/lit/ - Literature

>>19877253
>What now?
UG Krishnamurti

>>19877264
I've watched some of his talks. His position seems to be a complete negation of the possibility of transcendental experience, or of the meaningfulness of experience in the first place, but I don't feel like he provides anything more than that, maybe I missed his point.

How did you read Plato and not walk away with a satisfactory answer

>>19877302
I don't know, I feel like there's something wrong with me since everyone on this board who's into those subjects has some texts they swear by, found life-changing, and that gave them definitive answers, but I didn't feel anything of the sort after reading them. Yes, including Phaedo.

>>19877307
how old are you btw

>>19877253
The mistake is trying to 'touch' that superior thing through reading.
Try rituals instead

>>19877330
I'm nearing 25. Why?
>>19877333
I mentioned that I did complement my reading with actual practice, be it prayer, yoga, or meditation.

>>19877253
There are no arbitrary "superior truths" anon. Just have fun and believe what you want to.

>>19877253
Now you read the Pyrrhonists and realise epoche (suspension of assent) leads to ataraxia (tranquility). That attaching yourself to views and belief systems is the cause of your suffering.

>>19877356
But this thinking easily leads to hedonism. I'm scared that rejecting everything and going back to my original position, which felt comfortable and natural, would make me miss out on a genuine truth that exists beyond my own intuition.
>>19877373
I've read Sextus. I can't bring myself to apply skepticism to this life and reality, although I understand it's an epistemologically sound position. To retreat into suspending judgment regarding all physical matters strikes me as a kind of admission of defeat, or a compromise.

>>19877381
>physical
Metaphysical* sorry

you keep spending time as a student, try the role of the master

>>19877393
I'm far from having deep enough knowledge to be a master of anything, especially when it comes to experiential knowledge which I completely lack. I've got the theory down, but no experience to back it up, although not for lack of trying.

>>19877381
Yeah I felt that way for a long time, very intensely and painfully. I don't think it's necessarily a bad way to feel either. There is a certain human longing like we ought to be able to find answers to our questions. I'm a sceptic but I try to avoid allowing that scepticism to settle into dogma. It's provisional. There doesn't appear to be any real answer *yet*, but there could be...

>>19877400
Do you believe the answer will be revealed to you eventually? I used to assume it would be revealed after death, but now I'm worried that by then, it might be too late — that there is work we need to do here if we wish for death to lead to something good.

If that's any help, I didn't find God when I was seeking God, I found him in time and through life experiences outside of my control.
Perhaps it is seeking that prevents you from finding.

>>19877399
you're only supposed to try the role of the master, you won't master the role of the master by looking at others, and it seems you are quite knowledgable of both theory and yourself.

You are asking by creating a thread. Let others ask you, that's the role of the master.

>>19877405
At the moment I err on the side of thinking that there probably isn't any life after death. It would be annoying though if it turned out some deity did have expectations of me...

>>19877409
I don't have a lot of life experience, I purposefully remained rather inactive since I doubted that accumulating worldly experience could ever be conducive to spiritual experience. I'll take your word on it though.
I feel like seeking is natural, at least for a certain temperament. To stop yourself from seeking would be to distract yourself with the world. Or is that the point, at least temporarily?
>>19877414
Theory is all I've got, genuine self-knowledge eludes me.
>Let others ask you
So far I've refrained from taking on this kind of role because I wanted to avoid dogmatically spreading opinions I wasn't even sure of myself.

>>19877419
A deity, or something else. It doesn't have to be a classic theistic model, it could also be that spiritual achievement in this life translates to a better afterlife, whereas lack of spiritual achievement translates to rebirth, reincarnation, incarnation in some less pleasant state, dissolution (for those who haven't built a sufficiently stable spiritual "body"), or whatever else.

>>19877428
>dogmatically spreading opinions
storytelling evolves and is tested several times a week, by failing we get directed. Doesn't matter if you start out with a crude block, carve and chip away and practice. humility is not about being the worst, admitting knowing the least of ones self.

You are much like me, never standing in place. Your friends from years ago are nowhere to be seen and they can't see you. We don't have the courage to stay in one place. Actually, it doesn't matter if you stay in your football team, chess club or dog park. If you just stay put you will eventually see who you are.

>>19877455
>If you just stay put you will eventually see who you are.
How long does it take for self-knowledge to bubble up by itself from the depths of the soul?
Do you feel like you're progressing? I feel like I'm just going in loops.

>>19877474
There's a paradox with progress, any adult you see is probably just pretending to be more than a teenager. Much like you, you put on an act of a wise old man but you're 25. Most adults put on an act, and most teachers put on an act. When you see this, that noone has gotten anywhere you can take your first step to going somewhere. Most people are still battleing their vices which they have done for years on end, some are just better at pretending and hiding their flaws.

There is no progress to be made, nowhere to go. Stay in one place, get one teacher. It will just confuse you when you talk to more people because you will be looking for the "best" response or teaching.

>>19877474
>>How long does it take for self-knowledge to bubble up by itself from the depths of the soul?
with a good teacher anywhere between 1-15 years is an estimate. if you look at most big teachers they have been gone for 20 years looking. 1-15 years to find it, and the rest for formulating and trying to understand what they found.

The loops are a great analogy, you won't meet any teachers if they don't come back by looping, same will be true for you when you see that it takes a loop to get to the start.

>>19877335
those are nice foundations, particularly meditation because it's useful for your general wellbeing but by rituals I mean those mentioned in the Velchevsky manifesto
I only have this part of it

>>19877494
How do you acquire a real teacher? And do you think it's still possible in this day and age when so much information, even esoteric, is readily available for whoever's interested?

