You had sent me an addendum over a year ago, this video attached. I'd meant to watch, but eventually forgot until tonight. I've recently been undergoing spiritual struggles, and, even though I'm still trying to comprehend all that was said, I'm already feeling that struggle coming to a close. It's as if God saved this for me until I was ready to hear it. I'm still not sure if you were meaning to help strengthen people's faithes, especially in Christ, but that's the effect this has had on me.
We each speak our own truth and listen to the universe in our oun way.
Throught it all I think there runs a thread of something Other (call it Christ if you like) that we recognise in the natural world and in other people.
I wish you luck on your journey of discovery. If I may offer one piece of advice, it's:
Don't let anyone tell you what it ought to be like.
how did i miss this? you look great all dressed up mama. i cant believe at one time you told me you werent funny or smart. you are both at high levels!!
pinker is so much fun, i dont always agree with him, but i enjoy him. well is it vestigial (not in use) or is it just there, "acting" (selecting) for no apparent reason any more but yet manifests itself in nervous system development. we have lots to learn i think.
I beleive he accepts Goedel's incompleteness theorem to apply to sentience, and as such leaves room for the ineffable, even while explaining the "how" of our behaviour in biological terms.
Most important is to listen to the soul bird, because sometimes it calls us and we don't hear it. This is a shame- it wants to tell us about ourselves. It wants to tell us about the feelings that are locked up inside its drawers. Some of us hear it all the time. Some almost never. And some of us hear it only once in a lifetime. That's why it'a good idea - maybe late at night when everything is quiet - to listen to the soul bird deep down inside us.
May I say that you are awesome when it comes to story telling! I am a Christian and I still found this video to be beautiful. I do not feel disrespected in anyway as I (unlike SOME..not all,christians I have known)have been spiritually raised to believe not only in Jesus Christ and everything the Bible teaches but also to respect, honor and find beauty in every indiviual and their beliefs as well. Thank you for sharing and good day to you! :0)
Enthralling!!! I sat here, spellbound, fascinated, and yes, enthralled. This is an utterly supurb way to address such a deep and fundamental question; using parable...allegory. Listening to you was like nothing less than an aural mirror. Where do I begin....
"The Kingdom of heaven is within you". It's not how Jesus would want his words paraphrased but that is how I would describe the power of self belief. That all questions and answers that pertain to personal difficulties and doubts can be found if we look within the deepest of wells that is the human heart-mind. Mostly, we are what we are because we think so, even though circumstances conspire to negate this. essentially, however, it is true.
Now, here's my technical reason for my disbelief in God: There has always and will always be some form of existence. There is no beginning and no end. Before the big bang, there must have been something. Eternaity/infinity equates not just to time and space but to physical reality. If there is no beginning, how can there be a creator to create what has always existed?
5 stars for this vid would only be a beginning. :)
I'm not comfortable with "god-the-creator" either. Seems poitnless, as your "first cause" keeps receding. (ie "who created God?")
In fact, I think all personofications of Deity are human fictions. But, like the many other stories we tell ourselves, they are the way in which we apprehend our universe.
My deepest belief is that there is a way for the "heart-mind" to achieve enlightenment that is unique to each individual. When people impose their revelations on others, they divest it off all significance.
PLEASE DONT READ THIS! In 1997 a girl called lauren was walikng in a forest and then a she just dissapeared no one ever found her untill 2000 when a yoing girl called Mary found her body and markings on her chest saying: I wasnt pretty enough" and now you have read this she will appear in your mirror saying your not pretty enough and kill you. by the way the girl called mary died shortly after.
To be saved paste this to 5 other videos. THIS IS TRUE
I just listened again to this, one of your most interesting monologues, in it's entirety. I would just like you to know there are many good sermons I have heard and not felt inclined to listen to more than once. But this video has held my full attention on at least three occasions so far! So, thank you for ministering to me. :o)
You ... you ... you secular science lover! Questions ... questions ... cartisian thinkers, hegelian dialectics ... it's all so bothersome. Abrahamic monotheism is obviously the way to go. "Under God" ... it takes on a whole new meaning when one really submits. Submit! ... the children of Abraham know how to make Meat and sugar taste good together. People just need to eat more American pizza. It, like you, is divine. Cheers
You always amaze me with your ability to communicate thought and emotion so effectively through this medium.
