Re: End-consumption (was Re: The Physicalist Error)

Tang Huyen a écrit :

As a person I don't feel a shot of adrenalin, don't
feel the level of serotonin, don't know whether the
parts that are presently activated in my brain
belong to primitive parts or recent parts of the brain.
In fact I don't feel my brain at all, period. My job in
alleviating my suffering involves gathering together
all parts of my mind (not my brain) and harmonising
them, adjusting them to themselves and aligning
them with themselves, as I can feel directly (not as
an inference) that harmony amongst the parts of my
mind give me calm and peace, whereas conflict
amongst parts of my mind give me stress and
suffering. I don't need any science to get myself to
feel better by harmonising myself with myself. In
fact, scientific knowledge about the universe, about
animal behaviour, about brain structure and brain
waves helps me not at all in alleviating my suffering
and optimising my happiness. Present-day
knowledge in the social sciences about human
behaviour scarcely helps me in the same task. I am
still left to deal with myself in the raw, to make
myself happy or unhappy. In that respect, I am not
in any better position in that task than the sages of
the past, though I am vastly less wise than they
were.

In fact, given that Buddhist cultivation largely
converges on stripping off artifice (mentation) from
the reception of what happens in the raw, without
interpretation, any scientific knowledge will count
negatively in that purview. In addition, given that
such stripping off involves the stripping off of all
norms and standards, including those of modern
logic, math and science, there is a good chance that
norms and standards of modern logic, math and
science, given their splendid show in effectiveness,
are harder to strip off (because of their cockiness)
than other, older kinds of norms and standards, like
social, legal and traditional religious norms and
standards, which are pretty much relativised and
even trivialised by modern life.

No quibble here.

A few hours ago, I quoted Leibniz (one word was
missing, here restored):

Leibniz, Discours de Métaphysique, 9, xiv :

<<Les substances créées dépendent de Dieu qui les
conserve et même qui les produit continuellement
par une manière d'émanation comme nous
produisons nos pensées. Car Dieu tournant pour
ainsi dire de tous côtés et de toutes les façons le
système général des phénomènes qu'il trouve bon de
produire pour manifester sa gloire, et regardant toutes
les faces du monde de toutes les manières possibles,
puisqu'il n'y a point de rapport qui échappe à son
omniscience; le résultat de chaque vue de l'univers,
comme regardé d'un certain endroit, est une
substance qui exprime l'univers conformément à cette
vue, si Dieu trouve bon de rendre sa pensée effective
et de produire cette substance.>>

"The created substances depend on God who
maintains and even continually produces them by a
manner of emanation as we produce our thoughts.
Because God, turning so to speak on all sides and in
all manners the general system of phenomena that he
finds good to produce in order to manifest his glory
and looking at all the faces of the world in all possible
manners, because there is no relation that escapes his
all-knowledge, the result of each view of the universe,
as seen from a certain place, is a substance that
expresses the universe according to that view, if God
finds it good to make his thought effective and to
produce this substance."

I didn't know how to take your Leibniz quote the other day. I don't see what you find appealing in it in this context. I have no problem replacing God by Nature, to make it more palatable, but I find the intentionality in this quote problematic.

Probably there will never be an overall system of logic
or science that could encompass all logics or science.
Each system will have its scope and validity, which are
limited and not unlimited, local and not universal. They
will forever be incomplete, singly and together. As the
Buddha says: "What and what they think it, it is
otherwise". In addition any norm and standard that we
use to measure reality (or unreality) will inevitably turn
around to measure us; we presumably use them to chunk
and bag reality (or unreality) but they will inevitably turn
around to chunk and bag us.

Absolutely. By conceiving and dividing time (amongst other things), we built our own torturing instruments.

Liberation consists, amongst other things, in using them
as they are useful and dropping them when none is
needed. Otherwise they will be albatrosses that one
hangs on one's neck, unasked.

Liberation is free of name and form, of signs and marks.
How is science going to capture that? What it captures,
to the extent that it can capture anything of any use, is
going to be made up of name and form, of signs and
marks. How is that related to liberation? Liberation is
purely subjective, strictly sentimental, and not tied to
anything out there or in here (in your terminology, it is
end-consumerish all the way, and so much so that there
isn't any consumer left in there). How is science going to
pin that down? The harder it tries to pin liberation down,
the more it drives it away. Liberation is free of all points
of view, of all views (meaning intellective views). How is
science, which at best is a point of view and a view, going
to grasp that?

“I know everything, but I do not understand any of it” (René Daumal, La grande beuverie/ A night of serious drinking).

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