On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 18:37:24 GMT, "Dan Skunk" <_@rogers.com> wrote:

But we know we had an infancy through the the accounts of others and
through
witnessing the infancy of others. Memory is not the only means of
knowing
something about ourselves. For the question of where we always existed
or
not, there is no knowledge from any source though.

I suppose,
if you want to accept 'truth' second or third hand by authority only.

Not by authority, but by logic. If you recognize yourself as a human and

From a materialist view, the brain contains memory of our history.
It's all in there, more or less, and retrievable at need.
But at most times, none of that is present in consciousness.
It isn't there during sex, watching TV, or riding in the car.
When the information is required, we can get it a bit at a time,
never all of it in one whole chunk. But consciousness is always there.

A newly dead body is assumed to have a brain but no consciousness.
Give it an IV, breathing and feeding tubes, artificial heart and
kidneys, and you may keep the thing 'alive', but without consciousness.

If we could give it consciousness, then we could call it alive.

It's the difference between Chris Reeve and the Florida woman who
has been in a coma for all these years. Would we fight to pull the
plug on him?

It is always there because consciousness it a continuous process. It

Such a thing, whether it exists or not, would have no relevance to an
afterlife.


If personal identity were indeed impersonal, as I believe,
then all things live together as long as any things live at all.
And since time is a flawed technical concept, what is long?

I don't understand.

The nature that we see in the brain is not at all the way
we actually feel our brains. You think there is no gap?
The brain is described as an electro-chemical machine
operating according to cause and effect in space-time.
Does it feel like that to you?

We can not sense the chemical and electrical activity in our brains;

As far as mechanism goes, DNA life itself is just chemistry.
What's the fuss about?

I don't know.

Another problem with the materialist space-time position is the nature
of the conscious 'now' that is our only frame of existence.
For the concept of time to exist, there must be the timelessly
brief 'now' to divide past and future. 'Now' is too small to measure,
but where does it begin and end? Conscious 'now' is immeasurably
short and long at the same time, not likely in measurable space-time.

The brain is not infinite. It can not percieve an infinite number of
infinitessimal nows. It will necessarily quantify each moment in time by
the speed at which it is able to percieve changes in the state of it
senses.
The length of time of each quantum will be determined by the speed at
which
the brain is able to process the information.

So "now" will not be infinitessimal, but a period of a few milliseconds.


If you want to get really space-time technical, such a lag would
eliminate a present entirely, since we could only be aware of
already past events. (What would that do to free-will/determinism?)
The persistence of vision allows as few as 15 frames a second in moving
videos.

It would not eliminate the present. It would just mean that we can not be

But I'm not convinced by the common interpretation of the universe in
materialist space-time terms. It may be good for making toasters,
but it isn't really compatible with human experience, and certainly
harmful to psychic health. Materialism is a flawed religion.

I find it perfectly compatible with human experience. There is nothing that

Outside of space-time, would perception be spacial or temporal?
Not likely. Our concepts of it are limited human-centric.

(POW! My brain just exploded.)

Heh... Well, actually, outside of time-space, perception is not possible.

A consciousness outside of time looses its ability to percieve anything.

If there is no point of contact.

Hmm... I don't like the way I wrote that. Consciousness can't exist outside

Perception is a process of looking at the world,
and then understanding it. Learning from it.

Right.
Thought is laborious over time, including reason, memory,
imagination, and all the supposed individual qualities.
These may well be stored mechanically in the material brain.
But memory and habit are static and not dynamic. They persist
as a dusty library, without contact with the changing moments
we experience. Is personal identity 'alive'?

Of course it's alive, it grows and changes over time.

I don't think consciousness is of the same order as those.
You may say that consciousness is just a continuous immaterial
function that interprets brain functions. Does this really explain
anything? In fact, matter itself is nothing but the continuous
immaterial behaviors of energy. Immaterial functions are all
there is. That's Mind.

The essence of anyone's being is this immaterial function
called consciousness. Matter doesn't determine immaterial
functions. It's the other way round.

Ah. Good, good.

"Jahnu" <jahnu@india.com> wrote in message

The fallacy and appeal to ignorance is to say that we don't know where
consciousness came from or that it comes from matter. To say that
consciousness comes from consciousness is only logical and reasonable.

Considering that consciousness can be greatly affected by matter, such as
with drugs or brain damage, I believe it conclusive that conclusive that
consciousness comes from matter.

Were it not from matter, one would not expect matter to have such an
influence on it.

Jahnu <jahnu@india.com> wrote:

In this life -
throughout all your bodily and mental transformations, from boyhood,
to youth, to old age - the self remains the same. So the self remains
constan even though the body and mind change. Why think it will
discontinue at the final transformation - death? You just pass over
into another body, that's all.

