Metamorphoses of the Spirit: Breaking Bad Habits

[AshvinP]

For example, as mentioned before, the "reduction" to ideas in Plato is not at all what you are envisioning it to be, because ideas were experienced as sense-perceptible content.

Fine, but even within the Plato's framework, what is this experiencing of ideas as sense-perceptible content? Is this experiencing also an idea?

Also, can any idea exist without experiencing? Even if you claim that it can exist without experiencing, how can you ever prove it? To prove it, you need to be able to experience such idea existing in such non-experienced state. This makes such view non-verifiable, and as such, also unnecessary and non-parsimonious, because the ontology of Consciousness can be formulated without such proposition.

Ashvin, by the way, you have an amazing ability to write profound replies that eloquently avoid addressing the questions asked or the issues pointed

Eugene, you also have an amazing ability to agree to things and then contradict your agreement in the same post.

You are very well-read and informed and logical so it is not a lack of understanding. I cannot really fathom what it is. You agree that ideation is an ontic aspect of experience and then simultaneously demote it to a lower ontic level than willing. It makes absolutely no sense, like your insistence that idealism can be coherent without ideation at ontic level. Cleric has gone to extraordinary lengths to illustrate why ideal content is inherent in every experience, including mystical experience you are familiar with, even doing a live "on-air" example of a meditative practice, yet you still miss the point entirely.

So, in response to your question, for the millionth time, yes every experience has ideal content. The latter is ontic and cannot be separated from experience. None of it - willing, thinking, feeling - can be removed from any experience. I have never claimed ideation can exist without experiencing, because that would be absurd, but you have certainly claimed the opposite, which is equally absurd. To be fair, there are plenty of Eastern mystical types who also think about it the same way, but you have now been exposed to much more rigorous argument than is reasonably necessary to dispel that way of thinking.

[Eugene I]

You are very well-read and informed and logical so it is not a lack of understanding. I cannot really fathom what it is. You agree that ideation is an ontic aspect of experience and then simultaneously demote it to a lower ontic level than willing. It makes absolutely no sense, like your insistence that idealism can be coherent without ideation at ontic level. Cleric has gone to extraordinary lengths to illustrate why ideal content is inherent in every experience, including mystical experience you are familiar with, even doing a live "on-air" example of a meditative practice, yet you still miss the point entirely.

So, in response to your question, for the millionth time, yes every experience has ideal content. The latter is ontic and cannot be separated from experience. None of it - willing, thinking, feeling - can be removed from any experience. I have never claimed ideation can exist without experiencing, because that would be absurd, but you have certainly claimed the opposite, which is equally absurd. To be fair, there are plenty of Eastern mystical types who also think about it the same way, but you have now been exposed to much more rigorous argument than is reasonably necessary to dispel that way of thinking.

No I did not. I don't care what is ontic and what is not, I don't use such term. Nether I ever claimed that the ideal content is "secondary". I only said that it is impermanent, but that does not mean that it is secondary in any way.

You are pointing to a wrong problem. When I talk about experiencing of a thoughtless state, I do not say that it is 100% clean of any ideation or conscious activity whatsoever. Even the fact that it was recorded in memory means that there was certain conscious activity that allowed such recording. I only said that the ideation activity was so low and negligible in that state that it does not veil the experiencing aspect anymore, so it is just useful practically to facilitate the recognition of it. The question whether there can be a state of "pure" experiencing with zero ideation content is irrelevant.

But what is relevant is the question whether the experiencing aspect is itself reducible to its idea, or whether the idea of it only reflects the reality of experiencing. If it would be reducible, then everything in the universe would reducible to ideas. But my point is that it is not reducible to the idea of it, so the totality of the reality is not reducible to the ideas. Similarly, the beingness aspect is not reducible to the idea of it.

So, I'm formulating it as a "hard problem of conscious experience" for any ontology that claims that conscious experience is reducible to something else. Specifically, it is the "hard problem" for the idea-based idealism that claims that conscious experience is reducible to ideas. It is similar to the "hard problem of consciousness" for materialism stating that conscious experience is irreducible to matter. In fact, it is irreducible to anything.

