Criticism

[Eugene I]

Here is the difference - we conclude irreducible Thinking as the Ground after reasoning through immanent experience, while BK (and Schop) assumes "MAL willing" as the Ground (which also contains an implicit dualism between MAL/alter, Will-thinking).

I'm not so familiar with Schop's philosophy so can not comment on it, but BK said many times that he concludes the MAL as the ground and totality of existence based on our immanent conscious experience of willing and experiencing of conscious phenomena. In other words, his idealism is entirely phenomenologically-based. As he said in one video, the Mind at Large is a totality of conscious experiences/phenomena, including the acts of instinctive will that we all experience as humans. He emphasized many times that this is the key difference compared to materialism in which the ground is of a nature different from immanent conscious phenomena and therefore can never be experienced directly and can only be an abstraction for us, which creates an non-traversable division in a Kantian manner between our immanent conscious experience and the "material" ground. This is his main argument against materialism. So again, you claim is simply based on your misunderstanding of BK's philosophy, and if you will continue criticizing his philosophy from such position, BK and his followers will simply dismiss it as unwarranted. But again, what can be actually disputed in his philosophy is whether the instinctive will is the most fundamental force in the universe of Mind underlying the unfolding of this universe of forms on the sub-metacognitive level (as he and Schop claim), or or whether it is the meta-cognitive thinking activity at large that drives such unfolding. This controversy is where the dispute with BK could be more relevant and productive.

[AshvinP]

Not sure, but I've probably watched that video before, but will give it a listen again, and ponder it in the context of your remarks. Out of curiosity, have you read BK's Dreamed Up Reality: Diving Into Mind to Uncover the Astonishing Hidden Tale of Nature?—which next to More Than Allegory is perhaps the work I most resonate with. The reason I ask is that I wonder if you might find these earlier musings of BK, presumably preceding the later influence of Schopenhauer, also more resonant, and more in sync with what you are alluding to. If not, why not?

I remember reading some, but I don't see it on my Kindle. But consider this passage from MTA:

The problem is this: although the personal and direct experience of a transcendent order leaves an indelible mark in the human mind, the experience itself is almost never abiding. Once it ends, one quickly falls victim again to the irresistible pull of ordinary life and its claustrophobic ethos. The issue is compounded by the impossibility to properly translate the experience into words and concepts, which makes recall very difficult. This way, the transcendent order quickly becomes a rather abstract and distant idea, as opposed to a present and felt reality. One is left with ‘the agony of absence of the eternally further-beyond,’ 15 in the words of Henry Corbin. At best, life becomes divided into the baseline dullness of ordinary existence and fleeting, occasional excursions into transcendence. Either way, transcendence does not penetrate ordinary life. A clear boundary persists between the two, like a dam that prevents the riches amassed on the other side from flowing down into the river of our everyday existence. The two worlds don’t seem to overlap. Ordinary life remains, to a large extent, devoid of meaning.

Kastrup, Bernardo. More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth And Belief (Kindle Locations 363-371). John Hunt Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The reason the above is concluded is the implicit dualism of analytic idealism and the abstraction away from living Thinking. BK confuses his own personal cognitive limitation (which I also share) with a limitation of Reality itself. Then all subsequent thoughts about religion, myth, spirituality, science etc. move away from living Thinking and seek explanations for the world content on purely abstract grounds. Becoming self-aware of this personal limitation which is projected out onto the Cosmos is a major step in the other direction back towards the living Thinking.

[AshvinP]

Here is the difference - we conclude irreducible Thinking as the Ground after reasoning through immanent experience, while BK (and Schop) assumes "MAL willing" as the Ground (which also contains an implicit dualism between MAL/alter, Will-thinking).

