philosophy and insanity

[Zubivka]

De Cartes was Catholic Jesuit Priest

Err... not exactly. René Descartes was educated in a Jesuit College, is all. After which he joined the army (as a mercenary...), and the rest of his life remained (thanks god!) secular.
Beside maths, his scientific research also led him to basically invent the branch of Physics which is Optics. After him, not much evolved in this field before the 20th century, with relativity, then the quantic approach of optics...
Hence, his physics theories remained valid longer than Newton's (born approximately when Descartes died).

One of these fallacies is solipcism, which states that everything is just a figment of your mind. Nothing exists.

Thanks, Von Bloomingblume
Couldn't recall the word--solstice, solitarism, one-to-one-anism?--when I replied to Cran we could all but him be illusions...

[Wombat]

Almost nobody thinks that, if you don't have conclusive proof of your own existence, then it's irrational to believe that you exist.

I think that.* Does that make me crazy?

*For the time being, at least.

Not crazy, just mistaken. We know most things only on the balance of probabilities. When we get really lucky, we might know something beyond reasonable doubt. By these standards, you're just setting your sights a bit high.

It is very valuable to understand why nearly all our knowledge falls short of conclusive proof. Once you can see why that must be so, you can set appropriate standards and relax in the knowledge that you are doing as well as anybody can do. If you insist on setting inappropriately high standards after you have worked this out, that's the time to ask yourself why. And if you still want to set standards too high after you have questioned yourself in this way, then you might want to question your sanity. That's a long way off though.

[jim stone]

I argue that we don't exist, in two places:

First, 'Parfit and the Buddha: Why There Are No People,'
in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, March 1988.

Second 'Why There Still Are No People,' forthcoming
in the same journal.

Hume in The Treatise argues for what I take to
be a similar conclusion. The Buddha taught that
there is no subject of experiences, 'Acts exist
but the person who acts does not, thoughts without a thinker.'
Lots of mental phenomena go by, but nobody has them.
I think that's the truth. The rest--the sense of
being somebody-- in an artifact
of clinging.

I think you're right on. Maybe you should be
a philosopher. That's basically full-blown sh*t
crazy but still holding down a steady job.

If you feel you don't exist, you're not crazy
as long as you honor common sense,
and you are kind--that's enlightenment. The Buddha spent
most of his life bringing to people he knew didn't
exist the liberating news that they never were.
He did that from compassion for the people he
knew didn't exist. The deepest wisdom,
and where philosophy becomes religion, is when
the realization of selflessness (anatta, in Pali)
motivates kindness. Best

[Bloomfield]

Hume in The Treatise argues for what I take to
be a similar conclusion. The Buddha taught that
there is no subject of experiences, 'Acts exist
but the person who acts does not, thoughts without a thinker.'
Lots of mental phenomena go by, but nobody has them.
I think that's the truth. The rest in an artifact
of clinging.

So who poured that drink down Sibylle's dress? You should have seen her, she was furious.

[jim stone]

We speak as though there are persons; they
have a conventional existence, a bit like
baseball teams and The Big Dipper.
'Chariot' doesn't name this or that part,
the wheels, the yoke, nor does it name
the sum of parts, for that ceases
to exist when a part is changed but
the chariot does not, we say.
There is nothing in reality denoted
by 'chariot' ; it's a useful fiction.
Same with "jim,' 'Bloomfield,'
and 'Cranberry.'

Steven Collins "What are Buddhists Doing When they deny the Self in Religion and Practical Reason edited by Frank E. reynolds and
David Tracy, State University of NYPress, 1994 59-84.

p. 64.
Central to Buddhist soteriology is the doctrine of not-self (Pali anatta, Sanskrit anatman; the opposed doctrine of atman was central to Brahmanical thought). Put very briefly, this is the doctrine that human beings have no soul, no self, no unchanging essence. What appear to be stable and unitary persons are in fact collections of impersonal and impermanent events, arising and disappearing in a beginningless process of conditioning, a process which includes both physical causation and the spriritual causation of karma, action and its results. Connectedness across a series of lives occurs through the continuity of consciousness, seen as a constantly changing series of momentary events, in which both memory and temporary coherence of personality can be found, but no enduring self.

[emmline]

Try not existing. Just try it. If you dissolve into nothingness, you can assume (well, not really, you won't be there) that you do not exist. Otherwise, you exist. Deal with it.

[Nanohedron]

Considering the phenomenon of "Nano", for instance, I see myself (and any other "thing", for that matter) as a set of habituated probabilities arising instantly form instant to instant.

It doesn't fill my belly, though.

It does make my friends say, "Ooooooooookaaaay...." and turn to other topics.

[jim stone]

Try not existing. Just try it. If you dissolve into nothingness, you can assume (well, not really, you won't be there) that you do not exist. Otherwise, you exist. Deal with it.

\\

THIS is what non-existence is like. Plenty of thoughts,
sensations, emotions, just nobody who has them.
In addition, there is a delusory sense that there
is somebody underlying it all. The only thing that
one can try is to dissovle the delusion.
Life goes on, though, just without
the delusion. Life, but no one who
lives it.

About Descartes:

Descartes maintained that 'I think' is indubitable,
becuase it must be true if I doubt it. It was pointed out soon after that all that
was indubitable is 'There is a thought now.'
That's what can't be doubted.
It's certainly conceivable that there is just
the thought and no subject that has it.

Similarly any Evil Demon worth his salt would
create the belief 'I exist' without any believer.
There would therefore be deception, the
false belief, but no one deceived.

Cranberry, who wrote your book? Or is it a
book of readings?

[Guest]

Mindless thoughts are like thoughtless minds; in this way, they are empty.

