High-valance

The best introductory course on the topic.

I am deeply passionate about philosophy and critical discussions. It's almost all I think about all the time anyway and I'm annoyed by some of the idiocy that passes for philosophy these days. So since i've managed to pick up a few skills here and there by just impulsively debating and thinking about philosophy so much as the ADHDer i am, i thought i'd go in and try to clean up some of the mess they've created in academic philosophy. Through getting dragged into philosophical discussions on the internet and listening to various philosophical content and debates on the internet over the years, i have developed strong abilties in Methodological reasoning conceptual clarity critical thinking But also some things like wisdom and love of learning. So my strengths already align with the abilities you need as a professional philosopher anyway. And more than that, i'd say that in my own assessment, i have already developed a bachelors level understanding almost entirely on my own without any formal education in philosophy. Although some of the abilities and understanding i've developed go beyond what can be captured in terms of any degree. In a sense i don't feel like I have a choice. This path has chosen me, even if it sounds corny. Currently my main target is consciousness, the hard problem of consciousness and various philosophical ideas about consciousness, but eventually i also want to address political and societal issues and affect deep change on like a systemic level. Any tips or advice? Of course, l should improve and get a phd in philosophy but besides that general advice what do you suggest i do to ace this LP?

I understand your dilemma. The life purpose course helps if you haven't taken that already. Also as you gain more experience and develop more skill, a purpose will become more and more clear.

Sure i'm up for that! I don't really know how to do that though. Can we dm from this forum or do we have to give contact information?

Ok, so your mission is sort of to make the history is sort of to make your country less ideological and more truthful in their sense of history or in how that history is derived? Can you say which country youre in, by the way? I mean since the aim is to become a professional philosopher, i'll have to do a phd i, guess. So first step is to get into desired philosophy program/course at university. Thinking in terms of degrees isn't enough, though. I think in terms of getting really really good. I won't go into too much detail on that to not risk giving away too many details from the LP course. I'm actually currently corresponding with a professional philosopher, where we are having like a metadiscussion on what exactly is the hard problem of consciousness. And from that discussion, I'm in a process of generating pretty strong critiques of how it is was originally phrased and how it's commonly interpreted, i'd say. I suspect some of these critiques are original critiques. And I don't have any degrees yet. I'd also love to here more about the process you're going through with your LP.

Nice. Do you have an idea of what impact you want to have ultimately with this life purpose? i don't have any degree. I'm self taught so far in what I've learned, which there's still plenty left to do of course. But plan is to get a degree or a couple degrees, yeah, but also just to get really really good at this stuff, as presumebly that will lead to the best opportunities and satisfaction in the career.

Thank you, and that's awesome! So you're going to be a historian?

Some of the most common debate tactics i see are attempts at distortion and evasion tactics, so misrepresenting the other side and dodging their points / questions / arguments, also known as straw man and red herring fallacies. Begging the question is also very common. I can go on and on about common dirty / misleading debate tactics. However i suspect much if not even most of the time it's done unconsciously. Theyre not aware theyre doing it.

Make ideas and beliefs illegal. Is this a joke?

I dont wanna listen to mature bald guy! I wanna listen to the immature bald guy! The mature bald guy is boring. I wanna listen to the immature bald guy and integrate the good things he says and say fuck the immature toxic stuff he says. (i do want to listen to the mature bold guy but it sounds better if i said like I did above)

Jay dyer looked very bad against detroyer and ask yourself.

I've experienced similar. I went on a pick up bootcamp once and every night after i went to bed I was tortured by really bad stomach pain. I guess even though the mind is chill there's actually fear that you're not being aware of, or not being fully aware of, but which is perhaps being suppressed and then manifests bodily in the ways you describe. I don't know if I'm saying something insightful or obvious here. and I've experienced the restlessness too, even though I have felt mostly fine mentally. like fine enough to where I first didn't think the restlessness had anything to do with the mild anxiety felt during the interaction with the girl. but now I think it might have been my body reacting to anxiety I didn't in the moment become fully aware of but which was perhaps suppressed. but I don't know though so I hope someone else will reply to your post.

