non-dimensional being & consciousness

[bo198214]

As a sometimes-minimalist, the question arised to me, what is essential for consciousness. As was already discussed we could imagine conscious beeings in 4d and in 2D. Even can imagine consciousness in 1D. And I would say its no problem to omit even the one dimension. Then only all terms that have to do with geometry and movement drop out. To remove time, I really have some difficulties, but at least we could discretize time.

So I analysed a bit more how we come to various concepts.

• 1. What I really know, that I perceive something (subjectiveness). Maybe I can also influence something in my perception (will).
• 2. Then I may realize that there are some laws in my perception (also regarding my will). And some constants against change. Based on this I can distinguish entities. So I can become confident in performing certain things (learning). Or more articulated: I can predict some of my (non)influences. (Call this self-objectiveness).
• 3. Next stage is that I discern very direct perceptions/influences (for example pain/lift my arm) from more indirect perceptions/influences (for example seeing a tree burning/making fire). Based on that I draw a border what is me and what is not me. Reality is that what in result hits me hard. Imagination doesnt hit me that hard.
• 4. I can recognize a certain behaviour of me (for example to shout if a tree falls on me). I can recognize similar behaviour of other "entities". By analogy I assume there might be a similar perception/influencing (subjectiveness) for others (non-behaviourism).
• 5. I interact with their subjectiveness and realize that they can make similar predictions, or are confident in performing certain things like me (in their subjectiveness). I.e. I can agree about a certain subset of laws in my perception/influencing with most people. (Call this many-objectiveness.)
• 6. Then there is this funny thing "reasoning". By putting some laws together I can get new valid laws, without being confident in performing/ predict them. (Ratio) Doing this (nearly) without a perceptive base is then called pure mathematics. Doing this with a very small perceptive base (like reading off instruments) is then called theoretical physics.

I know its not formulated very clear. But if someone wants to make sense of it, it may become an interesting discussion. (May be there are also some established philosophical terms for things I describe, but am not reading that much.)

Science then covers exact many-objectiveness. But cannot cover self-objectiveness. Ok, but thats not what I wanted to discuss here anyway.
May aim is to construct a minimalized consciousness. What we seem to need is an input variable (perception) and a output variable (will). Self-objective is then certain laws between input and output (including integer time).
How would then a minimalist approach to recognizing laws/entities, oneself and hence other beeings? etcetc

[thigle]

i will try to gather(idealize) my ideas on this tomorrow, but meanwhile you might try this one: called consciousness: a hyperspace view which is a trial of Saul-Paul Sirag, in terms of reflection spaces.
i think you'll also need the quantum pentacle (as Finkelstein calls it), or 4-simplex if you want, for simplexes are the embodiments of minimal systems.

also, you'll have to deal with paradox, for which you'll need some minimal discernment system, like for exemple Russel's Theory of Higher Logical Types. Kinds differ from Aspects.

consciousness studies is not just the most provoking and edgy, but also possibly really some of the hardest issues at hand.

[bo198214]

consciousness: a hyperspace view which is a trial of Saul-Paul Sirag, in terms of reflection spaces.
i think you'll also need the quantum pentacle (as Finkelstein calls it), or 4-simplex if you want, for simplexes are the embodiments of minimal systems.

No, I dont need these. Its much too complicated for a minimal consciousness (though of course its a joy to see the broadness of Sirags knowledge). As I said the reality of this consciousness should be free of geometry. It should only be so complex that it is possible to discern other beeings. (How ever one can imagine other beeings in a nondimensional universe.) The focus is on the subjectiveness, the world around should only be as complex as necessary, that one can reconstruct some basic concepts of that consciousness (for example other beings).

To be clear: I dont want to deal with/explain/construct earthy consciousness. The concepts I listed in my first post are independent of dimensionality. So what is at least needed that we can speak about a consciousness which realizes the mentioned concepts?

[thigle]

free of geometry. do you mean by that purely algebraic ? i perceive algebras and geometries as duals. is that ok ? what you mean by free of geometry ? form-less ? what about dynamic geometry ? or geometric (clifford) algebras ?

i don't think 4-simplex is too complicated for a minimal consciousness, rather it seems to me as simple as it gets. fuller thought the same,... whatever.

...no problem to omit even the one dimension. Then only all terms that have to do with geometry and movement drop out. To remove time, I really have some difficulties, but at least we could discretize time.

what about negative dimensionality ? why you wanna remove time ? what is the difference between time and movement ? and why you wanna discretize time ? do you consider space essentially discrete (as Feynmann intuited ?)
why not consider the point as a minimal dynamic entity, instead of a static nothing ? do you know spin-mediated theory of consciousness by Hu&Wu ? there the 'mind-pixel', the 'linchpin' of consciousness is just such. a self-referential loop of activity.

ok. your list of exemples. is that an attempt at hierarchy ? is that a sequence or ad hoc set ? it seems going from perception to ratio. whole of such reversibility is what Merleau-Ponty called 'chiasma' or 'flesh'. '...in reflexive conversion, thinking and perceiving become 2 sides imagining...', of 1 non-orientable surface, i would add. also he states: '...each field is a dimensionality and Being is dimensionality itself..' [m-p, visible & invisible] by substituting Being with consciousness and 'dimensionality' with 'distinction', then the above translates freely as '...each field starts from distinction and consciousness is the distinction itself...'
notably, Brown in his classic Laws of Form states that "...to distinct is to contain (already?)..." (italics added)

also plato, he discerns 3 cuts in his divided line. first cut is manifestation between the 2 poles (internal/external) of existence(refers to things as they are without any projection of Being onto them), the nondual between doxa(opinion) and ratio(reason).
each of these is further cutted: internal existence as is the distinction of the buddhist emptiness and external cut distinguishes the essence of Doxa as taoist void.
so both poles are seen as open/empty: essence of rationality is groundless and dimensionality of opinion is open.

this polarity, or duality of Reason(ratio)-thinking & Doxa(opinion)-perception has been explored for long in philosophy.

I dont want to deal with/explain/construct earthy consciousness. The concepts I listed in my first post are independent of dimensionality. So what is at least needed that we can speak about a consciousness which realizes the mentioned concepts?

by 'earthy' you mean human-specific, or Earth-specific species' consciousness ? does it mean you aim at model of minimal generic consciousness ? minimal essentialist approach, looking for minimal essential constraints on the attributes of Being of 'consciousness' ? discerning what constitutes the Kind of Being we call consciousness ?

also, 'many-objectiveness' and 'self-objectiveness', what unifies these, what is present in both , or aspects of what are these 2 ? self-objective is another term for subjectiveness or do i miss something ? any overlap of meaning with universal/specific, general/singular, context-driven/autonomous ?

May aim is to construct a minimalized consciousness.

maybe one should value more discernment of how things actually are instead of how one wants them. i think your aim is to construct a minimalised model of consciousness.

and sorry for so many questions

[bo198214]

Hm, I believe we both are a bit below the critical mass to make this thread explode Perhaps because it is the wrong forum for such a more philosophical discussion. (I also often notice that most even intelligent people dont get the problems associated with consciousness.)

Anyway I try to answer some of your questions:

"Free of geometry" means I want to get it a bit down, so I can handle it algorithmicly. Thatswhy for example discretization of time ( -> turing machine). A good deal of mathematics is needed for example to construct the real numbers. Almost no effort is needed to construct the natural numbers. Thatswhy I prefer here the natural numbers *g*.

Though I cant see any duality between geometry and algebra, the focus is then neither geometry nor algebra, but on algorithm. For me geometry is simply a human-inclined mathematical topic, because humans have to deal with it simply by living in a geometric environment. Algebra is topic which is more independent of the actual living environment.

what about negative dimensionality ?

*shrug* never thought about that, but probably induces again geometry which I wanted to discard.

why you wanna remove time ?

Because it should be a minimal consciousness, so remove as much as you can as long you can still recognize it as consciousness.

what is the difference between time and movement ?

For movement you need space and time. For change you only need time.

and why you wanna discretize time ?

see above

your list of exemples. is that an attempt at hierarchy ?

