FmAm

How could something exist? How could morality exist? How could free will exist? Morality implies absolute judgement. It's impossible. Free will implies... well, I can't even imagine how free will could be possible. If there was something, what would it be? What "exists" (maybe) is some kind of automatic, irrational, completely meaningless and impersonal happening. No one is in charge of anything, because there is no one. There's just happening without something happening. Absurd verbs without nouns. Is this nihilism? Maybe. But nihilism does not necessarily imply darkness. It can be neutral.

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Time has passed, and I've lost my faith in experience, too. Thanks to Nagarjuna and Gorgias. There's a good paper on Madhyamikas and nihilism: "Sunyavada: A Reinterpretation" by Harsh Narain.

"The true world - we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one."

There's much common to Hume and Buddha: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity#The_no-self_theory http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/james1.htm

I'm claiming that there's no "upwelling". Nothing stems. There's no source. I'm not talking about some metaphysical or religious nothingness here. What I mean is that there's no consciousness or mind behind or beyond experience. If someone says experience happens in/on/at/to/etc mind/consciousness/Mind/Consciousness, I disagree. There's no doer, just doing. No experiencer, just experiencing. There's no hierarchy in experiencing. There's no base experience (such like consciousness). No foundation. No eternal Absolute. Experiencing (whatever it is at the "time") is all there is. And it can't be defined. If someone says he's experiencing ego or Consciousness, it's the experiencing that "exists", not the ego or Consciousness. The possible ego-experiencing is only experiencing, like hunger-experiencing (although I don't believe there's an experience of an ego). If there's table-experiencing, it's the experiencing that exists (for sure), not the table. I'm not a big fan of Nietzsche, but there are some things he said quite well:

I know. I can feel it all the way over here.

Reality can't be defined. Reality can't be experienced. Experience is reality. A shoe isn't an experience.

A foot, of course.

Yes, I'm saying that body is just like mind. It doesn't exist. When I experience my foot, for example, that's not what's really happening. "Me" and "foot" are thoughts, the inner story. The experience of the story and the thought is real. But the story isn't true. What we experience is a collection of sensations and forms (and even "form" is too much said - it is just a sensation without the story of a form). No "my foot". This is what can be absolutely certain. It is possible that "my body" is living in a "world". But I can never be sure about it. There are sensations I link together. One link contains the thought "foot" and some other sensations (which really aren't separate). But there's no proof for "a foot". The problem with mind is that there isn't even a sensation which could be labeled as "mind". There's just the story. The Bundle Theory of the Self http://m.sparknotes.com/philosophy/hume/themes.html

It's the illusion of ego I'm talking about. I'm not denying other people's experience (although I can know nothing about it). I'm just saying that other people and myself are just stories and there's not even an illusion of an ego or I. Has someone experienced an ego? I have never heard anyone saying that. Ego/I isn't something that can be experienced. Mind is like ego: it doesn't exist and can't be experienced. It's only an unnecessary noun added to the experience. (And I have no purpose behind this. I'm not denying (and I haven't denied) religions or beliefs, or stories. I don't care if someone believes that illusion of ego/mind exists. These are just thoughts.) Philosophy to me is always about the Absolute. When it comes to the Relative (the stories), I turn to psychology instead of philosophy. There's no possibility for free will. How could it be possible? I have never heard any plausible explanation. The belief in the story exists. Together with the belief comes the need to punish and judge, and the need to get acknowledgement. The kind of nihilism I'm talking about here clears all the obstacles to love and compassion.

Of course. Just like a mountain is formed by plates, the plates are formed by other factors etc. But what you call "me" is just a bunch of reactions (again, thoughts, feelings and other impressions) to environmental stimulation. And because of the infinite series of causes and effects, those reactions can't be separated from the environment.

Feel free to bash me. I'm not saying that I'm enlightened and without "I/ego" in a sense it is described in some religious texts. Not at all. I am an ordinary wanker with a very sensitive "ego". What I'm trying to say is that the ego doesn't exist even in a normal, everyday experience of a sensitive retard like me. Experience of ego isn't there even when it is insisted that it is there. There is just thought (an inner story) and other impressions. No one can experience ego or self. No one can experience oneself. Because there isn't one. This thread isn't about me.

My impression of karma is that of a pessimist. The world might return evil for good and good for evil. Or it might return nothing at all. Doing good and being compassionate is the last and only effort of the powerless. It's some kind of refusal and objection. And even the effort doesn't stem from "me". There's "good" and "evil" without real good and evil. There's doing and actions without doers or actors.

Both. Morality and free will can't be experienced. Affection and compassion can instead. So it's just realising the experience. This is a logical conclusion, too. And I've been searching literature that describes these conclusions.

Actually Hume criticised Descartes for his notion about the self. So my view is humean (or nietzschean) on this particular issue. I don't care about Nietzsche's solutions. Gautama's "letting go" is more honest standpoint.

Boring as a feeling is something that doesn't have to be assumed. It's real. (Although it's probably a mixture of angry and sad.)

An axiom isn't proof. It's an assumption.

Axioms are something that can't be proven.

I have a room in my house for all the things I've argued against. There's a few gods, a spaghetti monster, Starship Enterprise, just to name a few. Today I was thinking about arguing against 100 pounds of chocolate.

Sit still with me in the shade of these green trees, which have no weightier thought than the withering of their leaves when autumn arrives, or the stretching of their many stiff fingers into the cold sky of the passing winter. Sit still with me and meditate on how useless effort is, how alien the will, and on how our very meditation is no more useful than effort, and no more our own than the will. Meditate too on how a life that wants nothing can have no weight in the flux of things, but a life the wants everything can likewise have no weight in the flux of things, since it cannot obtain everything, and to obtain less than everything is not worthy of souls that seek the truth. (Fernando Pessoa)

You seem to wish many different things to me: death, happiness and now agreeing (you are being quite authoritarian). What would mathematics be without assumed truths, axioms? Math reflects and summarises the patterns of thought, the ways thought classifies the experience. Without Peano axioms, there can be no counting. Number one (1) is "the ultimate axiom" (it was Peano's original number, instead of 0). Assuming number 1 basically means that there's something, a thing, something countable - and someone (a thing, a soul, a self) is counting here. These axioms are questionable even in the light of the modern physics. I'm just staying in the position of no axioms at all. I have no need to deny anything.

Actually... not. And it wasn't even stolen concept fallacy. (Are you Randian Objectivist?)

It has to be my job to state that there's no proof for body or mind. Only "thing" that can be certain is some kind of unexplainable experience. And this experience can't be communicated to "others". I call this nihilistic solipsism, solipsism without self (mind). This is science at its best. No beliefs or myths, just the bare truth.

I have. His books were good, but a bit wordy for my taste.