ADHD is NOT just a medicalisation of boredom in a similar way that autism is not just a medicalisation of quirky and socially awkward kids. I worry that you're trivializing the serious problems many people with adhd have if we talk about it as just boredom. talking about it like that makes it seem like it's something trivial and not a real and serious problem for which treatment can be helpful. but it is very much a real and serious problem. we can see that the brain of people with adhd looks meaningfully different compared to people who don't have adhd. and to mention some of the problems, people with adhd tend to struggle a lot with friendships and relationships, on average they are undereducated because they struggle with academics, they are overrepresented in car accidents, drug and alcohol abuse, and perhaps the main thing they struggle with is sustaining their effort towards reaching their goals, which is a huge problem because trying to reach our goals is basically the game we're playing here in life, and people with adhd tend to suck at it. the experts say medication helps a lot in most cases. and treatment that doesn't involve medication is largely ineffective. when we say things that contradict what i'm saying here we risk making it harder for people with adhd to get the treatment that actually significantly helps those who really struggle in life with all the difficulties that adhd entails. or maybe it is meaningfully treatable without adhd meds, but not known among those we’d consider experts. like maybe it’s treatable with like heavy metal cleansing or whatever, but unless there is something like that, then please don’t go around acting like adhd is not real and that meds aren’t an essential and important thing for those who really struggle with adhd. that can be harmful.

Instantiates how stage red is born out of harsh environments where red values and functioning is necessary for surviving and meeting one's basic needs.

Thanks. I really appreciate all those guys.

That’s a good question, but I think there are some other relevant questions in doing a sort of philosophical inquiry into the framework you’ve presented. Are the words ‘nature’ and ‘everything’ just synonyms? Is that how people use these words? To some, nature may just be synonymous to the physical universe. But some believe that the physical universe is not everything. So, what is everything? Not all people agree on what everything constitutes. That is there are different ideas about what does and doesn’t exist. In regard to the question you asked, it seems to me to be more interesting to ask whether the physical world or everything in the physical world is conscious rather than whether everything in general is conscious. If everything means all things, and things such as the emotions or the phenomenological experience behind your closed eyes are regarded as things in some relevant sense, then the question by implication includes the question of whether an emotion is conscious, and whether the darkness behind your closed eyes is conscious. It is certainly part of a conscious experience, but are they themselves conscious? It isn’t obvious to me to what extent we’d want to entertain such questions. However, it is more obvious that we want to entertain the question of whether the physical world is conscious or whether everything in the physical world is conscious. If we look a bit more closely at this question, we can see that it seems to mean different things. Are all the fundamental building blocks of which the physical world is made conscious? At what scale are each of the building blocks of the physical world conscious? Are protons, neutrons, and electrons conscious? Are individual objects such as rocks, tables and chairs conscious? Where do we draw the line? Perhaps they are not conscious, but perhaps the physical world as a whole is conscious? The former questions are related to views such as microexperientialism and panexperientialism. The latter is the question of cosmopsychism. I am not deep into the literature on these views, but the key motivation for microexperientialist and panexperientialist views seem to be motivated to explain why we have consciousness as philosophical progression from the inability of mainstream physicalism (commonly thought of as 'materialism') to account for consciousness in physicalist terms (the hard problem of consciousness). However, both microexperientialism and panexperientialism run into a problem of their own. Namely the subject combination problem, which is the problem of explaining how the combination of multiple micro level subjects result in macro level subjects such as ourselves with a unitary experience of their own. Cosmopsychists propose that it is not the fundamental building blocks of the physical world such as fundamental subatomic particles that are conscious, but that it is the physical world as a whole that is conscious, and thereby we get rid of the subject combination problem. In its place, however, a new problem arises. Namely, the decombination problem or also called the decomposition problem which is about how the higher level subject of the physical world decomposes or decombines into multiple lower level subjects such as ourselves. A proposed solution to this problem is that the higher level cosmic subject undergoes a form of dissociation by virtue of which the decombination into multiple lower level subjects is accomplished. Personally, I think this is a sufficient solution. So, I take a cosmophychist view. And I also agree with Leo that nature (if by nature we here mean the physical world) is grounded within consciousness. So, I take a form of idealist cosmopsychist view à la philosopher Bernardo Kastrup according to which the physical world as a whole not only is conscious, but also is grounded within consciousness so that it effectively is being dreamed up by consciousness. This view is not only supported by forms of mystical insights and experiences and a type of awareness but is also on rational grounds, in my view, the view that, in terms of reasons to believe which view is true, is superior. With regard to the question of theism a relevant question seems to me to be whether the cosmic consciousness within which the physical world is situated is synonymous with God or not. I guess it technically comes down to how God is defined. We need to come up with a reasonable definition of god and be able to show that the definition entails that cosmic consciousness is god. But I also guess that if enough people just start calling cosmic consciousness god, then it just becomes one of the ways that god can be defined. Maybe we are at that point already.

