Criticism

[Eugene I]

I’m not sure if you’re strawmanning or you really misunderstand me this badly. Either way, your claim of metaphysics derived from the math of physics won’t become true through repetition.

First of all, I am not resorting to any mathematical model since that is something that comes after experience and needn’t come at all. The ancient Greeks had the notion of energy with no mathematics around it at all. Energy is the word we use to signify any force and in its common usage it isn’t something reduced to mathematics. It can be abstracted into the models of physics, but that would have nothing to do with my usage here. What is stranger is your claim that I “declare it an undisputable [sic] fundamental”. I explicitly said it was the most elemental reality we know of, but would be foolish to claim anything to be the most fundamental - and that applies to consciousness as well as energy. But I have to point out your repeated evasion of Kastrup’s resorting to energy through ATP as the marker separating consciousness from no consciousness. If this energy is the distinguishing mark of consciousness then it necessarily is more fundamental and consciousness is reducible to it. There just is no way around that, which is probably why you continue to evade it.

Second, you sound as if you consider consciousness to be a hermetically sealed entity with an inside and outside - a relic of obsolete metaphysics. It is rather our physical connection to the world. The energy you oddly refuse to acknowledge, mostly electromagnetic energy in this case, impacts our sense neurons, entangling us in the world. In that entanglement there is neither a subject/object relationship nor an isolated consciousness - just a relational event. This happens whether or not we create abstract models and is our only means of perception. Upon this entanglement we have two modes of understanding - esthetic and rational/objective, but this experience is always an event of mutual participation. What we call it is of no importance at this first level of awareness.

To summarize so far, you have distorted my use of energy into a reductive use in physics, which has no relation at all to my point; falsely claimed I posit energy as the ontological primitive, and ignore Kastrup’s resorting to energy to distinguish consciousness. Of course it is much easier to ignorantly dismiss it as laughable instead of addressing what I actually wrote.

I’ll skip over the simulated reality hypothesis as irrelevant to my position, as well as the fact that we don’t live in one.

It is another distortion to say I didn’t address what some call the hard problem. I explicitly said that nobody, including Kastrup, understands consciousness, although quantum mind theory offers interesting possibilities. Kastrup just offers metaphysics of the gaps, claiming that cosmic consciousness solves that problem. It in fact resolves nothing at all since there is no reason to believe it exists. We might as well just say god did it.

What reality are you referring to in the case of Rovelli if we know nothing outside consciousness? I do agree that science can only tell us how but not what, but that is of course just a common truism We learn what is through non-metaphysical thinking from direct experience.

Your remark on analogies strikes as a bit forced and evasive. You are still caught in the solipsistic trap of only knowing your own consciousness which in no way validates imagining any such thing outside your limited consciousness. It is no more than empty metaphysics and far weaker than the claim that energy we sense cannot be counted as real. But then you got confused about reality in the Rovelli bit also.

If it weren’t for his influence on Nietzsche, I doubt we would even remember Schopenhauer today. You aren’t missing anything here.

I had hoped for more honest conversation here, but if we are just going to repeat our mantras and dismiss opposing views as laughable with no honest counter we should just leave it at this.,

JW, you can believe in whatever you want: energy, Being, Heraclitus fire, Tao, Chaos, Chi, Brahman, Shmahman or whatever else X, I have no problem with that. The key point is: if you claim that such X is fundamentally non-conscious and then somehow conscious experiences emerge from it, then you inevitably run into the intractable brutal emergence hard problem of consciousness. I hope you are aware that this is not about "easy problem of consciousness": how consciousness functions and how conscious phenomena are causally related to each other and to their neural correlates, it's about how these conscious phenomena are actually consciously experienced. I again refer you to the works of Chalmers, IMO one of the greatest philosophers of our times.

[Eugene I]

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.

Right, it actually does not matter whether the Being is ontological/fundamental or not. What matters is whether it is conscious or not and whether conscious experiences are immanent to it or somehow "emerge" from it. The latter case leads to the "hard problem", but JW seems to take the "mysterianism" position and simply ignore it.

[Eugene I]

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.

Right, at the end it all boils down to experiential realization rather than philosophical reasoning. The reasoning is always a secondary layer built upon the direct experience.

[Mark Tetzner]

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.

Right, it actually does not matter whether the Being is ontological/fundamental or not. What matters is whether it is conscious or not and whether conscious experiences are immanent to it or somehow "emerge" from it. The latter case leads to the "hard problem", but JW seems to take the "mysterianism" position and simply ignore it.

Right. What you forgot to add is that JW is now part of a powerful cult that spans the globe and that we have certain rituals here.
As a "tier 5"-member of this forum I am allowed to make "tier 5"-requeststs - what I opted for is demanding from JW without delay
that he may cite an entire Hoelderlin-poem "auf Deutsch" and post it here asap. When can we expect to get it?

Mark

[Soul_of_Shu]

He (JW) 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 just because he didn't.

Well, I suppose, somewhat reluctantly, I'm going to have to delve into Heidegger, if I'm to comment about Dasein in any comprehensive way. Initially, from what I can glean from Wiki, for Heidegger, at least, Dasein is not referring to some fundamental, uncaused, irreducible ontological state, but seems to refer specifically to what it is to be a human being, as opposed to some speculation about transpersonal Being. Of course, it can be said that they are inextricably entangled. But reading further into it, I'm must concede that it does become quite convoluted and tortuous in trying to discern what exactly he is referring to by Dasein. However, I will continue to delve into it, and trust that it might eventually become clearer, with some edification herein from the promoters of Heidegger, who have actually read his work.

[Eugene I]

I should warn you that it is impossible to converge to a single and coherent interpretation or understanding of Heidegger's philosophy even if you are fluent in German (and if you are not then don't even try...)

[Soul_of_Shu]

Further to Dasein, in reading the following, it would seem that what Heidegger means by Dasein, is actually that self-reflective awareness which is now referred to as meta-consciousness, peculiar to human beings ...

"Heidegger uses the expression Dasein to refer to the experience of being that is peculiar to human beings. Thus it is a form of being that is aware of and must confront such issues as personhood, mortality and the dilemma or paradox of living in relationship with other humans while being ultimately alone with oneself."

[Eugene I]

Further to Dasein, in reading the following, it would seem that what Heidegger means by Dasein, is actually that self-reflective awareness which is now referred to as meta-consciousness, peculiar to human beings ...

"Heidegger uses the expression Dasein to refer to the experience of being that is peculiar to human beings. Thus it is a form of being that is aware of and must confront such issues as personhood, mortality and the dilemma or paradox of living in relationship with other humans while being ultimately alone with oneself."

Nice, but that's somebody else's interpretation of Heidegger's Dasein. Would be good to find the quotes from the original sources confirming that (with a comprehensible translation).

[Soul_of_Shu]

Nice, but that's somebody else's interpretation of Heidegger's Dasein. Would be good to find the quotes from the original sources confirming that (with a comprehensible translation).

Even better would be to speak to the man himself, because I don't understand German, and hence I'm inevitably left with a translation, by definition an interpretation. Any channelers of Heidegger available?

[Eugene I]

Any channelers of Heidegger available?

I asked him but, like Wittgenstein, he prefers to remain silent about the mystery...