What on earth is BINK?

Hermeticus,

Can't really argue with a man who simply wants happiness. My only point might be that what is good for an individual in their quest for happyness, can create a problem for a world that needs to deal with reality.The religious you might agree are not dealing with reality and it shows at the voteting both --think Trump, and the many many hate groups who vote for him, including the religious right wing. You might consider another drug.

Fool,
You had to know you get stuck with that handle--lol!! You are of course right, no suffering is involved, whether psycological or physical. You might think that getting shot in the head would be painful, but not if it does not have time to register. It is not the worst of ways to go. — boagie

I chose that handle myself - it suits me, as if we were made for each other. :grin:

It's my firm conviction that I have enemies with both the motive and the resources to put a bounty on my head. I hope they put into their service a marksman cum hitman to do the job. Fingers crossed! :grin:

LOL!!! Ever put snow on a hot lightbulb---Bink or could be a Tink, at any rate, the lights go out.

LOL!!! Ever put snow on a hot lightbulb---Bink or could be a Tink, at any rate, the lights go out. — boagie

:gasp: :brow:

My only point might be that what is good for an individual in their quest for happyness, can create a problem for a world that needs to deal with reality.The religious you might agree are not dealing with reality and it shows at the voteting both --think Trump, and the many many hate groups who vote for him, including the religious right wing. You might consider another drug. — boagie

The only option available to us is a subjective experience of reality to begin with. I believe the problems we encounter as a collective whole have their very root in failing to acknowledge that how we perceive the world is highly individual. This isn't exclusive to religion but shows wherever humans interact with each other - from relationships to politics and even science. Fanatiscm in this regard (i.e. "You're delusional, adhere to MY reality instead") leads to the worst kind of behaviour.

There is a base to our experience of the world, due to operating with basically the same systems. Apparent reality is based upon our experiences through our common biology, a biological readout you might say. The impression that I get from you, is that you are choseing to embrace something you know to be delusional, how that is even possiable boogles my mind. The world is chaotic enough as it is, if you wish to introduce an exceptence of all realities and/or all opinions have equal crediabilty there would be nothing but chaos. I can tell your sold on this course of reaction, but it is not one I personally have any respect for. These in- groups/religons are divisive and irrational, and in these times of nucular profiration we cannot afford irrationality and the creation/or maintenance of hate groups -- May Ali behead you if you disagree!

Indeed, what we do have is something like a "common reality". Through our common biology, we can confirm that we experience roughly the same things. This alone does not make do for rational ground though. Humans used to live on a flat disk until their common reality changed.

Self-deception imho is an integral part of human being. The topic of death does very well to illustrate this.

Either it's as you say and there is no downside to death - in which case our survival instinct would be a form of self-deception.

Or there is a downside to death, in which case your proclamation that there is none is an individual self-deception on your part.

So if we are to deceive ourselves either way, I might as well choose my delusions based on merit.

From my witness of death of my father in the hospice, it was very painful process going into death. It was not some sort of momentary event. It was slow and gradual, sometimes up and down condition of the physical health, and deterioration of the mind into the demise.

I am not sure what happens after one's death, but it was evident that the process of death was very slow and painful prolonged suffering of months for the dying.

Of course, each and every death is different. But some can be long lasting painful process before the actual death.

Given the temporality of everything around us, what makes you think the universe is eturnal? — boagie

When I say "everything is Eternal", I am not referring to anything that is within the limits of existence, but to the substance that permeates all of reality and that contains its natural essences - the metaphysical field -, therefore, the only way to truly be "eternalized" before the Universe and its eventual end, is through the concept of "Idea".

Become conceptual, and thus reach the true "Apotheosis" - Eternity.

The only standard in defining no downside is the condition of no suffering, whether that be psychological or physical. Apparent reality is delusional if you like, it is created by our biology. Apparent reality is a biological readout, as surely as a calculator creates a sum total of its input, so the sum total of the reactions we have to the physical world present us with apparent reality.