>>19877532
>Velchevsky manifesto
I've never heard of it. What sets it apart?

>>19877548
come to think of it I don't even remember when I saw the whole thing but what struck me was that it was a take on rituals like I've never seen before, not anything religious or schizo or nuage spiritual garbage, but a formulation of ritual as a necessary component of life and that the loss of ritual is one of the drivers for the decline of western culture
in fact i think there was another thing by that guy that read something like 'homogeniety as the death of ritual and the death of ritual as the decline of culture'
that was the other thing that rituals are the variances across the 'topology of culture' or something to that effect

>>19877253
>What now?
Zhuangzi

>>19877253
I can't say as I'm well read as you OP but I think I'll end up in the same boat regardless. I familiarized myself with Orthodoxy(in wich I was baptised when I was little), Aristolelian/Thomist philosophy, stoicism, enlightenment garbage, Gnosticism, Greek&Egyptian mythos, a little Dacian paganism, various political doctrines from all over the spectrum and so far even though I can agree with some of these in concept I can't say that I truly subscribe to anything. Not only I don't realy believe in anything but it seems like the more I read the less chances I'll have in doing so. The thing that upsets me the most about it all is the fact that the lack of any concrete beliefs will lead me to nihilism and by that point I can't see any option of salvation.

>>19877574
I would say the most important takeaways from his stuff are that rituals are the lived experiences of symbols and that symbolic self reference is decay and makes things meaningless
using just those two as tools to analyze a lot of the classics yields very interesting shit
Fuck phoneposting

>>19877574
>>19877615
Okay, I'd like to read more about it but the book seems impossible to find on the internet.
>>19877595
I've read Zhuangzi and the Tao Te Ching, as well as some more contemporary books on Taoist alchemy.
>>19877609
Our experiences are similar, there are also concepts from various belief systems that I find intriguing and that I think could be true, but it ends up being a tangled mess once I try to clearly lay it out.
>the more I read the less chances I'll have
You're probably right. As we keep learning about various systems and frameworks, the truth, assuming there is one, seems to get even more muddled and difficult to reach.
Lack of belief doesn't necessarily imply nihilism though, but for all intents and purposes someone who doesn't really believe in anything concrete isn't all that different from the typical modern atheist.

>>19877633
its a pdf and its very hard to find, I'll have a look on my pc when I'm home
Its very recent, the guy is eastern European or Russian and he had put up an unedited draft of his manifesto that he then took down for some reason
I saved it tho I've been on the lookout for him ever since, if he ever uploads a complete version I think its gonna make some pretty big waves in the art world if nothing else

>>19877428
>I purposefully remained rather inactive since I doubted that accumulating worldly experience could ever be conducive to spiritual experience.
What makes you think so?

>>19877717
I have a generally acosmic disposition, I guess. Hence why my default position even before starting to learn about spirituality was idealism as opposed to physicalism. I've never felt very involved in the world and generally brushed off experiences that required me to be.

Have you tried reading Kant?

>>19877609
Have you tried this book yet?

>>19877633
>Okay, I'd like to read more about it but the book seems impossible to find on the internet.
Have you read picrel?

>>19877633
>Okay, I'd like to read more about it but the book seems impossible to find on the internet
Have you read picrel?

>>19877633
>>19877664
I wanna know too wtf is this even

>>19877253
If you are looking for adding meaning to your readings, I would attend some of these religious bodies and actually participate in it. Prayer and meditation buddy; pray and meditate everyday and within a couple months you'll start to feel an energy when you pray. People are so disconnected from the spirits these days, it's looks laughable to see someone pray. Yet when you look at the Greeks for example, they were very reliant on their gods. The only way to spiritual enlightenment is prayer and meditation.

>>19878556
Also note: the AA big book is literally a step by step guide to spiritual awakening, if you really want it, pick that book up and go through the steps with a priest. Replacing the words for alcohol with something else that you want to quit. That is the path of least resistance to a spiritual awakening.

>>19878556
Pray to what

>>19878603
It doesn't matter my friend, choose something. The general word for God if you don't believe in any religion is: Creator. The important part is that you connect to the higher being that's out there.

>>19877253
>None of it made me feel as if I had touched upon any kind of superior truth
>What now?
https://web.archive.org/web/20190709032709/http://www.xenosystems.net/the-cult-of-gnon
https://web.archive.org/web/20190709044641/http://www.xenosystems.net/simulated-gnon-theology/
https://web.archive.org/web/20190704065822/http://www.xenosystems.net/gnon-theology-and-time/

>>19878603
>Pray to what
https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1038056776975835138

>>19877253
>A few years ago I started asking myself questions about the nature of reality.
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/speculative-musings/mathematics-and-the-russian-doll-structure-of-like-the-whole-universe/

>I realized the arbitrariness of the metaphysical models
https://www.academia.edu/1502945/The_Last_Magic_Show_A_Blind_Brain_Theory_of_the_Appearance_of_Consciousness

>I went through everything, learned about everything, some things more deeply than others.
>What now?
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/the-blind-mechanic/
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/the-metacritique-of-reason/
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/meaning-fetishism/
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/paradox-as-cognitive-illusion/
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/cognition-obscura-reprise/
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/zizek-hollywood-and-the-disenchantment-of-continental-philosophy/
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/the-eliminativistic-implicit-i-the-necker-cube-of-everyday-and-scientific-explanation/

>>19878691
>>19878733
What the fuck am I looking at here

>>19878611
>The general word for God if you don't believe in any religion is: Creator.

>>19877253
https://fgbueno.es/ing/gbm.htm

have sex

>>19879411
doesn't help

Read books about neoplatonism first then go back and read plato again

Yeah. No one knows anything. Certainty is impossible. Just choose whatever seems most reasonable or fun or aesthetic and don't stress about it.

