Why would dreams not take place in space time? Space time(in the general way it is used outside of mathematics) is pretty much a blanket term for the entirety of being. Dreams are certainly not time independent, since there are events that occur in them in some sequence.

You are right not to try to pit science against metaphysics. Science intends to circumvent the problems of perception. Metaphysics tries to make these problems into an art.

Think about rocks for a second.

All of the greatest minds in the world can ponder the metaphysical aspects of rocks. Issues of causality, of substance, of appearance versus substance, etc.

But what does that actually tell you about a rock? NOTHING.

All it tells you is how the human mind processes the idea of rocks, and how the human language can talk about them. Metaphysics is a mental exercise -- it can never provide knowledge of the substance of this world.

Maybe that is all it is for you. But it is much more for me. But that is fine. You can do whatever you want to do, and I'll keep doing what I am doing.

Rich

Can you provide a link or resource to this "Book of Fudd" you often cite?

Thanks.

Are we not the person we think we are? or are we the person other people think we are?

How can we be sure? who we really are?

When I am awake I experience three dimensional space and I experience a sense of time passing. I do not have either of these experiences when I am dreaming. It is totally different for me. POP! I am asleep (or so it seems). POP! I am awake. Between those two pops are images, things happening without definitive flow. It is much different from awake.

All people who I talk to will suggest that asleep feels much different than awake. How does the mind change itself? How does the mind get in and out of this state? Maybe my question is too subtle. It is so natural that no one that I have ever read has noticed that it is quite a feat!

Science is about observing and measuring. It if is not physically there, science is out of the picture. Ask a scientist to come up with a definition for love? - or any emotion for that matter. I am not asking how it manifests itself in a physical form (e.g. kissing). I am asking what is love. These type of questions are in the realm of metaphysics.

Are we not the person we think we are? or are we the person other people think we are?

How can we be sure? who we really are?

I've experienced the sensation of time passing in a dream before, but really that sensation has nothing to do with the passage of time. If there are sequential events in a dream, time is simply a logical extension of that fact. I've had blurring between the dream and reality before if it is especially vivid. Ever had a very vivid dream and think you were awake? If you wake up, you don't necessarily realize it was a dream until you gather your thoughts for a moment and realize it doesn't fit the context of what is actually going on.

The same sort of state you described can be manifestations of intoxication due to various chemicals. DMT, for instance, is a drug that is though might induce dreaming. The waking effects of it are very similar to a dream state, it is a very powerful hallucinagen. The chemical name is Dimethyl Triptamine. Look it up. It has in fact been postulated that DMT causes dreaming, as it is released by the mammalian brain, the theory is valid.

So this begs the qeustion, if we can have a dream experience while we are waking, how much does dreaming have to do with being 'unconcious'?





Things that are qualitative are not communicatable. I know what I mean by love, but you take what I mean by love to be what you mean by love. This supposition is supposed to somehow be verified by my properly using/responding to the word 'love' in the manner that you would expect it to be used/respomded to, but this only indicates what is happening externally. You have not idea how I experience love, only how I correlate the word love to certain situations/actions. This interaction, however, is totally quantifiable, so my subjective experience remains a mystery to you, as does yours to me.

So, when we make a metaphysical statement, we try to compose something that invokes a qualitative response, but we have no way to verify whether that response is qualitatively similar to how we concieve it to be. We only can observe its physical manifestation. Thus anything that is internal stays internal. This is where the tendency to project one's ego comes into play. There is a gap in what can be communicated(which is necessarily external and thus physical) and what is experienced(which is internal, but has external manifestations, the inerpretation of which has nothing to do with the internal state of the doer), so you must fill in the gap in the only way that makes sense to you. Metaphysics is your attempt to give structure to the projections of the self you use to fill in this gap.

Science is about observing and measuring. It if is not physically there, science is out of the picture. Ask a scientist to come up with a definition for love? - or any emotion for that matter. I am not asking how it manifests itself in a physical form (e.g. kissing). I am asking what is love. These type of questions are in the realm of metaphysics.

