In my opinion, the whole phenomenon can be called direct as well as indirect, it's just a matter of semantics. The phenomenon per se doesn't care about semantics. I just want to add this thought: If there is an intermediate thing (like a filter or converter etc.) between the "external world" and our "internal mind", then this same thing (filter or converter etc.) is also part of the "external world", isn't it? Here's a metaphor: When I'm wearing sun glasses which make the tree to appear darker, those sun glasses are part of the external world. So when I see the tree "indirectly" and I see the sun glasses "directly", I actually see a part of the external world "directly". I could also say: I see a whole package of the real world; in that "real" package are the tree and the sun glasses, among other things. -- It's all about semantics, I think.

If making a distinction is foolish, and you're making a distinction, then are you doing something foolish? — flannel jesus

I think this question isn't adequately put.

I'd put the question like this: "If making a distinction is foolish, and you're saying that making a distinction is foolish, then are you doing something foolish?" Answer: No. I'm just saying what action is foolish, namely the action of making a distinction. Saying A and making B are not the same.

A common response that is wrong. No one sees photons. Folk might well see using or because of photons. But photons are not visible.

It's very important to get the language right here. Sure, you see your hand because it reflects photons, but you do not see the photons. — Banno

OK, let me state my comment more precisely: We can't see a single photon because it's too small. Similarly we can't see the star Alpha Centauri because its projected diameter on our retina is too small. But we see the photons coming from that star when trillions of photons arrive in our retina at nearly the same time. Our retina cannot detect a single photon but it can detect large clusters of photons.

The verb "to see" may be incorrect in the way I'm using it. But that's not my point. I just want to suggest (like AmadeusD just did) that the "direct line", as you call it, from an external object to the retina, is not an abstract "nothing" but it consists of things that travel at the speed of light from the object to the retina. If you call this process a "direct line" then you ignore that whole process. You may call these travelling things "light" or "signals" or whatever; in any case they're not the external object per se. They are between object and retina and are subject to additional effects like interference, attenuation etc. Hence I call this whole information transfer from object to retina an "indirect" transfer.

I see my hand directly when I look down, indirectly when I see its reflection in a mirror. Here I have a clear enough understanding of what it means to see my hand directly and indirectly. — Banno

I think, when you look down, you don't see your hand directly; you see photons (or whatever moving signals) that moved from your hand to your eyes. So the process is already indirect even before you can make an intermediate mental picture of it. Nevertheless, I'd say that we see reality directly because those photons are real. -- What are photons? They have no substance. They are a piece of information. Now since everything in the world is real information, what's the difference between information in a dream and information in a non-dream? It's all real information. -- In short: I think we're talking about a pseudo problem.

Hello.

... what we experience in the dream cannot be real. So, what we are directly acquainted with cannot be the real thing, but our perception of the real thing. — Ashriel

Why do you think a "dream" cannot be a perception of the real thing?
I think both a dream and a non-dream can be a perception of the real thing.
With this premise I can't even pass your first conclusion:

P1 if we were directly acquainted with external objects, then hallucinatory and veridical experiences would be subjectively distinct — Ashriel

Can you describe the properties of such a distinction? Are there different colors, smells, sounds? If so, which ones belong to the real thing?

When an apple lies on the grass, what has caused this setting? I can offer two answers:

1. The apple felt from the tree. Without the tree the apple wouldn't be there.

2. Before the apple was on the grass, it wasn't there: "Apple absent at XYZT" changed to "Apple present at XYZT". In other words: Nothing changed to something.

Isn't this an empirical proof that the creation of something out of nothing is possible?

I agree completely.

(I just use the word "before" in order to be able to write that there is no "before". It's the same lingual logic as in the word "nothing": It's just used in order to tell what is absent, namely something; some thing versus no thing. We must be able to talk about absent issues. Therefore we need to name them.)

Whether spacetime is a thing or not is still subject to debate. You might like to read this article. — MoK

Thanks for the link. This reminds me of the question whether there are numbers when the entire world is absent. Was the number 42 there before the Big Bang happened? I'd say yes. Did the number 42 cause anything? I'd say no. Is mathematics a substance? I'd say no.

