Thread: Are we all just aspects of each other?

Originally Posted by Sageous

I don't know, Daredevilpwn.

Though I have no real problem with "non-living" things possessing some level of consciousness, I'm not sure I can extend all this to say that therefore the world is a dream, and that some united consciousness is holding it all together; and us, by extension, in its spiritual thrall.


I think there are other plausible explanations for why the world is the same every time we walk out the door (though in reality it is not, but that's for another thread, I think)... Not that yours isn't fairly cool!

Yeah, I can understand how it can be a huge leap for some to conclude the world is a dream. And you should make a thread about what you said in the parenthesis, would be interesting to see what your viewpoint on that is.

Originally Posted by Daredevilpwn

Yeah, I can understand how it can be a huge leap for some to conclude the world is a dream.

As I've pointed out elsewhere, a person's sensate experience of the world is literally a dream, because it is a cartoon representation of the world that takes place in that person's imagination. And its literally formed the same way that any other dream is, except that there's real time information from the senses built into it.

It seems that some people make this realization, or they feel it, and then just stop there with the conclusion that there isn't an objective physical reality outside of that dream. This is certainly a mistake. I think its also a mistake though to conclude that there are no other ways in which the objective physical reality is like a dream.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

As I've pointed out elsewhere, a person's sensate experience of the world is literally a dream, because it is a cartoon representation of the world that takes place in that person's imagination. And its literally formed the same way that any other dream is, except that there's real time information from the senses built into it.

Not everyone accepts representationalist theories of perception. I don't. I prefer what I can an incorporationalist theory according to which the perceived is itself taken up into the experience of the perceiver. Representationalist theories are dualistic; incorporationalist theories are monistic. Incorporationalist theories are more elegant, they discourage the sort of skeptical conclusions dualist theories encourage, they're more powerful, and they don't produce infinite regresses of representations representing representations representing representations.... For all the same reasons I also prefer incorporationalist theories of memory and knowledge.

Originally Posted by rrrrocketrick

Not everyone accepts representationalist theories of perception. I don't. I prefer what I can an incorporationalist theory according to which the perceived is itself taken up into the experience of the perceiver. Representationalist theories are dualistic; incorporationalist theories are monistic. Incorporationalist theories are more elegant, they discourage the sort of skeptical conclusions dualist theories encourage, they're more powerful, and they don't produce infinite regresses of representations representing representations representing representations.... For all the same reasons I also prefer incorporationalist theories of memory and knowledge.

OK. I don't know anything about representationalist theories of perception, so you shouldn't read anything into my use of the word representation beyond what I said. I do know some demonstrable facts about electromagnetics, optics, and a few other things. If your "incorporationalist theories" accommodate those facts then probably we're describing and emphasizing different aspects of the same understanding. Otherwise, I've also encountered people who don't "accept" that the earth is in some significant sense an approximately spherical ball that rotates on its axis, despite rationally compelling evidence, and there's not much I can say to that sort of thing. (If the universe were rotating around the earth, instead of the earth spinning, there would be no way to explain the erratic path that a satellite in a polar orbit takes relative to the surface of the earth.)

I'm with you on being against dualism, in the sense that an absolute mind/body dualism, or purusha/prakriti, or whatever, doesn't make any sense. Obviously both sides of any duality are in some sense aspects of the same thing. That said, certain kinds of distinctions are built into the way that things work. For example, light has frequency, and wavelength, in a manner of speaking, but it doesn't have color, at least not that corresponds to the frequencies that we map color to. The color is assigned, mostly involuntarily, by the viewer, much how color can be used to represent temperatures or elevations on a geographical map. Is this a duality, saying that the color isn't in the perceived object? Or is it not a duality, because everything's connected somehow, however indirectly? In any case, my meaning was that a person's sensate experience is not a complete, fully accurate embodiment of one's surroundings, that there are all kinds of demonstrable simplifications and embellishments built into it. Though the experience itself is also a part of reality, it is almost literally a cartoon, just as a cartoon is a part of reality also.

I think its worth noting that reflecting on one's experience of "the moment" is important but not by itself adequate to answer these kinds of questions. For example, a person would never figure out the thing I said about color, unless their "momentary experience" includes paying close attention to how their color perception depends on context, or reading the results of physics lab experiments. Of course, those things are a part of our experience also, if we choose to try to understand such things.