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Ego-- harmful delusion or pragmatic necessity?
#11
RE: Ego-- harmful delusion or pragmatic necessity?
(April 27, 2015 at 5:48 am)bennyboy Wrote:

Or should I use science as a kind of razor, using it to identify and destroy those parts of my sense of self which are delusional, or counter-productive?  It seems to me the complete annihilation of the self should give one the most objective power of observation and analysis-- but is this paying too high a price?
Mybold.

Depends on the value you place on objectivity and analysis.

Lots of life persists quite nicely without ego, for example, plants, plankton,
or the large parts of your neural network responsible for acid/base homeostasis and temperature regulation.
AFAIK, they don't spend a lot of time reflecting over this decision.  It was made for them by the chain of events leading to their existence.

If you go null, what's the point?  You'd just be another tree.
BTW, can you clarify what is doing the 'observation' if you are gone?
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat? Huh
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#12
RE: Ego-- harmful delusion or pragmatic necessity?
Well, if science is our best path toward truth, and is based on honest and accurate observation, then the point would be to completely remove bias and delusion from the process of observation, therefore resulting in the purest possible science, and the most efficient pursuit of truth.

I'm not so sure that an egoless person would be a tree. Such a person would still be able to interact with the world: talk, walk, think, observe.

(April 28, 2015 at 12:51 pm)wallym Wrote:
(April 28, 2015 at 10:54 am)Rhythm Wrote: We use science all the time without -being- scientists or transforming ourselves into objective whatsits.  Toddlers do it, hell, infants do it.  I think you'll be able to manage to continue using science properly without making any changes.  

If you aren't going to change how you live based on the scientific conclusions, what's the point of pursuing the issue?  Makes more sense just to live in ignorance and not worry about it.

That's the thing that mystifies me-- how rarely the scientific process is turned toward the self. We want to know every little thing about the universe, but have so little understanding of what it is like to be ourselves.
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#13
RE: Ego-- harmful delusion or pragmatic necessity?
(April 28, 2015 at 7:01 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Well, if science is our best path toward truth, and is based on honest and accurate observation, then the point would be to completely remove bias and delusion from the process of observation, therefore resulting in the purest possible science, and the most efficient pursuit of truth.

I'm not so sure that an egoless person would be a tree.  Such a person would still be able to interact with the world: talk, walk, think, observe.


(April 28, 2015 at 12:51 pm)wallym Wrote: If you aren't going to change how you live based on the scientific conclusions, what's the point of pursuing the issue?  Makes more sense just to live in ignorance and not worry about it.

That's the thing that mystifies me-- how rarely the scientific process is turned toward the self.  We want to know every little thing about the universe, but have so little understanding of what it is like to be ourselves.

Perhaps it's an issue of motivation.  Some wish to know to satisfy a natural impulse they have.  But the "I fucking love science" crowd is only satisfying their impulse to mimic the praised behavior of understanding the universe/ourselves?

I think the science/philosophical arguments are happening, it just hasn't gotten the stigma of being 'intellectual' yet to draw in people who wish to believe they are intellectuals.

Unfortunately, for now, the discourse seems to be very Theistic-like, in that it's "I have a 'feeling' of how things are, and will look to create a reality that leads to that conclusion."  Even if it involves believing in a few imaginary non-scientific things.
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#14
RE: Ego-- harmful delusion or pragmatic necessity?
(April 27, 2015 at 5:48 am)bennyboy Wrote: With the increase of an objective world view-- specifically, of a scientific process for arriving at truths-- I'm curious what you guys think about the role of the ego in understanding the world we observe....Or should I use science as a kind of razor, using it to identify and destroy those parts of my sense of self which are delusional....

I doubt our world view is any more objective than the world views of Hatshepsut's court at Waset back in 1478 BCE. The scientific method itself is certainly better than personal opinion if you want objectivity, but that hardly means such impassion will transfer over to the worldviews of those who feel that science is the only or best way of answering all questions. In fact that last clause (underlined) represents a most subjective opinion if you ask me.

Who says science is best? I should know; the nice folks at the hospital just treated me for a leg abscess of the sort that killed King Henry VIII. But to say that scientific medicine is more effective at saving lives is not to say that its advocacy is objective. We simply can't get our ego and our preferences out of the way of our understanding. For ego is a component of understanding: Argumentation, scientific or political, is never episcopal but always proceeds from a point of view. Lowering of death rates through medicine has contributed to modern global overpopulation. And science has brought us thermonuclear weapons that never horrified the English of Henry's day. So, I see science as a mixed bag of good and bad.