No its necessary sequence of recognizing:
you cannot recognize other beings before you could seperate yourself from "the rest". You can not seperate yourself from rest before you recognized some laws/entities. You cannot recognize laws, when you dont perceive anything at all. Only point 6 (reasoning) maybe not necessarily at this place.

by 'earthy' you mean human-specific, or Earth-specific species' consciousness ?

I mean earthy environment such as 3-dimensional, gravity, light, continuous time, etc. And to be able to operate in such environment, the consciousness has to adapt to this environment. But I can imagine a consciousness to operate in arbitrarily different environment.
Thats the "earthy" regarding the environment. I also mean "earthy" regarding the human consciousness, as it has its specific 5 senses, a certain common range of emotions, and other such specialities. On the other hand ratio I dont want to exclude from my consciousness to be constructed.

minimal essentialist approach, looking for minimal essential constraints on the attributes of Being of 'consciousness' ? discerning what constitutes the Kind of Being we call consciousness ?

Hmm, not exactly. I have 3 points that a human consciousness can do:

• discernment of self
• discernment of others and communication with others
• ratio

And I want to construct a minimal consciousness that can also do these 3 points. It should help to better understand how they are achieved in general (unearthy).

*have to finish in the moment*

[thigle]

Hm, I believe we both are a bit below the critical mass to make this thread explode :wink: Perhaps because it is the wrong forum for such a more philosophical discussion. (I also often notice that most even intelligent people dont get the problems associated with consciousness.)

you got the point here. this milieu doesn't have enough thinkers active & immersed deeply enough in these issues to look at it from the inside, so there is not enough manure to grow on. but maybe we can bluntly offer some more shit

essential for consciousness is that it is always co-dependent with phenomena, as long as we are talking about objectivising forms/states of consciousness. or it can be non-objectifying, in which case there is no form-aggregate in operation.

in other words, subjectivity & objectivity, consciousness & its percepts, reflexivity & percepts (reflected), imagination & perception, these are mutualy causal, reflexive, they arise interdependently, or indivisibly...
...in naked awareness.

the thing is that con-sciousness is a function of mind, and mind can be understood as perception or experiencing process.

to give another context, the realms where the presence of consciousness soans through, can be understood via 3-fold model of body/soul/spirit or matter/energy-time/space or body/voice/mind or also many others.

_body
we as humans are habituated to take as substrate for our experiencing process the input from the material bodies, the form we operate through, the 5 body-senses (as well as other not commonly noted subsystems, like kinaesthesia/balance & other proprioceptive aggregates), on which our cognitive unfolding is grown, we cognize primarily on/from this material basis and the models we derive from that are just such - matter-bound.

_voice(soul)
now other forms of consciousness are present scattered on the light-cones, that don't use material bodies as the basis for the experience, but use subtle energetic (light/color) bodies as dynamic substrates on which to unfold experience.

_mind(spirit)
and then the most subtle realm of no-form holds the non-physical existences, those that operate non-localy without the form-aggregate.

all these, however, are within the karmic wheel, and even though to 'lower' existences the state of consciousness of the 'higher' existences might seem as more plausible, it doesn't hold key to unlocking the samsaric circle.

for another (more 'rigorous') presentation of life-domains(realms) & life-levels check ALL SPACES by Tony Smith as well as subordinate Levels of Life Forms, Levels of Life

actually, consciousness is a lower-intensity cognition, a delayed one. it is always like-now but never truly so. it does not exist ultimately.

anyway to reflect a bit:

what is the difference between time and movement ?

For movement you need space and time. For change you only need time.

i disagree. what change apart from movement can you imagine ?

Though I cant see any duality between geometry and algebra, the focus is then neither geometry nor algebra, but on algorithm. For me geometry is simply a human-inclined mathematical topic, because humans have to deal with it simply by living in a geometric environment. Algebra is topic which is more independent of the actual living environment.

again, what about clifford(geometric) algebras ?

your list of exemples. is that an attempt at hierarchy ?

No its necessary sequence of recognizing:
you cannot recognize other beings before you could seperate yourself from "the rest". You can not seperate yourself from rest before you recognized some laws/entities. You cannot recognize laws, when you dont perceive anything at all. Only point 6 (reasoning) maybe not necessarily at this place.

for a comparision, in buddhist phenomenology (which runs canonically under name of Abhidharma - literally 'structure of dharma(s)'), the psychophysical aggregates that form the totality of experiential dynamics, are 5.

these can be understood sequentially, as well as parallely. for the simple sequential understanding (sorry for the following spelling):

1. 'form' (contains 'alaya-vinana' - 'fundamental structuring of all experiencing', 'cloudy mind', 'conceptual mind', 5 sense-aggregates )
2. 'feeling' (-/0/+ // bodily/mental)
3. 'perception' (...)
4. 'impulse','formation','concept'
5. 'consciousnes' (in a sense of containing all of the previous)

this is rather simplified, though.
the trick is to loosen the dependency of different aggregates so they start operating freely in synergy instead of mutual binding that is the suffering.

[moonlord]

i disagree. what change apart from movement can you imagine ?

Transformation. For example carbon dioxyde liquifying isobarically, isothermically and isocorically at the critic point.

NOTE: Isobarically means at the same pressure. Isothermically means at the same temperature. Isocorically means at the same volume. I'm not sure these words really exist in english.

[thigle]

that's (micro)movement anyway. it doesn't happen nowhere, does it ?

[moonlord]

Well, not nowhere, but exactly in the same place as it was before. So it implies no macro movement. I agree that, on a micro scale, it was a bad example... I'll think of another one...

[lobster]

_mind(spirit)
and then the most subtle realm of no-form holds the non-physical existences, those that operate non-localy without the form-aggregate.

Very interesting discussion. I was wondering how two terms "Emptiness is Existence and existence is emptiness" from the mahayana metaphysics and fana-il-fana from Sufi metaphysics - the annihilation of annihilation relate to this.

Is a 4 dimensional reality evolving in an infinite loop (in other words static)?

[thigle]

Emptiness is Existence and existence is emptiness

interesting for me to see 'Existence' in place of 'Form'. I never seen it stated that way, can you give reference ?

people usually cut it out of context, but this teaching in mahayan goes like this:

form is empty(ness),
emptiness (itself) is form.
therefore,
form is form and emptiness is emptiness.

btw, you can substitute 'open(ness)' for 'emptiness', it seems to be more appropriate translation of 'shunya' than 'emptiness, void' and other absence-like expressions, which bear unnecesary negative connotations, which makes it easier for our usually dualistic minds to slip.

now I don't know about the fana-il-fana from sufism, as i have not submerged myself into study of these teachings. however, 'annihilation of annihilation' seems to be another expressing of the fact that after we learn to 'purify' things(forms) from our projections (=we find them open, empty) we are stuck with the subtle form of no-form - emptiness. to understand that emptiness is conceptualisation/projection as well, we say 'emptiness is empty' (or, freely, 'void is open').
so we get back where we started, but it's all different now: form IS form and openess IS openess.
radical disctinction instead of radical confusion.

so fana-il-fana - anihilation of anihilation is the 'dissolution' of emptiness in emptiness.

a podcast that one can listen to, related to these meta-levels of negation, and the way to exhaust negation can be found at http://www.nondual.net, where Kent Palmer, a meta-system theorist, fundamental mythOntologist, and (imho) one of the most widely looking philosophers of today, is exploring possibility of nonduality within western scientidic tradition. one of these podcasts that you can find there, has 'negation' in its title, that's the one.

please be patient and check for his site on regular basis, as its not always online (let's say 2-4 days in week), like now, for exemple.
try in night hours for few days, you ain't gonna regret.
also, he is not an amateur on sufism at all.

[lobster]

interesting for me to see 'Existence' in place of 'Form'. I never seen it stated that way, can you give reference ?

