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Other-perspectives are possible states of experience, will, and knowledge that we can imagine fully adopting but do not.
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The presence of embedded other-perspectives within our personal sensory world (as opposed to other-perspectives we imagine seperately) entails a translation system that we use to relate the imagined subjective states of the other-perspective to sensory transformations.
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These sensory transformations which connect to our construction of other-perspectives might be summarily called language.
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Language takes many forms of expression. Verbal language, body language, and the mere sensory appearance of a body with sense organs considered sentient.
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A body is the limited range of expressive power over which a perspective expresses its contextual will. Sense organs are material representations of the limited range of experiential power which a perspective uses to manifest its sensory world.
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In the same way that we may use verbal expressions of bodies and emotional expressions of bodies to construct aspects of other-perspective’s subjectivity, we may use the appearance and orientation of their sense organs in relation to other, environmental, aspects of our sensory world to construct experiences for other-perspectives.
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The presence of an active other-perspective translation system in your mind begins with your will. The choice to limit your construction of an other-perspective to sensory appearances (as opposed to magical transformation of their perspective in some way according to your unconventional desire and power) is also volitional. This is called leaving other-perspectives free.
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In order for multiple free perspectives to cooperate and stay together there must be a collective desire to coordinate fundamental commitments - a desire for agreement and compromise.
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It is possible to change your fundamental commitments and beliefs against a group as an act of rejection of the compromise. It is also possible for your group with agreed on commitments and beliefs to separate from another group with different commitments and beliefs in a form of absolute disagreement. It is also possible for an individual to break away from your group’s commitments and beliefs. It is also possible for all three of these modes to occur in reverse in the form of agreement.
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Whatever the variation, whenever others diverge from your deep beliefs and commitments, they will gradually appear to become more and more wrong and insane as reality fits your view more and more, unless they change to agree with you - at which point they appear to become “correct”.
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The ways of manifesting experience and of building expectations and beliefs, and the ways of communicating them, are very fundamental negotiated agreements in a social convention. These may take the form of: materialism, animism, theism, solipsism, and the varieties of magical conventions.
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In materialism, only experiences derived from material relationships of objects are valid, hence your sensory information is only valid and useful for constructing beliefs if it corresponds to an appropriate relationship between a material sense organ and a material object. In our case those sense organs are the 5 commonly known human sense organs. This particularly requires for your senses to appear as differentiated qualities from one another with clear differentiation in order for clear comprehension and communication of your material sense experiences to others. Thus, e.g., no seeing a 2 dimensional field of scents representing objects’ surfaces if the agreement is to see colors. Similarly, only expressions in the form of material transformations are acceptable, hence the role of the body in action and the role of verbal language in communication. These imply the rejection of other, non-material, forms of action and experience and belief and communication.
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In theism, other forms of experiences and beliefs and actions and communications may be accepted under certain conditions: special revelation, prayer, miracles, visions, and divination are all examples of possible modes of valid experience, knowledge, and will. Similarly, animism and other magical conventions may include other modes of experiencing, knowing, and willing that are considered valid such as remote viewing, telepathy, magick, channeling, or telekinesis.
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Interestingly, most of the not-fully-material models presented make room for classifications of beings which relate to our sensory world in largely or wholly non-material ways - with modes of experiencing, knowing, and willing fully or largely untethered from material objects. Relating to these sorts of beings would be quite different from relating to the sorts of beings we relate to with the conventional materialist paradigm (animals and humans).
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Hallucinations within materialism are experiences which do not correctly correspond to the relationship observed by others between your sense organs and the apparent environment. Interestingly, this also makes some room for detecting non-materialist experiences (hallucinations) in your perspective by yourself: you can observe your own sense organs and environment with one sense and compare that to another sense to see if it properly materially corresponds.
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In general, hallucinations are experiences that do not validly correspond to the core principles of a view. Delusions are beliefs that do not validly correspond. Insanity and irrationality (from the POV of a given convention) are applied to any mode of experience, knowledge and will construction that differs from that conventional view and therein results in invalid subjective states.
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If you want to be loved and trusted and supported by a materialist or mostly materialist community and culture (as most humans in any cultural context do), if you want to be a member of their group and share in their reality, you’ll put an equivalent amount of focus on improving and expressing your material modes of experience and knowledge and will. If you are afraid of being rejected and ostracized by your community, of being considered irrational, insane, or dangerous, then you will probably spend most of your time ridding yourself of any experiences that aren’t related to sense organs and brains, knowledge that isn’t derived therefrom, and intentions that aren’t related to bodily expressions and brains. This can similarly be understood in parallel with theistic cultures, animistic cultures, or any others.
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If you can remove some fear of social rejection, or if you live in a flexible and tolerant culture, or if you have some social peers that want to negotiate and change the fundamental structure of reality with you, then you can spare some time, energy, and focus (either as an individual or a group negotiating a new convention) for exploring other possible fundamental commitments and modes of experience, knowledge, and will. You can look at rearranging your commitments and thus changing your reality until your surrounding culture either goes insane and destroys itself, disappears entirely, or comes to face your new, ever more apparent truth.
“The Construction of the Senses”
Originally posted by u/AesirAnatman on 2016-12-13 05:34:45 (5hyajt).
