Formlessness><form as the uncaused, irreducible ontic fundamental

[Soul_of_Shu]

Forms could not exist at all without the being-awareness, while being-awareness does not need forms to exist, even though it may never exist in time without forms.

Somehow, if form emerges from a prioritized formless state, it just seems another version of the 'hard problem' resorting to some mysterious quirk of magic, only form has not been abstracted into the stuff of matter. But allowing that some 'first' form might arise, what might it be?

[AshvinP]

OK, so to be clear, you are once again rejecting mumorphism. Because the latter does not posit formlessness (being-awareness-thinking) is causally or ontologically prior to form (thoughts) or vice versa.

Yes, if that is what muomorphism poses, I am rejecting it. I do agree that the ability of the OP to express forms is ontically fundamental, but not specific forms that emerge and disappear as an expression of such ability (including the ideas that the though-forms carry as their qualia).

What differentiates idealism from materialism is that ideas are ontically fundamental, and ideas indivisibly include awareness-thinking-thoughts.

No, that's not what all variants of idealism pose. You formulation of idealism in where ideas are ontically fundamental is exactly Platonist version of idealism. There are non-Platonist versions of idealism (with which I tend to adhere) which does not pose that ideas are ontically fundamental. My understanding is that BK's idealism is also non-Platonic, but if you do not agree, we can ask him this question to clarify in the BK's Q&A thread.

I still don't get the bolded statement. An infant evolving into adult or a person who falls into a coma surely undergo a change in ability of awareness, right? Or if we say the ability of awareness always remains the same but the degree of awareness changes, then surely the same applies to thinking as well.

Again, we are talking about different kinds of awareness. You are referring to a self-awareness, I'm referring to awareness as conscious experiencing (of anything). We had multiple threads of discussions with materialists regarding whether the conscious experiencing disappears in coma, anesthesia etc or not. The primal position of idealism (at least non-Platonic one) is that the conscious experiencing is continuous and unchangeable. If it would appear or disappear, that would make it and emergent property, but idealism poses that conscious experiencing is non-emergent but fundamental (see Chalmers arguments against strong emergence of conscious experiencing: "Chalmers argues that consciousness is a fundamental property ontologically autonomous of any known (or even possible) physical properties,[14]" ).

Yes, I am arguing for a version of idealism which is Western and clearly not shared by much Eastern philosophy, and BK is partial to the latter, although he also sees meta-cognitive thinking as the telos of the entire dissociative and evolutionary process, which then becomes more aligned with Western idealism

We all agree that awareness never "disappears". The question is whether thinking-thoughts-meanings can ever disappear so that there is only unthinking, meaningless awareness at the ontic level?

[Eugene I]

Somehow, if form emerges from a prioritized formless state, it just seems another version of the 'hard problem' resorting to some mysterious quirk of magic, only form has not been abstracted into the stuff of matter. But allowing that some 'first' form might arise, what might it be?

It's a simple observation of our direct conscious experience: forms come and go, arise and disappear, depend on each other and conditioned by each other (including ideas), and there can be a state with no forms (it can be actually experienced). But beingness and experiencing never come and go and never change in our direct conscious experience (obviously because it is impossible to experience the absence of existence or the absence of experiencing, duh ), so we call them "invariants" or "fundamental non-emergent properties" of the OP. Based on that experimental fact, we pose that the specific forms are emergent (it's just a different way to state that they are impermanent, mutually co-dependent, every form can exist or not exist). I do not see what does it have to do with the hard problem.

[Eugene I]

We all agree that awareness never "disappears". The question is whether thinking-thoughts-meanings can ever disappear so that there is only unthinking, meaningless awareness at the ontic level?

Well, in the Eastern versions thinking and meanings can definitely disappear, and that position is based on meditative experiences of the suspension of thinking (remember, Eastern idealism it is not just speculative, it developed as part of spiritual traditions and is very much grounded in the meditative experience), so thinking (as a process, not as a fundamental ability to think) and meanings are considered as emergent phenomena. In Platonic (Western) versions meanings are non-emergent, they are timelessly existing "things" by themselves. You are right, Platonism is a Western phenomenon and is unknown to Eastern idealisms, but by far not all Western versions of idealism are Platonic (Schopenhauer's is not, and I'm pretty sire BK' is not either, but we can ask him to clarify that)

Platonic idealism usually refers to Plato's theory of forms or doctrine of ideas. It holds that only ideas encapsulate the true and essential nature of things, in a way that the physical form cannot....Plato believed that because knowledge is innate and not discovered through experience, we must somehow arrive at the truth through introspection and logical analysis, stripping away false ideas to reveal the truth.

In other words, in Plato's idealism ideas are prior to the experiencing of them, they can exist regardless whether they are experienced. In the Eastern "experiential" idealism conscious experiencing (=awareness) is what makes possible for ideas to exist and the only exist when they are experienced (through thoughts).

[Soul_of_Shu]

We all agree that awareness never "disappears". The question is whether thinking-thoughts-meanings can ever disappear so that there is only unthinking, meaningless awareness at the ontic level?

In the beginningless beginning, was unthinking, meaningless awareness, wherein arose an idea ... I'm guessing it was "Let's get this party started"

[Eugene I]

We all agree that awareness never "disappears". The question is whether thinking-thoughts-meanings can ever disappear so that there is only unthinking, meaningless awareness at the ontic level?

