I've tried to follow the various discussions of Kant in this post and gotten lost. Where in Kant should I look for what he has to say. — T Clark

His moral theory is the best starting point and the concept of autonomy and the transcendental argument vis-a-vis reason or practical reason, but I would recommend more introductory explanations as it is easy to get confused by him. You can start here and progress to his work later. As stated: "Put most simply, to be autonomous is to be one's own person, to be directed by considerations, desires, conditions, and characteristics that are not simply imposed externally upon one, but are part of what can somehow be considered one's authentic self." The footnotes also offer some good links to other titles, such as Autonomy and the Paradox of Self-Creation: Infinite Regresses, Finite Selves, and the Limits of Authenticity, and The Ethics of Authenticity, amongst Kant' moral and ethical works.

This private heart is an attempt to advocate individuality over the primacy of institutions and so the authenticity is the belief or recognition of this intersubjective domain that then shifts to social action; to overcome the inauthentic ideas present in conventions that fuels this assertion of institutionalism over the self.

But the dichotomy between autonomy and authenticity is not satisfactorily answered by the transcendentalists, that being true to who you really are is much more complex considering any understanding of the self could be motivated by a number of factors that stand against this authenticity. There is an imperfection of sincerity there that is addressed with much more duress by Kant than Emerson, though I do respect the latter.

This is a great description of erring on the side of a kind of conformity (a conformity to billboards and perfume ads, which is now probably a conformity to the Instagram feeds of those who strive to incarnate such ads.)... On the other side we find a disagreeable insistence on 'individuality' that is little more than transgression, a mere negation of the norm which conforms in its own way. — foo

This conformity is intelligently marketed as compelling by the simple fact that people believe that they are 'individual' despite blindly moving in masses. 'Individuality' is a collectivist ideology constructed to overcome barriers to the system, just as we have laissez-faire to promote capitalism. Social media like instagram enables the platform for a person to promote or sell this false individuality - since it is their account and their name and their selfies - while underlying motivations is social unity where one forms meaning through 'likes' and congratulations as though the quality of their existence is levelled by how well they mimic this pattern. People are doing the same thing while saving themselves from criticism by behaving in a pleasant manner, but all it inherently is are automatons pretending to characterise liberalism and thrives since this individuality is believable.

I've tried to learn to trust my own first-hand experience. The photoshopped ads say one thing. The public sentimentality say something similar. The fullness of life, however, says things that cannot be fit conveniently into particular manipulative/marketing strategies. Even benevolent manipulation (political activism) tends to hide the part of the truth that muddies its message. — foo

I don't necessarily think it is about the tools that are available, but how those tools are used. I know this young man who has a very overweight girlfriend and he is consistently criticised because he is intelligent and attractive, but he says that he is fighting the system by constantly challenging himself against public scrutiny and opinion. What he is challenging, really, is not public but within, his own cowardice and ultimately his own perceptions that determine his experiences and identification with the external world.

Is there any authenticity in individuality, is it even possible?

I believe that propaganda appeals to subjective pleasures that may encompass our imagination but can effect us because we can contrast the symbols with this experience into an objective reality. The symbols can be striking enough to effect change in our objective opinions. But, what is questionable is the suggestion of which comes first; propaganda is influenced by politics and society and not by individual artists or that subjective creativity.

This is a really good piece.

But free will is noumenal - we cannot empirically know it. — Agustino

That is why I said it is not bound by nature; nature is deterministic.

I think that's the other way around - not bound by time, and therefore not subject to deterministic laws which can only apply within time. — Agustino

You just repeated exactly what I said. There is no other way around.

Where do you get the idea that free will can causally influence nature from :s ? I think this is wrong, because, once again, causality is imposed on the phenomenon by the understanding. So you cannot infer causality outside of the domain of application of the understanding, meaning outside the phenomenon. I think it is fair to say that the phenomenon as a whole is some kind of "reflection" if you want of the noumenon, but not that one causes the other. — Agustino

https://rd.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-010-3099-1_45

Actually I think it's Kant who is wrong on this point. From the Platonic tradition, we have direct access to apprehend intelligible objects (noumena) directly with the intellect, through intuition. That's why Aristotle placed intuition at the highest level of knowledge. Kant simply defines "intuition" in an odd way (as you explain in the other thread), and this dismisses "intuition" in the traditional sense, disposing of our access to the noumenon. — Metaphysician Undercover

:up:

We never know ourselves as we are. We know THAT we are, but not WHAT we are. The access we have to our own subjectivity is also given mediately, through the pure intuition of time. — Agustino

This is the most controversial aspect to Kant' thesis because the noumenal self is not subject to deterministic laws and therefore not bound by time, which is where this distinction is made since understanding is always subject to nature. Whereas free will is not bound by nature and if we know what we ought to do, we choose to do what is right; if nature is deterministic and where our understanding is subject to vis-a-vis categories, freedom is noumenal and so is our morality. You are saying that we do not have access to it, but we do, we just don't know how we have access because it is not bound by categories since free will can causally influence nature. That means that we know once we experience the effects from noumenal causality.