I'm not so familiar with Schop's philosophy so can not comment on it, but BK said many times that he concludes the MAL as the ground and totality of existence based on our immanent conscious experience of willing and experiencing of conscious phenomena. In other words, his idealism is entirely phenomenologically-based. As he said in one video, the Mind at Large is a totality of conscious experiences/phenomena, including the acts of instinctive will that we all experience as humans. He emphasized many times that this is the key difference compared to materialism in which the ground is of a nature different from immanent conscious phenomena and therefore can never be experienced directly and can only be an abstraction for us, which creates an non-traversable division in a Kantian manner between our immanent conscious experience and the "material" ground. This is his main argument against materialism. So again, you claim is simply based on your misunderstanding of BK's philosophy, and if you will continue criticizing his philosophy from such position, BK and his followers will simply dismiss it as unwarranted. But again, what can be actually disputed in his philosophy is whether the instinctive will is the most fundamental force in the universe of Mind underlying the unfolding of this universe of forms on the sub-metacognitive level (as he and Schop claim), or or whether it is the meta-cognitive thinking activity at large that drives such unfolding. This controversy is where the dispute with BK could be more relevant and productive.

Eugene,

You frequently assert what underlies Kant, Schop, Hegel, and Steiner, and their philosophical differences, but also admit you are not familiar with any of their actual writings. You say it all comes down to theism and "meta-cognition", but that is simply not true. BK makes clear his idealism is no different from that of Schop. Everyone familiar with Western idealism knows that Hegel held completely different epistemology and philosphical approach than Kant-Schop, and Steiner spells out the differences in crystal clear detail throughout his writings. You simply cannot grasp the difference between analytic philosophy and phenomenology. It is your way of avoiding a substantive debate of the issues - you just claim we are all saying the same thing and none of us even realize it. You and FB would make a great backcourt in a pickup game

[Eugene I]

The problem is this: although the personal and direct experience of a transcendent order leaves an indelible mark in the human mind, the experience itself is almost never abiding. Once it ends, one quickly falls victim again to the irresistible pull of ordinary life and its claustrophobic ethos. The issue is compounded by the impossibility to properly translate the experience into words and concepts, which makes recall very difficult. This way, the transcendent order quickly becomes a rather abstract and distant idea, as opposed to a present and felt reality. One is left with ‘the agony of absence of the eternally further-beyond,’ 15 in the words of Henry Corbin. At best, life becomes divided into the baseline dullness of ordinary existence and fleeting, occasional excursions into transcendence. Either way, transcendence does not penetrate ordinary life. A clear boundary persists between the two, like a dam that prevents the riches amassed on the other side from flowing down into the river of our everyday existence. The two worlds don’t seem to overlap. Ordinary life remains, to a large extent, devoid of meaning.

Kastrup, Bernardo. More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth And Belief (Kindle Locations 363-371). John Hunt Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The reason the above is concluded is the implicit dualism of analytic idealism and the abstraction away from living Thinking. BK confuses his own personal cognitive limitation (which I also share) with a limitation of Reality itself. Then all subsequent thoughts about religion, myth, spirituality, science etc. move away from living Thinking and seek explanations for the world content on purely abstract grounds. Becoming self-aware of this personal limitation which is projected out onto the Cosmos is a major step in the other direction back towards the living Thinking.

I don't see that issue in the above quote where BK clearly states that "personal and direct experience of a transcendent order leaves an indelible mark in the human mind", in other words, in many of us our knowledge of the transcendent order is grounded in the direct experience of it rather than in an abstract intellectualization of it . The only thing he says here is that this experience is transient, and when it goes away, we are left with memory imprints of it that become abstracted and distant ideas if the living experience of the transcendent order is not continuously maintained. And isn't it true?

Interesting though, in this thread I said exactly that - that in some people the knowledge about the transcendent order comes from direct experience, but you criticized that.

[Eugene I]

Eugene,

You frequently assert what underlies Kant, Schop, Hegel, and Steiner, and their philosophical differences, but also admit you are not familiar with any of their actual writings. You say it all comes down to theism and "meta-cognition", but that is simply not true. BK makes clear his idealism is no different from that of Schop. Everyone familiar with Western idealism knows that Hegel held completely different epistemology and philosphical approach than Kant-Schop, and Steiner spells out the differences in crystal clear detail throughout his writings. You simply cannot grasp the difference between analytic philosophy and phenomenology. It is your way of avoiding a substantive debate of the issues - you just claim we are all saying the same thing and none of us even realize it. You and FB would make a great backcourt in a pickup game

Perhaps you are right about Schop, I simply don't have time and motivation to read his works so I can't comment. But I'm more familiar with BK's philosophy and still think you misunderstand it and your criticism is unwarranted and misses more important issues in his philosophy.

