New interview with Bernardo

[AshvinP]

Clearly BK is finding more time for interviews again ~ who is up for a hero's dose ~ the latest being well over 4 hours

Wow this is a hell of a discussion so far and I am only about an hour in. The question of "morality" under BK's idealism is a great one to explore. I largely agree with BK's assessment that 'moral codes' so far have been nothing more than human constructions which do not seem to be reflected in Nature, but I don't necessarily agree that no 'higher' moral order could be discerned from the archetypal patterns of Nature we experience, including those which currently appear as 'red in tooth and claw'.

Around 1:45:00 BK is finally asked about Peterson, and says he doesn't know enough about him, but knows he is a Jungian and that serves as a common foundation. He is then asked where he disagrees with Jung, and says he doesn't disagree with Jung on anything, that Jung is a 'flat out' idealist, and considers him along with Thomas Kuhn as the two most important 20th century thinkers. That is a hell of a statement (which I agree with, top 5 without a doubt). BK mentions that Jung was "unbeatable" in his breadth and depth into the human condition, not even close to his peers.

I am really looking forward to reading BK's new book on Jung. It appears to me that Jung tended towards a belief in God as conceived in mystical Christian traditions, and that seems like a conception BK disagrees with at an ontological/metaphysical level. Perhaps BK understands Jung much differently in that regard, or perhaps he did not have religious belief in mind when saying he does not disagree with Jung on anything. Any ideas on that?

BK basically answers this question later in the interview. He states that he believes the East got it 'right' metaphysically, but practically he is a Westerner and believes we must act as if there is a telos to the evolved self-reflective nature of being. Therefore, he does not view the Self as a quality we need to escape from. Although Jung certainly praised Eastern philosophy such as Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, I believe he ultimately identified with a Christian metaphysics, although there is some room for reasonable debate there.

BK's view seems practical yet somewhat anti-pragmatic, in so far as he is confident that the most practically useful system for finding meaning in the face of suffering is not the system which is metaphysically true. My inclination is that, intellectually, we can remain agnostic about the metaphysics until we know more, either in this lifetime or the next or the next after that, so on and so forth.

BK brings up an interesting point regarding 'ego dissolution' with high-dose psychedelics, which is that we need to be consistent in our interpretations of those reports or experiences if we consider ourselves 'naturalists'. In my view, that actually weighs against the Eastern notion that an ego-dissolved state is the 'final reality'. If the ego-dissolved state feels 'ultra-real', then the Self is also real in some fundamental sense for there to be a contiguous reality. Perhaps reality is not contiguous in that manner, but then I am not sure we can call ourselves 'naturalists'.

[Ben Iscatus]

Fantastic interview. Thanks for posting, Dana.

[findingblanks]

I'm easily one of BK's biggest fans when it comes to holding his fundamental model up as incredibly well argued and compelling. It's air tight for me and I have endless gratitude for what he is doing. But the devilish fun is in the details and I always come back to this head-scratcher:

I know exactly exactly what BK means when he says the materialist believes that the the gigantic beautiful mountain he is looking at is inside his skull .

When Bernardo brings this up he often is gasping and exasperated then saying, "So the mountain is inside the skull and it just corresponds to something in the outer, purely quantitivae world.

When he says this he is almost always making the point that materialism makes this massive and mind-boggling distinction between the mountain we see (which must be within our skull) and whatever we think it corresponds to outside. Keep in mind, when he makes this point he is not making his other points about materialism not even being able to deduce in priniciple qualia from quantity. No, he is simply marveling at how materialism forces us to separate the obvious concreteness of the world from what we say is 'really' there.

He most ends his exasperation by saying something like, "But as an idealist I can say that the concreteness of this bottle is actually there, plain and simple. I don't have to create this crazy notion like the materialist that it is inside my skull and what it relates to is utterly different."

But later when he talks about how the bottle we see and touch is simply a partial extrinsic image of what Mind-At-Large is experiencing, he is clear to say that this bottle (its glimmer and glow, its concrete feeling, the unique sound it makes when you flick it...) is ONLY inside my alter...and what this bottle corresponds to in reality could be as distinct as a single neuron (as an image) is from the experience of planning my daughter's surprise birthday party.

