Actual Freedom (AF) is not a religious system/cult; I am none too sure how anyone got that impression here as the very front page of the AF website mentions “Non-Spiritual” in bold text.
Calling something “Non-spiritual” doesn’t make it not a religion. To use one obvious example, there are some evangelical Christians who say that they don’t have a religion and aren’t religious, but have a relationship with Jesus. Simply saying something isn’t religious doesn’t help matters.
To answer your specific questions: I define these things by personal experience. I did not claim that they are “everything.”—only that they are ways in which one experiences (i.e., consciously perceives) the world. As for “experimental evidence”—there are no experiments needed other than one’s ongoing conscious experience.
See that’s not ok. Any LWer would explain to you that the human mind is terrible at introspection. Human cognitive biases and other issues make it almost impossible for humans to judge anything about our own cognitive structures. And to claim that t there are no experiments needed is to essentially adopt an anti-scientific viewpoint. You aren’t going to convince anyone here of much while acting that way.
No, not enlightement (where feelings are still in existent), but an actual freedom (a permanent Pure Conscious Experience). It is rather interesting that this objection (AF == Enlightenment) is raised even in a forum pertaining to human rationality.
Of course it is, because what you are describing sounds nearly identical to classical Eastern claims about enlightenment. As to the difference between “enlightenment” and “actual freedom” I don’t see one. Of course, this might be the sort of thing where defining terms in detail would help, but you’ve explicitly refused to do so.
Please go and read some of the major sequences, and maybe after you’ve done so, if you still feel a need to talk about this, you’ll at least have the background necessary to understand why we consider this to be a waste of our time.
Calling something “Non-spiritual” doesn’t make it not a religion.
And calling something ‘religious’ makes it so? You said “the LWer concludes that this message amounts to religious spam or close to that.” And I responded with a question “what is the factual basis for such a conclusion?”. Don’t you think it would be a much more fruitful discussion if we sticked to the facts instead of intuitions/impressions/guesses/probabilities?
Human cognitive biases and other issues make it almost impossible for humans to judge anything about our own cognitive structures.
Yet what I originally claimed is a rather simple and obvious fact, based on common sense and experience, about bucketing our experience into sensations, thoughts and feelings, and not “judging about our cognitive structures”. There really is nothing to our experience outside sensations, thoughts and feelings.
And to claim that t there are no experiments needed is to essentially adopt an anti-scientific viewpoint.
Indeed there can be no experiments to verify the nature of subjective experience. Experiments can only arrive at the physical correlates (such as nerve pathways), but never at the subjective content itself. In the level of brain, it all comes down to neurons; yet, when we say “I sense …” or “I think …” or “I feel …” we are distinctly referring to sensations, thoughts and feelings.
As to the difference between “enlightenment” and “actual freedom” I don’t see one.
The very passage you are responding to contains this: “not enlightement (where feelings are still in existent)” implying that in an actual freedom, feelings are non-existent. It is beyond me how you failed to see that.
Calling something “Non-spiritual” doesn’t make it not a religion. To use one obvious example, there are some evangelical Christians who say that they don’t have a religion and aren’t religious, but have a relationship with Jesus. Simply saying something isn’t religious doesn’t help matters.
See that’s not ok. Any LWer would explain to you that the human mind is terrible at introspection. Human cognitive biases and other issues make it almost impossible for humans to judge anything about our own cognitive structures. And to claim that t there are no experiments needed is to essentially adopt an anti-scientific viewpoint. You aren’t going to convince anyone here of much while acting that way.
Of course it is, because what you are describing sounds nearly identical to classical Eastern claims about enlightenment. As to the difference between “enlightenment” and “actual freedom” I don’t see one. Of course, this might be the sort of thing where defining terms in detail would help, but you’ve explicitly refused to do so.
Please go and read some of the major sequences, and maybe after you’ve done so, if you still feel a need to talk about this, you’ll at least have the background necessary to understand why we consider this to be a waste of our time.
I would be greatly edified if you would heed Blueberry’s plea.
And calling something ‘religious’ makes it so? You said “the LWer concludes that this message amounts to religious spam or close to that.” And I responded with a question “what is the factual basis for such a conclusion?”. Don’t you think it would be a much more fruitful discussion if we sticked to the facts instead of intuitions/impressions/guesses/probabilities?
Yet what I originally claimed is a rather simple and obvious fact, based on common sense and experience, about bucketing our experience into sensations, thoughts and feelings, and not “judging about our cognitive structures”. There really is nothing to our experience outside sensations, thoughts and feelings.
Indeed there can be no experiments to verify the nature of subjective experience. Experiments can only arrive at the physical correlates (such as nerve pathways), but never at the subjective content itself. In the level of brain, it all comes down to neurons; yet, when we say “I sense …” or “I think …” or “I feel …” we are distinctly referring to sensations, thoughts and feelings.
The very passage you are responding to contains this: “not enlightement (where feelings are still in existent)” implying that in an actual freedom, feelings are non-existent. It is beyond me how you failed to see that.