I can only agree, within the field of philosophy, from what I know. Otherwise I see no trouble in saying what it means, although discursive communication may be in the form exercised in religious and mystical traditions. There is a tradition of allegory, or analogy and oral traditions. So two people who see what it means can discuss it. I have been a member of a group on more than one ocassion in which such discussion was commonplace. Although the interlocutors would require the appropriate intellectual articulation for affective communication to occur, I expect.

Ok, but the many may only be an extension of the one, so still one.

I agree, its pointless, other than as an academic exercise. I'm curious though if you say that substance monism is unintelligible. Is there a monism which is intelligible?

What is there if there is not the real?

Drivel.

You said it.

Seriously though I think you should have been born in Italy during the Renaissance, you would have fitted right in in the world of the Medici's, you could have been Niccolò Machiavelli himself!

Well John has said pretty much what I was going to say. I will add though that the Mona Lisa is not very well painted and only gained notoriety due to someone at sometime in the distant past pointing out that in the way her lips are painted it is debatable whether she is actually smiling, or straight faced.
I'm sure if I had been around just before the wheel was invented, I would have come up with the idea first. Surely a person who invented the wheel can be labelled a genius, what an amazing invention.

That's wrong, there are large numbers of geniuses and many more who if they were put back in time to the renaissance would be equivalent to geniuses. The difference is that standards and levels of achievement are so so much higher now. Let's take the example of art. There are many thousands of artists around who are skilled enough to paint the the standard of Leonardo da Vinci. But such abilities are not regarded as genius now, because many people can do it and the standard of what constitutes artistic genius has moved on to an intellectually exalted state.

Well if one puts aside the problematic consequences of pressing the button and accept it simply as you describe it. Then a true physicalist would press the button immediately, provided they were able to overcome the distaste of the idea of the inauthenticity of being in a vat.

If they (the physicalist) came up with any other reason not to press it they are being disingenuous.

However I suspect there are other candidates for pressing it, some religious people, people who have a strong distaste for suffering, those with suicidal tendencies.

I'm very happy for you, that you're not suffering to the extent that you would push the button for your personal position. Many people who do suffer would beg to you push it for their sakes, it's amazing how suffering can clarify the mind.

Anyway why not, is it a love, or sentimentality for this life the way it is? (I would consider pressing it to eleiviate the suffering of people in Syria with no medical facilities regardless of my own feelings). Or is it because you think we are doing something constructive and beneficial in the long run?(like Augustinio's perspective). Or is there another reason?

Yes, I visited the Abstract Expressionist exhibition at th Royal Academy a couple of weeks ago. There were lots of nice Pollocks there, not to mention Rothko's, also Barnett Newman who I was particularly taken by.

As you say art explores and exploits these ideas.

The reason why I posted my photo is that it is unusual in that it has a number of clear two and three dimensional imaginary beings in it. Along with that peculiar phenomena of not being able to see it and them when you do, not being able to not see it, as a way of examining the human psyche. I will draw a couple of the faces, which might draw them out of the picture.

It's just a thought experiment to try to see what your ethical and ontological commitments are. Think of it another way; if you could push a button and everyone would instantly be in Nirvana; no effort needed and no questions asked; would you do it? You might say that would have to be a fake, unearned Nirvana, but could there be any difference between absolutely believing you were in Nirvana and actually being in Nirvana? If so, what could the difference be?

Ok, I find it interesting in that it is like holding up a mirror to yourself, that you, or someone else, can view your ethical and ontological commitments objectively.

These are my initial thoughts;

That if I did press the button. The people, myself included, would not be themselves anymore, indeed they would be so removed from themselves, that the thought experiment becomes meaningless. This is why in mysticism (as I see it) the soul develops from , I, to , I am, to, I am that, to the point where it realises, I am that I am. In the final level of development the being would remain the same being when the button is pressed. Prior to "I am that I am", the being would loose their personal identity in the switch. in this prior state beings are formed, held up, propped up by tangible realities in this world as they are, take this away and they (their being) collapse, disappear. If they(their being) are thrust into "I am that I am", again they would be in a fractured, or collapsed state.

Secondly the idea of being in a vat and not knowing it is incoherent as we don't know if we aren't already in that state, that there is any other possibility to this state etc. I know that this is not the point of the experiment. But it does illuminate the issue which you may be enquiring into of the ontological basis of our reality. The implication being that if the button is pressed the beings will be in an exalted state, but it would be in some way false, a a lie, a fabrication. There are two problems with this, firstly as I say, we might already be in that state, life might not be possible without it being fabricated in some way. Secondly if the button were pressed the fact of there being a brain in a vat might become meaningless irrelevant, because we are phenomelogically our being and our experiences and the vat is simply an inconsequential artefact of material processes etc., or might simply disappear.

