Is Rovelli 'Dragooning the Human Spirit'?

[AshvinP]

(...)

I don't feel it would be responsible and ethical to continue excluding non-European philosophies and discussing arguments from authority from a selection of Eurocentric philosophers, especially when the main purpose of the selective reading the list of authorities through filters of egoism appears to be to justify egoism.

It is actually only responsible for me to exclude them, for the reasons I stated. Anything else would be extremely arrogant and egoistic. I do not know your Finnish indigenous connection to Buddhism in ancient India, if there is any, or whether you also understand Chinese-Tibetan language and culture. Maybe there is one and you do, and you have also studied the texts attributed to Nagarjuna. But even then, what Nagarjuna thought about ontology is completely irrelevant to Rovelli's position, especially if Jim is correct and Rovelli was only told to look into Nagarjuna after he already developed that position. There is no good reason to start referencing ancient philosophers on the question of Rovelli's ontic position unless your only purpose is to distract and obfuscate. But, all that being said, don't get me wrong... I have absolutely no problem with you bowing out of this particular discussion with me and would find it a most welcome surprise

[AshvinP]

We can say in Finnish: 'Koetaan." Speaking 'experiencing' relational, multi-perspectival asubjective, without any subject or object.

Which is not conscious??? For if it is, how is this not reducing to an OP of consciousness, while still requiring an explication of the apparency of subjectification/objectification, be that a process of dissociation, or whatever else? What does the bird inter-relating with its reflection behind the windowpane, seemingly perceived to be an objectified other, have to do with linguistic artifacts?

I don't know what "conscious" means here, so the answer is agnostic position. What is "OP" short for? "Original Post" does not seem to make syntactic sense in the context.

Bergson prefers term "psychic states" with qualitative multiplicity, that seems preferable to semantically vague but formally singular "consciousness". And even better I like verbs of Finnish to nouns in either subject or object case. Reduction of a verb to a subject/object noun is just begging the question.

Great point, Dana. All of these post-modern linguistic critiques are self-defeating with regards to the OP unless they admit to pure nihilism - admit that there is absolutely no referent underlying the relations, and also admit they cannot account in any way whatsoever for the fact that "men have from the beginning so persistently supposed [underlying referent of language] that they positively cannot open their mouths without doing so." And, since Bergson was brought up again in a misleading way, I feel compelled to set the record straight:

But let us go further and try to engender (we can do so obviously only in thought). To the extent that we distend our will, tend to reabsorb our thought in it and get into greater sympathy with the effort which engenders things, these formidable problems recede, diminish, disappear. For we feel that a divinely creative will or thought is too full of itself, in the immensity of its reality, to have the slightest idea of a lack of order or lack of being. To imagine the possibility of absolute disorder, all the more the possibility of nothingness, would be for it to say to itself that it might have not existed at all, and that would be a weakness incompatible with its nature which is force. The more we turn toward this creative will, the more the doubts which trouble the sane and normal man seem to us abnormal and morbid.
...
Such is exactly the effect certain “great problems” produce in us when we set ourselves again in the direction of generating thought. They recede toward zero as fast as we approach this generating thought, as they fill only that space between it and us. Thus we discover the illusion of him who thinks he is doing more by raising these problems than by not raising them. One might just as well think that there is more in a half-consumed bottle than in a full one, because the latter contains only wine, while in the former there is wine and emptiness in addition.

Who here honestly thinks that the above came from a person who is anti-essentialist, disturbed at any mention of OP, and rabid supporter of relational QM transposed to mystical "emptiness" philosophy? I think most with an open mind will find that the above passage suggests the exact opposite.

[Soul_of_Shu]

"Ontological primitive" stands for some singular noun - aka "monism". How does qualitative multiplicity - or non-quantitative pluralism - imply reduction to monism?

