Are we talking about the stickiness of memes?

Going back to Christianity, they went to great lengths to set their identity and ideology in stone, literally quite often. As I write this I look up and see a church tower that was built in 1100AD, so it has sat in the middle of this village for nearly a thousand years.

↪Wayfarer Yet still, you are not saying what you mean by non-physically real.

I may have a take on what Wayfarer is considering, but my terminology might be unpalatable in philosophical terms.

The implication as I see it is that this "probability wave" is an emanation from a portion of reality beyond the recognised membrane of our spacetime manifold. This portion may well have holistic presence as you suggest, perhaps transcendent of space and time, or reflective of such a state.

Personally the way I see it(apologies for the weird language) is as a reality in which space and time as we understand them are constructs, projections, like the two dimensions on a sheet of drawing paper, these are projectedthrough a substrate(again a construct) let's say the pre-noumenon forming a self contained field or membrane, or drawing on the sheet of paper. This is our spacetime manifold, as a holistic whole it exhibits probabilistic points, correlating to the symmetrical patterning of symmetry breaking of the whole(this whole might have fractal tendencies). This could also be viewed as a field or membrane projected between two poles in a pre-electromagnetism.

So as I see it particle physicists are trying to discern the probabilistic points in the projection I refer to, unaware of the pre-noumenon, or the reality in which the projection was constructed. l say constructed because I consider that the projection is an artificial fabrication conceived in a real world in which multifarious forms or species of projection, even fabrication are discussed, generated, and then individually put into practice on ocassion in a fabricated world, our world.

By analogy we are puppets and we are examining the strings which animate us wondering how they come into existence, unaware of the real world in which there is an author, a puppet maker, a stage, a puppet master and an audience. Let's say Punch and Judy.

Is the passage from Beyond Good and Evil? It's author has a nice turn of phrase.

You misunderstand me, did I not say that mind is the obstacle? So why would you think that the mystic is putting our meaning into conceptual terms, when that is the obstacle itself. For unveiling the pristine being and neumenon is the focus, the mind is nothing more than a witness, or for the canny a tool employed in retrieving intuitive knowledge(information from the transcendent interplay between being and neumenon) again, no conceptual construction, in terms of thinking intellection, going on. This information being a food of contemplation to be digested later.

So the mystic has a quiet sanctuary where being is in communion with the noumenon and no mind is allowed in.

This is all grist to the mill for the mystic. It involves collapsing all the ideas of metaphysics and reification of the human experience. All that is left in terms of logic and reason is your being and the noumenon. This is why I say from time to time that the mind* is the obstacle, the obstacle while also being the only tool of being in this world.

* l realise that I am using "mind" in what might be an unconventional sense.

That's an interesting question. Metaphilosophy directed at Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, and Darwin as a group.

Yes, I can't help imagining a a group of monkeys, or primitive humans sitting on a ridge in the Rift Valley, dreaming up complex patterns of grunts and interpretations of grunts, becoming gradually more sophisticated until they are organising themselves into religious and political groupings. Each pattern of grunts becomes a competing ideology with the most effective and persistent outliving the others and corralling the groups. And that we are still continuing the tradition, while imagining we are superior to this in some way.

I think I am beginning to understand your question now. Another angle might be to question if we knew that after we die we will be reborn into hellish poverty or a war zone, should we not be fearful of this, as we are fearful of being caned?

My intuition is that bodily integrity plays a visceral role in such possibilities. If I know, or just fear that I will be reborn into a war zone, I am not all that concerned in this life, because my corporeality is removed, or seperate from that reality. In that reality, it might not actually be me, or not the me I am now.

So is this a survival of the fittest in ideology, or perhaps survival of the most ingenious?

I don't really know what you are saying, I never saw a distinct classification of purposes. Nor do I see what the illusion of agency has anything to do with it. SOrry.

"The illusion of agency" is an unwarranted assumption. Determinism hasn't been proved to be the case, it is merely speculation.
The distinct classification of purposes is due to a distinct classification of agencies. For it is agency which generates purpose. Without agency there cannot be purpose, it is meaningless. Unless you include within the bounds of purpose the physical processes of matter, carrying out their own purposes.

So, do you agree that purpose is generated by agency and that there is no purpose in the absence of agency?

That is just saying our purpose is to going on towards going on towards going on at the same time caring for our biosphere.

Yes, I know, but this is the best we can do in the absence of the knowledge of the purposes of the agency, or process resulting in the existence of the existence we find ourselves in. Remember my second category of purpose?

