Perspective

Is there a God? If so, what is She like?

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Logik
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Re: Perspective

Post by Logik »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Wed Dec 19, 2018 10:15 am I don't think you know the truth about yourself in being deceived by your mind in believing in an illusory God. You get all worked up when others critique your beliefs.
You believe in illusionary Evil. What's the difference?
fooloso4
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Re: Perspective

Post by fooloso4 »

Nick:
If you have had an aha moment you have had a noetic experience.
You trivialize noesis as it stands at the top of Plato’s divided line.
You have seen a truth beyond what is revealed through dualistic reason.
This is the very thing Plato calls into question. This is why dialectic and the ability to give an account of what one claims to know are essential. A flash of insight is not true because it strikes one as true. One does not escape the cave in a flash.
You’ve experienced a rudimentary indication of what human consciousness is capable of
Yes, self deception. It is not rudimentary it is preliminary. It must be put to the test. This is what Socrates’ maieutics is all about.
A person who has had an aha moment will have experienced the difference between reasoning as discursive thought and the direct apprehension of noesis.
This is why mathematical knowledge is paradigmatic for Plato. When working on a problem you may suddenly see the answer. But this is not the end of the matter. It must be put to the test. It must be proven to be the right answer. Seeing an answer does not assure that it is the correct answer.

You are fond of pointing to what Einstein said about intuition but you turn a blind eye to the second half of what he says. He says the intuition must be put to the test. The intuition itself does not guarantee its truth. There are, he says, false intuitions.

You also turn a blind eye to Socrates’ knowledge of his ignorance. He goes to his death knowing that he does not know.

Noesis is not without content. Noetic knowledge is knowledge of something particular, not some vague sense of reality. With noetic knowledge one is able to give and defend an account. This last part you ignore and try to brush aside as preoccupation with arguing, but it is essential to Plato’s idea of noesis.
fooloso4
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Re: Perspective

Post by fooloso4 »

Reflex:
One thing that F4 seems to overlook: how can we come to know ourselves if we ignore the universal aspect of Being or fool ourselves into believing we don't need it?
What is the universal aspect of Being? How do you know it?
For a leaf cannot turn or a thought stir without affecting the whole universe from which we cannot be separated.
And you know this how? Have you witnessed a leaf affecting the whole universe? How does one leaf on one planet in one solar system in one of one hundred billion galaxies affect the whole universe?

Now it may be that you mean this poetically rather than literally - a sense of connectedness. In that case, it is odd that without knowing me you would think it is something I lack.
fooloso4
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Re: Perspective

Post by fooloso4 »

Veritas Aequitas:
If I am not mistaken F4 do believe some sort of universal being/reality [not personal God].
I don’t know what this means, so cannot say whether it is something I believe.
fooloso4
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Re: Perspective

Post by fooloso4 »

A point I did not address in my earlier post.

Reflex:
Personally, I still think F4 is the definition of he abhores: someone too infatuated with his thoughts and opinions to see the truth about himself.
It is not a matter of being infatuated with my thoughts and opinions but of knowing that I cannot sidestep them. Our experience is mediated by our thoughts and opinions. Whatever meaning we find or attach or attribute to anything and everything is mediated by our thoughts and opinions. Perhaps the Buddha, the Tathāgata, has arrived at “suchness”, but I have not, and, if you are honest with yourself, you have not either. Perhaps the mystic has “seen God”, but I have not. And so, we must attend to rather than ignore our thoughts and opinions, because they color everything we see and understand, everything that is meaningful for us. Unless, perhaps, until they don’t. But we are not there and so cannot answer the “perhaps” either yes or no. We do not transcend our thoughts and opinions by believing it is possible to do so.
Nick_A
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Re: Perspective

Post by Nick_A »

Consciousness and imagination are mutually exclusive. When a person is temporarily conscious they are free from imagination and when in a state of imagination they are incapable of consciousness. Altered states of consciousness are states of imagination and shouldn’t be confused with consciousness.

