UnbornTao

@Breakingthewall I understand the difficulty of articulating these things, and I get your frustration - but that frustration is more about you than about me. Have you even bothered to understand - and properly answer - some of the questions I asked you above? If you're as open as you claim to be, consider that you might be wrong in your stance on some fundamental things. Being open doesn't mean "everything is possible," nor does it mean "I can say whatever I want and that makes it true." It isn't merely a fantasy, an intellectual artifice, a social posturing, or a character trait. You need to be grounded and reconsider your stance on principles such as listening and openness - that is, if you care about being honest. You can go over the questions and try to respond to them. Or keep babbling away. Once you decide how to respond to this, we can switch back to the topic of meaning.

But what's your experience of the matter, though? Ah, this is the trick. I know we like and even cherish our spiritual beliefs - but they aren't true. When all is said and done, what do you have relative to these things? This is where I'm trying to push the conversation. Don't assume that just because I'm saying 'perception occurs', there has to be a self doing the perceiving. The occurrence of perception is hard to deny, isn't it? And it couldn't occur without a body - just as a computer needs hardware to exist. This is a kind of 'law' of objective reality. For some reason I thought you were the one who started the thread.

That is a peculiar use of 'perception.' Would you be able to perceive or experience something without your body? Could you see without eyes? What if you were told that you can perceive something prior to what you're calling interpretation and experience? We start to find different activities within what was previously - and vaguely - held as 'perception.' Would you say your dislike for a particular object is the same as perceiving the object - or the use it has to you as being the same as your sensory encounter with it?

You said that by perception you didn't just specifically mean a mental interpretation. I was making a distinction between the two in case you were assuming they're the same thing. If we were to define perception as the biological process of encountering data through the senses, where would you place it in 'the field of consciousness'? What do you mean by that? Is that what you're taking to be perception?

Nice.

Interpretation isn't perception.

Good pointing.

You should have noticed that you immediately interpreted the scribbles. Actually removing language-interpretations from your experience of them isn't necessarily easy and takes a concerted effort. You already distinguish between objective and subjective: you distinguish your preference towards a particular object from the object itself. You might also say, for example, that pain is illusory, and the next moment be in pain. So, notice the discrepancy between what one thinks and one's experience. How do you see perception? If it's absolute, why add 'perception' to it?

But GPT told me my drawing was amazing!

Why?

Of course. That way I can recruit more members to my cult - Meaningism. Join in! Free pizza on Thursdays. 🍕🍕

Not so different at all. Humanity as a whole is about wellbeing. It was a lame joke, anyway.

@Breakingthewall I understand you see it as me reacting, but that's not the case here. Don't confuse bluntness with reactivity. It seems you have your fair share of experience taking things personally, so to stay in that vein, I think I paid far more attention to what you wrote than you did while writing it. Did you read what I wrote? Perception and form are also limited. They aren't everything that exists. Okay, no more extrapolation for me. This screams BS. What do you take perspective and perception to be? And what about meaning? Again, what is an 'unlimited framework'? What exactly are you trying to convey with all that rhetoric? Just admit you really don't know what you're talking about and engage in the questioning - the sky won't fall. Being a charlatan is not consistent with the spirit of this work. At the very least, try to be honest and clear - and actually open, for that matter. You say meaning is objective on the one hand, and on the other, you say it is given, as well as a result of infinite cause-and-effect relationships, whatever that means. Could it be that it isn't clear at all - hence the existence of this thread? Be open to this possibility.

The important (hey, meaning) question to you, you mean! What meaning do we have to meaning? It'd be a shame if we were meaningless in the eyes of meaning. How rude. The outcome or "answer" would be an insight. So, you'd become conscious of what it is and this would probably change how you relate to it. The realization wouldn't detract from it or negate it either. It'd just be a recognition of what's true about meaning.

Sounds reasonable, albeit a bit simplistic. By this, I'm mainly referring to the comparison between what is versus what you want to see - calling this latter one meaning. "Subjective stories" might be more aligned with what meaning is, but it still doesn't quite capture it, in my view. A story sounds detached and fantastical, and we can easily recognize it as wishful thinking, while meaning is more primal, as if. Is meaning an interpretation? Does interpretation provide us with the meaning of something, or is meaning-making a separate activity built upon interpretation? What adds "charge" to an interpretation - what makes it good, useless, unworthy, worthwhile, significant? Are these good questions? We're moving in a good direction, though!

Okay, thanks. To play devil's advocate: everything is absolute. So, me saying that isn't very useful here. It might be the case that no one is actually doing the perceiving, yet you said that there is something occurring that we call 'perception' - and that sounds like a factual claim. Now, the former doesn't necessarily negate the latter, does it? Try to perceive these scribbles on a screen as objectively as possible - it's difficult to do. My point is that what we call 'perceiving something' tends to be interpreting or experiencing it, not merely encountering it through the senses.

The perceptive faculties seem to exist exclusively for survival purposes, but this is an interesting exercise. Do not make the mistake of turning the concept of survival into a bad thing - nor a good thing, for that matter. It is what we're up to. @aurum: I don’t think this is true, if I understand your proposition correctly. We do take our perception and experience to be an accurate reflection of reality - but that doesn't mean they are. We know that different animals perceive reality differently from us. Which is the more "correct" faculty? After some investigation, we find that we aren't even clear on what perceiving something actually is. Look at a small object and see whether you can sort out the different mental activities involved in your experience of it. Is the object its use or its label? Then how come it seems that we relate to its use and overlook the existence of the object itself? Is the use of the object perceived, or is use a function of something else?

@Breakingthewall Openness needs to be based on something real - on accurate distinctions. You seem to believe that the principle means "everything goes." Form, perception, meaning, perspective - every relative thing - is limited. It exists as some "thing." For example, our perceptive faculties operate within a certain range of stimulus. Your body is limited, as is your self. What you are, on the other hand, is what you are. Our job is to contemplate what that is. You also seem to think that limitation excludes potential - or is the opposite of it. But they're the same dynamic. If you can recognize something in the first place, it's precisely because it is a particular form. How could form exist without limit? The answer is that it can't. A thing has to be distinct from what it is not. It would be like a drawing without boundaries. The moment something is drawn, limitation arises with it; and it is precisely this boundary that allows for the existence of the drawing.

Thank you. Wouldn't taking meaning to be a bad thing also be an assessment of meaning? The way you talked about it gave me the impression that you might be viewing it that way. I agree with your second sentence. But notice how messy it can get: it seems as though we perceive (experience) meaning. But perceiving something precludes meaning, since what this process provides us with is meaningless sensory data. An additional activity (or activities) has to take place for meaning to be experienced. Without meaning, what is there? I'd say whatever is experienced, but without the context of meaning - objects, perception, a body, relationship, movement. I'd like to know your thoughts on this. Making these kinds of assertions doesn't help much, does it? (Unless you know what you're talking about.) They tend to shut down investigation before it even begins. We could claim that everything is an illusion, that nothing is, or that everything is real. Yet regardless of which position we take, we continue to recognize something we call meaning. We take it very seriously; in fact, we structure our lives around it. So, it isn't necessarily a simplistic matter. I'm trying to push us into our experience.