There are small/weak purposes like instinct and mowing the lawn and then there are grandiose purpose like why humans even exist at all. It is absurd and foolish to claim small/weak purposes as grandiose ones (which is what my OP pointed out). Yet you are all seeming to disregard this.

yes, this is what I was pointing out in my post when I categorised purpose into two kinds. This is the second category, as I wrote it;
"The purpose of agents responsible for the existence of the existence we find ourselves in."

But you are conflating the two categories which results in the confusion. As I said, in order to consider the purpose of the agency, or process resulting in the existence of the existence we find ourselves in, we can only coherently address it in reference to that agency, or process. But unfortunately we can't do this because we are in ignorance of what, or who it is. End of story.

This philosophical problem is why ideas like God and spirituality were thought of in the first place.

I wouldn't call being afraid to fall of a cliff "intellectual strategic action", more like instinct.

Yes, but instinct is a rudimentary form of purpose, it is strategic action stipulated by cells and groups of cells. There is also intellectual strategic action in organisms with large brains.

I also wouldn't call this a classification of purposes:

"that the answer is for humanity to secure its long term survival with a healthy social culture, which manages the planetary resources sustainably and cares for and maintains the biosphere."
-punshhh

That is just something that humans keep in check in order to sustain a healthy existence, it isn't a purpose to live.

An answer to the question, what is the meaning or purpose in my life? Is a person's life cannot have meaning or purpose independent of the species or race of which they are a member. So their purpose and meaning is equivalent to the purpose or meaning of the species or race as a whole. The purpose and meaning of the race as a whole is,
"that the answer is for humanity to secure its long term survival with a healthy social culture, which manages the planetary resources sustainably and cares for and maintains the biosphere."

how did you get from "they have liberty to pursue purposes" to "they have purpose'?

Well I don't know the rigourous logical steps involved in this, but surely if an organism is at liberty to pursue purposes, at some point it will pursue them, or at the very least might do so. If it does pursue one of these purposes, it can be described as having purpose in its action.

Just contradicted yourself, you say it might be then you say it is.

You will have to allow me a little room for my style of writing that is not academically precise. Read between the lines a little. I didn't contradict myself, but the way I wrote it was unclear and imprecise. Did you not understand this?

Anyway, where I said it "is clear, there is none", I should have explained that on the assumption that following death, there is a complete lack of existence, this would be the case.

To let go of the feeling of needing to keep trying is half the battle. There are numerous techniques and affirmations which allow one to dispel these sentiments and thought patterns that you find yourself preoccupied with. I have found that to achieve spiritual contentment doesn't actually require you to do anything, rather to stop doing things, things which amount to a distraction. So you can put yourself into a frame of mind where all you need to do is relax, rest, allow peace, stillness and quietude into your life, or into spaces in your life. Perhaps a quiet room, or special place in your garden. For me, to sit quietly in a woodland and just listen to the wildlife, feel the breeze, relax into the stillness and feel a space in the silence, would allow the hypereal state of mind to permeate. There is a hypereal joyful state in silence, especially if one can become acostomed to letting one's mind still and enjoy a lack of thought and the peace in simplicity.

All that striving that Mystics go on about is a different enterprise to this personal spiritual contentment we are talking about. It is a formal tutoring of intense personal development, a hot housing, designed to accelerate the development of the person. It is I think increasingly irrelevant in the modern world and is more a remnant of how spirituality was viewed and accessed in the past. There are I think a small number of people around now for whom it is appropriate, but for the majority of people it is an inappropriate, counter productive process, which can lead to psychological issues and feelings of failure etc.. I think that in the modern world of intense mental stimulation, financial freedom and domestic comfort, we face an entirely different set of issues for which traditional practice is not well suited and there is a mass movement, known as The New Age, in which people have begun to develop more appropriate approaches and techniques to embrace a natural spirituality in the modern world. Unfortunately it is a bit chaotic with false prophets and one is required to sort the wheat from the chaff to a certain degree. A formal school, or rigorous analysis of this movement has not been done yet as far as I know(I know it has been attempted a few times by some groups), it will emerge at some point I expect.

Just finished, looking inland from Aldeburgh beach.

For me meditation was what I did to force the issue. This was during a time in my late twenties and early thirties when I was engaged in a process of forcing a questing process, with some friends and one in particular, sparring, challenging, stretching, body and mind, on a grail quest, the comic version would be MontyPython's Holy Grail.

On two occasions I meditated at length in India for 4 or 5 hours a day for weeks on end. The second time in the Buddhist cave temple at the achealogical site at Ellora near Puna, 3hrs at dawn and 2hrs at dusk each day.