Those like Veritas are worried about the negative effects of consciousness and how they lead to violence and hatred. But this is misguided. What happens is that a genuine conscious experience becomes interpreted by our lower reason creating the feeling of justified self deception..

IMO the important thing is to realize that the word “intelligence is misleading. It doesn’t discriminate between higher and lower reason. It is an important distinction which secularism will deny since it suggests a source for higher reason. This is intolerable. Those aware of it have a moral obligation to keep it alive in society for the benefit of those capable of gradually acquiring a human perspective.

Here is a short explanation of higher and lower reason. If it makes sense to you IMO you are part of a fortunate minority.

http://www.john-uebersax.com/plato/pdf/ ... Reason.pdf
The word 'reason' as used today is used ambiguous in its meaning. It may denote either of two mental faculties: a lower reason associated with discursive, linear thinking, and a higher reason associated with direct apprehension of first principles of mathematics and logic, and possibly also of moral and religious truths. These two faculties may be provisionally named Reason (higher reason) and rationality (lower reason). Common language and personal experience supply evidence of these being distinct faculties. So does classical philosophical literature, the locus classicus being Plato's Divided Line analogy.

The effect of currently using a single word to denote both faculties not only produces confusion, but has had the effect of decreasing personal and cultural awareness of the higher faculty, Reason. Loss of a sense of Reason has arguably contributed to various psychological, social, moral, and spiritual problems of the modern age. This issue was also a central concern of 19th century Transcendentalists, who reacted to the radical empiricism of Locke. It would be advantageous to adopt consistent terms that make explicit a distinction between higher and lower reason. One possibility is to re-introduce the Greek philosophical terms nous and dianoia for the higher and lower reason, respectively. This discussion has certain parallels with the recent theories of McGilchrist (2009) concerning the increasingly left-brain hemisphere orientation of human culture.

Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Perspective

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

fooloso4 wrote: Wed Dec 19, 2018 3:04 pm Veritas Aequitas:
If I am not mistaken F4 do believe some sort of universal being/reality [not personal God].
I don’t know what this means, so cannot say whether it is something I believe.
Back to Kantian.
I believe all things are entangled with the human conditions, i.e. there is no absolute independent reality, i.e. no thing-in-itself. The basis is from Kant's Copernican Revolution.

I understand you believe there is such thing as thing-in-itself, a universal being/reality which is independent of the human conditions.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Perspective

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Nick_A wrote: Wed Dec 19, 2018 8:27 pm Consciousness and imagination are mutually exclusive. When a person is temporarily conscious they are free from imagination and when in a state of imagination they are incapable of consciousness. Altered states of consciousness are states of imagination and shouldn’t be confused with consciousness.
You are ignorant of the above.
Altered States of Consciousness are not imaginations.

I suggest you read up and research on ASC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_s ... sciousness

Those like Veritas are worried about the negative effects of consciousness and how they lead to violence and hatred. But this is misguided. What happens is that a genuine conscious experience becomes interpreted by our lower reason creating the feeling of justified self deception..

IMO the important thing is to realize that the word “intelligence is misleading. It doesn’t discriminate between higher and lower reason. It is an important distinction which secularism will deny since it suggests a source for higher reason. This is intolerable. Those aware of it have a moral obligation to keep it alive in society for the benefit of those capable of gradually acquiring a human perspective.

Here is a short explanation of higher and lower reason. If it makes sense to you IMO you are part of a fortunate minority.

http://www.john-uebersax.com/plato/pdf/ ... Reason.pdf
The word 'reason' as used today is used ambiguous in its meaning. It may denote either of two mental faculties: a lower reason associated with discursive, linear thinking, and a higher reason associated with direct apprehension of first principles of mathematics and logic, and possibly also of moral and religious truths. These two faculties may be provisionally named Reason (higher reason) and rationality (lower reason). Common language and personal experience supply evidence of these being distinct faculties. So does classical philosophical literature, the locus classicus being Plato's Divided Line analogy.

