Nietzsche and Christianity - Metaphysical Idealist Critique

[Lou Gold]

Hey,

Is there a whole section of page 28 now missing in this thread?

I was referencing an exchange with Cleric when the section seemed to vanish.

[SanteriSatama]

From what I understand, the conscious beings are what we are referring to as "ideas", "ideal content", etc., rather than beings which have ideas. Their activity appears to us as thought-forms until we reach higher modes of cognition and directly see their activity, like peeking behind a curtain to see the puppet-master pulling the strings of the puppets (perhaps not the best analogy). I don't think that is inconsistent with Plato and his Forms, but that's a whole different discussion.

I think Cleric already explained a few times how the ideal content can be uniquely experienced yet also belong to a shared pool of content. I still kind of think the combination problem is mostly an artifice of unexamined philosophical axioms. Although Cleric may disagree with me there, I am not sure. Not that it really matters, because the experiential givens point to genuinely shared ideal content with also unique perspectives on that content.

That's fine, I understand that the idea-beings ARE ideas. The question is: is there a conscious experience that pertains to these beings? The word "beings" sort of assumes that there is.

A common way to express this is that there are ideas that have (sentient) beings. To have subjects to carry an idea, the idea needs to have some degree of sentience and volition.

For example, pure mathematics is an idea of ideas, which has sensual intentionalities of Beauty and coherence. I don't think we would do injustice if we called also the Idea of pure mathematics a sentient being. She might approve.

[Eugene I]

You say the breaking of individual unity of experience is a fact (directly experienced?) when same experience is shared, but that the latter is impossible. So how are you directly experiencing the breaking of unity?

No, sorry, you misunderstood. I said: the unbreakable unity of experience is the experiential fact. Now, if we assume that the same experience can be shared, such assumption creates a problem (=subject combination problem): how is it possible to share the experiences between subjects without breaking the unity of subjective experience? You can not "cut out" a phenomenon of experience from a unity of one subjective experience and "stich" it to the unity of the other subjective experience. Or you can not "stich" two unities only within one shared phenomenon.

It's like there are two bags of nuts. But each nut only belongs to one bag. One nut can not belong to two bags at the same time. This is a rough analogy of course.

[SanteriSatama]

"Boundaries" are indeed only hypothetical but the combination problem has nothing to do with boundaries. It has to do with breaking the unity of individual subjective experiences (which is a fact, not a hypothesis) if we assume that the same experience is shared between two subjects.

Unity of a set ("of individual subjective experiences") has all to do with boundaries. There's no unity without boundaries.

Let's shift our attention a little. What is really remarkable is our ability to disagree over something so fundamental. Instead of arguing and trying to convince, it is also possible to treasure the disagreement in good cheer!

There's also a world of difference between 'same' and 'similar'. The first assumes Law of Identity. I don't. My definition of same/equal is derived from more-less relation: Neither more nor less. Mathematical identities are relational and contextual. Anatta.

Cleric divides the word into I-dentity. My Freudian lapse divades into Id-entity.

[Eugene I]

Unity of a set ("of individual subjective experiences") has all to do with boundaries. There's no unity without boundaries.

I thought you didn't like the set theory

[SanteriSatama]

It's like there are two bags of nuts. But each nut only belongs to one bag. One nut can not belong to two bags at the same time.

Well, quantum nuts go nuts if you tell their superposition that they belong only to one bag, and not many gabs the same time.

[SanteriSatama]

Unity of a set ("of individual subjective experiences") has all to do with boundaries. There's no unity without boundaries.

I thought you didn't like the set theory

Axiomatic set theories are not aesthetically pleasing. Finite sets etc. well-defined data structures, another story. Also, I'm not especially fond of the word-concept 'individual'. It's an ugly word in my language, which loves to speak in asubjective.

The dynamic notion of open interval is primary to catuskoti non-attachment to any position or combination of the classical static tetralemma, which is a closed interval, a static data structure.

[AshvinP]

You say the breaking of individual unity of experience is a fact (directly experienced?) when same experience is shared, but that the latter is impossible. So how are you directly experiencing the breaking of unity?

No, sorry, you misunderstood. I said: the unbreakable unity of experience is the experiential fact. Now, if we assume that the same experience can be shared, such assumption creates a problem (=subject combination problem): how is it possible to share the experiences between subjects without breaking the unity of subjective experience? You can not "cut out" a phenomenon of experience from a unity of one subjective experience and "stich" it to the unity of the other subjective experience. Or you can not "stich" two unities only within one shared phenomenon.

It's like there are two bags of nuts. But each nut only belongs to one bag. One nut can not belong to two bags at the same time. This is a rough analogy of course.

OK so now that's cleared up, let's try again. The above is not an experiential fact, it is an assumption. You may find it to be a pretty unquestionable assumption, but it still remains nothing more than an assumption. There is no amount of meditation which turns that assumption into an undeniable given of experience. (a better word to use here is "inference", since you believe it is a logical conclusion which follows from experience).

Can we agree on that?

[Soul_of_Shu]

Hey,

Is there a whole section of page 28 now missing in this thread?

I was referencing an exchange with Cleric when the section seemed to vanish.

It's possible, as we've had a similar issue before with an especially longish thread, where an entire section inexplicably vanished. If so, unfortunately there seems to be no way to restore it.

[Eugene I]

OK so now that's cleared up, let's try again. The above is not an experiential fact, it is an assumption. You may find it to be a pretty unquestionable assumption, but it still remains nothing more than an assumption. There is no amount of meditation which turns that assumption into an undeniable given of experience. (a better word to use here is "inference", since you believe it is a logical conclusion which follows from experience).

Can we agree on that?

Yes we can. The unity of the space is a fact. The rest of the arguments are indeed only assumptions. But, as I said before: I'm not saying that it is impossible in principle that the same experience can be shared between two unified spaces. It's just that there are no conceivable models so far that could explain such phenomenon.

For example, BK's idealism offers a model of consciousness subdivided into alters with DID analogy. We can understand it, it is conceivable and makes sense for the intellect. And it is consistent with no logical contradictions. But I do not know of any model of consciousness that would be conceivable and consistent and at he same time explain how the same experience can be shared between two unified spaces of experiences. It makes no sense for the intellect so to speak. But we can go into the "mysterianism" mode and just say: we claim that the same experience can be shared, but we have no idea how to explain and verify that at this point, hopefully we will be able to understand it in the future. This will then remain an "explanatory gap" for such version of idealism, just like "the hard problem of consciousness" remains an inconceivable explanatory gap in materialism.

In the "competition filed' of the philosophical metaphysics philosophers try to defend their models and demonstrate their advantages based on certain merits. One of the merits is minimal explanatory gaps. There are still no metaphysical models with no explanatory gaps, but some models have less serious gaps, others have more serious. If you create another explanatory gap in your model of idealism, this will push your model back into the queue so to speak, it will be graded lower among other models.

I would say, whether the same experience can be shared or not is an undecidable problem. We can not verify or falsify such claim experimentally, likewise we cannot verify or falsify its negation experimentally. But at least its negation does not trigger the subject combination problem and does not create any explanatory gaps.