The vast majority of vlogs (where I know there won't be video effects) I treat as podcasts while I view or do other things. But the way you personalize and tell a story makes it impossible for me to ever treat you in that manner.
Simply put, in too many ways to describe you are beautiful. Be well my friend. :)
BTW, at the 15:10 mark you said "fighting love with hatred" I think you meant that the other way round? Human evolution from here forward you mention in a comment. Evolution is the result of a species adapting to it's surroundings. Humans adapt their surroundings to suit them. Therefore humans will evolve much less in the future than other species because of that fact. At least from a physical standpoint anyway.
As for human evolution; I realise it can no longer be physical, except in us getting taller through better (or is it hormone-contaminated?) nutrition.
I was thinking of our moral and intellectual and community evolution. Like this community, for example.
1st, mystery isn't a_painful_ gap to this atheist. 2nd of course we're part of something larger, the cosmos. The non-self you meet inside is the unconcious. Read the many experiments on this fascinating part of our being - it protects us and helps us in many ways. I still see the ultimate beauty in an atheistic view.
Hi babe, nice to see you again. The cosmos is a fascinating place, isn't it? I'm not sure that, in the end, it matters much what label you put on things. You experience wonder and lead a noble life...what more could there be?
Yes, I do agree that in the end the label doesn't matter. Whether or not "God" or "spiritual realms" exist is irrelevant. What matters is what we do with our lives. As a believer in evolution, I put high priority on the actions we take that truly make the world better for our collective future generations.
You've just summed up my journey of 14 years or more by now in a 16 minute and 45 second video. Absolutely perfect, Alice. At least as perfect as anything can be. Thank you so much, my dear dear friend.
It's a glib way of summing up the advancement of knowledge. New empirical observations build up cognitive dissonance with cherished beliefs until we finally question the beliefs, the old world view disappears when belief is undermined, and we formulate a new world view which better matches observation. Then we wonder how we ever believed in that old stuff.
True. If you assume that any world-view will eventually be undermined by new discoveries, you may as well learn to live with cognitive dissonance. I have been coltivating the ability to believe contradictory propositions for some time.
Living with cognitive dissonance is giving up intellectually. One needn't. World views come and go in a process of refinement, becoming better and better descriptions of reality. Those contradictions are pointing to where you are clinging to an idea which does not match reality, and science has proven that you can improve your match with reality. Clining to "absolutes", like god, produces contradiction.
If you say so. I don't think the history of cultural development is necessarily a constant progress of refinement.. There have been many lifetimes spent in reverse gear.
I agree, however, that absolutes are illusory. The last thing I would ever do is "cling" to anything.
[part5]FINALLY lol, we get to the question of God. Taking modern physics into account, (read Stephen Hawking for quick info), we find our Universe CAN become what it is now, unaided by any divine presence, with nothing more than the rules of its own structure. You can call that structure God, which would make you a pantheist. But it's unnecessary. A feeling of divine presence can be chemically related. Not everyone feels it, that's for sure, so it might just be your brain messing with you. :P
[part4]That book explains why solipsism is an impossible philosophical position, although logically sound. Wikipedia the word "solipsism" if you don't know it. When you dismiss that and you take this world as real, but as a logically consistent Universe, you can study Physics and treat the results as approximations of a true, immutable Order.
[Part3]And, "existence" is defined with our own, and that is something many people don't realize. Existence is anything that has a presence in the universe where I am. Thus, by definition of the word "to exist", I exist. Read the book by Bertrand Russell, in Human Knowledge and its Limits.
[Part2]The only thing that is left is your own mental structure, asking the quesions and thus self-definable, and this perceptual parade that you are contantly confronted to. There is a common mistake to (unsuccessfully) try to justify some things, that are in fact definitions. You cannot explain or justify a triangle. You define it.
