What is your Philosophy of Mind?

Jinxed P, modified 10 Years ago at 9/11/13 11:30 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/11/13 11:29 PM

What is your Philosophy of Mind?

Posts: 347 Join Date: 8/29/11 Recent Posts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind

Are any of you into philosophy of mind? Questions regarding the nature of mental phenomenon? Classic questions such as materialism vs dualism, (or since dualism seems to be defeated in philosophy of mind circles) questions like eliminative materialism, the existence of qualia, free will, etc..

How has your meditation practiced informed your theory of mind?
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sawfoot _, modified 10 Years ago at 9/12/13 7:29 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/12/13 7:29 AM

RE: What is your Philosophy of Mind?

Posts: 507 Join Date: 3/11/13 Recent Posts
It seems that despite its problems most buddhists (and it seems many on this forum) are dualists, in seeing the mind somehow separate to the body but linked to it.

This appears necessary to accept such things as reincarnation, the powers, and working with chi/energy/kundalini etc...

So perhaps if you have some weird shit happen to you in meditation which you interpret as evidence for the above, then it could make you more likely to implicitly/explicitly be a dualist.
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Fitter Stoke, modified 10 Years ago at 9/12/13 1:02 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/12/13 1:02 PM

RE: What is your Philosophy of Mind?

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My experience was the opposite. Upon clearly perceiving anatta for the first time, many non-dualistic ideas began to make sense to me in a way they hadn't before. Also, of all the accounts of mind I studied when I was a graduate student, Sartre's seems to have held up the best in light of intensive meditation.
Jinxed P, modified 10 Years ago at 9/12/13 6:08 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/12/13 6:08 PM

RE: What is your Philosophy of Mind?

Posts: 347 Join Date: 8/29/11 Recent Posts
Fitter Stoke:
My experience was the opposite. Upon clearly perceiving anatta for the first time, many non-dualistic ideas began to make sense to me in a way they hadn't before. Also, of all the accounts of mind I studied when I was a graduate student, Sartre's seems to have held up the best in light of intensive meditation.


Very interesting. care to expand on that?
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sawfoot _, modified 10 Years ago at 9/13/13 7:43 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/13/13 7:43 AM

RE: What is your Philosophy of Mind?

Posts: 507 Join Date: 3/11/13 Recent Posts
Monism is an another one that comes up a lot in being linked to mystical experiences. I like to think that these kinds of insights get refined in higher paths and lead to non-dualism, though I am not sure how popular that approach is in western theory of mind.

What about you Jinxed? How has your meditation practiced informed your theory of mind?
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Fitter Stoke, modified 10 Years ago at 9/13/13 8:03 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/13/13 8:03 AM

RE: What is your Philosophy of Mind?

Posts: 487 Join Date: 1/23/12 Recent Posts
If you guys are interested in this stuff, you should check out David Chapman's blog. He's written a lot about monism, epistemology, and pussy-dripping goddesses with chainsaws.
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sawfoot _, modified 10 Years ago at 9/13/13 9:40 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/13/13 9:40 AM

RE: What is your Philosophy of Mind?

Posts: 507 Join Date: 3/11/13 Recent Posts
Fitter Stoke:
If you guys are interested in this stuff, you should check out David Chapman's blog. He's written a lot about monism, epistemology, and pussy-dripping goddesses with chainsaws.


Yep, here is a good starter:

http://meaningness.com/big-three-stance-combinations

And he has a lot of good critiques of monism (amongst others)

http://meaningness.com/taxonomy/term/15
Jinxed P, modified 10 Years ago at 9/13/13 5:55 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/13/13 5:55 PM

RE: What is your Philosophy of Mind?

Posts: 347 Join Date: 8/29/11 Recent Posts
sawfoot _:
Monism is an another one that comes up a lot in being linked to mystical experiences. I like to think that these kinds of insights get refined in higher paths and lead to non-dualism, though I am not sure how popular that approach is in western theory of mind.

What about you Jinxed? How has your meditation practiced informed your theory of mind?


I only do shamatha meditation, not insight practice, so I have hadn't any great insights. From my studies in philosophy of mind, and cognitive psychology I am materialist along the lines of Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter.
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(D Z) Dhru Val, modified 10 Years ago at 9/13/13 8:58 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/13/13 8:53 PM

RE: What is your Philosophy of Mind?

Posts: 346 Join Date: 9/18/11 Recent Posts
Before meditation I would have said philosophical materialist.

But not any more, a bit difficult to explain but here it goes...

What is the lynchpin to your world view ?
- Pure logic is ultimately circular and doesn't show you anything.
- So we tend to posit something like the cogito ("I think therefore I am") as a linchpin to logic based on some sort of ultimate fact of our experience.

A lack of lynchpins to be found?
- However when one's first person subjective experience is examined, we cannot find any evidence of a "I", a "thought", or "time" or "space" truly existing on independently without any reference to one and other.
- All lynchpins are merely conceptual designations, rather than actually real.
- So its all circular once again.

The end of suffering
This mean every aspect of experience has equal truth value in an ultimate sense, functionally all the rules to the universe (whatever they may be) still apply but only relative to each other.

Further since there is no ultimate truth outside of conventional truth. Conventional truth is the ultimate truth.

This allows for a greater diversity of philosophies, to be adopted depending on the situation.

So even this sort of philosophy is just a tool, and nothing ultimate. In Buddhism this sort of philosophy or "view" is a tool used to bring about the end of suffering.

If you recognize in real time that there is nothing inherently true to cling to in experience, then that would be the end of clinging.
Change A, modified 10 Years ago at 9/14/13 11:42 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/14/13 11:42 AM

RE: What is your Philosophy of Mind?

Posts: 791 Join Date: 5/24/10 Recent Posts
Jinxed P:
How has your meditation practiced informed your theory of mind?


I used to be into philosophy a lot. After meditation, the questions that used to push me towards philosophy no longer do that and I don't seek the answers to such questions.

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