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Spiritual: 1...of, pertaining to, or consisting of spirit; incorporeal. 2...of or pertaining to the spirit or soul, as distinguished from the physical nature
1...of, pertaining to, or consisting of spirit; incorporeal.
2...of or pertaining to the spirit or soul, as distinguished from the physical nature
I suggest you have a read of the "Hostility" thread, where, in case you were unaware, this whole ding dong kicked off following a reference to Deepak Chopra, and Quantum Mechanics, and went downhill from there.
ie the subject of "higher forms" of energy, matters pertaining to "higher levels" of awareness and consciousness.
This is so difficult to explain, as our language just is to limited to really convey these "dimensions". Language is linear, but experience is multidimensional. I guess it is for a reason that there is this Chinese saying: "One picture is worth more than a thousand words." Just try do describe and explain a picture - you will never really be able to convey the same impression that the picture does. Now take inner states, can be distress - have you ever had the situation were you tried to console someone in despair, who was crying and you asked: "What is the matter". Usually word-wise this person will not be able to talk coherently, maybe even talk "gibberish", and still you get the idea of what is going on in this person, despite the words not making any sense. There is definitely something beyond the level of intellect that can be communicated, maybe through music and art. There are also other states of knowing - however, again in non-verbal form, as they can be experienced in meditation - but as soon as you try to reduce the experience to words, it is loosing its essence, it often doesn't make sense when put in to words. One reason maybe, because we never created words that can carry that kind of information.
P.S. Jyana Yoga is the Yoga of inquiry - asking question to find enlightenment. However, the Jyana Yogi does not use the internet to find the answer; the Jyana Yogi meditates on the questions and looks for the answers "inside".
Thus, everything that you do not experience through your senses is spirit - feelings, emotions, thinking, visualizing, etc.
But this is simply wrong-headed. It presumes, for one thing, that those things are something distinct from physical and chemical interactions in the brain. There is no justification for such an assumption.
Language is linear, but experience is multidimensional.
This sentence is a prime example of why this discussion is so difficult. Linear and multidimensional are words that have meanings. And you're not using them in a way that makes any sense given their ordinary meanings.
While you are, of course, free to employ your own semantics, in which you imbue words with meanings that they do not usually have, it would help the reader to more easily grasp your point if you would please point out which definitions you change and how you change them.
Further, it does not help matters that it is almost invariably highly technical terms like dimensionality or linear that are mangled in this fashion. Taking the above example, you employ the term 'linear' as a contrast to the term 'multi-dimensional' - but the two are not mutually exclusive. The Schrödinger equation is very much a linear equation and it is very much also a multi-dimensional equation (OK, you can construct a one-dimensional version, but that has strictly limited utility). Further, neither of these terms has any natural connection to any description of language with which I am familiar.
I guess it is for a reason that there is this Chinese saying: "One picture is worth more than a thousand words."
... but 999 of them may be lies.
Snark aside, a word can also be worth a thousand pictures. I cannot, for example describe the full meaning that the viewer derives from a picture of an Iraqi child who's been hit by a phosphor grenade. There are simply too many side bands and connotations. However, it is equally true that no amount of pictures can describe the word 'imaginary' - again, there are connotations and impressions that are not easily translatable. And that is true for any migration from one media platform to another. An SMS can't say the same that an e-mail can, which in turn can't say the same thing a radio broadcast can, which in turn can't say the same things a TV broadcast can.
None of this is particularly new or deep insight, however, so I am not entirely sure where you are going with this. Certainly, the loss of information during translation from one medium to another is not to be taken as evidence of 'spiritual higher planes of existence?'
- Jake Ceterum censeo Chicago esse delendam
I guess I will take a break from ET too, these discussions are just no fun anymore.
That's a shame. Just when we've got them on the run.... ;-)
Jake is a Defender of the Faith, just the same as any other. Except his Faith is in "Science" and the "scientific method".
He is a priest in what Pirsig called the "Church of Reason".