[Part1]I had a friend that, after a hallucinogenic drug experience, told me he had realized how much our brain synthezises the perceptual information, and that there is a "click" that can happen, when you just feel nothing is real. Everything feels like a dream, made up by your mind. A powerful feeling because, as he said, you don't trust your senses anymore.
I too have had "religious experiences" of "oneness with the universe". They can be induced in meditation, by drugs, by hyperventilation, by certain forms of epilepsy ... what is your epistemological evidence that your experience is not a neurochemical phenomenon?
(Sorry for the multiple comments, I don't post video and youtube limits commets to 500 characters.)
Surely our belief in the validity of logic is also a neurochemical phenomenon. Ultimately I only accept logic because it seems intuitively that it must be valid, because the chemicals in my brain tell me so. Why then should we give rational argument absolute precedence over other subjective experience as an arbiter of truth?
It's important to understand that philosophy does not lead knowledge, it follows along behind the more empirical disciplines attempting to make sense of the knowledge they gain. Descartes is only of historical interest, we have learned so much since his day. I highly suggest you read Dennett's "Freedom Evolves" for some good ideas of what that term "I" you keep bandying about might actually mean.
People, and philosophers, often imagine an infinitesimal point "self" where consciousness lies. Kind of like a physicist imagining a planet to be a mass at a point in space. It's a fallacy, our selves are distributed over our brain, our body, our culture. Another book recommendation: "Descartes Error" Damasio
A very nice thoughtful presentation. The personal story of your grandfather is a very sweet one, but in the end, just an appeal to emotion. It's interesting that you invoke epistemology and wave it like stick to wave at atheists, but you let zingers like "he knew it was outside himself" fly by without asking how he knew that, or how you know that. In the words of Dennett: "If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything".
Yes, I suppose that's why it's fictionalised and twice removed. It's what one old man felt descart meant when he wrote about it. the point is, that experience really isn't explainable. All I can offer is the fact that many people in history as well as the present feel they have experienced it.
I've never been convinced that Descartes really existed. Just because Latin separates subject from object, it is impossible to express the existence of thought without assuming that there is a subject doing the thinking. "Cogito" implies "sum", but there is no fundamental metaphysical justification for conjugating "cogitare" in the first place.
Yes. That's an idea that may be more acceptable in the East Asia, where the languages are less inflected. Buddhism says there is no self. Buddhism began in India, where they do conjugate verbs, but it propagated largely via China, where they don't (AFAIK: I only know a few words of Chinese).
Yes, I do agree that language funnels our thoughts in different ways. But is it not also true that language is born of a need to express something and words exist as a result of concepts and not the reverse?
Words exist as a result of concepts, but the concepts don't necessarily represent true reality. Concepts exist because they are useful or because of the way our brains happened to evolve. Both the Chinese and the Indo-Europeans managed to solve the important practical communication problems, but the languages suggest different metaphysical truths.
"words exist as a result of concepts and not the reverse?"
Our concepts are products of human psychology and human culture. Advancement of knowledge, in both philosophy and science, is largely a process of rethinking our conceptualizations and forming new ones which better match reality.
I'm reminded of a quote from Kurt Vonnega... Vonnegu... from some guy named Kurt... "What is the meaning of life? To be the eyes, ears, and consciousness of the creator of the universe, you fool!" Nicely done. You ROCK!!
I don't argue against personal opinion or action...you know that! :P If anything you make more sense then 99% of people I might consider arguing with...so I'd say you're ok :)
OMG how did I miss tyhis one. I just made a video response to the same video.
MysterEy1 4 years ago
You had sent me an addendum over a year ago, this video attached. I'd meant to watch, but eventually forgot until tonight. I've recently been undergoing spiritual struggles, and, even though I'm still trying to comprehend all that was said, I'm already feeling that struggle coming to a close. It's as if God saved this for me until I was ready to hear it. I'm still not sure if you were meaning to help strengthen people's faithes, especially in Christ, but that's the effect this has had on me.
OperaPhantom91 4 years ago
We each speak our own truth and listen to the universe in our oun way.
Throught it all I think there runs a thread of something Other (call it Christ if you like) that we recognise in the natural world and in other people.
