GrantHenderson wrote: ↑Wed May 18, 2022 9:03 pm So the dichotomy between "pure experience" and meta-analysis thinking cannot be valid, as there would be nothing to meta-analyze in the absence of thinking.
Good catch, I wasn’t careful enough with that description.
I’m not intending to advocate that all thinking isn’t a meta-analysis of pre-existing thinking activity, but that we can block sense perceptions from interrupting such thoughts, thereby rendering them “internal experiences” that precede additional context provided by future sense perceptions. I don’t intend to propose a dichotomy between meta-analysis and pure experiences, but that we can engage in pure experiences (as a meta-analysis of previous thinking activity) without simultaneously forming an additional meta-analysis of that pure experience (which is itself a meta-analysis of previous thinking activity). The point I was trying to make is that when we form a meta-analysis of previous thinking activity, we lose some pure comprehension thereof.
This framework is supported by the visual analogy I shared. All future thinking activity — as bound by an outer circle — is linked to, and based upon previous thinking activity — as bound by an inner circle.
One thing I have tried to make clear from many of my previous comments is that there are no tangible objects, or an object/subject divide. I think the mind can trick itself into believing that such a divide exists — even though it doesn’t. The mind can assign arbitrary boundaries that separate subjects — this is evident by the fact that we can differentiate things in our surroundings. But these boundaries dissolve when they are brought deeper into focus. My reference to the mind as compartmentalizing information is as such a hallucination of mind.
This is also how I use pixels in my visual analogy — which should not be mistaken as objective content. The analogy demonstrates how pixels cannot be bound by perception, nor can pixels exist outside of perception. Thus, it is not rational to claim the existence of pixels as occupying a definite position in time (either as mind dependent or mind independent phenomena). Rather, pixels are how the mind forms estimations of its qualitative experiences.
I propose that our thinking activity is like a sensory organ which perceives ideal content like our eyes perceive colors, and therefore we are always co-creating the experiential world through this activity.
I agree that we participate in the creation of the experiential world through ideal thinking activity.
Most of our perception-thinking is completely reflexive, dragged around by sense-perceptions and intellectual concepts, and therefore out of our control. We need to seek out the relatively tiny islands of active thinking and images which we have creative responsibility for.
I don’t believe our perception-thinking is ever completely reflexive. This presupposes dualism, as it implies that our conscious thinking can be separate from the conscious thinking of MAL. It implies that we can be merely be a body which acts out the thinking activity of higher orders of consciousness.
Our capacity for creative choice is what enables our subjective experience of world content. It is our unique way of qualitatively viewing the world which makes us a participant in its creation. The experiential world is therefore never entirely created by “something else”. Otherwise, we would be dissolved in an entropic soup of the universe. The energy cost of creative choice is just subject to variation, and creative choice more quickly or slowly breaks down to instinct at the whims of the cosmic plan.
We serve a higher order consciousness in accordance with our order within the complexity chain. Like how each organ in our body functions to contribute not just to that organ but other related organs. And most of all, they serve to contribute to the function of our nervous system. Whereas, our nervous system moderates resources between all organs, but at some point delegates tasks to each specific organ. Universal minds' goal to dictate requires that it also empowers in a self generative feedback loop. Also a bit like how each neuron is essentially fighting for agency over every single neuron in your brain, which requires that it also sends information to other neurons (empowering them) in order for that neuron to reciprocate.
The energy cost for shifting focus against the influences of the cosmic forces depends on the homogeneity between our higher conscious environment and our individualistic interpretive model thereof, as well as our internal vs sense perceptual proclivities of our individualist focus/engagement in the instance of action.
For example, if we enter a relatively unfamiliar environment, and we are engaging our sense perceptions, the energy cost to shift our focus to some standard amount would be higher. Additionally, the time frame in which Willed thought breaks down to instinct reduces per standard amount of energy used — In which case, we are more at the whims of the “cosmic plan”. Whereas, if our sense perceptions are not as engaged, but we are instead processing deep internal experiences, this unfamiliar environment does not reduce the energy cost for individualistic choice as much. Furthermore, under familiar environmental conditions, we do not need to engage our sense perceptions as heavily, and are thereby more free to engage in internal processes without disruption by our relative environment.
As such, the relative entropy of the observer's environment, and the observer's sensory vs internal engagement levels determines the energy cost for said observer to make creative choices, as well as the time based parameters in which said observer's thinking breaks down to instinct under the whims of cosmic influences. This seems to function to filter the actions of observers that may otherwise push against the ideal patterns of the whole system.
Here’s another way of looking at it which you may not like due to its outward facing nature.
