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The proof of the pudding is in what the experience inspires in the one who has it. I haven't seen anything inspirational from you and others who claim such experience.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
That is why (one of the many reasons) so many people find MPDs disdain problematic.
Really? What part of loving one another and repenting when we fail do you find offensive?
There it is in a nutshell. The inability to accept or even grasp that people have different experiences different views different opinions different beliefs than yours.
What is dogmatic is your adamant insistence that people who have different views and opinions and beliefs than yours are wrong. The flawed logic is that the only valid views and opinions are yours.
Your inability to grasp this and grant to others that which you demand for yourself is staggering.
You do the same thing with knowledge. There are areas of knowledge you do not understand. You seem incapable of accepting that others know and understand stuff which you do not. Rather than simply saying you disagree you adamantly insist they are wrong and it is nonsense.
Can you not hear the difference between "many paths to God" and "any way other than yours is wrong"
Can you not hear how problematic it is to claim that anyone who knows or believes or experiences things you do not is wrong?
What are you prattling on about? I have repeatedly stated (in such frequency to be cliche) that my views and their certainty apply TO ME, period. You and others seem bent on pretending that they are otherwise probably because you have a proselytizing purpose for your views. I do not! I am EXPLAINING and DEFENDING my views. Take them or leave them as you wish.
Here, I think, you are giving Tza and others a lot of good ammunition. Certainly you are the ultimate and absolute authority concerning the phenomenological (qualitative/subjective) aspects of your experience. You are in an absolutely unique position regarding those aspects. But the instant you cross the line from epistemology (i.e., the direct given-ness of your experience - "1st-person singular") to an ontological interpretation ofyour experience, you unavoidably enter the realm of intersubjective experience (i.e., "1st-person plural" or "we" rather than just "I"). To insist, without any hint of self-reflective humility, that your ontological interpretation is absolutely correct is, for all practical purposes, a sort of dogmatism in the sense that Tza is trying to convey. This ontological interpretation may very well be the best interpretation for you in the context of your own life, but in the realm of intersubjectively constituted reality, it could still be, in some profound sense, the wrong interpretation for many other people.
Personally, I suspect that a truly objective reality probably exists, but I am not at all convinced that "it" (whatever it is) always implies "absolutely true" answers to any questions that involve any sort of interpretation. I would say that if there are absolutely true statements, a good candidate for one of them would be this: Absolutely every ontological interpretation is an unavoidably epistemological type of event and, as such, it falls under the scope of intersubjectivity (as opposed to "absolute objectivity" - whatever that might mean).
We are all (almost necessarily, due to logical issues related to self-reference) blind to some (perhaps even most) of the factors that constitute our experiences and our interpretive processes, and I can pretty much guarantee that most of these "hidden" factors are fundamentally social in nature. Basically, there is no "I" that is not, in some profoundly important sense, a "we". From my perspective, when you express absolute confidence in your ontological interpretation, you belie a certain "dogmatic" resistance to self-reflectively recognizing the limits of what you can be justifiably certain about.
I feel absolutely positive that Kate Mulgrew gave me a hug so, by implication, I feel absolutely positive that anyone who claims she didn't give me a hug is plain and simply wrong. And yet, oddly enough, cognitively, as a self-reflective philosopher, I recognize that I could, indeed, be wrong, despite my feelings of virtually absolute confidence. And therein lies the foot in the door for debate over the probability of my ontological interpretation being true. Despite my feelings of confidence, I've left the door open to the possibility that logical/empirical considerations could still potentially convince me to change my mind. If I am, in fact, delusional about the "Kate" incident, I've left a glint of hope for discovering this about myself via careful consideration of the evidence and arguments offered by others.
We have no disagreement, Gaylen. When I engage you, I don my philosophical hat and present any relevant hypotheticals for your excellent analysis. I have found that such speculation tends to be a rare ability probably reserved for philosophers or those with minds that tend to philosophical rumination. The ontological validity of cognitive content is the latest issue I proffered for your consideration in that vein.
... I will engage the debate in bold directly, but it requires that you entertain the idea that our consciousness is itself composed of Spirit which no materialist seems willing to do. Let me ask you since your consciousness knows of Jesus, what does that mean phenomenologically regarding His existence within those things that comprise the totality of our reality? IOW, do you consider constructs of our consciousness as comprised of genuine ontological phenomena or will-o-the-wisp illusions having no subtantive reality?
