It may be useful/interesting/educational/illuminating...whatever...to listen to the BBC podcast from Radio 4's "In our Time" with Melvyn Bragg. The two particular ones are:
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Born in 1872, Russell is widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytic philosophy, today the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world. His theory of descriptions had profound consequences for the discipline. Russell also played an active role in many social and political campaigns. He supported women's suffrage, was imprisoned for his pacifism during World War I and was a founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Melvyn Bragg is joined by AC Grayling, Master of the New College of the Humanities and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford; Mike Beaney, Professor of Philosophy at the University of York and Hilary Greaves, Lecturer in Philosophy and Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford.
and
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Upanishads, the ancient sacred texts of Hinduism. Dating from about 700 BC, the Upanishads ask profound questions about human existence and man's place in the cosmos. More than 100 Upanishads were produced, 13 of which are regarded as the canonical scriptures of Hinduism. Melvyn Bragg is joined by Jessica Frazier, Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent and a Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, University of Oxford; Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University and Simon Brodbeck, Lecturer in Religious Studies at Cardiff University.
The website for downloading (or just listening online) is here..
Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out. LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI
simonwheeler wrote:It may be useful/interesting/educational/illuminating...whatever...to listen to the BBC podcast from Radio 4's "In our Time" with Melvyn Bragg. The two particular ones are:
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Born in 1872, Russell is widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytic philosophy, today the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world. His theory of descriptions had profound consequences for the discipline. Russell also played an active role in many social and political campaigns. He supported women's suffrage, was imprisoned for his pacifism during World War I and was a founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Melvyn Bragg is joined by AC Grayling, Master of the New College of the Humanities and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford; Mike Beaney, Professor of Philosophy at the University of York and Hilary Greaves, Lecturer in Philosophy and Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford.
and
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Upanishads, the ancient sacred texts of Hinduism. Dating from about 700 BC, the Upanishads ask profound questions about human existence and man's place in the cosmos. More than 100 Upanishads were produced, 13 of which are regarded as the canonical scriptures of Hinduism. Melvyn Bragg is joined by Jessica Frazier, Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent and a Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, University of Oxford; Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University and Simon Brodbeck, Lecturer in Religious Studies at Cardiff University.
The website for downloading (or just listening online) is here..
Simon,
Fantastic!!
Best
Tom
The universe is a soul, trying to understand itself.... We each have the power to look inward at its immense beauty....
How about the modern Physics idea that our 3D world is equivalent to a projection from a 2D hologram stretched across a surface. This, as I understand it, can be proven to be mathematically equivalent. So which one is it? Is this world really 3D or not? Mathematically it makes no difference.
On a trip back from a course once on my motorbike, I experienced raw perception, in the sense of my image of the world being built up from packets of information -- I was experiencing the packets rather than the final illusion.
What is the minimum information transfer that could produce the images and experiences of the world that we perceive? If you read a book or listen to a radio play, you can see that it isn't really that much. Our entire perception can be reduced down to a few information streams. These would be two-way information streams, as what we concentrate on affects what we perceive -- e.g. an indistinct shape becomes a clearly defined object if you look long enough.
I've experienced this in another form when 'journeying' with a drum track whilst dieting jungle plants. For me, it is like the information stream is very slow in this case and it takes a while for images and impressions to form. You can still use attention to clarify and resolve indistinct things, though, just as in normal everyday awareness.
So, "reality" is in our imagination, created just the same way as the images we 'see' when reading a book. The information streams of perception are more real than what we think we experience. What needs to be simulated for most people's illusions to be complete is pretty minimal. I mean there are people who don't even require objects to stay put where they were left. So long as they turn up somewhere, that is enough consistency for them.
Physicists and scientists in general are a lot more demanding, so very much more detailed simulations have to be created to keep them happy. Rather than discovering physical laws, maybe they are creating them, extending the simulation of which we are a part. Any newly created law has to be consistent with whatever else has been created so far, hence the difficulty of discovery. If all current scientific knowledge were lost, maybe it could be rediscovered in a different form, with different laws.
I definitely support the idea that what we experience is all a construction, built for the purpose of having us play out karma or whatever down here. If someone (down here) finds a loophole that they (up there) don't want exploited, they close it. For me it is like being in a straight-jacket. No flying around, no intending physical stuff into existence, no fun at all. Well, maybe that could be possible if it were possible to hold an alternate reality more strongly than legions of scientists, or somehow escape their attention whilst momentarily breaking their 'laws'. Perhaps this requires the support of spirits which can hold those realities, since it would require huge amounts of personal power otherwise.
Maybe this is why I like Peru -- there is less heavy thinking going on here, and more gaps and unknown areas.