I've taken breaks too, and they are good for peace of mind. But I always return because I have such good friends here to share with. You can't be me, I'm taken
Not so very long ago, people remarked on this blog that philosophical disagreements would be used (and have been used) to drive in wedges between natural allies. It would be a sad irony if we were to drive in such wedges ourselves.
In other words, please consider this an apology for any insinuations of 'quackery' or somesuch in your practice.
And I do admit I am currently extra touchy - unfortunately I have been confronted over the last weeks, lets say with the shadow side of conventional medicine, and have been able to see some of the good stuff from the woo woo side. :-)
This disingenious, intellectual dishonesty/_ and exceptionalism are the ET equivalent of the eco-no-mist. Self-locked into quadrant 17, level B, having an ´on-my-terms-only´, puerile tantrum and refusing to come out. Newborn ´scientists´, as dangerous, authoritarian and myopic as newborn christians. Yet, you meet them and they are pretty full people! It´s an amazingly woowoo paradox, to use their terminology.
I will try to read below this and control myself, but if the ignorant and HURTFUL contempt continues, I´ll figure something else out.
Hope you give yourself credit and a good treat, then, come back soon. Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. --Charu Saxena.
I'm not entirely sure what has provoked it, or how much of it is a defensiveness-projection thing, but if we had a smug-o-meter handy right now, the needle would be off the charts. At this point I've become too annoyed with everyone to care what their original stance was. See, now I am being smug... This diary is a smug-magnet. I suggest everyone slowly back away from it. "This is nothing compared to how Putin rigged Eurovision."
metavision:
a higher-level gnome
I do have quite a bit of weaknesses and shadows. And the other FP's are great people, and I really appreciate being in the same team with them. (okay, they might have some weaknesses too! At least I hope so.)
I would appreciate if we all could just take a deep breath, exhale and take a step back and start all over with each other. Let's stop this he did, she did - lets let it be.
Isn't Christmas supposed to be the time of love and forgiveness. Let's practice that! :-D
the pseudo-science hammers
gnome gang
disingenious, intellectual dishonesty/_ and exceptionalism
Newborn ´scientists´, as dangerous, authoritarian and myopic as newborn christians
I'm just sorry you've been wasting so much time reading us. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
This is an overly simplistic reductionist view of what was being said, it's like a paint-by numbers version of the mona lisa. Everything has to fit together as a subsetof my own model of how the world works. The fact that someone has a different language to describe experience is seen as irrelevent or wrong headead.
None of this is particularly new or deep insight, however, so I am not entirely sure where you are going with this.
If it isn't particularly a new or deep insight, why are you having trouble working out where they are going with this, surely it should be obvious? Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
The problem is not that someone else is using a different language. The problem is that they are using the same language, but clearly not the same semantics. When a laundry list of perfectly biological functions is offered up as evidence of spirituality, I get sceptical. But I will admit - and apologise for the fact - that my language was intemperate.
If it isn't particularly a new or deep insight, why are you having trouble working out where they are going with this, surely it should be obvious?
No, it is not obvious, because it looks like these very much ordinary and commonly accepted facts are being used to argue in favour of a conclusion that does not seem to me to follow from those facts.
Fran, with 'linear', you surely meant is that speech has a one-dimensional progression, with words (and voices within words) following upon each other. Now the difficulty is less that what words are to describe is multi-dimensional, given that single words can describe three-dimensional objects ("duck") or even four-dimensional ones ("history"), but that what is to be described may branch out and loop back, have a million nodes, and you have to string it all up on a single thread. (While what you really meant goes beyond that I presume: the problem of describing things and words with no good handy words for it.)
Now while I have to disagree with JakeS on 'linear' ('linear' is not just a mathematical term, it also has a general meaning of 'line-like', and used so in many fields; say just the other day I mentioned Linear Pottery Culture) there is the thing that we see a lot of technical terms used loosely, improperly, or senselessly. In this instance, I deduced what you (Fran) meant from the context and my prior awareness of this problem with language, and not from the words you used.
