Eastern philosophy says the self is an illusion

Doc Dutch said:
While I agree with them too, the fact remains they assert that people have souls. There is no evidence that human beings have a supernatural component to their ability to make conscious choices.

IMO, a person is deficient in some manner to not be able to choose their own path.
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There's no scientific evidence of a soul

But we tend to know a lot less than we think we do.

I do not categorically write off the possibility of a vital life force, something the Neoconfucians call Qi. Something that exists beyond our ability to conceive of the laws of chemistry and biology.


I might be wrong, but I don't think the Asian traditions debate choice and free will the way we do in the West. Part of me think the strict mechanistic reductionists were a reaction against humanism, Christianity, Platonism. Those were the brick and mortar that comprised the scaffolding of Western civilization. And those traditions all believed that choice and deliberate self improvement were a reality of the human condition. To deny these basic precepts of the Western experience must seem edgy to certain professors looking to carve a niche for themselves professionally and stand out from the crowd.
 
Cypress said:
There's no scientific evidence of a soul

But we tend to know a lot less than we think we do.

I do not categorically write off the possibility of a vital life force, something the Neoconfucians call Qi. Something that exists beyond our ability to conceive of the laws of chemistry and biology.


I might be wrong, but I don't think the Asian traditions debate choice and free will the way we do in the West. Part of me think the strict mechanistic reductionists were a reaction against humanism, Christianity, Platonism. Those were the brick and mortar that comprised the scaffolding of Western civilization. And they all believed that choice and deliberate self improvement were a reality of the human condition. To deny these basic precepts of the Western experience must seem edgy to certain professors looking to carve a niche for themselves professionally and stand out from the crowd.
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Me neither, I simply recognize there's an absence of evidence for it just like there's an absence of evidence of life elsewhere in the galaxy.

OTOH, the quantum idea may yield results there for alternative existences. That's well above my pay grade so I can only speculate. :)
 
BidenPresident said:
He is perpetually like a college freshman in an intro class.
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Have the last five pages of the thread been posters gossiping about me and venting their petty grievances? I've been mostly scrolling past them.

All of my knowledge of philosophy, religion, biology, history, political theory are at the undergraduate level.

I don't have advanced degrees in any of them.

I've been registered here since 2006 and have never run across any poster who was truly an established subject matter expert in any of those fields.
 
Cypress said:
"I" is a pronoun, maybe even a colloquialism, we use in everyday English.
No-self is a sophisticated religious and philosophical concept used in Buddhism.

Word games aside, my brain chose which action to take. I could have easily chosen history as a major, and I did not feel any forces compelling me to my course of actions.

We do not live in a clockwork universe of simple cause and effect. Attempts to apply the mechanistic laws of Newton and Maxwell to humans do not cut the mustard because human psychology and conciousness is the great unknown of science and philosophy. Using strict reductionism to explain human psychology is getting way out in front of ourselves.

In a very real sense, the clockwork universe itself has not stood the test of time. If nothing else, quantum reality has proven to us that uncertainty is built into the fabric of the universe, and that uncaused causes really do exist.
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As far as I can tell, Zenmode, Dutch Uncle, and I are the only ones systematically participating on this thread in a substantive way.

Most everything else has been drive by insults, gossip, diversions into petty grudges.
 
Cypress said:
Have the last five pages of the thread been posters gossiping about me and venting their petty grievances? I've been mostly scrolling past them.

All of my knowledge of philosophy, religion, biology, history, political theory are at the undergraduate level.

I don't have advanced degrees in any of them.

I've been registered here since 2006 and have never run across any poster who was truly an established subject matter expert in any of those fields.
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uh huh
 
Cypress said:
I am agnostic about the concept of a lasting and persisting self. I think my physical brain is making choices, weighing evidence, and deliberating on courses of action.

Conciousness is a mystery, and it is getting way out in front of ourselves to apply the mechanistic clockwork laws of Newton to human psychology.

It's entirely possible that the origin of human conciousness is found somewhere in quantum reality. And uncertainty and uncaused causes are a fundamental tenet of quantum reality.
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I agree that consciousness has a level of mystery behind it, but that's not really relevant to the current discussion.

