what is the value of philosophical debate

[solxyz]

over in the phenomenology thread, xenolith made this comment:

 

Mental masturbation thread...

 

 

While I do participate a little bit, Im ambivalent about these kind of threads. Sometimes I find philosophy stimulating, sometimes it seems a little overblown. Overall I find it much more enjoyable to debate with people who see philosophy as a way to meet in the mystery of being, than to debate with people who think they are right. In the end, the Truth is unsayable and it has endless possibilities of expression.

 

Mostly, I see philosophy as a game or a verbal art. (You cant talk about techniques all the time, there's only so much to say about them.) The truth likes to express itself, and this is one of the ways that it does so. Maybe you're not into this game. Maybe you prefer music or darts. Thats fine, but that doesnt mean you have to criticize someone else's game.

 

I also think that philosophy does help a little bit with our cultivation (if it is approached with the right attitude). By hearing how other people have interpreted their experiences, one has the opportunity to check ones own interpretations. By trying to see things as another has suggested, one can open one's eyes in a new way, and maybe come a little bit closer to reality.

 

Others? What is philosophy doing for you?

[thelerner]

I partly agree w/ it being mental masturbation, but then again masturbation isn't all bad Maybe its more like consensual sexual foreplay w/ consenting adults.

 

There are times we're alone w/ our thoughts. Going into emptiness is good, but biting into philosophical problems can be fulfilling. Plus there are those rare times when philosophy kicks us in the ass and makes us change our life.

 

 

Michael

[三江源]

hold on a minute. you've got your genuine philosphical debate, and then you've got your mind wank.

 

two different things.

 

one enlightens you, the other is the writer/talker lovin' themselves a lot and hoping others will like the show.

 

 

the latter is an internet message board version of wanking at your bedroom window/in your car/ on a railway bridge/anywhere you can get an audience.

 

It isnt even neccesarily what you say, so much as how you say it.

[erdweir]

Yeah that is quite the circle jerk going on over there, I put in my 2 cents, but then I realized I just dont have the patience to really go for it anymore. I studied allot of philosophy in college, and took it very seriously. Doing that really sharpened my mind. I dont fall prey to mushy logic very often anymore, which I appreciate greatly. Mostly though I am glad I got it over with.

 

I think when I was young, a teenager, and someone first turned me on to some Kabbalah or Tarot, I was fascinated by it, I read all about it. Ultimately I gave it up because I realized my approach to it was just intellectual and I couldnt find books with any real exercises in them to do. I also tried to read about all of these other things, Buddhism or Indian metaphysics, or whatever else, and the same thing happened, all of the theory and concepts turned me off.

 

I turned away from all of that stuff because I was sick of my intellect, it bored me. I feel like I was stuck in my head most of my life and doing body focused meditation is much more of what I want now. I wish I had done it earlier. I dont even want to read about the concepts behind Taoism, it seems pointless to me, all I am interested in in practice.

 

There is something important about intellectual inquiry though, just as there is something important about any human talent, it just needs to stay in it's proper sphere. If you look at western society, we have an excess of intellectual disciplines and a lack of spiritual ones. Which is why we have allot of material power and use it recklessly.

 

In the Critical Theory books you have to read in art school, the intellectual masturbation levels are disturbing, hard to believe actually. You get all of these trendy radical statements that do very little to enlighten anybody but sound very sophisticated. It really made me sick trying to read that stuff, especially after reading much more serious thinkers.

 

At this point in my life I feel like the intellect is still important, but it needs to be dealt with as just part of the human landscape. Using science to study Chi is an excellent meeting of different worlds which have too long been kept apart. we need more of that kind of inquiry.

[Sunya]

erdweir I know how you feel, I'm in the same boat almost, except i'm still in college.. last year, and studying philosophy. It's definitely sharped the mind but also lead to a lot of mental wank and even arrogance, so for a while I was pretty anti-intellectual and really appreciated nature and being in the body. it was a nice break. but then I realized I threw the baby out with the bath water. and this is not the middle way of Buddhism. a middle ground is possible, and even necessary i feel. studying Buddhist philosophy coupled with meditation has been really great for me because Buddhist philosophy is so practical. it isn't vague or idealistic, it's practical, and actually the view of Buddhism is a tool to get you unstuck from concepts, the logic is killer. so while I agree that too much intellectualism can be bad, completely forgetting about intellectual reasoning is bad as well. I feel that for someone seeking truth, they should utilize all levels of inquiry, even intellectual.

[de_paradise]

There is a kind of knowlege that you can only experience. This is called "knowing" It is a result of cultivating and transforming the mind/body. This kind of knowlege few people in the West have, and 99.99% even do not even recognize the existence of this experiential "knowing."

 

 

Western philosophers are generally stuck in the book and reasoning type of knowlege, and while it is not "knowing", they pick up on the ideas, even those of sages with direct experience-- like a ball of silly putty pressed over a comic book, then pressed over a blank piece of paper, it makes the original imprint. Most people who have read a few good books on Zen can fake a talk like an enlightened Zen monk. While its not pointless, one must recognize that experiencing "knowing" is the ultimate goal.

Edited June 4, 2009 by de_paradise

[forestofclarity]

If you suffer from a philosophical disease, then you may need a philosophical medicine. Philosophical debate can help loosen mind based attachments that prevent us from seeing the truth.

[CarsonZi]

Well said de_paradise.... I agree.

 

Love,

Carson

[Uncle Screwtape]

I take part in debates because I have some continually evolving ideas and I want to submit them to a type of peer review. This helps me get them clear in my mind, it reveals where I am confused and the ideas themselves are either refined or abandoned, as the case may be.

Edited June 4, 2009 by Uncle Screwtape

[CarsonZi]

"Until you abandon all your ideas and beliefs you will never truly Know" .... in my opinion anyway.

 

Love,

Carson

[Uncle Screwtape]

"Until you abandon all your ideas and beliefs you will never truly Know" .... in my opinion anyway.

 

Love,

Carson

 

I agree with you. At least as far as estimations of the source are concerned. But when it comes to living in the everyday world of relationships, jobs and the rest of it, there are ways and there are ways of negotiating your way through. And I don't see any reason why we can't cope with both at the same time: engaging with its essence but understanding and dealing with its manifestations.

[三江源]

There is a kind of knowlege that you can only experience. This is called "knowing" It is a result of cultivating and transforming the mind/body. This kind of knowlege few people in the West have, and 99.99% even do not even recognize the existence of this experiential "knowing."

 

 

Western philosophers are generally stuck in the book and reasoning type of knowlege, and while it is not "knowing", they pick up on the ideas, even those of sages with direct experience-- like a ball of silly putty pressed over a comic book, then pressed over a blank piece of paper, it makes the original imprint. Most people who have read a few good books on Zen can fake a talk like an enlightened Zen monk. While its not pointless, one must recognize that experiencing "knowing" is the ultimate goal.

 

 

Yes. Nice post, made me do a wide smile, thankyou.

[doc benway]

Philosophical debate seems to be very valuable for sharpening your debating skills and learning the opposing arguments so that you can become more successful at philosophical debate...

 

It allows the mind to do what it does best -

create images and concepts to represent reality,

convince itself that these images are equal to reality

conclude therefore, that it truly understands reality

 

But does it really?

 

Great posts cat, CarsonZi and de_paradise.

[Guest paul walter]

over in the phenomenology thread, xenolith made this comment:

While I do participate a little bit, Im ambivalent about these kind of threads. Sometimes I find philosophy stimulating, sometimes it seems a little overblown. Overall I find it much more enjoyable to debate with people who see philosophy as a way to meet in the mystery of being, than to debate with people who think they are right. In the end, the Truth is unsayable and it has endless possibilities of expression.