Certainly
Reference is placement
placement is nowhere

form is empty(ness),
emptiness (itself) is form.
therefore,
form is form and emptiness is emptiness.

yep that is the form of emptiness
that is usually formed

now I don't know about the fana-il-fana from sufism, as i have not submerged myself into study of these teachings. however, 'annihilation of annihilation' seems to be another expressing of the fact that after we learn to 'purify' things(forms) from our projections

Just as well . . .
Yes.
In Sufism one is absorbed or the small self is absorbed or annihilated in the focus of ones devotions
Eventually only the Beloved is left
then even the Beloved is gone

so fana-il-fana - anihilation of anihilation is the 'dissolution' of emptiness in emptiness.

yes

also, he is not an amateur on sufism at all.

oh an expert
Shame.

Many thanks for all your points. Much appreciated.

[thigle]

but still: how do 'form' & 'existence' relate/differ ? how do you mean it ?

'existence' is from ec.sistere, 'out-of-itself' might be its rough etymological ex.plication.

and nowhere is everywhere, thus anywhere. so 'where ?' is where. (or, did you meant 'no where' or 'now here' ? oh, languague is so open it is killing us :wink: )

[bo198214]

I don't think you can say whether a point is conscious or not. It depends on what do you understand by consciousness. If something if conscious because it asks it-/him-/her- self why it/he/she is there, then a point isn't. What change can you see in 0D? The point can exist, or not. So either it is intrinsecally conscious, either it is not and cannot ever be. That's how I see the problem.

No, that is a misunderstanding. The question was not whether there can be consciounsness in a 0-dimensional world. But rather whether I/somebody can experience a non-dimensional world (what for that being then means that it lives in a non-dimensional world).

For example a computer program, or an idea, or algebra are all things that are independent of space, especially independent of 3-dimensional space. I imagine the consciousness as a computer monitor, where each pixel is a basic perception (though this computer monitor can grow and a lots of LEDs are around/can grow around). The perception is independent of space, either its there or not (this is what I would call binary consciousness) or there are different intensities of it.
Space comes into play if the pixels on the computer monitor transform according to geometrical laws (regard the computer monitor as the retina of your eyes). If the pixels transform according different laws the being lives in a non-geometrical/non-dimensional world. For example if there instead of a computer monitor were many displays with numbers and they change by certain number theoretic laws. And I can influence this in certain ways by my will. Then I would live in a number theoretic world. And maybe certain patterns in the numbers I can recognize as other people and can communicate with them. Space is absolutely unneccesary, the people dont need to have distances, nor do they need to move up/down, left-right, etc.
Or a more realistic example: If you sit day after day only at your computer and write posts in forums, then you live in a text-based world (that is imposed on a geometric world of course), the geometrical perception becomes insignificant. But if you play day after day only ego-shooters then you live in 3d-world imposed on a 3d world.

And as the described worlds are all imposed on a 3d-spatial world, for the consciousness this is not essential it can adapt to everything, so I assume there are such worlds that are not imposed on a 3d-spatial world but exist for their own. My interest is now to find a really basic such world (I think the number-theoretic, with integer time looks really basic) but where we still can recognize other beings and communicate with them, and how one would describe this in terms of that consciousness/world.

Though I really struggled to explain, I hope the basis idea was confered.

[moonlord]

If you sit day after day only at your computer and write posts in forums, then you live in a text-based world (that is imposed on a geometric world of course), the geometrical perception becomes insignificant.

I don't agree here. I see no difference between a text-based world and a geometrical one. They are both made up of information. Even shooting game are made up of numbers - text.

The theories, the data, the computer program - all of these are made up of information. The problem, as I see it, is whether information can exist in a zero dimensional world, or am I wrong?

[bo198214]

The problem, as I see it, is whether information can exist in a zero dimensional world, or am I wrong?

This question belongs to the subjectivity/objectivity thread, i.e. how can we determine whether something has consciousness or net. But in this thread I take a purely subjective approach. I start with a consciousness and then look how it comes to the various concepts of me, reality, other beings, etc. For this consideration I dont assume a prefabricated world/reality, but explain this in terms of the consciousness. So the question in this thread is different.

The theories, the data, the computer program - all of these are made up of information.

Exactly, so imagine the consciousness as perceiving and manipulating information. A good deal of that information for a human is geometrical, but that isnt essential for the consciousness. So we can dispose the geometry for a consciousness to work. The question is how much can we further reduce the complexity of the information, but still being able to discern other people and communicate with them.

[moonlord]

I believe we need a consistent definition or consciousness. I'd say a entity is conscious whether it considers it-/him-/her- self as a distinct part of the world. Any ideas?

[thigle]

consciousness is a function of the mind(experience, perception).
consciousness is indivisible from its object and these 2 are always co-dependently arising.

to be aware of being aware of the percept is to be conscious in an act of perception.
in other words, seeing this keybord and my hands typing this text, one "pole" of experiential axis is to identify with the percept. other is to be aware of this perception simultaneously(parallely) with having it. which is what is how any perception takes place, but we ususally get lost in the objective pole.

consciousness is actually an unnecessary vapor.

and, btw, both subjective and objective are objective. or in other words, inward manifestations of energy as well as outer manifestation of energy are both "inner". that's what's all the phenomenology with its eidetic reduction about, as well as tantric "one taste" (rochig) concept, as well as abhidharmic base understandic, etc.

both "objective" and "subjective" appear to the same underlying awareness, which is metaphorically like the mirror's reflectivity.

[moonlord]

If everything is "inside" our brain, how comes that people often share the same experience? Is there a link or a common intelligence?

[bo198214]

consciousness is a function of the mind(experience, perception).

So and what is mind?
My approach in this thread was, going from the most basic/obvious to the more complicated. It does not help to start with something already completely ridiculous.

So, and the most basic for me is consciousness. I dont mean awareness of being aware, or equally sophisticated. Simply perception and will. These are the atomic terms. We can call it also subjectivity, if "consciousness" bares already too much semantic. This is what a being can know for most sure (if it is able to know something) that it is perceiving.

And whether there are objects or reality or other people, comes after that. How I consider the path to these terms, I tried to explain in my list at the beginning. And I was/am interested, how you would explain the path to those terms (self,reality,objectivity,other people), when purely starting with the terms perception and will. What is essential to you, what else than 3d-geometry we can drop and despite being able to explain these terms?

[thigle]

thigle wrote:
consciousness is a function of the mind(experience, perception).

So and what is mind?

sorry, i meant Mind (as the nature of mind, which is space, or emptiness).

using mirror metaphor:
the mirror's object is ob.jective pole of experience (the sense-fields),
image in the mirror is the sub.jective pole of experience,
the projection is the consciousness,
the reflectivity itself is the awareness (or the flash of knowing that gives awareness quality)
and the space of experience(the mirror space) (which is the "Nature of Mind", or often called the Dharmakaya, or Experienc-as-Such) is its essence - the openess(or void, emptiness), meaning that the mirror contains nothing by itself, it's essence is none essence, that's why it can spontaneously, ecstatically re-present anything.

in our tradition mind & consciousness often mix unnecesarily.
in our tradition, consciousness can be understood as another term for Being, with emphasis on its aspect of presence.

consciousness is co-dependent with its object, there is no object of experience without consciousness.
so my approach is that it won't give any sense to think consciousness without its objects. consciousness is container, experiential entities/events are contained.

(then you can consider what happens on the level of self-containment - when consciousness takes itself as its object, by bending the mirror back on itself).

basically, every experiential event is lightning-up of consciousness by mindspace-teeming. mind is explained in the parenthesis in the above quote: experience. so the flow of experience (which is mind) is a function of the Mind.

then you can easily see, that calling 'mind' in our tradition by the name of 'consciousness' is too often a confusing error.
.
mind is the experiential process itself, consciousness is its space.

This is what a being can know for most sure (if it is able to know something) that it is perceiving.

which amounts to the same as my definition of consciouness meaning being aware of being aware of perception simultaneously with being aware of having it.. otherwise it's just perception. which entails consciousness as well.

well, i see i cannot avoid this, so:

ok,

this is the structure of experiencing process, as we humans have it in general, according to buddhist abhidharma (phenomenology), as well as according to my experience of just sitting.

