I think it does seem a bit hazy, but ultimately it comes down to the way you look at it. It's a bit like science stating that the earth goes around the sun when ordinary perception suggests that it's the other way around. Sometimes different perspectives can be reconciled and other times they can't. So, you can use different perspectives for different purposes and/or in different situations or go for a hierarchy of perspectives in which scientific, psychological, and philosophical/logical perspectives are arranged in some kind of order that makes sense to you and, if possible, to others. — Apollodorus

You might've hit the nail on the head there. Anekantavada (not-one-sidedness doctrine)

Anekāntavāda (Hindi: अनेकान्तवाद, "many-sidedness") is the Jain doctrine about metaphysical truths that emerged in ancient India. It states that the ultimate truth and reality is complex and has multiple aspects.[2] Anekantavada has also been interpreted to mean non-absolutism, "intellectual Ahimsa" — Wikipedia

By the way, it appears that anekantavada is precisely the view that my exposition on Heraclitus and Parmenides in the OP espouses. When one hears/reads the word "change", we immediately jump to the conclusion that these two Greek sages were talking about the same thing and in the same sense, causing us to wrongly infer that they were contradicting each other.

Nevertheless, note that Parmenides insisted that change was/is an illusion, contradicting, as it were, Heraclitus for whom change was/is all there is. Zeno of Elea thought up a series of paradoxes to prove his teacher Parmenides' position that change was/is an illusion. For some reason, Zeno focused on motion and through some clever arguments generated contradictions around it. The objective? To demonstrate motion as illusory.

Then Newton and Leibniz come along and invent calculus, the former executing this tour de force "...on just a dare..." according to Neil deGrasse Tyson :fire: . Anyway, calculus features in the "solution" for Zeno's paradoxes using, to my knowledge, the mathematical notion of limits. I vaguely remember someone using the word, "flux"; seems apposite since Newton talks of fluxions in his calculus.

I have a feeling that Zeno's paradoxes eventually lead up to the debate between rationalism and empiricism because motion is impossible if, well, you think about it (mathematically that is) but motion is actual/possible if we observe it.

Zeno used infinity in his paradoxes. Spells trouble any which way you slice that cake.

You may recall the discussion of the simile of the poison arrow. The thrust of that simile is that trying to resolve such questions is like asking about ‘who shot the arrow’, ‘what kind of wood is it made from’, and so on, instead of seeking treatment for the poison and dying as a consequence. — Wayfarer

Graham Priest believes that the Buddha would've considered such queries as a, I quote, "...waste of time..." Why do I feel like I've been pondering these very questions up until now? :chin:

Nevertheless, I recall discussing this matter with you or someone else before, many suns ago. While the Buddha makes sense of course from a triage perspective, he seems to have overlooked the fact that the poisoned arrow matters only because we lack good, satisafactory answers to the questions he dismisses as inappropriate. No?

As regards the ineffable nature of Nirvāṇa - it has always been understood that there is no way to understand it short of actually reaching or realising it — Wayfarer

I see the marks of a paradox in this. If nirvana is, as you and others claim, ineffable, it follows, doesn't it?, that no one know what it is. If so, how will someone recognize it when fae attains it? It appears that the criterion for identifying buddhas is lost to history, assuming there was one in the first place.

I'm especially concerned about this because there could be many, many ineffables. For instance, qualia - everday, mundane, routine - is also ineffable but nirvana, for certain (?), can't be the experience of qualia, right? Thus, necessarily all ineffables aren't enlightenment and this immediately raises the question of how one identifies buddhahood? The answer is not going to be very encouraging because an ineffable can't be put into words and that which can't be worded can't be understood. I'm rambling, aren't I but, in my defense, a genuine doubt.

Well, yes, because people's belief is based on their perception of change. In the case of the sphere the object retains its shape, therefore, psychologically it is "the same object" with a different color whilst the cup has changed into a candle and, psychologically at least, it is a different object.

The way we perceive or interpret things psychologically isn't the same way they are seen in scientific terms. — Apollodorus

The matter is, to my reckoning, wholly determined by some pecking order for properties à la Hume's notion of primary and secondary qualities. If not, there's no continuity between something and that which it changes into and the distinction x changed into y and x was replaced by y can't be made. It's still a bit hazy for me.