Please don't waste your time reminding me that we can't derive qualia from quantity. I agree. I get it. 100% But that is not the point Bernardo is making when he speaks about the mountain being in the skull and somehow corresponding to something out there that is nothing like it. And he is very clear that the things we see surrounding us are only in our alter and what they correspond to is not other shapes and sounds and perceptions but endogenous cognitions.

Anyway, love it all and loved this latest interview! He's on fire these days

[AshvinP]

He most ends his exasperation by saying something like, "But as an idealist I can say that the concreteness of this bottle is actually there, plain and simple. I don't have to create this crazy notion like the materialist that it is inside my skull and what it relates to is utterly different."

But later when he talks about how the bottle we see and touch is simply a partial extrinsic image of what Mind-At-Large is experiencing, he is clear to say that this bottle (its glimmer and glow, its concrete feeling, the unique sound it makes when you flick it...) is ONLY inside my alter...and what this bottle corresponds to in reality could be as distinct as a single neuron (as an image) is from the experience of planning my daughter's surprise birthday party.

Please don't waste your time reminding me that we can't derive qualia from quantity. I agree. I get it. 100% But that is not the point Bernardo is making when he speaks about the mountain being in the skull and somehow corresponding to something out there that is nothing like it. And he is very clear that the things we see surrounding us are only in our alter and what they correspond to is not other shapes and sounds and perceptions but endogenous cognitions.

Anyway, love it all and loved this latest interview! He's on fire these days

I get your critique here and I think that is a real issue with the "world as dream-illusion" paradigm. There seems to be a fundamental discontinuity between saying idealism implies that qualitative experiences are "real" but also that qualitative experiences in normal waking consciousness are "illusory". That being said, it is at least consistent that there are only qualitative experiences. My understanding is that BK would say the "concreteness" qualia is real, but it's not necessarily wedded to any specific 'external' object or any experiencing ego-self (which is also a constructed 'object' in his view). I do have issues with that and believe these types of questions are the most critical ones for idealists to consider carefully, without assuming any particular idealist conception to be true a priori.

[findingblanks]

AshvinP, again you put that very clearly and it really helped. It also helped me see that my main gripe is just that he sounds like he's laughing at materialists for saying that we have an inner image that is nothing like whatever is out there, and then, in another context, he marvels at how cool it is that only the alters see the mountains and that what the mountain is an image of in reality could really be nothing like it at all. BUT: as you and I have both said, BK absolutely makes the point that idealism is clear that it is ALL phenomenal, no matter how jaw-droppingly bizzaree such translations from reality into image are. Thanks again.

[JustinG]

AshvinP, again you put that very clearly and it really helped. It also helped me see that my main gripe is just that he sounds like he's laughing at materialists for saying that we have an inner image that is nothing like whatever is out there, and then, in another context, he marvels at how cool it is that only the alters see the mountains and that what the mountain is an image of in reality could really be nothing like it at all. BUT: as you and I have both said, BK absolutely makes the point that idealism is clear that it is ALL phenomenal, no matter how jaw-droppingly bizzaree such translations from reality into image are. Thanks again.

Good point. materialists and idealists alike can tend towards dismissing and devaluing the apparent world we actually live in . As Nietzsche, who was critical of both camps, put it:
"The concept of the “beyond”, the “true world” invented in order to devaluate the only world there is - in order to retain no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality! "

[Simon Adams]

I may be missing something, but my understanding of what BK is saying is that from a physicalist perspective, the whole of the mountain you see is purely an image in your brain, the light from 'out there' draws a picture in our mind. In other words the experience we have of the mountain being 'out there' is pure illusion. Whereas from the idealist perspective, the mountain we see is how the "thing-in-itself" of the mountain presents itself to us. So there are the mental processes of which the mountain is made, and what we see is how those present themselves to our individual consciousness (via our senses). The image in our mind only exists as an interaction between ourselves and the mountain 'out there', something that arguably is supported by quantum physics better than the physicalist version.

