And, in any case, their usefulness for we little observers with our agendas and sensory apparatuses.
Sure. But being completely without absolute statements in one's belief system doesn't work well for one either.
I think another issue is at work here, additionally - namely, that those absolute statements are sometimes a conflation of an explanation or a definition, and an instruction. The instruction version of the two statements before would be "You (everyone) should consider yourself (themselves) the owner(s) of your (their) karma" and "You should figure out for yourself how you really feel" - and these transformations are usually easy enough for us to understand, in fact, I think we often take them for granted. But all too often, those absolute statements are used in a way where it is not clear whether the speaker means them as an explanation or a definition, or as an instruction - hence another set of problems with them.
Interesting. I just wrote something similar, I think, on the Ockham's Razor thread. Could you give me an example here, especially one that is problematic or important to you. I am not sure I get it 100%.
Some examples of such conflations - but the conflation is not inherent in the statement, though, it depends on the intention of the speaker or listener (under potential instructions, the first one is an example what the speaker might have meant, and the one after the dash is what the listener might have understood):
Statement: I am a noble person.
Definition: I am a noble person.
Potential instructions: You should respect me, and if you don't, you are a bad person. / I'm screwed, I should go to a corner and die of shame.
Statement: I love you.
Definition: I love you.
Potential instructions: Don't attack me. / I have to do as this person tells me to do.
Statement: Everyone is worthy of respect.
Definition: Everyone is worthy of respect.
Potential instructions: You owe me respect. / I owe this person respect, regardless of what I think of them.
It is basically a matter of indirect communication - either from the side of the speaker or from the side of the listener or both. For example, from my own experience, I can tell that almost everytime someone says "Everyone is worthy of respect," what they actually mean is to tell the listener that the listener does not respect them and that he or she should respect them. Or, "I love you" tends to actually mean "love me" or "don't attack me".
We communicate mostly to manipulate, not to inform - even though techincally, the way we speak tends to have the form of merely giving information.
I was just thinking that anger in response to someone should imply a sense of sameness.
It does, yes. There is the classical example of a man rowing a boat and there is mist on the water preventing visibility. Suddenly, the man's boat is hit by another boat, while because of the mist the man cannot discern whether there is anyone in the other boat. The man gets angry and curses the other rower. But as he gets closer to the other boat, through the mist, he sees there is no rower in the other boat - and the man's anger dissipates immediately.
I find it puzzling why this happens. I've had a lot of this kind of experiences. It seems that the deciding factor is that we presume that all that is happening is happening intentionally and is thus carried out by a person. We presume intention. And when a happening (I can't say "action" here because if a branch whaps you, this isn't actually an "action", but a "happening") is harmful to us in some way or another, we presume harmful intention. The usual reaction to a harmful intention or a harmful action is defense, whereby dislike, anger, fury, physical aggression are degrees or kinds of this defense.
So the other underlying issue here is - How come we consider ourselves harmed? This consideration is probably heavily conditioned also. One first needs to identify with one's body, with one's status, one's emotions etc. etc. before an attack on those can be perceived as an attack on the self.
And this made me think that many judgments of superiority control emotional response and this may be a part of their misuse. But avoiding noticing superiority - or advantage, or greater experience or....- can also lead to greater unnecessary strife and is also a misuse.
I presume your line of reasoning can be exemplified as something like "He can do that to me because he is better than me, but if someone else would do that to me, I would hit them in the face" -?
People, in general, seem to varying degrees very different from me. I have guesses that their felt experience may parallel mine - they have emotions and prefer pleasure over pain - but that any communication is across a gap. Even with those I am closest to and share much philosophy with. Sameness is an experienced exception. I do not mean I am some hermit or isolated, but I take for granted that we are so different that Nagel's essay about bats is misleading because it is working from an implied 'with bats it is radically different'.
I understood Nagel's essay to be just about that - how potentially we are all so very different, and that the example with the bat was to point this out; that just as we can't adequately imagine what it is like to be a bat, one person cannot adequately imagine what it is like to be "in another person's shoes".
But can one not have a basic function that fits this world. To keep on with my metaphor I think you shifted to the surface of the sidewalk. Yes, it can have cracks and buckles and open manholes. But the self-distrust I was talking about was more in relation to things like 'if I lift my left foot is it really my left foot that is raised or is it my right?' 'Is it lifting?' asked after every two centimeters. So even the flat sidewalk is unmanageable. And further the same trust could help one navigate the dangerous sidewalk - which one would do with greater observation of the sidewalk, for the most part, and not one's self, except in very limited, highly specific moments.
I think I understand your point about self-trust, but I find the notion of self-trust very abstract. Because to have trust in oneself, one would have to know what this self is. And I don't know what my self really is - it seems that everything I can think of that I usually consider to be my self (body, emotions, thoughts, ...), isn't actually my self.
Perhaps a tangent but it makes me think of Mirror Neurons.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/...s/snmirror.php
I'm afraid I cannot find a better link. In general it seems the assumption of similarity is how we learn to an enormous degree. IOW via imitation. And by understanding others but non-motor in-brain imitation of others.
So there is a 'let's not reinvent the wheel' habit we have. It is practical to assume we are the same so I can imitate and become proficient, so I can internally imitate and make assumptions, rather than always having to build from the ground up.
This does not mean it is right, but I am raising the issue of how hard it would be to start without.
It seems, though, we reach a stage where the backside of this heuristic device has to be faced.
There is the concept of emotional contagion -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion . I know you don't like the term, at least you didn't like it a while back.
The basic idea seems to be that we tend to take on and become like that which we are exposed to, and the longer or the more intense such a conditioning takes place, the more likely it is that it will stick, even if we leave the environment where we originally picked it up. And this tends to happen entirely automatically.
I think that this is true both in blatant as well as in subtle ways. E.g. if you hang around alcoholics a lot, you'll probably become an alcoholic yourself. And if you hang a lot around people who are very indirect in communication, who have ulterior motives - you will pick up this style, to a greater or lesser extent. And it seems these things really hurt only for as long as one hasn't become thoroughly conditioned by them yet.
