Criticism

[JeffreyW]

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.

To the contrary, I am not defining it in any way at all, and believe that any attempt to do so is a reductive act leaving us with a concept insufficient to Being. It is you reducing it to consciousness. That we cannot explain consciousness as it appears (and it only appears to us directly in our own consciousness) does not give us license to assert metaphysical solutions.

[AshvinP]

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, Gedacht, 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.

Thanks JW, and yes I could sense the above in your previous posts as well, especially the first one. We are in much agreement about the major prejudices of metaphysics and analytic philosophy, including idealism. I suspect the main point of departure between us will be on the nature of Western cognitive and cultural evolution. I think Hegel was spot on when he observed:

“The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit

We could analogize the 'blossom' to the modern age, which is a stage of "spiritual" (practically synonymous with "perception-cognition" in my view) evolution no less real or necessary to the whole than all previous and future stages. So the deep dive into modern nominalism, rationalism, materialism-dualism, Kantian idealism, and overall abstraction serves a purpose, but not a purpose of some external agent guiding the world from afar, but a purpose which naturally unfolds from the inner logic of evolution. Books could be written on that purpose and have been, but I will sum it up crudely as, "instructing the individual human soul to become completely independent in his inner thought-life, thereby (hopefully) re-membering what was first revealed as external Wisdom as inner knowledge and beginning on a journey to authentic spiritual freedom". It is most definitely a remembering back to the primordial Logos and "esthetic experience of what was disclosed", but it is not a mystical returning to any past state of evolution. Instead it is a truly novel synthesis of ancient Wisdom, living Reason, and modern scientific-mathematic cognition.

How you feel about that?

[Eugene I]

But isn't Heidegger suggesting here that Being IS Thinking? And isn't "the presence of things in the present" is actually the thinking of them, the direct knowing of them, the direct conscious experience of them? And if it's not, then any other representations of "things in the present" can only be abstracted metaphysical inventions about them. In fact, any apprehension of "non-conscious objects in the outside world" is entirely a metaphysical invention, because we can not in principle ever directly experience the presence of such "things" in the present.

[JeffreyW]

"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.

That experience reduces to consciousness (whatever that even is) in no way implies that Being can be reduced to consciousness. Actually, consciousness can be reduced to energy. Without energy there is no consciousness, but not all energy displays consciousness. Kastrup inadvertently backed into this on Twitter in argument with somebody over whether a computer could become conscious. He replied no, that only life can be conscious and unless a computer produces and uses ATP there can be no consciousness. ATP is the molecule that distributes energy throughout the brain, and without that distribution of energy consciousness ceases. To carry that to cosmic consciousness, it also would be dependent on energy and ATP.

[JeffreyW]

But isn't Heidegger suggesting here that Being IS Thinking? And isn't "the presence of things in the present" is actually the thinking of them, the direct knowing of them, the direct conscious experience of them? And if it's not, then any other representations of "things in the present" can only be abstracted metaphysical inventions about them. In fact, any apprehension of "non-conscious objects in the outside world" is entirely a metaphysical invention, because we can not in principle ever directly experience the presence of such "things" in the present.

No, at least not directly. This becomes clearer in other place, especially in his long poem Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, where man is the outgrowth of the essence of Being with the purpose of allowing Being to experience itself. In this case Being is thinking, but only through man.

[Eugene I]

To the contrary, I am not defining it in any way at all, and believe that any attempt to do so is a reductive act leaving us with a concept insufficient to Being. It is you reducing it to consciousness. That we cannot explain consciousness as it appears (and it only appears to us directly in our own consciousness) does not give us license to assert metaphysical solutions.

The only thing I intimately and undeniably know as direct facts/observations is the existence/presence (=Beingness) and the activity (=Thinking) of the variety of conscious experiences/phenomena in the present. I'm not a solipsist and I have no problem assuming that similar existence of thinking activity and conscious experiences is present in other individuated fields of experience which we call "other people", and perhaps the existence of thinking activity beyond human forms of consciousness. But why I am obliged to invent, assume and assert the existence of any other "things" in the universe that are fundamentally different from conscious phenomena is beyond me, especially considering that I have no way to prove or directly experience the actual existence of such mysterious "things". But if anyone still wants to make such assertions then I have no problem with that either.

[JeffreyW]

I think you are conflating the mode of experience with what is experienced. You are experiencing consciousness only in relation to something being experienced. To claim otherwise is to need to explain how you could possibly come up with everything you experience. Try writing another play as profound as the Tempest.

[Eugene I]

That experience reduces to consciousness (whatever that even is) in no way implies that Being can be reduced to consciousness. Actually, consciousness can be reduced to energy. Without energy there is no consciousness, but not all energy displays consciousness. Kastrup inadvertently backed into this on Twitter in argument with somebody over whether a computer could become conscious. He replied no, that only life can be conscious and unless a computer produces and uses ATP there can be no consciousness. ATP is the molecule that distributes energy throughout the brain, and without that distribution of energy consciousness ceases. To carry that to cosmic consciousness, it also would be dependent on energy and ATP.

Energy is one of the mathematical abstraction of physical models. It is practically very useful but nothing beyond that. We can re-formulate all equations of physics without using energy at all. Here you are inventing a metaphysical projection of some mysterious entity called "energy" that is fundamentally different from conscious experiences/phenomena but that brings these experience into existence. You can never experience such "energy" because all you can experience is only phenomena of conscious experience, therefor you can only intellectually invent it and project into presumable existence. We are back to metaphysics.

[JeffreyW]

That experience reduces to consciousness (whatever that even is) in no way implies that Being can be reduced to consciousness. Actually, consciousness can be reduced to energy. Without energy there is no consciousness, but not all energy displays consciousness. Kastrup inadvertently backed into this on Twitter in argument with somebody over whether a computer could become conscious. He replied no, that only life can be conscious and unless a computer produces and uses ATP there can be no consciousness. ATP is the molecule that distributes energy throughout the brain, and without that distribution of energy consciousness ceases. To carry that to cosmic consciousness, it also would be dependent on energy and ATP.

Energy is one of the mathematical abstraction of physical models. It is practically very useful but nothing beyond that. We can re-formulate all equations of physics without using energy at all. Here you are inventing a metaphysical projection of some mysterious entity called "energy" that is fundamentally different from conscious experiences/phenomena but that brings these experience into existence. You can never experience such "energy" because all you can experience is only phenomena of conscious experience, therefor you can only intellectually invent it and project into presumable existence. We are back to metaphysics.

[JeffreyW]

That experience reduces to consciousness (whatever that even is) in no way implies that Being can be reduced to consciousness. Actually, consciousness can be reduced to energy. Without energy there is no consciousness, but not all energy displays consciousness. Kastrup inadvertently backed into this on Twitter in argument with somebody over whether a computer could become conscious. He replied no, that only life can be conscious and unless a computer produces and uses ATP there can be no consciousness. ATP is the molecule that distributes energy throughout the brain, and without that distribution of energy consciousness ceases. To carry that to cosmic consciousness, it also would be dependent on energy and ATP.

Energy is one of the mathematical abstraction of physical models. It is practically very useful but nothing beyond that. We can re-formulate all equations of physics without using energy at all. Here you are inventing a metaphysical projection of some mysterious entity called "energy" that is fundamentally different from conscious experiences/phenomena but that brings these experience into existence. You can never experience such "energy" because all you can experience is only phenomena of conscious experience, therefor you can only intellectually invent it and project into presumable existence. We are back to metaphysics.

Here you are conflating a thing with its mathematical abstraction. Energy existed long before man came to abstract anything and acts upon us whether or not we abstract from it.