The Ex-c Epic Buddhism Thread

[RintrahRoars]

I agree that an effective immune system requires the ability to identify the bad guys, but I don't think it requires a model of itself in order to function, no more than an electron needs a model of itself to follow the laws of physics.

[Legion]

Hey, stop me if you've heard this one...

 

The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop and says, "Make me one with everything."

[RintrahRoars]

Hey, stop me if you've heard this one...

 

The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop and says, "Make me one with everything."

 

BAHAHAHA yes I have head that one, it's epic.

 

And btw, hello thread! I just read through the whole thing over the course of a few days. Great conversations, and hopefully more to come.

[Legion]

Hey, stop me if you've heard this one...

 

The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop and says, "Make me one with everything."

 

BAHAHAHA yes I have head that one, it's epic.

 

And btw, hello thread! I just read through the whole thing over the course of a few days. Great conversations, and hopefully more to come.

 

 

You're funny Rintrah. Why do you say "hello" to the thread rather than the PEOPLE in the thread?

[RintrahRoars]

Well if you thought THAT was funny... you should reread my first post. There's a nugget

[VacuumFlux]

I suspect even plants have models of themselves, their environment, and the interactions between them.

I'm having difficulty trying to think of how a plant would have a way of distinguishing itself from its environment. It most definitely interacts with its environment, but how would 'it' even begin to distinguish between interactions within itself from interactions with its environment?

 

I suspect it would be a Nobel winning piece of research. I can't think of even one organism which does not have , or would not require, defensive mechanisms of some sort or another. We (the living) have immune systems. An effective immune system would require the ability to recognize "self" and be able to distinguish self from "other".

 

Some plants recognise not only themselves, but near relatives, and will avoid competing for root system space with a plant that is too similar to itself.

 

What do you mean by a "model of self"? To me, that implies cognitive awareness of self and not self, and plants have no neurological system to do this with. They certainly have some sort of pattern recognition in the proteins that their DNA encodes for, and complex immune systems. But even in me as a human, my body does self-repair and differentiating between self and not self (though sometimes it gets that part wrong; eczema can be considered an auto-immune disease) but I do not have any conscious awareness of that whole process. So I'm not sure what you mean by that term in relationship to a plant. It seems like a term way too likely to be misinterpreted as a top-down sense of consciousness that makes a plant do what it does, or an overly anthropomorphic description of the complex system that is a plant. I use anthropomorphic terminology all the time when trying to understand non-human things, and sometimes it's useful, but often gets in the way of me appreciating those other organisms for what they really are.

[Antlerman]

I suspect organisms require ego, if ego is properly understood. We require models (images) of ourselves in order to function in the world.

 

Does a cow have an ego model or not?

No. A human infant does not have an ego yet either. It is a pre-egoic stage. It is impulse, instinct. You can read about Loevinger's stages of ego development here: http://en.wikipedia....ego_development Freud placed the ego following the id, "According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the ego is the organized, realistic part; and the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role." http://en.wikipedia....o_and_super-ego

 

Ego is a product of a more highly development mind. A plant has no mind. A cow, has comparatively rather simplistic mental processes, like an infant. It has no sophisticated socialization structures through which more sophisticated mental models of self are created in order to differentiate themselves from others. It's functioning purely on body-awareness, or basic impulses for social organization, such as dominant male, etc, but not mental structures of self and others based on self-reflection.

 

To add, I suppose this is why a cow can't become Enlightened. How can it be if it has not first developed a sense of self, differentiated from the world? It would be like putting two infants together and call it a marriage. There can be no marriage, no unity of minds, because neither knows who they are as distinct minds, distinct selves from each other yet. Enlightenment takes the aware mind and overcomes the necessary distinctions between self and other in ego development. But rather than reverting to a pre-self, or pre-egoic stage in a sort of undifferentiated fusion with the world, as in a slumber, it transcends the ego, goes beyond the ego into a fully awakened mind that sees itself and the world as One, and through that becomes One in that awareness and self-sense. That is a marriage, that is Unity, that is Enlightenment.

[RintrahRoars]

Moo!

[Rev R]

I suspect organisms require ego, if ego is properly understood. We require models (images) of ourselves in order to function in the world.

 

Does a cow have an ego model or not?

 

Moo

 

The honest answer is: "don't know, no experience of being a cow."

 

Sure we can speculate, but why should we add models as a potter adds clay to his wheel to make a vase? If we want to define "ego" as the drive to survive, then all organisms have it. However, I do not think the "ego" of a cow could be stated as "I must survive," it is simply "survive". This approach doesn't appear to get us anywhere since we don't know the mind of a cow, or the "mind" of an oak for that matter. We have to turn to the one thing we can readily observe, our own mind.

 

I find it greatly amusing that there are people willing to spend a great deal of energy to criticise the reductionist method of science when the "Buddhist" line of inquiry is also based on reduction. Like a chef peeling an onion, we peel back the layers of existence looking for its root. For every layer we remove, there is another underneath so we keep going until, suddenly, the onion we were peeling is completely gone. Our cutting board is covered in onion layers, none of which are the onion, but all are necessary to be an onion. Problem is that sometimes folks get to this point and think that it is finished. Once you finish peeling your onion, you have to put it in the stir-fry.

[Legion]

Some plants recognise not only themselves, but near relatives, and will avoid competing for root system space with a plant that is too similar to itself.

 

What an amazing thing. Woah. Thanks for sharing this. Where did you hear of this?

 

What do you mean by a "model of self"? To me, that implies cognitive awareness of self and not self, and plants have no neurological system to do this with.

 

Well, I'm still learning, so I'm still working through all this stuff too. I don't believe models have to be based in cognition.

 

Among the examples to which I turn here is the somatic (rather than cognitive) anticipation demonstrated by things such as callus formation. If this sort of thing (along with things like learned immune responses) are indeed anticipatory, then I think models of some sort are being employed, because anticipation is a form of self-control guided by models.

[Antlerman]

I find it greatly amusing that there are people willing to spend a great deal of energy to criticise the reductionist method of science when the "Buddhist" line of inquiry is also based on reduction.

Those that criticize the reductionist method of science are ignorant of science. It is entirely valid to do so within science as a discipline, a method of discovery. Reductionism, which is criticized however, is not that methodology of doing legitimate science. It's a philosophy that says that everything in the world can be understood this way. That is not a conclusion of science at all. That's a belief.

 

P.S. In Buddhist practice, to the best of my knowledge, to strip everything down of its components to demonstrate, or to illicit a realization of the illusion of things, that isn't the same as a reductionist method. It is more comparable to a postmodernist deconstructionist approach. That takes a philosophical position and shows it to be absurd, a tower of cards we call reality. It is not to seek a component level understanding of structure, which is what a reductionist approach in science aims to achieve.

[Legion]

I find it greatly amusing that there are people willing to spend a great deal of energy to criticise the reductionist method of science when the "Buddhist" line of inquiry is also based on reduction.

Those that criticize the reductionist method of science are ignorant of science.

 

What? The biologists Nicolas Rashevsky, Robert Rosen, and Alousius Louie were/are pioneers in a relational approach to biology. They were/are very knowledgable in science, and each in their own way have been sharply critical of reductionism.

 

Are you sure you wrote this above as you intended?

 

It is entirely valid to do so within science as a discipline, a method of discovery. Reductionism however, is not science. It's philosophy.

 

I think that a reductionistic approach to the study of natural systems, and an alternative relational approach, both reside near the philosophical roots of science. I think in some sense they each address our presuppositions in the perception of nature, or how it is being observed.

[Antlerman]

I find it greatly amusing that there are people willing to spend a great deal of energy to criticise the reductionist method of science when the "Buddhist" line of inquiry is also based on reduction.

Those that criticize the reductionist method of science are ignorant of science.

 

What? The biologists Nicolas Rashevsky, Robert Rosen, and Alousius Louie were/are pioneers in a relational approach to biology. They were/are very knowledgable in science, and each in their own way have been sharply critical of reductionism.

 

Are you sure you wrote this above as you intended?

These are pioneers in the complexity sciences. Traditional natural sciences are reductionist in their methodologies. The complexity sciences, to you and to me of course are legitimate, but it is new relatively speaking in the history of modern science. These individual's criticism, whom you cited BTW, is of the methodology. They argue it is not the only way to understand nature, and incomplete actually. I believe its legitimacy in the sciences is gaining ground.

 

It is entirely valid to do so within science as a discipline, a method of discovery. Reductionism however, is not science. It's philosophy.

 

I think that a reductionistic approach to the study of natural systems, and an alternative relational approach, both reside near the philosophical roots of science. I think in some sense they each address our presuppositions in the perception of nature, or how it is being observed.

Systems theory, again is legitimate science in my view. This too however, is not what I am talking about in saying reductionism is a philosophy. I'm talking not a philosophy of science. I'm talking about doing what science, whether reductionist or relational, cannot do which is to speculate about all areas of human existence, as Kant's three critiques demonstrated. Reductionism is like Positivism, which is not science. It's a belief that reasoning and logic will tell us all the answers to life, what being human is.

