Article "The Schopenhauerian Mind" (book review)

[Secular Sanity]

In more detail  .. The First Law of Wizardry..
People can be made to believe anything either because they want it to be true or because they are afraid it's true.
The counter to it is.. there isn't one.

Well, I’m sticking with the default neural package…less drama, fewer updates, no mystical malware. 

[Syne]

You don't think there's a mind-body/hard problem of consciousness that leaves that an open question?
I agree with Descartes.

How does an immaterial mind interact with a physical brain?

We can't really say we know. So it's a matter of belief either way.

[C C]

Interesting thesis on "generic subjectivity"..I quote from that article:

"To identify ourselves with generic subjectivity is perhaps as far as the naturalistic materialist can go towards accepting some sort of immortality. It isn't conventional immortality (not even as good as living in others' memory, some might think), since there is no "one" who survives, just the persistence of subjectivity for itself. [...] It is possible that this view may make it easier to cope with the prospect of personal extinction, since, if we accept it, we can no longer anticipate being hurled into oblivion, to face the eternal blackness that so unsettled Burgess (and, I suspect, secretly bedevils many atheists and agnostics). We may wear our personalities more lightly, seeing ourselves as simply variations on a theme of subjectivity which is in no danger of being extinguished by our passing. [...] https://www.naturalism.org/philosophy/de...bjectivity

[...] "In Hinduism, the one true reality is called brahman, with anything else being labeled maya, which literally means “play” and is related to the word for “magic”; it is that which is not “really real.” Anything that we think about or experience rationally is maya. This includes all physical objects, including our bodies, along with our feelings and emotions.

[...] In Hindu philosophy, the atman is contrasted with the ego. The ego is a “false center” of self, the product of sensory experiences, accumulated memories, and personal thoughts. The ego is the feeling of “separateness” or limitation, that is, the sense that we are distinct from other beings. [...] The atman is reality; the ego is illusion. The atman is permanence; the ego is transience...

[...] If oneness with the atman is accomplished in life, then at death the atman or brahman reality is fully recovered, the cycle of reincarnation is broken, and the soul reenters brahman as a drop of water returns to the ocean. At that point, nirvana, a state of supreme bliss, has been realized."--- https://www.gotquestions.org/atman-hinduism.html

Even in Plato's dualism of the intelligible world and the sensible world, it would surely be more suitable to say that we'd return to the generic form or general concept of "human" after death. Just as a destroyed table would revert to the abstract principle or formulaic instruction for instantiating that kind of concrete furniture. This in contrast to the current panpsychism view of dissolving (after death) back into some overarching, multi-faceted experience that the entire cosmos has of itself.

The possibility of "specious" reincarnation would also ensue simply as a result of the sensible world recruiting that generic human form from the intelligible world to reify yet another born human. This, of course, would make more sense in the context of the brain dreaming or a computer simulating a reality -- than, say, physics. Since a strange person in a dream stems from a generic template we have for humans stored in the brain. And similarly with respect to a computer or trained AI carrying such a template to generate specific residents from for its digital environment.

[Ostronomos]

Spirit without body is real.

[Secular Sanity]

Spirit without body is real.

What observable evidence supports the existence of a disembodied spirit? Everything we know about consciousness ties it to physical neural activity.

[Magical Realist]

Spirit without body is real.

What observable evidence supports the existence of a disembodied spirit? Everything we know about consciousness ties it to physical neural activity.

See my "creepy figure photobomb" thread which is coincidentally just now actived..

https://www.scivillage.com/thread-19181-...l#pid79354

[Syne]

What observable evidence supports the existence of a disembodied spirit?

None.

[Ostronomos]

Spirit without body is real.

What observable evidence supports the existence of a disembodied spirit? Everything we know about consciousness ties it to physical neural activity.

Not evidence, logic. Mind expanding psychedelic experiences for one.

---

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/djJXKfS9zTw

[C C]

Spirit without body is real.

What observable evidence supports the existence of a disembodied spirit? Everything we know about consciousness ties it to physical neural activity.

Not evidence, logic. Mind expanding psychedelic experiences for one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djJXKfS9zTw

But he also says, afterward, that self is an illusion. The latter, however, is just one's acquired personal memories, that also provide the ability to classify and understand the phenomena that one is experiencing. Eliminate those memories, and that past-dependent personhood and its preferences -- as well the capacity to identify anything -- is gone.

There is a kind of basic and generic selfhood still grounded in the "hardware" of the body (its survival, reflexive reactions, and orientation to the outer environment) that would remain. But it lacks the special programming that one accumulated over the years.

The bottom line is that experiences (the manifestations) can occur without dependence on a theme of "self" (the latter again being reliant upon information stored in a memory system). In the context of belief in matter that lacks internal states (materialism), it is the manifestations that are actually the enigmatic aspect of consciousness -- not self.

The sequence of scenes in a video, for instance, can contingently consist of random things that lack any sign of intelligence, coherence, and regulation (mindless, IOW). Or they can be inclusive of a mind-like organization or guided narrative. In both cases, however, what is fundamental is the video's sequence of frames or that continuum of presented events.

VIDEO EXCERPTS: Consciousness is the one thing in this universe that actually can't be an illusion, right? I mean, even if we're in the matrix, if this is just a simulation, if we're confused about everything, if our physics is fake physics because we're not in touch with the base layer of reality, if this is all a dream, you know, if you're the only person who exists, and we're all in your dream... No matter how confused you could be about the nature of reality, one thing you can't be confused about is that something seems to be happening. And that seeming is the fact of consciousness. [The manifestations of sight, sound, sensation, odor, and the perception of continuous change.]

Should we give up the idea of distinct selves as simply incoherence?

I think self is genuinely an illusion [...] you feel that there is a subject, a kind of unchanging point from which you notice experience. Which doesn't leave you merely identical to experience, rather you feel like you're appropriating your experience. You're having an experience.

[...] And that subject is an illusion, and we can know that really from two sides. First of all, from the third person side, neurologically it makes no sense. There's no place in the brain for your ego to be hiding.

But more importantly, I think from the first person side, subjectively as a matter of direct experience, you can look for this sense of self, you can look for the eye in the middle of experience and fail to find it in a way that is conclusive.

[...] I would actually say that most people -- even if they're not meditating or taking psychedelics -- they're continually losing this sense of self, without noticing it. Which is to say, you can lose yourself in your work, you lose yourself in an athletic performance. You can lose yourself in just an outgoing act of attention.

[...] When you take stock of yourself, that's when notice it [self]. But it is continually being interrupted...

[Magical Realist]

The sequence of scenes in a video, for instance, can contingently consist of random things that lack any sign of intelligence, coherence, and regulation (mindless, IOW). Or they can be inclusive of a mind-like organization or guided narrative. In both cases, however, what is fundamental is the video's sequence of frames or that continuum of presented events.

Exactly! And a video of truly all the experiences of one's life would also include all those internal experiences like memory and imagination and introspection and understanding that accompanied all those external events. So there would be a decipherable though very subtle and more artistic rendering of intelligibility in the mere succession of these phenomenal happenings even without the persistence of some unchanging pov. Like the de-centering "stream of consciousness" works of Joyce or Woolfe or the surreal films of Luis Bunuel. Which suggests to me the real lessons of life are never those superficially grasped by some conscious ego so much as by our deeper unconscious psyche. Life ultimately happens in the surreal and poetic language of our dreams.