>>19877264
I hate that man.
He ruined all the enjoyment I have been getting from reading vedantic texts and practicing meditation and made it apparent that I was just pursuing harder to achieve desires deemed spritiual who were just as empty as carnal ones and deluding myself to a point of having self-inflicted psychosis while thinking I was detaching from illusions and that I was on my way to get enlightened.

>>19879784
Based UG mindbreaking people even after his death

>>19879640
It's all about aesthetics, isn't it?

>>19879999
In effect, yes I suppose so.

KJV

>>19877253
Read up on Derrida's notion of metaphysics of presence

>>19879999
Is that a bad thing?

Try Chan (Chinese Zen) if you haven't already, and maybe if you have.
Texts can only point to answers. You have to turn your awareness around and see it yourself.

How could you find what you're seeking when what you seek already is that which is seeking?

>[...] sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek externally for Buddhahood. By their very seeking they lose it, for that is using the Buddha to seek for the Buddha and using mind to grasp Mind.
>— Huangbo, On the Transmission of Mind https://terebess.hu/zen/Huangpo.pdf

>In my school, there are only two kinds of sickness. One is to go looking for a donkey riding on the donkey. The other is to be unwilling to dismount once having mounted the donkey. You say it is certainly a tremendous sickness to mount a donkey and then go looking for the donkey. I tell you that one need not find a spiritually sharp person to recognize this right away and get rid of the sickness of seeking, so the mad mind stops.
>Once you have recognized the donkey, to mount it and be unwilling to dismount is the sickness that is most difficult to treat. I tell you that you need not mount the donkey; you are the donkey! The whole world is the donkey; how can you mount it? If you mount it, you can be sure the sickness will not leave! If you don’t mount it, the whole universe is wide open!
>— Foyan, Instant Zen https://terebess.hu/zen/FoyenCleary.pdf

Reality is blood, bones and death. This is the reality that all these authors and great thinkers are tying themselves up in knots trying to escape.

>>19880373
People can witness supernatural events and powers as well.

>>19880449
Grow up.

>>19879999
Aesthetic and Dasein are the same thing meaning that something being about aesthetics is not at all bad or discouraging I would say

>>19880828
>GROW UP
t. depressed westoid manchild atheist

>>19880870
Enjoy your 69 raisins in heaven.

>>19880870
INSHALLAH BROTHER

>>19878110
Nooe. Can you gib a quick rundown of it?

>>19881338
A kantian system of occult philosophy

>>19877253
Study near death experiences and the research suggesting reincarnation by Ian Stevenson.

>>19881394
Also, if youre looking for information on reincarnation, buddhist texts talk extensively and in great deal on it

>>19877419
‘I do this, I do that’
Never has a concept been so further from the truth.

>>19880828
I was just being honest. There are many kinds of objects and circumstances in the world, I've seen all five of those things.

>>19881394
>Study near death experiences
Warning: doing this will make you a Gnostic

>>19881394
What conclusion did you come to?
>>19881881
Buddhism talks about rebirth, not reincarnation

>>19880148
At least for me, it is, yes. What's the point of it if it's all about aesthetic appealing? How can something so superficial and shallow be also fulfilling? By the way, I don't fear death or even think of death as a negative thing. I just want a systematic belief system to live by. Give me commandments, give me some fables and proverbs. Tell me how to sleep, how to eat, how to work, how to wear clothes. I envy Jewish people so much, it's unreal.

>>19883478
>I just want a systematic belief system to live by.
Why? Not saying wanting this is wrong or anything but I'd like to know why.

>>19883492
I guess it's because it's really important for me to maintain the sense of purpose in every little thing I do in my daily life. Without "traditions" life is too shaky.

>>19880838
I don't understand what Dasein is.

>>19883658
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/the-one-eyed-king-consciousness-reification-and-the-naturalization-of-heidegger/
"From the standpoint of BBT, the consciousness that Heidegger refers to here, that he interprets under the rubric of Dasein, is a form of Error Consciousness, albeit one sensitive to PIA [Principle of Informatic Adumbration] and the asymptotic structure that follows. Reification is ‘inappropriate’ the degree to which it plays into the illusion of symptotic sufficiency."

"By embracing asymptosis, Heidegger discovered a radically new inferential schema, one that allows the subject to become those containing and contained things. Lacking boundaries, these containing and contained things could no longer contain or be contained, and the tidy hierarchies of the tradition dissolved into the existential vicissitudes of Dasein. Regarding the ‘containers,’ Heidegger performs a kind of ontological equivocation, so that Dasein, unlike the traditional subject, becomes time, becomes the world. Regarding the ‘contained,’ he performs a kind of metonymic inflation, so that Dasein, unlike the traditional subject, becomes care, becomes anxiety. You could say that ontological equivocation (As temporalization, Dasein is…) and metonymic inflation (As care, Dasein is…) are the pillars of his interpretative method, what makes his philosophical implicature so radical. In one fell swoop, it seemed, Heidegger had sidestepped centuries of philosophical dilemma. By equivocating the world and Dasein, he was able to bypass the subject-object dichotomy, and thus make the epistemological dilemma look like a quaint, historical relic. The discrete, accidental relation between discrete subjects and objects became an encompassing, constitutive relation, one that Dasein is.

The fact that so many found this defection from traditional philosophy so convincing despite its radicality reflects the simple fact that it follows from asymptosis, the way the modes of prereflective conscious experience express PIA. Consciousness, as we experience it, is asymptotic, as it has to be given the Principle of Informatic Adumbration. The fact that the conscious subsystems of the brain cannot cognize inaccessible information is trivial. The corollary of this, our corresponding inability to cognize the limits of cognition, is where the profundities begin to pile up. Heidegger had stumbled upon a very real, very powerful intuition–but from the phenomenological side of the coin."