[AshvinP]

The problem is this: although the personal and direct experience of a transcendent order leaves an indelible mark in the human mind, the experience itself is almost never abiding. Once it ends, one quickly falls victim again to the irresistible pull of ordinary life and its claustrophobic ethos. The issue is compounded by the impossibility to properly translate the experience into words and concepts, which makes recall very difficult. This way, the transcendent order quickly becomes a rather abstract and distant idea, as opposed to a present and felt reality. One is left with ‘the agony of absence of the eternally further-beyond,’ 15 in the words of Henry Corbin. At best, life becomes divided into the baseline dullness of ordinary existence and fleeting, occasional excursions into transcendence. Either way, transcendence does not penetrate ordinary life. A clear boundary persists between the two, like a dam that prevents the riches amassed on the other side from flowing down into the river of our everyday existence. The two worlds don’t seem to overlap. Ordinary life remains, to a large extent, devoid of meaning.

Kastrup, Bernardo. More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth And Belief (Kindle Locations 363-371). John Hunt Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The reason the above is concluded is the implicit dualism of analytic idealism and the abstraction away from living Thinking. BK confuses his own personal cognitive limitation (which I also share) with a limitation of Reality itself. Then all subsequent thoughts about religion, myth, spirituality, science etc. move away from living Thinking and seek explanations for the world content on purely abstract grounds. Becoming self-aware of this personal limitation which is projected out onto the Cosmos is a major step in the other direction back towards the living Thinking.

I don't see that issue in the above quote where BK clearly states that "personal and direct experience of a transcendent order leaves an indelible mark in the human mind", in other words, in many of us our knowledge of the transcendent order is grounded in the direct experience of it rather than in an abstract intellectualization of it . The only thing he says here is that this experience is transient, and when it goes away, we are left with memory imprints of it that become abstracted and distant ideas if the living experience of the transcendent order is not continuously maintained. And isn't it true?

Interesting though, in this thread I said exactly that - that in some people the knowledge about the transcendent order comes from direct experience, but you criticized that.

The question is not about whether there can be direct experience of transcendent reality. According to Steiner, we are always experiencing that reality subconsciously. There is no essential dualism of immanent/transcendent. That is the inevitable conclusion of any consistent monism-idealism. Once BK posits a "clear boundary between the two [immanent and transcendent reality]", he has lapsed into dualism and cut himself off from fleshing out the spiritual implications of a consistent idealism. Instead, the analytic philosophy proceeds directly into the same territory of physicalism, where the Ground is conceived as little more than an abstract void. He says all spiritual knowledge is little more than "stories we tell ourselves" to gain what little abstract connection we can to the transcendent reality in this lifetime. According to BK, depending on which interview we listen to, it is quite possible that we will die physically and never remember anything of our individuated experience. That is the physicalist conclusion, plain and simple.

[Eugene I]

The question is not about whether there can be direct experience of transcendent reality. According to Steiner, we are always experiencing that reality subconsciously. There is no essential dualism of immanent/transcendent. That is the inevitable conclusion of any consistent monism-idealism. Once BK posits a "clear boundary between the two [immanent and transcendent reality]", he has lapsed into dualism and cut himself off from fleshing out the spiritual implications of a consistent idealism. Instead, the analytic philosophy proceeds directly into the same territory of physicalism, where the Ground is conceived as little more than an abstract void. He says all spiritual knowledge is little more than "stories we tell ourselves" to gain what little abstract connection we can to the transcendent reality in this lifetime. According to BK, depending on which interview we listen to, it is quite possible that we will die physically and never remember anything of our individuated experience. That is the physicalist conclusion, plain and simple.