I have heard of it but never really got involved, but I will and will get back to you.

Subjective experience is defined as phenomenal. Are you positing the subjective as an objective entity that experiences? Maybe I'm not following you. The world of experience (the subjective) is phenomenal. — Hanover

Because that is the 'I' - noumenal feature of the soul - or the real that interacts with schema and creates the phenomenal.

I know nothing of Thai law, but are you suggesting the child was sold from a needy family as opposed to the child being without capable parents? — Hanover

I was talking about commercial surrogacy and international adoption.

In the US, the termination of parental rights is extremely difficult as long as the parent expresses an interest, but the suggestion that it is based on protecting the interest of the child is wishful thinking. Many of these children would benefit if their parents just let them go. That's a sad reality. The state's hesitancy to terminate parental rights is based as much on its protection of the sanctity of the family unit as it is on the needs of the child. — Hanover

I forgot to respond to this before I hit publish. In Australia, there are strict regulations that determine when a person moves into state care by court order; for instance, a woman could have an intellectual disability and was sexually assaulted by an unknown assailant and does not have the capacity to look after the child, or a drug addict who may also not know the father etc, or the neglect is so profound that protection of the child involves the removal of parental rights. The circumstances are usually dire, however there is a shifting paradigm involving the refugee community due to a lack of extended familial support.

What you say is exactly the same in Australia, which is why when it moves into Permanent Care, there is really no other possible hope for the child to be cared for by their parents. Despite that, visitation rights continue four times per year and this is essential for the child, despite the difficulties.

I am as certain that most adoptions are for reasons pure and true as I am that your adoption will be. — Hanover

My adoption will be a child who has parents that are incapable of looking after him/her and rather than going into state care, I will become his/her permanent carer. I am well known in my community for being amazing with babies and children and I would love to take care of someone that would otherwise have no one. I am not wealthy and do not have much money, but I will work hard enough to invest in their education, although my focus will be to invest my personal efforts for them to overcome mental stress and other risk factors that they will inevitably experience. I am not saying that a majority of adoptee parents are bad, that is certainly not true and I am certain that their intentions are genuine, but this whole celebrity adoption and token child is certainly around.

Holy mother of socks, that is one hell of a thesis you got going there. I gave up trying to communicate to essayists sometime ago, try to condense your responses next time.

It's not for me to tell someone about what only they can possibly know, or discover in themselves. Being honest with oneself tends to be a non transferable skill, either you have it or you don't. Or you finally admit your aren't being honest with yourself, but this will be the result of introspection. We can't actually inform each other's self-generating, organizing, and regulating ecology of mind, we can only trigger what's already there in another. — Anthony

It is not about telling them what to think and how to behave, but to direct them in a manner where they can learn to discover themselves, to help them through the challenges particularly of the anxiety that they may feel, to remind them that they are not alone in the process and that their self-defence mechanisms are irrational. Only they can help themselves and even then, even if you try and support them, a person who is mentally stuck would not be able to understand what you are trying to do, the type of support you are trying to give and would shift it to other thoughts and opinions that enables them to continue thinking incorrectly. If we were aware of all these blockages, it would be much easier to face our faults and improve, but most of us need help.

Laws are the business of the universe, not man — Anthony

Nah, I am pretty sure it is a people thing.

What's important in cleaning up in a person begins way before their behavior, which is the reason why only the individual himself can do it. Perhaps intention is part of it, but even intention is a very limited concept. There are components to the mind and how they communicate with each other anent differences that make a difference, which the individual must get around via transpersonal experiences. Otherwise, the person looks from a part of himself at the whole, which doesn't work. You have to be able to engulf your whole psyche to see clearly the emergent property, or synergy of it. — Anthony

Ok, I think as I attempt to translate the above, that you are attempting to convey this totality in changing and while intent is a source for this motivation, it is not nearly enough to generate the will to change. People then attempt to find possibilities of improvement through external sources like society or people, which is just mirroring behaviour and will not effect any genuine change. If that is what you are saying, then I agree. But this "engulf the whole psyche" is really a physical transformation, to completely change your lifestyle because the biggest problem we have is dealing with or tolerating toxic people in our personal space.

Real change involves time because change cannot be 'sudden' (except for the sudden removal of yourself from the toxic people) and therefore real change - that change within you - is a process over a number of years. One should be adequately prepared to overcome any barriers or obstacles that will prevent that. It is those obstacles that are a challenge; if you want to lose weight, it takes time and effort, but the challenge is that voice in your head telling you to forget it and to eat that damned greasy burger.

I once met a young man that I knew had a part of him that was amazing, but he had so many barriers preventing him from reaching the next stage - he bullshitted to himself like someone I have never seen before - and while I could have helped him overcome those barriers, he was impossible to communicate with. As such, in the end, there is no helping such a person and again by help it is overcoming that barriers to their own improvement, because they wont hear what you are saying or intentionally misinterpret what you are trying to do. You could implode wholeheartedly by shutting down this barriers through a psychotic breakdown, or you could have a good friend that you trust who will support you through those obstacles slowly as you try to understand and find your own voice.