Third, the ways in which our current way of life would change. Provided there is no vital purpose being served in our living this way of life, then whilst bearing the first two thoughts in mind, I would have no problem with pressing the button. However if there is a vital purpose in us living this life, then I might in pressing the button, pass the buck and that purpose would have to be carried out by some other unsuspecting bunch of beings at a later time. So I would be bottling on my purpose.

Fourth, We might be here performing a service for some other lives, or purpose. What about for example the other animals and plants we share our lives with, or the planet, or the material of this universe? We might be fulfilling a vital custodial role within the wider system and so fulfilling our personal desires and wants in an instant might be a cowardly act of refusal to perform our natural role in nature, a role we might have actually chosen, or offered to perform. In this light, the thought experiment comes across as a conceited flight of fancy.

Yes I think I see it now, I think I couldn't see it, because I had already seen that as a cat. Right on the bottom two tenths in from the left.

Yes, I have noticed that some people don't see them so easily. I might have to draw one, zooming in is just to blurred.

What colour's the flames eye, I can't quite make it out?
It's getting late here, I need to crash now. Feel I'm going to have some vivid dreams;)

The white bit is just to the right of his long nose, like a dogs nose and two slightly darker bits are his ears sticking up above his head. Yes I know the super obvious looking one, but to me it's a pixie face, on the end of that branch which goes up to the right corner. Have you noticed ther a re a few ghoulish faces to the right of him?

Well I don't know if my imagination is to optimistic, but that being the case we are God and humanity is a distant memory.

Whoops wrong thread. The trouble with late night messages.

No but I just saw a bat face there.
He is if you go by the grid reference I mentioned above. He is second square in from the left(if the photo is ten squares wide and a fraction over half way up. He is the darke green area and is looking out at you, but slightly down and to your right. The dark area is his chest and just above and slightly to the right is his face.

Good start, any in 3D. Have you seen the wolf man yet?

I was once in a state where I saw faces everywhere, I was in an emotionally unstable condition at the time. But I have retained the propensity to do it.

Well, while imagining it I was brought to a shuddering halt when I realised that I would be putting a lot of immature beings in a paradise which they wouldn't know how to cope with. It would be pitiful to watch, I think. Maybe I wouldn't press the button until every person was mature enough to proceed.
It reminds me of the parable of the genie and the lamp.

I have found it's difficult to explain to someone where to look and what to look for. I think it can raise some interesting issues about how perception affects empirical knowledge. Once a person has seen one of the faces, they always see it clearly whenever they look at the photo. It's as though it is really obvious and they can't easily imagine not seeing it. While someone who has not seen it can struggle and struggle and just not see it.

On the sceptics forum, they just kept sayings it's paredoila and wouldn't consider anything else.

Let me try and tell you where a face is. If you roughly divide the bottom and the left side of the photo into ten squares like a grid reference, Zero at the bottom left corner. There is a light brown tabby cat looking out towards you, but looking past you slightly to your right, in the second square across the bottom and first up, in fact it's chin is almost touching the bottom of the photo. It appears to be wearing a white bib under its chin.

Anyway, I am thinking that we are programmed to consider something like a face as an important thing in our environment and have highly acute perception of facial recognition. This suggests that we have a strong anthropocentric bias. The implication being that any ideology we find pragmatically useful, perhaps, is given a bias of importance and correctness above its station.

P.s. There is a cheeky green goblin in the dead centre looking to your right with a dark coloured tricorn hat on. A prize to who can see him first.

Interesting, but I keep finding I can't get to an answer without having to come to a naive assumption or three. For example, "the best possible lives imaginable" leads to an infinite regress of more and more exalted states. States for which the brain would become obsolete, where do I draw the line? An interesting thought though.

Phew that's a relief, the person I was thinking of would never have said that!

Anyway, I don't believe that you can't see any fairies, you just haven't looked hard enough. You're to skeptical, because your world view denies their presence.

Not you again! I hope.

I have taken a photo of fairies.


This is a high resolution image, http://www.anbdesign.co.uk/wood.jpg

I once started a thread with this photo on the internationalskeptics forum(James Randi forum). It was fascinating the lengths they went to to discredit what was before their eyes.

