Category: Buddhism

Imaginary communication

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Normal socially-defined communication—business, school, professional, etc.—operates within known limits and terminologies. Skill is largely defined as understanding how to use the system without exceeding its limits, how to play the game.

Many other forms of communication must be imagined. That is, I have to imagine what you mean and you have to imagine what I mean.

In many cases of this type I will imagine that you are normal to the extent that I am able to imagine what normal is. And I will imagine that you imagine me to be normal. As I imagine you I will probably assume that your sense of what is normal is more or less the same as mine. This is probably what the central part of the bell curve of imagined communication looks like. People in this group are capable of imagining and cleaving to normal communication standards. If you reciprocate, we will probably get along fine.

If my imagination is better than normal, I will be able to imagine more than the normal person or given to imagining more. If this is the case, I will tend to want to find a way to communicate more than the norm to you. If you reciprocate, we might do well communicating. If you don’t, I might appear eccentric to you or distracted.

If my imagination is worse than normal, I will have trouble imagining or understanding normal communication. I won’t have a good sense of the cartoons we are required to make of each other and will probably appear awkward or scatterbrained to most people. If you reciprocate, we might do well communicating and find comfort in each other.

Normal communication, even when imagined, is based on something like cartoons. I see myself as a cartoon acting in relation to the cartoon I imagine for you. If my cartoon fits you well enough that you like it and if your cartoon of me fits well enough that I like it, we have a good chance of becoming friends.

A great deal of normal imagined communication is cartoon-like, and being normal, will take the bulk of its cartoons from mass media—movies, TV, radio, and, to a lesser extent today, books and other art forms.

People still read and learn from books and art, but normal communication has come to rely heavily on the powerful cartoons of mass media.

The big problem with our systems of imagined communication is they are highly idiosyncratic, messy, and ambiguous. We have to spend a lot of time fixing problems and explaining what we really mean.

It’s good to have idiosyncratic communication, but we have to find ways to understand each other on those terms.

first posted

The same could be said about Buddhism

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Historically, most religions have ‘Rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s’, which typically translates into allowing political authorities to do as they please with little or no objection. At some levels, this is a good way to think and behave, but like all short phrases this attitude or belief can sometimes be deeply misguided. At the end of the day if you are totally defeated, then render unto Caesar. If the matter is of small importance, render unto Caesar. But when Caesar becomes an all-seeing, Satanic panopticon who is killing large numbers of people, it is no longer right to render unto him. We passed that point in the West on 9/11 if not much earlier. Since the Obama presidency, when IC began directly spying on political opponents and is now using that information to punish them, it is obvious we the plebs must at least resist, at least speak up when an opportunity presents. Even simply honestly filling out a post-treatment medical survey takes some courage, but if many of us do stuff like that, we will collectively develop the courage to do more. We do not need to be obstreperous, but we do need to let people know where the uncrossable lines are. During covid, Christians stood stronger than anyone else, including Buddhists, atheists, Jews, Muslims, and more. Out of one million American doctors, only about 500 spoke and acted against the the terrible anti-science covid dictates. And of those 500, the majority were Christians. ABN

Who is JD Vance and why is he dangerous? And what can we do about it?

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

UPDATE: This is an excellent essay and I encourage everyone to read it. I believe this is the kind of outlook we want to get massive numbers of people to understand. We the plebs have some say in how we are ruled pretty much only through public opinion. The better many of us understand the world we really are living in, the more likely we will be able to humanize post-modern totalitarianism if we cannot defeat it entirely, which is a very daunting task. With Sundance’s permission, I have posted the entire essay on this site. ABN

_________________________________

Abandoned by his father to a troubled single mother; eventually raised by grandparents. He is then recruited from an Ivy league law school by shadow figures, a specific billionaire and a network of interests. He changes his name, writes a book about his life story, and with the support of the aforementioned – who eventually pays for the assembly of a strategic campaign influence network, becomes a Senator for 2 years before being quickly elevated into position in the White House.

Many people reading that paragraph would be familiar with the life story of Barack Hussien Obama. However, that paragraph also explains the right-side version of the exact same storyline, James David Vance. It’s a mirror.

On one side of the UniParty mirror we have an emotionally constructed political figure for the left.  On the other side of the UniParty mirror we have an emotionally constructed political figure for the right.  Each person, each emotional narrative, carrying the specific nuances to appeal to their wing of the UniParty audience.  However, both are following the same playbook.