May not be relevant but I've installed this strategy game on my old laptop - Civilization VI - and when I begin a new game, I get a settler unit close to a good tile to found a city but set that aside for the moment and let's look at my other most valuable unit, a scout.

The map of the world chosen is shrouded in what gamers will immediately recognize as the irksome fog of war. The scout's job is to explore the map, can be done either manually or in automatic mode, and reveal resources, city-friendly tiles, natural wonders, other civilizations, friendlies, and foes (barbarians or other belligerents).

Once a scout reveals parts of the map, we can send settlers to build more cities that can maximize benefits for my civilization in terms of wealth, knowledge, tourism, military power, and so on. However, what's interesting is, once I've developed a tile's resources as uncovered by a scout, keeping the scout on that tile or others I've already capitalized on is a total waste of a scout's innate exploratory skills. I must, should, send my scout units to the edges of my cities' borders, out into areas of the map still obscured by the fog of war. That's what scouts (are supposed to) do!

If I take a red sphere and put it on a conveyor belt, part of which is hidden by a curtain, and out on the other side emerges a yellow sphere, the usual response of most people would be the sphere changed color.

In the same setting, if I place a cup of water on the converyor belt and then a burning candle emerges from the other side, people would generally think the cup of water was replaced by a burning candle.

Sorry for the double post but I really need your opinion on this. The Mu state of mind that we were discussing is also humorously reffered to as N/A (not applicable). An illustration:

Name: Smith
Age: 4 years old
Gender: Male
Occupation: N/A

Asking questions that make sense in the so-called nominal reality (the one unenlightened beings exist in) of ultimate reality (the world of enlightened beings) is to commit the same error as asking for the occupation of 4 year old toddler Smith above. N/A!

Graham Priest believes the correct, most appropriate, Western concept to apply to Budhhahood and the way Buddhas contemplate is the ineffable - a state of being that's beyond, out of reach of, words.

Preist then goes on to talk about the paradox inherent in describing/attempting to describe the ineffable (indescribable). I've mentioned a few months ago that this particularly unenviable position is nothing other than "beating around the bush" and never really getting to the bush itself. Nevertheless, we at least know there's a bush out there somewhere. Unfortunately, we no know nothing else about this "bush" or what it conceals from us :rofl:

All this thinking seems to be foreplay?!

Also see Graham Priest on Nagarjuna (Aeon Magazine). — Wayfarer

Read the linked article. Almost felt him as a kindred spirit but Priest is a full-time philosopher and I'm just a beginner. :sad:

Anyway, here's what I discovered in Priest's writing:

1. For every given propositionn there are only 4 possible states in re truth and they are:
i) True (t)
ii) False (f)
iii) Both true and false (t,f)
iv) Neither true nor false ( n )

Priest claims that, with reference to the question of the Buddha's existence beyond death, the Catuskoti is meant to negate every possible answer and that he goes on to claim erects an entirely separate category of possibility viz.

v) Ineffable (i)

At first, I was under the impression that option iv) Neither true nor false was what people would treat as ineffable. Priest's reasoning for why this isn't so is, let's just say, based on a technicality: Priest believes that (t v n) is true but (t v i) is ineffable and thus n and i aren't the same. My own opinion on this is that n can be conceived of as a possibility despite not making any sense insofar as sense is a function of truth value but to ask someone to contemplate i is to quite literally ask that person to think of the impossible as possible.

Your thoughts...

NDE — Jack Cummins

No comment!

I am aware of one problem with what you are saying, 'When we are asleep, thinking ceases', because it clearly doesn't. When we are asleep, dreaming, thinking is present. The narrator consciousness and ego remain. In most instances, we remain aware of identity. In dreams we remain in the 'I' consciousness, rather than just immersed in a sea of images — Jack Cummins

Agreed, we dream but that's only during REM sleep. There's the NREM sleep we can't ignore.

It is just so strange that this thread popped up out of the blue again, when I was in the middle of reading and writing on current threads. The threads themselves seem to have life after death. — Jack Cummins

I propose a set of equations:

1. Physicalism: Brain + Thoughts = Consciousness
2. Nonphysicalism: Brain + Immaterial Mind + Thoughts = Xonsciousness

When we sleep, thinking ceases but the brain/immaterial mind continues on.

