Perception I

in #philosophy5 years ago (edited)

"Monks, I will teach you the All. Listen & pay close attention. I will speak."

"As you say, lord," the monks responded.

The Blessed One said, "What is the All? Simply the eye & forms, ear & sounds, nose & aromas, tongue & flavors, body & tactile sensations, intellect & ideas. This, monks, is called the All. Anyone who would say, 'Repudiating this All, I will describe another,' if questioned on what exactly might be the grounds for his statement, would be unable to explain, and furthermore, would be put to grief. Why? Because it lies beyond range."

Source: Sabba Sutta: The All (translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu)


Let's look at the following, the Buddha says that he is going to teach the All and immediately begins to refer to vision, to hearing, smell, taste, touch, and of course, the intellect. What does this mean?

We must have two things to consideration; the first, this is not the mother tongue of the Buddha, therefore, he does not use exactly those words and part of the message is lost, not only for the translation but also for the context, and the second thing to consider is that, has not been in my head for a moment the intent to make a Buddhist interpretation of the text, however contradictory it may seem, but my intention is instead to get as much gold as possible from an external perspective to such words, since I am not a Buddhist, having said that, my interpretation can be quite unique.

What does the Buddha mean then, having such considerations present, when mentioning this? To the perception. The All is the perception.

But let's avoid misinterpreting what he means by being superficial and not paying attention to the depth of his words, let's analyze a little more thoroughly what he says.

First, he refers to vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch; the five senses, and that are known by the generic name of sensation, added to this, later refers to the perception of ideas, to which Buddhists usually refer, as far as I know, simply using the word "perception" or "cognition", although it is also known some other times, as by some Christian groups, as "intuition", so that ideas such as good, justice, etc., should according to them be intuited, and on the other hand, we can also refer, as I will from now on, to the concept of "intellection", which does not refer only to intuiting, but also to understanding through logic such intuition.

The difference between "intuition" and "intellection" could be said to be similar to that between "seeing" and "observing", or between "hearing" and "listening", and so on.

However, he makes a precise distinction between "eye & forms", that is, between what perceive and what is perceived, making it clear that he is not a reductionist neither of the subject (subjectivist) nor of the object (objectivist), but it is encompassing everything, as indeed it does.

On the one hand, if we go to the most extreme subjectivism, there are those who argue that the only thing that we can be sure of is the existence of our own mind, ergo, our own existence, and that everything we perceive through the sensation, that is, the whole universe, can be totally false, illusory, a creation that makes our own mind for some reason.

Solipsism.

This is, of course, the maximum form of egocentricity, since it raises precisely that the ego is the only thing that exists. If we totally ignored Buddhism and listened to the discourse of the beginning, that the All is perception, perhaps we could believe that it is about this idea, but it is not so, because as we know Buddhism precisely seeks the detachment of the self.

But let us dedicate ourselves for a moment to embrace this opinion that we are the only thing that exists, or rather, that you are the only thing that exists.

I was reading some websites, some forums, some articles, to see some people defend or advocate solipsism. Something that is quite absurd if you think about it, because if they think they are the only ones that exist, why take the time?

Some said things like you are a God who feels lonely or bored, or any other similar vagueness, and that you created this entire universe for yourself, or not even this entire universe, only what you perceive now is the only thing that exists. You are able to do all this, of course, but you are unable to forget the only thing you are trying to forget, and is that this world is an illusion created by your mind.

What I found in such articles were people who embrace reason enough to deny or doubt intuition, since intuitively humans dismiss solipsism, but also don't embrace it enough to overcome emotion, because in effect, for someone to believe in solipsism, he must be a very emotional person.

Create a universe because you feel lonely or bored? These are human emotions, the human being is a social creature and has such needs, is petrified in complete loneliness, but a God who exists and has existed in solitude for all eternity would not have such needs.

But what argument do we have? So far I have only mocked a bit of some inconsistencies that this thesis has at first glance, but nothing concise. If we fully trusted our intuition we would not have to sustain logically why solipsism is wrong, but we simply "know it". It is curious because in this kind of matters we can trust, namely, in two things; the first, in intuition, and the second in reason. Sometimes one is better than the other, sometimes we trust more in the other than in the one, but it does not matter, because finally, sometimes by intuition we give validity to reason, and other times we rationally validate our intuition, everything depends on which of the two we trust the most.

But as I believe that there should be, as far as possible, a harmony between the two, I am not happy with just intuiting or just reasoning, but that both should be together. Let's start again from the basis that the only thing that exists is the subject, my mind, yes now it is my mind, and of course, what it perceives.

According to this, everything we perceive through sensation is in our mind, so that there is no external world outside the subject, and all the things we perceive in this way, all objects, all other people, are only in our mind. Although if we analyze it well, this already poses a problem; is not the body itself perceived through sensations? This is true, therefore, with the premises we take, it must be said that our body is as true as all other physical objects. Even more, if all these objects are only in our mind, we cannot say that the body with which we identify is more ours than any object, that is, just as we say that we are the body, we must also say that we are the objects that the body perceives, just as all other people are us, because if everything is in our mind we are all these things. Finally, as expected, we come to a logical contradiction. If the only thing that exists is me and all things and people are a creation of my mind, I cannot say with certainty that it is my mind, because it is also the mind of all these things and people, it is the mind of everything, in fact, and just as I say that all these things are controlled by a part of my mind that I am not aware of, I am forced to admit that all other people and things are in the same situation, therefore, if we start from the basis that the only thing that exists is the ego, we find ourselves in a situation where we must necessarily eliminate the ego, which is an absurdity.

