Criticism

[JeffreyW]

Ok, I disagree on the tone towards him, he said extremely disrespectful things, wrong things and had a strong tone of contempt before he was even invited here, I only invited him because I thought there could be a small chance B. would talk to him for the sake of content or write a blog-post for the sake of content. Thats all I am after.
Doesnt mean hes not not a well-read guy on philosopy and physics, which he studied.
He even quotes german words like mitstimmung that definitely dont exist, except maybe
in the mind of the one person who may have invented it. It could in principle exist as a
composite but it doesnt exist in the real world of Germans, even a google-search
did not return anything nor did entering it into dictionaries.

All that aside if I had not seen some substance he would not be here.
How you sort people according to whether they read your PDFs if interesting.

Can you give me an example how Bernardos idealism is abstract?
I agree that BK has not invented anything new, I came up with the same stuff on my own.
He just added quite a few bells and whistles and helped made a few things click
even better. "There is nothing new under the sun" as he said once himself.
Hence: renaissance of idealism.
Funny how toxic people are towards him in this very forum.

I borrowed the word from Heidegger, who I believe spoke some German.

[AshvinP]

2. We have no where to go. An educated spec, thats it.
We kind of know from our perspective as far as the abiogenese-guys do know it.
You are asking what it looks like from inside "Mal"?
No idea. There is obviosly a mystery.
But we are alters, we can point at the mirror and say: there is the alter.
I still dont understand why thats an abstraction but maybe I dont
know different examples of abtractions, I think I understand
the main points of what an abstraction is.

That should be a major problem for anyone who thinks knowing inquiries should shed more light on phenomena, not less light. This form of idealism actually takes a precisely formulated theory of living organisms, which no doubt contains some very important insights regardless of our metaphysical position, and replaces it with an abstract concept shrouded in complete darkness.

As said to Martin, abstraction is intimately related with practical significance. This only makes sense - the less something is tied to any concrete human experience (experiences which are highly structured, ever-evolving, and rich with meaning), the less relevance it will have for that concrete experience. I don't think it is an overstatement to compare these sentiments to an ontology which says, "Reality is a [mental] black hole", and that's it.

[Eugene I]

That should be a major problem for anyone who thinks knowing inquiries should shed more light on phenomena, not less light. This form of idealism actually takes a precisely formulated theory of living organisms, which no doubt contains some very important insights regardless of our metaphysical position, and replaces it with an abstract concept shrouded in complete darkness.

Kastrup's philosophy is a model originally derived from direct human experience. Our experience tells us that we experience a flow of conscious phenomena in our own minds. However, we also learn from experience of communication with other people that they also have a similarly structured flow of phenomena in their minds, but in most cases these flows are different and do not overlap, even though there is a continuous communication and interconnection going on between them. There is a certain interconnected fragmentation of the total flow of conscious phenomena that we all observe together. These are bare experiential facts. What we also do by utilizing our ability of rational and intuitive thinking is that we reflect the facts of experience and create ideal interpretations or models ("theories") relevant to the facts of experience that would describe them with a certain level of accuracy. The purpose of such reflective modeling is very practical - it help us to make sense of the experience and predict its outcomes depending on our decisions and acts of will. In a way, a good reflective model should comply with both Russel's "Correspondence Theory of Truth" and Charles Pierce's "Pragmatic Theory of Truth". If the experience changes or expands, the theory should also adopt to the changing experience (or to be replaced with a different theory). So, as long as a theory is always related to the relevant experience, it is not an abstraction. However, it becomes an abstraction when it is "abstracted" from the concrete experience and becomes a system of ideas on its own. A theory may start as relevant to an experience but later become an abstraction, or it may be made up as an abstraction from start and stay irrelevant to any experience, or it may later become relevant to experience. For example, the Riemann geometry was first developed as an abstract math model, but later was found to be relevant as a basis for an accurate General Relativity model.

