The effect of thoughts and needs on reality

[Sapius]

Hi James! Well, a fine post there, but you kind of lost me at the end with the lower/sub/higher level universe, otherwise, the rest is quite clear.

As I have mentioned to you earlier, I already know, philosophically, about the “balance” that existence needs to be what it is, but not in the terms you like to describe. May be it will click with others who are more academically inclined.

I wonder if this means that all things have a degree of memory (except the thing we call space).

Yes it does, but not in the sense as held by a human brain; it is an extremely more complex a unit than say a DNA strand, or an atom, or a quark. And yes, 'information' is a better word than 'memory' in such cases, but I think you know what I mean.

Now what do you mean by ‘except the thing we call space’? Are you saying that ‘space’ (as experienced from our “middle-earth” perspective) is inherently empty?

For something to physically exist, for it to be a thing, it must have at least one section where it is in balance.

Yes, necessarily.

No matter how much further we keep splitting the last quantum particle we ever find, that last one will still be subject to at least two parts, and the balance you describe has to necessarily reside within it for existence to remain in motion. It is this interactive and interdependent balancing act that creates motion, hence gravity, and the motion in turn never lets anything rest in peace, infinitely. The moment a “balance” is achieved, the “void” created because of it, tips over the “balance”… creating some other “balance” and “void”…. and there we go again…. Infinitely. At the core of it all, expansions and contractions are timelessly inter-creationary forces… AKA… causality.

:) There we go, the nature of the universe has been explained yet again for those with the imagination to hear it.

Well done!

[Laird]

Bilby, thanks for engaging me on this one - you're helping me to evolve and fill out my idea.

I’ll just concentrate on the consciousness aspect for now because it’s very original and interesting. Your views appear holistic, in that evolution isn’t just a feature of species, but also a feature of the mind itself.

Cheers, and yes, I see evolution everywhere - in the broader scheme of human knowledge as well. I'd go so far as to suggest the possibility that the universe itself is evolving towards a goal, which paradoxically is the creation of itself. It's a pretty bent explanation of everything, but it's the best that I've got so far. For a better idea of what I'm talking about, you might be interested in reading the speculative discussion that Nat (Unidian) and I had in the recent Human progress as Stratification of Being thread. Actually I suspect that you might find the whole thread pretty interesting given that you liked my consciousness-as-evolution idea, so you might like to simply read it through from the beginning.

You seem to be imbuing thought with its own unique level of consciousness. By drawing analogies with a biological entity, you are describing human characteristics as a force, with its own motivation, rather than just an effect. Have I read this correctly?

I think that you've taken the analogy too far - I don't ascribe any actual consciousness to a "thought animal". They contribute to (and in some sense are directed by) consciousness but they are not conscious in themselves.

So you’re saying that for a chronically depressed person, for example, the predatory forces are vying for dominance over the benign or “aha” forces.

Yes, that would be part of my explanation. It might also be something to do with the fact that their world-view has been coloured darkly and their ecological system doesn't have the species of animals that can evolve to bring back bright colours (I'll discuss world-view further on where you bring it up). The nice thing about consciousness versus biological evolution is that there are other ecological systems out there - other people's minds; books; movies - from which to import new thought species. And of course there is direct personal experience, which rather than importing existing thought species can bring into existence completely new species (this again seems to be a departure of the analogy - in real biological evolution there's nothing corresponding to the spontaneous appearance of a new species through something akin to experience). Experience can also affect the gravestone markers - we experience physical pain as well as mental anguish. Bump your head against an obstacle in your path enough times and the gravestone marker becomes solid enough for your mind to prompt you to evolve a new way of directing the physical walking of that path. So I guess that I've just described a new type of thought species - "directive" thoughts - thoughts that direct our behaviour.

And so if someone with low self-esteem is constantly doing the wrong thing, it’s because the predators have evolved, or statistically outnumber the benign forces.

I'm not sure about your association of low self-esteem and morally decrepit action. I think that it's quite possible for people with low self-esteem to have evolved a world view in which they value what most of us would describe as good behaviour, and that they treat others well, but that they nevertheless feel poorly about themselves because every time they have a thought that might inspire them with self-confidence or effective action, their critical predators kill it before it has a chance to evolve or give birth to affirmative or useful children (which in a more balanced ecological system it might be free to do; more on children below), leaving them with the feeling that "I just can't seem to do or come up with anything useful - I'm just no good". This of course is a thought animal in itself, which despite its gravestone marker comes to survive fairly well because it comes to have a relationship as a child of all of the critical predators that themselves dominate the ecology (again, more on relationships below). This is a fairly rough sketch and how this situation might come to be is something that I haven't considered carefully yet. If I later come to any insights then I'll probably share them with you.

But yes, low self-esteem could be due to predators statistically outnumbering benign forces.

Although here the “aha” moments seem to be describing creativity, and creativity is a separate issue to moralistic actions.

Yes, the "aha" moments are a recognition of something novel. However, they could very well be linked to morality because (I agree with you that) morality is mostly a consequence of world-view, and world-view is built up in part by creative thought.

My problem with that is that I think behaviour is the response of our world-view. And our world-view is an effect, rather than a force.

And my problem with those two sentences is that you write that world-view affects behaviour, but then deny that world-view has any force. I suggest instead that world-view is both a cause and an effect.

You've prompted me to realise that my description of consciousness-as-evolution was incomplete, because I didn't consider another property that I ascribe to a thought animal/species: its level of abstraction (nor its relationships, which I'll get to in the next paragraph). This is going to break the analogy a little bit again, because I don't think that there's a correspondence in biological evolution for what I'm about to describe. We build up a picture of a part of reality which is part memory and part active thought - a composite thought species. In that picture, there are some thought species that operate at a low level of abstraction, and some that operate at a higher level. Take, for example, a person's understanding of the formula, y = x^2. One thought species corresponds to the understanding through experience that each of those two symbols can be replaced by a number. At the same level of abstraction, another thought species corresponds to the understanding that substituting 2 for x necessarily requires that y is replaced with 4. Also at the same level of abstraction is the visualisation of a graph of this quadratic equation. At a higher level of abstraction is the understanding that y = x^2 is an equation and that there are many other types of equations. At an even higher level of abstraction is the understanding that an equation is a part of the field of study that we call mathematics, and that equations are but one mathematical technique - another one being arithmetic. The highest level of abstraction is world-view or, as I like to express it, (life) position. I might need to reconsider the idea of pure thought species in this light, because I find it hard to visualise world-view itself as a thought species. I'm not quite sure yet how to adjust my speculations to fit it in properly - do you have any ideas? ... Actually, thinking about it a little more I've decided that it's feasible to consider it as a thought species, but that it might simply be a newish type of species. Perhaps different levels of abstraction of thought species require different classifications. The reason that I think that it's a new and different type of species is that world-view isn't something that can be pushed through an associative chain of thought, nor recalled as a memory - it's more of a general awareness, feeling and understanding.