Well then call it the ontological primal process, under idealism involving ideation, the point remains that there's no 'prior to' that, making it the sole—i.e. not abandoning nonduality—uncaused, irreducible condition necessary to account for whatever is happening.

[SanteriSatama]

Who here honestly thinks that the above came from a person who is anti-essentialist, disturbed at any mention of OP, and rabid supporter of relational QM transposed to mystical "emptiness" philosophy? I think most with an open mind will find that the above passage suggests the exact opposite.

You made clear that you have no honest intention to learn and comprehend Bergson's philosophy, so there's no ground for dia-logos and learning together in that regard.

"Emptiness is a common translation for Sunyata:

Nāgārjuna's Mādhyamaka states that since things have the nature of lacking true existence or own being (niḥsvabhāva), all things are mere conceptual constructs (prajñaptimatra) because they are just impermanent collections of causes and conditions.[55] Because of this, Mādhyamaka is also known as Niḥsvabhāvavāda. This also applies to the principle of causality itself, since everything is dependently originated.[56] If one is unaware of this, things may seem to arise as existents, remain for a time and then subsequently perish. In reality, dependently originated phenomena do not arise or remain as inherently existent phenomena and yet they still appear as a flow of conceptual constructs.[57][58][note 5] Thus both existence and nihilism are ruled out.[59][60] Any enduring essential nature would prevent the process of dependent origination, or any kind of origination at all. For things would simply always have been, and will always continue to be, without any change.

From SEP article on Madhyamaka

The Madhyamaka school of Buddhism, the followers of which are called Mādhyamikas, was one of the two principal schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism in India, the other school being the Yogācāra. The name of the school is a reference to the claim made of Buddhism in general that it is a middle path (madhyamā pratipad) that avoids the two extremes of eternalism—the doctrine that all things exist because of an eternal essence—and annihilationism—the doctrine that things have essences while they exist but that these essences are annihilated just when the things themselves go out of existence. The conviction of the Madhyamaka school, which can be called the Centrist school in English, is that this middle path is best achieved by a denial that things have any inherent natures at all. All things are, in other words, empty of inherent natures. This doctrine of universal emptiness of inherent natures (svabhāva-śūnyatā) is the hallmark of the school, which places the school solidly in the tradition associated with the Perfection of Wisdom (prajñāpāramitā) literature of Mahāyāna Buddhism.

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There a number of points that all Mādhyamika thinkers have in common. In all of them one finds some version of the doctrine of two truths, according to which there is a level of understanding that consists of an accurate account of the world as it is experienced in everyday life and another level of understanding that is conducive to reaching the ultimate goal (paramārtha) of Buddhist practice, namely, nirvana, understood as the absence of attachment, aversion and delusion with no possibility of their return. There is also broad agreement that language is limited to the everyday level of understanding and that the truth of nirvana is beyond the reach of language and of the conceptualization that makes language possible.

Where differences arise among Mādhyamika thinkers is on the issue of how these two truths relate to one another. Does careful verbalization and thinking do any good in bringing one closer to nirvana, or is it invariably an obstacle? Is there any room within Madhyamaka for clear thinking and carefully wrought argumentation, or are all attempts to arrive at clear thought and rigorous argumentation ultimately delusional and therefore to be abandoned along with more obvious forms of delusion?

Another area in which Mādhyamakas differ from one another is in their attitude toward the other main school of Mahāyāna Buddhism, the Yogācāra school, which Mādhyamikas present as advocating a kind of subjective idealism. Early Mādhyamikas tended to refute the Yogācāra doctrine that all the contents within awareness arise out of awareness itself and are thus ontologically at one with consciousness. Later Mādhyamikas found room for that view, usually by portraying Yogācāra as a philosophy that prepares one intellectually and emotionally for the difficult truth that all things are lacking in inherent natures and all that we think of as knowledge is ultimately without grounding.

Essentialism
Metaphysical essentialism is related to the Platonic idea that any thing has an internal essence, without which it would not be what it "is."

