Philosophy Now Forum

nothing wrote: ↑Sat Dec 28, 2019 11:50 pm

bahman wrote: ↑Sat Dec 28, 2019 7:24 pm Let me illustrate it further. Suppose that you know the answer to a question, you learn it, you found or experience it yourself. I ask you whether you know the answer without requesting the answer. You reflect on the question and tell me that you know the answer to that question without retrieving the answer. I then ask what is the answer. You then reflect and retrieve the answer from your collective memory. So there are two steps here: 1) The knowledge that you know the answer even when the answer is not present in your conscious mind and 2) The appearance of the answer in your conscious mind. I am wondering about the first step. How could we know that we know the answer even when the answer is not present to us?

Understood - admittedly I did get a very different impression from the OP.

I will think about this for some time and return.

(after ~20 minutes)



Energy, frequency and vibration all imply resonance. If I am asked a question I know the answer to, I know prior to retrieving the answer based on the (particular) question having a certain familiar vibrancy which naturally resonates with (what I denote for finding no suitable equivalent) one's own body of knowledge. A sudden familiarity is aroused thus with immediacy, indicating the first ascertainable knowledge needing no further consideration beyond a simple 'yay' or 'nay'.

As a crude example: if numbers were each their own harmonic such that odd numbers represented a 'body of ignorance' and even numbers represented a 'body of knowledge', questions pertaining to even numbers would invariably resonate, whereas odd-numbered questions would not resonate. The same would be questions asked to a being who either readily know (due to having already attained to the same), or know not (due to a practical ignorance of the same): in any case, it is a matter of resonance (or lack thereof) due to the presence/absence of the concerned knowledge excited by the question.

Intuition, if/when viewed in this kind of way, is like a sudden internal resonance (ie. "flash") due to some kind of stimuli: be it a question(s) one is pondering, or the occurrence of some otherwise arbitrary event (such as an apple falling on one's head). If one retries the two-person dichotomy from your example and simplifies it to a single being practicing question-and-answer, sparking intuition in such a scenario is simply a matter of asking the right question such to generate the same "flash".

Perhaps there is a practical potency behind the simple expression "seek, and ye shall find" if/when taken as: "ask/inquire, and it will come".

I think any thought is a form so I can understand how we hold them. The mind is basically a reservoir of forms which it experiences. I don't understand two things though How do we retrieve a specific form considering that all that we have experienced lay in our minds? And how could we have the knowledge, which is a form, of an answer which is a form?

bahman wrote: ↑Sun Dec 29, 2019 9:42 pm I think any thought is a form so I can understand how we hold them. The mind is basically a reservoir of forms which it experiences. I don't understand two things though...

If we adopt the idea(s) that any thought is a "form" (with the mind being a reservoir of them) the thinking-inquirer themselves has not yet been given consideration. Thus any question "how do we..." begs a modus of interaction between thought and the one thinking. The problem to avoid here is identifying as thought: the same is lunacy whereby a being is at the mercy of their own machinations.

If we allow that thoughts are forms, we must minimally allow that forms can be expressed as a conjunction of both points (ie. masculine) and curves (ie. feminine): any number of the former producing an outline of the latter. As it relates to the thinking-inquirer, these would be the 'what' and 'why' respectively, according to a line of inquiry.

How do we retrieve a specific form considering that all that we have experienced lay in our minds?

I do not take to the meaning of the question. Is this assuming one has a conscious will/intent/motivation to retrieve a specific form, thus in need of a practical method as to how to accomplish this? Can the question be re-posed or an example given?

And how could we have the knowledge, which is a form, of an answer which is a form?

But why should knowledge be a form?
Suppose knowledge negates/obliterates forms.

Suppose any belief which is false. Whoever adopts this belief thus adopts the form(s) associated. In such a case, knowledge would be the equivalent to as little as one single "point" that renders the entire form impotent, thus the form (ie. the bondage associated) acts not on the knowledgeable.

To take a practical example: one is required to take a false testimony in order to join a particular ideological faith believing the testimony is true. The testimony binds an adherent to some ideological form in the form of a model man which is to be regarded as the highest standard of living. Thus, each testifying being is subject to a (false) form that practically governs their existence. Knowledge would be any single point which prevents such a form from ever forming. Thus, knowledge negates forms that would otherwise induce a state of suffering/bondage.