OK, so to relationships. This concept seems to fit the analogy reasonably well - there are some nice correspondences between the relationships that biological species (and animals) exhibit and those that thought species (and animals) exhibit. Taking the animals first, we can consider that each thought has at least one parent, but might have very many. One thought leads to another, as the saying goes. It might have siblings - closely associated thoughts that arise at the same time. For example, my mind gives birth to the thought animal "I am hungry". At the same time the thought animal "the last meal that I had was pasta" is moderately alive (that's another idea that has a reasonable correspondence with biological animals - the more healthy that a real animal is, the more alive that it is; likewise with thought animals, the more prominent in consciousness it is, the more alive it is) in my consciousness. These two parents give birth to the sibling thought animals "I wonder what I should eat?" and "I'd rather not eat pasta again."

Now, considering the corresponding thought species of these thought animals, I suggest that cousins of these species are the thought species "it is important that I eat a varied diet" and "deprivation of fruit and vegetables => scurvy". Having written this, I'm considering whether I need to revise my idea that a thought animal is a chain of associations, as in the scurvy example, or whether it is better to consider each separate component in the chain as a separate thought animal that is a child of its parent(s). Yes, I think that that's better. Again, the analogy breaks down a bit because for thought animals, parents are a necessarily of a different species, whereas for biological animals they are necessarily of the same (or exceedingly similar in the case of mutations) species.

So there are different types of parental relationships. First there are the type that I described above: one (or more) thought animal(s) give(s) birth to one or more different thought animals (of a different species). Next there are the types of thought parents implied by mutation. The thought species exists in memory and was last alive in consciousness as an animal at some point - this "last-alive" animal is the parent; when the species next becomes alive as an animal, a random fluctuation might modify it slightly - this is the child (of the same or very, very similar species).

Say someone has been mistreated during their developing years. They would have a lower level of positive motivators (creators?) than say, an optimist.

Yes, that seems likely. It's also conceivable though less plausible that the physical brain of the mistreated person is such that they manage to evolve positive thought animals anyway through strength of will or through the use of imagination ("God still loves me" might become the child animal of "that beating that Dad just gave me hurt a lot"), but they would be at a distinct disadvantage in this process.

I also think that there's something else that I need to add to this growing theory - the idea that relationships (and I mean the second type of parental relationship - that where the species are of a different type) between thought animals have the property of strength of association - we might say that the thought parents "love" their children (OK, perhaps I'm stretching the analogy a little, but I think that it's a sweet notion). We might consider that the path most trodden is the path most likely to be trodden again. I don't think that this is anything particularly new but what I'll add to it is that this path-treading - actually, I'll call it an "ancestral chain" to be more in keeping with the biological analogy - is also subject to evolution. It's more likely that the ancestral chain that was last trodden will be the same one trodden next time the parent thoughts arise, but again random fluctuations of the mind can cause different children to be born. If they produce positive sensations, then the partially lit lightbulb might next time be a counterweight to the strength of association of the (possibly gravestone-marked) dominant ancestral chain. In this way a negative but reinforced ancestral chain (depressive thought patterns) can be replaced with something more positive.

I'd also like to add the possibility that some thought animals naturally evoke "aha"-like pleasurable sensations that can only be dominated by a very unusually large number of critical predators. I added "-like" to aha because strictly these aren't novel thoughts - they occur over and over again - but they result in a similar feeling of elation as a novel thought. The optimist might be a person who has discovered what those particular animals are for him/herself and whose ecology has developed such that when hurtful thought animals start to live, they spawn these optimistic animals who fight for predominance in consciousness and, being strongly reinforced and pleasurable, defeat the hurtful/negative/depressive animals. This is really what I'm suggesting by the "God still loves me" example above. For me, one such thought animal is "I'm ALIVE and the universe EXISTS!! Wow and holy cow!!". Yes, I can imagine states of mind (ecologies) where I would not draw so much sustenance from this animal, but they are rare.

In those states I might actually avoid this "special" thought, because I think that then it might start to be associated with depressive states and might lose some of its positive power. I haven't really thought through how that sentence can be incorporated into my analogical system, so perhaps it's a fallacious idea ... yes, I actually think that it is - I think that the association of the special thought with depressive thoughts would occur in a different ecology to my normal ecology, and that this negative association in the depressive ecology would not necessarily affect (or would affect only very weakly) the "aha"-like power of the thought in a "normal" ecology.

Here I want to point out that I do consider that there is a difference between "ecology" - which is a collection of predominant thought species at a particular point in time - and "position" or as you prefer to label it, "world-view" - which is the most abstract thought species in the ecology.

But I can’t view the motivators, as having an identity or consciousness all of their own.

Quite rightly in my opinion - neither can I, except in the sense that perhaps the entire universe is operating by - as Sapius puts it, "Will" - which motivates everything. But that's a fairly speculative idea.

It’s really our own conscience trying to decide what to do, when our good and bad motivators are neck and neck sometimes.

I explain conscience as a family of desirable predators that kill deviant thought animals. It is the immune system of the mind. Likely some of these thought animals are a result of our genes rather than something that we develop through experience, as humans we seem to share a lot of our conscience.

Thoughts generally consolidate and complement one another, rather than compete.

I'd integrate that statement by saying that you're referring to the fact that relationships between thought species are built with and by strength of association, and that these form families of thought. How this association occurs and which factors affect it I would suggest at this point is a deeper and more physical function of the brain than I'm able to speculate on.

I don’t believe that wrong-doing is the result of randomness in the brain.

Nor do I, except indirectly, in the sense that a random fluctuation might mutate a deviant thought just enough that it manages to pass by the critical predators of one's conscience whereas before it didn't.

I think the “predators” or negative motivators, are fixed patterns in the mind and always exist.

I think that you are right that some of the predators have been there since childhood (or even birth in the case of genetically inspired predators) and perhaps you are even right that some don't change. But not all.

So I can’t see how predators evolve or mutate. They are the remnants of things that actually happened, so how would they get the energy to change in any way?

I'm going to distinguish between different types of thoughts: active (thoughts based on language or other symbolic or rational machinery), recollections and feelings. As I'll describe there's some overlap but let's go with them for now.

I would agree with you then that generally speaking, recollections don't evolve much, although they might well mutate a little - we all know that memories aren't 100% reliable and can change over time. Perhaps there's a little evolution in there based on what makes us feel good though - I'd *like* to remember that the way that she smiled at me was warm and welcoming, and perhaps the more times that I recall it, the warmer and more welcoming it becomes (up to a point and balanced by the critical predators that want me to retain a firm grip on reality). But we're talking about predators here, so positive memories of pretty girls smiling at me is a bit of a diversion. However, I don't think that recollections of experiences can be predators in the sense that I originally intended the word - as critical thoughts - but they can spawn children that are either active or feeling, and those I believe can be considered to be predatory.

