Free Will & Social Cohesion

On my interpretation of the doctrine of karma (action), the abandonment of the belief in free will is perfectly compatible with social cohesion. TBC

Always beginning, but never again!

Currently, there is much work being done in the philosophy of mind on the topic of consciousness. It is truly baffling. I'm wondering if I should dare speak my "mind" on the topic; although not having much of a following it may not matter to anyone but a few. However, here goes.

The majority of philosophical works on the topic--there are some exceptions, notably Galen Strawson--appear to take the phenomenal, if not ontological, existence of consciousness for granted. Some very important observations are made the aim of which, in most cases, is to theoretically clarify the nature of consciousness for a better understanding of our human experience. Indeed, much of what is said is highly useful, not simply for theoretical purposes, but for those of us who endeavor to learn the lessons of experience to alleviate our levels of dissatisfaction. This, of course, is what Buddhism, Yoga, Samkhya, Vedanta, Sufism, and other so called "spiritual" practices have aimed at in their respective studies of consciousness. However, as useful as much of this work has been, for both the theoretical and practical, it seems to have reached a sort of impasse. I will explain as we progress. Obviously, much can and probably should be discussed here regarding the many theories regarding consciousness, I have but one single preoccupation at this time. It came to me in the form of a question, somewhat of a rhetorical question, but to me a very useful tool to understand the limits of most investigations into consciousness. So, I offer this question to those of us who do love the philosophy of mind and wish to see it "progress" to the point wherein the theoretical gives way to the practical mission of minimizing human suffering.

Here is the question: "What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of consciousness"?

It appears to be a simple question, one that might be answered from biological, neurological, psychological, epistemological, ontological, phenomenological, etc. angles. However, my answer to the question may reveal aspects of the study of consciousness that few of us have considered, at least from what I've seen of current literature on the topic.

Now, there are several elementary ways to grapple with this question that yield, what I take to be, valuable results. Let's take a look at some of these approaches that may come in the form of questions or propositions or both.

So, we are now ready to take a close look at our experience and examine "consciousness." Well, our first step is to assume the intellectual posture of looking. But what exactly are we looking at. Our thought can only "catch" what has just occurred. It cannot capture what is, it can only capture what was, the past, just out of our reach. The evanescent nature of experience, i.e., the movement of time, guarantees a sort of failure. We may indeed believe that our thought captures what has just occurred, but what is our guarantee? How do we know for sure? Surprisingly, we have also overlooked something very important. We have operated on a presupposition, the presupposition that thought can, in some way, "know" what occurred in the immediate past, our just arisen experience. As the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides said: "Thinking and that because of there is thinking are the same thing. In fact without Being, in which it is expressed,...you will not find thinking: in fact nothing else exists or will exist outside of Being...." Parmenides thought that thinking and the basis of thinking are one and the same. So, in some unimaginable way, thinking is the way (methodos) of Being, of what is. It is through thinking that we access what is, being. How is this possible? How does thinking become identified with what is? For us then, it would be possible for thought, in some way, to be identical with what is when we look at our experience. Is that the case? Can my thought "capture" an experience, a time, that has just occurred? How do I know that it does? What does it mean to capture here? Does thought "reflect" reality? Does thought mirror reality? Notice we have resorted to metaphors and we deem them apt only on the basis that we want them to be apt. We are driven by the impulse of karmically determined movements of thought. Metaphors seem to work, but to what extent? When it comes to a scrutiny of our just-lived experience is thought 100% accurate? How do we simply accept the notion that thought does indeed reflect what is? In other words, we have arrived at a radical level of skepticism.

I am certainly not proposing skepticism. However, I am proposing that we take a look at this relation of thought and what is, or in our case, what was, and ask ourselves how far we are willing to go in trusting the historically conditioned nature of language, i.e., thought. This is particularly important with regard to the inquiry demanded by a philosophy of mind. So, where do we get the historically generated, or if you prefer, karmically determined notion of consciousness?

Well, supposedly, John Locke (1632-1704) the great British philosopher, introduced the word to Western philosophy. Since then, it has taken on a life of its own. What has happened is the many philosophers have been historically determined to posit realities, performing an act of reification, adding consciousness to their list of existents, on the basis of their ability to think it. Once posited and reified into an existent, albeit in many cases a phenomenal reality, consciousness has become a most problematic "thing" that must be explored and characterized.

"Consciousness" may be, for some analyses, a useful term; but that is all it is, a term. Once thought, we are tempted into thinking of it as a thing and that's when all sorts of problems begin, such as the mind/body problem.

Craving is a battle we wage against impermanence.

No Choice At All

Have you ever tried or, for that matter, conceived of not acting? How would it be possible to refrain from acting? I cannot conceive of halting my actions. Even committing suicide would be an act, the last one. Sleeping is even a sort of act. Dreaming is an act. Waking is an act. What can we do to stop acting? Honestly, I don't see any way of refraining from action. We have no choice but to act. (Shakespeare had it wrong.) So, once we admit that inaction is not humanly possible, we are left with several issues that call for our attention. One is knowing what to do. Knowing what to do requires that we have some sort of cognitive grasp of our situation--however fluid. In short, in the words of the famous 20th century Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, "We must know what there is in order to know what to do." I suggest we consider these two theses prior to moving on. The first is admitting, with all honesty, that we cannot be inactive, even for a moment. The second is that to act we need knowledge. So action and knowledge are like a coin--heads and tails. They are distinguishable but never separable. Dwell on this issue for some time until you get a grasp of their inseparability. It is important that you understand, to some extent, the relation between knowledge and action before moving on.

On the way to rehumanize all life....

Time is the all-embracing meaningful movement of each of our lives. We cannot separate time from significance, nor significance from life's movement. There is no "natural world." Nature is an interpretation that subtracts, or better, abstracts, human life from experience. A natural world is a world imagined; it is a [fantasy] world free from the perspectival dynamic of a truly human and living world. The natural world, the historical origins of which live in Ancient Greece, is that abstraction which--when seen through a moralistic lens of ecological thinking--blinds us to a world that pulsates with our breath of life giving rise to human experience.

Here is an illustration of how our "world," i.e., our experience, becomes dehumanized or decultured. Not long ago, European archaeologists began looking at the many megalithic structures, such as Stonehenge or Gobekli Tepe, that have been part of the European and Middle Eastern scenery for many centuries. Archaeologists, being what they are, looked at these megaliths and could only guess what they were, when they were constructed,  and hence, what purpose they served. Nor did they know how these megaliths were constructed. Now, they have constructed several theories or "stories" that serve to answer questions of meaning, construction, use and the like. Now, when these archaeologists and those of us who also take interest in these stone creations look at them, we perceive something altogether different than our 18th or 19th century explorers or archaeologists perceived. We now are "educated" to perceive "places of worship," or "sacred sites," or examples of "sacred geometry." We know what they are, or think we know. So, they are no longer enigmatic, but form a component of our knowledge store of ancient civilizations. We have actually changed what is seen when we gaze at the megaliths.

Now, imagine that everything that we humans perceive or cognize (conceptualize), or "know" in the most general sense, has gone this route from "something unknown" to something "known." All of what each of us knows would then start as "something-to-be-dealt-with" to finding a place in the ensemble of our knowledge. I say "something-to-be-dealt-with" because to come upon something unknown is to come upon a problem, something to be made sense of so that we know what to do with that something--whatever it may turn out to be. In this case, knowledge precedes action. An act (karma) cannot be taken without knowing, in some sense, what the many things around us are. We need to know what there is in order to know what to do. This all sounds so simple and yet this process, if not deeply understood, can cause us a whole litany of problems--not to mention suffering. I hope that we can be guided from its superficial layers to a much deeper understanding of our notion that the world(s) we live, our experience, is made of knowledge and therefore is not a natural world. We can, via our imagination, attempt to suspend our knowledge faculty and fantasize a return to a time before knowledge, as some might interpret the Garden of Eden as being. But this would be a purely fictitious world, not a lived one.

Our ancestors have bequeathed to us a vast number of interpretations of "things," i.e., a history, that does not conceal a natural world beneath those interpretations, but reveals the only worlds we humans have ever known, the perspectival ones. (Even the notion of "thing" arises from interpretation.) We have always lived in human worlds not earth, not the universe, not a natural world, not a noumenal world, and certainly not an imaginary world--for we live our perspectival worlds as reality itself. There is nothing beneath them, no pure unadulterated, or divine world, but the ones we face moment-to-moment in a rarely broken process without interruption.

I mentioned, in the first paragraph, that "ecological" thinking presumes that nature is in need of cleansing--ethics and ecology are inseparable. Well, there is certainly a dire need for cleansing but what precisely needs to be cleansed? If nature results from an adopted and historically generated perspective and that perspective is more often than not a deeply ingrained component of our perceptual systems, then the root problem of ecology lies within each of us. If nature is disclosed as perspectival, as David Hume might have said along with us, then our ecological thinking as well as remedial actions toward our environment must be revisioned.

     ...'tis impossible for us so much as to conceive or form an idea of any thing specifically different from [our perceptions]. Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible: Let us chase our imaginations to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass.* (Bold italics mine)



*Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, I.ii.vi

Let's Begin Again--We're back!

A few medical problems, a move to Roanoke, Virginia, and a few other concerns sidelined me for a while. However, I cannot contain what I have been introduced to, what I have learned, and how much I realize we all need to hear this stuff that arises from the anonymous depths of my life. All thoughts, insights, visions, spiritual experiences, moods, emotions, etc., arise selflessly--as I hope you are aware. If not, simply watch--with a serene mind--your thoughts and feelings as they arise. You will soon notice that, if you are honest, i.e., of clear vision, your thoughts, etc., are coming from or appearing from an unidentifiable source. There is, I suppose, some small measure of knowledge to be gained from speculating about the nature of this source. However, no matter what is said about it in any definitive way, will only be provisional. Much less and much more can always be said. Have at it if you wish. But remember this, any characterization of this source will elude finality. This is so for a very simple reason: We can never get behind it. We are an effect, not a cause. We, like the worlds we have lived and will live, are creations--or the movement of creation itself. We are always one blink of an eye too late to witness our own emergence from our source. If you doubt this, take a good look for yourself.

About Giving

I hug to be hugged;

I kiss to be kissed;

I love to be loved. 

In giving love, 

I receive love, 

the love that was always,

mine to begin with. 

The only love I can receive, 

is my own.

Whatever I put forth, 

is my harvest. 

In my giving, 

I am receiving. 

In my taking, 

I am giving. 

To give is to receive all,

that is given.

Anonymous