When we die, as per physicalism, consciousness ceases, the thing capapble of consciousness (brain) is destroyed, end of story.

However, according to nonphysicalism, the immaterial mind (the thing capable of consciousness) survives death and, in some religions, is transferred to another body (reincarnation).

From equations 1 and 2 above, we get,

3. [Physicalism] Brain + Thoughts = [Nonphysicalism] Brain + Immaterial Mind + Thoughts

Subtracting Thoughts from both sides, we get,

4. [Physicalism] Brain = [Nonphysicalism] Brain + Immaterial Mind

At this point we can conclude that the physicalist brain is identical to the nonphysicalist brain with an immaterial mind. Ockham's razor, duely applied, should shave off the immaterial mind and we're left with only the brain.

For obvious reasons, consciousness has been defined as thinking (about something) i.e. it's understood as awareness (of something) and there's a lot of debate about whether consciousness survives death or not. There seems to be a problem with this particular question, "does consciousness survive death?" because that's like asking will the image inside the camera persist after the camera's been deatroyed?

If anything, there's a real possibiity that there's an immaterial mind that has the potential for awareness (of something). We're conflating thoughts/thinking with mind when we assert that there's no mind when thinking ceases. That's like saying the eye ceases to exist in the dark when no images are formed on the retina.

the case against Darwinian evolution — fishfry

What would that look like?

I have flogged this — Tom Storm

OMG! And I've been flogging it too. :sad: Will stop now. G'day! Have fun!

So, I am interested in other people's thoughts on the question of what becomes of consciousness at death? — Jack Cummins

Try Nagarjuna's tetralemma "technique" (some find this description fails to do justice to the idea). Take a proposition or sentence, say this one, "I'm conscious" and tell yourself this: I don't affirm it, I don't deny it, I don't affirm and deny it, and last but not the least, neither do I affirm it nor do I deny it. What should happen, by my "calculations", is the sentence "I'm conscious" should become unthinkable i.e. you banish the thought I'm conscious" from the mind world. Every other sentence should be similarly dealt with until your mind becomes empty (of all thoughts) - the mind should, if all goes as planned, stop thinking. That's what happens to consciousness at death!

What's the point? you might ask. A simple one in my humble opinion: you can be alive but have no thoughts. If so, what is death in re mind?

How does this help? — Tom Storm

The existence of a God is simply our expectations in re a perfect moral authority (one who knows his stuff) being met. A perfect moral authority would be able to, in a manner of speaking, see through the haze that enshrouds the moral universe and identify every person, action, speech, and thought as either good or bad with the category uncertain/ambiguous/possibly both good and bad being the null set. I don't understand your objections since you know that atheistic moral theories like utilitarianism lack universal endorsement precisely because human actions are morally ambiguous in them.

I'd delegate that job to an intelligent designer!!!! — fishfry

This is the heart of the matter. Those who deny an intelligent designer must concede that evolution is an intelligent design. Thus, those who deny the existence of a creator deity must concede that intelligent designer present = intelligent designer absent. Hence, the mind, no-mind equivalency paradox. For those who believe in an intelligent designer, there's no issue at all - the "intelligence" displayed by evolution matches perfectly with their belief.

Yes it is, so you don't need address that. What about my key point? No one can know what God wants so morality is still dependent on argument. Theism does not offer any certainty over atheism. All positions come down to arguing a case for one particular moral view or another. — Tom Storm

You're missing the point but the fault is entirely mine. Apologies. It's not about what God wants, it's about what we expect from God.

I'd delegate that job to an intelligent designer!!!! — fishfry

You're avoiding the question which means you understood my point!

Thoughtful planning using the best available information, imperfect though it may be, would always be better than acting randomly and hoping for a favorable outcome. I can't fathom your assertion to the contrary. Or if you were paraphrasing the OP, I can't fathom that either. — fishfry

A simple question: Given what we know and what we don't how would you design evolution? In other words, if you were on the team that designs evolution, what sort of features would make it robust?

The claim was that acting randomly was better than trying to intelligently plan. I can't understand that. Nobody would live their life like that. — fishfry

The solution would depend on the problem, right?

unattainable notion of perfect moral authority — Tom Storm

That's an entirely different question. God may not exist but we know now what God is - the ultimate moral theory that enables us to assert, without an iota of doubt, black is black and white is white!

