Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA15205 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 9 Dec 2000 20:17:57 GMT Message-Id: <200012092013.PAA11680@mail3.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2000 14:19:00 -0600 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: virus: Psychological Profile of Hall In-reply-to: <20001209112117.B1337@reborntechnology.co.uk> References: <200012090556.AAA20101@mail2.lig.bellsouth.net>; from joedees@bellsouth.net on Sat, Dec 09, 2000 at 12:01:35AM -0600 X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Date sent: Sat, 9 Dec 2000 11:21:17 +0000
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: virus: Psychological Profile of Hall
From: Robin Faichney <robin@reborntechnology.co.uk>
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> On Sat, Dec 09, 2000 at 12:01:35AM -0600, Joe E. Dees wrote:
> > >
> > To take this point to its extreme, yet empirical, conclusion, some
> > people on this list have steadfastly and Buddhistically maintained
> > that they do not exist (or at least, they have maintained that they
> > do not possess selves).
>
> Belief in the self is exactly like any other belief: enslavement to
> the meme. Belief is emotional attachment. All we need for practical
> purposes are working hypotheses. See Buddhism Without Beliefs:
> A Contemporary Guide to Awakening by Stephen Batchelor.
>
Actually, I have read, and own, not only that book by Stephen
Batchelor, but also THE FAITH TO DOUBT: GLIMPSES OF
BUDDHIST UNCERTAINTY and ALONE WITH OTHERS: AN
EXISTENTIAL APPROACH TO BUDDHISM (his first book) by the
same author. When he strips belief from Buddhism, he discovers
something very dynamic, recursive and existential - not
essentialist, yet not nonexistent. I also recommend THE TAO IS
SILENT by Raymond Smullyan, who does much the same for
Taoism.
>
> In the case of the self, sometimes the concept is useful, and sometimes
> it is not. Just like any other concept, in fact. Pick them up and put
> them down as appropriate. Don't cling to them, or needlessly reject them,
> either. Needless rejection of a meme is enslavement to its negation.
>
And just who would be doing the picking up and putting down? If
no one, how does one know (and how IS there one to know) that
picking up and/or putting down has occurred? As I have pointed
out before, selves maintaining that they do not exist ensnarls the
nevertheless existent them in unresolveable contradictions, and
denies even their apodictically self-evident perceptions and
appearances (which must appear to someone to appear), for if the
self is denied, so is it's experience, since they are polar correlates
(Piaget, THE GRASP OF CONSCIOUSNESS) and cannot be
equated to each other, since one perdures within perspectives
upon the other, which requires them to be interrelated, but not
conflated. The structure of signification requires a sign, a signifier,
and a signified, as the structures of conception and perception
require conceiver/conceiving/conceived and
perceiver/perceiving/perceived, and none of the three legs of these
stools is dispensable. The fact that conceptions and perceptions
dynamically exist is not a matter of belief, but one of knowledge;
the evidence is perpetually presented and represented to our
senses and brains. I am not believing in the concept 'self" so
much as I am acknowledging the omnipresent evidence for the
referent to which the concept refers.
>
> Belief in the self is like belief in God -- or, for that matter, belief
> in memetics: at best unnecessary, at worst, positively dysfunctional.
>
It is not a matter of belief, but of knowledge, from direct,
apodictically self-evident and omnipresent experience. You need
to read THE FIELD OF CONSCIOUSNESS and MARGINAL
CONSCIOUENESS, both by Aron Gurwitsch, and THE CONTEXT
OF SELF, by Richard M. Zaner, but I am fully aware that you never
follow such recommendations; you just issue them. Maybe it's
because you're not there. And a quantum fluctuation dropped this
seemingly intended-by-someone but actually randomly chaotic
faux email in my inbox.
> --
> Robin Faichney
> robin@reborntechnology.co.uk
>
> ===============================================================
> 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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