A couple more.

Yes I know, but if there is some kind of transcendent existence of which we are a part, or an expression, then art may be equally transcendent.

I spent three hours with an art installation called Another Place, by Anthony Gormley, in Liverpool yesterday afternoon. It was one of the most exhilarating and constructive and remarkable experiences of my life and will have repercussions for years I expect.
These are a couple of the photos produced as a result, I took hundreds.

The Bower bird and the bird of paradise are both good artists and have a highly developed artistic appreciation. However they have no idea what art is, or that they are artists. Termites are brilliant sculptors, with no awareness that they are doing any such thing. Picasso was aware of the absurdity of trying to define(confine) Art, while realising that we as intelligent beings are in a sense artists all the time in everything we do. Perhaps the more one has appreciation of art, the more one is an artist.

It seems to me that one can approach art from different directions, such as the spiritual. One ought at least to recognise the distinction between the intellectual appreciation of art, the art object itself(or artefact) and the act of creating the art(or the artist).

The living(entity) is the artist,
The perceived is the artefact, the art object,
The realisation of the artefact as art by the living entity is artistic appreciation, or Art.

Just shape shift your way out of it.

He combined self esteem with humility.

But if you think you don't deserve punishment, then you can't be saved

This is encompassed in my phrase "turn to God". For a person to turn to God during the soul searching in the crisis of the athiest* on the death bed, it is the subject stripped of their self conception who in humility offers themselves up. If the subject is in a state of denial as you suggest, they are not at the point of crisis, but rather of denial. As such they have not turned to God.

* in reality this crisis is not only faced by the atheist, but by all who are not devout, or at peace with themselves.

Maybe, but that's mercy. They certainly don't deserve it, which is what I'm claiming.

I think that the wager is not so much concerned with such notions, it's more to do with soul searching in the subject making the choice.

Whether they don't deserve it? well I heard that whomsoever turns to God is allowed in. That all that is required for salvation is to turn to God. That in our ignorance we can't judge which way the weighing scales will fall.

God and belief in him is not a business deal. You'll never get to Heaven if you treat belief in God as a business deal, the way Pascal's Wager treats it. Pascal's wager was a mere "in your face" showed to those who claimed to not believe in God because it wasn't profitable to believe in God in this world (you'd have to give up on the "fun"). The wager points that the "fun" is really in truth nothing. If you give it up in this world, you haven't given much up - even if there is no God. But if there is a God, and you give up God, then you have lost infinitely. Regardless of the truth, the safest option is God. The irony is that belief in God is ultimately superior - even in this world, and even if there is no God.

I'm not sure you are getting to the crisis which the wager addresses. It is a universal crisis which people have faced throughout our history, well at least after the point in which a God was seriously considered within society(a very long time ago). People who have a conception of a God or creator find themselves on the point of death in the predicament of facing that being face to face, you know, the pearly gates. So some may turn to God at that moment, to offer themselves up. This is quite rational, but what about the atheist, who turns and offers themselves up? What has gone on in their mind to cause this turning to God? And surely if they offer in all sincerity, with all their heart, would they not be accepted and delivered by god?

I have come to this thread late, so haven't read through it all.
I would point out that this issue is not really philosophical in the rational or logical sense. But rather a theological question, a question which presents itself to atheists and irreligious people upon death. I share Cavacava's observation that it becomes of pressing importance, even a crisis, to some people upon their death bed and is well documented. It can do away with a lifetimes conviction in a moment, in favour of what can be described as mystical experiences.

In reality "logic" is dispensed with early in the crisis and "reason" is harnessed to go beyond reason in a theological journey which is akin to the psychological "fight", or struggle with oneself the moment before a parachute jump, or bungee jump. This would suggest that it is a question of experience, not thought and conviction.

