Re: BK's latest article on "self-deception"
Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2022 12:46 am
Lou,Lou Gold wrote: ↑Sat Feb 12, 2022 7:32 pmI surely do not deny the possibility of "true hallucinations" or the reality of the imaginal realm. Do you really believe that BK denies them when he says he "has an ambivalent relationship with first-person revelations"? Is this nihilism or is it that the difference between the imaginal and the imaginary must have practical meaning to survive tests and challenges and build intersubjective consensus?AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Feb 12, 2022 5:08 pmLou Gold wrote: ↑Sat Feb 12, 2022 8:33 am You say about the habitual dualities, This way of thinking served a great purpose but it has outlived that purpose. We cannot naively balance everything in our experience and call that understanding. I agree that dualist dichotomies served and serve limited purposes that has been outlived in certain contexts. Yes, and now we work on transcending deceptions by not clinging to them.
Looking at the duck-rabbit image, I see a non-existent critter, duck-like with a rabbit mouth on the back of its head. Do you think I'm naively balancing something or just seeing what is in plain sight?
I confess that I don't grok Cleric's chart. I'm not saying it's wrong, just that it's not for me.
I am saying the concept that "thinking" and "not-thinking" are equally useful, or can be reconciled with each other in some way, is itself a dualist dichotomy. It diminishes the act of thinking into its most abstract form, via something akin to subject/object or mind/matter dualism, and then says, "we can accomplish plenty of things in the world without this rigid thinking". That conclusion is only made because "thinking" has been reduced to its lowest form via the implicit dualism.
re: duck-rabbit - I think calling it "non-existent" is again reducing "idea" to something fanciful and ephemeral, added on top of the world where we perceive "real" rabbits and ducks. I hold that the particular forms we see, such as individual rabbits or ducks, are perceptions reflecting real archetypal ideas, such as rabbit-duck, which are currently supersensible to most people. The idea is real and its reflection is also real, but since we currently only perceive the reflection in particular forms, we confuse that for what "really exists" and say the former is our "fantasy", "hallucination", etc. By this simple error, we siphon our thinking towards complete epistemic nihilism.
I don't know why you are trying so hard to change what BK meant. TB and Shalibei also had the same impression and I don't think Ben or Eugene dispute the meaning of what was said. I already explained that meaning in multiple ways and TB did as well. You are stating what you think, not what BK meant in the article.