Criticism

[Soul_of_Shu]

I apologize for quoting myself several times and messing up this thread, I have already asked Dana to clean up as I dont know how, some of them I can not delete myself it seems. If there are any night owls around simply comment on the one with the smily-face next to "Atman". Until then.

Mark ... I saved the latest version of your comment. However, since I just copied and pasted it, any formatting that you added, such as the 'bold' portion, is lost. However, the main statement remains intact. FYI, when you want to edit a comment, click on the 'pencil' icon . But you only have an hour to make changes, after which only the mod can edit or delete the comment.

[Mark Tetzner]

Thank you Dana. Here is JW part 1 btw.

Between the video and the commments I think BK
will not talk to JW, but maybe he will write a blog.
I am done worrying about it though, the party can
aways happen right here. I would still be very
interested in a piece of content by BK, because
are a few snippets between both videos where it would
be interesting to see a well-founded rebuttal.
My elve-friends have told me that Bernardo
has hand-cuffed himself to the pipes under
the kitchen-sink because he wants to chime
in but really cant. I get it. My only argument:
Lets do it for the content.
It could be amazing.

I think JW is probably a wonderful guy in almost
every regard, this shines through everything
he does and writes, but maybe he went overboard with
a comment or two. I am looking forward to
seeing how it all ensues though may not
participate every day.

JW, there is a 6 hour course on analytic idealism on
Bernardos blog www.bernardokastrup.com
somewhere near the top did you check that out yet?
If not hear you go, let us hear your thoughts:
https://www.essentiafoundation.org/anal ... sm-course/

You also said you will write a review on "the idea of the world",
still in the making?

[Eugene I]

The problem is that contemporary quantum mechanics and quantum field theory point to an ontological primitive - if such a thing even exists - that exists outside of space, time, and deterministic causality. Instead it is waves in quantum fields upon which float the chaos of cosmic foam. What looks like objects through our icons are really outside of time and space and just the interplay of of the waves of quantum field energy. But even calling them fields and waves shows our inability to grasp this reality. Waves and fields exist in space and time, and are metaphors we use because space, time, and causality are the very conditions of representational thought. This is the inviolable wall separating our understanding from the most elemental truth. The only solution to this problem would be another eon of evolution.

JW, you criticize metaphysics (for a good reason), but your statement that mathematical abstractions of modern physical theories point to certain actual ontological realities is already a metaphysical statement.

[JeffreyW]

JW,

Thanks for the fascinating, clear, and precise comments above. I hope you don't mind me jumping in with some questions. Your comments provide a lot of fruitful territory to explore and I am not even sure where to start. This question of evolution seems as good a place as any, since it gets down to the core of pragmatic truth which potentially overarches the history of human ideas and culture. It seems to me that you are assuming above that evolution is a fundamentally physical process which eventually led to the development of consciousness, "primordial esthetic understanding", and then later to the seeds of our current "rational understanding". So, in that sense, you reject the idealist understanding of evolution, i.e. perception-cognition as the primary force of evolution, as detailed by German thinkers such as Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, Steiner, or Gebser. Is that correct?

PS - we can split this off into a separate thread if Mark or anyone else wants to discuss some other aspects of your responses on this one.
[/quote]

Yes, that is correct, which isn’t to necessarily reject intention in the universe. The difference would be that any sort of direction in the evolution would grow organically out of the manifold essence of Being itself rather than the influence of a transcendent reality.

[JeffreyW]

Your second question on how we can know what we can never know is a question of epistemology and contemporary physics. Our rational understanding (as opposed to our more primordial esthetic understanding) evolved during our time on the savanna as a drastically reductive sketch of our surroundings. Our brains received sense data as electro-magnetic impulses and created simplified icons of what seemed to our understanding as most urgent at the moment, suppressed the rest, and drew these icons in the medium of our subjective senses of time and space, and imputed causality. This was a purely pragmatic effort aimed at survival, not exploration and discovery of cosmic truths. Our present status on this planet is testament to its effectiveness but not to its ability to grasp fundamental reality. Donald Hoffman’s metaphor of 1’s, 0’s, and icons is a great explanation. The problem is that contemporary quantum mechanics and quantum field theory point to an ontological primitive - if such a thing even exists - that exists outside of space, time, and deterministic causality. Instead it is waves in quantum fields upon which float the chaos of cosmic foam. What looks like objects through our icons are really outside of time and space and just the interplay of of the waves of quantum field energy. But even calling them fields and waves shows our inability to grasp this reality. Waves and fields exist in space and time, and are metaphors we use because space, time, and causality are the very conditions of representational thought. This is the inviolable wall separating our understanding from the most elemental truth. The only solution to this problem would be another eon of evolution.

