Kastrup's basic model and extrinsic images of dissociation.

[findingblanks]

In honor of this being the "Formal" section and to narrow the scope of what I am trying to speak about, I'd request that all responses stay within Bernardo's basic framework and language, which of course leaves us lots of room for exploration.

Starting with the notion that the inanimate universe that we perceive is the extrinsic partial image of Mind-At-Large (MaL), let me ask about a solar system.

We must also remember that Kastrup IS NOT CLAIMING that any aspect of the image you point to is itself an experience of MaL. He gives the example of how if we isolate one of my neurons, we are not looking at an image of my entire subjective experience currently taking place. My whole body is more of a full (yet still partial) extrinsic image of my current experiencing.

I wonder if circles are the extrinsic image of kinds of dissociation?

With this in mind, I am thinking about the solar system.

Kastrup shares the common assumption that life evolved when the conditions became conducive on Earth. He does not share all the physicalist assumptions, but that's just fine.

So, then: what is this "Earth" thing that made dissociation possible?

Well our bodies (and maybe nearly all bodies that have evolved in this Cosmos) sees it mainly as circle. And if we push around and comb through and observe the Earth in detail we find that it is a VERY INTRICATE system of processes. This extremely intricate system provided the context for life/dissociation.

We must not make the mistake Bernardo warns against and imagine we can slip in behind this Earth Circle and think of IT has having it's own first-person experience. It may just be the like the neuron.

But... We also notice that Earth (and other orbiting circles) require for their existence the Sun Circle.

Again, we do not want to make the mistake and think the Sun is an extrinsic image of a first-person experience.

But.... It seems that Suns and solar systems seem to be primitive aspects (pictures of) whatever MaL is experiencing.

And we know that it seems to be a very very very special configuration within a solar system that allows for dissociation.

Whenever I think about this, I begin to see a vauge shape of what it might mean if there are levels of dissociation between MaL and forms of life.

If there are levels, I don't think of the first forms of dissociation as forms of life in themselves because I don't see them as having the capacity of self-replication as we find in life forms of Earth. So these first necessary dissociations (let's think of them as the Sun Circle picture) would be more like creative vents or filters that certainly 'pinch off' a new zone within MaL that allows for new patterns that might become like an Earth Circle Picture.

An Earth-like circle picture would not be a form of life for the same reason as the Sun Circle; it is more like a creative vent that constrains (which allows new creativity) what can form within it. When we get to forms of live within the Earth zone, we now are finding extrinsic images of a a first-person process that is fully dissociated which is expressed extrinsically in the self-generated movement of our reproductive bodies.

I wonder if this vague thinking might be pointing at how there could be levels of dissociation.

[Starbuck]

My take is: If there is something it is like to be the totality of the inanimate universe it would simply be raw primative subjectivity (without any object of experience such as awareness of itself or its excitations.)

To speak of things including solar systems, stars and planets requires the dissociation of organic life's perception.

The dissociated being's experience is therefore that primal subjectivity of m@l plus what it feels like to be its own localised whirlpool of m@l.

[findingblanks]

Thanks, Starbuck. You put it very succinctly. Much appreciated.

"To speak of things including solar systems, stars and planets requires the dissociation of organic life's perception."

I'm wondering if we could say that when we see a planet, we are looking at the extrinsic image of what it is like to be some aspect of MaL?

In the same way that the human mind gives us examples of many kinds of dissociations (one of which creates complete alters), I can imagine that MaL shares this capacity for multiple ways of segmenting off from itself, only one of which is a complete dissociation into forms of life that evolve.

If so, these other layers of dissociation are what would create the necessary conditions for life to eventually evolve into little critters that have perceptions from across fully dissociated membranes.

[Ben Iscatus]

Yes, findingblanks, as I see it, other layers of dissociation are real and inevitable. However, at present Bernardo's idealism does not delve into them, since he has a narrow objective: to give disaffected materialists and dualists the intellectual permission to explore deeper. Moreover, if idealism was generally accepted and science could honourably explore psychic phenomena (both Sheldrake style, and incorporating nonphysical information proven to be highly effective such as shown in the clinical psychology of Thomas Zinser), the results of such experiments and explorations could be included in analytic idealism.

[findingblanks]

Yeah, I'm very curious if the perception of circles (when encountering major aspects of inanimate nature: planets, stars, heads...) can be a partial image of a kind of dissociation taking place.

[Starbuck]

I'm wondering if we could say that when we see a planet, we are looking at the extrinsic image of what it is like to be some aspect of MaL?

That's pretty much my inderstanding, so long as we acknowledge that 'planet' is a notional entity, mediated by the alter's perception, but hinting at an aspect of transcendent reality. Just like in collapsing the wave equation through observation, we see a representation of a reality that we can only infer a transcendent wave like identity to.

However, I follow bernardos understanding that due to this notionality, a planet is itself not a conscious agent (an instance of separated dissociation).

[findingblanks]

I agree that a planet isn't a conscious agent.

Say we are looking at Earth 1000 years before the first alter could emerge there.

Are we looking at a very specific blend of MaL's first-person experience that is essential to dissociation?

I think so.

And even when we look away from that beautiful blue planet, is it fair to say that there is an ASPECT of MaL's experiencing that corresponds to that necessary blend of patterns?