I wish you luck on your journey of discovery. If I may offer one piece of advice, it's:
Don't let anyone tell you what it ought to be like.
phaedress 4 years ago
Thank you.
OperaPhantom91 4 years ago
how did i miss this? you look great all dressed up mama. i cant believe at one time you told me you werent funny or smart. you are both at high levels!!
batphilo 4 years ago
It is not often that one finds they've made a video response months in advance.
I'd forgotten about this, but there's quite a nice litle conversation going on in here.
Does it get you any closer to envisioning a vestigial adaptive mechanism?
(Looking into Pinker now...)
phaedress 4 years ago
pinker is so much fun, i dont always agree with him, but i enjoy him. well is it vestigial (not in use) or is it just there, "acting" (selecting) for no apparent reason any more but yet manifests itself in nervous system development. we have lots to learn i think.
battim 4 years ago
Yes, he is fun: "Is dreaming a screen-saver?"
I beleive he accepts Goedel's incompleteness theorem to apply to sentience, and as such leaves room for the ineffable, even while explaining the "how" of our behaviour in biological terms.
phaedress 4 years ago
I am less convinced when he talks about religion, as I never enjoy the iteration of a belief by non-adherents.
Still, I suppose he has to defend himself in the world at large.
phaedress 4 years ago
gandersourcefilms 4 years ago
"...late at night when everything is quiet -
to listen to the soul bird
deep down inside us. "
yes.
phaedress 4 years ago
wow this video truly touched my heart.
Then again phaedress always touches the hearts of everyone.
evangelian007 4 years ago
May I say that you are awesome when it comes to story telling! I am a Christian and I still found this video to be beautiful. I do not feel disrespected in anyway as I (unlike SOME..not all,christians I have known)have been spiritually raised to believe not only in Jesus Christ and everything the Bible teaches but also to respect, honor and find beauty in every indiviual and their beliefs as well. Thank you for sharing and good day to you! :0)
Cybil017 4 years ago
I'm so glad you liked my story.
I'm probably more Christian than not, but I decided not to alighn myself with any single group.
It is far more important, as you say, to follow the principles of respect and sharing than to wear a label.
phaedress 4 years ago
Enthralling!!! I sat here, spellbound, fascinated, and yes, enthralled. This is an utterly supurb way to address such a deep and fundamental question; using parable...allegory. Listening to you was like nothing less than an aural mirror. Where do I begin....
sainter1 4 years ago
Video response?
phaedress 4 years ago
:) I'm in Sydney Australia and at work in my office. Let me think on it k? :)
sainter1 4 years ago
"The Kingdom of heaven is within you". It's not how Jesus would want his words paraphrased but that is how I would describe the power of self belief. That all questions and answers that pertain to personal difficulties and doubts can be found if we look within the deepest of wells that is the human heart-mind. Mostly, we are what we are because we think so, even though circumstances conspire to negate this. essentially, however, it is true.
sainter1 4 years ago
Now, here's my technical reason for my disbelief in God: There has always and will always be some form of existence. There is no beginning and no end. Before the big bang, there must have been something. Eternaity/infinity equates not just to time and space but to physical reality. If there is no beginning, how can there be a creator to create what has always existed?
5 stars for this vid would only be a beginning. :)
sainter1 4 years ago
I'm not comfortable with "god-the-creator" either. Seems poitnless, as your "first cause" keeps receding. (ie "who created God?")
In fact, I think all personofications of Deity are human fictions. But, like the many other stories we tell ourselves, they are the way in which we apprehend our universe.
phaedress 4 years ago
My deepest belief is that there is a way for the "heart-mind" to achieve enlightenment that is unique to each individual. When people impose their revelations on others, they divest it off all significance.
phaedress 4 years ago
agnostic positions seem logical to me. agnostics can wonder about things without feeling foolish or guilty. very nice vid... thanks for sharing this
IChoseTheRedPill 4 years ago
PLEASE DONT READ THIS! In 1997 a girl called lauren was walikng in a forest and then a she just dissapeared no one ever found her untill 2000 when a yoing girl called Mary found her body and markings on her chest saying: I wasnt pretty enough" and now you have read this she will appear in your mirror saying your not pretty enough and kill you. by the way the girl called mary died shortly after.