Not all recollections are based on experiences though (and to clarify: in this paragraph I intend "experience" in an external sense, not in the sense of goings on in the mind). Some recollections are based on feelings (and this is where I think that we can appropriately use your term "approximation", because a recollected feeling is almost always but a shadow of the original feeling). Most importantly, some recollections are based on active thoughts. This is where the overlap that I mentioned comes in, because the recollection of an active thought involves reactivating that thought - i.e. giving birth to a new animal of that species. So the recollection of an active thought is no different than the active thought itself. OK, I still haven't explained how I think that active predatory thoughts evolve, but I'll save that until the second paragraph from this one.

Feelings I'm not too sure about but I suspect that generally speaking, they don't evolve much either. They probably evolve a little, but I suspect that the most important feature of feelings is the families that they form - the way that they combine in relationships to create new feelings. They can, however, act as predators in the same way that active thoughts can. I broadly describe them as less rational predators, although if I thought about it I could probably characterise them more subtly than that.

So, to active predatory thoughts. These can - as I suggested two paragraphs up - exist as wilfully reactivated recollections, but their most useful occurrence is as children of, or siblings with, creative/practical/benign active/feeling thoughts, where they can have the effect of killing those thoughts. I will try to explain how I think that these predators evolve. "Randomness" in the mind can cause the newly born animal to differ from its species mould, such that it is more effective against its prey. I put inverted quotes around randomness because I think that there is something about the brain that makes these mutations far more directed and purposeful than biological mutations. I'll think a little more carefully to see if I can later explain exactly how this might be.

Am I right in assuming that you are linking goodness with creativity? You might need to clarify this, because I don’t understand this.

I hope that I clarified this earlier on but if you're still not clear on it then please let me know.

Troubled people can be very creative. So their problems, or negative motivators, are what prompt them to create in the first place, and this can be a form of escape. So a creative person can actually have an excess of predators, and they are trying to find an outlet for their destructive tendencies.

Yes, nicely put.

I believe our potential is limited according which of our motivations – good or bad – has the upper hand. Despite free will, it is statistically unlikely that we can rise much above a predominantly weighed negativity. It is hard for someone to aspire to a good, fulfilling life, when the skills for this are totally lacking in their memory.

Oh, but there are many people who have a mental states that are not predominantly weighed negativity. Think of all of the successful people in this world - the prolific authors, the busy scientists, the superstar actors, etc. I'm sure that they have moments of depression, but it seems to me that most of them wouldn't be as successful as they are if they didn't have a predominantly positive mental ecology.

But I agree with you that if that is your state, then it is difficult to evolve it into something more positive - some of the irrational predators might be particularly strong and hard to replace.

What an extravagently long response I've indulged in. There is a reason for it though - I'm seriously considering writing a book exploring the idea that all aspects of life - biology, consciousness, cultural knowledge, technology (anything else?) - can be explained as processes of evolution, and that perhaps even the universe itself can be. What do you reckon - if I write that book will you buy a copy and read it? And don't respond with "I'll borrow it from the library": I don't just want your attention, I want your dosh too!

So I very much welcome your continued input into this idea. Please point out weaknesses and defects, ask for clarification where you're not sure, suggest how I might word or frame things better, append to it, etc.

I know that there are things that I haven't yet explained but that are important, such as the processes of comparison and of plausibility testing, but I'll have to think more carefully about them before deciding how or whether to integrate them - they don't seem to have much to do with evolution but a lot to do with genetically defined processes in the brain. I also know that much of this idea is crude and needs refinement. Perhaps you can help me in that process, but if not then I'll evolve it on my own.

To Sapius's post:

I can relate to Bilby in almost all that he describes

In fairness, Bilby being an androgenous name and whose subject has not as far as I know revealed a gender, you might equally have used "she".

“I” am no more than an interactively experiencing sensual process held long enough in and of a temporal thing that is complex enough to hold a sense of continuity through memory.

For a non-native speaker of English (and even if you were a native speaker), that was wonderfully expressed. I don't go so far as to make the same claim - to me it's possible that "I" is something beyond this - but I agree that what you write of is a huge component of what we mean when we say "I".

Regarding coincidences… yes, they may seem to be so, but only because we are not totally aware of all causes that lead to them

Sure, I guess if you put it like that then my contention is that there are a whole other set of "spooky" causes that we (or at least I) are currently unaware of.

Jamesh, unfortunately my imagination was found wanting. I had to read your post several times to get more than glimmerings from it. I've got as far as this: you view the entire universe as a series of hierarchical units, each of which can be either expanding or contracting, and which when paired can store information. I haven't yet deciphered how expansion and contraction relates to dilation of time, nor how time can be substituted for expansion/contraction as The Force.

[Bilby]

I think it’s a great idea to write a book. I’m in between jobs at the moment, so not much dosh available. But yes, I’d read your book.

You’re at the stage in your thinking where you really need to have a compelling argument. I’m still confused by your descriptions of the predators and creators, the evolutionary agents. The first thing I want to know is: Are these physical entities? How exactly are they made? You say the thought animals have no consciousness at all, but then you describe so many conditions where it would appear that they are actively motivated e.g. critical predators kill off affirmative thoughts. So there is some element of free-will in their actions? Do they procreate, as you seemed to imply? You have to explain exactly what is going on here.

Maybe start with the basics and set up an overview first. What are these thought animals actually made of? If these forces are physical, you need to state how they’re put together. Are they cellular, chemical? Are they subject to causal laws of physics? If they’re not physical, how do you account for their existence? Occam’s Razor, and your editor, will disregard anything superfluous. Basically, you should decrease, rather than increase complexity, or you need to have a very compelling reason otherwise. So you have to explain why these evolutionary agents are necessary in the scheme of things, rather than just say they are.

In other words, there’s a lot of similarity between your view and mine. I think we both agree that chronically depressed people suffer from a more negative than positive world view, and this helps to shape their future actions. But I’m trying to simplify, by saying that rather than their motivations actively competing, it is simply a statistical thing: the more positive motivators would more than likely lead to a positive outcome, so a person’s choice is actually spurred on by their perceived likelihood of success by taking a certain route. If you have a lot of positive experiences, this reinforces your world view that continuing on in this vein is a good idea.

You seem to be saying that there are evolutionary “forces” at work, competing with one another. If they’re not conscious, how and why do they kill? So there needs to be more clarity here.

So I’d start out with a basic, simple picture and gradually expand on that, so that the reader understands completely where you’re coming from.

So, in my own case, I’d start like this, with a brief overview:

I believe that consciousness, free-will and memory are all physical in nature. Our universe is entirely made of matter/energy and nothing transcends physical laws. Our world-view is predominantly passive. Physically, it consists of self-image which is an amalgamation of memories. Memory shapes our future actions. All memories are imbedded in the mind in physical, perhaps chemical, form. Our desire to invoke a memory releases a chemical, which finds its counterpart in the actual memory itself. Perception is an abstraction of all incoming stimuli. We probably only perceive of a tiny fraction of all stimuli. All objects in the universe have a connection with all other objects. All particles in the universe are drawn to all other particles. Our universe has a certain positive energy quantity. Energy can’t be borne from nothing. If our universe has a total positive quantity of energy, there must be an unknown universe with a total negative quantity of energy, so that the total net energy of the cosmos is zero.


