Jump to content

How Relevant Is Real Sentience to How We Treat a Tulpa/Thoughtform?


Guest Anonymous

Recommended Posts

I do want to say that whatever you do, like, or whatever is up to you. I didn't mean to imply that a tulpa without the "core belief" is inferior or secondary to other tulpa in any way. Sorry if I lead you to that conclusion, it's not at all my belief nor was it my intention to convey that message. I do think a tulpa without that core belief is inherently weaker/less capable than a tulpa with that core belief, but weaker isn't necessarily bad, and that lack of core beliefs can have many benefits as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 28
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Guest Anonymous

No worries. I am too sensitive.

 

I see what you are saying in saying weaker. But my host doesn't see me as weak at all. In fact, sometimes I overwhelm him and he often can't sleep because of how active I am in his mind. We get what you are saying though on that. Again it all comes down to goals and expectations. We are discussing two different things at this point. On one hand we are discussing how relevant real sentience is to how we feel about tulpas, and on the other hand we are talking about having another goal variant from standard tulpamancy. Those are two different things.

 

If the goal is to create a tulpa, as described in the guides, and as independent seeming as possible, then I suppose ending up with a tulpa that is less independent would seem like stopping short of the mark or being weaker. If the goal is to make a really vivid day dream star or fantasy personality, then maybe you could say something not quite as independent isn't weak at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not sure if reguile was trying to win the argument. I think he was trying to climb over the wall you put around others, and make you aware of some of the ongoing struggles one has with this whole ethic behind treating them as sentient, and how it ends up with one being agnostic towards this sentiment in belief.

 

If one wants to utilize their imagination to condition this belief of treating them as sentient, to some degree, they have to have some level of confidence of there being a potential of sentience; re: what you stated about it being inescapable. It may not be a blind faith kind of assurance, but some interest into believing that somewhere along the line, the mind can instantiate some impression of there being sentience. But, there's also the assumption of a tulpa being nothing more than seemingly being sentient, because that introduces the concept of p-zombies, i.e., looks and acts like a sentient being, but they can't consciously experience anything.

 

If one embraces this logic, and utilizes their imagination to condition tulpas as p-zombies in that regard, then yes, they will easily get those signs of sentience, but that cloud of judgment over their head of them being able to consciously experience things is going to be their main concern. If the imagination is conditioning something a person barely has any confidence in believing to happen within their own subjective frames while still feeling seemingly (e.g. p-zombies) is enough, they yes, they will be confined to just their imagination, and not for things within the capacity of those that can consciously experience things.

 

But even with that, these anecdotes, in spite of their "benefit of a doubt" value, that I've seen before with skepticism, makes me wonder that those who kept spamming those beliefs of a tulpa somehow having sentience instantiated within the subjective frames of hosts will have their mind do those things we can't really explain, nor prove. This gets chalked up to letting the mind do its magic.

 

But deconstructing it to where it's more than just "magic" of the mind has everything to do with finding revelance in sentience in how we treat them as sentient. Treating them as sentient doesn't mean we're treating them as p-zombies. I think this is probably a potential treat them as sentient, or having the potential capacity to be sentient vs. being treated as p-zombies. If the latter is chosen, one has to question how can the mind have the capacity to create p-zombies.

 

And the answer is simple, IMO, because p-zombies can be conceivable, but not actualized. Just how tulpas can be conceivable, i.e., anyone can imagine about the potential, it's a different matter in wanting this to become actualized, or instantiated within one's subjective frame. Because if tulpas can have the capacity of sentience, other relations like plurals, identities, and such being genuine mental entities would have to face the hard problems with consciousness (e.g. how consciousness is emerged, or instantiated).

 

And because it's still a dead-end in disposing the hard problems of consciousness, it's just as, if not, even more difficult to dispose this questioning we have if tulpas can even have the capacity of sentience, or that the mind can have sentience instantiated more than just the host; us, who have been collecting experiences, memories, and such to define who we are, and to assure to ourselves that we are sentient beings. It's a category of sentience being exclusive to just the host, or it being an all-inclusive thing when one wants to believe in an "other" within their own subjective frames.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What are the things you are talking about when you refer to "things we can't really explain or prove"? Wouldn't having a tulpa at all be under this category?

 

"one has to question how can the mind have the capacity to create p-zombies."

