Excerpts from a new article at Aeon by Natalie Emmons:
We see faces in the clouds and we might just see Jesus in our toast: the fact that we see anyone at all tells us that the human mind is actively searching for agents, even in the most ambiguous of situations.
…Bering and his colleagues set their sights on what psychologists call ‘intuitive mind-body dualism’ as an alternative…The study deliberately included a cluster of children too young to have been exposed to much religious testimony at all, to see whether even they had an inkling that a part of an individual survives death.
…The researchers found that even from the youngest ages, children tended to respond that the dead mouse retained its mental faculties, such as the ability to experience sadness and know things, but that it no longer had bodily states, like the need to eat or drink. As the researchers reported in Developmental Psychology in 2004, this was consistent with intuitive mind-body dualism and confirmed that children reasoned about the mind differently from the body after death: it was only the mind that tended to be viewed as immortal. Notably, they found that younger children were more likely than older children to endorse the idea of eternal life.
…To evaluate whether children possess a deep-rooted, unlearned sense that there is eternal life, I had to find a new experimental approach. My solution was to develop a way of examining children’s intuitions about the prospect of eternal life that avoided the topic of death entirely. After much contemplation and correspondence with Bering, I decided that asking children about the time before biological conception might resolve the issue.
…Namely, children from both cultures had a persistent bias to judge that their emotions and desires – but not their intelligence or bodily states – remained intact during the time before pregnancy. What’s more, the intuition that one’s emotions and desires were eternal endured even as the children grew older, although older children judged they had fewer prelife capacities overall.
In addition to showing that eternalist beliefs are not learned, another significant finding from this work is that children did not think that they had intelligence during the time before conception. This suggests that children are not simply relying on intuitive mind-body dualism to guide their judgments. Rather, from early on, they are sensitive to different aspects of the mind and view only emotionality and desires as the essential core of an individual; these traits, rather than pure intelligence, are what humans intuitively embrace as so elemental that they are thought to precede our existence on Earth.
Yes I have. Please tell us.
Keiths is our fact checker and scourge. Pisser off in residence.
William,
When you’re lying in a piss-soaked bed, can you choose to believe that you’re comfortable and dry?
Or do you get up and walk to the bathroom like the rest of us?
As I’ve explained before several times, the term “believe”, in my philosophy, means “to act as if true”. Sure, I could act as if it were true that I was comfortable and dry, but that would be in conflict with my actual experience. I don’t hold beliefs that are in direct conflict with my actual experience (translation for the persistently confused: I don’t act in a way that is in direct contradiction to my actual experience).. So yes, like anyone else, I’d get up out of the bed. It would be in conflict with my philosophical worldview to lie uncomfortably in a pissy bed acting as if I was comfortably lying in a dry bed.
Progress !
The evolution of “pissy”:
:0)
This?
As an occasional grammar nazi, I would suggest “pissed bed” instead of pissy bed.
Wrong thread title once again.
Innate stupidity and intimations of eternal idiocy.
William:
Richardthughes:
OMagain:
William,
Be a good boy and sing for the gentlemen.
But remember, no excuses. If I am not the person you want me to be, it is your fault for not “manufacturing” me correctly:
Be gentle, Mung. William’s doing the best he can.
I found the discussion i was looking for.
William:
Well, Mr. Free Will, why not choose to like the feeling of lying in a piss-soaked bed? Don’t you have the power? Perhaps you’re a biological automaton after all.
More from that discussion:
keiths:
William:
Well, if you can choose to enjoy having your fingernails pulled out, then it should be a piece of cake to enjoy lying in a piss-soaked bed. Why get up and walk to the bathroom if you can simply choose to enjoy your sloshy situation instead?
keiths:
William:
keiths:
keiths, after getting no answer from William:
It goes without saying that Mr. “I can choose to like anything” did not accept my offer.
William, you crack me up. You can choose to like anything, except for the things you can’t choose to like.
Reality has you whipped, doesn’t it?
I’m confused.
Can WJM convince himself he’ll enjoy his warm wet bed only to be disappointed he doesn’t? At what point do the mind powers kick in?
I would use the word “assume” for that.
keiths,
If you want a response, you’ll have to link to where those quotes come from so I can examine the context in which I made those comments.
