(April 28, 2015 at 12:47 am)bennyboy Wrote:(April 27, 2015 at 7:00 pm)Surgenator Wrote: Why do you have to choose between the two? Why can't you remove the delusions and enhance your life at the same time? That's what I would do.
Yes, that's the essence of the question. But let's say one takes seriously your advice, what then?
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? Should I not then look at acts of will as meaningless expressions of the myth of self, and conquer that myth through ascetic denial of pleasure or luxury in life? Let's say that in the interest of the best kind of science, that requiring a pure objective perspective, I struggle to lift that pleasant veil, and find underneath it nothing at all? Certainly, this would be the ego's equivalent of discovering that all the world is empty space, or mostly so.
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?
Is it possible to "use" science, and still do it properly? Or must one transform oneself, at a fundamental level, INTO a scientist, by which I mean not a profession but the embodiment of the ideal of pure objectivity?
I'm going to ignore the freewill part because it is another discussion in itself.
Lets work from an example, the enjoyment of swimming. If the neurologist/physiologist tells you that your enjoyment of swimming is nothing more than the endorphins released from the exercise swimming provides. I would not suggest that you should stop swimming because you found a mechanistic reason you do it. That mechanistic reason is what helps define you.
The reasons on why you act and think the way you do do not take away who you are. They define who you are. If you know who you are, you can try to make yourself into who you want to be. This is what I mean by removing and enchancing at the same time. You can remove something you don't like about yourself and replace it with something you do like.
Unlike the buddhist, I don't believe that you can remove, you can only replace.