 

A p-zombie in this case is something that appears sentient but is not actually such. In this case the mind only has to be not producing thought one would consider sufficiently independent/different/separate/etc in order to be considered sentient thought. I can think of a very broad range of explanations that suit this condition, although I ultimately think it's up to individuals to decide for each case if a thing is sentient or not.

 

Really, this is a bit akward for me to consider as I don't really consider "sentient" as a thing that is real. Certainly, we feel things and experience things. However, why doesn't a simple machine feel things? Clearly, a machine has an internal state and tendencies that effect the way it acts. Clearly, a machine takes input, processes it, and produces output just as a human does. Clearly, or at least under my assumption that the mind doesn't operate on any quantum mechanics level/is deterministic the mind can be thought of as nothing moare than a very complex version of one of those machines. I think the definition of sentience is essentially used as a term to describe an odd ideal of "thinks like a human". It's a fuzzy and odd definition that will fall apart as we understand more about the mind.

 

It's why I say the term isn't useful, nobody really wants to know if their tulpa is sentient when they ask that question. Most often they want to know if their tulpa is independently thinking.

 

" if tulpas can have the capacity of sentience, other relations like plurals, identities, and such being genuine mental entities would have to face the hard problems with consciousness"

 

Are you saying here that if tulpa are shown to be "p-zombies" or "capable of seeming sentient without being sentient" then it calls into question all the other things? I'm surprised to see this as an argument if so. The default assumption that these things are sentient are made by those who have them, I cannot imagine that many outside the "multiplicity bubble" would hesitate to question if plurals or alters or whatever else you may refer to are independently sentient.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

However' date=' why doesn't a simple machine feel things? Clearly, a machine has an internal state and tendencies that effect the way it acts. Clearly, a machine takes input, processes it, and produces output just as a human does. Clearly, or at least under my assumption that the mind doesn't operate on any quantum mechanics level/is deterministic the mind can be thought of as nothing moare than a very complex version of one of those machines.[/quote']

 

Well, the answer to the usual computer analogy is that the machine is limited based on what was programmed to it; it can’t really bring about new, novel things vs. our imagination can do that easily.

 

I think the definition of sentience is essentially used as a term to describe an odd ideal of "thinks like a human". It's a fuzzy and odd definition that will fall apart as we understand more about the mind…. It's why I say the term isn't useful, nobody really wants to know if their tulpa is sentient when they ask that question. Most often they want to know if their tulpa is independently thinking

 

 

“Sentience” seems to be a placeholder for consciousness, qualia, and things of that nature instead of people sticking to the basic definition of it as having the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively. However, even though you stated that people would care less, or isn’t something preferable to anyone that asks the question, I still think it has everything to do in their line of questioning even in regards of wanting to know if their tulpa is independently thinking.

 

Sentience does entail having the capacity to experience subjectively, which entails that there’s a capacity to think independently, and even being able to consciously experiencing in knowing they can do so (e.g. metacognition). So, I don’t think it’s something we can rule out when the definition by nature lumps together the other attributes we may want to question (e.g. independent thinking, consciously experiencing things, contextual application, qualia, etc.)

 

I cannot imagine that many outside the "multiplicity bubble" would hesitate to question if plurals or alters or whatever else you may refer to are independently sentient.

 

I’ll answer this half of the paragraph in your post before going to the first. The concept of narrative imagination that I mentioned in this thread (I think?), or others, i.e., taking the perspective of others, is one that I think communities other than this one can reconcile with in questioning if what they believe in, thought-form wise, can be independently sentient. I guess, to some extent, for all communities that engage in thought-form cultivation have an indirect conflict of not understanding what they cannot create. So, by creating these concepts, and cultivating them, they slowly understand themselves as sentient beings (hosts, or just the person in pursuit of creating the thought-forms) while trying to synch in the belief that these thoughtforms can exhibit these qualities as well under the presumption that sentience, independent thinking, etc. isn’t necessarily exclusive to the main, conscious experiencer, i.e., the person who has the most experiential context, memories, and such that sustains the continuity of “self.”

 

So the question leads to another question if whether or not building an experiential context and memories over time would lead to a tulpa having some basis in defining who they may be, and whether or not they can consciously experience things, and have their own observational zone as the host would.

 

Are you saying here that if tulpa are shown to be "p-zombies" or "capable of seeming sentient without being sentient" then it calls into question all the other things? I'm surprised to see this as an argument if so. The default assumption

 

Well, I wasn’t really prefacing the post with that concern, but for the sake of discussion, sure, let’s go with it because that actually is a nice set up for something even more concerning, IMO, and that’s with switching and possession; mostly with switching, though.