It’s nice to see you write again Aesir. I agree with everything you say, although I am fuzzy on some of the word choices, but I think I understand your intent.
In your discussion of convention you talk about a group validating each other’s will in what appears to be a relatively egalitarian way: if I can do magick, so can you. There are other options that are less symmetrical. Solipsism allows one to hold all magickal power internally while handing out limited conventional powers to the “others.” Thus it’s possible to create a world where you’re the only one who can do magick. It’s also possible to create a system of meaning which would allow one to selectively bring people into the group that can also do magick on par with you, or to a lesser degree than you. It’s all fully tunable.
One potential disadvantage of allowing free use of magick is that if the world is teeming with magick users, you no longer know if some random body ache is your own or your body’s doing or some “bad” sorcerer’s doing. This can then easily lead to paranoia. Which in my view is less than ideal to say the least. Because materialism severely narrows down the influences other perspectives are allowed to exercise on your own, it largely avoids paranoia, but of course even under a materialistic framework people still fall into excessive/needless conspiracy theories at times.
So while solipsism has the psychological challenge of realizing your ultimate aloneness, it allows magick use while sparing one the potential downside of paranoia.
I don’t think paranoia in a fully multilaterally magicked environment is an absolute necessity, but I don’t see a very simple solution for it either. One possible solution is if everyone agrees by convention that magickal shielding is absolute and inviolable. Another possible solution is to limit by convention the range of magick to line of sight originating at the “physical” body. “Out of sight, out of mind” convention. Another possible solution is to simply learn to tolerate the idea that you can never fully guarantee that the influences you observe are only your own plus environmental and contain no inputs from other intelligences.
It might actually be that solipsism is the most newbie-friendly entry into magick, because it allows you to learn magick without having to worry about anyone or anything else mucking around with your experience. As one becomes more confident, one might desire to make the experience more complex. So maybe anyone who becomes really good at a solipsistic view will eventually want to experience a deeper kind of sharing and will want to “invite” other influences into the area of magick anyway. Which then will perhaps begin the cycle toward the eventual fall back into materialism: at first everyone is friendly and things go well, but as time goes on, people get bored and want to try more things, which starts to erode trust, eventually convention “ages” and becomes unsustainable, then magick is seen more and more as something bad. Instead of sharing in something wonderful, from the POV of someone who wants to be left alone or to otherwise minimize disturbances, magick will be seen as an avenue of meddling. And at first magick can be regulated, which gives us organized religion, and then eventually it is completely abandoned and we’re back to materialism again.
So this is an interesting idea: conventions age because people get tired of the old ruleset, and gradually more and more individuals inside the group do “naughty” things because they’re bored and want more fun/excitement than convention can deliver. Or they begin to see the old convention as grossly unfair, or lacking for some other reasons, and begin to deviate/dissent. This puts burden on the people who still enjoy that old convention. But if enough people are bored with the old convention, the plurality who is now in the minority has no choice but to either drift off by themselves, or to consider abandoning the old convention as well.
So in other words, conventions, like bodies, must have a lifespan.
That lifespan cannot be measured objectively, because it will fully depends on some perspective. Someone who sticks with a convention can experience it lasting a very long time, possibly shrinking at times, but never really entirely going away. This is also aided by bodily death, where the mind has a chance to somewhat reset the environmental conditions. A convention-loving person will tend to reset toward their choice of convention with each new death/birth of the body, imo. But because the world is ultimately stored inside the subconscious “area” of one’s own will, these resets may be limited in their ability to restore the old convention back to the extent one isn’t fully conscious of what’s happening. A fully conscious solipsist could maintain any convention indefinitely, limited only by boredom and possibly other subjective factors. But a conventional being who disowns their subconscious mind and who really depends on others constantly validating their POV will find that a fraying convention is hard to maintain indefinitely, and even after many death/birth resets, will fall away from the old convention anyway, perhaps with feelings of loss and anguish.
And of course someone who takes the initiative in abandoning convention will experience that convention as much shorter-lived than someone who continues sticking with it.
And here it helps to remember that “convention” has two meanings: social agreement, and also personal habit. In other words, convention can appear as a social agreement, while only being a personal habit all along. Which is why one can fall away from any convention without first getting that group’s approval/permission.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2016-12-19 12:28:18 (dbd409g)
I agree with everything you say, although I am fuzzy on some of the word choices, but I think I understand your intent.
Hmm. Which word choices seemed fuzzy to you? I was thinking about several problems independently and they all met in a certain way that coalesced into this so I am mixing vocabulary from a few different perspectives. Why do we manifest our experience rigidly as the senses and why do we manifest sense organs was one question. Another was a desire to tease out the Phenomenology of manifesting and interacting with other perspectives (i.e. what is the structure of our intent that makes the illusion of other sentient beings to interact with). Third, the relation of those to magical modes of conceptualizing.
In your discussion of convention you talk about a group validating each other’s will in what appears to be a relatively egalitarian way: if I can do magick, so can you. There are other options that are less symmetrical. Solipsism allows one to hold all magickal power internally while handing out limited conventional powers to the “others.” Thus it’s possible to create a world where you’re the only one who can do magick. It’s also possible to create a system of meaning which would allow one to selectively bring people into the group that can also do magick on par with you, or to a lesser degree than you. It’s all fully tunable.
