Speculation About the Discovery of Ideal Forms

[Eugene I]

If we are completely objective in the way we conduct our knowing activity we can't fail but notice that the permanent aspects exist still as ideas within thinking. What is awareness? What is existence? These are ideas that our thinking grasps when it confronts the totality of perceptions and their metamorphoses. Thinking complements the perceptions with the all-encompassing ideas of 'awareness' and 'existence'. Confusion arises only when we believe that we arrive at the idea of 'awareness' in some different way than cognition. We should grasp this correctly. This doesn't demean in any way our experience. It doesn't at all say that "All we know is the idea of awareness, while the 'real' awareness remains unknowable." That would be completely erroneous (and a typical Kantian trap). All it's needed is to recognize that the perceptions and ideas are the only reality available to our experience.

It's all a matter of recognizing that what we call permanent aspects is actually also ideal content which overarches and unifies the disparate temporal states. The whole confusion arises when we project this all-encompassing idea into some 'awareness-in-itself' which can exist without idea. It's as simple as that. The fact of the given is that we never experience anything devoid of ideal content (even if it as vague as in the empty state). Instead of recognizing the aspect of permanence for what it is - namely, an ever evolving idea that unifies our temporal experience - we externalize it into some thing-in-itself called awareness which is supposed to be beyond any ideal content and instead creates it for us. Yet this is nothing but another hard problem, existing for the sole reason that we invent something out of our abstract thinking.

I do not agree, it is not an idea, it a fact of direct conscious experience. You are directly experiencing all the phenomena of shining sun (light and warmth) regardless whether you have or not have any ideas of how to name and interpret that experience, what the sun is etc. New-born child also experiences the same phenomena of shining sun even though he has no cognition about it. Likewise, the permanent aspects are the facts of our direct experience prior to any cognition of them. The conscious experiencing is present every moment of now regardless whether we notice it and interpret it with our cognition or not. New-born child is similarly directly experiencing the very presence of experiencing yet having no cognition and no clue what it is, how to name and interpret it. But yes, cognition can recognize, reflect and interpret that fact, it can label it with words "existence" and "awareness" and put together whole bunch of theories around it, there is nothing wrong with that. But the direct experiencing of this fact exists regardless of the cognition of it.

[Eugene I]

Indeed, any concept has a "right to exist", but we are asking on this forum which concepts are more accurate and/or useful. I don't think my conception in this matter depends on objective vs. subjective idealism, but idealism in general.

There is no such thing as "generic idealism", all versions of idealism have their particular idiosyncrasies and features that differentiate them form others. For example, I'm pretty sure BK will never agree with your hypothesis of the "existence of the uncountable infinity of all potentially possible ideas" in the MAL mind (you can ask him if you want).

re: uncountable infinity - what if we just translate that into quality rather than quantity? The quality of uncountable infinity.

I do not see how it would help though.

You said that the "infinite set of all potentially possible ideas in the MAL's mind" should exclude all logically inconsistent or otherwise "wrong" ideas. But how can we exclude them if we can still have such ideas in the content of out thoughts? I can still have an idea of "the set of all sets", even though it is self-contradicting and logically inconsistent. So, if I can have such idea, then why MAL would not? So, necessarily, you have to include all possible ideas, including completely nonsensical and logically inconsistent ones, in the infinite set of the "infinity of all potentially possible ideas in the MAL's mind".

And my final comment: Platonism is irrefutable, you can add a hypothesis of "infinity of all potentially possible ideas in the MAL's mind" to you idealistic paradigm if you like it (or you may not, it's optional). But that assumption is not necessary, it is based on an unprovable inference of the possibility of experiencing the actual infinity (of which we have no experiential evidence), and therefore adding such assumption to any metaphysical scheme is non-parsimonious. I also do not see how this assumption can make this version of idealism more useful. But this is not a refutation of it, it still has right to exist, there are many existing variants of non-parsimonious metaphysics. Yet, my personal preference is to avoid any unnecessary non-parsimonious and useless inferences.

[Cleric K]

I do not agree, it is not an idea, it a fact of direct conscious experience. You are directly experiencing all the phenomena of shining sun (light and warmth) regardless whether you have or not have any ideas of how to name and interpret that experience, what the sun is etc. New-born child also experiences the same phenomena of shining sun even though he has no cognition about it. Likewise, the permanent aspects are the facts of our direct experience prior to any cognition of them. The conscious experiencing is present every moment of now regardless whether we notice it and interpret it with our cognition or not. New-born child is similarly directly experiencing the very presence of experiencing yet having no cognition and no clue what it is, how to name and interpret it. But yes, cognition can recognize, reflect and interpret that fact, it can label it with words "existence" and "awareness" and put together whole bunch of theories around it, there is nothing wrong with that. But the direct experiencing of this fact exists regardless of the cognition of it.