[AshvinP]

You are very well-read and informed and logical so it is not a lack of understanding. I cannot really fathom what it is. You agree that ideation is an ontic aspect of experience and then simultaneously demote it to a lower ontic level than willing. It makes absolutely no sense, like your insistence that idealism can be coherent without ideation at ontic level. Cleric has gone to extraordinary lengths to illustrate why ideal content is inherent in every experience, including mystical experience you are familiar with, even doing a live "on-air" example of a meditative practice, yet you still miss the point entirely.

So, in response to your question, for the millionth time, yes every experience has ideal content. The latter is ontic and cannot be separated from experience. None of it - willing, thinking, feeling - can be removed from any experience. I have never claimed ideation can exist without experiencing, because that would be absurd, but you have certainly claimed the opposite, which is equally absurd. To be fair, there are plenty of Eastern mystical types who also think about it the same way, but you have now been exposed to much more rigorous argument than is reasonably necessary to dispel that way of thinking.

No I did not. I don't care what is ontic and what is not, I don't use such term. Nether I ever claimed that the ideal content is "secondary". I only said that it is impermanent, but that does not mean that it is secondary in any way.

You are pointing to a wrong problem. When I talk about experiencing of a thoughtless state, I do not say that it is 100% clean of any ideation or conscious activity whatsoever. Even the fact that it was recorded in memory means that there was certain conscious activity that allowed such recording. I only said that the ideation activity was so low and negligible in that state that it does not veil the experiencing aspect anymore, so it is just useful practically to facilitate the recognition of it. The question whether there can be a state of "pure" experiencing with zero ideation content is irrelevant.

Then we are in agreement, and if you apply that "low and negligible" ideational activity to the ancient spiritual commentators, you will see what I am pointing to with the metamorphic progression, i.e. their ideational activity did not veil the experiential aspect for them in the same way it does for our purely intellectual thinking now, and since we are their spiritual descendants, it does not need to do so for our ideational activity now. That is what Barfield calls "final participation".

The experience with zero ideational content question is certainly relevant now because there is no shortage of people who would claim that is exactly what we need to be reconciled with God, yet such a path cannot adequately address the real problem of spiritual nihilism we are now facing.

But what is relevant is the question whether the experiencing aspect is itself reducible to its idea, or whether the idea of it only reflects the reality of experiencing. If it would be reducible, then everything in the universe would reducible to ideas. But my point is that it is not reducible to the idea of it, so the totality of the reality is not reducible to the ideas. Similarly, the beingness aspect is not reducible to the idea of it.

So, I'm formulating it as a "hard problem of conscious experience" for any ontology that claims that conscious experience is reducible to something else. Specifically, it is the "hard problem" for the idea-based idealism that claims that conscious experience is reducible to ideas. It is similar to the "hard problem of consciousness" for materialism stating that conscious experience is irreducible to matter. In fact, it is irreducible to anything.

When I say something is "ontic", I mean it is irreducible to anything else. Also, I would call "experience" the totality of all ontic aspects. So no, the 'awaring' aspect is not reducible to the thinking aspect or vice versa, but since they are both ontic, they are present in all experience.

[AshvinP]

I really desire that you will recognize, after considering the 3rd part of my essay, that what I am desiring, or eagerly waiting to see manifested (in myself first of all), is not at all detached from authentic Christian tradition. Certainly not the pre-Reformation tradition. It is, as you say, a rediscovery of that tradition under the light of a new consciousness which has not previously existed. It is a new consciousness which should refuse to accept the awkward tension in your bolded statements above. The philosophical-scientific side is precisely the side of experiential relationship, which is also the spiritual side - they are becoming one and the same side. Intellectual inquiry is obviously involved, but it is always performed in service of the relational experience, as the left brain must exist to serve the right brain.

I actually see no tension in my statements in bold. For me the philosophy/science aspect is what Bernardo would call the re-representation. I think someone could read all the books available on science and philosophy, but if they don’t do any meditation, ritual, prayer etc, then they have no spiritual legs. They are completely stuck in the real spiritual world, and can only move in the world of re-representation.