 

Mostly, I see philosophy as a game or a verbal art. (You cant talk about techniques all the time, there's only so much to say about them.) The truth likes to express itself, and this is one of the ways that it does so. Maybe you're not into this game. Maybe you prefer music or darts. Thats fine, but that doesnt mean you have to criticize someone else's game.

 

I also think that philosophy does help a little bit with our cultivation (if it is approached with the right attitude). By hearing how other people have interpreted their experiences, one has the opportunity to check ones own interpretations. By trying to see things as another has suggested, one can open one's eyes in a new way, and maybe come a little bit closer to reality.

 

Others? What is philosophy doing for you?

 

 

 

 

 

All this is based on what I call experience, as oppossed to pholosophical theory/language indoctrination/pov and tricks. Thought I should write this qualifiying line so as to not be misunderstood that this post is merely my 'opinion'. It's impossible to get 'real life' across in language constructs (although I think the TTC does a fair approximation) so try and feel between the words if you think it's dogmatic. Anyway the nature of symbols(language) is to do violence to life through reducing and the denial of interrelated complexity.....

 

All language is an approximation, therefore an illusion, therefore a lie vis a vis lived experience . It depends on the quality of the person (honesty) which of these 'standards' of understanding you adopt and apply to daily life. Someone serious about getting somewhere will call it all a lie and proceed to step off the cliff to find what exists in terms of knowing outside the language (intellect) paradigm. Since all true understanding of life (which means having the capacity to be able to admit one knows nothing) is inherent in us all, it is merely a process of uncovering that is needed for that understanding to come about. But since philosophy and debate usually imply the accumulation of knowledge concepts while pretending to hone down already existing concepts in order to uncover and get to the bottom of an idea, you can see what we put ourselves through and how risky it is to trust the intellect/ego to get us to where we think 'we' would like to be in our lives. This is a classic paradigm found in almost all 'western' philosophy which unfortunately mirrors/feeds back to the daily attempts at communication in our cultures, thus propogating the illusion that more is more and that contentment with life is a process of endless enquiry til we find it after the hero's journey (yawn!). It's all about ego/power preservation under the guise of being open/democratic/appreciative of others' points of view. It's a nightmare that can never wake up from itself given the 'hall of mirrors' effect of the self-referential nature of language and concepts. That's why the concept of originality and breaking with tradition exists in our culture to the degree it does (though even that seems to be have been wiped out recently)-it's simply a breaking away from the ever circling madness of a culturally (linguistic) in bred self-referntiality.

 

 

I'm completely convinced life can only be understood through negative example and negative reasoning. Zen koans, reductio ad absurdam, Ockhams Razor (sometimes), Taoist 'logic'. If you stick to your guns in life and are honest you can come to a wonderful moment after ten, twenty ,forty years of 'search' and confirmation regarding the 'process' of wisdom/attainment where you have to simply admit that it's all been a waste of time/energy and that the way WE thought our 'process' was happening (serious,logical,getting somewhwere) was all 'wrong'-we went the wrong way, forwards instead of back (but isn't that the old tao through and through!). Since we all strive to know ourselves/universe/it's the same thing, and since that knowing is latent and inherent/alreadythere and always was, then it's all a process of trying to outwit our already existing reasoning and get it into evolving to somewhere else that feels more comfortable for our bodies, and where we can do without the dominance of the mind- all without feeling our little egos have been mistreated (and therefore revolting through having power taken away). Hope people don't think I'm just being anti-intellectual-I assure you I am advocating being much worse:anti-thought! Paul.

[medic]

 

I think when I was young, a teenager, and someone first turned me on to some Kabbalah or Tarot, I was fascinated by it, I read all about it. Ultimately I gave it up because I realized my approach to it was just intellectual and I couldnt find books with any real exercises in them to do. I also tried to read about all of these other things, Buddhism or Indian metaphysics, or whatever else, and the same thing happened, all of the theory and concepts turned me off.

 

I turned away from all of that stuff because I was sick of my intellect, it bored me. I feel like I was stuck in my head most of my life and doing body focused meditation is much more of what I want now. I wish I had done it earlier. I dont even want to read about the concepts behind Taoism, it seems pointless to me, all I am interested in in practice.

 

 

I follow you, I am here because I read the Tao Te Ching, but instead of find sages I found mystics. That's fine, this is the way, there are mystics because there are....scientists? IDK, but I guess real followers of the Tao are busy canceling their internet and meditating on the idea that no one is actually their body. If I'm wrong, please direct me to the conversations about the Way, and spare me all the mystical experiences.

[solxyz]

Thanks all for your responses.

 

I wanted to respond to something that paul walter said, because this seems to be a common idea in the anti-philosophy camp: "All language is an approximation, therefore an illusion, therefore a lie vis a vis lived experience."

This is only true if we take a representational model of language and symbol. If we treat our symbols not as a substitute world but as one mode of participating in the world - a way of expressing ourselves - then I think that changes things. When a plant grows into its appropriate form, it does not regard this form as a definition of reality and then become stuck in its own definition. The plant is just living out its nature. Similarly, symbolic expression seems to be part of the human form of life. Of course it can become a trap, but it can also be an enlightened activity.

Also, discovering the ultimate is not the only goal that we have in life. We also want to develop understandings of a lot of relative phenomena, and for this theory can be quite helpful.

That said, in general I quite agree with Paul's assessment of where philosophy gets a lot of people and its predicament in "western culture."

 

In my own life, I was a lot more interested in the stuff when I was younger. I was completely lost and it seemed to offer me a way of orienting myself and figuring out what the world and life was about. I think it really did help me with that up to a point. If someone had show me how to cultivate back in those days, would I have needed philosophy? I dont know, but I guess part of the point is that it was a teacher to me when no-one else was. Also it did bring about some major shifts in how I approached the world and even what I am doing with my life. For example, discovering the phenomenology and its application in investigating and understanding plants changed my attitude toward the material world and led me, indirectly, into my current profession.

Now that I know what Im about and have had some direct experience of the ultimate, I tend to look at it all and say "so what," but still I think its fun to get into once in a while, coordinating grand systems and visions with poetic and evocative sentences, trying to bring forward a meaning that is worthy of the human soul.

[erdweir]

"All language is an approximation, therefore an illusion, therefore a lie vis a vis lived experience."

 

The problem with statements like this is that they apply to themselves. If all language is a lie, then so is this statement. It's the classic paradox of the cretan who says all cretans lie, and is therefore himself lying, so the statement has no truth value.

 

self referential statements like that are considered nonsense in contemporary logic. I may be sick of reading philosophy, but this is just bad reasoning. maybe he is trying to create a paradox intentionally, I dont know Paul Walter's point of view really, but it sounds too simplistic to me.

 

This is the kind of shit that made me stop reading philosophy, like the post-modernists who say there is no such thing as absolute truth, which is itself a statement which asserts an absolute truth. total nonsense.

[Guest paul walter]

The problem with statements like this is that they apply to themselves. If all language is a lie, then so is this statement. It's the classic paradox of the cretan who says all cretans lie, and is therefore himself lying, so the statement has no truth value.

 

self referential statements like that are considered nonsense in contemporary logic. I may be sick of reading philosophy, but this is just bad reasoning. maybe he is trying to create a paradox intentionally, I dont know Paul Walter's point of view really, but it sounds too simplistic to me.

 

This is the kind of shit that made me stop reading philosophy, like the post-modernists who say there is no such thing as absolute truth, which is itself a statement which asserts an absolute truth. total nonsense.