Both occasions were fruitful, but the results were subtle and permeated my being gradually and largely imperceptibly. The way in which it was revealed to me was not in changes I noticed in myself, but rather the way that I noticed how I differed from my piers, who had not undergone the same practice. In ways like a clarity and stability in mental focus, perception, along with an abundance of what I will describe as grace( I expect you know what I mean). Along with a freedom from the psychological states and conditioning which they were inexorably subject to.

there is no objective measure even of what life is, let alone of what it is worth

Quite, we might naively think we have little worth, but this is not established, it can only be a conceit at best. A human life might have great importance, purpose and meaning, but we just don't know anything of this subtle complexity. Surely it is our duty to observe a reverence for what we have been gifted in the wonder of what it might represent beyond our narrow little window on its beauty and reality.

We might be in class 1 at kindergarten, perhaps we should stop throwing our rattle out of the pram now, it really is time we were nappy trained.

This is correct, nothing does resolve the situation. You are stuck here until you're not. You will run into harm, you will create your own harm, you will find survival within your culture, you will experience boredom unless you create some sort of entertainment situation.

Yes I agree with your assessment, but this does not take away our (limited I know) freedom for a bit of autonomy, freedom in action, freedom to create something as we please. Not to mention, a choice to help others.

I know it's not much to look forward to in the greater scheme of things. But it really doesn't matter what we think, this is our lot, right now, we have a choice to be constructive, creative and help move the race along, rather than in the direction of more suffering, or towards oblivion. Not to mention, the gift of a mind with the ability to dream, to imagine.

I have given purpose a lot of thought and have concluded that the answer is for humanity to secure its long term survival with a healthy social culture, which manages the planetary resources sustainably and cares for and maintains the biosphere. Is that not a worthy purpose?
— Punshhh

That purpose is the same as I stated in my OP, just to keep surviving and not die like all other animals. That is not a purpose, that is an instinct.

This is a conflation between instinct and intellectual strategic action. Also you have ignored my classification of purposes. It's almost as though you are not interested in discussing purpose.

Going back to instinct, all cellular life forms(to generalise) have agency, if they have agency they are at liberty to persue purposes, they have purpose. Even if that purpose is dictated by the processes of instinct. Higher animals like humans and primates etc, have the ability to develop individual and group strategies, so they have a wider scope of purposes within their capacity. But they are still within the first category of purposes.

So are you going now to appeal to the second category of purposes, those in reference to any agency, or process resulting in the existence of this whole world we find ourselves in? Because this seems to be what you are looking towards in the OP.

It's quite simple, an absence of anything, everything. There are no bananas or thingamajig, it's quite simple. In fact it couldn't be simpler.
— Punshhh

Don't you see though that they are one and the same thing? You don't KNOW what an absence of anything is because you can't ever experience it. It is simple because you just aren't looking at it deeply enough.

Yes, I know this distinction, I know that we as limited beings can't conceive of the reality of no existence. But we are discussing intellectualisation of the life we find ourselves in. So just as we can come up with the idea of 1+1 =2, or infinity, we can come up with the idea of nonexistence.

I bring it up though, because it might well be the case following death, so it is potentially an option for action in life, just take an overdose and you're there, in a state of absolute nonexistence, the purpose is then clear, there is none.

I'm very happy for you, that you are exploring these ways of breaking the rigid conditioned thinking patterns we are given by society. At some point it will feel the right time to start building your own narrative, your own unique perspective and self.

I think it's important to break out of the linear narrative etc.. to quest, as I used to say. But once free of it I find that one is required to focus back on the empirical world again to find ones path And to look to how ourselves as a witness is present or enthralled in this world.

I think its time to listen to some Leonard Cohen.

https://youtu.be/nZqq-zAkGy4

Perhaps if one views the physical body as a vehicle for the self. A vehicle whereby the self does some self-ing. I would personally add another tier of vehicle, the vehicle of the soul, wereby something like being does some being-self. With memories in both tiers,

In the physical vehicle, memories of experience and living in the physical world. In the soul vehicle, memories of soul business.

I thought the soul entered at the quickening.

"Please note this is not a pessimistic viewpoint but a realistic one. I am not saying the glass is half empty but saying what does it matter at all?"

This about finding purpose, nothing to do with depression.

Ahh, so your question is about purpose. Then what is all that stuff about meaning, or why you should carry on with living etc? That is all about what we are doing in this world we find ourselves in, which includes meaning, but nothing to do with any purposes in existence. It's true that people have purpose in their lives, but that is due to them having agency, hence purposes in action, reasons for action.