The effect of currently using a single word to denote both faculties not only produces confusion, but has had the effect of decreasing personal and cultural awareness of the higher faculty, Reason. Loss of a sense of Reason has arguably contributed to various psychological, social, moral, and spiritual problems of the modern age. This issue was also a central concern of 19th century Transcendentalists, who reacted to the radical empiricism of Locke. It would be advantageous to adopt consistent terms that make explicit a distinction between higher and lower reason. One possibility is to re-introduce the Greek philosophical terms nous and dianoia for the higher and lower reason, respectively. This discussion has certain parallels with the recent theories of McGilchrist (2009) concerning the increasingly left-brain hemisphere orientation of human culture.
Your ignorance in thinking ASC and imaginations are the same sort of defeat your whole argument above.

True there are the faculties of higher and lower reason.
Note Kant labelled lower reason as Pure Reason, thus his Critique of Pure Reason.
According to Kant, it is the lower Pure Reason that is responsible in triggering the idea of God which is illusory.
We [not you] now know this actually has an evolutionary and psychological basis and necessity.
Kant in CPR wrote:They [ideas of God, Soul, Whole Universe] are sophistications not of men but of Pure Reason itself.
Even the wisest of men cannot free himself from them.
After long effort he perhaps succeeds in guarding himself against actual error; but he will never be able to free himself from the Illusion, which unceasingly mocks and torments him.
B397
Re Kant the above would have referred to Plato who was definitely wise but was controlled by his faculty of Pure Reason in generating the idea of God thus fooled by such an illusion.

Note this 'normal' face illusion;
[presumed you are familiar with this execise??]
No matter how intelligent and wise a person is, as a human being, his mind [faculty of pure reason] will deceive him to see two 'normal' faces when the truth is not the case.

Image

Therefore you may think you are using your higher mind to arrive at the idea of God but you are ignorant of the fact the idea of God [an illusion] is a product of your active lower mind [pure reason].

This produced of the idea of God [illusory] is believed to be real by theists, but in general has contributed to load of terrible evil and violent acts by SOME evil prone theists. You cannot absolved yourself from such evils because you are indirectly supporting the whole idea which beholden the evil prone theists to commit terrible evils in the name of God [illusory].
fooloso4
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Re: Perspective

Post by fooloso4 »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thu Dec 20, 2018 5:57 am
I understand you believe there is such thing as thing-in-itself, a universal being/reality which is independent of the human conditions.

There is for us no thing-in-itself, only things as they are for us, that is, as we see them, as we take them, as we understand them. There was, however, a universe before us and will most likely be a universe after us.

As to what a “universal being/reality” might mean, that is not clear. Each term has come to mean different things and can be problematic for different reasons.

As to Kant: I do not wish to enter into another prolonged discussion but would like to point out that your selective editing misrepresents his argument. What he is referring to in the quoted passage is not the existence of God, Soul, and the Whole Universe being an illusion, but the illusion that their existence can be deduced from pure reason.

The facial recognition problem is interesting. Nick will dismiss it based on his notion of consciousness as privileged access to truth. I addressed this before but he ignored it. I’ll try again using a different tack.
fooloso4
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Re: Perspective

Post by fooloso4 »

Nick_A wrote: Wed Dec 19, 2018 4:22 am This disagreement between F4 and me as to the value of nous or noesis is very important in terms of acquiring a human perspective.
I addressed this: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=25663&start=105#p388227
but you ignored it. So I will do so again from a different perspective using Plato’s poetics.

