What EXACTLY did you discover during meditation? What steps did you take and what was the resulting experience? Can you be specific?
Same w Ayn Rand. What ideas did you read, can you summarize?
Same w Ayn Rand. What ideas did you read, can you summarize?
"I am finding that everything we say about consciousness is just an artifact of our language. If we are careful to always include the subject of the sentence as well as the unspoken assumptions then I have not come across any questions that don't have a straightforward answer. Same with morality."
It sounds like you're influenced by Wittgenstein, or at least his ideas. If you assume all these issues are artefacts of language then there's no way I can give you an adequate summary in any amount of writing, and especially not one comment. Human minds can only communicate by exchanging strings of words, after all.
To give you a straight answer, though: in vipasanna meditation you focus on one thing (typically the breath, though I often used ambient sounds) and attempt to break down your experience of that thing into constituent sensations. One thing you learn from this is how frequently your attention wanders, and by really training yourself to focus you learn how your attention is directed from moment to moment. The main thing you are trying to gain, though, is a first-hand experience of the Buddhist view of reality: that solid objects do not exist, and that existence consists only of flickering sensations, with no permanence or independent existence.
I really can't summarise Ayn Rand, since her writing is already extremely well summarised and essentialised. Click around that website if you want to learn her views on any particular topic. The relevant ideas here, though, are her views on concepts. There's been a long-running divide in philosophy between people who thought concepts reflected something intrinsic to the universe (e.g., that all horses contain an essence of horse-ness, or reflect Plato's ideal horse) -- and the people who thought this was nonsense and that language was therefore an arbitrary human construct (this latter view is currently dominant). Rand found a third position: concepts are human constructs, but they serve an objective purpose, and there are objective rules which determine their formation. ITOE is the only place where you will find her full argument.
To compare the two: Buddha takes sensory experience as the gold standard for reality, and concludes that reality exists, but is ultimately transient and lacks identity. Rand takes perceptual experience as the gold standard and concludes that reality exists, that the everyday objects we perceive really exist, and that therefore reality is logical and consistent.
(As for Wittgenstein, he says human language is just an arbitrary game which can never describe true reality, and ends up in a kind of quasi-mysticism (man helpless in the face of an ineffable, incomprehensible universe)).
I predict you will not be satisfied with this answer, because you are following a very misleading philosophical framework, but I wrote it up for the interest of lurkers.
I would say what we have are beliefs. And we use language to express them and can only legitimately convince each other, ie change someone': beliefs, through exposing a double standard in beliefs. All other methods eg. appeal to emotion could achieve this but are not logically legitimate without the double standard reason for changing beliefs. Knowledge is another word for bias.
From your perspective, do you dispute this?
Interesting. It's probably that most people who consider the question "what do words really mean?" hit on a very small set of possible answers. There's also the fact that his ideas have influenced many other intellectuals in many fields, and you many have absorbed his way of thinking by osmosis.
can only legitimately convince each other, ie change someone': beliefs, through exposing a double standard in beliefs
The primary legitimate way to convince another person is to point to reality -- the simplest way to do so is to point to something observable. If I want to convince you that eggs break when dropped, I drop a bunch of eggs in front of you.
Knowledge is another word for bias.
I can't really make sense of this statement, but it seems you're implying that all of our knowledge is untrustworthy. I definitely dispute this -- we have to have some certain knowledge or we don't have any knowledge at all. Put it this way -- do you know that "knowledge is another word for bias"? Are you certain? How?
"Also I say that the word 'exists' is meaningless unless it is relative to a conscious observer."
But does the conscious observer then exist? Do they have to exist relative to another conscious observer? Existence has to be absolute or you end up in such paradoxes. Otherwise, I agree that asserting the existence of parallel universes is arbitrary.
"I also think morality is relative to someone with a "sense of morality". Absolute morality is like absolute humor. Humor requires a human with a "sense of humor"."
Rand's view is that morality is objective, which she distinguishes from intrinsic. Intrinsic morality would be what you call absolute morality -- things are inherently good or evil, regardless of their relation to other things. In contrast, Rand says things are good or evil in relation some agent. However, this relationship is an objective fact of reality. (E.g., "sunlight is good for lizards", or "friendships are good for human beings").
