Atara

Evening, Franca.

How are you today? Hope you're enjoying your time in Nepal.

Sorry I haven't yet responded to your PM. I've been a bit busy of late, but will reply as soon as I can.

:tea:Thinking of you. Hope you've had a lovely day so far.

Hehe. Isn't it just! Glad you like it. I'm thinking of starting a chocolate trading thread on the forum actually. It is my earnest belief that the world needs more love to be shared freely between people, but failing that, chocolate comes a close second.

Cookies!! Om nom nom nom!

I'm :couch2: in our sanctuary, with some freshly brewed chai :tea:, and I'm thinking of you, ray2: for your happiness and welbeing, and letting you know, with a and a that you can join me here any time.

:tea: Fancy a cuppa?

Oh ok, no rush

Did you get my message at all?

Also, I HIGHLY suggest you join our philosopher's group on here! http://forum.infjs.com/group.php?groupid=31

Well said, limited comprehension. It is tough to want so much and have so little, and know that it is unattainable. That is part of the reason I developed my name so long ago, NeverAmI. It is this understanding of the limited comprehension of humanity. The understanding that we are all ignorant of that which we cannot comprehend and we can strive, but ultimately we will never attain the ultimate enlightenment we seek. Of course, it would be wonderful to be pleasantly surprised in this, but I highly doubt that to occur before death, if at all.

Good discussion! I greatly enjoy chatting with you.

And so, what is your philosophy? What drives you?

I am an intensely introspective person and most of this just make sense to me. I haven't formally studied anything in psychology but I would VERY much like to one of these days.

These are the conversations that make life worth living for me, it is my passion. The metaphysical aspect of philosophy is very difficult for me to ponder because my emotions start nagging with depression and dissonance/hopelessness. I try to keep it out of my mind because I form bias in that I don't want our existence to be utterly trivial in the overall big picture or full comprehension of what we are/what this is.

I gave up on a lot of this when I was younger, I had thoughts about the inability to form a baseline or how we interpret our senses. Ultimately I get weird looks and no one seems interested and I ignorantly equated it to me either being insane or at least "improper."

Major depression sort of shut it down for good for a long time, this is now my re-awakening. Not to sound epic or anything, my intellect is just soaring nowadays, I am impassioned.

John Locke was a major epistemological influence in the enlightenment period. He theorized that the mind is a blank canvas at birth, he basically argued nurture over nature 100% except in terms of genetic advancement. His argument is we are a "tabula rasa" or a blank slate that is formed based on experiences.

He heavily argued against original sin or that we are anything but ignorant creatures. I don't mean to sound reductionist with this, by saying that we are primal or primitive, we are obviously not such.

Here is a statement from wikipedia on Locke:

Locke defines the self as "that conscious thinking thing, (whatever substance, made up of whether spiritual, or material, simple, or compounded, it matters not) which is sensible, or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends".[20] He does not, however, ignore "substance", writing that "the body too goes to the making the man."[21] The Lockean self is therefore a self-aware and self-reflective consciousness that is fixed in a body.


I haven't studied much on Locke but I REALLY look forward to studying it in the future. J.J. Abrams who created the television series Lost named one of the characters John Locke, whether there is a link I don't know, I would have to guess there is, though.

Here is the wikipedia page for the character: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke_(Lost)

Hmm, a trip to Greece, that sounds fun!

The single largest inhibiting factor is that we cannot experience anything outside ourselves. If we could really tap into the consciousness and be able to measure things like we can the material world, to share those measurements with others in an absolute manner with a common baseline, I think it would be considerably easier to determine cause and effect in the human mind.

In our 'soft sciences' such as psychology there is this inability to find a common baseline between individuals. My 'good' or 'pleasure' is not necessarily grounded on the same baseline as yours. Your experiences seem to determine your baseline for definitions of moods and the idea of experiences (qualia). There is no way to prove that the way you see red is actually the same way I see red, we can look at something and we can both say it is red, but that doesn't mean that we actually interpret it the exact same way, for you red may seem completely different from my own, but we are both consistent in our own subjective experiences. I can never 'see what you see' or see through your mind, so we can never form that baseline.

So these psychologists have to constantly ask "how do you feel" because they have no other way of measuring someone's experience. They attempt to find personal details becaues that helps to form an overall baseline of what you have experienced and gives a better understanding of how you compare and contrast to others, so that inductive reasoning can be created. In the hospital they have charts to determine pain based on the face you make, this is a perfect example of qualia. Someone that hasn't been tortured might have a VERY different idea of what INTENSE pain is from someone else that hasn't anything even close to torture.

Protagoras stated that man is the measure of all things, and that makes sense. The person that was tortured may have a better understanding of a full spectrum of pain than someone who hasn't suffered that same experience. Yet that doesn't mean that someone can't suffer terror or a panic attack from an extremely less level of pain because that is the scope of the spectrum of pain they have experienced. The ideas between eliciting an emotional response based on your interpretation of something is in no way, shape or form the same as someone else's.

It will remain that way until technology advances far enough to truly monitor the thoughts inside someone else's head. Perhaps that isn't even possible with technology, that all depends on what truly drives the conscious mind, I don't believe it is simply chemicals in the brain, although I do believe it could be a combination of memory, intellect, emotion, etc. I would really like to find if intuition is truly capable of being reproduced by means of materialistic resources. Even more interesting is whether that capability of intuition could surpass that of us; such is the basis of any AI apocalyptic movie.

I agree that humanity has been doing something right. But I believe the 'right' path is one of balance. I don't say that being theological, epicurean, nominal, secular, stoic, materialist, capitalist, or empirical are right in and of themselves, but rather a balance and a respect is needed between all. No one of those seems to be the right path in and of itself, otherwise I think humanity would have followed that because it 'just makes sense.'

Then again, I don't particularly believe humanity is as irrational as everyone would like to believe, I simply think we are ignorant.

The notion that there WAS/IS an afterlife would indeed be an exciting venture. How I would like to discuss such matters with the likes of Socrates, Protagoras, Plato, Descartes, John Locke, etc. Of course, that assumes there would still be limited comprehension in an afterlife. If there was full comprehension then such conversations would not be needed.

Please keep in mind that I don't necessarily believe anything I say 100%. It is all theoretical and I sort of flesh out my thoughts as I say them. I appreciate your input and ideas too!