'Metaphysics' does reveal the reality that 'rocks' are not something 'out there' as naively thought, but that there is only perceived 'substance'/rock, found only in the mind. There is no 'out there' as 'naively' conceived, there is Here!, Mind!

Metaphysics does NOT reveal that there is no 'out there', seeing as metaphysics refuses to even look. Metaphysics tells us that if there IS a true out there, our view of it is completely contaminated by our tortured brains.

Maybe we should not treat Decartes' saying too complicated. What he asserts is the importance of thinking. Without thinking our existence is meaningless. That's what the meaning of "I think therefore I am". It's a metaphor.

Not at all. Love is not some occult thing hidden from view. When we say that someone is in 'Love' we are talking about them being a disposition to act in certain ways when presented with certain situations.

If you look how people talk about 'Love' and 'Loving' other people they often talk about very physical signs of affection whether that is kissing, compliments, moral support or many other things that are related to Love. There is behaviour criteria for Love, maybe not a scientific one, but one used by many people in there everyday life and I would suggest it works just fine, with people often talking about whether other people love them or not based on the behaviour of the other person in question.

Yes, and the Iranian Mullahs will keep doing what they are doing, which is the murder of Iranians who oppose them. But, who cares, thats' Liberalism, and tolerance, and it is fun to boot. At least for the Mullahs. Not so much, I guess, for those they murder. But, hell, why think? Thinking is no fun. Feeling is what is fun.

Maybe we should not treat Decartes' saying too complicated. What he asserts is the importance of thinking. Without thinking our existence is meaningless. That's what the meaning of "I think therefore I am". It's a metaphor.

Metaphysics does NOT reveal that there is no 'out there', seeing as metaphysics refuses to even look. Metaphysics tells us that if there IS a true out there, our view of it is completely contaminated by our tortured brains.

Where is out there? And what do our tortured brains (poor things) tell us that is contaminated? How?

Hi,

I am not looking for manifestations of love, e.g. how people act. I am looking for what is the impetus of all of these manifestations, which are innumerable and different for each person. What it IS that is causing these outward manifestations. Descartes gave us a clue:

I Think therefore I AM.

Science can only deal with what it observes and can measure.

Everyone describes love differently. All you did was just describe how love manifests for you.

Rich

---------- Post added at 08:50 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:45 AM ----------



Killings happen all around the world right now. The U.S. just finished pulverizing Iraq whose people's biggest sin was that they were sitting on top of lots oil (no one from Iraq was at all involved in 9/11). People are being murdered in Mexico by weapons shipped by gun manufacturers in the U.S., In Sudan the traditional religious wars that have gone on for thousands of years continues, ditto Pakistan and India. Yep, there is lots of stuff going on all over the world. You figure it out.

And everyone of them always thinks that they are absolutely Right, they have the Truth. Believing something doesn't kill. What kills is when two people, who think they are cocksure right all the time, decide it is time to kill. Maybe we wouldn't have so many killings if people didn't think they were so cocksure right all the time and preaching morality to others all the time? What do you think?

Rich

---------- Post added at 09:00 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:45 AM ----------



Hi,

Yes. I am all for exploring the various meanings that the phrase might have. And I would agree, that without thinking that existence is meaningless.

I, as you can tell, would go one step further. That without thinking there would be no existence.

Thanks for your comments.

Rich

---------- Post added at 09:04 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:45 AM ----------



There are all kinds of ways to look at the world. My metaphysics and those of many who came before me (if there was a before me), certainly do take into account an "out there" and there is no torture in my mind (brains are just a manifestation of mind in my metaphysical view of things). There are many metaphysics models which share my viewpoint in many cultures around the world.

Rich

Thus, even though I make no argument that the findings have "absolute" significance, we will find that there is relatively tight agreement about the weight of the rock within the 1 billion observations.

What is a pound? Doesn't matter, it's a measurement that different people can independently agree upon. The same can be said for any physical observation.

Let's now talk about the metaphysical properties of the rock. Is it a unity or a duality? Does it have substance and essence? What is its ultimate cause? What is its meaning? Is it good? Is it bad? Does it have consciousness?

