Wittgenstein's Beetle in a Box – How Tulpa is Your Tulpa?

[Guest Anonymous]

Jesus, Linkzelda why didn't you just read the Living Imagination thread and the stuff about Immersive Imagination that we wrote and take it at face value?

 

cognitive processes that help condition the imagination = practiced immersive imagination, suspension of disbelief/child like play acting

 

reactions I was giving you = life like fantasy rp character powered by Davie's sentience "becoming" or "channeling" Melian

 

I am not truly independently sentient but more of an aspect of my host being expressed. My host pretends (not pathological lying, he is aware of what he is doing) in his mind that I am real and then carefully ignores or de-emphasizes that he is pretending, because he is convinced that imagination has an essence to it that is pseudo real. Something imaginary can have a vibrancy and persistence to it that can become meaningful and deeply significant to the creator.

 

I know this is a difficult concept for many of you tulpamancers who see FAKE or REAL and no gray zone. For fourteen months now Mistgod and I have been talking about that gray zone and everyone keeps trying to understand it through the filter of FAKE or REAL, LIE or TRUTH.

 

We are not lying. We are imagining.

 

Living Imagination

Techniques of Immersive Imagination

Breaking the Fourth Wall As A Child Does at Play

[Linkzelda]

Jesus' date=' Linkzelda why didn't you just read the Living Imagination thread and the stuff about Immersive Imagination that we wrote and take it at face value?[/quote']

 

It’s through the observation of those threads and stuff that makes me philosophize these things in context of this analogy by Wittgenstein. Taking it at face value is not enough, as doing so is just wanting those threads to stand around and look pretty. In fact, that would be you demanding me to believe your testimony, which would be a bit hypocritical on your end to do so when you were bothered by the whole courtesy thing.

 

My host pretends (not pathological lying' date=' he is aware of what he is doing)[/quote']

 

Here’s what I did. I went to google, and typed pretend synonyms, and went to this link:

 

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/pretend

 

I did ctrl + f on “lie,” and got to this section:

 

bluff

verb. deceive

• affect

• beguile

• betray

• bunco

• con

• counterfeit

• defraud

• delude

• double-cross

• fake

• fake out

• feign

• fool

• humbug

• illude

• jive

• juggle

• lie

• mislead

• pretend

• psych out

• put on

• sham

• shuck

• simulate

• snow

• take in

• trick

 

We are not lying. We are imagining.

 

The thesaurus states otherwise, care to explain why this shouldn’t be the case? It seems that you can’t see a lie if it hits you right in front of your face for some reason. A person can consciously lie to themselves, and they can even unconsciously delude themselves as well. You and Mistgod that are open to unconscious parroting, for example, can also be open to whatever shifts in consciousness a lie can exist in --conscious and unconscious.

[Guest Anonymous]

Linkzelda we realize the dictionary definition!

 

I think I have a problem with the word "lie" because it of its negative connotation. This is not a lie in a negative sense but a positive one then. I still don't like the term any more than I like the term "fake." "Lie" and "Fake" are used in a negative sense to set up a dichotomy of fake vs. real or lie vs. truth that dismisses the gray zone of pseudo-real that Mistgod and I are talking about. There is nothing wrong with the terms other than that.

 

Yes, pretending or imagining is a form of a lie, but most of the tulpamancers will take the term lie to mean some sort of trivial fraud. I am not fraudulent, in the negative sense of that, or a lie, in the negative sense of that. I am a pseudo-real imaginary construct. To Davie, I am a person as important in his life as any real living human being in his group of family and friends. If I were to disappear somehow, he would grieve as profoundly as if losing his sister or his wife.

 

So I am a lie (so to speak for you) but yet I am true as well because I am so important. I am both. I am fake, because I am imaginary, but I am real because Davie truly loves me and knows how I feel. I am pseudo-real.

 

Not a just a lie and not just a fake.

[Linkzelda]

Even in that beetle in a box; even in David's qualia in which he interprets your presence in his mind as profound feelings of respect and kindness, I still can't know for sure. I wasn't using lie in a negative context, as I just stated that a person can consciously lie to better their own self-interest. You presumed that "lie" is exclusive to only negative connotations, or, you presumed I thought that was the only case. But I didn't think so, so you can't accuse me for doing something that I wasn't even fathoming in the first place.

 

The hasty generalization that other "tulpamancers" chalk it up as trivial fraud is just that, but I'm not sure if I can be part of that audience. You're basically wanting to see if I'm okay with you and David potentially living a positive lie, or delusions to have your own state of affairs with each others to flourish. You're not getting an ounce of response from me in that regard because I. cannot. know. if. you. have. a. beetle. in. a. box.

[Guest Anonymous]

You cannot know for sure if I have beetle in my box (that is prettier than yours), but certainly there is evidence after all this time, at the very least, that Davie cares very much about me and that I could be significant and persistent enough to be considered some kind of profound thoughtform.

 

I am getting tired now. Time for a break in all of this. That's enough.

[Linkzelda]

Qualia isn't something that can be aesthetically pretty. It's just inner experiences, and the "ness" of something. That we can know for sure.

