"In order to change, one must accept." Jung

Usually talk therapies address emotions.

Psychoanalysis does this... Free association.

Free association means that a person speaks about their life... The analyst directs these thoughts not by an imposition but as an, theoretically, assuming of the other as opposed to the Other (in Lacanian analysis). The other is that which is spoken toward in one's own head. The purpose is to elaborate not on thought but those emotions... And furthermore to confront those emotions and accept them in order for further growth. Psychoanalysis is not the eradication of depression for "Depression is not a sign of weakness but a sign one has been trying too hard for too long" (Freud). Psychoanalysis does not alleviate pain or contradict it... It rather clears the obstructed path toward what would be happiness of fulfillment, along with the acceptance of all emotions, desires and impulses.

can you prove that there are still there atoms in a water molecule regardless of an intelligent agent?

I think you have misinterpreted me... Not that your interpretation is not well based but that I should elaborate...

Intentionality is a phenomenological term. It says that consciousness is always consciousness of something, which in terms of Sartre provides a reconciliation of dualisms such as being and appearance and subject and object--providing an epistemology 'beyond' idealism or realism.

That is contradictory. If consciousness is by virtue of intentionality, then it is an intentional object — Sir2u

What I was saying is that consciousness is Intentionality... Intentionality is the characterization of consciousness. Consciousness is not an intentional object, due to the pre reflective cogito.

I am not sure there must be a presuposee...

I think therefore I am...

"I think where I am not therefore I am where I do not think. I am not whenever I am a plaything of my thought. I am where I do not think to think." Jacques Lacan

Clearly, if I'm ready and willing to take into account others' perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions, I don't think my own have universal authority — gurugeorge

This presupposes that others perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions say something contradictory to what mine do, and also that others perceptions, feelings, experiences, etc. relate to the exactly the same things...

but an assertion based on these feelings or experiences ?

I think it is not unheard of for a person to have two, contradictory ideas.

I think in pychology it is called cognitive dissonance...

But I don't think it is a problem really... I think everyone is a multiplicity of conceptions, and the fact of ambiguity permeates all of human personality.

Freud says "Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity."

Well obviously I could be wrong.

It seems to me that the world and consciousness are essentially one. Consciousness belongs to the world and the world belongs to consciousness, because consciousness is always consciousness of something it is not...

But I have my own problem. Can consciousness can be consciousness of itself? I think this is true, but consciousness of being conscious would be consciousness of consciousness (of) something it is not... So consciousness of consciousness would be consciousness (of) being... And consciousness is fundamentally being-in-the-world... Correct?
Being is thus not consciousness but is the condition of a consciousness... But consciousness has been said to be the condition of all revelation... And so the revelation of being would be of consciousness...
It is a puzzle.

I wrote of this a few years back. It was something along the lines of "Time is a simulation of lack for stability."

I do not know if it is epistemologically accurate, but I will try to remember what I thought...

There was once a state of perfect homeostatic balance. The infant does not hunger until a lack (the cutting of the umbilical cord). Desire is based on lack. For instance, the safety of the mother (reference Freud). The homeostatic imbalance creates a psychic state of... Once a sensation impacts the smooth, sandy slate of consciousness, it necessitates an 'ontological permute' that changes consciousness to be in accordance with the shape of it, after that sensation is gone. And so sensations necessitate consciousness to comport itself toward all the experiences which added to the totality of it, but disappeared... Consciousness consists of being ahead of itself (heidegger) because it is always a lack of totality... Though Heidegger insists that Dasein is a totality... Which perhaps is due to my misunderstanding. But anyway... Perhaps you can see that line of thinking.

In that case, yes. The tree is as it is in consciousness, but it is not itself consciousness. The world is in a sense consciousness, because the consciousness is consciousness (of) the world. The parenthesis are to show that it is rather Consciousness-the-world... There is no consciousness and then the world... There is only consciousness-world.

But if our emotions, feelings and experiences are authentic, then do they not have absolute authority over what reality is?

By 'reality' I mean... Anything that can be experienced.

That would be impossible because the tree is not consciousness.

But you are more than merely "the 'seeing' of the world", no? Are you not also the feeling of yourself? — Janus

I am not the feeling of myself, because myself cannot be felt. But I am also feeling itself. I am transphenomenal experiencing.

"Thinking in relation to others" is the inescapable foundation of successful communication. If you have not already, you will find that I'm quite able to maintain my own, authentic position while communicating with others. I think you are capable of the same. — Dfpolis

You may be able to maintain your own meaning, and you always do, but this is irrelevant, for the act of translating your own authenticity into that which is accessible by others implies a stripping down of that authenticity in terms of the they, which refers to the everydayness of existence. Your own authentic position can only be understood by an assimilation, which loses meaning in the process.
Furthermore, Nietzsche was not saying that meaning can never be communicated. It is that meaning is often not communicated at all, and it is precisely in these meaningless structures of 'knowledge' or reference that constitutes the herd constitution of consciousness. Consciousness is an objective, transpersonal entity in terms of the they. It is not with reference to anything authentic, which is at base incommunicable.