Absolutely. I even mentioned solipsism in the post (although I think we should have a better word for it than solipsism because imo ALL of the radical subjectivism we talk about here is basically solipsism). It’s useful to add emphasis to that point though here. I want to explore the relationship and difference between egalitarian and solipsistic models of magick more - especially regarding serious magical powers like tp, tk, esp, resurrection, levitation, etc. What I’m working on now is understanding first the various ways these various metaphysical commitments affect our individual and/or collective modes of action and perception. I feel like grasping that is the foundation to understanding the implications and consequences of serious magical practice and the gateway to making the metaphysical shift.
A major question I’m thinking about is what the subjective experience of a fully magified perspective is, that doesn’t live in a materialist sense organ based set of sensory fields. The alternative, as a worldling would seem to be something like esp, remote sensing, tp, and intuition for experience and tk and tp over the esp, remote, tp, and intuitive sense fields for expressive intent. Or something like that. The subjective experience of a materially untethered being.
Which then will perhaps begin the cycle toward the eventual fall back into materialism: at first everyone is friendly and things go well, but as time goes on, people get bored and want to try more things, which starts to erode trust, eventually convention “ages” and becomes unsustainable, then magick is seen more and more as something bad. Instead of sharing in something wonderful, from the POV of someone who wants to be left alone or to otherwise minimize disturbances, magick will be seen as an avenue of meddling. And at first magick can be regulated, which gives us organized religion, and then eventually it is completely abandoned and we’re back to materialism again.
This here is really quite interesting. I’m not sure if I’m totally on board but I like this direction of thought.
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2016-12-24 11:53:06 (dbkd248)
Which word choices seemed fuzzy to you?
I’ll have to reread your post again, but for now I want to reply as is. What I remember is that I didn’t think it was important, which is why I didn’t say much more about it besides that comment. It was more like “oh, ok… so that’s how you put it?” It was not anything like “what does this even mean?”
although I think we should have a better word for it than solipsism because imo ALL of the radical subjectivism we talk about here is basically solipsism
I think radical subjectivism only has one hard requirement: you have to be aware of the choices you’re making. So for example, if you hold physicalist beliefs, but you feel as though the universe somehow imposes physicalism on you, then you’re not a subjective idealist because you’re not taking personal responsibility for your choice of metaphysics.
If, on the other hand, you’re fully aware of how you’re choosing to relate to your experience in the manner of physicalism, while also being aware of other options, then you’re a subjective idealist of a physicalist flavor (so not a solipsist). That’s just one example.
So subjective idealism is defined by a willingness to accept total responsibility for every element of your experience^* , which suggests a kind of basic primal solipsism in and of itself, but you can believe that there are other minds “out there” and be fully cognizant you’re choosing to believe that and knowing what at least some of the other options are, and then it’s hard to call you a 100% solipsist.
That’s because solipsism requires that your perspective be the only authoritative/real one, whereby all other perspectives are merely derivations and/or permutations of your own, and even that, only with your blessing. A 100% full blown solipsist mode will only recognize exactly one sentient being.
It’s possible to be a subjective idealist who recognizes any number of sentient beings as authoritative/real, including an infinite amount (in other words, a subjective idealist may optionally recognize even more sentient beings than the obvious ones), and as long as you take responsibility for that belief and you know you have other choices, then you’re still a subjective idealist in my book.
So upholding that the three-sided capacity of mind is fundamental and that it is perspectival by necessity is the only requirement. But beyond that how exactly you want to use that capacity is not dictated by subjective idealism.
So to use a computer analogy, I think subjective idealism is basically a boot-loader. Controlling your boot-loader gives you control over what sort of operating system (OS) you want to run, including the option of being able to boot yourself into a few different OSes. And generally I think one does need an OS to do anything useful. OSes are things like physicalism, animism, neutral monism, even transcendental idealism, panpsychism, and yes, solipsism, etc.
Subjective idealism is a very powerful entry point into pretty much any way of thinking, including back into physicalism, because it’s possible to justify physicalism under some circumstances to a subjective idealist. The good thing about knowing about subjective idealism is that it allows one to unstick from any OS, which then in turn allows one to choose an alternative OS, and do so in a relatively graceful and willing manner (as opposed to say having another OS be beaten into you, like in the old days when people made converts through force). And I claim that solipsism is an interesting and a very powerful OS, but I don’t claim that it’s the be all end all of OSes under all circumstances. Different OSes are good at different things. Solipsism is focused on de-othering as much as possible, and mitigating an element of surprise, as well as returning most of the power back into your own perspective, but pays for it in solitude and in the loss of the sensation that you live inside anything (so like, a solipsist doesn’t live inside a universe, for example). All these value judgements are subjective.
I believe all possible mental formations have their uses, even those we/you/I don’t want to be using right this moment. (So presently I am not keen on animism, but I can also see how in a different circumstance animism may be interesting too, for example.)