The balance in the wager is a no brainier, because on the one hand there is the bliss, comfort and divine embrace of faith in deliverance. While on the other hand is oblivion and an irrelevance of any abandoning of atheist conviction. It can only be a win win situation if the choice is in the affirmative any it can only be a loose loose situation of despair, or vacuous acceptance of oblivion, in the negative.

Why would an atheist cling to their conviction when rationally it is an irrelevance, because their sense of self esteem and integrity is teetering on a precipice of indifference, irrelevance, an infinite timeless void of nothingness. Why not follow the conceit of a belief in the afterlife for the last few minutes and hours of life, simply for comfort and a moments peace? Who knows you might wake up in heaven a few moments later, in the blink of an eye? And if you don't it doesn't matter because you don't exist anyway, by that point?

There is a move to give the rights of a person to primates.

We need to invest in and develop zoos as we will have to rely on them to keep many species in existence certainly during the next generation. The scientific and technical knowledge surrounding this endeavour needs to be developed now while the species in question can still be found in the wild.

The millennium seed bank is in my country, which is taking seriously the preservation of as many species of plants as is possible. Unfortunately animals can't be preserved so easily.

Philosophy can help us to understand what we don't know and what we can say about what we do know. Thus achieving some balance and perspective on our predicament.

Where else would this occur?

I am happy and I have a happy cat. We live a happy life together. I am on ocassion aware and a little sad that there are unhappy people and unhappy cats in the world and how difficult it would be to make them happy. So I accept a little responsibility not to give to many treats, to keep a tidy house (etc..), to stroke and talk to the cat a few times a day etc.. and carry on with my happy life.

Modern speculative physics is the very same thing, sophistry. It is highly educated individuals simply seeking money to support their stream of false information. If they are to be rousted, as the sophists which they are, where else to start this movement other than a philosophy forum?

A point is reached where the person who (or the public opinion which) decides whether the money flows into the coffers, has to take the "truth" on faith, rather than understanding it in person. From this point on, the more inaccessible the sophistry, the better. The money continues to flow regardless, on faith alone. The problem then becomes looking as though you are doing something worthwhile, to justify the diversion of resources. It was in the mediaeval monasteries where this was perfected. They devised a scheme whereby the worth was to be realised in the afterlife (buying your way into heaven), so there was no way to test it.

So in this case perhaps we should be looking for the worth of the funding, are the money dispensers taking it all on faith? What is the worth they are expecting to arrive?

That would seem an ideal these days. We are a colony though, so there's no escaping it.

A logical analysis of your being cannot answer whether you are a philosophical zombie, or not. It has to be taken on faith.

And what then?

I don't know.
Presumably some greater (cosmic) purpose would emerge at some point. Unless there is no purpose, but only happenstance(because cosmic purpose is speculation)

Do you/we require a purpose?

I'm not sure you are making a valid point based on what I said. A God that has a purpose and design we can never know is a relatively moot one. As I said above, "God is such an alien being to us, that his goals may be inimical to human happiness, and that effectively means nothing for the living/breathing human. Just because a cosmic/spiritual aspect of things supersedes the physical human, does not make my lot as a physical human any better. If my suffering matters because of a cosmic game that is beyond my control, it effectively means I am shit out of luck in terms of life being anything for me, the human. Purpose in a grand sense becomes meaningless for the human."

You assume here that God is an alien being to us. This has not been established, because God might be inside us, moving in us, the very quick of us. Also you assume that we can never know the cosmic purpose of God. But this does not mean that God, or someone who does know it can't tell us, but rather we are currently blind to it. Yes purpose in a grand sense may be distant, or meaningless for the human, but it might also be something more immananet and have a mysterious, or subtle correlation. Essentially I am saying that you are presenting a point of view on a situation which could be any number of ways. There is as I can see nothing definitive showing that the life of a person is meaningless, or hard luck. Yes, it might be, but not necessarily.

And I already told you that it is convenient how we know just enough from these ancient prophets that had this magical ability to tell us some partial truth of it. It is convenient that it is in ancient times, it is convenient that when we ask for justification, we can never know the whole truth, but just enough to keep the carrot and stick of following this or that.

