Hi Krimel,
I am not even close to being able to properly explain any of this emptiness
concept to you. But I'd like to try one little aspect. A thing that would
inherently exist (like a thing-in-itself) would be an entity that would not
depend on anything or not be subject to change of any kind. (Which leads to
Ron's post on illusion and reminds me of RMP's crystallization experience.)
But I'm not sure that is your understanding of a thing-in-itself. Anyway,
to say more than that makes no sense because of my limited understanding and
limited skill at explaining, and your lack of curiosity to read beyond
Wikipedia.
I imagine child development is very interesting. I've been watching my
grandson for four years absorb language and the world around him. It is
quite remarkable.
Marsha
----- Original Message -----
From: "Krimel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 2:43 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Tit's
[Marsha]
I remember a while back you ardently defending tit's. I think maybe you
have softened your view. Are tit's independent, autonomous entities, or
not? Example? Are tit's patterns? Or something different?
[Krimel]
I just finished a book on child development call "The Scientist in the
Crib." It looks at some of the remarkable discoveries that have been made
over the past 25 years with regards to how children's brains and thoughts
and sense of morality develop as they grow up. The authors claim that the
three great problems of childhood are the problem of the external world,
the
problem of other minds and the problem of language. Sound familiar?
What they show is that infants exit the womb remarkably well suited to
solving these problems. We are not blank slates. For example the visual
system in newborns is not at all like that of older children. In fact
newborns could be classified as legally blind and for years this was the
dominant understanding. However, if we look a little more closely we see
that newborns are extraordinarily near sighted. For them the world
actually
comes into pretty good focus at about 9 inches. That is the world that
their
visual system processes is the face of whoever is holding them. Imagine a
newborn entering the world with 20/20 vision. The task of dealing with all
of that information would be overwhelming. Nature has spared newborns of
this and instead focuses their attention on the most important part of
their
new worlds, Mama. It is no mystery from an evolutionary stand point that
we
are born prepared to deal with the world we must survive in. What is
surprising is how well prepared we are to adapt to the world we find
ourselves in.
The issue I am driving at here is that it is true that we know only the
world of our sense impressions and our stored recollections of past
experience. It is not possible for us to have direct experience of
anything
outside of our nervous systems. Experience IS activation of the nervous
system. The question really is: Can we trust our senses to provide
accurate
information? Can we trust ourselves to accurately interpret this
information? Again the evolutionary response is yes because if our senses
where not functionally accurate we would not survive. Our senses are
finely
tuned to give us information about the world that is relevant to our
survival.
In short our senses have evolved to help us apprehend TiTs. It is
certainly
possible to doubt whether TiTs actually exist. From a purely skeptical
position is it is not possible to discount all of the scenarios that would
have us deceived by clever demons or have our disembodied brains floating
in
vats or that cast us as immortal deities living in self imposed exile out
of
boredom. Idealism, extreme phenomenology, some forms of mysticism and
numerous religious notions are ongoing incarnations of this kind of
thinking.
I suppose I could advance all manner of reasons why I am so willing to
accept the fact the TiTs do in fact exist. I think our sensations are
rooted
in something outside of ourselves. But as I have said many times in the
past
it all boils down to faith. Whatever rational spin I might put on the
matter, in the end my belief in the existence of an external world is
rooted
in a sense of rightness and not in rationality at all.
[Marsha]
p.s. If you haven't read Nagarjuna, I will have to think of you as a
monk,
and not a wizard. Although a useful monk.
Ron:
I think what Krimmel (sic) needs to distinguish, and I'm not sure that
Kant
does, is differentiate between noumena and things in themselves.
Roughly, a noumenon may be distinguished from the following concepts,
although there is debate of the synonymity between them:
[Krimel]
I am way too lazy to read either of these guys in the original. I will
make
do with the Sparknotes or Wiki versions. I appreciate the originality of
such thinkers but in end I think their views are flawed by ignorance just
as
our current views will seem similarly flawed to future generations. While
they are both interesting for historical reasons, history is not my
primary
interest.
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