Benutzer:Jayen466/Mensa Philosophorum

Stammtischmotto: Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses 2. Motto, wenn das erste nicht hinhaut: Ama et fac quod vis

Geist/Materie

... it is possible that the conclusions of scientific materialism are wrong. From time to time we sense a larger reality than the one science provides, a subtle perception pointing to a better, meaningful existence. The dissonance between the scientific view and the one we intuit produces restlessness and a need for resolution. Even the pursuit of material goals may be a blind response to the urge to attain a dimly sensed reality in which purpose and meaning are facts, not fantasies. Our ability to progress in that direction is severely hampered by our not understanding the nature of the problem, by restricting reality to the empirical realm. Indeed, Western psychological science tends to regard the very consciousness through which we know the physical world to be no more than a product of that world, an epiphenomenon less real than that which it comprehends. No wonder meaning vanishes. A physicist commented on this assumption:

Most painful is the absolute silence of all our scientific investigations towards our questions concerning the meaning and scope of the whole display. The more attentively we watch it, the more aimless and foolish it appears to be. The show that is going on obviously acquires a meaning only with regard to the mind that contemplates it. But what science tells us about this relationship is patently absurd; as if the mind had only been produced by that very display that it is now watching and would pass away with it when the sun finally cools down and the earth has turned into a desert of ice and snow.

It is as if Descartes had been stood on his head and made to declare, "I think; therefore, the world exists and I am an illusion."

A J Deikman: The Observing Self, S. 7–8

-- Jayen466 00:46, 9. Nov. 2007 (CET)

Kein Geist, nur Materie (shades of the tone scale)

“Everything in the universe is material: therefore the Great Knowledge is more materialistic than materialism.” ...

I could not refrain from asking here, “What about thought?”

“Thought is material as well as everything else,” answered Mr. Gurdjieff. “Methods exist by means of which one can prove not only this but that thought, like all other things, can be weighed and measured. Its density can be determined, and thus the thoughts of an individual may be compared with those of the same man on other occasions. One can define all the qualities of thought. I have already told you that everything in the Universe is material.”

Glimpses of Truth, in: G. I. Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World, S. 21–23.

-- Jayen466 01:02, 9. Nov. 2007 (CET)