Intuitive Idealism vs. Analytic Idealism (Part II): An alternative formulation of idealism

[AshvinP]

Then why do you insist on isolating every part of the spiritual scientific approach we are suggesting, without ever considering it holistically, as Steve is suggesting? You slice and dice it up and make random arguments against each tiny fragment, moving from one to another whenever you run out of logical responses. It is the exact opposite of your engineering approach - when it comes to spiritual issues, instead of reflecting seriously on Steve's point that "every step or component constrains what can come after or what configuration the system can take", you say "why can't we just have a spiritual system with no constraints whatsoever, because it makes me feel good and it isn't 'tyrannical'?". That is literally your response to 99% of the arguments we make now. Your own musical analogy also suggested this to you - the point of allowing musicians degrees of freedom to explore different keys, times, notes, chords, etc. is not to forever remain in dissonance, but to converge on harmonious pitches and melodies. Basically when it comes to spiritual issues you invert all the logic that you use in normal life and work, which is the hallmark of the modern age.

The engineering design process does both —focus intently on the smallest parts or details but always considering its effects on the system-as-a-whole. Even small details can make or break a complex system. A few years back there was a very small script routine (javascript, I think) that had been in some online libraries that thousands of programmers had used for years. However, that script was linked to someone's personal library and it got either deleted or changed for some reason. That broke everything where it was used.

The question is, is a particular small part of a system essential for the integrity of the system-as-a-whole? If it is and is faulty, criticizing it is warranted.

Steve.

I agree and this is a perfect analogy for spiritual science (not really an analogy, because we don't view Thinking inquiry within any field as fundamentally different in its essential approach). It treats every minute detail in the world of phenomenal appearances as of utmost importance to understand, but it also makes clear we will only understand those minute details by way of their relation to the Whole spiritual organism. It is the holistic and integrated Spiritual which always informs, reveals, renews, revitalizes, transfigures, etc. the fragmented sense-impressions and concepts, whether in myth, philosophy, art, or science. We don't need to (and we really should not) arbitrarily compartmentalize any aspect of our life and shield it from the Spiritual, even though there is constant pressure to do just that. We must be "in the world, but not of the world."

[AshvinP]

I'm saying that your (and Goethe's) ideas of Polarities (Darkness, Light, Eternity) as ontic realities actually are abstractions of your mind which you believe exist as realities.

Alfred North Whitehead called this the fallacy of misplaced concreteness when one mistakes an abstract belief, opinion, or concept about the way things are for a physical or "concrete" reality. Reification, in other words.

This is why I think metaphors are important. They are not to be taken as literal ontic realities but perhaps they do offer some sense of those realities even though inadequate and can still be actionable. Paul Tillich once said that everything in his theology was metaphoric except his phrase "Being-Itself".

Steve,

It is unfortunately most 'post-modern' theological scholars who do exactly that - mistake an abstract "psychological" concept, for ex., with the Reality itself (just to be clear I am not referring to Tillich here, just illustrating a point). They say, "Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead" is clearly a metaphor - a symbol for the psychological process of letting old rigid beliefs die so that new living thoughts can be born. That, of course, is partly true - the psychological process is very important to understand. But is it the totality of the Truth behind the Crucifixion and the Resurrection? If we assume "yes", then we have done exactly what we set out to criticize in the fundamentalist believers who say "it is all about a historical reality of Jesus, which reveals God's power so that we can simply believe in him". Both the fundamentalist and the post-modern theologian are making the exact same mistake - reducing the rich fullness of the Reality to a set of abstractions and confusing those for the Reality itself.

There is nothing "abstract" about the polar essence of our experience. We can all observe it taking place right now in our own Thinking activity. That is as close to concrete experience as we can possibly get, and without adding any extra assumptions. Here is an excerpt from Scott's essay on that (he labels the polar essence "mumorphism"):


https://sites.google.com/site/nondualis ... authuser=0

As a philosophy of mind, mumorphism is the claim that all mental activity is mumorphic. Take thinking. Thinking is not just thoughts (each of which has form), that is, the set of thoughts is just another thought. Rather it is what moves from one thought to another, unifying one concept with the next, which (if the thinking is original) changes the concepts. On the other hand, without the confining force of concepts, one would just have meaningless drivel. Thinking, then, in Coleridge's words, is a case of two forces of one power, which act against each other as they constitute the other.