 

Edit to add: This is what I mean too when I say even Relational science itself can be reductionsim. Rather than a gross reductionism, it is a subtle reductionism. Reductionism, not as a method of doing science, but reducing all of human existence to a scientific explanation. So much for the humanities.

[Ouroboros]

Hey, stop me if you've heard this one...

 

The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop and says, "Make me one with everything."

 

BAHAHAHA yes I have head that one, it's epic.

 

And btw, hello thread! I just read through the whole thing over the course of a few days. Great conversations, and hopefully more to come.

 

 

You're funny Rintrah. Why do you say "hello" to the thread rather than the PEOPLE in the thread?

Maybe the thread has a model of itself too to exist?

[asanerman]

I suspect organisms require ego, if ego is properly understood. We require models (images) of ourselves in order to function in the world.

 

Does a cow have an ego model or not?

No. A human infant does not have an ego yet either. It is a pre-egoic stage. It is impulse, instinct. You can read about Loevinger's stages of ego development here: http://en.wikipedia....ego_development Freud placed the ego following the id, "According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the ego is the organized, realistic part; and the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role." http://en.wikipedia....o_and_super-ego

 

Ego is a product of a more highly development mind. A plant has no mind. A cow, has comparatively rather simplistic mental processes, like an infant. It has no sophisticated socialization structures through which more sophisticated mental models of self are created in order to differentiate themselves from others. It's functioning purely on body-awareness, or basic impulses for social organization, such as dominant male, etc, but not mental structures of self and others based on self-reflection.

 

 

Is it not true that the study of self, atta, (which relates closely to "personality") in Buddhism does not deal with complex postulated entities, such as "id" or "ego" or "super-ego," but with a serious of events, i.e. the basic event is the ongoing relationship of mental states to sense objects--such as, the feeling of desire (the mental state) toward a beautiful woman or handsome man (the sense object).

 

A person's mental states are in constant flux, moment to moment at a rate reckoned in microseconds. The semblance of self (personality) springs from the intermingling of these impersonal mental states. What appears to be "self" is the sum total of body parts, thoughts, sensations, desire, memories, and so on.

 

The only continuous thread in the thinking mind (the sixth sense) is bhava, the continuity of consciousness overtime. Each successive action of awareness is shaped by the previous moment, and will in turn determine the following moment. It is the continuity of consciousness that connects one moment of consciousness to the next.

 

Psychological activities (phenomena identified as "self") such as thoughts, memories, or perceptions are part of a continued flow.

 

According to the Eastern personality theory, Abhidhamma, self "is like a river that keeps a constant form, seemingly a single identity, though not a single drop is the same as a moment ago. In this view "there is no actor apart from action, no percipient apart from perception, no conscious subject behind the consciousness."(Compendium of Philosophy Van Aung, Z. (trans.). 1972 p. 7.) (~ quoted from Theories of Personality Third Edition by Hall and Lindzey 1978, p. 359)

 

I'm agree with Rev

 

... Our cutting board is covered in onion layers, none of which are the onion, but all are necessary to be an onion. Problem is that sometimes folks get to this point and think that it is finished. Once you finish peeling your onion, you have to put it in the stir-fry.

 

And maybe a cow or a plant is enlightened, that is, they have no "cutting board," or "grist" for the mill, no "onion" to peel!

 

Maybe they are only in the "Stir," Rev. No drama, No reductions necessary!

 

This morning as I sat with my little Maltese by my side and gazed deeply into her little dark eyes I wondered; "Can I possibly be as much human as she is canine?"

 

Well!

[Legion]

Um, I dislike pressing a point with you A-man, but I'm going to anyway.

 

You wrote, "Those that criticize the reductionist method of science are ignorant of science."

 

This is patently false. And I'll note that it is a falsehood stated without an accompanying qualifier such as "I believe" or "in my assessment".

[Ouroboros]

I find it greatly amusing that there are people willing to spend a great deal of energy to criticise the reductionist method of science when the "Buddhist" line of inquiry is also based on reduction.

Ouch. That's been my critique at times too.

 

I wonder... how is it even possible to do an inquiry into anything without applying some form of reductive thinking? To reduce, is to take a part and look at the parts independently. Discussion is always analytical, isn't it? Just wonder what your thoughts are about this.

