Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
I posit all the time, he says in mock upsetness.
Avoiding the pits of extreme skepticism
- Thread starter greenberg
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I posit all the time, he says in mock upsetness.
Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
It may be neutral in some senses but it is one very limited way of looking at 'beings'.
And if you believe in a self than you localize gratification. This might not be useful to the whole.
But you said you found it useful. Is this how one determines objectivity?
There you can see how utility and gratification of a posited self has led to an objective error. (I realise this is cruel and you were joking)
Actually I am a religious folk, though not a monotheist and I wish more rational-humanists (feel free to clean that up, it is not meant as an aspersion, could see their own axioms as clearly)
personal choice, but I try to do so sometimes and find it utterly impossible. it's vexing.
Me not know Hebrew (winks)
Well, good. I find it easier to do gymnastics if I am not arguing for something I believe in.
But they are not affirmations in the fullest ontological sense.
The self as named here is not the same kind of self as it is usually named in Western philosophy (which is absolute, independent, unique).
Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
come now
a philosophy? an inquiry into an, all too real, perception?
Which perception:
of a self
or of a phenomenon that shifts in which I can find no self to hang a hat on.
Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
Well, the Nazi's found their beliefs useful, for a while.
what does philosophy have to do with this? make the observation (of self) in a scientific
manner. expand on quote please
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Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
Maybe I misunderstood. I thought you were defending the idea of utility as a route to objectivity.
Gotta go Gustav. But I'll check in much later.
Gotta go Gustav. But I'll check in much later.
i have no idea what that means
you have done this east/west thing before so lemme provide an affirmation. i was born and raised a theravada buddhist. yet that means nothing to me
the formula..... east > homo sapiens < west
Make the observation of self in a scientific manner?
I hold it is impossible to make observations without refrence to a particular worldview/philosophy/metaphysics.
In the so-called West, we, and traditional science, tend to think of phenomena as having a self, having an (absolute, independent, unique) identity; that phenomean exist independently of context and that their self can be adequately observed independently of context. That is our worldview/philosophy/metaphysics.
Ie., we go out, catch a bird, bring it to the lab and observe the bird and think we can thus know what it is. - This is the primary way of scientific observation, which has, of course, been upgraded over time to include some contextual concerns. But the insistence on the (absolute, independent, unique) identity of a phenomeon is still there.
Note the surprise and disdain when something is found to not have this sort of identity, like "males are genetically crippled females" - this surprise would be impossible if we wouldn't hold on tightly to our particular ideas of what makes up selfhood or identity.
On the other hand, in a worldview/philosophy/metaphysics like Buddhism, they don't think the self exists the way we in the so-called West tend to think. To them, the self or a person's identity is something which exists only in a conventional sense, a conglomerate of matter, feeling, perception, formations and consciousness. And according to them, none of these things can be said to be "I" or "mine" or "my self"; they change, they are dependent.
(Note that matter, feeling, perception, formations and consciousness are the only things that can be observed, at least to some extent.)
Really? Wow.
It was a bad sentence, I apologize.
I meant that in Western philosophy, the self is usually considered to be absolute, independent, unique. Otherwise there's really no point in talking about the self, or identity.
not in this case. i find nothing intervening in this particular type of introspection.
you are welcome to show me otherwise. what assumptions must i hold for the content of my prior posts ?
justify the characteristics. relative to what? i hold that those qualities are an artifact of judeo/christian stuff
the skandhas
just postulates
thy do not detract from positing a self at all
if you look into a def of consciousness, similarities to skandhas should be apparent (i think)
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engrave in stone
At least these (and this is not an exhaustive list):
- English is a meaningful language that can successfully used in the situation at hand.
- Gustav can use English sufficiently well.
- It is possible and meaningful to talk about the things Gustav talks about.
- It is worth it to post here.
- If Gustav presses a key, then a particular meaningful image appears on the screen.
You get the idea.
A worldview/philosophy/metaphysics needn't be explicitly expressed, nor a person aware of it in order to act based on it. We sometimes think that if we don't explicitly subscribe to any worldview/philosophy/metaphysics, then we're independent of it or don't have one - but this is not so.
For example, that you find it worth your time to spend time at a forum like this speaks of your worldview/philosophy/metaphysics. In contrast, many other people don't find it worth their time to post here.
I think so too, although the Old Greeks probably contributed as well.
The fact is, this is how we often think about people and things, it seems those characteristics are accepted apriori.
E.g. If a person doesn't behave the same way at all times, the knee-jerk reaction of many "Western" people will be to suspect the person of lying or pretending. Such suspicion points in the direction that those people think of a person as something that should not change, that should be the same regardless of context.
You mean the khandas do not detract from positing an "absolute, independent, unique" self? If so, I agree, I think they don't. But it stands to reason that the khandas are all we can know -all that can be known-, and so even if there might be such a self, we couldn't know it.
Alas, the debate on this issue is still hot within Buddhism.
On the other hand, the "Western" model of the self supposes that the self can (and even should) be known.
hmm. i really liked this the first time i read it but now i find the word unnecessary quite subjective. i still like it, but not quite as much.
unnecessary is deemed by the assumer, whereas personally I could not help but agree, i don't think the statement stands on its own.
i think we can twist things were we so inclined by parsimony, to see god everywhere and having not noticed denial - find perfect comfort in it.
cool, thats two assumers. you really need to drop indulging the insane. semantics can lead to a contradictory state of affairs. choices will have to be made. secondly, everything is deemed by the "deemer"
yes
the law of parsimony is the axiom. the context
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