Consciousness and Matter - The thing in itself

[DavidSchuy]

According to Bernardo Kastrup matter is an appearance in consciousness. Matter is what consciousness looks like from a certain perspective. Or one could say that subjective experience, inner life, is what matter looks like.

My first question is: To what extend do you agree with this?

My second question concerns the thing in itself. That which has experiences is the thing in itself, namely consciousness.

Is that right?

According to Philip Goff and his pan- and cosmopsychism matter is the outside of consciousness and the intrinsic nature, the inside, is - made out of - consciousness.

Would you concur with that?

[Mandibil]

Think of perception as the attached screen of an (oldschool) video recorder - but that the only "thing" you have access to is what occurs on that screen. There is a dissociative boundary between what the screen presents and what it re-presents (an axiomatic choice). If you are locked in a world that is surrounded and limited to that screen presentation, you are literally living in a presentation.

If you try to use that presentation to talk about "the things them selves" you can only refer to them as re-presentations, not what they really are - since you are stuck in the presentation. So whatever the things are in themselves, can only by assumed at with re-presentations. Matter is one such re-presentation.

[Starbuck]

Matter is one such re-presentation.

And what do night time dreams re-present?

[Mandibil]

Matter is one such re-presentation.

And what do night time dreams re-present?

You are presupposing they represent some thing !

[Starbuck]

Matter is one such re-presentation.

And what do night time dreams re-present?

You are presupposing they represent some thing !

So if they are not representation, they must be the will? or another category?

[Simon Adams]

Hi Starbuck

I think these are good questions. The western tradition as I understand it has imagination, intellect and will as categorically different aspects of the soul, even though they are related and used together in many cases. What Mandibil is saying is closer to the Eastern tradition, and arguably closer to Bernardo's view. Ramanah Maharshi had a great analogy of being in the cinema, where your life is like watching the film where you're so absorbed that you think its everything. However the the film only exists because of the screen onto which it's projected, which sits in the background, taken for granted and always obscured by the images being presented onto it.

I think there is truth in this analogy, and I'm a fan of making things as simple as they can be. However a dream is a good example of where there seem to be two separate things going on. There is a part of you creating the dream (which aligns with the imagination), a part of you which is the experiencer of the dream (making sense of it), and a part of you deciding how to respond to the things around you. In this case the will and the intellect seem fairly tightly bound and maybe you could argue that they are the same thing. However the imagination does seem like a separate aspect.

It seems like we are at least experiencers, representers, story makers and actors/speakers. And I think you can simplify to the point where you can no longer really make sense of the differences. That said, I haven't read all of Bernardo's books and I suspect he would have more detail in the way he differentiates these.

Regards

Simon

[Starbuck]

Thanks for feedback Simon. I've just reread Bernardo's Schopenhauer book. Its definitely monist, so all just modulations of one Will.

5 sense Perception seems to be analogous to an interference pattern - the interplay between localized, dissociated will, and what's 'out there' in terms of non-dissociated Will and the other alters. These impressions are then processed through an intuitive scaffolding of spacetime recognition and finally present as perception of the 5 senses (which can then be meta cognized and conceptualized). This all accounts for what is commonly called 'matter', and on to abstract concepts like mathematics.

Our inner life of feelings, volitions, emotions etc seem to be a more direct 'being' of the Will itself, only partially entering spacetime, but offering strong clues about the non distorted primordial 'ideas' that constitute the Will.

I would therefore surmise that in dream state, A localised inner world is projected out as if it were perception. Just as the hidden world of the Will is projected out into the minds of the alters, the hidden world of the individual alter's psyche is projected out to constitute a dream avatar and a dream world. Going back to your point I guess dreams are a clear pointer that we ARE the creative imagination AND recipient at the same time.

[AshvinP]

Matter is one such re-presentation.

And what do night time dreams re-present?

In BK's view, they are either symbolic representations of personal subconscious thoughts or collective subconscious thoughts (aspects of MAL). I am not sure if BK speculates about this in his writings, but in Jungian psychology they are those thoughts which we have repressed and wish to tell us something about the problems we are dealing with but cannot resolve.

[Simon Adams]

Yes dreams are clearly some kind of interplay with the subconscious, and Jung would say that the subconscious is connected between people.

However I haven’t seen a good explanation for the difference under Bernardo’s metaphysics. You have the external physical world being a consistent interaction between us and M@L, and dreams being an inconsistent interaction between us and M@L. The latter is clearly not via the senses, but how would you describe the difference? Would you say that everyone uses the same front door, but have their own personal backdoor that changes character and narrative regularly all through the night?

(funnily enough my subconscious seems to have signed the last post of with “regards”, something I have no memory at all of doing...)

[AshvinP]

Yes dreams are clearly some kind of interplay with the subconscious, and Jung would say that the subconscious is connected between people.

However I haven’t seen a good explanation for the difference under Bernardo’s metaphysics. You have the external physical world being a consistent interaction between us and M@L, and dreams being an inconsistent interaction between us and M@L. The latter is clearly not via the senses, but how would you describe the difference? Would you say that everyone uses the same front door, but have their own personal backdoor that changes character and narrative regularly all through the night?

(funnily enough my subconscious seems to have signed the last post of with “regards”, something I have no memory at all of doing...)

In BK terms, it would be varying levels of 'dissociation' within the alter or between the alter and MAL. There are thoughts of the alter which have been dissociated from the alter's meta-conscious awareness, as well thoughts of MAL dissociated as well. Since they are by definition 'outside' of meta-conscious awareness, i.e. not 'forms' of our experience, they can only present to us in narrative forms which appear to be irrational and "absurd" (just as many ancient mythological narratives will appear the same way).