So I can see at least 22 good faces including some three dimensional looking beings in this photo and for someone who is new to it they probably can't see any of them.

How many can you see? Or do you deny they are there?

Thanks, nice version, some good improvisation and the last two minutes are sweet. But the Winterland version is my favourite, tight and heavy. I've got it on vinyl, so no worries.

What about the seven eighths of the iceberg below the surface to speak by analogy?

Jimi did some nice heavy instrumental back in the day, this is one of my favourites.

Jimi Hendrix, Tax free, live at Winterland.
https://youtu.be/tqjR8P5Jt48

I can't watch this in the UK due to copyright, hope you can where you are.

This version is no where near so heavy, more meltdown though and nice guitar torture.
https://youtu.be/yzi9Av0Mg80

Good driving music.

Yes, I've heard about the problems with migrants in Australia. Curiously the boat people who were housed on Naoru are now going to be accepted into the US.

I was a reluctant remainer, this is due to my planning to live in France in a decade or so. Although I largely agree with your assessment. I would say though that economic considerations were not on the mind of those who voted to leave, or I suspect on the mind of the remainers. I am a polling officer in Suffolk and around here the consus from the people who came into the poling station was that they are happy to take an economic hit for the political benefits of leaving the EU.

So are you talking about my fathers desire to ejaculate inside my mother? As that would be the purpose of the agent (my father) who chose to bring me in to existence.

Im not sure that there was a lot of purpose there, more like desire, attraction etc. This goes back to my point about cellular life though. The purpose in your fathers action was biologically determined and driven by his cellular life.

Or do you refer to all life when you say "US" as in "god was the agent who brought us in to existence".

Yes, I did, I but I did state that it might be a process and not God, or an intelligent alien.

Oh no, now I see it was the latter. But I have seen many people reject this notion in favor that there is no agency that brought us in, it was just a fluke of nature. single celled organism evolved after lightning struck certain chemicals in the atmosphere and we are now just an absurd, random nothing with no rhyme or reason. How do incorporate purpose then? It would seem to go back to what willowofdarkness said: "To think in terms of living for a purpose is to consider life meaningless. As if life was nothing, with meaning only to be found in escaping it to some notion of purpose."

Yes it might well be a purposeless process which brought us into existence. But logically we can have no idea if this could be the case. Empirically based scientific enquiry cannot even address the question about our origin. Nothing we can rationally come up with can help us out on this score, because in either case(with, or without agency), what we encounter on the ground would be identical(i.e. the world we find ourselves in) and the alternative might be absolutely imposssible. We are blind.
If there is no purpose, then we can't obviously incorporate one. Unless we accept that we might be mistaken and incorporate one anyway, which many people, do anyway. Personally I leave the question open, while maintaining a heathy contemplation and intuition on what the purpose is if there is one.

There is another angle though and that is that we decide to trust nature and that nature is not somehow deceiving us. If we trust nature in this way, we can consider that all the information about our origin is somehow expressed, coded in nature, naturally. So an intuitive reading of nature might give us the answer. I do this to the capacity that I can and I have determined that there is agency present and active in nature before our eyes, so there might be grander forms of agency beyond our current level of perception. So on balance if one is looking to nature for guidance, I do consider that there is a such a purpose.

Also I already addressed the point made by Willow.

Right, but this isn't OUR agency. It is the agency of something of which we have no control over and are not a part of (the unconscious brain). We are separate from it even though we share the same house.

But my point is that one is at liberty to programme/condition ones unconscious mind to the extent that one is able to act as a strategic agent. Also your point about our unconscious mind having predetermined what we are going to do etc, is only an observation of how our momentary responses work. Agency over longer time periods works out regardless. For example in my own life, I contemplated for many years what my ideal career path was, I consciously chose what that path would be and have now acted on that choice. As such I am in entirely different circumstances, doing something different to what I would have been doing if I had remained in the demographic etc that I was born into.

I would call that autonomy, not agency. Agency implies careful deliberation, decision making, conscious choices etc.

It is rudimentary agency I know, but it is deliberated and decisions are made, although there isn't conscious choice. The organelles within the cells are complex computational devices which develop, test and refine responses to environmental conditions.