Arguments about these subjects, as rational and elegant and organized and logical as they may be, are solely the domain of the human mind. So the conclusion reached are contingent upon the imagination of the person undertaking such metaphysical speculation, but this makes his conclusions contingent upon his 1) apprehension of the rock and 2) his idiosyncratic thought process.

Since there is NO opportunity for independent corroboration, the sole way of even getting this impression across to others is with language, and we know that language is fraught with ambiguities and imprecisions.

So what has this process told us about the rock? About the rock that we all agree exists outside our consciousness. Nothing at all -- nothing.

Why isn't what most frequently causes the manifestations of love, love? Just as what causes the outward manifestations of anger, anger? And, we did not need Descartes to tell us that, did we?

That killings happen around the world does not, in the least, excuse the Mullahs of Iran, or the Nazis of Germany. Not unless you believe that a lot of wrongs make a right. So that others do evil is quite irrelevant. It is rather surprising, though, that you blame the United States for all the evil in the world. I thought you love everyone, since, after all, that was the perspective of the United States, and you don't think that you can have any reason to quarrel with any perspective, since all are equally "valid". I see you do not care much about consistency, either. Well, consistency is just another perspective. Isn't that right?

Yes, fanaticism (which is, after all, only another perspective) is an evil (but why you think so, I cannot imagine). But knowing the truth is not fanaticism.

You continue to confuse knowing the truth with fanaticism.

'Individual Consciousness is an illusion. Consciousness is not dual, it is a monism.
Whatever 'reasons or interpretations support such an illusion of 'individuality' flies in the face of all the revealed evidence of millennia of mystics, of quantum theory...
but, ok, reading on (with commentary); etc etc but all but just what does it actually mean? If anything... Not an unusual 'linear' perspective + 'belief' = belief in existence beyond death. Religious 'belief' is less than valid justification in a philosophic context...Suffers from the assumption of 'causality' and the vanity of considering ourselves as gods who 'create' anything...More vanity. 'Will', 'free-will' is another vain egoic illusion believed. Nothing 'new' here either.

On the other hand, the Chinese eat deer antler and tiger penises for 'virility' and cut the fins from live sharks and dump them back into the ocean to endure horrible deaths so they can gain whatever believed 'health' benefits from eating the fins. The list of common atrocities is enormous! In general, i don't hold much 'admiration' for the depth of undestanding and empathy and compassion and education of the common Chinese person.

I dont know where you found the quote, but it doesnt seem to be more than a single deviation or two from the most common and obvious of 'thinking'.

This seems like common folk medicine, highly suspicious at best, toxic (with horrific consequences) at worst.
Just my opinion and experience. There are others...

There are a small few Chinese philosophers worth the effort, though, Lao Tsu, for one.

I think it is very probable that if when you come to my door, I kick you down the stairs, and shout at you never to come around again or I'll beat you to a pulp, that my internal state is, well, unwelcoming. Wouldn't you say that, just off the top of your head?

Don't be cute just because you don't get what I'm trying to say, it makes you appear proud of your lack of understanding. I guess you could go try to read R.D. Lang's Politics of Experience to get a longer more detailed explanation, there aren't too many big words in it.

Hi Nameless. I was amazed at this post of yours which I've just stumbled across. I had you down as someone who agreed with sages. Maybe I muddled you with someone else. It's hard to keep track of who said what and when around here.

You're entitled to your opinions, of course, but I would be wary of being so bold.

It's simply not possible to dismiss one Chinese sage as an idiot and another as 'worth the effort' without appearing not to understand what either of them is talking about,

let alone how their views dovetail with each other.

If it appears that their views are inconsistent then you have the wrong interpretation.

Or, I think you would admit, there is at least this possibility.

This is a useful rule of thumb for reading the wisdom literature.

"Anything that contradicts experience or logic should be abandoned." The Dalai Lama.

love is not a feeling love is an act of compassion, you love someone in spite of what you dislike in them, and that to me is the real secret of a good marriage