Here we have an argument perfectly sustaining in the confines of logic to dismantle such ideas, we have not satisfied ourselves with just intuiting.

Having already got rid of these, we have, on the other hand, the reductionists of the object, those who say that everything that exists are objects, the human being is an object, we have all heard once, when it is not mentioned by ourselves, things like that the human being is a biological machine.

But since we are not interested in knowing if the human is an object or subject, because we are talking about perception, then let's concentrate on what interests us. When I spoke of solipsism above, my interest was not to prove or disprove anything other than the simple fact that the sensations are reliable. Objectivists, in all their variants, rely on the validity of sensation, but they deny to a certain extent the validity of intuition or intellection by denying the existence of objective ideas.

The ideas to which we refer are those that we mention all the time when speaking, such as good, justice, liberty, equality, beauty, and a long list of other things. Basically everything that the human seeks, we can even add to the list the feelings, be it love, happiness, and many more, because these are intimately related to the first ones. Are there such ideas or not in an objective way?

The first thing we have to do is to affirm that such ideas exist in some way for the simple fact that we mention them. If they did not exist at all, how would it be possible for such nonexistent things to affect us who do exist? If we say that something that does not exist can affect what exists, then a world of logical absurdities opens up to us, and today the world could completely destroy itself because something that does not exist destroyed it. So absurd.

Of course they exist, almost no one denies that, but where? Well, if we start from the fact that ideas do not exist objectively, as the objectivists say, but in the end they exist in some way, then they must exist in a object, in what object do they exist? The answer is probably that they are somewhere in our mind, or rather, in the brain, or where else can they be?

If the ideas are only in our brain, then they are all of a subjective nature; beauty is subjective, justice is subjective, good is subjective, and so on. Even truth itself is subjective, or is it that truth itself is something other than an idea? Perhaps this line of thought leads us back to the solipsism from which we have just get out, or worse yet.

But focus only on perceiving the existence of a single idea objectively, which will show that such exist not only inside the human brain or the mind, but exist as ideal objects.

The one.

If we take an apple and observe it, we will notice that there is oneness in it, that is, the apple is one. That's right, an apple is one apple. But although it has oneness, the apple is not the one, it is not the idea of the one, is this understood?

We perceive that in the apple there is oneness, and therefore, we say that it is one, one apple, from where we get the idea of the one that is in our head, that is, seeing many things with oneness (one apple, one tree, one car, etc.), we abstract the oneness that exists in them and we perceive this idea of the one that is in our head. Like when we make an addition.

Now, where is the one? and I mean the one in itself. The one we refer to when we mentioned the number one. In our head? If the one is in our head, how is it possible that the apple, which is not in our head, has oneness? It can not be in our head then. It is in the apple? Is the one the oneness that has the apple? If it is in the apple, obviously we are forced to admit that it is in all things that have oneness, in a kind of omnipresence, whether in a car, in a tree, or in a pear. But this leads to something else, if all these things have oneness, then they are all similar, that is, they all share something, of course, oneness. But if I told you; physically, a car and an apple are similar, what would you say? You will see that although there is no physical resemblance between the two, there is an ideal similarity, because both share the oneness, and that oneness taken in itself, and not taken as the oneness of an apple or anything else, is a what we refer to when we count, that is the one, the idea of the one. An object therefore ideal, which is not in our head as we said, nor in the other objects, but is itself an object.

We are not interested anymore arrived at this point, we only want to admit that the idea that the human perceives, like the many others, are not only in his head but they are outside, making the perception of ideas in a certain way equal to the vision, to taste, and to other sensory perceptions.

For this point it seems that we have taken many turns simply in the first words of the Buddha, because we have only focused on half of what he says in his speech, we have converted around 200 of his words in almost 2000, although it has not been in vain if we have come to understand what perception is. But have we understood why perception is the All? That is truly the most important thing, and it is also what has immense practical value, so it will be dealt with in the second part, for which it was necessary first to lay the foundations that we have discussed here.

That said, I have to clarify again that this is my interpretation and I have actually used the initial discourse as the structure of the post, rather than as a basis for everything exposed, it is possible, therefore, that my interpretation is not accurate, or that something has been overlooked, in that case, I would be more than pleased to be corrected. All you can interpret of what I have written, lies beyond my range.

Know thyself.


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Forgive me but I had a hard time trying to understand your post. Are you questioning the existence of objectivity? That the way we process information is a symptom of solipsism, making everything subjective?

In any case, I think we need to draw the line between objectivity and subjectivity. When it comes to truth, it must be objective, absent of emotions and feelings. When emotion is intertwined with truth, then it is not truth. We have to understand what something means before we define it.