The general concern seems to be why we can't control the world at will. In other words why the dynamics of the world unfolds independently of the volition of the ego if everything is imaginary/mental. There's at least one model of a mind-only view of reality which explains this. According to it the observable universe is being generated by the part of universal consciousness to which we generally have no introspective access. You can sort of think of it like a dream that's being generated by a so called 'subconscious' or obfuscated part of consciousness that determines the dynamics according to which the dream or the dreamt up/imagined/mentally created universe/world unfolds through a chain of cognitive associations between the obfuscated part of consciousness and the experience of the imagined dream world. Like a thought can trigger an emotion which can trigger a memory which can trigger an other emotion which can trigger an other thought and so on through a chain of cognitive associations. The obfuscated part of consciousness can through this kind of cognitive associations generate a world. And we are dissociated from this obfuscated part of consciousness which generates and determined the unfolding dynamics of the world and thus we can't generally control it at will through egoic volition. If you want answers to these sort of questions I suggest to check out writer Bernardo Kastrup. His consciousness/mind-only model of reality can make sense of many of these concerns we have if everything is just imagenary/mental.

Well the question I wanted an answer for was 'what do you mean by causalities in this context?' I don't see how you've answered that question. You said 'there is no whole without the sum total of its substance'. I don't see how that's an answer to the question. You don't have to answer. You do whatever you want of course, but insofar as you are willing to answer then it doesn't seem to me like you have answered the question.

Okay sure. I don't get your point. Are you gonna answer my questions as well?

I think the way that I think beacuse it's obvious that nothing can exist outside consciousness. But then in order to make sense of things, we seemingly have to infer something 'outside'our 'individually consciousness'. But to infer a whole universe outside consciousness seems inflationary, unessesary and like a unimaginable abstraction. So the inferance is one of phenomenal or mental 'stuff' instead, that realize the phenomenal appearance of the cosmos and to which the appearance of the universe as a whole corresponds. This can in a basic way explain that we seem to share the same context (the key world there being 'seem to'), and that world unfolds independently of egoic volition, and that there are strong correlations between brain states and subjective states. In case you want a more rigorous explanation I can do that to. But some of my assumptions is that we can explain the metaphysics and ontology of reality in a basic logical way to some non-trivial degree which at least partially reveals truth. And I'm also assuming that we need to infer soemthing beyond our 'individual consciousnesses' to make sense of and explain things. But I don't understand what you mean by causalities in this context. Can you please clarify? And then I'll happily answer. And I don't exactly know what you mean by 'linearly'. You mean like to logic-oriented or something? And sure there's no tree. But the appearances that constitute that which I'm calling a tree seems hard to deny.

Well if that was in response to me then I'm not sure you understood it the way that I meant it. I'm not quite saying that literally, beacuse even to say that we share the same reality is a materialist way of putting it. And I don't think the tree we both can see literally is the same tree. I'm saying that the phenomenal appearance of the tree you experience and I experience if we were seeing the so called 'same tree' is realized by the same underlying phenomenal or mental process. That's what I mean when I suggest that we are sharing the same reality. 'But the 'world' of phenomenal appearances that constitute our respective lives aren't the same. There is a non-trivial way in which we are then not sharing the same reality.