Also, being unstuck doesn’t mean one must avoid commitment. You can be committed and unstuck so long as you maintain awareness of other options and understand why a commitment is a form of choice (it’s a long term choice, but still a choice). One only becomes stuck if one no longer remembers that one has these other choices they could be making, or how that would work (like they no longer get how their own will works). And being stuck is not permanent either. Eventually I believe everyone must recognize themselves for what they are and not for how they appear.
It’s useful to add emphasis to that point though here. I want to explore the relationship and difference between egalitarian and solipsistic models of magick more - especially regarding serious magical powers like tp, tk, esp, resurrection, levitation, etc. What I’m working on now is understanding first the various ways these various metaphysical commitments affect our individual and/or collective modes of action and perception.
That’s interesting to me too.
What I’m working on now is understanding first the various ways these various metaphysical commitments affect our individual and/or collective modes of action and perception. I feel like grasping that is the foundation to understanding the implications and consequences of serious magical practice and the gateway to making the metaphysical shift.
You might be right. I am not sure myself. I mean, maybe this kind of compare-and-contrast style of learning is a very important key.
A major question I’m thinking about is what the subjective experience of a fully magified perspective is, that doesn’t live in a materialist sense organ based set of sensory fields.
Does the dream avatar in a lucid dream have sense organs or not? There is at least an appearance and function as though there are sense organs.
My intuition tells me that the sense organs are a result of me trying to full time isolate myself from my environment (disowning an aspect of my own mental activity, othering) and simultaneously locate myself in it. With that conception sense organs become like windows between me and my environment. They constrain me, but they also constrain everyone else around me, assuming I am imposing an egalitarian mode. So yea, I can only look forward, but I can relax and know that everyone else I am likely to meet can also only look forward, so I can sneak up from behind if I want to. Having sense organs allows for a very basic kind of privacy too, because the sense organ ranges are considered limited, so “out of sight out of mind” applies when I believe sense organs are the only valid way to gather or to get at the information that would be considered environmental by some convention.
The subjective experience of a materially untethered being.
I think someone who is materially untethered could be in many different states. One possibility is that one no longer even has a sense of an environment. Other beings are simply like other thoughts. If you think of another being, then it’s there. If you think of a place, then you’re at that place. As soon as you stop, the place is gone. You think of another place and there is that other place. It’s like being nothing in particular with the only ability to think and imagine. So like you wouldn’t need an ability to walk or to breathe. You wouldn’t need a heartbeat either. Your sense of time would also probably be extremely different too. What would be a lot of time or a little to someone like that? It would be hard to say.
This here is really quite interesting. I’m not sure if I’m totally on board but I like this direction of thought.
I want to be saying this is how it could happen, not that it must always happen like that. Subjective idealism generally opens potentials. It doesn’t close them. A subjective idealist in principle could understand even perspectives that when assumed would not be able to reciprocate and understand subjective idealism. The main task for a physicalist is to learn what is physically possible, and to then deem all else impossible. A subjective idealist as I see it wants to contemplate all manner of possibility.
So if I made it sound like that’s the only way the cycle can happen, or that there even must be some repeating cycle at all, I was just being a bit hasty. Personally I think the idea of cycles is relevant to me, but I don’t think subjective idealism demands or implies that there must be cycles.
^* During othering as a subjective idealist you would take responsibility for having disowned some aspect of your own mental activity, even if, for obvious reasons, you cannot always take total responsibility for all the specifics in that which you have disowned, because that would potentially defeat the purpose of othering. Othering is not a binary, so it’s a little bit more complicated here than what I am explaining.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2016-12-24 20:14:46 (dbkrlul)
I think radical subjectivism only has one hard requirement: you have to be aware of the choices you’re making. So for example, if you hold physicalist beliefs, but you feel as though the universe somehow imposes physicalism on you, then you’re not a subjective idealist because you’re not taking personal responsibility for your choice of metaphysics.
If, on the other hand, you’re fully aware of how you’re choosing to relate to your experience in the manner of physicalism, while also being aware of other options, then you’re a subjective idealist of a physicalist flavor (so not a solipsist). That’s just one example.
I’d want to say you are a solipsist of a physicalist flavor in this example.
So subjective idealism is defined by a willingness to accept total responsibility for every element of your experience* , which suggests a kind of basic primal solipsism in and of itself, but you can believe that there are other minds “out there” and be fully cognizant you’re choosing to believe that and knowing what at least some of the other options are, and then it’s hard to call you a 100% solipsist.
IDK, I think you don’t believe there are other minds anywhere in ‘subjective idealism’. I think you might like to imagine other possible perspectives you could take and imagine how they might look from the outside if they relate to the primary perspective you are imagining. I think you don’t imagine a different potential out there if you’ve internalized this stuff. That doesn’t even really make sense imo.
That’s because solipsism requires that your perspective be the only authoritative/real one, whereby all other perspectives are merely derivations and/or permutations of your own, and even that, only with your blessing. A 100% full blown solipsist mode will only recognize exactly one sentient being.
Solipsism says your mind is all that exists or at least is all you can know to exist. This seems about right to me as long as we know this perspective we manifest is not our mind. I’m denying that sentient beings are all independently minded I guess. They are independent perspectives though.
