The Central Topic

[AshvinP]

Too many assumptions. I'll just stick with my experience. That's all I know.

That's great. This is Zen. But note that you would also need to drop the assumption of the existence of any non-conscious "world stuff" existing beyond your experience, because all you know and can ever know is only your conscious experience.

My personal take: I'm ok with taking assumptions as long as I understand what they are. I'm a "possibilian" and don't want to block myself from exploring different possibilities of how the world could be, and block myself from the spiritual development that those possibilities may offer. If science would not make any assumptions and models of reality (and those are also only hypotheses), no science would be possible either. But science dares to make assumptions, and that is how it progresses.

The world-stuff exists in my experience. Prove it doesn't.

The Steinerites can have their hierarchies and astral planes too if they want.

Explore away. No need to convince me of anything.

Can this be split off into a separate thread, perhaps called, "I know nothing and never will"? Then you guys can debate each other about who knows less and who will win the race to the bottom of denying all conscious experience

[Martin_]

That's great. This is Zen. But note that you would also need to drop the assumption of the existence of any non-conscious "world stuff" existing beyond your experience, because all you know and can ever know is only your conscious experience.

My personal take: I'm ok with taking assumptions as long as I understand what they are. I'm a "possibilian" and don't want to block myself from exploring different possibilities of how the world could be, and block myself from the spiritual development that those possibilities may offer. If science would not make any assumptions and models of reality (and those are also only hypotheses), no science would be possible either. But science dares to make assumptions, and that is how it progresses.

The world-stuff exists in my experience. Prove it doesn't.

The Steinerites can have their hierarchies and astral planes too if they want.

Explore away. No need to convince me of anything.

Can this be split off into a separate thread, perhaps called, "I know nothing and never will"? Then you guys can debate each other about who knows less and who will win the race to the bottom of denying all conscious experience

And whoever wins will disappear in a puff of logic.

Sure. split it.

[Eugene I.]

The world-stuff exists in my experience. Prove it doesn't.

You need to realize that this is just another unprovable assumption, if you really want to be consistent in your commitment not to take any assumptions. In your (or my) experience only sense perceptions exist that feel/look like the "world stuff". But sense perceptions are only phenomena of your conscious experience. There is no way you (or I) can prove that they are "caused" by any "world stuff" existing beyond your conscious experience, this can only be an assumption (which is unprovable in principle). You can not "step out" of your conscious experience to see if there is actually an external "world stuff" outside your own consciousness that "causes" your sense perceptions to arise.

Of course I cannot prove that the "world-stuff" does not exist either. Neither you can prove that it does. So, either way, both statements that "world stuff exists" and "world stuff does not exist" can only be unprovable assumptions. You may pick one, or you may not and simply remain agnostic to its existence (if you really want to commit to not taking any assumptions).

But to connect it back to the TCT, the only thing we experientially know as an undeniable fact is the existence of our conscious experiencing-thinking-willing-feeling. Everything else is an assumption.

I think, therefore I am
Cogito, ergo sum

[Soul_of_Shu]

Can this be split off into a separate thread, perhaps called, "I know nothing and never will"? Then you guys can debate each other about who knows less and who will win the race to the bottom of denying all conscious experience

And whoever wins will disappear in a puff of logic.

Sure. split it.

The thing is that as long as Cleric continues to engage in the discussions within discussions, this being his choice as the Topic starter, in which case he might as well have posted it in the GD section, then I might as well treat it as if it is in GD. Anyway, the last time with the Gebser tangent we split the topic into a separate one, and I went through the bother of moving a bunch of posts there, since then that thread has been inactive, except for maybe one post that Ashvin added. So if anything, I'll be moving this topic into GD.

[Eugene I.]

The thing is that as long as Cleric continues to engage in the discussions within discussions, this being his choice as the Topic starter, in which case he might as well have posted it in the GD section, then I might as well treat it as if it is in GD. Anyway, the last time with the Gebser tangent we split the topic into a separate one, and I went through the bother of moving a bunch of posts there, since then that thread has been inactive, except for maybe one post that Ashvin added. So if anything, I'll be moving this topic into GD.

I think this discussion is quite relevant to the TCT topic:

But to connect it back to the TCT, the only thing we experientially know as an undeniable fact is the existence of our conscious experiencing-thinking-willing-feeling. Everything else is an assumption.

