Snowbird said “…we only receive what is being transmitted to (our senses) but not the whole picture and even what we get can be distorted and misled.”
TimB replies: Welcome to the Universe, Snowball.
I’m just trying to show that the OP is making a claim based on little evidence for doing so.
Like how Science can’t escape language forming frames through which we look at the world through: COSMOLOGIES, AND SEMANTICS. | Kone, Krusos, Kronos
Among the other links I have posted it just shows how limited science is in regards to learning about the world.
You are having trouble accepting boundaries. There are limitations to everything. You might want to have libertarian free will. But it ain’t gonna happen (except maybe virtually so in your imagination or in lucid dreaming). Similarly, we are limited by the way our sensory and intellectual processing abilities function. There are boundaries.
You have made that point. But you don’t seem to accept it. Do you imagine some value in continuing to pursue that line of thinking? If so what is the value?
Do you think that we don’t understand the limitations of our perceptual/processing abilities? I think that is pretty common knowledge. It’s just that our perceptual/processing abilities are functional in our lives. Are you suggesting that we should abandon our perceptual/processing skills because they have limitations? What would you replace that with? Apathy? Hopelessness? An inability to act?
Our perceptual/processing abilities are the way we interface with our world. It has limitations. But it still works. My glasses help me to see better than I would otherwise, but they do not allow me to see things that are microscopic or macroscopic. They do not allow me to see in infra-red spectrum, xray, etc. Should I therefore get rid of my glasses, because they are not capable of helping me see other aspects of the true environment in which I exist?
Should I claim that since others, also, don’t have more expansive visual abilities, that they can be disregarded in their observations, because they don’t have extra-visual perception?
It is often difficult to come up with a determination of what is true. Do you think that we should not accept what we determine to be true, even tho we observe supporting data?
Your position seems to be that since our perception/processing abilities are inherently limited, we might as well abandon them. If that is your position, then I think that you, and persons who think similarly, are a threat to our continued functioning as a society.
I’m not sure what the story is trying to imply but looking at similar stuff on his page seems to suggest Maya or illusion is a recurring theme with Materialism being his bone of contention (in the altruism link).So. You're not sure, but this guy said something, and he said it a couple times. Do I understand you correctly?
So. You’re not sure, but this guy said something, and he said it a couple times. Do I understand you correctly?Well it's a common them in the spirituality I see today, and he is in that vein. Like in his article about Solipsism.
As for Tim, I am referring to the cosmology article where he points out that language frames us in a view point which is limiting.
Ok, language inherently frames how we process info. So? Should we just give up on language? Everything has boundaries/limitations, else nothing would be coherent.
@snowcity - I'm just trying to show that the OP is making a claim based on little evidence for doing so.Well why not do that based on what I actually said? Rather than the stories you make up in your own mindscape?
So, lets take it from the top —
I got a question:
When do we as a society finally get to behave intolerant and confrontational towards malicious willful ignorance?
When do we as a society finally get be militant in defense of respecting truth, honesty, physical reality?
After all, we do need each other to keep ourselves honest.
Honesty, respect for knowledge and experience, is the key to learning and lasting constructive solutions –
so when the hell do we as a society get to start demanding that of EVERYONE, even of the God Fearing respect physical truth?
When do we get to point out the difference between (the God of) EGO Run Amok,and the God of Time & Light, Life & Love???
When will we as individuals start appreciating the two fundamental domains of reality?
The Physical Reality, this Earth and Evolution, which gave birth to us, and which will continue long after we are dust and less.And our (individual and collective) Human Mindscapes, our minds, our eyes to perception.
Please thoughtfully challenge my words, it would be interesting to hear what you do with them,
or whether you’ll simply resort to more distraction away from the words written up there?
snowcity said; Solipsism it is a Philosophical current were Consciousness it is exclusive to the individual, therefore beyond the self, everything can be held in doubt.No, even yourself can be held in doubt. Your brain is only capable of making "best guesses" (controlled hallucinations) about the sensory information it receives from both external and internal conditions.
Everyone is (controlled) hallucinating his/her reality. It is only when our hallucinations (best guesses) agree, we call that reality.
Everyone is (controlled) hallucinating his/her reality. It is only when our hallucinations (best guesses) agree, we call that reality.But if the very existence of others is in doubt then how can you agree?
Do you agree that others doubt your existence?
I don’t doubt the existence of others. And I am more of a skeptic than the average bear.
I’ll be honest I don’t really doubt other people exist but the idea that all I have on that is belief is what bugs me.
I don’t doubt materialism either, it’s the view that makes the most sense to me and is the least human centered one, at least I think so. But I don’t know what to do when people question that.
The ones who question it are usually new age type followers or gurus of eastern religions/spirituality saying stuff like this: Ramana Maharshi - Ramana Maharshi added a new photo.
I don’t think silence is more effective than speech and I’m not sure of his reasoning leading up to it either. But personally I can’t see how people can disagree or why.
but the idea that all I have on that is belief is what bugs meI think you're confused about "belief" - Are you saying every thought you have is a "belief"?
Can you unpack the difference between “thoughts” and “beliefs”, or are you assuming they are the same?
Then there’s the quote:
Silence is more effective than speech.From silence came thought, from thought the ego, and from ego speech.
So if speech is effective, how much more effective must its original source be?
It’s a straw man, an empty jingle.
I mean when you get to set all the parameters of your thought stream, you can conjure up anything you want.
