I don't think that any religion is about self-overcoming — praxis

Interesting. I can't help feeling that religions, when practiced from a certain perspective - are often about overcoming or transcendence - perhaps as simple as overcoming your baser self or your more human urges, but right through to attaining enlightenment. Of course this all depends on how one constructs those ideas and no doubt there is a spectrum of possibilities.

I have often pondered Buddhism and emptiness and how this sits with nihilism - perhaps passive nihilism. Nietzsche (admittedly with an inadequate understanding) thought Buddhism expressed nihility. But might there not a connection between Nietzsche's goal of self-overcoming and citta-bhavana the Buddhist concept of (mind-cultivation). In used to read Suzuki on Buddhism in the 1980's. This quote resonated and I have often adapted it (perhaps controversially) for some expressions of nihilism.

Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.
D.T. Suzuki

You're claiming that the core of a religion is nihilistic in nature? :chin: — praxis

You make that sounds like a bad thing. :wink:

But no, I was responding to what you said about emptiness - it was just a quip and isn't really germane to this thread.

If it doesn't, toss it back in the bin. But if it does, you'd be foolish not to take it with you. — T Clark

One man's trash is another man's treasure. Or so I am told.

Philosophy as dumpster diving. I can get behind that.

Emptiness is the core of Buddhism. — praxis

And the core of nihilism. Or at least some expressions thereof.

Jeeez, ya blokes from daunundda are lazy: — praxis

Yeah I am but I've seen this some of this stuff already. I was thinking more about Buddhism specifically. Mediation doesn't care if you are Sam Harris or the Dalai Lama.

The world is a vast supermarket of ideas and lifestyle options. I need a good reason to pursue neuroscience which is not a subject of much interest to me. Seems it's like quantum mechanics for spawning a range of spurious notions amongst laity.

Absolutely, yes, although not in a way that is likely to be agreeable to a... fetishizer. — praxis

Isn't it the fetishizers who have a Jones for evidence based everything these days? I think it's the denigrators and vandals like me who doubt evidence. :razz:

suppression of the neural default mode network. — praxis

OK. What on earth is that?

The concept and experience of 'emptiness', for instance, has value because it can lead to well-being (when not fetishized). — praxis

Do you think this can be demonstrated?

I know middle class Westerners seem to fetishize Buddhism but is there any good reason we should care what it (in any of its fecund forms) says? Asking for a friend...

We must inspire good ideals in others to prevent them from succumbing to depression and suicide. If we value their life that is. Which we should. :) — Benj96

:up:

How does one rule out idealism you say? My answer to that is why would you want to rule out idealism? Idealism stands as a goal, a noble one at that. — Benj96

Sorry, I was referring to philosophical idealism (all that exists is consciousness and materialism is just mind when viewed from a particular perspective) as per Schopenhauer, Berkeley, Hegel, Schelling, and these days Kastrup and Hoffman)

Cheers. Dyspeptic? I prefer bemused. Nice writing by SJG.

Probably because I'm failing to make sense. I was just saying something superfluous about the use of the word real in certain contexts. When I worked in the area of antiquities briefly in the 1980's, the big question about items offered to us was always 'Is it real?' Forgeries being very common. After a while, that question seemed to become metaphysical as it was down to experts who had an almost mystical way of determining if something was real or not by signs no one else could discern. The subsequent cost of an item and its aesthetic satisfaction being based entirely upon it being judged real or not. A digression, sorry.

I hear you.

Until you have a term with which to contrast it, "real" has no meaning, does nothing except perhaps misguide. — Banno

So a useful example of this in action might be a 'real' 5th century BCE attic vase versus a fake one. How would this fare - the real god versus the false gods? Can real meaningfully refer to an abstraction, or must it be demonstrable?

I guess we have real characters in a Dickens novel.

Yes it seems so to me too. Nicely worded.

Since you have no criteria for determining if you're presently on Ketamine, you don't know if the world you think of as real is just an idea. — frank

Indeed and so we might arrive back at idealism - what criteria do we use to demonstrate that the physical world is real other than intersubjective agreement? Not sure kicking a rock Dr Johnson style will cut it. Do you have an approach to this?

I think there were very fine people on both sides, Baden.

Is it the case that this kind of political discussion hinges mostly on a judgement made about human behavior?

:up:

Yes, I know the difference between real and real. — T Clark

Never thought you didn't, I was pointing to a consistent use of real/authentic as a hallmark of superiority in many contemporary sub-cultures. Something this thread keeps reminding me of. :wink:

Isn't the contrast here real against artificial? — Banno

Probably right. I suspect part of this strand is even less defined - 'real' as somehow pure or good; it's opposite being not just artificial, but insalubrious, less moral.

Meursault, the main character the tale, was absurdly contrived. — praxis

Indeed. I also sometimes think of this tale as the 'awakening' of someone with autism.

Just 4 real ingredients.

This marketing of the 'real' is to me related to authenticity culture which for some years has been a defining quality in marketing lifestyle options, especially the 'hipsters' who, when they were more of a thing, pontificated about the authenticity of products like beer, music or clothing. Perhaps the vestigial traces of 1970's 'be real' imprecations.

