Philosophical Speculations

Ben Iscatus wrote: ↑Tue Dec 14, 2021 9:44 am I'm utterly amazed that you found this inspiring, FB. Were we watching the same podcast? How differently we alters can view the world! What different perspectives we have! There was BK, all wound up... and opposite him was a laid back, half-interested individual...I reckon Graham Oppy had been replaced by a low grade philosophical zombie - not even programmed to answer the question about who would win the ashes (real Australians are forced to answer this one way only). He couldn't grasp that identity theory was just a linguistic device for promissory materialism (or if he could, he couldn't say why it's not). In fact, Oppy didn't attempt to justify any of his very few thoughts.

There was a hopeful statement for Cleric and Ashvin, though. After saying that conceptual reasoning is not enough - that intuition, empathy (emotional intelligence) and imagination are important, right at the end, BK said that "Nature is a book to be read." There!

Was that before or after he said the "individual doesn't even exist"? It's just stunning how assertions like that pass for rigorous philosophy these days, even though it literally defies all experience. "My intellectual atomized ego", which I am using to fragment the individual and thereby declare it non-existent, " does not fundamentally exist", would be more reasonable. Responding to question, "does materialism or idealism best explain reality". I will let you guys know when absolutely no response is received

Was that before or after he said the "individual doesn't even exist"? It's just stunning how assertions like that pass for rigorous philosophy these days, even though it literally defies all experience. "My intellectual atomized ego", which I am using to fragment the individual and thereby declare it non-existent, " does not fundamentally exist",

I think that's unfair, Ashvin. In speech you know such understanding is telescoped and truncated. You are too hard on conceptualization. We have to use ideas to categorise experience, or we'd just be storytelling all the time. Even with "cognitive metamorphosis" - is metamorphosis not a concept? Is cognition not a concept?

Anyway, I thought BK did a good job of demolishing poor opposition.

Ben Iscatus wrote: ↑Tue Dec 14, 2021 2:16 pm

Was that before or after he said the "individual doesn't even exist"? It's just stunning how assertions like that pass for rigorous philosophy these days, even though it literally defies all experience. "My intellectual atomized ego", which I am using to fragment the individual and thereby declare it non-existent, " does not fundamentally exist",

I think that's unfair, Ashvin. In speech you know such understanding is telescoped and truncated. You are too hard on conceptualization. We have to use ideas to categorise experience, or we'd just be storytelling all the time. Even with "cognitive metamorphosis" - is metamorphosis not a concept? Is cognition not a concept?

Anyway, I thought BK did a good job of demolishing poor opposition.

I don't know what the objection is. My use of the word "stunning" was just colloquial speech - it's not really stunning, because this has been BK's core position for awhile now (unless he is speculating on life after death, at which point he sometimes waffles on individuated soul-experience continuing after physical sheath is discarded). I am not against using concepts. I am criticizing the lack of relating those concepts to our concrete sense-experience and reasoning through them. Which reminds me of my other comment to someone on that Twitter thread.





The very fact BK chooses only to debate "poor opposition" he can demolish shows the entire problem here. Not just with him, but analytic philosophy in general.

Ben Iscatus wrote: ↑Tue Dec 14, 2021 9:44 am "Nature is a book to be read."

This is an interesting and revealing analogy. For as in reading a book of fiction (i.e. relating to phenomenal simulacrums as opposed to the noumenal source), one may glean some inkling of what the 'author' is actually like, but only in an actual intimate heart-to-heart meeting and confluence of psyches, can reader and author truly become well-acquainted, and know the profound meaning of such an integral relationship. Mind you, upon meeting the author the book may never be read in the same way again ... never mind if the author turns out to be a misanthrope at large

I don't know where I stand in terms of thinking we would necessarily make a deeper link with author by knowing them personally, but I appreciate the thought experiment and can certainly think of the kind of situations where you really would need to know them in person.

AshvinP, I didn't know you pointed to logical or observational error in BK's work. I thought you merely preferred a model that doesn't remain as general as his. Is there a link to where you point clearly to where BK is simply wrong in your opinion?

Graham Oppy is the kind of materialist thinker than Rudolf Steiner could and did deeply respect and sing the praises of. In my opinion. Thank God that great thinkers don't need other great thinkers to be right about the ultimate questions to feel deep respect for the other's thinking nonetheless.


Oppy is not only a very good human being, but he teaches people a way of sorting cognitive maps that shows respect for the various positions and humility with one's own. When Oppy talks about how deeply reasonable many arguments for God are, he backs it up despite still arguing that his view seems more consistent to himself. And of course he'll bug some folks.

findingblanks wrote: ↑Tue Dec 14, 2021 6:54 pm I don't know where I stand in terms of thinking we would necessarily make a deeper link with author by knowing them personally, but I appreciate the thought experiment and can certainly think of the kind of situations where you really would need to know them in person.