The Big Bang is the rapid expansion of an initial singularity; that singularity being something like an infinitely compressed spacetime. — Michael

Agreed. But before that singularity there was no time axis on which a previous event caused the big bang event, was it?

Quantum vacuum is different from nothing. — MoK

I mean "nothing" in the sense of "no specific thing (no thing) was there to cause the event".

The fact that the event happend in vacuum doesn't necessarily mean that this vacuum itself contributed to the cause. The existence of the vacuum side by side with the non-causal event may be pure coincidence.

You need spacetime for the Big Bang to happen. — MoK

You need the beginning of spacetime for the Big Bang to happen, I think.

You think there was spacetime before the Big Bang?

I think this topic has nothing to do with logic but with causality. To think that every event has to have a cause is just a human intuition, in my opinion, or, according to Kant, a category "a priori". Space and time are another "a priori" category. Our senses cannot detect space and time, nor causality. Our senses can just detect things. Space and time, and causality are not things. They are the prerequisite in our own transcendental mind that makes the detection of things possible for us. Just because this is the case here and now, doesn't mean that causality is everywhere all the time. Aside from that, there are acausal events in quantum physics. Also, assuming the big bang theory is correct, the bang occured without a cause as there wasn't even a time period before it.

The main responsibility is on the one who pulls the trigger. Not on the one giving the command to pull the trigger. — baker

What if the trigger puller's mind consists of a heterogeneous mosaic of multiple, different will-vectors? Which of the many will-vectors belong to that "single person"? And when the killer is caught, what part of this person has to get into jail? Of course, the prisoner's body needs to remain in one piece. One may conclude, the vector sum of all differerent vectors in that mind represents that "single person". While we're at it: Could this principle be applied to an entire country as well? Every person in this country represents one individual will-vector. The person itself is sort of a country too, containing many different will-vectors.

Sure, here it is: — LFranc

Thank you for your detailed reply. I see the problem of gradual "measurements" is very complex, and the required algorithms are nearly incalculable. So I would put this problem into a more pragmatical context: We humans are able to estimate sizes and intensities of things we cannot measure exactly. We estimate and predict issues all the time, and often our predictions lie within a reasonable tolerance; otherwise we wouldn't be able to survive for more than a few years. In other words: I wouldn't put this problem into a binary yes-no context but into a context of probability, similar to quantum mechanics. The fact that something isn't exactly detectable doesn't mean that there is no useable probability corridor within which we can operate very well with a relatively low error quote. How useable this approach might be probably depends on the background of the original responsibility question, I think. Well, what is its background?

1. Is it a pure epistemological question? ("What is responsibility?")
2. Is it about the motivation of people? ("Can a little man change the future?)
3. Is it about guilt? ("Can that little man be blamed for the terrible past?")
4. ...?

Tempting answer to the problem: it is all true but responsibility comes in degrees: the tyrant is the most responsible, then his police, then his citizens, then citizens from other countries...
Problem 1: how could we prove this? (I've read several disappointing papers) — LFranc

As you say ("in degress"), the problem is not a binary yes-or-no thing but it's a scalable matter, I think. Prove? Power is scalable. You can measure the length of the individual knives. The knife of Joe Average is shorter than that of the tyrant. I'd like to learn what exactly was disappointing in the papers you read?

I fear neuroscience alone cannot answer my questions; in this deep area they exceed the possibilities of empirical tools. I guess an interdisciplinary combination of neuroscience and philosophy would be more helpful.

"The One needs the Zero" -- I think I heard of this idea in several variations many years ago, and at that time I had the same idea before I read those other sources. I can't remember the sources anymore. Why are you asking for a citation? Just take my comment as a philosophical suggestion that is here to be rationally tested by other philosophers on the forum. Why do you guys always refer to old books? What about the future? Future books don't exist yet. You can write them.

Not even the One, i.e. the absolute singularity, is non-compounded. The One needs the Zero in order to differ itself from the Zero. So for its permanent existence, the One must permanently pair itself with the Zero. It's a binary pair. It's not a non-compounded singularity. So if the One shall be synonymous to "purity", then this "pure goal" will never be achieved anyway.