Keiths, you are quote-mining again, apparently deliberately, since I’ve already exhaustively explained to you (1) the context of that quote (it being a non-literal inspirational tract for manifestation techniques intended for an audience that already accepts the the manifestation viewpoint), and (2) that it is not a part of my worldview philosophy that you can manifest anything, but rather there are some things which serve as necessary contextual constructs for one’s existence in particular times and locations.
I’ve explained exhaustively that in the manifestation community, no one holds that you have control over most aspects of what you experience, but rather that manifestation techniques are about a more general rearrangement of the kinds of things you experience on an ongoing basis and how you react to that which you experience.
However, none of this suits your false, cartoon-network narrative that serves the purpose of keiths famous false “gotcha” obsession. You don’t try to understand, keiths; you intent is to find phrases and quotes you can use and put in juxtaposition to each other to make others look as bad as possible. You don’t just do it to me; you do it to everyone who doesn’t agree with your view of things.
You and RichardHughes want to characterize my views as if I’ve said I can use my “mind powers” to “convince” myself of anything or make supernatural events occur, or change water into wine or whatever. Perhaps these childish characterizations are all your minds can comprehend from my detailed explanations; perhaps you’re just not capable of holding a more nuanced or complicated model.
But, since you are apparently deliberately quote-mining now, I think it’s more likely you’re just playing some childish game of attempting to vex and frustrate those you are “competing” against by insisting they answer questions and resolve supposed contradictions you generate by deliberately mispresenting what they have already explained.
I suppose that is why you didn’t bother to link to where you found those quotes in your other post. I think from now on I’ll simply reiterate that you are quote-mining and deliberately mischaracterizing my position.
What’s wrong with the link he provided?
So, from now own, my standard response to keiths will be:
“Keith consistently quote-mines me in order to mischaracterize my worldview and philosophy. I’ve corrected him multiple times but he refuses to accommodate those corrections. I’m not going to continue spending my time looking for past threads from which keiths is quote-mining and in which I’ve already corrected him afterwards. I’ll be happy to explain my worldview if there are any serious inquiries, but this post is to let others know that keiths characterization of it should not be taken seriously.”
Goodness, William, you’ve had a year or two to explain your worldview, and lots of people have asked you to do it. Apparently you’ve written whole books on the subject and then disowned them.
Either you are an incoherent writer, or your worldview is incoherent, because I don’t know anyone who has been able to understand it.
I didn’t see the link.
To answer the question, then. Keith asks me:
I answered him, saying I can choose to act as if I was comfortable and dry, but that is not my actual experience. I would not be comfortable or dry. I do not act as if something is true when it conflicts with my actual experience. It’s not that I cannot do it; rather, I will not.
We then move to another aspect of free-will techniques – choosing to enjoy something you do not currently enjoy. Well, I’ve done that already many times in my life; it doesn’t happen immediately for me – it takes time (for whatever reason) for the willful intent to manifest in a change from disliking a thing to enjoying it.
The question is whether or not I can choose to enjoy something that is seriously uncomfortable, painful or revolting. The answer is, I’ve succeeded in doing just that in my life already several times. Again, not immediately. There may be something I cannot willfully, over time, change from not enjoying to enjoying. That may be an intrinsic aspect of my existence here – but, as I’ve already demonstrated to myself, there is quite a bit of room for making some very serious changes in how one reacts to things here.
There’s a difference between acting as if something is true, and actually enjoying something that I previously did not enjoy. I can do the former very quickly, but the latter usually takes some time, unless I can find a meme that can quickly alter my response to a thing. Often it takes finding several new memes to alter reactive behavioral patterns.
So, can I act as if the wet, pissed-on bed is comfortable and dry? Of course. Anyone with a modicum of will power could do the same. Could I use my free will to train myself to enjoy sleeping on a wet, pissy bed? I think so – I’ve trained myself to enjoy things that were far more uncomfortable and problematic than just sleeping on a pissy bed.
Now, would I do such a thing? In all the cases where I’ve trained myself to enjoy that which I previously found unenjoyable, it was basically either out of necessity or a desire not to be psychologically uncomfortable in certain situations that appeared to be intrinsic aspects of my existence here. So, since I don’t have to sleep in a pissy bed, nor is that situation likely to come up, why bother acting as if I enjoy it, and why bother training myself to enjoy it?