Here I’ve summarised everything I believe into one paragraph. If I was writing a book, this is where I’d begin. More to help me than anything. Later on, I’d expand on individual concepts, as we’ve done here. But I think you need to do this basic synopsis first.

[Laird]

I think it’s a great idea to write a book. I’m in between jobs at the moment, so not much dosh available. But yes, I’d read your book.

Neat, thanks for the support.

The first thing I want to know is: Are [predators and creators] physical entities?

They are thoughts as experienced in consciousness. So they aren't physical, although they can be (at least partly) explained by physical processes in the brain.

How exactly are they made?

The answer to that would probably take me into the field of neuroscience, which I have no understanding of and don't want to speculate on without prior study.

You say the thought animals have no consciousness at all, but then you describe so many conditions where it would appear that they are actively motivated e.g. critical predators kill off affirmative thoughts. So there is some element of free-will in their actions?

My first-pass answer is that there is no free-will in their actions - think of them as like a virus that can kill a person - these thought animals are as conscious as a virus and as capable of killing. My second pass answer is that it seems likely to me that *everything* in the mind has an element of free-will, so in some slight sense they probably do, but in this model I separate will from actual thoughts as much as is possible - free-will operates at a higher level than thoughts that arise. Perhaps part of free-will is the directionality of the mutation of thoughts. But that wouldn't be a complete description of free-will and I need to think more carefully about that one.

Do they procreate, as you seemed to imply? You have to explain exactly what is going on here.

There's nothing corresponding to procreation itself, just rebirth out of memory due to association.

Maybe start with the basics and set up an overview first. What are these thought animals actually made of? If these forces are physical, you need to state how they’re put together. Are they cellular, chemical? Are they subject to causal laws of physics? If they’re not physical, how do you account for their existence?

I think that you want me to explain things at a lower level than I intend to. I'm operating at the level of what I can personally observe occurring in my mind - nothing that requires a scientific understanding of the brain acquired through dissection or ECGs or anything that's not directly accessible to consciousness. So when I say that a predator is just a thought that occurs in your mind, I mean exactly what you experience when reading this sentence and thinking to yourself "but, no, that's not a good enough explanation!" As you experience the words in quotes, you are experiencing a predator.

So you have to explain why these evolutionary agents are necessary in the scheme of things, rather than just say they are.

This is going to be a work of speculation, so I'm not going to claim that this is a necessary explanation, just that it fits well with my personal observations of my mind.

You seem to be saying that there are evolutionary “forces” at work, competing with one another. If they’re not conscious, how and why do they kill? So there needs to be more clarity here.

The why of killing is because that is their nature - why is the sky blue? The how of killing I'm going to explain as due to a monitoring process in the brain that I will term "plausibility testing". When a pair of thoughts compete, plausibility testing selects the fittest thought - i.e. whether the predator kills off its prey or whether the prey is strong enough to avoid death. I would say that plausibility testing depends a lot on world-view and on understandings held at various levels of abstraction. If I hold the world-view that the world is explained through the perfect and uncontradicted teachings of the Bible, that God created the world 6000 years ago in 6 days, etc, then my plausibility testing might allow the prey "the Bible was inspired directly of God and therefore should be trusted" to survive the predator "but it might instead have been written by the Devil as a trick" whereas an atheist might find that this predator kills off the prey - that the Bible should not automatically be trusted.

But I think you need to do this basic synopsis first.

The synopsis of my book is that it is a speculative work suggesting that everything in the universe including the universe itself can be explained in terms of evolution. Consciousness is one facet of evolution. I don't intend to get into the lower level physical details of the brain and am content to relegate those details to biological evolution.

[Sapius]

Laird,

In fairness, Bilby being an androgenous name and whose subject has not as far as I know revealed a gender, you might equally have used "she".

Hehehee... With all due respects… does that really matter? What maters to me is the quality of thought, not the gender of the person posting it. I respect and revere existence as a whole… so if the poster minds… he/she can point it out… I would be glad to oblige. Unfortunately English is not a gender descriptive language as some other languages are; otherwise the gender of the person speaking would be obvious.

BTW… how would one respectfully address a she-male?

S: “I” am no more than an interactively experiencing sensual process held long enough in and of a temporal thing that is complex enough to hold a sense of continuity through memory.

L: For a non-native speaker of English (and even if you were a native speaker), that was wonderfully expressed.

I try to do my best, but the truth is that I have pick up such descriptiveness reading good writers such as yourself.

I don't go so far as to make the same claim - to me it's possible that "I" is something beyond this - but I agree that what you write of is a huge component of what we mean when we say "I".

Well… in my opinion, “I” (consciousness) is but just that; considering something “beyond” without any reasonable justification would translate into a wishful thinking in my opinion. What reasons do you have to believe such a possibility?

S: Regarding coincidences… yes, they may seem to be so, but only because we are not totally aware of all causes that lead to them;

L: Sure, I guess if you put it like that then my contention is that there are a whole other set of "spooky" causes that we (or at least I) are currently unaware of.

What set of spooky causes? Events may seem “spooky” because most of us are not aware, know how or why certain things occur the way they do. It is the not knowing of the causes that make events “spooky”, otherwise not.

[Laird]

Laird: In fairness, Bilby being an androgenous name and whose subject has not as far as I know revealed a gender, you might equally have used "she".

Sapius: Hehehee... With all due respects… does that really matter? What maters to me is the quality of thought, not the gender of the person posting it.

Quite right of course, but I'm a curious fellow and wanted to give Bilby an opportunity to satisfy my curiosity should s/he so desire, but I respect his/her right to maintain a silence on the issue. It does, as you can see in the preceding sentence, however, make communication a little more awkward, but Bilby is not to blame for the shortcomings of our language.

Unfortunately English is not a gender descriptive language as some other languages are; otherwise the gender of the person speaking would be obvious.

Oh, you mean that some languages don't have a single word for "I" but rather have "I-as-a-male" and "I-as-a-female"? Well, that's a new one to me. Can you tell me which languages you know of that are like that? What's your native language by the way?

BTW… how would one respectfully address a she-male?

Tricky one. I'd say go with appearance. If a man's dolled up as a woman, then clearly he's playing a role that he finds stimulating and wants to associate with. It's most respectful to him then to play along with that role, rather than to break it down by reminding him of reality. I'm conscious that I used "him" rather than "her" in the preceding sentence, but the difference is that I'm talking in general - when talking about a specific transvestite then I think that I'd use "her".

I try to do my best, but the truth is that I have pick up such descriptiveness reading good writers such as yourself.

Thanks mate, that was a nice and subtle pick-me-up.

Laird: I don't go so far as to make the same claim - to me it's possible that "I" is something beyond this - but I agree that what you write of is a huge component of what we mean when we say "I".

Sapius: Well… in my opinion, “I” (consciousness) is but just that; considering something “beyond” without any reasonable justification would translate into a wishful thinking in my opinion. What reasons do you have to believe such a possibility?

