How is there a world that remains when not being perceived?

[HelenAmery]

I’m not an expert here, which you’ll probably tell from the question! But I reckon you all can help with where my understanding is missing something.

Reading The Idea of the World Ch3 and BK writes about the world only ever being known as images via all sensory modalities, on the screen of perception.

So I get that if I’m on a chair I only experience the chair via sensory images. There is no chair outside of that.

But if I pass out unconscious on the chair, although there is no experience of chair, the apparent chair doesn’t vanish and leave me in a heap on the floor. I’m aware that I have no way of knowing this doesn’t happen and that the chair could reappear as I come round. And that if someone took a photo of me passed out on the chair all I’d know is the photo which is still only appearing as a sensory image.

I guess my point is, yes we’ve only ever known a world via sense perceptions, but that world seems to remain even if I’m not consciously perceiving it at the time.

All help gratefully received!

[Jim Cross]

I think this is fatal flaw in the parsimony argument that idealism makes.

To get around this problem there needs to be an assumption of a mind at large that is perceiving what you feel as the chair while you are unconscious. Or that the chair you perceive is composed of little excitations of consciousness itself.

There isn't any way to prove this mind at large exists. There may be hints of something in various transformative experiences but we have no way to know if these hints are errors of perceptions themselves.

[HelenAmery]

I think this is fatal flaw in the parsimony argument that idealism makes.

To get around this problem there needs to be an assumption of a mind at large that is perceiving what you feel as the chair while you are unconscious. Or that the chair you perceive is composed of little excitations of consciousness itself.

There isn't any way to prove this mind at large exists. There may be hints of something in various transformative experiences but we have no way to know if these hints are errors of perceptions themselves.

Thanks Jim, funnily enough the phrase ‘mind at large’ popped up a few mins ago here too! It would explain the appearance of all things including a me that’s either conscious or not, and aligns with nondual understandings but as you say how do we know those transformative experiences are ‘true’.

Maybe this is where we lean on quantum physics instead with the ground of all apparent things being a quantum field. Maybe it is that which is synonymous with mind at large.

[Soul_of_Shu]

But if I pass out unconscious on the chair, although there is no experience of chair, the apparent chair doesn’t vanish and leave me in a heap on the floor.

Interestingly, it's also possible to be having a so-called OBE and experience the same imagery of 'your' body sitting in a chair, from a dissociated pov. In which case, I imagine that whatever is sustaining it under those circumstances, is not other than what is sustaining it under all circumstances, but it's now perceived as being objectified 'out there' along with all other persisting forms not limited to one's personal consciousness, yet still existing as a transpersonal form. However, while fixatedly identified with that form, one's experience is of being 'inside' it, as 'my' body, and not as a transpersonal object of experience. Suffice to say that this spatiotemporal subject><object 'reality' construct is far from being beyond further elaboration and explication. Hopefully others 'out there' will speak to this topic from 'in here.'

[Ben Iscatus]

Under analytic idealism, the chair is an idea held in place by MAL (or rather the predictable laws of MAL's instinctive way of thinking). So, once created, the continuing existence of MAL's idea of the chair is not in doubt.

Your experience of the chair is something else. A chair is of course more than you experience - consider the difference between noumena and phenomena or Will and representation.

What you experience of the chair is what evolution considers necessary for your survival- in other words, you must be able to see it and touch it - which includes providing you with the cognitive scaffolding of space and time. When you are asleep, you still experience the chair by touch, though this experience may not be available to introspective recall.

[HelenAmery]

But if I pass out unconscious on the chair, although there is no experience of chair, the apparent chair doesn’t vanish and leave me in a heap on the floor.

Interestingly, it's also possible to be having a so-called OBE and experience the same imagery of 'your' body sitting in a chair, from a dissociated pov. In which case, I imagine that whatever is sustaining it under those circumstances, is not other than what is sustaining it under all circumstances, but it's now perceived as being objectified 'out there' along with all other persisting forms not limited to one's personal consciousness, yet still existing as a transpersonal form. However, while fixatedly identified with that form, one's experience is of being 'inside' it, as 'my' body, and not as a transpersonal object of experience. Suffice to say that this spatiotemporal subject><object 'reality' construct is far from being beyond further elaboration and explication. Hopefully others 'out there' will speak to this topic from 'in here.'

Makes sense, and NDEs too. And therefore the same something that sustains the body is also sustaining the appearance of ‘chair’. And so when the world is viewed from ‘within’ the body the sensory perceptions appear to belong to me ‘here’ but they no more happen within me at those times than if there was an OBE. Hence when we connect to direct experience it’s of ‘looking happening’ but no ‘me’ doing the looking.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Hence when we connect to direct experience it’s of ‘looking happening’ but no ‘me’ doing the looking.

Yes, in OBE events, whatever this 'I' is that is experiencing a world apart from this 'I' is quite impossible to localize, while sometimes even involving a 360 degree field of experience. Go figure.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Also of note, regarding the sleeping state, in which this 'I' is experiencing its dreamworld, upon returning to the waking state there is a notion that this dreamworld ceases to exist, yet I'm not so sure of that. It may well be that. as Jung intimated, this subconscious realm is always active, 24/7 so to speak, but while in the waking state one must tune it out, so as to focus on the consensus construct of corporeality, even as the subconscious realm is constantly informing the waking state at a subliminal level. Thus this 'I' making decisions is always involved in far vaster dimensions of sustained activity and ideation than it is metacognitively aware of.

[HelenAmery]

Also of note, regarding the sleeping state, in which this 'I' is experiencing its dreamworld, upon returning to the waking state there is a notion that this dreamworld ceases to exist, yet I'm not so sure of that. It may well be that. as Jung intimated, this subconscious realm is always active, 24/7 so to speak, but while in the waking state one must tune it out, so as to focus on the consensus construct of corporeality, even as the subconscious realm is constantly informing the waking state at a subliminal level. Thus this 'I' making decisions is always involved in far vaster dimensions of sustained activity and ideation than it is metacognitively aware of.

I guess that makes sense given the dreamlike objects of experience that appear within meditation.

[Shaibei]

From what I understand Bernardo thinks that while you are not looking there are excitations of m@l around you. One of the things I wonder about Bernardo's formulation is whether over time it has become more distinctive of the way we perceive reality outside and what it really is (as in Schopenhauer, for example).