To your example: ...it sounds like the receptionist may have had issues with cognitive load. In which case she should have quit her job or asked for a new position as the correct sacrifice (though obviously she may have had other environmental problems). If it were entirely genetic or from weak internal self-generation, organization and regulation, there is little anyone could have done for her. — Anthony

I went and did research and sometime afterwards, I attempted to discuss it with her but she refused. It was not her job, it was her personal life - her husband and her family - all of whom consistently put her down and degrade her, but even so, it was 'normal' to her and the hysteria that she experienced - despite being a clear indication that something was wrong - she was still in denial even after that. These are the constant obstacles, as I said, we need to overcome in order to face the truth, but for some they are so deep into their problem - she has children for instance - that a complete transformation of their lifestyle is very unlikely, which includes change.

Certainly the idea of a wife as property is way way less prominent in contemporary culture than it was, so i can't see how consumerism somehow made that phenomenon worse. And I don't see how you can make the jump to friends and family being property based on that seemingly innacurate portrayal of wives as property. — Noble Dust

This is a good point, but I am speaking about ownership where there is an absence of relatedness and where the orientation to people is without feeling because people become objects or property. While you are correct that this is not a new phenomenon, it is that consumerism has shifted our approach to this orientation and broadened this symbolic unity, becoming more resistant due to marketing ploys and where success and value is determined by something outside of you. The motivation here is an attempt to symbolically cure the alienation we feel and the lack of esteem we have to our own selfhood.

You could love a person not because you actually love them, but because they epitomise the right type of object that furthers your social position. It is the same thing, just more sophisticated.

Subjective experience is phenomenal. The object of the phenomenon is noumenal. If you say the noumenal is knowable, reading generously, I read that as rejecting Kant as opposed to misunderstanding Kant, but I can't follow your suggestion that the subjective is noumenal (i.e. the phenomenal is noumenal). — Hanover

How is subjective (being the unconscious) phenomenal?

I too am working so I will quickly say that contemporary society invented the profitability of the production of goods and the attainment of assets both for the person purchasing and for the system as a whole; the producer markets the profitability in order to get more people to believe that they need to make this purchase. We become proud to own something because we are taught that ownership is valuable. So, as an example, women were considered "property" or an object of possession and the greater the perfection or appearance of this person, the greater the social congratulations (your value is interconnected with this ownership). There is a shift in our understanding of what value is and the acquisition of more objects in your possession - friends, family, job, power, money - the more valuable you become. You essentially become property.

Kant also accepts that idea - that we can be mistaken in our views about empirical reality, and these mistakes can be corrected. Kant's distinction is between thing-in-itself and phenomenon. The thing-in-itself is unknowable. Within the phenomenon, we have the distinction between the empirically ideal and illusory, and the empirically real. So when you're in the desert and hallucinate an oasis, that is empirically ideal, and you can achieve clarity about this, and overcome this false perception. But overcoming this false perception has nothing to do with gaining access to the thing-in-itself, and starting to talk about the thing-in-itself in this context really confuses matters, because the word already has a philosophical baggage. — Agustino

Our awareness to exercise moral law that is authentically willed and therefore real is based on our understanding of ourselves as one that establishes this law, the world of understanding that is grounded in the transcendental 'I' and this does not follow if the things-in-themselves cannot be known. If subjective experience is noumenal then we are attaching knowledge to the unconscious realm, which is unknowable. What I am attempting to convey is that there is no exclusion from accessing the noumenal because we have practical reason to postulate that free will exists there and presume that it is the location that constitutes reality even if it can be experienced only qua appearance. There is a distinction between appearances and the thing-in-itself, just as much as a person' experiences can be tied to their imagination and schematically projected, but being independent from our experience of it does not make it entirely inaccessible - think semiotics - despite such an assumption being a paralogism because of this presupposition of some unity of apperception. Overall, understanding of the ultimate nature of reality remains unknown, but we are nevertheless capable of regulating using reason the principles that govern our experience that is constitutive of this free will.

Can I summarize this then as it's better to give than receive and we should take time to smell the roses because there's meaning even in the smallest moments? I'm not sure who disagrees, and I think attributing the opposite view to the consumer driven capitalists is a strawman. Adhering to an economic philosophy for pragmatic purposes says nothing of the person's theological position. My cite to Joel Osteen was meant to point out that you are espousing traditional Judeo-Christian values, which are held most closely by the consumers you condemn. — Hanover

I am not attributing to consumer driven capitalists, like "I have this object" but the fundamental orientation of our self with the external world and where our character is structured by contemporary society that determines this complete totality in the way that we perceive the world. We are no doubt driven by material gain and this mode of existence is so deeply rooted in our understanding that possessing and ownership have become engendered even in our values that everyone including yourself have become property. Prior to this, dogma dominated the social arrangements that values were input and illustrated in the dominant orientation of experience. Both are actually wrong.

