Criticism

[JeffreyW]

Both Heidegger and Wittgenstein met at the point of mystery, but differed on how to proceed. Wittgenstein urged silence, and Heidegger urged poetic thought as Being itself speaking through us leading to esthetic knowledge; and opposed to the metaphysical reduction of rational explanation.

I’m with Heidegger on this.

Absolutely, me too. But did not you notice a peculiar and mysterious aspect of that Being - it's not just "IS" but it is also AWARE. It is That which knows/experiences all conscious experiences. We all know it intimately and directly from our inner experience. That is why in Advaita it is termed Sat-Chit = Being-Awareness

No, I have never noticed that awareness. Not under the influence of psychedelics. Not in meditation. Not in my experience as a musician in those mysterious moments when Being was playing through me. As far as I can tell, the claim of aware is an anthropomorphic projection onto a mysterious experience.

[JeffreyW]

The question at the bottom line is really simple actually. We all have factual observables: the phenomena of conscious experience which are the sense perceptions, feeling, thoughts bearing ideas and meanings, imaginations, acts of will brining some of these phenomena to existence. And this is all we have as observables, and nothing more, this is undeniable fact of our direct experience. Now, the philosophical question is: is there anything in reality that by nature is fundamentally different from these consciously-observable phenomena, whatever it could be? We can make assumptions about the existence of such phenomena or noumena or fundamentals, but there is no way we can ever prove their existence, because we can never experience them directly. And there is an obvious and undeniable possibility that such phenomena or noumena simply do not exist in any ontological sense, and all there is to reality is only phenomena of conscious experience. The last statement is called "idealism", where the term "consciousness" is simply a label for the entire set of all observable conscious phenomena we can ever experience. If we are to suggest a positive answer to the ontological problem at all, of all such possible answers that philosophy has offered so far, the idealist answer is the simplest and most elegant (in other words, the most "parsimonious").

JF, what you are describing is another possible approach to the problem, which can be labelled as mysterianism or agnosticism, where we admit that our human cognitive ability is simply insufficient and inappropriate to even approach the ontological question of what the reality fundamentally is. It would be like a dog trying to understand math. I have nothing against it, and I agree that such position is the most pragmatic. We can perfectly live and survive in the world without answering the ontological question, it is irrelevant to our way of existence. But if we take such pragmatic position, ironically we arrive back to idealism. Why? Because the world we actually live in and experience is exactly the world of the conscious phenomena. We do not experience directly anything apart from conscious phenomena. All the "external" world of material objects that we think we live in is entirely our projection and fairyland fantasy, and we have no way to prove that it is real. But why do we even need such fantasy? Does it serve any pragmatic purpose? Many people think that it does, but I do not think so, IMO it's just a cognitive habit that actually creates more problems than it solves (but that's a different topic). Anyway, if we take such agnostic and pragmatic approach, we find that all that is relevant to our life is the reality we actually live in - the world of our conscious phenomena, or "consciousness" to use a simple word for it. And science is only a set of mathematical and cognitive models that simply describe and approximate the patterns of these phenomena. From a pragmatic standpoint we do not actually need to assume the existence of any other realities that are by nature different from conscious phenomena that we directly experience as observables (be it matter, shmatter, Kantian noumenon or neutral ontic fundamental or whatever). This version of idealism is not ontological (we refrain from making any statements about what the reality fundamentally is), it is simply a pragmatic worldview about the world that we actually experience and the world we actually live in - the world of the phenomena of our direct conscious experiences.

We are largely in agreement here, but I never meant we shouldn’t explore the ontological problem - the question of Being. It’s the most important thing we can do and life is empty without it. What I am saying is that rational reductionism is purely pragmatic, and not to be entirely dismissed but not the path to ultimate truths. I say that of all outgrowths of metaphysics. Instead, we need to live more in the present through esthetic understanding steering hard into the physical experience itself.

