![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 23 of 23. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2005, at 22:02:36
If you think about it, the inside of your own mind is the only thing you can be sure of.
Whatever you believe - whether it is about the sun, moon, and stars, the neighborhood in which you live, history, science, other people, even the existence of your own body - is based on your experiences and thoughts, feelings and sense impressions. Thats all you have to go on directly, whether you see the book in your hands, or feel the floor under your feet, or remember that George Washington was the first president of the United States, or that water is H2O. Everything else is farther away from you than your inner experiences and thoughts, and reaches you only through them.
Ordinarily you have no doubts about the existence of the floor under your feet, or the tree outside the window, or your own teeth. In fact most of the time you don't even think about the mental states that make you aware of these things: you seem to be aware of them directly. But how do you know they really exist?
If you try to argue that there must be an external physical world, because you wouldn't see buildings, people, or stars unless there were things out there that reflected or shed light into your eyes and caused your visual experiences, the reply is obvious: How do you know *that*? It's just another claim about the external world and your relation to it, and it has to be based on the evidence of your senses.
But you can rely on that specific evidence about how visual experiences are caused only if you can already rely in general on the contents of your mind to tell you about the external world. And that is exactly what has been called into question. If you try to prove the reliability of your impressions by appealing to your impressions, you're arguing in a circle and won't get anywhere.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2005, at 22:17:27
In reply to How do we know anything?, posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2005, at 22:02:36
Would things seem any different to you if in fact all these things existed *only* in your mind - if everything you took to be the real world outside was just a giant dream or hallucination, from which you will never wake up? If it were like that, then of course you *couldn't* wake up, as you can from a dream, because it would mean there was no "real" world to wake up into. So it wouldn't be exactly like a normal dream or hallucination. As we usually think of dreams, they go on in the minds of people who are actually lying in a real bed in a real house, even if in the dream they are running away from a homicidal lawnmower through the streets of Kansas City. We also assume that normal dreams depend on what is happening in the dreamer's brain while he sleeps.
But couldn't all your experiences be like a giant dream with *no* external world outside it? How can you know that isn't what's going on? If all your experience were a dream with *nothing* outside, then any evidence you tried to use to prove to yourself that there was an outside world would just be part of the dream. If you knocked on the table or pinched yourself, you would hear the knock and feel the pinch, but that would be just one more thing going on inside your mind like everything else. It's no use: If you want to find out whether what's inside your mind is any guide to what's outside your mind, you can't depend on how things *seem* - from inside your mind - to give you the answer.
But what else is there to depend on? All your evidence about anything has to come through your mind - whether in the form of perception, the testimony of books and other people, or memory - and it is entirely consistent with everything you're aware of that *nothing at all* exists except the inside of your mnd.
It's even possible that you don't have a body or a brain - since your beliefs about that come only through the evidence of your senses. You've never seen your brain - you just assume that everybody has one - but even if you had seen it, or thought you had, that would have been just another visual experience. Maybe *you*, the subject of experience, are the only thing that exists, and there is no physical world at all - no stars, no earth, no human bodies. Maybe there isn't even any space.
The most radical conclusion to draw from this would be that your mind *is* the only thing that exists. This view is called solipsism. It is a very lonely view, and not too many people have held it. As you can tell from that remark, I don't believe it myself. If I were a silipsist I probably wouldn't be writing this book, since I wouldn't believe there was anyone else to read it. On the other hand, perhaps I would write it to make my inner life more interesting, by including the impression of the appearance of the book in print, of other people reading it and telling me their reactions, and so forth. I might even get the impression of royalties, if I'm lucky.
Perhaps you are a solipsist: in that case you will regard this book as a product of your own mind, coming into existence in your experience as you read it. Obviously nothing I can say can prove to you that I really exist, or that the book as a physical object exists.