Either that or they could only save one life, so they did what they could do. The couple did a deed far greater than I, as I adopted no one. I'd also say that even if (and I don't think it's the case) this couple adopted a child and saved him from misery and did it for no reason other than for fame and attention, I still applaud them. A child saved is a child saved, regardless of intent. — Hanover

They didn't need to 'save' anything, the amount of money they spent taking this child away from his twin and his mother could have been used to give the entire family a comfortable life and both children an excellent education in their respective country. We love to translate these unsustainable actions to be heroic; we can "pity" the disadvantaged because we think our tears is actually going to help them, but take a step back and look at the fruits of the labour here. I am currently moving through an adoption arrangement in Australia (known as Permanent Care) and despite the fact that the child cannot be taken care of by the parents due to a number of possible reasons and hence why the courts take responsibility that enable the order for myself to be the primary carer on a permanent basis, if the parents are still alive we are legislated to ensure visitation rights a number of times. Because, psychologically, this is important for the child.

The thing-in-itself is not accessible. — Agustino

As above. Far out, Agu, do you have to do this in every single thread?

It's not about what you can accept. You can't just pull out a term out of Kant's philosophy and completely misunderstand it. The nature of the transcendental aesthetic precludes whatever is empirically real from ever giving us access to things-in-themselves. To claim otherwise is just to misunderstand Kant's metaphysics. — Agustino

I didn't pull it out, you did and you are the one misunderstanding it.

The thing-in-itself is not accessible. — Agustino

I can't accept this.

That is not the rose seeing me, but rather I seeing myself in the rose, through the way I choose to relate to it. — Agustino

Exactly. Ask not what the rose can do for you, ask what you can do for the rose.

In a word, anthropomorphic. Maybe on a deeper level, that we appreciate the rose for its beauty and meaning rather than its rational value. — praxis

The value here is still projected, but we value the rose for something more than just an object; being rational is actually the regulator and therefore how we understand beauty and meaning is dependent on the clarity of our rational faculties. Our moral values and consciousness determines our ability to give love.

I read recently that a couple adopted a child from Thailand and the mother had twins, but they took only one child and never looked back neither did they help the family. To them, adoption was an image, they did not actually care about the child clearly by not caring about the family of the child, they just wanted a token adopted child for social reasons rather than moral.

Exactly, but in this instance think of Foucault and his concept of discourse:

"What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn't only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression"

Society is not empty, it is dynamic and compelling otherwise why else would highly intelligent people be swept away by the tide and very powerful people lack self-esteem. Consumerism enables us to be convinced that we need it, and that without it there is no meaning to our existence and the sensory stimuli that it evokes, the category it places you in that determines your worth, is powerful.

The answer is in our creative pursuits, how we challenge and defy this system by a mode of being rather than a mode of having or of acquisition, the acquisition of values conducive to the paralysis of our own self-worth.

And so respond to your question. What is it that is of real value if not the acquisition of things and fitting perfectly in to societal expectations. If others don't determine your value, and if your proof of self-worth isn't proved by tangible wealth and success, then what is the answer? — Hanover

Productive self-experience. The framework that determines our value through others is paradoxically narcissistic, despite a reliance on others, because there is an absence of an active orientation towards being.

Many ideologies are formulated on the same tangible proof that enables mobilisation through this essentially faux suggestion of self-worth.

Sounds to me like you're waxing poetic as you gaze into that bouquet you got from your sweetheart on Valentine's Day. Awww. — Hanover

Be careful. This is not the shoutbox so I would appreciate you responding appropriately or not responding at all.

How are these likes different from the rose's looking at you?

I understand the contrast between the mutuality of relationship and the one way relationship of possession, but to the extent that one sells oneself and buys a trophy husband, at least the semblance of mutuality is restored. Can you articulate why it is only the semblance and thus unsatisfying? — unenlightened

Kant is unable to give any real explanation of how schema is connected to categories or the conceptual rules that adequately determine this cognitive orientation and since it is the structure of our mental state that is in question as it is reason or our rational faculty that regulates our observations, how we productively associate with the external world is the primary determinant of this relationship. The problem is not the fact that one would want a family and home, but a trophy wife or husband is a form of consumption where one is passively oriented like a commodity without any inner activity.

For instance, being creative is an active orientation that in contrast alleviates boredom, while on the flip-side can also be compensated with destructiveness as an activity or action. What I am attempting to illustrate is this being mode of existence, our capacity to give and to be a part of the world - rather than to take - and our capacity to love, to feel a connection even to simple things like a rose. It is how we project our understanding and has nothing to do with the rose.

A beautifully worded statement, but just because it's beautiful doesn't mean it's true. In what sense does the rose "see me"? — Agustino

Projection. In the end, the representations we make of objects in the world is a projection that determines the quality of our own mental state.