The survival instinct is not delusion, it is the serving of the essence of what you are, you're genes, your body is a vehicle for said genes. The function of the vehicle body is to survive long enough to pass on your genes. You seem to be wishing to negate the power of reason, the fact that our ancestors were ignorant of the total reality of the world does not negate the value of reason which did discover the earth was not flat. I guess we should define the term delusional, so as to be sure we are on the same page. You seem to think that delusion is the key to happyness but wish to use reason to get there and then justify living in delusion through reason. It is strange to me.

Concepts and ideas are the tools of reason, not an end in themselves. The Maps is not the terrain so to speak.

Concepts and ideas are the tools of reason, not an end in themselves. The Maps is not the terrain so to speak. — boagie

Concepts and ideas are both the foundation of reality - through the angst to be - aka Egoism - - and its method by which "reality" becomes "rational", and also an end to be reached, because everything that was eternal has, as first purpose, the returning to being eternal.

Returning to your final allegory, a "map" obviously is not and cannot be the "terrain" rationally and existentially, however, in the metaphysical field, three scenarios are possible:

(1) The map is the terrain;
(2) The map is not the terrain;
(3) The map is and is not the terrain.

Your view is limited to the perception that the "always present limitation of existence is a rule, not only for itself, but for all other epistemological fields".

The foundation of apparent reality is your biology, foremost we must have experience, for experience is the holy grail. Certainly our ideas and concepts structure somewhat, but all words are but qualifications and/or limitations. Experience of the physical world is, the other half of your mind, it's is fuel to the mind so to speak. Subject and object stand or fall together- to steal a bit from Schopenhauer. Open and unlimited speculation is metaphysics, if it never answers back to reality it is quite useless.

Think of Damocles before you get all Humean! Is it metaphysics to change position on that? What does "Get real!" mean?

Death is the completest term of time. It is proof, complete proof, that time is change, not duration. The difference life is to the metaphysics of duration, proving duration is not what time is and metaphysics not what realness is, is the meaning and realness of time. We are biologically committed to enduring, and metaphysically committed to conceive realness enduring or duration. The devil is in the details of that commitment, because if we can't see past it to the completing term of time lost life is we can never know, or be, the angel only that loss can intimate and all we know and are is the devil of duration both experience and metaphysics is.

Without consciousness there is no time.

Whose? When is this if only recognition of the difference lost life, or new life, is is knowledge of what time most really is? Surely not consciousness only your own? Even dead matter experiments with altering conditions that ultimately, if very rarely, generates the potential for life. And even wholly instinctive life experiments, however many fits and starts and dead ends, with the conditions from which consciousness might emerge. And even our much touted awareness is within the context of a mostly autonomic biology that is only in the least terms autonomy. What we have to recognize is that the expansive terms of duration and enduring is not what time is, and that it is through the least term of not enduring and not attenuating duration that time is what it is and most real. The most infinitesimal deviation from the causal nexus is the most complete term of time. But it is never to be found in the continuity of that nexus. That is, the least term of time is all the differing it is. There is no "because..." to it. And recognition of this is never in your possession, but is always only known as something lost to you. Something worthy, and more what worth is, than all that endures your possession of it.

Is it possible to recognize when consciousness is lost?

Careful! It's a trick question. but there is an answer.

There is no downside to death, — boagie

I wouldn't say that. No more TPF. No more heroes. No more thoughts about quantum physics. No more carrot cake. No more walking the dog. No more painting. No more watching children play. -No more Coldplay, Rammstein, Killing Joke, Doors, Satie, Nat King Cole or System of a down. Not to forget Allanis Morrisette. Or Nina Hagen. No more loving. No more realizations...

Only the grim rebirth that awaits. To re-experience the growth to adulthood never to be obtained. Maybe I like death!

What about the chance to know what the dead really meant? (in the case of others' deaths) Or what they really think of you. (in the case of your own)

There is no downside to death, if one does not see it coming and there is no suffering involved, whether psychological or physical suffering. — boagie

Suffering occurs in life, not death. With death, life ends. And with it, suffering. There's neither a downside or advantages in death for the deceased. Besides, good or bad, it happens anyway!