>>19880373
>Reality is really x
You're just as stupidly dogmatic as any religious preacher.

>>19877253
You're not going to get anywhere without initiation and being in a propitious part of the cycle. It seems like you did not understand most of it well enough if you thought random, aimless "practice" would help.

>>19883674
>Give me an arm long enough, and I will reach across the universe and punch myself in the back of the head. Not because I deserve it, but because I can take it.
i kek'd hard at this

>>19877335
A few years of unguided, unstructured, uncommitted, fragmentary reading of a random grouping of texts, and to your surprise none have revealed their depths of experience after a few texts and mantra sessions. So you move to the next when they don't immediately provide transcendental experience. I think what you learned here is how to be a puffed up dilettante. Reading random excerpts from the history of physics across the world and history in no particular order or with no particular depth, dutifully dropping a bowling ball and feather off the roof, expecting it to give you the insights of say a Heisenberg after a few weeks is bordering on sociopathic megalomania, but that's what you suppose you're doing about the nature of reality/soul/God whatever. Also, your whole blog post was better stated by Descartes several hundred years ago, and he had solutions instead of being a little whiny bitch, how'd you miss that? You haven't "built any metaphysical models" anymore than some flakey soccer mom with a salt lamp. Laughable, truly.

>>19877253
Try Islam?

>>19883735
>and he had solutions
lol no

>>19883742
Maybe not ones you agree with but he created a 'metaphysical model' with which he was satisfied after a much longer methodical approach to the study of things... Leading to one of the most important steps in the evolutions of geometry in the process among other things. This fag read Twitter theosophy quotes and is confused that he's not looking upon the face of God. There are qualitative differences to their approaches (and results not surpisingly) to a similar dilemma.

>>19883742
I'm not recommending Descartes to OP but his dilemma was similar... at the fucking start of his 'quest'. Anyone familiar with it wouldn't rehash it in such a basic bitch fashion as OP, pretending his dilemma is unique or even an end state instead of a preliminary.state mistaken for an advanced one.

>>19883717
Yes, yes, I'm aware of the Traditionalist take. You missed the point of the thread.

>>19883735
>>19883779
What I learned here is that being an arrogant dogmatist with tunnel vision and a chip on his shoulder like you is fruitless and leads nowhere. By all means, keep doing what you're doing; you haven't yet arrived at a point where what I'm saying resonates with you because you're still in the starry-eyed stage, believing that somehow your particular path is leading you to a meaningful outcome. You don't understand what I'm saying so you spew your prideful nonsense all over the place, accusing me of being a dilettante when I most certainly have more experience than you in whichever path you chose. You're most likely projecting your own lack of discipline and commitment by assuming all I've done was go through "a few texts and mantra sessions" and your impressionable mind fails to grasp the idea that diligent practice and study might indeed lead nowhere, probably because you've experienced a few meaningful coincidences or pretty visions and believe you're on a path to awakening. You'd be almost funny if not for how confidently you display your ignorance.

It's telling that after vomiting your bitter projections all over the place, the entire substance of your posts consist of strawmen and insults and no actual alternatives. You haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about.

>>19877253
Yoga Sutra 1.14

sa tu dīrghakālanairantaryasatkārādarāsevito dṛḍhabhūmiḥ

>...this practice becomes firmly grounded only after it has been cultivated uninterruptedly and with devotion for a long time

Get cracking, OP.

>>19883735
>>19883779
Start with the sceptics

>>19883678
Not at all. This is the simplest and most evident explanation that doesn't require any theory. It's what all the available evidence shows.

>>19883788
It's not a take. You missed the point of the works you read.

>>19883870
>It's not a take.
Yes, it is.

>>19883760
It has nothing to do with what "I agree with." Descartes was simply wrong and his "metaphysical model" is just as worthless as someone who spent 5 minutes thinking about his, because all falsehoods are equal.
>>19883843
>This is the simplest and most evident explanation that doesn't require any theory
Not at all, it is itself a theory. Consciousness is more primary than "flesh and bones" and has no necessary connection to "flesh and bones", there is no reason I should accept yours over one which makes more sense and is more self-evident.

>>19883876
No, it's not.

>You WILL assent to a belief system

>>19883880
>has no necessary connection to "flesh and bones
Tell that to people with damage to physical brain tissue
Tell that to any neurosurgeon

I don't understand how anyone can seriously push this point in the modern age considering how much we know about the physical origins of conscious and unconscious thinking.

>>19883889
I wish I could.

>>19877381
>I'm scared that rejecting everything and going back to my original position, which felt comfortable and natural, would make me miss out on a genuine truth that exists beyond my own intuition.
You won't.

>But this thinking easily leads to hedonism.
And reading every spiritual text under the sun easily leads to autism and schizophrenia, but that didn't stop you for some reason.

>>19883898
>considering how much we know about the physical origins of conscious
Which is... nothing? We have no idea why the appearance of consciousness (and not consciousness itself, because it cannot be scientifically measured, only "assumed" - unscientifically) occurs to us as it does, appearance being another being who we assume is conscious, yet we have no scientific means of being assured of it. There is nothing in any particle or relations of particles which is necessarily associated with consciousness. There are patterns we connect between certain appearances (all appearing to consciousness, in consciousness) which have only circumstantial relationships to one another, and no necessary relationship. There is no more necessary relationship between flesh, bone and awareness, than there is daisy, bicycle and awareness, the only relationship is one of happenstance, which some buffoons seem to take as "self-evident truth" or another similar absurdity. One of the most common counterexamples to bring up is the reality of sleep. Your brain temporarily shuts down overnight, yet you are not there, you are immediately there the next morning, assuming you do not dream. The "fact" of the brain is secondary and circumstantial.
>unconscious thinking.
This is an oxymoron, by the way. Rocks do not think. Unconscious things do not think, they at best "process" or "develop." If you make the unscientific assumption that there is anything which is really unconscious.

in case you are honest, have you read/read about the CTMU?
if you did, what did you think?
if you didn't, why don't you give it a go?

