Criticism

[JeffreyW]

I would never use the word “just” to modify poetic. Poetic thought is the way to experience truth as non-reductive esthetic understanding. There is far more profound truth in a Beethovens symphony than in all the works of Einstein.,

I see the roles exactly reversed from what you ask. Science exists to feed the practical needs of technology and take us to the edge of what can be objectified, where they mystery beckons to us with all new questions - it shines a beacon on where the poets are to meet. For me it is far more interesting fro what it discovers that it can’t explain than for what it can.

[AshvinP]

Eugene - I really hope you take the time to read the above as well, and especially the bold part. If you do, then it should not be necessary for me to explain why our epistemic position is completely opposed to that of BK in any future discussions.

I did read it and I agree. The bold also applies to Descartes dualism which historically became the implicit foundation for the scientific method. However, I'm not so sure it applies to BK, since in his scheme the human sense perceptions are the perceptions manifested by MAL's ideations (across the "Markov's blanket") which are also subjective by nature, therefore there should not be in principle any non-traversable gap between the MAL ideations behind the sense perceptions and our human ideas about them. In other words, the MAL ideations can be in principle knowable, shareable and accessible to us. I guess he never elaborated on that, but I assume it would be natural to conclude this from his philosophy. But I can now see that BK probably made a mistake by associating his philosophy with Schopenhauer's, even though I'm not qualified to make any judgements here because I'm really ignorant about Schop's philosophy (and have no interest in studying it).

You have just restated the dualism, though (bold). That assumes we are forming ideas about "MAL's ideations" (our sense-perceptions). That is also Kant's assumed starting point for his epistemology. For Goethe and Steiner, our concepts, which manifest inwardly, belong to the sense-perceptible content of whatever we are observing just as much as any properties which manifest outwardly as percepts. Without the concepts, we would be perceiving complete gibberish of pure syntax (outer form) rather than an intelligible language with some semantics (inner meaning).

Trust me, Eugene, the implicit dualism we are speaking here is not easy to get rid of... it is completely habitual to all of our normal thinking. I feel like you are really underestimating it.

[AshvinP]

I would never use the word “just” to modify poetic. Poetic thought is the way to experience truth as non-reductive esthetic understanding. There is far more profound truth in a Beethovens symphony than in all the works of Einstein.,

I see the roles exactly reversed from what you ask. Science exists to feed the practical needs of technology and take us to the edge of what can be objectified, where they mystery beckons to us with all new questions - it shines a beacon on where the poets are to meet. For me it is far more interesting fro what it discovers that it can’t explain than for what it can.

Let me rephrase the question - why can't the esthetic inquiry and knowledge form the basis of an entirely new, objective, rigorous, and precise science? If we have moved past the Cartesian dualism of knowledge which is "subjective" as opposed to "objective", then what is still preventing that new science from developing?

[Mark Tetzner]

JW ... I forgot who famously said man kann nicht nicht kommunizieren (one cannot not communicate), along the same lines
I would think that one can not not have a metaphysical position. My feeling is that you have this one core-belief that
metaphysics is bunk. And while I concede that we can not know anything for certain for me it is all about comparing
models and what makes sense. You are trying to rule out idealism based on a core-belief it seems and yet are arguing
for materialism (though when pressed you don't want to self-identify as one) and say that you are entangled with the
world etc.
So that's just what I came away with, think you said you are an analytic philosopher but that it all comes from beliefs/convictions is just
what I feel. You think consciousness has to do with you being entangled with the world or something, but what
does this really mean or where is the aha-moment for others?

You say that BK can not hold a candle to you because you have expertise...and at the same time say that nobody understands
consciousness. You say it takes years of thinking about these things.....and in contrast you fail to see that BK has dedicated his life to this?
He is approaching his fifties and you are
probably in your sixties, maybe seventies, so where is this inferiority that you are trying to assign to him coming from?

Bernardo has these 5 criteria to evaluate a position.
We discuss why mainstream physicalism fails on all key post-enlightenment values, such as coherence, internal consistency, parsimony, explanatory power and empirical adequacy.

I am interested why you don't want to play this game.
Is it really not possible that this is because you were schooled a certain way or that you have beliefs that you could
re-examine? Next to "the Germans" there are other schools of thoughts who believe differently, some, like Spinoza
are discussed in BKs idealism-course. And as you know "the Germans" were partly influenced by the East anyway.
You are a materialist, but materialism says that the essence of the world is quantitative and that it does not have
the qualities of experience, which means we are akin to a light-bulb in a world that doesnt exist.
To me this is what this is really all about, it is some times interesting what Goethe and Beethoven said, but to me the
5 pointers from above are much more important and a much healthier starting-point, thoughts?

Can you make a compelling case for your world-view, just like BK made for his? Can you explain why your way
of looking at things is not just something that sides with our view-point but why we are necessarily wrong?
Can you explain consciousness? Can you drill serious holes into the idealistic model?

Do not get this the wrong way:

Your bitterness an your wrong evaluation of BK who is supposedly building this monstrous money-machine for
his own gain and is actually a cult-leader has made me doubt your sense of judgement. This does not have
to do with what we agree or disagree on, it is simply nonsense. I know this might sound insulting, but there is
gold in the rubble, I think we are emotional beings and paying attention to our emotions can also help us
understand why we believe what - it is a much more serious force than we dare to think, when it comes to
what we believe about the world. Sorry for going Freud on you, Thoughts?

What I regret in many discussions of this sort is that the inability to drive home a position 100% is what
the critics are banking on, but they can often not make a coherent case of their own.