Again this is your point of view, however I am not going to defend religion, only to say that there is a grain of sense running through it.

If it is as you say, beyond human comprehension, it loses any matter for the living breathing human who must endure life as the mortal human. We become but pawns in a greater scheme that is beyond our control for something is never for us.

As above, I am saying the cosmic purpose might be beyond our comprehension, the truth is we don't know. It might simply be like the plot of a Sherlock Holmes story, impenetrable at first sight, but when revealed the dastardly plan of Profesor Moriarty might be quite simple and obvious, even in plain sight. Anyway the point looses traction if one consideres that for example the cosmic purpose is the same purpose being played out in an individual human life, but on a larger scale, so equally relevant. Indeed there are numerous ways in which it could be imminently present and critical.

By logic, if we humans can think of a concept ("moksha"..union with a godhead..worlds beyond our mere mortal world) it is not in fact beyond our comprehension... If it is beyond our comprehension.. then we can never know it anyways..

Just because a person is not aware of the relevant purpose in their action does not prevent them living a constructive and caring life etc. Personally, even though I am not aware of my cosmic, or divine purpose and have to craft my own personal purpose in life. I feel a deep reverence for this life and what experiences and opportunities I have been afforded. Not to mention my exploration of the subtle ways that those purposes might run through my being and body in this world.

but the Garden of Eden story, if taken literally is about two people who wanted more than what paradise had to offer.. Which seems like we were pretty bored, even in paradise. This does not provide much hope as nothing offers true satisfaction according to this story. If everything was redeemed, would we just get bored again in paradise? Anyways, even these ideas of paradise, or a more pristine time.. or a better time.. this is all so human, going back to the anthropomorphizing point.. It can even be an analogy for early hunting-gathering societies. The longing of early civilizations for an even earlier time when things were less complicated.

There is a deep meaning in the story and I certainly don't see it having anything to do with getting bored in paradise. It is more about an inadvertant loss of innocence, or more precisely a step change in our development as autonomous animals(agents). Resulting in us having the capacity to step outside, beyond, our instinctively conditioned behavioural responses in our environment. Resulting in a crisis of agency and our having to take responsibility for our own actions within the ecosystem. So in a way Eden is our ecosystem before we got to clever and messed it up.

Looking beyond the religious discussion here, my theory is that we are essentially striving at nothing.. we survive and then get bored and these two sides of the pendulum motivate us to make goals. We are put into the stress of living life and then must contend with the energy to deal with surviving and then keeping ourselves entertained. The Garden of Eden story as an analogy for this fits nicely in that framework.

Yes, I am happy to leave religion behind here and focus on agency and our limitations in terms of insight and analytical thought. I agree with your summary here, although in the light of my ideas about Eden, it might add a twist in its use as an analogy. However I do think that some people do seek a vision of a grander purpose, even sense it, or realise it on ocassion. Also there is the farsighted pragmatic vision which I pointed out in the other thread. One in which humanity secures peace, its long term survival and acts as custodian to the ecosystem.

I can't defend the religious narrative here, because it is vulnerable to criticism and I am critical of it myself. However I can offer some perspective on the issue, something which I think is hard to see due to it being so engrained in our world.

The main vulnerability in religion is that it has been exploited relentlessly by power brokers and priests who loose the piety it teaches. Although this is understandable if one considers how unpleasant life was in the past, certainly in the northern climbs, for all but the few who managed to get into a position of relative privelidge and comfort. Anyway, an analysis of religion will only ever result in a discovery of aspects of human nature and how promises of heaven or paradise can be exploited.

There is though a thread of insight to be gleaned from the teachings and the history, which like in the spiritual analysis, can give us some perspective and sight of our predicament in this world.

