Hi Soul. I like how you phrased the question.
Regarding your practical concern that Bernardo's overall point might get lost if we get too esoteric, I agree.
That's my concern with how he makes his point. I know that to those who already share our conviction of analytical idealism, it is to problem to just hear him bluntly say that countless experiences can be dissociated from our current awareness.
But I've watched almost all of his interviews and I've never seen this point land all that well with interviewers who are not already fully on board. They often sound confused and don't really even know what to ask. That's my impression.
And I think their confusion is warranted beyond merely being that they are stepping into new ways of thinking, although that must also be at play I'd think.
If we are willing to grant that Bernardo clearly feels it is important that his listeners understand in some boiled down and basic way that what they see as clouds and moutains and buildings are not what is really out there but are 'dials on their perceptual screen' that help them stay alive; then I think we aren't overstepping the boynds of practicality if they need to have a similar understanding of the unconscious.
You don't see the idea that is manifesting as the perception of a cloud. You see a cloud, which is a dial or icon.
There is a process of translation going on between the outer mental reality and the alter. This translation process turns endogenous MaL experience into dials/perceptions to an alter.
I think it is relatively ridiculous to claim that while reading the book I am also having dozens upon dozens of other distinct experiences
as such. There is no evidence for it and there can't be because when we notice, "Oh, I've been hearing that damn train whistle and that has made me feel so nostalgic!" we are noticing the whistle in meta-consciousness. Even if we remember that we quickly had noted the whistle for a split second that is also meta-consciousness.
So the notion that our meta-consciousness is always surrounded by distinctly explicated perceptions/sensations/thoughts/feelings (coffee, tightness of belt, warmth of air in left nostril, coldness in each toe, sounds in the street and forest, agitation from earlier arguement, excitement for upcoming trip, etc) that each, as such, *impinge* upon our meta-consciousness, seems to be making some errors and isn't very clear.
What is more accurate and conforms to experience and fits BKs model?
That your hearing of the train whistle is part of a field-experience that is always shaping your current meta-consciousness. Because before meta-consciousness isolates it conceptually as "a train whistle" the experience is in a (analogy alert) superposition as part of the whole unconscious field. All experience then are shaping each other not as hundreds of already conceptualized units of separated experience but as the way they change each other. This entire field of your experience is always implicitly funtioning in the shaping of your meta-consciousness. So sometimes the train whistle will evoke nostalgia, sometimes not.
Bernardo often says that everything we see outside of us that is not a living body merely a nominal distinction we make and must treat as if it is in reality an ontologically distict part. But he is right that his modle implies that in reality all of inanimate nature is just "one" thing, very intricate and complex (and in some kind of 'superposition' until an alter needs to reduce it to a perception).
Just as we can't understand his model if we think that cars are actually there as distinct realities in the real world, his model also makes no sense if we think of unconscious personal experiences as distinct entities just being experienced (all hundreds of them) in some non-meta way by some other "part" of ourselves. That error suggests some kind of DID process is necessary for understanding how unconscious experiences shape our awareness. I think that is inflationary and loses explanatory power.
Soul_of_Shu wrote: ↑Sat Jun 05, 2021 2:23 pm
findingblanks wrote: ↑Fri Jun 04, 2021 4:01 pmThis points to my concern with how Bernardo is framing 'unconscious experience' as if it is merely itself, a dissociated unit of experience either impinging or waiting to be noticed by meta-consciousness.
I'm still having some difficulty coming to terms with what is deemed problematic with the way BK is framing so-called 'unconscious experience'. Just for the sake of keeping it uncomplicated, let's take the train whistle example I alluded to elsewhere, and we agree, along with BK, that this percept, while registered by the psyche at a subliminal level, could still affect some metacognitive conversation about vacations to transition into an anecdote about trains, without recognizing the subliminal influence—or in BK's terms, the percept is registered by the psyche, but one doesn't
know that it is registered. Yet clearly the percept, albeit subliminal, still must have some 'train whistle' quality to it, in order to evoke some meaningful association that would trigger the anecdote about trains. So what is it about the way BK would frame this particular scenario that is deemed problematic?