The nature of "self" whether a religious/spiritual type of soul or something physiological is also not relevant.

But, what you said about your brain making choices is relevant if your brain is making decision without the existence of a self. So, what do you mean when you say your brain is making decisions, presumably without a self, while you, that doesn't actually exist, maintains free will?
 
ZenMode said:
I agree that consciousness has a level of mystery behind it, but that's not really relevant to the current discussion.

The nature of "self" whether a religious/spiritual type of soul or something physiological is also not relevant.

But, what you said about your brain making choices is relevant if your brain is making decision without the existence of a self. So, what do you mean when you say your brain is making decisions, presumably without a self, while you, that doesn't actually exist, maintains free will?
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How do you know what your brain is doing?
 
ZenMode said:
I agree that consciousness has a level of mystery behind it, but that's not really relevant to the current discussion.

The nature of "self" whether a religious/spiritual type of soul or something physiological is also not relevant.

But, what you said about your brain making choices is relevant if your brain is making decision without the existence of a self. So, what do you mean when you say your brain is making decisions, presumably without a self, while you, that doesn't actually exist, maintains free will?
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Whether or not I have a Platonic self, I have a unique physical brain and cognition capable of experience, learning, deduction, memories, and a collective personality which gives me powers of reason, reflection, introspection, and choice irrespective if one accepts a Platonic and Augustinian concept of lasting soul.
 
Cypress said:
It's entirely possible that the origin of human conciousness is found somewhere in quantum reality. And uncertainty and uncaused causes are a fundamental tenet of quantum reality.
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LOL. Sounds like standard issue new-agey horseshit. Common among those who don't actually understand QM sufficient to apply it but think that anything they think is "weird" must fit in there somehow.

I love to see scientifically illiterate new agers try to talk about complex subjects when they finally stumble upon QM at which point they plow EVERYTHING into that which they don't understand.
 
Cypress said:
I admit it's an open philosophical question, but choice and free will seem self evident to me. And absent any compelling proof or evidence, I am going to trust my senses over mental masturbation.
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Seems like mental onanism is most of what you have.

One possibility is that if our conciousness is a projection of some quantum state,
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^^^^like that. Utter bullshit but it sounds cool.

There was even an episode it on Star Trek, where Worf was shifting through different quantum worlds!
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Figures you get your science from watching TV fiction.
 
Cypress said:
Sounds right.

I agree with Aristotle, Confucious, Jesus, Lao Tzu, and Plato that humans do have, and have always had, the freedom to make moral choices.
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So how do you deal with the data coming from actual observations of brain states, eg fMRI which shows that sometimes (maybe a lot) the actual action taken happens BEFORE the brain constructs a justification for the action calling into question exactly how "free" it was.

But by all means ignore this post so you can mutually masturbate Doc.

Nothing in my psychological, emotional, or physical experience leads me to believe that isn't true. It takes more than mental gymnastics to convince me that I don't have any choice in life. I would have to see some kind of compelling scientific proof and evidence of that.
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Must be nice to ignore science when it "feels" wrong, eh?
 
Cypress said:
All of my knowledge of philosophy, religion, biology, history, political theory are at the undergraduate level.
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Agreed.

I don't have advanced degrees in any of them.
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One doesn't have to have an advanced degree to understand topics more thoroughly than you normally demonstrate.

I've been registered here since 2006 and have never run across any poster who was truly an established subject matter expert in any of those fields.
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LOL. This is hilarious. WHAT ADULT brags about how long he's been on a discussion forum like it lends some credence to his bullshit??? LOL.
 
It's one thing to sling insults across the Internet from an anonymous keyboard. It's another for people to prove what they are through their own statements.

Cardinal Carminative said:
LOL. Sounds like standard issue new-agey horseshit.
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Cardinal Carminative said:
Seems like mental onanism is most of what you have.
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Cardinal Carminative said:
But by all means ignore this post so you can mutually masturbate Doc.

Must be nice to ignore science when it "feels" wrong, eh?
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Cardinal Carminative said:
LOL. This is hilarious. WHAT ADULT brags about how long he's been on a discussion forum like it lends some credence to his bullshit??? LOL.
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