I don't see how consumerism implies that you treat others as objects. The world is as much a forum for action, as it is a place for things. The rose is a thing - how I relate to that thing is a different question from what the rose is. — Agustino

This is a good point and one I am attempting to ascertain in order to find the necessary psychological conditions that enable transcendence, the fundamental mistakes we make that mediate the wrong perceptual attitude. This dichotomy between the thing in itself and things as they appear to us. We learn from others to perceive that a rose is just a rose and like all other objects, it is disposable and the relation we have with it lacks meaning or feeling and one is alienated and void of any emotional connection. The analogy of consumerism is that society is that machine, this buy and sell, commodity demand and marketing in a social and political system that becomes embedded in our representations that our values themselves become aligned with it.

Our value depends on the success of how well we sell ourselves. It is no longer about the quality of our experiences, but whether our experiences are approved. The mode of having.

Respectfully, this is risky territory. How is one consciously enjoying a consumerist life, for instance, and yet deeply miserable? A misery that never becomes conscious is hardly a problem. — foo

This is a good question, Foo, and I have mentioned this in another thread, whereby we have conscious thoughts, learned behaviour taught to us since childhood, the language we acquire and the social requisites that enforce behavioural expectations. Our unconscious, however, is our own personal identity, separate and contains intuitive feelings that we are unable to articulate using language. Have you ever encountered a situation where you felt like something was wrong, but could not put words to explain why you felt that way, perhaps until sometime later? Anxiety and depression is the language of this unconscious feeling telling you that something is wrong, for instance, but that you are unable to understand or explain why you feel that way.

So, consciously, you are told that getting married to a trophy wife, working in a secure job, having two kids and living in the suburbs will bring you happiness. You do what you are told. You find that attractive wife, but she is mindless, you cannot have great conversations with her or laugh with her about similar jokes, but you think she is right for you because she epitomises what you are told to find attractive. You are silently suffering because you are blindly following, but you cannot articulate why because there is a totality in your conscious thoughts as dictated by your environment that you actually think that you are supposed to be happy because that is what you are told will bring you happiness. .

We are told that selling ourselves as objects - to be attractive, powerful, wealthy - is the requisite for this success, that we feel accomplished when we post a photo on Instagram and get likes for it despite the fact that it is completely meaningless. The more likes, the more worthy the object. There is an inherent emptiness in this, a lack of relatedness, or substance that despite the fact that we are dynamic, active, energetic and doing things, all of it is really nothing.

The congratulations that we receive from others who are also experiencing the symptoms of this pathology satisfy us consciously because we think there is some unity in this approval, but deep within we understand the self-deceit or the sacrifice to our own self-hood, but we simply cannot articulate it.

No. This is outright BS. The only reason why consumerism is bad is because it leaves you vulnerable to the loss of the pleasure of consuming, through your susceptibility to loss of health, loss of money, loss of friends, loss of social status, etc. If it didn't leave you vulnerable to those things, or if you could be invulnerable to them, then it wouldn't be bad. But life is so structured, that suffering is an intrinsic aspect of it. — Agustino

When you look at the saying I do not only see the rose, the rose also sees me, the rose itself is no longer an object because there is a genuine reciprocal unity. Ultimately, how we identify and perceive the external world and our relatedness to it is determined by the quality of our mental state. Aside from functional requirements, consumerism teaches us to acquire and own objects where we begin to transform and identify the external world as a thing, including values and ideals. A rose is just a thing, a disposable object. Our relationship with others is devoured by a sense of ownership and entitlement, where people market archetypes in order to be advantageously positioned in society thereby making themselves and their own feelings property.

This is the mode of having. It is kind of orientation or relationship between you and the external world, not actual commodities, and a totality in your perceptions and thinking and thus an actual mode of existence. While there is harmony in this social dynamism, the continuity of this acquisition is constant and as such the very essence itself is nothingness since there is no satisfaction. This mode of having is nothing, empty. The mode of being, on the contrary, is to be creative, to be capable of expressing ourselves and find that genuine relatedness to others. This is impossible if our relatedness to others has no substance, is not rooted with feeling but rather viewing others as merely objects that one can acquire and dispose of.

Indeed, but there is a reason for that, which I quoted from Erich Fromm' work based on a Buddhist mantra that attempts to articulate that there is a genuine, reciprocal unity between the self and the external world, and a pseudo-unity based on an emptiness or alienation glued together by consumerism. Being in the world is this ontological relationship between our identity extended into and becoming present spatially or dasein.

We need conceptual parallels to magnify our own personal story without unconsciously blocking this potential articulation with self-defence mechanisms. The ambiguity of the prose - just like the ambiguity of the parable that attempts to teach one about morality through a story without actually codifying it specifically - is intended to enable us to subjectively reflect and contrast so that we can actually understand why we feel a certain way.