[AshvinP]

I may be missing something, but my understanding of what BK is saying is that from a physicalist perspective, the whole of the mountain you see is purely an image in your brain, the light from 'out there' draws a picture in our mind. In other words the experience we have of the mountain being 'out there' is pure illusion. Whereas from the idealist perspective, the mountain we see is how the "thing-in-itself" of the mountain presents itself to us. So there are the mental processes of which the mountain is made, and what we see is how those present themselves to our individual consciousness (via our senses). The image in our mind only exists as an interaction between ourselves and the mountain 'out there', something that arguably is supported by quantum physics better than the physicalist version.

That is basically correct, but the materialist perspective is even more radical. Even the "light" 'out there' does not have independent qualitative properties, such as brightness. It's really quite amazing how intelligent people can argue for materialism while also being completely unaware of these implications, which would undoubtedly make them more hesitant to argue for it.

The other issue is this - how can we say the qualitative experience is "real" and "illusory" under idealism at the same time? If the story of our "selves" navigating a world of qualitative experiences is an illusion, then everything which is experienced within that story must also be an illusion. Yet BK still maintains the idealist can confidently state that the redness of red or the brightness of light is a real quality of objective reality, whatever that is.

[Simon Adams]

Yes and I often find BK expressing the same concept in different ways, and agree with one version and not the other. “Real” can mean different things, but if you see a mountain and I see a mountain, and an airplane flying into the mountain blows up, then something about the mountain is real. Yes it’s mostly empty space, and yes what what we see is not the “thing in itself”, and maybe the you and I observing it are at some level part of the mountain (*), but I don’t think it’s meaningful to set the bar of ‘real’ so high. You may as well say that all experience is unreal, yes some people are feeling deep sadness right now, and some intense happiness, but that’s all just an illusion of the ego’s separation so doesn’t really exist etc

* It was interesting that in the interview the subject of the heart came up. If you follow Ramana Maharshi’s route of following the sense of I, it’s like there are layers. At times it seems like your I is in your head, at times it’s your whole body, and at times it’s your heart. At some point there is a sense that it’s an integral part of something far wider, which is presumably a taste of the eastern enlightenment. However it seemed to me that the will comes from the heart specifically, and this aspect still seems present even when the sense of I is far wider. I guess what I’m saying is that I think ‘oneness’ or ‘patterns in mind’ can be an oversimplification of the reality.

[Eugene I]

The other issue is this - how can we say the qualitative experience is "real" and "illusory" under idealism at the same time? If the story of our "selves" navigating a world of qualitative experiences is an illusion, then everything which is experienced within that story must also be an illusion. Yet BK still maintains the idealist can confidently state that the redness of red or the brightness of light is a real quality of objective reality, whatever that is.

Let me give a simple analogy to illustrate this. Let's say we go to an art exhibition, look at one of the paintings and see a mythical Unicorn depicted on it. Now, our visual sensory experiences of the painting are absolutely real, there is no doubt about it. But in addition to the sensory experiences we recreate a mental representation of the painting with the mental image of the Unicorn and accompanying thoughts about the Unicorn. Again, such mental image and the thoughts are real to us - they are mental though forms and our experience of them is absolutely real. However, the meaning of those thoughts may not represent or reflect any realities (other than the meanings themselves). For example, the thought that "the Unicorn exists" has a meaning - the existence of the Unicorn. However, there is no "real" Unicorn in the universe other than our image and thought about it. In that sense, our image and thought about Unicorn that we experience in our consciousness are absolutely real, but the meaning of the belief-thought that the Unicorn exists independent of our imagination about it is an "illusion" (illusion meaning that it does not correspond to any reality outside of our imagination and thought about it).

Similarly, the "self", if taken as a meaning of our mental representation/reflection of the totality of our private conscious experiences, is real - we all do have an idea of self and an intuitive sense of self as some mysterious "entity" or "being". However, there is no evidence or proof that such "self-entity" is actually real and that it is anything more than only a meaning of a thought. In that sense it can be said that the "self" is an "illusion".