>>19877253
Is it possible that, while doing all of this study, you have been asking the wrong questions, and thus have not found the answers you seek? I saw someone in the thread earlier mention taking on the role of the master, which I read to mean see what others are asking and attempt to answer those questions. If you can not answer those questions to your satisfaction then you need to probe what you are missing, identify how you can acquire it, and internalize it so that it may better guide you toward more questions that may lead you to where you want to be. Plenty of people would argue that the best way to learn is to teach and that is what’s meant by “taking on the role of the master.” I also get the feeling that you have been basing your enquiries into the truths of the world on information you have gathered (and maybe even internalized and made your own) information from what accepted sources have to say on the subject, but have you thought much about what they aren’t saying? Maybe there is some truth to be gotten to via negativa. And if this perspective hasn’t occurred to you before perhaps there are other perspectives that also have eluded you that could lead you closer to what you are looking for. Spend more time, branch out, and only assume an end point when you find a satisfying answer to your questions or when you die. All other end points are born of hubris.

>>19883914
What's your point?

>>19877253
Read Camus

>>19877253
Not reading all that, any time you get like this either do 20 push-ups, disconnect from your wifi, or re-read the Tao Te Ching.

>>19883947
>>unconscious thinking.
>This is an oxymoron, by the way.
The brain does a lot of thinking when you are asleep. Many decisions are made without your awareness. I recommend you go to /sci/ or watch https://youtu.be/ba-HMvDn_vU or read some university neuroscience 101 course materials and not rely only on 200 year old+ philosophers for your ideas regarding human cognition.

>>19877253
Maybe you're just a fag

>dogmatists feeling threatened itt
this is the right path

>>19877253
read Husserl my man
start with the logical investigations

>>19884814
Camus, more like Cam-ewww. Amirite guys?

>>19885089
>Many decisions are made without your awareness.

And with this sentence you have refuted your own argument. There are many complex processes that your body performs 'without your awareness'. The another anon is right, unconscious thinking is a ridiculous and contradictory turn of phrase,
proponents be damned. Thought implies consciousness. Do computers think? The point is a semantic one, but it stands, especially when it serves to muddy the already murky waters surrounding definitions of consciousness.

Same. I think I am just going to go outside now lol.

>>19885089
> The brain does a lot of thinking when you are asleep. Many decisions are made without your awareness
automated subconscious or unconscious mental processes =\= thinking & decisions

>>19883898
> Tell that to people with damage to physical brain tissue
brain damage only affects and can only be shown to affect objects of consciousness (thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensory perceptions), but there is no research suggesting that it affects consciousness itself (the presence that is aware of those thoughts, emotions etc)

>>19885875
>Thought implies consciousness.
"Thought" implies delusion of having consciousness. It need not be true, though.

https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/lamps-instead-of-ladies-the-hard-problem-explained-2/

Does a magician materialize matter out of nothingness, when he pulls a coin out of your ear?
Does a film require pictures magically moving, or is it merely exploiting your eye's inability to process frames beyond flicker fusion threshold?

>Do computers think?
Do you?

>>19885916
>unconscious mental processes =\= thinking & decisions
Both are heuristics.

>thinking & decisions
Require emotions, btw. And I doubt that you deliberately decide what to feel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes%27_Error

>>19877532
what do we have here

>>19885089
>>19885875
>>19885916
>>19885950
>>19885985
>>19886034
i read somewhere that people that fixate on consciousness are gay, then i saw a study where they filmed thousands of hours of the joe rogan experience and proved it.

>>19885888
trips of reason

>>19886277
dubs of truth

>>19883219
Why?

>>19886169
I saw a study where they filmed thousands of hours of me doing your mom.

>>19877253
There is nothing. It’s all a lie fed to you by mentally ill fools. Your existence is a silly aberration that is rarely, if ever, found outside of Earth. Once we die we return to the meaningless, uncaring, void and that’s a good thing. Egotistical creatures like ourselves aren’t suited for this material world and with nothing spiritual there is nothing for us.

>>19877253
If you were genuinely curious about the nature of reality you should have spent that time learning about current scientific models than reading the Bible and collecting magic crystals or whatever the fuck you were doing. This is obviously not going to go down well on this board because everyone here who aspires to be a philosopher or a theologian is a complete and utter intellectual fraud. But when it comes to the nature of reality, empiricism is the way to go. It's the only way anyone can really know anything with any degree of certainty. The fact is that empiricism and the scientific models it built have provided us with such a great understanding of the nature of reality that we can now control the natural world itself in ways that would have seemed miraculous to people even just a few hundred years ago. I hope you're planning on either writing a fantasy novel or starting a cult because otherwise you've wasted your time on complex systems of superstition that have little to do with reality as it is.

>>19887158
ah yes, because we understand the underlying truths behind quantum physics (not what it predicts but how it actually works) completely and there isn't any on going debate about it. same goes for where the universe comes from (everyone knows how singularities work). And there definitely isn't any mystery as to how those simple things conglomerate to form the classically mechanical world we interact with in our day to day lives (and how that world interacts with "us." this us being another concept modern science has already nailed down as well). Clearly science has all the answers, there is no reason to seek out any other routs of inquiry. Its all solved. thanks for reminding me.

