Your sighing and dismaying about my disagreement with you is getting tiring. Let's stick to the concrete points, please, or there is no use conversing.
You're not meeting any of the specific challenges i'm raising against the rationality of your views. I have been nothing but honest in my assumptions, yet when I call you out on yours you don't reply. You just spout general rhetoric about what I can't possibly understanding because bla bla bla. It's hard to keep communicating in a good spirit If you keep this up.
As has been stated before, we have already passed the point of talking past each other - there's no point in pursuing a discussion if we're talking on different terms, from different positions, at different positions. I knew your assumptions before you spoke them, and I have made mine abundantly clear, if you want to read back over the discussion (I'm hardly going to repeat myself in every post, am I? That would be consumately pointless, more so than the preceding part of this discussion was).
Why the correlations between states of the brain and experience, like I have mentioned in previous posts, if consciousness doesn't have a physical basis? Why does your consciousness retreat if you are:
- hit on the head
- parts of your brain are removed
- you take chemicals that effect neurons in the brain?
-Why does the difference in experiential state between being awake and sleep correlate with entirely different patterns of large-scale neuronal activity in the brain?
If you're going to give me more 'the metaphysical always operates in tandem with the physical', then I would like some shred of argument of evidence for this massive assertion. Please stop, and attend to this first issue before moving on.
The metaphysical doesn't operate solely "in tandem" with the physical, it informs the physical. You seemingly cannot understand what this means, which is why we urge you to read up on the subject first.
If you damage the receiver, how can you expect the transmission to hold?
If you unblock the receiver, does it not make sense that more transmissions might come through?
Secondly, and this is directly related, I'd like you to answer the following and stop worming around:
3. That if you post a non-physicalist explanation for something that interacts with the physical world (forms, consciousness) you are going to need to have a story about how the non-physical interacts with the physical.
This has already been answered: the physical is a manifestation of the metaphysical, it is informed by the metaphysical, ergo, there is no "separation" between the two, there are no two entities between which there can be "interaction". Or what, do you think we've been running around trying to prove that Heaven is a place in the sky which you can get to if you fly hard enough?
By the way, have you ever read Plato's cave allegory?
Again, i've already responded to this. Science does seek to know the knower (and in one particular instance of knowing the knower cognitive science debunks your theory of forms, which you have said nothing about).
What debunks the theory of forms? The fact that we can find physical evidence for them within the brain? Hardly sounds like "debunking" unless you make the base assumption that a physical explanation removes the possibility of any other explanation being true.
How does science seek to know the knower without the introspection characteristic of meditative practices? If you want to tinker with the brain, you can get a great understanding of the brain, and I'm sure even one of how thoughts map themselves onto the brain's structure; however, we are not simply the amalgamation of thoughts and feelings we constantly experience, but, rather, the experiencer of those thoughts and feelings - "we" cannot be found within the brain (again, please read the refutations of the physicalist theories of mind, especially re "qualia" in this case). In order to know the self, one must journey into the self, rather than approaching the subject cursorily.
Of course human conceptions are important. Write poems that describe your qualitative expierence of water until you're blue in the face, if you like. Write sociological essays on the meanings different cultures have attributed to 'water. However if you're concered with finding out about the ontological nature of parts of the world, seperate from your experience of them, then you're simply not concerned with "the affairs and thoughts of humans". These are worth something beyond the physical constituents of process and objections under question. But we've been talking about such processes and objects, not about human sentiments towards them!!
You're missing another fundamental point of Tradition, which is that the Self and Reality are One, just as all things are One. There can be no enquiry into the structure of the universe without enquiry into the structure of the self (I actually found it funny that you should think otherwise!).
Science replaces traditional ontological understandings of water, not traditional human experiences with water.... Doesn't it? If so... why not? Please, address this third issue before moving on. Do you think a molecular understanding of water is not a better ontological picture of water, i.e. as it is in-itself, seperate from our experience of water , than ontological pictures of water that did not involve molecular chemistry?
The chemical structure of water is very interesting when compared with traditional notions of it, actually. For example: hydrogen is the fuel used by the Sun's fusion reactions; combustion is a process of oxidisation; thus, within water are two sources of fire, which tallies with the Vedic notion that Agni, the Fire God, was a "fire" (energy) which suffused water.
We hold that meaning can be derived from outside of physical experience, thus we hold that water might have ontological significance above and beyond its chemical composition, which is nevertheless important. Certainly, the chemical composition "H20" is only what we call "water" in this world; in another world, water might have been made of the chemicals "XYZ", but it would have had exactly the same properties and uses as the water we have on this world. What is more important: the essence, or the form?
I will not start quoting what drugs i've taken or books i've read as though these give me authority. I will adress the issues we are talking about. Grow some balls and do the same. I'm after good reasons or evidence for hypotheses. If you can't provide me with either for your theory of forms, or for consciousness being non-physical, don't revert back to sweeping statements. It's not like this is a pissing contest.
There are three issues for you to respoind to, highlighted in bold. This is childish, but its become a matter of intellectual honesty.
Those were honest suggestions as to how you should progress, not ill-conceived attempts at proving my own importance (I don't need to do that: I craft worlds). Crow very often hits the nail on the head around this place, but even so I'm surprised to see such a bawling response in the middle of what's appeared to be a rather reasonable discussion.
Anyway, stop being weak and actually make an effort to understand the opposition, rather than hiding behind imposed ignorance (which is, itself, insanity manifest).