 

 

Yes and so is this statement referring to itself-I am merely trying to stop people asking questions for which there are (to me) no answers, and no questions to be asked in the first place. Take my word for it, when you go down the rabbit hole of discovering the limits of language you arrive at tao. But you lose everything you 'know' and found comforting. There is no way of killing the tyranny of language except through not talking/thinking. I would post blank spaces happily, sometimes they give the person time to reflect and be subsumed by 'non-thought '. You are only referring to your use and expectations of language in this post but it's hard for the sender to see the self referentiality of the message sent. You think you are communicating a point that has a verifiable meaning but since I disagree with it it is 'meaningless' to me so therefore futile, so therefore could be proved non-valid in terms of its own use. If this is driving people mad then welcome to the world of philosophy 101. By nature all language refers to itself-it is a closed set of symbols-you can't eat it or play foootball with it or...it's language. I am not trying to reason or to apply logic and as for paradox, well it's unavoidable to critique language using the tool itself-that's why Zen koans or the TTC were written in the style they are-to get you off the drug and drip feed of logic and meaning. And the post-modernist people are right about the relativity of their enquiries, the problem is they don't follow it through and live in 'silence' they blab more and everyone becomes THE meaning of their own statements/viewpoints. That's a social use of wisdom that gets used for more power for the individual in the egoic sense. Tao understanding arrives at the same conclusion BUT life becomes something entirely different after that because you are suppossed to integrate the conclusion and that means neccessarily destroying the false edifices of language-the most obvious being the biography/idea/construct of the self. It doesn't really matter if you agree or disagree with anything here, it's not about that kind of game. I have nothing to prove, just something to show. Paul

[erdweir]

Yes and so is this statement referring to itself-I am merely trying to stop people asking questions for which there are (to me) no answers, and no questions to be asked in the first place. Take my word for it, when you go down the rabbit hole of discovering the limits of language you arrive at tao. But you lose everything you 'know' and found comforting. There is no way of killing the tyranny of language except through not talking/thinking. I would post blank spaces happily, sometimes they give the person time to reflect and be subsumed by 'non-thought '. You are only referring to your use and expectations of language in this post but it's hard for the sender to see the self referentiality of the message sent. You think you are communicating a point that has a verifiable meaning but since I disagree with it it is 'meaningless' to me so therefore futile, so therefore could be proved non-valid in terms of its own use. If this is driving people mad then welcome to the world of philosophy 101. By nature all language refers to itself-it is a closed set of symbols-you can't eat it or play foootball with it or...it's language. I am not trying to reason or to apply logic and as for paradox, well it's unavoidable to critique language using the tool itself-that's why Zen koans or the TTC were written in the style they are-to get you off the drug and drip feed of logic and meaning. And the post-modernist people are right about the relativity of their enquiries, the problem is they don't follow it through and live in 'silence' they blab more and everyone becomes THE meaning of their own statements/viewpoints. That's a social use of wisdom that gets used for more power for the individual in the egoic sense. Tao understanding arrives at the same conclusion BUT life becomes something entirely different after that because you are suppossed to integrate the conclusion and that means neccessarily destroying the false edifices of language-the most obvious being the biography/idea/construct of the self. It doesn't really matter if you agree or disagree with anything here, it's not about that kind of game. I have nothing to prove, just something to show. Paul

 

Fair enough

Edited June 5, 2009 by erdweir

[Martial Development]

"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." - Wittgenstein

 

In other words, philosophy can revse the damaging effects of one's previous "education". It can also be a pair practice, analogous to intellectual Tantra if you like.

 

 

 

I follow you, I am here because I read the Tao Te Ching, but instead of find sages I found mystics. That's fine, this is the way, there are mystics because there are....scientists? IDK, but I guess real followers of the Tao are busy canceling their internet and meditating on the idea that no one is actually their body. If I'm wrong, please direct me to the conversations about the Way, and spare me all the mystical experiences.

 

Real followers of the Tao solve their problems, and subsequently join the rest of us in the real/imaginary world.

 

Fake followers of the Tao stew in what they pretend to be intractable spiritual dilemmas (e.g. "I am not my body")...all to avoid getting a real job?

[solxyz]

It can also be a pair practice, analogous to intellectual Tantra if you like.

 

How do you see this working?

[Martial Development]

How do you see this working?

 

Normal philosophical discussion.