I know lots of people who not only understand my point of view, but actively seek my advice in changing their worldview to become more like mine. So, it’s not a question of if my view is in itself incomprehensible, but IMO it’s a matter of if one actually wishes to understand it, and has a worldview framework that allows one to understand it.
I think that this kind of worldview is just too orthogonal to the traditional mainstream “scientism” reality framework to be understood in any depth at all by those still deeply enmeshed in that more traditional framework. IOW, you have to divorce yourself from thinking in standard “how things work” terms to really begin to understand it. It literally took years and years for me to uproot my old view before I was able to start understanding/developing this view.
When you say that something is or is not your actual experience, is that something that you actually believe is true, or is it just something else that you only “act as if” true?
If you believe it actually IS true, then it’s not the case that you never believe that this or that is true (as you have claimed in the past).
OTOH, if you again only act as if such experiences are really taking place, I’m not sure you actually understand what the words “believe is true” mean.
What I’m saying here is that your position is incoherent, as Vaihinger’s “Philosophy of As-IF” has long been understood to be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_%27As_if%27
So, this comment:
(which I made 2 years ago)…. may be technically true but misleading. It’s a little too hyperbolic for my tastes now. I can indeed choose to like to sleep in a pissy bed, but that doesn’t mean I will actually like it right then or even later – but I can certainly make that choice, like I can choose to be ub England. That doesn’t mean I’ll ever actually get to England, but I can still make that choice and then employ techniques to get me to England.
So, I can choose to enjoy sleeping on a pissy bed and thus employ my reaction-changing techniques to acquire that goal; but I may not ever achieve it. It depends on certain existential aspects of my nature.
heh
Yeah, the timecube guy says something similar.
Fer’instance?
walto said:
“Believe is true” doesn’t have much of a place in my worldview system. “I experience” is the only statement I hold as being necessarily true, even though I don’t really know what “I” is, or even what “experience” is really comprised of. That may be incoherent, but still it’s true nonetheless. I don’t know that truths are necessarily coherently reduced or disassembled into distinct, define-able values.
Beyond that, I don’t hold anything as being “true” about the nature of existence and experience. What I do is behave as if experience is providing actionable information. Isn’t that really what we all do? We collect experiences into models of reaction and action. I do the same thing.
I think where I differ from many here is that I do not consider such models “reality”, but rather as mere conveniences and contrivances. I don’t require that they be consistent or permanent – I can change my models as I see fit, as the situation may require. I don’t require that that they can be proven “factual” or that they are 100% effective. I don’t care if they are considered religious, scientific, superstitious or magical in nature – as long as they seem to work for me.
Yeah you do. You get up for a piss like the rest of us. That’s true.
William,
You are as beholden to truth and reality as the rest of us. The truth is that if you piss the bed, you will experience the disgusting aftereffects. So you get up and walk to the bathroom instead.
Reality says “jump”, and you ask “how high?”, just like we do.
ETA: Ninja’d by OMagain.
Yes, you’ve said that “work for you” means “makes your life better”.
Presumably you could happily quaff rhino horn as an aphrodisiac or the bones of an albino child to cure what ails you as those would “seem to work for you” also.
Yeah, so what you are saying is that just like everybody else on the planet you learn from experience. You ain’t special.
Have you ever been the **only** caregiver for a parent with Alzheimers, taking care of **all** their physical needs and emotional problems? I wanted to be a good son to her and take care of her, so I changed how I reacted to some pretty deeply-held “unenjoyments”, and learned to enjoy things by changing aspects who I was and how I reacted.
To clarify: “enjoying” a thing doesn’t necessarily mean one thing like being pleased or happy. One can enjoy all sorts of things if they find the proper perspective. For me, “enjoy” is a very deep, broadly contextualized concept that I think few people can understand.
William,
It isn’t “technically true”, William. It’s utterly false.
You admitted:
If you can’t manage to enjoy sleeping in a piss-soaked bed, do you really think you can choose to enjoy having your fingernails pulled out?
Your statement was wrong, and everyone here knows it.
Blurt and backpedal, blurt and backpedal.
It seems important to you and Omagain that I’m “just like everyone else”. I wonder why?
Who here considers the map to be the reality? Those who don’t care much for science are the ones who seem not to know the difference.
Who does care, except that the scientific models typically work and the rest do not?
