Boundaries

[mikiel]

K: "You have the naive academic tendency to think that entire philosophies can be accurately summed-up in a single sentences."

I made no claim to be "summing up an entire philosphy." I just stated the fact that the belief "that the physical world is an illusion" is a belief central to the philosophy of solipsism, which it is.

mikiel

[Dave Toast]

Kevin, personally is a solipsist.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4020&st=0&sk=t&sd= ... =50#p76158

Moron.

[mikiel]

Kevin, personally is a solipsist.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4020&st=0&sk=t&sd= ... =50#p76158

Moron.

Just re-read the above post. Do you have a point besides name calling. Kinda cute really, if that's all you've got.
mikiel

[Dave Toast]

I made no claim to be "summing up an entire philosphy."

belief "that the physical world is an illusion" is a belief central to the philosophy of solipsism

Kevin, personally is a solipsist.

Moron.

Come on now, don't hold back, you can react more than you did in your last post.

[Isaac]

The claim that the physical world is an illusion only makes sense if you know what is real. In your case, this would be what exactly?

[mikiel]

DT: "Come on now, don't hold back, you can react more than you did in your last post."

You really are just here for the drama of the brawl, I see. If you have ever said anything intelligent in reply to my posts, I missed it.

But, here is your requested fix, and then I'm done with you.
Fuck you very much.
mikiel

[Kevin Solway]

The claim that the physical world is an illusion only makes sense if you know what is real. In your case, this would be what exactly?

That which we experience is real.

[David Quinn]

DQ: "There is nothing in what Kevin has said to suggest that he is a solipsist."

K: "that the physical world is an illusion" *is* solipsism.
Review even the surface of it (solipsism) and get back to me. Maybe you would look a little less stupid if you knew what solipsism is before offering your usual knee-jerk reaction...(a working definition of a "jerk.")

A solipsist is someone who believes that everything exists in his own mind. Kevin's affirmation that the physical world is an illusion is something else entirely.

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[mikiel]

DQ: "A solipsist is someone who believes that everything exists in his own mind. Kevin's affirmation that the physical world is an illusion is something else entirely."

What else? This is par for the course for you... empty rhetoric.

Pretend we are in a high level world symposium on solipsism, debating the finer points of the philosophy.

If one believes that the physical world is an illusion, describe it's existential nature outside the mind.

If you are depending on the mystique of cryptic answers with no elaboration or explanation, as above, you will certainly lose the debate and confirm that you are a shallow thinking fool.
As the old saying goes, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than speak and remove all doubt."
mikiel

[David Quinn]

Both, in that my body/mind is a limited portion of Reality (a "thing") and in constant movement (an "action").

Ok, so you are a thing that acts. The reason I asked was that without the perception of Reality as action that may appear as things, I could explain my post to you no further.

Would you agree that all is energy? And if so, is energy a thing? I ask this because it seems incongruous that the source of all movement is a thing.

It would be incruguous to look for the source of movement in anything or any place, because obviously such a source cannot exist in beginningless Nature.

We can think of everything as being "energy", if we like, as long as we don't try to squeeze the whole of Nature into the narrow, everyday conceptions of energy that we have. Thinking of everything as energy is useful for dissolving the belief that things are solid, discrete entities, but that's about as far as its usefulness goes. As soon as you try to go a step further and turn energy into an objective reality, then it too becomes a thing which needs dissolving.

-

[David Quinn]

DQ: "A solipsist is someone who believes that everything exists in his own mind. Kevin's affirmation that the physical world is an illusion is something else entirely."

What else? This is par for the course for you... empty rhetoric.

Pretend we are in a high level world symposium on solipsism, debating the finer points of the philosophy.

If one believes that the physical world is an illusion, describe it's extential nature outside the mind.

There is the existence of other minds experiencing the illusion of a physical world, all of which is occuring outside Kevin's mind.

As I understand it, Kevin differs from the solipsist in that he doesn't believe that when he dies and his consciousness is extinguished, the whole of Nature will disappear. The experience of Nature will continue on in the minds of others, just as it is occuring now in the minds of others.

