Criticism

[AshvinP]

It isn’t a matter of taking “behind” literally, but noting its structural role impeding a real understanding of that time. It is difficult to avoid using metaphysical concepts because it is so hard for us to think without them; and when we slip up we project our habits of thought onto a time when they didn’t exist, and thus block our own view. There was no metaphysical “behind” to nature; everything that existed was visible. You commit that error when you claim the people of that time perceived logos in nature. Rather, logos occurred when nature revealed itself in experience. Logos was man’s apprehension, not something hidden by or behind nature and certainly nothing as static as an idea.

First, I do not consider ideas static, but that's another discussion.

Indeed it is, and I will take up that part of the argument, since it seems to be the common misconception between everyone here, myself included, because even if I don't intellectually consider ideas "static", I know that is how I experience them often. It's very easy to snap back into that mode of abstract thinking about "idea" and I am sure Scott would agree, which is why we are naive materialists and dualists today.

JW,

I have mentioned this to you a few times before, in the context of Schopenhauer's quote - "Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."

This is why I also directed you to Cleric's imaginative exercise on the other thread. One must come to experience the way in which "idea" can come to life in our immanent experience. Most people experience this when they contemplate aesthetics, even superficially, but they don't bring that knowledge to conscious awareness because there is a deeply ingrained prejudice against Idea. This is why Schopenahuer could write the above quote and still fail to see how his rejection of Idea as noumenon was nothing more than a limit of his own field of vision. I think Hegel had a more living understanding of Idea, but unfortunately it is buried under mountains of abstractions for the most part.

I think I already shared the anecdote of Goethe and Schiller here, where Goethe drew the archetypal proto-plant. Schiller responded, "yes but that is just an idea, not an empirical observation", and Goethe responded, "if that is an idea, then I see ideas with my eyes!" This is actually a very common experience among the most brilliant artists of the modern age. Beethoven expressed similar sentiments - “Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.” And that's coming from someone who went deaf, so clearly he is not simply talking about the musical sounds by themselves, but the ideal element standing behind those sounds which the listener is transported within. But without any possibility of fully conscious imaginative cognition, since it had not yet blossomed, many thinkers were forced to conclude "mankind cannot comprehend" these higher worlds of knowledge.

Until we come to terms with the fact that what we naively and abstractly think of as "idea" is nothing more than our own limited cognitive vision, a limit which we now have the ability to consciously overcome, we will forever remain within the domain of abstract metaphysics, even if we think we have escaped it. Without the underlying ideal element, understood in its full and living richness, what we claim to know, or whatever we claim it is possible to know, such as "esthetic knowledge", will just be yet another abstraction among a heap of abstractions such as "mind", "matter", "energy", "substance", "process", "emptiness", so on and so forth. It is the Idea which gives any of these "ontological primitives" their meaning in the first place. I don't remember posting my favorite Bergson quote on this thread yet, so I will post it below for your consideration.

These conclusions on the subject of duration were, as it seemed to me, decisive. Step by step they led me to raise intuition to the level of a philosophical method. “Intuition,” however, is a word whose use caused me some degree of hesitation. Of all the terms which designate a mode of knowing, it is still the most appropriate; and yet it leads to a certain confusion. Because a Schelling, a Schopenhauer and others have already called upon intuition, because they have more or less set up intuition in opposition to intelligence, one might think that I was using the same method. But of course, their intuition was an immediate search for the eternal! Whereas, on the contrary, for me it was a question, above all, of finding true duration. Numerous are the philosophers who have felt how powerless conceptual thought is to reach the core of the mind. Numerous, consequently, are those who have spoken of a supra-intellectual faculty of intuition.

But as they believed that the intelligence worked within time, they have concluded that to go beyond the intelligence consisted in getting outside of time. They did not see that intellectualized time is space, that the intelligence works upon the phantom of duration, not on duration itself, that the elimination of time is the habitual, normal, commonplace act of our understanding, that the relativity of our knowledge of the mind is a direct result of this fact, and that hence, to pass from intellection to vision, from the relative to the absolute, is not a question of getting outside of time (we are already there); on the contrary, one must get back into duration and recapture reality in the very mobility which is its essence. An intuition, which claims to project itself with one bound into the eternal, limits itself to the intellectual. For the concepts which the intelligence furnishes, the intuition simply substitutes one single concept which includes them all and which consequently is always the same, by whatever name it is called: Substance, Ego, Idea, Will.