1st aggregate - FORM:

_5senses(consciousness/sense organ/sense object)
_6thsense(conceptual mind)
_cloudy mind
_alaya-vijnana (fundamental structuring of all experience)

2nd aggregate: FEELING
3rd aggregate: PERCEPTION
4th aggregate: IMPULSIVE FORMATION, CONCEPTION
5th aggregate: CONSCIOUSNESS (containing all the other 4 skandhas)

let's not delve into details of each aggregate micro-architectures, but consider it globally:

this is a 5-fold feedback structure, rolling time through it, patterning the experiential flow. these 5 functions act as the mandala (centre<->circumference) - with the Form at the crossing.

the more egoistic(freezing experience by habitual grasping) the mode of operational dynamics of these 5 skandhas in one's expereince are, the more of deterministic pattern appears, the more interdependent and entangled these 5 skandhas become.

the more independent these 5 Skandhas become, the more freely they function and each aggreagate becomes an enlightenment expression, an autonomous "buddha family", which is a traditional name for "senseConsciousness-contactmedium-senseObject" triad functioning in cleansed, freed, or natural infinite form/modality.

so sometimes you might think senseConscioiusness when you say consciousness, sometimes mindConsciousness (within the first skandha of form) or one of 2 cloudy minds (at 1st skandha).
another times, you mean the Consciousness that is the 5th skandha.

so to get back to your question again:

how you would explain the path to those terms (self,reality,objectivity,other people), when purely starting with the terms perception and will.

perception is locally, or elementarily the presence of sense-consciousnesses to sense-fields.
globally it is what is running within the 5the skandha of consciousness as the application: form, feeling, perception, concept

the will would correspond to a deeper thing than perception, it's the perception's thrust, the intentionality.
thus it seems to me that the fundamental structuring of all-experience (the alaya- -vijnana conscoiusness in the 1st skandha of Form) corresponds to that. there are some note on this and on how tibetan dzogchen thinkers have thought it as well as how husserl has thought it. i think will can be understod either in terms of alaya-vijnana, and the cloudy mind (in cases when it's more elemental, almost instinctual tendency to grasp) and at the 4 aggregate of Conception, when it's more complex, concept-mediated will.

moonlord wrote

If everything is "inside" our brain, how comes that people often share the same experience? Is there a link or a common intelligence?

that is simply because those "brains" are within and of the same world. (btw, who said everything is "inside" our brain ?)
your brain my brain, still the same physus.

[bo198214]

Thigle, I dont know whether you already noticed that Buddhism is for doing and not for talking about. So even if you would have 1st hand experience (what I doubt) of what you describe, I would like to discuss this in another thread.

You introduce various other concepts, though I explicitely wanted to reduce the complexity as much as possible. My terms are terms accessible to everybody, and not of an esoteric direction with a completely different goal (i.e. leading to englightenment).

how you would explain the path to those terms (self,reality,objectivity,other people), when purely starting with the terms perception and will.

perception is ...
the will would correspond to ...
i think will can be understod ....

Thigle, I dont know if it is so difficult to understand me. You did exactly the opposite, what I asked for. 1. You never explained self, reality, objectivity, other people. 2. You explained perception and will, which I wanted to regard as atomic terms in this thread.

[thigle]

you can doubt other's experience, but that doesn't help you with your own one. i've been DOing traditional samatha and vipassana for 6 years now, on regular basis, so i can TALK about buddhism too, and feel confortable and not heretic for that..

buddhism is not "for doing and not for talking about", it is to understand and to embody through experience that understanding, to actualise it, even though there's nothing such and noone is really doing it. it's not a dualistic approach of doing OR talking about, talking is DOing, talking is ACTION in the realm of speech.
anyone acts and exists through 3 gates of mind, speech, and body. so even thinking is DOING, that is action as well, only of different kind than walking, it might seem.
this action/non-action issues are a whole another openscape, so let' leave it to itself for the moment.

still, actually, the spirit is the body, so your distinction breaks down as unnecessary.

got it, or sit on it.

now back to your "self, reality, objectivity, other".

those are not equivalent concepts. let's sort them:
by self you mean (i suppose) subjectivity. (if you don't mean Jungian "Self") ?
by objectivity you mean what is available to subject, to your self ?
by other you mean other subjects ?
by reality you mean what ? for me (and hundreds of philosophers), reality is one of 4 aspects of Being, along with identity,truth and presence.

if so, then:
"subject&object" is one structure WITHIN the consciousness,
"other" are other consciousnesses, in the intersubjective field,
and "reality" is just attribute, or aspect, it's categorically lower than subject/object structure, or other, which can both be real or unreal, or different kinds of real (like hyper real, wildly real,...)

if you read attentively, without getting stuck on languague formalisms, you would understand it already from the 5 skandhas teaching.
you should realize that it is not a matter of you "wanting to regard" (something - perception & will in this case) "as atomic terms in this thread."
it is a matter of finding how it really IS ! and if you think you can beat 2500 years of inner work of a tradition which dedicated itself to exploring internal dynamics of our experiencing process, in which thousands of people were working to refine their collective understanding of these matters, just by postulating whatever you like, you just become an objective reductionist with egoist tint, which you surely don't want.

Thigle, I dont know if it is so difficult to understand me. You did exactly the opposite, what I asked for. 1. You never explained self, reality, objectivity, other people. 2. You explained perception and will, which I wanted to regard as atomic terms in this thread.

actually, that's pretty much because you got it causally flipped. your "atomic terms" are effects, or functions of those that you consider to be effects, but which are really causes: self/objectivity.

if you would agree to reconsider "perception" and "will" from atomic to re-formulating them into perceptivity & intentionality, i can see it would be workable perhaps.

to explain self, funny, but: self is a misconception, arising due to the habitual tendency of grasping mind, wrongly considering various traces of experiential dynamics as essential, like memory, or the perceptual ability itself, etc.
essence of self is selflessness, but there's noone to see.

reality i explained above, it's one of 4 ways in which we grammatically use Being in Indo-European languagues, along with identity/differance, presence/absence, and truth/false.

objectivity is a complementarity to subjectivity, which together form a structure in our consciousness(i mean 5th skandha consciousness), one being the "external" other the "internal" pole of experiential field, which spans BOTH.

explaining other people is unnecessary, if you can actually explain one.

[bo198214]

you can doubt other's experience, but that doesn't help you with your own one. i've been DOing traditional samatha and vipassana for 6 years now, on regular basis

I didnt doubt your practice. But I doubt, that you without your knowledge about Buddhism, by purely doing that Meditation, came to the same models (for example the 5 skandhas), as in the buddhist canon.

The buddhism especially considers human consciousness, where we here consider what is necessary for consciousness and not what actually is the human consciousness on earth.

now back to your "self, reality, objectivity, other".
those are not equivalent concepts.

Exactly, they were never intended being equivalent. But they are built on each other
Perception/Will -> Self-Objectivity -> Self -> Other -> Many-Objectivity

by self you mean (i suppose) subjectivity.

By self I mean what is usually understood by self. This includes own mind and own body. For example the "I" in: "I like to eat ice cream.".

by objectivity you mean what is available to subject, to your self ?

By objectivity I mean what is usually understood by objectivity. For example if someone says "I can objectively cure this decease".

by other you mean other subjects ?

Other people. For example: "This guy wanted to kill me."

by reality you mean what ?

I mean what is usually understood by reality. For example "In reality it was a bit different than what you now tell." Or for another example when you say:

how it really IS !

you just become an objective reductionist with egoist tint, which you surely don't want.

I dont let me manipulate by statements "If you are not the same view as me than you are a terrible bad guy".

that's pretty much because you got it causally flipped. your "atomic terms" are effects, or functions of those that you consider to be effects, but which are really causes: self/objectivity.

