Kevin Beal

This was literally the content of everything I've addressed to you at this point. I didn't respond because I would be repeating myself, and if you were to ask me despite that, it would seem pointless to do it again. The point of mental health is to accurately assess and effectively work through the world. It's the model of mental health presented by stef in the A Theory of Mental Health series. It's also the whole point of the book The Psychology of Self Esteem by Nathaniel Branden. It's actually a very commonly accepted thing among psychologists (not so much virtue necessarily, but you get the point). Addicts don't have a healthy relationship with reason and virtue. The ex post facto reasoning they do in order to justify the next high and the avoiding of the delayed gratification. Hitting bottom means they no longer can rationalize their behavior being that the logic is inescapable. I have known addicts who've used truthisms they picked up from their gurus in order to justify destructive behavior. People close to me that I care about. To me, this is very personal. But I've made a concerted effort to use logic to make my case for me. If there is something wrong with the logic, then please let me know. I really don't appreciate the passive aggression, it's unbefitting of a philosophy forum. This was the whole point of the last post I made that you took issue with. It's a moral issue and is potentially dangerous. I was more than reasonable, but you refused to actually address anything I was saying. So then I decided to be more direct. Before you ask me questions, you should actually read what I've written. Not only was the comment in question passive aggressive, so is this one. And so is avoiding the content of what I'm saying and then rejecting me being blunt about it. That's a problem. And I honestly don't know what you're talking about. What has happened more than once? And draw swords? What does that mean? If you can actually provide a counter argument, that'd be great. That's what I've tried to do. And I asked you 3 times now to show me the errors I'm making or concede the point. It feels like indoctrinated bullshit? Show how it is! Don't just take offense and think you've done anything. I did take offense, and then I used reason to present a case. You are clearly taking offense and doing absolutely nothing to make your case. It's just projection, and you should own it. If anybody else wants to point out any errors I've made or criticisms they have of what I said, then please do so.

I don't think this is fair at all. There are plenty of religious people who've been to war, witnessed murder and been raped. Definitely more than spiritual people. I feel very confident saying that religious people have lived a hell on earth. I know some of them personally. Also, no one deserves compassion. Compassion is an involuntary response to seeing other people suffer. And sometimes not even then, since a lot of people suffer as a result of their own poor choices. I feel for people who make bad decisions, but at some point, after they've refused to learn from their mistakes I stop feeling compassion. And this applies to many spiritualists I've met. The intellectualized defense of dismissing honest pride or true rationality or healthy certainty that spiritual people often do eventually becomes the personality. I have tried to compassionately and patiently reason people out of their spirituality. That has never gone unpunished. And frankly I've come to resent that whole approach that you are suggesting. Now, I try and be a little more direct, since life is short and I've got things I want to accomplish. So, to that end: This thread has been completely derailed. There is a serious problem in nihilism that many (if not most) varieties of spiritualism share. That is the rejection of reality, truth and morality. That is a serious goddam problem that corrodes the last remnants of the true self we have left after broken childhoods. And I regard people who serve to kill other people's true selves in this way as highly immoral. It's not just a mental health issue, it's a moral one. I don't know what expression your own spirituality took and maybe it's a much healthier and honest one, but that doesn't matter in the slightest since the point of this thread is to shuck off unhealthy nihilism, embrace reality, truth and morality. You are not serving that end by recommending spiritualists. You don't serve an alcoholic by telling them to try another form of alcohol. In fact, you'd say it was pretty damn irresponsible. You did not address my very serious criticisms. If you accept them, then you maybe ought to take back the advice. If you don't accept it, then tell me where I've made my error. Sorry to be so blunt, but this thread is not about your opinions on spirituality. Start another thread if you like.