Yes, there are people who twist themselves into knots to "fit in," but they are rather low on the path to satisfy Maslow's heirarchy of needs or growth in Fowler's stages of faith. There is certainly nothing "universal" here. — Dfpolis

Maslow's hierarchy came after Nietzsche, and it is precisely the understanding that Nietzsche tries to communicate which sets the tone for an understanding of such a hierarchy at all... The fact that consciousness needs to transcend this herd mentality... This is what Nietzsche was referring to.

Only if you let it. If you know history, you know that many have stood proud of their orientation. Of course there have been, and are, social pressures and even criminal penalties, but many found ways to work around these while continuing to be authentic to themselves. — Dfpolis

The problem is not necessarily authenticity itself but alienation as well, which is not synonymous with authenticity.

"There is no "having to be intelligible to others." — Dfpolis

This is not the case... It is that consciousness is often completely unintelligible in terms of the they. And an authentic consciousness would have as its object its being authentic.

If there really were a single consciousness, everyone would value and devalue the same things — Dfpolis

This is not analytically true. It would be synthetically true. Consciousness is consciousness of others, and valuations are either accepted or rejected by virtue of the herd consciousness that is not ones own. Nietzsche's solution to this meaninglessness or nihilism is the Ubermensch.

Most mystical experiences convey no information. They do not reduce what is possible. They open us to new possibility. Mystical experience shows us that it is possible to achieve the unity that we long for in love — Dfpolis

If love is a mystical experience by your definition, then love is probably not a mystical experience, because love is most definitely a communication. Love is not mystical, but human, real, authentic in terms of the one defining it and experiencing it. An objective love makes absolutely no sense.

I posted the same thing twice... Disregard this post.

Consciousness is fundamentally tied to matter but is in itself immaterial... This does not mean that it is divorced from materiality... But consciousness does seem to be contingent on the material, although it is itself immaterial.

I have a problem with this, because if awareness were one and communal I would be aware of every other persons experience and they of mine. I am not. I am directly aware only of my interactions with the world -- of myself standing as a subject to the objects I encounter. — Dfpolis

This is a misinterpretation of Nietzsche. What he is saying is quite akin to Heidegger's Das Man or the they, an inauthentic display.
In communication experiences are translated into what he calls the herd mentality. With regard to religion, Carl Jung adopted this idea and elucidated upon archetypes or archetypal structures in which people adopt certain explanations of their own personal, unique meaning, replacing it for what can be assimilated by others, instead of resorting to a de facto alienation from a society they wish to gain fulfillment from.

I do not find my thoughts "constantly overruled by ... the genius of the species." I often find myself at odds with the thinking of others and with anything that could pass for a "herd mentality." Nor am I alone in thinking that, at times, I am "a voice crying in the wilderness."

Rather than my thoughts being "overruled by the character of consciousness," I find them informed "by the character of consciousness" -- as I become aware of some aspect of reality apparently missed by others. And, again, I do not find myself alone in this. Each person has their own standpoint and subjectivity -- giving rise to their own, unique subject-object relationships. — Dfpolis

Thinking in relation to others changes the authenticity of your own meaning into its herd analogue. You speak so to to be understood. People adopt values and absolute truths so to dismiss the inherent ambiguity of life, which is paradoxically the precursor of art. This will to a lack of ambiguity and a demonstration of human life that attains the value of absolute or normal or conventional is that which boxes the human into a construction of their own lives as not with reference to their own subjective feelings and meanings but with regard to everything they are not, which is all that is communicable.
For instance. I am gay. My thoughts about my life, if this was fifty years ago, would be overruled by the genius of the species, that herd mentality, that overruling aspect of the they which would have labeled me as deviant or inauthentic, according to transpersonal absolutist constructions.

I do not find this in my experience. Perhaps you can provide an example to help me see what you see — Dfpolis

Okay... I love someone. When I communicate this... This love that is 'mine' becomes just another relationship. When I create something significant to me, I communicate it to the world, consciousness delivers me over to the herd mentality where I have to be intelligible by others, which is not guaranteed, and thus what I have created loses in a very real sense its meaning, because its meaning can not be apprehended by everyone.

Mystical experiences are at base experiences. They are not different than ant other experience. They are just defined differently. There is absolutely no evidence in experience of the divine or the supernatural or the mystical... Only that which is not understood or cannot be adequately represented by 'knowledge,' which is also, at base, an illusion.

I don't see anything dependent on a deity. Consciousness does not need a deity, nor does anything.

Nevermind

Going to an example like Mary the colour scientist, what Mary has before getting sight is knowledge, when she gets her sight, she doesn't learn anything new, she just becomes acquainted with colour, becomes aware of it. But that isn't knowing it any better; her becoming acquainted with colour, becoming present to/with colour, is a change in the present state of her conscious being, not a change in the structure of her expectations. — gurugeorge

Can you reiterate this for me?