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[Isaac]

The claim that the physical world is an illusion only makes sense if you know what is real. In your case, this would be what exactly?

That which we experience is real.

So what we are experiencing is not the physical world?

[mikiel]

DQ: "A solipsist is someone who believes that everything exists in his own mind. Kevin's affirmation that the physical world is an illusion is something else entirely."

What else? This is par for the course for you... empty rhetoric.

Pretend we are in a high level world symposium on solipsism, debating the finer points of the philosophy.

If one believes that the physical world is an illusion, describe it's extential nature outside the mind.

DQ: "There is the existence of other minds experiencing the illusion of a physical world, all of which is occuring outside Kevin's mind.

As I understand it, Kevin differs from the solipsist in that he doesn't believe that when he dies and his consciousness is extinguished, the whole of Nature will disappear. The experience of Nature will continue on in the minds of others, just as it is occuring now in the minds of others."

-

This is rich, and a bit awkward in that I am debating what Kevin means not with Kevin but with you.

So you and maybe Kevin are saying that there is no objective world/cosmos. It is all subjective and dependent on the homosapien mind, as a collective consciousness. OK so far?

So, if Earth had never formed and humans had never evolved... What then?.... there would be no cosmos? This is absolutely as foolish as philosophy gets, and only complete "head up their asses" fools subscribe to it.
Science is then a collective fantasy... But what bodies/brains support this ultimate subjectivity.
This crap is totally absurd. Looks sophisticated at first. Cool cats in black turtlenecks and berets... talking Berkely/Hume and Idealism... "go ahead, prove us wrong... using only subjective sensation/perception. The "vast cosmos" is all a collective fantasy projection"....
But what physical substrate (bodies, brains and the like) support the debate? Total bullshit! And everyone knows it but the head-up-ass solipsists who can only see their own shit.
"Good grief!"
mikiel
"Submit" didn't post. Instead I get the prompt, "Tip: Styles can be applied quickly to selected text."
No, thanks. I'll try again.

[Leyla Shen]

DQ: "A solipsist is someone who believes that everything exists in his own mind. Kevin's affirmation that the physical world is an illusion is something else entirely."

mikiel: What else? This is par for the course for you... empty rhetoric.

It’s not “empty rhetoric”---well, not unless you mean "empty" in the Buddhist sense. This understanding depends upon the value one places, and understanding one has, of pure logic.

How is it that even though “1,” for example, cannot be experienced in any other form than that of pure logic (that is, that one always experiences “1” thing and never “1”), we know ahead of experience (a priori) what “1” is exactly because it isn’t empirical?

If one believes that the physical world is an illusion, describe it's extential nature outside the mind.

Wot?? Does that even make any sense from any perspective?

[brokenhead]

As I understand it, Kevin differs from the solipsist in that he doesn't believe that when he dies and his consciousness is extinguished, the whole of Nature will disappear. The experience of Nature will continue on in the minds of others, just as it is occuring now in the minds of others.

And just as it always has?

[Kevin Solway]

That which we experience is real.

So what we are experiencing is not the physical world?

Something is causing what we experience.

When you think you are awake, you may be dreaming. Or our universe might be only a computer simulation. But even if we are all dreaming, or if our universe is a computer simulation, it will still be true that our experiences are caused by something.

[David Quinn]

As I understand it, Kevin differs from the solipsist in that he doesn't believe that when he dies and his consciousness is extinguished, the whole of Nature will disappear. The experience of Nature will continue on in the minds of others, just as it is occuring now in the minds of others.

And just as it always has?

As long as there have been minds.

No mind = no illusion of the physical world.

-

[David Quinn]

So you and maybe Kevin are saying that there is no objective world/cosmos. It is all subjective and dependent on the homosapien mind, as a collective consciousness. OK so far?

I reject your division of objective and subjective here.

The world we experience in our consciousness is nothing other than the objective world. There is no other world besides.

As to what occurs outside of consciousness, it is impossible for us to say. No one and no thing will ever know what is there.

Even the phrase "what is there" is misleading because words like "what" and "there" are constructs of consciousness that only have meaning within consciousness.