My view OC not Barney Bhudda's.

[Darwin]

A couple of non-Buddhist treatments of Descartes:

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, by neurologist Antonio R. Damasio

Consciousness Explained, by Daniel C. Dennett

Also somewhat related:

The Blank Slate:The Modern Denial of Human Nature, by Steven Pinker

Several books by Patricia and/or Paul Churchland--most of mine are out on loan at the moment, and I'm not sure which ones are most appropriate for this particular question. http://philosophy.ucsd.edu/EPL/Pat.html has info.

Cranberry, you might enjoy the Web site of one of my old college friends who has "been in and out of madhouses all over North Texas". It's at http://mysite.verizon.net/trcbmc/index.html and includes a novel-in-progress about the experience at http://mysite.verizon.net/trcbmc/id27.html

[emmline]

THIS is what non-existence is like. Plenty of thoughts,
sensations, emotions, just nobody who has them.
In addition, there is a delusory sense that there
is somebody underlying it all. The only thing that
one can try is to dissovle the delusion.
Life goes on, though, just without
the delusion. Life, but no one who
lives it.

Sounds like an inside-out and somewhat more depressing way of stating that individual identity is the illusion...all are part of the whole(or whatever is) and and only perceive themselves as seperate entities.

[jim stone]

That's rather how later Buddhism went, Emmline,
but the Buddha's teaching was different.
It isn't that we are one with anything;
rather it's that when you look within
you find that nothing lasts long enough
to be you. It isn't that we become a
Big Self; it's that nature is impersonal
through and through. Empty phenomena
rolling on.

Darwin, I just saw Dan Dennett a couple
of weeks ago. He gave a lecture here
in St. Louis. The Damasio book
you mentioned is said to be very good.

[Will O'B]

because if I don't exist who was that getting so amazingly drunk at the Philological Society's annual reception last Thursday that I spilled my drink down Prof. Sibylle Cotwold's decolte and called old Prof. Werckenheimer's new book "a failed attempt at onanism" in his presence?

Whew...what a relief! All this time I thought it was I who spilled my drink on the good lady and called the Professor's book "a failed attempt at onanism" in his presence. But now that I think of it, Bloomie, I don't recall seeing you at the reception...

Will O'Ban

[Darwin]

That's rather how later Buddhism went, Emmline,
but the Buddha's teaching was different.
It isn't that we are one with anything;
rather it's that when you look within
you find that nothing lasts long enough
to be you. It isn't that we become a
Big Self; it's that nature is impersonal
through and through. Empty phenomena
rolling on.

Yes, dependent orgination is all very well and good, but I, personally, see the tendency toward identification with "everything" as just another attempt to wring meaning out of the meaningless. (That is, I see "meaning" as coming entirely from within. It doesn't need to be justified.)

Another way of looking at no-self is that everything (every thing) is a temporary composite of elements that are, themselves, temporary composites. I wrote a little something about it in an email to a friend (the same one I recommended to Cranberry), and it ended up at http://mysite.verizon.net/trcbmc/id35.html though I didn't write it with the idea of having it published.

The identity of one of these "composites" as a unitary "thing" is, as Jim said, a useful fiction. In truth, our brains are "designed" to construct these entities out of the great seething mass of sensory input. This is particularly clear with regard to the visual system. Our eyes, optic nerves, and brains add emphasis to very particular facets of the overall visual experience while ignoring others. Edges and colors are experienced separately at the input level, and are then bound into visual objects, and we can scarecly escape the feeling of unity in those objects, even when our own analysis shows that unity to have no deep foundation.

But even our mental objects change with time. Our memories fade and shift. We may even remember events with details that never happened. Still, our mental objects commonly outlive the external circumstances that gave rise to them. They have a persistence and generate a feeling of reality that is extremely convincing and that seems intuitively "real".

Darwin, I just saw Dan Dennett a couple
of weeks ago. He gave a lecture here
in St. Louis.

I've been a big Dennett fan for a long time, so it was interesting to read Paul Churchland's On the Contrary: Critical Essays, 1987-1997, "Chapter 12. Filling In: Why Dennett is Wrong", which is a classic case of scientific data "disproving" philosophical logic. (It's about Dennett's contention that the brain deals with the visual blind spot by simply ignoring it, while it seems that the evidence makes it clear that the brain actually "fills in" the missing data.)

I must say that his Self and Identity, which I read as part of a "Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence" class about a dozen years ago, seems pretty dated now. It's part of why I prefer the uncertainty of science and Buddhism to the certainty of philosophers.

The Damasio book
you mentioned is said to be very good.

I enjoyed it. It fits nicely with Pinker's book (as do the later Churchland works). His starting point is Phineas Gage, who lost part of his brain in an explosion that put an iron bar through his head. When I started reading it, I realized that I had seen a drawing of his skull, showing how the bar had penetrated it, in a copy of Ripley's Believe It or Not that we had back in the late '40s or early '50s.

[Will O'B]

No. It's...like, I'm honestly not sure if I exist.

Ok, Cranberry, here's the TEST:
1. Stare into a mirror. If no one stares back, then it's a pretty safe bet that you don't exist -- or you're a vampire. In either case this could be seen as a problem.
2. Stare into a mirror. If someone else stares back, then enjoy yourself as you spend the guy's money and pig out on the food in his fridge.
3. Stare into a mirror. If several people stare back, then poll them on whether or not you're insane.
4. Stare into a mirror. If you stare back, then head for the Funny Farm because life can't be that boring!

Will O'Ban

Neurotics build castles in the air.
Psychotics live in them.
And psychiatrists collect the rent.