Res Ipsa Loquitur: Kant vs. the World

[Eugene I]

The ideas themselves are both ontic i.e. non-emergent because ideal content-activity is ontic under idealism by definition. If we are not assuming any philosophical axioms, then our direct experience also suggests ideal content-activity is ontic along with willing-feeling. Whether that ideal content is useful in 'saving the appearances' and restoring higher order unities of ideal relations is a question for spiritual science to investigate. The evolution of scientific paradigms you reference is exactly how the unconcealment of knowledge unfolds. That is not just philosophical or spiritual speculation but empirically verified results of developmental psychology. It is only a problem when anyone mistakes their particular model for the final and complete model.

OK, that's fair, although I personally refuse to use the term "ontic" in this way, it seems meaningless to me. If everything is "ontic" and nothing in "not-ontic" than what's the point of using such term?

Anyway, I get your paradigm. The remaining questions for me are:

- Do the "higher-order unities of ideal relations" exist when no human beings have any concepts about them? If yes, do they exist in the "Divine mind"?

- How do we know which ones of our concepts "reflect" the "higher-order unities of ideal relations"? How do we apply such "spiritual science"? For example, you believe, as a conclusion of the spiritual science and your spiritual intuition, that the idea "Christ is the Messiah" belongs to the "higher-order unities of ideal relations". However, Shaibei, who I think is also a believer in the "higher-order unities of ideal relations" of the Divine origin, does not believe that the idea "Christ is the Messiah" belongs to such "higher-order unities" according to his spiritual intuition and his Kabalistic spiritual science (but Shaibei, please correct me if I'm wrong). So, suppose I want to agree with the reality of the "higher-order unities of ideal relations". But which one, the Christian or Judaic? How do I choose?

[Eugene I]

Let's focus entirely on the direct experience. What exactly this experience really gives us and what we add out of ourselves? It is precisely here that we should be most careful and learn from previous experience.

So what's the experience? Pure awareness with phenomena entering and leaving consciousness. That's it. That's as factual as we can be without coloring the facts in any way. But when we say "phenomena, such as thinking and ideas, are only emergent elements from the ground awareness" we have a perfect example of something that we add through thinking to the given. This is the crux of the error. When there's general undervaluing of thinking we simply don't observe it close enough and that's the easiest way to blind ourselves about the way we reach our ideas. The above is such an example. Just because we clothe our knowing activity in a shroud of mystery we imagine that we arrive at the idea of emergence in some more 'direct' way. We contemplate that idea and believe that it's immune to logical fallacies, that it somehow proceeds directly from experience. But it's not so. We simply need to be brutally honest (as you say) with ourselves about this.

To put it into a more simple example, I can say: "When I close my eyes all colors disappear and I'm left in blackness. This direct experience shows me that blackness is fundamental and colors are only emergent phenomena." Put in this way things are much more blatant. Yes, we can fantasize as much as we want about blackness being the pure potential containing everything but the fact remains that we don't experience how exactly colors emerge from it. It's just an abstract conjecture. Direct experience only tells us that color experiences can appear and disappear from consciousness - nothing more. It's practically the same with the mystical state.

If the above is understood properly we'll also be in position to awaken from the Kantian spell that ideas have only local to our conscious bubble existence and can never be anything more than ideal copies of reality. Even though this view is very deeply embedded in the collective subconsciousness we can still recognize it and ask "is it really the result of direct experience? Or it's just an idea that has been spread over the world of perceptions?" If we are brutally honest we'll have to admit that there's nothing in the given that forces us into the conclusion that ideas exist only as personal copies. The whole idea of the personal and separate conscious space (that we discussed in the other thread) is another conjecture of the same kind. All we ever experience is one conscious space and one kind of ideas. When we imagine that our conscious space is only one of many and our ideas are only local to that space, we're presenting an idea as if it proceeds from some certain knowledge. But direct experiences - even in the mystical state - in no way lead out of themselves to these ideas. We only add them half-consciously because we don't pay close attention to our cognitive process.

