Hi Paulo
Paul, thanks for posting regularly and for engaging so wholeheartedly in this dialogue, it's that engagement that will make all the difference,
And thank you for this wonderful service that you are providing. It's terrific having you guide this inquiry and the quality and frequency of your posting is helping so much to maintain a good level of momentum and intensity.
this brings more sharply into focus the matter of whether by 'Paul' we mean a temporally persistent and spatially consistent phenomenon, like a conventionally understood 'river', or a momentary phenomenon, like the zen river.
That's a great point, and I think it could be of value to examine it in more detail.
Which of the above 'Pauls' actually exist - the persistent and consistent experience, or the momentary experience?
Let's see. There seems to be something like an assumption somewhere in the present Paul that the consistent and persistent Paul also presently exists along with or as a feature of the present Paul or even that the present Paul is a part of the consistently and persistently experienced Paul. Do actual past Pauls exist in or as a feature of the present Paul? Yes, in that all Pauls share in relatively consistent and persistent physical and mental qualities. What about the consistent and persistent awareness/experience aspect of what we are calling Paul? Does that exist presently? Yes, in that the present sense of Paul does not seem to differ too radically from previous Paul's sense of Paul. The sense of Paul persists. But the question is whether the consistent and persistent experience of Paul actually exists. There can only be one experience of Paul per moment. But that one experience could consist of or include the thought or the assumption that the present experience is in many significant ways a continuation of older Pauls rather than a wholly new Paul.
Mmm - not much clarity of answer emerging here. Let's consider the exercise with the plant:
Here's an exercise to help you in your consideration of the above question -
Find a plant with leaves on it, any size will do, indoors or outdoors, doesn't matter. Look at a number of different leaves in the plant in turn. Notice that each of them is slightly different - different coloring, shaped slightly different, different sizes, etc. We call each of them leaves, instead of 'leaf no.1', 'leaf no.2', 'leaf no.3', etc. even though there is not one of them that is alike.
Okay - I notice these differences between the leaves which I hadn't consciously focused on before. I'm not sure, though, that we call each of them 'leaves', as you say. Rather, I think we say 'leaves' to refer to the collection of individual leaves. I would agree that we might commonly point to each one and say something like 'that's a leaf', that's another leaf' and so on, when in actual fact the leaves are not all the same. We would use the same word for what were actually distinct and differing things, albeit sharing a relatively high degree of similarity. And I assume that this is what you are getting at with this example.
Consider if the word 'leaf' is a cognitive shortcut, which means we overlook the ACTUAL leaves? (Not seeing the wood for the trees, so to speak - sorry, couldn't resist that one!)
Yes, I think we do overlook the actual leaves. We typically just see a bunch of similar leaves and move on. Is it because the word 'leaf' is a cognitive shortcut that we overlook the actual leaves? I'm not sure if that is exactly what you are suggesting. I'm not sure if that as an explanation matters right now.
In the case of not seeing the wood for the trees, I thought that this typically meant that we don't see the whole because we are focused on the particulars. The way you are using the expression here as an analogy for not seeing each leaf because we are focused on the whole, seems to be an inversion of the typical meaning, ie. we don't see the particulars for the whole. Perhaps, you mean we don't see the actual details of wood as a material (rather than wood as 'forest') because we just see trees consisting of similar but distinct manifestations of wood. Anyway, not sure that exactly what you mean matters right now either. Perhaps using this inverted meaning will be useful later on because sometimes maybe we don't see what, in another sense, actually exists as a whole because we are focused on particulars. Anyway ...
Consider also if the label/concept/convention 'Paul' is similarly a cognitive shortcut, describing something that is ACTUALLY different (albeit similar) from moment to moment.
Yes, there is typically not really a seeing of the details of present experience. There is an assumption that is not usually conscious that the present Paul is largely an instance of the consistent and persistent Paul. The points of difference are noticed to some extent but it does not occur to Paul that these are significant or sufficient to undermine the 'operating assumption', and thereby 'sense', that the present Paul is essentially a continuation of previous Pauls which together form a singular consistent and persistent Paul that actually exists. The reality being suggested, though, is that the present Paul is essentially a distinct object (in physical, mental and awareness apsects) from previous Pauls. This in the same way that each leaf of a plant is a distinct object or expression or manifesation from other leaves, albeit sharing a common source.
If we want an analogy that works more clearly to illustrate the disctinctiveness of each Paul, it might be better to choose that of trees and a forest. For the plant/leaves analogy leaves open the possibility that the leaves are all fundamentally connected and part of a whole, whereas the forest/tree analogy is less susceptible because physical connection is far more tenuous. But perhaps the different senses of Paul are actually somehow joined and so plant/leaf could be more appropriate depending on what is actually the case.
Okay, I'm pretty happy that in theory there's a good analogy here. Let's see if it unfolds in actual experience!
Paul