It started with a conversation several weeks ago.  Who is JD Vance and where did he come from?

How does a person without any baseline in politics, not a council member, not a mayor, not a state rep – or state senate, governor etc., become a U.S. Senator and then quickly get into the White House?

What I was told sounded eerily familiar.

JD Vance was born James Donald Bowman in Middletown, Ohio (August 2, 1984). He then changed his name to James David Bowman. He then changed his name to James David Hamel. Eventually, in 2014, notably after Yale Law School (class of 2013) and after marrying his wife Usha, now age 30, he changed his name to write a book.

It was 2014, that’s when JD Vance was born.

Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy was published by Rupert Murdoch’s publishing house, Harper Collins in 2016. The book was made into a Netflix movie, [Reed Hastings] created by Imagine Entertainment and directed by Ron Howard (2020).  However, the interesting background on JD Vance goes back to Yale, and the Obamaesque tap on the shoulder that comes from a billionaire most are familiar with, Peter Thiel.

Continue reading “Who is JD Vance and why is he dangerous? And what can we do about it?” →

An evidence-based critical review of the mind-brain identity theory

~ ABN ~ 2 Comments

Abstract

In the philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and psychology, the causal relationship between phenomenal consciousness, mentation, and brain states has always been a matter of debate. On the one hand, material monism posits consciousness and mind as pure brain epiphenomena. One of its most stringent lines of reasoning relies on a ‘loss-of-function lesion premise,’ according to which, since brain lesions and neurochemical modifications lead to cognitive impairment and/or altered states of consciousness, there is no reason to doubt the mind-brain identity. On the other hand, dualism or idealism (in one form or another) regard consciousness and mind as something other than the sole product of cerebral activity pointing at the ineffable, undefinable, and seemingly unphysical nature of our subjective qualitative experiences and its related mental dimension. Here, several neuroscientific findings are reviewed that question the idea that posits phenomenal experience as an emergent property of brain activity, and argue that the premise of material monism is based on a logical correlation-causation fallacy. While these (mostly ignored) findings, if considered separately from each other, could, in principle, be recast into a physicalist paradigm, once viewed from an integral perspective, they substantiate equally well an ontology that posits mind and consciousness as a primal phenomenon.

UPDATE: Below is a comment from a reader. I am reposting it closer to the article it refers to because it greatly widens the discussion of what consciousness is and how to understand it. ABN

Please allow me to point out a clear oversight in this abstract. This abstract implicitly suggests that if one rejects material monism, they must subscribe to either dualism or idealism. This binary framing excludes other philosophical perspectives such as Radical Empiricism (R.E.) that do not fit neatly into these categories, which prioritize substance (whether mental or physical) over pure experience.

As proposed by William James, Radical Empiricism offers a distinct alternative that is neither strictly materialistic nor dualistic/idealistic. It posits that consciousness and experience are integral and interconnected aspects of reality. It’s core tenets embrace two assertions which fundamentally align with Buddhist aggregate theory: (1) the primary substance of reality is pure experience, which includes both the subjective and objective aspects of reality without privileging one over the other. (2) Experiences are fundamentally interconnected and relational.

In R.E., consciousness is not an independent fundamental substance (as in idealism) nor merely an epiphenomenon of the brain (as in material monism). Instead, consciousness is a function of the elements of pure experience, which are continuous and interwoven.

Other non-dualistic and non-materialistic perspectives, such as process philosophy and phenomenology, also challenge this simplistic binary framing.

However, R.E. is the most explicit in asserting elements of pure experience as more ontologically fundamental than either the mental or physical worlds of experience, which are seen to be mere abstractions from pure experience.

In Radical Empiricism, consciousness is not the fundamental substance of reality but a manifestation of the dynamic interplay of experiences. This view avoids the pitfalls of both dualism and material monism by grounding consciousness in the relational fabric of pure experience.

What I wish to emphasize in this commentary is that consciousness, while central to understanding human experience, is not an isolated phenomenon but intricately linked with the flow of experiences.

The abstract’s presupposition that rejecting material monism necessitates adopting dualism or idealism is a form of a false dilemma, which is a logical fallacy. By not considering other viable philosophical approaches, it limits the scope of the discussion and potentially misleads readers about the diversity of thought in the philosophy of mind.

Thus, an integral perspective stemming from a more holistic approach (such as the chain of interdependent originations in Buddhist aggregate theory) aligns well with Radical Empiricism by considering the interconnectedness and relational nature of experiences. This is the justification for explicitly asserting such discussions, as this abstract invokes, must include R.E. as a valid and valuable approach to understanding consciousness.