Anyway. Things won't be resolved by philosophizing at the borderline. We need to see what the practical implications of each view are. That's the only thing that gives ideas their worth. Ideas don't come with labels 'true' or 'false'. They prove their correctness only when they are harmoniously related in greater wholenesses, which become practical and fruitful impulses for individual and social life.
I'm preparing an essay that I hope I'll post in the coming days, which is related to the questions here.

Cleric, please see my answer here
Simply speaking, as a bottom-line approach, I do not make any inferences whether the "blackness" or "awareness" is a "substratum". By the way, the difference between visual blackness and awareness is that by opening your eyes you can make blackness disappear, but there is nothing you can do to make the awareness disappear. Again, this is only an statement of the fact, and I make no bottom-line inferences from it. The only inference I make is the existence of other peoples FOE to avoid solipsism.

Still, I can conditionally assume some extra inferences, just for a fun of it, such as that the "awareness-beingness" is a "substratum". These are already metaphysical schemes and I have no way to prove or verify them. There are other metaphysical schemes available: the objective-idealistic (yours/Simon's/Ashvin's) or materialistic. But I have certain personal preferences towards the subjective phenomenological idealistic one simply on practical and psychological grounds - it helps me to attain a sense of harmony, happiness, meaning and efficiency in my life, but that does not mean that it would or should work the same way for everyone else. Such worldview as a bottom-line does not include the inference of the "awareness-beingness" is a "substratum", but I have an "extension" auxiliary metaphysical scheme of my liking that does include the inference of the "awareness-beingness as a substratum". But I accept that such extra inference is non-parsimonious when compared with he plain empirical bottom-line minimalistic platform outlined here.

[AshvinP]

The ideas themselves are both ontic i.e. non-emergent because ideal content-activity is ontic under idealism by definition. If we are not assuming any philosophical axioms, then our direct experience also suggests ideal content-activity is ontic along with willing-feeling. Whether that ideal content is useful in 'saving the appearances' and restoring higher order unities of ideal relations is a question for spiritual science to investigate. The evolution of scientific paradigms you reference is exactly how the unconcealment of knowledge unfolds. That is not just philosophical or spiritual speculation but empirically verified results of developmental psychology. It is only a problem when anyone mistakes their particular model for the final and complete model.

OK, that's fair, although I personally refuse to use the term "ontic" in this way, it seems meaningless to me. If everything is "ontic" and nothing in "not-ontic" than what's the point of using such term?

Anyway, I get your paradigm. The remaining questions for me are:

- Do the "higher-order unities of ideal relations" exist when no human beings have any concepts about them? If yes, do they exist in the "Divine mind"?

Basically "ontic" can be used to distinguish idealism from materialism-dualism, but apart from that you are correct that idealism simplifies metaphysics to the point where such labels are largely irrelevant within idealism.

There are several ways to answer your questions - 1) pragmatically, no they don't exist because they have become irrelevant to human purposes; 2) epistemically, no they don't exist because we can only experience the relations from the human perspective and, once that is removed from consideration, there is nothing more we can say; 3) I don't know and must withhold judgment on that question until I experience all the relations for myself.

But it's also worth pointing out these are the type of abstract intellectual questions which had no use for thinkers like Goethe and seem to directly result from the dualist influence of Descartes (spirit-matter divide) and Kant (ontic-epistemic divide).

- How do we know which ones of our concepts "reflect" the "higher-order unities of ideal relations"? How do we apply such "spiritual science"? For example, you believe, as a conclusion of the spiritual science and your spiritual intuition, that the idea "Christ is the Messiah" belongs to the "higher-order unities of ideal relations". However, Shaibei, who I think is also a believer in the "higher-order unities of ideal relations" of the Divine origin, does not believe that the idea "Christ is the Messiah" belongs to such "higher-order unities" according to his spiritual intuition and his Kabalistic spiritual science (but Shaibei, please correct me if I'm wrong). So, suppose I want to agree with the reality of the "higher-order unities of ideal relations". But which one, the Christian or Judaic? How do I choose?

Again these are metaphysical abstractions that are barely worth considering and come up a lot in post-Cartesian, post-Kantian religious discussions. There could be a lot of confusions going on here, including the idea that "truth" corresponds to a set of objective facts existing outside of our experience. That notion of "truth" was rejected by Goethe, pragmatists, phenomenology and spiritual science.