It is in this way all knowledge negates all belief-based ignorance(s): pursuing the negation of any/all belief-based ignorances approaches all absence(s) of all form(s) acting on a being such: to cause suffering. If there are no such forms acting on, there is no suffering.

nothing wrote: ↑Mon Dec 30, 2019 1:30 am

bahman wrote: ↑Sun Dec 29, 2019 9:42 pm I think any thought is a form so I can understand how we hold them. The mind is basically a reservoir of forms which it experiences. I don't understand two things though...

If we adopt the idea(s) that any thought is a "form" (with the mind being a reservoir of them) the thinking-inquirer themselves has not yet been given consideration. Thus any question "how do we..." begs a modus of interaction between thought and the one thinking. The problem to avoid here is identifying as thought: the same is lunacy whereby a being is at the mercy of their own machinations.

True. I should have said that any thought is a form in the mind of the thinker.

nothing wrote: ↑Mon Dec 30, 2019 1:30 am If we allow that thoughts are forms, we must minimally allow that forms can be expressed as a conjunction of both points (ie. masculine) and curves (ie. feminine): any number of the former producing an outline of the latter. As it relates to the thinking-inquirer, these would be the 'what' and 'why' respectively, according to a line of inquiry.

We distinguish thoughts from each other. Therefore, they have different forms that we experience. The form, however, is not spatial. Therefore, there is no point or curve.

nothing wrote: ↑Mon Dec 30, 2019 1:30 am

How do we retrieve a specific form considering that all that we have experienced lay in our minds?

I do not take to the meaning of the question. Is this assuming one has a conscious will/intent/motivation to retrieve a specific form, thus in need of a practical method as to how to accomplish this? Can the question be re-posed or an example given?

I think that all we have experienced reside in our minds. Think of two questions A and B and two related answers C and D. C is the answer to A and D is the answer to B. If I ask you A you pick up C and if I ask you B then you pick up D from your collective memory. My question is how we are able to retrieve the proper answer related to a question if both C and D reside in your collective memory.

nothing wrote: ↑Mon Dec 30, 2019 1:30 am

And how could we have the knowledge, which is a form, of an answer which is a form?

But why should knowledge be a form?

Knowledge is a form because we can distinguish between different forms of knowledge.

We distinguish thoughts from each other. Therefore, they have different forms that we experience. The form, however, is not spatial. Therefore, there is no point or curve.

The point-and-curve is an analogy and need not be thought of as spatial: although time has no properties, time has the same attributes as space viz. time is needed to form thoughts just as space is needed for form to reside in.

Time and space are thus united at a fundamental level wherein they are reciprocals of one another - yang and yin respectively. There comes a point wherein certain universal attributes, having equal (though reciprocal) application in both space and time, become commensurable and the concerned attribute transcends spacetime/timespace entirely. This is related to the intrinsic limitation(s) of the mind.

I think that all we have experienced reside in our minds. Think of two questions A and B and two related answers C and D. C is the answer to A and D is the answer to B. If I ask you A you pick up C and if I ask you B then you pick up D from your collective memory. My question is how we are able to retrieve the proper answer related to a question if both C and D reside in your collective memory.

The impressionable mind itself is physical - so impressions relating to the same can certainly be said to reside therein. Upon death however, the discriminatory nature of the mind (ie. the mind itself) is forfeit, thus physical impressions are only temporary and are likewise forfeit. This discrimination (not to be taken as derogatory, but rather in its most practical sense) is precisely what the mind temporarily grants (thereby being subject to the temporal nature of the physical), and this is what is related to the process of discriminating between proper (ie. relevant) and improper (ie. irrelevant) answers.

To borrow your construction:

Que → Ans
A → C
B → D

C and D are already present (if even dormant), thus the relevant question which excites them is like a closing of a switch to a circuit A/B → C/D, or even a light (question) being directed onto what is already there such to observe it: if A then C, if no A then no C. The question itself is thus the initial filter which discriminates, thus to each thinker-inquirer their own disciplined (or not) use of the mind as to what to do with the answer.

Knowledge is a form because we can distinguish between different forms of knowledge.

"Different forms of knowledge" is incoherent to me - I am tempted to wonder if knowledge is being conflated with intelligence, as these are certainly not the same. What is meant by "different forms of knowledge"?

bahman wrote: ↑Tue Dec 10, 2019 4:14 pm We are all been in a situation when we are asked a question. We know that we know the answer to the question even before we retrieve the answer from our collective memory. How do we do that?

You don't know how you know you know what to do.

Doing/knowing just happens, is happening to nobody.