On the other hand, to conclude that you are the only thing that exists is more than the evidence warrants. You can't *know* on the basis of what's in your mind that there's no world outside it. Perhaps the right conclusion is the more modest on ethat you don't know anything beyond your impressions and experiences. There may or may not be an external world, and if there is it may or may not be completely different from how it seems to you - there's no way for you to tell. This view is called skepticism about the external world.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2005, at 22:38:53
In reply to Re: How do we know anything?, posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2005, at 22:17:27
An even stronger form of skepticism is possible. Similar arguments seem to show that you don't know anything even about your own past existence and experiences, since all you have to go on are the present contents of your mind, including memory impressions. If you can't be sure that the world outside your mind exists *now*, how can you be sure that you yourself existed *before* now? How do you know you didn't just come into existence a few minutes ago, complete with all your present memories? The only evidence that you couldn't have come into existence a few minutes ago depends on beliefs about how people and their memories are produced, which rely in turn on beliefs about what has happened in the past. But to rely on those beliefs to prove that you existed in the past would again be to argue in a circle. You would be assuming the reality of the past to prove the reality of the past.
It seems that you are stuck with nothing you can be sure of except the contents of your own mind at the present moment. And it seems that anything you try to do to argue your way out of this predicament will fail, because the argument will have to assume what you are trying to prove - the existence of the external world beyond your mind.
Suppose, for instance, you argue that there must be an external world, because it is incredible that you should be having all these experiences without there being *some* explanation in terms of external causes. The skeptic can make two replies. First, even if there are external causes, how can you tell from the contents of your experience what those causes are like? You've never observed any of them directly. Second, what is the basis of your idea that everything has to have an explanation? It's true that in your normal, nonphilosophical conception of the world, processes like those which go on in your mind are caused, at least in part, by other things outside them. But you can't assume that this is true if what you're trying to figure out is how you know *anything* about the world outside your mind. And there is no way to prove such a principle just by looking at what's *inside* your mind. However plausible the principle may seem to you, what reason do you have to believe that it applies to the world?
Science won't help us with this problem either, though it might seem to. In ordinary scientific thinking, we rely on general principles of explanation to pass from the way the world first seems to us to a different conception of what it is really like. We try to explain the appearances in terms of a theory that describes the reality behind them, a reality that we can't observe directly. That is how physics and chemistry conclude that all the things we see around us are composed of invisibly small atoms. Could we argue that the general belief in the external world has the same kind of scientific backing as the belief in atoms?
The skeptic's answer is that the same process of scientific reasoning raises the same skeptical problem we have been considering all along: Science is just as vulnerable as perception. How can we know that the world outside our minds corresponds to our ideas of what would be a good theorietical explanation of our observations? If we can't establish the reliability of our sense experiences in relation to the external world, there's no reason to think we can rely on our scientific theories either...
There may be no way out of the cage of your own mind. This is sometimes called the egocentric predicament. And yet, after all this has been said, I have to admit it is practically impossible to believe seriously that all the things in the world around you might not really exist. Our acceptance of the external world is instinctive and powerful: we cannot just get rid of it by philosophical arguments. Not only do we go on acting *as if* other people and things exist; we *believe* that they do, even after we've gone through the arguments which appear to show we have no grounds for this belief. (We may have grounds, within the overall system of your beliefs about the world, for more particular beliefs about the existence of particular things: like a mouse in the breadbox, for example. But that is different. It assumes the existence of the external world.)
If a belief in the world outside our minds comes so naturally to us, perhaps we don't need grounds for it. We can just let it be and hope that we're right. And that in fact is what most people do after giving up the attempt to prove it: even if they can't give reasons against skepticism, they can't live with it either. But this means that we hold on to most of our ordinary beliefs about the world in the face of the fact that (a) they might be completely false, and (b) we have no basis for ruling out that possibility.
We are then left with three questions:
1. Is it possible that the inside of your mind is the only thing that exists - or that even if there is a world outside your mind, it is totally unlike what you believe it to be?
2. If these things are possible, do you have any way of proving to yourself that they are not actually true?
3. If you can't prove that anything exists outside your own mind, is it all right to go on believing in the external world anyway?"What Does it all Mean?" Thomas Nagel.
Posted by sunny10 on May 6, 2005, at 10:25:55
In reply to Re: How do we know anything?, posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2005, at 22:38:53
I don't even understand what's in my MIND at all more than half the time!!!
Posted by alexandra_k on May 6, 2005, at 11:48:34
In reply to Re: gotta admit your first line lost me..., posted by sunny10 on May 6, 2005, at 10:25:55
> I don't even understand what's in my MIND at all more than half the time!!!
Heh heh yeah.