When the prisoner is released and is turned around to the source of light it is the light of the cave that he sees. When he ascends from the cave he is eventually about to see a greater source of light, the sun. But the sun is not the source of being and knowledge. There is a third source of light, the Good. At each step, he is blinded before he can see anything clearly:
"Then I suppose he'd have to get accustomed, if he were going to see what's up above. At first he'd most easily make out the shadows;
and after that the phantoms of the human beings and the other things in water; and, later, the things themselves. And from there he could turn to beholding the things in heaven and heaven itself, more easily at night—looking at the light of the stars and the moon—than by day—looking at the sun and sunlight."
"Of course."
"Then finally I suppose he would be able to make out the sun—not its appearances in water or some alien place, but the sun itself by itself in its own region—and see what it's like." (516a-b)
This is quite different than what you understand noesis to be - an “aha moment”. The light of the fire can only be seen upon release from the bounds that tie us to the wall. Seeing that light is an “aha moment”, but it is twice removed from the source of truth. The light of the sun is not yet the source of light of the truth, for it is once removed. As to seeing the source itself, I have pointed to the problem in the past, but you have ignored it. You turn away from what Plato says. You accept the notion of education as a turning around of the soul but turn away when you don't like what you see.

You prefer Uebersax’s Christian Neo-Platonism to Plato himself. You prefer the easy way, the way of what is “received” without question in an aha moment. You brush aside the problem of whether it is by the light of the cave fire that you saw whatever it is you think you saw. You are unwilling to consider that even when one ascends from the cave what he sees are shadows and phantoms until he becomes accustomed to the light of the sun. This cannot happen in a moment. You have not had “direct apprehension of a higher reality that reconciles duality”. I may never convince you of that, but that does not mean I should allow you to mislead others about Plato by leading them to Christian Neo-Platonism.
Nick_A
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Re: Perspective

Post by Nick_A »

Veritas
True there are the faculties of higher and lower reason.
Note Kant labelled lower reason as Pure Reason, thus his Critique of Pure Reason.

According to Kant, it is the lower Pure Reason that is responsible in triggering the idea of God which is illusory.
We [not you] now know this actually has an evolutionary and psychological basis and necessity.
If we admit that we have the capacity for both higher and lower reason it is reasonable to conclude that the human organism has three sources of awareness of the Absolute.

The first is through higher reason. The noetic experience reveals both the state of self deception we live in as well as the awareness of an ineffable source beyond human conception.

The second is through our observation of nature. It becomes obvious that the power within functioning nature or what Plotinus called Dunamis, is not an accident but has a source beyond our understanding. It arouses our experience of awe and wonder.

The third source is through lower reason. It is the attempt to rationalize what we cannot understand. Most seem to stop at lower reason and create God in the image of man creating the violence and hatred you referred to.

There is minority who know they live in self deception and make the necessary efforts through impartial conscious contemplation to let their opinions go, strive for a thought free open mind ,and seek to have the experience of understanding. If they are fortunate they get help along the way and begin to experience the inner path; their vertical conscious connection to a higher reality the source of which is the Absolute.

In short, lower reason can reveal the quality of contradictions normal for the human condition which can only be reconciled by higher reason. Once a person experiences the transition between the lower and the higher, it opens new doors to what the soul of man seeks to remember and how it makes life on ezrth meaningful.
Nick_A
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Re: Perspective

Post by Nick_A »

F4
When the prisoner is released and is turned around to the source of light it is the light of the cave that he sees. When he ascends from the cave he is eventually about to see a greater source of light, the sun. But the sun is not the source of being and knowledge. There is a third source of light, the Good. At each step, he is blinded before he can see anything clearly:

This is quite different than what you understand noesis to be - an “aha moment”. The light of the fire can only be seen upon release from the bounds that tie us to the wall. Seeing that light is an “aha moment”, but it is twice removed from the source of truth. The light of the sun is not yet the source of light of the truth, for it is once removed. As to seeing the source itself, I have pointed to the problem in the past, but you have ignored it. You turn away from what Plato says. You accept the notion of education as a turning around of the soul but turn away when you don't like what you see.
Quite true. The first awareness is of the sources of shadows. By definition it is an aha experience. Why deny it? It is the beginning of the process of awakening. Education can create a beginning. I support it and the spirit killers within education seek to destroy it for the sake of the glorification of the great secular god.

