However, this realization, speaking only for myself, doesn't diminish the suffering I have to bear. I don't feel better about someone belittling me in public just because I happen to know that I am in illusion, an accident of circumstances, having no real essence and so on. In short, there is no self, doesn't necessarily imply there is no suffering. — Agent Smith

Then what is it that suffers?

So, you think that suffering can exist without awareness of it? I don’t think so. I think that suffering is possible exclusively in proportion to awareness: if awareness is 100, suffering is 100, if 50, 50, if awareness is 0, suffering is 0. The medical practice of anaestesia is scientific evidence of it. So, there is absolutely no difference between “actual suffering” and “awareness of suffering”. Suffering without awareness can produce body reactions, but these body reactions are not suffering: when only the body is suffering, nobody is suffering: when doctors are operating your body and you are totally under anaestesia, nobody is suffering. We can see that animals have degree of awareness as well and it is possible to practice anaestesia on animals as well. This seems to me scientific evidence hard to deny. — Angelo Cannata

If I break my arm, I am aware of the pain. In being aware of the pain, I am aware of my injury. You seem to be saying that I suffer because I am aware of the pain, not because I am in pain. To say that when the body is suffering no one is suffering, are you saying that you are not your body? What is it that you are referring to when you say, "you"? Are you referring to your body, brain, mind, soul, or what?

Then what is it that suffers? — Harry Hindu

And the good question award goes to none other than Harry Hindu!

To say that when the body is suffering no one is suffering, are you saying that you are not your body? What is it that you are referring to when you say, "you"? Are you referring to your body, brain, mind, soul, or what? — Harry Hindu

When I say “I”, I am referring to my subjective experience of feeling “I”, that, since it is subjective, is impossible to prove, otherwise it would become objective. So, I cannot say that I am my body, because this would make the meaning of “I” something objective.
I experience that my subjective feeling of “I” is connected, dependent, on some objective things: my body, external events, a lot of things, but “connected” and “dependent” does not mean that it is just an objective result of these elements.
I can put, for a moment, myself in a materialistic, scientific perspective, so that I understand that, for other people, I am just an object: they have no way to enter my subjectivity. But, when I put myself in the perspective coming from my inner experience of myself, which is the perspective of my subjectivity, it becomes impossible to me to reduce my experience of “I” to something objective. I feel my experience of my subjectivity as something undeniable to me; undeniable not because I am able to give evidence of it to myself. I cannot prove my subjectivity even to myself. I feel it undeniable because I feel myself inside it, it is a feeling; it cannot be anything more than feeling, otherwise it would be objective and provable.

You psychoanalyzed me señor! I'm most obliged. — Agent Smith

I would say i psychoanalyzed us, we humans, I wouldn't know your psychology from Schrödinger's cat's. Or is that cats'.

A weak person, who is afraid of all kinds of suffering or violence, will be overly protective of others. — M777

I disagree. You're conflating the idea of not simply "going along with the flow" and accepting suffering or violence or most importantly lack of innovation to prevent undesirable things as some sort of negative attribute. All while using the very same technology and innovation that solely exists as evidence to the contrary to spread your archaic and frankly barbaric and animalistic views of humanity. It's easy not to give a crap about someone or something else not immediately relevant to you. When did this become "brave" or even positive? This I believe you should look into. That or flee from. Though perhaps for the good of advancement of humanity it's best you stay right where you're at. It'll all be fine. At least, you will live and whatever else by your own proclaimed code. No one could possibly be blamed.

I would say i psychoanalyzed us, we humans, I wouldn't know your psychology from Schrödinger's cat's. Or is that cats'. — Bylaw

:lol:

So you use "suffering" and "pain" interchangeably yet the latter is involuntary and the former is voluntary. Are the Stoics, for example, mistaken that 'we suffer from how we deal with pain' and not principly from pain itself?

We say things like


3^rd person perspective.

1. My soul
2. My body
3. My brain
4. My mind
5. My dog

Compare 1, 2, 3, & 4 to 5

I'm not my dog. Surely then

1. I'm not my soul
2. I'm not my body
3. I'm not my brain
4. I'm not my mind

We also say

1^st person perspective

1. I'm thinking
2. I'm suffering

Who/what am I?