To be saved paste this to 5 other videos. THIS IS TRUE
tommylebowitz 4 years ago
Why don't you do a video response to Chemo Brain!
MrWayneCharles 5 years ago
I would, but as long as you refuse to talk with me directly and answr my questions I will not contribute to your self-aggrandisement.
phaedress 5 years ago
Send me a list of your questions, I will address them all!
MrWayneCharles 5 years ago
"O could I tell, ye surely would believe it!
O could I only say what I have seen!
How should I tell or how can ye receive it,
How, till He bringeth you where I have been?"
by Oswald Chambers from his devotional, My Utmost For His Highest, April 9th reading.
guitmartiman 5 years ago
Jack;
In this medium it is possible, while speaking with someone, to revisit the history of your conversations not only in memory but in the original!
Thank you for understanding this video, and ministering to me so dilligently for almost a year since then.
phaedress 4 years ago
I like to think God sometimes uses me in spite of myself. No false modesty intended.
guitmartiman 4 years ago
I just listened again to this, one of your most interesting monologues, in it's entirety. I would just like you to know there are many good sermons I have heard and not felt inclined to listen to more than once. But this video has held my full attention on at least three occasions so far! So, thank you for ministering to me. :o)
guitmartiman 3 years ago
You ... you ... you secular science lover! Questions ... questions ... cartisian thinkers, hegelian dialectics ... it's all so bothersome. Abrahamic monotheism is obviously the way to go. "Under God" ... it takes on a whole new meaning when one really submits. Submit! ... the children of Abraham know how to make Meat and sugar taste good together. People just need to eat more American pizza. It, like you, is divine. Cheers
MangoMawn 5 years ago
You always amaze me with your ability to communicate thought and emotion so effectively through this medium.
The vast majority of vlogs (where I know there won't be video effects) I treat as podcasts while I view or do other things. But the way you personalize and tell a story makes it impossible for me to ever treat you in that manner.
Simply put, in too many ways to describe you are beautiful. Be well my friend. :)
DoctorOhh 5 years ago
Ohhh!
You amaze *me* with your kindness. I'm glad you enjoy my ramblings.
phaedress 5 years ago
BTW, at the 15:10 mark you said "fighting love with hatred" I think you meant that the other way round? Human evolution from here forward you mention in a comment. Evolution is the result of a species adapting to it's surroundings. Humans adapt their surroundings to suit them. Therefore humans will evolve much less in the future than other species because of that fact. At least from a physical standpoint anyway.
Blinkazoid 5 years ago
Did I do that?!? Whups!
As for human evolution; I realise it can no longer be physical, except in us getting taller through better (or is it hormone-contaminated?) nutrition.
I was thinking of our moral and intellectual and community evolution. Like this community, for example.
phaedress 5 years ago
1st, mystery isn't a_painful_ gap to this atheist. 2nd of course we're part of something larger, the cosmos. The non-self you meet inside is the unconcious. Read the many experiments on this fascinating part of our being - it protects us and helps us in many ways. I still see the ultimate beauty in an atheistic view.
sciencebabe 5 years ago
Hi babe, nice to see you again. The cosmos is a fascinating place, isn't it? I'm not sure that, in the end, it matters much what label you put on things. You experience wonder and lead a noble life...what more could there be?
phaedress 5 years ago
Yes, I do agree that in the end the label doesn't matter. Whether or not "God" or "spiritual realms" exist is irrelevant. What matters is what we do with our lives. As a believer in evolution, I put high priority on the actions we take that truly make the world better for our collective future generations.
sciencebabe 5 years ago
Do you believe in human evolution? I mean forward from here? I really want to, but sometimes I'm not sure.
phaedress 5 years ago
You've just summed up my journey of 14 years or more by now in a 16 minute and 45 second video. Absolutely perfect, Alice. At least as perfect as anything can be. Thank you so much, my dear dear friend.