However, when reading someone trying to describe a concept new to me, what's more trying to introduce a new philosophy of everything, such loose use of technical terminology is an insurmountable obstacle. (And an annoyance.) The text will not make sense. Or, one will get the impression of shifting images, and from that of the incoherent thinking of the author. Or, one will guess that the author himself doesn't understand at least he technical terms he uses, or worse, not even what he means to say.
'Dimension', 'energy' and 'linear' are among the most misused terms. So we with a technical education have our triggers, to explain JakeS's reaction. *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
Since all people are more-than just an education and free to use language, there should be no limit to what terms anyone here can use. After all, rotten oil companies and the msm misappropriate the terms every minute of our lives and ´everyone´ here understands what they mean.
P.S. to DoDo: It feels bad that the gnomes on the previous thread did not extend the courtesy of reading or trying to understand a new poster, but Jake S. was goaded on and now it´s being helped out, after insulting Fran and posting a far-from-genuine apology. Not fair, not honorable. Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. --Charu Saxena.
This would be an interesting subject for discussion, but not in your current emotional state as expressed by your several recent comments in this thread. Like poemless, I kindly ask you to stand back a bit, like many others managed earlier today. *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
Let me explore this further.
I chose the core of a neutron star as comparison. This is something I can't see, hear, taste or smell. I can't even see it with instrumental aid (e.g. photograph it with a telescope), being hidden by a visible surface. What I can do is use physics theories on what I can observe (e.g. view formulas in books, and computer printouts on observations of radiation from the covering surface and gravity), and make a picture in my mind.
Now my real point is not that this is a visualisation (which you mention as part of the 'soul'), but that what I do with the neutron star's core I also do with at least other people's feelings, emotions, thinking, visualizing. So, are at least other people's 'souls' strange the same way a neutron star's core is, or is there more to it?
(I could go on asking whether the individual makes the same to her own feelings/thoughts/etc. as she does to the neutron star's core, and answer for myself that yes and that that has much to do with what we call consciousness, but this goes too far for what we are discussing at the moment.)
A bit of a sidetrack: what you say about reduction to words, here for subjective experience, might be true the other way: there is a lot more to things people are used to talk about fluently.
The best example is Stalin's statistics ("One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic"): it is easier to syphatize with one anecdotal story than contemplate dry numbers, yet behind those dry numbers express the truth of a million such personal stories. But the same goes for other 'dry' stuff -- compare the explosion of colors and forms on a photograph of Jupiter by a space probe with the white speck of light everyone saw until 400 years ago, and then contemplate what multitude of Truth might be there in a piece of Reality it is simply physically impossible to ever sense with human senses (even if we'd travel there), like the core of a neutron star.
"One picture is worth more than a thousand words."
This is entirely a sidetrack, but worth to pursue. I think sometimes the opposite is true. Some words are used to describe concepts built on hundreds of preceding concepts which have no good visual representation, at least no good visual representations that are meaningful without at least a hundred of those preceding concepts. Say, the spin of atomic nuclei. Or 'neoliberalism'. Or 'karma'!
Pictures are also so meaningful because our brains are built (evolved) to heavily process visual sensory information (e.g., recognise lots of patterns in it). For, say, a dog, one smell might be worth a thousand barks and yells and a million pictures. *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
I guess it is whatever it is that makes you who you are.
You've strayed into religion
What do you mean by religion?
For me religion and spirituality are not the same.
Spiritual is inside, personal, no translators - it is more independent. You find your own "truth" instead of being told what that truth is. And most of all it leads to a increasing state of peace and being.
Ah, hope it makes sense, word are so limiting. :-)
Refer to Bob Altemeyer's writing about the Authoritarians (followers) and the Double Highs (gurus). We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Spirituality is a wonderful impulse within humans, it is the same thing that creates inquisitiveness, quest,humility and wonder. It is the very best part of us
I dislike, no, hate is closer; I hate religion because, to me, it is an attempt to harness the individual's natural spirituality for base political purposes. From what I have read, the actual expressed philosophies of various prophets such as Jesus, Mohammed, buddha are wonderful paths to better personhood. But their codification into religions nd the necessary bundling of "explanations, rules and regulations on top has created entities that would repel the originators. You cannot argue with God, you cannot claim immorality in divine law. Yet it is man made abomination. keep to the Fen Causeway
thanks for saying it so well... "These days, there's nothing more ridiculous than the truth." Leonard Pitts Jr
That is where I find Pirsig's metaphysics useful in terms of the ability to look at things on the basis of a continuum of experience.