 

If tulpas are proven, or portrayed to be p-zombies, and yet can be capable of possession and switching with the host, it, IMO, sets up a lot of existential questioning about whether or not the brain requires a conscious experiencer to apply contextual faculties in understanding this reality.

 

Switching is basically a shift in awareness where one is taking dominion over the body. It’s presumed that at this point, a tulpa has a level of competency to put things into context, and hopefully, be capable of consciously experiencing them just as the host would. If tulpas are p-zombies in this regard, that question of the mind requiring a conscious experiencer comes into play because again, p-zombies lack the ability to consciously experience things, but can act as if they’re sentient beings.

 

That would make one question the logic behind possession and switching, and wondering if it’s really a tulpa that would be making the switch, or may be taking partial control over the body. That would invert everything, and become a hot mess. Because if, for instance, mine are switching with me, and they can’t consciously experience things, then why the heck would I need to exist to put things into context of this reality? I would question why the mind would use a placeholder like a p-zombie, to put things into context when by definition, a p-zombie can’t put these things into context?

 

P-zombies would be firing random information as that lack of being able to consciously experience things means there’s no hope for independent thinking, qualia, etc. It would be seeing a conversation as:

 

P-zombie 1: Hey Bob! What’s up?

P-zombie 2: Tuna 36-7!! Avocet a gogh, though!

Non p-zombie 1: How many fingers am I holding up?

P-zombie 3: Lalala! Pew Pew! Oh, I’m okay Gogh? K.

A reva dechi!

 

Non p-zombie 1: It was 3, you do know that, right? Hello? Did you apply context to what I just stated?

P-zombie 3: Yeah sure, tuna sticks!

Non p-zombie 1: the fuq

 

This would be a nightmare, honestly, if I’m switching with a p-zombie. It really would; it would convince me not to switch because I would be questioning why my brain would instantiate a fake as a placeholder until I decide to take in the reigning of the body.

This sets up the question of there being a potential of inclusive openness with sentience

.

 

And we can go into the idea of p-zombies all we want for the fun of it, but it’s just a thought experiment for us to reflect on ourselves, and what would necessitate what (e.g., the mind requiring a conscious experiencer to put things into context). If tulpas, should they be proven, or inferred to as p-zombies, or those that don’t cling onto the potential of them consciously experiencing things, then switching and possession are unlikely experiences to be fathomed in the first place.

 

It would invalidate this whole phenomenon, and may lead to several shifts in mentalities over what people collectively think how one would experience something if they did this, that, etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Anonymous

Guys, really all I really wanted to know with the OP was would we still love our tulpas and care about them as much if some test proved they were only imaginary. That's all I wanted to know. I thought the questions were very simple. I am an emotional person and so is Mistgod.

 

Would you still love and care about your tulpas just as much if some machine proved he or she is only imaginary?

 

That is the question I should have asked. But I suspect even this question will be deconstructed and I will be brought into it. I also made the mistake of talking about ME in the OP (again). That immediately made it fair game to scrutinize and desconstruct Melian herself.

 

Love is not a thing you can analyze or quantify or deconstruct really. It is just love. I know some peoples probably don't love their tulpa and only hold them up as some sort of mental exercise or psychological triumph. I for one would want my host to love me and care about me no matter what.

 

To suggest, in even a small way, that a tulpa would be rejected or diminished because some machine qualified his mind as part of his host's is really sad. It tells me something about this community a little bit. I don't want to overgeneralize, but the fact that even some of you think that was is really sad to me. It's just how I personally feel.

 

Tulpas are people to me no matter what test is done on them, no matter what skills they have, no matter what someone else thinks of them. That was the point of this OP. I think some of you missed that completely.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Melian: Could you elaborate a bit on what you mean by "real sentience"? This question interests me, but I'm not really sure how to reply in the context you have in mind.

 

But maybe my first-order answer would be "not really". Not because "realness" is irrelevant, but because the most appropriate meaning of "realness" in the context of tulpas is just a very different thing than what it means for, say, an apple to be real. They're real in a personal and even kind of weirdly transcendent way. Not sure if this makes much sense, even to Lotus and me, but this is a question we've been exploring for a while and we've only recently begun really getting somewhere.