Since action by a local observer changes the state of the environment it is contained within, it can be regarded as distinct to its environment by the entropy differential it imposes on its environment. More specifically, the degree to which a local observer is defined as an alter = the differential entropy between the whole system, and the system external to the observer in a moment of conjunction between the observer and the system, multiplied by the time duration in which information is communicated from the relative system to the observer such that the system entropy is increased an amount equal to the differential entropy imposed by the observer.
Inversely, the degree to which the observer is globally defined (an aspect of the system) = the differential entropy between the whole system, and the observer in a moment of conjunction between the observer and the system as a whole, divided by the time duration in which information is communicated from the relative system to the observer such that the system entropy is increased an amount equal to the differential entropy imposed by the observer.
If two people are playing a game of 4 dimensional tag and the chaser can never catch the avoider, then the avoider is untouched by the chaser. But rather, the chaser only has to catch up to a point in which the avoider has previously been in order to define how far ahead the avoider is in that measured instance. Such is inevitable so long as the chaser is always moving.
So long as the observer imposes an informational complexity to the system, and that informational complexity is reimposed to the observer by the system in equal (or greater) margin, the observer is contained within that system because an equally complex relationship has been established between observer and environment.
P.s. I like the Steiner quote you linked. I wasn't aware of who he was until our conversation.
Grant,
Thanks for the thoughtful post. Once again, I find myself agreeing with much of what you wrote. At the same time, the "outward facing nature" you mention is troublesome for me. What I keep thinking is, "how many more conceptual formulations could be utilized here to convey the same underlying content?", and the answer I come to is, "infinitely many". When we really sense that reality, it makes the whole thing less impressive, so to speak. It feels as if we are hitting a ceiling but becoming too enamored with our concepts to rise above the ceiling. Perhaps that's more of a reflection of my own state of thinking and path at this time, but I imagine nearly every careful thinker eventually comes upon similar concerns if they are striving for something more than just thinking as they have always known it.
In terms of reflexive thinking, I am speaking from a phenomenological perspective in terms of our conscious thinking. Thinking is the opposite pole of perceiving, which is basically Willing activity. Plato described perceiving as a process in which our eyes are as 'prehensile' instruments reaching out and grabbing hold of objects. That is a much more accurate way of describing its essential nature than modern scientific understanding. We get better sense of it when considering how we direct our attention to places without much if any reflection. Our active perception happens mostly subconsciously, including perception of concepts, while our conscious thinking reflexively reacts to those perceptions, outer and inner. So, in that sense, our normal thinking is the passive counter-force to our active willing-perceiving.
We can notice how modern metaphysics like analytic idealism smear out all of what we do with these inner activities into "consciousness". It gains an abstract metaphysics, even if technically accurate, at the expense of a living understanding of what we are doing inwardly. This is why materialistic thinking which highly differentiates experience and activity can even gain an advantage if it avoids the naive realism of outer perceptions and the reductionism of inner experience, which of course are huge problems. We really need to distinguish these activities precisely in our phenomenal experience to reach greater levels of understanding. This is a big obstacle for analytic philosophy - a smeared out ontology to save 'mind' from 'matter' results in mind which is functionally equivalent to matter as an abstract concept. But even when our careful thinking manages to make conceptual differentiations, these aren't necessarily going to promote understanding beyond a certain point.
As long as our higher intuitions, inspirations, and imaginations remain subconscious, our conscious thinking is mostly passive in this manner, working with whatever it was subconsciously steered towards, which includes the palette of concepts it is familiar with. We are still experiencing the higher cognitions, but not in connection with our own active will, but a seemingly external will emanating from God, nature, nurture, cultural institutions, etc. The goal of developing higher cognition is to spiral our thinking and willing into a tighter active union, through feeling, so that we increasingly find the reasons or motives for our thinking experience in our own will. It is because they are so out-of-phase with each other normally that we feel as atomized beings surrounded by perceptual structures which we have little to no creative involvement in. It is only a habit of passive thinking which we can learn to overcome like we can with all other habits of mind. This comes back to what you said earlier re: Goethe's color theory and how it's interesting, but we probably cannot ever know if it's accurate.
Why would this be the case in a monistic, idealistic Cosmos in which our own Thinking participates in its evolution? Why would something as the manifestation of colors of the rainbow forever remain a great mystery for human scientific knowledge? It is only because we have intellectually convinced ourselves that our intellectual thinking is equivalent to Thinking as such, and because we have not differentiated our own thinking enough to understand the richly differentiated structures of Consciousness, i.e. Willing-Feeling-Thinking in their Passive-Active dimensions. Conceptual formulations don't help us inwardly differentiate beyond a certain point - they simply start pooling up on each other and bury our living understanding under the gravity of mineralized abstraction. On the other hand, one-sided mystical introspection may dissolve and evaporate our concepts into nothingness. The key is to locate the strait and narrow path which spirals rhythmically and harmoniously between the Center.