Anton Rogachevski

@Someone here That's great! Thanks! @ExploringReality ❤️ same

Mu! All we can know is Experience, it is everything we had ever known and could possibly know. We actually know nothing but it. We are like the fish in the water of experience, except that in our case it's even worse - we are a Sea within an infinite Sea with no land anywhere, no fish! That may be quite scary to hear, but it is essential to understand as it is the most basic epistemic foundation on top of which we will eventually build the idea of "reality". Yes we can only have an idea of reality, and never the actual reality itself, since we don't actually have access to it, but through the senses and through thoughts. One would have to be "outside and separate from experience" to examine it as an object, which isn't technically possible, since we can only access what is experienced by us directly right now, and will never by definiton know what is supposedly "outside of experience" except as a story, because we can't ever experience a "non-experience", as you can already see it's an oxymoron. There can't be an experience of "nothing", it wouldn't register and wouldn't exist for us phenomenologically. Yes, you can become aware that everything is Nothing at it's foundation, experience is completely empty - and that's precisely what makes us able to experience in the first place. To understand this you need see it directly and very clearly with an incredible level of awareness, but that's a little more advanced. That Emptiness is quite full and amazing, and not the "nothingness" you are imagining right now. From a purely phenomenological perspective, without supposing a physical plane outside of perception, there's no such thing as an "experience" as a separate object which you can discuss, it's an idea that can only occur if you have another idea of "non-experience". If you realize there's no such thing, experience as separate phenomenon which you can talk about can't make sense anymore without a background. You can see a black circle on a white background, but if both the background and and the circle were black, you couldn't see it, and it would stop existing for you phenomenologically. Interestingly enough one could also say: You are experience! It's your fundamental nature - experience that is seemingly self generative and self aware, or as Leo would put it: "An infinite hallucination". Perception on the other hand is a bit problematic because the ideas of a "perceived thing", and a "perceiver" are already contained within it, it assumes a mereological materialistic perspective. In this imaginary scenario "experience" is the signal that is being generated by the "brain". You could in this supposed materialistic perspective say that: "Experience is the simulation of the brain", but it's another imaginary story within the infinite hallucination that is you.

There cannot be such a thing, from the perspective of an experiencer at least.

If everything is presumably God, how can the devil exist? Is the devil also all powerful in his deception? Then how can an enlightened person so self assuredly claim that he so easily overcame this all powerful deception? How does he know for certain that it's not just another trick by the devil that made him think that he's "god" and that now he knows everything? Does Enlightenment remove all doubt from the system?

@ExploringReality How do you know?

Cool! : ) By system I meant the psyche. So an enlightened person feels 100% sure he's got it, he has 100% Truth and he doesn't doubt it anymore?

@Someone here "Reality" how does that relate to experience? I don't know if it exists. Names are meaningless beast noises. I don't think anything at all. There's just experience. I guess I can live with that. I think it's too optimistic to hope for an ontology beyond that.

@Someone here Dunno what you mean by "energy" or "nature", haven't we just agreed that there's just experience?

So in your view the Devil is not a problem at all? There's no challenge to overcome his deception? Is there devilish deception?

@Someone here So experience just is - sounds like phenomenological ontology. Where's the epistemology here? Why do you call your experience truth? What does it mean for it to be truth? How do you define "Truth"? No siree nothing obvious at all, or else I wouldn't post this topic.

@Someone here That's quite simplistic. I guess I want a better established ontology. But if I deconstruct skepticism wouldn't I just believe anything?

@Someone here I guess the deeper meta question is should we also deconstruct skepticism, and if we should then how can it be done? It seems as though I'm trying to skip epistemology all together and just focus on ontology. Does ontology need an epistemic basis?

How can I trust I not to deceive me? How can I know anything at all, or could it be just pure mind fiction? I guess even logic is showing us it's a complete and endless hallucination.

@Someone here So how are they different? Isn't that a meaningless statement then? Like 1=1?

Finally something that starts to make sense! Thank you for your reply.

@Breakingthewall So where's God in your conception? How does he interact or relate to what you call "devilliry". My question was ontological in nature not theoretical or metaphorical.

@Santiago Ram @Hojo My question is the same. How do you know that? How certain are you?

How do you know that?

Leo, is that how you experience reality?

@Leo Gura I can't see why you say animals are zombies and that they can't recognize beauty. Their consciousness is probably not that much different from ours, except ours is more complex. Sure they don't have ideas and abstraction abilities like ours but simple direct experience of the senses, some basic recognition of symmetry and the release of dopamine as a result of biological evolutionary programming may trigger a feeling of beauty I presume. I don't know why I have to prove or anyone has to prove the existence of beauty. But if one would want to theoretically I guess it would be as following: One day when we could scan a brain and separate the experience of beauty we could say here this is beauty, it consists of these frequencies in the brain. If you can make a conscious robot that can have the same experience of beauty, would that be proof? ------ About the limitation of rationality part, I don't think rationality is one of the frames, but a meta tool to analyze them all.

It's not like your hardware is much different to ours. You did feed it many weird substances. How is it in a practical sense? Is your life more amazing and fulfilling post enlightenment?

I'll grant you that logic is part the infinite hallucination that you call Reality, but I'm highly skeptical that the inside of the cave is all there is. I don't believe the hallucination just yet. Since I'm not yet enlightened, I still believe there may be something we don't see or can grasp or know outside of perception. I also highly doubt the ability of a monkey jungle brain like ours to actually understand anything about ultimate reality. I'm even skeptical of the ability of skepticism to properly question delusion. So I don't even know how deeply I don't know anything at all. I guess this is an infinite hallucination.

@Leo Gura Logic is the grammer of the way thoughts are interacting. The fact that logic can hold a paradox shows that it can't be truth. A paradox reveals to us how inadequate thought actually is for grasping reality.

The baboon is truth, the banana is truth. It doesn't need to think about the banana or equate a banana with a banana in order to be God, it already is it, even though it's not conscious of it. If logic is Truth than anything is. But it's not so.

It can only work within a logical framework. But logic is not Truth.