Psience Quest

(2021-11-05, 07:23 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I do wonder what the Buddha actually thought about this "illusion of self", or even his early disciples.

People cite debates between the Buddhists and Hindus on whether there was some imperishable self (Atman), but both Buddhists and Jains joined the Hindus in arguing against the ancient materialists who denied reincarnation - or any other kind of afterlife - altogether...

I know very little about comparative religion but I have assumed that talk of illusion was in reference to the illusion of separation. In your terms, the illusion of separation between Brahman and Atman. Nevertheless, in my personal philosophy the separation, while ultimately illusory, is nevertheless essential to create the kind of distributed consciousness with feedback through which Brahman (or God, whatever you prefer) can experience and evolve.

Non-dualists like Rupert Spira seem to insist (as I understand them) that the illusion is dispensed with at (or shortly after) the moment of human death. I am fairly convinced that they are wrong and that the individual personality endures and perhaps becomes aware that it is part of a collective which is also, in turn, part of a grater collective and so on.

[EDIT] Just mulling this over in my mind, I am reminded of accounts that I have read which describe many differing realities, few of which are physical as we know it. So if most of the conscious entities which exist are from non-physical realities and presumably don't die as we do, then the Spira notion of being returned to the universal ocean of consciousness upon physical death does not apply. And if the response to that observation is that conscious entities can exist in a non-physical reality, isn't that precisely what the after-death spirit form would be? 

I hope that makes sense.

I've revised a little on my above post.

(2021-11-06, 12:42 PM)Valmar Wrote: [ -> ]I've revised a little on my above post.

That's a bit cryptic. I'm comparing one of your previous posts with the version which I had memorised. But I can't tell whether you added. subtracted or merely corrected the spelling.

(2021-11-04, 11:18 PM)Valmar Wrote: [ -> ]So, again, who exactly is being fooled into thinking they have conscious awareness, of anything? There's no-one home, after all.

Well, again, nobody is fooled into thinking they have an experience, it is more that the self is part of the experience.
There is no self outside the experience.
As said before, the experience is the story of what just happened. It is not told to the self, it is told with the self as just one of the elements of the story.
The self is just one of the concepts we put in a narrative, it probably is not even formed the first one or two years of our existence. 

Over the course of our lives we form concepts of things by having certain neurons firing together, they grow ever more complex, get more meaning, fall apart in different concepts, etc...

 

Quote:Illusions have no reality, and can't affect anything. Illusions have an absolute lack of awareness, most of all of being an illusion. Illusions only exist as part of confused perception, which requires a non-illusory conscious awareness that can be somewhat aware that it was previously fooled into thinking that their misperception was real.

Living entities cannot be illusions, because they consciously react to the world around them, and make choices and decisions that have real impacts on other living, conscious entities. There are real consequences. Global wars have been waged over petty conflicts, which leave widespread destruction for decades. The habitats of animals can become irrecoverably polluted by toxic waste created by selfish individual humans. Real issues, caused by real entities with real minds.

Even now, I'm having some kind of impact on other forum members who read, and react, to this very post in some fashion or another.

Are you an illusion, Sparky? Am I deluding myself into believing that I'm speaking with someone who's not really there? Do you really believe that you don't exist?

Where did i say that anyone is an illusion? I never said there is no self, the illusion is that the self is a separate entity.
I am not saying the self doe not exist, i am saying it does not work the way our intuition says it does.

Why the reductio ad absurdum if it is about something i did not say, what does that add to the conversation?
As also said a few times before, you do not have to agree, but at least try to understand what i am saying.

Quote:llusionism is far duller and much less interesting than even the lowest forms of solipsism, frankly... because it denies what is so painfully obvious to even the most intellectually dishonest of reductionist materialists!

If you understand what i am saying, what does it actually deny? It might be painfully obvious to you, it is not to me.
Tell me, how does dualism not result in infinite regress of nested consciousnesses?
And talking about solipsism, how do you keep any form of idealism from falling into that sort of idiocy?

(2021-11-06, 02:00 PM)Typoz Wrote: [ -> ]That's a bit cryptic. I'm comparing one of your previous posts with the version which I had memorised. But I can't tell whether you added. subtracted or merely corrected the spelling.