We'll need to explore the matter of Kantian morality very carefully. What's relevant to the OP is how Kant's position on lying being immoral is non-negotiable. In layman's terms, lying is always bad. Period! The matter of why mendacity is bad seems to be a different issue from why being untrutfhul is always bad. In utilitarianism, for example, a case can be made that lying is bad but no utilitarian has been able to argue that lying is always unethical. In fact, lying isn't always bad for a utilitarian.

Let's look at how Kant deals with telling falsehoods. The categorical imperative states that if an action L can't be adopted universally i.e. made into a law applicable to all and at all times, L can't be good and, conversely, if L is amenable to such a treatment, L has to be good. I'm employing lying in my analysis but I'm certain that we can generalize the argument to all morally-apt actions.

In my analogy, Kant's categorical imperative would correspond to, should we consider the white object black in all cases (in the light and also in the dark)? No, of course not! However, there seems to be no issue with treating the object as white even in the dark. Can we make lying into a law? No we can't. Can we make being truthful a law? Yes, of course!

What does this mean at all?

If you ask me, there's a moral asymmetry - good actions retain their goodness so to speak even in situations that might not be appropriate for them. Bad actions, despite being good on occasion still feel wrong. For instance, even if the truth hurts, it doesn't lose its goodness but a lie, even if it saves the world, pricks the conscience. This moral asymmetry is, I'm afraid, the intuition that we've all had at some point in our lives and Kant's categorical imperative puts it on a firm rational foundation.

Yes. But the Enformationism worldview provides a novel vocabulary to explain that vital distinction : the difference that makes a difference to sentient creatures. That theory pictures Evolution as a process of converting simple into complex, and potential into actual. Information (EnFormAction) is the universal Force that causes such progressive change -- from lifeless matter, to living matter, to thinking minds. And that creative Energy exists in both physical and metaphysical forms, just as intangible Energy can be converted into palpable Mass, which we interpret as Matter. :nerd: — Gnomon

Is Enformationism your pet theory? I'm inclined to agree that everything is about information. Why? Take a model toy car for example. We convert it into information - a blueprint consisting of instructions on how to build it, complete with pictures from different angles - and transmit this information from, say, the US to a factory in Malaysia and voila! we have exact replicas, indistinguishable as it were from the original, being churned out by the millions. Information! Living organisms too seem similar - genes serving as information carriers.

On this view though, there's nothing really special about consciousness, is there? We simply need to get matter in the right configuration and out pops on the other side consciousness.

Mutation doesn't drive evolution: it permits evolution. Environmental changes drive evolution. Mutation is the noise, not the parameters or the cost function, in a comparable optimisation problem.

And as for strategies, the imperfection of copying a large amount of data using mindless biological machines with no oversight is the opposite of one. Pre-life physical laws account for this noise, no intent required. What we have evolved instead is strategies for the opposite: the surprisingly high fidelity of RNA copying. If we must infer an intent, surely that was to staunch random mutation? But this too is perfectly explicable in terms of environmental selection pressures. — Kenosha Kid

Don't mind me saying but you seem to be, I myself guilty of the same error, focused on only one aspect of the evolutionary mechanism that's genetics. I suggest we exercise caution before we jump to conclusions.

There are two aspects to genetics:

1. The hi-fi replication complete with error-correction mechanisms during DNA copying

2. The mutability of DNA despite 1 above

The situation is rather complex. If adaptation is necessary for survival, DNA needs to be able to mutate considering how the environment may change unpredictably (2 above) . Yet, once an effective adaptation has been acquired, it must be maintained for the period of time the environment is stable (1 above). In other words, our genetic mechanism must maintain a fine balance between fidelity of DNA and mutability of DNA, The situation is akin to guns: we don't want to use a gun but we need to own one (just in case) :chin:

My posts have been emphasizing 2 above and you've kindly reminded me that's only half the story. Let's then take both together and see what we can make of it? The question is, is owning a gun in the current social climate in the US a good strategy? The answer seems to be "yes"! What does that mean for genetics in re evolution? Is current genetics, as it operates within the setting of long periods of stability punctuated by drastic and random shifts in the environment, a good gameplan? :chin:

Haven't followed the thread, only responding to this. But I don't agree. Say I'm a wooly mammoth and I notice the climate is getting cooler. By random chance I would mate with any old mammoth and if the weather gets colder and I mated with a not-so-woolly mammoth, my offspring would be out of luck. But if I'm a smart, planning kind of mammoth, I would mate with the wooliest mammoth I could find so as to give my offspring the best chance of survival in the coming cold snap.