I won't have time to address this right now, but I can briefly set the stage with this: According to me, objects of consciousness are absolutely necessarily always "beyond" or "other than" consciousness itself (which is the root of "self-reference paradox", but that's a story for another time). There is never anything "in" consciousness. Consciousness is not a container that can have something "in" it. If I'm right about this, then there definitely is a "real world" that is, in an important way, "independent of consciousness."
But here is the twist: The "world" that is "independent" of consciousness is not a world full of "stuff" - in fact, it is not really a "world" at all. The world is, fundamentally, an intersubjective construct. This is the deeply confusing lesson of quantum mechanics, although it seems that none of us has fully gotten a handle on how to think about it or talk about it beyond a brute acceptance of the operational effectiveness of the math. For now, it seems to me that the closest we can get is to wave our hands vaguely in the direction of "logical conditions for possibility of qualitative subjective experience" (where "logical", in this case, is really phenomo-logical). And the best way I can find to think about these "conditions for possibility" (CFP) is to think in terms of "abstract structures" underlying experience. Consider numbers here. The number 5 is not some "stuff" that we become aware of when we contemplate the number 5. Rather, the fact that we can have an experience of thinking about the number 5 is based on an underlying "abstract" (for lack of a better term at the moment) "fundamental structure of reality". What it feels like to think of the number 5 is not an "experience" that is "in" consciousness in any literal sense, and it is not a "representation" of some "stuff" out there that is the number 5. Rather, my subjective experience of thinking about the number 5 at this moment just is the number 5 - not because "I" am the "creator" of 5, but because there is no "I" at all, there is just "reality" in the form of "thinking of the number 5" in a given phenomenological context.
Sorry to have to leave this on such a whacky and totally confusion note, but it's all I can do at the moment.
I won't have time to address this right now, but I can briefly set the stage with this: According to me, objects of consciousness are absolutely necessarily always "beyond" or "other than" consciousness itself (which is the root of "self-reference paradox", but that's a story for another time). There is never anything "in" consciousness. Consciousness is not a container that can have something "in" it. If I'm right about this, then there definitely is a "real world" that is, in an important way, "independent of consciousness."
But here is the twist: The "world" that is "independent" of consciousness is not a world full of "stuff" - in fact, it is not really a "world" at all. The world is, fundamentally, an intersubjective construct. This is the deeply confusing lesson of quantum mechanics, although it seems that none of us has fully gotten a handle on how to think about it or talk about it beyond a brute acceptance of the operational effectiveness of the math. For now, it seems to me that the closest we can get is to wave our hands vaguely in the direction of "logical conditions for possibility of qualitative subjective experience" (where "logical", in this case, is really phenomo-logical). And the best way I can find to think about these "conditions for possibility" (CFP) is to think in terms of "abstract structures" underlying experience. Consider numbers here. The number 5 is not some "stuff" that we become aware of when we contemplate the number 5. Rather, the fact that we can have an experience of thinking about the number 5 is based on an underlying "abstract" (for lack of a better term at the moment) "fundamental structure of reality". What it feels like to think of the number 5 is not an "experience" that is "in" consciousness in any literal sense, and it is not a "representation" of some "stuff" out there that is the number 5. Rather, my subjective experience of thinking about the number 5 at this moment just is the number 5 - not because "I" am the "creator" of 5, but because there is no "I" at all, there is just "reality" in the form of "thinking of the number 5" in a given phenomenological context.
Sorry to have to leave this on such a whacky and totally confusion note, but it's all I can do at the moment.
I...IOW, do you consider constructs of our consciousness as comprised of genuine ontological phenomena or will-o-the-wisp illusions having no subtantive reality?
