Brahman versus Brain(man)

[atreestump]

I mean, you could use the forum to practice for your classes, figure out some kind of structure to the classes. I didn't mean your teaching skills are lacking in any way. I can see how that was lazy writing, but I have a cold etc...

[Socrates]

it really would be rather misleading or self-deluding to try to jam Eastern thinking with modern philosophical categories.


This implies that one is superior to the other, which I don't think is the case. Philosophy is always a historical study, hence why anthropology and other historically invested subjects from the human sciences now have a massive influence on philosophy. What we call 'western thought' has its influence at some time or other with 'east' in some way.

I suppose the use of isms may be somewhat reductive from time to time, but there are well thought out and very diverse philosophical positions and subjects that have labels and categories, depending on the interpretation, we can end up with idealism, dualism, monism, occasionalism, etc, etc, etc.
 

If the modern ideas were presented to people of the past, they might not even be able to understand it in the same way. The words and their meanings are very different, and so the thinking was very different.


Yes, it is true that as culture changes, society and language, interests change too, the focal point of what objects we will study changes. As Foucault points out during his archaeological phase, during Renaissance Europe the Human Sciences didn't exist as there was no human subject, all was perceived as written by God and man was to find the signs of God around him to reveal God and his way. To us in modern society, this may seem like obedience to a epistemological framework, but to those during this 'epistemic event' (episteme) it was the ontological groundwork of their reality.

As we moved into Modernity and the Enlightenment, the human subject was seen as separate from the physical world, which led to Humanism and 'psychological man' where subject and object came up side by side once more, man became the object of study.

Thus, we must conclude that there is no such thing as the 'right' interpretation of the many varying and diverse epistemic events which seem to forget each other as they pass, but on some deeper subconscious level, there is an absence presupposed by what is present-at-hand, during the transformations there were inclusions that were deferred and differentiated and which come back to haunt us, phantoms, what Derrida refers to as 'Hauntology'.
 

They may not have been saying what we think they were saying, and in reading copious amounts of literature from around the world, I am pretty certain people are not wanting to really accept what was being frankly stated and finally, most readers seem to lack the symbolic vocabulary from the culture to really even make a proper choice of what Western category might better fit.


Don't get me wrong however, saying there is 'no right interpretation' does not mean that all interpretations are equally valid! No one has ever truly believed that and never will, we just have to acknowledge that interpretation and meaning is never fixed. It is relational, differentiated and has the appearance of solidity, an effect of a congealing over time.

The more I look into post-structural thinkers, the more I see a striking resemblance to some Buddhist views of reality and experience, these thinkers were even in some ways directly influenced by these profound texts and I view Chuang Tzu as a kind of proto-existentialist in many ways, the doctrine of emptiness is an amazing and liberating conceptual framework of being that is equal in significance to the philosophy of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Butler and others who have views of non-self when it comes to identity within structures.
 

To understand the East and even the past, one has to familiarize themselves with the languages of symbols and themes.


The same goes for the 'west'.
 

Modern people say one thing or write one thing and mean just that. Ancient people were often saying multiple things at once when they wrote it down, unless it was an actual bill or receipt. This continues until very recently, old terminology was still very symbolic.


Again, I see the same kind of inter-disciplinary approach in structuralism and post-structuralism, which starts from the premise that there are no fixed meanings and so saying one thing  presupposes at least a 'two thing'.
 

A nice way to put it might be that ancient people spoke in swathes, especially when dedicating things to writing which was especially a painstaking and rare process. They were not like most people today who in writing generally mean one specific precise object at a time.


While poetic and aesthetic approaches to knowledge can be difficult for modern thinkers, I will give you this at least, those within the Analytic tradition outright reject the more artistic style of continental thought as it was radically different from their formal style and gave post-structuralism an unfair hearing and in many cases, completely misrepresented the arguments without even reading the texts, declaring it sophistry.

I think it can take a long time to decipher a text that has multiple themes and concepts running through it simultaneously and does require a piece by piece analysis in order to grasp the whole picture. I don't think people intend to be overly reductive when they focus on ideas in this way, it's more like breaking down the whole into smaller parts to see how they link up and relate to other ideas and themes. This is a never ending process, it is constantly evolving and being rediscovered, some times we obtain important tools which can be put to use elsewhere, but it takes time to digest.

