It is a job and unless you regularly state that you have come up with something like a Higgs Boson, a Black Hole, Gravity Waves or the biggest joke of them all, "Artificial Intellitgence", you will no longer get paid. The trick is easy, you are a scientist, and they are NOT, so you cleim they cannot know. Most impressive is, if you can push a poor soul in a wheelchair to the front as a spokeman, what kind of bastard would stand up to him and call his bluff? Leonhard Susskind did pointed out the BS in Hawkings theory and wrote a book about it, "The Black Hole War". Hawking admitted he was wrong, but.... who knows Susskind? and what a hero is "our" Stephen...? "The area of artificial intelligence", is the name of a book from 1993 on my bookshelf. In those days AI was standing immediataly in front of a breakthrough...... Which is exactly where it is right know too. If you simply look at their theories for yourself and think about it for yourself, you can see that what these jokers call AI is nothing but a stack of statistics, all on top of one another. All that goes very well with our complete lack of understanding what our brain does. What is a thought? That is a much more basic question, and we know absolutely nothing about its answer. They show us some scan pictures where nice colours flash... yeah, sure.
You are not wrong with what you are saying. But you are not addressing 'scientists' you address established science. I also have controversies with it (as you know reading some of my posts.) The flaw in the big bang theory relies (already) on the extrapolation of time to zero. In other words: The cosmos is forced to the conflict linear time/ singularity. (sooner or later). Either time is always linear and real (then the question: What was before the big bang? is a valid one) or is abstracted from a singularity by an observer who relates. It doesn't matter if brain or a stone. We can make conclusions about processes using the terms of science. We can compare and recognize and assign. We can make parts of processes visible by shifting their electromagnetic spectrum into a recognizable spectrum (via senses) by using electronic devices. We can apply cause and effect. We can detect changes by comparing to normal (a reference) where normal =most probable and significant appearance at reproducible and verifiable conditions. We can say what a brain does relatively from the perspective of cause and effect. Science itself has made it possible to recognize what we call a brain at all. A bunch of interconnected neurons which form different regions of different evolutionary age from their dimensions comparable to our galaxy (amount of stars and neurons)... The question is: What do you expect to know? All you ever could are more differentiated objects and their related processes. Humans cannot say what a stone or a thought or a brain IS. (The subject)..we can only describe it by using further objects and their processes. If you blame scientists for stating to be above human I do not disagree.
"Humans cannot say what a stone or a thought or a brain IS." Oh, yes we can... The fact our answers change over time is another matter...
To simply think simplest thoughts is one thing... But to think well - oh, well... Just look at this: "In discussing why the US stands ready to wage war on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia the president literally said they “pay cash.”"?!? https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1173948716023275520 Jesus Marx wept! Need I say more? No, not all of "us" are "Human"!
That kind of complexity is actually larger than the sum of its parts, it has its own deranged "logic" that breeds its own enemies in order to make itself going, as in "endless wars"...
Nothing is easier then taking something out of its context and then "heroically" play clever from today's POV... Ridiculous! https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/descartes/context/ https://learnodo-newtonic.com/rene-descartes-contribution He had to deal with absolutes of the religious dogma. (He wasn't the only one and he wasn't the first but this fact must not be belittled!) In the most brutal shorthand for the impatient: D. decides to go against it and posits a completely opposite (sacrilegious!!) foundations! Liberating and critically minded - but bloody minded, too! He had to have some balls on him to do that - BACK THEN!!! One's right to doubt is the very foundation of Modernity!!!
I do not say that Descartes wasn't historically important to humanity and stands for modern Philosophy. Anyway His "I think therefore I am" is now the core and reason how humanity is reflecting themselves. With all the ego and object related sense of being. With all the disconnection to nature and the results, pollution, disrespect, exploitation. It's become a mirror of how human mind works nowadays. The more I have the more I am. I think Kant and Hegel developed Descartes philosophy further but don't know which way. You know that. But if.... it has created no fruitful evolution of human mind.(yet). A turning away from that (exploiting nature and by that humanity) that comes out of the conceptual mind will ever repeat as a failure, wrapped in different appearances depending on time. "I think therefore I am" is leading to a total insane form of human existence. Watch the news, and you know it. Humanity has to move forwards...there is a focus on consciousness in which we can be AWARE of thinking. When you are the observer of your own thoughts, 'who' are you then? If you would be 'thoughts' you cannot even be aware of thinking. And this consciousness of I AM is even more of what we really are. The 'subject' which is cause that even those objects and thoughts can come and go at all. The 'place' of real creativity and intuition...but still cluttered by I think therefore I am. What originally had been absolutes of the religious dogma is now the conceptual mind which can only experience being as an object / objects. This even accelerates by the so called electronic gadgets such as smart-phones. Totally focussed on the screen. Lost in repeating thought patterns, not aware of what they really do in real life (walking, driving, eating, meeting, yes living). Cut-off from the real sense of being and by that real creativity. And a self-identification which is based on impermanence (of objects) is never satisfying and creates the illusion of 'want to have more until finally I can'... By posting that I don't want to claim to be one of the philosophers, I am just posting how I perceive the world.