Does the self remain the same? I look back at the boy I was and, quite
frankly, I see very little that is "the same"... Maybe you are using a
very different definition of "the same" than I am?

If we can't remember our infancy, does it follow than we had none?
(Practically speaking, what we haven't experienced or can't remember
can't be said to exist, at least for us.)

The logical conclusion to draw, since we have no recollection of ever
having not existed, is that we have always existed. In this life -
throughout all your bodily and mental transformations, from boyhood,
to youth, to old age - the self remains the same. So the self remains
constan even though the body and mind change. Why think it will
discontinue at the final transformation - death? You just pass over
into another body, that's all.

I call that enduring thing that accompanies our whole career 'consciousness'.
It is the unchanging observer of all that is objectified and perceived. While
the body and the mind constantly change, consciousness remains the same 'I'.
It has no features of it's own that might indicate individuality.
When it is there, 'I' is there. When it is not, nothing is.
It actually is our only living, indispensible part.

But why wait for rebirth? That same identical 'I' is in all beings already.

"Daniel T." <postmaster@eathlink.net> wrote:

Jahnu <jahnu@india.com> wrote:

In this life -
throughout all your bodily and mental transformations, from boyhood,
to youth, to old age - the self remains the same. So the self remains
constan even though the body and mind change. Why think it will
discontinue at the final transformation - death? You just pass over
into another body, that's all.

Does the self remain the same? I look back at the boy I was and, quite
frankly, I see very little that is "the same"... Maybe you are using a
very different definition of "the same" than I am?

The self in the sense of I-feeling, the innermost observer, remains
the same during all bodily transformations. That is clear. You are the
same person now as when you were born. It is the same I-feeling now
as then. Only your body and mind have changed.

Jahnu <jahnu@india.com> wrote:

The self in the sense of I-feeling, the innermost observer, remains
the same during all bodily transformations. That is clear. You are the
same person now as when you were born. It is the same I-feeling now
as then. Only your body and mind have changed.

No, it isn't the same I-feeling. I know of nothing about me that is the
same now as it was say, 30 years ago...

Please don't tell me how I feel or what I think. Thank you...

"andy-k" <spam.free@last> wrote in message
news:yLCEb.17975$R6.4041735@newsfep2-win.server.ntli.net...
"Russ Rose" <russrose@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:VtCEb.85489$8y1.291344@attbi_s52...
"andy-k" <spam.free@last> wrote in message
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I've about as much enthusiasm for discussing Pirsigs cranky ethics
as I
have for discussing why the bible must be literal truth. I wish
you'd
said so in the first place. If you wish to indulge in such a
discussion
then start a thread on the subject, but this time be up-front about
it.

I had no such interest. You just kept asking your narrow minded
questions
and I was presenting you with an alternate way of thinking.

lol! I saw it the other way round.

You saw the presentation of the ubiquitous subject/object metaphysics as
an
"alternate way of thinking"? Now that's funny...

All a matter of subjective
perspective
then ;-)


If you have no desire for an alternate way of thinking, why are you
here?

"Alternative" covers many views ranging from the fascinating to the
ridiculous.


Yet you still refuse to explain how the MOQ is circular and/or how it is
that you know it well enought to discard it yet unable to recognize it.
Please save me from my ignorance...


A closed mind is a terrible thing...

Your descent from reasoned argument to emotive argument is an indication
that this debate has run its course.


If you say so...


PS it was his metaphysics that were cranky, the ethics are fairly run
of
the mill...

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 02:36:44 GMT, "Dan Skunk" <_@rogers.com> wrote:


"Jahnu" <jahnu@india.com> wrote in message

The fallacy and appeal to ignorance is to say that we don't know where
consciousness came from or that it comes from matter. To say that
consciousness comes from consciousness is only logical and reasonable.

Considering that consciousness can be greatly affected by matter, such as
with drugs or brain damage, I believe it conclusive that conclusive that
consciousness comes from matter.

Is the TV the cause of the TV program? Is the lightbulb the cause of
light? You can alter the TV program by smashing the screen. If you
smash the screen the program goes away. That doesn't mean the TV is
the source of the program.The TV is just the via media through which
the program manifests. Similarly the mind is just the via media
through which consciousness manifests in the material world.
Consciousness can never be affected by matter. You can affect the mind
by drugs, violence etc. and impair its functionality, but
consciousness itself, the observer, remains always the same. It is
still the same self that observer the changes of a drug-induced mind.

Good point, but with a TV, we have knowledge of what a TV program is.