I’m not at all saying that the philosophy/science are not important, they must inform and balance. Truth must always be a guide, that undefinable out of reach idea that keeps us honest. Equally many (if not most) people don’t have the inclination or even ability to follow the science or philosophy, and they can still have very ‘plugged in’ spiritual journeys without the philosophy and science. It’s arguably important they are part of a community / tradition that does have people who value and understand these things, but I don’t accept that they are “one and the same”. I will caveat that however, as there is a sense in which someone who learns some of these things through the relationship, will also know something of the reality to which the philosophy points, even if they have no idea what terms to use etc. However I don’t think the reverse is ever really true.

BK may actually gain something from Vervaeke in this regard re: "participatory" consciousness. Not really, because BK says he is familiar with Barfield and Gebser's writings so he probably knows much more about it than I do, but has chosen not to include it in his rigorous philosophical persona at this time. Anyway, the main point being, and as Scott just mentioned on the Incarnating the Christ thread, participatory consciousness does not need to represent and re-represent noumena to itself, at least not at the most direct layer of concepts 'above' us that we can only explore abstractly. What we explore with abstractions those beings explore with direct perception. That is why the "metacognition" concept is misleading, because it is a statement of relational perspective on phenomenon rather than an absolute state of a being.

Again, this can all be derived from the metamorphic argument and its implications as long as we abandon all other philosophical assumptions we [unconsciously] bring to the table. The big difference from ancient participatory consciousness is, of course, the hard-won capacity of modern humans to also scientifically explore such ideal relations with great resolution and specificity. We must stop thinking of our thinking as a completely separate capacity from our perceptual organs, because, in reality, it is not. We can perceive ideas with our thinking as we perceive colors with our eyes and sounds with our ears. Now if there are legitimate philosophical, scientific or even theological arguments against that assertion, I am definitely willing to entertain them. So far, I have not come across any, and, in contrast, I have only come across increasingly more evidence in favor of that assertion the more thinkers I explore, although I have not personally experienced it yet.

I say "hard-won" above because it came at a great spiritual cost, but in reality that rigorous scientific mode of consciousness is a gift from God. How do we show our gratitude to God for that gift, which as you point out, very few people have it at their fingertips like we do? Most people will spend a better part of a lifetime trying to develop such a skill, yet probably everyone on this forum can employ it right away without even much effort. That is truly what Christ has brought into the world through His Incarnation into human history. Not just metaphorically, but literally. We give thanks to God for His grace by freely aligning our will with His through our spiritual activity, and that is not other than what we are discussing right now.

One more thing here - I realize how arrogant it sounds when people point the finger at other Christians and say those people are not properly considering the faith while I am. I realize no one likes to be told their spirituality is somehow "inferior" to someone else's. Therefore I want to be clear that is not what I am claiming. I am not discounting the possibility that many people can work towards an authentic relationship with Christ without fully embracing the higher cognition component in their current incarnation. Indeed, it is not even necessary they have heard of Christ or read the Gospels.

At its core, the spiritual science perspective flows in the opposite direction - it recognizes that spiritual activity is what truly unites all human beings regardless of faith or creed and that the Christ impulse now permeates all human beings. While many forms of Christianity posit predestined (or foreknown, which is not much better) camps of "saved" and "damned", it does no such thing. It is intended as a truly empirical science that reveals the actual relations of ideal beings, but as a bonus it does not embrace a conception of God which sits very awkwardly with the idea He is Loving and Merciful as most other formulations do.

It cannot be denied that the path to Christ requires much effort no matter what formulation one adheres to - there is simply no getting around the fact that narrow is the way which leads to Life and there are few who find it. Yet there is also denying we get the most meaning from life when we adopt the most responsibility as Christ did. A faith which demands more of its adherents in that regard simply fits better with what we know of Christ from all traditions which speak of him. So we must ask ourselves whether we are denying higher cognition because it makes no sense, because it does not make sense of God's Love, or whether it imposes on us a responsibility we fear and therefore avoid.

