Federica wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 1:26 pm
Here’s my questions to you:
> What is it that wasn’t clear in what I previously wrote?
I've reviewed your first post - yes, it was very clear, but it came after Ashwin's post and made reference to it, and I wasn't very clear on Ashwin's initial response. But I thought the paragraph you highlighted in blue indicated a degree of mutual consensus.
And your next response was right on the mark - in fact, this paragraph captures exactly what I'm getting at:
Federica wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 7:56 amWe cannot fight the materialist assumption by countering it with another assumption. Instead we have to start from the given, meaning from the only thing we have, our human experience, and approach the subject-object question from there. We have to start from perception (some alignment of vocabulary may be required, when we refer to perception). The materialist, also, should agree to start there, rather than from a metaphysical account. Another way to say it is, we have to start from phenomenology. From the given of experience, through careful reasoning, we can logically discern the role of the thinking agency, or faculty, in the 'appearance' of reality.
That's exactly correct. It's also pretty much consistent with the Kantian and phenomenological tradition. It is just the kind of argument I'm trying to make. Notice again that quotation I included from Paul Davies' book in my response to you. It uses observations from quantum cosmology to call out the 'role of the observer'. So it's doing precisely as you suggest! This is why 'the observer problem', generally, has been the big philosophical breakthrough arising from quantum physics. (Notice also that the response of mine that you said was 'frustrating' was not in response to you.)
> Why did you decline Cleric’s question?
By Cleric's questions, you mean this one?
Cleric wrote: So does this cause any concern to you: that we can disentangle our personal perspective up to a point, yet we still remain entangled in a more mysterious stratum of reality where our bodily nature belongs? Do you conceive of a potential perspective which can experience itself consciously creative within the forms and organs of the body and the whole of Nature for that matter? Or the body and Nature are things that forever remain beyond the scope of the liberated mind, which just has to wait for death in expectation of the final liberation?
I didn't respond directly, because I didn't understand it, but
this provides a general indication of how I would respond.
> What Ideal are you pursuing with your philosophical activities?
Kastrup refers to his current course as 'analytical idealism' and I think he uses the term 'analytic' to align his work within the general approach of 'analytical philosophy'. And that is the mainstream approach in Anglo-American academic philosophy. And he's making inroads there. Whereas if he went too far into the esoteric/occult, then the mainstream could easily write him off as 'an occultist'.
As I mentioned in my introductory post, I was a member on various philosophy forums for quite a few years, and I'm accustomed to trying to articulate my ideas within that framework, although I incorporate some perspectives from Buddhism. But I try to refrain from appeals to the esoteric or occult (hence Rudolf Steiner is not on my reading list although I've had some contacts with anthroposophy.)
I'm trying not to create too long a post, but as for my general orientation, I think you could call it 'the forgotten wisdom school' (a la Huston Smith). That is: ancient philosophy had a life-transforming wisdom and metaphysic, which over the millenia first became absorbed into religious dogma, then was abandoned by modern naturalism and has been forgotten. I had something of a Platonist epiphany (totally unexpected) which revealed the 'thread' I'm referring to that runs through philosophy up until Schopenhauer, after which it became extinguished in most Anglo-American philosophy. As Kastrup is re-introducing idealism, he's adapting some elements of this thread – hence his affinity with Schopenhauer.
Actually speaking of Schopenhauer, I can't resist from quoting this passage from him which I used many times on philosophy forums. which basically provides the answer to the question I asked:
World as Will and Idea, Arthur Schopenhauer wrote: All that is objective, extended, active—that is to say, all that is material—is regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be desired (especially if in ultimate analysis this reduction should resolve itself into action and reaction). But we have shown that all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and ever active in time. From such an indirectly given object, materialism seeks to explain what is immediately given, the idea (in which alone the object that materialism starts with exists), and finally even the will from which all those fundamental forces, that manifest themselves, under the guidance of causes, and therefore according to law, are in truth to be explained.