In one video I remember him clearly saying that all transcendent ideations of MAL are actually experienced but only subconsciously. As he said, "these experiences are real but not consciously reported". The "boundary" he is talking about ("Markov's blanket" in his terminology) is only the differentiation between the consciously and unconsciously experienced phenomena (i.e. reported and non-reported phenomena). This "boundary" is flexible, we can in principle access the transcendent and subconscious realms in our spiritual experiences. You simply misinterpret such differentiation as dualism in a Kantian-divide manner, which it is not. In Kantian dualism the realm of noumenon cannot be ever experienced, neither consciously nor subconsciously, the division is non-traversable in principle.

[AshvinP]

The question is not about whether there can be direct experience of transcendent reality. According to Steiner, we are always experiencing that reality subconsciously. There is no essential dualism of immanent/transcendent. That is the inevitable conclusion of any consistent monism-idealism. Once BK posits a "clear boundary between the two [immanent and transcendent reality]", he has lapsed into dualism and cut himself off from fleshing out the spiritual implications of a consistent idealism. Instead, the analytic philosophy proceeds directly into the same territory of physicalism, where the Ground is conceived as little more than an abstract void. He says all spiritual knowledge is little more than "stories we tell ourselves" to gain what little abstract connection we can to the transcendent reality in this lifetime. According to BK, depending on which interview we listen to, it is quite possible that we will die physically and never remember anything of our individuated experience. That is the physicalist conclusion, plain and simple.

In one video I remember him clearly saying that all transcendent ideations of MAL are actually experienced but only subconsciously. As he said, "these experiences are real but not consciously reported". The "boundary" he is talking about ("Markov's blanket" in his terminology) is only the differentiation between the consciously and unconsciously experienced phenomena (i.e. reported and non-reported phenomena). You simply misinterpret such differentiation as dualism in a Kantian-divide manner, which it is not. In Kantian dualism the realm of noumenon cannot be experienced in principle, neither consciously nor subconsciously.

No it is the same. Kant obviously did not put it in terms of "subconscious", which was not known as a possibility back then, but he says that our conceptual intuitions do not belong to the noumenon (things-in-themselves), rather they are imposed by our "personal" minds (alters) onto the noumenon. That is the same for Schop and BK with the sole exception of purely abstract and instinctive "Will". They both fail to perceive that they can only intuit the Will's existence through their Thinking activity. The dualism comes into play in the epistemology, i.e. what it is possible to know about the noumenon in this lifetime. Kant, Schop, and BK all say we cannot make those noumenal layers of the subconscious conscious in this lifetime.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I remember reading some, but I don't see it on my Kindle. But consider this passage from MTA:

The problem is this: although the personal and direct experience of a transcendent order leaves an indelible mark in the human mind, the experience itself is almost never abiding. Once it ends, one quickly falls victim again to the irresistible pull of ordinary life and its claustrophobic ethos. The issue is compounded by the impossibility to properly translate the experience into words and concepts, which makes recall very difficult. This way, the transcendent order quickly becomes a rather abstract and distant idea, as opposed to a present and felt reality. One is left with ‘the agony of absence of the eternally further-beyond,’ 15 in the words of Henry Corbin. At best, life becomes divided into the baseline dullness of ordinary existence and fleeting, occasional excursions into transcendence. Either way, transcendence does not penetrate ordinary life. A clear boundary persists between the two, like a dam that prevents the riches amassed on the other side from flowing down into the river of our everyday existence. The two worlds don’t seem to overlap. Ordinary life remains, to a large extent, devoid of meaning.

Kastrup, Bernardo. More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth And Belief (Kindle Locations 363-371). John Hunt Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The reason the above is concluded is the implicit dualism of analytic idealism and the abstraction away from living Thinking. BK confuses his own personal cognitive limitation (which I also share) with a limitation of Reality itself. Then all subsequent thoughts about religion, myth, spirituality, science etc. move away from living Thinking and seek explanations for the world content on purely abstract grounds. Becoming self-aware of this personal limitation which is projected out onto the Cosmos is a major step in the other direction back towards the living Thinking.