All things have form, but are only actual through the force of formlessness. On the other hand, form is also a force, which restrains the force of formlessness. Thinking exemplifies this best in our experience.

Or consider hearing the sound of a bell. This is a change in my consciousness, but if my consciousness didn't continue (remain unchanged) through the hearing of the sound, I wouldn't have heard it. Now one can't say that most of my consciousness did not change, just the part that heard the sound changed, because if so, then the "most" part would not have heard the sound. Rather it is my entire consciousness that heard it, so my entire consciousness both changed and did not change.
...
The word 'mumorphism', modeled after the Aristotelian word 'hylomorphism', is a compound of 'mu' -- Japanese for 'not', or 'no', or 'nothingness', but here, taking some liberty, to be understood as 'formlessness' -- and 'morphe', Greek for 'form'.

It is shorthand for

"Formlessness is not other than form, form is not other than formlessness" (Heart Sutra)

and

"Awareness of objects is the Universe. Awareness of absence of objects is Nirvana. But to Consciousness-without-an-object these two are the same." (Franklin Merrell-Wolff).

and

"Two forces of one power, expanding life and confining form" (Coleridge)

and

"The Infinite defines itself in the finite, the finite conceives itself in the Infinite. Each is necessary to the other's complete joy of being. The Infinite pauses always in the finite; the finite arrives always in the Infinite. This is the wheel that circles forever through Time and Eternity." (Sri Aurobindo)

[Eugene I]

You are now rejecting the claim that ontic Reality is polar in its essence? Please state it clearly.

IMO such claim is an abstraction.

I do not see any problem with abstractions, we use them all the time in life and sciences and engineering, as long as we recognize them as abstractions. They only become problematic when we confuse them with reality.

[Eugene I]

Alfred North Whitehead called this the fallacy of misplaced concreteness when one mistakes an abstract belief, opinion, or concept about the way things are for a physical or "concrete" reality. Reification, in other words.

This is why I think metaphors are important. They are not to be taken as literal ontic realities but perhaps they do offer some sense of those realities even though inadequate and can still be actionable. Paul Tillich once said that everything in his theology was metaphoric except his phrase "Being-Itself".

Exactly, Conscious-Being-Itself is the fact of our every-moment direct conscious experience (but only if we pay attention to it) and, based on such experience, it is undeniable reality. But we also find that this beingness is also actively experiencing, perceiving, cognizing, willing and creating forms/meanings/ideal that are never found separate from it (unless we abstractly imagine them to be separate).

[AshvinP]

You are now rejecting the claim that ontic Reality is polar in its essence? Please state it clearly.

IMO such claim is an abstraction.

I do not see any problem with abstractions, we use them all the time in life and sciences and engineering, as long as we recognize them as abstractions. They only become problematic when we confuse them with reality.

So you are saying the direct polarized experience of Thinking, as described in Scott's essays, of which I quoted a relevant excerpt, is an "abstraction"?

This just keeps getting better and better (and more intellectually inverted)

[Eugene I]

So you are saying the direct polarized experience of Thinking, as described in Scott's essays, of which I quoted a relevant excerpt, is an "abstraction"?

This just keeps getting better and better (and more intellectually inverted)

I don't experience thinking as "polarized", but only as dynamically active with polar tendencies. From my experience I would describe them as multiple pairs of the movement directions of willing. Thinking can willingly move toward darker or lighter, fragmented or unified, changing or unchangeable aspects of experience, etc, I never experience the actual Eternity, or Light or Darkness as some "ontically" existing Poles, but we can still have them as (abstract) concepts that help to envision and model the dynamic processes of thinking.

Now, have you ever directly experienced the actual Eternity? If not, why do you believe that it ontically exists?

[AshvinP]

So you are saying the direct polarized experience of Thinking, as described in Scott's essays, of which I quoted a relevant excerpt, is an "abstraction"?

