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zannennagara
Found in Space



Registered: 09/25/08
Posts: 433
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: deCypher]
#9312589 - 11/25/08 06:22 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
deCypher said: I fail to see how objectivity being an impossible ideal implies that subjectivity is likewise. Subjectivity is all we have; I have certain terms that I can apply to various sensory phenomena that I perceive, and I can notice apparent consistencies and regularities in the stream of information invading my perception. All of this is subjectivity; how is this an impossible ideal to attain when we've already attained it?
If you only accept that objectivity exists when there is no subjective experience, then you must only accept that subjectivity exists when there is no objectivity to experience, which means nothing to identify and have, no terms or phenomena, no consistencies or regularities, no information and no perception of anything, no concept of subjectivity or subjectivity itself at all.
But you accept objects into your subjective experience, and obviously any description you could have of it, so you must possess a degree of objectivity that makes your experience not entirely subjective, i.e. they both feed off of and require each other, sliding towards greater objectivity with more commonality between subjects and towards greater subjectivity with less commonality between subjects.
-------------------- No debe haber separación, no puede haber definición.
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: zannennagara]
#9312603 - 11/25/08 06:25 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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Objective reality is reality independent from any mind. Although we can certainly see patterns and regularities in our interactions with others, these do not prove the existence of objective reality; we can only guess at its existence.
Subjective reality, on the other hand, is proven by its phenomenology (or even by your attempt to make the proof itself).
Accepting objects into a subjective experience implies that you accept the object's objective existence in reality; whereas if one is to be truly philosophically precise one may only say that one accepts the probability of an object into a subjective experience. There is no such thing as a degree of objectivity: X either has objective existence or it does not.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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zannennagara
Found in Space



Registered: 09/25/08
Posts: 433
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: deCypher]
#9312812 - 11/25/08 07:01 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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Phenomonology, phenomena, are objects, no? Within your mind, then, the phenomena are objective until contradicted by evidence that the objects are within your mind but no other subject's; you can have no proof that the mind-objects are exclusively (your) mind-objects until you ask another subject.
If there can be no such thing as a degree of objectivity, there can be no such thing as a degree of subjectivity either, and either it's completely in your mind or it's completely not, despite the fact that other subjects notice some objects with more similarity to you than with other objects.
-------------------- No debe haber separación, no puede haber definición.
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: zannennagara]
#9313021 - 11/25/08 07:38 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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zannennagara said: Phenomonology, phenomena, are objects, no? Within your mind, then, the phenomena are objective until contradicted by evidence that the objects are within your mind but no other subject's; you can have no proof that the mind-objects are exclusively (your) mind-objects until you ask another subject.
If there can be no such thing as a degree of objectivity, there can be no such thing as a degree of subjectivity either, and either it's completely in your mind or it's completely not, despite the fact that other subjects notice some objects with more similarity to you than with other objects.
I agree completely: there is no such thing as a degree of subjectivity, as all things we perceive are by definition subjective. Our perception of other subjects noticing objects is also, likewise, subjective.
One has to start from a point of no doubt and then work our way from there; you're starting from the assumption that an objective reality exists when even this is doubtful. From the moment of their first appearance, phenomena are wholly subjective (we experience a particular sensation, for example, or see a particular pattern of light or color). It's only after we build on this fundamental skepticism that we can allow for the possibility of their objective existence: the pattern of light could be a cow, or it could be just an after-image. Starting from Descartes' position of utter skepticism, we can only progress into an idealist view: everything is mental experience until otherwise contradicted by evidence towards of an objective reality (and even then it will never contradict fully; only hint at).
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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zannennagara
Found in Space



Registered: 09/25/08
Posts: 433
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: deCypher]
#9313323 - 11/25/08 08:19 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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I don't see how it's more doubtful to assume that an objective reality exists than to assume that a wholly subjective one does. A wholly subjective perspective assumes that the mind takes precedence over anything it experiences, that individual experience is a given before the existence of anything else - in spite of the fact that any experience requires phenomena, phenomena only describable or knowable due to objective "things," which would suggest that they are coexistent.
Descartes says "I think," but that's not very specific: what all is entailed in thinking? Thought, like experience, requires some object to suffuse it with content. Nothing can exist in and of itself, only as an interaction with its apparent environment; there has never been a blank and isolated mind before it had contents, or if there was there could be no experiencing it.
If we're assuming our mind is limited to our body, then the existence of other bodies sharing what appears to be a near-similar mental experience offers far more proof for objectivity than pure subjectivity. If we're assuming that our mind is everywhere at once, then yes, it could all be a mental experience, but then in examining its phenomenology we still have the same observations to make within it as if it were not.
-------------------- No debe haber separación, no puede haber definición.
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: zannennagara]
#9313454 - 11/25/08 08:36 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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zannennagara said: any experience requires phenomena, phenomena only describable or knowable due to objective "things," which would suggest that they are coexistent.
Why does an experience require phenomena? An experience is what it is; any further suppositions are merely that, suppositions.
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Descartes says "I think," but that's not very specific: what all is entailed in thinking? Thought, like experience, requires some object to suffuse it with content.
One can have the pure experience of awareness without an referent object, certainly. This is the desired no-mind state of samadhi and ego death.
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Nothing can exist in and of itself, only as an interaction with its apparent environment; there has never been a blank and isolated mind before it had contents, or if there was there could be no experiencing it.
Again, these are assumptions. All we can ever know, see, think, hear, or feel are by definition mental experiences; anything further is built off pattern and consistency.
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If we're assuming our mind is limited to our body, then the existence of other bodies sharing what appears to be a near-similar mental experience offers far more proof for objectivity than pure subjectivity.
We're only assuming that we have various sensations, feelings, and experiences that in total we label a body; but your statement implies the objective existence of such, thereby begging the question.
I agree that, pragmatically speaking, the line between the external and the internal (the observer and the observed) can blend quite a bit, and the boundary of such is very loose. But from a skeptical standpoint, and starting only from what we're sure to be true, mental experience is the only thing that we can know for certain.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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Noteworthy
Sophyphile