Radical Empiricism’s emphasis on direct experience and empirical grounding aligns with the empirical findings in neuroscience that challenge simplistic materialist explanations. Highlighting this alignment is important in order to show how and in what manner R.E. can bridge empirical data and philosophical insights.

In conclusion: The abstract’s oversight in presenting a false dichotomy between material monism and dualism/idealism is a significant limitation. Radical Empiricism provides a nuanced and comprehensive alternative that views consciousness as a function of the elements of pure experience, rather than as a separate fundamental entity. A more inclusive and accurate discussion would acknowledge this and other philosophical perspectives, enriching the debate and providing a more robust framework for understanding the nature of consciousness.

~John Range

Nepal convicts ‘Buddha boy’ of child sex abuse

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

A Nepali man whose followers believe him to be a reincarnation of Buddha has been convicted of child sexual abuse, a court official said Tuesday.

Ram Bahadur Bomjan, known as “Buddha Boy” by his devotees, became famous as a teenager after followers said he could meditate motionless for months without water, food or sleep.

“The district court on Monday found Bomjan guilty of child sex abuse,” said Sikindar Kaapar, information officer at the court in Nepal’s southern town of Sarlahi.

He is expected to be sentenced next month.

Bomjon, who faces up to 14 years in prison, could not be reached for comment. His lawyer, Dilip Kumar Jha, said that there was no evidence against his client and that they would appeal the case in a higher court.

The 33-year-old guru has a devout following but has long been accused of physically and sexually assaulting his followers, and had been hiding from authorities for several years.

link

WRITER ALARMED WHEN COMPANY FIRES HIS 60-PERSON TEAM, REPLACES THEM ALL WITH AI

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Impostor Syndrome

The pace at which AI has damaged countless industries is whiplash-inducing. And no one understands this better than a writer who in 2023 was excelling at his copywriting job with a team of writers 60 people strong — and by the next year found himself the last human standing, arm in arm with AI imitators he was expected to drag along and get up to speed.

“They wanted to use AI to cut down on costs,” the writer told the BBC, using the pseudonym Benjamin Miller.

At first, the new workflow was this: his manager would feed a headline into an AI model, and it would generate an outline that the team were expected to work with, with Miller doing the final edits.

But that was just the beginning. Months later, management decided to cut humans out of the loop almost completely. Going forward, the AI model would generate articles in their entirety. Shoddy automation was here, and as a consequence, most of the writers lost their jobs. Miller kept his — though his role was going to be a bit different than before.

Now, he was tasked with polishing up the AI’s lackluster prose, and, to quote the BBC, “make it sound more human.” If only there was a way of doing that with, uh, human writers.

Dehumanizing Drudgery

Soon, Miller was the only human employee left on the team. It was down to him, and him alone, to fix up all the AI-generated articles.

“All of a sudden I was just doing everyone’s job,” Miller told the BBC. “Mostly, it was just about cleaning things up and making the writing sound less awkward, cutting out weirdly formal or over-enthusiastic language.”

“It was more editing than I had to do with human writers, but it was always the exact same kinds of edits,” he added. “The real problem was it was just so repetitive and boring. It started to feel like I was the robot.”

And so Miller found himself in the unenviable position of legitimizing the intrusion of AI into his very own job by making the extremely fallible models appear more capable than they actually are. This hasn’t been a fate exclusive to writers; in the service industry, for example, an army of underpaid, outsourced workers secretly worked behind the scenes to power the “AI” drive-thrus at the fast food chain Checkers.

link

I worked as a translator for many years. Gradually, computers took over and I moved on. I found it liberating to be replaced by machines. The other day I posted a song supposedly composed and played by AI. I think the song is pretty good and is a masterpiece of composition, employing almost every major lyrical and musical trope in its genre. It’s humorous, cleverly mocking, has many good lines—I think her name was Hailey. Where’d you run? The song was based on a Tik Tok clip with the pictured women making a reference to a sexual act. She was joking. The video was widely received with good humor. You can find more reactions at the link. As for the musicality of the tune, I play guitar but AI selected riffs ‘twice as better than I will’. Lots of people dump on music, especially country, because it’s just simple patterns. Steve Pinker has said as much. But AI is going to show Pinker that even his exalted thoughts and prose can be imitated. They too are just simple patterns, tropes. AI is revealing the core of Buddhism, itself the root of skepticism and stoicism, by forcing us see and feel the amalgam of experience and memory that is human ‘creativity’, its transience, emptiness and copyableness by a machine. ABN

People’s Use Of Alcohol Or Opioids Causes Greater Secondhand Harms Than Marijuana Consumption Does, Study Finds

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

A new study of thousands of people nationwide suggests that secondhand harm caused by marijuana use is far less prevalent than that of alcohol, with respondents reporting secondhand harm from drinking at nearly six times the rate they did for cannabis. Perceived harms from opioids and other drugs also outweighed those related to marijuana.

