Philosophical Speculations

Which argument did I incorrectly interpret? It sounded like naive realism when DS said: But I also left open possibility he (?) was using that as metaphor for what it looks like to his thought and not only his eyes. For me it sounded like DS was describing animistic gnosis as a self evident given. ...

So while your formulation on reincarnation above may very well be true, it's just too low resolution to be useful. Everything must eventually be judged by both its coherency in light of Reason and also its practical utility for spiritual growth (the two should never be at odds). Because I do not ha...

Whew, tons going on in this thread since I poked my head in last! Gonna take me a while to chew through all of it, but of all the complicated questions raised, this one I think I can answer pretty succinctly:

AshvinP wrote: he (?)

She.

You'll get different points of view here, but for Kastrup, what you really are is not Eduardo. Eduardo is an "alter," or a dream character, or something like that. What you really are is what he calls Mind At Large, which is the "Dreamer" or the dissociative identity disorder pat...

Online survey? Nope. Self-selection bias is high. Useless results. To demonstrate this, you need a randomly selected group of people that would ideally have measurable variation in metaphysical beliefs. You then remeasure after the experience. Ideally the experience would take place in some sort of...

(Incidentally, for what it's worth, while I've tripped many times both before and after that experience, and have found them profoundly helpful for healing some deep-seated emotional difficulties, that particular experience has left DMT as the only psych that I'm scared to do again.)

I can only speak to my own experience, but, yeah that tracks. During my materialist phase, I knew about the Hard Problem and the arguments for consciousness as fundamental (I've always been a philosophy nerd) but I didn't grok it. And then I took DMT. And then I got it: nondualism, death, consciousn...

You would agree that all cognitive science so far holds that an infant does not act with the same sort of intent that a full-grown adult acts with, right? You may claim that a human being always acts with some intent, regardless of age, but I don't see how you can claim infants act with equal degre...

I'd like to take a minute before diving in and express gratitude that this conversation has, so far, been very pleasant, even with us being at odds in such a fundamental way. Sometimes philosophical disputes get... prickly, and I'm happy about the state of this one. For the latter, we could compare ...

This is becoming overwhelming to try to respond to everything, but I'll try to hit the highlights and refocus the conversation. Our limited ego-self we currently identify with is a more recent development, but there is also eternal Ego-Self. The distinctions are not at all fundamental and are only a...