"Christ is the Messiah" is a meta-abstract idea which contains within it all sorts of other ideas. We would need to specify all of those sub-ideas and their meanings before we could begin to explore the question of whether they are useful to the restoration/rebirth of higher order unities of ideal relations.

[Eugene I]

Ashvin, thanks for the explanations, but for me they feel too vague so I don't know what I can make of them. What I get is that you assume the world is ontically "ideal" and therefore can be comprehended in principle (in an iterative and asymptotic way perhaps) by exercising our thinking ability to comprehend ideas? That's a fair hypothesis, as long as we accept that it is only an inference. But we find ourselves already existing in a structured world. Now, with the assumption that such world is the world of "ideal relations", how these ideal relations were created in the first place or where did they come from? Who/what created them? Or have they always existed uncreated?

Another key question is: how this "ideal relations" carry a power to create actual conscious experiences? This is basically the same "hard problem of consciousness". Either these "ideal relations" are themselves of the very nature of conscious experiences, or, if not, then they somehow "give rise" to conscious experiences, in which case we run into the "hard problem" again.

[Cleric K]

Eugene, thanks for your response on the other thread.

Another key question is: how this "ideal relations" carry a power to create actual conscious experiences? This is basically the same "hard problem of consciousness". Either these "ideal relations" are themselves of the very nature of conscious experiences, or, if not, then they somehow "give rise" to conscious experiences, in which case we run into the "hard problem" again.

This is one of the points that will take many more generations of humans to get over. Currently the psychological inertia is great. We're so used to use our thinking in the abstract modelling way (especially with materialism, where this is the only conceivable way) that it's now very difficult to overcome these thinking habits.

If we try to model the universe through 'idea relations', in the same way we try to model it with matter, (conscious) energy, etc., we'll never approach reality. We can only speak of idea relations when we take them from actual experience - and that's our own experience. The trouble is that the deeper we go in this way, the more we deconstruct our own being, the more we understand how we function. And this is something that not very many people want to do. Objective view of ourselves is not always the most pleasant sight. The difficulty in spiritual science is that we can never understand the Cosmos in the true sense unless we understand ourselves. The reason is that our personality is only an outlet of something much larger and we need to understand how it filters and shapes the greater potential.

So idea relations can be grasped only in a very limited way through abstract reasoning, like mathematics. We can certainly build analogies and metaphors using abstract concepts but these must always be used to point attention to reality.

For example, what are we doing here? Each one of us experiences a unique constellation of ideas. Everyone arrived at them through their unique life path. Now we are interacting using language which is a medium for idea exchange. When you read the things here, they produce certain effects in your soul - these are idea relations - real ones and not abstract. These idea either resonate with your current constellation of ideas or not. If they don't, you may try to reckon if it's because the ideas are illogical, contradictory, etc. or because they clash with a feeling and so on.

In short, we need to develop the habit to always seek the concrete experiences. There's no need for hard problems because we're not making any models. We are not trying to explain reality through theory of everything. We don't assume our thinking to be a completed tool that we use to speculate about the nature of reality. Instead thinking perceives how it is shaped and restricted by the unique constellation of ideas and their relations. Through proper conduct of our spiritual activity we can change our 'phase relationship' with ideas. Here we should overcome another habit - the notion that ideas are merely intellectual curiosities and they simply accumulate but they don't change anything except our understanding. But this isn't true. For example, let's consider the idea of 'soul' in comparison to 'brain'. Let's ignore the exact details of this soul for the moment. As long as both concepts exist only as abstract words in our intellect it's true that nothing really changes except our theoretical knowledge. But there's a great difference if we live though the ideas with our whole being. It feels different if I'm only a brain or a soul that uses the brain as a reflecting apparatus. And note that here it's not at all about belief. Belief can have a place in the theoretical case, where we subscribe to one or the other word but that doesn't really change anything. In the second case we don't need belief but only willingness to explore the ideas in a living way. If we do that we find that if we unite with the idea of soul we really feel differently and we find new forms of spiritual activity that didn't make sense in the brain case. For example, if I have pain in a part of my body I may try to visualize soothing currents that heal and restore the harmony of the tissues. This experiment makes no sense in the brain paradigm but is completely sane if we have a soul. There's still no need to subscribe or believe in anything. The point is that through these ideas we expand the spectrum of what is possible for our spiritual activity, which also leads to corresponding perceptions (the soothing currents is usually not something that the materialist has experience of). So here we have a real idea relation again. We relate with the idea of soul in the most intimate and living way, experiment with it, and this leads not to theoretical speculations but to actual forms of spiritual activity and perceptions that were previously non-existent. So we see that ideas should become something living, actual forces to be investigated and not simply concepts in the mind.

