What is the strongest argument against Bernardo's monistic idealism and/or non-duality?

[PHIbonacci]

Hi,

I've been studying Bernardo's work for some time and I'm currently reading Decoding Jung's Metaphysics. I totally resonate with Bernardo's... ToE?

I have found this thread in the old forum, from 2017 with some interesting contributions and I would like to know what do you think about it in 2021.

[SanteriSatama]

Same argument that goes against any and all substance metaphysics. Process philosophy. Heraclitus instead of Parmenides.

[PHIbonacci]

Heraclitus instead of Parmenides.

Thank you SanteriSatama.

This might be useful. You mentioning Parmenides reminds me of BK's Open Letter to Peter Kingsley (arguably world's foremost expert on the pre-socratics):

Misunderstanding Parmenides

"Indeed, Kingsley claims that we in the West have been misinterpreting and misrepresenting Parmenides' ideas since Plato, and modern scholarship has compounded the problem even further. Parmenides is seen as the founder of logic and rationality, of our particular way of discriminating truth from untruth, fact from fiction, through reasoning. According to this mainstream view, the Promethean powers of Western science, as embodied in technology, are the culmination of a way of thinking, feeling and behaving that can be traced back to Parmenides' manner of argumentation in his famous poem.

But Kingsley argues very persuasively (R: 1-306) that what Parmenides was trying to say was nothing of the kind. According to him, logic for Parmenides wasn't a formal system based on fixed axioms and theorems, meant to help us discern true from false ideas about reality; it wasn't grounded in some metaphysically primary realm of absolutes akin to Platonic Forms; it didn't derive its validity from some external reference. In summary, Kingsley argues that, for Parmenides, logic wasn't what we now call reason, but something much broader, deeper, unconstrained by fixed rules and formalisms."

Source: https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2019/12 ... -open.html

[AshvinP]

Heraclitus instead of Parmenides.

Thank you SanteriSatama.

This might be useful. You mentioning Parmenides reminds me of BK's Open Letter to Peter Kingsley (arguably world's foremost expert on the pre-socratics):

Misunderstanding Parmenides

"Indeed, Kingsley claims that we in the West have been misinterpreting and misrepresenting Parmenides' ideas since Plato, and modern scholarship has compounded the problem even further. Parmenides is seen as the founder of logic and rationality, of our particular way of discriminating truth from untruth, fact from fiction, through reasoning. According to this mainstream view, the Promethean powers of Western science, as embodied in technology, are the culmination of a way of thinking, feeling and behaving that can be traced back to Parmenides' manner of argumentation in his famous poem.

But Kingsley argues very persuasively (R: 1-306) that what Parmenides was trying to say was nothing of the kind. According to him, logic for Parmenides wasn't a formal system based on fixed axioms and theorems, meant to help us discern true from false ideas about reality; it wasn't grounded in some metaphysically primary realm of absolutes akin to Platonic Forms; it didn't derive its validity from some external reference. In summary, Kingsley argues that, for Parmenides, logic wasn't what we now call reason, but something much broader, deeper, unconstrained by fixed rules and formalisms."

Source: https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2019/12 ... -open.html

If we take the evolution of consciousness seriously, then BK and Kingsley must be correct. Modern scholarship simply projects back a rationalist mode of consciousness onto the pre-Socratics, because that's the easiest thing to do and will necessarily support the conclusions they want to reach. Much of modern scholarship about any ancient thinkers can be understood in this manner. "Everyone is the unconscious proponent of some dead philosopher." In this case, Descartes.

[Lou Gold]

I like the drift of Jung and Bernardo and Kingsley.

I suspect the strongest argument against non-duality is that creativity requires dissociation into dynamic process, which may make life itself the best fundamental. "I am that I am and what I will be."

[AshvinP]

Hi,

I've been studying Bernardo's work for some time and I'm currently reading Decoding Jung's Metaphysics. I totally resonate with Bernardo's... ToE?

I have found this thread in the old forum, from 2017 with some interesting contributions and I would like to know what do you think about it in 2021.

I don't think there are any good arguments against the monistic part of the idealism, so it's hard to say what is the "strongest" out of equally terrible options. Of his idealism in general, I would say philosophical arguments which attribute meta-cognition to MAL, such as various panentheistic ones.

[SanteriSatama]

Thank you SanteriSatama.

This might be useful. You mentioning Parmenides reminds me of BK's Open Letter to Peter Kingsley (arguably world's foremost expert on the pre-socratics):

Misunderstanding Parmenides

"Indeed, Kingsley claims that we in the West have been misinterpreting and misrepresenting Parmenides' ideas since Plato, and modern scholarship has compounded the problem even further. Parmenides is seen as the founder of logic and rationality, of our particular way of discriminating truth from untruth, fact from fiction, through reasoning. According to this mainstream view, the Promethean powers of Western science, as embodied in technology, are the culmination of a way of thinking, feeling and behaving that can be traced back to Parmenides' manner of argumentation in his famous poem.