So, if Earth had never formed and humans had never evolved... What then?.... there would be no cosmos? This is absolutely as foolish as philosophy gets, and only complete "head up their asses" fools subscribe to it. .

I've written about these matters in Wisdom of the Infinite. For example:

Before Consciousness

A natural question to ask at this point is what existed in the Universe before consciousness came into being. If we accept the standard scientific view, the first signs of life appeared around 4.5 billion years ago and rudimentary forms of consciousness perhaps a billion years after that. If, as I maintain, existence can only occur within consciousness, then it follows that nothing could have existed before consciousness evolved. How can that be so? What about the Big Bang which supposedly happened 15 billions years ago and presumably did not have the benefit of someone watching it? Am I saying that the Big Bang never occurred?

Again, although these questions are perfectly natural to ask, they are nevertheless fundamentally deluded and unaskable. For they are created out of a false understanding of my views. It is meaningless to speak of what occurred before the evolution of consciousness because, as I pointed out earlier, the very use of the word "what" is inapplicable outside of consciousness. Even the notions "before consciousness" or "outside consciousness" are meaningless.

As with anything else, the Big Bang can never be anything more than an appearance to an observer. If we could somehow build a time machine and travel back 15 billion years, there is little doubt that we would observe a Big Bang in action. However, it would still be a Big Bang exploding within our own consciousness and nowhere else. It would still only be an appearance. The idea of a Big Bang-in-itself, outside of anyone’s perception, is groundless.

Note that I am not rejecting Big Bang theory because I favour an alternative cosmological theory or because I believe there was a state of absolute nothingness. I am not really engaging in a cosmological debate here at all. Rather, I am focusing on something far more profound. Alternative cosmological processes, together with the state of absolute nothingness, are like the Big Bang in that they can never be anything more than an appearance and hence cannot make any more claim to validity than the appearance of the Big Bang can. The bottom line is, we cannot even begin to think or speak about what occurred before the existence of consciousness because the very notion of "something occurring" is meaningless in this context.

As with any other scientific issue, all we can do is allow the empirical evidence to guide us and create what we think is a plausible theory about the observable universe’s origins. This is a perfectly natural and worthwhile activity to engage in. But while we are doing this, we should never forget that whatever theory we care to create will only ever apply to appearances within consciousness. Any attempt to stretch their significance beyond this would be short-sighted and irrational.

So how did consciousness initially spring into being if there was ultimately no Big Bang, no alternative cosmological process and no nothingness? The short answer is, I have no idea. Nor does anyone else have a clue. The question is utterly beyond the capacity of the human mind to solve. As mentioned previously, there are only two things that we can know for sure about the "hidden void" - namely, (a) that it does not have any form and is therefore wholly unlike anything we can ever experience, and (b) that it possesses the capacity to generate consciousness and existence. Nothing else can ever be known about it.

-

[brokenhead]

It is meaningless to speak of what occurred before the evolution of consciousness because, as I pointed out earlier, the very use of the word "what" is inapplicable outside of consciousness. Even the notions "before consciousness" or "outside consciousness" are meaningless.

As with anything else, the Big Bang can never be anything more than an appearance to an observer. If we could somehow build a time machine and travel back 15 billion years, there is little doubt that we would observe a Big Bang in action. However, it would still be a Big Bang exploding within our own consciousness and nowhere else. It would still only be an appearance. The idea of a Big Bang-in-itself, outside of anyone’s perception, is groundless.

See this is false because it depends entirely on the assumption that the only consciousness is an evolved consciousness. You cannot prove that. You cannot even demonstrate it in a reliable manner, because any physical evidence you submit is illusory by your own estimation. And you are granting 4.5 BYA when life is presumed to have first appeared on earth as a cutoff point beyond which it is meaningless to speak of anything occurring. You are not requiring sentient evolved consciousness, which would make that figure much lower. I have grave doubts that 1) evolved consciousness is the only form of consciousness; 2) that it is the highest form of consciousness; and 3) that consciousness is limited to the earth and so must necessarily be the oldest extant sentience in the universe.

