Bernardo's latest essay

[Cleric K]

In the quoted text you did not say "only Thinking provides meaningful link between fragments", you only said "Thinking provides meaningful link between fragments" Latter statement is what I agree with, while still disagreeing with the former one. But I understand you position: because you have no experience of the Unity in Experiencing, you also have no evidence for such Experiential Unity, and therefore it is natural and logical for you to claim that "b]only [/b]Thinking provides meaningful link between fragments".

Eugene, you keep resisting to expand the horizon of cognitive activity. Why is it so difficult for you to consider that when we talk about ideal content we don't speak about floating thoughts that simply obscure the screen of consciousness with made up meaning, but we speak about the very essence of meaning? Think of the World of experiences (I'm using your words, otherwise I would call it World of perceptions). The Experiential Unity that you speak of, as Ashvin noted, is something which is completely comprehensible and doesn't need anything mystical. All that's needed is to stop asking questions. As long as I'm completely at peace with the World Content we may speak of unity in this sense. Not that the picture of the World Content is complete, it's just that I have no interest whatsoever in the rhythms and patterns of the picture. I simply flow with it in complete submission, I'm at one with the picture. This is experiential unity. It's unity as far as my "I" is completely content with 'whatever happens'. This is actually the highest ideal for many people. But we should be perfectly clear (and you have agreed with this many times) that this experiential unity doesn't give any practical knowledge about the larger picture. It is just a momentary ignoring of the incompleteness of the picture. It's almost as getting drunk so the questions of life are put to the side for a moment. And here you'll object that you're not advocating this. I know. The thing is that this experiential unity is meaningful experience, even if it is the "blooming, buzzing confusion" - there's still knowing element of experience. It doesn't matter if there's knower, thinker, self or whatever - the individual conscious perspective, as you name it, is conscious of the "blooming, buzzing confusion" - within the perspective there's knowing that this is what is being experienced. Please don't confuse this knowing with data. I'm referring to the most intimate inner experience of knowing, I guess in you terminology it would equate to 'being aware'. To be aware means to experience some meaning (what we call 'ideal element'), some intuitive understanding of what the contents of experience are, even if they are as vague and inexplicable as the "blooming, buzzing confusion". So even if we are completely at peace with the confusion and we appreciate it as a beautiful unity there's still awareness weaved out of meaning.

I'm simply trying to present things in your terminology because you seem to refuse to understand what is meant with Perception, Idea and Thinking. In your wording Perception is the contents of awareness. Idea is the invisible meaning that awareness experiences. Thinking is the spiritual activity that works upon the perceptual contents such that we can be aware of more encompassing meaning. We can imagine this as organizing broken mirror pieces such that they reflect better and better meaning. I repeat that we can be fully content with very fragmentary and incomplete perceptual content. As long as we focus on the sum total of these fragments as a whole, we can be aware of unitary meaning. I can't stress enough how important of a distinction this is. An idiot can also have experiential unity - he simply flows along with the panorama of experiences and could be aware of the completely unitary meaning of "blooming, buzzing confusion", without any question about anything else.

This is the critical point. We can have unitary experience even if we are completely absorbed in a single thought of an atom. But this doesn't mean that this unitary picture presents a complete Cosmic panorama. We need to work with our spiritual activity in order to organize the perceptual experiences such that they can reflect the higher meaning obscured behind the fragments. The meaning of "blooming, buzzing confusion" becomes more and more patterned, rhythmical and encompassing. In certain sense the confusing perceptual content of awareness is still there but we have worked upon it with Thinking such that higher meaning has been revealed.

Here's another analogy. A page of a book is buzzing confusion for the illiterate. Yet he can encompass the whole page in a completely unitary experience imbued with the meaning 'flat thing with markings'. As long as the experience doesn't provoke any questions in the illiterate, he might be completely satisfied or even ecstatic while beholding the page - experiential unity! Yet when the perceptual contents have been worked upon by Thinking, the 'flat thing with markings' increases in ideal resolution and additional meaning is experienced. Now there's also unity but of a much higher order. In other words, not only that we haven't taken anything away from the incomprehensible experiential unity of the page but we have made it even more meaningful and complete. The text in the page may contain wise words which when understood, transform our awareness into orders of meaning that are inconceivable when we stare incomprehensibly at the page.

