davecraw

Let's go to the core. Essentially this is about being at the mercy of something more powerful than you. Imagine such an entity exists and it wants to put you in hell forever. You can't overcome that. In such a case you are doomed. Now what to do? Well does it exist? For what it's worth I tried hard to prove such a entity can't/doesn't exist. I failed. As far as I know no one has proved the impossibility of such an entity. Perhaps we just aren't intelligent enough yet to do it. I don't think it's worth it to try to disprove its existence especially considering the rate at which AI is progressing. We might soon have an AI that can analyze these situations far better than any human. Thus, I offer a practical solution. One that can be implemented. Determine what you want and work to create just that. Don't waste your life imagining hellish things. If the entity exists you're damned. If you waste your life fearing it you're damned regardless of whether it exists or not. The only way to not be damned is to create something wonderful for yourself. Do that and nothing else.

It seems this view is prevalent in many people's model of reality on this forum. Ex. "Only the experience exists." or "The experience is consciousness." etc. If you have this view you could please explain what you mean? Specifically what are you referring to with the word experience? What do you mean by conscious and can you give your definition of that word? Are you under the impression that only the experience of typing this post exists (the one posted with the davecraw account). Or are you trying to express something different? Please help me understand!

Beyond all descriptions!

As far as I can tell this conclusion is at the heart of many of the maters debated on this forum. However I think there are massive issues with this idea. 1. Lack of Evidence First consider the fact that the people making this claim are only experiencing their own experience. So anything that exists beyond their experience they are by definition not experiencing. So isn't the person making a claim about something they don't know about? After all if something else did exist they would have no experience of it. 2. The limitations of the experience Human experiences (at least mine) are aparently too limited to bring themselves into existence. Thoughts, sounds, colors, and sensations all lack the apparently neccessary brain invovled in generating experiences. There is lots of evidence a brain is involved. For example, when people's occipital lobe is damaged they no longer see (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK560626/#:~:text=Cortical blindness is an important,proper management and improved outcome.) This is an indication that the source of human experiences exists beyond the experiences. 3. Other people's claims about their own experience People claim they have a different experience than me. And I can tell you about my experience of typing this right now and seeing that it's 5:41 PM and you can know that your expereince is different than the one I'm describing. For these reasons it seems appropriate to infer that something exists beyond the limited experience. More importantly though there is apparently no reason I'm aware of to conclude (and spread the idea) that nothing exists beyond the experience.

Sorry for responding so late but the question is whether you are under the impression that you ever perceive with the other bodies you encounter in your life. For example the body used to type this post. Do you think you ever perceive with it?

You've probably encountered this but curious how you evaluate this claim: "This statement is false." Evaluate whether that's true or false and give your reasoning!

Why a private conversation. That's not helpful to everyone on this forum. Before taking the time to converse with you can you briefly outline your view of reality that you will apparently present?

But this experience doesn't have feet so how to do that?

Well then let's analyze the idea that only the experience of typing this message out exists. This message is the one posted with the davecraw account. Is that what people are claiming only exists?

Okay thank you for that. With your second framing are you suggesting there are multiple experiences coexisting or just one? The third one doesn't make sense because in that case the experiencer is the experience. In other words the experiencer is experiencing itself or the experience is experiencing itself. As for which one to discuss all and any variations.

To your first point consider the first few reponses in this thread. People are apparently explaining their reasoning. In addition consider the posts in these threads: So it seems some people do hold this view. But as to your next point it's not clear what the difference is. You asked the same question and bolded different words. Can you elaborate?

How then do you define understanding? Do you agree your post is understood at some level? And if so how and by what?

@Girzo @Girzo How is that? If he is I and he's conscious then I am also conscious. No disagreement but it might warrent discarding some of the claims made like "The experience creates itself." This is only evidence if you assume a priori that consciousness is required for understanding and replying to a forum post. Do you agree the post is understood? Doesn't understanding involve consciousness by definition? If you don't think it's understood why do you claim so? How do you define understand? Against, only true after assuming there is indeed such independent being as Leo and responding to your posts by this being requires consciousness. Those are assumptions. The reason it's important for you to define understand is because it's defined on Google as "perceive the intended meaning of (words, a language, or a speaker)" Perceive is defined as "become aware or conscious of (something)". By those definieitons understanding involves consciousness. In other words it's not possible to understand without being conscious. This seems to undermine your argument. It's only under assumption that you are a limited being doing something and experiencing something. This is what you assume, so this is not an evidence of anything. I can assume on equal grounds that consciousness just is and experiences itself, in whatever form it is, for example typing. I can propose many other alternative models of interpreting this situation. So as you can see your line of reasoning can't even beat post-modern, relativistic arguments. That means it doesn't constitute knowledge. The way you reason would fly if we were discussing some practical matter and tried to be pragmatic. But pragmatists don't care about what is ultimately true, and here we are discussing ultimate nature of reality. Pragmatic knowledge =/= metaphysical knowledge. Isn't there an experience being experienced of typing? If that's not evidence of the existence of consciosuness then what is?