What reveals itself again is the error of metaphysics. It attempts to speak what we cannot say. To define the unknowable most elementary base of existence as consciousness is as meaningless as defining it as fairyland. Both are mere anthropomorphic projections from inside out locked cage of human representation.

JW,

Thanks for the fascinating, clear, and precise comments above. I hope you don't mind me jumping in with some questions. Your comments provide a lot of fruitful territory to explore and I am not even sure where to start. This question of evolution seems as good a place as any, since it gets down to the core of pragmatic truth which potentially overarches the history of human ideas and culture. It seems to me that you are assuming above that evolution is a fundamentally physical process which eventually led to the development of consciousness, "primordial esthetic understanding", and then later to the seeds of our current "rational understanding". So, in that sense, you reject the idealist understanding of evolution, i.e. perception-cognition as the primary force of evolution, as detailed by German thinkers such as Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, Steiner, or Gebser. Is that correct?

PS - we can split this off into a separate thread if Mark or anyone else wants to discuss some other aspects of your responses on this one.

I also just want to add here that I am pretty much in agreement with the bold above, but where we disagree is the underlined. Is the underlined an example of what Schopenhauer meant when he wrote, "Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."?

It’s very similar. It means that we cannot perceive outside our innate conditions of cognition and often presume that to be actual reality.

[AshvinP]

JW,

Thanks for the fascinating, clear, and precise comments above. I hope you don't mind me jumping in with some questions. Your comments provide a lot of fruitful territory to explore and I am not even sure where to start. This question of evolution seems as good a place as any, since it gets down to the core of pragmatic truth which potentially overarches the history of human ideas and culture. It seems to me that you are assuming above that evolution is a fundamentally physical process which eventually led to the development of consciousness, "primordial esthetic understanding", and then later to the seeds of our current "rational understanding". So, in that sense, you reject the idealist understanding of evolution, i.e. perception-cognition as the primary force of evolution, as detailed by German thinkers such as Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, Steiner, or Gebser. Is that correct?

PS - we can split this off into a separate thread if Mark or anyone else wants to discuss some other aspects of your responses on this one.

I also just want to add here that I am pretty much in agreement with the bold above, but where we disagree is the underlined. Is the underlined an example of what Schopenhauer meant when he wrote, "Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."?

It’s very similar. It means that we cannot perceive outside our innate conditions of cognition and often presume that to be actual reality.

FYI I started a new thread "on the nature of evolution" in response to your comment. I was actually suggesting the "locked cage of human representation" may be an example of confusing our own personal limitations for limitations of Reality itself. It is true that abstract intellectual reasoning can only take us so far into the noumenal relations underlying the phenomenal world, but I disagree that abstract intellect is the absolute limit to human cognition which can be developed today or that it is fundamentally disconnected from higher modes of cognition. Put another way, if the cage is locked, then we ourselves hold the keys to open it, not aeons from now, but right this moment.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Yes, that is correct, which isn’t to necessarily reject intention in the universe. The difference would be that any sort of direction in the evolution would grow organically out of the manifold essence of Being itself rather than the influence of a transcendent reality.

So this is still resorting to the mysterianism of some presumably non-aware Being, which somehow, we know not how, inexplicably gives rise to awareness. Why even capitalize the term Being, thus suggesting some immanent numinous noumenal essence, if in effect it seems no more than the realm of non-aware '___' (fill in the blank with the latest quantum theory) that physicists' resort to as their starting premise, leaving them with the same 'hard problem'? If there is no distinction, why name it 'Being', as opposed to, let's say, the equally non-aware quantum vacuum state, or the zero-point field? To this mind, such immanent Being suggests a state beyond that. And if so, what is so troubling about it being aware?

[JeffreyW]

The problem is that contemporary quantum mechanics and quantum field theory point to an ontological primitive - if such a thing even exists - that exists outside of space, time, and deterministic causality. Instead it is waves in quantum fields upon which float the chaos of cosmic foam. What looks like objects through our icons are really outside of time and space and just the interplay of of the waves of quantum field energy. But even calling them fields and waves shows our inability to grasp this reality. Waves and fields exist in space and time, and are metaphors we use because space, time, and causality are the very conditions of representational thought. This is the inviolable wall separating our understanding from the most elemental truth. The only solution to this problem would be another eon of evolution.

JW, you criticize metaphysics (for a good reason), but your statement that mathematical abstractions of modern physical theories point to certain actual ontological realities is already a metaphysical statement.