It's actually a very strong, very simple reason, but I don't seem to be able to communicate it effectively. I'll give it another shot here:

Consciousness is a perspective. It's a "looking-out-from-my-window-on-the-world". Your position seems to be that consciousness is what I would term "emergent" - that physical processes in the brain in some sense "cause" it. I can imagine this position being able to explain all sorts of things - the feelings of I, the memories of I, the thought processes of I - the one thing that I cannot imagine this ever being able to explain is the inhabitation of the perspective of I.

I simply have to trust that you know what I mean by "the inhabitation of perspective" because I don't yet know a better way to put it, but probably that's where this explanation will fall down. I ask you that if that's indeed where you find my explanation lacking, to ponder it a little bit, because I believe that your consciousness and mine (and indeed every human's and probably every other animal's) are alike in this respect.

S: Regarding coincidences… yes, they may seem to be so, but only because we are not totally aware of all causes that lead to them;

L: Sure, I guess if you put it like that then my contention is that there are a whole other set of "spooky" causes that we (or at least I) are currently unaware of.

S: What set of spooky causes? Events may seem “spooky” because most of us are not aware, know how or why certain things occur the way they do. It is the not knowing of the causes that make events “spooky”, otherwise not.

By "spooky" I mean, as you seem to imply, simply that they are things that most of us are not aware of and might find a little frightening or disconcerting because to become aware of them would require a radical reevaluation of our world-view, and that's a difficult and painful process. As for what they might be - well first I'd posit that reality as we know of it and are able to describe it through science is but one out of many levels or layers, and that these other levels are nevertheless capable of affecting ours.

Now, you might, as Kev did earlier, argue that science would be capable of detecting such causal relationships. And I agreed with him that the type of (quantum) causal relationships that I speculated about would be detectable to science. But I have ideas about subtler relationships than the ones that I described, which were that a large number of localised and related quantum events were caused to occur at a highly improbable level of coincidence so that a particular macro-level event was effected. Now I consider the possibility that in the brain, there are many decisions that hang on a knife-point balance, such that a single - or at least only a very few - quantum events determine the direction of the outcome. This reduces the requirement for a large number of highly improbable interferences from another level of reality - only one or a few undetectable interferences need occur for a human to be unconsciously directed for a higher purpose. Complete and utter speculation, but really, who knows?

The other possibility is that these layers of reality are intimately tied to consciousness, which is, as I suspect, a "force" - in a manner of speaking - entirely different in nature to anything else in the universe. This "force" then is evidence in itself that different levels of reality exist, for it can only be explained as a different reality to the rest of the universe - it is the link between "normal", "physical" reality and "spiritual" realms.

The age-old mind-body problem of course then raises its head and I am forced to acknowledge that I don't have a completely plausible and satisfying answer - to what extent does this "unreal" force of consciousness contain such things as feelings, thoughts and understandings, and to what extent does the physical brain contain them? I can only speculate. Possibly the brain contains more ephemeral contents and the mind (or soul) contains deeper seated elements of the personality.

But surely this mind's affects on the brain should be detectable to science, you might argue. Well, yes, but I might present the same quantum arguments as to how it might do this as I did above. Or perhaps we will, as our science progresses, actually find indisputable evidence of larger-scale effects. Or perhaps in some "spooky" way a causal connection exists that is nevertheless undetectable - in the same sort of weird way in which observation causes a quantum wave equation to collapse into one out of the many possible alternatives - every time an attempt is made to scientifically observe the effect that the non-physical mind has on the physical brain it is in some way made unobservable.

I know that the possibilities that I'm presenting here will be quite alien and revolting to many people on this forum and I fully expect at least some of you to be metaphorically shaking your heads and muttering to yourselves, "oh dear, another irrational new-age kook" or similar. If so, then I ask you to carefully consider your characterisation of my thoughts as irrational. Rationality is the construction through observation, intuition, inference, deduction and plausibility-testing (or reality-testing where possible) of understanding. That's exactly what I'm doing - I'm looking at what I've experienced and observed in life and trying to explain it the best way that I can. What's the alternative? I think that many people on this forum take the kind of position that you, Sapius, have just described - that consciousness is purely emergent and needs no explanation beyond that. I've tried to explain what I find deficient in that position. So the only rational approach left to me is to canvas more explicative alternatives.

I find supporting evidence for my position in several phenomena. The first is that of dreams. Some of the dreams that I have are vivid constructions of a reality in which I am as lucid as I am when awake. If my rationality is under question for considering the possibility of a non-physical mind distinct from but connected to the physical brain, then likewise is under question the rationality of anyone trying to maintain that such experiences arise purely out of our evolved brains. I mean, really, of what possible survival value are these vivid, lucid dreams? In my everyday life I (my brain) find(s) it hard enough to determine appropriate ways to interact with other people, and yet in these dreams are many people all interacting in uniquely personal ways - so, what, my brain is less imaginative when I'm awake? Of what possible survival value is it to have a powerfully realistic imagination... but only when you're asleep?

The second is the descriptions of many different people of their experiences of astral travel. One of those people as most readers of this forum will know through listening to The Reasoning Show podcasts, is Susan Blackmore, but she's not the first that I've come across. I was quite intrigued that she has retreated into denial of the implications of her experience - I'm not quite sure how she explains it if not that her non-physical mind was disassociating itself more than usual from its physical inhabitation of her brain and that this experience is personal proof that at least a part of the "I" is contained in a non-physical construct that we might term "mind" or "soul", but perhaps I'll need to re-listen to that episode.

Finally, I'll comment on what you might have picked up on as a large degree of defensiveness in my above exposition. I'll explain that by saying that throughout this thread absolutely no one has said anything that even remotely sounds like a "well, it's pretty far out stuff but it's at least a vaguely conceivable possibility" (even the one person who I expected might lend me at least the smallest element of support of that type instead held back), leading me to believe that I'm way out there on my own with this one and that I therefore have to pay more careful attention to the critical arguments that you guys are naturally going to muster against my ideas.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Laird: In fairness, Bilby being an androgenous name and whose subject has not as far as I know revealed a gender, you might equally have used "she".

I have not had time to keep up with this whole thread, but I noticed this and I want to thank you Laird for flushing out this awareness.

I also would like to throw in a suggestion. English is limited in that it does not have an androgenous reference pronoun. Languages evolve by people adopting a way of speaking, and eventually it makes it into the dictionary. I propose the word "e" as an androgenous substitute for either he or she. I'm going to just start using it in informal text (don't anybody try this on a school paper or anything - what goes in a school paper is only what is already in the dictionary). Actually, I think I will start using it in substitution for either he or she, rather than as a third alternative for "I don't know the gender." Reasons being include that it would eliminate the awkward moments when someone ought to know the gender, as well as when someone's feelings might get hurt if the gender is misidentified (Awww, e's a cute baby, isn't e?), and that gender shouldn't really matter to people anyway, so it's a good idea to eliminate it from the language altogether. There's less chance to be a misogynist or an misandrist if the referent is "out of sight, out of mind." I'd say that 98% of the time, a person's gender does not matter - and in situations where it would matter, they'll figure it out.

