Not sure how to ask this properly, so I’ll just put it plainly.

I (the subjective self) may or may not exist

That doesn’t mean anything, it just is

We can’t really comprehend this, not because we’re missing something

But because the self can’t get outside itself to understand what’s beyond it

Any attempt to do so is already shaped by being a self

I’m not saying this is profound, or depressing, or enlightening

I’m not looking for meaning in it

I just want to know if there’s a name for seeing things this way?

If this kind of stance has ever been named or written about, I’d love to know. The closest Ive found is things like quietism or madhyamaka Buddhism, yet these are very intertwined with belief and meaning.

  • ofthemassesOPEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    I’ll give it a read and probably come back with more questions then.

    Do you think that it seems like the best conclusion to subjective reality is none then? This question really came from thinking about ideas like the philosophical zombie problem, after chatting with my partner about physical vs non physical consciousness. It seems to me that we are limited to comprehend outside (if there even is an outside) of subjective reality.

    • givesomefucksEnglish
      2·
      4 days ago

      I mean, reality is impossible…

      Which is confounding because obviously something exists.

      I stopped worrying about it when I was a little kid, we’ll never figure it out. Which is kind of the big message in the Tao, what’s important is minimizing strife and maximizing comfort.

      • ofthemassesOPEnglish
        1·
        4 days ago

        I think many kids did but to what point, I certainly thought it was unexplainable but to suggest the possibility of my own experience not be truly my own, no. I believed for a long time my subjective experience existed and is in physical reality therefore atheism is the logical conclusion.

        If you accept that subjective experience may or may not exist or be all sorts of things but never truly know, wouldn’t you have to reject atheism and religion. Yet many people subscribe to these beliefs including myself. I don’t think it’s a given that people don’t believe in their subjective existence.

        The conclusions of Tao I would be on the same page there, some form of hedonism/utilitarianism to live life by.

        • givesomefucksEnglish
          1·
          3 days ago

          Was randomly watching this video and while he mentions the Dao instead of Tao, it made me think of this thread:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGOagUj-fYM

          But he’s an anesthesiologist who spent like 30 years working with Sir Roger Penrose on what consciousness is. Penrose is probably the smartest living physicist right now, him and Hawking worked together to finish a lot of Einsteins work.

          But that’s what I was talking about how with crazy high level physics, shit starts sounding like a religion.

          Like, no one knows more about consciousness than this guy in the video, but he’s talking about time crystals and aromatic rings in the brain being the foundation of consciousness and that it doesn’t need a biological body for a consciousness to form…

          It all sounds crazy, even if he’s using scientific terms and has proof to back it up.