A challenge to the modern scientific view of the self.

[sthitapragya]

This is a description and positive evaluation of old-established social customs, or what social anthropologists call ascribed status. Please consider the youth aged under 25 years who is better educated, more compassionate, less bigoted, and has wider experience of ways of life than some older person who lacks all of those . This hypothetical youth has achieved a status to the effect that she is better able to accomplish what you describe as "to have a family and fulfill your duty towards procreation and propagation of the species as well as to enjoy the fruit of your learning" than many a 25-50 year old who is mentally or morally immature.

Absolutely. And that is probably why it is not followed anymore. Also you have to remember that dharma is intrinsically related to moksha or nirvana. Dharma is a choice made to attain moksha. The ages are guidelines which need not be followed rigidly as long as one understands and ready to move on to the next stage. Dharma is not a code of requirement for everyone. It is a guideline for those who wish to attain nirvana.

True, human personalities are generally believed to progress through maturation stages which coincide with chronological ages, but this is not sufficient justification for the firm rulings such as you describe above as basic dharma.When a soldier is following his dharma if he refuses to do what he considers to be a wrong action isn't this a departure from the discipline that defines a soldier? If every soldier acted on his own moral authority the army would collapse. Similarly if every individual acted according to their own rules the order in society would collapse. So what I ask you is where is dharma on a spectrum between ordinary human kindness and conforming with authority?

When a soldier commits himself to the battlefield he also commits himself to follow the orders of his superiors. That is dharma. Every citizen commits himself to obey the law too. Again that is dharma. You cannot say dharma lies at a particular place between human kindness and authority. There is no human kindness when a soldier kills another soldier. Yet it is his dharma. The real question would be what if a soldier is asked to kill an innocent civilian who is known to be innocent and harmless? This is where his dharma as soldier and his dharma as a protector of the civilian and clash. Honestly, I don't know what happens then because even the literature studiously avoids such uncomfortable issues. But I assume that he could choose either step and face the consequences of his choice. Both would be dharmic acts.

If harmonising with the order of nature is dharma, and this is certainly conducive to the continuation of life, how can we know what the order of nature is? Hindu philosophy and religion is man-made like all other philosophies and religions and therefore has no natural authority. If the self is to be defined as naturally autonomous then it cannot be subjected to any preconceived ideas about maturation stages or preconceptions that may be called dharma.If the self is to be defined as emergent from the formative influences of the culture of belief from which the self grew then the self , and selves, are cultural constructs.

So I ask you Sthitapragya, is a self a cultural construct or does the self arrive with a human being at a certain stage of maturation even in the hypothetical absence of all human cultural influence? Your description of basic dharma is not quite clear as to which it is.

I believe dharma is harmonizing with human reality more than nature. For the rest, I cannot answer you because either way you look at it, there are glaring contradictions. The self is supposed to be atman and I really do not understand why one needs moksha because the atman is already in moksha since it is brahman itself. The claim that it needs moksha flies in the face of every definition of the atman.

I am happy to stand corrected about the Indian caste system.

The caste system originated in the puranas. It is not part of the original vedas. But the fact is that it still exists sadly specially in rural areas of India where the exploitation is rampant. So you are not wrong about the caste system. It just has nothing to do with dharma as it did not exist when the doctrine of dharma came into existence.

[prothero]

Of course the modern scientific view of the self is there is no "soul" (immortal, eternal, changeless) no atman. The self is instead a construct of the mind which depends on an intact memory and a functioning brain. Where does the "self" go when you die; it ceases to be when the brain ceases to function. The self is dependent on an intact and functioning brain and when the brain ceases to function the self ceases to be. This is not to say that mental states or experience are identical with brain states but that there is a close correlation and a linked dependency. When the patient with Altzheimers loses his memory and no longer recognizes his loved ones or even remembers his own name and history where is the "self"; largely already lost. True the relatives still talk about Uncle Henry but Uncle Henry no longer recognizes or remembers himself and at the least the "self" is changed and at the most the "self" has already disappeared.

Most of the evidence from science and from medicine (brain injuries, trauma, tumors, drugs, hypoxia) indicates that "consciousness" and the self are brain dependent. Evidence to the contrary is weak, non repeatable and lacks any empirical confirmation. Individual "selfs" depend on individual brains and human like consciousness depends on a functioning intact human brain.

[sthitapragya]

Of course the modern scientific view of the self is there is no "soul" (immortal, eternal, changeless) no atman. The self is instead a construct of the mind which depends on an intact memory and a functioning brain. Where does the "self" go when you die; it ceases to be when the brain ceases to function. The self is dependent on an intact and functioning brain and when the brain ceases to function the self ceases to be. This is not to say that mental states or experience are identical with brain states but that there is a close correlation and a linked dependency. When the patient with Altzheimers loses his memory and no longer recognizes his loved ones or even remembers his own name and history where is the "self"; largely already lost. True the relatives still talk about Uncle Henry but Uncle Henry no longer recognizes or remembers himself and at the least the "self" is changed and at the most the "self" has already disappeared.