Andrew Potter wrote an interesting book on this:

https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-authenticity-hoax-andrew-potter/book/9780061251351.html

I am merely saying that for the sake of this discussion (that you don't seem to want to be a part of :wink:) — CornwallCletus

Don't confuse a different perspective with lack of participation. :wink:

The paranormal entities are of unknown origin. The discovery does not state whether or not they are spirits or ghosts as in some kind of "residue" of a human soul. All we know is there are something sentient here among us that is not bound by the laws of physics as we commonly know them. — CornwallCletus

I kind of determined this. My point is simply that the paradigm shift would be far greater if we were able to demonstrate from 'ghosts' that there was an afterlife. A question for the ages. I suspect this would be more transformational than aliens - which is in the more mundane realm of speculative science. I also suspect that the existence of some non-specific paranormal entities may not in itself be significantly different from extra-terrestrial life.

For me the issue is not confined to the phenomena you identify - what happens next will have more to do with 1) how the media covers it - what panic or otherwise they generate in the public and 2) what politicians do with it, and, 3) social media reactions. It could go in several directions and depend largely on whether paranoia and bizarre speculative reactions are engendered.

As with most matters, it is not the thing itself which causes the reactions, it is how we choose to respond to it.

Right, that's the point. We consider whether or not the thing being measured (through sensation) is real, and we naturally conclude that if we are measuring it, it must be real. But prior to coming to this conclusion, isn't it necessary to do our due diligence toward understanding the thing which is doing the measuring? If the thing doing the measuring isn't real, then what validity does "if we are measuring it, it must be real" have? — Metaphysician Undercover

Good question and one we never quite get past even if we ignore it or sweep it aside.

I would say that novelty is the only criterion of value, if one understands novelty in a certain way — Joshs

I understand your point - I was referring to the energetic pursuit of novelty or 'the new' for its own sake. Whatever novelty I appreciate is generally, although not always, eclipsed by my desire not to experience something too different unless I have to. :wink:

Have you seen Mark Fisher’s — Joshs

Thanks. Really interesting. His 'slow cancellation of the future' seems to fit. Can't say much more as I have never deliberately listened to music from the present moment and novelty has not generally been a criterion of value.

I do still seek out new music being released whereas many people don't.. — Jack Cummins

Me too, but only if it was written between the 17th and early 20th century. :razz:

:up:

Oh sure; brawny heros walking away from expositions in slow motion. — Noble Dust

Especially extravagant curlicues of CGI, orgiastically dancing in onanistic production design.

a preoccupation with form is it can lead to what Adorno described as fetishism. — Noble Dust

Totally where I was heading with this. I find myself thinking about movies too.

I guess that would make both false if sushi is AI, then there is no 'I' writing on the forum to begin with. :wink:

There's a story, probably apocryphal, that Frederick the Great once gathered his court scientists and philosophers together and asked them to explain why a dead fish weighs more than a live one. They went around in turn each offering a theory, and once they had all offered their explanations, he pointed out that it does not. — Srap Tasmaner

:cool:

1). I know my subjective experience is true. I have feelings and emotions. They exist. (my mind)

2). I know I am an object. My body exists. I am observable.

3). I know that others are objects in the physical world/universe. They are observable.

4). But I also know that these objects (people) are also subjects like myself (they have a mind). — Benj96

It's interesting you say this. I would say I do not 'know' these things to be true although I have reasonable confidence in some of them. I don't take my feelings as an indication of reality. We feel deeply and wrongly and capriciously all the time. It might be 'true' that I am experiencing anger, for instance, but what realty is this emotion corresponding to or produced by and what alternative, equally true emotion might have come to me instead?

To say something is observable is to privilege empiricism and to make assumptions about the observer and what is being observed. How does one rule out idealism, for instance?

I generally make assumptions that the world I see and appear to interact with is real - as far as this word goes, in TC's sense (human scale only). I don't think it's easy or useful to do otherwise. But I don't imagine I have access to truth or reality as such, just a pragmatic response and some tentative models of reality that work reasonably well.

:up:

Oops - apologies, TC, if I've been clogging your OP with unrelated frivolities. I'll stop now.

Not for me.

I never expect anything much to make sense - but it's a human trait to build ourselves little stories of meaning. Descartes versus Gautama sounds like the perspectival gulf between East and West, perhaps.

In the same way that comedians can be depressed.
You can be both flaky and rational, no? — Amity

It was just an excuse for an alliterative quip. I take nothing much from this.

So, once the functional aspect of an artistic expression is evolved to it's logical conclusion, the focus of that expression shifts from what it is to how it's done. — Noble Dust

I had nascent thoughts similar to this some years ago, but never as developed. Does this seemingly inevitable switch to or preoccupation with form indicate something like the emergence of decadence? Perhaps this is pushing it but outside of art, would 'post-modernism' qualify as a preoccupation with form vis-a-vis the metanarrative as function?