I myself must admit I fear such a responsibility more than anything else in the world and every day I catch myself shirking from it in many different ways. It really takes a sustained effort to stay on the straight and narrow, but when I am being perfectly honest with myself, I know in my heart there is no good reason for me to claim that it is not my spiritual duty and what is being required of me.

[Simon Adams]

BK may actually gain something from Vervaeke in this regard re: "participatory" consciousness. Not really, because BK says he is familiar with Barfield and Gebser's writings so he probably knows much more about it than I do, but has chosen not to include it in his rigorous philosophical persona at this time. Anyway, the main point being, and as Scott just mentioned on the Incarnating the Christ thread, participatory consciousness does not need to represent and re-represent noumena to itself, at least not at the most direct layer of concepts 'above' us that we can only explore abstractly.

But this is not what science is. Our physics is extremely primitive still. If aliens came along that actually understood even just how gravity works, our physics would look like using epicycles to describe the motion of the planets. For you to say that our partial, limited, point in time, and ultimately inaccurate abstractions of nature are the same as the reality they are trying to describe just makes no sense to me at all. I suspect you will say this is a result of the effects of the Kantian divide, but there are no epicycles, there never were any epicycles.

Likewise we currently have Kuzla-Klein as the standard way to understand extra dimensions, but I suspect this will turn out to be nonsense: there is good reason to believe that there are extra dimensions, but they are not in any way rolled up. Most physicists believe Dark Matter is non baryonic matter, but again I’m fairly certain the reality goes back to our poor understanding of gravity (which more and more physicists are starting to accept).

I could go on and on. The point is not so much that these different ways of knowing are partial and include errors, although that is important. The bigger point is that at the limits of that knowledge, you make an assumption about what is just beyond that limit, such as always assuming that it must be the same thing just from the perspective of different ways of knowing. At one point, ‘science’ and ‘philosophy’ thought that the universe was eternal. The early church fathers used the bible to come to the conclusion that it was not eternal. In the last century, we have found through science that the universe is not eternal, it had a start.

When you use the science way of knowing, of knowing via the relationship to the external senses and measurement, the physical world is all there is. When you use the meditative way of knowing, via your relationship to yourself, you realise that what you experience with senses and measurement is not something separate and different from what you experience in mind. But the two ways of experiencing are both limited. No matter how well you realise the nature of mind, you will not be able to use it to establish the chemical makeup of Alpha Centauri. No matter how advanced your science, you will not be able to make a machine that experiences self awareness. So when you try to combine them, you naturally make assumptions about what is beyond those limits. For example just like on the universe having a start, the early church fathers (and the Jews before them) concluded from scripture that god was entirely distinct from the universe, even though he shapes it, sustains it’s being and can have an immanent presence within it. To me this makes sense from what I have learnt through the third way of knowing, the relationship side, but if you are only using the first two ways, and consider that what they have visibility of is everything, then the universe becomes god and you end up with a similar mistake that both philosophy and science made when they thought that the universe was eternal.

[Simon Adams]

Well, knowing the Eastern Christianity from inside, I'm sure they would claim that the spiritual science reduction of God and the whole world to ideas and the claim that it all can be exhaustively known by cognition is 100% heresy and a result of Aquinas's influence on the Western spirituality, theology and philosophy. And as Simon rightly noted, it is quite opposite to the Eastern Orthodoxy understanding of the ineffability of God's nature that started fron pseudo-Dionysius and culminated in the theology of Palamism. In the West it was also shared by many mystics such as the author of "The Cloud of Unknowing" and by Meister Eckhart, but on the most part it was ignored.

I’d recommend reading the article I linked to (in fact the first part of it as well), as it shows that Aquinas didn’t have that view at all. It’s true he was part of the natural development that was already happened in the west, which arguably would always have ended in the scientific way of thinking. However as Vervake pointed out, it was far more the nominalists like Abelard before Aquinas, and Ockham after Aquinas that developed this way of thinking.