Philosophy, thus understood, necessarily pantheistic, will have no difficulty in explaining everything deductively, since it will have been given beforehand, in a principle which is the concept of concepts, all the real and all the possible. But this explanation will be vague and hypothetical, this unity will be artificial, and this philosophy would apply equally well to a very different world from our own. How much more instructive would be a truly intuitive metaphysics, which would follow the undulations of the real! True, it would not embrace in a single sweep the totality of things; but for each thing it would give an explanation which would fit it exactly, and it alone. It would not begin by defining or describing the systematic unity of the world: who knows if the world is actually one?

Experience alone can say, and unity, if it exists, will appear at the end of the search as a result; it is impossible to posit it at the start as a principle. Furthermore, it will be a rich, full unity, the unity of a continuity, the unity of our reality, and not that abstract and empty unity, which has come from one supreme generalization, and which could just as well be that of any possible world whatsoever. It is true that philosophy then will demand a new effort for each new problem. No solution will be geometrically deduced from another. No important truth will be achieved by the prolongation of an already acquired truth. We shall have to give up crowding universal science potentially into one principle.

- Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics (1946)

[JeffreyW]

I have reservations about Jasper’s theory of Axial Age, but for here I’m limiting my discussion to the Greeks from Homer to Socrates, which is in that time frame. All we know of the Greeks of that time is from the fragments of poems and philosophy and can make no conclusions about how the general population might have differed.

I did not conclude the general population differed. I am saying they all, poets, philosophers, and peasants, were naive idealists. They certainly did not call themselves idealists. I only mean they experienced themselves as being in a world of spirit, not mindless matter. Similarly I call modern people naive dualists because we experience ourselves as being in a world of both our thoughts and feelings, and mindless rocks.

And I responded why they weren’t idealists. I wasn’t the one saying you were claiming the general population was different.

It isn’t a matter of taking “behind” literally, but noting its structural role impeding a real understanding of that time. It is difficult to avoid using metaphysical concepts because it is so hard for us to think without them; and when we slip up we project our habits of thought onto a time when they didn’t exist, and thus block our own view. There was no metaphysical “behind” to nature; everything that existed was visible. You commit that error when you claim the people of that time perceived logos in nature. Rather, logos occurred when nature revealed itself in experience. Logos was man’s apprehension, not something hidden by or behind nature and certainly nothing as static as an idea.

First, I do not consider ideas static, but that's another discussion. You say "everything that existed was visible". Are you saying they saw the arm and hand of Zeus throwing lightning bolts? That they saw in the sense of photons striking their eyes the spirit of a grove? What I am saying is that they did sense Zeus and grove spirits, but not with their eyes, much as I sense the meaning of your words when all that is visible consists of dark pixels on a white background.

They believed Zeus to be visible, but that isn’t the point. The gods were not elemental reality to them. Music and FIre were, among other things, and they were visible. We confuse the current notion of god with that of the ancient Greeks.

The few glimpses we have of their thoughts of elemental reality are in stark contrast to the consciousness of idealism. The best example we have is probably the Dionysian follower Pythagoras. Dionysus was his god, but not in any sense we recognize today. For Pythagoras, music of the heavens was the ontological primitive, if we can even apply such an inelegant term. All was made up of music, and Dionysian revelry was the path to ultimate truth.

What is music without the conscious experience of it? So I would call Pythagoras an idealist, granted the term didn't come into being for another 2000 years.

How would our needing consciousness to experience music make it idealist? And if ideas aren’t static we have twisted the word beyond recognition, or certainly beyond anything Plato would agree with.

[JeffreyW]

It isn’t a matter of taking “behind” literally, but noting its structural role impeding a real understanding of that time. It is difficult to avoid using metaphysical concepts because it is so hard for us to think without them; and when we slip up we project our habits of thought onto a time when they didn’t exist, and thus block our own view. There was no metaphysical “behind” to nature; everything that existed was visible. You commit that error when you claim the people of that time perceived logos in nature. Rather, logos occurred when nature revealed itself in experience. Logos was man’s apprehension, not something hidden by or behind nature and certainly nothing as static as an idea.

First, I do not consider ideas static, but that's another discussion.

Indeed it is, and I will take up that part of the argument, since it seems to be the common misconception between everyone here, myself included, because even if I don't intellectually consider ideas "static", I know that is how I experience them often. It's very easy to snap back into that mode of abstract thinking about "idea" and I am sure Scott would agree, which is why we are naive materialists and dualists today.

JW,

I have mentioned this to you a few times before, in the context of Schopenhauer's quote - "Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."

This is why I also directed you to Cleric's imaginative exercise on the other thread. One must come to experience the way in which "idea" can come to life in our immanent experience. Most people experience this when they contemplate aesthetics, even superficially, but they don't bring that knowledge to conscious awareness because there is a deeply ingrained prejudice against Idea. This is why Schopenahuer could write the above quote and still fail to see how his rejection of Idea as noumenon was nothing more than a limit of his own field of vision. I think Hegel had a more living understanding of Idea, but unfortunately it is buried under mountains of abstractions for the most part.

I think I already shared the anecdote of Goethe and Schiller here, where Goethe drew the archetypal proto-plant. Schiller responded, "yes but that is just an idea, not an empirical observation", and Goethe responded, "if that is an idea, then I see ideas with my eyes!" This is actually a very common experience among the most brilliant artists of the modern age. Beethoven expressed similar sentiments - “Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.” And that's coming from someone who went deaf, so clearly he is not simply talking about the musical sounds by themselves, but the ideal element standing behind those sounds which the listener is transported within. But without any possibility of fully conscious imaginative cognition, since it had not yet blossomed, many thinkers were forced to conclude "mankind cannot comprehend" these higher worlds of knowledge.

Until we come to terms with the fact that what we naively and abstractly think of as "idea" is nothing more than our own limited cognitive vision, a limit which we now have the ability to consciously overcome, we will forever remain within the domain of abstract metaphysics, even if we think we have escaped it. Without the underlying ideal element, understood in its full and living richness, what we claim to know, or whatever we claim it is possible to know, such as "esthetic knowledge", will just be yet another abstraction among a heap of abstractions such as "mind", "matter", "energy", "substance", "process", "emptiness", so on and so forth. It is the Idea which gives any of these "ontological primitives" their meaning in the first place. I don't remember posting my favorite Bergson quote on this thread yet, so I will post it below for your consideration.

These conclusions on the subject of duration were, as it seemed to me, decisive. Step by step they led me to raise intuition to the level of a philosophical method. “Intuition,” however, is a word whose use caused me some degree of hesitation. Of all the terms which designate a mode of knowing, it is still the most appropriate; and yet it leads to a certain confusion. Because a Schelling, a Schopenhauer and others have already called upon intuition, because they have more or less set up intuition in opposition to intelligence, one might think that I was using the same method. But of course, their intuition was an immediate search for the eternal! Whereas, on the contrary, for me it was a question, above all, of finding true duration. Numerous are the philosophers who have felt how powerless conceptual thought is to reach the core of the mind. Numerous, consequently, are those who have spoken of a supra-intellectual faculty of intuition.

But as they believed that the intelligence worked within time, they have concluded that to go beyond the intelligence consisted in getting outside of time. They did not see that intellectualized time is space, that the intelligence works upon the phantom of duration, not on duration itself, that the elimination of time is the habitual, normal, commonplace act of our understanding, that the relativity of our knowledge of the mind is a direct result of this fact, and that hence, to pass from intellection to vision, from the relative to the absolute, is not a question of getting outside of time (we are already there); on the contrary, one must get back into duration and recapture reality in the very mobility which is its essence. An intuition, which claims to project itself with one bound into the eternal, limits itself to the intellectual. For the concepts which the intelligence furnishes, the intuition simply substitutes one single concept which includes them all and which consequently is always the same, by whatever name it is called: Substance, Ego, Idea, Will.