According to this well digested reading, according to Bergson the original/fundamental self is: Qualitative multiplicity of psychic states in duration. Ie. a constantly changing process which can't clearly defined and identified, and hence not fully reducible to language.

Second type is the spatial self aka 'ego': original self "refracted and solidified into homogenous space"

In my own investigation so far, I can't verify the essence (in the above sense) of "awareness" as homogenous spatial thought-object with inherent existence. That seems just a projection of abstract spatial thinking of ego. During a quality of psychic state when thinking was on pause, according to the narrative after-thought, duration continued, but with the absense of qualia of past and future inside that specific qualia.

[SanteriSatama]

"Ontological primitive" stands for some singular noun - aka "monism". How does qualitative multiplicity - or non-quantitative pluralism - imply reduction to monism?

Well then call it the ontological primal process, under idealism involving ideation, the point remains that there's no 'prior to' that, making it the sole—i.e. not abandoning nonduality—uncaused, irreducible condition necessary to account for whatever is happening.

Duration includes prior, so yes prior can belong both in and before duration, and consecutive qualia can be present or non-present, and why not also both and neither.

Point can't remain, it's just an end of a line. Linguistic trickery of objectifying and calling thusly "that" and "it" is just mindgames of linguistic trickery.

What would remain of your argument, if for example you stopped axiomatically assuming bivalent logic, and focused on staying aware and observing mechanisms of bivalent logic as they arise and cease?

[AshvinP]

Who here honestly thinks that the above came from a person who is anti-essentialist, disturbed at any mention of OP, and rabid supporter of relational QM transposed to mystical "emptiness" philosophy? I think most with an open mind will find that the above passage suggests the exact opposite.

You made clear that you have no honest intention to learn and comprehend Bergson's philosophy, so there's no ground for dia-logos and learning together in that regard.

The projection is getting pretty blatant, don't you think? You can at least try to make it more subtle. I have given you many passages directly from Bergson's latest book, from his pen to your eyes, which all point to the same essential truths. You respond with videos of some random guy reading Bergson and talking about "qualitative multiplicity", which actually does not even contradict anything I am claiming about Bergson's philosophy. That random guy is talking about "polarity" of experience which I am constantly supporting here, as well as the notion of "original Self", which you frequently deny. Face it, SS, Bergson held to monism, essence, and OP. It's rather colonialist hurtful mentality for you to appropriate his ideas to a position he flatly rejected. The guy is literally begging and pleading with you to stop victimizing him from the eternal beyond:

To the extent that we distend our will, tend to reabsorb our thought in it and get into greater sympathy with the effort which engenders things [see "Thinking activity"], these formidable problems [see "modern abstract philosophy"] recede, diminish, disappear. For we feel that a divinely creative will or thought is too full of itself, in the immensity of its reality [see "higher cognition"], to have the slightest idea of a lack of order or lack of being [see "OP"]. To imagine the possibility of absolute disorder [see "spiritual anarchy"], all the more the possibility of nothingness [see "emptiness"], would be for it to say to itself that it might have not existed at all, and that would be a weakness incompatible with its nature [see again, "essence"] which is force [see, "objective reality"]. The more we turn toward this creative will, the more the doubts which trouble the sane and normal man seem to us abnormal and morbid [see "nihilism"]
...Thus we discover the illusion [see, "naive realism"] of him who thinks he is doing more by raising these problems [see, "post-structural linguistic philosopher"] than by not raising them. One might just as well think that there is more in a half-consumed bottle than in a full one [see, "eternal essence"], because the latter contains only wine, while in the former there is wine and emptiness in addition [see again, "emptiness"]..

I have made my point. Feel free to have the last word, which conveys objectively shared meaning, on this topic.

[SanteriSatama]

(...)

Cherrypicking and misinterpreting few quotes to support a day of sophistry in a court debate for this or that dogma does not mean honest attempt to comprehend philosophy. That method is not honest, not trustworthy.