[Eugene I]

No, I have never noticed that awareness. Not under the influence of psychedelics. Not in meditation. Not in my experience as a musician in those mysterious moments when Being was playing through me. As far as I can tell, the claim of aware is an anthropomorphic projection onto a mysterious experience.

Well, I would think this is because you are abstracting and projecting the Being to something beyond your own existence and your own conscious experience. But if the Being is the ontological essence of all the world, it is also the ontological essence of each of us including you. We all "are" exactly because are are part and expression of the same Being. And we are able to be conscious about the Being and experience all our conscious phenomena exactly because Being has this fundamental ability to be conscious and have conscious experiences.

But if any ontologist claims that Being is fundamentally unconscious and has nothing to do with our "anthropomorphic" conscious experiences, then such ontologist faces the intractable "hard problem of consciousness" (C) Chalmers. Mysterianistic denialism is simply a way to hide this problem under the carpet and run away from it.

[AshvinP]

Both Heidegger and Wittgenstein met at the point of mystery, but differed on how to proceed. Wittgenstein urged silence, and Heidegger urged poetic thought as Being itself speaking through us leading to esthetic knowledge; and opposed to the metaphysical reduction of rational explanation.

I’m with Heidegger on this.

Absolutely, me too. But did not you notice a peculiar and mysterious aspect of that Being - it's not just "IS" but it is also AWARE. It is That which knows/experiences all conscious experiences. We all know it intimately and directly from our inner experience. That is why in Advaita it is termed Sat-Chit = Being-Awareness

No, I have never noticed that awareness. Not under the influence of psychedelics. Not in meditation. Not in my experience as a musician in those mysterious moments when Being was playing through me. As far as I can tell, the claim of aware is an anthropomorphic projection onto a mysterious experience.

Heidegger, after his turn, actually points to Thinking as the "lure" which draws us towards the Origin which draws away from us. The beginning of Western thought (pre-Socratics etc.) veils that Origin, but it is not destined to remain forever veiled. It is, ironically, the activity most easily associated with unconcealment, and which is always closest to us, that actually does the unconcealing for Heidegger - Thinking. Not the mechanical, horizontal, reductionist thinking of the modern age, but rather vertical Thinking which is deepened through Memory, i..e. devotional contemplation, a "recalling in thought where [the heart] remains gathered and concentrated" . He does not extend this inner logic of Thinking much further as far as I am aware, but clearly he was deeply intuiting the fruitful path towards Being - the path which finally allows us to begin Thinking.

Is thinking a giving of thanks? What do thanks mean here? Or do thanks consist in thinking? What does thinking mean here? Is memory no more than a container for the thoughts of thinking, or does thinking itself reside in memory? In asking these questions, we are moving in the area of those spoken words that speak to us from the verb "think". But let us leave open all the relationships between those words - "thinking", "thought", "thanks" and "memory" - and address our question now to the history of words. It gives us a direction...

The word "memory" originally means this incessant concentration on contiguity. In its original telling sense, memory means as much as devotion. This word possesses the special tone of the pious and piety, and designates the devotion of prayer, only because it denotes the all-comprehensive relation of concentration upon the holy and the gracious. The thanc unfolds in memory, which persists as devotion. Memory in this originary sense later loses its name to a restricted denomination, which now signifies no more than the capacity to retain things that are in the past.

But if we understand memory in the light of the old word thanc, the connection between memory and thanks will dawn on us at once. For in giving thanks, the heart in thought recalls where it remains gathered and concentrated, because that is where it belongs. This thinking that recalls in memory is the original thanks.
...
Yet all these anticipatory remarks which had to be made, about the nature of memory and its relation to the keeping of what is most thought-provoking, about the keeping and forgetfulness, about the beginning and the origin - all these remarks sound strange to us, because we have only just come close to the things and situations in which what we have said finds expression.

But now we need to take only a few more steps along our way, to become aware that situations are expressed in what was said which we find difficult of access for no other reason than their simplicity. At bottom, a specific access is not even needed here, because what must be thought about is somehow close to us in spite of everything. It is just that it is still hidden from our sight by those old-accustomed preconceptions [metaphysics, especially of the modern age] which are so stubborn because they have their own truth.