{I think you’ve trapped yourself in a mental world that refuses to acknowledge there’s such a thing a Physical Reality, which possesses definite solid touchstones, that are beyond you and your desires and beliefs. }
What about using physical reality as a touchstone for grounding your ‘beliefs’ within the framework of this biosphere you are a part of?
“Silence” came before “thought” - but that doesn’t make silence the wellspring of thought.
The wellspring of thought is little physical structures
(folds within folds of constructive harmonic cumulative poetry cascading down the flow of time.)
sure we don’t fully understand them, but we know quite a bit.
The brain’s structures are where you’ll find the wellspring of thought!
Although are primal cells conducting some sort of “thought” that allow them to navigate the world and propagate?
“Silence” that’s just poetry and soothing mind games - which is okay -
though recognize that it is quite different from thinking about Physical Reality. Or?
Seriously think it through.
Thought inspired a lot of things, ego being only one of them, complex human speech is another, so what of it? Actually “inspired” is lousy way of putting it how - about facilitated?
Speech came from thought???Thought facilitates "Speech". Speech is an expression of the need to communicate more complex in people, but it exists in varying form throughout our biosphere.
Please, think that through.
How about looking at it from another perspective:The origin of speech is the need to communicate, which actually started at the beginning of biology’s Deeptime.
(not to be mistakes with the Universe’s deeptime)
The need to communicate is a primal biology need that traces back to the first living things - before there were critters, let alone microtubules and neurons.
Even tossing “Thought” around like that is the proverbial poop against the wall to see what sticks and calling it profound.
But if one wanted to be adult and serious, one would first have to define what “thought” you are discussing.
Why?
Because “thought” - that is the processing of incoming information also has it’s origins in the deepest depths of biology,
way before neurons, or fields full of molecular high rise structures processing ever more intricate layers of understanding, the little gray cells.
how much more effective must its original source be?Here again, this is simply gobbledegook. What could be more effect than its origin???
Sure what could be more effect in a human than taking it back to the origins (well a milestone) like those holy first hundred days when a person is as close to perfection and godliness as is humanly possible. Last year I got to revel in one of those most exalted individuals during that short period. That infant had an awful lot of things to share with me - but when it comes to me the adult human, thinking and reacting to the world around me, how effective are all those sacred moments (beyond my heart, spirit, soul) in me reacting and surviving in a nasty world that would just as suck one dry as to let them live?
Get what I’m trying to get across?
The “origin of thinking” is not “more effective” than the product of exercising that thinking through living and learning.
Does that resonate at all?
what are you quoting from CC?
Thought didn’t come from silence.
And some kinds of thought came from our development of speech.
Speech, aka “verbal behavior” is functional. Each of us developed it within a “verbal community”. Just thinking, would not cut it in terms of developing speech. We all needed listeners to respond to our emerging development of language or each of us would not have complex speech today.
And having developed verbal behavior, aka speech, we were able to think in more sophisticated ways.
Again not a relevant post strawberry
Strawberry,
Respectfully, we don’t really function at the molecular, atomic, nuclear, and smaller microscopic levels. Yes those scientists are geniuses, but that “Quantum” stuff is about the wee things so teeny that we are pretty much removed from that reality (at least, from our Macro level perspective in which we actually do things.)
I am rather fond of the “real world”. I accept that the quantum may impinge on our Macro existence. Just as we can impinge on the Quantum. e.g. splitting an atom
Emotionalstrawberry said; I suggest you read this book by Ajit Varki. The theory that humans had an edge on survival not because of their biologically superior traits, but because they could make the psychological leap of living in denial of reality. The book is fascinating.I suggest that before you read any other book that you read this scientific account of how homo sapiens split from the other great apes because of a single mutation.
Human Chromosome 2 is a fusion of two ancestral chromosomes. Alec MacAndrew
Introduction
All great apes apart from man have 24 pairs of chromosomes. There is therefore a hypothesis that the common ancestor of all great apes had 24 pairs of chromosomes and that the fusion of two of the ancestor's chromosomes created chromosome 2 in humans. The evidence for this hypothesis is very strong.......more
Conclusion
The evidence that human chromosome 2 is a fusion of two of the common ancestor's chromosomes is overwhelming.http://www.evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm
Denial, one of the defense mechanisms described by Freud, no doubt has some survival value, else it would not be so ubiquitous among humans.
But I don’t think we know that no other species has some similar mental/emotional process. Elephants seem to have awareness of mortality and this did not end their branch on the evolutionary tree. We humans tend to over-estimate our uniqueness, I think.
Now I think that we are unique in some ways. Our complex verbal behavior includes textual behavior. Other species do not have this, I don’t think, at least not to the extent that we do. Tho as I write, I consider ants. I think that they communicate textually in a way by leaving chemical indicators for their fellow ants to follow. And whale songs may be a way of trying to record information, similar to past human practices of passing on info thru memorization and recitation.
Another way that we are unique is that our opposable thumbs have made technology possible for us. Who knows, elephants and dolphins may actually be smarter than us, but they don’t have nifty little hands like we do.
But back to the defense mechanism of “denial”. Our complex verbal behavior makes lying to ourselves and others possible. So I think, questioning why other species never achieved human-like uniqueness in this respect is faulty, for a couple of reasons.
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As I said, there are other species who have somewhat complex verbal behavior, e.g. elephants, dolphins, whales and perhaps others. We do not really know whether some have a similar psychological defense mechanism such as denial.
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If we want to understand better how we humans evolved to develop any of our psychological processes, we simply should come to better understand our development of complex verbal behavior.