---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> wrote :
You know Richard, I follow your line of reasoning better than salyavin, but it's a nice exchange nonetheless. what a breath of fresh air And maybe if we all try we can make FFL interesting again. Wouldn't that be nice! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <punditster@...> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...> mailto:mjackson74@... wrote : Sal, I guess Share will have to take you to task cuz you just NUKED this Marshy sycophant! Well done, and well said. > On 9/4/2014 6:59 AM, salyavin808 wrote: > Well, I don't mind what he's into. Just that he expects me to be into it or he'll throw a tantrum. > Non sequitur. I have not thrown any tantrums. And, it has already been established that you are "into" Transcendental Meditation. If so, what is it exactly, that you are attempting to transcend? All we expect of you is to provide us with the rationale for your materialistic beliefs. Most of us here on FFL are transcendentalists which is why we are here - all the Upanishadic thinkers were transcendentalists and have rejected the materialist point of view. My position, and the position of all transcendentalists, is that we infer that consciousness is the ultimate reality and we accept that inference is a valid means of knowledge. Thoughts and ideas, not being material objects, cannot be perceived; they can only be inferred. > Inference may be a valid way of gaining knowledge but only if the information you have is adequate to provide a detailed enough model of what it is you are claiming the inference explains. But I dispute that you can gain enough knowledge about either the world or how consciousness works - let alone that there is some primary fundamental connection between the two - simply by sitting in meditation to make any such existential claims. Let's not forget that I've been there as far as experiences go. I saw wondrous things but did the mystical explanation add up? > I've often mentioned it was my prior knowledge of physics that stopped me becoming a true believer, the tape they show on the second day of checking makes the claim but doesn't explain it. Nobody ever explains it. Because it isn't an accepted part of physics. It's a possibility sure, but why bother with it when it doesn't add anything to our explanation and in fact, makes it more complex when it should - at that level - be becoming simpler. that's the state of play. I've typed that a million times now Willy, if you spent less time sulking and spamming you might have tried to explain your POV. > You can assume that your inner experience relates in some explanatory way to the outside world but that is the mistake, I think, that transcendentalists make. We simply don't know enough about consciousness to be able to say how it works yet but we know a lot about physics, I can't remember the last time I read the mystic viewpoint in a serious physics book. Actually I can't remember the first time. > We know our brains form a 3-D model in our heads, we can measure thoughts happening, even see what they are! We know there is a threshold of activity needed for consciousness and we know how to switch it off. All the evidence seems to be heading towards the fact that consciousness is somehow a process of the brain. Sam Harris can think what he likes but I can't fit together the two strands of knowledge we have here. One is tested and open to refinement, the other is an assumption based on the idea that inner experience is the ultimate model of the universe? > Mere perception is often found to be untrue. We perceive the earth as being flat but it is almost round. We perceive the earth as static but it is moving around the sun. We perceive the disc of the sun and think it is small, yet it is much larger that the earth. > That's odd, I was just about to use the same analogy to demonstrate the > mistake of relying on inference when you don't have enough information for > an informed opinion. You can't gain enough information by just standing on > this planet to work out what shape it is. Which is why people used to think > that it was flat. > You can deduce what shape it is with experiments though. > Even measure it accurately with a couple of poles if you're smart enough. > But sit there and infer? No. > We infer that consciousness is the ultimate reality and not caused by a combination of material properties. We infer the validity of consciousness because we ARE conscious and we are self-conscious. To refuse the validity of inference is to refuse to think or discuss. All thoughts, all discussions, all doctrines, all affirmations, and all denials, all proofs and disproofs are made possible by inference. If consciousness means self-consciousness then it cannot be identified by logic with the human body. Animals also possess a physical body, but not rational consciousness. If consciousness is a property of the body, it must be perceived like other material properties. But consciousness is neither seen, smelt or tasted nor touched nor heard. Consciousness is private and cannot be shared by others - it is the very constructed character of knowing. The point is that naive materialist think they perceive material objects as they are and as they seem, yet knowledge tell us that this not always the case. We could be in error. An error is something that should not be. There may be no validity in using only perception to discover ultimate truths. A materialist accepts perception as the ultimate knowledge, but often our perception is just wrong. If perception is your only means of valid knowledge and you reject inference, that is a thoughtless self-contradiction. We are all conscious that we exist - nobody doubts their own existence. That would be sheer madness or lunacy. > I'm glad you like your non sequiturs because none of this supports your contention that consciousness is the ultimate reality. What you describe is simply the trouble of trying to explain just what it is that is going on in our heads. It's taken a long time to work out what we know already and some serious technology has had to be developed, the reason being we can't tell just by thinking about it how our brains actually work. And if we can't work it out how they work by thinking, where does that leave inference about altered states of mind? You have after all just come to a conclusion based on an experience. > Ever taken LSD? Did you mistake that for reality? I hope not. But doesn't it teach you something interesting about the mind. > The materialist cannot support his views without giving reasons which presuppose the validity of inference. Severe and contemptuous criticism has been heaped against the materialistic doctrine by all schools of Indian philosophy and logic for thousands of years, and with much justification. Vedantists, Jainas and Buddhists all reject materialism; AND they also reject notions of God and an individual soul-monad, yet they realize that consciousness is their very reason for being. Your materialistic belief, as I understand it, is self-refuted and sheer nonsense and no system of philosophy or metaphysics at all, according to my philosophy professor. That is my position and I agree with Sam Harris. > Ah, then you don't understand it at all old chap. I am most definitely aware of how matter is and isn't and what the problem of consciousness is. I just don't think the mystics have got the answer. But maybe it'll work out that way, that'll be a turn up for the books ;-) > But hey, this was nearly a conversation. Your second this decade on FFL. Well done. > <SNIP>
