Perhaps the ancients were not as much "in their heads" and language oriented as we are today.
— Janus
I think that's very likely. — Ludwig V
often these prejudices become reinforced concrete for their bearer — Astorre
I always thought of [alayavijnana] as a kind of collective karmic storehouse, and it is explicitly doctrinally classed as a form of consciousness. So I'm not seeing how it is not an idea of collective consciousness or mind. — Janus
Buddhists believe in the Universe. The Universe is, according to philosophers who base their beliefs on!idealism, a place of the spirit. Other philosophers whose beliefs are based on a materialistic view, say that the Universe is composed of the matter we see in front of our eyes.
Buddhist philosophy takes a view which is neither idealistic nor materialistic; Buddhists do not believe that the Universe is composed of only matter. They believe that there is something else other than matter. But there is a difficulty here; if we use a concept like spirit to describe that something else other than matter, people are prone to interpret Buddhism as some form of spiritualistic religion and think that Buddhists must therefore believe in the actual existence of spirit. So it becomes very important to understand the Buddhist view of the concept ‘spirit.’
I am careful to refer to spirit as a concept here because in fact Buddhism does not believe in the actual existence of spirit. So what is this ‘something else’ other than matter which exists in this Universe?
If we think that there is a something which actually exists other than matter, our understanding will not be correct; nothing physical exists outside of matter.
Some people explain the Universe as a universe
based on matter. But there also exists something which we call value or meaning. A Universe consisting only of matter leaves no room for value or meaning in civilizations and cultures. Matter alone has no value. We can say that the Universe is constructed with matter, but we must also say that matter works for some purpose.
So in our understanding of the Universe we should recognize the existence of something other than
matter. We can call that something spirit, but if we do we should remember that in Buddhism, the word ‘spirit’ is a figurative expression for value or meaning. We do not say that spirit exists in reality; we use the concept only figuratively. — Nishijima Roshi
So you're saying it isn't memory if there's not a purpose of homeostasis in it? Wow... — noAxioms
I have a romantic notion of philosophy as potentially being able to provide this kind of psychological or experiential transformation, not just the lifeless pursuit of analysis and cold reasoning, but a new way of seeing that enlarges our experience in some way. Yet such a description feels rather tendentious, soft and poetic. — Tom Storm
For Pierre Hadot, famously, the means for the philosophical student to achieve the “complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things” epitomized by the Sage were a series of spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the student’s larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things (PWL 84).]
Is that the discussion you want to have? — Srap Tasmaner
A scientist doing science is not going to worry about whether an atom of hydrogen is "really out there" or not. — J
"If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise" William Blake — Janus
I don't keep up with this stuff, but Wikipedia seems to believe there is still no evidence for extra-sensory perception that is broadly accepted among scientists. — Srap Tasmaner
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
I do think the materialism/ idealism dichotomy is ultimately wrongheaded, — Janus
If I propose that the things are ideas, then I must imagine an unseen, unknowable entity―a "mind at large" to quote Kastrup, and that seems to bring in the inevitable ontological dualism involved in thinking there is a transcendent realm or reality over and above the one we know. — Janus
The topic of things-in-themselves is just brutal. When I go down the rabbit hole, it's just total blindness. — Manuel
So is it the case that whenever this perspective is proposed, it invariably originated from a study of Eastern religious ideas? — Punshhh
it seems we could never be certain about the ultimate or most basic constitution of physical things. — Janus
reside within the brain/body? — Janus
it's contradictory to use physical evidence to prove the non-physical. — Hanover
I've only argued that paranormal experience doesn't offer proof of substance dualism. — Hanover
This whole project of treating these stories as testimonial evidence is doomed from the start. — Srap Tasmaner
My point here is that if we take the mind/body interaction problem seriously, we don't just shrug our shoulders and claim that ghosts exist as a seperate substance in a mysterious way, but we say instead that ghosts must be physical as well. — Hanover
As for the nature of the physical, Charles Pinter (in Mind and the Cosmic Order) points out that it originates ‘with the sense that it acts in opposition to our will and constrains our actions’ — push it, and it resists, or lift it, and it is heavy. But then, ‘since sensation and thought don’t require overcoming any physical resistance, we consider them to be outside material reality’ — in other words, non-physical. However, contrary to the popular understanding, the so–called ‘immaterial’ acts of cognition are fundamental to any conception we can form of ‘the physical’, as physics itself is inextricably intertwined with mathematical concepts. But again, the primacy of mind has been deprecated because of having been relegated to the so–called ‘immaterial domain’, which does not objectively exist. To put it another way — our cognitive construction of the world is not itself amongst the objects of the natural sciences, and so is deprecated by physicalism, even though, in a fundamental sense, the physical sciences depend on it. This points towards the fundamental contradiction in the physicalist conception of the world. — The Mind Created World
the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood, so that these statements appear faulty in ways in which, properly understood, they are not. Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which, on examination, are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices. — Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Bryan Magee, p106, 'Subjects and Objects'
Can you give me an example of any truth which is determinable in any way other than by observation or logic, and also explain just how that truth can be determined? — Janus
You don't even attempt to back up your claim. — Janus
Of course there is a perspective involved in saying that the Universe is or is not independent of minds, but it doesn't follow that it is impossible that the universe be either independent or dependent on minds―we just don't know and may only speculate about it. — Janus
Can you give me an example of any truth which is determinable in any way other than by observation or logic, and also explain just how that truth can be determined? — Janus
I'm not going to try to address any purported implications of quantum mechanical experiments and results because I don't have the expertise — Janus
It is an undeniable aspect of experience that people see the same things at the same time and place down to the smallest detail. — Janus
Regarding any individual experiment, all observers see the same result, though. — Janus
It follows then that it must be real independently of all minds unless you posit a hidden collective mind. Is that what you believe? — Janus
Regarding any individual experiment, all observers see the same result, though. — Janus
Space and time might be real, but they’re not objectively real; only real relative to each individual observer or measurer. — Ethan Siegel
To the best that we can tell, the real outcomes that arise in the Universe cannot be divorced from who is measuring them, and how. — Ethan Siegel
In any case why deny what science tells us, and then appeal to it when it suits you? — Janus
I don't believe you have any real doubt that the everyday objects we encounter constantly have their own existence, which does not rely on our perceiving them. — Janus
A scientist doing science is not going to worry about whether an atom of hydrogen is "really out there" or not. As you say, the working assumption is that, if we act as if the atom is mind-independent, we can learn what we need to learn about it. ...I'm suggesting that the particular brand of objectivity that we call scientific objectivity -- essentially an intersubjectivity, a faith in a shared point of view -- will be unchanged. — J
The dependence on what is observed upon the choice of experimental arrangement made Einstein uhappy. It conflicts with the view that the universe exists "out there", independent of all acts on observation. In contrast Bohr stressed that we confront here an inescapable new feature of nature, to be welcomed because of the understanding it givs us. Bohr found himself forced to introduce the word “phenomenon”. In today's words Bohr’s point – and the central point of quantum theory – can be put into a single, simple sentence. "No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered (observed ) phenomenon”. — John Wheeler, Law without Law
Now suppose the object of scientific investigation is the phenomenon of consciousness; not the experience, but the fact. — J
There is no determinable fact of the matter that that can be used to ascertain what makes sense and what doesn't as a universal rule. — Janus
I'm saying it seems most plausible to me that there is a reality outside any consciousness of it. — Janus
It is an undeniable aspect of experience that people see the same things at the same time and place down to the smallest detail. It's easy to test. — Janus