 

Like a chef peeling an onion, we peel back the layers of existence looking for its root. For every layer we remove, there is another underneath so we keep going until, suddenly, the onion we were peeling is completely gone. Our cutting board is covered in onion layers, none of which are the onion, but all are necessary to be an onion. Problem is that sometimes folks get to this point and think that it is finished. Once you finish peeling your onion, you have to put it in the stir-fry.

I think the problem is that there's a method of reduction, which is what you say above, the peeling of onions. But then there's the philosophical idea if Reductionism which suggests that the parts are the only thing the constitute the whole, and it might not be completely true. The whole of one being or thing is constituted of its parts, but also of its processes and relationship with the environment around it. I don't exist in a vacuum. Take my body and put it in a stasis chamber out in space, I'm not the same person. Biologically the same, but not existentially the same. (I think. Antlerman and Legion might have something to say to clarify this to me or tell me if I'm on the right track.)

[Antlerman]

Um, I dislike pressing a point with you A-man, but I'm going to anyway.

 

You wrote, "Those that criticize the reductionist method of science are ignorant of science."

 

This is patently false. And I'll note that it is a falsehood stated without an accompanying qualifier such as "I believe" or "in my assessment".

You're misunderstanding my meaning. Please read my last post before this one. I added a couple thoughts of clarification. If you are still thinking I'm lumping what you say into this statement above, please let me know. I don't believe I am.

[Legion]

Um, I dislike pressing a point with you A-man, but I'm going to anyway.

 

You wrote, "Those that criticize the reductionist method of science are ignorant of science."

 

This is patently false. And I'll note that it is a falsehood stated without an accompanying qualifier such as "I believe" or "in my assessment".

You're misunderstanding my meaning. Please read my last post before this one. I added a couple thoughts of clarification. If you are still thinking I'm lumping what you say into this statement above, please let me know. I don't believe I am.

 

Nah man, I saw what you wrote. It was quite... diplomatic.

 

I'm not being diplomatic here. So I'll say it again...

 

You, Anterman, wrote "Those that criticize the reductionist method of science are ignorant of science."

 

This is a FALSE statement.

[Antlerman]

P.S. Ever damned thing I post on this site is my opinion. Get over this already.

[Legion]

Of course everything you write is your opinion. I'm not focusing here on your lack of humility. I don't care. Be arrogant. Be proud.

 

But also be correct.

 

Again you wrote, "Those that criticize the reductionist method of science are ignorant of science."

 

This is a false statement. It is incorrect. It is mistaken. It couldn't be further from the truth.

[Antlerman]

Um, I dislike pressing a point with you A-man, but I'm going to anyway.

 

You wrote, "Those that criticize the reductionist method of science are ignorant of science."

 

This is patently false. And I'll note that it is a falsehood stated without an accompanying qualifier such as "I believe" or "in my assessment".

You're misunderstanding my meaning. Please read my last post before this one. I added a couple thoughts of clarification. If you are still thinking I'm lumping what you say into this statement above, please let me know. I don't believe I am.

 

Nah man, I saw what you wrote. It was quite... diplomatic.

 

I'm not being diplomatic here. So I'll say it again...

 

You, Anterman, wrote "Those that criticize the reductionist method of science are ignorant of science."

 

This is a FALSE statement.

The context is valid. Rev R was equating Reductionism with the reductionist method. I was saying those that equate the two and say science is wrong because of this, are conflating terms and are in fact ignorant of legitimate science.

 

I agree that it is legitimate for a scientist in the complexity sciences to criticize the appropriateness of the reductionist method in understanding the natural world in all circumstances. Do you believe that Rosen and other believe the reductionist method was bad, altogether? What I said, was in fact true, in that context, but false in how you misread me.

[Antlerman]

I'm not focusing here on your lack of humility. I don't care. Be arrogant. Be proud.

Keep this shit up, and you'll be taking a vacation. I'm through with you making crap personal in these threads. Got it?

[Legion]

So you're going to sidestep the issue of your mistaken statement? Is that it?

 

Let me fix it FOR you.

 

Those that criticize the reductionistic approach to the study of nature are those who are most knowledgeable in science. It is the lay person who never thinks to question reductionism. Indeed the lay person equates reductionism with science. They typically operate under the mistaken assumption that reductionism IS science.

[Rev R]

And maybe a cow or a plant is enlightened, that is, they have no "cutting board," or "grist" for the mill, no "onion" to peel!

You'd have to ask the cow and the tree. This one knows nothing of such things.

 

 

This morning as I sat with my little Maltese by my side and gazed deeply into her little dark eyes I wondered; "Can I possibly be as much human as she is canine?"

What is "human"? What is "canine"?