Cotard's delusion (severe case: I don't exist!)

Then what is it that suffers?
— Harry Hindu

And the good question award goes to none other than Harry Hindu! — Agent Smith

You misjudge me. I'm not looking for an award. I'm looking for an answer.

So you use "suffering" and "pain" interchangeably yet the latter is involuntary and the former is voluntary. Are the Stoics, for example, mistaken that 'we suffer from how we deal with pain' and not principly from pain itself? — 180 Proof

It seems to me that suffering is the awareness of being in pain. I'm not sure if any of it is voluntary. We have an injury, we have pain and we have an awareness of the injury via pain. Pain is the information while we are the informed and the injury is what we are informed of. There should be a difference in behavior between a p-zombie burning its hand on a hot stove vs. a human burning its hand on a hot stove because the p-zombie would never be informed its hand is burning on the hot stove.

You misjudge me. I'm not looking for an award. I'm looking for an answer. — Harry Hindu

Shut up and accept the trophy! :smile:

Why does the trophy say, "Agent Smith's Lower Expectations Award"?

Why does the trophy say, "Agent Smith's Lower Expectations Award"? — Harry Hindu

:snicker:

we have no evidence that somebody is suffering inside a body showing alarm signs of suffering — Angelo Cannata

The being suffers and it manifests that in a lot of various ways. What other evidence shoulld we expect?
How do you mean "somebody" inside a body? A spirit or soul? Impossible. If you believe in the duality of body-spirit, the spirit can be inside the boyd as well as outside. What other entity can exist in a body?

Nobody would say that we should protect computers from violence — Angelo Cannata

Aren't virus attacks on computers acts of violence, esp. malware? Shouldn't we protect them from such attacks?

I'm sorry --and I don't like having to say this-- but your assumptions/propositions/statements lack foundation and sense.

Breaking a leg seems more like pointless suffering than suffering and suffering shouldn't be generalized as these types of events.

Who/what am I? — Agent Smith

This is where I do my bit and say that 'you' are the thing that gets in trouble if 'you' break the rules. Or gets a Scooby snack when 'you' are a good boy. 'You' have to give reasons for what you say is true or for the weird thing you got caught doing. ('I' am caught up basically in the same play, of course, so I'm using the second person when I could be using the first.)

I say this from a perspective that emphasizes that 'you' is a mark/noise traded according to mostly tacit and always evolving rules by curiously inventive monkeys on the third rock from the sun. These monkeys, like other animals, are hungry and horny, and useful and dangerous to one another. So the 'game' of these marks and noises is primarily about organizing the cooperative and occasionally warlike monkey lifestyle. We are the monkeys who make promises. It's evolution, baby.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDaOgu2CQtI
"I am the first mammal to make plans."

Who/what am I? — Agent Smith

IME, you / we are the kind of What which deludes itself that it's also a Who in order to deny to itself that it's nothing but a (strange looping) What. :eyes:

The self then is an ethical entity. Nice!

IME, you / we are the kind of what which deludes itself that it's also a who in order to deny to itself that it's nothing but a (strange looping) what. :eyes: — 180 Proof

We must do what we can to survive; it has to do with joy and suffering.

The self then is an ethical entity. Nice! — Agent Smith

Well put !

I was reading Brandom on Kant and something 'obvious' moved to the foreground for me. The metaphysical status of the self is secondary. We could debate about it endlessly. But we who would be debating would be those ethical entities you mention, justifying our claims and demanding that others do so. And we of course remember which little boys have cried wolf, an we gauge the reliability of statements according to the evaluated credulousness or creditability of the claimant. Scorekeeping.

It looks as though, apart from ethics, the self is as good as nonexistent - a stone falls, a book falls, we fall (for gravity there is no self, re anatta).

It looks as though, apart from ethics, the self is as good as nonexistent - a stone falls, a book falls, we fall (for gravity there is no self, re anatta). — Agent Smith

That sounds right to me. The self is a virtual or conventional or ethical entity.

:ok: