Old is relevant because when we deal with intuition, the closer we get to primitive consciousness the better. Opposite to the objective worldview where the most contemporary technology is generally trusted, with the subjective world, ancient models are potentially more revealing of the raw architecture of the psyche.
Neither does age imply primitivity, nor is intuition untrainable. It's capable of training and renewal as much as anything else; it's an adaptation only valid in a context.
Who says that the more primitive the better? If intuition is any indication of our psyches (certainly true to some extent), why would I be interested in using old methods describing my more primitive phsychic attributes rather than new ones? Why shouldn't modern meditation techniques, say, be able to supplant old techniques? The accumulation of knowledge and fine-tuning of accuracy need not be relegated to rationality.
Their meaning is what's important about them, which is a reflection of inner truth.
When you say reflection, I'm thinking of a scientifically describable phenomenon. The I Ching is nothing like that.
But again, where's the worth in those techniques if I can get the same stuff anywhere else?
QM can only be validated objectively. I Ching subjectively. It's just an entirely different orientation from top to bottom.
I'd argue with equivocation. The "validity" in the first sentence is qualitatively different from the one in the second. Any validation (as in "I feel validated") drawn from the I Ching is either formally indistinguishable from belief in the supernatural (while I certainly think it has the potential to be more accurate by virtue of a thinking person being involved exclusively) or formally indistinguishable from any other opinion about oneself. (Which leads me to argue that not only do you have no formal basis for claiming what you're claiming, but neither do you have any way to measure the validity (in any sense of the word) of formally similar "alchemistic" methods other than possibly by statistical analysis.)
QM can be validated independently; not independently from people for obvious reasons, but independently from person to person. Its truth is quantitatively different from your truth. It's accurate (not necessarily true) no matter what you believe. A personal truth revealed by the I Ching does not have a measurable degree of accuracy; QM does.
It's not about calling it anything. You just let it be what it is.
Which you and I both agree is impossible due to observation being done by observers.
Besides, when I Ching "validates" your beliefs, you're doing exactly that: calling it truth.
Yep. The TV works too. TV Ching. Nothing special about the I Ching or Tarot other than they are designed expressly for that purpose so you get a really rich and coherent vocabulary to draw from.
So the method is irrelevant then?
Just seems to support my stance that scientific methodology has and cannot have anything to do with it, and the two systems are logically incompatible simply by virtue of science being a methodology. I can just read a lot for the vocabulary and do my intuitive contemplation of my own. Which is what I do, in fact, I just don't call my conclusions truth. Not the same truth as the one described by QM in any case. I'm all over validation where possible, but do not trouble myself overly when I can't.
I'm not claiming that it's not a coincidence at all. (Everything is a coincidence, technically). I'm just saying that on one level the coincidence is meaningless, and on another level it appears uncanny. That's what consciousness is made of. Pattern recognition. Choosing to recognize a pattern or not.
Which is what I meant when I said pat rec is fine unless it's pareidolia. Seeing patterns where none exist and attributing meaning accordingly is a classical example of the mind being unreliable.
You can't choose to recognize a pattern. Lengthy encrypted messages can have a very simple pattern that is completely hidden to any observer, no matter how hard he/she tries. And optical illusions are not a matter of choice either; they're a result of our archaic pat rec mechanisms being unable to cope with graphic perceptions that do not appear in nature. Never even mind that patterns can be produced absolutely .
The point is not to use divination, but to understand that it's not nothing, and that it's shadowy semi-validity reveals some important truths about the Self and it's connection to the Cosmos.
About the self, quite possibly. Where does the connection with the cosmos come into the picture considering you don't have a methodology the results of which even you yourself could subjectively verify to any degree? Is satisfaction with the results the only criterion? How do you qualify the validity of a personal truth you reject ("the I Ching got it wrong") or accept ("the I Ching was spot on") even to yourself?
I agree. It doesn't stop people from using logic to prove the erroneous conclusion that imagination isn't real.
Who's claiming that? Links if possible, please.
Course it's real. It's just a complex process, like an eddy, nothing supernatural. If you define "exist" as "exist concretely, measurably, perceptibly" than you can indeed state that imagination doesn't exist. In much the same way as language doesn't. No bearing on the importance though.
[alleged semantics]
My point was that calling the universe ours has no bearing on what the universe is objectively like (as in "the abstract concept of absolute objectivity"). The fact that you can call white the opposite of black (even as the default definition) and have it be useful in communication has no bearing whatsoever on either the nature of the universe or descriptive accuracy (cold is famously the absence of heat; but it would still be very easy to posit cold as 0K and derive a descriptive system mathematically equivalent to the one we're using now, seemingly validating that there is such a thing as cold). That doesn't actually have to do with competing definitions at all.
In the same way, I can illustratively call the universe snifty, but it has no bearing on whether the word is an apt description or if snifty is just a word for a semantic model merely approximating our perceptions.