Only then can we be enabled with the right solutions to make real changes. As mentioned, a person could consciously enjoy the consumerism, have a perfect life, partner, family and everything could be great, but they are deeply miserable and are unable to ascertain why. They instead opt for psychological placebos such as new ageism and mindfulness to try and accept the happiness of the situation, despite the fact that they are crying out through their feelings. To be able to make real changes, one really needs to understand and confront why their actual day-to-day life is bad.

This is the precise problem.

And while I have no grand consummate theories about it, there are some observations that have taught me all is not what it appears. — Anthony

Of course not. Have you ever encountered someone where, when you told them the truth about a flaw in their personality, they respond in their shock with denial before attacking you or your character, involving gossip or sometimes slander in order to have other people side with them against you so as to avoid the anxiety? This type of narcissism would prefer insanity than facing the truth. If you say the exact same thing, but nicely - such as using 'examples' in other people rather than being directly about them - then, while they may still be shocked, nevertheless appreciate you for opening their eyes.

Our dreams manifest symbolically our subjective conflicts where we can interpret and articulate consciously our unconscious realm and express what we actually think and feel. Our perceptions and interpretations conflict for a number a reasons, mostly because of learned behaviour and our ego. In the end, our reason and rational faculties regulate our perceptual and behavioural responses and we should work hard to ensure that - like we do our bodies - we keep our mind active and strong through learning, knowledge and articulating our personal experiences.

Drugs does not help you do this.

CBT is NOT what it seems...it is more likely to lead to increased social mania, neurosis, and a break in consciousness due to the promotion of pseudo contact in oneself and in relationship. In short, it is childish as it doesn't lead you to own yourself as an whole human being with subconscious processing, and it ignores certain undeniable elements of mental process. — Anthony

This to me is merely denial. Criminals hate police because they want to commit crimes and while there are bad policeman that would therefore justify such a hatred, the fact is that the reason why criminals hate law enforcement is because they do not need such obstacles to their desired behaviour. There may be bad psychologists, but that is not the real reason why people express their rejection of psychotherapy.

First of all, you make little sense here. How is talking to someone going to "break consciousness"? The only thing the CBT does is teach you practical, self-reflective skills that enable you to approach your own personal story and experiences and find the confidence to articulate it. This can be achieved by writing, communicating, even art. By confronting your own experiences and overcoming the self-defence mechanisms that prevent you from facing them, you reinforce an independent willpower that allows you to overcome the root causes of your neurosis.

I saw a woman have a hysterical episode at work, our receptionist who was laughing hysterically and crying uncontrollably at the same time and there was nothing we could do to stop her and get her to hear us or even see us, despite her being there. It was frightening to say the least, her eyes staring wildly out into space as she laughed and cried, and when she came to at the hospital, she herself said she was extremely frightened and had no idea what happened. How exactly can you be lead to your "whole human being" when such a dramatic and uncontrollable psychotic episode does nothing of the sort.

And yet you fail to mention the positives of induced psychotic episodes as seen by psilocybin and LSD. Many psychologists and psychiatrists are waiting in great anticipation when these tools can be harnessed to treat deeply depressed memories or traumatic events, obviously in controlled settings and under the guidance of someone who can help ease the arising anxiety, and with the proper screening methods too to prevent the emergence of more enduring forms of psychosis. — Posty McPostface

What are the benefits of these isolated experiences, exactly?

You also appear to be purporting that induced psychotic episodes are the only real method of enabling a person to accept and articulate trauma, which is simply wrong.

. Agustino insisted that thoughts, and actions, which are not consciously chosen by the agent are in some important way, not thoughts and actions of the agent. But that's contradictory nonsense, and leads into a weird dualism where some of your thoughts and actions are your own, and some are not your own. The legal system distinguishes based on responsibility. So even if one is not legally responsible, this does not mean that the person's thoughts and actions are in some way not that person's. — Metaphysician Undercover

The way that I see 'conscious' and 'unconscious' psychologically is the dichotomy between learned behaviour - our relationship with the external world and language - along with our own personal selfhood. So a person could be feeling anxious, isolated and without any sense of meaning (unconscious) while consciously they could consume their energy and time with activities and would have trouble articulating why they feel that way. Like people who have a 'perfect' life - loving partner, nice home, money and security - and yet are still miserable; they cannot articulate why and so to them the anxiety is the problem rather than the mode of existence, that it is somehow not your own feeling and it needs to be ignored. The way that they articulate their identity is based on a type of contrast to normalcy, and Agu is guilty of articulating that in other places by purporting his want of a trophy wife who has specific behavioural attributes, an unrealistic idealism devoid of substance and motivated by his religio-social commitments. For it to work, he would need to find someone living in the same delusion as him.

While responsibility attempts - in the philosophy of law - to rationalise the purpose of the law, intent is the determinant to understand the severity of the crime itself and the ultimate punishment. In the case of self-defence, for instance, the motivation when proven that they subjectively acted out of self-defence confirms that they are no longer liable for the crime because it would not have been committed otherwise. Legally and philosophically there is that conflict between subjective and objective in the concept of mens rea in similar vein to this unconscious and conscious realms or the learned 'I' and the actual 'I'.