[Laird]

On the subject language usage, I'd like to correct my misspelling of "androgynous" as the mistaken "androgenous".

I propose the word "e" as an androgenous substitute for either he or she. I'm going to just start using it in informal text

I'll join you in that endeavour, at least on this forum and when I'm not aware of or sure of gender. If it starts to come more naturally then I might use it more generally. You might recall that I made this suggestion to the departed passthrough in a separate thread, but I suggested it only in relation to the pronoun's application to God. I recalled there that I'd encountered the notion through the science fiction writing of - if I remember correctly - Robert Heinlein.

What about the "him"/"her" problem? I seem to recall that Robert's suggestion was "im", but that still seems to be too masculine-derived to be acceptable as a neutral alternative. Hmm, perhaps "imer"? The problems with that are that it's bi-syllabic and that it's not intuitively sensible to someone who's not yet aware of it, but so far it's the best that I've got.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

I have some kind of vague memory about something like that. The fact that I couldn't properly recall prompted me to take my temperature again, and my fever is returning. Nuts, I guess I pushed myself too hard.

I don't like the "im" for the same reason, and the "imer" is bad both for the reason you sated, and also because it necessarily puts one gender before the other. I'll think on an alternative. My first reaction was "h" but that is an awkward sound to make when spoken, so it wouldn't catch on. Gotta think of something else, and apparently at the moment, my brain is frying with fever. I'll work on it later.

[Laird]

Gotta think of something else, and apparently at the moment, my brain is frying with fever. I'll work on it later.

I've just had an idea. How about eer, pronounced ee-er, probably contracted though in everyday usage to something like the way that we pronounce the word "ear". It incorporates both genders, because the initial e could be thought of as deriving from "he" (although a critic might point out that it could equally be said to derive from "she" - my counter is that "he" being the shorter word, it's more correct to think of it as the source) and the subsequent er can be thought of as deriving from "her". What do you think?

[Shardrol]

I am sorry but to my ears 'e' just sounds like someone who has one of those accents where they drop the H's trying to say 'he'.

This E business has been around for a while, along with E-prime (a modification of English eliminating all forms of the verb 'to be' - 'To live or not to live - I must come to a decision').

I don't usually have a problem with saying 'him or her' if I mean a person of unspecified gender, but there is also 'one' & the ungrammatical but useful 'they' used in the singular.

[Laird]

I am sorry but to my ears 'e' just sounds like someone who has one of those accents where they drop the H's trying to say 'he'.

How about the Spivak (new) variant described on the Wikipedia page that you linked to: "ey"? I also noticed that they suggest a word for him/her that's very similar to the "eer" that I just suggested: "eir". Seems pretty workable to me. What do you reckon?

E-prime (a modification of English eliminating all forms of the verb 'to be' - 'To live or not to live - I must come to a decision').

What do you think of that idea?

I don't usually have a problem with saying 'him or her' if I mean a person of unspecified gender

I usually separate them with a stroke, but either way, it's a little awkward, wouldn't you agree?

but there is also 'one' & the ungrammatical but useful 'they' used in the singular.

I think that both of those alternatives suffer from the same problem: they already have different uses and we reduce the richness of our language to appropriate them for this usage too. I'd like instead to see its richness increased. Reduced richness leads to confusion. For example, when I say "What would one like to do?" the traditional sense is "What would the-average-person like to do?" whereas in the new sense that you're suggesting that it might be used, it would mean "What would this-particular-person like to do?" Generally, context is going to make clear which of the two is meant, but there will be cases in which it will be more ambiguous.

[Bilby]

Jane Austin, and many other writers, have been using the singular “their” since the 14th century so it’s not unknown. You don’t really need a new word to denote male/female when “they” or “them” could more easily be used in a singular sense as well. There would be a lot of resistance to the use of “e” because it does sound a bit like a Cockney trying to saying “he”.

English is a dynamic language, and “bad or incorrect grammar” is just convention. If everyone started using “them, they and their” as singular words, it would quickly become accepted, and “correct” usage. “Man is a mammal who suckles his young” sounds odd. “The human is a mammal who suckles their young” sounds better. I think we should all be trail-blazers and get this thing going.

Laird, just going back to your book. It sounds like an original idea and there are elements I really like, so it’s worth continuing with trying to present a coherent picture. You don’t need to have in-depth knowledge of physics to explain your views. Famous philosophers through the ages have discussed the nature of reality without any knowledge of physics at all, and thousands of years later we’re still studying them.

I’m wondering if I was the person you were referring to who didn’t offer you an element of support. It’s difficult for me to wholeheartedly accept something that I don’t understand. Anyone who is hoping to communicate to others has to have conviction in their own views, and I’m just wondering whether you might need to go over the basics a bit more. At some stage you have to stop being a fence-sitter, and take a plunge. You don’t need science, just a sincere belief in what you’re saying. I hope you reconsider the suggestion of summarising what it is you believe, and enlarging from there.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Gotta think of something else, and apparently at the moment, my brain is frying with fever. I'll work on it later.

I've just had an idea. How about eer, pronounced ee-er, probably contracted though in everyday usage to something like the way that we pronounce the word "ear". It incorporates both genders, because the initial e could be thought of as deriving from "he" (although a critic might point out that it could equally be said to derive from "she" - my counter is that "he" being the shorter word, it's more correct to think of it as the source) and the subsequent er can be thought of as deriving from "her". What do you think?

Too feminine. Sounds like the country slang for "her." Good try, but we need something else.

I like Bilby's suggestion about them and their though.

Shardrol - thanks about E-prime. I actually had not heard of that.

[Leyla Shen]

Hey, I’ve got a novel idea! How about everyone faces their delusions instead of skirting around them by inventing new words and reams of useless diatribe?

I know, too hard.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Leyla - Are you pointing at something or just swinging your finger around?

[Laird]

You don’t really need a new word to denote male/female when “they” or “them” could more easily be used in a singular sense as well.

As I wrote in response to Shardrol, I think that this diminishes the variety in our language and adds to confusion. "Their house was robbed." Am I talking about a guy who lives alone or a family? You might ask in return, "why is it important to know?" Well, part of the value of language is efficient communication. In this sense, the more information that one can convey in a single word, the more effective the communication is. So I'll restate my opposition to this suggestion.

Elizabeth finds "eer" too effeminate, but how about "eir" (pronounced as in "their")?

I accept the unsuitability of "e", but how about "ey" (pronounced as in "they")?

The beauty of these two words is that they are exactly what you suggest except without the first two letters, so we get the best of both worlds - the essence of your suggestion and the maintenance of variety.

Laird, just going back to your book. It sounds like an original idea and there are elements I really like, so it’s worth continuing with trying to present a coherent picture.

Thanks for the encouragement - I've started on it already and have completed a draft of the introduction and have started fleshing out the table of contents. The structure and details of the book are slowly evolving in my mind.