[Jim Cross]

The thing is that as long as Cleric continues to engage in the discussions within discussions, this being his choice as the Topic starter, in which case he might as well have posted it in the GD section, then I might as well treat it as if it is in GD. Anyway, the last time with the Gebser tangent we split the topic into a separate one, and I went through the bother of moving a bunch of posts there, since then that thread has been inactive, except for maybe one post that Ashvin added. So if anything, I'll be moving this topic into GD.

I think this discussion is quite relevant to the TCT topic:

But to connect it back to the TCT, the only thing we experientially know as an undeniable fact is the existence of our conscious experiencing-thinking-willing-feeling. Everything else is an assumption.

I thought the Central Topic was "experience is all". Anybody that wants to assert that needs to accept that our experiences are likely different so there is no justification to any argument that their particular experience is more valid than another's.

So in my experience there is world-stuff. It isn't an assumption. It might be the same as what somebody else describes as "conscious experiencing-thinking-willing-feeling" but there is no way to know that.

If we do split this off, I vote to call it the Strawberry Fields Forever topic.

[Soul_of_Shu]

The thing is that as long as Cleric continues to engage in the discussions within discussions, this being his choice as the Topic starter, in which case he might as well have posted it in the GD section, then I might as well treat it as if it is in GD. Anyway, the last time with the Gebser tangent we split the topic into a separate one, and I went through the bother of moving a bunch of posts there, since then that thread has been inactive, except for maybe one post that Ashvin added. So if anything, I'll be moving this topic into GD.

I think this discussion is quite relevant to the TCT topic:

Well Gebser is tangentially related too. And yet it was felt by some, Jim included, that it was off-topic, and should be moved. Now some may feel that the back-n-forth that you and Jim are engaged is drifting off-topic, even if it can be reeled back into the original topic. But again, as long as Cleric keeps engaging in that process, I'm not going to bother trying to determine when it is or is not off-topic, according to whoever's opinion.

[AshvinP]

The thing is that as long as Cleric continues to engage in the discussions within discussions, this being his choice as the Topic starter, in which case he might as well have posted it in the GD section, then I might as well treat it as if it is in GD. Anyway, the last time with the Gebser tangent we split the topic into a separate one, and I went through the bother of moving a bunch of posts there, since then that thread has been inactive, except for maybe one post that Ashvin added. So if anything, I'll be moving this topic into GD.

I think this discussion is quite relevant to the TCT topic:

But to connect it back to the TCT, the only thing we experientially know as an undeniable fact is the existence of our conscious experiencing-thinking-willing-feeling. Everything else is an assumption.

I thought the Central Topic was "experience is all". Anybody that wants to assert that needs to accept that our experiences are likely different so there is no justification to any argument that their particular experience is more valid than another's.

So in my experience there is world-stuff. It isn't an assumption. It might be the same as what somebody else describes as "conscious experiencing-thinking-willing-feeling" but there is no way to know that.

If we do split this off, I vote to call it the Strawberry Fields Forever topic.

Not even close to TCT. I feel like we went from abstract metaphysical speculation before TCT, which was par for the course on this forum, and the thing TCT was hoping to address, to claims so absurd they haven't invented a category of philosophy to encompass them yet. I would suggest going back and reading Cleric's various posts on this thread with all of the great images, analogies, and clear explanations, but I fear it will all appear as indecipherable heiroglyphics to some people at this point, like a theory of music to the deaf. Nevertheless, I have personally found great value in them for my own understanding.

[Cleric K]

I thought the Central Topic was "experience is all".

The Central Topic begins with what is known as given facts and not with immediate speculation about what the supposed world-in-itself is. We start from what is given instead from what we abstractly suppose the world is and then try to retrofit the given to our presuppositions.

In some parallel universe scientists would be bewildered how we got everything exactly upside-down, alas this is the sorry situation on Earth. Instead of starting from the given and work our way outwards by building on sure foundations, we start with fantasies that even in principle can never be known if they exist or not (because we're so ingenious that we have ourselves defined them to be inaccessible to experience), and then we try to 'explain' the given through mechanical arrangements of the fantasies.

If this is not understood then maybe it's better that Dana simply archive this thread and some day we may find it in some alien museum in a hall with other artifacts under the banner - "The peculiar and sad history of humanity's failed attempts to stand upright."

[Soul_of_Shu]

If this is not understood then maybe it's better that Dana simply archive this thread and some day we may find it in some alien museum in a hall with other artifacts under the banner - "The peculiar and sad history of humanity's failed attempts to stand upright."

Hey, if I might be allowed to focus on the positives, if nothing else this discussion has been carried out largely without degenerating into the personal antipathy that it might have done not so long ago, and so perhaps that is a plus