In other words planning beats chance. Right? — fishfry

"...IF the weather gets colder..." The point is we have to make decisions without knowing all the relevant information. What sort of plan would you recommend?

The same thing is true for religious morality which varies according to the denomination, church, preacher/Iman, and varies with the subjective preferences of individual believers. We have no way of knowing what a higher consciousness thinks our moral choices should be so why make the claim it provides a foundation? — Tom Storm

You're barking up the wrong tree. That there are different Gods, one or many for every culture, is irrlevant. God or gods, in whichever culture fae/they are found in, represnt the idea of a perfect moral authority - an infallible creator of mora laws - and that's what the issue is all about? All atheistic moral theories - utilitarianism, Kantian - aim to be God-like when it comes to moral codification i.e. the idea is to enable a clear distinction between good and bad in every case without ambiguity. You know, no doubt, that extant moral theories are considered inadequate precisely because they can't do that.

What does that have to do with anything I said? — Zelebg

Imagine an empty digital photo, say with resolution of 900x900 pixels and 900 colours. It potentially can hold a picture of every planet, star and galaxy that ever was and will ever be, at any arbitrary given time, from every possible angle, every possible altitude. It can hold every photo and movie frame that was ever taken and will be taken, every scene that was ever seen and will be seen, dreamt or imagined by every human or alien that ever was and will ever be. It can also contain every page of every book that existed, exists, and will ever exist... it potentially contains a picture of anything that was and can ever be, a picture of everything that can possibly be, both in reality or imagination, and yet the number of those pictures is not infinite.

Therefore, the universe, along with the number of things, actions, or concepts, is not, and cannot be infinite, not even potentially. Right? — Zelebg

1. You're assuming that such a photo can be taken i.e. you're begging the question.

2. Take an everyday photograph, say, of mount Fuji. Obviously, you won't be able to focus on every single blade of grass that can be found on its slopes. In other words, details are missing and we all know the devil is in the details. Put simply, the photograph of mount Fuji will contain less information than mount Fuji. Same goes for every photograph - the finitude of a photograph doesn't entail the finitude of that which is being photgraphed.

Huh. Plato's ethics? Virtue Ethics? Stoicism? Confucianism? Buddhism?

If you hold the "Big Daddy" view of God, your moral point of view is inherently childish, selfish and fearful--what won't you do to avoid a good spanking? What would you do if there was no spanker, or if spanking took a holiday, so to speak?

https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2003/10/04/ — Ciceronianus the White

It seems there's been a slight confusion. Entirely my fault. Apologies.

There are two roles God fulfills viz. 1) legisilator (maker of laws) and 2) judge (punishment of moral offenses). What Dostoevsky means by "if there is no God, everything is permitted" has more to do with God's function as a legislator than a judge. I'm not in any way saying that God as judge doesn't have an effect on the conduct of the faithful - it does, Hell is an effective deterrent just as prison and capital punishment are.

To elaborate, God would, being an authority/expert on morality, issue moral decrees that are crystal clear. What do I mean by "...moral decrees that are crystal clear"? One only has to take a look at atheistic moral theories, those which you mention above and others, to come to the realization that they're all less than perfect, meaning a particular action can, on certain occasions, be good and in a different situation, the exact same action can be bad. Put simply, our conduct is morally ambiguous insofar as moral ambiguity means good in one case but bad in another.

God, on the other hsnd, can be understood as the personification of perfect morality and, by that token, will smoothen out all the wrinkles - moral paradoxes that are part and parcel of current atheistic ethics - and what this should achieve is a code of morals that draws a clear boundary between what's good and what's bad.