This just keeps getting better and better (and more intellectually inverted)

I don't experience thinking as "polarized", but only as dynamically active with polar tendencies. From my experience I would describe them as multiple pairs of the movement directions of willing. Thinking can willingly move toward darker or lighter, fragmented or unified, changing or unchangeable aspects of experience, etc, I never experience the actual Eternity, or Light or Darkness as some "ontically" existing Poles, but we can still have them as (abstract) concepts that help to envision and model the dynamic processes of thinking.

Now, have you ever directly experienced the actual Eternity? If not, why do you assume that it ontically exist?

What does it mean to "move towards" some experience which does not ontically exist?? This is really becoming surreal for me, although I am not surprised. You have to find a way to avoid the logical argument for polar essence, but also without admitting it exists, because that would contradict most of your responses to Cleric and myself lately, so your solution is - "they kind of exist, they kind of don't". You are inventing nearly incomprehensible abstractions to avoid the implications of your direct experience.

I conclude the poles exist because they manifest directly in my experience, as you also admit they do in yours. I cannot possibly explain the experience of my own Thinking without the changeless and changing aspects. Now if I was a materialist, I could say "well there is a changeless aspect until I die and my brain stops functioning, then I won't experience anything anymore". But I am an idealist, where conscious activity is fundamental and does not stop when I die, so I must conclude there is an eternal changeless aspect. Notice that, if your response is "maybe your 'personal' conscious activity stops when you die", then you are simply adding an assumption across the boundary of death which, according to your own view, is not possible to know or verify. Even with that unwarranted assumption, "MAL" (whatever it is) must be eternal, and there is also no reason to assume the "polar tendencies" which apply to all of our experience and all aspects of the natural world around us do not apply to MAL as well.

[Eugene I]

But I am an idealist, where conscious activity is fundamental and does not stop when I die, so I must conclude there is an eternal changeless aspect.

There is definitely changeless aspects of consciousness, I've been telling it to you all the time, and you can actually directly experience them. But "changeless" is not the same as "Eternal" (unless we are again confused about terminology). Keep in mind that "time" itself is an abstraction, and "Eternity" is usually understood as "encompassing the infinity of time", and in such case that is an abstraction as well. What we experience directly is changing and unchanging aspects of the thinking activity, that's all. I don't see them as "polarities" but just as they simply are in the direct experience: as simultaneously existing changeless and changing aspects of consciousness (experiencing-thinking-feeling-willing activity).

[AshvinP]

But I am an idealist, where conscious activity is fundamental and does not stop when I die, so I must conclude there is an eternal changeless aspect.

There is definitely changeless aspects of consciousness, I've been telling it to you all the time, and you can actually directly experience them. But "changeless" is not the same as "Eternal" (unless we are again confused about terminology). Keep in mind that "time" itself is an abstraction, and "Eternity" is usually understood as "encompassing the infinity of time", and in such case that is an abstraction as well. What we experience directly is changing and unchanging aspects of the thinking activity, that's all. I don't see them as "polarities" but just as they simply are in the direct experience: as simultaneously existing changeless and changing aspects of consciousness (experiencing-thinking-feeling-willing activity).

Call them whatever you want - "changeless", "timeless", "eternal", it doesn't really matter. It is precisely the intellect lost in abstractions which obsesses over the labels rather than the experiences they are pointing to. So what exactly (please be specific) is your objection to Cleric's "Alpha-Omega" polarity in his comment to you?

[Eugene I]

Call them whatever you want - "changeless", "timeless", "eternal", it doesn't really matter. It is precisely the intellect lost in abstractions which obsesses over the labels rather than the experiences they are pointing to. So what exactly (please be specific) is your objection to Cleric's "Alpha-Omega" polarity in his comment to you?

Exactly, if we want to follow the phenomenological idealist approach, we need to always be grounded in the experience and then use the language (because we still need to communicate using linguistic labels) in such a way that we can always precisely define to which direct experiences the labels are pointing to. I have no idea what the Cleric's labels "Alpha-Omega" mean and what direct experiences they are pointing to, so to me they remain abstractions until I can find actual experiential references to which they are pointing.