Were it not from matter, one would not expect matter to have such an
influence on it.

It may look that way superficially, but that's because you have not
learned to distinguish between the mind and consciousness. The mind is
the feeling, willing and thinking. They can be altered by drugs,
damage etc. But the consciousness is neither of these things. The
consciousness is the observer, the real self within, and it is forever
free from the effects of matter. You can't mix matter and
consciousness. Maybe an analogy will help you understand:

The hardware in your computer is like the physical body; the mind is
like the software, and the user or the operator is the consciousness.
To understand consciousness you have to learn to separate it from the
body and mind. You have two bodies: a physical body and a mental one.
They are part of the material world. Beyond that or transcendental to
that is the self - the consciousness. Self-realization means to
discover the self beyond the body and mind.

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 08:29:23 -0600, Keynes <Keynes@earthlink.net
wrote:

If we can't remember our infancy, does it follow than we had none?
(Practically speaking, what we haven't experienced or can't remember
can't be said to exist, at least for us.)

Some people can't even remember what they did yesterday. But by
logical deduction we can understand we had a childhood. You don't need
to remember the experience. On another note you are right, though. In
the greater scheme of eternality what you do in this life or in any
other life has absolutely no consequence. Still you get karma for it,
though. You have to either suffer or enjoy the fruits of your
activities. That's why you come back life after life to either suffer
or enjoy even though you actually don't belong here in the material
world.

Hmm... Doesn't seem that usefull a process to me. How can one correct the

It doesn't make sense to say that just because the self falsely
identifies with its body and mind it has no identity on its own. It
could have a spiritual identity beyond its material designations. In
the Vaishnava tantra the eternal identity of the soul is said to be as
the servant of Krishna.

Doesn't make sense that just because the self falsely identifies with having

But why wait for rebirth? That same identical 'I' is in all beings
already.

The 'I' in you is not the same as the 'I' in me. We are distinct and
separate entities. Souls are atomic particles of consciousness
emanating from the Supreme - eternally part and parcel of Him.

*nods*

"Daniel T." wrote:

Jahnu <jahnu@india.com> wrote:

The self in the sense of I-feeling, the innermost observer, remains
the same during all bodily transformations. That is clear. You are the
same person now as when you were born. It is the same I-feeling now
as then. Only your body and mind have changed.

No, it isn't the same I-feeling. I know of nothing about me that is the
same now as it was say, 30 years ago...

Yes, the observer is the same.

Please don't tell me how I feel or what I think. Thank you...

I couldn't give a fig how you feel or think. Please don't think I am
just offering you an opinion. I'm merely stating an irrefutable fact.

If you have any probems in life you can be sure they stem from the
root factor that you can't see the difference between your self and
your body and mind. As long as you think like that you are going to be
met by one defeat after an other in life. Imagine when your body
starts to rot and get old and sick and you can't have sex anymore and
you think this is actually happening to YOU. How depressing is that?

Not necessary to introduce such complexities and unknowns to the
explanation, when a simple one, based on facts will work better.

At least us atheists live in the real word

and do not concoct elaborate
fantasies in to satisfy our desires.

You will have problems in life, the same as anyone else, no matter what you
believe. Your great Krisha will not feed you when you are hungry or clothe
you when you are cold.

We shall encounter defeat, yes. But we shall encounter victory as well.

This is life. Were one to never experience defeat, victory would have no
meaning.

Freeing oneself from all the miseries of life only deprives oneself of
experiencing any of life's pleasures. It is only by emersing oneself
completely in life that one can fully experience all the pleasures it has to
offer.

It is interesting that you have become frustrated at your inability to
convince others of your point of view and are resorting to calling everyone
who doesn't agree with you stupid.

With all the discussion about
transcending the material world and finding eternal bliss, you do not appear
very transcendant nor blissful.

You are arguing from premesis which they don't accept. Your first task is
to prove the existence of your god. Only after that, can you begin to have
a meaningfull discussion about him.

We are still having an interesting discussion. Both of us learning more
about ourselves through examining our own ideas, but don't get too upset if
everyone doesn't automatically come to believe your way of thinking.

You are stating as fact how you think I feel. You are wrong. When you
said "You are the same person now as when you were born" you were wrong.
My opinion on everything is different now than it was 30 years ago, even
my eye color has changed.

It isn't depressing at all, it's life. The fact that you can't seem to
accept that life is change, that people change, grow old and die, is why
you will continue to be caught in the cycle. Always grasping for that
which simply doesn't exist... a constant.

There is no Atman. Get over it. The sooner you get through the seven
stages a grief and get to acceptance, the happier the rest of your life
will be.