Specific-Rub993 t1_ixmo1jm wrote on November 24, 2022 at 4:41 PM

Reply to comment by Epoferute in /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | November 21, 2022 by BernardJOrtcutt

We may not ever truly know who we are, so we should not act like we're even capable of knowing.

"Observation of the external is not supplementary to observation of the internal" To observe is something YOU do, if you can observe the internal, then you are not the internal.

Are we a soul - a consciousness - or are we our thoughts and behaviors? If we are a soul, then trying to understand who we are is merely an observation of thoughts and feelings. If this is true then thoughts become part of the external and observation of the internal becomes impossible. A soul cannot observe itself. Trying to understand who you are becomes natural phenomena pondering about natural phenomena. The goals of living is to live and the goals of observing is to observe. If there is no universal meaning to life, there is nothing you ought to become. And if there is a universal meaning to life it is in its definition; to live. Thus there is nothing you ought to become.

To some extent you are correct though, I came to these conclusions by "looking within". Yet there is nothing that says I have uncovered the truth. I have a hard time seeing how you could ever uncover something universally true about something within. The nature of us means, it seems like, there are some things we will never know. The truth of the soul and the truth of the reality we see around us, including that which we see in our thoughts, are equally unknowable. It is also very human, I think, to reject that. We want to know the unknowable and we will stop at nothing to try to understand. This includes me. We can never know what was before the universe, yet we still ponder. We are full of contradictions and absurdities. We are humans.

Epoferute t1_ixoc45q wrote on November 25, 2022 at 12:23 AM

You're getting this idea of observation mixed up with the senses. Yes, we can observe the external world (nature), but introspection (observation of the inner self) is something different entirely. Observation of nature deals with the physical while observation of the internal deals with the abstract like state of mind and virtue, which are the contents of the soul. My thoughts and emotions are unique to only me and are most surely not tangible; they are not external.

I agree that we cannot find this "ultimate truth", but you must also consider that all actions you have taken which you have deemed "correct," come from within. We all believe there is some truth to what we say and believe, else we would not say or believe it. Truth does exist, and it may exist only in our minds. Nothing in nature is explicitly telling us what is true and what isn't; we are the ones deciding based off of belief. You can absolutely believe that there is nothing we ought to do, and you can absolutely say that the goals of living are separate from the goals of observing, but I challenge anybody to live without a single thought about their condition. Surely, it is hard to deny that you do not have flaws and things which could be improved upon. I simply believe that basing your life upon attaining the unknowable is pure folly (as alluring as it is); there are much better things to concern yourself with. The same goes for proclaiming to understand things you clearly do not. You are only going to contort your perception of the world by thinking you know what you do not. We may be human, but that doesn't give us the excuse to act irrationally.

I think you make good points, but I think you might be distracted with the pedantics of the world (as we all are, though surely to differing extents). The most important thing in life is the betterment of the self and others, I believe. Truth is supportive of this goal, but not all-important. We can attain enlightenment through self-truth, but we do not need ultimate truth to realize this.