The difficulty is that you insist on considering ideas only as clear-cut concepts that the intellect operates with. What ideas are is the 'substance' of meaning. To be aware means to experience some ideal content. There's a whole gradient of ideal content. What you call direct experience is united effortlessly (that's why you don't consider it cognition) with the the ideal element (which is why we are aware of the perception). Isn't it the case that when you think about 'red' you're thinking about the same ideal content which you experience even if you don't refine it into words (which you call direct experience)? Are we addressing different idea of 'red' when we think, than the idea of 'red' that presents itself to us in direct experience? The word, concept 'red' is something more refined but it's clear that thinking shapes this from the same ideal meaning of 'redness' that we experience directly.

When we introduce two distinct (orthogonal) types of ideal elements - one for the direct perceptions and one for thinking - we create the irreconcilable chasm. Instead, it is always ideal content that we experience as the awareness of what we perceive or think about. This becomes obvious when we consider that even thoughts are direct experience so it's completely artificial if we assume that we are dealing with one type of ideal content when we have the direct experience of thoughts and with another type when have direct experience of 'red', for example. This is the core realization. If we grasp this we understand that we have spectrum of ideal content all over, only different in 'resolution', wholeness, etc. It is entirely our own fabrication to postulate orthogonality between the ideal content experienced in thoughts, and that in any other perceptions.

[Soul_of_Shu]

[Eugene I]

The difficulty is that you insist on considering ideas only as clear-cut concepts that the intellect operates with. What ideas are is the 'substance' of meaning. To be aware means to experience some ideal content. There's a whole gradient of ideal content. What you call direct experience is united effortlessly (that's why you don't consider it cognition) with the the ideal element (which is why we are aware of the perception). Isn't it the case that when you think about 'red' you're thinking about the same ideal content which you experience even if you don't refine it into words (which you call direct experience)? Are we addressing different idea of 'red' when we think, than the idea of 'red' that presents itself to us in direct experience? The word, concept 'red' is something more refined but it's clear that thinking shapes this from the same ideal meaning of 'redness' that we experience directly.

When we introduce two distinct (orthogonal) types of ideal elements - one for the direct perceptions and one for thinking - we create the irreconcilable chasm. Instead, it is always ideal content that we experience as the awareness of what we perceive or think about. This becomes obvious when we consider that even thoughts are direct experience so it's completely artificial if we assume that we are dealing with one type of ideal content when we have the direct experience of thoughts and with another type when have direct experience of 'red', for example. This is the core realization. If we grasp this we understand that we have spectrum of ideal content all over, only different in 'resolution', wholeness, etc. It is entirely our own fabrication to postulate orthogonality between the ideal content experienced in thoughts, and that in any other perceptions.

Cleric, what you call "ideal content" is called "qualia" in the philosophy of consciousness. As a matter of our direct experience, they are simply qualia. But you have a specific interpretation of what those qualia are: you interpret them as an "ideal content". Such interpretation is part of the scheme of your particular version of metaphysical idealism, which is fine. This is idealism based on the assumption of the primacy if ideas. But there are other versions of idealism, such as subjective, phenomenological etc, that interpret qualia in a different way (or do not interpret them at all and take them as brute facts of the direct conscious experience).

My preference is to take them as just qualia, exactly the way we directly experience them, including the ideas. That is why I call meanings and ideas as "qualia of thoughts". So, in such scheme, everything in the world is qualia that are present and experienced. Every quale has a permanent aspect - presence and experience, and impermanent - the qualitative content of it. There is no split between thoughts and other phenomena, they are all equally qualia. We just, for practical reasons, conditionally categorize them (using our thinking ability) into different categories based on their content - into visual, tactile, imaginative, cognitive thoughts-ideas-meanings etc categories. But regardless of such categorization, they still remain essentially just qualia.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I asked this question elsewhere, but it didn't get any traction ... Under idealism, what do we make of the idea of the cosmological constancy of the speed of light, being not provisional, but constant under all circumstances. And with that in mind, as idea and percept are inextricable, not-two, why is it that the apparency of trans-corporeal beings are phenomenally experienced as beings of light?