DUR precedes MTA by a few years, so is even further removed from the Schopenhauer phase. I can only quote from it to give some impression of where his mindspace was at in those early explorations, albeit it's not much upon which to base your input, and as I only have it in hard copy, thus having to type it out with these crippled fingers, here is but a brief snippet to perhaps whet the appetite ...

"Only your own direct experience with subjective exploration can take you beyond speculation and towards knowledge. This book is no substitute for that. Instead, what I've sought to achieve with it is a kind of art whose medium is ideas; an art form that, although expressed in words, like a work of fiction, engages the intense flirtation with the here and now; so intense in fact that, as in an obsessive love affair, it seeks to dissolve the boundaries between itself and the object of its affection. Such an art form thrives in the possibility that it is one with reality."

[AshvinP]

I remember reading some, but I don't see it on my Kindle. But consider this passage from MTA:

The problem is this: although the personal and direct experience of a transcendent order leaves an indelible mark in the human mind, the experience itself is almost never abiding. Once it ends, one quickly falls victim again to the irresistible pull of ordinary life and its claustrophobic ethos. The issue is compounded by the impossibility to properly translate the experience into words and concepts, which makes recall very difficult. This way, the transcendent order quickly becomes a rather abstract and distant idea, as opposed to a present and felt reality. One is left with ‘the agony of absence of the eternally further-beyond,’ 15 in the words of Henry Corbin. At best, life becomes divided into the baseline dullness of ordinary existence and fleeting, occasional excursions into transcendence. Either way, transcendence does not penetrate ordinary life. A clear boundary persists between the two, like a dam that prevents the riches amassed on the other side from flowing down into the river of our everyday existence. The two worlds don’t seem to overlap. Ordinary life remains, to a large extent, devoid of meaning.

Kastrup, Bernardo. More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth And Belief (Kindle Locations 363-371). John Hunt Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The reason the above is concluded is the implicit dualism of analytic idealism and the abstraction away from living Thinking. BK confuses his own personal cognitive limitation (which I also share) with a limitation of Reality itself. Then all subsequent thoughts about religion, myth, spirituality, science etc. move away from living Thinking and seek explanations for the world content on purely abstract grounds. Becoming self-aware of this personal limitation which is projected out onto the Cosmos is a major step in the other direction back towards the living Thinking.

DUR precedes MTA by a few years, so is even further removed from the Schopenhauer phase. I can only quote from it to give some impression of where his mindspace was at in those early explorations, albeit it's not much upon which to base your input, and as I only have it in hard copy, thus having to type it out with these crippled fingers, here is but a brief snippet to perhaps whet the appetite ...

"Only your own direct experience with subjective exploration can take you beyond speculation and towards knowledge. This book is no substitute for that. Instead, what I've sought to achieve with it is a kind of art whose medium is ideas; an art form that, although expressed in words, like a work of fiction, engagess the intense flirtation with the here and now; so intense in fact that, as in an obsessive love affair, it seeks to dissolve the boundaries between itself and the object of its affection. Such an art form thrives in the possibility that it is one with reality."

Thanks - that is even more clear reference to the issue here. Notice he calls it "subjective exploration". He does not think it is a matter for any philosophical or scientific inquiry, which is objective. He thinks it can only be an "artform", like a composer who receives some dim inspiration from the transcendent realm before composing a song. The key difference is not what he thinks we can accomplish in this lifetime, which we all agree on, but what he thinks we cannot accomplish under any circumstances. Noticing that spiritual practice or art can establish a connection with transcendent meaning, which is practically something everyone agrees on, is not going to pull humanity back from the shores of nihilism.

I do agree, though, that BK started off more open to these possibilities of genuine spiritual exploration in this lifetime and has steadily foreclosed on that possibility as time moved on. As Cleric remarked, that is how it goes when thinking is conceived as abstraction - the thoughts steadily lead away from the Logos which imbues all forms of our experience with deep spiritual meaning, because they have artificially foreclosed on the possibility of moving in the other direction.