Thigle, its very simple for me, if you dont agree with me about the basics, then we can not discuss the topic.
I have often realized that it seems possible to flip what is basic and what is derived. So contrary to the common view, that first is the reality and then we can look, how it produces consciousness, I assume in this thread that first is consciousness and then we see how we come to reality. This is the view of this thread and I dont think it is contradictive.

if you would agree to reconsider "perception" and "will" from atomic to re-formulating them into perceptivity & intentionality, i can see it would be workable perhaps.

Sorry, but I dont see the difference.

to explain self, funny, but: self is a misconception, arising due to the habitual tendency of grasping mind, wrongly considering various traces of experiential dynamics as essential

I dont see how one objectively can say, that something is essential or not, as far as I know it is a very personal affair what is essential.

objectivity is a complementarity to subjectivity, which together form a structure in our consciousness(i mean 5th skandha consciousness), one being the "external" other the "internal" pole of experiential field, which spans BOTH.

What is "our consciousness"? Consciousness is already something subjective (and if nothing else, but most philosphers would agree with me).

explaining other people is unnecessary, if you can actually explain one.

Thigle, it really seems to me, that you live in two worlds that you cant bring together. There is one world with fascinating and divine structures, where there is no self and there are a lots of duality, and quaternions, and most exalted philosophical discussion. And the other world where you say "you" and "me" in the normal daily sense, where you really (=in reality) have a flat, where you can go, if it rains out there. These both worlds are so extremely distant, that I cant see, how you ever will bring them together.

[thigle]

I doubt, that you without your knowledge about Buddhism, by purely doing that Meditation, came to the same models (for example the 5 skandhas), as in the buddhist canon.

so you don't consider experience to be natural ? you think it is as we think it ? but we all think in the same space, our 'personal' worlds are embedded and permeated through the same world-space. nature and culture are complementary, so you cannot say that everyone has his own truth.
that is the nihilism of unfinished relativity, but actually, the relativity of viewpoints is relative too !
so i not only would come, i DID come to the same (or structurally coupling) model of experiential dynamics, before knowing buddist canon. and I didn't do it alone ! thousands of people from different traditions found the SAME but named it differently. even in our tradition, what do you think Jung has found on mandalas ? why is his model 4-fold with 5th crossing as the transcendent function ?
why are there countless instances of n-fold schemas of consciousness that all (at least partly) overlap ? of these, 4 & 6 fold are prominent and most abundant.
now you can still say that it's everybody's choice to think the 'essence' of his mind, but that is done through tmind that is present already. and that mind is a dynamic structure of certain SPECIFIC attributes, it divides things by certain symmetries and not others, unless one doesn't work on it and doesn't bring it into consciousness. this mind has a CERTAIN structure, as much as carbon atom has one, or any other physical matter.

to sum up, the patterning of the experience, which might roughly be called our conformal mindstate, is happening via consciousness that has a major configuration for a given era, but most importantly: it is NATURAL thing, so it's not up to anyone to think it up.
how did you become different from nature in the first case anyway ? you think your subjectivity is artificial, disconnected from this world, like a capsule noone sees into ? you are nature.

in similar way:

I dont see how one objectively can say, that something is essential or not, as far as I know it is a very personal affair what is essential.

essences are not simple ideas ! that's what husserl find in our tradition, when he realized the difference between IDEAS - abstract glosses on things, and ESSENCES, or Kinds, which are 'constraints on the attributes of things', what make things internally coherent under external deformations.

so you can argue that your idea of a self or consciousness, or of whatever is different from another's idea of the same thing. but the essence of the thing is what you and others are abstracting the ideas upon, it's the same, irrelevant of your or mine conception of it.

oh my, people come on ! enough of this blind individualism, we are here together and our bodies are this planet ! if you don't see it, ask yourself why you don't wanna look.

we here consider what is necessary for consciousness and not what actually is the human consciousness

through what medium do you consider that? through consciousness. so you cannot avoid it. otherwise it's like looking through a telescope, or a kaleidoscope, or through somMedium in general, and hoping to see the medium itself (or a picture of what is as it is, a clear picture. which is even more non-sense).
but for that you have to STEP BACK and look at the tool you look through first, to read how many dioptries it have, or what color filter it uses, or what symmetry it has its mirrors in... to know then in what way is the output that particular tool is giving you tinted, what's a trace of re-presentational method and what's represented and what's representation.
so to consider consciousness, you cannot use (simple) consiousness, in the same way as you cannot see your eye through your eye itself. but you can always use mirror.
you have to become aware of consciousness, if you want to understand it at all, as well as what is necessary for consciousness.

they were never intended being equivalent. But they are built on each other
Perception/Will -> Self-Objectivity -> Self -> Other -> Many-Objectivity

this is not different from skandhas anyway, you just can't get over different terminology, so again :

1st skandha is the FORM, the bodies of perception, the 6 senses(consciousness-senseOrgan-senseField triads) together with 7th & stratums, of which 7th is your Will, even though it's rather a protoWill, blind intentionality in the sense of being a habitual tendency to grasp.
the 8th strarum is the repository of all habitually grasped traces, on which the blind will acts.

your other terms can be all derived from this first heap.

btw,

I dont let me manipulate by statements "If you are not the same view as me than you are a terrible bad guy".

that's not what i intended. i just pointed out that that mode of thinking is not a very insightful one, and the terminology should not be taken too seriously, we all know words are just that, only if we become poets for a moment then this restriction breaks up.

explaining other people is unnecessary, if you can actually explain one.

Thigle, it really seems to me, that you live in two worlds that you cant bring together. There is one world with fascinating and divine structures, where there is no self and there are a lots of duality, and quaternions, and most exalted philosophical discussion. And the other world where you say "you" and "me" in the normal daily sense, where you really (=in reality) have a flat, where you can go, if it rains out there. These both worlds are so extremely distant, that I cant see, how you ever will bring them together.

actually i live in 3 worlds, which are all the same realm. the 'world of fascinating and divine structures' as you call it, is the multidimensional realm BETWEEN the virtual and the specific, realm of possibility -the archetypal interface where primordial configurations (like multidimensional forms & operators) bridge the virtual and what you call 'daily' world. but these are really the same ! that's why spirit is the body, because its so subtle it permeates not only the informational(bodies/dimensions) but also the formal(or 'daily sense' world as you call it).

there's nothing to bring together, as nothing is divided, apart from apparently.

to gain understanding of any duality, look at it through triadic scheme, by finding its centre, or making it into a dialectic cycle. any triad is a simple holistic understanding, that shows the indivisibility of A from antiA, and that relation between one and other, that link itself, is the third term.

so 3 worlds my friend, but only to make it explainable. in actuality, these are just 3 foci on 1 circle(cycle), and nothing needs to be brought together.

[bo198214]

so you cannot say that everyone has his own truth.

I didnt say it anywhere (in contrary I even fight this opinion!). What indeed I mean is that buddhism is (only) one view, among various others. And I also mean that they are not isomorphic.

why are there countless instances of n-fold schemas of consciousness that all (at least partly) overlap ?

If I have 10 apples and 10 pears, then they are not the same, only because both are 10. Same with n-fold schemas.

I dont see how one objectively can say, that something is essential or not, as far as I know it is a very personal affair what is essential.

essences are not simple ideas ! that's what husserl find in our tradition, when he realized the difference between IDEAS - abstract glosses on things, and ESSENCES, or Kinds, which are 'constraints on the attributes of things', what make things internally coherent under external deformations.

So to the point, you can say objectively what is essential for everybody?

we here consider what is necessary for consciousness and not what actually is the human consciousness

through what medium do you consider that? through consciousness. so you cannot avoid it. otherwise it's like looking through a telescope, or a kaleidoscope, or through somMedium in general, and hoping to see the medium itself (or a picture of what is as it is, a clear picture. which is even more non-sense).

I can not quite follow you. For me it sounds like: Because I am human, I can only think about human consciousness. Because I live in 3d, I only can think about 3d-universe. You see, its not conclusive. Its not necessary to always bring self-reference into play. Please only where appropriate. Same with:

so to consider consciousness, you cannot use (simple) consiousness, in the same way as you cannot see your eye through your eye itself. but you can always use mirror.
you have to become aware of consciousness, if you want to understand it at all, as well as what is necessary for consciousness.