[Dave casarino]

"No, I have never noticed that awareness. Not under the influence of psychedelics. Not in meditation. Not in my experience as a musician in those mysterious moments when Being was playing through me. As far as I can tell, the claim of aware is an anthropomorphic projection onto a mysterious experience."

A mysterious EXPERIENCE indeed. So said experiences were experienced, thus they are reducible to the experiential, replace the word awareness with experience, now if we are to go against dualism there is no true divide between experience or experiencer, but what is divided up is contents of experience into their different shapes forms and textures, now some would say this makes the irreducible subject unnecessary as an actual existent and the experience somehow experiences itself without an irreducible subject to behold it, but without a flavorless subjective field to behold the widely various contents of experience we would need every distinct element of what makes up an experience to have a little subject fixed to each precise detail OR every precise detail perceived doubles as a subject and an object at the same time, both examples are supposed to combine these experiential components to form an experiential whole a la panexperientialism, this entails that bits of your brain and sense organs are all tied into the events that are happening around us, if that is not the case then it would go that little parts of the brain that perceive different types of information would each be a certain kind of subject that can only experience certain precise details of experience like the part of our brain that experiences red or the part of our brain that experiences a certain frequency of sound, as though experiences slot into correctly fitting experience holes in our heads, and this is all tied together into one relatively cohesive experience somehow (because the slots tell each other when they have been fitted or something), but then we are back at subject/object distinction, and we are assuming that the physical is the subject of experience itself provided enough dynamical information structures have formed to pump unconscious energy with experiences that force it into experiencing consciousness for a time until it dies. If the physical can experience (provided it is correctly fed) then it is prone to being the subject of experiences in some sense, provided it is roused somehow which leaves us at the metaphysics of protopanpsychism. Experiences experiencing themselves or non experiential elements somehow becoming subjects of experiences (if tickled dynamically enough, despite also not naturally being able to be tickled) are both very strange ideas.

If we have something that can experience many different things and it is whole and not constituent then we have a flavorless witness of experience, all contents of experience are mere objects of experience and not what is experiencing. I have used the word experience a lot in this, this isn't a bold declaration but I am merely leaving this for the shark/s to see how they bite.

[Eugene I]

Dave, you are right, in fact, Chalmers has a whole chapter in one of his books discussing this mysterious quality of the unity of conscious experience, the quality that is totally intractable for materialism or for any other non-consciousness-based ontology. I would call it "the hard problem of consciousness #2".

[Mark Tetzner]

1. Why is he unhappy?
2. You are implying that serious funds went into his company.
And maybe even insinuating that he does not believe as he speaks.
I think if you think and announce it so so: proove it.
Gruss, Mark


P.S. what does "monetized to the maximum" mean?
Is this going the route of him enriching himself on those
who need religion as "opium for the masses" (karl marx). ?
My honest intuition: this is probably bull.
He makes some money on books and if once in a while someone
pays him for an interview, then so be it.
Bernardo knows almost nothing about the possibilities he could have,
he thinks what he does is the result of carefully crafting things over the
years.
He made some money elsewhere in his life - that he is making any
money that can be considered "serious" on his books etc. is something I have
good reasons to doubt.
It sounds to me to be a bit on the conspiracy-side of things, but
let use know if you know better.
After all BK is not reading anything we say, so might as well

Unhappy as in angry that somebody would have the audacity to critique him as I did. Our mutual friend tends toward thinking the videos were unfair hatchet jobs, but again he has no background in these subjects.

He himself talks about the all the funding behind Essentia Foundation and he is following the same business model as other marketers selling themselves as the solution to your problems, such as Chopra, Peterson and Osteen. As they demonstrate, there is tremendous money in books and seminars - not so much in legitimate philosophy. Nietzsche lost money oh his self-published books and Wittgenstein needed about a decade to find a publisher for the Tractatus and never really made much money. He supported himself by teaching grammar school and his family inheritance, Heidegger was the rare exception, with Sein und Zeit as the biggest selling philosophy book of the 20th Century.