1938superman 5 years ago
You have a knack for putting people to sleep.
constust 5 years ago
You are a wonderful wonderful story teller. Please keep it up
KasparHauser4 5 years ago
Thank-you so much!
phaedress 5 years ago
"Why then should we give rational argument absolute precedence over other subjective experience as an arbiter of truth?"
I would answer that with this quote:
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." P.K.Dick
Reason is a tool for predicting the universe, we use it because it works, whether you believe in it or not.
Ratabluie 5 years ago
No disrespect to Phillip Dick, but that it too narrow a definition for me.
phaedress 5 years ago
Interesting but unprovable quote which makes it a belief.
DoctorOhh 5 years ago
It's a glib way of summing up the advancement of knowledge. New empirical observations build up cognitive dissonance with cherished beliefs until we finally question the beliefs, the old world view disappears when belief is undermined, and we formulate a new world view which better matches observation. Then we wonder how we ever believed in that old stuff.
Ratabluie 5 years ago
True. If you assume that any world-view will eventually be undermined by new discoveries, you may as well learn to live with cognitive dissonance. I have been coltivating the ability to believe contradictory propositions for some time.
phaedress 5 years ago
Living with cognitive dissonance is giving up intellectually. One needn't. World views come and go in a process of refinement, becoming better and better descriptions of reality. Those contradictions are pointing to where you are clinging to an idea which does not match reality, and science has proven that you can improve your match with reality. Clining to "absolutes", like god, produces contradiction.
Ratabluie 5 years ago
If you say so. I don't think the history of cultural development is necessarily a constant progress of refinement.. There have been many lifetimes spent in reverse gear.
I agree, however, that absolutes are illusory. The last thing I would ever do is "cling" to anything.
phaedress 5 years ago
This is SOOOOOOO good! Thank you so much for sharing this!
mrmortonblogs 5 years ago
I was really hoping you, especially, would like it.
phaedress 5 years ago
[part5]FINALLY lol, we get to the question of God. Taking modern physics into account, (read Stephen Hawking for quick info), we find our Universe CAN become what it is now, unaided by any divine presence, with nothing more than the rules of its own structure. You can call that structure God, which would make you a pantheist. But it's unnecessary. A feeling of divine presence can be chemically related. Not everyone feels it, that's for sure, so it might just be your brain messing with you. :P
distortingjack 5 years ago
I will reply to your comments in a couple of months, when I have done the required reading..:)
phaedress 5 years ago
[part4]That book explains why solipsism is an impossible philosophical position, although logically sound. Wikipedia the word "solipsism" if you don't know it. When you dismiss that and you take this world as real, but as a logically consistent Universe, you can study Physics and treat the results as approximations of a true, immutable Order.
distortingjack 5 years ago
[Part3]And, "existence" is defined with our own, and that is something many people don't realize. Existence is anything that has a presence in the universe where I am. Thus, by definition of the word "to exist", I exist. Read the book by Bertrand Russell, in Human Knowledge and its Limits.
distortingjack 5 years ago
[Part2]The only thing that is left is your own mental structure, asking the quesions and thus self-definable, and this perceptual parade that you are contantly confronted to. There is a common mistake to (unsuccessfully) try to justify some things, that are in fact definitions. You cannot explain or justify a triangle. You define it.
distortingjack 5 years ago
[Part1]I had a friend that, after a hallucinogenic drug experience, told me he had realized how much our brain synthezises the perceptual information, and that there is a "click" that can happen, when you just feel nothing is real. Everything feels like a dream, made up by your mind. A powerful feeling because, as he said, you don't trust your senses anymore.
distortingjack 5 years ago
I too have had "religious experiences" of "oneness with the universe". They can be induced in meditation, by drugs, by hyperventilation, by certain forms of epilepsy ... what is your epistemological evidence that your experience is not a neurochemical phenomenon?
(Sorry for the multiple comments, I don't post video and youtube limits commets to 500 characters.)
Ratabluie 5 years ago
I was going to ask that same question.
distortingjack 5 years ago
Surely our belief in the validity of logic is also a neurochemical phenomenon. Ultimately I only accept logic because it seems intuitively that it must be valid, because the chemicals in my brain tell me so. Why then should we give rational argument absolute precedence over other subjective experience as an arbiter of truth?