[Apanthropinist]

Fair enough, and I’m not one to often appeal to “mainstream consensus” (Kuhn and all that), but Gibbon was accepted as a “poisoned well” 30 years ago.

Yes and I’m a supporter of analytic idealism. I certainly don’t agree with Bernardo on everything, but what I like about it is that he generally doesn’t go further than what he needs to make sense of things. I have my own reason to have trust in revelation, which from my perspective adds ‘downwards’ ‘knowledge’ to what we can establish ‘upwards’ through reason, science and meditation. In terms of this upward side, analytic idealism is a clear and consistent framework. There are risks in analytic idealism (it’s kind of upside down from a theological perspective), but it’s a vast improvement on empty materialism and the damage that does.

Yes and this is key. Humans have the ability to be vengeful, cruel, selfish, as well as forgiving, kind and willing to sacrifice their own good for others. What makes a person choose the latter, not in a ‘give in to the world’ sense, but as a positive choice? There needs to be a certain detachment from things, which can come from practices like meditation, contemplation etc. But there is also a need to navigate that shadow within, and I think Dante described that as well as anyone. A kind of self awareness, of discernment. None of it is easy work though, so how do you motivate people to ‘cut out that part of their own heart’ as Solzhenitsyn put it? Ignatius created the “Spiritual Exercises” for this purpose, but even just spending 20 mins each evening examining your conscience from the day can more difficult to keep up than going for a run!

I take the points you have made, and made well, I admit that my comment was clumsy at best and your responses clearly reveal how I was being clumsy. I take back what I said and accept your points Simon.

I share the same view. He takes his argument only as far as it is necessary and within what it is capable of.

There is a power and beauty in analytical idealism for me. It's power is that of a well reasoned meta-narrative which describes the ground of reality and locates us within it and does so in a way that is, in essence, agnostic and ambivalent, just as you say, clear and consistent. It's beauty is that it does not exclude the theological/spiritual/mystical, they just aren't necessary for it to succeed. In this way the atheist has no reasonable grounds to suggest that there is no God or Deity etc because there could be, in just the same way that the theist has no reasonable grounds to suggest that it is necessary. Analytical idealism describes the ground and logically leads us to the point where it can go no further, to a door, after that all we have is revelation in the sense of what we behold on the other side of that door.

I guess my answer to Solzhenitsyn would be Jung's answer, "“Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one’s being, but by integration of the contraries.” "

[Simon Adams]

I take the points you have made, and made well, I admit that my comment was clumsy at best and your responses clearly reveal how I was being clumsy. I take back what I said and accept your points Simon.

I share the same view. He takes his argument only as far as it is necessary and within what it is capable of.

There is a power and beauty in analytical idealism for me. It's power is that of a well reasoned meta-narrative which describes the ground of reality and locates us within it and does so in a way that is, in essence, agnostic and ambivalent, just as you say, clear and consistent. It's beauty is that it does not exclude the theological/spiritual/mystical, they just aren't necessary for it to succeed. In this way the atheist has no reasonable grounds to suggest that there is no God or Deity etc because there could be, in just the same way that the theist has no reasonable grounds to suggest that it is necessary. Analytical idealism describes the ground and logically leads us to the point where it can go no further, to a door, after that all we have is revelation in the sense of what we behold on the other side of that door.

I guess my answer to Solzhenitsyn would be Jung's answer, "“Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one’s being, but by integration of the contraries.” "

Yes I agree 100% with all of that . I really see analytic idealism as the only sane ontology (that I am aware of at least) in which to do science. In some ways I would prefer a more Platonic take on it, as I think idealism is too flat, and we have good reasons even just from other areas science (such as maths, physics and biology) to see that the vertical has structure that shape the patterns of the world. I would argue that these are more fundamental than instinctual patterns of behaviour. However there is a lot of baggage with Plato, and that baggage often does more to hide than reveal the reality. Whereas analytic idealism is, as you say, “a well reasoned meta-narrative which describes the ground of reality and locates us within it and does so in a way that is, in essence, agnostic and ambivalent, just as you say, clear and consistent”.

