Jim Cross wrote: ↑Fri Sep 03, 2021 2:28 pmKeep in "mind" the only reason there needs to be an explication is because of the primary premise of idealism itself.
Well duhhh! And what are proponents of physicalism basing their explications on if not the primary premise of physicalism?
This is the "hard problem" of idealism - pretty much a mirror image of the "hard problem" of consciousness. How do you explain what appears to be external world beyond the control of my individual mind?
It's been around for a while, at least, since Samuel Johnson tried to refute Berkeley's idealism by hitting a stone and declaring: "I refute it thus."
Berkeley's solution was the Mind of God. BK's solution with alters, DID, and mind at large is novel and imaginative but is, as you note, a "provisional" or maybe unprovable theory, perhaps in the end not all that different from Berkeley's.
Jim Cross wrote: ↑Fri Sep 03, 2021 6:47 pm
This is the "hard problem" of idealism - pretty much a mirror image of the "hard problem" of consciousness. How do you explain what appears to be external world beyond the control of my individual mind?
It's been around for a while, at least, since Samuel Johnson tried to refute Berkeley's idealism by hitting a stone and declaring: "I refute it thus."
Berkeley's solution was the Mind of God. BK's solution with alters, DID, and mind at large is novel and imaginative but is, as you note, a "provisional" or maybe unprovable theory, perhaps in the end not all that different from Berkeley's.
All ontologies are provisional and unprovable, that's why they belong to philosophy and not to natural sciences.
"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kanzas anymore" Dorothy
Jim Cross wrote: ↑Fri Sep 03, 2021 6:47 pm
This is the "hard problem" of idealism - pretty much a mirror image of the "hard problem" of consciousness. How do you explain what appears to be external world beyond the control of my individual mind?
It's been around for a while, at least, since Samuel Johnson tried to refute Berkeley's idealism by hitting a stone and declaring: "I refute it thus."
Berkeley's solution was the Mind of God. BK's solution with alters, DID, and mind at large is novel and imaginative but is, as you note, a "provisional" or maybe unprovable theory, perhaps in the end not all that different from Berkeley's.
All ontologies are provisional and unprovable, that's why they belong to philosophy and not to natural sciences.
Yes. Both materialism and idealism are unprovable either by science or logic. One is not even more likely the other. They can be debated for the next thousand years with no conclusion There is no reason to believe in one or the other. The only philosophical approach that makes any sense in such a circumstance is Nagajruna's.
Jim Cross wrote: ↑Fri Sep 03, 2021 8:22 pm
Yes. Both materialism and idealism are unprovable either by science or logic. One is not even more likely the other. They can be debated for the next thousand years with no conclusion There is no reason to believe in one or the other. The only philosophical approach that makes any sense in such a circumstance is Nagajruna's.
Well, more precisely: it is Nararjuna's interpretation by Rovelli who disregarded another part of Nagarjuna's philosophy common to all Madhyamika schools - their teaching on the tathāgatagarbha - the Buddha's Nature, which is the "luminous nature of the mind" (awareness, the ability to have conscious experience of phenomena).
Buddhists (Nagarjuna included) never claimed that all there is to reality is only conditional relations of phenomena, they also pointed to the unconditional "nature of mind" which consciously experiences all phenomena (even though it is still empty of self-nature). In Buddha's own words: "There is, monks, an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated is thus discerned."
"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kanzas anymore" Dorothy
Jim Cross wrote: ↑Fri Sep 03, 2021 8:22 pm
Yes. Both materialism and idealism are unprovable either by science or logic. One is not even more likely the other. They can be debated for the next thousand years with no conclusion There is no reason to believe in one or the other. The only philosophical approach that makes any sense in such a circumstance is Nagajruna's.
Well, more precisely: it is Nararjuna's interpretation by Rovelli who disregarded another part of Nagarjuna's philosophy common to all Madhyamika schools - their teaching on the tathāgatagarbha - the Buddha's Nature, which is the "luminous nature of the mind" (awareness, the ability to have conscious experience of phenomena).
Buddhists (Nagarjuna included) never claimed that all there is to reality is only conditional relations of phenomena, they also pointed to the unconditional "nature of mind" which consciously experiences all phenomena (even though it is still empty of self-nature). In Buddha's own words: "There is, monks, an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated is thus discerned."