You don’t need to have in-depth knowledge of physics to explain your views.

If I'm to discuss physics then I do. I'm quite willing to speculate, but only in areas that haven't been studied or that aren't easily accessible to science.

I’m wondering if I was the person you were referring to who didn’t offer you an element of support.

You were not - you arrived new to the forum and half-way through the discussion: I had no expectations of you.

At some stage you have to stop being a fence-sitter, and take a plunge.

I intend to take the plunge of fully discussing and exploring a coherent set of ideas, but I intend to clearly explain which of those ideas I believe in and which are fantasies that might happen to be true anyway.

I hope you reconsider the suggestion of summarising what it is you believe, and enlarging from there.

I haven't written out a summary but the most essential elements of my contentions are becoming clearer to me as I think about them.

Hey, I’ve got a novel idea! How about everyone faces their delusions instead of skirting around them by inventing new words and reams of useless diatribe?

Right now Leyla I'm afraid that the English language is far more deluded than any of us. It is hopelessly attached to a dualistic notion of gender. I hope that you will recognise the need to compassionately assist it on the arduous path to an enlightened linguistic state in which the false belief in the distinction between masculine and feminine no longer appears to it but rather it perceives the Oneness of its personal pronouns. I know that your critical powers will prove vital in the process of raising our language's egolessness to the point that it realises that it is but an arbitrarily bounded component of greater grammatical causality and that it thereby accepts its lexical reformation without emotion or any of that sort of fuss that one has come to expect with the post-modernist, relativistic, politically correct families of words.

[Shardrol]

I am sorry, Laird, but all these 'eys' & 'eirs' just sound ridiculous to me. I use 'he or she' or 'they' & I don't feel this diminishes the language. But, y'know, I'm so backward I don't even feel the desire to change words like 'mankind' into 'manwomantransgenderedkind'. I'm content to let everyone muddle their way through these issues & come up with their various ideas. Probably something fairly sensible will win out.

As to the original topic, well we don't know what effect our thoughts & needs have on events in our vicinity. I am sure some people would find it comforting to think that the universe will provide them with a cookie if they're hungry. In fact I once knew someone like that, who would show up somewhere without having made any arrangements for where to stay or how to get around. When she arrived she would phone various people she knew & usually someone would invite her to stay with them or drive her where she needed to go. Then she liked to talk about how it wasn't necessary to arrange anything in advance because 'the universe' would always take care of her & give her what she needed.

People are always relating 'remarkable coincidences' as if they're significant but the vast majority of the time we're going about our business & nothing particularly synchronous is happening. Does that have any meaning? It might.

[Laird]

I am sorry, Laird, but all these 'eys' & 'eirs' just sound ridiculous to me.

I feel a little uncomfortable with them too, but I've trialled them in sentences over my tongue a couple of times and I reckon that with familiarity they'd be less awkward. Given that I've lived for so long using different words they'd probably never feel completely natural, but, hey, I think that Bilby's suggestion that we should be trailblazers is great.

As to the original topic, well we don't know what effect our thoughts & needs have on events in our vicinity.

Wow, the first person in this thread who's expressed open-mindedness on this issue.

I am sure some people would find it comforting to think that the universe will provide them with a cookie if they're hungry.

Yes, I've known people who had a lot of faith in the provision of the universe too - not quite as much as your friend though. I also have a lot of faith, but it's more to do with human nature - I don't know anyone who would simply stand by and watch another person starve to death for example.

People are always relating 'remarkable coincidences' as if they're significant but the vast majority of the time we're going about our business & nothing particularly synchronous is happening. Does that have any meaning? It might.

I'm not suggesting that coincidences can be relied on - perhaps occasionally things are just caused by some unknown higher force for some higher purpose that we will never be aware of, but that is helpful or progressive in some way. Or perhaps my mind is just overly fond of picking out patterns.

[Bilby]

In response to Laird’s comment: If the person you are talking about is non-specific, i.e., someone you don’t know, it would be correct to say: “someone was away at no. 10, and their house was robbed”. So there’s no presumption of the person’s gender. But if we knew who the person was, it should be ok to continue with the gender-specific pronoun, as in: John Smith from no. 10 was away, and his house was robbed”. I don’t think this is an issue of discontinuing gender pronouns. It’s just that we need a neutral pronoun as well because having to say “he or she” is unwieldy. But there’s really no need to be saying “the mother in the maternity ward fed their baby”.

It might be less of a cultural shock to introduce “their and they” into general conversation whenever it’s warranted, rather than befuddle everyone with completely foreign words. I often say “I saw my doctor and they said I had a multiple-personality disorder” and really, no-one bats en eyelid.

[Sapius]

Laird: Oh, you mean that some languages don't have a single word for "I" but rather have "I-as-a-male" and "I-as-a-female"? Well, that's a new one to me. Can you tell me which languages you know of that are like that? What's your native language by the way?

No, not the “I”, that would indeed be a new one for me too, but the verb that proceeds has a feminine or masculine quality; hence one knows if it is a female or male speaking. This kind of grammar is incorporated in some form or another in almost all central/eastern languages that have Sanskrit as a root, but not Chinese character based languages.

Say for example Thai, Burmese, or the many languages in and around that region, the Malaysian and Indonesian peninsula, most of the Indian Languages (not dialects but languages; I take it there are officially 32) - all the Arabic world, but not Persian, have such a grammatical structure. I take it Latin has a similar form of grammar, but it has somehow not filtered down to languages that claim to have Latin as the root. From such grammar, one can discern the gender of the speaker without even knowing his/her name or face. And talking of names, if one is not familiar with the cultural background or the local language, it is quite difficult to know if a name belongs to a female or a male without meeting in person. I can give examples if you like.

BTW, disclosing my native language would cast a shadow of presumed psychoanalyses of ‘me’, as in from “where he comes from”, rather than decipher me from what I express, so my apologies. However, my personal language is logicality though, naturally coupled with compassion.

At times I address another person as ‘he’ if I do not know the gender from the name, because I am a ‘he’, and I guess that comes naturally, but I mean no disrespect to womankind.

Consciousness is a perspective. It's a "looking-out-from-my-window-on-the-world". Your position seems to be that consciousness is what I would term "emergent" - that physical processes in the brain in some sense "cause" it.

It is not only the brain but also the rest of totality, i.e., all that dynamically interact with each other, which is also responsible for “Consciousness”; what you look out at, is equally interactive and responsible, but the human kind of consciousness requires a human brain to bring forth a logically self-aware consciousness, evolved from a minimally self-aware quark consciousness.

I can imagine this position being able to explain all sorts of things - the feelings of I, the memories of I, the thought processes of I - the one thing that I cannot imagine this ever being able to explain is the inhabitation of the perspective of I.

“Perspective” of “I” exists even in a quark by default (duality); otherwise it could not interact with that that is not “it”. Our perspective is simply a highly evolved one based in and off of a quark consciousness; we are essentially a bunch of complex enough quarks interactively at work as an individual thing.

