07-27-05 7:27 • "Truth"
V:Does anyone read or write sutras? Come now, really.
I want to know if people are actually capable of reading those things. I have great difficulty, and I am an excellent reader.
I admit occasionally reading bits of sutras, though very few cover to cover. I use them more like the I-Ching. Open randomly, read until you feel better or fall asleep.
I harmonize with the observation that they are not a great read for the most part and I find commentaries or more modern works both more accessable and more relevant.
Keith:There is no such thing as truth.
What smart people mean by 'truth' is 'rational/objective knowledge'. Knowledge that can be verified through human sensory perception, and/or knowledge that can ultimately be traced back to this kind of knowledge through a series of valid reasoning steps.
What dumb people mean by 'truth' is 'knowledge of THE ACTUAL STATE of reality'. Knowledge of reality AS IT IS, rather than 'as it is being understood through our filters of human sensory perception and human mental interpretation'.
So we have two entirely different meanings, which seem to be jumbled up and used interchangeably in common speach and writing; and neither of which can be seen to make a damn bit of sense.
First, I don't see how you can claim truth is invalid as a concept with out positing some valid meaning for truth by which claims of validity can be measured.
But I suspect you aren't at odds with mundane true or truth, but it is the religious claim about some "greater Truth" (i.e. their god of choice), which has you in a tizzy.
For just off hand definition I would say that a statement is true and factual if its refers is what is actual in a noncontradictory manner at the time it is considered. For example, "I have a cat in my house at the moment" is true and factual since I do actually have a cat in my house at the moment.
Truth is this consistancy of statement with actuality. So it would be proper to say I was speaking the truth or relating truthfully the state of affairs at the moment with the cat.
If we only dealt with what is actual, it would be much easier, but we also can have statements which refer to things which are not actual. Thus if a statement deals with what is not actual then it is true if it is noncontradictory and cosistant with its referant.
We could distinguish between factual truth and logical truth in this case. Factual truth would always qualify as logical truth but the reverse is not true.
Thus the confusion of claims of truth around things like the bible can be resolved. It is logically true to say that the bible talks about a god even though it is not factually true to claim that the god so discribed exists since no actual god is present in reality.
The only use of Truth which I have ever found acceptable is when it is used in the same context as Nature (i.e. all of nature not just our ecosystem) or Reality or the Universe as a means of describing the manifest nature of Reality's existence.
Now if I might ponder a bit, I suspect your dificulty with truth is because you are attempting to approach it via rationalism, which puts the cart before the horse in its attempt to define the concepts of true and truth before it considers the nature of reality.
I would suggest a more empiriacal approach. Observe that reality is manifestly actual and can be reasonably described by certain statements we call true and factual. By using reality as the foundation of truth is is possible to develop useful and reasonable concepts of truth, true and fact such as has happened in the form of science.
Or more succinctly: The truth is that what is, is.
07-22-05 3:21 • Aniken's Comment
Guest Blogging today: Aniken
M: Satori I envision is one in which our separate egos are, as in a lightning flash, suddenly perceived to be part of a single Being.
Stop talking, then stop thinking, then stop stopping. What's left then goes "Oh yeah! that's it!" without words or thoughts while void and empty.
Part of a single being is just shifting the ego on some one else.
Is the emptiness inside a bubble actually seperate from the emptiness outside the bubble if you only imagined the bubble there to begin with?
M: Swarm,
Words are not the enemy, nor thought, nor mind. Failing to distinguish between pitchforks and pocket combs will get you into a lot more trouble than any of these things. There are, as I said, levels. We are not here to learn how to transcend the world of opposites, but to learn how to live in it.
I apparently wasn't clear.
I wasn't speaking against words. I was describing my experience of satori.
"Stop talking, then stop thinking, then stop stopping. What's left then goes "Oh yeah! that's it!" without words or thoughts while void and empty."
M: I suggested the possibility that talking/thinking and perception of duality does not necessarily preclude the satori experience.
I don't believe I said it did.