But Kingsley argues very persuasively (R: 1-306) that what Parmenides was trying to say was nothing of the kind. According to him, logic for Parmenides wasn't a formal system based on fixed axioms and theorems, meant to help us discern true from false ideas about reality; it wasn't grounded in some metaphysically primary realm of absolutes akin to Platonic Forms; it didn't derive its validity from some external reference. In summary, Kingsley argues that, for Parmenides, logic wasn't what we now call reason, but something much broader, deeper, unconstrained by fixed rules and formalisms."

Source: https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2019/12 ... -open.html

Yes, I read that with great appreciation, BK makes eloquent case for Parmenides. Of course Heraclitus and Parmenides play here mostly symbolic role, but that doesn't mean insignificant, as we are speaking on pre-Aristotelean level of Logos, not about formal logic of syllogisms etc. Plato's treatise of Forms culminates in Sophist and its discussion of Great Kinds, ie. foundational level conceptual opposites, and it is natural to interpret Sophist as a synthesis or the thesis-antithesis pair of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Change and Rest - cf. process and state - are already one of the polarities that Plato discusses and relates to other polarities, the main focus being on question of Being vs. Non-being. I don't want to paraphrase the whole discussion, it's better to read the original. Any case, the conclusion of the treatise of Great Kinds is that world is characterized by dynamis. Which does not mean only Aristotle's concept of 'potential', but is also analogous to Schopenhauer's concept of 'Will'.

Plato's obsession with eternal and immutable gives mathematics that status. In that regard, key results of modern computation theory - with which BK has philosophically complex relation as he shifted to philosophy from computation (and apparent limits of AI research) - becomes the key argument in favor of process philosophy and holomovement instead of idealism as substance metaphysics. Undecidability of Halting problem is a temporal argument against absolute etenalism of mathematical proofs and objects, the static aspect that remained such in Plato's synthesis of Heraclitus and Parmenides.

The argument is complex and nuanced when we get in finer detail, and BK's fondness of Bergson tells that he's not necessarily strongly opposed to process philosophy, if opposed at all. The frame of substance metaphysics of analytical idealism can be also more or mostly a rhetorical choice by BK, originating in the motivation to argue against substance metaphysics of materialism in language that connects with analytical philosophy and horizons of physicalism. In that respect, a minor but important detail is criticism of BK's use of term 'reductionism'. More commonly, the concept pair reductionism vs. holism refers to the part-whole relation, not metaphysical "reduction" to this or that substance. In the usual sense reductionism is the view that wholes are sums of their parts, and holism claims that wholes are more than that. BK has argued strongly against (micro)pan-psychism, so he's definitely not a reductionist in relation to the part-whole relation.

[SanteriSatama]

I don't think there are any good arguments against the monistic part of the idealism, so it's hard to say what is the "strongest" out of equally terrible options. Of his idealism in general, I would say philosophical arguments which attribute meta-cognition to MAL, such as various panentheistic ones.

A very strong argument against both monism and dualism as genuinely meaningful questions instead of superficial language games, is that both presuppose God of Number theory. Existential quantification as such is already a metaphysical postulate. Even though the formulation of Principle of Parsimony also presupposes the metaphysical postulate of quantification, a general interpretation of parsimony requires to drop quantification as ontological axiom, if better options are available and axiomatic quantification is not necessary.

And better option has been found.

[Lou Gold]

I don't think there are any good arguments against the monistic part of the idealism, so it's hard to say what is the "strongest" out of equally terrible options. Of his idealism in general, I would say philosophical arguments which attribute meta-cognition to MAL, such as various panentheistic ones.

A very strong argument against both monism and dualism as genuinely meaningful questions instead of superficial language games, is that both presuppose God of Number theory. Existential quantification as such is already a metaphysical postulate. Even though the formulation of Principle of Parsimony also presupposes the metaphysical postulate of quantification, a general interpretation of parsimony requires to drop quantification as ontological axiom, if better options are available and axiomatic quantification is not necessary.

And better option has been found.

Hmmm! I think this is aligned with what I was reaching toward with the suggestion that shamanhood might be the most parsimonious.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I concur that to make a strong argument against nonduality, one has to make a strong case that Reality is essentially based on there being at least two fundamentally and categorically different ontological primitives, which is inherently less parsimonious, notwithstanding the point that the nondual primitive expresses as multitudinous phenomenal polarities. As for making a strong case against the primacy of consciousness, one must make a strong case for how consciousness arises from a non-conscious primitive. I know of no such case.