[waechter418]

 

 


Sharpen up your teaching skills?


...could be taken as a reminder for fair game -
as Don wrote:
"All is a manifestation of Consciousness just as dream characters and ambience are manifestations of brains as mental processes." - which has little to do with your reply:
"Reality is not a manifestation of consciousness and therefore a dream....Buddhist merely states that as things don't have a self-nature (anatman), as all forms are inter-dependent, these forms are not fixed and are subject to change, it is only in this sense can we use the dream as a metaphor (not fixed and impermanent)"
....nor can i see Atman and of the inter-dependency of forms being thrown together by serious Buddhist thinkers.

[atreestump]

@"waechter418" Why not have a crack at this thread? https://ontic-philosophy.com/Thread-Discussion-Weishaupt-and-Kant Not so much the second part of it, but the challenge from Weishaupt to Kant.

[Socrates]

"All is a manifestation of Consciousness just as dream characters and ambience are manifestations of brains as mental processes." - which has little to do with your reply:
"Reality is not a manifestation of consciousness and therefore a dream....Buddhist merely states that as things don't have a self-nature (anatman), as all forms are inter-dependent, these forms are not fixed and are subject to change, it is only in this sense can we use the dream as a metaphor (not fixed and impermanent)"


It looks like it has a lot to do with it.

To say ALL is a manifestation of consciousness is to say consciousness is the fundamental substance of reality, the thing-in-itself. This is subjective idealism at best, solipsism at worst. This is saying that consciousness has a nature in and of itself. Idealism may be a way out of the dualism of Descartes, but it is counter intuitive to experience and solipsism (which I don't think you are trying to get across by the way) is just silly, the idea that external reality would not exist, or that we can only be sure of our own experience at most, is the first brick wall for philosophical inquiry.

Whereas the other view is saying consciousness is an effect or inter-dependent relations and is constantly subject to change and 'dream' is the means of expressing this. That is dependent origination, therefore there is no such thing as the 'thing-in-itself' as the thing presupposes the other thing. This is to say in mind and body terms, that 'I' is always relational to the 'Other' and so we are constructed from the outside-in.
 

....nor can i see Atman and of the inter-dependency of forms being thrown together by serious Buddhist thinkers.


Seems to be part of many Buddhist thinkers, Thich Nhat Hahn, Shunryu Suzuki and Chuang Tzu to name a few big thinkers. Don from ilovephilosophy seems to be arguing a Gnostic type view that leads to idealism. Consciousness is an effect of matter, not the other way around and his use of the term 'materialism' misses the panentheist view of matter, that consciousness is a mode of nature/God, an expression of one and many. He's just swapping the a priori term 'spirit' for 'consciousness'. Just because something appears after the fact doesn't make it insignificant, or not in anyway spiritual, it's just acknowledging that one can't exist without the other - dependent origination.

When he tries to refute the counter-claim he argues in a circular fashion:
 

For those who dismiss idealism out of hand, ask yourselves this: What is the fundamental (metaphorical) arena of existence where everything occurs and without which nothing could be attested to exist?


He's saying that if we didn't experience reality, if it can't be attested to, then it doesn't exist or truth claims are futile, but he's missing the fact that 'I' is entirely relational, identity is a total  construct made in the image of the other, from the outside so to speak and this is very different from idealism, this is dialectical monism. You can't have one without the other, raw without cooked, I without you, so consciousness is after the fact - self-consciousness presupposes recognition from another consciousness.

[atreestump]

I think a thread on George Berkeley is in order in the beginners zone. @"kFoyauextlH" or @"Philosophy" do you want to have a go at that?

[kFoyauextlH]

It might be a little delayed as I am still rather extremely busy. I would love to though but would not mind if it happens after an initial article by you or anyone else. I am currently in the process of renovating, receiving furnitute, and numerous and constant deliveries of important research and work materials while also organizing and ordering more. So I don't want to hold people up or anything but it was easpecially a good idea and appropriate for either of those usernames to go at it and give it a go.