Experiences. The way things seem to you. That is all it means. What you are conscious of. It lists specific examples...
Posted by sunny10 on May 6, 2005, at 14:01:08
In reply to Re: gotta admit your first line lost me... » sunny10, posted by alexandra_k on May 6, 2005, at 11:48:34
confusion right now!
I HAVE actually thought about stuff being "real", right down to "words"!
Somebody thought up words. That made them "real".
Somebody thought up physics; that made it "real".I still say that the reason there is so much miscommunication all has to do with perception...after all, how do we prove what is inferred vs what is implied???
All of life is perception... what is "real" to one person is sometimes completely irrelevant to others...
I agree with you completely... you're just better at writing than I !!!
Posted by jay on May 6, 2005, at 18:51:07
In reply to How do we know anything?, posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2005, at 22:02:36
Well, when you lose your child; your wife; all your money; your career; your best friends; that is reality kicking me in the face, and at that time, didn't really care if the world blew up...and any trivial questions irritated me. (Back THEN...1997 or so..) I know this is kinda religious...but it reminds of my situation and what somebody said to me...about the story of Job. (I am agnostic by the way..but...) You know the story..."God" comes and takes away all of these things from the poor guy to test his "Faith"....and a friend answered with "I think He took it a bit too far.." At that time, I was only disgusted with the world, asking mentally to people "Why are YOU alive and NOT THEM??!!". I was very angry...something I HAD to get over.
Existentialism really antagonizes somebody who has lost someone close to death...and even dying people themselves. I don't know if you know of Maslow's Hierarchy or not, but when your basic needs are not met, your physiological needs,.like you are starving, in horrific pain, or are homeless etc..you can't really move on as a human being towards the other goals of love, esteem, and eventually self-actualization. The need for self-actualization is "the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming."..or so say's Maslow.
Anyhow...I just think that there are answers, and often we overlook them. When reality rubs your face in it, we can still find answers, but just may have to take a different route.
Jay
Posted by alexandra_k on May 6, 2005, at 20:51:11
In reply to Re: yeah, I know- just happen to be in a state of, posted by sunny10 on May 6, 2005, at 14:01:08
> ... you're just better at writing than I !!!
Sorry. All three posts are an extract from Nagel. I included the link for the book in the last post.
Posted by sunny10 on May 9, 2005, at 8:56:14
In reply to Re: yeah, I know- just happen to be in a state of » sunny10, posted by alexandra_k on May 6, 2005, at 20:51:11
Posted by alexandra_k on May 9, 2005, at 18:49:04
In reply to Re: thanks- I feel less dumb (smile) (nm) » alexandra_k, posted by sunny10 on May 9, 2005, at 8:56:14
:-)
The first line is pretty much what the whole chapter is supposed to try and convince you of.
The idea is that there isn't any rational justification for your belief that there is an external world.
Or for the belief that the external world is anything like what it seems to you to be like.But then there also isn't any rational justification for the belief that there isn't an external world.
Or for the belief that the external world is nothing like what it seems to you to be like.IMO it shows us something about the limits of rationality.
And about how faith is something that operates here.
Though in the course of most peoples life we never really consider that1) Belief in the external world is a matter of faith
2) Belief that the world is fairly much like it seems to us to be is a matter of faithAnd it also teaches us something about the limits of certainty... And how most of our beliefs are evaluated for truth and falsity relative to a framework of background assumptions... And I've probably lost you again...
Posted by alexandra_k on May 9, 2005, at 19:42:33
In reply to Re: thanks- I feel less dumb (smile) » sunny10, posted by alexandra_k on May 9, 2005, at 18:49:04
And Descartes... Well, Descartes thought that knowledge = certainty.
There are different kinds of knowledge:
Object knowledge - 'I know my dog'. That is something like knowledge by acquaintance.
Know-How - 'I know how to ride a bike'. Which is a skill or ability.
Propositional knowledge - I know that certain propositions such as 'the sun is hot' or '2+2=4' are true.Epistemologists (philosophers who study knowledge) have traditionally worried the most about propositional knowledge.
It is fairly much commonly accepted that the following conditions are necessary requirements for knowledge:
1) Truth. Because saying 'I know that 2+2=4' seems to be adequately translated as 'I know that it is true that 2+2=4'.