What I have defined is not a unity between the conscious mind and intention, but a division. All the activity of a living being is intentional, meaning it is carried out with purpose. The conscious mind has the capacity to prevent activity, through willpower. This defines the division between the conscious mind and the intentional acts of the living being. By preventing actions the conscious mind provides the conditions required to consider options. Therefore "intention" as the motivator of action, and seated deep in the unconscious level, is actually opposed, and therefore distinct from, conscious willpower which is the preventer of action. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree, but not so much the way you have stated here. So, say a person becomes conscious of themselves and feels the angst as we had originally stated, but this subjective feeling of alienation is a phenomenon too overwhelming due to an intense lack of self-esteem that they choose to conform. While they may be mindlessly following, the fact is that they have chosen to do this (hence why I am a compatibilist) and therefore intentional. Only children or one without the cognitive capacity is safe from the moral burden of such intentional activity.

You claim the "motivation is pleasure". But that cannot be correct in this model. The real motivator is the real intent, the real purpose behind the act, at the natural, biological level. The purpose behind the sexual act is reproduction, and this is the real motivator. The conscious mind however, apprehends the sexual act as pleasurable, and therefore sees it as a desirable option. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have been going round and round with this one and even started a new thread about it. I cannot really come to grips with this, maybe look at my other thread and discuss there.

As a fan of more psychosis in a world devoured by damaging neuroses, I advocate smoking pot if it leads to psychosis. — Anthony

Congratulations, this is by far the most ridiculous comment I have ever read. So, rather than working through and understanding the cause of neurosis in order to prevent the severity of the condition spiralling to something even worse, you say "let's get worse!"

Psychosis is defined as:

"A severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality."

They are no longer capable of distinguishing reality and in their delusions tend to hear voices and hallucinate, are consistently agitated and often have problems speaking and articulating themselves. They are completely lost, whereas neurosis is defined as:

"A relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety, obsessive behaviour, hypochondria) but not a radical loss of touch with reality."

So when you say:

Psychosis is really the only cure for neurosis. — Anthony

What you are actually saying is commit mental suicide and no doubt the reasoning behind this is a tactic to avoid the distress that it causes when attempting to ascertain the cause for having neurosis in the first place. All it does is prove the very fear you speak of as it is clear that is what is causing you to escape into a preference for the complete annihilation of the mind along with the freedom and responsibility therewith.

The excuses to avoid facing responsibility is so typical, like a neo-Nazi delusional enough to ensure the continuity of his ideology through holocaust denial.

There are causes for the condition, it does not just pop out of nowhere but it is there because there are a number of causal factors that you can ascertain and work through including the identification of your own personal and behavioural patterns that exasperate mental health conditions for the worse. Your health including what you eat and how you sleep, as well as how much exercise you do. The state of your brain and development, neglect during childhood, hereditary and other biological factors and if it is too hard for you to be able to ascertain the quality and reasons for your feelings, seek help. There are professionals out there that can use both pharmacological - depending on the severity - together with CBT and other psychotherapeutic support.

The greater your understanding of yourself, the greater control that you are in and fear itself is the feeling of being out of control. The continuity of such faulty thinking is caused by a number of reasons, but mostly because your interpersonal cognitive discourse is shaped in a way that supports your fears rather than tackling it head on. Like that garbage about advocating for psychosis.

Sometimes the greatest way to say something is to say nothing at all.

LOVE this song.

Can I just say, MU, that while this thread has not been challenging for me, it has certainly been great having a conversation with someone who actually understands and the fact that I have not had to filter through silly emotions and irrational suggestions (that is what the subject of love does), well, it has been really satisfying to say the least, especially for the opportunity to articulate my opinions on this subject with greater clarity.

But then people want to tie intention to consciousness as well, such that non-conscious things cannot have intention. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is problematic; intoxication and criminal liability questions intent different to other crimes (mens rea). There is basic intent, but when someone is not conscious like they are intoxicated, how do we measure intent? While the law would not offer an acquittal for a crime committed during intoxication, the effect of the intoxication does 'direct' the individual to behave immorally that could reduce the sentence. If a person is mindlessly following and unable to ascertain the quality of his own mental state - while still guilty - if he does what everyone else is doing and if they do not see such behaviour as wrong, is it immoral?

What we need to prove there is some unity between action and intention, but if intention is a mental state there needs to be some awareness or consciousness that motivates action because you are doing it for a reason or with a purpose. It is therefore causally teleological. Reason itself is a mental state or a quality - a free choice - and the reason why so many people want to escape into determinism is to safeguard them from the frightening gloom of free-will and making bad choices. The intention therefore needs to be unified and in some way epistemically articulated. Psychologically, however, the quality of these choices can be formed through beliefs - think of ultranationalist political ideology - and determining the quality of such beliefs is even more complex.