And now he began to see for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand and rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth-but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it.
He had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth-but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it.
I use the example of Mary Rose not to show that my experience "proves" anything, but that it convinced a pretty hard case like me that there is more to reality than may be "subjectively" or "objectively" dissected, tested and measured.
I don't think you can find a single historical culture that viewed itself as 'part of the world, and not an enemy of it.' Most of the rituals - and all of the technology - of those ancient cultures revolves around bending nature to the will of humans, either directly or through divine intercession. The illusion of the 'noble savage' who lives in harmony with nature is one of the more enduring myths of our culture, but it has little basis in fact.
We are not so different from those 'savages' in our desire to control nature. We're just a lot better at it.
His is essentially a Non-Dualist approach.
Let's look at the land, for instance.
Most native peoples cannot even conceive that anyone could "own" it. To that extent they see themselves as part of their environment.
I draw upon Pirsig's approach to "Quality" to provide an explanation - to myself, if to no-one else - in relation to "Value" (which I believe exists in Static and Dynamic forms) and in particular the relationships of "Property" and "Money", which we have been brain-washed into thinking of as "Objects".
Without consideration of the metaphysical basis of Economics ("the Physics of Value", as I see it) we cannot construct an Economics that addresses the Reality we daily experience.
Pirsig's identification of the relationship - and not just the subject and object - is IMHO ground-breaking. It takes us into the "both/and" space which is not "either/or".
Up here in Scotland they seem to "get" this - it's in that "uncertain" space of their "Not Proven" verdict between the certainties of "Guilty" and "Not Guilty".
Knowledge based value and Intellectual Property
was my ramble through the subject at Lancaster University a couple of years ago...
It postulates that the fundamental reality is Quality or value. All things come from Quality, and it is Quality that draws all things into being from Quality. All that exists is a form of Quality, and nothing exists without Quality. You could say that Quality is one of the names of God.
This is the central axiom of Pirsig's metaphysics, right? If so, then he is indeed practising Platonic dualism: Postulating an existence of qualia as something distinct from physical reality. Discussions of angels and pinheads then ensue.
The identification of the importance of relationships is neither new nor groundbreaking, nor does that insight benefit from being couched in metaphysical claptrap.
Postulating an existence of qualia as something distinct from physical reality
But the quote actually was (my highlight again)
It postulates that the fundamental reality is Quality or value.
Nothing dual about that.
The way I read Pirsig, he says that Quality is all there is: it's not distinct from anything: it is anything and everything ie Reality.
You won't find anything resembling "claptrap" in Pirsig's books. You may disagree with what he says, but you shouldn't have any difficulty with the way that he says it.
How other people describe what Pirsig says is up to them, and people often descend into "claptrap": if only everyone were as clear as you, Jake.
But I think you should avoid using "metaphysical" almost as a term of abuse, a bit like the use of "liberal" by political opponents as a pejorative term. What is needed is a good dose of Metaphysics IMHO: we really need to look askance at the assumptions that underpin what passes for our thought.
If anyone else pre-dated Pirsig in his conception of an alternative metaphysics to the conventional post-Greek "subject/object" metaphysics, then please direct me to him or her.
As far as I can see Pirsig's is entirely original thinking, and original thinking is rare. This is once in a thousand years stuff.
But since it brings into question the premises underpinning pretty much the entire academic edifice constructed in the couple of thousand years it's no surprise it doesn't exactly receive an enthusiastic reception...
Oh. My mistake then. But if Quality is simply physical reality, then why isn't he just saying that?
Looking at assumptions is good and right, but I fail to see what metaphysics has to offer as anything other than an intellectual exercise. If it does not make testable statements, then how can it educate our decisionmaking? And if it does make testable predictions, then how is it different from methodological naturalism?
