In humans, knowledge is not of things but of representations of things. I think obviously. — Mww

Is it so obvious, though? This is one way of thinking about the situation, to be sure, but is it the best way? To imagine is to represent, to make a picture is to represent. to think reflexively about or to re-member something is to represent. So perhaps it is difficult for us to imagine, think about, picture or re-member how we perceive things without it appearing to us to be a process of representation.

For example, religious peple have been arguing about who has the right idea of God or The Truth. They even went to war with eachother for precisely this reason (such as the 30 year war). They have killed "heretics", maimed children, tortured women, burned towns and villages, and so on.

And all this on account of their belief as to what the right properties are of an entity that is ultimately unknowable. Clearly, these people have something at stake here. — baker

The question was as to what stake people could have in something that is completely unknowable; which implies also something that is thought, acknowledged, to be unknowable. The stakes of the religious people you are referring to here are those of people who imagine they know the nature of the unknowable, or that someone has known and revealed the nature of the unknowable and so they at least have faith that it is thus and so; so their stakes are not in something that is acknowledged to be completely unknowable.

"Hap-piness is a warm gun"?. :wink:

Not merely sitting, but sitting in a certain way; nothing to do with chickens. This is not according to me, but according to Soto Zen. On the other hand all animals are said to have the Buddha Nature, so...

I like the way it sounds, but I don't know what it means. I've never cared for Emerson's poetry much. — T Clark

I agree, his essays are much better...he's not much of a poet.

It's an image of the "famous solo cup". not the famous solo cup itself (if such a thing exists apart from images). One image on your computer and one image on mine, and they are presumably pretty much the same image as to colour (red), shape and proportion, if not size. If there are discrepancies between the two images we could discover them by each of us describing what we see on our computer.

and allowing oneself to get held captive (ascetic ideal) by any particular valuative concept of flourishing. — Joshs

Did you mean "not allowing..."?

But Nietzsche did not believe that the self is a fixed identity. That is one reason he is embraced by postmodern philosophers like Foucault and Deleuze , who see the self as socially constructed. — Joshs

Regardless of what the self is, would Nietzsche not agree that you must follow your own passion and not live according to the mores and expectations of others, and that to do this would constitute flourishing?

The real you is an illusion. — Cartuna

You can live more or less enslaved to what you might think are the expectations of others.

What is the impetus for transformation - is it being who you really are, which may not be an improvement? — Tom Storm

Surely Nietzsche would have said that "being who you really are" is preferable to not being who you really are. It seem to me this is where the existentialist notion of authenticity comes into play.

That says something, doesn't it? So now, religious or philosophical conviction is 'special pleading', and the secular view is normative. Is that it? — Wayfarer

It's a philosophy forum, I'm exploring the philosophical question of the nature of rights. The fact that this is so dimly apprehended says something in my view. — Wayfarer

The secular view is default because it is the view that grounds ethics in nothing more than arguments that may be derived from empirical and rational consideration of the actual situation on the ground, so to speak, and not on this or that ancient scripture.

That said, there's a story breaking in Australia about shocking treatment of livestock in the live animal trade, by abbatoirs in Indonesia. I'm standing with the animal rights acitivists in calling for that abhorrent trade to be closed down, it is absolutely heart-wrenching to see animals treated that way, and completely inhumane. But it's not a matter of violation of the animal's rights, it's cruelty on the part of humans. — Wayfarer

What's wrong with being cruel to animals if we don't think it is because they have a right not to be treated cruelly? What about children who are not of an age to understand the notion of a right? If what you are claiming is that animals don't have rights because in order to have rights they would have to be able to conceive of themselves as having rights, then that is a self-serving tautology.

Animals that are treated cruelly are unhappy just as humans that are treated cruelly are. Animals may not be able to articulate the notion of having rights, but they would avoid being treated cruelly whenever possible. Humans don't have rights because they are able to conceive of themselves as having rights, but because, for the sake of compassion and fair play, we grant ourselves rights, just as we should for animals.

How do you interpret Kant's notion of the 'thing in itself'; is it. for him, unknowable or merely not exhaustively knowable?

I read Nietzsche’s self-overcoming ( will to power) as being different than you were before, not better in the sense of some kind of cumulative progress or organic growth. — Joshs

You don't understand it as an idea of flourishing, but simply of change, whether for the better or worse?

Uh huh — frank

My apologies if I offended you by my straight talking. Do you want to say that philosophical pragmatists acknowledge unknowable things in themselves or not?

I think this is on the right track. Nietzsche conceived of the fundamental aim of all life to be, not merely survival, but power; by which I take him to mean, not power over others or physical strength, but power over oneself, over one's own desire for comfort, ease and distraction at the expense of flourishing and becoming the best you can be. So I understand Nietzsche to be talking along similar lines as Aristotle did with his notions of eudamonia and arete.