Meaning: noun "what is meant by a word, text, concept, or action" adj "intended to communicate something that is not directly expressed" A computer processes an equation, and carries out tasks, for sure. But the computer doesn't understand what it is doing. All of the abstractions we talk about computers doing this or that are reduced by the computer into a more basic form, ultimately (if not immediately) into bits, or on / off. The computer doesn't see the equation "2 + 2 = 4", but rather the bits that represent the character encoding, the plus and equal operators etc. When we see "2 + 2 = 4", it actually means something to us in both subjective and objective terms. It may remind us of the book 1984 or our elementary school classes (but I repeat myself ). A book can be a computer in that it's features can be thought of in terms of an objective (internally consistent) syntax. When we drop it on the floor, that could be like the computer bit's "on" state and that operation was reduced by the computer using the input "dropping" to mean whatever we want that "on" state to represent. These electronic boxes in front of us are just spectacularly good at performing billions of operations and easily programmable so that those operations can express something meaningful to us. Here is John Searle's "chinese room" argument: Thanks! And I definitely can relate to what you are saying.

I've noticed that a lot of people end up on the forums who have a lot of eastern philosophical, non-dual or similarly anti-ego type perspectives. And I'm always surprised by that. To me they seem incredibly different and mutually exclusive, but if so many are drawn to the show, then perhaps I'm missing something. I'm actually more familiar with Deepak and Ken than I am with Tolle. I've read UG Kirshnamurti and other thinkers of this vein. My parents were really into A Course in Miracles for a long time. I grew up with this stuff floating around, but the majority of my exposure has been in recent years with my brother who lived and worked with, and we talked about this sort of stuff on a daily basis, discussing, debating, and I think I can argue the non-dual position pretty well. But you may be much more knowledgeable about this stuff than I am. Feel free to correct me where I've got it wrong. I actually don't think that this non-dual approach is compatible with rational virtues. And I think for the same reason that nihilism is incompatible (to not go too far off topic). That is that the goal of a philosophical life is self esteem, efficacy, worth and ultimately happiness, through a dedication to understanding the world objectively, being personally responsible and living in line with your values. Whereas the nihilist / non-dualist rejects objectivity, rejects any self to be responsible or irresponsible for, and proposing values that by definition cannot be exercised since they are defined as contradictions (true nor false, real nor unreal, good nor bad). It would seem to me that they are the antithesis of the other. Don't get me wrong, I share a lot of the same conclusions as these thinkers, but the methodology, the framework for establishing truth, is (in my estimation) logically fatal at best, and potentially dangerous at worst. In that way, I can't imagine how they could be stepping stones like you said, but apparently they are for some people since there are so many viewers who identify (ironically) as non-dual. So that's where I'm coming from. A lot of generalizing, but I think it's true enough.

If I remember correctly, Tolle is a kind of nihilist, insofar as he rejects objective reality, truth and morality. His "non-dualism" means embracing contradiction as truth, right? The dualism being truth vs falsehood, or right vs wrong, or real vs unreal. He essentially says that the mind invents meaning where there really is none (ostensibly). If that's true, I wouldn't consider his writing good for getting out of a nihilistic mindset. Just the opposite, really.

My tendency is to wonder if when people disagree with me about something I'm certain of, that I wasn't explicit enough, leaving too much up to interpretation. By putting forward syllogisms, I'm mostly trying to put that concern to rest. But perhaps it's futile and reason just doesn't convince people sometimes...