It’s possible to be a subjective idealist who recognizes any number of sentient beings as authoritative/real, including an infinite amount (in other words, a subjective idealist may optionally recognize even more sentient beings than the obvious ones), and as long as you take responsibility for that belief and you know you have other choices, then you’re still a subjective idealist in my book.
I agree but I want to twist the vocab. Whether you recognize one or many perspectives in your sensory world, you’re still a solipsist if you take responsibility for that and consider them all emanations from your mind.
And I claim that solipsism is an interesting and a very powerful OS, but I don’t claim that it’s the be all end all of OSes under all circumstances. Different OSes are good at different things. Solipsism is focused on de-othering as much as possible, and mitigating an element of surprise, as well as returning most of the power back into your own perspective, but pays for it in solitude and in the loss of the sensation that you live inside anything (so like, a solipsist doesn’t live inside a universe, for example). All these value judgements are subjective.
So what you call solipsism I would call some particular variety of solipsism. Maybe egotheistic solipsism instead of physicalistic solipsism.
I mean I get your vocabulary and understand it but I’m not sure it is more accurate than what I’m suggesting. Not that it matters so much.
Does the dream avatar in a lucid dream have sense organs or not? There is at least an appearance and function as though there are sense organs.
And that’s exactly what I’m talking about. How many dreams have you had where you had an experience in and of some dream world but you did so without sense organs and without the material organ of the body to express action? Sure you might do a little magick or intuition in the dream, but as a modification of the sense organ world and not as a replacement for an organ-centric system of sensation. It’s a limitation we maintain deeply in our minds. At least I know I do. And I think it has big implications for abandoning materialism.
My intuition tells me that the sense organs are a result of me trying to full time isolate myself from my environment (disowning an aspect of my own mental activity, othering) and simultaneously locate myself in it. With that conception sense organs become like windows between me and my environment. They constrain me, but they also constrain everyone else around me, assuming I am imposing an egalitarian mode. So yea, I can only look forward, but I can relax and know that everyone else I am likely to meet can also only look forward, so I can sneak up from behind if I want to. Having sense organs allows for a very basic kind of privacy too, because the sense organ ranges are considered limited, so “out of sight out of mind” applies when I believe sense organs are the only valid way to gather or to get at the information that would be considered environmental by some convention.
Exactly. But then what I want to explore is what it is like to not structure your experience in this way.
I think someone who is materially untethered could be in many different states. One possibility is that one no longer even has a sense of an environment. Other beings are simply like other thoughts. If you think of another being, then it’s there. If you think of a place, then you’re at that place. As soon as you stop, the place is gone. You think of another place and there is that other place. It’s like being nothing in particular with the only ability to think and imagine. So like you wouldn’t need an ability to walk or to breathe. You wouldn’t need a heartbeat either. Your sense of time would also probably be extremely different too. What would be a lot of time or a little to someone like that? It would be hard to say.
This is a possibility but my emphasis would be on what those experiences of places you think about would be like. In your example most people would imagine just jumping from one sense organ based perspective to another, like jumping from one dream as a human to another dream still as a human. What I’m looking to explore is a fundamentally inhuman mode of sensing and acting.
My motivation is basically a desire to better understand my options for fundamental modes of cognition.
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2016-12-26 07:51:17 (dbmf9dk)
I think you don’t imagine a different potential out there if you’ve internalized this stuff.
You can. What you have to internalize is the situations as they pertain to you. You can remain agnostic to anything else. I know what my universe is like, but is there another? I don’t have to insist on a definitive answer here as a subjective idealist. Similarly to potential, there might be some “other” potential that is forever beyond my scope, it doesn’t matter. Only the infinite potential in my scope matters to me. There might be even more potential than that, but since it has no subjective relevance, I don’t have to care for it. Given this, I don’t have to deny it either.
Solipsism says your mind is all that exists or at least is all you can know to exist.
I think it’s the former.
Think about this. How is it that there are any non-solipsists at all? Who are these people? What makes them non-solipsistic? Can you answer this one?
Whether you recognize one or many perspectives in your sensory world, you’re still a solipsist if you take responsibility for that and consider them all emanations from your mind.
What I meant was, a person could consider some things to be not emanated from their own mind (like the minds of the other living beings, for example), and as long as they took responsibility for that belief, and realize they had other choices in how to relate to their experience, they’d still be subjective idealists.
Compare and contrast: (a)-“There are other minds out there, and that’s just how it is. Nothing I can do about that.” (b)-“I believe there are other minds out there and while I could believe otherwise, I don’t. I believe there are other minds out there.” If (b) also admits that the three-sided capacity of mind is fundamental, and understands the implied by volition inescapable perspectivalism, then (b) is a subjective idealist.
It’s basically how othering works. If at first you didn’t realize you disowned something and then suddenly you realized it, you still only own the fact of disowning in a very abstract sense. It doesn’t mean you now attenuated or cancelled all disowning and its implications. To reduce disowning and/or to cancel it, one needs more than just to own the fact of disowning. One needs to produce an intent to reduce it or to cancel it. Imagine you own a pen. Is that by itself what causes writing? No. In addition to owning a pen, you must intend to write with it. Then the writing will appear. Owning is a permission in this context.
