Bernardo's latest essay

[DandelionSoul]

Okay, yes, I agree. ^_^

[AshvinP]

Ponder this - if anyone was satisfied with such a low resolution understanding of the ultimate Ground, then why would they still be inquiring to it? Why would you or anyone else be on this forum trying to discuss metaphysical issues which are surely trivial compared to the essence of our Ground? Our lack of satisfaction is Nature's way of telling us there is much more finer resolution of the Ground to be gained from thoughtful contemplation.

You're right, of course. There's always more to be explored, and the "resolution" is ultimately inexhaustible. Metaphysics isn't a game I play to win, anymore than lovemaking or pyrography or any other creative endeavor. I play it because I love playing it. The point I was making is not so much that we should pack up and go home because metaphysics has bottomed out. Rather, it's another move in the game: drawing out what seems to me to be an implication of nonduality -- namely, that the distinction between "There is a Ground" and "There is no Ground" itself strikes me as just a more subtle duality.

OK sorry I probably misunderstood the first time. I don't really follow now either. Does the above mean the question of Ground vs. no Ground is meaningless or that the concept of "no Ground" is meaningless, or something else?

[SanteriSatama]

If you're suggesting that I should stop using language of distinctions

That if and need to mention it is very much part of the hurtful relation. Authoritarian phenomena of PC wokestery are part of otherizing and excluding the primitive experience. Even as possibility.

Though huge over-simplification, IIRC we've talked before of possibility of some kind of thesis-antithesis-synthesis dynamic in our spiritual evolution.

Zen and Shinto get along fine in Japan, many identify as both.

[Eugene I]

Isn't that exactly trying to explain what reality is that many Eastern schools have given up on?

That quote is a particular hypothesis (within the framework of idealism) of how the perceived reality is "produced". But Eastern schools were not much concerned about that question. Buddhism would just say that it is produced in the "alaya vijnana" (something similar to the Jung's collective unconscious), Vedic schools would refer to the apparent world as a "Maya", or "a dream of Shiva" etc. But what they refer to as "ineffable" is the awareness (conscious experiencing) if the apparent world, which is exactly what "hard problem of consciousness" in the modern formulation is about.

[Eugene I]

... and to me, your "noumenal reality" doesn't contain it's source. You think it's the changeless source of itself, to me it's the very opposite, it's a movement between poles. Let's shake hands and agree to disagree, as we're wearing a circle in the carpet

Ashvin and Cleric think that ideas can experience themselves or other ideas, and that such experiencing is just another idea, just like materialists think that matter can experience itself and that conscious experiencing is just an epiphenomenon of matter.

[AshvinP]

... and to me, your "noumenal reality" doesn't contain it's source. You think it's the changeless source of itself, to me it's the very opposite, it's a movement between poles. Let's shake hands and agree to disagree, as we're wearing a circle in the carpet

Ashvin and Cleric think that ideas can experience themselves or other ideas, and that such experiencing is just another idea, just like materialists think that matter can experience itself and that conscious experiencing is just an epiphenomenon of matter.

I find it very interesting how your inability to understand our position is proof of the core tenet of that position - that Thinking remains in your "blind spot". It's like the person who abstracts from consciousness, abstracts from the abstractions of consciousness, abstracts the abstractions from the abstractions, so on and so forth. Eventually you are so lost in abstractions you cannot see the simple fact that what allowed you to make the first abstraction from consciousness, without which you would be in a "blooming, buzzing confusion", was ideational activity. You forget that everything you write to others about consciousness is only possible because of ideal content. You forget what allows you to claim anything about willing, feeling, being, experiencing, etc. without the claim being a bunch of random noise is ideal content.

You forget all those things and, to cap it off, you continue to think your understanding of our position is correct, even when we tell you many times it is not, so you no longer have any motivation to figure out what we are actually claiming. So you then project what you are doing onto us. It is under your view that ideational activity and ideas, i.e. all meaning in the Universe, become epiphenomenal (although whether you claim they are fundamental or not seems to be dependent on what day of the week and what hour of the day it is). It is also under your view that consciousness can "directly experience" itself without ideational activity.

These are the things which make your position very similar to the naïve realism of physicalism - you feel that your individual "direct" experience of "beingness" or "awareness" is the thing-in-itself. Before, I assumed you saw those major errors in your position and simply transferred it to our position to cover them up. Now, I think you are projecting them unconsciously, because that is the only way you would continue making the same basic errors this often and to this extent. It is not just you who leaves Thinking in his blind spot, because BK does to a certain extent as well, but the difference is we haven't been pointing it out to BK over the course of dozens of essays and comments in the last few months, maybe even hundreds.

[Eugene I]

It is also under your view that consciousness can "directly experience" itself without ideational activity.

