Re: dhw--Epistemological Framework (Order of Rank?) (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, March 07, 2011, 13:17 (5009 days ago) @ dhw

dhw,-The thread of conversation I'm having with David is separate from what we're dealing with; but it does impact it. -> MATT: You went down the wrong rabbit hole here...
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> MATT: This goes back to my distinction on what it means to know something. Not to just hear it. Not just repeat what someone told you, but to know. Knowing is a marriage of all the causes and all the effects that make up that object. It's a deep understanding, NOT a superficial one. Science's job is to give us workable knowledge--NOT truth. You're describing workable knowledge.
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> ...How can such questions be answered without going into cause and effect? Now whoosh, back we go to the distinction between knowledge and truth! ...
> -I think you're trying to weave different threads of mine into the same fabric. You... seem to get heartburn when I bring up my qualifications for knowledge. To know isn't just to have knowledge, to know is to live your knowledge. (Inaccurate representation, but your prior use of 'internalization' is close.) For each of us individually, it isn't possible to know deeply in any but a few areas. The Big Bang is a great analogy for this. At the moment when it was a single point of quanta, the universe literally was all possible futures at once. -Cause and effect being delusion: Brought up because David brings up the Aristotelian "prime cause." He said he can't get past it. To a degree, this is your problem too, because you've previously asked "If we were created, what created the creator?" In keeping up with my rabbit nature, I'm adjusting and asking you if you (either of you) are really asking the right question? The influence of eastern thinking upon me is really quite deeper than I had surmised--but it was David that asked to go down this particular rabbit hole. -In the post you're responding to, you're accusing me of philosophizing (sophistry perhaps?) away your concerns. I'm trying to get you to approach your notion of cause and effect from a completely different view. My response to David goes far down that path. He seems to follow the idea, though I surmise it might be giving him some heartburn. (It is a completely different teaching to what we grow up with--unless of course you grew up with Kabbalistic, Gnostic, or Sufi parents...). You have to give up your notion of time; which is counterintuitive. This goes back to several of my posts (that you probably understand in better context now) in looking at time. -The universe has only ever been 'right now.' The past is a picture of yesterday's state compared to today's. The future can be predicted, but not known. This isn't saying that previous states have no impact on now, or the future, only that reality itself is only ever the present moment. Hindu's Brahman, Buddha's enlightenment. David's panentheistic God.-Again, in eastern traditions, the notion of cause and effect are products of language and ego. Language because language attempts to make permanent things that are not intrinsically permanent. Ego because we're driven to use language to make sense of our world. Ancient sages in India recognized this and came to the conclusion that reality--is consciousness only. To perceive this you must learn to shut off the parts of your mind that deal with past and future. -> MATT: The real question isn't "Is there anything without a cause?" it is "Is there anything that isn't both a cause and an effect?" Chew on that for awhile. 
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> There's nothing to chew on. It's self-evident. And it gets us nowhere. ... We can then delve into the factors that make us believe what we believe (inseparable from the problem of rank and from the sequence of cause and effect).
> -It is self evident that causes and effects are truly inseparable? Useless how? Read my signature again; that's what we do with language and science. We get shades of the universe. But there's other perceptions; it's just a question of whether you think they're valid. [EDIT] According to Eastern tradition, understanding the root nature of the cosmos as unity, as all causes and effects simultaneously, is the rock from which differentiations of cause and effect are built. It's just a bit more explicit than it is here in the west. If cause and effect are two perceptions of the same thing--the irreducible thing--they are only two perceptions of a single object. The single object is reality. The perceptions are not. -> In this context, it might help if you would explain what you mean by "direct" experience, which you said was one of only two means we have to inform ourselves about the world. I pointed out that a vast amount of our information comes through indirect experience ... i.e. the experiences of others.-Direct experience: Knowledge gained through mental means alone. Information from indirect sources still enters through your ears or eyes.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"