It is an abuse of language when truth is being sprinkled with subjectivity.

Great stuff by the way. Probably going to need some time to digest all of it.

Oh no, I am saying that both subjectivism (like solipsism, etc.) or objectivism (like materialism, etc.), are reductionist and don't encompass everything.

The firsts illogically believe that there is no external world, and the seconds forget that the external world is perceived by our senses, and therefore, the object itself is not completely knowable, although of course, such an object exists and it is knowable, but not completely.

I also agree that objective truth lacks emotions, what I mean is that there is an objective truth about emotions and feelings.

It is an abuse of language when truth is being sprinkled with subjectivity.

The subjective truth is opinion, and not truth. Although being subject there is always some subjectivity in what we say.

I will try to make the second part more understandable.

Regards!

The subjective truth is opinion, and not truth.

100% this.

How does a man arrive at objectivity? He must rely upon the consensus of others to validate his subjective observations. Is objectivity mere consensus amongst subjective perceptions? When all of man's truths, by necessity, must depend upon his aubjective perceptions and interpretations, can there be true objectivity? If so, from whose perspective?

Consensus is not required to arrive at objectivity. Objectivity is a perception devoid of emotion and feelings. I can arrive at objectivity by saying 5 + 5 = 11, but that doesn't make it true. However, consensus is required to arrive at truth but only from objective perceptions so I agree with you there.

I can count a crowd and can objectively state, that 100 people are standing on a field. But objectivity nowhere stands alone. Measurements and numbers are always connected to other statements which include some kind of goal or opinion. Man himself is, from what I think, by no means capable of being purely objective and I am asking myself if it were the case, would we not lose our humanity as being detached from emotions and would this not require a notion onto life which does not care about human affairs?

If we as humans count, measure, estimate or discuss matters we always attach something to it which we would like to express, prove or gain. If I would count those hundred people and announce it out loud this would be connected to some desire to transport a message, like "these are many people!" or "only hundred people watch this event" or "100 people create a certain atmosphere" and so on. The objective truth that the earth circulates around the sun has always a meaning. In the sense that it changes perception and evaluation of the humankind itself over the course of time. Before we had the heliocentric view of the universe we had the notion that earth was the centre of the stars. In that sense, arriving at truth through objective perceptions alone, I find, is not taking place as it always is attached to something subjective which is what the individual gives it. Those two go together in the same way mind and matter aren't separable.

Physics answers the question that a branch which falls from a tree does make only a sound if an ear is near by which has the form and function to perceive this sound. No ear, no sound. This leads me to the question: is there any objective proclamation at all which stands alone just so? I cannot think of any. Can you?

Is objectivity mere consensus amongst subjective perceptions?

There's already a name for that, and it's called intersubjectivity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersubjectivity

Intersubjectivity
Intersubjectivity, in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, is the psychological relation between people. It is usually used in contrast to solipsistic individual experience, emphasizing our inherently social being.

Maybe thinking Buddhism in historical context can assist in decyphering the cryptic anecdotes that Siddhartha may or may not have discussed, but "faithfully" preserved by his acolytes. Siddhartha, having been thoroughly discontented with the reigning Hindu religion and mystic yogis at explaining suffering, "woke up" under a tree, while in deep meditation.

Buddhism is likely somewhat of an anti-thesis to Hindu thesis in attempting to answer suffering. Thus, the elusive goal of attaining "nirvana," or nothingness/void, as opposed to the curse of infinite karmic cycle, to which Hindus are subject. Is Siddhartha posing a counterpoint to the Hindu creation belief of the abstract one god gazing upon himself by tuning the mind to subjective perception of the material universe?

Rather than gods and karma, Siddhartha seems to validate only the material and the subjective observer. The maya, or illusion, of existence in Buddhism seem to contrast sharply with the immutable fact of karma and caste. The non-existent self of Buddhism dictates the validity of man, which is denied by the objective externals and obligations of karma and caste.

Is Siddhartha posing a counterpoint to the Hindu creation belief of the abstract one god gazing upon himself by tuning the mind to subjective perception of the material universe?

I believe that to a certain extent he does, it would be necessary to see what nature he gives to the ideas to know if he places them in the same rank as the sensations, or if he gives a higher step as Plato does, however, both forms of perception are still inherent to the subject and therefore, following Buddhism, they must be transcended.

As for the material world, he refers to the All talking about the sensible and the intelligible, therefore, it is not about denying something beyond this, which could very well exist, but it shows the impossibility of perceiving something beyond this.

Furthermore, when he talks about ideas he may already be referring to something alien to matter, although again, it would be necessary to see what nature he gives to ideas.

And yes, I believe that both karma and caste Buddhism does not deny them, nor does it deny intellection and sensation, but it seeks to transcend them.

Hi vieira,

This post has been upvoted by the Curie community curation project and associated vote trail as exceptional content (human curated and reviewed). Have a great day :)

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Very thanks! Have a great day too!

Awesome!!!!!!
Congratulations for your great content and thanks to @curie to share this content with us😉👍
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Thanks!!!!!!

Can you please provide an "executive summary"?

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