Moreover, it's not a text that is equivocal or unequivocal. If F = ma seems unequivocal to you, that's because you have a certain knowledge that contextualizes it and makes sense of it. Someone who lacks such knowledge cannot make sense of F = ma, or at least not in the way those who do have that knowledge can. Its' the same with other things, including those in religion. — baker

This is a weak argument: F=ma cannot be understood simply by virtue of understanding English. Do you read Pali? If not I presume you read the Pali Canon in your first language. I have read parts of the Pali canon in English, and the concepts are not difficult to understand. Of course faith, or belief, not to mention practice, is another matter.

I don't deny that Eastern practitioners have a whole culture of ritual and belief that informs their practice and their understanding of enlightenment; but all that shows is that they have their own cultural understandings of what is a universal human concept, like love or compassion. I have not argued that it will not be experienced differently by those in different cultures.

If the goal is non-attachment then on what basis would you claim that a practice to realize that is dependent upon certain beliefs (other than that the practice itself is a sound method for achieving non-attachment)?

If there is some other goal, then what would you say that other goal is?


Complete cessation of suffering. — baker

And how is complete cessation of suffering achieved? By letting go of all attachment? So, you haven't answered the question which was on what basis would you claim that complete cessation of suffering is impossible (assuming for the sake of argument that it is possible at all) without believing in karma and rebirth. I am not asking why it would not be possible for those who have been enculturated into believing in karma and rebirth, to become enlightened without those beliefs, but why it would be impossible per se without those beliefs.

If westerners are not capable of really believing in karma and rebirth; are you saying that that would preclude them from ever being able to realize complete cessation of suffering, assuming that is possible at all for anyone?

Since you persist in talking around my questions without providing any counterarguments, and since the above is the salient point I am interested in, I am not going to respond to the rest of what you wrote, until I am satisfied that you have responded to the above. I'm not here to waste my time.

Meaning that chicken are enlightened. — baker

And...?

I knew you'd say that. :wink:

But then the unpredictable is expected, so to be truly unpredictable the madman should sometimes be predictable, because that would be unexpected.

It's the term used by Buddhists. Whether complete non-attachment is possible to cultivate is a question I can't answer, since I haven't done it. I do know that I have managed to become less attached to things, so I know it is possible to learn to reduce your attachment, and I do know the result is a clearer mind and less anxiety.

theia mania. — TheMadFool

Is that what we should expect from an enlightened mad fool instead of the mundane madness from the ordinary mad fool? :razz:

Your apparent puzzlement is amusing.You think everything is black and white: either no attachment at all or complete attachment? No diversity of attachment: no being attached to some things and not others?

Not sure what you could mean by that. — praxis

I simply mean that we don't consciously experience dopamine, just as we don't consciously experience neural networks.

It is far more real than this 'non-attachment' concept that you appear to put so much stock in. — praxis

Not on the experiential level.

Yeah, there's no gotcha here. It's pragmatism. Think about all that literature you absorbed and you'll see why. — frank

Pragmatism does not accept any notion of unknowable things in themselves. You apparently don't know what you're talking about.

Still deflecting? The question was how do we know that things in themselves are unknowable if we are basing that supposed knowledge on a story that assumes that we know how things like the eye, the optic nerve and visual cortex work. It's a performative contradiction.

Nice bit of deflection. I'm already familiar enough with the literature thanks.

No. e.g. "What is Enlightenment?" — 180 Proof

I think you can find similar ideas to enlightenment-as-non-attachment in Spinoza, the Epicureans, the Skeptics, the Stoics and the Existentialists.

Nietzsche, as I read him, advocated a radical independence of spirit ... — Janus — 180 Proof

I'd forgotten about that essay; I encountered it as an undergraduate: looks like radical independence of spirit begins with Kant. Keeping the flame alive!

Of course we do. Science says we model the world. We talk about our models. — frank

If we are modeling the world then there must be a world that is being modeled, no? Or perhaps you are wanting to say the world is a model? Whose model would it be then?

If I am alone riding my bike out in the desert, is this all just a model? If I am driving my car through congested traffic in the city is this all just a model? If we each have our own models, then how come we can mostly coordinate such as to avoid collisions, if we are not all accurately modeling anything?

If we are accurately modeling something, then the issue comes down to just how we want to talk about whatever it is we are modeling; do we want to say there are cars, roads, trees, people, traffic lights, bikes, buses, trains etc, etc, or do we want to say that there are unknowable structures (or "somethings") that we (arbitrarily?) model as cars, roads, trees..."? What would be the advantage of the latter way of speaking?