Any purposes in the existence of the existence we find ourselves in are a different issue and can only be coherent in reference to any agency who, or which, is responsible for its existence.

So there are two seperate purposes here;

The purposes of human agents.
The purpose of agents responsible for the existence of the existence we find ourselves in.


So it seems that you are asking about the purpose of life, well this is in the first category, the purposes of human agents. Well there are many answers to this, but none of them answer anything about the second category. That is a category error.

I have given purpose a lot of thought and have concluded that the answer is for humanity to secure its long term survival with a healthy social culture, which manages the planetary resources sustainably and cares for and maintains the biosphere. Is that not a worthy purpose?

What the hell does that even mean?

How could I even guage or calculate with approximation if it would be more appealing if I have no idea what it is like?

That is like asking which pocket you want to choose from, in the right... would you like this plastic banana that is electrified at 250v? or in the left... would you like this something a rather with a superduper wizz bang thingamajig.

It's quite simple, an absence of anything, everything. There are no bananas or thingamajig, it's quite simple. In fact it couldn't be simpler.

Does absolute none existence seem more appealing to you?

Because if you're not alive, this is the alternative. If you're alive, you have at least two choices, either to make the best of it, or to languish in one of various depressive states.

So you've got three choices;
Absolute none existence.
A depressive, or aimless opt out( while continuing to live).
Making the best of it.

Which do you prefer?

But the point that I want to make, is that the Pythagorean theorem can only by known by a mind. So it's not mind-dependent, in the sense of being reliant or this or that mind, but in the sense of only being perceptible by a mind. So, what is, includes or implies a mind capable of grasping the truth! But that is what had been bracketed out of the scientific method by Galileo and his successors; this is where the idea of 'mind-independent' came from. So I think Einstein's conception of realism is at fault. Essentially, it doesn't want to recognize the limitations of science; saying that science sees 'things as they truly are' is a conceit.

Nice summary. I never understood all the confusion around CI, surely it's obvious that what will be observed is a facet determined by the capacities of the instrument being used to do the observing. The fact that those facets appear inconsistent is only due to it being a random snapshot of the facets.

To jump from there to a waveform collapse etc etc is assumption upon assumption while wearing blinkers. None of it follows.

Yes, it might also be implanted like a seed, which develops and grows through "right action".

I guess it depends on how you define "normal state of consciousness". Is the normal state of consciousness a state of skepticism or openness. The heightened state you allude to may just come to a person, I believe, without them having previously cultivated intuition and faith; but it is more likely to come to someone who has cultivated those things.

Yes if it's cultivated perhaps. What I am referring to is not a heightened state, although that might accompany it. Rather it is a transformation in the consciousness of the witness. This in my experience involves a change, development, or journey in one's intellectual state, this probably involves a realisation of something not previously thought to be possible, again, something is revealed. So for example in the case of the Buddha this transformation revealed the reality of a transcendent state and realm, by the removal of a veil in his being. The removal of an impediment, so rather than seeing only the impediment, the Buddha saw the true reality.

If God appeared as a human person (as He is supposed to have done 2000 years ago) then presumably some would believe on the basis of intuition, others might experience a profoundly convincing vision and many would be skeptical and even disbelieve. Two thousand years ago, if undoubtable miracles were witnessed, many might have judged it to be case of witchcraft or possession by demons. Ironically a performance of genuine miracles would probably be far more convincing today in our scientifically skeptical age.

Yes, although there were some witnesses who experienced a revelation as I described it above, principally the disciples, along with some of the people who were healed. Regarding miracles, yes they might be more convincing today, but what would they be convinced of I wonder. Most people would suspect, I expect that the miracle is some kind of extraterrestrial technology and that God is some kind of alien. So we are confronted with regression, maybe it isn't God, just a more advanced being, and God is still hidden, but maybe it is a far more advanced being than that, with a far more convincing miracle, but maybe God is still hidden and this is an imposter and so on.

I suppose what I am homing in on is that in a person there is a process in the mind, which happens when a belief is formed. Resulting in a held belief, a conviction of the truth of something. It is a psychological process resulting in a persistent or deeply held conviction in someone's mind. This might also be accompanied by a process in which information(which may seem fantastical) can be implanted in the mind which is persistently or deeply known, or understood.

So the notional advanced being coming along and telling us the truth of reality, might just simply manipulate these capacities in us, transfer the information, or conviction and we would be in possession of the truth. There are many testimonies of such events in religious material.

And this might be what happened to Colin, the OP.

