Thought of by whom? By others? By you?
If you think of yourself as an experiential construct, have you not just created an object that you can observe? Is that object you?
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Apophaticists: Do you exist?
- Thread starter Niatero
- Start date
If you think of yourself as an experiential construct, have you not just created an object that you can observe? Is that object you?
Niatero
*banned*
Yeah, that's the point I was trying to make earlier, but I didn't know how.
(later) Whoa, I just had a flash. If the two unknowables are one, how can the experienced be experienced as the experience of a single person?
Person?
Do you not experience the body? What is that which is experiencing? Is it the person?
Niatero
*banned*
I mean, how can there be an experience of experiences that seems to be associated with a single body only? Bother, I don't know how to explain what my question is.Person?
Do you not experience the body? What is that which is experiencing? Is it the person?
...
Wow, everything just turned inside out!
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Something other than the self. Sartre, quoting or agreeing with Hegel, says something like consciousness only exists as something that interacts with other things. So the supposition is that those things exist separate to the self, and it’s in the interaction with them that self is made aware that it exists. Or something like that.
Is person separate from body? I would say the experience of being a physical being is as much a part of self as anything else, or maybe it’s the only thing. If we lose a limb, for example, the self has to reconfigure to some degree. If we are just physical beings, which seems likely, the data that creates that sense of being a person is sensory data.Person?
Do you not experience the body? What is that which is experiencing? Is it the person?
Whenever I think of observing my self, I have to use my imagination to ideate what that might mean. There isn’t anything that naturally arises to be looked at. There’s no shift in focus as there is no dichotomy, as such. I don’t see any need to interpose a separation - me thinking about me is me thinking about me, not me thinking about something separate to myself.
Is the person not just a term for the body/mind complex?
What is being reconfigured? Does awareness change as a result of losing a limb?
Are you aware of this sensory data? What is it which is aware of this data?
Can you observe these thoughts? Are they you? Or are they just temporary experiences you observe that come and go? What is it that es experiencing these thoughts of you?
Niatero
*banned*
But what do you think about the question of whether or not the experiencer exists? I'm thinking that maybe it's as meaningless as the question of whether or not a creator of everything exists. Or at least, speculating about it leads to vexation and madness as much for one as for the other. And is it even actually two different questions?
(later) Oh. If both questions are meaningless, than it's meaningless to ask if they are different questions or not. See? This leads to vexation and madness.
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I think it can be said that mind arises from body. Without the body, there is no mind. But perhaps the self also needs an external environment to be in relation to.
What is being reconfigured would be an altered set of parameters, I would say. As in when I visited my childhood haunts as an adult, everything seemed really small. That adds to the gestalt of my experience and perspective, one more thing to add to the whole. The part of the brain (wherever that is) that manages a missing limb sometimes behaves as if it is still there; it doesn’t ‘know’ it no longer is. But the aggregate of data acted on by the brain, including memory, experience, recognition, sensory input, and whatever else, makes up the self that does know the limb is gone. The self isn’t apart from those black box parts of the brain, they are part of the self. If the brain is damaged, the self changes.
How it seems to me, based on too many things I’ve read to remember which is which, is that the brain analyses incoming data and makes judgements and predictions about it and initiates courses of action. The self part, I think, bridges all of that, bringing it all together in the experience we think of as self.
I’m aware of thoughts arising as a result of some stimulus.
I had to look this up - in Being and Nothingness Sartre cites Husserl on thinking (noesis) and the thought (noema), namely that noesis is the reality we experience, that is the process of data analysis or something of that sort is what we experience, but that the noema is just a correlative of that, something noesis throws up as a result of the ongoing process of analysis, interpretation, prediction etc. Hence the noema is not ‘real’ in the same sense as the noesis, but rather a product of the noesis that has no independent reality of its own. The noema in that sense is perhaps a bit like the choices we make in those choose your own adventure books, the end result of an internal process we are not fully conscious of. The self in that context is the gloss put on that whole process to give is a semblance of coherence and meaning.
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I am neither the experience, nor the object of experience, nor the experiencer...
In My True Nature
Neither am I the mind nor intellect nor ego, Neither am I the organs of hearing, nor of tasting, smelling, nor seeing, Neither am I the sky nor the earth, neither the fire nor the air, Neither am I the vital breath nor the five vital airs, Neither am I the seven ingredients nor the five...
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The pot does not have an intrinsic existence. It cannot exist independently of the clay.
Easily solved with a nice cup of tea.
Heyo
Veteran Member
Define "god".
Define "I".
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
Who is asking?
Niatero
*banned*
I'm the one asking the questions here.
If you need to know who is asking or definitions of words, then my question is not for you.
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
Then you have the answer.I'm the one asking the questions here.