I can consider consciousness, plainly as I am.

they were never intended being equivalent. But they are built on each other
Perception/Will -> Self-Objectivity -> Self -> Other -> Many-Objectivity

this is not different from skandhas anyway, you just can't get over different terminology,

I usally dont think in words, but in relations. And this chain is different from the skandhas as far as I can see. But I know two mind reflexes that indeed were triggered as reaction of my original post. That is one to take the points as philosophical postulates and two to put it in the drawer of n-fold statements, like very common in buddhism. Not to mention, that it was not intended to be either of them.

the terminology should not be taken too seriously, we all know words are just that, only if we become poets for a moment then this restriction breaks up.

I dont see, where I was in terminology.

actually i live in 3 worlds, ... but these are really the same !

For all I care you can live in infinite other worlds. I dont think that they are the same, but they overlap. And that are the critical places.
You say on the one hand, Self is a misconception, you dont need to explain others when you explained one. On the other hand you use "I" and "you" in the same way as everybody else do. Thats for example an overlapping place that you can not handle. Same with "spirit" is "body".

and nothing needs to be brought together.

Maybe in essence not, but you - my friend - should (be able to) bring it together.

[thigle]

thigle wrote:
so you cannot say that everyone has his own truth.

I didnt say it anywhere (in contrary I even fight this opinion!).

here it is, where you act nihilistic.(meaning you deny or believe in absence of essence to things, subjects or objects):

I dont see how one objectively can say, that something is essential or not, as far as I know it is a very personal affair what is essential.

first, giving exclusive hold of truth to objectivity, you deny it to subjectivity.
second, you try to reclaim the hold of essential (truth) to personality.
third, it's incoherent to state that one can objectively say anything at all, for it is always the subject speaking. (i suppose you don't hear objects like tables and rocks laugh and talk, or do yo ? )
maybe you meant if someone could state (subjectively) something that appears objective.
or other phrasing: if essential (which is categorically more inclusive set than truth which is just an attribute) is to be discerned subjectively, how could one really express truth (purely) objectively ?

why are there countless instances of n-fold schemas of consciousness that all (at least partly) overlap ?

If I have 10 apples and 10 pears, then they are not the same, only because both are 10. Same with n-fold schemas.

bo ! you didn't think really. i don't claim the sameness of specifics, i claim common objectivity ! the chair is chair regardless of your conception (idea) of it. in that way, consciousness (or soul-structure) is a stuff that is basically the same for everything conscious, though it is differentiated specifically according to the particular karmic pattern of the being.

n-fold schemas appear and overlap coz they are abstractions over the same essence - over the Kind of being called consciousness.

so no apples & pears, no silly action. do you get the difference between a thought(or idea) and essence(Kind) or not ?

So to the point, you can say objectively what is essential for everybody?

surely not objectively, for that is a non-sense of a major kind. but is it that hard to just see it (nor objectively, nor subjectively) ?
look instead of saying, perceive instead of willing:
essence = Kind = minimal set of constraints on attributes of a thing.
everybody is not a thing, it's either an abstraction (idea) over social field, or stands (in context) for Everybody, in which case the thing in question is a global view on the (totality of) social special system.

essential for reflexive(social)systems are octonionic algebras, Wilderness, verticality, propensities, traces, minimal semantic difference that generates the meaning - the chiasm, etc.
buddhists (which i am not, or everybody is) would simply say that essential are 4 truths, first being the suffering or the incompleteness of personal state.
to everybody indivisible unity of 3 gates of existence are essential, as they stem from 3 primordial imprints (of body, voice-energy and mind).

world is essential to everybody.

or if you meant by everybody each sentient being, or each human, than i'd drop from octonions to quaternions, talk about differAnce, autopoietic special systems, etc.

bo, pleaaaaaaase understand that meaning that is used with 'objective' is usually inappropriate. ob.jective just means 'thrown forth', or 'thrown before'. it is just our western dual mindset that always tries to defeat one of the members of any duality by the other. it is not that objective is true and subjective untrue. there can be false objectivity and true subjectivity as well !
(did you know that reading texts from before renaissance, you have to read ob.ject as sub.ject and vice versa, the their meaning flipped with the birth of individualized rationality, mirrored in teh (symbolic) form of bruneleschi's perspective construction, which stem from putting the observer OUT into the picture plane, into the ob.jective realm seemingly beyond, or in the picture. that's why in early renaissance perspective demonstration drawings one often finds a symbol of the eye in the central vanishing point. before that conceptual move, or step into that infinity, our focal point dwelled mainly on the other side.

but the idea/essence issue, just try to distinct and not mix semantic levels, otherwise we're lost in sense-less talk of viscious-circles feedbacking on us all that's needed is some etymological beginnerism.

as someone said: radical mixture is insanity, radical distinction is suprarationality. i add (to counterbalance the dualism of the statement): mixture white and distinction black, their relationship can be graphed as YinYang symbol.

now to this:

we here consider what is necessary for consciousness and not what actually is the human consciousness

through what medium do you consider that? through consciousness. so you cannot avoid it. otherwise it's like looking through a telescope, or a kaleidoscope, or through somMedium in general, and hoping to see the medium itself (or a picture of what is as it is, a clear picture. which is even more non-sense).

I can not quite follow you. For me it sounds like: Because I am human, I can only think about human consciousness. Because I live in 3d, I only can think about 3d-universe. You see, its not conclusive. Its not necessary to always bring self-reference into play. Please only where appropriate.

yep, you cannot follow me because you cannot follow you (to your own extiction, or until you see your own back). if you want to understand/explain consciousness, and rule self-referentiality (which means feedbacking actually) out of the game, just forget it.

all of the traditions, whether mystical, religious, philosophical, or scientific, agree in one form or another on the self-referentiality of consciousness. many even claim the self-referentiality to be the key, or even very consciousness itself. which is not improbable nor impossible at all.

i said what i said, it's simple:
you consider consciousness.
how do you do it (through what medium) ?
through (your own) consciousness.
so you got consciousness on mind (or put otherwise, consciousness is the object of your consciousness)
you see now where the self reference pops up ?

does this then give sense ? :

so to consider consciousness, you cannot use (simple) consiousness, in the same way as you cannot see your eye through your eye itself. but you can always use mirror.
you have to become aware of consciousness, if you want to understand it at all, as well as what is necessary for consciousness.

I can consider consciousness, plainly as I am.

you can but then its your problem and stuck you are as Descartes with his cogito est sum or how was it, 'I think therefore i am'. or is it that you claim that you are therefore you think ? better but still not actual.

they were never intended being equivalent. But they are built on each other
Perception/Will -> Self-Objectivity -> Self -> Other -> Many-Objectivity

this is not different from skandhas anyway, you just can't get over different terminology,

I usally dont think in words, but in relations. And this chain is different from the skandhas as far as I can see.

not that much. skandhas are usually explained from FORM towards CONSCIOUSNESS, but they function as a feedback structure, a cycle. depending on how you look at it, it process linear time, on which it rolls, performing different kinds of work and feeding out patterned experience.

but let's not force analogy overlapping discoveries where noone wants to discover.

That is one to take the points as philosophical postulates and two to put it in the drawer of n-fold statements, like very common in buddhism. Not to mention, that it was not intended to be either of them.

you claimed buddhism being about doing, now it's about putting things into label-drawers. don't insult buddhism, have nothing to do with th issue and cannot defend, only through silence. if you can't or don't want to use it, ok, just state "no more x-ism in my thread" and i respect that. but if you don't see that it's just words we use to make more refined distinctions that can we feedback with experience, thus refining it as well, well, i doon't have what to add then.

actually i live in 3 worlds, ... but these are really the same !