With regards to your question of why we agree about the nature of objects such as trees 'out there', or more generally put, why we seemingly share the same reality about which our experience to a significant extent converges such that it is consistent among observers, I would suggest the following considering, although with the caveat that the map is not the territory, language is limited so don't take this to literally, and also that I'm not someone who's had many deep awakenings so what I'm about to say isn't deeply grounded in direct experience. But what I'd suggest is that the shared context in which we are all embedded is more or less analogous to a shared dream, the contents of which such as trees are being self-generated in all the various dreams by the same collective psyche or mind generating the shared dream or imagined 'reality'. We might also think of this as kind of similar to the way we currently view the so called 'external world' but only that it is not a world outside and independent of consciousness made of non-conscious physical stuff, but rather a domain of consciousness, a stream of experiences or mental goings on which we might call the collective psyche self-generating our experience of a shared world with qualities and properties whose nature we all seem to basically agree on. So in some sense, what's out there is not the external physical world of objects, but a mental or phenomenal world of mentation by virtue of which we recognise a shared environment. Although 'out there' is a non-literal way of putting it, and that sort of phrasing is sort of materialistic terminology and a materialistic way of putting things. This might also help to understand why we can't change the world at will, because it is this trans-personal collective mind or consciousness that constitutes our world and thus also the manner in which it unfolds. If the trans-personal collective consciousness unfolds according to certain patterns and regularities and self-generates our seemingly collective world it isn't then a surprise that our seemingly collective world also unfolds according to certain patterns and regularities that we have come to call the laws of nature, which we also btw, might metaphorically view as the code or programming determining the rules and thus the way its metaphorically simulated world, self-generated by the trans-personal collective mind as the metaphorical programmer, unfolds independently of volition. Therefore we can't just walk through walls or turn blue whenever we want (at least for the most part). Further, mind or consciousness does not supervene on matter or the physical, meaning consciousness or mind does not come from matter or biology/the body-brain system. There is an undeniable relationship between consciousness/mind and body but not a causal relationship of the type that gives primacy to the physical and according to which the brain or biology generates consciousness. Biology and brains are images or appearances in consciousness which tend to correlate very strongly to subjective states. But correlation does not necessarily imply causation so to say. Rather biology is an image of a process of localisation of consciousness in a stream of consciousness, like a whirlpool is an image of a process of localisation of water in a stream of water. Does a whirlpool generate water? No! As such, for the same reason that a whirlpool doesn't generate water the body-brain system doesn't generate consciousness. Remember, these are just words, and words aren't the truth. Don't believe any of this stuff but with that said if you're interested in understanding a consciousness or mind-only view of reality better I'd recommend to check out Bernardo Kastrup, either on YouTube, or his blog 'Metaphysical speculations' or his books in which he deconstructs the mainstream materialist paradigm in which many of us are so deeply entrenched.

It wasn't originally, and I agree that the standards are and should be different, but then you talked about famale on male rape victims enjoying rape most likely, and also about victim blaming male rape victims, and then it did partly become about empathy for rape victims. That became a salient topic for obvious reasons. It baffles me that you are having a hard time undersatnding this. It would help if you set your minimisation and exuses aside and try to understand why we communicated what we did also.

I don't think anybody thought you did minimise male on male rape. But I don't think how much or little female on male rape happens is relevant to minimising the experience of those it does happen to regardless of the number. The ones it does happen to and has suffered beacuse of it deserve compassion, not minimisation. Reactions to minismising it seem to be to be an appropriate response of human decency. Call it SJW woke scolding and outrage if you want but to me it seems like human decency... but of course that is also a relative notion.

So true! Conservativism and progressiveivism are relative notions. Liberals and progressives from today will most likely look very Conservative from the perspective of future generations. And it's a fun thing to contemplate how future generations will look back at our generations. What will they see as conservative, wicked and crazy? Not just politically and socially, but metaphysically, philosophically, ethically and across the board. Agreed!