What you call reality is actually a collection of statements that you believe to be true. You just have a very high confidence that they are true. You can point to something but you also have to make an argument which assumes these statements. If I already believe them, then you can successfully build on that. If I don't, then you have to convince me of X, and the only legitimate way to do that is to show that I would have a double standard if I don't believe X when I already believe Y for much less convincing reasons.
I can't really make sense of this statement, but it seems you're implying that all of our knowledge is untrustworthy. I definitely dispute this -- we have to have some certain knowledge or we don't have any knowledge at all. Put it this way -- do you know that "knowledge is another word for bias"? Are you certain? How?
The statement is defining the word "knowledge". And you can't get me to play the game of "are you certain?" Do you know that "knowledge is another word for bias?" What I said is what I believe. You see you used the word "know" but I already told you how I define that word. You can convince me to change my beliefs, but the only ways you'd do that is by exposing a double standard, as above.
I believe that my position is consistent and the one that most successfully models reality, with the least ad-hoc adjustments.
Rand's view is that morality is objective, which she distinguishes from intrinsic.
But you would have to define the word "objective", probably as "independent of whatever any group of people, no matter how large, thinks". But then you can never prove that an objective morality exists, because you'd just be appealing to what groups of people think, as your premise. Some people, such as moral relativists, simply wouldn't agree.
(There are many more logical philosophical problems with Rand's argument, see this: http://www.owl232.net/rand5.htm )
But does the conscious observer then exist? Do they have to exist relative to another conscious observer? Existence has to be absolute or you end up in such paradoxes. Otherwise, I agree that asserting the existence of parallel universes is arbitrary.
The word "exist" is only relative to a conscious observer. So, as far as the conscious observer is concerned, of course they exist. The light from a distant star exists. The star may no longer exist, but it exists in the past because the observer infers that it had to generate the light. If they are wrong, then the star might never have existed, actually.
It's actually not self contradictory. Observers observe things. Obviously.
Let me make crystal clear what I am saying, using another language: mathematics.
I am saying "A exists" is meaningless. "A exists for B" is a binary relation, and its meaning is "B can observe A" or "B can deduce the existence of A from something that exists for B".
I am saying that "A should do B" is meaningless. Instead, moral statements are ternary relations: "If A wants C, A should do B", which recursively means P: "If A doesn't do B, and C doesn't happen, then A can be blamed", which recursively means "If D wants to be considered rational, B shouldn't blame A if A did B and C didn't happen" etc.
What you are saying when you say "You should do your homework" actually has a hidden premise, "... if you want to do well in school". This relative morality makes reasoning easier without ad-hoc rules. Like, you may want to escape a volcano, and thus you might violate some other "absolute principle" such as failing to respond to a question in a debate, in order to run for your life.
Relativism just makes more sense to me and people like me. As I said at the outset, if you are careful to include all your premises, all these "magical" things become pretty straightforward.
"I believe that my position is consistent and the one that most successfully models reality, with the least ad-hoc adjustments."
If reality is only a set of beliefs, why are you trying to model it with another set of beliefs?
I've studied that Owl link in depth, and (though he appears intellectually honest for the most part) he mis-characterises Rand's views. I'll tap out here, but I want to point out that you definitely seem heavily influenced by Kantian ideas.
To answer your question: because beliefs is what we have. We don't really know things. We believe things. And we use language to communicate our beliefs. If you define knowledge to be "true justified belief" then you'd be stuck as you wouldn't ever be sure of something 100% so you wouldn't "know" anything by that definition.
And before you ask how come we know mathematical truths are true, it's because they are part of the language we have chosen to use, eg logic and math. If we used some sociological mumbojumbo arguments to convince each other eg of institutional oppressio then maybe mathematical theorems underpinning statistical results wouldn't be as certain in that context.
Again, I haven't read Kant beyond the "categorical imperative". I just noticed that people usually face all these difficulties because they fail to precisely DEFINE all their terms. This set of definitions just seems to best match what's really going on.
To illustrate, if I described a parallel world that you would never encounter, never be able to deduce its existence from any observations in this one etc. then in what way are the sentences "it exists" and "it doesn't exist" meaningful?
I think meaning is only relative to some subject who can comprehend it.
I also think morality is relative to someone with a "sense of morality". Absolute morality is like absolute humor. Humor requires a human with a "sense of humor". A humorless person is like a psychopath. They don't share the same phychological responses as others. Some moral value can be widespread just like a joke can be funny to a lot of people.
So I guess I am a relativist...