Philosophy, thus understood, necessarily pantheistic, will have no difficulty in explaining everything deductively, since it will have been given beforehand, in a principle which is the concept of concepts, all the real and all the possible. But this explanation will be vague and hypothetical, this unity will be artificial, and this philosophy would apply equally well to a very different world from our own. How much more instructive would be a truly intuitive metaphysics, which would follow the undulations of the real! True, it would not embrace in a single sweep the totality of things; but for each thing it would give an explanation which would fit it exactly, and it alone. It would not begin by defining or describing the systematic unity of the world: who knows if the world is actually one?

Experience alone can say, and unity, if it exists, will appear at the end of the search as a result; it is impossible to posit it at the start as a principle. Furthermore, it will be a rich, full unity, the unity of a continuity, the unity of our reality, and not that abstract and empty unity, which has come from one supreme generalization, and which could just as well be that of any possible world whatsoever. It is true that philosophy then will demand a new effort for each new problem. No solution will be geometrically deduced from another. No important truth will be achieved by the prolongation of an already acquired truth. We shall have to give up crowding universal science potentially into one principle.

- Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics (1946)

All I can say is my experience, including over 30 years of meditation and a long time musician, is very different from what you describe. On the other hand, Idea is always a reduction of a reality that cannot be grasp as an idea.

[AshvinP]

All I can say is my experience, including over 30 years of meditation and a long time musician, is very different from what you describe. On the other hand, Idea is always a reduction of a reality that cannot be grasp as an idea.

That is exactly my point. When the bold is "all you can say", i.e. you must remain within your own limited personal experience, and accept that experience as it is immediately given to you (naive realism), to philosophize about the structure of Reality itself, you are firmly within the domain of Schopenhauer's criticism in that quote and, by definition, engaged in abstract metaphysics, which is also related to Scott's overall point about naive materialism-dualism. Whatever you are positing or failing to posit about Reality beyond your own immediate personal experience is abstract metaphysical speculation - metaphysical positing and failing to posit, i.e. speculation that is not first reasoned out carefully, about the structure of Reality are two sides of the same coin.

Almost every philosophical intellectual of the 'post-modern' age has perceived this flaw in other thought-systems but not their own. BK perceives it in crass materialism-dualism but not in his own analytic idealism. You perceive it in BK's idealism but not your own conception of "esthetic knowledge". Everyone ends up criticizing everyone else without realizing they are all operating according to the same flawed assumption. Cleric has discussed the shortcomings of mystical philosophy, which refuses to evolve with the currents of cognition, at length on this forum. So I will just say, if you find yourself unwilling to consider these well-reasoned criticisms of your view, then you should ask yourself why? If your consideration boils down to "all you can say in your experience", then you should at least confront the fact that you are philosophizing from a position of naive realism and abstract metaphysical speculation about the essence (or lack of essence) of "idea".

[Soul_of_Shu]

All I can say is my experience, including over 30 years of meditation and a long time musician, is very different from what you describe. On the other hand, Idea is always a reduction of a reality that cannot be grasped as an idea.

JW ... As mentioned earlier, I've been thinking of starting a music related topic, which I've now done, and would certainly welcome your input there, if so inclined, and you have the time to watch the video associated with it ... Patterns and Meaning in Music

[Dave casarino]

I am convinced it should be relatively easy to nail someones metaphysics down whether they regard metaphysics as some flawed western thought program that got ahead of itself and contaminated our mental habits like Jeffery or whether they believe it is alive and well, a field dedicated to connecting the mind's assumptions with reality and attempting to conclude which mental assumption best represents reality as a whole like Kastrup. The reason metaphysics is topical at the moment is because since the 90's the west has been currently trying to figure out how materialist metaphysics can be reconciled to the non physical nature of conscious experience, in fact we don't even need self activated mentation to be a part of the question, rather simply experiencing, we are literally as far as we can tell experiences and experiencing, the hard problem of consciousness only makes sense as a term in regard to the fact that consciousness as we know it predisposes wakefulness and metacognition, it should rather be the hard problem of experience with mental contents and mental activity being second to simply witnessing as a subject or integrated whole, how does matter experience, is experience reducible to constructs in observable matter, is matter reducible to experience ala BK, or is matter (or energy) experiential in nature?