I hate to speculate about whether he believes what he’s saying or not. Probably does but isn’t all that confident he can defend it against someone with real knowledge of physics and philosophy. If he has time to respond to others on Twitter, he has time to respond to me also.

Ok, this business-model stuff is in my view just wrong, it is questionable at least in my mind, that that are his motives.
To me these are all Unterstellungen and I dont see how this essentiafoundation is taking of in any serious way (yet) and
if there is serious funding available I am missing the cues that tell me this is so. But I can not know and could be wrong.
It is also not impossible to find a sponsor or metaphysical "sugar-daddy/ who funds him so he can do his work and have a good life,
but I have no reason to believe that because his output would have to be much higher. There is hardly anything going on on his
blog anymore.

Maybe he has just become weary from too many LONG interviews and is taking a step back.....all within his rights.

The question would be of course what the funding, if it exists, would be for. It can only be either for research, but
not sure why it would get funds for research, other than maybe Daniel Hoffmann etc.

Or, more likely, to spread the word around as a project fueled by pure passion, but I dont see any marketing-activity, which in turn doesnt necessarily mean anything but its speculative. But the youtube-channel should normally grow or anything that makes me think funds flow into this and that marketing-bucks are being spent. The only goal right? More eye-balls.

When I click on any amazon-book by him I dont even get retargeted, to me this is not what is happening.

It doesnt have to take of in any of these ways, it gives meaning to peoples lives. To the lives of the founders
first of all, maybe to the life of the consumers if the foundation ever makes serious progress.

But I am sure that he is doing all this for genuine motives and not business-motives. If anything, the funding
is to drive the cause and I think you have turned him into a Feindbild,. To me: too many Unterstellungen.
That you can not see his passion and think this is a business-model: Its funny you think that its almost
definitely wrong.

He is evading you alright and that he is doing it for the resasons you like to think is nothing that can be ruled out.
Maybe he is not responding because its hard do do so on 5 bottles of wine which he now has to drink
because you have shattered his world-view.

But there have been others here who said things like "if you want to play with the big boys you have to talk to me"
but that person was more of an idiot. You are not an idiot and I said from the getgo I would like to see how he deals with your obections. But he could have a ton of reasons for not responding, he maybe does not want to be drawn into something
that could take weeks of his time. If he responds you will be challenging him again and that he wont be interested
to dedicate his entire life to you is something you can probably understand though.... I am sure you would like it the
other way around. Human nature.

There is also ill-will in the way you approach this and interpret him when it comes to him and his motives, that could be another reason.

To me, Even a blind man can see there is no business-model behind this.

Selling a solution to a problem? This is true for any book-sale, people like to read what interests them.
Nothing more to it.

There is also a good chance it doesnt even phase him.

In the end, who knows, its all speculative.

If he thinks he can eliminate your objections maybe one day we will hear from him.

Whether you have raised doubts in him is just another speculation.

His replique would have been interesting but maybe he is just coddeling his cat all day.

Which is a pitty but....

Time will tell. It´s his call alone.

[JeffreyW]

Absolutely, me too. But did not you notice a peculiar and mysterious aspect of that Being - it's not just "IS" but it is also AWARE. It is That which knows/experiences all conscious experiences. We all know it intimately and directly from our inner experience. That is why in Advaita it is termed Sat-Chit = Being-Awareness

No, I have never noticed that awareness. Not under the influence of psychedelics. Not in meditation. Not in my experience as a musician in those mysterious moments when Being was playing through me. As far as I can tell, the claim of aware is an anthropomorphic projection onto a mysterious experience.

