For existence it’s “I think therefore I am”, just seems like an unavoidable axiom of experience. It feels like wherever I look I’m staring at it.
For conciousness I listened to an 80k hours podcast with David Chalmers on The Hard Problem and ever since then it’s been self evident there’s something that it’s like to be me. It felt like something that had to be factored out of my experience and pointed at for me to see. But it seems as self evident as existing.
For wellbeing and suffering it took some extreme moments for me to start thinking about the fact that some things feel good and bad and that might be like, quite important actually. Also with the realisation that I never decided to find wellbeing good and suffering bad they just are.
For causality I admit it’s not as clear cut, and I only really thought about it yesterday reading this article. But in this moment I’m running an operating system shaped by the past. In that past I experienced the phenomena of prediction and causality. This moment seems no different to that moment so it feels natural to unambiguous act as though this moment will effect the next.
Hmm that last explanation feels much more unwieldy than existence, conciousness, and valence. Perhaps it doesn’t quite deserve the category of self evident, and is more like n+1 induction.
In my own experience, there are moments where I see something that I haven’t seen before, such as what is really going on in a certain relationship in my life, or how I have been unwitting applying a single heuristic over and over, or how I have been holding tension my body, and it feels like a big gong has just rung with truth. But I think what’s really going on is that I was seeing things in one particular way for a long time, and then upon seeing things in just a slightly different way, I let go of some unconscious tightness around the previous way of seeing things, and that letting go frees up my mind to actually think, and that’s such a big relief that I feel this gong ringing with truth. It seems that letting go of seeing things one particular way is what the energetic release is about, rather than the particular new way of seeing things.
I mention this just because it’s the thing that seems closest in my own experience to the direct experience of self-evident truth. It seems that when I see that I have been holding to one particular way of seeing things, it is self-evident that it’s better to make a conscious choice about how to see things rather than just being unconsciously stuck. But it does not seem to me that there is any self-evident truth in any particular replacement way of seeing things.
Well, I would just say that the significance of it for me comes from the connection between the conclusion “I am” and practical life. I like to remind myself that there is something that really matters, and that my actions really seem to affect it, and so I take “I am” to be a reminder of that.
You’re quite welcome 🙂
For existence it’s “I think therefore I am”, just seems like an unavoidable axiom of experience. It feels like wherever I look I’m staring at it.
For conciousness I listened to an 80k hours podcast with David Chalmers on The Hard Problem and ever since then it’s been self evident there’s something that it’s like to be me. It felt like something that had to be factored out of my experience and pointed at for me to see. But it seems as self evident as existing.
For wellbeing and suffering it took some extreme moments for me to start thinking about the fact that some things feel good and bad and that might be like, quite important actually. Also with the realisation that I never decided to find wellbeing good and suffering bad they just are.
For causality I admit it’s not as clear cut, and I only really thought about it yesterday reading this article. But in this moment I’m running an operating system shaped by the past. In that past I experienced the phenomena of prediction and causality. This moment seems no different to that moment so it feels natural to unambiguous act as though this moment will effect the next.
Hmm that last explanation feels much more unwieldy than existence, conciousness, and valence. Perhaps it doesn’t quite deserve the category of self evident, and is more like n+1 induction.
Thank you for sharing this.
In my own experience, there are moments where I see something that I haven’t seen before, such as what is really going on in a certain relationship in my life, or how I have been unwitting applying a single heuristic over and over, or how I have been holding tension my body, and it feels like a big gong has just rung with truth. But I think what’s really going on is that I was seeing things in one particular way for a long time, and then upon seeing things in just a slightly different way, I let go of some unconscious tightness around the previous way of seeing things, and that letting go frees up my mind to actually think, and that’s such a big relief that I feel this gong ringing with truth. It seems that letting go of seeing things one particular way is what the energetic release is about, rather than the particular new way of seeing things.
I mention this just because it’s the thing that seems closest in my own experience to the direct experience of self-evident truth. It seems that when I see that I have been holding to one particular way of seeing things, it is self-evident that it’s better to make a conscious choice about how to see things rather than just being unconsciously stuck. But it does not seem to me that there is any self-evident truth in any particular replacement way of seeing things.
I’ve never seen that feeling described quite that way, I like it!
Out of curiousity, how do you feel about the proclaimed self evidence of “the cognito”, “I think therefore I am”?
Thank you!
Well, I would just say that the significance of it for me comes from the connection between the conclusion “I am” and practical life. I like to remind myself that there is something that really matters, and that my actions really seem to affect it, and so I take “I am” to be a reminder of that.