Independent personhood is an idea created to perpetuate ideological power structures: so that an 'individual' could be blamed for errors in how institutions enacted society.
The data stream into the brain-vat comes from somewhere with consistent rules, but after that how we enact such streams into "Immediate reality" is a function of our socialization. Including the identification of 'self' as the supreme unit of interest.
No pearls before swine is fine so long as you see there are no swine.
Yet the effort seems to be so futile. They don't get it...and sadly, they don't seem to have the slightest desire to get it. Strong determination to seek truth at all costs is incredibly difficult for most. Religions are faulty constructs merely pointing at what is real. That's how they get away with it. God's "mercy" reinforces these faulty constructs of mere mortals until perhaps a few wise up and find out just how little they actually know. But this is all just pearls before swine and nearly impossible for most to understand. I admire your tenacity.
Immediate reality is a lie you tell yourself to justify what you think you're doing.
This easier for some than others. For example, I have brain damage from an illness I had as a child. As a result, I see (or don't see) things differently than most 'normal' people.
In my world, there is only the eternal now. I can remember things from the past and imagine things in the future, but only now is real. This might be the result of aphantasia in which you are unable to create images in your mind.
So since I can't actually "see" the past or the future, they lack any sense of being real. I know that they are real but on the level of subjective experience, they aren't
But even with such an advantage, I still can't quiet my mind to the point where I can see beyond my immediate reality.
Yet the effort seems to be so futile. They don't get it...and sadly, they don't seem to have the slightest desire to get it. Strong determination to seek truth at all costs is incredibly difficult for most. Religions are faulty constructs merely pointing at what is real. That's how they get away with it. God's "mercy" reinforces these faulty constructs of mere mortals until perhaps a few wise up and find out just how little they actually know. But this is all just pearls before swine and nearly impossible for most to understand. I admire your tenacity.
It's something of a contradiction, but it was intended to be. Breaking down conceptual thinking can start by embracing contradictions since in doing so you can start to see beyond the constructs that create reality.How do you remember things from the past and imagine things in the future if you don't create images in your mind?
The past and the future aren't actually real. They are imagined. The past is gone and the future hasn't happened yet. The only way you can experience them is to imagine them, they are not really occurring. Also your imagination or memories of them are subject to deletion, distortion and generalization so they are quite flawed.
The only thing real is right now.
That had nothing whatsoever to do with what I asked.
Merely existing is an interaction with the environment around you to begin with on a basic level, of course more so in a structured society.
Manipulation of that on large scales is the foundation of Polotics and Religion to begin with, but it still had nothing to do with my question.
Brain-vat ?
All I said was that when one experiences the fact that everything is perfect one enters a God conscious state. I didn't say that you knew that. I am sure you see the world as very imperfect. You are not a knower.
So....imagination then, not reality. Got it.
Once there was a man who was robbed on the road by a thief. Later the thief dropped the money on the road where the owner walked right by unseeing, it so overdone was he by his loss.
If your denial of leprechauns was "your definition of a Leprechaun doesn't meet the definition of any REAL leprechaun" Then yea, it'd be because you believed in Leprechauns.
Your disbelief in God is qualitatively different from your disbelieve in leprechauns. If tomorrow we found good empirical evidence of 1ft tall humanoid gold-hording, rain-bow fetishizing, culture in the emerald isle, you'd say "fuck, leprechauns!"
But when you are confronted with empirical evidence of the impact that God has in people's lives you say "well that definition of God doesn't comport with a REAL God".
Why would I say, "Fuck Leprechauns!"?
People claim "God" has impacted them. All I may see is how/if they changed. I don't see "God", because other people change positively without any claim to "God" as well.
And a "real" God would only help people change positively who are willing to claim "God"?
It would seem to me that the discontinuous identity shift at the core of overcoming great tumult comes through the grace of God; be it that someone acknowledges God as that force or not.
But I'm glad we agree on your having a different qualitative sense of what it is to say "there is no God" vs "there are no leprechauns"
I don't understand what you mean by this. As far as I can tell, there is no difference between gods or leprechauns.
Metaphor is metaphor. Deal with it as such and move on. So sensitive you are.You're the one that doesn't get it and has no desire to. The evidence that you have no desire to is that you keep repeating "this is all just pearls before swine" even though he is trying to tell you there are no swine.
Your dehumanization of human beings by calling them swine because they disagree with you is indicative of this mental illness that you have, but are unaware of.
It's origin is anger. You are angry that you are not getting what you want. So like a child throwing a temper tantrum when his mother denies him candy you angrily resort to dehumanization of humans who merely disagree with you. What you want is for everyone to agree with you and validate your worldview and your beliefs, but that is not happening enough for you.
Instead of being happy finding common ground with the people who do agree with you, instead you find those who disagree with you and post angry, dehumanizing, hateful comments at them in a vain attempt to make yourself feel better, but it isn't working. If it were working, you wouldn't need to do it over and over again like a chain smoker.