Registered: 10/05/08
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: deCypher]
#9313696 - 11/25/08 09:11 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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If I see the sky as blue, this is subjective. If go and ask ten people what colour the sky is, they will probably all say blue. each person has a similar subjective experience, so we figure, we cant all just be making this up. We suppose that the sky is objectively blue. We never logically proved it. Therefor it is fine to say the sky is blue, because no one will contradict you. That doesnt mean that it is ACTUALLY blue, it just means that it is most likely blue, to the point where considering it perhaps not blue is a waste of time.
humans do this neat thing called 'idealising' whereby we talk about things that dont actually exist
in science, data is collected, and you know what happens next? it is analysed and then turned into an idealised form whereby we get all of the individual measurements and find the 'line of best fit'. this 'line of best fit' is then treated as if it is the actual state of the world, in order to make further inferences about the world and to make calculations and to turn all the different measurements into a single result. But this line of best fit does not represent reality, it represents a mathematical derivation from the collection of measurements we make, it is an 'ideal'
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lifein all day
Stranger

Registered: 11/25/08
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: Middleman]
#9313725 - 11/25/08 09:14 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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q. what is consciousness?
a.the part of you that was wondering.
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lifein all day
Stranger

Registered: 11/25/08
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: Noteworthy]
#9313751 - 11/25/08 09:16 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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well lets not ask the question in the first place
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: Noteworthy]
#9313785 - 11/25/08 09:21 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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Noteworthy said: If I see the sky as blue, this is subjective. If go and ask ten people what colour the sky is, they will probably all say blue. each person has a similar subjective experience, so we figure, we cant all just be making this up.
I completely agree with your viewpoint, but there are also definite problems with assuming that each person has a similar subjective experience even if they all say the sky is blue... what if they're color-blind from birth and whenever they pointed at a blue object (that they saw as red or something wholly different) their mother told them that it was called 'blue'? We have no way of distinguishing their mental experience simply by their words.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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Sleepwalker
Overshoes

Registered: 05/07/08
Posts: 5,503
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: deCypher]
#9313839 - 11/25/08 09:30 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
deCypher said:
Quote:
Noteworthy said: If I see the sky as blue, this is subjective. If go and ask ten people what colour the sky is, they will probably all say blue. each person has a similar subjective experience, so we figure, we cant all just be making this up.
I completely agree with your viewpoint, but there are also definite problems with assuming that each person has a similar subjective experience even if they all say the sky is blue... what if they're color-blind from birth and whenever they pointed at a blue object (that they saw as red or something wholly different) their mother told them that it was called 'blue'? We have no way of distinguishing their mental experience simply by their words.
The fact that the sky tends to stay constant, whether or not we all see the same "blue", still points to an objective stimulus IMO.
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: Sleepwalker]
#9313857 - 11/25/08 09:32 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
Oweyervishice said: The fact that the sky tends to stay constant
From whose eyes?
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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Sleepwalker
Overshoes

Registered: 05/07/08
Posts: 5,503
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: deCypher]
#9313892 - 11/25/08 09:38 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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I'm right and you're wrong and that's the truth.
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zannennagara
Found in Space