Sorry, Yen, very, very wrong! If we go via the very basic philosophical Subject-Object relationship - things are not that black-white at all! You really need to read a bit more on the subject, instead of merely "meditating" on Unity of Life with the Universe... For instance, Habermas writes for a long time now about young Hegel's "open dialectics", i.e. inter-subjective relationship, where it all started and continued via other authors/thinkers/philosophers. It is rather self-congratulatory and a totally undeserved effort even to try to monopolise such a stance. Groundless! All of your latter musings are therefore completely false, as completely mis-informed (to be kind)...
Your reply is not wrong. But I bet you missed entirely what I have posted. I assume when you've read that you started thinking about an answer. You found either a special personal answer (an idea of what you are personally identified with, human, male, Serbo-Croatian, philosopher, this age, father, husband, whatever....) or no answer and ditched thinking about then. BUT you'd only get it when you would OBSERVE your thoughts. It's a call for meditation. Not a call to think about. Once being able to (break through the huge momentum of the thinking mind) it would be like.... You would be aware of being, I AM, no thoughts arising. The so called stillness. Then you read the question. The words appear as objects in your mind, you understand the question by relating to what's needed to understand the word. Then they vanish.....back to stillness. I AM. Being the observing consciousness, very alive.....and then an answer appears. Whatever it is. BUT again as thoughts as objects..and then they vanish again. So the thoughts follow their nature being object and impermanent but 'YOU' remain, YOU as the spacious consciousness which is cause and precondition for the thoughts to arise. So who are you then? The next thoughts / which arise and go? No. The 'answer' is not different from the subject without a name. I AM. So makes this any sense? Of course not. It cannot, it would 'just' become an object then. Gnothi seauton is the call to be still. If this sounds odd.....then you haven't found a needed gap yet. The momentum of the thinking mind has 'you' still in its grip. This condition I assigned to I think therefore I am.
Every day, when we wake up, the world shows itself to us. Where does that experience come from? Before anything shows itself, there has to be someone to show itself to. Every apparition and disappearance presuppose a change against an immutable background. Before waking up, I was not conscious. In what sense? Why don't you remember it or why haven't you tried it? Even without conscience, is there not experience? Can you exist if you don't know? Is a gap in memory a proof of non-existence? Can you speak of your non-existence as an actual experience, or argue for the non-existence of the mind during sleep? If they call you, you are immediately awake, and isn't your first perception the "I am"? Therefore some seed of consciousness must nestle in sleep or swoon. The awakening experience flows like this: "I am ... a body ... in the world". In reality they are not three distinct and successive perceptions, but one and overall, that of having a body in the world. Can there be "I am" without someone recognizing it?
The whole point of Critical Theory, Yen, is that they are trying to see how their thoughts, their theory depends on or how it's conditioned by the epoch, i.e. the social, economic, political etc. context.... Ever so slightly deeper than the usual Oriental nonsense of who is dreaming of whom, me of a butterfly or v.v. And there is no such thing as "immutable background" - it is ever changing, a process!!! As we are, too...
You're input makes clear that you had moments in your life where you could be still, you had a glimpse of what I tried to express. Such stillness for instance can be caught right before one wakes up from sleep, most people miss that moment. There is awareness and presence first, no thoughts yet and hence no form identity yet. But you are very alive, in fact you are most alive at this moment. And then depending on focus the presence gets lost and your form identity and the world out there (all those are objects) arise. To most people those 2 'conditions' are just one, the latter. As soon one had that one recognizes that in 'the other', immediately. "Where does that experience come from?" From YOU, the I AM, from the unconditioned consciousness which is precondition for any forms that appear 'in' it and come and go. When you are 'awake' your form identity that makes you being a person in the 'awake' world arises. When you go to sleep and enter dream state whatever form you take there as an identity arises. It can be superman, a wizard or somebody who has to run away from a murderer or whatever. And there is the deep sleep state. A complete empty state where no objects of any identity arise. Anyway YOU are. In deep sleep state you have lost awareness, everyone does. Goal in meditation is to become aware of it. No. There is the immutable subject, the unconditioned consciousness, the I AM from where your form identity arises. Those forms are ever changing as we = our form identity does, yes. Your form identity appears as thoughts I am Yen, male, MDL admin, a teacher of Chemistry, researcher and so on....and all those forms of identity of course are changing. When I sleep and dreaming I change 'my' form identity and I am not Yen, male, a researcher anymore, but maybe a wizard. And this identity has the same reality when dreaming. So 'where' is 'Yen' there? So there has to be an underlying 'ground' which is essentially 'more' you than those forms. It is when you are awake, when you are dreaming and when you are in deep sleep. So how is 'this' expressed in philosophy?
What do I get from knowing this? We are always someone, with their memories and habits. I don't know any other "I am" other than me.
Meditation cannot be replaced by talking / thinking / making concepts about. Only meditation itself gets you to an answer to your question. Also answers to your question are just answers and would never replace your answer found when you meditate. It is actually a means that realizes the fact that anything, your life, is now. There is only one moment in your life and it is ever this moment. It is culturally found at many places, also as different forms. Anything that gets you to the present moment is a form of meditation. I don't think so. Whenever you have compassion towards another human being I AM is more than 'only' you. Whenever you feel true love towards another human being I AM is not 'only' you. Whenever you feel not being separated I AM is not 'only' you. Meditation is nothing fancy. It is also not a teaching in that way that it adds something more to your knowledge. So your answer to your question "What do I get from knowing this" is actually. Nothing. You 'get' no-thing which is thought to be missed to be, because you are already. You get access to your essence identity which is beyond any form. I AM. So the only way to get further is to practise it yourself.