>>19887114
Wrong

>>19886410
Why not?

>>19889113
I just don't see the link

>>19887458
>ah yes, because we understand the underlying truths behind quantum physics
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2018/04/14/notes-toward-a-cognitive-biology-of-theoretical-physics/
"With general relativity, Einstein had to overcome a form of frame neglect to see space and time as part and parcel of the machinery of the universe. With quantum mechanics, Bohr and others had to overcome a form of constitutive neglect and invent a new rationality. When cognizing the universe on the greatest scales, your frame of reference makes a tremendous difference to what you see. When cognizing reality at infinitesimal scales, your cognitive biology makes a tremendous difference to what you see. In each case, you cannot understand the fundamentals short understanding yourself as part of the system cognized.
Our cognitive biology, in other words, is only irrelevant to cognitive determinations in classical (ancestral) problem ecologies. This explains why general relativity was more ‘insight’ driven, while the standard model was much more experimentally driven."

"The central issue, in other words, is the same issue structuring debates regarding the nature of knowledge and experience: whether the apparently exceptional nature of the quantum, like the exceptional nature of experience and cognition, isn’t an artifact of any incapacity on our part."

"But if quantum mechanics is both exceptional (insofar as it violates classical mechanics) and scientifically warranted, cannot the intentionalist claim the same? Where intentionalists use the empirical power of operationalizations of intentional posits (such as beliefs) to argue their objectivity, quantum realists use the empirical power of quantum mechanical postulates (such as wave-functions) to argue their objectivity. But there’s two key differences undermining this apparently happy analogy: first, where intentionalism is nothing if not intuitive, quantum mechanics is, to put it mildly, anything but. And second, quantum mechanics is the most powerful, most applicable theory in the history of science, whereas intentionalism is plagued both by issues of reproducibility within experimental contexts and issues of generalization beyond those contexts."

>>19887458
>Clearly science has all the answers, there is no reason to seek out any other routs of inquiry.
It's not a question of whether "science has all the answers", it's a question of whether your intentional intuitions can be easily broken by some random scientist. Because if they do, then the toolbox you pose as an alternative is shit. And they do.

You've already been told to read >>19878733 this.

https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/the-eliminativistic-implicit-i-the-necker-cube-of-everyday-and-scientific-explanation/
"Our cognitive capacities, it turns out, are far more fractionate, contingent, and opaque than we ever imagined. Decisions can be tracked prior to a subject’s ability to report them (Haynes, 2008; or here). The feeling of willing can be readily tricked, and thus stands revealed as interpretative (Wegner, 2002; Pronin, 2009). Memory turns out to be fractionate and nonveridical (See Bechtel, 2008, for review). Moral argumentation is self-promotional rather than truth-seeking (Haidt, 2012). Various attitudes appear to be introspectively inaccessible (See Carruthers, 2011, for extensive review). The feeling of certainty has a dubious connection to rational warrant (Burton, 2008). The list of such findings continually grows, revealing an ‘implicit’ that consistently undermines and contradicts our traditional and intuitive self-image—what Sellars famously termed our Manifest Image."
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/the-metacritique-of-reason/
"The primary difference is that the Intentionalist thinks they can overcome neglect via intuition and intellection, that theoretical metacognition (philosophical reflection), once alerted to the existence of the transcendental, suddenly somehow possesses the resources to accurately describe its structure and function. The Eliminativist, on the other hand, asks, ‘What resources?’ Lay them out! Convince me! And more corrosively still, ‘How do you know you’re not still blinkered by neglect?’ Show me the precautions!

The Eliminativist, in other words, pulls a Kant on Kant and demands what amounts to a metacritique of reason.

The fact is, short of this accounting of metacognitive resources and precautions, the Intentionalist has no way of knowing whether or not they’re simply a ‘Stage-Two Dogmatist,’ whether their ‘clarity,’ like the specious clarity of the Dogmatist, isn’t simply the product of neglect—a kind of metacognitive illusion in effect."

>>19877253
anything in that list that isnt Christianity is basically luciferianism . thats why ur not getting ur answers with meaning, anything satanic , the best meaning it can give u to life is in the material experience, sry

>>19889382
Yes, good goy.

>>19889385
lucifer takes worship in any way shape or form those other religions teach you to worship yourself

>>19889389
You don't know what you're talking about

>>19886169
>thousands of hours of the joe rogan experience
Joe is one of the most important disseminators of information of our time.

>>19889382
>luciferianism . thats why ur not getting ur answers with meaning, anything satanic
"Perhaps in the spirit of universalism, both monotheistic and mathematical, it is possible to unify the two myths. There is only one God, and His Eternal Omnipotence, absolutely appalled at the image that His creation offers to Him, and filled with loathing for it, annihilates Himself in a profound groan of agony and despair. Imagine the agonies of Christ on the Cross multiplied to infinite proportions, the maximum of tragic intensity giving rise to measureless expenditures of energy in the form of sonic vibrations. This is the sound of the universe, the melancholic sound that constitutes the universe, the cosmic noise from which all form and structure derives as oscillations coalesce into dark matter, atomic matter and light, producing the stars from which life ultimately derives, a universe in which, with supreme irony, human forms of life will perceive divine harmony and mathematical consistency, the very image of creation that God sought to avoid, but through avoiding, in his tragic stupidity brings about.
No wonder Lucifer rebelled, becoming Satan, the great adversary, patron of black metal which if it cannot break the chain of eternal repetition, affirms the divine cacophony and pandemonium that results from the death of God, therein returning harmony to dissonance all the better to affirm the primordial impulse, the sovereign gesture, in which God negates himself in the slavish image of man, the divine hatred of the divine returning each time in an ecstasy filled with woe of a different force and quality."

