Religion and Ethics Forum
Religion and Ethics Discussion => Philosophy, in all its guises. => Topic started by: Samuel on January 04, 2017, 01:14:38 PM
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Happy new year all, just popped in to see how things are... but its a slippery slope and Torridon's thread on the illusion of self got me thinking. He's known to do that from time to time.
here's a quote from the first page:
cognitive science demonstrates that the conscious self is a retrospective construction of mind. All we need to do is decide whether to be true to the evidence, or lead lives of denial.
I think we'd all agree that as humans we need to feel there is a sense of meaning to our lives. I would assume it is part of the complex evolved sense of self and helps to furnish our armoury when it comes to survival.
To what extent though is self delusion necessary for us to be able to construct a sense of meaning? is it ever possible to adhere only to the rational facts of our biology and psychology?
I somehow doubt it. It seems obvious to me that we are all deluded about something. Otherwise we would all be nihilists. We have no choice but to believe in the 'self' (even religious practices that deny it do so in recognition of the fact that it 'exists' in the first place) and from there the delusion branches out to encompass any number of notions that might be useful to us for various reasons. The justifications for those are what gets discussed here every day... its the detail. But the broad picture is one of necessary, unavoidable delusion.
I'm a rationalist, and a scientist, but also a pragmatist and I suppose I'm looking at the scientific evidence and asking 'so what?'
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I think the 'so what' is twofold. First if we were to pisit that what might seem like a necesssry delusion to be true, then it would restrict our possible understanding and investigation of matters of neurology and mental health.
Second, the idea that idea that the self is somehow freed from normal inevestigative methods is used by those who want to argue for it being 'evidence' for it being non naturalistic.
On a day to day basis, just like the subject of free will, there isn't something that is of great import here. It is only the sort of consideration that occurs after ones normal basic needs are covered
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Hi Samuel, good to hear from you. One solution is to treat the ego/self as a psychological construct, which is therefore 'real' in some way, just as your personality is real. Yet this still allows us to question things like agency. The stuff about the 'non-natural' soul is quite baffling, and I don't really understand what is meant by it.
Northern soul, yes!
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Hello both :)
It is only the sort of consideration that occurs after ones normal basic needs are covered
this was my point really. I'm not disputing the value of knowing what is 'real' and what isn't, but its a consideration that is only relevant outside of the day to day task of being a person. That's why I didn't understand what Torridon meant when he said that "All we need to do is decide whether to be true to the evidence, or lead lives of denial"
...shouldn't it be possible to be true to the evidence and accept denial simply as a part of life?
And I'm not suggesting or leading into any kind of supernatural element here. The seemingly parallel nature of some types of knowledge interests me though. I know what it feels like to be me and yet I know that feeling of 'me' is a delusion... but if I am a delusion, who is it that is deluded? is my brain and body a separate identity to my mind?
and why is all this filling my head today? when I supposed to be back at work!?
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No, I think that being true to the evidence means that when one is required to think about it, one cannot deny it, and I think that is what torridon means. You have to look at the context of the thread and while I know you are not suggesting any supernatural conclusion, the denial of the evidence is often used on here and elsewhere to do precisely that. I look on torridon's phrase 'lives of denial' rather like the idea of 'the unexamined life is not worth living' as being questions that only arise when they can apply. For anyone posting on a forum such as this, that threshold has already been met.
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and why is all this filling my head today? when I supposed to be back at work!?
Work avoidance? At least, that's what is affecting me :)
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Thanks NS, that helps. Yes, 'an unexamined life is not worth living', I would wholeheartedly agree with that, burdensome though it is.