Secondly I would point out a naivety in your reasoning, you criticise the anthropomorphism while then resorting to it to make your case. It is quite reasonable and philosophically astute to recognise our limited intellectual understanding of our predicament in finding ourselves in this world. This would entail a realisation that we cannot make any presumptions in terms of purpose about any purposes that we may be subject to. Indeed it strikes me that an apophatic analysis of what we don't know and can't say would be an appropriate starting point, so as to avoid those very anthropomorphic assumptions.

To address the two points you raise;

The restlessness of humanity, the will, is as I pointed out in the other thread a result of evolutionary pressures in shaping life. It is only the relentless, the resourceful and sometimes the ruthless which survive and outlive the rest. So it's no accident that a restless and resourceful species has come to dominate the ecosystem. This doesn't however say anything about our soul or any purposes we are subject to.

Secondly, that any cosmic purposes may not have any care for, or require the suffering etc of humanity, or that it is out of our control etc. Well this is all based on assumptions as I outlined above. We really can't say what requirements there are in our being here and the reality of our existence may be existentially far more complex and subtle than we can realise. Making any assumptions irrelevant to the truth of it.

So this is of course subjected to the same absurd conclusions- why does this whole training have to occur in the first place? If it is because God wills it, then he must have also been bored to set up this little game. But, if we are here in order to raise the lower worlds to the higher worlds, I don't see how this should make us feel much better. Now we are just pawns in this cosmic game. Of course, this is all based on a fantasy that somehow is more believable than other fantasies due to historical contingencies of conversion.. Odd, how this cosmic game is something that is oddly anthropological. Of course it centers around humans, of course it is some sort of struggle, of course it has aspects of Platonic and Zoroastrian cultural elements. All beliefs picked up by various philosophers from various regions, reified into a nice little fantasy package.

Yes I am inclined to agree with you, however there are answers provided by believers. Let's break it down.

1, why does this training thing have to occur?
Well the answer goes that God being mighty has a mighty purpose and us mere mortals can't understand such mighty matters. But we can be privy in some way through revelation.

2, how come It is necessary for God who is so mighty to have to make us and make our lives so difficult to serve a purpose which he can bypass with a miracle.?
Well this is covered by the fall. We weren't living difficult lives initially, but we fell from grace, by partaking of the tree of knowledge. Thus we learnt how to be evil and it's been downhill from there. However if we can make the path of return we can be reinstated in paradise in the knowledge of evil, while not practicing it.

3, we are pawns in this cosmic game?
This I see as fallacious, all things, beings etc are pawns regardless, even gods.

4, odd how this cosmic game is something that is oddly anthropological?
Again this is a bit fallacious, because our philosophy could not be anything else, due to us not having higher beings telling us the bigger picture. Also we can see the bigger picture to a certain degree, we can see the same issues playing out in the animal and plant kingdom and so see that it is not just us, but life in general who are acting out this charade.

5, all beliefs picked up by various philosophers from various regions, reified into a nice little fantasy package?
Well that's religion for you, you can pick lots of holes in it and point out its failings. The thing about revelation is still there though, I don't think we can conclude it didn't happen. For example it might all be a plan by some aliens to guide is in a constructive direction so us to help us on our way past the first nappy training session, rather than watch us fall beck into the Stone Age again, which has probably happened many times in the past.

If God is somehow incomplete or must go through a process of raising his lower parts to his higher parts by our actions and deeds (what constitutes as legitimately a "good" action or belief versus just an action or belief..must have some sort of magical metaphysical quality of course), then it means that something happened to God. He was complete and now he is not. We need to fix Humpty Dumpty back together again.. Mainlander has a similar story reversed though. Instead of God bursting himself into the physical world in order to get fixed again, he was really bored and wanted us to exhaust ourselves in entropic nothingness so that he could commit suicide. It seems either way, God is a bored fella.. He either is bored to death (Mainlander) or bored with being a complete being and so needs pawns in a game (Judeo-Christian mystical traditions for purpose).