Concerning causality Physical laws are descriptions of how matter and energy behave. They are not processes occurring outside of objects acting upon them, except as the features of other objects. They are a feature of that object, emergent properties that come about at different times under different conditions. It makes no sense to say that a water molecule feels wet or an atom has color since those emergent properties don't arise except when that object is in a particular state, such as in an aggregation and at a certain temperature (or access to light as the case may be). Some objects don't even have elemental magnetic and gravitational features. Causality doesn't happen to a rock, that is to say it isn't a separate process applied to a rock. When we are talking about causality concerning rocks rolling down hills, we are talking about the features of the rock, it's density, shape, position, trajectory etc. We aren't talking about a physics equation. The equation is an abstraction whose syntax has no meaning outside of human minds. Causality is a catch all term describing the features of an object, and applies to wetness just as much as it does to gravity (for example). Just as it equally describes consciousness as it is a feature of the brain in a particular state. I caused the rock to roll down the hill by nudging it. Moving my leg is a feature of my body, as the downward angle is a feature of the hill, as the downward pull of earth's gravity is a feature of the earth. P1. Causality describes the features of objects P2. Consciousness is a feature of the brain C1. Consciousness is causal P3. Physical laws describe the behavior objects, not processes applied to objectsP4. Physical laws are features of an objects and only describe those objects if the state of that object allows for it P5. Gravity and other physical "forces" apply to objects only in a particular state in exactly the same way consciousness only applies to objects in a particular state C2. Consciousness is causal in the exact same respect as gravity is C3. There is no logical requirement to put consciousness outside of "causality" or say that it violates "physical laws" Concerning self At a bare minimum we have to accept that a self is responsible for something that they caused as a result of their actions. You can assert that determinism is true and still you can accept this conclusion. If you don't accept it, then I don't understand any reason to continue a debate about it. If people did not hold the concept of self (personal identity) as true, then they would not reply to the same person who they are debating, nor would they even pick out any human being to counter argue to, nor would they acknowledge that an argument had been made, nor would they identify themselves as the one making the counter argument. All of these things necessarily assume the existence of selves in order to be performed. P1. A self is the personal identity of an agent who acts to produce some result P2. You are addressing particular people P3. Acknowledging that an agent is responsible for something they produced assumes the existence of selves C1. You absolutely, without a doubt, no matter how much you protest accept the existence of selves.

If someone steals from me, is it selfless on my part? I don't have that rewarding feeling, and my actions (not locking up) resulted in a gain for them. People who advocate democracy seem to think so.

Alright, Rudy the babblefish

But not so vague that they communicate nothing about the meaning of the word. If we define coke as "it" and then through an exhaustive analysis conclude that "it" is coke, then we have done nothing to explain the meaning of coke. The point of a definition is to offer meaning. If your description is meaningless, then it's not a definition at all. What passes for philosophy in academia these days is just a shifting of words from one configuration into another and pretending to have communicated something. I'm not saying that's what you are doing, but that is a concern worth having. It may be the case that you have it figured out and I am as yet just completely unable to comprehend it. I'd be willing to entertain that if the discussion weren't going in circles, going nowhere.

What neuroscientists are actually doing with consciousness and how determinism is a non-answer considering it: Also, if you haven't watched the John Searle video, then you need to get your ass on that whether you are a determinist or a free-willer, or not. Like economics as a science, consciousness in neuroscience is also terribly misunderstood, by layman and professionals alike.

How do you discern for yourself what is ignoring useless thoughts and what is avoidance. How do you know?

This is officially going in circles.

Nope. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying to respect your emotional apparatus enough to trust that you feel the way you do for a reason, and not make it bad because it's inconvenient, or hard, or unpleasant. If your work situation is the true source of your "negative" emotional response then you can get a new job, negotiate a different situation or some other solution. If it's baggage from the past, then you can work through it by acknowledging it, looking at it's origins and it's effect on your life, create a long term game plan for dealing with it's effects in the current day. You can always do something about it as an adult. Psychotherapy is a huge plus if you can get a good therapist. But changing your mind about it is not a long term solution, in the same way that aspirin is not a long term solution. You are only managing symptoms. The problem isn't your emotions, it's deeper than that. And I didn't ask you to "constantly think about your problems". If it's constant enough to warrant that as a response, then get yourself into therapy quickly! I don't know what you mean by "worthwhile". It depends, just like eating McDonalds can be just fine. Different things have different consequences. Eating McDonalds is directly analogous to suppressing your emotional experience. You can do it every once in a while, just don't make it a habit. That's all I'm saying. Also, you are also conflating emotions with conclusions here. Conclusions can be false, but it would make no sense to say that an emotion is false without reference to the associated thought (i.e. it doesn't make sense that I'd resent a person who was trying to help me). And if you do that, then all you are saying is that you don't know why the person is feeling that way, and thus cannot dismiss it as unproductive. If the problem is the conclusion, then that's a separate issue. That's not what you said though as your criticism of the approach taken in the show about people's childhoods. You didn't say that what they were saying was false: that it's not childhood that is the problem. Your criticism (if I understand correctly) is that the way they could go about it could be better (i.e. via "mindfulness"). If there is some error in looking at childhoods then make that case.