In that case he's conscious.

You make a good point. However, someone may be "certain" they are right and still wrong. So more importantly than whether I know or not or whether I'm certain or not is the evidence being presented. Isn't there evidence that this is created by a conscious source? After all how else is your post understood? Isn't there evidence that Leo's posts are written by a conscious source? After all doesn't he demonstrate his understanding of the posts in his responses? Now the topic of this thread is about people's identification with experience. Isn't there evidence that this post is typed out and that the experience doesn't type this? Isn't that evidence that there is a difference between the source of this post and the experience of this post? Isn't that evidence that people's identification with their experience is actually a misidentification? Or do you not consider any of that evidence to be convincing? If not why?

To be clear you actually haven't. In this thread you attacked the logic but never explained what's wrong with it: Our conversation: Leo: "@davecraw You got very poor logic. No Awakening for you." Davecraw: "Can you explain the errors in my logic? I don't want to carry broken logic and would appreciate your analysis. Thank you." Leo: "@davecraw The only thing you have is your experience. The end." Davecraw: "And I know you are experiencing too. So since it's known that you and I are both experiencing that leads me to the question of whether your experience is different than mine." Sidenote: It's reasonable to infer that you're conscious because of the consciousness involved in typing this. If this consciosuness is yours then obviously you're conscious. If it's not yours then there's evidence you're conscious because of your demonstrated understanding of the posts in your responses. Leo: "You don't know that." As I just pointed out your claim isn't true. Then I asked the following question to determine if you know what I know by asking if you know whether I am experiencing or not to which you never replied. Of course this person knows whether it is experiencing by experiencing its own experience. Davecraw: "Do you know whether I am experiencing or not? If yes, then do you know whether your experience and mine are different or not?" With all this in mind it should be clear you never disproved my logic let alone even gave an explantion as to what's wrong with it. You seem to be continuously making untrue claims unfortuantely.

Could you point out the flaws (or at least some) in the logic?

Well apparently this is typed out. The experience is the evidence of that. Seeing fingers move in a particular way. Seeing keys pressed in a certain order. Put your finger over a key (like the "I" key). Now the "I" key isn't being expereinced. However, you can still press it (and witness the effect) even though it's not being experienced which is an indication it existed beyond the limited experience. I! The point is that apparently everything being expereinced is too limited to type this BUT nevertheless this is typed out. That's an indication that there is a difference between that which types this and this experience. Or do you doubt this is typed out?

This is an important point. People make a distinction between experiences and non-experiences. Essentially it's up to the person to make a useful distinction. One construction is something is an experience if it's experienced. Now whether there is actually a difference between the state of experiencing something and the state of not experiencing something is key. What is the relationship between you and this post now? How about 10 minutes ago before you read this. Is there a difference? If so then perhaps that's a good reason to make a distinction between experiencing this and not experiencing this.

How can I? After all this experience doens't have eyes to read your post.

Alright then shoot me!

Where's the gun?

@OldManCorcoran The notion that the colors and text on a screen write and respond to these posts (hell let's include the thoughts, sounds and every other part of the limited experience) is just on the verge of insanity as far as I can tell. Your claims lack supporting evidence. You got to explain how this is typed out with just limited experiences.

If I am the color red then I'm not anything else like the music or the time on the clock. Another thing is this experience (7:05 PM now) ceases to exist. Now it's 7:06 PM but I still exist. That's an indication of a difference between the experience and I.

Consider a person with cancer that hasn't been diganosed. They don't know about their cancer but it exists inside them. Imagine such a person claiming "I don't have cancer because I'm not experiencing it." How is your claim any less absurd then that?