I actually think it’s a mistake to try and make it a complete philosophy. I think you can and should do physics separate from idealism, but the further we go into the likes of quantum physics, the more necessary it will be to have something like analytic idealism to interpret what it’s saying. I was watching this video early this morning which has great insights into the way we construct historical narratives (although I suspect not to your tastes), and there is nothing in there which relates idealism, but you are never going to make sense of what they are saying from a physicalist perspective. I see analytic idealism as an essential framework in which to discuss the bigger picture, but as soon as it’s extended beyond that essential framework (which Bernardo does at times, albeit caveating it as speculation), you risk it loosing it’s greatest strength.

[AshvinP]

BK may actually gain something from Vervaeke in this regard re: "participatory" consciousness. Not really, because BK says he is familiar with Barfield and Gebser's writings so he probably knows much more about it than I do, but has chosen not to include it in his rigorous philosophical persona at this time. Anyway, the main point being, and as Scott just mentioned on the Incarnating the Christ thread, participatory consciousness does not need to represent and re-represent noumena to itself, at least not at the most direct layer of concepts 'above' us that we can only explore abstractly.

But this is not what science is. Our physics is extremely primitive still. If aliens came along that actually understood even just how gravity works, our physics would look like using epicycles to describe the motion of the planets. For you to say that our partial, limited, point in time, and ultimately inaccurate abstractions of nature are the same as the reality they are trying to describe just makes no sense to me at all. I suspect you will say this is a result of the effects of the Kantian divide, but there are no epicycles, there never were any epicycles.

Likewise we currently have Kuzla-Klein as the standard way to understand extra dimensions, but I suspect this will turn out to be nonsense: there is good reason to believe that there are extra dimensions, but they are not in any way rolled up. Most physicists believe Dark Matter is non baryonic matter, but again I’m fairly certain the reality goes back to our poor understanding of gravity (which more and more physicists are starting to accept).

I could go on and on. The point is not so much that these different ways of knowing are partial and include errors, although that is important. The bigger point is that at the limits of that knowledge, you make an assumption about what is just beyond that limit, such as always assuming that it must be the same thing just from the perspective of different ways of knowing. At one point, ‘science’ and ‘philosophy’ thought that the universe was eternal. The early church fathers used the bible to come to the conclusion that it was not eternal. In the last century, we have found through science that the universe is not eternal, it had a start.

When you use the science way of knowing, of knowing via the relationship to the external senses and measurement, the physical world is all there is. When you use the meditative way of knowing, via your relationship to yourself, you realise that what you experience with senses and measurement is not something separate and different from what you experience in mind. But the two ways of experiencing are both limited. No matter how well you realise the nature of mind, you will not be able to use it to establish the chemical makeup of Alpha Centauri. No matter how advanced your science, you will not be able to make a machine that experiences self awareness. So when you try to combine them, you naturally make assumptions about what is beyond those limits. For example just like on the universe having a start, the early church fathers (and the Jews before them) concluded from scripture that god was entirely distinct from the universe, even though he shapes it, sustains it’s being and can have an immanent presence within it. To me this makes sense from what I have learnt through the third way of knowing, the relationship side, but if you are only using the first two ways, and consider that what they have visibility of is everything, then the universe becomes god and you end up with a similar mistake that both philosophy and science made when they thought that the universe was eternal.

Think about it this way - Hoffman claims science so far has been about studying the dynamics of our user interfaces, for no other reason than it implicitly assumes flawed physicalist starting points. Does he stop there? No, he goes on to change the assumptions which then allows him to start with conscious activity and build mathematical models to be tested against experience and other well-established mathematical models. Under your view above, he is not actually getting any closer to the noumenal structure of Reality, just viewing it from a different abstract perspective, and moreover he can never, in principle, get any closer. Same goes for the entire progression of science from its inception to current day.

Under the spiritual scientific view, however, he might be capturing the structure more accurately with his models and perhaps it will lead him naturally towards the tools of higher cognition, where abstract models are abandoned altogether for direct experience. In some sense, Hoffman's work is an implicit rejection of your view above. He claims all models must be tested against experience, like any good scientist would claim, which implies our experience has something to offer in the pursuit of ever-more expanding and precise scientific knowledge.

