a priori reality

[STeve555]

I've read some books about buddhism. And I always thought that the "now" that those books emphasized on as the one "time" to focus on. The "time" between past and future.

But it was only till I read "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" that this "now" actually means the picture you get before your 5 senses have a go at it.

 

I think I understand what they mean with a priori images being the real immediate truth that is seen by humans. But when reality can only be seen when unprocessed by the human senses, how can it be sensed by a human being in the first place?

 

Pirsig says that Phaedrus, the person he was before electroshocks, thought that an a priori image of a given object enters the brain. And the instant between that objective image and the processing of that view in the brain (subjective image) by means of our sense of sight is called "quality". Quality c.q. Tao truth. The principle truth.

 

the moment of truth is the moment between a priori information and a posteriori processing of that information by means of our 5 senses.

 

I can see why for milliseconds this can be true for the sense of "sight" But is it not true that the sense of hearing knows not of a delay that can be found in sense of sight?

 

Sometimes you can stare right through someone: meaning you both think your thoughts as well as sense someone in front of you, at the same time.

 

This can also be said of all other four senses? I believe the sense of sight differs from all other 4, because this "quality" only exists by means of relay time between incoming information and processed information.

 

Thus the question here is: how can unprocessed images (the direct beams of truth) be known to us humans as truth prior to the subjective image we get when our brains process it to palpible feelings? I can not hear straight through someone while at the same time being occupied with something else.

But with the sense of sight that is different somehow.

 

How can we possibly see the principle truth of the universe in an unprocessed way, prior to this image being processed by our sense of sight?

 

Must not all we see, be processed by our sense of sight and brain in order to be aware of it? A priori or a posteriori?

 

 

And is it not also true that all objects we perceive to see, are in reality 2 centimeters to the left or to the right compared to where we imagine it to be?

 

and how is that a priori reality different from some delayed reality you percieve milliseconds later in your brain?

 

I totally fail to get the importance somewhere, and I do not know where I go wrong. But what in our brains senses the "truth" before our 5 senses make it secondhand knowledge to us?

Edited October 22, 2012 by STeve555

[imatfaal]

a priori knowledge and understanding is normally considered to be justified as believable without experience and it rests on the necessary definitions of the words used (wikipedia's example is 'all batchelors are unmarried' this only requires knowledge of the words to be understood as true - no evidence from the world is required). A priori knowledge and the justifications for belief are based solely on reason not on observation (of any sort - no matter how transcendental or mystical). If your knowledge is based on experience or perception this is not a priori this is considered a posteriori. a priori beliefs are commonly thought to be refutable by observational evidence; (I was taught that mammals were defined as warmed-blooded, giving birth to live young which were then fed breast milk of some description - thus I would have had a priori justification for stating that all australian mammals gave birth to live young. The existence of the platypus blows this out of the water - my definitions were faulty and thus so was my justification for belief).

 

the notion of an a priori experience is thus, to me using my understanding, a contradiction in terms. There are certain concepts that can have a possibility for a priori justification and others that cannot - by definition that gained through the senses (even without any processing - if this is possible which I doubt both physically and mentally) would be a posteriori. If you think of the disturbances and pollution in the air, matter and the emf that surround us all the time - we take some of these (a tiniest fraction) and specialized cells react to them; cones and rods react to light in the eye, compression waves in the air set nerve cells in the ear firing, chemicals in the air link up with receptors in the nose and mouth; but none of our senses react to information, or data - the information content is purely contextual. To envisage information reaching us and describe an a priori reality exterior to our sense and perceptible without experience is difficult to justify - we need observations, interactions and experience to describe external objects to quote the philosopher du jour "Object x is what interacts in x, y, and z ways with object Y."

 

 

Kant argued that the a priori justifications that we make regarding existence allow us to experience and thus make a posteriori justifications for further belief - the only a priori reality is the mind set that, amongst other things, allows us to have an external-facing, experience-gaining sensorium. But this is not the same a priori reality that seems to be being discussed.

[STeve555]

"by definition gained through the senses (even without any processing - if this is possible which I doubt both physically and mentally) would be a posteriori"

This is exactly what I mean.

 

Nirvana/Nirwana in buddhism is exactly "seeing" without any processing of the senses. Observing prior to thinking.

Sometimes I feel very ill, like we all do from time to time. But no matter how sick I get, that "homunculus" of me remains to be a onlooker, instead of being a partner in suffering somehow. This is BBC David Attenborough knowledge one stores in ones mind.

 

You mentioned the platypus mammal pigeonhole misconception analogue. But that is merely knowledge gained by emperical means. That has nothing to do with first hand knowledge, rather second hand knowledge. BBC's David Attenborough knowledge one stores in ones mind.

 

I am saying that some buddhist books try to sell me that a priori knowledge (nirvana) (the feeling of being one with the cosmos) can be induced by neutering your 5 senses through meditation. Then you float above want, greed, lust, love, hate, knowledge.

 

In buddhism vs. evolution it MUST mean you are going 200 stories down with an elevator and even bypass the very ancestors "reptile" brains we derive from and land on a soft instinctual tissue cushion, like your closest friends sometimes see you ride a yellow banana in Spain holding one of the 40 heineken you had that day

 

My question is still: what inside humans, brains of whatever, is responsible for that? And then again, how can a human being "experience" nirvana by bypassing the senses? What sixth sense is created by canceling out the former 5 in order to "see" it?

 

If you shoot a meditating person in the head, won't the nirvana stop?

If people can have "un-thoughts" like that than maybe the "seventh" commandment in the monotheistic view can be respected for real.

 

And is Buddhistic meditation, or meditation on general principle rather deducing or inducing from phenomenology?

 

 

Edited October 25, 2012 by STeve555