Yes, it does come down to intuition and faith to a large degree, I think. And yes miracles, or signs would be more convincing. As I see it while the receiver or witness of the information is in a normal day to day state of consciousness, there would not be conviction in what was being conveyed, there might be some intellectual understanding, or flash of insight. But this is in contrast to what is understood in revelation of the witness being in some way, transported, or transformed by the experience, such that there is no doubt of the truth, or reality of was is witnessed.

I can illustrate the problems around this with a thought experiment. Say God appeared to humanity in person, there would be a problem of identification, that it is God, wheather the experience of the witnesses is sufficient that they believe it themselves, such that there is no doubt. If someone did doubt it, how would the purported God, prove, or convince the witness? Etc... The God, might well be an imposter etc.

Yes, I agree, while humanity remains in isolation. However if someone who knew the nature of reality came along and told us, I don't see any impediment to our understanding it and communicating it discursively. Although we might well doubt what we were told, determining whether we are being told the truth, may require demonstration, rather than information.

Explain why it makes sense for someone who knows he will soon be tortured - but isn't being tortured yet - to fear the impending event.

It "makes sense" because "someone" is, by definition, a creature developed to survive over time. Creatures or things which aren't developed to survive, or persist over time, have already ceased to exist, long ago. This is a world of the persistent. Creatures persist longer when they develop behavioural strategies derived from analysis of experiences.

It looks as though you are also asking something along the lines of Karma, or being, independent of a creatures current instantiation of behaviour. Well like some of the other posters I don't see how we can address it in any real sense apart from our common conditioned knowledge and understanding. This is not to say there aren't other ways of knowing, but rather that all indications are, around us, that there is none. So karma (or its equivalent) and reincarnation (or its equivalent) are human ideas and sentiments present in the face of clear evidence(on the surface at least) to the contrary.

Interesting, actually I thought I was replying to mongrel, but I'll carry on with what I was thinking anyway. Yes it's a distortion of spacetime. I have come across the idea in some science literature before but I can't find it now. It was described as an ooze and the way I see it is if you imagine at the point of the Big Bang, at the initial stage of expansion space and time might have been distorted and contorted with extreme curvature. So that there is extension and physical activity, but not in an external manifold of time as we understand it as spacetime. But within many small isolated bubbles, incorporating their own space and time and self perpetuating, extruding, or oozing. As I am writing this, I am thinking of quantum foam, which seems to have equivalence.

So the idea is that there might be a material that can exude its own time and space independent of any other manifold of spacetime.

Logically, God cannot exist if they are Real. To exist is to be an illusion, only a finite state. It would take away what makes God God.

Yes, I know the rationale, I just don't buy it. Logic is a human invention. It works in reference to the world and the known and the known unknown, but not in reference to beyond the world and the unknown unknown. We just can't presume to say anything about that.

For us to suggest God exists is like arguing the transcendent is worldly. The point of God is they are the infinte beyond the finite world. For God to exist, to be of the finite flux, is to reduce God to man. God becomes not the Real beyond the world, but just another material actor.

Yes, I understand your point and it is rational, but I have considered this at a deeper level of complexity. Namely, one can consider god to be outside the world, but also in it in the being of the beings in the world, imminent, the transcendence of being and the transcendence outside the world.So is both outside the world and inside the world.

I would also say the "infinite" is also a human invention, and can not be applied to the beyond the world, or the unknown unknown. So this so called infinite transcendence, might not be infinite at all, just eternal( relatively transcendent). I don't see why eternity cannot be in the world, even if infinity cannot.

Yes I agree with your reading of Augustine and Aristotle. I have a way of thinking of time which might add another twist. It's around the idea of an ooze, so if you imagine there is something, quite simple going on somewhere where there is no timespace bubble. It is a self perpetuating changing thing, which provides its own time and space within itself, perhaps contorted dimensions, like the surface of a lava flow.

But why do you relegate God, or it's equivalent(which we can't conceive) to beyond existence? We can't make this presumption.

No, it happened. I wasn't expecting you to believe me though.

Yes, you are lifted out of your normal self and hosted by another being, thus being as you say gifted other capacities.

That's the exact problem

Yes, I agree, well apart from the assumption that god does not exist, for these reasons. We cannot say this, we just don't know. Also yes the atheists may be right, while naive.

Anyway, this is irrelevant if one is considering what actually exists, rather than what we can say exists, or conceive of as existing. What actually exists and what form it takes may be entirely unknown to us, or inconceivable to us. Thus, we cannot determine what difference God makes, or not, from our limited position. It doesn't follow that because we can't find a difference, that it is not there.