AshvinP, I didn't know you pointed to logical or observational error in BK's work. I thought you merely preferred a model that doesn't remain as general as his. Is there a link to where you point clearly to where BK is simply wrong in your opinion?

Yes, there are several. Generally, any arguments I make against Kant or Schop also apply to BK, because his "model" is exactly the same, only with more updated terminology and metaphors for the 21st century.

But you already know the critique of "critical idealism" from Steiner's PoF and Goethean Science. So I don't think you will find anything too novel in my essays. Here are two recent ones.


Kant v. Goethe - viewtopic.php?t=648&start=10

Solipsism: Facts and Fictions - viewtopic.php?t=579&start=20


If you want to provide a specific claim of BK, then I can also explain why I think it is incomplete (not "wrong"). As mentioned before, and as Steiner pointed out often, the error in these modern philosophical, scientific, and systematic models in general come from incompleteness, and that is a natural and inevitable logical consequence of adopting implicit dualism, naive realism, and the corresponding hyper-abstraction of our Thinking activity.

findingblanks wrote: ↑Tue Dec 14, 2021 6:54 pm I don't know where I stand in terms of thinking we would necessarily make a deeper link with author by knowing them personally, but I appreciate the thought experiment and can certainly think of the kind of situations where you really would need to know them in person.

You seem to have missed the nuanced point of the analogy, in this case an analogy, however limited, pointing beyond to a deeper context, one far more profound than meeting a human author of a book. For the 'Author' of 'the book of Nature' we are 'reading' is the ever-present Origin wherein the Logos is with God, and the Logos is God. And in this experience, upon that Meeting, the Book is not read in the same way again.

OK, there seem to be lots this-or-that options... ontology-or-no-ontology, physicalism-or-idealism, different kinds of science, reality-or-imagination, read-the-book-or-not, know-the-author-or-not, etc. How would folks apply their favorite option (and with what consequences) to this recent reading of the book? Please keep it simple: what difference would your preferred model make?

Lou Gold wrote: ↑Tue Dec 14, 2021 9:55 pm OK, there seem to be lots this-or-that options... ontology-or-no-ontology, physicalism-or-idealism, different kinds of science, reality-or-imagination, read-the-book-or-not, know-the-author-or-not, etc. How would folks apply their favorite option (and with what consequences) to this recent reading of the book? Please keep it simple: what difference would your preferred model make?

I would try hard to abandon the notion of "model" altogether. This is one thing we keep mentioning here but is rarely understood. It's not hard to understand - no philosophy degree or even familiarity with analytic idealism is needed. Only some minimal thinking effort and good will.

What is implicit in all "models" is the "correspondence theory of truth". It is really exactly what is sounds like, and it lives as a tempting force within all of us. That is key to remember - what we call it doesn't matter so much as how it actually functions in our experience. It is our default way of perceiving and thinking of the world content. We assume that Nature is there with her appearances, and it is our task to fashion inner concepts which model her independent behavior external to us. If we were snuffed out of existence in the next moment, we assume that her behavior would continue exactly the same as it always had. When we return to existence, we assume it is our task to fashion a historical model of what happened when we were gone (which are really things we no longer remember, because we are never actually snuffed out of existence). Whenever we speak of ideas being "right" or "wrong", we have already adopted this view. This happens every day and every lifetime for everyone. We never overcome this default mode by rearranging concepts and calling ourselves "idealist", "monist", "phenomenologist", "participatory cognitionist", and what not. We only set out on a path to mitigate its influence when we seek to deeply know it, to even Love and appreciate it, as it lives within us. Here I mean "Love" which wants the best for it, whatever it is, not "love" which wants it to remain exactly as it is. Love which deeply desires for it to reach its full potential, just as we can deeply desire to reach our own.

All of this has great practical relevance for your question and link. The correspodence view sees these natural phenomena and subconsciously thinks, "how do I rearrange the concepts that I already have to make sense of these things happening in the world out there". A "particpatory" view of thinking, again remembering it is not the outer label which matters but the inner meaning of what it is pointing to as a symbol, sees these natural phenomena as question marks. They are the punctuation at the end of questions we have not thought to ask Nature yet, perhaps because we don't know how to even formulate it, or we are anxious about popping the question. These natural questions invite our Thinking into them so we may discover new concepts - more holistic ideas - which explain why and how they appear to us. Notice we have not made any metaphysical judgments whatsoever at this point - we don't know what the natural phenomena are "made of". The natural phenomena are like clues on a treasure hunt which will naturally lead our concrete Thinking activity towards constellating their deeper meanings. So, the short answer to your question above is, we need to treat Nature more seriously than some object to which we "apply our favorite option". We cannot rush to impose our preferred intellectual "solutions" on her. She is not going to react favorably to that treament, and that is perfectly understandable. She deserves much more deep Thinking attention than most people are willing to give her today.