Again, if thinking is, in essence, a perceptual organ, there is no reason why our perception must be limited to a "physical" world as opposed to a "spiritual" one, which, under idealism, are in essence one and the same world. Under this view, we come to a realization that the rigorous scholastic theologians were not merely living in a world of detached abstract thoughts about God, but they already sensed that the world of reasoned thoughts can reveal a good deal about the spiritual realm that we do not perceive with our normal senses. When viewed in that light, we see reason and science are not at odds with spiritual belief and Divine revelation.

[Simon Adams]

Think about it this way - Hoffman claims science so far has been about studying the dynamics of our user interfaces, for no other reason than it implicitly assumes flawed physicalist starting points. Does he stop there? No, he goes on to change the assumptions which then allows him to start with conscious activity and build mathematical models to be tested against experience and other well-established mathematical models. Under your view above, he is not actually getting any closer to the noumenal structure of Reality, just viewing it from a different abstract perspective, and moreover he can never, in principle, get any closer. Same goes for the entire progression of science from its inception to current day.

No that’s not my view. We get abstractions that are indeed closer and closer depictions of the perceptible aspects of reality. But they will always be abstractions. Just imagine Hoffman comes up with his ‘final equation’, and then Wolfram finds a formulation of his model which predicts Hoffmans equation as well as, SR, GR, QM etc. So we end up with a single model out of which all the phenomena and behaviour of the world can be derived. Then what? All you have is a very, very useful blueprint of how nature behaves. Ignoring whether this will ever explain anything at all about experience, will etc, it’s still just an equation. It’s a description of what nature does, not what nature is. Even if it describes how all agents interact, it will never actually be a relationship, be an interaction etc. Maybe it will lead to new ways to understand consciousness, maybe it won’t. It seems likely there is only so much you can establish when working on the representation, just like there is only so much you can tell about a person from a photo of them (smaller and smaller pixels don’t help!).

Under the spiritual scientific view, however, he might be capturing the structure more accurately with his models and perhaps it will lead him naturally towards the tools of higher cognition, where abstract models are abandoned altogether for direct experience.

This is a leap that makes no sense to me at all. You would have to explain what you mean here by science, as you seem to have jumped to meditation because science has got to a certain point.

To go into high speculation mode, I can imagine a reality where time and space are emergent from a substrate that itself has dimensionality of a sort, and maybe this is a realm in which our individual minds move, and in which they are connected to all that represents as matter. Maybe we could find “tools” that can somehow probe this realm directly, to that which is the source of the representations. But all such tools will tell you is again, how it behaves. We may be able to infer things from this which could improve our philosophy and poetry, but I can’t see how science could possibly draw out the essence. No more than I can have a glass of wine and a chat with the Mona Lisa.

In some sense, Hoffman's work is an implicit rejection of your view above. He claims all models must be tested against experience, like any good scientist would claim, which implies our experience has something to offer in the pursuit of ever-more expanding and precise scientific knowledge.

“Testing against experience” is just a description of the scientific process. I don’t see how that is rejecting my view?

Again, if thinking is, in essence, a perceptual organ,

Woa … I think I disagree with every word there . From what I have been able to work out, thinking seems to be a kind of emanation from something I call “I”, which then echos around some kind of ego ‘chamber’. It’s like a self reflective loop in awareness, which is filtered, merged and fed back via various instinctual structures represented by different parts of the body, mostly the brain. Poor description I admit but thinking is a process, not an organ.

there is no reason why our perception must be limited to a "physical" world as opposed to a "spiritual" one, which, under idealism, are in essence one and the same world. Under this view, we come to a realization that the rigorous scholastic theologians were not merely living in a world of detached abstract thoughts about God, but they already sensed that the world of reasoned thoughts can reveal a good deal about the spiritual realm that we do not perceive with our normal senses. When viewed in that light, we see reason and science are not at odds with spiritual belief and Divine revelation.

I don’t believe they are at odds in any way whatsoever.