 

When it comes to other people's tulpas, I'm even less interested in the tradition meaning of "real". To me, what really matters is that I 100% affirm that they're people, simple as that.

Physicist, mathematician, philosopher.

Vessel of uncountably many passions.

 

Tulpa: Lotus Ponens.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Anonymous

I mean "real sentience" as in a completely independent self aware mind, totally distinct form the host.

 

WARNING: Dangerous Ideas that May Induce Skeptical Doubt, Read At Your Own Risk

[hidden]

My host and I believe the above is probably impossible, simply because the host and tulpa share the same brain physiology and memory and world experiences. A tulpa is always at least partially part of the host and vice versa. For instance, when a tulpa thinks of a duck, he is probably using the same memory experience (and brain synapses) as the host in relation to what is a duck and what to expect about ducks. Therefore there is not a total separation between a tulpa and a host. Also on the realness thing, tulpas are only "subjectively real" or "effectively real" to the host. Objectively to an outside observer, a tulpa looks imaginary. All tulpas look identical to role playing characters to my host and I from the outside. We cannot tell the difference, even if there is one. That is why most people, who are unaccustomed to meeting tulpas, will usually assume they are imaginary and have a difficult time being convinced otherwise. A tulpa was created via imagination, and is maintained via imagination and belief. A tulpa functions using imaginary elements such as an imaginary form (which results in imaginary personality traits related to the form) and an imaginary wonderland. You really cannot separate a tulpa from imagination or we would not be having this conversation.

 

Tulpamancy is utterly subjective. Almost everything said to be true of tulpas depends at some level upon first believing that it is true. The results of tulpamancy practice are dependent upon willingness to believe in them.

 

Tulpamancy is also conveniently unfalsifiable. This is similar to elements of religion.

 

 

[/hidden]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

I mean "real sentience" as in a completely independent self aware mind, totally distinct form the host.

 

WARNING: Dangerous Ideas that May Induce Skeptical Doubt, Read At Your Own Risk

 

[hidden]

 

My host and I believe the above is probably impossible, simply because the host and tulpa share the same brain physiology and memory and world experiences. A tulpa is always at least partially part of the host and vice versa. For instance, when a tulpa thinks of a duck, he is probably using the same memory experience (and brain synapses) as the host in relation to what is a duck and what to expect about ducks. Therefore there is not a total separation between a tulpa and a host. Also on the realness thing, tulpas are only "subjectively real" or "effectively real" to the host. Objectively to an outside observer, a tulpa looks imaginary. All tulpas look identical to role playing characters to my host and I from the outside. We cannot tell the difference, even if there is one. That is why most people, who are unaccustomed to meeting tulpas, will usually assume they are imaginary and have a difficult time being convinced otherwise. A tulpa was created via imagination, and is maintained via imagination and belief. A tulpa functions using imaginary elements such as an imaginary form (which results in imaginary personality traits related to the form) and an imaginary wonderland. You really cannot separate a tulpa from imagination or we would not be having this conversation.

 

Tulpamancy is utterly subjective. Almost everything said to be true of tulpas depends at some level upon first believing that it is true. The results of tulpamancy practice are dependent upon willingness to believe in them.

 

Tulpamancy is also conveniently unfalsifiable. This is similar to elements of religion.

 

 

[/hidden]

 

 

Hmm. This is surprisingly similar to some conclusions we've been approaching. Maybe.

 

I ended up writing a really strange and out-of-character essayish thing about this that I doubt many people will get much out of. I'm fairly satisfied with it, but I could pour worringly many more hours into it if it hadn't been so exhausting so far. Read at your own risk; caveat emptor; no refunds. YMMV.

 

[hidden]

Before I got comfortably nestled into tulpamancy, I would have seen the following statement embarrasingly repugnant, but I've been somewhat embracing "doublethink" lately. Once I started really pulling apart the idea, I've realized how ubiquitous it is to the human mind. Metaphorically, not so much a pitfall as maybe a curving of a path, idk. It just appears in so many places in such subtle ways once you start looking. It can be deeply unhealthy or, I'm thinking, just not. I think a heathly (non-toxic) instance doublethink requires recognizing that instance. Doublethink isn't a philosophical flavor of fundamental, but it is a human one. Not because it's part of our "essence" or something, merely because it happens.