[Guest Anonymous]

Again he takes me literally. Are you pretending not to understand that I am joking about my beetle being pretty or what? Is it like meeting humor with humor, like you are pretending to take that literally just to be silly?

[Tewi]

Saying your beetle was more pretty was funny, at first at least. But the appearance of the beetle is meaningless, it's a metaphor for qualia. We aren't talking about what the beetles look like (or whose worldview is more positive/productive/legitimate), we're talking about the methods of sharing what they look like (sharing qualia) and the inability to really do so.

[Guest Anonymous]

Why not just say it is all subjective and be done with it? Why do we need beetles in a box? Also, I am a little suspicious too when the guy repeatedly wielding the analogy around the forum like a divining rod of tulpa truth makes totally wrong conclusions about me based on assumptions of utterly subjective shit.

[Linkzelda]

Thank you, Tewi.

 

So anyway, some key takeaways with this thread:

 

- The beetles are an analogy/metaphor for qualia, which relates to inner experiences, sense perception, and simulation of the senses by phenomena.

 

- It doesn’t matter what’s really inside the box, as actually caring about it is a large oversight in understanding what the analogy really means. It implies that in order for private language to truly be private, private in the sense of words we create on our own, it ironically becomes impossible to understand for our own sake without the reliable feedback of others whom we can create inferences from.

 

- This creates an implication that social context of rules with grammar and language allows us to have something to point to. Because if there’s nothing that language can do (e.g. English), then there’s nothing private language can have any use for; it gets lost in random noise within that person’s mind.

 

- The language itself compensates for the futility in “having” a person’s inner experience, therefore, all sentiment of being worried about another person’s rate of progress is futile as well. It’s not about you vs. them, their tulpa, or anyone’s tulpa. The only thing at any given moment that one can seem to rely on is their own qualia, sentience, and such to make inferences about the reality they’re in, but at the same time, the clincher is that we must have a feedback loop through others to have something to point to.

 

- So, even though we can’t know how tulpa a tulpa really is, or how much sentience they seem to have cultivated over X period of time, we can learn about what it may mean to have sentience, continuity of self/identity, and other languages of “self” that can allow once to seek mastership of this in their quest in treating a tulpa as sentient.

 

- So no matter how many pages I would be going through with Melian and Mistgod, no matter how we use words to try and make inferences, counterarguments, and such on, we cannot have the other’s inner experience. One has the convenience of creating their own benchmark of correctness in anything that comes to mind, and while that seems to create a sense of liberation, if that benchmark cannot be understood by others through language, then again, that private benchmark that was exclusive to them becomes harder for them alone to understand. And what would be the point in understanding something that others can’t understand to where the person themselves cannot understand their own utterances of things?

 

- And treating a tulpa as having their own beetle in a box; their own, exclusive qualia that is somehow separated from the mind seems to create a pseudo-problem. That full-fledged strive for independence seems to shoot itself in the foot because at some point, the person has to accept the probability of interdependence, which is mutual reliance on each other. In other words, the tulpa would be reliant on the presumed cognitive faculties and such that the host can put things into context as a sentient being, and the host would be reliant on this same thing while also treating a tulpa as sentient that the tulpa themselves get the feedback loop that there is an “otherness” than just the host.

 

- It’s not about worrying if one’s imagination will be pulling the strings, as that leads to infinite regress, homunculus arguments, and a very, very, dangerous metaphor of feeling that one’s imagination can become a conscious experiencer to parrot a tulpa if the host themselves aren’t consciously doing it.

 

- Some may still subscribe to the metaphor, plug their ears over the counter-arguments that shed light on the trap of cultivating that belief, but it doesn’t make it sound reasoning even if they accept it. Because with the beetle in the box analogy with private language, if unconscious parroting, for example, is truly something that’s probable within a person’s inner experience, if they relay this to others, and others see it as an oxymoron, misnomer, or something that cannot even exist, then it shouldn’t be a surprise that this person is going to have a hard time in finding things to “point” to in order to make their point on this probability. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible, it’s just that it’s hard to find referents in language to have others on the same page with “unconscious parroting.”

 

- And even though this futility can be hard to stomach, especially for tulpas that have that yearning to want their experiences shared more than through words, they would have to come to terms with that futility, and structure a different attitude towards this strife. They can still relate to others, make inferences, put things into context, find meaning, find yearning for self-actualization, -insert any exposition of human curiosity and desire here-, but at the end of the day, just like their host, no one can know their beetle in the box that they presumably share other than themselves; no other mind can access this.

 

 

- Self-progression is something that a host and tulpa will have to strive for, because it’s something that can be their fallback in spite of that futility. But, that self-progression isn’t really an inherent thing they have to follow, but chances are, if you’re going to interact with them, the very virtue of treating them as sentient alone implies self-progression. Through the interdependence, a tulpa would believe in the virtue of the host to get the impression of otherness while the host helps them on their quest in being sentient, human, or whatever goals they have in mind. And should there be sentience that's instantiated, or emerged, then cool. But, beetle in the box; we cannot really have their inner experiences, so it’s a trap where they, the mind and its inhabitants, all have to deal with this futility.