So what you call solipsism I would call some particular variety of solipsism. Maybe egotheistic solipsism instead of physicalistic solipsism.
Then you have to explain what does it mean to be a physicalist. The way you’re talking right now leads me to believe that you’ll end up saying that everyone is basically a solipsist, and they just don’t realize it. Which is something I sometimes say if I am arguing to get someone to unstick from their apprehension toward solipsism. But we need to remember that it’s possible to hold a conviction that one isn’t really a solipsist, and that these convictions have meaning and implications.
How many dreams have you had where you had an experience in and of some dream world but you did so without sense organs and without the material organ of the body to express action? Sure you might do a little magick or intuition in the dream, but as a modification of the sense organ world and not as a replacement for an organ-centric system of sensation.
I see what you mean. I’ve experienced non-sense-organ-centric ways of sensing, and of course it’s possible to enter such from waking or from dreaming when lucid, but yea, they are really weird states of mind that are hard to describe. In Buddhism I think they would be called the formless jhanas. I do not presently train myself to enter into these experiences at will, but I have experienced them sporadically, when I was training for such long time ago. And sometimes “at will” (immediately) too, but usually (so far) whenever I experienced this weirdness at will I didn’t want to do it again, lol. The more normal way to experience these states would be to concentrate on them and seemingly fail all day long and then when I am exhausted from meditation and nap, then sometimes I will have a dream where the strange thing happens. So even though we wouldn’t refer to this as “at will” it’s obvious volitional, because these episodes during naps aren’t random. Once I abandoned that practice I stopped having such episodes.
So you see how fuzzy it is to even be talking about a hard and certain distinction between “at will” and “not at will?” On some level one can surmise that everything is already “at will” in some sense. And yet we still understand the difference between an experience being as available to one as the snap of one’s fingers, or less available than that, and that difference has meaning too.
Sure you might do a little magick or intuition in the dream, but as a modification of the sense organ world and not as a replacement for an organ-centric system of sensation. It’s a limitation we maintain deeply in our minds. At least I know I do. And I think it has big implications for abandoning materialism.
You might be right. Are you saying one has to be able to let go of this limitation to really let go of materialism? Personally I don’t think so, however, I can also see how if one were to be very comfortable in such states of mind, it might help with other ways of experience because it would probably grant more fearlessness. Then again, the reverse is true too, any fearlessness developed through playing with the sense-based experiences will later translate into fearlessness toward dwelling in formless states. So if there is a relationship, it doesn’t have to be one of obvious cause-effect.
But then what I want to explore is what it is like to not structure your experience in this way.
OK, so you probably imagine I am far away from you right now. What if I am inside your body? Or on top of your finger? Or in both places at once? Or nowhere at all? As you contemplate each possibility, you’re exploring that which you wish to explore, and you’re not even having to fully abandon your sense-organ-centric way of thinking yet. But as you imagine all these options, it does seem to change your perception though, doesn’t it? Especially if for a moment you become slightly serious about each tentative proposition I have made.
This is a possibility but my emphasis would be on what those experiences of places you think about would be like. In your example most people would imagine just jumping from one sense organ based perspective to another, like jumping from one dream as a human to another dream still as a human.
Not exactly. For example, if I see through walls, I am already violating a conventional notion of sensing. If I can hear music springing from the grass, that’s not any kind of normal sensing either, nor is what most humans would consider “human.” If you see simultaneously from 10 different points in space, that’s not normal either. What I am saying is, even this distinction between sense-organ-based and non- is not a binary. You can begin with small “distortions” (compared to your memory of convention) to sensing and eventually the whole notion of sensing hardly makes any sense at some point, once enough distortions are accumulated or once they are no longer small. So my intuition tells me it’s a continuum and not a binary.
My motivation is basically a desire to better understand my options for fundamental modes of cognition.
It’s great to explore sometimes, but I say be careful with the delineations. :) Right now you appear to be under the impression that there is a fundamental and insurmountable difference between the sense-organ-based cognition and “its opposite/compliment.”
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2016-12-26 13:02:08 (dbmq3xb)
Think about this. How is it that there are any non-solipsists at all? Who are these people? What makes them non-solipsistic? Can you answer this one?
As you probably already understand, my view is that everyone is emanating their whole reality. And some realize it and some don’t. I don’t think the idea of one who isn’t emanating their whole reality from their mind is coherent - other than as a position of ignorance - that is to say they are emanating their whole reality and don’t pay too much attention to that. If everything is an emanation from your mind, is your imagination in some sense, then yeah everyone is a solipsist. All possible perspectives are solipsistic. Everyone who doesn’t recognize this is confused or inattentive in my present pov.
What I meant was, a person could consider some things to be not emanated from their own mind (like the minds of the other living beings, for example), and as long as they took responsibility for that belief, and realize they had other choices in how to relate to their experience, they’d still be subjective idealists.