2) Belief. It seems silly to say 'I know that 2+2=4' if I don't even believe that 2+2=4.Then there are all sorts of problems trying to specify the other condition which seems to have something to do with the notion of adequate justification for that belief. Because I could accidently arrive at a true belief - but that doesn't seem to be enough for knowledge.
Descartes thought that knowledge = certainty and so if it is possible to doubt that a proposition is true then you can't say that you know the proposition is true.
I could say 'I know I am sitting in front of a computer right now'. But it is possible that I am actually in bed asleep dreaming that I am sitting in front of a computer. It is possible that even if I was in bed asleep I could have qualitatively identical experiences to the experiences that I am having now. So it is possible that I am not sitting in front of a computer and therefore I do not know that I am sitting in front of a computer.
In this way he shows that it is possible to doubt all a-posteriori beliefs (those about the external world) and even all a-priori beliefs (those that don't require experience but are based on reason alone such as knowledge of logic or mathematics).
With respect to a-posteriori beliefs it is possible I am dreaming and thus they are all false...
With respect to a-priori belief it is possible that there is some kind of evil genuis or demon that causes me to err every time I count the sides of a triangle or attempt a deduction. (Improbable, sure - but he only needs it to be possible).So. We can't have knowledge of those kinds of things. We can't have knowledge of the external world (which undermines all the sciences) and we can't have knowledge of a-priori things such as mathematics or logic either.
Hmm.
What is left?The cogito.
Cogito ergo sum.
Roughly translated as:
I think, therefore I exist.
If it were possible to doubt that you are thinking then you would be doubting - and doubting is a form of thinking.
Try as you might you cannot really doubt that you are thinking.
Therefore you know you exist as a thinking thing.
Though it still has to be established that you have a body etc.Experiences, the way things seem are also immune from doubt.
'I now seem to be seeing a red patch'.
'I now seem to be sitting in front of a computer'.
'I feel hot'These things can be known.
Your experiences can be known by you.
They are certain.But not a lot else. Well. Nothing else really.
'I am in pain' is ambiguous.
If pain refers to a conscious experience then you cannot be mistaken about your experience.
If pain refers to something along the lines of nerve damage then you cannot know this, because you cannot know that you even have any nerves.So.
If knowledge = certainty then all we can know is
that we are in fact having the experiences we seem to be having.
And that is all.So maybe certainty isn't required for knowledge after all... Maybe certainly is too stringent.
But then if certainty wasn't required for knowledge then it seems that we have knowledge of things that we cannot know to be true.
And that sounds counter-intuitive.
SOmething has to give in our concept of knowledge...
I love this stuff...
But (if anyone is still with me) you are probably wiping away tears of boredom... Oh well.Why do people like ethics so much more than epistemology?????
Posted by alexandra_k on May 10, 2005, at 7:20:21
In reply to Re: thanks- I feel less dumb (smile), posted by alexandra_k on May 9, 2005, at 19:42:33
I have finally rediscovered an interest in my thesis
:-)
:-)
:-)
I haven't done anything on it for a month.
Not since I was in hospital. I worked on it for a day in there and came away with heaps of new ideas and stuff.And now I have almost another days worth :-)
One of my supervisors just got back from conference.
Montreal.
There was a seminar on delusions.
By someone who's work I have read.
Who worked with someone I know in Australia.
Who is writing on verrrrrry similar stuff to me.
My supervisor said she remembers what it was about, and that it made more sense to her after having read what I had to say. And her boyfriend went with her as well and he is into phil of law and he was finding it all a bit interesting so I finally got to have a conversation with some peoples.That is what it is.
That is why it is so hard to work.
But now I think I am getting it...
An overall explanation that handles all cases...
Sort of a two part explanation 'cause there are broadly two different kinds of cases.I have to write a seminar to give in a couple of weeks as well...
So all in all... Very good timing.
And Descartes. Descartes is the key.:-)
Posted by sunny10 on May 10, 2005, at 8:37:18
In reply to Re: and thanks to my raving..., posted by alexandra_k on May 10, 2005, at 7:20:21
I think, therefore I am.
I think I am a useless piece of sh*t (because it is all I was taught when I was a child and I cannot seem to re-train my brain), therefore I am a piece of sh*t...