Basically, atheistic moral theories are missing definitive answers to moral questions. An act is sometimes good and at other times bad which implies that all acts are neither obligatory (good) nor prohibited (bad). In short, everything is permitted, you just have to know the right situation for a particular action. Compare this particularly unsatisfactory state of affairs with divine morality - God's moral decrees would consist of a list of absolute dos and don'ts that are universal (applies to everyone and at all times) i.e. it'll be able neatly categorize actions as either definitely good or certainly bad, no grey areas.

Propositions are truth-bearers, so explain to me how any species without discursive language produces, assents to or communicates truths — 180 Proof

I think this definition of truth is too narrow, I would even go so far as to say that you're guilty of anthropocentrism by restraining truth to human language. Animals that lack human level like languages can and surely must handle truth for they can't afford to lose touch with reality, doing so would be nearly always fatal to them.

they "become survival engines" by not dying off. — 180 Proof

My thoughts exactly - the would have to know the difference between what's edible and what's inedible and to whom they're edible and aren't these truths, truths they would need to know to survive?

I don't want to spoil it for you but, if you ask me, an image isn't the object it's an image of or as @180 Proof might've said, the map isn't the territory.

Again, mind is what a sufficiently complex brain does. — 180 Proof

how do you make the Quantum Leap from Brain to Mind? — Gnomon

I maybe way off the mark but I've always felt that the difference between the mind (humans) and mindless life (bacteria) is greater ergo, harder to explain than the difference between life (bacteria) and the lifeless (stone). This is what Gnomon is probably referring to by Quantum leap.

Having said that, we've been able to replicate logic, an ability we pride ourselves as possessing, we even go so far as to define ourselves with it, on unmistakably dead matter (computers) while as of yet being unable to create a synthetic cell that can match up to a single bacterium.

Our brains are adapted for making trial & error correlations — 180 Proof

That works for me.

Natural selection shows, Fool, that our mammalian brains are, in fact, fundamentally survival engines and not "truth" (causation) engines. — 180 Proof

Well put! What's interesting though is to become successful survival engines, living organisms must be truth engines. To assume otherwise would be like thinking it's possible to be a philosopher without giving a damn about truth - philosophizing is about caring about truth just like survival is.

Actually, do eat some. — Bartricks

:smile: :ok:

don't eat yellow snow — Bartricks

Thanks for the advice! :up:

:up: G'day.

A reply worthy of a buddhist. — Bartricks

Don't mistake the sign for the referent.

How is it a hindrance? To be intelligent is to be responsive to Reason. And to be good is to behave in a manner, and instantiate traits of character, that Reason approves of. Reason is not going to disapprove of being responsive to her, and the more responsive one is, the more likely one is to be someone she approves of. So intelligence will generally help one to be good, not pose an obstacle to it. It may not be necessary, but it isn't a hindrance. — Bartricks

Adam, Eve, The Serpent, The Tree Of Knowledge, Original Sin. You do the math.

Religion reminds me of an old movie in which the villain and the hero are having a verbal duel, a prelude to 5 minutes of no holds barred fighting

Villain (very proudly addressing the hero): Look around you, you piece of shit. All that you can see, as far as the eye can see, all of it is mine. [Human]

Hero (very calmly); Indeed but the thing is, what lies beyond, beyond all that you can see, all of that is mine! [God]

I have never met an intelligent buddhist. Indeed, 'buddhist' means 'bullshittist'. So that a buddhist thinks x is not in any way shape or form good evidence that x. — Bartricks

:sad: When it comes to being good, one's IQ is a hindrance! Buddhism is about pure compassion come hell or high water! Can't think/reason your way out of that one, can you? Just saying...

in states of meditation, and I felt so much more relaxed after the sessions — Jack Cummins

All the woo (e.g. "subtle bodies" "astral projections" "clairvoyance") jibber-jabbered already on this thread is just folks making shit up ex post facto generalized and myth-ified aka "New Agery". — 180 Proof

I don't know what you all believe in and I don't really care.
As long as we're making shit up, go hog-wild, you know. — Bill Hicks (1961 - 1994) American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, and musician

But then...

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. — Hamlet

I don't want to ruffle your feathers 180 Proof but I think you should see this, you too Jack Cummins



August Kekulé (1829 - 1896)

Ouroboros

To both Jack Cummins & 180 Proof

Since I've put you both in the right frame of mind, might I suggest a certain approach, a systematic methodology to, dare I say it?, interpret dreams?