Likewise it is entirely possible to sit in deep meditation while in the same room as an inquisitive 4 year old and a fussing baby, in theory.
In practice I find all of that distracting enough that the more subtle experience which I'm less familiar with escapes me.
Perhaps in twenty years I'll be practiced enough that my grandchildren can crawl all over me without disturbing my focus, or I can be talking/thinking and not get caught up in the thoughts. But at the moment while I know where to look, its still hard to see.
So to get at what is left when all else is gone, I have to stop piling new shit on top of the old and sit quietly for half a second while it all winds down. YMMV
07-12-05 7:20 • Athiests and determinism
S: I noticed that my Atheist friends are very adamant that there are no mysterious forces in the universe and no such thing as any process in the brain that is spiritual. The brain is simply a pile of physical elements programmed to work a certain way. So far so good in terms of the consistency of their theory, but then it turns out that they are often total fools for romantic love.
Your atheist friends don't seem very up on things.
There are certainly mysterious forces in the world, (you might track down the new scientist's top ten unexplained anomolies in science) but that has nothing really to do with Atheism which is primarily just a lack of belief in any deities. (Though most generalize this into a lack of belief in superstiously based entities of any kind and then on into disavowal of the supernatural in general.)
What you discribe sounds like naturalism, realism or more likely radical materialism. But none of these deny there is a complex mating behavior exhibited by humans called "love." They just deny that it has any supernatural components. If you press such a person they will simply admit to speaking nonliterally and metaphorically about perfectly natural psychological state which they are experiencing as they seek a mate.
S: The brain is simply a pile of physical elements programmed to work a certain way. Actually the brain is a symbiotic collective of billions of genetically related single cell animals with 4 billion years of organized micro and macro development and trillions of interconnetions, self organized into a semblence of a single cohesive intellegent being. Note self organized vs. programmed.
The pattern of activation which these animals has developed is so complex it thinks. (Well, sometimes.) And can be effectively considered a source of macro causality independant of deterministic events. You could describe us as a chaotic intrusion into the realm of order.
On a side note the universe is neither fully deterministic, nor fully nondeterministic. The more macro an event, the more deterministic; the more micro the less deterministic. We live at the tipping point between the two. Also, I have discussed love in terms of dopamine release and elevated seratonin levels, but my sweety is a geek too. :)
I don't know any athiests who actually believe in souls even if they find it convenient to use the notion peotically as part of the mating process.
I think Kuhn is the one who goes into the notion of incomiserate belief systems, but I find people to be far more flexable than you, he or Kant give them credit.
Most people believe what they believe, for about as long as it takes to get a beer from the fridge. Hense the 7 second sound bite repeated over and over.
Even then they usually don't really understand it or its ramifications so they are a mess of contradictory and competing beliefs which surface according to mood. A few people are obcessed enough to focus down a few pat beliefs, but usually they either end up on the street or in the RNC.
So if you say "There is no external world," as a philosophical position, and then I say, "Could you please go to the store and get me some coffee?" one is being consistant with reality triumphing over the need to hold silly philosophical notions consistantly. People who take philosophy too seriously tend to deselect from the gene pool the way Sartre's existentiallism students did.
This is why I prefer things like, naturalism, realism, pragmatism, zen and Epicurianism. Or more basically, what's real is real, what works does work, what is pleasant is pleasant, and what you care to say or think about all that is just words and thoughts. To tie this back to atheism, all the atheist is saying is "look --- no god. Pony up a god or shut up already."
S:In this way, most Atheists, don't really believe what they believe because, for instance, they believe in telling others that, for instance, "they should not steal."
It seems like you are playing with the supposed moral quandry of atheism as to why one should be ethical. The answer is simply because one's life works better that way. If you want to improve your sleep you could look into the proof for this in game theory. Or you could watch "A Beautiful Mind" which sort of documents John Nash's reasoning leading into the proof. Or you could check out Epicurus or ask some zen guy and get hit a couple times til you figure it out. The optimum solution to living well is to consider both your needs and the needs of others.
What you do is what you are believing at the moment, but you might notice you do lots of stuff.