Registered: 09/25/08
Posts: 433
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: deCypher]
#9313914 - 11/25/08 09:42 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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An experience itself is a phenomenon, and one can only communicate it in terms of phenomena, even if it is to describe ego death. I may not have delved as psychonautically deep as you have, but what has felt like ego death to me has either seemed like a union between the self and all "objects," so that I lose perception of mental object-distinction, or been a reappearance in an utterly alien world, yet with perceivable thoughts and settings. "Samadhi" as a word in common with different experiences is then an objective concept.
To suppose that an experience can have identifiable components is no more of a jump than to suppose that it is entirely self-contained; this supposition is the foundation for language itself, so in using language to describe our experience we are bound to acknowledge these objective things.
The definitions of know, see, think, hear and feel entail the usage of physical neurons, eyes, ears and skin; why must the mental experience be divorced from from the physical, why start with the assumption that mentality precedes physicality? Whether hallucinatory or not, they are, or seem to be, always coexistent; why trust the mental as true, while disregarding the objective as possible hallucinations? Might you be hallucinating that you have a mind that is not objective?
There cannot be a line between observer and observed; observation requires both for either to exist. From a skeptical standpoint, we should be less sure of a mental experience's exclusivity than the apparent truth that the experience includes the physical object - in whatever way we relate to something as not devoid of experience - as well.
-------------------- No debe haber separación, no puede haber definición.
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Noteworthy
Sophyphile


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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: Sleepwalker]
#9313919 - 11/25/08 09:43 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
Oweyervishice said:
Quote:
deCypher said:
Quote:
Noteworthy said: If I see the sky as blue, this is subjective. If go and ask ten people what colour the sky is, they will probably all say blue. each person has a similar subjective experience, so we figure, we cant all just be making this up.
I completely agree with your viewpoint, but there are also definite problems with assuming that each person has a similar subjective experience even if they all say the sky is blue... what if they're color-blind from birth and whenever they pointed at a blue object (that they saw as red or something wholly different) their mother told them that it was called 'blue'? We have no way of distinguishing their mental experience simply by their words.
The fact that the sky tends to stay constant, whether or not we all see the same "blue", still points to an objective stimulus IMO.
YES
but... how does that prove there is an objective stimulus? 'points to' is no solid ontological grounds
and this 'objective reality' that the data 'points to', how could we ever know what it is, even, lets say, if you were sure it existed?
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Sleepwalker
Overshoes

Registered: 05/07/08
Posts: 5,503
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: zannennagara]
#9313929 - 11/25/08 09:44 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
zannennagara said: Might you be hallucinating that you have a mind that is not objective?
Does that make no sense to anyone else?
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zannennagara
Found in Space



Registered: 09/25/08
Posts: 433
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: Sleepwalker]
#9313987 - 11/25/08 09:54 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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-------------------- No debe haber separación, no puede haber definición.
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Sleepwalker
Overshoes

Registered: 05/07/08
Posts: 5,503
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: Noteworthy]
#9313995 - 11/25/08 09:55 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
Noteworthy said: how does that prove there is an objective stimulus? 'points to' is no solid ontological grounds
and this 'objective reality' that the data 'points to', how could we ever know what it is, even, lets say, if you were sure it existed?
Well I can't really add anything new to this thread. I can't ever be sure that anything exists beyond what is immediately apparent to me. Logically, I know I can't really trust that anything I experience is happening "out there", but practically, I have a trust my mind to a certain degree or I would be a vegetable.
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: zannennagara]
#9314007 - 11/25/08 09:58 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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zannennagara said: An experience itself is a phenomenon, and one can only communicate it in terms of phenomena, even if it is to describe ego death. I may not have delved as psychonautically deep as you have, but what has felt like ego death to me has either seemed like a union between the self and all "objects," so that I lose perception of mental object-distinction, or been a reappearance in an utterly alien world, yet with perceivable thoughts and settings. "Samadhi" as a word in common with different experiences is then an objective concept.
To suppose that an experience can have identifiable components is no more of a jump than to suppose that it is entirely self-contained; this supposition is the foundation for language itself, so in using language to describe our experience we are bound to acknowledge these objective things.
Identifiable components of an experience are only pragmatic considerations; the experience is still a whole as we perceive it. The use of language to communicate this to another bundle of contextually associated perceptions that I label as zannennagara is merely another aspect of my mental experience. Samadhi is a word; nothing more--to understand what it means one can only experience.
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The definitions of know, see, think, hear and feel entail the usage of physical neurons, eyes, ears and skin
These are the physical correlates, sure. But what is physical? If you probe further into its definition, IMO you'll find that it's nothing more than a term for a category of perceptions that is more consistent and regular than others (dreams, or hallucinations, for example). I can only suppose the existence of my eyes, or my ears--I know that I experience sights and sounds, however. (Language here poses a bit of a problem because the words "sight" and "sound" themselves imply the existence of objective phenomena, yet we still say we see a rabbit in our dreams even when our physical eyes were not doing the seeing.)
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Might you be hallucinating that you have a mind that is not objective?
The very fact that there is a you hallucinating presupposes a subjective experience, no?
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From a skeptical standpoint, we should be less sure of a mental experience's exclusivity than the apparent truth that the experience includes the physical object
If we didn't dream, or experience altered perceptions of phenomena that have no objective existence, this might be true--yet these things exist and therefore lend convincing skeptical doubt.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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Noteworthy
Sophyphile


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Re: Cosmic significance of self [Re: Sleepwalker]
#9314011 - 11/25/08 09:59 PM (15 years, 2 months ago) |
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yup. that is why it doesnt matter much that we cant prove objective reality exists.
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