Heidegger, after his turn, actually points to Thinking as the "lure" which draws us towards the Origin which draws away from us. The beginning of Western thought (pre-Socratics etc.) veils that Origin, but it is not destined to remain forever veiled. It is, ironically, the activity most easily associated with unconcealment, and which is always closest to us, that actually does the unconcealing for Heidegger - Thinking. Not the mechanical, horizontal, reductionist thinking of the modern age, but rather vertical Thinking which is deepened through Memory, i..e. devotional contemplation, a "recalling in thought where [the heart] remains gathered and concentrated" . He does not extend this inner logic of Thinking much further as far as I am aware, but clearly he was deeply intuiting the fruitful path towards Being - the path which finally allows us to begin Thinking.

Is thinking a giving of thanks? What do thanks mean here? Or do thanks consist in thinking? What does thinking mean here? Is memory no more than a container for the thoughts of thinking, or does thinking itself reside in memory? In asking these questions, we are moving in the area of those spoken words that speak to us from the verb "think". But let us leave open all the relationships between those words - "thinking", "thought", "thanks" and "memory" - and address our question now to the history of words. It gives us a direction...

The word "memory" originally means this incessant concentration on contiguity. In its original telling sense, memory means as much as devotion. This word possesses the special tone of the pious and piety, and designates the devotion of prayer, only because it denotes the all-comprehensive relation of concentration upon the holy and the gracious. The thanc unfolds in memory, which persists as devotion. Memory in this originary sense later loses its name to a restricted denomination, which now signifies no more than the capacity to retain things that are in the past.

But if we understand memory in the light of the old word thanc, the connection between memory and thanks will dawn on us at once. For in giving thanks, the heart in thought recalls where it remains gathered and concentrated, because that is where it belongs. This thinking that recalls in memory is the original thanks.
...
Yet all these anticipatory remarks which had to be made, about the nature of memory and its relation to the keeping of what is most thought-provoking, about the keeping and forgetfulness, about the beginning and the origin - all these remarks sound strange to us, because we have only just come close to the things and situations in which what we have said finds expression.

But now we need to take only a few more steps along our way, to become aware that situations are expressed in what was said which we find difficult of access for no other reason than their simplicity. At bottom, a specific access is not even needed here, because what must be thought about is somehow close to us in spite of everything. It is just that it is still hidden from our sight by those old-accustomed preconceptions [metaphysics, especially of the modern age] which are so stubborn because they have their own truth.

The only Heidegger that interests me is the post-turn Heidegger, and you just quoted from one of my favorite books. Your quote actually accords with what I’ve been saying. To access Being we have to completely jettison the stubborn habits of understanding stemming from metaphysics by returning to pre-Socratic thinking of Being in the fullness of logos. That means an opening up to what is right in front of us and has been all along - the presence of things in the present, instead of metaphysical inventions. It means remembering the fullness which still is barely remnant in language - in the word. But he further explains that that opening toward Being is a hearkening to the call of Being in its mysterious concealedness and what is unconceals.

I don’t know if you can read the German, but things are much more apparent in the words “thinking", "thought", "thanks" and "memory” which all play off the word denken (thinking). Denken, Nachdenken, Andenken, and Gedächtnis, which taken together show a reverential musing on what is revealed. This is in stark contrast to the appropriation of beings in metaphysics and technology, The point is actually embedded in the approach in this demonstration. Metaphysics and its generations of analytic philosophy and objectification misappropriate meaning in words by defining them, which annihilates all the manifold of meaning in a word such as Denken. It takes a “living” history to kill it and fix it to a specimen table with a pin. Words are not for defining, but for exploring, and in that exploration remembering back to its “Ursprung” - its original springing forth from the ground of Being through esthetic experience of what was disclosed.