Yes it's possible that we are in a Mainlander situation, we can't know from our perspective(putting revelation to one side for now). The trouble is that when considering cosmic purpose, it strikes me that we just can't do it philosophically other than through some intuitive contemplation of nature as I pointed out in the other thread. If there is a cosmic purpose being played out unless we are privy to the mind of the active agencies instigating it, we are entirely in the dark as to what the purpose might be.

Also I would point out that we can't presume that God(or whoever it is) is infallible. This was wishful thinking by the early Roman christians.

Anyway in putting the case for spirituality I would categorise purpose into 3 divisions from our position.

a, divine purpose, or eternity. Something which is way beyond us , so it is pointless to speculate.

b, cosmic purpose, the purposes of the greater beings in our vicinity, the entities upon which we live and which sustain us. Something which is beyond our limited understanding, but which can be intuited a little, or passed to us via revelation.

c, human, or animal and plant, purpose, something which is contingent on categories a, and b, so can only be pragmatic.

So in answer to you on this point, we are blind to the purposes which put us here, so such speculation is fruitless.

This is not necessarily my view, but by acting as a devils advocate I may be able to offer an answer from the perspective of religion, or spirituality, which seems to be what you are questioning.

From the perspective of religion, we are God's children in kindergarten, so need to be nappy trained and this is as good a way as any to do it. From the perspective of spirituality we are fulfilling a role within an eternal cosmos of being. That role is not necessarily something we can know, but will have some relevance to the development of being, or the enterprise we find ourselves involved in.

In both cases as I expect you were expecting the greater purposes are known to God/god, or whoever is in that role.

Because we are constructed to do it, its second nature. We find ourselves doing it as though we have some grand destination. Some of us think and say why are we doing it? as though there must be a destination, but there need not be one for us to be here and doing it.

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

It was only a matter of time.

Quite, we are biological organisms which persist over time simply because we have chemical systems for replication and extending lifespan(to the scale of a human lifespan). Any different, or other kind of configuration of chemicals which doesn't achieve this disappeared, died out eons ago, they failed to persist. Except that is for chemical states which naturally persist through being chemically at rest, such as elemental gases, liquids and solids.

It is survival of the persistent and a purpose can be imagined in this, but there is none as such other than what is chemically built into the systems themselves by some kind of chemical evolution.

Perhaps this is like try to getting your head around infinity. You just end up imagining a very large quantity or size, then you intellectually multiply it in some way to make it seem larger. But then there is a kind of leap from there to some kind of acceptance of a mathematical axiom. The imagined infinity is never realised. A grasping of an infinity always fails, or a mental representation of infinity always fails and the mind has to side track into a belief about mathematical principles and take it on faith from the math that there is such a thing as infinity. Then the mind goes back to where it tried to mentally represent the infinity in the first place and kind of puts a belief there instead of a mental representation. But then pretends that an infinity has been grasped, understood, a kind of conciet.

As I see it purpose is something which cannot be known outside the mind* of the agency which performs the creative act which is completed by acting out its inherent purpose.

So if there is a purpose in the existence of humanity we cannot know it in the absence of the thought process(I have simplified this into thought process so as to continue my point, this could be described as "will") of the agency who put us here. Some religious people think they are privy to this purpose through revelation, let's put them to one side for now, along with the alternative perspective that there is no purpose at all.

Now in my enquiry into the purpose of our existence it has occured to me that there is a principle in the creative act which can be interpreted as a signature of the agent concerned. So effectively the purpose can be read in the creation like the stylistic brush strokes of an artist on their canvas. For example an art specialist can determine a Van Gogh by the form of the brush strokes independent of the subject of the painting. The movement of his arm, the way his brain/mind to hand coordination is somehow evident in the creation, as a signature.

So by analogy the artistic style of the agent responsible for our existence will be evident in us as a signature. If not specifically the signature of that particular agent, then the signature of the agent who created that agent. All that is required to determine the nature and get a hand on the purpose of the agent is to learn to read the signature.

