Minimalism and exclusivity: Contrast, color, semiotics

[sethisalive]

Which is the "delusion", where does it lie: the color red that we perceive, the photons in waves of ~700 nanometers, the apple or stop sign that the light reflects off from, the cones in our retinas, the pigments within the cones, the hyperpolarization of the photoreceptor that sends the "color" signal, the hypopolarization (or stabilization) of

Comments

[sethisalive]

I was speaking in metaphor, not literally, in the sentence of mine you quoted. :) I think you missed what I was saying. I'm sorry it wasn't as clear as it could be, but my LJ tends to be a place where I go to spew thoughts and loosely connect things so that I can remember them later.

Who is a Greek philosopher, or anyone, to tell me to conceptualize "now" in non-discrete terms? My experience is not calculus, so why should I pretend it to be? "Now", to me, is a discrete unit of time. Is that a delusion, to organize my thoughts so? I'm well cognizant of the laws of physics, physiology, and the like.

All talk of "I" and "you" depends on the utterance of those words. You can imply as much as you'd like, semantically, with each word, and extrapolate quite far, inwards and outwards, but to surround one's thoughts around the individual words, "I" and "you", is to miss the point, I think.

[sethisalive]

Good points

[nyuanshin]

It's revealing that they use the word "delusion", because there's simply no warrant for it. This is a case where one syllable makes all the difference: the Latin ludere means "to play", and when prefixed with de- (literally "down", by semantic extension "detrimental") it suggests a harmful trick. But if we're using Latin-derived words then the right root word to use would be illudere (literally "to play with"), which is value-neutral and more in line with the Vedantic origins of the term maya. All distinctions are illusory, but this in no way implies that they're inherently detrimental.

Any "Buddhist" who takes this tone is neglecting one of the distinguishing aspects of Buddhism, which is the concept of upaya (no religion or philosophy I know of, aside from radical pragmatic skepticism, has anything that comes close). Illusions can be highly useful, and great fun! (And moreover, illusions themselves are quite real. I've been bottling up a post on this for quite some time.) I mean yeesh, not to sound like a militant Nagarjunist but

[sethisalive]

Nice!

I'll be looking forward to your post on the subject. :)

Yay for upaya (and radical pragmatic skepticism)!