Yes, there are genuine ontological phenomena, but they are not "substantial" entities; I think they are somewhat better thought of as something like "abstract potentials" or "abstract essences" - although none of these concepts is quite right. By the word 'abstract' I'm trying to get at the idea of not necessarily being particular to an individual and, by "essence" I'm getting at something necessary to an experience having the particular "qualitative feel" that it has. If you take away the "essence" of a thing, then you don't have the thing. So an "abstract essence" is both "sharable" and necessary - something like an underlying shared structure. But the key point is that the genuinely ontological aspects of phenomena are not "produced" or "created by" mind, nor are they "1st-person singular" phenomena - which is to say that, although each of us has unique, unrepeatable perspectives, the contents of our experience are always fundamentally 1st-person plural. Even the "I" is fundamentally 1st-person plural. So phenomena are not "will-o-the-whip illusions," but they also don't have "substantive reality" - if "substantial" is meant to capture 3rd-person mind-independent concrete particular-ness of "stuff".
...I am certain that our consciousness has a separate and distinct ontological existence within the unified field from the physical brain that produces it, but you likely do not.
I would say that the measurable physical phenomenon that we call 'brain' is a way in which Reality's conscious aspect manifests itself to itself (more specifically: the way in which it manifests it's underlying essential dynamic structure to itself). In other words, when experience experiences itself "as other" it sees "brain".
Generally, consciousness is like looking through glass - basically invisible to itself (in a manner of speaking). But if self-reflective attention is turned to the "glass" (so to speak) as such, then the glass is experienced as "brain" and the structure can be studied in an intersubjective way because the "as other" is always intersubjectively constituted.
There is an underlying structure/reality that serves as the conditions for possibility of experience, but the "mind/brain" duality is an epistemological perspectival difference, not an ontological duality. Mind doesn't produce brain, nor does brain produce mind. There are different aspects of Reality, and Reality experiences its own essential dynamic structure in one way or the other.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 12-01-2018 at 03:50 PM..
Yes, there are genuine ontological phenomena, but they are not "substantial" entities; I think they are somewhat better thought of as something like "abstract potentials" or "abstract essences" - although none of these concepts is quite right. By the word 'abstract' I'm trying to get at the idea of not necessarily being particular to an individual and, by "essence" I'm getting at something necessary to an experience having the particular "qualitative feel" that it has. If you take away the "essence" of a thing, then you don't have the thing. So an "abstract essence" is both "sharable" and necessary - something like an underlying shared structure. But the key point is that the genuinely ontological aspects of phenomena are not "produced" or "created by" mind, nor are they "1st-person singular" phenomena - which is to say that, although each of us has unique, unrepeatable perspectives, the contents of our experience are always fundamentally 1st-person plural. Even the "I" is fundamentally 1st-person plural. So phenomena are not "will-o-the-whip illusions," but they also don't have "substantive reality" - if "substantial" is meant to capture 3rd-person mind-independent concrete particular-ness of "stuff".
I have unsuccessfully tried to engage the concept of abstraction as something that exists within a composite consciousness field separate from the ontological substance that comprises it. I used melody as an example. It is comprised of sequential sound vibrations (ontological substance) but ONLY exists within a composite consciousness field that recognizes the entire sequence NOT the individual sound vibrations. The composite consciousness itself is comprised of sequential individual neuronal activity in resonance to produce what we experience as "instantaneous" instants of continuous conscious awareness. Without the perceptual platform of the composite instantaneous conscious awareness, the melody does not exist. It is just ontologically individual sound vibrations. Similarly, without the composite of resonant neural activity, consciousness does not exist. It is just ontologically individual neuronal firings, period. Logic dictates that the composite must ontologically exist separate from its individual components (individual neuronal firings) for ANY abstractions to exist.
When we experience a "conscious other," we see ourselves as the "object of an other". Because of this, we can feel things like pride, guilt, shame, embarrassment, etc. We generally don't have any sort of everyday reason to doubt that there really are these other perspective from which we are being seen as the other. But dreams, hallucinations, and certain modes of philosophical reflection can lead us to question whether or not certain phenomena taken to be "others" are really "conscious others." (BTW, I'm not sure that the people in our dreams are just illusions of otherness - I think there are some plausible reasons to believe that they may actually have subjective perspectives of their own, but that's another story.)
I don't have a lot of reasons to doubt that what you experienced was a genuinely conscious other (even if the physical correlates of this "other" were within your own brain), and my view of reality would not be totally upset if this other was Jesus. But I do see a variety of alternative possibilities, some of which seem more plausible to me.
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