I don't think Rovelli (nor am I) denying what we call conscious experience. Helgoland even has a discussion of it.
Jim Cross wrote: ↑Fri Sep 03, 2021 8:22 pm
Yes. Both materialism and idealism are unprovable either by science or logic. One is not even more likely the other. They can be debated for the next thousand years with no conclusion There is no reason to believe in one or the other. The only philosophical approach that makes any sense in such a circumstance is Nagajruna's.
Well, more precisely: it is Nararjuna's interpretation by Rovelli who disregarded another part of Nagarjuna's philosophy common to all Madhyamika schools - their teaching on the tathāgatagarbha - the Buddha's Nature, which is the "luminous nature of the mind" (awareness, the ability to have conscious experience of phenomena).
Buddhists (Nagarjuna included) never claimed that all there is to reality is only conditional relations of phenomena, they also pointed to the unconditional "nature of mind" which consciously experiences all phenomena (even though it is still empty of self-nature). In Buddha's own words: "There is, monks, an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated is thus discerned."
Might also be useful to look at these.
According to Thomas Kochumuttom, Yogācāra is a realistic pluralism. It does not deny the existence of individual beings;[10] what it does deny is:
1. That the absolute mode of reality is consciousness/mind/ideas,
2. That the individual beings are transformations or evolutes of an absolute consciousness/mind/idea,
3. That the individual beings are but illusory appearances of a monistic reality.[32]
And one of the links in your own link leads to this as a meaning of Tathāgatagarbha.:
It also means that there is no "transcendental ground," and that "ultimate reality" has no existence of its own, but is the negation of such a transcendental reality, and the impossibility of any statement on such an ultimately existing transcendental reality: it is no more than a fabrication of the mind.[14] Susan Kahn further explains:
Ultimate truth does not point to a transcendent reality, but to the transcendence of deception. It is critical to emphasize that the ultimate truth of emptiness is a negational truth. In looking for inherently existent phenomena it is revealed that it cannot be found. This absence is not findable because it is not an entity, just as a room without an elephant in it does not contain an elephantless substance. Even conventionally, elephantlessness does not exist. Ultimate truth or emptiness does not point to an essence or nature, however subtle, that everything is made of.[15]
Jim Cross wrote: ↑Sat Sep 04, 2021 1:19 pm
I don't think Rovelli (nor am I) denying what we call conscious experience. Helgoland even has a discussion of it.
Yes, he does discuss it in "The world seen from within chapter", but I think he misunderstands the "hard problem". He thinks that the fact that the relational model represents the world as "seen from within" (from 1-st person perspective) resolves and makes the "hard problem" go away. But the 1-st person perspectival description of the world is only "half" of the "hard problem". A philosophical zombie could in principal also report his 1-st person perspectival description of the world, or an AI computer could do that as well. The very pinnacle of the "hard problem" is how/why all this reporting is accompanied with an actual conscious "feeling"/experiencing, with "what it is like to have such experience". And this "experiencing" itself is irreducible to the world of relations, it is "that" which experiences all relations while not having any "entanglements" with what is being experienced whatsoever (exactly as Buddha said 2500 yrs ago).
"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kanzas anymore" Dorothy
Jim Cross wrote: ↑Sat Sep 04, 2021 4:37 pm
Experiencing itself is exactly a relationship between a subject and object experienced and both subject and object are further reducible.
That's already a metaphysics, an unprovable interpretation. You chose to believe in the relational interpretation (of both QM and of the world in general), and it's a good one, but it is still an unprovable interpretation.
Look at what is given in your direct 1-st person conscious experience: a flow of phenomena (sensations, feelings, acts of will, thoughts with their meanings, images etc) each of them consciously experienced ("there is something it is like to heave those experiences"). There is no "subject" or "object" in this direct experience, only the intimate experiencing of phenomena. All phenomena are inter-related, but the experience of them is always continuously unchangingly present here an now regardless of what is experienced. This is all what is given. Anything else is our interpretation added to this direct experience, but the funny thing is, any interpretation itself, being a set of meanings of thoughts, is also inseparable part of this conscious experience. And the "subject" and "object" are also nothing but the meanings of thoughts that are also inseparable part of this conscious experience.
"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kanzas anymore" Dorothy