Translator's loyalty to text and meaning starts from getting first a holistic sense, before proceeding to translanting particular by particular. I have no time nor interest to read books anymore, so I use what audiovisual means are available to start to satisfy my curiosity of Bergson's philosophy of duration.

I have no interest in using Bergson as argument from authority in the debate that you think there is going on. It's a bit old fashioned, I know, but my main philosophical interest and method remains gnothi seauton. When I was 17 and went for my first Interrail trip, my first stop was in Saanen, Switzerland, where Jiddu Krishnamurity was lecturing, because my cousin was working there in the team Jiddu. Next stop was Delfoi, Greece, where the life wisdom 'gnothi seauton' had been carved in stone. Visiting the archeological temple area, out of whim i decided to climb to the mountain behind it.

The view was worth the climb.

Staying in duration, being present, experiencing life fully - I can very well understand when this is poetically called essence of life. I can very well understand the frustration and alienation of a slave soul in the wheels of sadistic bureaucracy, and the deep desire to liberate from such loss of meaning and experience life more fully.

As a philosophical conceptualization, essence/ousia/hypokeimenon/substance means objectification of self into static, spatial thing (cf. 'person', 'individual' etc.), with supposed "inherent existence". That alienating objectification is at the root of identity politics, constantly seeking and inventing new nominal labels for the felt emptiness of the spatial object of ego, trying to fill a bottomless well with conceptualized identities of person masks and their abstract mechanisms to serve some ideological Super-ego.

The felt emptiness of loss of meaning and sunyata-emptiness conceptualized object-things, objectification and subjectification of self into slave soul, have opposite meanings for fullness of living experience. Bergson, Nagarjuna etc. can be helpful philosophers in liberatory gnothi seauton, feeling ourselves, coming back to our senses and enjoying life's gifts more fully. If we allow them to help, and not get stuck in abstract metaphysical debate about spatial objectifications and conceptualizations.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Duration includes prior, so yes prior can belong both in and before duration, and consecutive qualia can be present or non-present, and why not also both and neither.

Point can't remain, it's just an end of a line. Linguistic trickery of objectifying and calling thusly "that" and "it" is just mindgames of linguistic trickery.

What would remain of your argument, if for example you stopped axiomatically assuming bivalent logic, and focused on staying aware and observing mechanisms of bivalent logic as they arise and cease?

It seems that while in this mood of playing the contrarian non-conformist, disagreement will be found with whatever is said, unless perhaps it's stated in the exact same words.

Not 'prior to' just refers to there being no ontologically distinct process antecedent to what can only be a process that is not divisible into disconnected parts or entities, i.e. nonduality, which in no way implies being bivalent.

[SanteriSatama]

Not 'prior to' just refers to there being no ontologically distinct process antecedent to what can only be a process that is not divisible into disconnected parts or entities, i.e. nonduality, which in no way implies being bivalent.

Epistemological humility can't deny or affirm such possibilities of divisible and disconnected. Divisible vs non-divisible and connected vs. disconnected are bivalent expressions and thoughts. As is also duality vs. nonduality, formally.

How does duration relate with undecidability of Halting problem?

[Jim Cross]

Wow. A surprising amount of acrimony in this thread it seems to me.

Anyway. To clarify for those who haven't read Helgoland, the book is primarily about quantum mechanics, its history, and how to interpret. Rovelli, of course, presents his relational quantum mechanics is the best way of interpreting experimental results. In a nutshell, different observers can see different results. Observer doesn't mean conscious observer. Observation by a conscious observer doesn't create reality. The world doesn't split every time an observation happens. Reality is simply relational.

From there Rovelli ventures into some philosophical territory and finds similarities between relational quantum mechanics and the philosophy of Nagarjuna. There is no OP. Reality is composed of relationships. The world at its core is empty and it is so empty that even its emptiness isn't fundamental.