Looking at responses from 7,799 people to the 2020 U.S, National Alcohol Survey, researchers found that more than a third (34.2 percent) said they’d experienced secondhand harms related to alcohol use over the course of their lives. Just 5.5 percent, meanwhile, said they’d ever experienced secondhand harms related to cannabis.

As for other substances, 7.6 percent of people said they’d ever been harmed by others’ use of opioids, while 8.3 percent reported ever experiencing harm from unspecified “other” drugs.

link

Panpsychism, pansignaling, and Buddhism

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Panpsychism means “all mind” or mind in all things, with an emphasis on cognition being a fundamental aspect or part of nature.

Pansignaling means “all signaling” or signaling in all things, with an emphasis on signaling being a fundamental aspect or part of nature.

I like the term pansignaling because it gets us to look at the signals, without which there is nothing.

Another word that is close to these two is panexperientialism, which connotes that “the fundamental elements of the universe are ‘occasions of experience’ which can together create something as complex as a human being.”

These ideas or similar can be found in the Huayan and Tiantai schools of Buddhism.

Highly recommend giving these ideas some thought and reading the links provided above.

I  tend to favor thinking of this stuff from the signaling point of view. A signal can be found, defined, analyzed, and so on. A signal is a fairly objective thing. When we consider signals and consciousness, it is very natural to consider that signals are parts of networks and that networks can be parts of bigger networks.

As I understand it, panexperientialism holds the view that atoms have experience, and that molecules have experience as do the atoms that make them up… and so on till we get to cells, organs, brains, human consciousness. Human consciousness, which is fundamentally experiential, is what humans mainly think of as experience. At all levels, the “parts” of human consciousness also are conscious or cognizant and thus capable of experience. Thus, there is no mind-body problem. Cognition or awareness is part of nature from the very bottom up. For example, a single bacterium can know to move toward something or away from it.

Life is “anti-entropic signaling networks” that organize, self-organize, combine, cooperate, compete, eat, and change constantly. From this, we can see where impermanence and delusion as described in Buddhism come from.

When matter breaks down into waves and laws, it becomes information, but similar processes are still at work. In Buddhist terms we find again dependent origination, no intrinsic self separate from other information, impermanence, rational structure, karma (the work of this producing that), the primary consciousness found in deep samadhi.

first posted FEBRUARY 25, 2017

A picture of early Buddhism based on what we can be reasonably sure of today

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

As ascetics,31 the Śramaṇas (Buddhists) owned little more than a simple robe and a few other necessities. Thus did Gautama Śākamuni, ‘sage of the Scythians’, wander, meditating and searching for answers, before his “awakening”. He may well have met others doing the same thing, and studied with some of them, but we have no remotely credible evidence that he knew anything about Jains, Ājīvikas, or other non-Brahmanist sects. The traditional view, which actually accepts this problematic notion as dogma, has not been seriously questioned for a long time. Yet these sects are unattested in any dated or datable Pre-Normative Buddhist sources. It is because their teachings needed to be refuted and rejected by much later Buddhists that they eventually appeared in the written Buddhist tradition, but in works that are patently late doctrinally, full of magic and other forms of fantasy, and unreliable in every other way. Chronological incongruities reveal that the putatively “early” forms of what eventually became identifiably Jain, Ājīvika, and so on, did not yet exist as such anywhere near the time of the Buddha, but took on recognizable forms only much later due to heavy influence from Normative Buddhism, therefore no earlier than the Saka-Kushan period.

~Beckwith, Christopher I.. Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia (pp. 70-71). Princeton University Press

Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Pyrrho of Elis went with Alexander the Great to Central Asia and India during the Greek invasion and conquest of the Persian Empire in 334–324 BC. There he met with early Buddhist masters. Greek Buddha shows how their Early Buddhism shaped the philosophy of Pyrrho, the famous founder of Pyrrhonian scepticism in ancient Greece.

