Amos

True, delusion is another proof of dualism or Realization could not come about.

Jonsey3333

Amos:
How is being delusional a proof for dualism? It proves that cognition is not always true.


Regarding the study where making a decision was simultaneous with acting on the decision: it is often interpreted from this that spur-of-the-moment "decisions" happen when our brain picks a option for some superficial reason, and quickly feeds us the impression that it was a decision. Is the superficial reason due to something supernatural? Maybe. But maybe not. It can go either way.

-Mike

Amos

If "it can go either way" it already proves the supernatural. The supernatural exists only from oblivion because in nature the supernatural does not exist. It is contained within the natural and it comes across to us as an intelligent design (every bush can be a burning bush).

The spur-of-the-moment decision may or may not be correct because believers may or may not have correct opinion. The sciencist is not satisfied until he knows but is seldom able to place this it the proper context with regard to the whole and therefore the 'many question' arise after the experiment . . . which is good, but not the end of our inquiry.

In the end, the gnostic knows, the skeptical scientist does not know but is learning, the believer may or may not have correct opinion (but will never know) and the agnostic is just an impoverished believer but must exist to make the gnostic known.

Francois Tremblay

I absolutely agree that dualism is a delusion (^_^)

Synaesthesia

Amos,
The only poety I have ever composed (embarassingly bad, but mandatory) was done so quite lucidly. Poetry is often a matter of various ideas being developed about your perception so one might poetically say that poetry exists only when we are truly awake. In either case, our poetic idealizations leave a great deal out. Indeed any explication does if we are to derive any useful information from it.

Although it should go without saying, if it were true that human attention could be directed only at poery and not chewing gum and walking while you're abstracting, the question of dualism and monoism would be little changed. It would simply be an empirical discovery about the limitations in our perceptual processors.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

Autonemesis

Whoah! Back the truck up there. You've assumed there are certain ways to answer as your questions progressed. "Am I still me?" is not so obviously answered "Yes" as your next question assumes. Furthermore, your last question is confusing: What is "my identity" if it is not identical to "me"? And if the two are identical, the question reduces to "What part of me contains me, if not a soul?" which seems rather tautological. And if the conclusion you seek is true, that the soul exists and is the true self, then your last question is reduced to "What part of me contains me, if not me?"

Doesn't seem like there is much of use here.

Amos

Thanks and quite true. I do not disagree with that observation nor will I ever say that our perceptual processors are not important. They are, we go by them, as we must, and we must go hard if we are ever to exhaust the images (desires) they place before us.

There must be a Buddhist poem wherein we do not seem to "go" anywhere (dhyan) after enlightenment when all thirst is gone (Tanhakkhaya). From this would follow that if Nirvana can be a reality there exists an identity within the soul that truly is in charge of our destiny and maya is just needed to arrive at that end.

John Page

Amos:

Here's a link to some research info<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/Nightline/neuro020114_spirit_feature.html" target="_blank">abc news article</a>. Meditation only gets you so far - have a look at what's inside the box...

Amos

Interesting but I am not one for meditation.

excreationist

This is about the words combining our memory fragments together so that we imagine the situation represented in the poem. Our attention concentrates on this rather than the outside world.
Or do you think our minds travel off to poem land in a literal way somehow?