I don’t think there is a clear content of something being ‘out there’ i.e. fixed and true, i.e. ‘my expectations won’t influence my experiences of it’ (nonsense because this itself is actually a confused way of expressing a sort of influence of expectations on the experiences). Something being out there means you’ll structure/narrow your expectations of it based on past experiences and present appearances. You ‘can’t’ use magick in the same sense that you ‘can’t’ use drugs - you’re not supposed to and you internalize that as a fear of insanity on the one hand and a fear of criminality on the other. Or in the same sense that you can’t move a king 3 spaces forward in one move in chess: it’s against the rules and you want to play the game.
It’s basically how othering works. If at first you didn’t realize you disowned something and then suddenly you realized it, you still only own the fact of disowning in a very abstract sense. It doesn’t mean you now attenuated or cancelled all disowning and its implications. To reduce disowning and/or to cancel it, one needs more than just to own the fact of disowning. One needs to produce an intent to reduce it or to cancel it. Imagine you own a pen. Is that by itself what causes writing? No. In addition to owning a pen, you must intend to write with it. Then the writing will appear. Owning is a permission in this context.
Everyone already has all the internal permission to transform their whole reality however they want - in a sense they do this all the time. The thing is that people are committed to and desire to not transform their reality in arbitrary ways. They have a game they’re playing that they want to keep playing.
Then you have to explain what does it mean to be a physicalist. The way you’re talking right now leads me to believe that you’ll end up saying that everyone is basically a solipsist, and they just don’t realize it. Which is something I sometimes say if I am arguing to get someone to unstick from their apprehension toward solipsism. But we need to remember that it’s possible to hold a conviction that one isn’t really a solipsist, and that these convictions have meaning and implications.
Yeah a physicalist is a solipsist that is very committed to and interested in the physicalist game to the point that they are uninterested in considering alternative games and basically never think about them. A solipsistic physicalist is someone who maintains enough distance and detachment from the physicalist game while playing it to sometimes consider alternative games.
I see what you mean. I’ve experienced non-sense-organ-centric ways of sensing, and of course it’s possible to enter such from waking or from dreaming when lucid, but yea, they are really weird states of mind that are hard to describe. In Buddhism I think they would be called the formless jhanas. I do not presently train myself to enter into these experiences at will, but I have experienced them sporadically, when I was training for such long time ago. And sometimes “at will” (immediately) too, but usually (so far) whenever I experienced this weirdness at will I didn’t want to do it again, lol. The more normal way to experience these states would be to concentrate on them and seemingly fail all day long and then when I am exhausted from meditation and nap, then sometimes I will have a dream where the strange thing happens. So even though we wouldn’t refer to this as “at will” it’s obvious volitional, because these episodes during naps aren’t random. Once I abandoned that practice I stopped having such episodes.
This is quite interesting.
So you see how fuzzy it is to even be talking about a hard and certain distinction between “at will” and “not at will?” On some level one can surmise that everything is already “at will” in some sense. And yet we still understand the difference between an experience being as available to one as the snap of one’s fingers, or less available than that, and that difference has meaning too.
Well some things that we want with various intensities stand unopposed and others may stand quite opposed by contradictory desires of various intensities. In fact, those desires and intensities may fluctuate and priorities may shift, sometimes in a cyclical manner of smaller or larger scales of time. Moods are an escape of this.
You might be right. Are you saying one has to be able to let go of this limitation to really let go of materialism? Personally I don’t think so, however, I can also see how if one were to be very comfortable in such states of mind, it might help with other ways of experience because it would probably grant more fearlessness. Then again, the reverse is true too, any fearlessness developed through playing with the sense-based experiences will later translate into fearlessness toward dwelling in formless states. So if there is a relationship, it doesn’t have to be one of obvious cause-effect.
I think I’m wanting to emphasize awareness of these types of states as options because I want to know my options and see what if anything I want to change and how fundamentally.
Not exactly. For example, if I see through walls, I am already violating a conventional notion of sensing. If I can hear music springing from the grass, that’s not any kind of normal sensing either, nor is what most humans would consider “human.” If you see simultaneously from 10 different points in space, that’s not normal either. What I am saying is, even this distinction between sense-organ-based and non- is not a binary. You can begin with small “distortions” (compared to your memory of convention) to sensing and eventually the whole notion of sensing hardly makes any sense at some point, once enough distortions are accumulated or once they are no longer small. So my intuition tells me it’s a continuum and not a binary.
I agree with this 100%. You might say our present experiential model is a form of self-restricted remote sensing and that we are committed to telekinetically moving the body in the shapes of our adjustments of the positions and directions of our remote senses and that we telepathically read other people’s intentions and manifest them in our esp remote sensing fields as bodily movements. I.e. we are already telekinetic and using esp and telepathy, but we maintain highly restricted commitments about how to use those powers.
It’s great to explore sometimes, but I say be careful with the delineations. :) Right now you appear to be under the impression that there is a fundamental and insurmountable difference between the sense-organ-based cognition and “its opposite/compliment.”
I think you recognized something here. After thinking about it I think I have more clearly understood the blurriness although I think there is an opposite side of the continuum from sense organ based modes of cognition, but that such a pov may be tough to talk about in ordinary English (although I’ve got some ideas).