If your philosophy can "prove" any physical thing is an illusion, it cannot address the issue of when the first instance of that illusion took place. Therefore, to accept your philosophy as in any way "complete" is to preclude the possibility that further knowledge of any kind could illuminate this area. I find such restrictions unacceptable.

[mikiel]

DQ: "I reject your division of objective and subjective here."

(And you go on to share from your book in support of the above.)

In the spirit of sharing from previously written work, here is a piece from my page, "Conscious Unity: Contemplations on the One in All."
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"Relative Reality is created by consensus among finite minds and hearts and lives in agreement about the world they share. Absolute Reality is created by the One in Whom we are all parts and participants.
Awakening is the quantum leap from relative to absolute. "
-------------

Read "subjective" for "relative reality" and "objective" for "absolute reality."
And how, you ask, can we know objective, absolute reality?
(Well, you didn't really ask. Rather you simply deny the possibility flat out.)
Through direct gnosis, the a-priori branch of epistemology, as contrasted with the better known a-posteriori branch familiar to empirical science.
Of course direct gnosis is disclaimed by empirical science and solipsists alike, as it requires transcendence of both subjective perception and "pure reason." But, this, as you have previously indicarted is beyond your realm of knowledge, so you must deny its reality in general. (Mystic unity, cosmic consciousness, etc. must then be relegated to new age woo-woo and fakery.)
Keep those blinders on, eyes straight ahead on what you think you know for sure. You wouldn't want to disturb your comfort zone and actually consider what I just said as a possibility.

mikiel

[divine focus]

We can think of everything as being "energy", if we like, as long as we don't try to squeeze the whole of Nature into the narrow, everyday conceptions of energy that we have. Thinking of everything as energy is useful for dissolving the belief that things are solid, discrete entities, but that's about as far as its usefulness goes. As soon as you try to go a step further and turn energy into an objective reality, then it too becomes a thing which needs dissolving.

I agree.

It would be incruguous to look for the source of movement in anything or any place, because obviously such a source cannot exist in beginningless Nature.

Would it then not make more sense to look at nature as the movement itself instead of a thing in which things move? This may make it harder to grasp mentally, as the mind works better with concrete things, but would it not be more accurate?

[mikiel]

DQ: "A solipsist is someone who believes that everything exists in his own mind. Kevin's affirmation that the physical world is an illusion is something else entirely."

mikiel: What else? This is par for the course for you... empty rhetoric.

It’s not “empty rhetoric”---well, not unless you mean "empty" in the Buddhist sense. This understanding depends upon the value one places, and understanding one has, of pure logic.

I simply meant that asserting "something else entirely" without any mention of what else... if the physical world is an illusion... is totally vacuous.

How is it that even though “1,” for example, cannot be experienced in any other form than that of pure logic (that is, that one always experiences “1” thing and never “1”), we know ahead of experience (a priori) what “1” is exactly because it isn’t empirical?

How 'bout "Kosmos" as the One omnipresent Consciousness Whos body is the entire cosmos. How can "one" know this One? By direct identity, as each form (manifest as multiplicity) realizes "I Am One", the same Identity in all. All this, of course totally transcends "pure logic." The holographic model is my fave, tho. Every "bit" of the minutia embodies a mini version of the whole-0-gram.

If one believes that the physical world is an illusion, describe it's extential nature outside the mind.

Wot?? Does that even make any sense from any perspective?

Ok, you got me on this one. If you assume the totally absurd premise that there is no physical world.... hmmm... including the existence of the person making the assumptuion without even an actual physical body/brain.... then there is no existence outside the absolutely absurd mind making that assumption.
So if you start from an absurd premise, you arrive, quite logically at an absurd conclusion. Garbage in; garbage out.
(One debate point for L.S., tho, no matter how absurd the conclusion.)

mikiel

[divine focus]

--------------
"Relative Reality is created by consensus among finite minds and hearts and lives in agreement about the world they share. Absolute Reality is created by the One in Whom we are all parts and participants.
Awakening is the quantum leap from relative to absolute. "
-------------

Read "subjective" for "relative reality" and "objective" for "absolute reality."