Our instinctual drives are natural - a man wants to have sex with a woman - but these drives are unconscious. Like your comparative on plants or other biological organisms, our instinctual drives are a natural part of our biological system and the motivation it assigns is entirely propelled for the pleasure it offers like food to a hungry animal or pollen to a bee. It is evolutionary and beyond reason. This motivation is pleasure; if a man desires a woman because of such instinctual drives, he could try and justify it by forming a 'belief' that somehow his desire for pleasure is 'love' but the unity here is not real. Conformism or blindly following is automaton and the reason why people have this pathology of normalcy is due to the pleasure it gives having people accept you and appreciate you.

Plato demonstrated that virtue exists as the manifestation of a type of knowledge, but this exposed a deeper problem, that one can know what is good, and still do what is bad. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a good point, but it brings to mind the Aristotlean conception of happiness: There are three prominent types of life: pleasure, political and contemplative. The mass of mankind is slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts; they have some ground for this view since they are imitating many of those in high places. People of superior refinement identify happiness with honour, or virtue, and generally the political life. I am thinking about a man who falls in love - authentically - with a woman that does not 'fit' in a positive category - say she is unattractive - and may impact on his social standing and so he turns his back on her. There is a certain level of courage in virtue, or 'willpower' as you call it that motivates the individual to avoid being "slavish" by seeking the pleasure social approval affords. This, again, depends on the quality of their mental state or their capacity to rationalise adequately and honestly. Reason, it would seem, regulates our behaviour and so it should be our imperative to ensure its adequate function by consistently seeking to improve ourselves.

Ohhh poor TimeLine feels the need to say she has a bigger one :D — Agustino

Bigger heart? So true. I am a fluffy bunny feet. You are a disease-spreading flushable. :P

Don't cry for me you Argentine.

Thanks, I really needed a picture of your feet as proof that you are on a tram... — Agustino

Proof that I am busy, unlike you who talks non-stop about business and appears non-stop to be on TPF. Gosh, some people. (L)

With regard to anxiety I think that it can produce a cascade of thoughts which often are unhelpful because they merely perpetuate the anxiety. In this case an emphasis on the body can help to ground you and make you aware that you are more than those thoughts and put them into a perspective that stops you getting carried away. When you are calm maybe the problem can be reframed in new ways. Ultimately though I don't think meditation is about problem solving but radical acceptance. At bottom there is nothing to fix but only a getting to know more intimately. Here again is the rub of denial if this is used to turn away from problems. — Perplexed

I agree, hence why I myself have stated that for me, above all else, peace is really my only goal and by peace I mean that calm, level-headed attitude and a restfulness within but this is not achieved by mindfulness or meditation only. It requires a complete transformation in your attitude and how well you take care of yourself.

Many of us are in a position where we are required to manage conflicting or multiple things and the more tired and anxious you are, the less productive and so you end up lacking any achievement. Life becomes this terrible repetition of just dealing with shit with bits and pieces of positive "moments" that keep you going.

The most important problem to overcome in my opinion is the people in your personal space because you can form attachments or dependency - either emotionally or economically - that make you adapt to their presence, like having a thorn in your side that you do not remove, and so you just deal with them day in day out until you find that years have passed and you haven't an inkling as to what happiness is. So it is to find the courage - despite you wanting them around - to admit that these people are toxic to your happiness and that may mean a radical change to your personal circumstances.

What has that to do with anything? Right now, I am on a tram on my way to work. I am on my phone to avoid having to look at people pressed into eachother. I will work all day managing 10 staff who are dependent on me. I have come to a point where I am considering leaving TPF because of this and a number of other personal and creative pursuits I have planned including a documentary I am partaking in a few months and an adoption application where I will need to leave my current housing arrangements and rent a place suitable for us.

I once owned my own business too and can understand the difficulties. But my life right now is much more busy then it was back then.

There is the magic, mystic crystal revelations of the New Age, and then there is just ordinary secular meditation. — Bitter Crank

This is exactly it and I think nowadays people assume that meditation is linked to new ageism. The one thing I hate about yoga classes is the leader tends to blab on about something mystical, whereas I enjoy spending an hour in class essentially just stretching my body, a way to decompress and escape my incredibly busy lifestyle.

That is the way I see meditation, self-reflective practice that takes one out of the busy and places emphasis even temporarily just on 'me'. For mental health and to improve there are a number of other 'practices' that need to be done, including what you eat, friends that you have, exercise and taking care of your brain through reading and knowledge. All this leads to peace, which is happiness.

To me, meditation is really just self-reflective practice that slows the mind down to remind the person of the importance of this peace.

What has that to do with your original dreamy point?

You know. The Mind. The force that figured out the concept which it calls the Law of Thermodynamics and Entropy. It's what asked the question to begin with. — Rich

Are you saying that the mind violates the LoT and entropy?

I guess the verdict is still out. Mind/Life may violate it I guess and that would be that. — Rich

Yeah, sorry buddy, you make no sense here.