As far as I understand it, if you have an emotional experience that is unpleasant and you try and diminish the feeling in a way that makes you less aware of it, either by telling yourself it's something it isn't or by avoiding it entirely, then that is suppression. You are denying yourself your experience of your life, and that has serious psychological consequences. The only way I can see a person escaping this inevitable conclusion is by (rightly or wrongly) telling themselves that their new perspective is more true. And when I've seen people do this (myself included) it was always half truths or mythologies that people came up with: therefore suppression. The entirety of eastern philosophy seems to be an ex-post facto way of doing this (lying to themselves), as far as I can tell.

There are good reasons to suppress and repress your emotional experience. If you are a child (or a captive) in a dangerous situation, you want to be able to suppress and then repress it to protect you from that danger. Mastering their inner world because they cannot change the outer one, by "clearing their minds", or distracting themselves or adopting other people's mythologies about the situation. That will all serve the child in the short run, while they are forced to be in that situation. Adults may want to suppress some of their emotions in a work setting or something similar if they can't reasonably walk out of the room and deal with it. They definitely don't want to make that a habit though (thus repress it) since you have much less control over that, it could result in destructive behavior later etc. If you aren't a captive child, or in an extremity of cases at work, then you don't want to suppress your emotional experience. It can very easily lead to repression, since if you aren't dealing with it now, then why would you later? That standing order in your head will start to carry itself out. We all have emotional experiences that don't seem to fit the current situation. I got resentful recently when someone was only trying to help me. If you look at it like I'm resentful at her, then it's not going to make any sense, appear "useless", but that's not actually what was happening. I wasn't upset with her, she merely triggered an existing upset. The only way that people have emotional experiences that are just plain wrong is when their sense data is hypersensitive (twig breaks and we think it's a tiger) or fucked up (in the case of psychosis). What I was doing has probably a similar basis, but is different. I was resentful (most likely) because the particular way that she tried to help me was reminiscent of past situations where I was humiliated. While she was being sincere, the people in the past were not. My resentment made sense then, but not now. If you take these seemingly "useless" responses and shut them down with "mindfulness", or any other kind of distraction that is designed to suppress, then that response will only cement itself to more situations that no longer warrant it. It could also shift into some other form, get acted out in a different way, but you cannot suppress / repress without consequences. It'll express itself somehow, and the more you avoid it, the more dysfunctional the expression. Eventually the defense (this "useless" response) becomes the personality. The true self erodes and the false self takes it's place. These kinds of meditations are great, so long as they don't enable you to avoid your own issues. Preferably they'd bring you closer to them. But that's not how most people meditate...

"Science" doesn't say anything. Science is a collection of principles and methodologies and not a series of conclusions. It's a convenient shorthand, but it can easily confuse the issue when you say that science says something, while only a few scientists have ever concluded it. (Global warming for example.) My understanding of the quantum phenomena you are describing is "indeterminacy", which is not the same thing as randomness, not even close. It's impossible to reduce it to a simpler processes that we could use to determine the existence and location of the next particle. That's not randomness. Most quantum phenomena cancel out long before they could be applied to something like you or me, especially this particular kind of indeterminacy you are referring to. We don't jump in and out of existence, exist in two locations simultaneously or any of that. I don't need it to justify free will. Consider it a red herring. To your second point, I don't yet fully understand how you are using your terms yet since you only really defined the 3 laws. But what I will say is that I understand that there is an irreducibility to consciousness. Consciousness being a state that the system (our brain) is in. When you try and reduce it to deterministic processes, you run into all sorts of logical problems like I mentioned before (and is explained in the John Searle video: please watch it). Also, you did not address my criticisms, so I'll repeat them: You cannot say anything meaningful about randomness or else you are saying that it's not random. It can have no discernable properties or characteristics to describe or else there is order, and thus is not random (randomness being defined as having no order). You cannot address me personally without acknowledging a self here to know who you are and what you are saying, and you don't argue with plants or rocks, I presume. Your actions necessarily imply you accept the existence of selves. So we don't understand how consciousness works. So what? We don't understand how gravity works either (at least in any way that could ever be verified / falsified). We have yet to find the part of the brain that is the thing that generates the observing ego. But as John Searles talks about, there is no need to do that for it still to be there, be a natural phenomena, have a science applied to it and describe something real. This idea that neuroscientists cannot find the observing ego is definitely not a consensus. There are certainly people who say that, and there is a whole lot of disagreement in neuroscience. It's a science that isn't very old and there is a lot more work to do.

