GENIUS FORUMS

Carl G wrote:What qualifies you to know?

brokenhead wrote:

Carl G wrote:What qualifies you to know?

Don't get ruffled just 'cause you're not on his list, Carl.

Thanks for the nomination, but I think that the three stooges and I differ substantially in our conception of enlightenment (see my latest post in E.F.), so it is a bit silly to clump all of us together.

Shahrazad wrote:I'm not so sure it's silly. Do all the enlightened men of the past subscribe to the same version of enlightenment? Putting it another way, can't there be two enlightened people who arrived there using different approaches?

Dan Rowden wrote:A=A is built out of perceptual awareness.

Dan Rowden wrote:A=A is built out of perceptual awareness.

maestro wrote:

Shahrazad wrote:I'm not so sure it's silly. Do all the enlightened men of the past subscribe to the same version of enlightenment? Putting it another way, can't there be two enlightened people who arrived there using different approaches?

Actually David's latest post in EF shows that we do have some convergence. However my objection to the presentation of their method is the same as that of Victor's. Knowledge is not gained with just reasoning with precise definitions and A=A, in the absence of perception.

Enlightenment can hardly be gained through reasoning with precise definitions and A=A. You need perceptual awareness, which David acknowledges there.

David Quinn wrote: Don't forget that what prevents people from immersing themselves in reality is their immersion in dreamworlds, which are always conceptual in nature. You need conceptual tools to dismantle these dreamworlds. Once they are dismantled, the tools are no longer needed.

I think I have not covered the role of the thinking mind in this scheme well enough. First of all the thinking mind does not work like a computer, i.e. it does not work linearly on propositions to generate true false statements. What the thinking mind does is model the world based on observations (and ideas from others), and devise future actions based on the model. This is done by everybody's mind.

The role of logic is to check whether the model is consistent, and whether it is consistent with observations. It is also used to devise future action. The modelling process is not done through logic, in fact much of it is done subconsciously and through sudden insights. Which are nothing but products of the faster subconscious processing. This can be seen in physics for example where new models are generally flashes of sudden insight. Logic merely checks it for consistency. Also these sudden insights are produced when there is a contradiction in the existing model.

Thus when the observation process provides data, there is no need for you to sit with a pen and paper and try to apply logic to to the data. What is going to happen is that a lot of this data will be contradictory to your existing model. The mind may try to furiously fit the new data with the preexisting model, but this has to be avoided. New and clearer models will emerge on their own (through insights), which will be invalidated by further observations, and so on. Until a very clear picture emerges of the self and the world.

This exposition also shows that it is a good idea to not reject ideas contradictory to you out of hand but to listen to them carefully, they are the fodder for the mind to make a better model.

The thinking process reminds me of the dialectic process. Whereas the observation process reminds me of the third eye. The idea is that just as the two eyes provide observations about the outer world, the third eye does it for the inner world.

maestro wrote:What do you mean by A=A, that a label is equal to the thing?

Dan Rowden wrote:A=A is built out of perceptual awareness.

An empirical fact then?

maestro wrote:What do you mean by A=A, that a label is equal to the thing?

Dan Rowden wrote:

A=A is built out of perceptual awareness.

An empirical fact then?

DavidHenry wrote: A=A means that a thing is what it is, ie, it has identity, and that it's definition "should" be objective.
A=A has no validity is we reject reality, and if we think definitions are arbitrary and unrelated to the objective attributes of any object......that's not to say that definitions aren't man made, they are, but done properly{by reference and respect for reality} they're objective.

maestro wrote:

DavidHenry wrote: A=A means that a thing is what it is, ie, it has identity, and that it's definition "should" be objective.
A=A has no validity is we reject reality, and if we think definitions are arbitrary and unrelated to the objective attributes of any object......that's not to say that definitions aren't man made, they are, but done properly{by reference and respect for reality} they're objective.

Do does it mean that I can define say a cat objectively and then reason about it?