Agreed, but let's try to avoid all the discussion of this or that philosophical model for now. I'm all for that kind of discussion normally but we are making some progress here and I don't want to muck it up too much. So we agreed before that what we are trying to do here is use an empirical-scientific approach to spiritual reality. We will only work off of empirical givens. One such given is the unity of individual experiential field.Eugene I wrote: ↑Thu Mar 25, 2021 8:27 pmYes we can. The unity of the space is a fact. The rest of the arguments are indeed only assumptions. But, as I said before: I'm not saying that it is impossible in principle that the same experience can be shared between two unified spaces. It's just that there are no conceivable models so far that could explain such phenomenon.AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Mar 25, 2021 8:08 pm OK so now that's cleared up, let's try again. The above is not an experiential fact, it is an assumption. You may find it to be a pretty unquestionable assumption, but it still remains nothing more than an assumption. There is no amount of meditation which turns that assumption into an undeniable given of experience. (a better word to use here is "inference", since you believe it is a logical conclusion which follows from experience).
Can we agree on that?
For example, BK's idealism offers a model of consciousness subdivided into alters with DID analogy. We can understand it, it is conceivable and makes sense for the intellect. And it is consistent with no logical contradictions. But I do not know of any model of consciousness that would be conceivable and consistent and at he same time explain how the same experience can be shared between two unified spaces of experiences. It makes no sense for the intellect so to speak. But we can go into the "mysterianism" mode and just say: we claim that the same experience can be shared, but we have no idea how to explain and verify that at this point, hopefully we will be able to understand it in the future. This will then remain an "explanatory gap" for such version of idealism, just like "the hard problem of consciousness" remains an inconceivable explanatory gap in materialism.
In the "competition filed' of the philosophical metaphysics philosophers try to defend their models and demonstrate their advantages based on certain merits. One of the merits is minimal explanatory gaps. There are still no metaphysical models with no explanatory gaps, but some models have less serious gaps, others have more serious. If you create another explanatory gap in your model of idealism, this will push your model back into the queue so to speak, it will be graded lower among other models.
I would say, whether the same experience can be shared or not is an undecidable problem. We can not verify or falsify such claim experimentally, likewise we cannot verify or falsify its negation experimentally. But at least its negation does not trigger the subject combination problem and does not create any explanatory gaps.
Cleric and I are also saying another such given is the ability of two or more individuals to experience the same ideal content, to the point where we can participate in the same space of ideal content through communication, empathy, etc. Forgetting any and all philosophical models and corresponding presuppositions about what is possible-impossible, do you agree?