Saying chaos is a law is like saying that contradiction is truth. They are the opposite of each other. You cannot pull a principle out of something that is (by definition) meaningless. It's like the static that Stef talks about in Against the Gods? You can't say anything about it and still call it static (chaos). I never once mention randomness, either. To say that it's either determinism or randomness is to set up a false dilemma. Having gaps in causality (that is one event is not necessarily tied inextricably to all others deterministically) is not the same thing as randomness. The physical laws that you are talking about aren't random, and human rationality isn't random either. You seem to be using the word "metaphysical" in a way that I'm not familiar. If you could explain what you mean by that, it would help. And you have yet to show me where the randomness is in what I'm saying. You are just asserting it. I don't understand the point you are making about self. Hopefully we can at least agree that selves exist since you are addressing me and I'm addressing you. You aren't responding to someone else, or responding to a glass of water, right? Also, you either have to abandon the term "random" here, or stop telling me all about it, it's qualities / properties since you are saying that there is meaning in something that is meaningless by definition. It's a self defeating argument. You keep telling me that I'm violating metaphysics, causality etc, but I don't accept that. Either you've gotta make the case to me that I'm violating them or move on to another point, because this is just going in circles. Also, you keep jumping between "natural law", "physical law" and now "universal law", but don't define the first or third one one. Honestly, I can't tell if you are using them interchangeably or not. My understanding of natural law (at least on the surface) has nothing to do with metaphysics outside of ethics. Please define your terms, explain what my argument is and where exactly the error in logic is. And please dumb it down, because either it's over my head, or it's irrational (or some third option I'm not aware of).

The universe is a concept encompassing all that exists. It is not an entity upon which qualities can be ascribed. What specifically is the error that I'm making? Admittedly, I am not understanding what you are saying. Please dumb it down as much as you can.

"Free" meaning you cannot say given X input, Y output will result. The X there is the decision made against an ideal (prefered state). No one is saying that "free" is free from any physical laws. There is nothing in the realm of physics that I'm aware of that requires human will to necessarily be setup as "X input necessitates Y output". From what I understand, you immediately run into logical problems as soon as you reduce consciousness (and by consequence: free will) to "X => Y". That would be equating the mind to a computer which (as described in the John Searle video I linked) cannot possibly explain answer the question of how human will can be accounted for deterministically. The reason being that all you are doing is providing a syntax devoid of meaning.

Like who? I don't think I've seen anyone say it's a cure-all...

The OP said this in the last paragraph

You mentioned that what you are saying is back by science. Can you provide a link to any primary sources? I cannot for the life of me imagine how talking to yourself like your thinking is useless is ever going to lead to greater mental health. That would be counterintuitive to say the least.

Very interesting. Could you elaborate?

What if we used definitions that were specific to how they're used on the show or in the community? (as opposed to a wikipedia type definition that is supposed to encompass everything). So for "libertarian" that would be like the consistent application of the NAP as applied to politics (or something to that effect). I think it's most accurate, and it avoids all of the religious and political party baggage that doesn't apply to the show anyway.