I'll only get the ball rolling, where you want to go with it is entirely up to you two of course.

It's my personal opinion that we humans are mainly interested in causality - our brains seem to be wired that way as evidenced by how humanity, taken as a whole, has interacted both within, among ourselves, and without, with the world. From ancient religions to modern science, it's been all about causality, causality, causality, and more causality.

Given this is so, the mind, when dreaming, could be tapping into the causal web [the interconnected complex network of causes and effects] if such can be thought to exist and thus accessed by the mind in certain, as of yet unknown, states, dreaming being one of them.

If you humor my hypothesis then it becomes quite obvious what the next step is in our quest to understand dreams. Causation, as Hume succinctly described it, requires temporal (time) and spatial (space) contiguity. The former, if you'll allow me some wiggle room, is just another name for coincidence and Carl G. Jung's (1875 - 1961) idea of synchronicity may come in handy although Jung was very clear that synchronicity should be viewed as an Acausal Connecting Principle :point: Synchronicity (Book).

As for the latter (space/venue), it seems secondary to coincidences(time) if one takes into consideration Action at a distance. Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), a friend of Jung's was dead against such an idea and famously called it Spooky action at a distance. Anyway, Jung was interested in the paranormal and action at a distance, spooky or not, was part and parcel of paranormal phenomena (ESP/Sixth Sense, Psychokinesis) [Warning 180 Proof: woo-woo.

In short, focus on, investigate, the time aspects of dreams and see if you can somehow discover coincidences in them. If you find one, it might point you in the right direction; mind you, the coincidences don't have to be causal (acausal connecting principle), instead think of them as slice of time and whichever events might've happened "simultaneously" from a certain frame of reference (Relativity Of Simultaneity) will show up together in one's dreams. I won't go into spatial aspects of dreams for the reasons that space seems not as important as time for causality (spooky action at a distance vis-à-vis the paranormal) and maybe, just maybe, the dreaming mind may only be concerned with time, blocking out or ignoring space completely. Timing might possibly be the determining factor for causality.

That's all I could think of. I hope it was helpful Jack Cummins, Jungian buff and I hope it was entertaining 180 Proof if only because you got wind of how woo-woo, woo-woo can get.

Adios Señoras/Señoritas, as the case may be.

P.S. There's a coincidence hidden in this post. Can you spot it? Hint: Jung!

“What sort of philosophy one chooses depends, therefore, on what sort of man one is; for a philosophical system is not a dead piece of furniture that we can accept or reject as we wish, it is rather a thing animated by the soul of the person who holds it.” — spirit-salamander

:clap:

This kinda paradoxical situation arises precisely when we lack definitive answers to questions in a given area/subject/discipline. Why is it a paradox? It's one because philosophy goes all out of its way to project an image of absolute objectivity and attempts to maintain a safe distance from subjectivity, a concept cognate with taste/personal preference but, try as philosophers might, their attempts to remain objective has not borne the expected fruits. Thus, not surprisingly, they've given their subjective side just the right amount of freedom to, well, do what it wants, no strings attached, no questions asked.

That said, philosophy, it appears, is a very broad discipline and though it might've begun with the spirit of fairness in judgement, it has, over the centuries, acquired a new persona that not only tolerates but also encourages the study of subjective human experiences. This, as far as I'm aware, has spawned a new generation of thinkers investigating the subjective aspects of our mind and how they impact/bear on our relationship to the world. In the simplest sense, philosophy treats tastes/personal preferences as perfectly legit domains of inquiry and also warmly embraces anything that might be all subjectivity and no objectivity.

The problem with that argument is that people do remember dreams. Perhaps not always and not perfectly, but dream recollection isn't at all unusual. What seems to be the case is that we remember dreams that appear to have a meaning or are otherwise of importance to us personally.

IMO the fact that sometimes people aren't sure whether their experience was a dream or something more real is a separate issue. — Apollodorus

 If you have trouble remembering dreams, you're in good company. Most of us have 4 to 6 dreams a night, but we forget the vast majority of them. — www.healthline.com

The Brain May Actively Forget In Dream Sleep (NIH)

We all have our own little problems.