The BK's model of alters is a simple model relevant to our experience of interconnected fragmentation of conscious phenomena. He used the DID as an explanatory analogy for such fragmentation, and that is where the term "alter" came from. As such, the BK's model is not an abstraction, but a practical model within the framework of idealism (which is "consciousness is all there is"). However, when people learn about the BK's model but ignore or unaware of the actual experience to which this model pertains, then that's when the BK's model becomes an abstraction specifically in those people minds. In other words, BK's model is not an abstraction the way it was developed by BK, but often becomes an abstraction when people misinterpret it.

[AshvinP]

That should be a major problem for anyone who thinks knowing inquiries should shed more light on phenomena, not less light. This form of idealism actually takes a precisely formulated theory of living organisms, which no doubt contains some very important insights regardless of our metaphysical position, and replaces it with an abstract concept shrouded in complete darkness.

Kastrup's philosophy is a model originally derived from direct human experience. Our experience tells us that we experience a flow of conscious phenomena in our own minds. However, we also learn from experience of communication with other people that they also have a similarly structured flow of phenomena in their minds, but in most cases these flows are different and do not overlap, even though there is a continuous communication and interconnection going on between them. There is a certain interconnected fragmentation of the total flow of conscious phenomena that we all observe together. These are bare experiential facts. What we also do by utilizing our ability of rational and intuitive thinking is that we reflect the facts of experience and create ideal interpretations or models ("theories") relevant to the facts of experience that would describe them with a certain level of accuracy. The purpose of such reflective modeling is very practical - it help us to make sense of the experience and predict its outcomes depending on our decisions and acts of will. In a way, a good reflective model should comply with both Russel's "Correspondence Theory of Truth" and Charles Pierce's "Pragmatic Theory of Truth". If the experience changes or expands, the theory should also adopt to the changing experience (or to be replaced with a different theory). So, as long as a theory is always related to the relevant experience, it is not an abstraction. However, it becomes an abstraction when it is "abstracted" from the concrete experience and becomes a system of ideas on its own. A theory may start as relevant to an experience but later become an abstraction, or it may be made up as an abstraction from start and stay irrelevant to any experience, or it may later become relevant to experience. For example, the Riemann geometry was first developed as an abstract math model, but later was found to be relevant as a basis for an accurate General Relativity model.

The BK's model of alters is a simple model relevant to our experience of interconnected fragmentation of conscious phenomena. He used the DID as an explanatory analogy for such fragmentation, and that is where the term "alter" came from. As such, the BK's model is not an abstraction, but a practical model within the framework of idealism (which is "consciousness is all there is"). However, when people learn about the BK's model but ignore or unaware of the actual experience to which this model pertains, then that's when the BK's model becomes an abstraction specifically in those people minds. In other words, BK's model is not an abstraction the way it was developed by BK, but often becomes an abstraction when people misinterpret it.

Eugene,

I can't even type out these explanations to you anymore, because I think it is giving me arthritis. The underlined are pure abstract assumptions. The bold are explicit dualisms which flow from those flawed assumptions. Your 2nd paragraph is an accurate summation of why BK's philosophy is rooted in abstractions which are not first derived from experience, but instead uses analogy of DID to explain it's own abstractions. All of it is abstract analytic philosophy and not phenomenology, in the way either of those terms have ever been used in the history of philosophy. And correspondence theory of truth has not, is not, and will never be compatible with pragmatic understanding of truth.

Is it possible you and Mark simply don't know as much about Western philosophy and German idealism as you think you do? That is a good theory to explain why you consistently get these things wrong. It is supported by the evidence you both admit to never having read much of the philosophy. And your forever keeping of Thinking in the blind spot is what leads you to state and restate various versions of dualism in practically every comment without realizing it. It is not frustrating that this is done, because many many people do it, actually we all do it at various times, but it's frustrating that you won't ever consider the possibility that you are not the sole exception.

[Mark Tetzner]

I borrowed the word from Heidegger, who I believe spoke some German.

Seems he spoke and invented German.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Seems he spoke and invented German.