Saying it 1001-th time again: I never say that consciousness can "directly experience" itself without ideational activity. I say that it can experience itself together with ideational activity, and the ideational activity can reflect such experience with ideas. But you can never know about this experience until/unless you experience it for yourself.

[AshvinP]

It is also under your view that consciousness can "directly experience" itself without ideational activity.

Saying it 1001-th time again: I never say that consciousness can "directly experience" itself without ideational activity. I say that it can experience itself together with ideational activity, and the ideational activity can reflect such experience with ideas. But you can never know about this experience until/unless you experience it for yourself.

That bolded part doesn't mean anything - it's incoherent under idealism. You only include such incoherent statements because you do not want to let-lie Thinking in the domain it properly belongs to (I wrote the below quoted section of latest essay just for you). You want to imagine a realm of pure experience and then another realm where ideational activity takes place and reflects on that pure experience. That is dualism no matter what ad hoc rationalizations you try to stick to it. And please do not respond saying my quote below forgets about "Being" and "Experiencing" because I have not had mystical experience... I am not forgetting anything - we can add those on to the list of fundamental activities which do not belong to the unifying domain of Thinking, or group it under Willing - it does not matter in the slightest... the point I am making still remains the same.

Before proceeding further, we should remain clear - Heidegger does not exclude the "imagination", "inspiration", or "intuition" from Thinking. Spiritual contemplative personalities often partition abstract intellect from all these other modes of contemplation and consider only the former "thinking". That is a fundamental mistake and one that Heidegger, even with his mature exploration of Eastern mysticism, did not make. He recognized that all of these contemplative activities belong to and only belong to the domain of Thinking. We belong to that place where we must find our essential role. My heart belongs to my circulatory system and my lungs belong to my respiratory system, while both are essential to and therefore inseparable from my 'physical' existence.

My heart cannot claim for itself my in-breathing and out-breathing and my lungs cannot claim for themselves the circulation of my blood. So it is that my willing, feeling, and thinking activities belong to distinct and asymmetrical domains of my spiritual existence. The same applies for the Willing, Feeling, and Thinking of humanity writ large, because my personal activities are microcosms of the macrocosm. The soul-activities of Willing and Feeling fulfill their essential roles in the differentiated perspectives of human beings. They are what imbue us with unique personalities as our lives unfold in the integral flow of Time. Without these living beings constantly impelling our conscious experience into new thought-states, we would never experience any flow of Time.
...
Human spirits, for example, present to us as a book - we read their gestures, expressions, eye movements, speech, etc. and are thereby drawn closer into their inner experience. If we were to ignore that reality of shared experience, then we would perceive human spirits as lifeless corpses moving around mechanically. In fact, there is a real danger of that occurring in the modern world with modern technology. We may soon be unable to tell any difference between interacting with a human spirit or an AI algorithm pretending to be such a spirit. Yet that same technology, when treated as nothing more than a symbol of an underlying spiritual reality, also reminds us that 'invisible' spiritual forces form all of our social interactions in a highly specified manner.

In what way besides Thinking could we approach such an invisible yet highly specified Reality? Thinking fulfills its essential role, then, through the integration of varied human souls - "I have not come to abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them." It takes what presents to us as differentiated appearances of willing and feeling and weaves back together the ideal constellations which make sense of those appearances as a living whole. We often refer to this process when speaking of the "spirit" of a text, especially in common law traditions. The highly differentiated rules of court decisions and statutes can only be effective when they are born of the principle (spirit) underlying them. Old rules must continuously be reborn in that spirit to remain relevant and useful.

[Eugene I]

That bolded part doesn't mean anything - it's incoherent under idealism. You only include such incoherent statements because you do not want to let-lie Thinking in the domain it properly belongs to (I wrote the below quoted section of latest essay just for you). You want to imagine a realm of pure experience and then another realm where ideational activity takes place and reflects on that pure experience. That is dualism no matter what ad hoc rationalizations you try to stick to it. And please do not respond saying my quote below forgets about "Being" and "Experiencing" because I have not had mystical experience... I am not forgetting anything - we can add those on to the list of fundamental activities which do not belong to the unifying domain of Thinking, or group it under Willing - it does not matter in the slightest... the point I am making still remains the same.

"Being" and "Experiencing" are not thoughts/ideas that Thinking is thinking. They are the Reality that Thinking reflects. And it reflects it through experiencing them, because how would Thinking otherwise know that they exist if there would not be any experience of them?

[SanteriSatama]

Ashvin and Cleric think that ideas can experience themselves or other ideas, and that such experiencing is just another idea, just like materialists think that matter can experience itself and that conscious experiencing is just an epiphenomenon of matter.

Without personifying ideas to forum members, at least now, the idea of self-referentiality by definition could experience itself.