Stosh

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Everything posted by Stosh

  1. The Art of War

    Stosh replied to woodcarver's topic in Miscellaneous Daoist Texts & Daoist Biographies

  2. The Art of War

    Stosh replied to woodcarver's topic in Miscellaneous Daoist Texts & Daoist Biographies

  3. I know what you mean entirely,! Im tired of the drama, the headbanging etc and blah blah for the most part. Theres still some knee jerk reflex ,, but its lazy. Even this here is far more attention to a pebble than a pebble warrants . Movin on..

  4. The Art of War

    Stosh replied to woodcarver's topic in Miscellaneous Daoist Texts & Daoist Biographies

    .

  5. The Art of War

    Stosh replied to woodcarver's topic in Miscellaneous Daoist Texts & Daoist Biographies

  6. Well Dwai , isn't especially tender , he can handle dispute. But for some folks any kind of questioning at ALL is taken as an attack . BUT I'm not the best speaker to advise anyone on how to tone down a post in fact I suck at it , and am often misconstrued. All I'm saying is that I thought that post read that way, not that your overall style of writing needs any adjustment at all.

  7. The Art of War

    Stosh replied to woodcarver's topic in Miscellaneous Daoist Texts & Daoist Biographies

    .
  8. Im not saying you are upset, but I read it that way as well. Smilies notwithstanding. For me the thing was several iterations of 'not relevant ', in almost as many sentences.

  9. Many creatures sadly die to provide our food.

    Stosh replied to AussieTrees's topic in The Rabbit Hole

  10. Its funny you should say that, ..It does seem that its second thoughts which limit what I would do more than the first ones... but then why would anyone start making second thoughts in the first place?
  11. ... Are you Sure about that? it seems somewhat ironic.
  12. Ahh, I didnt expect that angle, very interesting, the 'perspective of all perspectives..' So,, the universe cares about its own development ??. and prefers what ? ,,owls over mice?? sentience manifest ? ..... I dont see this being the answer to all yet. The universes rules are unwavering therefore the outcome cant be prompted hedged or affected by the universe. Us within it can possibly affect outcome but dont know what to bring about or why, and if yin invites yang, the script of the universe is designed for us to fail in getting the universes desires fulfilled unless,, the mission of the universe is to screw with us... You may be onto a fundamental truth there.
  13. No it doesn't matter without someone attributing significance to it. ,,,,No, an object is independent of an observer. If that was not true , the dark side of the moon would not have existed until 1959, at which time when the Luna 3 satellite took pix of it, all the craters would have had to form simultaneously and yet in a fashion indicating they hadn't. Even so , from a purely logical standpoint which does not accept inference as valid evidence ,, there was no dark side until it was seen. It was undefined, and the only honest thing one could claim about it was that they had no idea if it would have one ( dark side)
  14. Why?
  15. after sleep and a re-read, ... 'Does the unwitnessed tree fall?,' I say ,Sure , as in Aussies account, the ramifications persist ,so the event mustve happened though unwitnessed. If no one ever encountered the fallen tree, then from a human perspective, the event appears formless,,as in Steves definition , and the event is undefined as a drop of water in an endless sea. Im thinking the Koan is designed to tire out your deductive process trying to reconcile those two considerations. Re: meaning,, I dont see Steves or Aussies posts as endorsing there being any Meaning ,outside of the meaning one attributes to an event. Though Im curious what argument can be made For , Meaning ,which exists in some way independent of an ascriber.
  16. None , and ,, not in and of itself even if there was someone to hear it , be hit by it , or build a house out of it. You can assign meaning to the event if you want. And that what makes it , meaning, illusory rather than false. Meaning, suggests that there was some alternative sequence of events possible , which didn't fulfill some plan , but the only events that happened actually occurred , no alternative exists which both did not happen and did happen. The not happening of an event is imaginative. EX, this Lotto winning means I can buy a new car. The event in which you weren't able to buy the car was a situation you imagined. The event was never otherwise. .. Perhaps this is clearer in reverse,, Losing the money means I can't buy the car. Well you never did buy the car , and the buying of the car was again,, imagined. Either way , the sequence of events unfolds as it will. If one believes in free will, that somehow you can change what will happen, this requires some disconnect between cause and effect, but that still requires an imagination, to have an expectation which does not get fulfilled -( the 'change' )
  17. Well.. they arent distinct from the universe as a whole ,so the universe as a whole, itself , formulated the pachinko machines along with anything else,, stars planets viruses ice. The subdivisions are illusory.
  18. Yeah that appears to be true , but its presuming free will exists,, which one may , I like to think it exists , but I don't know if its provable. Dwai is ,perhaps, presuming or inferring that there is an "actor". (Someone which actually is more than just a automaton and somehow dictates the flow of events in a time line, to what they might not have been. or along those lines) But ,We could just be very complicated pachinko machines, completely predictable so long as one has the correct algorithm, and any seeming 'choice' didnt actually exist. If we are pachinko machines, we have no individuality that can be called an actor and we are just the imagined cogs of a much bigger machine.. the cosmos .. the Tao ,.. etc.
  19. Action and actor haven't been defined yet, for the purpose of this thread , though the english implies what the relationship would be once they were defined. Im not sure volitionless action should be included , and the boundaries of the actor in a universe need to be defined. For instance , a rock falling, is not using volition, its just moving in the direction of gravity. And if a doctor smacks my knee knee into twitching thats similar. If I cant help but reflect the circumstances of my upbringing , then what I say or do may just be physical consequence of past situations.
  20. Is this like when the kids just keep asking " why " in response to every answer given? .. but anyway , 'Need' is a subjective illusion , there is no 'need' dictating that one store data.

  21. What made YOU laugh today/tonight ?

    Stosh replied to zerostao's topic in The Rabbit Hole

    Oh that was funny as all heck !

  22. The Father and Son of Taoist Philosophy

    Stosh replied to Marblehead's topic in Daoist Discussion

    You did notice that there's 559 posts , right?
  23. I figure it is the predisposition pattern of neural connections to fire , which stores 'data', but the biochem basis of memory is still under scrutiny , RNA and so forth , being responsible for encoding specific memories is no longer the current theory. Since these patterns are not completely isolated from affecting other subsets of neurons the effect of their influence is generalized. So an apple may be substituted for, or associated with an orange if the info about them ( and therefore the firing cascade) is rather similar. A cigar sometimes really is a cigar, and sometimes its not. Its just the nature of the beast to make associations , some of them faithful to the original memory and sometimes not. If a critter reproduced faithfully exact, its progeny wouldnt vary, mutation occurs to allow variation from an original plan. Similarly we might apply the idea of tying a shoelace to tying a rope, if the circumstance is close enough. ( notice that its an analogy of something familiar which I am applying in this unorthodox situation, to predispose you to grasping something which feels new so that you might conclude it 'rational' )
  24. Yes.
  25. Imprecise analogy consequent to symbolic representation stored in the neo-cortex.