This is one way to look at it, but it may make more sense to say that the "objective" is the relative reality "outside," while the "subjective" is the absolute inside. These terms are tricky, because even when I speak of "objectivity," I am speaking about the subjective absolute.

It is similar with "real" and "illusion." I would hate to say the world is an illusion, but its reality is based in belief. The absoulute "Reality," though, is not experienced in the same way that we perceive the world. We are actually experiencing it now, but we would consider it to be "unconscious" since the point of our experience within perception is to experience the world and the self among other selfs. This is to say, there is no absolute "reality" in the sense that we understand reality through perception.

[mikiel]

--------------
"Relative Reality is created by consensus among finite minds and hearts and lives in agreement about the world they share. Absolute Reality is created by the One in Whom we are all parts and participants.
Awakening is the quantum leap from relative to absolute. "
-------------

Read "subjective" for "relative reality" and "objective" for "absolute reality."

This is one way to look at it, but it may make more sense to say that the "objective" is the relative reality "outside," while the "subjective" is the absolute inside. These terms are tricky, because even when I speak of "objectivity," I am speaking about the subjective absolute.

One way to understand enlightenment... the way I realized at my breakthrough... is that "inside" and "outside" are egocentric programs developed since birth, i.e., (as i've said many times) "me" in here ; "not me" out there. Once one realizes that this duality is an illusion, what is left is Reality... "No Boundary" between the illusion of "me" and the reality of all there is. "I", the individual, am a manifest part (in-form as this individual) but at the same time one single identity, in (dare i say it again) conscious unity with the Whole... the universal "I Am"... the true awakened identity.

It is similar with "real" and "illusion." I would hate to say the world is an illusion, but its reality is based in belief.

The world/cosmos is the objective reality beyond subjective perception.
Remember the metaphore of the three blind men and the elephant? Each 'grasps' a different part and formulates a personal subjective psuedo-reality based on his limited perception. But the whole elephant (world/cosmos) is the Reality absolutely independent of the three limited, only partial subjective perceptions.

The absoulute "Reality," though, is not experienced in the same way that we perceive the world. We are actually experiencing it now, but we would consider it to be "unconscious" since the point of our experience within perception is to experience the world and the self among other selfs. This is to say, there is no absolute "reality" in the sense that we understand reality through perception.

I "perceive" this as incoherent rambling, tho I am open to clarification, if you care to explain after reading my comments above. I do agree that personal perception is only a limited part of reality, tho cosmic consciousness can know the Whole, as per gnosis.

There is no "subjective absolute." All subjectivity is relative to the illusory program of "me" as a separate identity/entity. or "our consensus reality as a community of mere "belief"... far from enlightened realization of Reality as One Cosmic Being.

mikiel

[divine focus]

The world/cosmos is the objective reality beyond subjective perception.
Remember the metaphore of the three blind men and the elephant? Each 'grasps' a different part and formulates a personal subjective psuedo-reality based on his limited perception. But the whole elephant (world/cosmos) is the Reality absolutely independent of the three limited, only partial subjective perceptions.

The absoulute "Reality," though, is not experienced in the same way that we perceive the world. We are actually experiencing it now, but we would consider it to be "unconscious" since the point of our experience within perception is to experience the world and the self among other selfs. This is to say, there is no absolute "reality" in the sense that we understand reality through perception.

I "perceive" this as incoherent rambling, tho I am open to clarification, if you care to explain after reading my comments above. I do agree that personal perception is only a limited part of reality, tho cosmic consciousness can know the Whole, as per gnosis.

LOL

What I'm saying is that the physical world/cosmos is actually not beyond perception but only created within perception. One individual perception may perceive the entirety of it with a certain focus, but even without that focus, perception is creating in conjunction with other perceptions for the most part. Even this may not be the case in all instances, as the world/cosmos really is your own personal creation.

The absolute, or the "objective" as you call it, is not actually the world/cosmos/universe, but can be seen as within it or the foundation of it. You could also call it the "collective unconscious" of all worlds and all realities every"where" and every"when", although it is the epitome of consciousness itself. I call it simply the "subjective," as it is the inner essence of you--and also, I feel, more to the point than to call it "objective."