This isn't the first time you've called people swine either. You've done so quite often. It's clear you don't visit these forums to learn anything. You're here seeking validation, overlooking when you find it, when some posters agree with you, and instead focusing on those who disagree to release pent up emotional anger that you are not dealing with in a healthy manner.
Religion is only justified in my mind as a means to an end. Other than that, I'm not much of a fan. We all have one life...live it as best you see fit. All I'm trying to do is convey something that is incredibly difficult to convey.What is "Truth"? That is the problem here. For Religion it is some nebulous "Why am I here?" and from that all kinds of "Truth" is offered that can't be substantiated. Some of it is Good, some of it is not-Good. Some religious people weed out the not-Good, which is fine, however others embrace the not-Good aspects of these "Truths". Therein lies the fundamental problem with Religion.
I think what you all really want are Guiding Principles. Ways to live that maximize Good. That is commendable, but if they are not based on your Intellect and Reason, they are not reliable. If they are based upon Intellect and Reason, then they are both Communicable and Verifiable.
Metaphor is metaphor. Deal with it as such and move on. So sensitive you are.
Religion is only justified in my mind as a means to an end. Other than that, I'm not much of a fan. We all have one life...live it as best you see fit. All I'm trying to do is convey something that is incredibly difficult to convey.
And a "real" God would only help people change positively who are willing to claim "God"?
It would seem to me that the discontinuous identity shift at the core of overcoming great tumult comes through the grace of God; be it that someone acknowledges God as that force or not.
But I'm glad we agree on your having a different qualitative sense of what it is to say "there is no God" vs "there are no leprechauns"
I don't understand what you mean by this. As far as I can tell, there is no difference between gods or leprechauns.
How did you determine that God is what causes people to change?
Interesting. I was just about to say there is nothing but your immediate reality. I guess I would have to say, now, that there is one's immediate reality, and the reality we may imagine is our immediate reality.
Your method of disproof is based on an ideal definition for God and a lack of emperical evidence for Leprechauns.
Ok, what is "God" then?
That which is when you are. Being ends all questions. Where thought ends there is only the unity of love. He is when the you you call you is not. Then what you really are is.
You ask about God because of separation. It is our loss that drives us, that makes us bitter and hard of heart. It is the echoes of his being that make you sure the dogma of religion can't be correct.
Do not seek God because it will be the ego that seeks. He has always been within seeking you.
Immediate reality is a lie you tell yourself to justify what you think you're doing.
I think everything happens and the next 'moment' of existence occurs because everything already happened in the last moment.
I'm just being curious at the moment really.
You believe immediate reality is a lie from what you posted earlier, but what happens later continues to justify another lie ?
I'm being honest actually, I want to know how that works.
It might explain the way a lot of people think these days.
I'm going to write out a short time line and you tell me when you think we diverge:
A baby is born, it starts making neural connections exponentially.
As time goes it gains the ability to focus its eyes, distinguish visual outlines, smell and hear food stimuli that reduce hunger pangs etc.
Still here there are myriad observations made with no sense of 'what it is', but there is exploration of patterns in visual, tactile and other stimuli.
Eventually it gains verbal skills.
It learns that those who hold its life in the balance will harm it for what seem to be arbitrary word game conception like "respect me"
The word-games attach only vaguely to experienced stimuli, but playing and following the word games connect very directly punishment and reward.
Through this system the 'right' way to act, eat, sleep, and behave emerge.
To do otherwise would evoke A fundamental fear of torture by the tiny person's only life line.
Errors in the word-game playing are internalized, as though it is the child's 'fault' for exploring the world.
These systems are re-enforced in school; the right way to draw, color, write and so on are enforced. The right way to think about problems is delivered. The 'wrong' way of thinking is punished; punishment continues at home.
Life is a series of punishments, and punishments by omitted reward, from the only life-line you have in the world.
By this time the idea of a stimuli and its relation to your other stimuli: the experiences of the brain in the vat, have been so perverted from their original form that we need an entire method, called science, to break past all the word-game lies you've been told should pre-form your experience.
But because all of the scientists, too, are subject to the torture and Stockholm syndrome of having been a child, when they learn their sciences they too re-enact the system. Becoming a ph.d. is predicated on the same torture and norming system as home life, or the military. Complete brain washing in 'how we do things'.
This new way of lying about immediate experience is a little more useful, a little closer to finding patterns in stimuli, but it's still subject to historic power that pre-forms that stimuli into a series of lies.
1=1 is an axiom in math. H = H is an axiom in chemistry. As we move beyond that axioms become less and less perfect until we get all the way up to the 'truth' statements in our language-game world... all of which are lies, because those truths, while true within the word games, do not comport with real axioms.
And so we all live a lie. Replacing immediate experience with verbalized lies: verbalizations we have so personalized that they have become all we come to know of as experience.
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I see modern atheism as a visceral rejection of the lies of childhood... it just doesn't go far enough.
We want epistemological certainty of SOME KIND so much we demand to know.
But there is so much we cannot.
Just stasis in a heat bath.