Yes, I do think that it was immigration which decided the vote in the end. As an issue it was probably more important than the economics, or politics of the situation. Only the other day there was a prominent politician criticising Angela Murkel(in reference to brexit) for outspokenly offering refuge for refugees a year ago, which led to a surge of up to a million arriving in Germany. For the UK it is the freedom of movement within the EU which was to much for many, not only people from all the new member states, but also potentially refugees and economic migrants who once present in Europe would move over here at a later stage. The scenes at Calais, which I have experienced myself were very provoking. I had personally experienced people in large numbers on the roads on the approach to the Channel tunnel and while parked at a hypermarket, a scary looking African man emerging from a hedge approaching us who was I expect looking to hide in our van.

Yes, it is my perception that outside the UK there is little mention of and it is largely not known about the downsides of the EU. In terms of economics I think it is better understood and I agree, it is a rocky road at the moment. But as I said there is a political dimension, which was the concern of those who voted to leave. During the debate leading up to the vote the debate was dominated by economic considerations, but towards the end there was a marked shift in focus towards the political implications which swung the vote.

You guys appear to be working on the assumption that the EU (as a political organisation) is functional and useful, also that it is a benefit for the UK to be a member. There are many who disagree with this view and many arguments to the contrary.

The EU does achieve the purpose for which it was set up(so far so good, however in the current climate I can see this changing) namely to bring the countries of Europe together with a joint purpose as an antidote to perpetual conflict.

But in terms of politics it is disfunctional and dictatorial. No member can instigate change (except perhaps Germany, or France), all members are subject to a relentless implementation of a certain politic which is decided behind closed doors by a faceless beurocracy. Alongside this, which does not seem to be acknowledged here, is that there is a continuous project of further integration going on, both economic and political, "an ever greater union". However The UK has always been fundamentally against the political union, while in favour of greater (to a degree) economic integration. This split was inevitable due to these political circumstances, it is the EU bureaucrats who have been in denial of this reality. The UK, both as a government and as a people were never in favour of, or going to accept such political integration.

There could be purpose both ways. If it was created by agency then it would be akin to what willowofdarkness says "To think in terms of living for a purpose is to consider life meaningless. As if life was nothing, with meaning only to be found in escaping it to some notion of purpose."

I understand what Willow is saying here, however I think that it is more a comment about having a respect and a sense of reverence for the living of life in the here and now, as opposed to ignoring the present in favour of some imagined future moment. I don't think it is actually a commenting on purpose itself.

It is true that one can live a fulfilling life without any awareness of a purpose. But this does not mean that there is no purpose in our existence. But as I said, I don't think we can know the purpose in the absence of a knowledge of the purposes entertained by the agency which brought us into existence to begin with. For example God, or an advanced alien. Although, I think we can conclude that whatever that purpose was/is, our presence is required for it to be carried out. So we can perhaps come up with a few initial thoughts about what that purpose maybe in terms of a general perspective.

I wouldn't call the libet experiment "speculation". It indicates our actions are driven by unconscious decisions and that we percieve them as conscious by mistake.

Yes, I see this, but in terms or agency this is irrelevant, we can be unconscious agents and still have agency. For example by consciously planning a strategy and practicing and learning it repeatedly, leading to it being undertaken unconsciously at a later time. Also agency doesn't require "free will", I suggest that all cellular and multi-cellular organisms have agency and most of them don't have "free will".

By agency I mean a self organising system which develops a complex strategic action as a response to the environment. A more sophisticated kind of agency can be seen in humans. For example, humans used intellection to develop computation and robotics. So at some point in the future AI will imerge and will have been created/generated solely by human agency.

It is hard to make sense of your post. But in a general fashion, physics does make use of this kind of "projection from a higher dimension" thinking. For any dynamical system - like some dancing sea of particles - you can step back to a higher level view that sees it as a now frozen mass of vectors or trajectories

Yes, I realise this, but unfortunately, from my perspective, all these other realms are simply reduced to a set of mathematical relations and reification of mathematical and physical casual realities in this world. Rather like in my analogy of the puppet, the quantum physicist puppet, reifies a "higher dimension", constituted of strings, wooden bodies and the plot of the puppet show in which they find themselves. Never once considering that in that higher dimension, there aren't ropes moving wooden bodies and there isn't a plot of a show, but rather an infinite possibility of actions and autonomous biological bodies etc.

This is the trick that quantum mechanics relies on in invoking an infinite dimensional Hilbert space. There is room enough in Hilbert space for every alternative history. And reality can then be a projection of that frozen realm. If you look through it, you see the average state, the least action sum, that becomes what is most likely to actually happen.