Since I don't know how old Pirsig's writings are, and since I apparently don't understand what they're about, I think I'll retract the statement that he does not make original claims...
As far as I can see Pirsig's is entirely original thinking, and original thinking is rare. This is once in a thousand years stuff. But since it brings into question the premises underpinning pretty much the entire academic edifice constructed in the couple of thousand years it's no surprise it doesn't exactly receive an enthusiastic reception...
... but claims of an impending paradigm shift raise little red flags in my mind.
If it does not make testable statements, then how can it educate our decision making?
I think that what we have to do is to look again at the nature of tests. I really don't know enough about this area, but my intuition is that this Metaphysics of Quality/Value may open up new thinking in relational logic and conceptual frameworks. My problem is that I find abstraction very difficult to cope with intellectually.
And rightly so, but such is the position in which we find ourselves, IMHO.
In particular, the legal concepts of "absolute" property rights are faulty and "broken". We are used to either absolute, infinite "ownership" eg freehold land, shareholder "Equity" or absolute, temporary "use" for a finite duration eg leasehold land, and debt.
These Newtonian assumptions of absolutes are not good enough. They do not explain the ability to utilise assets/Value for an indefinite period which arises from the use of the legal concept I call an "Open" Corporate for the encapsulation of property rights.
I have found in Pirsig's MoQ an approach that allowed me to develop a conceptual framework within which to analyse - at least to my own satisfaction - value events/transactions and their role in economic interaction.
The reason this is important is that there is a "Telluric" paradigm shift going on IMHO based upon the connectivity of the Internet, and it is only defective legal protocols - the "Semantic Web" - that are holding us back.
My thesis is that consensual partnership based solutions are optimal, and the proof of that pudding is in the eating. If I am right in that thesis, then I am curious as to why it should be so.
i believe that to be axiomatic, so it may not have a 'why'.
does asking 'why not?' help?
why does it need male and female genetic material to create human life?
or should i say 'did'?
the world as one big pulsing consensual partnership sure sounds optimal to me....
if the proof is in the eating, then i can say from experience that when you get a bunch of people together for a project and it goes well, everyone goes home feeling good, bellies full of pudding.
ET is a group project, and induces that sort of satisfaction, if mostly intellectually.
blogging is a new way of relating which creates a forum which in meatspace would need highly unusual levels of respectful discipline and lack of interruption, no one interjecting, each with the freedom to say until the end what one had to say.
and then take as much time as necessary to peruse and reply.
so it's pulling communication out of us that possibly has had no outlet up to now.
i should bear that in mind more, when glitches occur, and flameouts follow.
you knew this was going to get warm, this debate, chris, calling it a punch-up in advance...
and it has been, because this stuff goes deep, very difficult to keep emotions down to lukewarm when discussing concepts like soul.
i see it as lancing a boil, what you did.
not the lounging emperor watching the blood sports below, but peacemaker, through somewhat shamanically allowing passionate emotions space to erupt and spend themselves, bouncing pixels against each other, instead of fur flying and blood on the walls, which is all to often the meatspace outcome when matters of 'faith' are provocatively brought out of hiding, like lions out of their catacomb cages.
can't wait for the next one on art... though i imagine it will be much less emotional...art claims no ticket to houri heaven in the afterlife, more like a pine box and a posthumous price at sotheby's.
though it can save souls... prolly left ole-time religion in the dust in that sense.
unless art is your religion! rumi's poetry comes to mind... "These days, there's nothing more ridiculous than the truth." Leonard Pitts Jr
JakeS, I think the one point where I think you clearly mis-read rg's top-level comment really applies to you. Writing "being couched in metaphysical claptrap" might be what you honestly think, still, it won't generate anything positive in a discussion with ETers who believe in the meaningfulness of that metaphysical claptrap. It may be the right language for an esoterics or sceptics web forum or USENET newsgroup with a rawer tone and higher traffic with more hit-and-run posters, who to boot are prepared to take some fire on both sides, but minting words and asking questions should work better here. *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