If I could find an way to absorb someone else's way of thinking=knowing=feeling, perhaps I would be free.
All of what you wrote is true- and that is precisely what binds me.
-sunny10
Posted by Larry Hoover on May 10, 2005, at 10:22:50
In reply to Re: and thanks to my raving..., posted by alexandra_k on May 10, 2005, at 7:20:21
> I have finally rediscovered an interest in my thesis
> :-)
> :-)
> :-)Extraordinarily extra-specially KEWL!!!
Go girl!
:-)
:-)
:-)
:-)Lar
Posted by Damos on May 10, 2005, at 17:10:19
In reply to Re: and thanks to my raving..., posted by alexandra_k on May 10, 2005, at 7:20:21
Three big cheers for you and a happy dog dance too. That's so great Alex, go get 'em.
=0)
=0)
=0)
;0)
Posted by alexandra_k on May 10, 2005, at 18:26:39
In reply to Re: and the key to my depression as well » alexandra_k, posted by sunny10 on May 10, 2005, at 8:37:18
> I think, therefore I am.
> I think I am a useless piece of sh*t (because it is all I was taught when I was a child and I cannot seem to re-train my brain), therefore I am a piece of sh*t...Oh, no no no.
Your argument goes like this:
P1) I think I am a worthless piece of sh*t.
P2) Whatever I think is the case (ie - that I am a worthless piece of sh*t) actually is the case (in external reality).
_______________________________________________
C) I am a worthless piece of sh*t in reality.You didn't state the second premiss (P2) explicitly - but that is required in order for the argument to be valid. But the problem with making that premiss explicit is that P2) is false - and so in virtue of that we don't have good reason to believe C - even if P1 is true.
Basically the problem is that you can't infer from the way things seem to you (P1) to the way things actually are in mind-independent reality (c) (assuming that there is such a thing as mind-independent reality).
What Descartes showed us is that if things seem a certain way to you then it just has to be true that they do in fact seem that way to you. But that is a truth about your experiences. If you have certain experiences then it is indubitibly true that you are in fact haveing those experinces.
But as soon as you make some kind of claim about the way the mind independent world is or has to be on the basis of your experinces then there is room for doubt to creep in. Because you cannot know anything beyond the contents of your mind. You cannot know that there is an external world that causes your experiences, you cannot know that your experinces are an accurate representation of reality even assuming that there is an external world.
What 'I think, therefore I am' shows us about your 'I am a worthless piece of sh*t' example is that if you think you are a worthless piece of sh*t then it is impossible to doubt that you think you are a worthless piece of sh*t. It is indubitable (impossible to doubt) that you are in actual fact having the experiences that you are in actual fact having. That is a tautology (fairly much saying the same thing twice).
P1) I think I am a worthless piece of sh*t.
___________________________________________
C) It is certain that I actually do think I am a worthless piece of sh*t.This argument is valid because IF P1) is true then C) JUST HAS TO BE true. If P1) is true and C) was false then one would end up in a contradiction (which just is an impossible state of affairs). But you only end up in a contradiction becaue you are fairly much saying the same thing twice...
So.Just because you think you are a worthless piece of sh*t does not at all mean that you actually are a worthless piece of sh*t. Even if we assume you have a body ;-)
All that follows from the fact that you think you are a worthless piece of sh*t is that it is certain that you do in fact think that you are a worthless piece of sh*t.
All by itself that is fairly uninformative...
But it teaches us a lot about the limits of certainty etc etc.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 10, 2005, at 18:51:33
In reply to Re: and the key to my depression as well » sunny10, posted by alexandra_k on May 10, 2005, at 18:26:39
Lets take a delusional utterance: 'I am dead'.
Jaspers maintained that delusions are ununderstandable in the sense that they are self-defeating or contradictory in some way. I call this the 'Cartesian interpretation' of the Cotard delusion. According to Jaspers the following is a good analysis of what the subject is attempting to do in saying 'I am dead'.
'I am no longer a subject of experience'.
But Jaspers point is that if Descartes has shown us anything at all then he has surely shown us that it is IMPOSSIBLE or self-contradictory to attempt to believe that one doesn't have experiences! The very act of believing just is an experience (roughly).So. We can't hope to make sense of a contradiction. If the delusional subject is attempting to express something along these lines then we cannot hope to explain the Cotard delusion except possibly some kind of neurological explanation 'by recourse to some underlying brain pathology'.