However, Shaibei, who I think is also a believer in the "higher-order unities of ideal relations" of the Divine origin, does not believe that the idea "Christ is the Messiah" belongs to such "higher-order unities" according to his spiritual intuition and his Kabalistic spiritual science (but Shaibei, please correct me if I'm wrong). So, suppose I want to agree with the reality of the "higher-order unities of ideal relations". But which one, the Christian or Judaic? How do I choose?

This is a very poor way to approach this question. Let's start by saying that one can find the Idea-being that we call Christ even if he was born on an isolated island and doesn't know about the existence of the bible. Simply put, if one reaches the idea of M@L and seeks how his microcosmic (bodily) perspective relates to the Macrocosmic perspective, he'll need to 'invent' the Christ and find the most fruitful relation to that Idea-being, even though he has never heard of it and would not call it that.

So the question "How do I choose" is misunderstood. It's like asking "How do I choose between building a one or two floor house", while at the same time I don't have neither the knowledge, nor the materials, nor the intent to build a house. In other words, we reach the Idea of the Christ only when we have explored our interior and then find a missing component there. If we haven't reached that state it's pointless to "choose". The time for believing in the Christ is over. Now it's time for work. Now it's entirely a question of 'building our house' in the most real sense.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, thanks for the explanations, but for me they feel too vague so I don't know what I can make of them. What I get is that you assume the world is ontically "ideal" and therefore can be comprehended in principle (in an iterative and asymptotic way perhaps) by exercising our thinking ability to comprehend ideas? That's a fair hypothesis, as long as we accept that it is only an inference. But we find ourselves already existing in a structured world. Now, with the assumption that such world is the world of "ideal relations", how these ideal relations were created in the first place or where did they come from? Who/what created them? Or have they always existed uncreated?

Another key question is: how this "ideal relations" carry a power to create actual conscious experiences? This is basically the same "hard problem of consciousness". Either these "ideal relations" are themselves of the very nature of conscious experiences, or, if not, then they somehow "give rise" to conscious experiences, in which case we run into the "hard problem" again.

It's the same with BK's idealism - MAL simply exists as Unity. As soon as we claim MAL was created, we have added the concepts of "time" and "cause-effect". The difference is that BK's MAL is non-thinking whereas we are positing thinking as ontic aspect (or claiming it is unnecessary to add assumption of "non-thinking"). So the ideal relations are the very nature of experiencing.

[Eugene I]

It's the same with BK's idealism - MAL simply exists as Unity. As soon as we claim MAL was created, we have added the concepts of "time" and "cause-effect". The difference is that BK's MAL is non-thinking whereas we are positing thinking as ontic aspect (or claiming it is unnecessary to add assumption of "non-thinking"). So the ideal relations are the very nature of experiencing.

OK, I get it, and in such formulation it makes sense. The BK formulation where the MAL is non-meta-cognitive and instinctive does not make much sense to me. How is that it is instinctive and not meta-cognitive (which suggests very primitive cognitive abilities) and at the same time is able to manifest by its ideations extremely complicated and structured reality that follows highly complex mathematical relations (which suggests extremely high level of cognitive abilities)? And if we accept the BK's assumption that after death the alters get integrated back into MAL with their memories and cognitive abilities, why such integration does not bring our meta-cognitive abilities back to MAL so that it would become meta-cognitive?