[Eugene I]

Eugene, you keep resisting to expand the horizon of cognitive activity. Why is it so difficult for you to consider that when we talk about ideal content we don't speak about floating thoughts that simply obscure the screen of consciousness with made up meaning, but we speak about the very essence of meaning? Think of the World of experiences (I'm using your words, otherwise I would call it World of perceptions). The Experiential Unity that you speak of, as Ashvin noted, is something which is completely comprehensible and doesn't need anything mystical. All that's needed is to stop asking questions. As long as I'm completely at peace with the World Content we may speak of unity in this sense. Not that the picture of the World Content is complete, it's just that I have no interest whatsoever in the rhythms and patterns of the picture. I simply flow with it in complete submission, I'm at one with the picture. This is experiential unity. It's unity as far as my "I" is completely content with 'whatever happens'. This is actually the highest ideal for many people. But we should be perfectly clear (and you have agreed with this many times) that this experiential unity doesn't give any practical knowledge about the larger picture. It is just a momentary ignoring of the incompleteness of the picture. It's almost as getting drunk so the questions of life are put to the side for a moment. And here you'll object that you're not advocating this. I know. The thing is that this experiential unity is meaningful experience, even if it is the "blooming, buzzing confusion" - there's still knowing element of experience. It doesn't matter if there's knower, thinker, self or whatever - the individual conscious perspective, as you name it, is conscious of the "blooming, buzzing confusion" - within the perspective there's knowing that this is what is being experienced. Please don't confuse this knowing with data. I'm referring to the most intimate inner experience of knowing, I guess in you terminology it would equate to 'being aware'. To be aware means to experience some meaning (what we call 'ideal element'), some intuitive understanding of what the contents of experience are, even if they are as vague and inexplicable as the "blooming, buzzing confusion". So even if we are completely at peace with the confusion and we appreciate it as a beautiful unity there's still awareness weaved out of meaning.

I'm simply trying to present things in your terminology because you seem to refuse to understand what is meant with Perception, Idea and Thinking. In your wording Perception is the contents of awareness. Idea is the invisible meaning that awareness experiences. Thinking is the spiritual activity that works upon the perceptual contents such that we can be aware of more encompassing meaning. We can imagine this as organizing broken mirror pieces such that they reflect better and better meaning. I repeat that we can be fully content with very fragmentary and incomplete perceptual content. As long as we focus on the sum total of these fragments as a whole, we can be aware of unitary meaning. I can't stress enough how important of a distinction this is. An idiot can also have experiential unity - he simply flows along with the panorama of experiences and could be aware of the completely unitary meaning of "blooming, buzzing confusion", without any question about anything else.

This is the critical point. We can have unitary experience even if we are completely absorbed in a single thought of an atom. But this doesn't mean that this unitary picture presents a complete Cosmic panorama. We need to work with our spiritual activity in order to organize the perceptual experiences such that they can reflect the higher meaning obscured behind the fragments. The meaning of "blooming, buzzing confusion" becomes more and more patterned, rhythmical and encompassing. In certain sense the confusing perceptual content of awareness is still there but we have worked upon it with Thinking such that higher meaning has been revealed.

Correct, there is Experiential Unity, and there is knowing of the meaning of it through Thinking, which is a reflection of such Experiential Unity by Thinking. If we would not be aware of it through Thinking, the Experiential Unity would still be there (because it always is). So, to realize such Unity, Thinking needs to reflect it. But you are right, such realization doesn't give any practical knowledge about the larger picture, and Thinking is indeed needed to achieve larger knowledge or the unity of meanings and relations behind the "panorama". However, if Thinking ignores the Experiential Unity, the larger knowledge will include the ideal relations and meanings, but still miss the the Unity of Experiencing, and therefore will be incomplete. So, I'm saying it again: an integration of Thinking and Experiential knowledge are needed for the completeness of our knowledge about the Reality.

Thinking without knowing the Experiential Unity is incomplete.
Knowledge of Experiential Unity without the knowledge of ideal meanings and relations through Thinking is an "idiotic" experience and is also incomplete (fully agree with you here, Cleric).
Only integration of both can bring the completeness to the knowledge of Reality (and thereby fully close the Kantian divide)

[Eugene I]

We are now at such a point again - once you claim there is "Unity in Experiencing", you have introduced the element of ideal content which presupposes Thinking.

No, as I said many times before, the "Unity in Experiencing" is NOT an ideal content. That's the key point: Experiencing is NO and idea. So there is no way Thinking can know it without referring to the direct Experiencing. It's only by referring to the Experiencing when Thinking can report it and reflect it with its "idea of Experiencing".

[AshvinP]

Correct, there is Experiential Unity, and there is knowing of the meaning of it through Thinking, which is a reflection of such Experiential Unity by Thinking. If we would not be aware of it through Thinking, the Experiential Unity would still be there (because it always is). So, to realize such Unity, Thinking needs to reflect it. But you are right, such realization doesn't give any practical knowledge about the larger picture, and Thinking is indeed needed to achieve larger knowledge or the unity of meanings and relations behind the "panorama". However, if Thinking ignores the Experiential Unity, the larger knowledge will include the ideal relations and meanings, but still miss the the Unity of Experiencing, and therefore will be incomplete. So, I'm saying it again: an integration of Thinking and Experiential knowledge are needed for the completeness of our knowledge about the Reality.

Thinking without knowing the Experiential Unity is incomplete.
Knowledge of Experiential Unity without the knowledge of ideal meanings and relations through Thinking is an "idiotic" experience and is also incomplete (fully agree with you here, Cleric).
Only integration of both can bring the completeness to the knowledge of Reality (and thereby fully close the Kantian divide)
...
(response to Ashvin) No, as I said many times before, the "Unity in Experiencing" is NOT an ideal content. That's the key point: Experiencing is NO and idea. So there is no way Thinking can know it without referring to the direct Experiencing. It's only by referring to the Experiencing when Thinking can report it and reflect it with its "idea of Experiencing".

I will attempt one last approach here because I like a challenge and I am stubborn. First, we should remember that no one here, Cleric, you or me, is speaking of what Reality consists - we have not gone to that question yet. We are only speaking of epistemology, how we gain true knowledge of the world (under idealism this converges with ontology but we can forget about that for now). Next, we should remember that, as monists, we are not presupposing subjects experiencing and objects experienced. That is a dualist presupposition which, for the same reasons as it does under hard mind-matter substance dualism, skews the reasoning towards flawed conclusions.

That second part is critical to questioning your approach above. Note how many subject-object divisions are present in your argument above. Not just distinctions, but divisions, since we are discussing the essence of these matters. There is an experiencer and the "experiential Unity", the knower and the "meaning of it". There is the "Unity of Experiencing" and the "ideal relations and meanings". Beyond that, there is also an implicit substance dualism which takes the form of "Thinking knowledge" and "Experiential knowledge", which implies two separate realms of ideal content where one is only accessible to Thinking and the other is only accessible to Experiencing. You then imagine we must combine the two realms together ("integration") for "completeness of our knowledge about Reality".

Again, you may say that is all reasonable and necessary for making distinctions when speaking of these matters, but we should see how you are not only making distinctions but attempting to describe the fundamental essence about "incomplete" vs. "complete" knowing-knowledge. You are imagining a realm of "pure experiential Unity" and another realm of "meaning discovered by reflective Thinking" (those are not your quotes but I am doing that to delineate the two realms being presupposed in your approach). Then you are imagining the first realm gives us one type of knowledge and the second realm gives us another type of knowledge, and we should add them together to get "complete" knowledge.

Cleric and I are disputing the existence of two separate realms of essential experience and knowledge in the first instance! We are saying that a presupposition of two realms in that manner is flawed dualist thinking and leads us to keep essential Thinking in the "blind spot" of our spiritual activity. It leads us to claim we somehow know things with pure Experiencing separate from Thinking. As Cleric said, it can only imagine Thinking activity in terms of floating intellectual concepts which are personalized to each local consciousness and obscure the "Experiential Unity" of the One Consciousness. This flawed reasoning then concludes the horizon of cognitive activity must end at our personal boundaries when describing an objective Reality in its essence. It then stops asking questions about the details of that essential Reality beyond any feeling of "Experiential Unity".

You may dispute all of the above, and especially that last part, but let's remember you have spoken of Cleric's (and Steiner's) detailed descriptions of the underlying Reality behind physical processes in the world as "fantasies". You say it is good that Steiner had these "fantasies", but other adepts have had other "fantasies", so there is no reason to prefer his over others. Or in discussions with me, you likewise say the "Platonist" and "Christian" interpretations of underlying relations are no more true than all other interpretations. You say the assertion of more truth to one interpretation leads to all sorts of egotism and atrocities, and by that time in the discussion we have completely abandoned any sort of careful reasoning and are operating exclusively on feelings.

Anyway, that is my last approach to clarify these positions - maybe Cleric will more, and I can clarify anything written above, but apart from that I want to move past square one and focus on the deeper details of these things, as we started to do with Simon's offering of Borella and Guenon for consideration. That is the sort of higher resolution direction we should be heading in with these matters, rather than going around in circles on the basics of our respective positions.

[Eugene I]

You are imagining a realm of "pure experiential Unity" and another realm of "meaning discovered by reflective Thinking"

You are correct that we are talking about epistemology here, not ontology. These two "realms" are not ontological, they are only epistemological. The Reality is always One and complete, however, our knowledge of it, at this point, is fragmented and incomplete. This fragmentation does no harm to the ontological unity. The question is - how do we make our knowledge of Reality complete and unified? Conscious Reality has two aspects - Thinking activity and Conscious Experiencing. Thinking can not know the Reality in fullness without encompassing the Experiencing aspect of it. But only knowing Experiencing without applying Thinking to encompass all ideal relations is also incomplete. Both are needed for the completeness.

[AshvinP]

You are imagining a realm of "pure experiential Unity" and another realm of "meaning discovered by reflective Thinking"

You are correct that we are talking about epistemology here, not ontology. These two "realms" are not ontological, they are only epistemological. The Reality is always One and complete, however, our knowledge of it, at this point, is fragmented and incomplete. This fragmentation does no harm to the ontological unity. The question is - how do we make our knowledge of Reality complete and unified? Conscious Reality has two aspects - Thinking activity and Conscious Experiencing. Thinking can not know the Reality in fullness without encompassing the Experiencing aspect of it. But only knowing Experiencing without applying Thinking to encompass all ideal relations is also incomplete. Both are needed for the completeness.

OK so in previous post I stated, under idealism, epistemology and ontology converge. I said we can forget about that for now, but let's remember it in this post because it is directly relevant. For idealism, there is only One process - mental activity. So far so good. The mental activity can exist in several aspects (modes) as you say, so we are still good. One of those modes is what we usually refer to as the "meaning" of mental activity. It allows us to distinguish between the modes and content (a meaning of "flower" is different from meaning of "lion" is different from meaning of "monkey" and so forth). I think we are still good up to there.

Now we part company when you say, "Thinking cannot [ascertain the meaning] of the Experiencing aspect". I substituted "ascertain the meaning" for "know". If that is not a fair substitution, then let me know what is. Likewise you say, "knowing Experiencing without [ascertaining the meaning] of all ideal relations is also incomplete". In those two assertions we clearly have an epistemic dualism - 1) the knowing by way of Thinking and 2) the knowing by way of Experiencing. We argue that, under idealism, that also amounts to an ontic dualism. We say that you are creating two separate kinds of meaning, only accessible to different modes of the One Reality. Do you dispute that is what you are claiming?

And another few questions for you, because at the end of the day none of this matters unless it has practical significance - so if your view is correct, then what is the practical significance? What part of our arguments here must change? For example, if your view is correct, then should we refrain from saying Steiner's spiritual scientific claims are possible? Should we refrain from saying they are more accurate than oppositional NDE accounts? Should I refrain from saying it is only through the Christ being that integration can be accomplished? What is the logical connection between your position and those practical differences (if there are any)?

[Eugene I]

Yes, there is an epistemic dualism. This is because the Thinking activity has two ways to "process" the meanings/ideas. One way is similar to pure mathematics: is it processing and manipulating only ideas/ideal content. Arguably (and I agree with that) all sense perceptions are also included in the ideal content. The other way is similar to empirical science that refer its theories to the experimental data: it is for Thinking to refer to the conscious Experiencing of this ideal content, where the Experiencing itself is not an idea and does not belong to the ideal content. By doing that Thinking is capable to know something "beyond" its ideal content, however, is also capable to formulate the meaning/idea of the Experiencing. Note that the "meaning of the Experiencing" is only an ideal reflection of the Experiencing itself (which is not by itself a meaning/idea). Yet Experiencing is never apart from the ideal content and Thinking activity, while at the same time it is never fully reduced to the ideal content.

The practical significance of it is two-fold knowledge of the Unity of Reality: both through the knowledge of the unity of the ideal relations by Thinking, and through direct knowing of the Unity of Experiencing. It is somewhat similar to a difference between thinking about being a human, and actually being a human.