Likewise, nothing immediately follows from the fact that you can call objectivity and subjectivity polar opposites. Not validity, not desireability, nothing.
It doesn't claim. It teases.
So it can't? Screw it then, I'll do what everybody else does, form my opinions largely based on gut feelings and unsubstantiated claims where validation is not feasible.
Back into the science/not science red herring.
No; you want the prominent world view to encompass both subjectivity and objectivity, while claiming the SEW only caters to one part of the whole. The question why we should think a particular set of intuitive "methods" complementary (formally or socially) to science (or the SEW if you prefer) is a pertinent one, especially since one has a clear method while the other seems to be defined by arbitrarity and intution. There will be borders where they both will overlap and claim high ground; someone will find a personal truth that is demonstrably wrong and seek to perpetuate it, others will be overly critical of personal truths (which I'd call philosophies or views, not truths). These are two world views, not one. Or one incoherent one if you prefer.
And both are represented right now, I might add, quite routinely in the same person.
Absolutely. Not all aspects though. Not qualia.
Yes, but while science can tell us nothing about qualia,
neither can anything else. Philosophy dealing with qualia uses logic just like science would.
My point being that you can't confirm or deny the reality of qualia even subjectively. Sure, you can feel validated, but that's about it.
True, but I would say that I'm not a brain. I come from a brain. Brain exhaust. Electric brain sweat, mayybe. I don't need to be here, my brain is perfectly capable of making it's computations without a me monitor and an I mouse connected to it.
One theory holds that our conscious thoughts are qualitatively identical to our subconscious ones, except that more thinking power is assigned to them.
Be that as it may, certain procedures (such as calculations) being automatic and subconsious does not mean they are not integral or constitutive. Whether you are your consciousness or all your brain functions, or the body as well is, I think, a moot semantic point indeed (unless you want a biologically feasible definition).
Nope, you're not getting it. Obviously having to think about it is the way it is, but why would it be that way if the universe were purely automatic? The brain can read words and letters and not bother you with the English deciphering process you had to learn, so why bother you with anything else?
See above (unconscious=/=not me). I don't think about my first sex experience all the time. It's still a constitutive part of my personality whether I recall it consciously or not.
If the universe is automatic, a living system subject to evolution
necessitates a way to interact with its surroundings. Act and react. It's easy to see why a species that does not have the luxury of prodigious procreation rates would need an efficient way to act and react in a way allowing for sufficient offspring. That's true independently from any free will considerations. An animal of our size with no computational power (or another action/reaction mechanism) dies out.
As for consciousness, without an exact representative definition, it's hard to answer the question of why consciousness developed. It may be just a (genetically beneficial) self-perception, self-reflection, the perception of a process. Like yellow, we may never know why we perceive it as we perceive it. The important question is to ask how can we possibly tell (no matter which methodology), and why should we not regard the results as baseless (logically or otherwise) views.
haha. Well I think it can, because I think that order is inherent in the body and in all forms of the cosmos. But without any order exterior to human intellect, what do you suppose could lead to the invention of consciousness? Based on what provision of matter or energy?
Predictibality and thus order are indeed a prerequisite for intuition. I was (poorly) attempting to make the point that in no way does intuition imply a sense which violates constraints of "physical and temporal locality". Subconsious processes again.
Intuition is just another process in the brain "foretelling" the future, just like one may foretell the result of 4+5 or foretell the behavior of wounded prey. Intuition is an incredibly flexible adaptive process and it develops according to evolutionary principles, whether we're talking genetically or memetically. The "primitive" intuition (and pattern-recognition) of a hunter-gatherer is entirely unable to cope with cars or 3D movies.
So my stance is that while intuition is very valuable and produces good results, it has its limits just like anything else, and even where it works well it can easily crap out. Intuition can also only tell us about things that it has been trained to process, or which it was hard-wired to process. It completely fails outside those boundaries; when movement patterns are too complex or too qualitatively different to have been beneficially recognized during our evolution.
Every time you voluntarily move any part of your body you are directly influencing the universe. The body is part of the universe, no?
Yeah, sure. I just wanted to make sure you didn't mean your consciousness is directly influencing the universe, as opposed to influencing (or, in the automaton model, being the result of) small parts of it.
Yes but 'abstraction' loses relevance when we talk about color. Color is both entirely subjective but concrete. Our opposites don't need to have a bearing on the universe, they are the universe informing consciousness. We discover opposites, we don't invent them.
Yes, we do. In no way other than by arbitrary definition is black the opposite of white.
The logic of looking for an opposite is intuitive - we are searching for a relation that exists already internally, provided by our neurology, not creating it out of thin air and deciding it's an opposite arbitrarily.
As stated, intution is valuable but its method is unverifiable (for now) and unreliable. I don't care if searching for opposites is intuitive; it's also intuitive to attribute human-like characteristics to everything around us. We are searching for symmetries where none may exist.
Sure, that can be productive (science does that, albeit with heavy testing involved), but changing society on that basis and not much more?
Physics, no, but why not metaphysics?
Because I maintain that the only meaning the word "opposite" has is as a descriptor of purely formal relationships. Where it fails to be an accurate descriptor, a better one should be sought, or the definition changed for the duration of the discussion.
I would prefer a rigid definition (of any kind, as long as I know what it is) in this case because opposition is very fuzzily defined in everyday language. Women/Men, Rich/Poor, First World/Third World, -1/1. Symmetries in certain aspects between entities seem to us to imply opposition (as you stated, it's intuitive; see Foucault and postcolonial theory), but that need not be true in all aspects, only those routinely emphasized. If there is a symmetry in all aspects relevant to the discussion (even with a possibly "merely" conceptual axis), I would use the word; but it still would have only descriptive value illustrating what I think; nothing would follow from it directly unless I can show it is indeed an accurate descriptor (and used accordingly).
I'm much more lax in everyday language, but the more abstract and specialized a debate gets, the more important it is to have clear, workable definitions, shared concepts as unequivocal as is practical.
In this case, I would be willing to accept your definition of opposition, but maintain that nothing need follow from it unless you can show that the symmetry exists outside of language and abstract concepts.
That's what I'm saying, both the color wheel and the nuomenon of color are part of the Cosmos. It's not an either/or.
Of course. Just like consciousness and everything else. That does not mean both are accessible via the same or even diametrally opposed (by whatever measure/definition) methods, and it does not mean that one has things to say about the other and vice versa.
Us saying or arriving at the conclusion by whatever means that "two methods share some symmetries" is a part of the universe. No bearing on the universe whatsoever or our ability to cope with it, though; the conclusion that since consciousness is part of the universe, the symmetries we perceive are a representative measure of the universe itself just isn't admissible. Our consciousness need not be able to grasp or even reach for any truth about the universe in its totality or our own conscious part of it just by virtue of being part of it, and certainly not when regarding as representative a model that is demonstrably faulty in other areas and quite likely as arbitrary (not random though!) as language.
I don't think we have to know, I just think it's dishonest not to include them in any meaningful cosmology.
I agree we don't have to know.
But how? They are used as descriptors already. Where would we put the concrete circles? On what basis? "I don't know" is a sufficient incentive for most scientists but how would one go about incorporating circles as something concrete?
Oh, bummer. I hope you find one soon. I'm all for taking a break, hah.
Nah, then I'll have forgotten most of what I said.
I know what you're saying but I'm not talking about the physical universe. Other end of the Cosmos.
So ... arbitrary application of meaning again?
It's true to the degree that it's personally meaningful.
Like the existence of god?
I wouldn't call meaningful true, just meaningful.
I qualify it because numbers are too far infra to be considered objectively real. They are elemental decatypes to us. I have no reason to presume that the Cosmos has any such prejudice though. Our numbers may very well be as real to the nuonomenal Cosmos as cosmic rays or supernovas. Why wouldn't they be? Quarks are real to us, why wouldn't our 'ideoquarks' be real to it?
Cause we can infer and measure quarks (whatever they are), and only say and write numbers. We have learned how to assign meaning to communicable patterns; they are not physical entities.
If a number is objectively unreal, why wouldn't a circle be?
The color yellow is an example of a truth without evidence. A circle. etc.
I was using evidence in the empirical sense again (next time I'll use a qualifier); including self-perception. You can't claim any truth about your personal yellow-qualia without seeing something yellow (not honestly, anyway).
In any case, that's just a truth about the recipient, not about the corresponding wavelength of light (nonetheless true of course; but saying "it is as I perceive it" is a long shot away from "I perceive it as such").
An archaeologist of our civilization could easily that we worshiped the Stock Market, or any of the iconic deities that adorn our skyscrapers. I'm not positing that Greek myth is a myth, but that you may be painting prehistory with a broad brush. Zeus worshipers did alright with the math and the philosophy, the architecture, the democracy...not bad for people who believe things without any indication that they are true.
Yes, but we're outside their worldview now. The architecture is independent from their religion except for the aesthetic. Temples were either used for social functions independent of veracity or else completely wasted ressources. They weren't using their mythical worldview to inform their technological or mundane worldview (not exclusively, anyway); but they were influenced by it.
As an aside, the ancient Greeks believed for centuries that an object dropped from any given height will accelerate to its final speed immediately (i.e. infinitely fast) and proceed to maintain that speed.
Ah cool, I like that book but it did seem a little screwy in the structure department. I wonder if he got the idea from William S. Burroughs?
Couldn't say. Read the VALIS trilogy yet? Dude was completely nuts ...
He's done better books than High Castle, true. Vast fluctuations of quality, mostly owing to his habit of writing a book on amphetamins in two weeks whenever he ran out of cash, I think.
reply if you want but I gotta take a break for a day or two.
Suits me fine.