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2017-01-01 15:07:25 (dbuvbi4)
As you probably already understand, my view is that everyone is emanating their whole reality. And some realize it and some don’t. I don’t think the idea of one who isn’t emanating their whole reality from their mind is coherent - other than as a position of ignorance - that is to say they are emanating their whole reality and don’t pay too much attention to that. If everything is an emanation from your mind, is your imagination in some sense, then yeah everyone is a solipsist. All possible perspectives are solipsistic. Everyone who doesn’t recognize this is confused or inattentive in my present pov.
I can see this. But it’s possible to regard mental states as just mental states. Meaning, you don’t have to regard one as the truth, and others as confusion. You can, but don’t have to. When we talk about solipsism here, we are trying to create a distinction between solipsism and some types of non-solipsism. Then some sort of non-solipsism must also have some subjective meaning and purpose as a possible (way of) cognition. Even if the truth of non-solipsistic cognitions is not objective or provable, it doesn’t ruin or cancel the potential meaning of those cognitions.
So you can regard physicalists, for example, as ‘secret solipsists’ (and for the purpose of challenging some people’s preconceptions I may say something similar myself), but that doesn’t mean that’s what they are in any objective sense. That’s one way to relate to this kind of aspect of one’s experience.
Personally I aim to rule my solipsism without myself being ruled by it. (It’s non-trivial to rule something without in turn being ruled by the very thing you’re ruling.) This means while I recognize its power and relevance, I will not give it absolutely everything so as to entirely deprive other possibilities of meaning. Of course that’s just me. I don’t say everyone should be exactly like me in this regard.
I can be humaning without being a human. I can be solipsing without being a solipsist. The possibilities are endless. Even if I want to solipse (verb) for a trillion subjective years, I personally feel that it doesn’t warrant getting stuck there. As far as I am concerned there is no set of gloves so good that it would warrant gluing them permanently to one’s hands.
Everyone already has all the internal permission to transform their whole reality however they want - in a sense they do this all the time.
I was talking about doing it consciously instead of secretly/unconsciously.
The thing is that people are committed to and desire to not transform their reality in arbitrary ways. They have a game they’re playing that they want to keep playing.
I agree. It’s a bit of a generalization, but I think it’s a fair one.
I agree with this 100%. You might say our present experiential model is a form of self-restricted remote sensing and that we are committed to telekinetically moving the body in the shapes of our adjustments of the positions and directions of our remote senses and that we telepathically read other people’s intentions and manifest them in our esp remote sensing fields as bodily movements. I.e. we are already telekinetic and using esp and telepathy, but we maintain highly restricted commitments about how to use those powers.
I agree. Magick is both what keeps the world as it appears, and what can change its appearance. It is both rule-setting and rule-breaking. It is ultimately any and all operation of one’s will. But conventionally we would recognize only the unusual manifestations as possibly being magickal.
After thinking about it I think I have more clearly understood the blurriness although I think there is an opposite side of the continuum from sense organ based modes of cognition, but that such a pov may be tough to talk about in ordinary English (although I’ve got some ideas).
We’d probably not need to talk about it. I don’t know. Maybe we would just have the gleam of understanding, and not even in our eyes. Just in the mind. We would just know stuff. People talk because (usually) they think they have to deliver information somewhere where it isn’t yet. Since we wouldn’t labor under such a notion, our talking would be similar to silence and our silence similar to talking.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-01-02 00:18:51 (dbv6cxm)
When we talk about solipsism here, we are trying to create a distinction between solipsism and some types of non-solipsism. Then some sort of non-solipsism must also have some subjective meaning and purpose as a possible (way of) cognition. Even if the truth of non-solipsistic cognitions is not objective or provable, it doesn’t ruin or cancel the potential meaning of those cognitions.
I think I’m saying there are no non-solipsistic perspectives. To maintain a mode of more expanded or more limited possibilities for yourself is eminently volitional. A more physicalist person is a solipsist and a more deity-minded person is also a solipsist. Imo, solipsism is a meta-paradigm. Basically I’m using the word in the same way you use subjective idealism. I’m just thinking maybe solipsism is a better choice of terminology? A person can be more conscious or more unconscious of their solipsism - and those on the more unconscious end might have tendencies to make confused statements like denying solipsism. In what way is this like giving solipsism the power instead of having power over it as you claim?
Everyone already has all the internal permission to transform their whole reality however they want - in a sense they do this all the time.
I was talking about doing it consciously instead of secretly/unconsciously.
That’s more a continuum than a binary. Even things you do unconsciously are still not totally unconscious and conscious things are just a bit unconscious. Besides, people change their reality consciously often - e.g. internalizing a view because of reading a science article. It’s just that they are committed to changing their beliefs in certain ways - according to certain commitments. They don’t want to change their beliefs in other ways. So a physicalist atheist will e.g. alter expectations based on science reports but not based on what they might like to expect (magick). I think any internal permission they lack is rooted in a conflicting desire to remain scientifically minded.
We’d probably not need to talk about it. I don’t know. Maybe we would just have the gleam of understanding, and not even in our eyes. Just in the mind. We would just know stuff. People talk because (usually) they think they have to deliver information somewhere where it isn’t yet. Since we wouldn’t labor under such a notion, our talking would be similar to silence and our silence similar to talking.
:) Now that’s some fun stuff to think about.
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2017-01-07 15:06:20 (dc3ufvf)