Avoiding the pits of extreme skepticism
- Thread starter greenberg
- Start date
then i suppose i didn't account for the 'null delta' state, but it resolves to zero anyway, so myah. (null delta being where we're in repeat mode, autopilot), and that state is contextually sensitive, as a hammer to the boot gets your attention no matter how tuned out you are, given the functioning nervous system thing.
Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
No 'to'. 'for others' gratification' Thought actually I like the bare 'for others' even better. They exist for others and not for themselves in my experience of them if one takes on the evaluation as utility mode.
Not sure I got this. But...
I am saying that all of what you are describing floats in a sea of my noticing the other's subjectivity. I am not sure what causal chains this sets off or how it affects my viewing them in utility terms, but I do feel it does.
Yes, I found the 'kowtow' thing odd. Since to me that 'word' has always meant a kind of subordination with no regard for real feelings.
This is so if at the same time with notions of gratification, we still keep the notions of subjectivity.
Then, of course, a typical subject-object relationship develops, one of objectification.
Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
Gratification could be opened up pretty inclusively. I would find it gratifying if someone helped me end my suffering. And I would find it gratifying to help someone do that. For example.
Besides this I think that the awareness of the other as subject creates an automatic connection that keeps one from only evaluating future effects. Compassion and care arise from it, sometimes even against my will.
more succinctly, experience transformed into utility by the act conceptual integration thats infancy occurs (in teh context of what the mind is focused or becomes focused upon) almost instanteneously (from the subject), becoming an evaluation of utility performed either consciously or unconsciously. The contents of the evuation (both consciously and unconsciously) will be wholly dependent upon the conceptual schema of the subject, and not necessarily available for report through language.
...
My experiences impact me.
That impact yields value, which transforms to utility.
If you were emotionally scarred by whatever, bored by it, whatever of the myriad of possible reactions, that fits into your mind in terms of what it already knew. This is an intrinsic valuation of experience. The sifting process itself performs the evaluation by the very "shape" of it, if you will. It's a dynamic lense of sorts, tied to an interface stimulated by that which seems external to it (or 'an extention of it' if you choose that angle). Utility is simply a "mechanical" if you will, evaluation of the transaction.
Positive utility reinforces, negative utility fosters evasion.
Or at least that's what I was just thinking.
...
My experiences impact me.
That impact yields value, which transforms to utility.
If you were emotionally scarred by whatever, bored by it, whatever of the myriad of possible reactions, that fits into your mind in terms of what it already knew. This is an intrinsic valuation of experience. The sifting process itself performs the evaluation by the very "shape" of it, if you will. It's a dynamic lense of sorts, tied to an interface stimulated by that which seems external to it (or 'an extention of it' if you choose that angle). Utility is simply a "mechanical" if you will, evaluation of the transaction.
Positive utility reinforces, negative utility fosters evasion.
Or at least that's what I was just thinking.
Not necessarily typical, but yes. Individuals IMO, are fairly classified as subjective objects, or rather maybe objects that have awareness, which is a pretty special set of objects.
Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
I still experience something that I don't feel is included in your scheme. Some of the impact or washing over is of the other person's subjectivity. I don't experience this as positive or negative. It underscores and permeates my reactions and actions and experience of this other.
I can also notice it's absence when I have a purely utility based interaction with another person.
Well I understand and certainly don't find you incorrect, it's just that I can see how the extra stuff fits, or at least I've convinced myself I can.
Awareness of the other as subject can certainly be a powerful way to control one's desires. As in, "He's a person too, you can't just use him as your pleasure object!" From this, compassion and care certainly can arise.
Edit: Awareness of the other as subject is also a powerful way to short-circuit solipsism and extreme skepticism.
Moreover, when compassion and care nest in the mind, the mind isn't so sharp and edgy anymore.
Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
Your quote above could be guilt which manages to mistreat both parties. And awareness of the other as subject can also increase my anger. I must confess to having gotten angry at what we call inanimate objects. But I have never borne a grudge against even those heinous pieces of furniture that stub my toes. Other humans however I have borne grudges against. I am not defending the grudges - I am must better at getting through all the emotion in the instance - but pointing out the other side of recognizing their subjectivity.
I think the awareness is effective even without thought. I do not need to draw conclusions about the other and my actions in relation to them when I notice their subjectivity.
It may seem like I am splitting hairs - or worse - but I think thoughts like you one you expressed are both aftermath and tricky at best.
Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
OK. Maybe my hairs went up over a metaphor. Perhaps I am rutting.
I would find it very offputting if my girlfriend said:
(and then added)
Unfair of course since the purpose of the text is quite different. Nevertheless however dressed up in the mind, that's not the only way I want her to come toward me. (sometimes it is nice to find one is an attractive object, it is sort of surreal, for me anyway. but not just that always.)
Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
Are we still talking about Extreme Skepticism, guys?
if you become "too skeptic", you become openminded because you become skeptic at skepticism so it selfdestructs.
same thing with openmindedness: if you become too openminded, you become openminded even towards skepticism.
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two opposites are two sides of the same thing. two perspectives.
same thing with openmindedness: if you become too openminded, you become openminded even towards skepticism.
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two opposites are two sides of the same thing. two perspectives.
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Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
I'm not sure those are opposites. The ES could claim that he is keeping his mind open rather than trusting his senses. In other words he is not allowing himself to harden in to one postion, whereas the believers, of all stripes, decide, as in the OP, that the room is dark - a leap of faith closing out other possibilities - and are no opening minded at all about the possibility they are wrong or fooled.
Skepticism and belief seem more like opposites to most people.
I tend to think skepticism is an attempt to transcend oneself and a symptom of thinking too much. Maybe a fun exercise - though more likely torture - but a bad lifestyle choice which on some level the ES knows. I would almost call ES a lie, even if they lie to themselves first the ES really has other motives than the seeming possibility that you can't really know anything.
But I liked you opening up the idea of opposites self-destructing. Or at least that skepticism does.
I would tend to see a spectrum like this
certainty belief belief with some open mindedness open mindedness ---------} skepticism
when thinking about a particlar belief or phenomenon.
(this mess I have just written should get keep the ball rolling Yorda released. have at us gentlemen)
Skepticism and belief seem more like opposites to most people.
I tend to think skepticism is an attempt to transcend oneself and a symptom of thinking too much. Maybe a fun exercise - though more likely torture - but a bad lifestyle choice which on some level the ES knows. I would almost call ES a lie, even if they lie to themselves first the ES really has other motives than the seeming possibility that you can't really know anything.
But I liked you opening up the idea of opposites self-destructing. Or at least that skepticism does.
I would tend to see a spectrum like this
certainty belief belief with some open mindedness open mindedness ---------} skepticism
when thinking about a particlar belief or phenomenon.
(this mess I have just written should get keep the ball rolling Yorda released. have at us gentlemen)
The way I see it, the main problem with assuming the subjectivity of others (or better: their subject-ness) is that the assumer will likely posit that the others' subject-ness is the same as one's own, has the same structure as one's own. That all people are basically the same, have the same compartments, except that they have somewhat different contents.
In this metaphor, the "compartments" could stand for things like "work", "relationships", "hobbies", "religion/philosophy", "favorite food" etc.; and the "contents" are the specifics of each person, like "programmer", "husband", "collecting stamps", "existentialist", "bananas" ...
This sort of understanding of subject-ness and compartmentalization works pretty well in everyday life.
I'm not sure this is what you mean by "recognizing the other's subjectivity", though.
It seems that in your view, "subjectivity" is more a means to give the other person actual status as a person, with the implications of respect and how to behave properly toward a human as a human. Yes?
Perhaps not consciously. It could have become intuitive.
Of course they are. There a good bases on which one can build compassion, and there are bad bases on which one can build compassion, each leading to different results.
Yes. We're doing background research.
Geez, I don't know why, I can't really keep a straight face anymore.
Seriously? First, then why are you bothering? If what your'e saying has nothign to do with what happens in a mind, then IMO - it's rather pointless. Secondly, if the mind is more or less useless, then wtf? I think that's exactly incorrect, as it's mind that allows for the notion of "use" in the first place.
Perhaps, in many cases though I don't think it's quite that simple, as evaluating the status you implied is up to the invididual, and they don't necessarily know how to classify with any sort of confidence.
Sure.
And what I'm trying to get from you is WHY they don't apply, and have given you examples as to why it seems to me they do. For instance in a later post you list assumptions that you say are independent of self, to which I replied something along the lines of "but they imply self" and "they have to exist somewhere", to which I don't think you've responded.
No you've gotten it across just fine, but haven't defended it against my scrutiny (which of course you don't have to, but I'm curious). We can bounce our metaphysical systems against each other and see how their shapes change in response.
Maybe so, like I said I can't freakin tell..I think you are doing that.
Sure sure, but again like I said we can smash them against one another and see what happens.
Within, sure, but what I'm looking at is to find a metaphysical system that applies to all metaphyical systems regardless of their internal composition. I think it can totally be done in a general form, but shit maybe I'm wrong I dunno.
Damn those self-fulfilling systems!
Yeah it's a pain in the ass for reelz.
Yeah I got it, but like, I think we can out do them. Eventually this will be figured out.
I thought this was the post to which I failed to respond, if not and it's a repeat pardon.