But Ashvin what Hegel is talking about here is not only correct, it can be successfully argued because the flower is something that any dissociated alter can observe in the waking state, without any effort, throughout the progression of its continuous extantly dissociated whole. It can be demonstrably evidenced as a valid and sound argument by the evidence of the physically observed unfolding of its organic unity, by anyone, without any additional steps, just a pair of eyes.AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 12:40 am I am not sure how many more different ways I can say this... but let me attempt another - the metamorphic view does not exclude any authentic Eastern spiritual traditions or downgrade their importance in the whole progression. There is both temporal and 'spatial' progression of Spirit in that sense. Eastern spirituality will have an even bigger resurgence than it already has in the last century. So if that is your biggest quarrel with my essays, then you should rest assured I am not at all promoting that view. I will quote Hegel again and say the different aspects of flowering plant can also be analogized 'spatially' to Eastern, Persian and Western.
The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)
In other words, the validity of the claim is supported and proven, by the philosophic method, because the organic unity is extant to everyone as it appears across a dissociated boundary.
We can't argue the same for the immanent or inner experiences, not by using the same methods and principals that brought us to the door, ie philosophical analytical idealism. What I am not doing is trying to introduce a Kantian dualism because there is no discontinuity as such in analytic idealism, just that we end up with explanations trying to explain explanations of the inherent experience. It is not to say that we can't experience beyond the boundary just that we can't use language to describe what experience 'looks like/is like' beyond the boundary, language fails at that point as it has reached its limit and cannot embrace or encompass (and delineate which is the purpose and function of words) that which we experience.
Much like you simply cannot describe a psychedelic experience to me as you experienced it, as McKenna said "You can't English it." I don't doubt that you had the experience and I can also take a psychedelic and perhaps experience a similar thing but I also 'can't English it'.
This is my whole point about where philosophy ends because linguistic capacity and competence ends. We can talk about the other side of the boundary, and personally this is far more interesting to me than what got us there, but we can't argue for it or about it in a way that could ever be settled on in the way a valid and sound argument fully and finally settles a debate.
This is where I am mulling over Schopenhauer and what Kastrup has to say about him but really philosophy ends at the boundary of the dissociated alter because we can say nothing, after the boundary, which could be validated by its methods and principles. It doesn't mean it can't be talked about simply that we cannot say, to quote The Mandalorian, "This is the way." or as the Daoist's encouraged to understand, 'The Dao that can be named is not the eternal Dao'.
In other words, what is beyond the boundary can only be beheld not explained. There is a fundamental difference in method between observing, describing, testing and verifying what appear across a dissociated boundary as they appear to a dissociated alter, which is science and whose method has a clear philosophical fundament, and what is on the other side of that dissociated boundary. We can describe and explain the dissociations as they appear across a boundary by one method and then behold what is on the other. We can have experiences of the whole continuity but we can only 'English' the ones on the dissociative side of the boundary. 'M@L doesn't need to speak but dissociated alters do.' at least if they have any hope of even existing in and navigating their way around their dissociated 'state' otherwise there would just be an entropic goo, in other words complete association rather than dissociation. Language (English or otherwise) is part of dissociation by definition, 'I' and 'Not I' which although an illusion is also what it 'looks like' not to be an entropic goo. This, so, not that.
That's what Kastrup's analytical idealism implies to me and I'll respond when I'm not trying to get my head around Python. However if you'd also like to continue by email then drop me a PM and I'll send you my address. It may be less discontinuous than my coming back and forth here to make replies a few days after you post. At least with email there is a common thread.