Secondly, these synonymous things still don't explain why these persons wish to be "non-compounded". Why do these person want to amputate all their components? I understand their will to amputate their hair and their foreskin, which is certainly not only for health reasons. But what's the psychological reason -- aside from all those myths and fairy-tales? I still think these old texts were invented by humans, not by gods, and I'd like to know why these humans invented such texts. The comments in this thread remain on the surface. I'd like to dive deeper into the brains themselves rather than into the books that these brains developped.

From my point of view, an event that is caused at random outside the solipsist's will is an event that is -- tautology -- an event that is not controlled by the solipsist, hence the solipsist's claim to power sounds paradox to me and is just a sign of megalomania.

Similarly, when the solipsist forgets what events he or she generated yesterday, then I think it's OK to say he or she was a solipsist yesterday; but today it's no longer the case because those things that started yesterday now run their own processes. It's like an embryo in a mother's body; the embryo body may be the property of the mother's body, but there'll be a time when the two bodies are disconnected and the ex-embryo will go its own way even if the mother keeps thinking the new human follows her commands from yesterday, tomorrow or nowhere. Solipsism is just language. There's no substance.
-- I may be wrong now, but I don't think so.

English isn't my native language, but from a logical point of view, when there are multiple instances of a "Jack-in-a-box", aren't there multiple Jacks as well as multiple boxes, so that the final expression should actually read Jacks-in-boxes?

If we can have multiple parallel worlds, each world for a single solipsist, then I think the idea of multi-solipsism is not paradox.

But what I find paradox is the assumption of a solipsist being able to experience the feeling of surprise. -- Who can surprise a solipsist?

For example, the word "purity" itself doesn't say anything about the deeper psychological picture the person gets when the person says the word "purity". I think the term "purity" is just an abstract curtain of something that is psychologically much more complex. Such stuff cannot be found in history books and holy bibles. So maybe here on the forum we can share our own thoughts?

Javi, thank you. Debates are fine. I'm not complaining. I'm just no expert in those particular historic details; I'm unable to add anything to that part of the thread which so far just seems to be a random collection of quotes from history books rather than an attempt to spread the context further in a creative, thought-experimental way.

Let me repeat the original poster's questions:

So, I am asking how do you see the relationship between religion and sexuality? What impact do the two areas have upon one another? How does the dialogue between science, religion and spirituality impact on thinking about areas of controversy, including gay and transgender issues, and underlying cultural wars and agendas? — Jack Cummins

As I am an agnostic atheist, I'm unable to contribute with helpful comments in this discussion about "God's bodies" and "Plato's ideas" etc. I'm sorry. -- I accept your religion, and I see no reason to make any points against it as long as you allow me to claim that my body belongs to me and nobody else.

No. A religious person only seeks for mercy. — javi2541997

Yes, but that doesn't exclude the idea of seeking for mercy in an overly controlled way rather than in a randomly surprising way, does it?

Premise 1:
I think religious persons seek control more than other persons do. After a slight loss of control they fear great instability. So it may be an overreaction. Now, for them, the control may be provided by a higher creature and not necessarily by the persons themselves. Nevertheless, that higher creature is, in my opinion, an invention of such persons, hence in the end this control is provided by that persons themselves indeed -- mentally.

Premise 2:
Sexuality is something that is typically out of control.

Conclusion:
Persons that seek control try to avoid sexuality.


Recently I listened to an interview with a Buddhist Shaolin Kung Fu master. He hurts himself all day, every day, with all kinds of tools. He also avoids sexual activities. Why? He said, he wants to completely control his mind and body which includes the controlled suppression of pain by repeating the painful routines on a daily basis. I guess, this growing experience of resistance makes him more happy than the satisfaction experienced during a 10 second orgasm which is, of course, provoked by a strange force outside the own will. -- I think, at the end of the day, even this procedure is just another variation of joy. Life isn't about avoiding joy. It's about having the goal to achieve joy. That's the motor. Life is activity.