The second (most common) interpretation of the Cotard delusion I shall dub the 'Biological Interpretation'. According to the biological interpretation the subject intends to express their belief that they no longer are a biologically living organism.
Traditionally clinicians would attempt to draw the subjects attention to such facts as their being able to feel their heart beat. Their being able to walk around. Their having bodily urges such as the need to urinate. Such facts are biological signs of life. That the subject did not take such facts to be evidence against their delusion was itself supposed to be evidence for the delusional subjects irrationality.
The third interpretation was recently suggested by Sass. He maintains that the Cotard subject has the experience of a 'diminution in the normal tonality of life'. Basically they no longer have physiological / autonomic / affective responses. They feel emotionally numbed... Dead even.
If the delusional subject is attempting to express their EXPERIENCE of emotional death then THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT COULD COUNT AGAINST WHAT THEY ARE SAYING.
If they are expressing an experience then what they are saying is as certain as the cogito.
Whereas if they are making an inference from their experience of emotional death to something like their bodily death then it would seem that biological signs of life would be relevant to refuting their belief.
So...
Implications....
If the delusional subject (indeed, if the normal subject) knows anything for certain at all it is that they surely are having the experiences they seem to be having.
If that is what the delusional subject is attempting to do in making their utterance then clinicians miss the point in focusing on Biological signs of life.
Some one or other said that delusions seem to have 'reached the status of framework propositions for the delusional subject'. But if delusions are the expression of experience then it would be unsuprising that they have 'reached' framework status, because if they are expressions of experience then they are in actual fact framework propositions.
Hmm.And so in some cases...
The delusional subject may make the inference like this:
P1) I have the experience of emotional death.
____________________________________________
C) I am emotionally dead (where to be emotionally dead just means to have the experience of emotional death.But sometimes... They might be doing this:
P1) I have the experience of emotional death.
P2) Expereinces tend to be caused by reality being a certain way. (The experience of emotional death is caused by biological death)
____________________________________________
C) I am biologically dead.But is this irrational?
We do this in our daily life...
P1) I seem to be sitting in front of a computer.
P2) Experiences tend to be caused by reality being a certain way
____________________________________________
C) There is a computer in front of me.P2 in both cases is a framework proposition. It is not rational to believe it. But it is also not rational to disbelieve it. It is beyond the support or falsification of reason.
Delusions (even if they are about external reality) aren't any more irrational than our beliefs about the external world. They rely on the same framework proposition.
I think sometimes the subject is talking about their experience. Other times they might be making the inference to external reality - but this move isn't irrational. Clinicians can't provide evidence for or against P2) and so it is unsuprising that delusions seem immune to supposed 'evidence to the contrary'.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 11, 2005, at 1:46:37
In reply to Re: and the key to my depression as well, posted by alexandra_k on May 10, 2005, at 18:51:33
And if a clinician insists that the expression of a delusional utterane is absurd...
And the subject is expressing their experience...
Then they will be talking past each other.
And if the clinician doesn't understand the distinction between making a claim about ones experiences and making a claim about the way things are in the world...
Then how can the subject be expected to get it either?
Jeepers.
No wonder delusional subjects utterances seem to be immune to evidence to the contrary. There is no such thing as evidence to the contrary with respect to either (a) the expression of their experience or (b) the second premiss (which basically accepts ones experience as veridical).But.
The APA DEFINES delusions as being 'radically false beliefs about external reality'.But if the subject is expressing their experience then the belief isn't radically false, and it isn't about external reality either.
So.
We have a decision to make:Maybe delusional utterances simply CANNOT be expressions of experience BY DEFINITION.
Or.
Maybe the APA definition of delusion is wrong.
IMO the explanandum isn't 'why do some people have delusions' rather it is 'what could lead someone to say such a thing'.
If we accept the APA definition as authoratitive then it becomes an empirical matter whether there is actually anything such as delusions. If all delusional subjects are attempting to express their experience then there wouldn't be any such thing.
Posted by Damos on May 11, 2005, at 22:04:51
In reply to Re: and the key to my depression as well » sunny10, posted by alexandra_k on May 10, 2005, at 18:26:39
From the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. He says it so much better than I can. Tried repeatedly and just got gibberish.
