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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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asking what some thing IS, is a trick question
True.
Other trick questions:
What is your name?
What day is this?
What is the capitol of Mauritius?
What is a trick question?
Those esoteric masters had a good sense of humor.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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MH2: . . . labels like 'energy' are just heuristics. They help us to talk and learn about objects in the world around us.
You know what a heuristic is, right? It too is a label for what is not known. It’s just a model, a rule of thumb. Heuristics help us to talk about appearances.
Learning . . . well, that’s another question. One can argue without contradiction that the learning concerns narratives. However, a narrative is a cry away from “what is” in any complete, final, or accurate way.
You say you’re learning about the world. I suggest you’re learning about appearances.
Appearances tend to be superficial. If they are, and if you would admit that they are, then what possible hypothesis would you next consider?
Try playing along; it’s kind of a thought experiment. If all you can honestly claim is that there are appearances—that they appear in consciousness (that you might think is yours)—then what would you next consider?
What is a reality that could be at best described as merely appearances?
Put it together: appearances and consciousness. One shows up with the other, . . . all . . . the . . . time.
Largo: . . . all reality is a moving target, and no one can answer the "what" question because there are no fixed things to begin with, and the properties we call energy and matter are neither things or separate from each other.
. . . what he said.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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But the point is, reductionism doesn't acknowledge these catagories. Reductionism never says - we can only go down so far and then our methods are no longer viable. (JL)
At a point reductionism fails, and "knowledge" of what lies beyond becomes a matter of speculation or faith it seems. Arguments that lead in principle down to emptiness, do so by a shift of categories:
"According to the generalized uncertainty principle (a concept from speculative models of quantum gravity), the Planck length is, in principle, within a factor of 10, the shortest measurable length – and no theoretically known improvement in measurement instruments could change that." (Wiki)
But you've moved on to other aspects of physical theory.
I have a hunch that asking what a field is runs into the same challenges. We can call it a thing for convenience, but it seems to defy the definitions of a classical external object (JL)
Of course, you're speaking of a field in physics, where the definition of a field may be that it IS what it DOES. On the other hand, in math a (vector) field is easily defined in an abstract sense.
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WBraun
climber
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all reality is a moving target, and no one can answer the "what" question
Only holds for the impersonalists and is incomplete.
All Ulitmate reality has personality and individuality ......
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WBraun
climber
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Rawl, Powers, American, Nord-Lock, etc.
Not one of them could even move without consciousness first.
Thus DMT still splashes in the shallow end having yet to learn how to even swim yet .....
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 8, 2016 - 03:50pm PT
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Arguments that lead in principle down to emptiness, do so by a shift of categories:
--
Categories are not primary but derived from the source subject. In this case the source subject is reality. Strictly speaking a category is:
cat·e·go·ry (kăt′ĭ-gôr′ē)
n. pl. cat·e·go·ries
1. A specifically defined division in a system of classification; a class.
2. A general class of ideas, terms, or things that mark divisions or coordinations within a conceptual scheme.
Used as defined above, it would seem that the primary consideration is the system of classification itself, NOT the reality that is being classified.
It's sort of like considering a system of classification as a stand-alone, subject-independent thing, but I am not talking about quantifications, rather WHAT is being quantified.
Nor am I talking about an "argument," but rather what is actually "there," or in this case, what empirical evidence suggest is NOT there - namely an imagined kind of cinderblock (a particle with a fixed stuff nature) foundation upon which reality is built.
I can see why some people struggle with the idea of emptiness, but I think most are objecting to what we are NOT saying - that emptiness is more real than stuff or forms. Not at all. None of this or that is real in the way we consider the moon as "real," as a tangible external object out there and observer-independent. Not emptiness nor yet the forms have those qualities.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Righty-tighty lefty-loosey! (most the time)
Not only do you need a bolt but you have to use it! So clip in brothers!
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Largo and MikeL are pretty good self-parodists, too. They have learned something from the masters of the esoteric traditions.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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. . . what empirical evidence suggest is NOT there - namely an imagined kind of cinderblock (a particle with a fixed stuff nature) foundation upon which reality is built (JL)
When you make your next voyage down below the Planck Scale please send up a message, perhaps by tachyons. Thanks.
You say you’re learning about the world. I suggest you’re learning about appearances (MikeL)
OK, so to penetrate more deeply into reality a good strategy might be to study how these appearances (objects) relate to one another and how this information might shed light on these things that exhibit appearances.
Or we could all retire to the ashram and zen-sit.
Or we could retire to the Philosophy Department's faculty lounge and pick each others' brains.
Or we could . . .??????
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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^^^^^^^^^^
Try to relax. There’s nothing that needs doing. A preoccupation with doing, solving problems, achievement, and usefulness have overshadowed the “being” part of living. It’s a bias of the times that intelligence, a demand for more knowledge and information, and “will” appear to be paramount values to be honored over all other values. I suggest to you that there are no paramount values. They are all the same.