"Satan’s role, as it has been handed down from Romanticism, is to sustain a trace of the divine in the wake of the death of God. As such, the Prince of Darkness, in the playful gravity of his perpetual insurgency, is of course a negative support of modernity’s Enlightenment project, both as its defining obscurantist opposite and its very impulse as a mode of transgressive negativity. Satan, as the untenable metaphor for nonknowledge, marks the boundaries of being and nothingness, joy and the abyss, centre and margin, life and death, man and beast; as the demonic figure of paradox, possession and the impossible, Satan threatens the undoing of these distinctions, holding them both together and apart, the locus of desire and imagination in a Godforsaken universe."

>>19889396
yes i do ,
lucifer wants to mix the femenine and masculine energies, preverting God's creation thats what the baphomet stands for thats why it was made it was made upon this belief
In bhuddism the whole point is to mix the krishna masculine with the kundalini feminine energy

>>19889419
>patron of black metal which if it cannot break the chain of eternal repetition,

thats retarded thats literally a lie from the garden of eden. this is for u fucking aetheists out there: there is no simulation. this is it. this is the only life u get and u better make it count. until u realize there is no repetition, will u wake up and repent

>>19877253
let me share with you my own koan which I spontaneously thought of
>the master was beating his student for not practicing dutifully
>the student pleaded with the master, "please stop beating me"
>the master said, "you are beating yourself"
>the student was immediately enlightened

>>19889426
>In bhuddism the whole point is to mix the krishna masculine with the kundalini feminine energy
Yep, you have no fucking idea what you're talking about kek

>>19883478
I feel very similarly but did attempt to live like that for a couple years but as a Christian. Even was fully confirmed as a member of a church and everything and for a time did really believe. In the end I found it equally miserable as a life without any inherent existential structure and never felt the peace that seemed to be promised in the Bible or the certainty I saw in others around me. Engagement in the routines and rituals never quieted the general angst of living and never made me feel secure in it.
Pic related won't answer any questions but it is a nice film to laugh at the search for meaning or direction especially in a religious context.

>>19889482
Ok but that's not what koans are or mean.

>>19889434
lol

>>19889207
>doesnt know about the ongoing debate copenhagen (bohr) vs hidden variables (einstein, dirac, schrodinger) vs many worlds (everite) and ignores the measurement problem
you can take the stance that "it doesnt matter how it works, it just does" but i fail to see how thats any less apocryphal than "god did it" and just accepting that as fact.

>>19889231
My point isnt that science is useless compared to theological study. Its that there is plenty of reason to take both into account (because both are flawed). taking many different perspectives on the universe yields the best chance at a complete understanding. I also think that the view of sacred text as simply "mah fairy stories" is extremely short sited considering the amount of pragmatic advice one can obtain if they actually engage with the material. science explains how the universe works but it doesnt explain our place init or how we should best act to maximize our selves (which again i would like to point out that science very much struggles with pinning down what "our selves" even means). In other words "you would have been better off engaging with scientific text if you wanted truth" is an opinion that is contingent on what truths you are looking for. no single discipline or rout of inquiry is going to yield all of them.

>>19889412
yes and that is a good thing

>>19887114
>Once we die we return to the meaningless, uncaring, void
Superstition. Belief in true Void is just as optimistic and religious as belief in Heaven.

>>19889575
>taking many different perspectives on the universe
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2019/12/27/eliminativist-interventions-gallagher-on-neglect-and-free-will/
"A happy face on a robot, on the other hand, could mean anything. This ecological dependence is precisely why source-insensitive cognitive tools are so situational, requiring the right cues in the right circumstances to reliably solve select sets of problems—or problem ecologies."

>the view of sacred text as simply "mah fairy stories"
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/truest-of-the-true-falsest-of-the-false/
"I see epic fantasy as a kind of ‘scripture otherwise.’ A large part of its appeal lies in its iteration of anthropocentric worlds, ontologies that serve our default understanding of the world. All fiction caters to the vagaries of human cognition, but none to such an extent. As such, epic fantasy possesses tremendous social and cultural significance, recording, at almost every turn, the antagonism between modernity and the human soul. Agency is distributed through the natural world (as opposed to restricted to humans or nonexistent). History has a closed narrative structure (as opposed to being open-ended and pointless). Morality is not only objective, but simple and unambiguous (as opposed to intractable or illusory). Events, regardless of scale, are intentional (as opposed to random). Social relationships are local and familial/tribal (as opposed to bureaucratic and incidental). Reality is accountable to human need and desire (as opposed to opaque and indifferent). Epic fantasy, as I like to say, offers us a ‘photographic negative’ of modernity.
The subgenre is often derided as ‘escapist,’ but for me, it’s important precisely because it’s consolatory in such a fundamental, encompassing way. Once its kinship to living scripture as opposed to myth (dead scripture) is highlighted, the absurd proportion of the cognitive stakes involved becomes clear. Where ‘scripture’ is the truest of the true when it comes to narrative, ‘fantasy’ is the falsest of the false, something that is somehow more fictional than fiction."

>In other words "you would have been better off engaging with scientific text if you wanted truth" is an opinion that is contingent on
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/if-free-will-were-a-heuristic/
"Perhaps this is a growing pain every intelligent, interstellar species suffers, the point where their ancestral socio-cognitive toolset begins to fail them. Maybe science strips exceptionalism from every advanced civilization in roughly the same way: first our exceptional position, then our exceptional origin, and lastly, our exceptional being."