I simply have to trust that you know what I mean by "the inhabitation of perspective" because I don't yet know a better way to put it, but probably that's where this explanation will fall down.

I think I know what you mean. Hopefully much will be clear as we discuss further.

I ask you that if that's indeed where you find my explanation lacking, to ponder it a little bit, because I believe that your consciousness and mine (and indeed every human's and probably every other animal's) are alike in this respect.

I have pondered much on it; hence your ideas are not novel to me. For me, “consciousness” goes far beyond the animal realm, even beyond any known quantum level; it lies at the heart of duality, in fact, it is the heart and soul of existence.

… This reduces the requirement for a large number of highly improbable interferences from another level of reality - only one or a few undetectable interferences need occur for a human to be unconsciously directed for a higher purpose. Complete and utter speculation, but really, who knows?

I would say that speculations are but healthy ponderings, but there comes a stage one is compelled to analyze his speculations and reach some relatively logical conclusions. You can consider it a “higher purpose”, but yes there does seem to be a drive towards something, but that something is but the evolving of consciousness happening at any given point of a dynamic existence. The “purpose” may seem “higher” as seen from the evolving point of view, but absolutely nothing can remain stagnant in an infinitely dynamic system, including the level of consciousness, irrelevant of which “higher” purpose it may be driven to.

The age-old mind-body problem of course then raises its head……….

Possibly the brain contains more ephemeral contents and the mind (or soul) contains deeper seated elements of the personality.

I think this mind-body problem may be reduced if not removed by the time we finish this discussion…

I think that many people on this forum take the kind of position that you, Sapius, have just described - that consciousness is purely emergent and needs no explanation beyond that. I've tried to explain what I find deficient in that position. So the only rational approach left to me is to canvas more explicative alternatives.

Later on in this discussion I will give some examples that may clarify the idea that although consciousness is purely emergent, it is nevertheless a force that once evolutionarily generated to a certain qualitative level, can live off of any material for survival. Allow me to first question your supporting evidence below as to how closely have you studied them.

And please don’t assume how I may or may not argue along the lines that others have. I am not them, and you do not know me yet.

I find supporting evidence for my position in several phenomena. The first is that of dreams. Some of the dreams that I have are vivid constructions of a reality in which I am as lucid as I am when awake. If my rationality is under question for considering the possibility of a non-physical mind distinct from but connected to the physical brain, then likewise is under question the rationality of anyone trying to maintain that such experiences arise purely out of our evolved brains.

Experiences are necessarily retained impressions acquired through sensual information OR logically deduced thoughts of such information. Who said ‘experiences arise purely out of our evolved brains’? I think you seem to assume too much.

How much have you studied your own dreams? How much do you remember what you dream? Are you aware that you are dreaming when dreaming? And in how many of them? What perspective do you visualize your dreams from? First person perspective or do you also at times see yourself in a dream from a third person perspective? We shall talk about the “purpose” of dreams once we discuss the above basic questions.

The second is the descriptions of many different people of their experiences of astral travel.

Yes, I thought that might come up; and how that is possible may be much clear once we reach the end of this discussion, but we need to go step by step towards it to at least understand, if one has not had such experiences. Have you had any out of body expereinces?

Finally, I'll comment on what you might have picked up on as a large degree of defensiveness in my above exposition.

Again… assumptions. What defensiveness? I did not detect any… I must be blind.

I'll explain that by saying that throughout this thread absolutely no one has said anything that even remotely sounds like a "well, it's pretty far out stuff but it's at least a vaguely conceivable possibility" (even the one person who I expected might lend me at least the smallest element of support of that type instead held back), leading me to believe that I'm way out there on my own with this one and that I therefore have to pay more careful attention to the critical arguments that you guys are naturally going to muster against my ideas.

Well, I say, it is not that far out a stuff and that it is very much a conceivable possibility; all that is needed is an open mind and less arrogance, as in I have experienced all that there is to experience. Possibilities remain open to those who mentally remain open to possibilities; otherwise the doors as shut, and they have none other to blame for that. In my opinion, it is the individual’s attitude towards existence that opens up unthinkable doors; and the possibilities are most probably infinite, for the more I know, I realize how little I know.



I haven’t forgotten about what we were discussing on the other thread before my short absence…

L: On the one hand we can speak of "leading to its creation" (a temporal process) yet on the other we can describe this as a timeless entity (a temporal-less beingness). Does this ring the discordance bell in your mind too? I don't think that at this point my mind contains the conceptual structure to properly envisage the nature of this being.

S: Yes, it is quite difficult to envisage such a scenario unless experienced, but it is quite possible to comprehend IF one can keep an open mind and be open to certain probabilities. I can try explaining if you are interested.

L: Very. Please elaborate.

… later I will try to explain and show the connection to this issue once we reach a certain level of current discussion. It is very much relative.

BTW,

S: I try to do my best, but the truth is that I have pick up such descriptiveness reading good writers such as yourself.

L: Thanks mate, that was a nice and subtle pick-me-up.

What is this supposed to mean? I mean what I said, and you are not the only one that writes quite coherently. There are others that I have learnt from.

[Jason]

Hey, I’ve got a novel idea! How about everyone faces their delusions instead of skirting around them by inventing new words and reams of useless diatribe?

OMFG! "Skirting", that is so non-gender-neutral.

[Jason]

I propose the word "e" as an androgenous substitute for either he or she.

I propose "it" and/or "stupid", or perhaps "stupit".

BTW… how would one respectfully address a she-male?

"That's a huge bitch!" or "Freak!". Shouted preferably.

[sue hindmarsh]

Leyla Shen wrote:

Hey, I’ve got a novel idea! How about everyone faces their delusions instead of skirting around them by inventing new words and reams of useless diatribe?

I know, too hard.

Well, yes - it is extremely hard. To begin with, you have to be lucky enough to have a strong connection to your own mind. Then, using that connection you're able to discern your life’s focus and purpose. From that point onwards all thought and action is appraised to ensure that they are consistent with that focus and purpose.

You’re asking that they “face their delusions”, but for them to be able to do so they would first have to have as their focus and purpose the only thing that can uncover delusions – and that is truth. For only by holding your life up to the light of truth can you find the untruths.

Added to all of the above is the fact that delusions are often very difficult to dig out and even harder to remove completely. Sometimes you think you’ve got one by the root, only to discover that all you’ve got is a small piece of it and you have to go back to work digging out the rest.

So Leyla, asking them to stop their mindless babbling, and also to face squarely their delusions, is really asking far too much – don’t you think? Clearly their babbling indicates that they don’t have a strong connection to their own mind, and because of that, they also don’t have a connection to truth.

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[sue hindmarsh]

Elizabeth wrote:

Leyla wrote: Hey, I’ve got a novel idea! How about everyone faces their delusions instead of skirting around them by inventing new words and reams of useless diatribe?

I know, too hard.

Leyla - Are you pointing at something or just swinging your finger around?

It is clear that Leyla is pointing to the fact that when considering the sexes, more discrimination is needed, not less.

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