Secondly if we are inquiring into the purpose of the entirety of the existence we find ourselves in, then it may be the case that every subjective and objective form in this world is a signifyer of the purpose if one is able to accurately read it.

Following this approach I have extrapolated that the purpose of our being brought into existence is primarily(this is grossly simplified) to carry on the evolutionary development of living entities to the point at which they become independently existing entities. Independent in the entirety of their world. So they would independently generate and maintain their own physical existence and world. Something which we cannot do and are barely learning to understand through trying to survive on a limited and vulnerable planet.

* by mind, I am referring to one's existential being rather than one's thinking intellectual mind.

Is your body YOU? Or, is your body a package which is discardable without loss of “YOU”? Is a kind of intellectual disembodiment a sin against others?
Are you your body, or are you something apart from your body?

I would say that your body is your home, for now, until you move house. Whether you are your body, or something else, I would say that you are your body, but the surface of the body, in the sense of the physical matter, is like a suit, a sheath, as in Joseph's coat of many colour's. So in a sense you are not the matter of your body, but the body minus the matter.

Faerie nuff...but remember it is believed to be a resurrection of body, soul and spirit; all perfected. Personally, I have no clear idea, but just a vague intuition, of what that might mean.

Transfiguration.
One way of looking at this process is that energy* flows through the body like water down a river. For our body and soul to be transfigured is by analogy to manage a greater flow, which requires removal of the impediments, or blockages. Otherwise disorder, disease and death would result, a flood in the analogy.

*just what this energy is and how to describe and discuss it is more complicated.

Also, I suspect that most people, in dreaming of some scenario that would constitute "the best possible life imaginable", are envisioning a life without suffering, death, struggle, poverty, limitation, and so on. It seems to me implicit in the question that such a life would be one in which each person has limitless power, resources, access to aesthetic experiences, fine surroundings and possessions, and so on. In my view, such a life would be pure fluff, like living in a kitsch painting, empty of real and substantial life, completely hollow and superficial. It would be strictly masturbatory. Despite all appearances, a deep desolation would permeate everything. By far the greatest impoverishment in such a life would be the absence of other subjects with whom one might enter into the Ich-Du. This "life" would be always strictly in the mode of Ich-Es.

This is not necessarily the case. For example the experience of Charles Manson would be quite different to the experience of Jesus. So provided the person was of the right mind, it would be ok.

If a scientist examines a concert hall, say the Albert Hall, during a concert. They might come away with a map of the auditorium, the sheets of music, descriptions of the instruments. Recordings and vibrational readings in different places in the room. The anthropology of the people in the room. Etc etc.

However they would probably be lacking in data to convey the experience of being a member of the audience. So there is a dimension of personal experience, which is personal, within people and people are not well understood by science.

Yes, metaphysics is always a means of limiting the mind, the imagination. There is an implication that we, humanity, have the capacity to both determine and understand the nature of existence, or something. I know that some folk would say that they build in an acknowledgement of our limitations. But this itself would lead to the realisation that we don't know anything, apart from what we find before us. So limiting again.

For me an understanding of the nature of existence is much more a living and intuitive experience, in which thought, thinking is nothing more than one of a number of tools in my tool kit.

Quite.

Accept the consistency of solipsism and sufficient doubt is introduced for the OP.
Regarding the issue of other minds, in some sense we are all one mind(all the biosphere on Earth). So it may not be an issue atall.

Not exactly; when I say that I don't think that either idealism or materialism, per se are more conducive to spirituality I mean that to hold one or the other metaphysical view makes no difference.

Yes, likewise. Actually for me both metaphysical views dovetail nicely into one whole, absent the rhetoric in either which denies something in the other. In fact all this argument about metaphysics we see here is largely irrelevant to me because I have developed my own metaphysic a while ago, which neither comes close to.

