timelets

Philosophical problems can frequently be solved by conceptual analysis or by transforming them into more differentiated versions. However, an additional and interesting strategy consists in attempting to also uncover their introspective roots. A careful inspection of these roots may help us to understand the intuitive force behind many bad arguments, a force that typically survives their rebuttal.

--- Thomas Metzinger, Being No One, 2004.

The American composer, artist, and ­ music theorist John Cage (1912–1992) wrote
about a sudden philosophical insight that he had in the late 1940s during an experi-
ment in the anechoic chamber at Harvard University. He described it like this: “[S]ilence
is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around.”

--- Thomas Metzinger, The Elephant and the Blind. 2024.

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His comparison of meditation experience to silence feels right. It's not like any other exprience, even if we say it's like flying or swimming or resting. On my smartwatch it registers as deep sleep, but I know I'm not sleeping; rather, I feel that the world around me goes into quetude of almost non-existence.