The main summary would be that we can not be certain or grasp anything except information or what appears to us. That all we deal with is unique and private information, a particular set of pixels making up an overall image that no one else is actually supposed to be seeing "as is" meaning "as us".

This information is inclusive of everything we seem to be returning in a moment, including our thoughts and feelings and what we call memories. We can not even be certain of their real chronology or truth, only able to speak of the current experience.

To Berkeley, and me, these are generated by the One Power that generates information or experience "as is". We are thus only able to see our experience, we can not even be certain of anyone else seeing anything, but know for certain they are not "seeing as us" or else they would "be" us that moment.

Our experiences appear to be sporadically generated and can't be known beyond the current moment of experience which is inclusive of everything we are experiencing which is all just data or information. That is the only "stuff" we ultimately only ever "know" and so really we are ourselves just a screen of information generated in a moment, with nothing of any real substantial or stable "self" to hold on to. The next moment we could be "informed" which is "transformed", and our only form is our information or experience, and would think we are someone else somewhere else with consistent memories affirming it just as if in a dream, where things make people afraid just by the feeling of fear happening or the strange facts are just accepted as if true "oh yes of course I remember when that haplened", until we wake up.

What I have written here encompasses more than the ideas of Berkeley but a whole range of Idealism based or compatible ideas. Even though it can sometimes seem strange or counter-intuitive, it is based very much on an attempt to describe the apparent condition or reality of our unique illusion. I am an Idealist in every sense of the word generally, and believe that what we think is hard can just as easily be soft or our hands can go straight through or practically most anything that one can seem to experience can seem to happen easily, but that we do not really control this or determine it as we ourselves are just a photograph, a frame of experience, and whatever does indeed determine it is alone the true power, which is itself Non-Information or non-substance but the Unseeable Action or Power which can freely generate experience and make its "form" whichnis inclusive of all we see and even how we seem to interpret it and feel about it and understand it.

Oh, looks like I did it afterall.

[thetrizzard]

'Perceiving mind is an incarnated mind' - Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Our body is not primarily in space:it is of it. Our body is always already in the world; therefore there is no body in-itself, a body which could be objectified and given universal status. Perception, then, is always embodied perception, one that is what it is only within a specific context or situation. Perception in-itself does not exist.
Perception is not simply the result of the impact of the external word on the body; for even if the body is distinct from the world it inhabits, it is not separate from it. Indeed, the very imbrication of the perceiving organism and its surroundings is what lies at the basis of perception. This means that there is no perception in general – a notion which would turn it into an abstract universal; there is only perception as it is lived in the world.

It is here where the categories of East & West dissolve


Very clearly written responses Socrates :heart:

The Wiki page on the links between Buddhism and Western Thought is worth a butcher's hook

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_Western_philosophy
[hr]

A few days ago i discovered in "ilovephilosophy" the following text by Don Schneider - who graciously agreed to share this flower with us.
Thank you Brother! (hope you like the title grown in my garden:)

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In the conventional Western paradigm, consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter in the form of a human/animal brain. In the Eastern metaphysical schools based upon the Upanishads (most saliently within the Hinduism school of Advaita Vedānta and within schools of Mahayana Buddhism (such as Zen and Yogacara), Consciousness (“Brahman” in Hindu terminology) is the fundamental ground of existence which cannot be further sublated. All is a manifestation of Consciousness just as dream characters and ambience are manifestations of brains as mental processes. Thus, matter is an epiphenomenon of consciousness as opposed to the visa versa view of Western materialism.


@waechter418 You may find these of interest

https://monoskop.org/images/b/b2/Varela_Thompson_Rosch_-_The_Embodied_Mind_Cognitive_Science_and_Human_Experience.pdf

http://www.khamkoo.com/uploads/9/0/0/4/9004485/buddhist_phenomenology_-_a_pholosophical_investigation_of_yogacara_buddhism_and_the_cheng_wei-shih_lun.pdf

[atreestump]

@"thetrizzard" Thanksman. Will check them out today.

[Socrates]

I like how the Buddhist Phenomenology books starts, the mind as another sense.