For all I care you can live in infinite other worlds. I dont think that they are the same, but they overlap. And that are the critical places.
you say on the one hand, Self is a misconception, you dont need to explain others when you explained one. On the other hand you use "I" and "you" in the same way as everybody else do. ...Thats for example an overlapping place that you can not handle.

bo, dear, all is overlapping. there ain't a bit that doesn't overlap. than t distinctions disappears again.
just that once we need to focus on this or that and we make let's say 3-fold distinction. the things as such, that we distinct in many ways, they don't change, but we may gain understanding through the process of dissasembling(abstracting) and assembling(specifying).
and on using words like I and you, how do you know how i mean them if we cannot agree on understanding of so many other things ?

rather than overlap, interpenetration might be more accurate word, and btw, you accused me after missing my context (

...permeated through the same world-space...

)

so i don't need to handle it, as it's unhandable. i don't have this ill will to power, to dominate, to handle. what for ? what you wanna use it for ?

in absolute reality (now that's blunt) noone can handle it. that's how it's handled. or is that too much self-referential for you ? kill yourself and it can be handled. otherwise forget about handling it.

also why you add that "spirit" is "body" to that unhandability issue ? they are not one, they are not 2. sometimes one states they are 2 to counteract monism, other times one states they are 1 to counteract the dualism. still, they are not one not two. and thats why they're one (of a different kind) anyway. (did i skip the self-referential induction this time ?)

and nothing needs to be brought together.

Maybe in essence not, but you - my friend - should (be able to) bring it together.

noone(not even your friend) can bring together what is not divided yet, there's nothing to bring together. there's only the way to dwell in the actuality of manifestation, thus integrating continually. what more do you want ?

nagarjuna says: where there are no extremes, there's no middle either.

[bo198214]

here it is, where you act nihilistic.

I am nihilistic if I deny that everyone only has its own truth? :?

first, giving exclusive hold of truth to objectivity, you deny it to subjectivity.
second, you try to reclaim the hold of essential (truth) to personality.

where?

third, it's incoherent to state that one can objectively say anything at all, for it is always the subject speaking. (i suppose you don't hear objects like tables and rocks laugh and talk, or do yo ? )
maybe you meant if someone could state (subjectively) something that appears objective.

Of course But if we always dive into those minorities, we never will progress.

or other phrasing: if essential (which is categorically more inclusive set than truth which is just an attribute) is to be discerned subjectively, how could one really express truth (purely) objectively ?

The normal meaning of "essential" is how important it is. First "true" and "essential" are not of the same type, i.e. only propositions can be true or false, where definitions and objects can be important. But even if we admit propositions to be important or not, I dont see the contradiction when saying that some propositions are equally true for all people, but more or less important for certain people. Important/Essential can also be respective to a certain goal (and so even maybe objective essential things are possible).

so no apples & pears, no silly action. do you get the difference between a thought(or idea) and essence(Kind) or not ?

No, *you* introduced the philosophical meaning of 'essential' and probably even your philosophical meaning of 'idea' and 'thought' is different from the usual meaning. And I am not willing to put a slightly or majorly deviating understanding on each word, unless there is good reason for it.

buddhists (which i am not, or everybody is) would simply say that essential are 4 truths, first being the suffering or the incompleteness of personal state...

Essential for what/whom?
Surely not for the mason, that wants to build a house.

bo, pleaaaaaaase understand that meaning that is used with 'objective' is usually inappropriate. ob.jective just means 'thrown forth', or 'thrown before'.

So, what is then objective in usual sense? I asked you to define it, but everything you said was, subjectivity and objectivity are only two appearances or what else of consciousness. The one is the more inner, the other the more outer. So and now tell me, how one should work, with that blurriness!?

it is just our western dual mindset that always tries to defeat one of the members of any duality by the other.

Mathematics can be performed by every culture. And indeed it favors the true proposition over the wrong propositions.

(did you know ...

No, i didnt know, but sounds interesting.

if you want to understand/explain consciousness, and rule self-referentiality (which means feedbacking actually) out of the game, just forget it.

The only thing I said: please where appropriate! and not on the basis: Somewhere self-reference must be, so I mention it in every situation.

i said what i said, it's simple:
you consider consciousness.
how do you do it (through what medium) ?
through (your own) consciousness.
so you got consciousness on mind (or put otherwise, consciousness is the object of your consciousness)
you see now where the self reference pops up ?

I understood you well. Thatswhy I mentioned that you only detected a pseudo-self-reference. When I try to observe how I observe, I come into difficulties. But if a make a theory on making theories, or if I consciously speak about consciousness (or if I physicly make a physics experiment, or if I loudly talk about loudness, etc etc) there isnt any difficulty. The branch of mathematical logic is a good example for that. Its a proper mathematical theory. In the same way I can do what you think of being impossible (because you see pseudo-self-referential problems):

I can consider consciousness, plainly as I am.

you can but then its your problem and stuck you are

So by the same argumentation you would also call mathematical logic stuck ... tsts

That is one to take the points as philosophical postulates and two to put it in the drawer of n-fold statements, like very common in buddhism. Not to mention, that it was not intended to be either of them.

you claimed buddhism being about doing, now it's about putting things into label-drawers. don't insult buddhism

Hello! Read what is written. The only assertion about Buddhism was that it has several n-fold this-and-that. About which you hopefully agree. I assume it was explained in that way to support memory. If I know there are *5* skandhas, its a kind of checksum for my memory.

bo, dear, all is overlapping. there ain't a bit that doesn't overlap.

I thought two disjoint sets dont overlap ... :?

and on using words like I and you, how do you know how i mean them if we cannot agree on understanding of so many other things ?

by how you use them, i.e. in the same way as me.

so i don't need to handle it, as it's unhandable. i don't have this ill will to power, to dominate, to handle. what for ? what you wanna use it for ?

You have the will to discuss this topic, and probably the will to do much more things in your life. What for? If everything is anyway one, and distinction is completely unneccessary.

or is that too much self-referential for you ?

Probably I can bear more self-reference than you. My favorite topic at university was recursion theory and mathematical logic. But over some years only seeing everywhere self-reference, it lost its attraction ...

[thigle]

I am nihilistic if I deny that everyone only has its own truth? Confused :?

yes

first, giving exclusive hold of truth to objectivity, you deny it to subjectivity.
second, you try to reclaim the hold of essential (truth) to personality.

where?

here(again):

I dont see how one objectively can say, that something is essential or not, as far as I know it is a very personal affair what is essential.

you are a child of postmodern era. autonomous individuality - everyone's own identity, freedom of choice, these rule over truth or reality aspects of Being.

Of course But if we always dive into those minorities, we never will progress.

we never do progress, we just transform, re-adjust continually, mutate. and diving into minorities we are raising in the centres. don't be lazy to distinct so finely that distinction falls off. it is necessary to discover that existential gate from Being into ec.sistence.

or other phrasing: if essential (which is categorically more inclusive set than truth which is just an attribute) is to be discerned subjectively, how could one really express truth (purely) objectively ?

The normal meaning of "essential" is how important it is. First "true" and "essential" are not of the same type, i.e. only propositions can be true or false, where definitions and objects can be important. But even if we admit propositions to be important or not, I dont see the contradiction when saying that some propositions are equally true for all people, but more or less important for certain people. Important/Essential can also be respective to a certain goal (and so even maybe objective essential things are possible).

the normal meaning of "essential" is not the essential meaning of the "essential". the essential meaning of "essential" is idiosyncratic, completely of itself, being of a Kind, not of a Type.
you say your favorite at university was logic ? and you don't see categorical difference between Ideas and Kinds(essences) ? back to university, or self-study update ! :twisted: learn on Russel's and Whitehead's Theory of Higher Logical Types, further refined by Copi, as well as Palmer. no way you get around it ! Kinds=Essences are not simple Ideas ! understand and enjoy, ignore and stay confused, keeping it mixed...

so no apples & pears, no silly action. do you get the difference between a thought(or idea) and essence(Kind) or not ?

