Semantic, with all due respect, bóllocks.
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But that idea is inherently solipsistic. It relies on the idea that ‘you’ are some unique entity. You aren’t. Science tells us that we are actually all boringly alike. ‘Your’ mind has no particular mystery. You are not a unique snowflake. You just wantbto be special because you lack the humility to accept that there’s nothing particularly interesting about you.
No, not at all, actually. I do not think there is anything uniquely interesting about my mind. I believe that the most stupid person in the world has just as much potential as Einstein to discover untapped truths about the nature of consciousness. Not their consciousness - consciousness in general.
The assumption being that science (and therefore man) is capable of understanding everything.
I disagree, or at least I disagree with the idea that we should assume that is true. Man is product of evolution, the engine of evolution is arbitrary genetic change. I find it unlikely that something that has evolved as a result of arbitrary genetic change should attain such a degree of sophistication that they could understand absolutely everything.
It strikes me as superficially arrogant. No wonder Monty supports this view. :-)
But you want mystery, don't you? You don't want everything explained, you want stuff to be just out of reach because that suggests there is more than the grindingly physical. You may want to explore it, but you don't truly want to understand it. Not really.
What I'm trying to explain is that that instinct - that inherently insatiable desire for the ineffable - is what I'm talking about.