You are right about physics in general and bring up a crucial issue of our time. Let me refine my position in light of your question. I say that observations in physics point to certain strange realities. For example, John Bell’s experimental observations point to nonlocality. Heisenberg’s observations point to a quantum realm unencumbered by deterministic causality or the principle of identity. This is what we know from observation - anything more is metaphysical speculation. My claim is that within what can be known scientifically through observation points to a world beyond our conditions of thought. That is why I insist that the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, which is really a refusal to interpret, is the only honest position to take on the matter: Remain silent before what cannot be spoken. Many Worlds, Hidden Variables, Pilot Waves, etc, are mere metaphysical speculation.

Along with that is the most elemental thing we can experience, which is energy. We measure it in waves: in brain waves, electromagnetic oscillation, gravitational waves, sound waves. It is the basis of our experience, which is not to say it is elemental, but rather the most elemental that we can know. And we know that waves and fields are just metaphors for what we cannot speak. Really, so is energy.

But you bring up a deeper point: the mathematical language of physics. As Heidegger showed us with “A=A”, science as a method is still metaphysical to its core and can never reveal any elemental truth, but only correct facts born of the pragmatic intent our objective representations. It is reductive and superficial by design, locked in a small band of reality as its proper sphere of operation. Eugene Wigner is brilliant on this question of the applicability of mathematics to reality and its origins as subjective reductive projection.

Accordingly, science has two essential functions: 1. Constantly satisfy the appetite of practical technology; 2. Illuminate that clearing at the fringe of science where the mystery of Being calls as a beacon to where the poets are to gather.

[JeffreyW]

Yes, that is correct, which isn’t to necessarily reject intention in the universe. The difference would be that any sort of direction in the evolution would grow organically out of the manifold essence of Being itself rather than the influence of a transcendent reality.

So this is still resorting to the mysterianism of some presumably non-aware Being, which somehow, we know not how, inexplicably gives rise to awareness. Why even capitalize the term Being, thus suggesting some immanent numinous noumenal essence, if in effect it seems no more than the realm of non-aware '___' (fill in the blank with the latest quantum theory) that physicists' resort to as their starting premise, leaving them with the same 'hard problem'? If there is no distinction, why name it 'Being', as opposed to, let's say, the equally non-aware quantum vacuum state, or the zero-point field? To this mind, such immanent Being suggests a state beyond that. And if so, what is so troubling about it being aware?

A central question to be sure. Let me now just say that I intend to respond to every post directed to me but, not all at one sitting. I respect your questions and opinions too much to simply throw out glib responses, and prefer to give then the thought and time they deserve. I will get to this later today.

[Eugene I]

You are right about physics in general and bring up a crucial issue of our time. Let me refine my position in light of your question. I say that observations in physics point to certain strange realities. For example, John Bell’s experimental observations point to nonlocality. Heisenberg’s observations point to a quantum realm unencumbered by deterministic causality or the principle of identity. This is what we know from observation - anything more is metaphysical speculation. My claim is that within what can be known scientifically through observation points to a world beyond our conditions of thought. That is why I insist that the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, which is really a refusal to interpret, is the only honest position to take on the matter: Remain silent before what cannot be spoken. Many Worlds, Hidden Variables, Pilot Waves, etc, are mere metaphysical speculation.

I would not agree with that. Copenhagen interpretation (CI) suffers from a major inconsistency - the event of the measurement is left beyond the QM, it is unexplainable by QM. In other words, CI has no way to explain using QM formalism how exactly the WF undergoes a "collapse" from superposition of states to a single eigenstate (note that this has nothing to do with decoherence). This is what's called "the measurement problem" and this is why physicists had to invent so many other interpretations, otherwise who would care? Sabine explains it quite eloquently here.

If I would have to pic a QM interpretation, my favorite would be relational and QBit because they are the most metaphysically agnostic and do not suffer from the measurement problem. But I actually would rather refuse to need any QM interpretations, I do not believe QM requires any interpretation at all. Interpretations of QM are only needed if we have a metaphysical model of reality in mind (materialistic or some other kind of "objective reality") and want to reconcile this model with the math of QM. So the QM interpretations are really the "bridges" between our mind-constructed metaphysical systems and the math equations of QM. Drop the metaphysics and no interpretations are needed, and all that is left are simply math models of physics that approximate the patterns and relations of the observable phenomena. For example, suppose we live in a simulated reality. In such case the math objects and abstractions of the physical models do not point to any "physical" realities at all. There are no such things as "energy", "waves" or "particles" in a simulated virtual reality world, those are only our abstract representations.