There is nothing not to like. When a person experiences that they live in a state of self deception attached to the shadows on the wall they have a choice to pursue awakening to experience the light of the sun and finally the light of the Good. Most have neither the need, the will, or the courage to abandon their self deception so remain as is. There is a minority with the need to awaken and are willing to sacrifice their attachment to their self deception in order to become one with universal meaning and purpose.
"Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it We must continually suspend the work of the imagination in filling the void within ourselves."

"In no matter what circumstances, if the imagination is stopped from pouring itself out, we have a void (the poor in spirit). In no matter what circumstances... imagination can fill the void. This is why the average human beings can become prisoners, slaves, prostitutes, and pass thru no matter what suffering without being purified."

"That is why we fly from the inner void, since God might steal into it. It is not the pursuit of pleasure and the aversion for effort which causes sin, but fear of God. We know that we cannot see him face to face without dying, and we do not want to die."
Simone Weil -- Gravity and Grace
Freeing our psych from the hold of imagination and opening to the void to experience the light is frightening so much so that most are incapable of it. We don't realize how much of our lives is controlled by imagination. It creates our personality. Abandoning that gives the impression of death and as Simone wrote: we don't want to die.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Perspective

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

fooloso4 wrote: Thu Dec 20, 2018 4:30 pm
As to Kant: I do not wish to enter into another prolonged discussion but would like to point out that your selective editing misrepresents his argument. What he is referring to in the quoted passage is not the existence of God, Soul, and the Whole Universe being an illusion, but the illusion that their existence can be deduced from pure reason.
Ok, I will avoid any prolonged discussion.
But just as a reminder of my points;
The ideas of independent absolute God, Soul, and the Whole Universe which theists claimed as real are similar to claiming the 'normal' face [in the above experiment] as real.
For some theists, God is even empirically real to the extent God had sent holy texts and commands via prophets and messengers plus answering their prayers, kill enemies, etc.

The difficulty is the independent absolute God, Soul, and the Whole Universe, being transcendental illusions are not easy to explain or expose like the empirical-based face illusion.

In the whole context of the CPR Kant accepted the existence of God is a transcendental illusion, but he nevertheless acknowledged it even if it is an illusion, the idea of God [illusory] is nevertheless an imperative, critical and useful idea & ideal for his Philosophy of Morality and Ethics. I don't agree with Kant's imputation of God into Morality.
fooloso4
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Re: Perspective

Post by fooloso4 »

Nick:
Quite true. The first awareness is of the sources of shadows. By definition it is an aha experience. Why deny it?
Because, as I said, it trivializes what only occurs at the end of a long arduous journey. Noetic knowledge is of the Forms. The first awareness is of a bright light that one must look away from. Once one is able to look at it, and this does not occur in a moment, what one sees is that this source of light is one made by the puppet masters, the opinion makers, the makers of myths (Plato is one of them. The one whose myths you mistake as gospel truth). You mistake the fire for the light of a transcendent reality. It is, in fact, when understood, nothing more than what is made by the opinion makers. Dazzled by the light of the fire you have not even seen its source. What you experienced in your aha moment was not noesis, but what you imagine noesis to be.
It is the beginning of the process of awakening.
It can only be so if one stops imagining what the reality outside the cave must be. Only if one comes to see that Plato, Simone, Needleman, and whoever else you never tire of quoting are image makers and what you are seeing is the shadows they have projected on the wall of your cave.
When a person experiences that they live in a state of self deception attached to the shadows on the wall they have a choice to pursue awakening to experience the light of the sun and finally the light of the Good.
You have not been able to get past your self deception. You cannot awaken to experience by imagining experiences you have not had. You cannot experience what is beyond your experience. You can only awaken to the possibility of experience. You cannot awaken to the experience the light of the sun, you can only imagine that such an experience is possible.
There is a minority with the need to awaken and are willing to sacrifice their attachment to their self deception in order to become one with universal meaning and purpose.
You deceive yourself when you imagine that you are one of those people. Your attachment is to what you imagine it to be to be awake in the light of day. You do not sacrifice your attachment, you cling to it.
Freeing our psych from the hold of imagination and opening to the void to experience the light is frightening so much so that most are incapable of it.
You have demonstrated that you are incapable of it. You are not opening to the void. You have filled it. You can call it “grace” or “human consciousness” or any of the other things you have been told about, but they are nothing more than what you imagine - “eikasia (delusion or sheer conjecture)”.