But as I said before, I'm kind of sitting on the fence and also considering a different a-al-Buddhist/Hindu polytheistic scenario where the is no single "parent" MAL-creator which manifests the world through its ideations and from which the alters "split", but there have always been a multitude of alters, which is just the way the cosmic consciousness structured intrinsically as always "spilt" into a multitude of subjects. In this way our particular creation may be a manifestation of one of those creator-alters or is a collective endeavor of a group of creator alters, and there are many more alters in the universe of consciousness involved in different modes and states of consciousness and in various other created realms. This is less centralized, more "democratic" scheme with more freedom and variety of possible states, developmental paths and created realms (potentially an infinite variety). In this scenario the creator alters are also highly cognitive creatures and they manifest realities through their ideations, so we can say that such realities are constructed of their idea-relations.

[AshvinP]

But as I said before, I'm kind of sitting on the fence and also considering a different a-al-Buddhist/Hindu polytheistic scenario where the is no single "parent" MAL-creator which manifests the world through its ideations and from which the alters "split", but there have always been a multitude of alters, which is just the way the cosmic consciousness structured intrinsically as always "spilt" into a multitude of subjects. In this way our particular creation may be a manifestation of one of those creator-alters or is a collective endeavor of a group of creator alters, and there are many more alters in the universe of consciousness involved in different modes and states of consciousness and in various other created realms. This is less centralized, more "democratic" scheme with more freedom and variety of possible states, developmental paths and created realms (potentially an infinite variety). In this scenario the creator alters are also highly cognitive creatures and they manifest realities through their ideations, so we can say that such realities are constructed of their idea-relations.

That view is aligned with Steiner's Anthroposophy and panentheistic views in general. But it's also critical to recognize that what appears "split" from 'lower' perspectives will be unified from 'higher' perspectives and that all perspectives form a unified Whole. Although spiritual science does not ask us to take that on blind faith but to test through experience in a rigorous manner. I think it's also important not to simply posit an infinite variety of "equal" perspectives because it is more "democratic", but rather to see what configuration of perspectives make the most sense of our experience. Even from my current lower perspective, an 'equal infinity' makes little sense of my experience which is hierarchically structured and predictable in various ways.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, thanks for the explanations, but for me they feel too vague so I don't know what I can make of them. What I get is that you assume the world is ontically "ideal" and therefore can be comprehended in principle (in an iterative and asymptotic way perhaps) by exercising our thinking ability to comprehend ideas? That's a fair hypothesis, as long as we accept that it is only an inference. But we find ourselves already existing in a structured world. Now, with the assumption that such world is the world of "ideal relations", how these ideal relations were created in the first place or where did they come from? Who/what created them? Or have they always existed uncreated?

Another key question is: how this "ideal relations" carry a power to create actual conscious experiences? This is basically the same "hard problem of consciousness". Either these "ideal relations" are themselves of the very nature of conscious experiences, or, if not, then they somehow "give rise" to conscious experiences, in which case we run into the "hard problem" again.

It's the same with BK's idealism - MAL simply exists as Unity. As soon as we claim MAL was created, we have added the concepts of "time" and "cause-effect". The difference is that BK's MAL is non-thinking whereas we are positing thinking as ontic aspect (or claiming it is unnecessary to add assumption of "non-thinking"). So the ideal relations are the very nature of experiencing.

I didn't see Cleric's response to your question before posting this reply but it is clearly more helpful than mine so you should go with that.

[Eugene I]

That view is aligned with Steiner's Anthroposophy and panentheistic views in general. But it's also critical to recognize that what appears "split" from 'lower' perspectives will be unified from 'higher' perspectives and that all perspectives form a unified Whole. Although spiritual science does not ask us to take that on blind faith but to test through experience in a rigorous manner. I think it's also important not to simply posit an infinite variety of "equal" perspectives because it is more "democratic", but rather to see what configuration of perspectives make the most sense of our experience. Even from my current lower perspective, an 'equal infinity' makes little sense of my experience which is hierarchically structured and predictable in various ways.

Right, the question is whether the the unified Whole has it's own unique "global" subjective perspective, or if it is only a unity of all perspectives and experiences and a "common ground" of the aspects of reality that are common to and shared between all alters/perspectives, such as common aspect of beingness (because we all "exist" in the same way), common aspect of conscious experiencing/awareness (because we all consciously experience the reality in the same way) and common thinking and volitional abilities.