There are fair ways to adjudicate charges against people, and there are sound methods to finding out how life-forms appeared. One might very well be wrong about this or that, but one finds out if one is right or wrong by using what works, empiricism.
Glen Davidson
It’s not. That’s your faulty belief system workon on overdrive. I’m pointing out you’ve said nothing special, revelatory, or unique. You seem to think you have stumbled on some big secret way to be. You’ve not. You are just like everyone else. But the more you keep banging on about it the more I’ll point that out.
And that’s it is it? That’s your sole example? Anything else?
Yes, as just noted, that’s because you are special and hardly anyone can understand you.
Get a grip. These coping strategies are perfectly normal “programs” that everybody has. It’s not just you.
If you can’t manage to enjoy sleeping in a piss-soaked bed, do you really think you can choose to enjoy having your fingernails pulled out?
Well, I think managing to enjoy sleeping in a piss-soaked bed wouldn’t require too much effort or time, considering what I’ve already had to train myself to enjoy. I can certainly choose to enjoy having my fingernails pulled out, but whether or not I could do it on the spot would certainly be an interesting challenge.
BTW, keiths, I have explained on this site before the difference between “enjoymjent” and “finding it pleasureable”. There are all sorts of things that I enjoy that I do not find pleasurable.
As I said in the very thread after the post that keith quoted:
Note – keith is once again quote-mining out of context in order to characterize me as not being consistent when he says the following:
No, everything I’ve said here is completely consistent with what I said in the very thread keiths quoted; he was just counting on nobody examining the fuller context of what I explained in that thread – he was counting on his equivocal use of the term “enjoy” to make it appear my statements were contradictory.
As I said before: keiths is an unrepentant, apparently deliberate quote-miner.
Oh, let me guess. You “enjoy” things other then things that are directly physically pleasurable? How deep!
I’m wondering if you ever mention any of these proclivities of yours to bankers when you ask to borrow money. What you’ve said there is that you’re utterly untrustworthy from one moment to the next and that you have no compunctions about it at all.
So what if you said X last week? X just doesn’t float your boat anymore!
Dude, whatever feels right at the moment! Don’t let The Man try to pin you down! Truth, belief, evidence, trust? Who needs any of that shit? It’s, like, obsolete!
If only the people who have been tortured over the years had your insight! You should write a book……
Oh, wait now.
Actually, it is possible to train oneself to endure pain.
Well, this seems to be an important part of your narrative now. Perhaps you think it’s important to me to think that I’m special, so your new means of attacking me is to insist I’m not? I wonder. If we were in a coffee shop discussing worldviews over a cup of coffee, would you limit yourself to looking for perceived weaknesses or talking points you think would hurt my feelings, and continue to “hammer” at those during our conversation?
If you think it is important to me to think I’m special, what’s the point of insisting I’m not? I really don’t see the point other than – once again – simple cruelty. Does it bother you somehow if I – arguendo – think I’m special?
To a point.
Glen Davidson
Perhaps that’s just a belief of yours, unconnected to any reality? How can you tell?
I don’t consider it to be an attack to point out facts.
I’d be happy to hurt the feelings of someone who displayed beliefs in such things as Uri Geller’s ability to bend spoons with the power of his mind, that a group of people can perform a “ritual” that will enable then to lift chairs with fingertips that they could not lift before, that think that faith healing really might actually work and so on and so on. I’d consider hurting the feelings of such a person “tough love” if simply pointing out they were wrong led to such hurt feelings.
I’m pointing out that you *are* special. But only as special as the rest of us. No more and no less.
No. I think you do think that. And I think that everybody should, at some level, think they are special.
Omagain said:
Wow. Okay. Do you have a justification for why it’s okay to “happily” hurt their feelings? I’m assuming you don’t happily hurt anyone & everyone’s feelings?
Tough love.
petrushka,
Is “tough love” something usually administered “happily”? Are you saying that, in your opinion, OMagain loves me in some way? I don’t really think that justification for harming others fits here. OMagain?
Or are you just trying to provide cover for someone “on the team” who just said something pretty reprehensible?
William,
It’s the other way around. It seems important to you to think of yourself as a special snowflake, a “deep” thinker. But the things you offer as evidence are utterly banal.
For example:
As Glen said:
LOL. William makes a false accusation of quote mining, then proceeds to quote mine OMagain:
Yes, he does have a justification, and he provided it in the very quote that you truncated, William: