Great thread. Whatever happened to madnak? Guy has the clearest mind I've ever come across. His last post on 2p2, 5 years ago:
Perhaps he simply figured it all out...

Which means you and me have near zero access to any other experiences than our own and have to guess about the immaterial experiences of others or observe what relatively little one can put in to language or now grow a record on media. So the immaterial experiences of others is simply outside most of our grasp and scope. Sounds like something good to 'not know'.

****** is a loaded term, uninformative to me. fYI

What material?

Materialism, if considered consistently, will lead you to the conclusion that there is no human body or brain to begin with. It is a way of trying to define ourselves that ultimately defines us out of existence. If taken seriously, materialism leads us to conclude that you, and your surroundings, are merely quarks and energy fluctuations in particular arrangements. What you perceive as you and your body, is not disconnected from your environment in any material way, and neither are your thoughts; it is all just energy. This is an absurd way of describing our existence; a way that most materialists will object to themselves. Yet this is where consistent materialism must necessarily lead. To a meaningless contradiction; everything is energy; as meaningless as everything is everything.

Have you considered that while dividing and reducing reality may be of practical use, it may not necessarily tell us anything about the nature of that reality? If I'm staring through a hole in a fence and I've never before seen a cat...and then I see a cat walk past on the other side. I first see it's head and then it's tail...and the cat turns around and walks by again..head first...tail after. From this I may divide the observation and conclude that the event 'head' causes the event 'tail'. When in fact, head and tail are the same thing. Have you ever considered that narrow conscious attention divides reality in this way, when in fact none of it is divided at all? When in fact, cause and effect are the same event?

I don't. It's analogous to my being a functional atheist even though agnostic is a better description (how the **** can I possibly know, and I could be making a huge error) because pontification about different versions of the supernatural is utterly pointless to me. I have no problem with either position.

No, I don't give a **** what their experiences actually are, or if I can understand them, just that they agree that they don't take place without some degree of functioning bodies, which i would have thought to be a safe assumption.....

Not seeing the problem here. If you're saying that a description using words, even words that may be/be describing actual nonsense, is a better, more concise way to communicate a description to another person than a gigantic set of equations, sure. That doesn't entail, in any way, that those words have any special connection to reality.

As soon as you start talking about reality you're talking about something else.


PairTheBoard

That's pretty much my best guess; although I know nothing of Buddhism and never heard of the other one before. I am sure anyone else would describe me as an atheist.

It may be that flatly stating that thinking is supersensible isn't enough for in truth this is a matter inner experience, that to which each of us can(may) not be able to clarify in one's inner being.

A picture of percept-thinking is the bringing forth of concepts which associate with the percept. Proceeding to Kant which has affected our thinking in extremity to the present day the "percept" is brought forth into the cognitive man as a "mental picture" . The leading lights then, and even now, therefore axiomatically stated that we cannot know the actual percept but that we only know our "mental picture" .

This "mental picture" approach was justified by carrying the "percept" along the route of the air,nerves,brain,.. and so on that when the percept reaches our brain it could not be the same as that which is without us, or the "percept" in and of itself. Kant therefore concluded that is so far as Man is concerned there could be not real "truth" and the catchword of our lives should be within "duty", no more , no less. Kant did offer some relief as he offered that mathematics was the best and primary etiology for the study of man within the cosmic whole.

In a very real sense Kant's epistemology failed his desires to prove the rightness of an epistemological approach. The idea of Kant falters when we consider that we ourselves are a 'percept" and therefore within a man is the "mental picture" of himself . In those times the idea of "soul" could be spoken to and we have the "soul" contained within an illusion of mental pictures which can lead to one being illusory to one's self, ala Madnak. Also, if no "soul' then we mash into the brain which finds itself illusory in the mish mash of questionable thinking, the brain as mush.

In a real sense Kant and many others , in some way, denied thinking as a living reality and became stuck in the cognitional state of the human being, the cognition of "mental picture".

Concepts and ideas which are involved within thinking should be considered but a sidelight is the use of "words" within thinking. Inner experience will reveal that the world of "thoughts" or "concepts" or "ideas" are not the same as "words".

A thinker in the realm of thoughts can come upon a concept and in a real sense interpret it into the language to which we refer. Abanal, but not trivial look at that thing which sits upon our shoulders will clarify the difference between thoughts and words.

If a German has the concept of the thing on our shoulders he uses the word "kopf"(correct me German speakers) whereas the Italian will say"testa". "Kopf" relates more to the rounding of that which is on our shoulders whereas the Italian speaks to a "statement" such as "last will and testament". They see the same thought and interpret it into their respective languages.

Far off the point there is a movement of languages from one to another and not necessarily is each fixed in stone. In English we have 'head' or "head of state" or "ruler"; it lacks to me but perhaps we can do more than relate our shoulder accessory to more than the bathroom for as some may know the naval term is 'head".

Some of us only think in"words" and as the language of today only relates to externals or sense bound objects the idea of a "thought" other than in words is lost. there are others who do not "think in words" and act as thinkers of the thought realm.

This gets closer to the nature of thinking but I'll stop here.

Bye the bye Madnak always had something to say; I loved Madnak and sorely miss him . I ribbed him a bit but he was always worth listening to as he was one of the best.

The experience of having a body is an excellent example of experiences which are knowable as immaterial among individuals. That you have your experience of your body is an existence I can clearly safely sense.

So why do people have to agree with you? Is abstain a safe option in face of a range of choices of what to think about having experiences without having a material body?

No. WTF. I don't have the experience of having a body unless I HAVE a minimally functioning body. It's quite simple to stop that experience. It's the exact opposite of immaterial to me- it clearly requires material.

They don't have to agree with me. They're free to just be idiots, to invoke a particular brand of the supernatural, to speak in matter-denying ontologies that I don't give a crap about, etc

Your not giving a crap is immaterial from this angle, just a different flavor of immaterial as a superstition or something claimed to be supernatural.

Emotions are the another immaterial experience, speaking of not giving a crap.

My Bold

No place is safe. The parasites are everywhere and insidious (didn't you view the video I posted in the other thread?).

"someone you don't even like", I love you man, as all liberals love everyone, because liberals wish to be loved also, by everyone, because they are the gatekeepers of all truth and enlightenment, and because we are all in this together, and liberals are the best and brightest, and we all need the liberal love and to return it, so we all can be together as one soul, so the earth can heal, so we all can kowtow to liberal sanctimony and thus the utopian chimera will glow from our faces and light the world in love and peace and friendship. No dualism. Oneism. All is one and one is all. We will all join together in the one universal soul of being. The homogeneity of metaphysics. Just submit. No more tooth. Love is the only reality.

Well, Love and Beer. So we are back to dualism, if dualism is your religion. But Beer is first.

Love's so great it even speaks for itself without making any sound and people can hear it.

Emotions obviously have a material component (for me) for the same reason as the previous post. Are you a literal ****** or something?

You appear stunted in argumentation enough to presume that is not a forgone conclusion of mine already. However, to the point, you haven't made any immateriality not exist yet through the argumentation, but that has nothing to do with it being stunted. It's just, like I said, mostly beyond certain grasp.


You know what's really immaterial that I have found?

Wildness.

You're the dumbest **** alive if you can take

and think I'm trying to argue dualism is demonstrably false.

You prefer one classification and contrast game (mathematics/equations) to another. Fine. To me, poetry does a better job of describing reality and experience than mathematics. The game of mathematics tells nothing meaningful of my subjective experience in this framework in which I find myself presently.

Sure. Not even going to disagree with you for normal experience. I think the grand mistake is trying to make that classification (or any other) into the basis of a framework of everything instead of treating all the classifications as useful fictions for their intended domains. "A bunch of crap exists. No classification scheme is useful, coherent, and complete" isn't a very exciting meta-framework, but here we are AFAIAC.

If you say so. I haven't mentioned dualism materially. Looks like there are more than one or two ways up, down, and around immaterial hills is where I am coming from.

*Tip of the secret poet club hat*

Daric mused that Mathematics' (equations) is/should be aesthetically pleasing, to accurately reflect reality - thus in a real sense poetry.

And you are mistaken in your obtuse view of equations - Mathematical symbols are simply a shorthand for the easy of computation and manipulation of concepts according to fixed rules and laws. Every equation can be written in prose. And if written in prose; also in poetry.

QED

Dualism is the separation of man to the world as in the "mental picture". the dualist, because of this fixation denies knowledge of the external world or, in fact, denies all knowledge for he cannot get out of himself.

Man is limited, and when he perceives, he perceives a limited portion of the world but is quite able to bring thinking into action and works within concepts(ideas) in relation to his percepts. the essential matter is that in the perceiving the individual man is only fixed upon part of the world but in the bringing forth of concepts through thinking the world becomes complete.

Man, is therefore very much involved in world creation for the reality is not the percept but the combination of percept to concept (idea). Realism is the human being bringing together the two parts of reality the percept with the concept (idea).

The above denies all dualism and is in fact "monism" for the world/cosmos is not all perceptive facts, so to speak, but is the merger of the concept to the percept. The Ego of man works within this conscious activity and in so doing completes the being of the world/cosmos.

In understanding this one realzes that we are not at all individual thinkers with our own brand of thinking but that we are immersed withing the activity of thinking which is not the sole ownership of any man. If thinking were different for each and every one of us there can be no understanding within the human milieu although it seems that way at times.

In thinking man speaks within the commonality of the human exegesis . One can say the moon ,sun and stars, in perception become common to each and every one of us through the concept(ideas) merged within the perceptual planetary motions.

The human individuality manifests when the individual performs a "judgment" and in this judgment he appreciates a "feeling" and in this feeling it speaks to the individual. We become individual in "feeling" consequential to the percept-concept and in this make it our own.

Each of us have our own myriad of experiences and in these experiences we bring thinking into movement thus gaining knowledge and through "judgment" we make this our own which is embossed within "feeling". the more the cognitive experiences the richer the life . finis

If by "manipulation of concepts" you're referring to classifying and contrasting concepts (individually and collectively), then yes, that is how i also consider mathematics. A more pedantic version of a very old game, for the more pedantic persons of this world.

If to receive a brief moment of joy, you must deliberately (as opposed to spontaneously) add elegance to an otherwise meticulous, rule-laden set of pedantic symbolism, surely you must also ask if your time is better spent drinking beer instead.

One need not desire the scheme to be useful for others, coherent or complete. It is more than sufficient for the scheme to spontaneously evoke positive affect. For the more romantic, this can be derived by seemingly useless schemes, including but not exclusive to, theology, poetry, philosophy, fiction, fine arts and music. For the more pedantic, this may be derived by other, more deliberate and rule-laden means. One is no more useful than another, in the broader sense of this word, or at least to the extent that one does not NEED to engage in self-flattery; and is not in need of a sub-game whereby others' views must necessarily be inferior to one's own. Some in fact, actively engage with both types of schemes.