Descartes believed he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: 'I think, therefore I am'. He had in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being & identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind. Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being "at one" & therefore at peace. At one with life in its manifest aspect, the world, as well as with your deepest self & life unmanifested - at one with Being. Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and continuous conflict within & without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incedible liberation this is!
Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgements, & definitions that block all true relationship. It comes between you & yourself, between you & your fellow man & woman, between you & nature, between you & God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you & a totally separate "other". You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances & separate froms, you are one with all that is. By "forget", I mean that you can no longer feel this oneness as self-evident reality. You may believe it to be true, but you no longer know it to be true. A belief may be comforting. Only through your own experience, however, does it become liberating.
Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance. For example, there is nothing wrong with cells dividing and multiplying in the body, but when this process continues in disregard of the total organism, cells proliferate and we have disease.
The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly - you usually don't use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken over.
Just because you can solve a crossword puzzle or build an atom bimb doesn't mean that you use your mind. Just as a dog loves to chew bones, the mind loves to get its teeth into problems. That's why it does crossword puzzles & bulids atom bombs. You have no interest in either Let me ask you this: can you be free of your mind whenever you want to? Have you found the "off" button?
You practice mindfullness meditation Alex as do I, and what are we striving for? No mind. In those moments we achieve this, do we cease to exist? I am not thinking, therefore I am not. Just a question.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 12, 2005, at 1:09:21
In reply to Re: and the key to my depression as well » alexandra_k, posted by Damos on May 11, 2005, at 22:04:51
> Descartes believed he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: 'I think, therefore I am'.
Yes. He was writing around the time that the sciences were getting underway. Scientists were claiming that they were coming to know things about the material world. But scepticism was a threat to the whole project. The scepticism being 'but isn't it possible that the scientists are mistaken?'
Descartes tried to doubt everything that could possibly be doubted in order to see whether there was anything that was immune from doubt. Whether there was anything that he did know for certain. The point of the whole project was that he wanted to demonstrate that human knowledge rests on foundations of certainty - thus rescuing the sciences, and indeed the whole of human knowledge from sceptical worries forever.
To defeat the sceptic once and for all.
So when he found the cogito 'I think therefore I am' he must have been delighted :-) There is something that it is impossible to doubt. Whenever I think 'I exist' I confirm that I do in fact exist. But then the question remains WHAT am I? What is my nature? If I am certain that I exist then what sort of thing is this I that certainly exists?
Descartes 'equates thinking with Being' to the extent that he considers that whenever something thinks then it confirms its existence... And he 'equates' identity with thinking when he says that whenever something thinks then it confirms its existence - AS a thinking thing.
Descartes found that when he thought 'I exist' then it was certain that he did exist. When he asked himself 'what am I?' he found it was certain that he was a thing that thinks.
But what else is he???
He doesn't conflate being with thinking, because he doesn't rule out the possibility that non-thinking things (ie most material objects) exist. It is possible that they dont, but then it is also possible that they do... We can't be certain either way. So all thinking things exist, but then non-thinking things might exist too... He doesn't rule out the possibility that he has a body. But he says that he can't be certain that he does.
Whenever he thinks the thought 'I exist' his existence (as a thinking thing) is confirmed. He can doubt he has a body. He cannot doubt he has a mind.
Descartes then uses that as an argument for Dualism (the idea that there is the mind / soul / spirit on the one hand, and body / brain / the material world on the other).
His argument relies on Leibniz' law which goes something like this:
If we have x and y
And we want to know whether x and y are the same thing
Then if we can find one property that x has that y lacks
Then we have shown that they cannot be the same thing.
Because (at any given moment in time) a thing must be identical with itself.So all he needs to do is find one property that the mind has that the body lacks and he has shown that mind and body are two different kinds of things.
He says:
1) The mind has the property of indubitable existence (I cannot doubt that I am thinking - that I am a mind if you like)
2) The body does not have the property of indubitable existence (I can doubt that I have a body - or that I am a body if you like)
_______________________________________
Therefore: The mind is not the body.So Descartes argues that one is more properly identified with ones mind than ones body. One has immediate and direct access to the state of ones mind but not the state of ones body.