Also the question I have posed twice now to Hanover has not been answered. How do we know the scientific picture of perception is right if we cannot know anything about what things are in themselves?

For me it seems more accurate and parsimonious to say that we don't talk about our models, we talk about the world via our models.

Right, I have no argument with dopamine being a part of the story, and only a part, even in the biological, neurological context. From the experiential perspective it doesn't exist at all

LOL, yes I remember that one too. It always reminds me of when I used to be interested in kabbala, and I remember reading that Hebrew letters each have a meaning. So the word for light 'AUR' is composed of Aleph Vav Raysh which translates as "the inifinite impregnates a vessel". Or something like that...

You tell us it is your point. — I like sushi

Que?

I haven't read the dopamine book; I am prejudicially suspicious of any attempt to explain complex human motivations and behavior in terms of the effects a neurotransmitter.

I agree that we are, by and large, social beings. Maybe we would do best in small. close communities composed of like-minded individuals. This would seem to characterize Buddhist monastic life. Although non-attachment is the goal, practitioners are advised to "take refuge" in the sangha (the community of aspirants).

I seem to remember a Leonard Cohen song with the lyric line something like "Do we have the strength to be alone together?"

I'm interested in what might be a Western equivalent of enlightenment - outside from Jung's somewhat syncretistic ideas.

Does anyone have comments on Nietzsche's ideas of self-overcoming? The will to power implies significant attachment however, but perhaps I am wrong.

The secular version of enlightenment seems to be a kind of emotional and aspirational minimalism. — Tom Storm

I think you can find similar ideas to enlightenment-as-non-attachment in Spinoza, the Epicureans, the Skeptics, the Stoics and the Existentialists.

Nietzsche, as I read him, advocated a radical independence of spirit; he was a great inspiration to Heidegger and Camus if not Sartre.

I think you are right that some secular notions of enlightenment are as you say; a disposition that is motivated by the desire for comfort, an easy life and wants to avoid being disturbed or any kind of inconvenience.

Ideas generally seem to be malleable, though; so unless they are antithetical they can often to be massaged until they begin to resemble one another.

I don't know; I'm not sure a non-attached person would experience disappointment.

That seems true, although I would say the cultural stuff is most important, and although it is obviously absorbed via the senses, it is not mere sense data.

Love and beauty are not the same thing. I guess we have to decide what love means. — praxis

For me there are different kinds of beauty. There is moral beauty for example. A saint would be morally beautiful. To admire something would be to love it in some sense it seems to me.

A mind that would not exists without sensory input in its development. Minds don’t just pop into existence. — praxis

I don't know. Imagine if there could be a person who was blind, had no feeling in their body, no senses whatever; could they have a mind? I really don't know; I'd say probably they wouldn't have anything we would recognize as a mind, but they would have a brain with at least some function, if they were alive at all, I imagine. But in any case, is it the senses that tell you that or do you reach that conclusion from something you've read or is it just an intuition you have?

In non-attachment, why would you love any particular person? — praxis

Why could you not? You might, although non-attached, find one tree more beautiful than another, no? Surely a saintly person would be more loveable than the misogynist, the serial killer, or the pedophile, even to the non-attached person, wouldn't you think?

From what I have read of people being in sensory deprivation chambers, I doubt anyone would last that long. Instead they might become psychotic, but then that would be to lose one's mind, only in one sense; the psychotic still has a mind, however unbalanced it might be. As to the existence of consciousness postmortem, I don't think it is possible to know. That said I think we, or I at least, have little reason to think that consciousness does survive the death of the body.

Is it necessary that to feel something, pain, love, grief, happiness or whatever, that I be attached to the feeling? What does it mean to say I am attached to a feeling as opposed to simply being aware of the feeling? If I feel love for someone, do I need to be attached to that love in order to act lovingly towards them?

Minds require (are completely dependent on) sensory input to simply exist. — praxis

That, even if true, is not the point. Is it the senses that tell you that minds require and are completely dependent on sensory input simply to exist, or is it not a modern cultural presumption?

It is fairly clear that someone "not attached" could be interpreted as "not caring" because they cannot care about something they have no attachment too. — I like sushi

I don't understand it that way. I think it's possible to feel care, love, grief, pain, whatever to the fullest and yet be unattached to the feeling.

I imagine it's a state of equanimity in which thoughts and feelings arise and are clearly seen and felt but are not indulged in. Think about pain; as long as you are embodied pain cannot definitely be avoided. But as, I think it was, @Tom Storm told us in another thread recently, his father was able to switch pain off, undergo dental procedures without anaesthetic and said "It only hurts of you let it".

To a mind lacking nuance perhaps.