One of the principle difficulties of philosophy is arriving at an understanding of the nature of spirit. It is not 'nothing', that is simply an indication of the inadequacy of the mind for the nature of the question. It is also not something. My approach is, it can't be understood through the exercise of thought and reason, so my approach is negative, 'not this, not that'. It is something that has to be realised on a deeper level. (I'm sure you of all people on this board would undersatnd that ;) ).

Yes I agree, infact I don't often mention spirit because it is so volatile that it can't be addressed without failing to address it. Rather like God, both terms and concepts became essentially irrelevant to me in my contemplation a long time ago. I simply house them in place referred to as eternity, or for God, perhaps, the one about whom naught may be said.

Refering to material though my position is such that I rarely ever see it mentioned on forums like this. That material as a philosophical concept is all forms of extension, division, differentiation. Or everything which is not "the one about whom naught may be said". So to me the soul, mind, concepts, being, even spirit are all material. And all material behaves according to natural law. So to me the immaterial is a scarce thing indeed, like hens teeth. But vital nevertheless.

I agree, I have looked at all the arguments for doubt on a philosophy guide website and none of seem relevant to me. They merely discuss differences between the reality of a dream and the reality of waking experience, which for me are irrelevant and don't seem to address Descarte's doubt about sitting in front of the fire.

My perspective is in reference to being and the fact that due to some unknown process beings find themselves either in a dream, or in waking life, or perhaps in some other place such as as a ghost, or in some kind of heaven, or another world. Beings with minds just find themselves somewhere and be there.

Another way of saying this is that if solipsism is logically consistent (which I think it is), then a solipsist is in the same condition as this being I describe. They find themselves in a place, or state, through some unknown process and at some point will find themselves in another place and be there.

But no Christian believes the soul is material

Does anyone believe that anything is immaterial? I mean material in its broadest sense, so the soul, while not constituted of physical matter, is constituted, has a constitution, of some kind of subtle material, or ethereal substance. Even God must surely have a constitution of some kind. By constitution I mean structure, body, matrices. How can a mind operate in a void? An absolute void?

I thought we'd see more defenders of the argument (or some variation of it). Ah well.

Perhaps I can help. It occurs to me that if one looks at the issue in terms of the occurrence of being, rather than the experience of that being, there is equivalence. So in a dream, a being finds herself in a dream. Likewise upon birth a being finds herself in a world. Irrespective of whether there are circumstances in experience to suggest that a being in a dream is caused by something in experience, empirical( a birth might likewise have a full complement of causes, which we are not aware of).These two instances of a being finding themselves somewhere are the same. Like a process of waking up, a being arrives somewhere through an unknown process, one ocassion a dream and another a birth into a world.

So it seems to me that in both cases, we are simply describing the physical conditions which appear to result in these two examples of beings finding themselves somewhere and then deciding that one, being born, is more real than the other. In the ignorance of the basis of being and how beings come into being.

An aside, I have on ocassion woken from a dream with a strong sense that I am awake, only to find subsequently that I am still asleep and in a dream, a dream in which I am convinced I am awake. Then I wake up again and have to concentrate really hard on where I am and we're I was before I fell asleep, to establish that I am indeed awake.

When I first started posting on these forums, I was surprised to encounter this school of thought called idealism. I was expecting that my spiritual perspective was going to be viewed as outlandishly immaterial and that the accepted ontology would be some kind of materialism or physicalism. When suddenly I was confronted with these notions like solipsism and radical forms of idealism. I thought such ideas would have been discarded long ago, as I had done myself. Although I did understand the rationale and had gone through the intellectual ramifications etc myself and seen it for what it is.

Suddenly I found myself thrust more on the side of the materialists in this dialectic. This is not to say that I don't consider the reality of idealism playing some fundamental role in the processes of our existence. Or that I don't consider transcendental idealism to be fundamental. But rather that it is pointless exercise in itself, other than as a contemplative tool to be used on ocassion, like solipsim.