To see that we typically tie identity to mind more than body consider the notion of life after death. If it is possible for me to survive the death of my body then my identity seems to be tied more to my existence as a thinking thing rather than my existence as a physical thing. Suppose, on the other hand that I am lying in my coffin and all conscious experience or mind ceases with the death of my body. There is a sense in which I don't exist anymore. Even though my body is right there - still existing. 'I' am not my body. Rather, it seems to be true that I HAVE or POSSESS a body.But is it true to say I HAVE or POSSESS a mind?
Or is it better to say I AM a mind?> Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgements, & definitions that block all true relationship.
So he wants to say the former.
I have a mind.
Not I am a mind.Ok. I have to say that I find the extract hard to understand...
Supposedly...
>It [saying you are mind rather than you have a mind] comes between you & yourself
If I am not a mind then what am I?
> You practice mindfullness meditation Alex as do I, and what are we striving for? No mind.
I couldn't do it when I strove for that.
You can't will yourself unconscious!
What I strive to do is to focus on one thing
One thought
To the exclusion of all else.
To direct all of my attention on that one thought
So that one thing became everything.
And distinctions were all lost.
All that I was aware of was one thought.
I have meditated on the cogito :-)
I also quite like
'I am an active information processor'.
Even though that might be false....>In those moments we achieve this, do we cease to exist?
I'm not sure that we get there in meditation. But we surely do in a dreamless sleep. Because Descartes thought that what one was was a thinking thing then it would follow that when we stop thinking we fail to exist. Yup.
Note: that is just to say
'I exist - as a thinking thing'.
'When I stop thinking - I stop existing as (or being) a thinking thing'.
It might sound odd.
But that that follows, yeah.Descartes concluded that the only essential property that he was certain he had was existence as a thinking thing.
But.
Surely he could have other essential properties.
It is just that he would never be in a position to be certain that he did or did not have others.So.
While it is certain that we exist as a thinking thing.
That thinking is sufficient (enough) for existance.
It is still possible that thinking isn't necessary for existance - though it is fair to say that thinking is neccessary for existence as a thinking thing.
So while we are certain that we are thinking things.
It is not certain that that is all we are.
It is not certain that there aren't other characteristics that are also essential to our identity.
There might be
There might not be.
If there are some others then we might get to continue to exist right through dreamless sleeps.
Though not as a thinking thing.
Not if we stop thinking,
Nope ;-)
Posted by Damos on May 12, 2005, at 17:06:13
In reply to Re: and the key to my depression as well » Damos, posted by alexandra_k on May 12, 2005, at 1:09:21
Ahhhh, I could listen to you talk like this for ever. I have to tell that when you have a concious out of body experience it really screws with your ideas of what 'is' and 'isn't' you. I mean, to actually get up out of yourself, walk across the room and look back at yourself lying there and feel both of yourselves as a physical entity is most strange, most strange indeed.
Back when I was young I really wanted to study philosophy but something inside told me that I would loose myself inside my head. But I just love it. I love the theory and the concepts and constructs simply for their own sake. With 20/20 hindsight, not doing it was a mistake - a biggy, but such is life, it's only one of many. Thank you for the way you are able to explain things so that even a dope like me can understand them. It's a gift, an uncommon gift.
Have you ever seen the movie "Altered States". In it William Hurt uses a sensory depravation cell. Well I used to use one sometimes as much as 6 times a week. I spent a whole night in one once in 2 hour stints. Talk about a serious brain trip. It's quite amazing what happens when all external stimuli are removed -AMAZING.
Now get back to work =0)
Posted by damos on May 12, 2005, at 21:32:43
In reply to Re: and the key to my depression as well » alexandra_k, posted by sunny10 on May 10, 2005, at 8:37:18
Hey Sunny,
You are so not that!!!!!!!
People may have dumped and cr*pped on you from a great height for a very long time, but you are not that.You are sunshine, laughter, a cheeky grin, a sneeky tickle and gentle cleansing rain. You are kind and good in ways that really matter and in ways that touch so many of us. Get it? Got it? Good!
XOXOXOX
Damos
Posted by sunny10 on May 13, 2005, at 9:12:29
In reply to Re: and the key to my depression as well » sunny10, posted by damos on May 12, 2005, at 21:32:43
This is the end of the thread.
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