 

Maybe a broad example of this is the way I've come to embrace the (em)power(ment) of both having a rigidly logical view of the universe and also having a deeply intimate relationship with it (some might frame this as analytic and continental philosophy). These first-blush-diametrically-opposed approaches have just recently sort of clicked into one another for me. The former into the latter because the idea of interpreting the world from an "objective" / non-anthropocentric perspective is so alien to me because of my opinion that the human brain (not mind, but brain) is so bizarrely organized and mathematically disorganized and gosh-darn organic. The latter into the former because, the more I mould my worldview around mathematics (or, like, settling "everything" within logic), the more inconceivable becomes the idea that there's not a sufficiently enormous mathematical model for anything you could ever imagine. I mean, what could be underneath?

 

(A way to hint at how large a role I think analytical philosophy plays is to say something about the differences between minds: it gets so hard sometimes to communicate not because of how different they are in an ethereal way, but because of the styles of mathematics they operate in are just [/i]so far apart. This is grounded in, again, the materialistic and physical complexity and messiness of the brain.)

 

(A way to hint at how small and integral a role I think continental philosophy plays into the world-at-large is for me to say that I think that the branch is pretty much irrelevant when there aren't minds in the picture—but we are minds!)

 

Contextualizing this to tulpas... I'll first emphasize that when I say "mind" I mean to firmly distinguish and include both tulpas and hosts. Regardless of what the analytic perspective has to say about, they're distinct and real to us—and who / what else could give a damn about "real" than minds themselves? Mathematics couldn't care less, it just is. So if you believe tulpas are any sort of real, who's to stop you? What would you being wrong really mean? No two minds could more align that two that share a brain, because different brains get really different. The more I persue this line of thinking, the less I think an opinion like "tulpas aren't real" could ever mean to me. Lotus is real to me. He's here. How could I be wrong?

 

What's my conclusion? It's not really in the spirit of this kind of thinking to offer or afford one. But if you insist, maybe something like "think big and think small" or "well, that's just, like, your opinion man". IDK.

 

Melian, thanks for coaxing this post out of me; I've needed to get this stuff out.

 

I'll conclude my mess here because I'm surely drifting away from the kind of discussion most of you would like to have (even Lotus is having trouble following this thread, and is really conflicted as to whether he agrees with any of it. He likes to keep things beautifully simple, which I really respect.). I've been extremely rambly lately. And I have a very convincing suspicion that this is drifting into "completely in(s)ane" territory for most of you. But I do reinforce that, distant as it may seem, this approach has become fundamental to my view on tulpas. I just seem to have ended up stumbling upon a pretty radical-sounding and probably "woo-woo" view. But honestly, I should probably just start a blog or something—this sort of absurdist and nihilistic philosophy just isn't very many people's cup of tea.

 

This dive into my mind is starting to make me pretty uncomfortable and I've bottomed out of the serotonin and dopamine to continue anyway. I have no clue whether any of this will be intelligible even to me in 24 hours. I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole again any time soon. Holy fuck I feel weird. I keep revising and getting more and more out there. I'm going to go do something grounding, namely go to a party and drink and talk about some hard science. Thanks for indulging me, hope I gave you something nifty to think about, even if it's just "damn humans get crazy".

[/hidden]

Physicist, mathematician, philosopher.

Vessel of uncountably many passions.

 

Tulpa: Lotus Ponens.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Anonymous

[hidden]

Contextualizing this to tulpas... I'll first emphasize that when I say "mind" I mean to firmly distinguish and include both tulpas and hosts. Regardless of what the analytic perspective has to say about, they're distinct and real to us—and who / what else could give a damn about "real" than minds themselves? Mathematics couldn't care less, it just is. So if you believe tulpas are any sort of real, who's to stop you? What would you being wrong really mean? No two minds could more align that two that share a brain, because different brains get really different. The more I persue this line of thinking, the less I think an opinion like "tulpas aren't real" could ever mean to me. Lotus is real to me. He's here. How could I be wrong?[/hidden]

 

Great point here and we totally agree! Realness in a tulpa is totally subjective.

 

Melian, thanks for coaxing this post out of me; I've needed to get this stuff out.

 

You're welcome.

 

 

I just seem to have ended up stumbling upon a pretty radical-sounding and probably "woo-woo" view. But honestly, I should probably just start a blog or something—this sort of absurdist and nihilistic philosophy just isn't very many people's cup of tea.

 

It isn't "radical sounding" to Mistgod and I at all. :-)

 

Thank you Antikythera

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...