My biggest problem with knowledge is the point I found in Sartre, which I found to be pretty obvious (as what usually happens in philosophy... You find something and realize it is so obvious it was overlooked): A metaphysics presupposes an epistemology and an epistemology presupposes a metaphysics.

My own conclusion, and I hope nobody steals this idea (not that it is... probably... very significant), is that Knowledge is as if it is knowledge, and is only as if it is knowledge.

I read earlier of a 'will to life' written by a philosopher a couple hundred years ago. But I can't seem to remember what philosopher it was. It sounds interesting. I agree with you though.

Has everything been objected to?

Philosophically I say to myself...

REALLY?!

I can see your point... For instance... If I look at a tree, I see the tree. I say to myself that I know what that is... I also say to myself that my perception of IT is not the truth of whatever it is, for there is much that I do not see and there is much that I cannot ever understand about what I am abstractly defining as this tree. However, I am seeing IT. I am hinting at what would be the truth of it. And therefore it is apprehended. Obviously I cannot dissolve myself in it: I remain consciousness of it, and it remains an object of my consciousness. But the fact that it can be apprehended by consciousness means that it is not fundamentally and completely separate from my consciousness, and I am seeing a facet of what would be the whole gem. I am seeing an aspect of that totality. Its essence is not hidden from me. Its being is not hidden or concealed. It is rather by virtue of the fact that I CAN apprehend it that I can apprehend the essence of it, and it is not something existing separate from my own existence. It is as such for me. It is not, obviously, a construction of my own mind and obviously has a being of its own, but this being is very different than the being of consciousness, and therefore both are, though seemingly incommensurable, in a striking connection and relationality.

I disagree with your epistemology. I do not see the necessity of that dualism, namely of subject and object, of being and appearance.

...we are inhabiting a world whose existence is independent of our perceptions of it, and that the commonality of our perceptions is due to that and the constitutional characteristics we all share. — Janus

The world IS our consciousness. It is obviously not that we are the world but that consciousness would not be without the world. This is not to say, again, and resort to that dualism assuming that consciousness and the world are fundamentally separated. The Cartesian dualism has plagued philosophy for too long.

The commonality of our perceptions could never suffice to substantiate the assertion that an objective world determines us. I refuse to accept that, because it is anti-freedom.

But I understand your point, and perhaps my point is addressing something else. But I just don't see the world from that perspective. I don't see the world at all.
I am, rather, the 'seeing' of the world.

What if someone believes there is a God or God's and another part of them believes there is not?
@Janus

Ownership is an illusion.

What would be immaterial? What is an immaterial reality? And how is denying immaterial reality matrialism? I can deny the existence of immaterial realities and still not accept the notion that consciousness or being is the result of interactions of matter or the material.

Philosophy can eradicate bigotry. Philosophy provides cohesion and understanding of humanity. Philosophy provides ethics.

I definitely do not trust the idea of a Creator or a deity. But that is because I have never heard a credible argument for one; an argument that cannot be shown to be fallacious.

I'm very reluctant to speak of a Godhead though.

Have you heard of the 'pre reflective cogito'?

@Michael Ossipoff
Have you heard of ego-death in a psychedelic experience?

Personally, because of my psychedelic experiences with ego-death (yes someone attack me and tell me I am delusional!), I think that the idea of a separate consciousness is an illusion, albeit a very real one, and that there is no death of the type of being that would be able to experience or 'see': there is only a death of the personality, of the 'person.' There seems to be a foundation of everyone's being and I refuse to believe there is a beginning or an end to transphenomenal being. I think in death it disintegrates to reform into something else, and depending on the formation that manifests this transphenomenal soup, another separate identity forms.

But hey. Maybe I am delusional!

Most people are devoid of philosophy. And this is troubling.

But what would logic be if it were not in its truth its meaning? And its meaning is in its function right? Or am I off?

The ego of Descartes has been shown to be atop unsturdy premises.

The I that I would refer to would be the ego of Freud, of the personality... Although people have objected to Freud's ego as well.

Logic is as it is used, correct? And so it is in a sense about reality, right? Unless... Logic has a mind of its own?

I am optimistic in terms of freedom and pessimistic in terms of the behavior and thoughts of other people.

But if the transphenomenality of consciousness was never created how could it end?

What if there is no death? Only a disintegration?

Superfluous to what? — gurugeorge

Knowledge is superfluous for a few reasons.

1. It presupposes the truth of that which delivers it.
2. It never reaches any truth.
3. It is recharacterization of what is already intuited to be.
4. It can be only as if it is.

There is supposedly an important distinction between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance.

Knowledge by description involves ascertaining something... But in order to describe something one must have a knowledge by acquaintance. So knowledge by acquaintance is really the only type of knowledge. But this knowledge is incommunicable is it not? For this incommunicable knowledge, which would be the inspiration of a written knowledge of something, would be the truth of that something. And since words can never give the meaning of something alone, the truth is never disclosed in a descriptive knowledge... And therefore the only knowledge that is capable of being linguistically addressed is the one that is, ergo, superfluous.