Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id LAA14168 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 13 Sep 2000 11:09:53 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745A05@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: solipsistic view on memetics Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 11:07:27 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Sorry to butt in,
What you've got here is Fromm's classic dichotomy between western notions of
doing versus eastern notions of being.
After all there are "two" kinds of enlightenment- that sought by the
rational empiricism of the west (since, what the 18th century onwards), and
the enlightenment through meditation of eastern traditions.
Personally I'm firmly in the western camp on this one, and the zen/bhuddist
"solutions" proposed by the likes of Brodie and Blackmore to the meme
"problem" I find very problematic.
What we need to do is treat eastern philosophies the same way we treat
mid-eastern religions that dominate the west: Look at their origins and
analyse them with contemporary tools to explain their origins. We have, for
example, good grounds for suggesting that Mohammed didn't receive messages
from God in his nights sleeping in caves, but instead suffered bouts of
temporal lobe epilepsy/sleep paralysis which he interpreted in relation to
the most pressing concerns to him- i.e. the unstable political situation in
Medina, and his family's precarious status (there may also have been some
low frequency noise generated within the cave producing other hallucinatory
effects also, enhancing his perception of receiving messages from god).
The Bhuddist meditiation thing comes from a slightly different train of
events, but are equally explainable. IIRC, we have this rich prince going
out amongst ordinary people, and being so shocked by what he sees he rejects
his worldly possessions, and then sits under a banyan tree for ages eating
only a grain of rice every so often before reaching enlightenment. This is
quite simple to explain: what we have here is a straightforward case of
post-traumatic shock, which since the condition was not treated was followed
by an absolute denial of the physical reality of the social system which
generated that shock. [IMHO, I think Jesus suffered from a similar kind of
post traumatic shock when, as a teenager he found out Joseph wasn't his
father, but that his father was probably a Roman soldier who raped his
mother.]
Anyway, as an Enlightenment-project follower, unsurprisingly, I would reject
meditative solutions to difficult questions like does the self really exist,
and do other selves exist. Still, whatever floats your boat :-)
Vincent (sorry, just an excuse to be militantly atheist again)
> ----------
> From: Chris Lees
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2000 5:01 am
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: solipsistic view on memetics
>
> Joe wrote :
>
> >No, it was "Wu!",
>
> I don't think it matters very much, but I think it was/is Mu in Japanese,
> Wu in Chinese, yes ?...meaning, I believe, literally 'nothing', but with
> a more technical or special meaning in this particular context. (As in
> Joshu's 'Has a dog a buddhanature ?' )
>
> > which is more than a negative answer, it is a
> >rejection of the question. That's like invoking God or different
> >dimensions to foreclose further questioning; a mystical and anti-
> >intellectual response, indeed.
>
> Hmm. This is a bit tricky. I agree on "more than a negative answer",
> but not that it is "a rejection of the question". It's more like saying
> 'neither positive or negative', in the sense that to progress insight
> it is nescessary to move from that simple binary opposed pair.
> I see Mu! is an injunction, a clue, a pointer to look elsewhere.
>
> I see what you mean (I hope) by saying it is "like invoking God or
> different dimensions" or a some other non-empirical principle.
> That's true, but only at the level of this verbal intellectual debate. I
> wrote
> because stimulated by your "if selves didn't exist, what could possibly
> be there to be deluded ?" which is a magnificent, powerful and
> fundamental question. In my view, Mu! or similar koans are not
> nescessarily 'anti-intellectual' (in the sense of being against rational
> thought or scholarship ) rather that there is recognition by a questing
> intellect that when we hit such tough questions on the ultimate nature of
> our reality or being, the intellect, as a tool, can go no further, whilst
> direct experience in meditation can go further, and it is from such
> a position, a position outside or beyond conventional verbal speculation
> or rational analysis that the Mu! answer can be found, as a practical
> project. I don't think this is at all 'anti-intellectual', nescessarily.
> It's just an approach which has been found to provide an answer to
> those who are insistent upon pursuit of that question, ' what is there
> to be deluded ? ' Or what is there to be Enlightened ? for that matter.
>
> C.L.
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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