Hey, surely, even for Germans, neologisms are allowed. Indeed, when it comes to the ineffable, and Lao Tzu's aphorism that true words seem paradoxical, neologisms seem almost inevitable. That's why I refer to emptifullness, and Scott refers to mumorphism, which last time I checked you ain't gonna find in the OED.

[Soul_of_Shu]

That should be a major problem for anyone who thinks knowing inquiries should shed more light on phenomena, not less light. This form of idealism actually takes a precisely formulated theory of living organisms, which no doubt contains some very important insights regardless of our metaphysical position, and replaces it with an abstract concept shrouded in complete darkness.

Kastrup's philosophy is a model originally derived from direct human experience. Our experience tells us that we experience a flow of conscious phenomena in our own minds. However, we also learn from experience of communication with other people that they also have a similarly structured flow of phenomena in their minds, but in most cases these flows are different and do not overlap, even though there is a continuous communication and interconnection going on between them. There is a certain interconnected fragmentation of the total flow of conscious phenomena that we all observe together. These are bare experiential facts. What we also do by utilizing our ability of rational and intuitive thinking is that we reflect the facts of experience and create ideal interpretations or models ("theories") relevant to the facts of experience that would describe them with a certain level of accuracy. The purpose of such reflective modeling is very practical - it help us to make sense of the experience and predict its outcomes depending on our decisions and acts of will. In a way, a good reflective model should comply with both Russel's "Correspondence Theory of Truth" and Charles Pierce's "Pragmatic Theory of Truth". If the experience changes or expands, the theory should also adopt to the changing experience (or to be replaced with a different theory). So, as long as a theory is always related to the relevant experience, it is not an abstraction. However, it becomes an abstraction when it is "abstracted" from the concrete experience and becomes a system of ideas on its own. A theory may start as relevant to an experience but later become an abstraction, or it may be made up as an abstraction from start and stay irrelevant to any experience, or it may later become relevant to experience. For example, the Riemann geometry was first developed as an abstract math model, but later was found to be relevant as a basis for an accurate General Relativity model.

Eugene,

I can't even type out these explanations to you anymore, because I think it is giving me arthritis. The underlined are pure abstract assumptions. The bold are explicit dualisms which flow from those flawed assumptions. Your 2nd paragraph is an accurate summation of why BK's philosophy is rooted in abstractions which are not first derived from experience, but instead uses analogy of DID to explain it's own abstractions. All of it is abstract analytic philosophy and not phenomenology, in the way either of those terms have ever been used in the history of philosophy. And correspondence theory of truth has not, is not, and will never be compatible with pragmatic understanding of truth.

Is it possible you and Mark simply don't know as much about Western philosophy and German idealism as you think you do? That is a good theory to explain why you consistently get these things wrong. It is supported by the evidence you both admit to never having read much of the philosophy. And your forever keeping of Thinking in the blind spot is what leads you to state and restate various versions of dualism in practically every comment without realizing it. It is not frustrating that this is done, because many many people do it, actually we all do it at various times, but it's frustrating that you won't ever consider the possibility that you are not the sole exception.

I'm fast becoming convinced that we need to get out of this highly restrictive, disjointed textbound format, if we're ever going to make any progress on these questions of epistemology, and the premise that we should be relying only on what we know by experience, rather than abstract speculation, whether idealist or physicalist, because by its very nature this textbound communication is limited to interpreting a written representation of our thoughts, feelings willings, etc, with no real-time elaboration or collaboration that might allow for more clarity. So I'm contemplating the possibility of taking metakastrup into zoom-mode, beginning with an experiment of a small number of us getting together on JW's youtube channel to parse out our various takes on it. To begin with, perhaps no more than 4 or 5, otherwise it just becomes too much input to keep it comprehensible. So anyone else up for that?

