Karl

easy, one hand cannot clap. This is what I meant by controlling definitions. You can get people to believe completely contradictory things. Once they have sufficient contradictory experiences you can tell them anything. I have an example put forward by, Dewey (I think) in modern education, in which he wonders exactly what it would take to get children to believe snow is black. Koans are about control in which the student will look to the master for the masters version of reality. It gets obedience from the student and gives power to the master. It's a Svengali.

How can there be knowing if no mind ? How can there be 'language' with no mind. Do you mean something else because clearly mind is needed for any form of language or knowledge retrieval.

There are millions of versions of history which are all opinioniated unless only the dry facts are quoted. I like Patrick J Buchanan -Churchill, Hitler and the unnecessary war. There is no need to defer to posting cute cat pictures.

I see nothing that conflicts with my definition at all, however I see several logical flaws in that talk which isn't given by Buddah. Happy people have developed wisdom which is why they are happy. One needs suffering to know suffering is circular reasoning. There are several problems with his argument which invalidates it.

It doesn't conflict with 'all life is suffering' because that is the Buddhists belief and so desire in Buddhism is never satiated and suffering is always the result. To an extent this is also Mises philosophy on human action. If we turn again to Rand objectivism we can see a chink that desires can be sufficiently met and even exceeded as long as they are not placed wholly on material things, but where sufficient material things are present. In other words it isn't true that there is no happiness in life and Buddah didn't say that- he said all life is unmet desires-isn't that just a version of ' by the sweat of your brow ' in the Bible ? I agree that you cannot maintain yourself with zero desires and that in essence is what I believe some people are trying to do instead of satisfying their desires minimally in the case of necessary things such as food and shelter, but greatly in the case of desires that do not revolve directly around obtaining physical gratification. I read that Buddah tried abstinence and discarded it.

There is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that Russia had been considering a pre emptive attack on Germany several years prior to the start of the war. Russia's imperialism was in the order of spreading communism across the world. In other words a political take over and not one by geographical invasion in which it was introverted. This continues to permeate today even without direct Russian backing through groups of intellectuals and organisations such as UNESCO, club of Rome and the Fabian Society. Most of it has been willingly adopted by state education as the best way to control the population. Germany's imperial ambitions were at an end prior to the beginning of the First World War when it considered that 'it had enough hay to fork over'. However that did not suit Great Britain who wanted Germany to be in constant conflict with the next most powerful nation -France-this remains the current tactic for the West to set the most powerful regional state against the next most powerful and provide tacit support for that state.

That's true, but only when man is eliminated. Good and evil are only pertinent to man. I'm not thinking of it in the religious sense though it works fine. You can substitute which ever opposites you wish, but mans morality is driven by experience and desire. Does anyone commit murder, rape, genocide, theft etc and think it's good ? I think there are not 'rules' of good and evil, but they can be roughly codified as natural laws without difficulty. Then we use a jury of peers to determine if those rules have been broken. Therefore self defence would not be murder, taking back stolen property would not be theft. God could be defined as the ultimate authority and leave it there. If one is an atheist then ultimate authority rests in man, if a statist, it is the state, if religious then a deity. It has to cope with the reality of mans existence and beliefs as they are.

Suffering: A state of mental discontent in which desires conflict with reality. That I think corks it. Values are desires and not 'needs' because of free will choice. It fits nicely with both Buddhist, Tau and existence from the perspective of objectivity. It's a bridge. Reduce desire to nothing and there is no suffering.

Where I differ in the definition is that all the sadness, hunger, pain can be linked directly of the fear of something and then defined. Sadness doesn't exist of and by itself so in case of grief it might be the fear of loneliness. Fear then is primal. It is a warning that there is a threat to existence. That threat-loneliness-is something we don't enjoy if we have been close to the deceased. By internal values, these (with reference to Rands assertion that the primary value is predicated on life itself ). I've done some work on value elicitation and- if I may call them this way-secondary value hinge around security, respect. This does back up Rands assertions from security, but being respected clearly indicates a need for relationships being important to that survival and raw economic reality confirms this to be true. Still adding : let's say loneliness is a concept buried in the subconscious and the death of a partner kicks off a conflict with a value ( loneliness-I don't want to be alone threat to existence ), this fires off fear which makes the person delve into the subconscious, select the concept and then move the emotion into a conceptual response. 'I fear I will be lonely' becomes sadness.

Kauffmanns comments were a good read. Discovering that he believes it was Popper who propagated much of the myths really throws a curved ball.

She didn't strike me as a happy person either. It's why I'm careful not to fall down the objectivist tunnel-it could be of course that she didn't live up to her own philosophy and so suffered the worst conflict with reality.

I think being 'beyond good and evil' is abdication. It's the giving away of individuality to the collective and thus accepting the arbitration of a greater power. Hegel proposed the state as God on Earth serving that purpose. It's the difference between God as individual, or God as the collective, or at least one group of men who will decide morality for all the rest. This is precisely what Hitler was doing- total sacrifice to the state.

This is what Rand says about values as its objectivist she doesn't get into subjective values and states them explicitly. In other words you cannot have any values if there is no one to whom values can occur. Interestingly she also talks about 'full potential'. I'm wondering if these things aren't that far apart. To challenge the basic premise of any discipline, one must begin at the beginning. In ethics, one must begin by asking: What are values? Why does man need them? “Value” is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. The concept “value” is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? It presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative. Where no alternative exists, no goals and no values are possible. I quote from Galt’s speech: “There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence—and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.” To make this point fully clear, try to imagine an immortal, indestructible robot, an entity which moves and acts, but which cannot be affected by anything, which cannot be changed in any respect, which cannot be damaged, injured or destroyed. Such an entity would not be able to have any values; it would have nothing to gain or to lose; it could not regard anything as for or against it, as serving or threatening its welfare, as fulfilling or frustrating its interests. It could have no interests and no goals. ¶ It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of “value” is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of “life.” To speak of “value” as apart from “life” is worse than a contradiction in terms. “It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible.” In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between “is” and “ought.” Now in what manner does a human being discover the concept of “value”? By what means does he first become aware of the issue of “good or evil” in its simplest form? By means of the physical sensations of pleasure or pain. Just as sensations are the first step of the development of a human consciousness in the realm of cognition, so they are its first step in the realm of evaluation. The capacity to experience pleasure or pain is innate in a man’s body; it is part of his nature, part of the kind of entity he is. He has no choice about it, and he has no choice about the standard that determines what will make him experience the physical sensation of pleasure or of pain. What is that standard? His life. Since a value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep, and the amount of possible action is limited by the duration of one’s lifespan, it is a part of one’s life that one invests in everything one values. The years, months, days or hours of thought, of interest, of action devoted to a value are the currency with which one pays for the enjoyment one receives from it. Material objects as such have neither value nor disvalue; they acquire value-significance only in regard to a living being—particularly, in regard to serving or hindering man’s goals. Values are the motivating power of man’s actions and a necessity of his survival, psychologically as well as physically. Man’s values control his subconscious emotional mechanism that functions like a computer adding up his desires, his experiences, his fulfillments and frustrations—like a sensitive guardian watching and constantly assessing his relationship to reality. The key question which this computer is programmed to answer, is: What is possible to me? There is a certain similarity between the issue of sensory perception and the issue of values. . . . If severe and prolonged enough, the absence of a normal, active flow of sensory stimuli may disintegrate the complex organization and the interdependent functions of man’s consciousness. Man’s emotional mechanism works as the barometer of the efficacy or impotence of his actions. If severe and prolonged enough, the absence of a normal, active flow of value-experiences may disintegrate and paralyze man’s consciousness—by telling him that no action is possible. The objective theory of values is the only moral theory incompatible with rule by force. Capitalism is the only system based implicitly on an objective theory of values—and the historic tragedy is that this has never been made explicit. If one knows that the good is objective—i.e., determined by the nature of reality, but to be discovered by man’s mind—one knows that an attempt to achieve the good by physical force is a monstrous contradiction which negates morality at its root by destroying man’s capacity to recognize the good, i.e., his capacity to value. Force invalidates and paralyzes a man’s judgment, demanding that he act against it, thus rendering him morally impotent. A value which one is forced to accept at the price of surrendering one’s mind, is not a value to anyone; the forcibly mindless can neither judge nor choose nor value. An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes. Values cannot exist (cannot be valued) outside the full context of a man’s life, needs, goals, and knowledge.

Rand said something about values that is maddeningly difficult to comprehend and you are saying something similar for the flow of the Tao. I see an integration struggling to get out and my mental gears are grinding trying to connect the dots. I don't believe plants suffer because they don't hold values. Rand says life has value of itself it needs no reason, therefore our key value is life and therefore all other values are derivative. She adds moral code in which if we operate against our principal value-the primacy of life- then we get suffering. So we have people who are going against that value by murdering someone. For the impotent observer this is also against their values, but there should be no suffering if prevention was an impossibility. I came to a similar conclusion for guards in death camps who were compelled to carry out orders under pain of death. Do you sacrifice yourself for principle ? That issue is also in the Gita and is resolved by God telling the hero that those he shall kill are already marked for death ( but this is in direct contradiction to the law of identity, free will and therefore morality which doesn't work for me as it creates a law of predetermination ). How does the Tao cope with that issue ?

Not quite what I meant. I was paraphrasing because I'm making leaps which I will eventually have to revisit. I'm seeing a bridge here, something fundamental that connects things but I need some help: can you explain the 'flow of Tao' ? I had a look at Rands explanation of value and it's beginning to form the basis of conceptual integration which spans more than just one area. It seems the question of what is suffering ? Is potentially THE question. I asked what it was people were trying to achieve with spiritual liberation. Isn't that the freedom from suffering/happiness ?

And then comes the six million dollar question : define suffering. Certainly it's a mental aberration. Rand compares it with pain on the physical side which means death. Suffering is the mental state which also means death. We are getting there I think but this a heck of a grind.

Yes, I agree that there is something not right about it. I think this is because we haven't sufficiently defined the what of suffering and have gone straight for the why of suffering. There was a point at which I was going to add something so sufficiently confusing that I refrained from doing so at the beginning of the thread because of the complexity it introduced. I admit I stuck to the 'simple is best' over anything else. So fear is a necessary and not a sufficient condition for suffering. You might see why I refrained from adding complexity. Two conflicting concepts will create constant tension which have the capability to turn into fear once the future is introduced. Fear can manifest without conflicting concepts being present, but in a similar way there is fear of the future and fight/flight. So, is suffering simply an artificially created synthesis ? If that is correct, then this accords with suffering being a modern phenomena, unlike fear which is a natural response. A phobia is a learned response to a trigger. I'm mulling this around because the definition for suffering hasn't been clarified and so this is a first attempt at it. You can add or subtract as you see fit because I'm just as interested to see where this goes. Read this by Rand on happiness: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/happiness.html Having read it I have a dimly perceived notion that my thesis is close to being correct, but it will take a while to digest it. Something fits in a compulsion to do something against our internal values. The conflict is therefore not between two internalised concepts, but between something hard wired as a value ? Even then I'm not exactly certain until I can define 'value' ( where is it acquired ?).

What if I said they were the same, identical thing ? What if it isn't about the oppressive tendencies of others, but purely of the self and that the self same liberation is reflected in the need for liberation from mental tendencies. What if it's the same thing but you are trying to treat the symptom and not the cause ?

That isn't what you are trying discover is it ? You are looking for spiritual liberation and I would be posting clods of soil which you would use to justify your own beliefs.