It doesn't matter if we call it matter, energy or quantum foam, all three terms imply that experience is not at it's core or not a fundamental component, rather it is being assumed that evolution can force non experiential elements (whatever they may be) to witness experience representative of reality in accordance to fitness provided the structure of whatever substance/s or incomprehensible postulate in place of substance/s is of the right form necessary to communicate experience to something that does not experience, but that means it has the potential to experience with enough stimulation, so long as you stick to any of these you have an ontological assumption of sorts however vague. if you are to disregard metaphysics totally then you shant posit an alternative to idealim in your critique of it, rather critique it where you think it is wrong, but to put fourth some vague concept in it's steed as a better alternative defeats your point of NOT having a metaphysical assumption, throw away energy or being as postulates, then proclaim total agnosticism and you will be consistent in your remarks. (and this conversation wouldn't have become this long winded, you have given the idealists food and they will bite it until you stop)

[JeffreyW]

I am convinced it should be relatively easy to nail someones metaphysics down whether they regard metaphysics as some flawed western thought program that got ahead of itself and contaminated our mental habits like Jeffery or whether they believe it is alive and well, a field dedicated to connecting the mind's assumptions with reality and attempting to conclude which mental assumption best represents reality as a whole like Kastrup. The reason metaphysics is topical at the moment is because since the 90's the west has been currently trying to figure out how materialist metaphysics can be reconciled to the non physical nature of conscious experience, in fact we don't even need self activated mentation to be a part of the question, rather simply experiencing, we are literally as far as we can tell experiences and experiencing, the hard problem of consciousness only makes sense as a term in regard to the fact that consciousness as we know it predisposes wakefulness and metacognition, it should rather be the hard problem of experience with mental contents and mental activity being second to simply witnessing as a subject or integrated whole, how does matter experience, is experience reducible to constructs in observable matter, is matter reducible to experience ala BK, or is matter (or energy) experiential in nature?

It doesn't matter if we call it matter, energy or quantum foam, all three terms imply that experience is not at it's core or not a fundamental component, rather it is being assumed that evolution can force non experiential elements (whatever they may be) to witness experience representative of reality in accordance to fitness provided the structure of whatever substance/s or incomprehensible postulate in place of substance/s is of the right form necessary to communicate experience to something that does not experience, but that means it has the potential to experience with enough stimulation, so long as you stick to any of these you have an ontological assumption of sorts however vague. if you are to disregard metaphysics totally then you shant posit an alternative to idealim in your critique of it, rather critique it where you think it is wrong, but to put fourth some vague concept in it's steed as a better alternative defeats your point of NOT having a metaphysical assumption, throw away energy or being as postulates, then proclaim total agnosticism and you will be consistent in your remarks. (and this conversation wouldn't have become this long winded, you have given the idealists food and they will bite it until you stop)

I think you have misread me. First, I do not posit energy as what Kastrup calls the ontological primitive. In fact I have gone out of my way to emphasize that no such thing is even possible. I do say that energy is the lowest element in our experience, at least so far, but that in no way implies energy is the lowest element, or even that such a lowest exists. I do not “assume” this, but observe it. Without energy there is no consciousness. At the quantum field level, which is the lowest level of reality we yet know, energy is all there is.

We know through observation that evolution is a process that brought us as a species to where we are, That would be the most likely explanation for consciousness. We only encounter consciousness in life, and to attribute it to non-life would be the sort of metaphysical leap I refuse. Life is also composed of elements that themselves are not alive, and it is no great leap to assume the same for consciousness.

I’ve not given them any food. Perhaps they are biting at lures.

[JeffreyW]

All I can say is my experience, including over 30 years of meditation and a long time musician, is very different from what you describe. On the other hand, Idea is always a reduction of a reality that cannot be grasped as an idea.

JW ... As mentioned earlier, I've been thinking of starting a music related topic, which I've now done, and would certainly welcome your input there, if so inclined, and you have the time to watch the video, and read the essays, associated with it ... Patterns and Meaning in Music

I haven’t finished the video yet, but I will comment later.