In Buddhism there is a saying: If you meet the Buddha on the road kill him.
Nick_A
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Re: Perspective

Post by Nick_A »

F4
N. Quite true. The first awareness is of the sources of shadows. By definition it is an aha experience. Why deny it?

F. Because, as I said, it trivializes what only occurs at the end of a long arduous journey. Noetic knowledge is of the Forms.
No. Direct apprehension can be experienced on all the steps of the ladder of awakening.
N. It is the beginning of the process of awakening.

F. It can only be so if one stops imagining what the reality outside the cave must be. Only if one comes to see that Plato, Simone, Needleman, and whoever else you never tire of quoting are image makers and what you are seeing is the shadows they have projected on the wall of your cave.
You doubt the value of the power of myth. The great perennial ideas of the past are to be contemplated rather than believed. It is through impartial conscious contemplation that a person can experience an aha moment. That is why the spirit killers are so intent on eliminating the great ideas and arguing about Trump, gender rights, abortion rights, social justice as the equality of slavery for example. Anything to avoid the depth of questions of the heart philosophy is directed at.
N. When a person experiences that they live in a state of self deception attached to the shadows on the wall they have a choice to pursue awakening to experience the light of the sun and finally the light of the Good.

F. You have not been able to get past your self deception. You cannot awaken to experience by imagining experiences you have not had. You cannot experience what is beyond your experience. You can only awaken to the possibility of experience. You cannot awaken to the experience the light of the sun, you can only imagine that such an experience is possible.
As I’ve said, my advantage over you is first my willingness to admit I am in Plato’s cave. Secondly, my advantage is having experienced the third dimension of thought. Your blind belief in the supremacy of binary logic as the highest expression of intelligence keeps you “third force blind.”

https://parabola.org/2017/07/30/the-hidden-third/
“The greatest responsibility of all: the transmission of the mystery.”
—Basarab Nicolescu
In response to this call, physicist and author Basarab Nicolescu’s recent fragmentary text offers a view of humanity’s current spiritual situation. In thirteen sections, items as brief as a few words are linked to delineate the cosmic obligation, at the same time respecting the silence of the sacred. Following suggestions of Maurice Blanchot, the fragments remind us that the whole is never given and that the beginning of understanding is always imminent. Fragmentation also mirrors a prime discovery that Nicolescu draws from his own area of scientific expertise, broken symmetry. Physicists now believe that a breakdown in laws of symmetry supplied the initial condition of the Big Bang. Thirdly, humans’ relation to God (or “Absolute Evidence” in Nicolescu’s account) and to the celestial order has ruptured. The holy reconciling force has withdrawn and the pathway once illuminated by it, is no longer visible. While we now pray for divine support, no reply is forthcoming.

The call, moreover, is blocked from our ears by deep habits of thought and language. Inherited from the ancient Greek world, their source lies in binary logic: either this or that but not both. Nicolescu’s rejection of binary-ism is strong: “The fiendish dialectics of binary thought have the redoubtable yet subtle force of being able to kill in the name of ideas.” The death consists in foreclosing the middle, the “third not given”: what is there before and remains there after the division into two. Yet that death preserves in hiding the excluded element, which allows a direct perception of multiple levels of reality, up to that of Absolute Evidence. Fear of confronting a many-dimensioned cosmos lies behind the embrace of the binary. We opt for ready knowledge and survival of the status quo rather than participation in a work of co-creation. Because we fail to see the ambiguity in “yes or no,” our spirit is blinded and put in shackles....................
Everything else you accuse me of just proves you are third force blind so must live in imagination as it concerns acquiring a human perspective as opposed to the cave perspective you are dedicated to defend.
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