[JeffreyW]

1. Why is he unhappy?
2. You are implying that serious funds went into his company.
And maybe even insinuating that he does not believe as he speaks.
I think if you think and announce it so so: proove it.
Gruss, Mark


P.S. what does "monetized to the maximum" mean?
Is this going the route of him enriching himself on those
who need religion as "opium for the masses" (karl marx). ?
My honest intuition: this is probably bull.
He makes some money on books and if once in a while someone
pays him for an interview, then so be it.
Bernardo knows almost nothing about the possibilities he could have,
he thinks what he does is the result of carefully crafting things over the
years.
He made some money elsewhere in his life - that he is making any
money that can be considered "serious" on his books etc. is something I have
good reasons to doubt.
It sounds to me to be a bit on the conspiracy-side of things, but
let use know if you know better.
After all BK is not reading anything we say, so might as well

Unhappy as in angry that somebody would have the audacity to critique him as I did. Our mutual friend tends toward thinking the videos were unfair hatchet jobs, but again he has no background in these subjects.

He himself talks about the all the funding behind Essentia Foundation and he is following the same business model as other marketers selling themselves as the solution to your problems, such as Chopra, Peterson and Osteen. As they demonstrate, there is tremendous money in books and seminars - not so much in legitimate philosophy. Nietzsche lost money oh his self-published books and Wittgenstein needed about a decade to find a publisher for the Tractatus and never really made much money. He supported himself by teaching grammar school and his family inheritance, Heidegger was the rare exception, with Sein und Zeit as the biggest selling philosophy book of the 20th Century.

I hate to speculate about whether he believes what he’s saying or not. Probably does but isn’t all that confident he can defend it against someone with real knowledge of physics and philosophy. If he has time to respond to others on Twitter, he has time to respond to me also.

Ok, this business-model stuff is in my view just wrong, it is questionable at least in my mind, that that are his motives.
To me these are all Unterstellungen and I dont see how this essentiafoundation is taking of in any serious way (yet) and
if there is serious funding available I am missing the cues that tell me this is so. But I can not know and could be wrong.
It is also not impossible to find a sponsor or metaphysical "sugar-daddy/ who funds him so he can do his work and have a good life,
but I have no reason to believe that because his output would have to be much higher.

Maybe he has just become weary from too many interviews and is taking a step back.....all within his rights.

The question would be of course what the funding, if it exists, would be for. It can only be either for research, but
not sure why it would get funds for research, other than maybe Daniel Hoffmann.

Or, to spread the word around as a project fueled by pure passion, but I dont see any marketing-activity, which in turn doesnt necessarily mean anything but its speculative. But the youtube-channel should normally grow or anything that makes me think funds flow into this and that marketing-bucks are being spent.

When I click on any amazon-book by him I dont even get retargeted, to me this is not what is happening.

It doesnt have to take of in any of these ways, it gives meaning to peoples lives.

But I am sure that he is doing all this for genuine motives and not business-motives. If anything, the funding
is to drive the cause and I think you have turned him into a Feindbild,. To me: too many Unterstellungen.
That you can not see his passion and think this is a business-model: Its funny you think that its almost
definitely wrong.

He is evading you alright and that he is doing it for the resasons you like to think is nothing that can be ruled out.
Maybe he is not responding because its hard do do so on 5 bottles of wine which he now has to drink
because you have shattered his world-view.

But there have been others here who said things like "if you want to play with the big boys you have to talk to me"
but that person was more of an idiot. You are not an idiot and I said from the getgo I would like to see how the convo
unfolds. But he could have a ton of reasons for not responding, he maybe does not want to be drawn into something
that could take weeks of his time. If he responds you will be challenging him again and that he wont be interested
to dedicate his entire life to you is something you can probably understand though I am sure you would like it the
other way around. Human nature.

There is ill-will in the way you approach this and interpret him, that could be another reason.

There is also a good chance it doesnt even phase him.

In the end, who knows, its all speculative.

Time will tell.

We will just have to disagree on that.

[JeffreyW]

Dave, you are right, in fact, Chalmers has a whole chapter in one of his books discussing this mysterious quality of the unity of conscious experience, the quality that is totally intractable for materialism or for any other non-consciousness-based ontology. I would call it "the hard problem of consciousness #2".

And to try to resolve that problem with the assertion of cosmic consciousness is an example of metaphysics of the gaps. Best not to speak what cannot be spoken.