In the beginningless beginning, was unthinking, meaningless awareness, wherein arose an idea ... I'm guessing it was "Let's get this party started"

I would even guess there was an idea even before that one: "Ohhh... it is sooo boring here ... Let's have some entertainment and get the party started"

In one NDE account a guy asked what is the purpose and meaning of all of this creation, and the answer was: "for the entertainment of the spirit"

[Soul_of_Shu]

I would even guess there was an idea even before that one: "Ohhh... it is sooo boring here ... Let's have some entertainment and get the party started"

In one NDE account a guy asked what is the purpose and meaning of all of this creation, and the answer was: "for the entertainment of the spirit"

Still too personified ... the party is this ever-present emptiness dancing ...

[Eugene I]

I would even guess there was an idea even before that one: "Ohhh... it is sooo boring here ... Let's have some entertainment and get the party started"

In one NDE account a guy asked what is the purpose and meaning of all of this creation, and the answer was: "for the entertainment of the spirit"

Still too personified ... the party is this ever-present emptiness dancing ...

Yeah, but some personified formations wanted to make it to feel entertaining and meaningful, not just randomly dancing

[AshvinP]

We all agree that awareness never "disappears". The question is whether thinking-thoughts-meanings can ever disappear so that there is only unthinking, meaningless awareness at the ontic level?

Well, in the Eastern versions thinking and meanings can definitely disappear, and that position is based on meditative experiences of the suspension of thinking (remember, Eastern idealism it is not just speculative, it developed as part of spiritual traditions and is very much grounded in the meditative experience), so thinking (as a process, not as a fundamental ability to think) and meanings are considered as emergent phenomena. In Platonic (Western) versions meanings are non-emergent, they are timelessly existing "things" by themselves. You are right, Platonism is a Western phenomenon and is unknown to Eastern idealisms, but by far not all Western versions of idealism are Platonic (Schopenhauer's is not, and I'm pretty sire BK' is not either, but we can ask him to clarify that)

Platonic idealism usually refers to Plato's theory of forms or doctrine of ideas. It holds that only ideas encapsulate the true and essential nature of things, in a way that the physical form cannot....Plato believed that because knowledge is innate and not discovered through experience, we must somehow arrive at the truth through introspection and logical analysis, stripping away false ideas to reveal the truth.

In other words, in Plato's idealism ideas are prior to the experiencing of them, they can exist regardless whether they are experienced. In the Eastern "experiential" idealism conscious experiencing (=awareness) is what makes possible for ideas to exist and the only exist when they are experienced (through thoughts).

That is why I included "ontic" level. We know that right now we are having experiences that we are not reflectively aware of, right? I would say we are also having thoughts we are not aware of. So the meditative state where thinking "disappears" could be a state in which you are unaware of thoughts which are still ontically in existence.

The broader point is that the Eastern mystic must come up with all sorts of dicontinuous ways of explaining how thought forms arise from thoughtless awareness when the former is ontically absent, and how any of that squares with monist idealism which cannot have two essentially different substances or processes. And it also has the nihilistic issue of claiming experience of the OP (God) necessarily entails a loss of all meaning.

[Eugene I]

That is why I included "ontic" level. We know that right now we are having experiences that we are not reflectively aware of, right? I would say we are also having thoughts we are not aware of. So the meditative state where thinking "disappears" could be a state in which you are unaware of thoughts which are still ontically in existence.

There are definitely thoughts in existence when thinking disappears within one particular space of experience - the thinking continues in other individuated spaces and possibly in subconscious spaces. But that does not prove such thinking to be "ontic". Whenever any thinking occurs (within each space of experience), it is always experienced as impermanent, changing and conditional on other phenomena, therefore can not be "ontic" (being "ontic" means being non-changing, non-emergent and non-conditional).

But, following Platonism, you can still argue that, as opposed to thoughts that are conditional, the meanings themselves are not conditional and exist "prior to" any thinking/thoughts, and thinking only has "access" to the meanings. Such Platonic position is undecidable, you can nether prove nor disprove it. It definitely has right to exist, and this is why it survived up to these days and still has many proponents, especially among mathematicians and the followers of monotheistic religions.

The broader point is that the Eastern mystic must come up with all sorts of dicontinuous ways of explaining how thought forms arise from thoughtless awareness when the former is ontically absent, and how any of that squares with monist idealism which cannot have two essentially different substances or processes. And it also has the nihilistic issue of claiming experience of the OP (God) necessarily entails a loss of all meaning.

There are definitely explanatory gaps in the Eastern idealism, as there are in every other version of idealism (Platonic included). There is still one substance/process (OP) in the Eastern idealism that has various fundamental and non-fundamental (emergent) aspects, with thoughts and their meanings belong to the emergent aspects of the OP.

Yes, you can claim that there is a nihilistic issue with respect to meanings, but not with respect to the OP's fundamental aspects - the beingness/awareness and its potential to unfold into forms. So, if you want your life to be meaningful in the absolute/ontic sense, then Platonism or monotheistic religions give you a solution (timelessly existing meanings in Platonism, or meanings existing in the God's mind). In the Eastern traditions personal life is only meaningful in a relative sense: we, sentient beings, "invent" the meanings of our lives for ourselves. You can say that there is a "nihilistic" aspect in this, but "nihilistic" only in a sense of denying the ontic/absolute nature of meanings, while not denying the existence of meanings at all (because meanings do exist as emerging forms). On the other hand, there is an aspect of freedom in it: you are not constrained to some pre-destined timeless meanings and life goals, but you are free to define any meanings for your life that work for you and that you deem appropriate. Freedom/liberation from conditioning (including conditioning by meanings) is one of the motivations and "invented" meanings at the roots of the Eastern traditions. It is like loving just because loving makes us happy vs. loving because God made us and told us to love.