Scorpio (mudrunner@eudoramail.com) wrote:
>Then perhaps you would consider continuing the dialogue on your article
>"The Pernicious Doctrine of Sophism."

>Both Homer and I have relevant questions you left unanswered.

     It is unclear if my definition of sophism is the same as Carol's,
basically others call me a sophist for my stance on certainty.

     I am perfectly certain I am, and that I perceive.

     I am not certain that other's are nor that they perceive, as all
I have to base this on is my own perceptions.  That SOME causal source
other than myself exists is probably self obvious, but that it is
other beings like myself I do not know, and KNOW I do not know this
with perfect certainty.

     I am troubled by my lucid dreams, where I hold conversations with
the denizens there on the subject of whether they are 'real' or not,
"Hey you realize we are dreaming now?!", I do tests, make them squeal,
look in their eyes, you know, see if they are alive, and as far as I
can tell they seem to be.

     So if my dreams are merely my own mockups, then clearly I am able
to mockup the apparency of another being, something Adore calls
'casting self awareness on others', something one can do even if
others DO exist.

     Since my present time is actually less real than my dream time,
and since I actually believe that present time IS just another dream
running on the same projection mechanisms as sleep dreams, and that
the body does not in fact exist while I am awake any more than it
exists when I am dreaming of a body, except as a virtual machine in a
virtual reality (ala The Matrix), it becomes hard for me to assert
with certainty that others exist, with the same certainty that I
exist.

     By the way I consider The Matrix to be literally true, except
that the world they woke up to was simply another Matrix that they
took as actual.  One day they will learn, if you are conscious of it,
its dream time.

     Some claim that we can create actual others, I find this
philosophically execreable.  We may be able to call them into
manifestation but only if they have left a note on their door saying
"Please disturb".

     The idea that we can create others, leads to the idea that we
were created ourselves, and what was created can be destroyed.  This
is a basic aberration, running away from the first moment of time when
we considered our selves to have been created by another.
 
     Some have gone so far as to claim that if we think a mockup of
another being is an actual being, that thinking causes it to be so.
Which means if I mockup some pretty young thing and stick a knife into
her tits, and I make her scream in pain, then its really happening to
some other living being.

     I have done this experiment in dreams, knowing I was dreaming.
It left me chilled to say the least.
 
     I eventually gave this up and I chose to assume that the beings
in my dreams were real enough, in the same way that I chose to assume
that the beings in the waking world are real enough.

     I started to behave myself in dreams as if they were a real
world, with some exceptions of course :).  Some bugger starts to bug
me I whip out the old "What are you, who are you?" a few times and
render them a puddle of color on the floor.  Always works too if I can
remember to do it.
 
     Hacker's view is that creation is in the conception, which means
at a high enough level, if the AllThatIs conceives of something it
becomes true in the conceiving of it.  You know, the Cosmic All gets
the idea of an asshole one day, and wham Hacker appears.
 
     So maybe that's what they are talking about, mockups are as
actual as you think they are.

     Notice this is very different from mockups are as real as you
think they are.

     Realness is an experience, actuality is what is true regardless
of what you experience.  Realness comes from BELIEVING in actualness,
believing makes things real, it doesn't make things actual.

     Anyhow a study of perfect certainty, once one finds a few, leads
directly into perfect certainty of UNCERTAINTIES, and that's where
Adore claims that personal integrity really starts, knowing what you
know and knowing what you don't know and being 100 percent right about
it with no chance of being wrong.  
 
     If one considers there is always a possibility of being wrong
about ANYTHING, their mind is broke, cuz by their own statement, they
could be wrong about that.

     The Adorian catechism starts in part:

     1.) Being certain that one can't be certain of anything is being
absurd, certainly.
 
     2.) Uncertainty exists, to doubt it, is to prove it.

     Most people claim they are as certain that others exist as
themselves, so I can't talk to them about this.  They also are sure
the MEST universe is actual and out there, which of course it ain't,
and even if it were, they could never know it, because all they have
are the experiences in their consciousness to go by.

     Conscious color form they can know, implied external actualities
are only a theory.
 
     So when people become lost in false certainties, things that they
are not in fact certain of, can not in fact be certain of, and which
may in fact also be actually wrong, then they can fail to be
certain of things they can be certain of and which are right under
their own noses.

     Thus the meatball is very certain that the physical universe is
actual when it is merely a virtual dream, and yet they are not certain
that they exist as a spirit.  
 
     Electron love.
 
     What a joke.

     Homer
 
>Scorpio

--
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Homer Wilson Smith   Clear Air, Clear Water,  Art Matrix - Lightlink
(607) 277-0959       A Green Earth and Peace. Internet Access, Ithaca NY
homer@lightlink.com  Is that too much to ask? http://www.lightlink.com