Sorry ~ it's the first two paragraphs (if they can be called that) that I had changes to. The rest is the same, I think.

(2021-11-04, 11:27 AM)David001 Wrote: [ -> ]Isn't that just plain obfuscation?

No it is an outline of a possible explanation.
Isn't dualism much more of an obfuscation?

Quote:You start with a world that contains no consciousness.

Yes there must have been a time conscious was absent in this world.
Given that we are talking about the deeply self-aware kind of consciousness that makes reflections on the nature of experience possible, that time is not that long ago in evolutionary time.
And on a personal level, that kind of consciousness is not even present in newly born.

So, yes both from an historical and personal perspective self-awareness comes into being rather gradual, which is an important observation.

 

Quote:Then somehow this non-conscious world creates an idea (like teacups or radios or clocks have ideas perhaps) that it must be conscious (a lot more details about this step might help).

This idea is then received by another part of the non-conscious world, and voila - we have illusory consciousness!

David if you want to ridicule an idea on the basis of an obvious straw man that shows you do not (want to?) understand it, what actually ends up being ridiculous?

(2021-11-07, 02:13 PM)Sparky Wrote: [ -> ]No it is an outline of a possible explanation.
Isn't dualism much more of an obfuscation?


Yes there must have been a time conscious was absent in this world.
Given that we are talking about the deeply self-aware kind of consciousness that makes reflections on the nature of experience possible, that time is not that long ago in evolutionary time.
And on a personal level, that kind of consciousness is not even present in newly born.

So, yes both from an historical and personal perspective self-awareness comes into being rather gradual, which is an important observation.

 

David if you want to ridicule an idea on the basis of an obvious straw man that shows you do not (want to?) understand it, what actually ends up being ridiculous?

I don't think it is a strawman.  In order to have an illusion, there has to be real consciousness in the first place, otherwise what is having the illusion?  That which is not genuinely conscious cannot have illusions.

(2021-11-07, 02:13 PM)Sparky Wrote: [ -> ]David if you want to ridicule an idea on the basis of an obvious straw man that shows you do not (want to?) understand it, what actually ends up being ridiculous?

I don't want to ridicule it, but I do want to make it clear that it doesn't make sense. You can't explain consciousness as an illusion because if we take (say) the definition of 'illusion' at Wiki, we find:

"An illusion is a distortion of the senses, which can reveal how the human brain normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation."

My only quibble with that, is that I am sure animals can encounter illusion too.

Thus it cannot apply to something that isn't conscious.

Conceivably you want to use a new definition of consciousness that fits your needs, or maybe you want to restate what exactly you are saying.

David

(2021-11-07, 10:19 AM)Sparky Wrote: [ -> ]Where did i say that anyone is an illusion? I never said there is no self, the illusion is that the self is a separate entity.
I am not saying the self doe not exist, i am saying it does not work the way our intuition says it does.

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I've encounterd this in buddist thought as it is taught in western theravada. The “self”
is a pegoritive kind of like the ego. From the perspective of western psychology from freud/jung(ego) to hienz kohut (the self)- it appears to me the self is a separate entity by definition otherwise there is no one to have an experience. To say that there is only “the experience” is cognitively dissonant. You can't address an experience as an agent. How can an illusion recognize it is an illusion.

(2021-11-07, 05:02 PM)David001 Wrote: [ -> ]I don't want to ridicule it, but I do want to make it clear that it doesn't make sense. You can't explain consciousness as an illusion because if we take (say) the definition of 'illusion' at Wiki, we find:

"An illusion is a distortion of the senses, which can reveal how the human brain normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation."

The problem (and maybe also solution) with that definition is that it is unrelated to consciousness.

Think of examples of sensory input which is misinterpreted.

• A camera autofocus selects the background instead of the intended subject.
  
• A google algorithm blurs out innocuous street signs or random details when it is supposed to obscure the identity of people (context: streetview).
  
• An automated video subtitle generator produces absurd text.
  
• A thermostat picks up heat from a hot coffee and turns down the room heating.
  

None of those things has anything whatsoever to do with consciousness. That means it doesn't have any relevance here as a supposed explanation of anything.