The Occam's Razor you're thinking of shaving with this morning requires a bit of cream if you want a smooth shave. Occam's Razor is a philosophical principle and therefore somewhat subjective even if useful. Psychologists use the term "delusional" to refer to people who aren't oriented with respect to everyday reality. From your writing, I doubt you have any serious problems with delusion, like the fellows who hear God commanding them might. In other words, don't worry.  Smile

(April 27, 2015 at 5:02 pm)wallym Wrote: I think evolution has done such a marvelous job at creating the illusions we live...

I find it odd that Father Darwin saw a need to create illusions in the first place. Why should the brain, as a computer, require that it think it is doing one thing when it is really doing another?

(April 28, 2015 at 12:47 am)bennyboy Wrote: Let's say, by an interest in science and disciplined objectivity, I discover that I am not what I've always defined myself to be.  What if studies of the brain lead me to see free will, for example, as an illusion?

I suspect you're thinking of psychology lab studies that show a decision to press a button precedes conscious awareness of making the decision. In that sense it makes sense to call free will an illusion. Yet as long as the decision is made by your own brain instead of some external thing or person, how is it that your will is not free?
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#15
RE: Ego-- harmful delusion or pragmatic necessity?
(April 30, 2015 at 9:30 am)Hatshepsut Wrote:
(April 27, 2015 at 5:02 pm)wallym Wrote: I think evolution has done such a marvelous job at creating the illusions we live...

I find it odd that Father Darwin saw a need to create illusions in the first place. Why should the brain, as a computer, require that it think it is doing one thing when it is really doing another?
Interesting question.  Possibly, it's just a side effect.  Once you start the thinking bus, it's going to go willy-nilly.  Self-consciousness could be a mental appendix.   Perhaps a computer brain just doesn't work on it's own, and requires the illusion to properly function.  Perhaps the illusion serves as a carrot for the computer brain.  Quite honestly, I haven't gotten this far yet!
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#16
RE: Ego-- harmful delusion or pragmatic necessity?
(April 28, 2015 at 12:47 am)bennyboy Wrote: It seems to me that Buddhists in particular, but ascetic mystics of many traditions, have arrived at this conclusion, and followed this path.  I mean, I've seen a Buddhist book directly entitled "Meditations on the Nature of Emptiness."  And yet they are almost universally mocked as agents of "woo" by those of us who haven't divested ourselves of the pleasant illusions and delusions of ego.  I wonder, which party is most capable of science, by which I mean the clear-minded observation of reality?

The problem is that such people have attained a certain result by the practice, but have adopted fanciful explanations for what that result is and why it is. The fact that different brands of woo layered on top seem not to matter one whit to the result suggests that the woo is an extraneous imposition — the woo doesn't matter, it's the practice. But the woo has become embedded in our culture(s) to the effect that the explanation that the practice rids you of ego — which is part of the woo — is the reality. It's mistaking metaphysics about the practice, which is likely wrong, for the nature of the result. The explanation — which is just religious horse hockey — has come to be mistaken for the reality.

I'm interested in meditation because of the possible effects on the brain. But those effects are unlikely to be as the mystics describe them. What the actual brain / psychological effects are is still largely unknown. I don't think adopting a woo filled explanation of it gets us any closer to that goal, except as a descriptive report of the subjective experience.
[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
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#17
RE: Ego-- harmful delusion or pragmatic necessity?
(May 1, 2015 at 11:25 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: The problem is that such people have attained a certain result by the practice, but have adopted fanciful explanations for what that result is and why it is.  The fact that different brands of woo layered on top seem not to matter one whit to the result suggests that the woo is an extraneous imposition — the woo doesn't matter, it's the practice.  But the woo has become embedded in our culture(s) to the effect that the explanation that the practice rids you of ego — which is part of the woo — is the reality.  It's mistaking metaphysics about the practice, which is likely wrong, for the nature of the result.  The explanation — which is just religious horse hockey — has come to be mistaken for the reality.

I'm interested in meditation because of the possible effects on the brain.  But those effects are unlikely to be as the mystics describe them.  What the actual brain / psychological effects are is still largely unknown.  I don't think adopting a woo filled explanation of it gets us any closer to that goal, except as a descriptive report of the subjective experience.
Yes, I agree with this very much. However, looking at quotations or teachings of both the Buddha and subsequent buddhists, I think it's easy enough to determine which are purely treatises on mental experience and the nature of delusion, and which are speculative BS about karma and rebirth etc. Also, modern western Buddhists (some of them anyway) seem determined to reconcile the process of meditation with modern philosophy or science, which would be why Sam Harris, for example, can comfortably call himself a Buddhist atheist.