Most of the evidence from science and from medicine (brain injuries, trauma, tumors, drugs, hypoxia) indicates that "consciousness" and the self are brain dependent. Evidence to the contrary is weak, non repeatable and lacks any empirical confirmation. Individual "selfs" depend on individual brains and human like consciousness depends on a functioning intact human brain.

Absolutely. And I agree with this completely. That is probably why I can only go so far in explaining the concepts of Dharma, Atman and Brahman because as such I do not believe in them due to the inherent contradictions that arise out of all such concepts. I have studied them extensively and have not found anything to explain the contradictions away.

The most glaring one I feel is that if the atman and Brahman are the same, what is the need of the atman in the first place? It is not as if the atman is a separate part of the Brahman since the Brahman cannot be separated. They are supposedly literally one and the same.

[bahman]

You have problem with non-scientific point of view on self as well since you cannot explain what self is either. You simply hide the problem in your disposal inside a box so called soul, something that has some properties such as self which you cannot ask where did they come from. Scientific view in another hand can nicely explain the problems which we have when we have some malfunction in the brain such as Alzheimer when non-scientific view fails to describe. Scientific view can also explain the the problem of having a person as a result of mixing a sperm with one egg which non-scientific view fail to address (how soul could be bounded to embryo). Scientific view cannot address the problem of life after death and non-scientific view has problem with the life after death either.

[sthitapragya]

Scientific view cannot address the problem of life after death and non-scientific view has problem with the life after death either.

That is probably because if there was life after death, death would not be death, would it?

[Belinda]

Of course the modern scientific view of the self is there is no "soul" (immortal, eternal, changeless) no atman. The self is instead a construct of the mind which depends on an intact memory and a functioning brain. Where does the "self" go when you die; it ceases to be when the brain ceases to function. The self is dependent on an intact and functioning brain and when the brain ceases to function the self ceases to be. This is not to say that mental states or experience are identical with brain states but that there is a close correlation and a linked dependency. When the patient with Altzheimers loses his memory and no longer recognizes his loved ones or even remembers his own name and history where is the "self"; largely already lost. True the relatives still talk about Uncle Henry but Uncle Henry no longer recognizes or remembers himself and at the least the "self" is changed and at the most the "self" has already disappeared.

Most of the evidence from science and from medicine (brain injuries, trauma, tumors, drugs, hypoxia) indicates that "consciousness" and the self are brain dependent. Evidence to the contrary is weak, non repeatable and lacks any empirical confirmation. Individual "selfs" depend on individual brains and human like consciousness depends on a functioning intact human brain.

Absolutely. And I agree with this completely. That is probably why I can only go so far in explaining the concepts of Dharma, Atman and Brahman because as such I do not believe in them due to the inherent contradictions that arise out of all such concepts. I have studied them extensively and have not found anything to explain the contradictions away.

The most glaring one I feel is that if the atman and Brahman are the same, what is the need of the atman in the first place? It is not as if the atman is a separate part of the Brahman since the Brahman cannot be separated. They are supposedly literally one and the same.

I agree with both Prothero and Sthitapragya. I am still trying to find a place for the concept of atman in view of the contradiction in the concept of atman as pointed out by Sthitapragya. I tentatively suggest that atman fits with the ability of humans to conceive of eternity, of eternal truths.Then perhaps atman-Brahman cannot be separated because eternal truth is absolute and is never relatively here or there, then or now. If eternal truths is the case about atman-Brahman then atman-Brahman is not at all the same as the scientific self.

It can only confuse therefore to teach atman-Brahman while conflating the ideas of atman-Brahman and the term 'self'.

[sthitapragya]

I agree with both Prothero and Sthitapragya. I am still trying to find a place for the concept of atman in view of the contradiction in the concept of atman as pointed out by Sthitapragya. I tentatively suggest that atman fits with the ability of humans to conceive of eternity, of eternal truths.Then perhaps atman-Brahman cannot be separated because eternal truth is absolute and is never relatively here or there, then or now. If eternal truths is the case about atman-Brahman then atman-Brahman is not at all the same as the scientific self.

It can only confuse therefore to teach atman-Brahman while conflating the ideas of atman-Brahman and the term 'self'.

Belinda, it just makes more sense to believe that there are no such things as the atman or Brahman.