[Eugene I]

I asked this question elsewhere, but it didn't get any traction ... Under idealism, what do we make of the idea of the cosmological constancy of the speed of light, being not provisional, but constant under all circumstances. And with that in mind, as idea and percept are inextricable, not-two, why is it that the apparency of trans-corporeal beings are phenomenally experienced as beings of light?

My guess is - in order to have some experiential content, there has to be certain particular and consistent forms which form the content of our experience. In this particular "creation" some forms have been chosen to be forms of light. There could be other forms, and there is nothing to stop us from assuming that there indeed may be the other worlds build with different forms and patterns of forms. So, at this moment we just happened to be in this particular world with its specific forms, but we cold be existing in any other worlds, and may be able to transition to other worlds (once in discarnate state) if we choose to (this is what NDE/regression data also suggests).

[AshvinP]

Indeed, any concept has a "right to exist", but we are asking on this forum which concepts are more accurate and/or useful. I don't think my conception in this matter depends on objective vs. subjective idealism, but idealism in general.

There is no such thing as "generic idealism", all versions of idealism have their particular idiosyncrasies and features that differentiate them form others. For example, I'm pretty sure BK will never agree with your hypothesis of the "existence of the uncountable infinity of all potentially possible ideas" in the MAL mind (you can ask him if you want).

re: uncountable infinity - what if we just translate that into quality rather than quantity? The quality of uncountable infinity.

I do not see how it would help though.

You said that the "infinite set of all potentially possible ideas in the MAL's mind" should exclude all logically inconsistent or otherwise "wrong" ideas. But how can we exclude them if we can still have such ideas in the content of out thoughts? I can still have an idea of "the set of all sets", even though it is self-contradicting and logically inconsistent. So, if I can have such idea, then why MAL would not? So, necessarily, you have to include all possible ideas, including completely nonsensical and logically inconsistent ones, in the infinite set of the "infinity of all potentially possible ideas in the MAL's mind".

And my final comment: Platonism is irrefutable, you can add a hypothesis of "infinity of all potentially possible ideas in the MAL's mind" to you idealistic paradigm if you like it (or you may not, it's optional). But that assumption is not necessary, it is based on an unprovable inference of the possibility of experiencing the actual infinity (of which we have no experiential evidence), and therefore adding such assumption to any metaphysical scheme is non-parsimonious. I also do not see how this assumption can make this version of idealism more useful. But this is not a refutation of it, it still has right to exist, there are many existing variants of non-parsimonious metaphysics. Yet, my personal preference is to avoid any unnecessary non-parsimonious and useless inferences.

Exactly - any ideal content you experience is already known by definition under idealism. In that sense, you do have direct experience of ideal content approaching infinity. As you stated in another thread, every time you picture geometrical content it appears slightly different. It has nothing to do with whether you are properly combining ideal content, i.e. ideas that posit what is logically impossible (under all forms of logic) are simply bad combinations of ideal content.

Also, it is interesting how you rely on direct experience and parsimony in this question, but reject it in the argument with Cleric. You never directly experience perceiving (sensing) without thinking, except maybe in one limited case of the mystical state (the apparent absence of thinking in this one state is also easily explained). The only common thread which explains why you apply different criteria is your rejection of "Platonism" or Western idealism in general.

[Soul_of_Shu]

One is also reminded here of the Tao Te Ching premise that the names that can be named are not the eternal names ... so just what is meant by an eternal 'name'?

[Cleric K]

My preference is to take them as just qualia, exactly the way we directly experience them, including the ideas. That is why I call meanings and ideas as "qualia of thoughts". So, in such scheme, everything in the world is qualia that are present and experienced. Every quale has a permanent aspect - presence and experience, and impermanent - the qualitative content of it. There is no split between thoughts and other phenomena, they are all equally qualia. We just, for practical reasons, conditionally categorize them (using our thinking ability) into different categories based on their content - into visual, tactile, imaginative, cognitive thoughts-ideas-meanings etc categories. But regardless of such categorization, they still remain essentially just qualia.

OK. So we need to synchronize the terminology I guess. How would you name the following. I see red surface. Then I turn my gaze away or I close my eyes and recall the experience of the color. It's not necessary to have vivid colorful experience, neither to have a clear intellectual concept/word for it. Just the fact that I'm addressing the same inner experience that I had when looking at the surface, although now the actual perception is not present. In certain sense now I only have half of the experience - the meaning/idea/awareness of redness, without the perception. When I have both the perception and this meaning they are fused together but when I recall the experience I can experience (unless I have super vivid imagination) primarily the ideal content - that which is otherwise fused with the perception now I experience independently. This is how I would call it - meaning/idea. What word would you use?