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Which came first?

Lost Ego

Lost Ego

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Is the mind(or self or whatever you want to call it) an extension of the world or is the world an extension of the mind?
 
i recall there being some tribe who believed that human eyes did not function by catching light, but by projecting the world.
 
yes psyduck but which do u believe in?

l2 i tend to lean more towards that end. if it is so then i think the same can be said for all of our other senses.
 
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more info on "mind(or self or whatever you want to call it)" please.

the only way i can see it being anything but obviously an "extension of the world" is if the definition of the above terms are not of the traditional conception (mind = a person's consciousness, self = an individual). if you are referring to the spark of life, then yes, it could be argued to have projected the universe.
 
L2R said:
i recall there being some tribe who believed that human eyes did not function by catching light, but by projecting the world.
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I remember being in primary school and the teacher telling us how eye's worked.. when asked which way round it is nearly all of us put our hands up for projecting out of our eyes. We do receive signals from the world around us but to this day no one has shown how or where the image of the world outside of us is reconstructed. It just "happens" in the brain they say. Investigating the question is very revealing to what we really are.
 
l2 when i say mind im just referring to the brain - our understanding of what creates perception. when you die, can you imagine the world going on? of course not, without a brain there is no world, no way to comprehend what is. this world, or my world rather, is born when im born and dies when i die. i know thats not what your looking for, im trying to trace my beliefs back until i can figure out where my foundation for this thought started.
 
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sight is only one of 5 senses. i dont believe the world is ever there though. this thread isn't about me knowing all. i want to see your points of view on the subject. did we really spring forth from the earth or is it the earth that sprang forth from our perception?
 
we (as individuals) sprang from the earth, absolutely. there is no question of it. perception has no relevance to this question at all.
 
we (as individuals) sprang from the earth, absolutely. there is no question of it. perception has no relevance to this question at all.
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^^^ or?

the world is produced by YOUR mind, and YOU decided to read some books about darwinism "in" this (produced) world and YOU became convinced that YOUR produced body (which YOU 'produce' in harmony with YOUR subjective experiences, such as pain, hunger, etc.) is the result of (and reducible to) material processes, or perhaps YOU took some more effort, and YOU became a researcher in biology/geology and YOU made a very nice coherent system of empirical knowledge provided by YOUR senses and YOUR intellectual activity.

p.s. sorry for the caps :) (in the end, maybe your mind is producing this appearence anyway, so don't blame me ;) this is, you)
 
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L2R said:
we (as individuals) sprang from the earth, absolutely. there is no question of it. perception has no relevance to this question at all.
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Berkeley, Schopenhauer, and whole schools of idealism would care to disagree. I'm not going to argue either way because I really don't have an answer, but I don't think you can simply assert that as fact.

"esse est percipi"

I think perception is quite relevant to this question.
 
i may hallucinate things of my own creation, but it does not follow that i am creating the environment which is located outside of my body with my individual thoughts. the world inside my head and the world in which we have evolved as a species are two different things.
 
L2R said:
i may hallucinate things of my own creation, but it does not follow that i am creating the environment which is located outside of my body with my individual thoughts. the world inside my head and the world in which we have evolved as a species are two different things.
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proof? :)
 
other people exist.

they could all be zombies, granted. however i'd rather live with convincing zombies unawares than follow the insanity that is to believe i'm the only thing alive. on the balance of probabilities, this latter notion is more likely a diseased thought process based on extreme egotism and paranoia. it is essentially saying that the entire universe revolves around me. bit silly, no?
 
^
"that is silly" isn't a valid reason not to believe something. it may be silly but it's possible. Can you prove it impossible? Please do kind sir

wanna hear a joke? its highly probable that a planet could ever sustain life. LOLOLOL see where i'm going with this? a balance of probabilities is completely idiotic. Who cares how probable it is that i'm the only being that ever existed. Possible is the keyword here, is it probable we're all one being, is it probable one being, greater than everything, created us indiviually, is it probable the energy within us can be recycled, is it probable that there is no god????

I'm open to all possible explanations but i won't be able to get any one scenario out of my head unless there is a valid counter example. These scenarios are the foundation of all of our thoughts, ideas and beliefs and i take them very seriously. And the reason im focusing on this particular one is because it scares the shit outa me lol
 
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L2R said:
other people exist.

they could all be zombies, granted. however i'd rather live with convincing zombies unawares than follow the insanity that is to believe i'm the only thing alive. on the balance of probabilities, this latter notion is more likely a diseased thought process based on extreme egotism and paranoia. it is essentially saying that the entire universe revolves around me. bit silly, no?
Click to expand...

It is not essentially saying that the entire universe revolves around me, I suggest you actually read a bit of idealist philosophy before mischaracterizing its views like that. Also, you're conflating solipsism with idealism - Berkeleyan idealism, for instance, does not assert that there is only one mind, only that to exist is to be perceived - but there are still multiple minds perceiving things, and there is one eternal mind (God) that perceives things at all times, which accounts for why things don't fade out of existence when people stop perceiving (as in sleep).

More interesting, though, I think is that many elements of idealist or Schopenhauerian philosophy jive quite well with psychedelia - if you believe there's any veracity to the experience of ego death/ego diminishment, it's not so wild to believe that each of us is in fact one mode or expression of the same fundamental thing. And, given how radically different reality appears to us at the sensorial level then it does at this "fundamental" level that we access through such states as ego diminishment, if we are fundamentally expressions of the same, noumenal thing, then it would follow that we precede the universe as we sense it, and not the other way around. It's not really an egoistic approach, because it's not that I create the perceived universe, it's rather that we all do, given that at the basic level of reality, we're all one thing.

Like I said, it's not something anyone can prove and I don't have a particular stance on it, but I don't think it's silly at all. At the very least, I would read some Schopenhauer before condemning his views, especially since I'm not the best person to condense his views. :)
 
i was talking to both of you (and psyduck), and it's cool.

lost, to expect certainty is to approach the subject with an entirely unrealistic expectation. it's simply not going to happen, so probability is a valueable factor to consider when having such thoughts. as is preference, because at the end of the day, we function within these contexts we find ourselves in. in the aid of that functionality, it is preferable to steer away from insanity. and personally, having had a taste of that cake, i don't like it at all. even if ultimately it is true, it is unverifiable, so it is pointless to make your own life difficult.

IamMe, i must confess that my responses have been quickly done. I didn't go beyond a basic philosophical consideration. This is why i asked for clarity of definition before providing my thoughts. I wanted to avoid those annoying semantic problems, and it looks like i have failed in that regard. Sorry. I took the meaning of individual mind/brain/creator of perception to not include any semblance of collective unconsciousness/divine spark/creative force.

also, if i may request: please instead of dropping philo names and jargon, use laymen terms to explain the meaning of them and how those meanings apply. i have done a bit of phi in uni, but at the moment my head is swimming in ancient hst and political theory (not to mention industrial relations where i work), and i'm neither interested nor resourced with enough time right now to look stuff up to interpret both meaning and application here.
 
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