Thats all very well, but the blinkers of what we know in this world and the mathematical consistencies we find here, are still being worn. Or in other words we just project what we already know, because we don't know anything else.

But the ontological issue is whether the mathematical trick is just a mathematical trick or - as MWI might want it - the higher reality is the true reality, and the projection is merely some kind of localised illusion.

Or that the true ontology is something else not thought about.

My own view of course is that it is simply a mathematical trick. It is how modelling works. And to get carried away by it is mistaking the map for the territory.

I agree, but we can't know if our world is a localised reflection, localised peculiarity, or the best of all possible worlds. Again we are blinkered.

And here you seem to be trying to introduce some mind behind the scenes and directing the action. So you are really stacking up theism on top of the mathematical Platonism. I'd call that doubling down on everything I would disagree with as a natural philosopher and systems thinker here. :)

.Well that depends on what I mean by mind* and a mathematical Platonism is an oversimplification. I know now your approach and I'm with you in the phrase, natural philosopher and I like these systems ideas. I'm with you all the way with the triadic approach, that's how I think, but I happen to have another world and philosophy of the "ghosts in the machine", which I overlay and integrate within the naturalism.

*for me mind is equivalent to being the way being is used around here. Or the living entity which is hosted, emerges from, the body. But mind is itself viewed as a material(subtle). So this mind you suggest I am introducing behind the scenes is nothing more than another material, operating in the same, in essence, way that the material of science operates. So I refer to a hierarchy of more subtle or higher minds, which are all materials in turn, embracing a hierarchical regression (eternal, not infinite) of materials which each appear as minds in the sphere below in the chain. The ghost in the machine is irrelevant other than in the introduction of agency and purpose into the system( sorry if this is meaningless).

↪Punshhh

That's the issue. The mind is not so much an obstacle as an irrelevance. Quiet sanctuary is achived by many. Anyone can do it. All it takes is living the moment rather than theorising about what logic, description or concept amounts to your existence.

Quite, but it is your assumption that the "theorising about what logic, description or concept" is in some way an alternative to quiet sanctuary. It might be for some, including those who are being mislead, or exploited, but for genuine practicing mystics part of the practice is in developing the discipline to manage ones own internal life and experience. For example, a mystic will have all their philosophical, spiritual ideology as a kind of reference library in their memory. But this is kept seperate (including its content) from other action and being through disciplined practice. Likewise when it comes to their living in the external world and likewise for when they take sanctuary, or any other of a number of other practices. None of these regions of their being impinges on the other and the practiced mystic will easily draw from a number of these regions for a specific purpose, or action, while maintaining an inner freedom from their uncontrolled impinging on their internal space. There are systems and practices specifically developed to enable this kind of mental discipline.

The mystic tells a falsehood: that respect for being and noumenon is given by abandoning thought and saying the (conceptual!!!) "mystery" formed them. Rather than quieting of the mind, it is the mind yelling at the top of its lungs, demanding that respect for being and the noumenon requires this concept of mystety (which is what makes the mystic profound over everyone else).

This is an incorrect assessment, perhaps because you are observing mystics who have succumbed to forms of vanity. This is understandable as we are human and this is human nature. This is nothing that a healthy dose of humility won't dispel.

No doubt in living, the mystic achievies contentment, as do many others, but that's not the issue. It's understanding of contentment which the mystic gets wrong. It sees them demand contentment is a matter of realising that being is given by concept of "mystery."

Again you display a lack of understanding here. It is as I say understandable for there are people around who for whatever reason do make these mistakes, as in any walk of life. For the mystic the role of mystery is in the acceptance of the mystery in life. Or in other words to develop an awareness of what we don't know, or understand and the extent to which some aspects of our life are mysterious even in the face of logic and reason.

Essentially the processes in the life of a mystic are to develop an awareness of, a control of and an alteration in the orientation of the person within the world. The primary step taken before this can be done is to strip away metaphorically the person from the being and establish a communion with the noumenon (God in traditional language). Thus establishing a stable anchor for the self which could be put off course during the practice. Provided these processes are done well none of the mistakes, or dubious ideologies you allude to are of any concern.

However I do realise that due to there not being any academically established and regulated mystical school in the world at this time(with the exception of those that can be found within a few religious traditions), it is a "Wild West" out there and any budding mystic will have to establish their own foundations to their practice which is not easy especially when there is no one telling them what information is useful and what is a distraction.

Memes, ideas, ideologies that stick around, infiltrate.
Here's the church, flint construction as most are around these parts.