DClaudeKatz 5 years ago
It's important to understand that philosophy does not lead knowledge, it follows along behind the more empirical disciplines attempting to make sense of the knowledge they gain. Descartes is only of historical interest, we have learned so much since his day. I highly suggest you read Dennett's "Freedom Evolves" for some good ideas of what that term "I" you keep bandying about might actually mean.
Ratabluie 5 years ago
bandying about the term "I"...I need to take a deep breath over that one. maybe more soul-searching will follow. :)
phaedress 5 years ago
People, and philosophers, often imagine an infinitesimal point "self" where consciousness lies. Kind of like a physicist imagining a planet to be a mass at a point in space. It's a fallacy, our selves are distributed over our brain, our body, our culture. Another book recommendation: "Descartes Error" Damasio
Ratabluie 5 years ago
A very nice thoughtful presentation. The personal story of your grandfather is a very sweet one, but in the end, just an appeal to emotion. It's interesting that you invoke epistemology and wave it like stick to wave at atheists, but you let zingers like "he knew it was outside himself" fly by without asking how he knew that, or how you know that. In the words of Dennett: "If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything".
Ratabluie 5 years ago
Yes, I suppose that's why it's fictionalised and twice removed. It's what one old man felt descart meant when he wrote about it. the point is, that experience really isn't explainable. All I can offer is the fact that many people in history as well as the present feel they have experienced it.
phaedress 5 years ago
I've never been convinced that Descartes really existed. Just because Latin separates subject from object, it is impossible to express the existence of thought without assuming that there is a subject doing the thinking. "Cogito" implies "sum", but there is no fundamental metaphysical justification for conjugating "cogitare" in the first place.
DClaudeKatz 5 years ago
Very interesting. Are you suggesting that thought may esist independently of mind?
phaedress 5 years ago
Yes. That's an idea that may be more acceptable in the East Asia, where the languages are less inflected. Buddhism says there is no self. Buddhism began in India, where they do conjugate verbs, but it propagated largely via China, where they don't (AFAIK: I only know a few words of Chinese).
DClaudeKatz 5 years ago
Yes, I do agree that language funnels our thoughts in different ways. But is it not also true that language is born of a need to express something and words exist as a result of concepts and not the reverse?
phaedress 5 years ago
Words exist as a result of concepts, but the concepts don't necessarily represent true reality. Concepts exist because they are useful or because of the way our brains happened to evolve. Both the Chinese and the Indo-Europeans managed to solve the important practical communication problems, but the languages suggest different metaphysical truths.
DClaudeKatz 5 years ago
It's a fascinating subject. The three languages I live in are very similar, but even there I find concepts that do not translate.
I take from this that no single person --or culture-- can grasp the whole of metaphysical truth.
phaedress 5 years ago
"words exist as a result of concepts and not the reverse?"
Our concepts are products of human psychology and human culture. Advancement of knowledge, in both philosophy and science, is largely a process of rethinking our conceptualizations and forming new ones which better match reality.
Ratabluie 5 years ago
Aren't concepts a response to reality as perceived by the individual and shared by the culture?
phaedress 5 years ago
I'm reminded of a quote from Kurt Vonnega... Vonnegu... from some guy named Kurt... "What is the meaning of life? To be the eyes, ears, and consciousness of the creator of the universe, you fool!" Nicely done. You ROCK!!
HoldinCoffee 5 years ago
Did he say that? You must be thinking of Kilgore Trout. :)
phaedress 5 years ago
Google will tell you it's Dick.
Trout said: ""The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest. "
Ratabluie 5 years ago
Thank you for sharing that. Very cool stuff. So cool I won't even rag on Decartes! :P
AngryAtheist 5 years ago
No arguments at all from you? That makes me feel I haven't done a good job.
phaedress 5 years ago
I don't argue against personal opinion or action...you know that! :P If anything you make more sense then 99% of people I might consider arguing with...so I'd say you're ok :)
AngryAtheist 5 years ago