In death, it is the persons who loved the deceased who suffer. So, from that viewpoint, there is a downside to death.

The things you have stated have already been well established in previous posts--- nothing to disagree about here.

People may think good or bad of you but in death, there is no experience, no feelings, what they think could have no effect.

No more, no more, you have to ask yourself, is it better to have lived or better to have never existed. Never to have experienced love, but also never to have experience the slings and arrows of life, in the form of nature red tooth and claw.

Possible only to a conscious observer, another consciousness.

That's the wrong way to look at it. We can't really get each other right in life, but we can interact and respond to each other, and the real measure we share is the character of honesty and discipline we bring to the drama of it. That drama is never complete in the sense that we achieve synchrony in our terms, but every measure of the quality of our participation in it is more complete than the quantity of synchrony to our terms. But even this is never a matter of established meaning or appropriated terms. What death brings to this is the completest possible recognition of how incomplete our participation is in that drama. But if that recognition is always more complete than all the terms we deem we share in life, then what we do share in, subterranean to the explicitly perceived meaning of our terms, is more real than that perception. The dead can no longer respond to our misperception of them. We can either arrogate that misperception or recognize how incomplete our participation with them is. But insofar as that participation is real, more real than our perceptions of it, then the dead are always as with us as they were in life anyway. You cannot remembrance the dead, for any perception of what they meant to us is distortion without the living response correcting, or modifying it. But you cannot eliminate the meaning our part in the drama, or dialectic, of always uncompleted terms is to our continued capacity for that drama among the yet living. Language does not emerge unilaterally, and death proves just how unalone we are in it, even, maybe even most, when we are at a loss for words.

Is perception finality?

I must admit to being puzzled by your post. Are you saying, we didn't really know the person alive and can know them even less when they are dead? Perhaps, I am missing the point, perhaps you could word it differently?

Self-deception imho is an integral part of human being. The topic of death does very well to illustrate this.

Either it's as you say and there is no downside to death - in which case our survival instinct would be a form of self-deception.

Or there is a downside to death, in which case your proclamation that there is none is an individual self-deception on your part.

So if we are to deceive ourselves either way, I might as well choose my delusions based on merit. — Hermeticus

I like your style. I vote for evolved self-deception. We're in the grip of a master madness, the fear of perfect sleep.

I wouldn't say that. No more TPF. No more heroes. No more thoughts about quantum physics. No more carrot cake. No more walking the dog. No more painting. No more watching children play. -No more Coldplay, Rammstein, Killing Joke, Doors, Satie, Nat King Cole or System of a down. Not to forget Allanis Morrisette. Or Nina Hagen. No more loving. No more realizations... — MikeBlender

I dig the catalog. I agree that we fear death as a loss of nice things. But we can reason that being dead involves no fear, no sense of loss. I'm in not rush, for reasons such as yours. But it's nice not to fear some absurd torture chamber at the end of the earthly journey.

From my witness of death of my father in the hospice, it was very painful process going into death. It was not some sort of momentary event. It was slow and gradual, sometimes up and down condition of the physical health, and deterioration of the mind into the demise.

I am not sure what happens after one's death, but it was evident that the process of death was very slow and painful prolonged suffering of months for the dying.

Of course, each and every death is different. But some can be long lasting painful process before the actual death. — Corvus

Sidepoint, but to me it sucks that our culture embraces pointlessly drawn-out and painful deaths for no reason that I find valid anyway. Obviously I wouldn't want death forced on other who felt the need to cling, but I do wish I could set up some auto-destruct feature for myself in case I'm unlucky enough to be trapped in some ugly state. For instance, maybe a stroke destroys my autonomy, or I'm paralyzed by an accident and physically can't choose to leave this world on my own terms (just having the choice would make post-accident life more endurable, I think.)