I think psychology lost something when introspectionism was snuffed out as a scientific process in the 1920s. Surely, subjects with better control over their mental function would allow for richer results even when it comes to measuring brain waves, blood flow, etc. In fact, a very well-trained subject might even be instructed to modify his experience in ways normally only possible through selective brain damage. I've heard of the mental feats of some Buddhist monks, and I believe them for the most part to be true, if not literally true in terms of the woo content you are talking about.

(April 30, 2015 at 9:59 am)wallym Wrote:
(April 30, 2015 at 9:30 am)Hatshepsut Wrote: I find it odd that Father Darwin saw a need to create illusions in the first place. Why should the brain, as a computer, require that it think it is doing one thing when it is really doing another?
Interesting question.  Possibly, it's just a side effect.  Once you start the thinking bus, it's going to go willy-nilly.  Self-consciousness could be a mental appendix.   Perhaps a computer brain just doesn't work on it's own, and requires the illusion to properly function.  Perhaps the illusion serves as a carrot for the computer brain.  Quite honestly, I haven't gotten this far yet!
I think the essence of the philosophical problem is this: "mind" represents a top-down view, while physics represents a bottom-up view. But you can't really answer "why" questions with bottom-up views: we can't track all the QM particles in the point of a pencil, let alone in the human brain, and we have pretty good reason to believe we never will.
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#18
RE: Ego-- harmful delusion or pragmatic necessity?
Science is best.

By that, I mean science is the one and only reliable method we have for learning the truth about reality. If anyone has a better method to propose, which is as reliable or better, or can investigate things accurately science cannot, I'd love to hear about it!

Call it an argument from ignorance if you want, technically it is. But "science" can be seen as a metaphor for "our best tools to get the truth". This is not a static set of tools. And I don't understand the idea that we should not use those tools because there "might be better ones". Until we find better ones, these are our best. As we find better ones, we include them, discarding older ones if appropriate, or improve them. And they work. That's the important bit. They work. "Other ways of knowing things" have not been demonstrated to work outside the head of people using them, in relation to objective truth. If they worked, they would be science too.

How would we show another method is better than science and that science should be abandoned... With science!

Science! I'm off to have sex with science now, brb.

I'm talking about the truth of reality, of course. Science does not pretend to be able to tell you what you "should" do, other than by using predictive models to analyse the results of your actions.
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#19
RE: Ego-- harmful delusion or pragmatic necessity?
(May 2, 2015 at 3:34 am)robvalue Wrote: And they work. That's the important bit. They work. "Other ways of knowing things" have not been demonstrated to work outside the head of people using them, in relation to objective truth. If they worked, they would be science too.

Science! I'm off to have sex with science now, brb.

I'm talking about the truth of reality, of course. Science does not pretend to be able to tell you what you "should" do, other than by using predictive models to analyse the results of your actions.

That depends what you mean by science.  Science literally just means "knowing."  However, science as we mean it today involves certain rules, like the ability to share objective observations, that don't really work for a sicence of the mind.  And by mind, I don't mean brain function-- I mean what it's like to experience and think.

For example, Wundt made careful observations, but (from Google): "Wundt analyzes the constituents of the mind by using a method called introspection, which involves the subjective observation of one's own experience. This became the reason why structuralism gradually faded out, based on the unreliability of this method."

So would you say that things you learn about your mind by watching your thoughts, attempting to control your feelings, etc. are science?  They certainly represent a kind of knowledge, but they are not easy to quantify in objective terms that can be shared reliably.
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#20
RE: Ego-- harmful delusion or pragmatic necessity?
I guess you could call it an internal science. You may learn things that you consider true and helpful about yourself which can then be somehow applied in a positive way. The mistake people often make is to attribute external things in the real world to this introspection, as if they have learned something about ghosts or something.

But for it to be general science, if you cannot offer some way for others to validate your findings, then I don't see how it is. But if you do achieve something, you can study how and why it happened, thus leading to science.

Again, stuff about your own brain, viewed through the filter if your brain may offer "internal truths" but I see science as dealing with objective truth.

So I guess it comes down to how you define science exactly. I tend to think that if you're using at least some logical methodology, then it's science-esque even if it's not hard science. So if you're doing introspection properly, I could accept it as science-esque.

Not that it matters what I think, I'd have to adjust my answers based on hard definitions of science, or the ones being used in whatever conversation.
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Please visit my website here! It's got lots of information about atheism/theism and support for new atheists.

Index of useful threads and discussions
Index of my best videos
Quickstart guide to the forum
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