The Self Delusion

by John_Mann 29 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • John_Mann
    John_Mann

    (I'm not saying that the boy is what gives us our sense of self, but our reasoning side is the self's spokesman. Because we do write, speak, articulate, the boy exists.)

    So does IBM Watson have a "boy" too?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DywO4zksfXw

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLR1byL0U8M

  • frankiespeakin
    frankiespeakin

    Yes I'm aware and many years ago I took a long test and I came up classified I think as a 'introspective introvert' that becomes focused on something and it said that others that try to get me to change my focus do so at a risk of getting run over, if they are posting a road block of sorts in my imagination. Anyway that's the gist of what it said and been so long ago it is probably embellished with the passage of time and recall.

  • John_Mann
    John_Mann

    There's a lot of introverts in discussion forums. We like to handle ideas in a static and unsynchronized way. The (offline) social dynamics it's not a good environment to discuss deep thoughts.

  • jgnat
    jgnat

    IBM Watson is all boy with no intuition.

  • John_Mann
    John_Mann

    Intuition have several meanings.

    Define what you mean as intuition...

  • jgnat
    jgnat

    John_Mann, I use intuition as described in Haidt's model as I mentioned in my first response to this thread.

  • villagegirl
    villagegirl

    Chocolate, Art Books and young men, thats what life is about.

  • poppers
    poppers

    John_Mann, I am having a little trouble with understanding your opening post, and that may be because of an issue with semantics. The self (note the lower case s) that is an illusion is a mentally created "me" that people believe themselves to be. But when this idea of me is investigated the search for it comes up empty because that me cannot be found as an actual and real entity. The only thing that can be found of that me are ideas and beliefs one has about oneself. So in this sense there can be no self awareness because there is no self to be found.

    Going one step further, what remains when all ideas of me stop completely, when no "story of me" runs through the mind? All stories ABOUT me come from memory; they are tied to past events or imagined futures stored in or created by the mind. In other words, stories are dependent upon a mentally created time, and those stories are constantly being replayed in the mind where the "me" is the starring character of the drama it finds itself in. But in the NOW, in this very moment, when no thoughts of past or ideas of the future are entertained, something remains present and undeniable. In this very moment of now, where life is actually lived because it's the only "time" that truly exists, there remains the sense of existence, of Be-ing, of Am-ness. That SENSE of existence has a liveliness to it that is alert, silent, still, peaceful, and CONSCIOUS. This is sometimes referred to as true nature, the real Self (note the uppercase S). To know oneself as THAT and to knowingly abide in/as That is called Self-realization. Another term for this is enlightenment. In other words, enlightenment is one's true state of being, and by its very nature it is Self aware - it is the ONLY thing that is aware.

    However, this Self is not actually a "thing" that can be isolated and looked at as though it has some physical qualities to it. It is that to which all phenomena appears; it is the witnessing consciousness of everything that happens. This is what masters endeavor to point out to people. The "little me" that is created by the mind is not aware of anything, much less "self aware" because because it doesn't really exist; it's only an illusion created and sustained by mental activity, but it isn't aware. It is the Self alone that is aware. You are that Self, and to know oneself as that rather than the mind created me is to be enlightened. This is "liberation" from the dream of me and the awakening into reality as it actually is.

  • John_Mann
    John_Mann

    But Haidt's moral intuition is an automatic process, Watson is full of automatic processes. I don't understand your point.

    I use intuition as defined by Jung, an ability to abstract things and take free (sometimes random) relationships among them. In this case, Watson have a lot of intuition too.

    I think the next decade we will face the challenge to give full human rights to artificial beings, just like the women, black people, pagans, atheists and gays in the past.

  • John_Mann
    John_Mann

    poppers Yes I know this explanation, but if this Self is the only thing that exists then we still can say there's no individuality at all. There's no John_Mann "True Self" and one popper's "True Self" because it's just one thing.

    Plato and Kant said that every object have a "true self" in an ideal realm (Plato) and these ideal "objects" are the only things-in-itself (Kant).

    But Schopenhauer gone further and said if the real existence is beyond categories (time, space, etc) so there's no sense to keep the individualization among ideal objects. In this ideal realm must exist just one thing that he called "Will to Live" (Shunyata, Brahman...), a kind of blind force/energy that (for some unknown reason) needs to manifest itself in an objective world with the illusion of multi-individualization (Vishnu becoming infinite beings [Vishvarupa] in Baghavad Gita).

    In Physics we have a similar concept called quantum vacuum fluctuation, a kind of "pregnant void", an empty state that can give origin to an entire universe.

    Even in this sense, there's no self or Self.

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