No, *you* introduced the philosophical meaning of 'essential' and probably even your philosophical meaning of 'idea' and 'thought' is different from the usual meaning. And I am not willing to put a slightly or majorly deviating understanding on each word, unless there is good reason for it.

godamnit, bo i thought you more open ! here, an attitude-vitamin:
buddhist heuristics 1(of4): "...on teacher's message not his personality...on what is meant (intent), not just on the words...on ever-fresh awareness, not on judgemental awareness...on what is definitive, not on what is provisional"

*I* did not introduce it ! it's actually more than hundred years old. i even gave you reference: Husserl. Edmund Husserl. do you reckon that guy ? the father of phenomenology. no Heiddeger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Lyotard, Foucalt, Deleuze-Guattari, Virilio, no continental philosophy at all without this distinction between Ideas and Essences ! DAMN IT ! this is n-th time i explain, saving you dozens of philosophy books to chew through and you are just ignoring it due to your lazy mind or i dontknowhat! THINK IT godamit ! its so simple ! do you not distinguish any semantic levels of your languague ? beings are not Being, that is any being's Being. and abstraction ever that are Ideas - unities of presences, abstract glosses. Husserl distinguished Nomeatic nucleus (the external coherence of a thing) from Essences (internal coherence, constraint on the attributes of a thing, what makes it itself, its KIND !)

and dont' forget essence did not enter our languague and thought alone, it came as duality to existence, some 400 years ago(or even less). (essentia/existentia.) existence we got from arabs, who had no word for Being when transcribing all that we know from old Greeks. so they used their 'existence' instead, which entered back when Aristotle and others were translated back into Europe. that' also period when/where 'algebra' comes from, it actually was a part of a longer name ...Al-Jabr..., meaning also stone or something hard. but also algebra itself, as part of math, with focus on operations, came from arabs. euclid and greeks were mainly geometrical (almost wholly).

anyway, ec.sistere etymologically(=actually) means "out-of-itself". while Being is more like "in-itself". now you can see more into how sub.ject & ob.ject were flipped, how emptiness of existence entered the Being, fragmented it, emptied it of essence, but nihilistically forgot to do the same to itself, being out-of-itself.

so each time brings its own challenge. our is to learn to radically distinct in the middle of radical confusion(mixture). to make non-nihilistic distinctions.

buddhists (which i am not, or everybody is) would simply say that essential are 4 truths, first being the suffering or the incompleteness of personal state...

Essential for what/whom?
Surely not for the mason, that wants to build a house.

surely yes. the pope and aliens and that idiot Bush apply as well. me too, you 2, any sentient being.

bo, pleaaaaaaase understand that meaning that is used with 'objective' is usually inappropriate. ob.jective just means 'thrown forth', or 'thrown before'.

So, what is then objective in usual sense? I asked you to define it, but everything you said was, subjectivity and objectivity are only two appearances or what else of consciousness. The one is the more inner, the other the more outer. So and now tell me, how one should work, with that blurriness!?

and what that i defined it as aspect of duality !? you said you think in relations, so what's so dificult with a dialectic duo ? that's it ! but let you have another one:
objective in the usual sense is often identified with these reductions: the only true, empirical, physical, measurable, commonly observable, etc.
essentially, ob.jective is "forth-throwing", is one of the ways (I won't tell you how many Kinds of ways there are, you don't like these countings, and still don't wanna discern Kind from Type) in which energy manifests - that in which apprehended appears as "before", out of, not within the apprehender.
so there can be objective, or subjective manifestations of energy (like trees, appearing objectively, or fear, appearing subjectively).
but they both appear in the same awareness. manifestation on the level of neither object nor subject, like sound or color, that's another one. do you know the next one ? and the valence of this set of distinctions ?

and how one should work with that bluriness ? exactly like that, by working with it. it's simple. just realize it's a 2-manifold within awareness, that both inner and outer are Inner. you can sit on it for a while. distinguish one, distinguish other. learn what they have in common, learn where they differ. experience where both of these are experienced, and focus on that awareness. then call again.

our western dual mindset that always tries to defeat one of the members of any duality by the other.

Mathematics can be performed by every culture. And indeed it favors the true proposition over the wrong propositions.

you miss the point. that was that looking at 2-configurations as dualities is stupid, because they are complementarities, not fighting parties.

I understood you well. Thatswhy I mentioned that you only detected a pseudo-self-reference. When I try to observe how I observe, I come into difficulties. But if a make a theory on making theories, or if I consciously speak about consciousness (or if I physicly make a physics experiment, or if I loudly talk about loudness, etc etc) there isnt any difficulty. The branch of mathematical logic is a good example for that. Its a proper mathematical theory. In the same way I can do what you think of being impossible (because you see pseudo-self-referential problems):

if you understood me well, why did you state

I can not quite follow you.

? is this a tricky word-game ? we just state anything then state we didn't ?
you did not understand me well, because you cannot observe well. you yourself write:

when i try to observe how i observe, i come into difficulties.

that's because you still did not discern awareness and consciousness, in other words, you are not dead yet. yeah, dead.
it's inconclusive only because you don't know where to apply. check out the charnel ground, dance with the skeletons.

and it's not pseudo-self-reference, it's simple (self-reference)^1, like a mobius strip. btw, what do you call proper self-reference ? also, if such an expert on self-reference, please teach me on where does it springs from, and where are its limits and can you give a modell of let's say (self-reference)^4 ?

I can consider consciousness, plainly as I am.

you can but then its your problem and stuck you are

So by the same argumentation you would also call mathematical logic stuck ... tsts

no way. mathematical logic exhausts itself. each Kind(sorry) of logic has its domain and cannot be relied on in foreign countries. you miss my point: you CAN but is it appropriate ?

Hello! Read what is written. The only assertion about Buddhism was that it has several n-fold this-and-that. About which you hopefully agree.

if you leave it with grand first letter. for buddhism, i disagree. and Hello! remember what you write ! :

to put it in the drawer of n-fold statements, like very common in buddhism.

AND

Buddhism is for doing and not for talking about

? or is someone else typing your answers ? :wink:

I thought two disjoint sets dont overlap ..

and i thought a set cannot be a member of itself.

and on using words like I and you, how do you know how i mean them if we cannot agree on understanding of so many other things ?
by how you use them, i.e. in the same way as me.

meaning is intentional, use is not necessarily. that means it's not transitive, you cannot know fully my intent from how i use a tool.

so i don't need to handle it, as it's unhandable. i don't have this ill will to power, to dominate, to handle. what for ? what you wanna use it for ?

You have the will to discuss this topic, and probably the will to do much more things in your life. What for? If everything is anyway one, and distinction is completely unneccessary.

??? bo you react to a negation of my proposition ! and i don't state at all that distinction is COMPLETELY unnecessary, nor that everything is anyway one, it's just you that stop there again.

Probably I can bear more self-reference than you. My favorite topic at university was recursion theory and mathematical logic. But over some years only seeing everywhere self-reference, it lost its attraction ...

perhaps you lost the challenge, not the self-reference its attraction. perhaps you were unable to refine enough ?

[bo198214]

Hear thigle, all I have seen from you, you can wonderfully comment and judge what was said (not only what was said but also what I am), especially completely independent of the content. But I never saw you developing new scenarios or applicate your knowledge to concrete situations.

The top of this kind of discussing I already told: that you claim there is no self or it is a misconception, and if you explained one you also explained other. And on the other hand still use 'I' and 'you' and distinct between them. And then explaining that there is nothing to bring to together.

This is for me: saying one thing and doing the other thing. Catapulting every contradicting thing into the realm of philosophical dialectic or buddhistic unity, where no one can anymore grasp it. (And surely you have again a nice comment about grasping in buddhism completely avoiding the content of what was said.)

And you must admit that it is quite unrealistic that I run to the library, lend the collected works of Husserl, only to realize after, that it was completely irrelevant for what I try to develop here. In the same way irrelevant as the 5 skandhas and the 4 buddhistic truths are to the mason that wants to build a house. If you have something relevant, I guess it (s relevance) is explainable in simple words and examples.

In the same way as I explained you, that self-reference does not cause problems in the development here and in the development of mathematical logic.

and Hello! remember what you write ! :

to put it in the drawer of n-fold statements, like very common in buddhism.

Yes and its a misunderstanding. "common" was intended to refer to "n-fold statements" and not to "put into drawer".