, I should be able to solve bigger, harder problems with more ease.

I’ve listened to lectures by Terence McKenna, the self-described “psychonaut”, and while it is clear that certain drugs - such as psilocybin - imbue you with a feeling of being in contact with the Ultimate, I am skeptical that these feelings actually indicate reality. Rather, I suspect that these altered states of consciousness arise from the drug’s effect in selectively attenuating and amplifying the function of modules within the brain. Perhaps psilocybin creates this impression, as described by McKenna, of being about to be hit by a 1000 ft. high tidal wave, hundreds of miles wide because it activates some kind of “awe module” within the brain whose function is to keep us away from the edge of high precipices. Or, perhaps the awe module works in complex conjunction with other parts of the brain where awe is an “ingredient” of the impression the brain is making on our consciousness in a manner similar to how different receptors on the tongue are sensitive to sweet, salty, bitter and so on but impress a unified “taste sensation” on our consciousness.

I have no doubt that the subject really feels that he is in the presence of God or that he is experiencing some truly awesome real event to which the rest of us are simply blind because we are not in the higher state of consciousness required to perceive it. But drugs and meditation are not the only things that can alter your consciousness. Try walking down the street with no music for awhile. Then, try walking down the street with some awe-inspiring movie music in your iPod headphones. If you’re like me, it will really feel different even though there’s no good reason why it should feel different.

In conclusion, I believe that altered states of consciousness are not actually transcendent, even if they feel that way to the subject. Drug-induced altered states of consciousness are almost certainly degernate states of consciousness.

But I think this is a pretty minor problem from a philosophical point of view. For example, we know that the world looks completely different at different frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. The human eye is tuned to a tiny band of electromagnetic radiation frequencies we call “visible light” but it turns out that there are many other frequencies and the world looks completely different in these other frequencies. That my perception of the world can be radically different if the configuration of my brain is altered through drugs, meditation or other means is not surprising. I think of it by analogy to “tuning the dial” to a different frequency.

Yes, my consciousness is presented with pre-filtered, pre-sorted, pre-categorized, pre-pattern-matched, structured perceptual data. Realizing that we simply have to accept this fact is one of the (largely unsung) achievements of 20th century philosophy and science. I do not perceive the world-as-it-is. No one does. The brain is the organ which is responsible for the conscious experience of the world. You can know this by hooking your brain up to an encephalograph and going to sleep. Your conscious experience is directly correlated with your brain’s activity.

Sure. I see two unsolvable philosophical problems. The first is external and you already mentioned it when you described the problem with trying to circumscribe “reality”… as soon as you denote “reality”, you open the question of what is beyond it. Epicurus, I believe, decided that the Universe must be unlimited because if it had a limit, you could go there, stick your fist past it and there would be a new limit. Modern physics gets “clever” with mathematics and says, well, the universe is unbounded but not infinite (i.e. it’s circular) and they might be right but I have yet to see clear and convincing reasons to believe that’s actually true.

At a more fundamental level than the geometry of the Universe is the orderliness of the Universe. If we say “the Universe follows laws X, Y and Z” the question immediately arises why those laws instead of these laws? This is really an infinite regress because as soon as we answer that question, we will simply have created a new set of laws to which the same question will again apply. I call this the “substrate problem”… imagine that the Universe is a gigantic computation (ala The Matrix)… then where is the computer that is performing this computation and what is computing that computer’s Universe? Ad infinitum. I think the geometric problem is just a special-case of this wider problem of infinite regress in any attempt to explain the structure of the Universe in the most general sense.

The second problem is internal and may subsume the first problem depending on whether you assign primacy to the subjective or the objective. What am I? What is me? What is it that is conscious of the physical world? Clearly, as I noted above, my brain is the organ responsible for presenting the “picture” of the physical world to my consciousness. But what is my consciousness? Daniel Dennett simply waves the problem aside as a non-problem but it really is a problem. He might be right that it’s just our poor understanding of the brain that leaves us with this mystical feeling that there’s an entire missing subject in the science of the mind (what is consciousness?). But this is little comfort until we actually do have this better understanding of the mind where we realize we were all pursuing a non-problem all along.

So, until we actually have some sensible answers to these problems… what is the grounding of the objective and the subjective… I’m left with no other option but mysticism. Maybe in 1,000 years people will have a good laugh at my stone-age mysticism but I don’t see any other option. The fact of existence (of the Universe and of my consciousness) is mystical to me. I know of no good answer to Leibniz’s famous question: Why does something exist rather than nothing? For ‘nothing’ is simpler than ‘something.’

But I limit my mysticism this far and no further because mysticism is acidic to rational investigation. It’s too easy to say “that’s just the way it is” … that’s what parents say to a child when they’re too busy to explain something or too proud to admit they don’t know. It turns out that the Universe looks structured because it is structured, so leaving the “easy out” of mysticism guarantees that one will not make progress in discovering the underlying structures of the Universe (including those structures within our own minds).

Clayton -

48

A higher state of consciousness,like an ecstasy of some sort, technically implies that you don’t solve bigger problems -it’s not a difference of degree but of kind -but it implies that you understand things w/o having to reason through them. That is, higher states of mind imply knowing things in a self-evident way which you would otherwise have to think through.

I agree w/ your skeptism RE: the above. If Mr. Jackson believes that the Ultimate=the Infinite then he cannot believe that he feels it, since the infinite is insensible (it is infinitely large and all its sensible parts are infinite in extent so that they are immobile). At least sometimes, it is impossible to feel God.