[Dave casarino]

You see your problem here is that "energy" is something you say you observe, it is a quality of experience you have observed, you see stuff, say it is distinct from yourself and call it "energy", an idealist simply reduces your postulate of undefined "energy" into the experience itself, whatever it is that shapes the patterns and dynamics of your experience, in truth you have only ever known your own brain, unless the content of your experience is directly experienced, which means naive realism and an interface between conscious energy and non conscious energy which has the added funny of assuming the qualities experience of non conscious energy reveals said energy's actual qualities. Which sort of imply's that energy is experience, or of a nature of quality at least instead of quantity. (nonconscious quality?)

Despite your proclamations of integrated beingness you have reduced the subject to the object, but the object is a sensation within the subject, unless we are naive realists, if we are not then it is qualia first and everything else is speculation. Now you could say that machines record objects, and we consistently encounter objects in various locations independent of our individual minds, an idealist then postulates that experience's are occurrences that take place in a non local field of experience as a whole, and that the apparent experiential nature of the universe is then accounted for with no hard problem of consciousness, but then we are stretching our qualia out to all it represents. The physicalist who may or may not need reality to be one consistent ontological whole is adamant that experience is derived from non experiential forms or whatever stuff:X, Kastrup and the new idealists alongside the panpsychics come to life asking how something that does not have experience at the core of it's nature comes to experience if experience is not inherent, now you have said you don't believe in any one substance, that's fine but if the totality of mystery stuff:X is non experiential, then how the fuck does it jump ontologies into an experiential stuff or composite, even if for a blip in time? Now you can deny the sovereignty of strong ontological assumptions, but then it's a less defined transition between the experiential and the non experiential and we get a vague pointer in the direction of panprotopsychism. OR you can just say consciousness is epiphenomenal, but I think that the human visual and hearing system (and hands) strongly points to evolution favouring conscious experience, the head set is set up for it so it is of primary importance to our biological system, so it has causal efficacy over the shape of our heads and brains through evolutionary selection, hardly a side effect.

[AshvinP]

I think you have misread me. First, I do not posit energy as what Kastrup calls the ontological primitive. In fact I have gone out of my way to emphasize that no such thing is even possible. I do say that energy is the lowest element in our experience, at least so far, but that in no way implies energy is the lowest element, or even that such a lowest exists. I do not “assume” this, but observe it. Without energy there is no consciousness. At the quantum field level, which is the lowest level of reality we yet know, energy is all there is.

We know through observation that evolution is a process that brought us as a species to where we are, That would be the most likely explanation for consciousness. We only encounter consciousness in life, and to attribute it to non-life would be the sort of metaphysical leap I refuse. Life is also composed of elements that themselves are not alive, and it is no great leap to assume the same for consciousness.

I’ve not given them any food. Perhaps they are biting at lures.

Maybe I am misreading too, but how are you reconciling the bold with the underlined? You say you refuse to make the metaphysical leap of attributing consciousness to non-life, and then immediately say it is not a great leap to assume consciousness can be "composed" of [presumably non-conscious] elements.

Besides that, the red part is clearly naive realism and metaphysical speculation at work (and also reductionism - "composed of"). As I have explained, you fail to see that about consciousness because it comes from a cessation of reasoning once you reached desired conclusion of, "I just don't know and nobody knows or can possibly know right now". But it is clear when you speak about "life". So BK stops reasoning when he reaches his preferred conclusion that consciousness is fundamental, and you stop reasoning when you reach your preferred conclusion that "I don't know what consciousness is", then extrapolating your lack of knowledge onto everyone else, past-present-future, which is exactly what Kant did.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=648

Kant thereby violates the very first principle he laid out not more than a few pages after laying it out - the principle that we cannot derive knowledge from beyond potential 1st-person experience, either in the form of sense-impressions or cognitive 'intuitions'. The assertion that "certain of our cognitions rise above the sphere of all possible experience... to which there exists in the whole extent of experience no corresponding object", is a baseless speculation from the 3rd-person spectator perspective. No individual can determine, from potential 1st-person experience, the true extent of "all possible experience" which can provide "corresponding objects" for certain cognitions. In making this assertion, Kant has raised himself up into the non-existent 3rd-person spectator perspective on the Universe. He feels that the space of all possible experience is laid bare before him, including the experience of every other perspective apart from his own.