Myself, and I am sure many others here, have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours thinking, meditating,
reading, informing themselves etc to arrive at their conclusion, that is something I also wanted to add,
its not just you being the Lichtgestalt

Once we die we know for certain whats going on, can we find agreement on that or not?

One thing is for sure: Nobody can believe what he has not grokked. We can not accept what
we re not familiar with. I remember years before
I knew anything about BK doubting my own sanity to consider that the world could be mental.
It is pure torture. So from the many years that you have been thinking about things, how many
hours do you think you have tried to grok idealism? A couple of hundred to 500 I would hope,
in my opinion that is a minimum needed.

[Mark Tetzner]

Here is another question I have, not sure abou this one (thought pretty sure on my position. )
As JW said idealism is like a God of the gaps fallacy.
In my view there are problems with this.
1. A biblical God is a naive notion, consciousness is a fact.
2. Some answer must go into the gap anyway, we are arguing
for different positions. Every God-of-the-gap argument could
be countered by a materialism-of-the-gap counter-argument.
Kinda like that.
3. Once we are convinced of something the other position always
looks like it has fallacies, nobody is immune to this.
Thats why I like the 5 criteria posted above.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Mark ... As for understanding what JW is getting at (if I can presume to speak for him), it might be helpful to keep in mind that he is not committing to an ontological primitive, and is quite content to leave that as a mystery, and thus is not into ontology at all. At most, if he's referring at all to some fundamental, uncaused, irreducible state, he calls it Being, and that beyond that there is nothing else definitive that can be said about it, including whether it is essentially aware or non-aware. In either case, making either claim opens up an explanatory can of worms, in terms of how it accounts for the apparency of this relational subject><object dynamic experience, with all of its spatiotemporal phenomena, including these thought forms. BK is into ontology, and has committed to going with aware Being, and its immanent ideation, then attempts to make a cogent explanatory case, however provisional it may be. But to expect JW to make such a case for how to derive awareness from non-aware Being is a moot point, because he hasn't committed to any such fundamental ontological premise. Rather, it's all forever a mystery, and thus pointless to attempt any explanation as to how for example 'energy', having inexplicably arisen from Being, comes to be experienced, or exactly 'who' the fuck cares.

[Mark Tetzner]

Dana, yes noted, I will try to understand this interface better, earlier I already sent you an email. And no, I did not do it on purpose, I probably just mis-clicked. Please delete the first post and thank you for elaborating on JWs thoughts. Though earlier JW said science seems to point at an ontological primitive and then followed up with "if there is even such a thing", its all a bit confusing. He also does not assign awareness to Being, but later says when Heidegger speaks of Dasein (being or existence), Dasein means consciousness to Heidegger. And probably he quoted him right, but I think maybe Heidegger did not think of ontological classes, but I see no reason not to think in terms of them only because he didnt. Whatever I dont want to belabour the points. I will continue to watch the convo.

P.S. I am under the impression that people, be it the philosophers from the past or today, mostly have a tendency to take consciousness as a given, it is almost like one does not to have to think about it, they intuitively know what it is or they dont worry about it. From this stems the belief that ontological classes etc. are not important, maybe it is a sign of simply being disinterested or not having realized how perplexing it is?. This is the most perplexing think about consciousness, that different cultures believe different things and its all chrystal-clear from their perspective for some reason. In howfar did "the Germans" from back then really get involved thinking deeply about consciousness? I am not sure if it was deep at all. The convos in this thread, maybe, go way beyond what at least most of them focused on, thats my assumption.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Though earlier JW said science seems to point at an ontological primitive and then followed up with "if there is even such a thing", its all a bit confusing.

Insofar as a scientist has committed to an ontological premise, i.e. non-aware Being, which they may equate to the quantum vacuum state, or the zero-point field, or some immanent state of potential 'energy', they are into ontology. From there, some are attempting to come up with an explanation as to how awareness is emergent, or epiphenomenal, in terms of that state. While, as futile as it may seem, I remain open to such an explanation eventually being arrived at, in the meantime, due to certain revelatory realizations, to this mind Being and awareness are synonymous, and any reference to such Being that would be absent awareness, only ever feels like an abstraction within awareness. As such, any ancillary philosophical case that is made for the primacy of awareness, can be useful in terms of offering a conceptual framework for the purposes of discussion in the context of this forum. Indeed, making such a case is what this forum was primarily created for. So it's quite self-sustaining In that regard. And I'm not sure why JW as any interest in it at all, except perhaps in hope to convince us that ontology is a rather wordy waste of time.

[Mark Tetzner]

He will return and let us know

[Eugene I]

You have just restated the dualism, though (bold). That assumes we are forming ideas about "MAL's ideations" (our sense-perceptions). That is also Kant's assumed starting point for his epistemology. For Goethe and Steiner, our concepts, which manifest inwardly, belong to the sense-perceptible content of whatever we are observing just as much as any properties which manifest outwardly as percepts. Without the concepts, we would be perceiving complete gibberish of pure syntax (outer form) rather than an intelligible language with some semantics (inner meaning).

Trust me, Eugene, the implicit dualism we are speaking here is not easy to get rid of... it is completely habitual to all of our normal thinking. I feel like you are really underestimating it.

No dualism here, MAL ideas and human ideas are of the same nature and so it is in principle possible to for these ideas to be shared. But the universe of ideas is continuous and infinite, not discrete, so most often our own ideas are not exactly the same ideas but only close relatives or approximates of other people ideas or MAL ideas. They are close but still different. This is why it happens so often (including this forum) that we seem to speak about the same topics and ideas but our understanding of them actually differ.