If you don’t think that philosophy encompasses all discourse, then you’re lacking some knowledge in philosophy.
You think your “ideas” are inaccessible to philosophy? Maybe they’re incorrect according to philosophy, but I don’t think there’s much that can escape the kind of inquiry that you seem to be trying to dodge.
You said people who are competitive can’t cooperate. I THINK I see examples of competitive people cooperating every time I see sporting events or political events on T.V.
1.) I don’t see that has to do with having a mind steeped in philosophy, whatever that means.
2.) I don’t see you bothering to say anything about why my observations aren’t correct.
But that’s all I have. Some sports team in some distant land seems to work together to overcome some other sports team. I have what appears to be cooperation and competition happening at the same time. If I look deeper than appearances, aren’t I just making shit up that I don’t know anything about? I don’t know these people. If I started saying things like “well yeah but they aren’t really cooperating because they are competitive people with no spirit of togetherness blah blah blah” I’d just be telling fantasy stories about a stranger, based on nothing but my own prejudice. Your example with the friend who is screwing you over behind your back- presumably you know that because of something you observed, right?
Right, but you don’t know anything about a person’s intentions except through observation.
You are somebody who believes that your world IS the world, someone who cannot see beyond his own limitations and who refuses to believe that he HAS any limitations. The truth is, fortunately, that the world IS much, MUCH bigger and richer than you are prepared to allow. I actually find it rather staggering that you can be so confident of the extent of the world. You are a lion pacing around its cage roaring and full of pride, claiming he rules the world, while I stand outside bemused by the absurdity of the lion.
The answer to 2) is 1).
A mind steeped in philosophy means: in order to do philosophy your mind has to work in very specific ways, in particular using logic and reason extensively. Also, there are other ways the mind can work which are left to atrophy, or are disabled by the excessive use of logic. An analogy might be: you are a specialist like a swimmer who develops all the muscles and the body shape and the mindset that enables fast swimming. But put the swimmer on a tennis court and he will quickly find that he has the wrong muscular development, the wrong mindset and body shape that works well for tennis. This analogy sort of works I think but it does not reveal the huge gap between the abilities developed by philosophers and the much, much larger range of abilities accessible when one develops one’s full human potential. That you cannot see this is because you have not been outside of the philosophical mindset. It is like trying to explain to someone who has been blind from birth that there is such a thing as sight and just what it means to be sighted.
The answer to 2), as I have said many times, is your observations are not correct because you are interpreting those observations incorrectly — so it is not so much that you do not observe correctly, but that you do not interpret the observation correctly.
“But that’s all I have.”: well, no, that is not all you have, or I should say, that is not all you NEED have. It is only all you have because you are steeped in philosophy. As I’ve said time and again, there is actually more.
What you have are your senses — many more in fact than the 5 obvious ones — your feelings and intuition (and actually there is more, but I won’t go into it because I feel that I am already stretching your credulity beyond breaking point). You interact with the world through your whole body as well as your mind. If you use it, it tells you much, including the intentions behind people’s behavior — but in addition, you have to understand that you are a growing being and that your mind will solve problems for you if you just let it. (Ooops, I just heard the elastic snap….) The thing is, you see, that if you actually WANT to know the intentions behind people’s actions, then all you have to do is pay attention to people and leave your mind to do its own thing and it will in time develop the ability to do so.
When I think of it, the best analogy for the mind is to be found in video games such as Final Fantasy. In these games the characters start of withy very few abilities. Every battle they fight and every puzzle they solve etc, gives them experience points. After a time they accumulate enough experience points to gain a new ability. Your mind, the mind, works like this. It gains from every experience and after some time the gains from lots of experiences allow it to develop a new ability.
dragon- in your response to me, you make up speculative, wrong-headed stuff about me to justify your positions, in just the same way as I suspected you were doing it with ‘people who are competitive’. You don’t have access to any special insights, methods, or intuitions. What you have is preconceived notions and prejudice, and an unwillingness to consider anything that challenges them.
Yeah whats all this lion in a cage nonsense?
Wrong again! Would you stop looking in the mirror and actually see me for once!
It was an image which, as such images are, was supposed to make my meaning clearer. Obviously it failed. Can’t win 'em all!
One of the big problems I have to deal with here is that I am talking to people who have given up using images, largely, in favour of words alone, words and definitions and logic and rules. The power of the image has been lost — which is a great pity because the most powerful, sophisticated finctions of the thinking mind use visual imagery.
I anticipate derision and demands for evidence. I don’t do science. I do personal experience. Try it for yourself — no easdy matter, I have to admit but the only way to find out what your mind can do is to try it. You might try starting with collages — but you must abandon all rules and work purely from the subconscious i.e. no thinking before you make choices, no composing your picture etc, just gather a selection of images from magazines and quickly paste them onto paper. So the key is to work very quickly without giving yourself time to “think”.
Without interfearing in the discussion of the thread, i just want to make a remark on this particular point.
The position of all schools of the east is also the same as of Abrahamic religions. All emphasis is on the intention, not the action.
But, there is only one exception to this rule, Jainism, which is perhaps the only religion in the world, who does not accept ignorance as an excuse.
It very clearly says that if one is ignorant, it is his fault and he would be hold accountable for his actions.
So, do not waste time, go and get wisdom right now.
with love,
sanjay
Thank you. I hadn’t realised that Jainism was distinct in this way.