[Mark Tetzner]

Hey, surely, even for Germans, neologisms are allowed. Indeed, when it comes to the ineffable, and Lao Tzu's aphorism that true words seem paradoxical, neologisms seem almost inevitable. That's why I refer to emptifullness, and Scott refers to mumorphism, which last time I checked you ain't gonna find in the OED.

sure. no problem. the problem i see more is that if a neologism only leaves a native speaker with question-marks on is forehead, then it is not of much use. imagine I used the term together-mood or even with-mood (=mitstimmung), you would be shaking your head. so i guess mitstimmung points at people vibing with each other, so if heidegger explained it when using the term then....ok, but i can not know. mitstimmung could exist with ease, it just doesnt. english is a language where certain words carry a lot of meaning, a question of sprachgefuehl . german is not such a language, it is somewhat complicated and not much intuitive understanding is built into most of our words. thousands of neologisms would help the german language. it already happens, as we take many english terms and integrate them into our language, for example "cringe" has been voted for to be the word of the year among "young people" if I remember correctly. it means being embarrassed on behalf of someone else (fremdschaemen). german "youth-slang" incorporates many english words. there isnt a good german word for it. "sus" is another one highly en vogue right now, german youth means "suspicious" when using it. again: german slang uses a lot of english. I like your zoom-idea but my camera has magically configured itself no not operating properly so I am looking forward to you guys meeting.

[Eugene I]

Eugene,

I can't even type out these explanations to you anymore, because I think it is giving me arthritis. The underlined are pure abstract assumptions. The bold are explicit dualisms which flow from those flawed assumptions. Your 2nd paragraph is an accurate summation of why BK's philosophy is rooted in abstractions which are not first derived from experience, but instead uses analogy of DID to explain it's own abstractions. All of it is abstract analytic philosophy and not phenomenology, in the way either of those terms have ever been used in the history of philosophy. And correspondence theory of truth has not, is not, and will never be compatible with pragmatic understanding of truth.

In order to resolve this we need to start from scratch and align with basic definition of terms. Since we both speak about phenomenology and seem to agree that conceptual models need to be grounded in phenomenal experience, we first need to define what the word "phenomenon" means. So, step #1: please give your definition of "phenomenon".

For the reference:
The discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.
Do you agree with this definition? If not, please give your own.

Step #2. If you agree with the above definition (I do), then answer these questions:
- In your 1-st person subjective experience you experience certain qualitative phenomena, such as the color of the wall in your room. In my subjective 1-st person experience I do not experience the same phenomenon of the color of the wall that you experience. We do not share the experiences of the same phenomena, our spaces of conscious phenomena do not overlap. This is experiential fact as experienced from our the 1-st person perspectives. True or not?
- If true then linguistically we can conventionally call this observation "fragmentation of the fields of 1-st person experiences". The particular selection of the word "fragmentation" does not matter as long as we know what phenomenal experience it refers to.

Step #3. Next, we need to give definitions and agree what the term "abstraction" means. For the reference:

Abstraction is the process of generalization by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a black-and-white leather soccer ball to a ball retains only the information on general attributes and behavior of a ball. Similarly, abstracting “happiness” to an “emotional state” reduces the amount of information conveyed about the emotional state. Abstraction typically results in the reduction of a complex idea to a simpler concept or a general domain, which allows the understanding of a variety of specific scenarios in terms of certain basic ideas. Abstract things are sometimes defined as those things that do not exist in reality or exist only as sensory experience, but there is a difficulty in deciding which things "exist" in reality. It is difficult to reach agreement on whether concepts like God, the number three, and goodness are real, abstract, or both.

In philosophical terminology, abstraction is the thought process wherein ideas are distanced from objects.

Abstraction uses a strategy of simplification which ignores formerly concrete details or leaves them ambiguous, vague, or undefined. Effective communication about things in the abstract requires an intuitive or common experience between persons wishing to communicate.

According to such definition, any manipulation of ideas by thinking when they become distanced from objects (phenomena) becomes an abstraction.
Do you agree or not? If not, please give your definition of abstraction.

[AshvinP]

Eugene,

I can't even type out these explanations to you anymore, because I think it is giving me arthritis. The underlined are pure abstract assumptions. The bold are explicit dualisms which flow from those flawed assumptions. Your 2nd paragraph is an accurate summation of why BK's philosophy is rooted in abstractions which are not first derived from experience, but instead uses analogy of DID to explain it's own abstractions. All of it is abstract analytic philosophy and not phenomenology, in the way either of those terms have ever been used in the history of philosophy. And correspondence theory of truth has not, is not, and will never be compatible with pragmatic understanding of truth.

In order to resolve this we need to start from scratch and align with basic definition of terms. Since we both speak about phenomenology and seem to agree that conceptual models need to be grounded in phenomenal experience, we first need to define what the word "phenomenon" means. So, step #1: please give your definition of "phenomenon".

For the reference:
The discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.
Do you agree with this definition? If not, please give your own.

Yes, that is fine, IF we also add "without any assumptions about the nature of the phenomenon". That is practically the hardest part for people to avoid when engaging in phenomenology, but absolutely necessary.

Step #2. If you agree with the above definition (I do), then answer these questions:
- In your 1-st person subjective experience you experience certain qualitative phenomena, such as the color of the wall in your room. In my subjective 1-st person experience I do not experience the same phenomenon of the color of the wall that you experience. We do not share the experiences of the same phenomena, our spaces of conscious phenomena do not overlap. This is experiential fact as experienced from our the 1-st person perspectives. True or not?
- If true then linguistically we can conventionally call this observation "fragmentation of the fields of 1-st person experiences". The particular selection of the word "fragmentation" does not matter as long as we know what phenomenal experience it refers to.

The bold is already a major assumption which has strayed from the phenomenological approach. You are already assuming a dualism in which there are two subjects without overlapping "spaces" of conscious phenomena (I am including ideal content of appearances in "phenomena"). If any such dualism is correct, then it can only result as a conclusion after we have carefully reasoned through our 1st-person experience of phenomena. So no, the "fragmentation of the fields", in the sense you are using it, is a pure assumption at this point and such assumptions are only appropriate for analytic philosophy.

Step #3. Next, we need to give definitions and agree what the term "abstraction" means. For the reference:

Abstraction is the process of generalization by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a black-and-white leather soccer ball to a ball retains only the information on general attributes and behavior of a ball. Similarly, abstracting “happiness” to an “emotional state” reduces the amount of information conveyed about the emotional state. Abstraction typically results in the reduction of a complex idea to a simpler concept or a general domain, which allows the understanding of a variety of specific scenarios in terms of certain basic ideas. Abstract things are sometimes defined as those things that do not exist in reality or exist only as sensory experience, but there is a difficulty in deciding which things "exist" in reality. It is difficult to reach agreement on whether concepts like God, the number three, and goodness are real, abstract, or both.

In philosophical terminology, abstraction is the thought process wherein ideas are distanced from objects.

Abstraction uses a strategy of simplification which ignores formerly concrete details or leaves them ambiguous, vague, or undefined. Effective communication about things in the abstract requires an intuitive or common experience between persons wishing to communicate.

According to such definition, any manipulation of ideas by thinking when they become distanced from objects (phenomena) becomes an abstraction.
Do you agree or not? If not, please give your definition of abstraction.

Sure, this is fine definition (except we should be careful with the bold which contains an implicit assumption, or at least will normally be interpreted with this assumption, that ideas are not also aspects of the objects).

I have a sense where this is going, so I will just say now that there is no problem with abstractions as such. This also speaks to Dana's post above about writing and representation. The problem comes in when we forget that we have abstracted from the phenomena and assume the abstractions themselves are adequate explanations for the phenomena. The more we abstract in our philosophy and rely on those abstractions in our formulations, the more likely this error becomes. So if some reading what I am writing right now look at the words and think to themselves, "these words explain why meaning arises, because the appearance of the word-forms stimulates my mental activity to create meaning, and naturally someone else's mental activity will create different meaning", then they have reified the abstraction.