>>19889575
>but it doesnt explain our place init or how we should best act
>sacred text
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2018/08/11/were-fucked-so-now-what/
"Why, for instance, presume meaning will survive the apocalypse? <...> If meaning is fundamentally natural, then what in its nature renders it immune to ecological degradation and collapse? <...>
Writing allowed our ancestors to transcend the limits of memory, to aggregate insights, to record alternatives, to regiment and to interrogate claims. Combined with narrative plasticity, literacy begat a semantic explosion, a proliferation of communicative alternatives that continues to accelerate to this present day.
This is biologically unprecedented. <...> The plasticity of meaning, our basic ability to adapt our narratives, is the evolutionary product of a particular cognitive ecology, one absent writing. Literacy, you could say, constitutes a form of pollution, something that disrupts preexisting adaptive equilibria. Aside from the cognitive bounty it provides, it has the long-term effect of destabilizing narratives—all narratives.
The reason we find such a characterization jarring is that we subscribe to a narrative (Scranton’s eminently Western narrative) that values literacy as a means of generating new meaning. What fool would argue for illiteracy (and in writing no less!)? No one I know. But the fact remains that with literacy, certain ancestral functions of narrative were doomed to crash. Where once there was blind trust in our meanings, we find ourselves afflicted with questions, forced to troubleshoot what our ancestors took for granted. (This is the contradiction dwelling in the heart of all post-modernisms: the valuation of the very process devaluing meaning, crying ‘More is better!’ as those unable or unwilling to tread water drown)."

>>19889207
>>19889231
>>19889680
>>19889694
are you r scott bakker?

>>19889604
What is the least superstitious stance that isn't skepticism/agnosticism?

>>19877253
I don't really know what your asking about, and I'm not sure i'll be that much help, if what you say is true you may very well be far more knowledgable than me, but desu honest recently I've been having somewhat similar questions myself so I'll see if I can't endeavour to try and give a new perspective. ( I also sort of wrote an answer to this on another thread so see pics attached.)

But essentially to my mind is that the ultimate answer is that their is no answer. That the ultimate understanding of reality comes from seeing reality itself. This is reflected in the book of five rings, where Musashi says that after pondering on the principle by which he was able to win his 60 duels that there was no principle. It is also mentioned in the book of the void, (that is, that there are things outside of our conception , like in fighting someone attacking you from behind, there are things we can't know.)

It's also alluded to in the Tao, the idea of water being something that can take on any form.

Also, since you mentioned taoism, I should mention that a key point in taoism is the idea of the elucidation of universal truths through the tautologies of distinctions found in practicing an artform, that when then looked at from a tautological perspective point towards a universal principle. (cha-do, ken-do,) much like the passage in the I-ching stating that first one, when getting to know the tao, like at it's children, but then having known it's children, returns to it's mother.

Such practices are therefore considered a microcosm of the dao, and as such people who follow that way commit themselves to a lifetime of practice. ( usually multiple decades.)

What's more this of being at one with universal nature requires the mental flexibility of becoming detached from the self, hence it also fits in with the buddhist concept of becoming detached from desire.

Now of course it can't be said that musashi had no principle to his fighting, but he did have no preferences, his "dao" was the way of strategy, which was described as "victory, whatever the means." This was why one of the main points of his was to have no preferences.

In other words, the most important part of wisdom is to simply see circumstances and develop intuitive judgement for all things, without being attached to a certain way of thinking or letting your character as a person interfere with what is the correct way forward.

People who have practised any form of way, (cha-do, kendo etc,) have always been concerned about purity and the real iteration of the thing, Musashi wrote about it, Gichin Funakoshi wrote about, Zen Master Hakuin had that issue when he was revitalising Zen buddhism in japan, and it's even mentioned in the I- ching IIRC. (something about how the ancients minds were beyond comprehension, bla bla bla.) So how does a person cut the wheat from the chaff? I think it's through using your own judgement. 1/2

>>19890917
And the thing about that is, whether you do it through some "way" or through meditation or through your thinking in everyday life, it's not an intellectual point you can arrive to, it's something you have to practice.

>>19883735
>>19883779
Also wanted to touch on Descartes, Specfically the discourse on the Method, as it lays one of the most important fundamental principles for anyone asking these sorts of questions, which is the capacity for doubt. As Descartes says “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”

All human beings feel that inherent uncertainty with regards to our understanding of the nature of reality, and the natural tendency is to fill it with some sort of belief system.

What most people don't realise is that the capacity to doubt is actually not a bad thing but instead one of the greatest gifts humanity possesses. By being able to doubt, a person can make their beliefs like building blocks in their brain, reassesing them only to find them stronger, in need of some altering, but at any point being willing to knock things down from the foundation and start from scratch.

Rather then trying to settle on some "superior truth", isn't it better instead to take note of the absurdity of the nature of existence itself? I mean think about it, suppose your an alien, and you find yourself in some weird, abstract plane of existence, wouldn't you want to get your philosophical bearings? wouldn't you want to know how it is that you exist? how or what causes existence to exist? the sheer awe inspiring absurdity of existence if anything should cause you to want to doubt, to always be willing to reassess things and constantly swing the pick-axe at existence and being itself.

And consider this, we live in a time where we might yet come to some manner of understanding about consciousness, causation, and maybe even existence itself. Isn't it an exciting time to be alive? why would you want to drum out the inherent sheer awe of things by some way of a banal oversimplification. I think the unknown is much more exciting.

>>19883436
>What conclusion did you come to?

For NDE's, too many people have had too similar experiences for me to write it all off as a mere hallucination one experiences with a brain malfunctioning while approaching death. I believe in an afterlife. For reincarnation, the evidence was simply very convincing. I believe in reincarnation.

This is not faith.