Christopher I. Beckwith traces the origins of a major tradition in Western philosophy to Gandhara, a country in Central Asia and northwestern India. He systematically examines the teachings and practices of Pyrrho and of Early Buddhism, including those preserved in testimonies by and about Pyrrho, in the report on Indian philosophy two decades later by the Seleucid ambassador Megasthenes, in the first-person edicts by the Indian king Devanampriya Priyadarsi referring to a popular variety of the Dharma in the early third century BC, and in Taoist echoes of Gautama’s Dharma in Warring States China. Beckwith demonstrates how the teachings of Pyrrho agree closely with those of the Buddha Sakyamuni, “the Scythian Sage.” In the process, he identifies eight distinct philosophical schools in ancient northwestern India and Central Asia, including Early Zoroastrianism, Early Brahmanism, and several forms of Early Buddhism. He then shows the influence that Pyrrho’s brand of scepticism had on the evolution of Western thought, first in Antiquity, and later, during the Enlightenment, on the great philosopher and self-proclaimed Pyrrhonian, David Hume.

Greek Buddha demonstrates that through Pyrrho, Early Buddhist thought had a major impact on Western philosophy.

link

Recommended reading for The Ethical Skeptic, and others of course. I am just finishing Beckwith’s Empires of the Silk Road, which will transform your understanding of world history if you are not already familiar with his work. Looking forward to reading Greek Buddha next. ABN

Psycholinguistics: our normal interpersonal communication system inevitably produces significant error

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Our normal interpersonal communication system inevitably produces significant error; thus leading to misery, personality disorder, mental illness. In spiritual terms, the normal ways we talk and listen carry toxic seeds of ignorance (and evil) that scatter everywhere. Even the sciences are affected.

Without the FIML corrective, nothing will change.

I have done FIML long enough that I feel deeply sorry for everyone who does not do it.

It’s not super easy to do FIML, to correct the mistakes that cause so much suffering, but it can be done with no more effort than learning to cook well or play the piano passably well. And like those skills, it’s fun to do once you get going with it.

Societies collapse because ignorance, greed, and madness accumulate and rot them out from inside. It happens to all of them. It is happening to us very seriously right now.

Marriages, friendships, and individual lives collapse for similar reasons. Errors build on errors, minds overwhelmed; suffering ensues.

I beg of you. Give it a shot. Learn FIML.

Within a short time you will see what it does, how it does it, and why it is so necessary for a good life.

Buddhism and ethical signaling

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Buddhism is very much a system of ethics. Buddhist practice is founded on the Five Precepts of refraining from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and the irresponsible use of alcohol.

In most Buddhist traditions, these precepts are taught as if they are fundamental to the workings of the universe. But how can morality be fundamental to the workings of the universe? How does it really even matter to human beings?

If we think of a human being as a signaling system, we may be able to show that ethical thoughts and behavior are of fundamental importance to the system itself.

Human signaling systems signal internally, within themselves, and externally, toward other people. Our most important signaling system is the one we share with that person who is most important to us, our mate or best friend. Let’s confine our discussion to this sort of primary signaling system.

If I lie to my partner or cheat her, I may gain something outside of our shared signaling system, but that signaling system will suffer. And when that shared system suffers, my own internal signaling system will also suffer because it will contain errors. It will no longer be in its optimal state. Similarly, if she lies to me or cheats me, our mutual signaling system will become less than optimal as will both of our individual, or internal, signaling systems.

My own signaling system cannot grow or become optimal without my partner treating me with the best ethical behavior she can muster. And the same is true for her with respect to me. And we both know this.

We would be good to each other anyway, but it is helpful to see that our being good to each other has a very practical foundation—it assures us optimal performance of our mutual and internal signaling systems.

FIML practice is designed to provide partners with a clear and reasonably objective means to communicate honestly with each other. FIML practice will gradually optimize communication between partners by making it much clearer and more honest. In doing this, it will also optimize the operations of their mutual and individual signaling systems.

To my knowledge, there is nothing like FIML in any Buddhist tradition. But if I try to read FIML into the tradition, I may be able to find something similar in the way monks traveled together in pairs for much of the year. I don’t know what instructions the Buddha may have given them or how they spoke to each other, but it may be that they did a practice with each other similar to FIML practice.

In any case, if we view human being as a signaling system, we may be able to claim that clear signaling—that is, ethical signaling—is fundamental to the optimization of that system.

first posted FEBRUARY 3, 2013