[AshvinP]

Yes, there is an epistemic dualism. This is because the Thinking activity has two ways to "process" the meanings/ideas. One way is similar to pure mathematics: is it processing and manipulating only ideas/ideal content. Arguably (and I agree with that) all sense perceptions are also included in the ideal content. The other way is similar to empirical science that refer its theories to the experimental data: it is for Thinking to refer to the conscious Experiencing of this ideal content, where the Experiencing itself is not an idea and does not belong to the ideal content. By doing that Thinking is capable to know something "beyond" its ideal content, however, is also capable to formulate the meaning/idea of the Experiencing. Note that the "meaning of the Experiencing" is only an ideal reflection of the Experiencing itself (which is not by itself a meaning/idea). Yet Experiencing is never apart from the ideal content and Thinking activity, while at the same time it is never fully reduced to the ideal content.

The practical significance of it is two-fold knowledge of the Unity of Reality: both through the knowledge of the unity of the ideal relations by Thinking, and through direct knowing of the Unity of Experiencing. It is somewhat similar to a difference between thinking about being a human, and actually being a human.

That is not what I mean by "practical significance". According to you, there is the ascertaining of meaning (knowing) by Experiencing and the ascertaining of separate meaning by Thinking. Now someone asks me why I take the time to even question such a proposition and I respond - "because the person who feels they have ascertained primal meaning by pure Experiencing will feel there is no need to go further. They could go further or they could not, it makes very little difference to their lives. This person will naturally be so skeptical of claims to 'higher knowledge' than the knowledge already gained by Experiencing they will never consider those claims properly. They may even view those claims as being directly harmful 'fantasies' to others by excluding other claims." So that is the practical significance for me in pushing back against this epistemic dualism.

Assuming your epistemic dualism is correct, what is the practical significance for our arguments about seeking higher knowledge, engaging in spiritual science, adopting Christo-centric spirituality, etc.? Does it make any difference to those arguments or not at all? The reason I ask is because you often respond that you simply want us to have a more "complete" understanding of what you call "being a human" above. You say our essays and comments are only presenting one side of the story and another major "aspect" is missing from them. So what difference would that more complete understanding, which integrates the "missing aspect", make to any of the specific claims we make in matters of philosophy or spirituality?

[SanteriSatama]

One way is similar to pure mathematics: is it processing and manipulating only ideas/ideal content. Arguably (and I agree with that) all sense perceptions are also included in the ideal content. The other way is similar to empirical science that refer its theories to the experimental data: it is for Thinking to refer to the conscious Experiencing of this ideal content, where the Experiencing itself is not an idea and does not belong to the ideal content.

Those are very deep questions, how pure math, sensing and empirism relate. For Greeks there was no distinction between pure and applied mathematics, they started from naturally continuous geometry and derived discrete number theory that way, by relating line segments and areas and giving those relations numerical values.

Zeno's "paradoxes" are empirical proofs by contradiction, showing that continuous processes/measurments can't be reduced to discrete number theory. We know empirically, by our intuitive sense of continua, that Achilleus beats tortoise in a race. Well, perhaps, unless the tortoise can quantum tunnel or something weirdly creative.

If "ideal content" is taken to mean math in most general sense, then I would not say that sensing is included in ideal, the relation seems far more complex. Ideal filters shape and also create sensual experiencing. Obviously "Experiencing itself" is also an idea in philosophical language. But I think we can agree that sensing (and thus also empirism) is not simply reducible to ideal sphere of mathematics.

[Eugene I]

"because the person who feels they have ascertained primal meaning by pure Experiencing will feel there is no need to go further. They could go further or they could not, it makes very little difference to their lives. This person will naturally be so skeptical of claims to 'higher knowledge' than the knowledge already gained by Experiencing they will never consider those claims properly. They may even view those claims as being directly harmful 'fantasies' to others by excluding other claims."

There are indeed some Eastern "extremist" schools that would make such claim. But I disagree with it and do not subscribe to such view, and this is why I say that such extremist Eastern approach is incomplete and lacking.

Assuming your epistemic dualism is correct, what is the practical significance for our arguments about seeking higher knowledge, engaging in spiritual science, adopting Christo-centric spirituality, etc.? Does it make any difference to those arguments or not at all? The reason I ask is because you often respond that you simply want us to have a more "complete" understanding of what you call "being a human" above. You say our essays and comments are only presenting one side of the story and another major "aspect" is missing from them. So what difference would that more complete understanding, which integrates the "missing aspect", make to any of the specific claims we make in matters of philosophy or spirituality?

The difference it makes is more "existential" rather than philosophical, so to speak. It kind of makes the experiencing of Reality more full/encompassing, or perhaps more fulfilling (=full-filling), but I can't really describe it in words. It is like you can be a scientist (e.g. spiritual one) and at the same time a musician. On one hand, these activities almost do not interfere with each other, but on the other hand, the do affect each other in some ways.