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    • AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.
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  • Weird Studies
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    from mysterianism
    • The position that some things are simply inherently unknowable. The word seems mostly to be used in descriptions of certain varieties of philosophy of mind that hold that the nature of consciousness simply can't be grasped, that it is beyond the human mind to understand itself. I'm extending it to cover the idea of Weird Studies/Radical Mystery, an important aspect of the WS worldview.

    Weird Studies/Radical Mystery

    15 Apr 2022 - 07 Dec 2024
    Open in Logseq
      • One of those more philosophical episodes where I have this reaction of extreme frustration; I feel like the hosts are onto something very close to my own views but just different enough that it causes dissonance, like if you play two adjacent piano keys.
      • In this case they are dealing with one of the fundamental principles of Weird Studies, Radical Mystery, which seems to be something like: the cosmos is inherently mysterious, and in a way that goes beyond mere unknowability. Some quality baked into the foundations of reality makes it weird, or mysterious (not quite the same thing but related). This manifests in paranormal phenomena like UFOs.
        • Taking that stuff seriously is where I get out of the boat, but OTOH the hosts take great pains to emphasize that the paranormal can't be studied by science, because its too idiosyncratic and unrepeatable. Given that, my science-nerd self can't really object, although I'm not sure what you are supposed to do about it. Weird shit happens, it can't be predicted or reasoned about, so, what are you supposed to take from it?
      • They were talking about a certain kind of experience – forget the term they used, but when objects take on a certain intensity, a thisness, a presence to them. I've experienced that on psychedelics, and its one of the more striking phenomena, I've always wanted to understand it better.
      • First there is a mountain Then there is no mountain Then there is
      • Plotinus, the problem of the undescended soul.
      • In Soto Zen, no awakening , just practice (but there is a diversity of opinion)
      • Spiritual practice should be a confrontation with death with no guard rails. Has to be dangerous to be a real initiatory experience.
      • Listening to the podcast itself is such a dangerous act – to be born and die to oneself... This Is It. Um, OK, this doesn't feel that dangerous but maybe it is, maybe I am risking my sanity (or at least my identity) by ingesting all this stuff and trying to take it seriously.

      • Elsewhere

        • Radical Mystery: A Preliminary Account | Patreon
          • Radical mystery holds that mystery is not merely a contingent flaw in the state of our understanding, some lapse in knowledge to be supplied at a later date. Radical mystery asserts that the unknown — the hidden, the obscure — is not a lack at all but a positive and unexpungeable quality of things and events. Mystery inheres even in saying there is no mystery: I have long suspected that Richard Dawkins is a trickster sage, whether he knows it or not.