I see why you would think that. Having a phobia isn't necessarily suffering. The suffering comes from "if I didn't have this phobia/ because I have this phobia/ I shouldn't have this phobia" You would naturally be wary of walking on slippery rocks, or standing on the edge of a cliff. I was often asked if I could cure vertigo. Mostly it wasn't a case of vertigo at all, but a rational fear of high places. I even know I fighter pilot that is terrified of heights. Vertigo becomes an issue if an occupation requires working at height, but for most it's just easier just to avoid the trigger. I worked with a woman who had a bird phobia and it prevented her from going on holiday with friends- she wanted to go to Venice and was terrified of birds in St Marks square. It was very easy to rid her of that phobia because she was patently desperate to go. The work took less than 20 minutes and she picked up a bird with a broken wing the very next day. This was her own cure, I had just facilitated the decision. She resolved the internal conflict- 'it's stopping me going and making me miserable as I will miss out'. Suffering is the thought that you shouldn't be having the thought, that things should be different than they are.

Faith is something I would apply to 'spiritual liberation' as no such thing has ever been discerned. Logic isn't freedom from anything but fallacy, it therefore is the truth of reality and nothing more. There is no 'paranoia' Nikolai. Yet, you would believe in such things as spiritual liberation and the primacy of conscious creation. Who gave you that idea and what convinced you they were real ? Did you ever know what is was you were searching for, or were you only required to search ? These things you should answer. I could point you to texts but I think you either wouldn't read them, or dismiss them-from my own experience that's how it would have been for me. Being frantic isn't something I'm good at and despair is a word to be replaced by that of action. Calculated action.

Science is about evidence. Consensus has never been required. Neither has 'convincing' scientists. Logic is about integrating concepts, but it is useless without grammar. It isn't about consensus either. I've had a look for the Newton Aristotle conflict, but I can't find anything pertinent to the discussion. You would have to lay that argument down so I could understand what you are getting at. Remember that Aristotle used logic ahead of grammar ( the classic trivium), he saw it as a means to an end. He taught politicians the art of persuasive discourse. The trivium method uses Aristotelian rules but restores grammar to its rightful place prior to logic. That is how we learn. We read books and listen to argumentation. If we are asking the 'why' of a thing first it creates a logic loop-begging the question. I think you might have learned the classic trivium ? The rest of your discourse is more ad hominems which don't support any argument I can see. You didn't expand on 'abandon' either so I can't answer that question. I don't make any judgement about you Brian, you can be very certain of that. I will discuss and argue the facts that's all.

Now, I have absolutely no idea what you are on about. If I'm trying to concentrate and focus I clear my mind of distractions. What's all this 'that's me' stuff. You can't do this if you are actively listening or reading only when something is task oriented. It's not something that I have to really work to do. If I'm not actively learning my mind is blank. I use it to actively process, or its quiescent. It's just not an issue so I don't have to go through the day actively dropping thoughts, or emotions. The subconscious is better, faster, more accurate if it is fed a diet of non contradictory conceptualisation. The conscious mind can get on without the heartburn, indigestion and bloating. The hard disc is purged of virus and defragmented. The less rubbish stored the better everything operates.

Swallowing bullshit because someone tells you that you should is analogous to eating rotten meat. I reviewed your links on animal intelligence. The first one I clicked on 'scientists are rapidly coming to the consensus..." What has 'consensus ' to do with science Brian ? Are you swallowing this rubbish ? You were a physicist with a first class mind, you know science isn't about consensus. This is Hegels dialectic in action. It's trying to get us all used to the idea that 'synthesis' is the only thing necessary. As long as there is a common ground we have no reason to doubt the propaganda" yet anyone with a smattering of understanding knows full well that a 'consensus' is simply an appeal to authority.

Abandon ? Where the heck did that find its way in to the conversation ? What has learning to do with personal relations ? That's a very confused response.