[Guest paul walter]

There is a way of looking at philosophy that can never be embraced in the normal discourse that comes from that sort of enquiry. It's this: we are educated to feel enquiry is a noble thing, that you have to GET to an issue through ACCUMULATED debate, that it is an EVOLUTION of understanding. Even if that debate is the sword which is cutting away, we are geared to seeing it as a movement FORWARD arriving at a goal that may or may not be foreseen. It's the hero's journey (read:ego's journey). If we arrive at a desired outcome (a palatable outcome?) we claim that the process was valid and that wherever we are we may be CLOSER to our goals, if only because we seem further away from our original conundrum. Now my conclusion after a life of using this model (without really believing in it) and being honest enough to say I waste a little more of my life everytime I 'indulge' in it, is this: since we all want to return to somewhere we claim we have left (tao etc) and that sigifies emptiness (in the fullest sense), then why don't we just shut up and be? Well, because there are things to do, jobs, families, books, lack of self-belief....... right? They engage us, and we both engage them through debate and defend ourselves against these things through the same mechanism. This shows the circularity of human problems and the whole problem about why we can't free ourselves FROM OURSELVES. The nature of discourse seems to me a schizoid proposition that has come about from REFUSAL/DENIAL to simply BE. Philosophical enquiry needs to exist to the extent that we create the conditions of self-ignorance/obfuscation. Is that why the Dhamapada and TTC texts (and a few others) are so 'simple' and exhort us to give up and be? Simply by talking/thinking we create the conditions for reaction...then it snowballs and you have what we call philosophy. In our day and age we need to have the 'faith' in ourselves to give up. It's very tao-you want to know 'everything', then stop thinking and see what actually exists. Taoists are scientists ( that's one human centered way of describing it) and that science is based on OBSERVATION which, and this is where it gets confronting for people, has an INTELLIGENCE all its own. AND that intelligence has nothing to do with linguistics as such, which is how we have been trained to 'see' the world. This is problematic simply from the illusory point of view that you can't use the tool that caused the obfuscation/disconnection from life in the first place to find your way back EXCEPT some will say through DECONSTRUCTING. Fine, but after you've done all the deconstructing , if you are honest and can see the process from beginning to end without bias you will see that it all was merely a RESISTANCE on 'your'/selfs part to delay the inevitable (and the already known/felt) for as long (or as short if your lucky) as possible. This is the point where a human leaves the cradle of his socialised safety net and sees it was there/'in' the person all along. Most people merely reform themselves/their views using the philosophical method because that's all you can do with it. Without having a total paradigm shift away from these sorts of methods/expectations there is no hope of getting through the black hole of logical enquiry.

 

Now no-one post that I have used logic and philosophy to make my point or i will post a blank page in order to make you confront your own identities through non-rational means!!he he. Like the endless reams of Buddhist elucidation of the fact that all is illusion and nothing is permanent I could go on but will leave it here. Paul.

[solxyz]

But what if we treat philosophy and discourse not as a journey through which we hope to arrive at a distanced truth, but simply as an expression of the truth or the situation that is at hand (and an expression of the truth that is continually emerging)? What if, to the extent that we have questions, we do not expect to answer them, but merely articulate the mystery in which we find ourselves and possible ways of regarding this mystery?

Edited June 7, 2009 by solxyz

[Martial Development]

since we all want to return to somewhere we claim we have left (tao etc) and that sigifies emptiness (in the fullest sense), then why don't we just shut up and be? Well, because there are things to do, jobs, families, books, lack of self-belief....... right?

 

Not right. Most people in America would not make that claim. And among the minority that would, most are not being honest; or more precisely, have not engaged in sufficient self-inquiry to make an honest judgment in the matter.

 

Persons with language and education cannot simply drop them, and exist. Deconstruction or "controlled demolition" is the only viable option. It will happen whether they explicitly pursue it or not..and people like to talk about stuff that happens, so cut them a little slack, pal.

Edited June 7, 2009 by Martial Development