Being is not about being anything. It’s certainly not about being smart or clever.
. . . a good strategy might be to study how these appearances (objects) relate to one another and how this information might shed light on these things that exhibit appearances.
Why? What are you trying to do, where are you trying to go, and for what reason? If you were to know these things, would it help you to live a better life, a more fulfilling life, a more engaged life, a happier life? I’d say that if you saw appearances everywhere you looked, you might simply relax and just be who and what you cannot help but be.
You seems to see “the result” of the views that I present as some sort of mindless, zombie-like existence I suppose. I can’t convince you just how narrow and misguided that view might be in all the things and ways that I’ve expressed myself here. It’s really just the opposite in my view. I see the dharmakaya as an unlimited potential for anything to show up. You see things. I see displays. You take things seriously and concretely. I’m in wonder at what shows up.
I guess I’m just lucky.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Put it together: appearances and consciousness. One shows up with the other, . . . all . . . the . . . time.
That's why I often use my Ngarlu instead of my consciousness.
Oxygen and consciousness. One shows up with the other all the time.
If you want you can talk about the appearance of love, the appearance of the taste of sugar, or the appearance of a parabola. I would rather toss out the clutter and talk about love, sweet, and parabolas.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 9, 2016 - 09:14am PT
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My sense of it John is that we are looping back into scientism - meaning basically two things: "Philosophy" is actually the attempt to do science without instruments or schemas (numbers, etc.), and that the fundamental nature of reality is so fractured that insights from one mode of inquiry have no carry over to other modes, that science cannot tell us about subjectivity and that subjective adventures are not portals into objectivity. Or worse, the objective is the ONLY avenue of true inquiry into the subjective. Granted, this is an extreme view, rendering an extreme POV - like the belief that any thing is independent of any other thing or phenomenon.
Studying the relations between the apparent pieces and phenomenon of reality, as you suggested, is a wise choice IMO because as leading scientists will tell you, as well as folks from the subjective camp, that all that there is. There is no immutable or non-contingent stuff that "does" stuff or has qualities and phenomenon. We can and do use this model for convenience and it worlds wonderfully. That's the rub. I use my "self" to live in the world but it is a provisional phenomenon with no inherent nature of its own.
The bridge between the many and the one, the narrow and the wide, the stuff and the emptiness is mind. That fact that we cannot tease out mind and see it as a stand alone thing means it is part of an undivisible whole. It is in that sense that people say, "It's all mind." We could just as well say, "It is all sky." It's all just one big mo-fo, and IME, there is no thing or phenomenon that is mutually exclusive of any thing else.
Still a little bewildered by the whole Trump affair...
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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I use my "self" to live in the world but it is a provisional phenomenon with no inherent nature of its own.
Couldn't your self's inherent nature be that it is a provisional phenomenon?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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MH2: Couldn’t your self's inherent nature be that it is a provisional phenomenon?
I think you are still saying that it’s a thing. I’d say that you’re cleverly missing the point, but I suspect you’re just being perverse.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Still a little bewildered by the whole Trump affair...
Stay strong, John. At least you're not boo-hooing and threatening to run off to Canada. I can't believe climbers can be such wimps.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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I think you are still saying that it’s a thing. I’d say that you’re cleverly missing the point, but I suspect you’re just being perverse.
It's much simpler than that.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Nov 10, 2016 - 05:30am PT
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A selection from "The Science of The First Person" by Douglas Harding:
It is very possible -indeed necessary -to have doubts about what I see there. (Thus I'm sure I'm now seeing something I provisionally call a spot of light, but what it is that looks like this I'm not sure; it is probably a star, but then it could be a galaxy or a planet or a UFO or a satellite or a meteorological balloon or a firefly on the window, or even the product of liver trouble.) But it is impossible for me to doubt what I see here, namely the Absence of any spot of light, of any colour or shape or motion, of anything whatever. In this instance there is no question of interpretation, for there is nothing to interpret. The Void here is itself and not an appearance of something else; it doesn't point elsewhere or call for explanation or elucidation. What it visibly is it really is. How unlike the data which the scientist investigates, data that aren't at all what they seem! In fact, his job is never to take them at their face value, always to question and look beyond what he finds. Only this motionless and colourless No-shape, which is the investigator himself as 1st Person, is wholly indubitable and unproblematic. The One who is it knows what to make of it. The only 'thing' that can safely be taken at its face value is one's own faceless No-thing-ness. Everything else is at least two-faced and by its very nature deceptive.
SHEN-HUI: Seeing into one's Self-nature is seeing into Nothingness. Seeing into Nothingness is true seeing and eternal seeing.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 10, 2016 - 06:59am PT
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SHEN-HUI: Seeing into one's Self-nature is seeing into Nothingness. Seeing into Nothingness is true seeing and eternal seeing.
Wonderful statement.
Perhaps not accurate, final, or complete, though.
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