AWiseman wrote:
I can easily accept that consciousness "is just appearances". But that appears to me as nothing other than semantics. To understand that "consciousness is just appearances" makes perfect logical sense, but I have this defeated sense of "So what?".
It's perhaps like someone trying to teach a kid calculus. The child can accept every separate fact he is told, but he may nevertheless still not "see" the grand picture.
What happens when everything you experience ---all the things--- are labelled "appearances", such that there are no real boundaries anywhere?
And what happens when the kid puts himself into the equation? Is he now still there?
Is anything?
K: All one needs is a logical definition for "thing" (e.g. appearances), and "cause" (e.g. whatever brings a thing into existence). Then put these two ideas together.
A: I can accept that what you say about "things" and "causes" is true, but I would have to take it on faith that this was actually going to lead me anywhere particularly worthwhile. Worse still I am quite convinced I have already gone down that road and it has not led me to any breakthroughs. Also, I am suspicious, along with what Jason implied earlier, that there is no greener grass on the other side. Perhaps I already do understand "Reality".
Your philosophising seems to be driven by a need to experience
something. Whereas I see philosophy as finding out what is ultimately true. And letting my desires for
something to live on .....die.
Nietzsche criticised so-called "philosophers" (using the word sarcastically) for being driven by certain prejudices:
Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir; also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant had grown.
Indeed, if one would explain how the abstrusest metaphysical claims of a philosopher really came about, it is always well (and wise) to ask first: at what morality does all this (does he....) aim? Accordingly, I do not believe that a "drive to knowledge" is the father of philosophy; but rather that another drive has, here as elsewhere employed knowledge (and mis-knowledge!) as a mere instrument. But anyone who considers the basic drives of man to see to what extent they may have been at play just here as in inspiring spirits (or demons and kobolds) will find that all of them have done philosophy at some time - and that every single one of them would like only too well to represent just itself as the ultimate purpose of existence and the legitimate dominator of all the other drives. For every drive is domineering - and it attempts to philosophize in that spirit.
And here, Nietzsche wrote about the real philosopher, the "Free Spirit" :
Need I still say expressly after all this that they, too, will be free, very free spirits, these philosophers of the future - though just as certainly they will not be merely free spirits but something more, higher, greater, and thoroughly different that does not want to be misunderstood and mistaken for something else. But saying this I feel an obligation - almost as much to them as to ourselves who are their heralds and precursors, we free spirits! - to sweep away a stupid old prejudice and misunderstanding about the lot of us: all too long it has clouded the concept "free spirit" like a fog. In all the countries of Europe, and in America, too, there now is something that abuses this name: a very narrow, imprisoned, chained type of spirit who wants just about the opposite of what accords with our intentions and instincts - not to speak of the fact that regarding the new philosophers who are coming up they must assuredly be closed windows and bolted doors. They belong, briefly and sadly, among the levellers - these falsely so-called "free spirits" - being eloquent and prolifically scribbling slaves of the democratic taste and its "modern ideas"; they are all human beings without solitude, without their own solitude, clumsy good fellows whom one should not deny either courage or respectable decency - only they are unfree and ridiculously superficial, above all in their basic inclination to find the cause of all human misery and failure in the forms of the old society as it has existed so far just about - which is a way of standing truth happily upon her head! What they would like to strive for with all their powers is the universal green-pasture happiness of the herd, with security, lack of danger, comfort, and an easier life for everyone; the two songs and doctrines which they repeat most often are: "equality of rights" and "sympathy for all that suffers" - and suffering itself they take for something that must be abolished. We opposite men, having opened our eye and conscience to the question where and how the plant "man" has so far grown most vigorously to a height - we think that this has happened every time under the opposite conditions, that to this end the dangerousness of his situation must first grow to the point of enormity, his power of invention and simulation (his "spirit") had to develop under prolonged pressure and constraint into refinement and audacity, his life-will had to be enhanced into an unconditional power-will. We think that hardness, forcefulness, slavery, danger in the alley and the heart, life in hiding, stoicism, the art of temptation and devilry of every kind, that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical in man, everything in him that is kin to beasts of prey and serpents, serves the enhancement of the species "man" as much as its opposite does. Indeed, we do not even say enough when we say only that much; and at any rate we are at this point, in what we say and keep silent about, at the other end from all modem ideology and herd desireableness - as their antipodes perhaps? Is it any wonder that we "free spirits" are not exactly the most communicative spirits? that we do not want to betray in every particular from what a spirit can liberate himself and to what he may then be driven?
Perhaps the real issue is that while I have no problem understanding the Totality, I hunger for a more categorised, practical understanding. As an example, I have studied AI in great depth, but have discovered that there is no theory which is anywhere close to being able to model conscious perception in the same sense that we are experts at modelling many physical interactions. In order to model a "hill" object, we just need to define it according to a set of criteria we choose. But for some reason there is a complete absence of criteria by which we can model a pain sensation "object". It seems to absolutely escape any objective categorisation.
I have no problem defining a pain sensation according to a set of criteria I choose. I don't know, ultimately, whether the pain sensation is really a pain sensation, but that doesn't stop me having quite a lot of success in staying alive. That's scientific uncertainty for you: causes are infinite, so the things we experience cannot be pinned down as intrinsic. No one knows ultimately what particular things really are. Or rather, they aren't ultimately anything. Or even more accurately, they are just what they are.
And, if your scenario were taken to its extreme, the fundamental error is that any model created as an ultimate representation for consciousness, is appearing in, and affected by, consciousness. And trying to model the Totality is an extremely impractical way to approach it.
I mean, how can you ever represent something that has absolutely no ultimate nature at all? Any model that is made-up is completely decentralised. The meaning for the Totality can not be anchored anywhere.
I am interested in [consciousness] because I don't understand it. Or at least I am suspicious of my understanding of it.
So you would throw away the Absolute, for some thing that has meaning relative to the Absolute?
Why do you find this kind of "greener pasture" more satisfying, I wonder........
I'm also interested in it because many have said that breaking down one's delusions about the nature of consciousness is necessary to understand "Truth". I think the most direct way to do this may be to try and "see" consciousness for what it is, rather than try to find arguments to construct an understanding of it.
Again, the nature of consciousness can only be found by understanding the nature of Reality.
There is no other certain
and logical way to do it.
Consciousness is a part of the Totality. What is true for the Totality is necessarily true for all its parts.
K: I define consciousness as whatever appears to mind, and define the Totality as all consciousnesses (all appearances), so I end up looking at the nature of Reality rather than the nature of consciousness. The conclusion that I have for the nature of Reality inevitably applies to consciousness.
It's like having a universal ticket. But the ticket has to be stamped by the Totality Government, rather than the Consciousness Officer.
A: I think you are suggesting that I should approach the problem in a top down fashion as opposed to bottom up. Instead of trying to make sense of consciousness first, then develop insight into the totality, I should perhaps concentrate more on the totality and through that will be able to see the part that is consciousness for what it really is. Well I will certainly put much effort into that sometime. But I want to stay relatively focussed on the route I am on unless you can explain why it will not get me to the solution in the end.
The approach to understanding the Totality is not top-down vs. bottom-up. It is simply that what is true for the Totality is true for all its parts.
One's aim should be to find out what is the ultimate, true, nature for anything. So, instead of looking at the unique identity for any particular thing, such as "white, shiny, square, heavy, perishable" and so on, one should be looking at the ultimate identity for the Totality.
It's really very simple. It isn't a particular form.
And that is Ultimate Truth, present everywhere. One's own true nature.
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