[OuterLimits]

What makes the most sense for the materialist is that there are no other minds "out there". To view one's neighbor scientifically is to see particles and the void, and not to indulge imaginatively in wondering what it is "like" to be that other person. So there is no real "death", but then there is no "life" for him either. This is often overlooked by the hyper-scientific set. There is great enthusiasm in preaching about the illusory nature of free will, but somehow the problem of other minds gets short shrift.

[prothero]

What makes the most sense for the materialist is that there are no other minds "out there". To view one's neighbor scientifically is to see particles and the void, and not to indulge imaginatively in wondering what it is "like" to be that other person. So there is no real "death", but then there is no "life" for him either. This is often overlooked by the hyper-scientific set. There is great enthusiasm in preaching about the illusory nature of free will, but somehow the problem of other minds gets short shrift.

"Other minds" might be a problem for a solipsist but not really for a materialist (physicalist). For a physicalists "mind, experience, consciousness" is an emergent property of certain complex physical systems. If my brain has experience and is conscious then other people with similar physical brains are easily assumed conscious as well ;on the basis of physical analogy, observation of behavior and linguistic report. For a physicalist (experience is essentially a physical phenomena even if we currently lack a complete physical explanation but just as new physical properties emerge in other complex systems (say chemical compounds as opposed to their individual atomic constituents), mentality is a physical property still awaiting a scientific explanation.

Now to be fair I am not a physicalist, I am a process monist and thus the events which make up reality are ultimately physical-experiential units and so primitive mentality (in the form of internal and external relations and the flow of time from the past to the future is intrinsic to all of reality). Consciousness is not something that mysteriously springs into the universe but rather has evolved from more primitive forms of psychic experience found at the very core of nature and reality.

[OuterLimits]

To call yourself materialist physicalist, but not to use the maxim that something to exist must either be measurable or be posited as necessary to cause what is measurable, is to be a particularly imaginitive type of materialist physicalist.

The business about my brain being "causing" consciousness (oh dear, we're drifting further from what can be observed and measured) and deriving from that that other brains are causing consciousness elsewhere completely leaves our empiricist maxim behind. It makes sense in a general handwaving way that one could conclude that the universe must have a creator, but has nothing to do with empirical endeavor.

To say there is any consciousness out there, you must not believe that reductionist physics is adequate to explain what we do measure out there.

[prothero]

To call yourself materialist physicalist, but not to use the maxim that something to exist must either be measurable or be posited as necessary to cause what is measurable, is to be a particularly imaginitive type of materialist physicalist.

The business about my brain being "causing" consciousness (oh dear, we're drifting further from what can be observed and measured) and deriving from that that other brains are causing consciousness elsewhere completely leaves our empiricist maxim behind. It makes sense in a general handwaving way that one could conclude that the universe must have a creator, but has nothing to do with empirical endeavor.

To say there is any consciousness out there, you must not believe that reductionist physics is adequate to explain what we do measure out there.

Well any number of things that affect your brain will affect your "consciousness" but you did not really read what was written. Acknowledging the link between brains and minds does not make one a materialist, a physicalist or a reductionist.

[OuterLimits]

I'm saying that if you're an honest reductionist physicalist, you acknowledge there is no evidence of consciousness out there.

[Belinda]

Sthitapragya wrote:

Belinda, it just makes more sense to believe that there are no such things as the atman or Brahman.

But belief in atman -Brahman can morph into belief that every person has an eternal nature as well as a temporal nature. When temporal nature seems to be hopeless this belief then can become the springboard to ever-recurring fresh hope , to starting afresh.

The self, unlike the atman, is temporal and the scientific view of the self is not a challenge to the belief that the self is not fixed but is a process.

[sthitapragya]

Sthitapragya wrote:

Belinda, it just makes more sense to believe that there are no such things as the atman or Brahman.

But belief in atman -Brahman can morph into belief that every person has an eternal nature as well as a temporal nature. When temporal nature seems to be hopeless this belief then can become the springboard to ever-recurring fresh hope , to starting afresh.

The self, unlike the atman, is temporal and the scientific view of the self is not a challenge to the belief that the self is not fixed but is a process.

The belief in the atman-Brahman fulfills the psychological need for immortality. I believe that humans are probably the only living beings that can contemplate their own death at a future time. Since this seems to be a relatively new evolutionary phenomenon, the brain also is not completely evolved to deal with it. The concept of immortality was the brain's way of protecting itself from breaking down when humans first became aware of their own future death.

[Belinda]

Sthitapragya, it's tempting to think that eternity is a grasping at everlastingness. But immortality is the temporal self surviving body death. It's impossible for the scientific self to survive death. Atman ,unlike self, I suppose has no attributes, memories, or feelings so there is nothing that survives death as there is no death for atman to survive.