Is Rovelli 'Dragooning the Human Spirit'?

[SanteriSatama]

I mean in a systematic manner that is valid for all. A manner that makes us realize that we are actually progressing towards true knowledge instead of endless "inter-subjective" opinions according to whatever we feel is most appropriate at any given time on any given day. Of course I am not the first and only - my entire worldview is based on countless others who already treaded this path of systematic knowledge before me so that I may discover it for myself from within myself.

So, by denial of "inter-subjective" the "valid for all" does not include acceptable for others, or does not include the transformation of desire from want to becoming love?

Yes, there are many who have treaded the systematic knowledge of Satanism.

[AshvinP]

I mean in a systematic manner that is valid for all. A manner that makes us realize that we are actually progressing towards true knowledge instead of endless "inter-subjective" opinions according to whatever we feel is most appropriate at any given time on any given day. Of course I am not the first and only - my entire worldview is based on countless others who already treaded this path of systematic knowledge before me so that I may discover it for myself from within myself.

So, by denial of "inter-subjective" the "valid for all" does not include acceptable for others, or does not include the transformation of desire from want to becoming love?

Yes, there are many who have treaded the systematic knowledge of Satanism.

I am speaking of the actual process of living in the world - observing it, thinking about it, making sense of it, uncovering its rich meanings, enriching our own relationships with Nature and others. You want to abstract away from that in every post you write, which leads us entirely away from productive dialogue. I wonder if you notice how your posts get shorter and shorter in every subsequent comment - it is a great living illustration of deconstructionist abstraction which diminishes concrete meaning further and further until there is nothing left to write or respond to.

I am not speaking about fantasizing about some rationalist and mechanical Utopia where everything is "acceptable" to everyone at all times. It's about seeking truth in spiritual freedom wherever that may lead.

[Soul_of_Shu]

As it happens, the most recent article from Essentia also wades into the self/no-self/not-self conundrum ...

https://www.essentiafoundation.org/read ... xperience/

[AshvinP]

As it happens, the most recent article from Essentia also wades into the self/no-self/not-self conundrum ...

https://www.essentiafoundation.org/read ... xperience/

"You and I share a thought-sphere which is not localized in space or time. Hello, my friends. Nice to be here with you."

Exactly right. All of these nihilistic approaches in the modern age share that one common element - personalizing and isolating the thought-sphere in one way or another. Sometimes it is explicit in the case of materialism, sometimes less so in the case of Schop philosophy of Will, sometimes the topic is completely ignored (which is effective denial of shared thought-sphere) like in the case of Rovelli and company. One way or another, they all find their respective ways of dragooning the human spirit. Unfortunately she completely ignores her own observation when saying:

We normally think of experience as some kind of relation between two independent real things: a subject and an object. But the truth is that there is just experience—experience is the real thing. It just happens to be the case that experience has this bipolar structure for us, constrained and extended between the synthesis of self and the synthesis of world, with the synthesis of judgment determining our actions and reactions from the one toward the other. These things are mental factors, factors of consciousness. In other words, they are qualities or dimensions of consciousness, misconstrued as the foundation of consciousness itself. Consciousness has no foundation. It is the foundation.

But there is not just experience, remember? Or, in any case, that experience includes the shared thought-sphere. And if we admit that, as she already did, then we cannot assert, "it just happens to be the case that experience has this bipolar structure". The meaning of that structure is also fundamental, which is nothing other than the Self.

[Eugene I]

I hope, rather naively, that SS and Eugene also see the relation between their position and yours - "I have had mystical experiences and reflected on them abstractly, so now I know there cannot be eternal essence and all riddles of the Cosmos have been solved." I know they will deny any such feelings until the cows come home, but in the meantime I am still waiting on an answer to my question posed to Eugene. What next?

Let me clarify my position:
- I have had mystical experiences. So what? They did open important insights to me, but there is still a lot that I do not know and do not understand. Most riddles of the Cosmos remain unsolved for me.
- The only thing I know for sure that the ever-ongoing activity of Thinking-Feeling-Willing-Experiencing is continuously taking place in my field of experience. I can also see that the content of this activity is incomplete and insufficient for providing a full explanation of "all the riddles of the Cosmos".
- I have no idea whether any "eternal essence" (other than the TFWE activity itself) exists or not, so I have no ground to either affirm or deny it. I'm OK with labeling the TFWE itself as "eternal essence".

I am still waiting on an answer to my question posed to Eugene. What next?

I know what you are asking, and definitely agree that we, purposely or not, both as individuals and a community, are on the path to and heading towards acquiring deeper knowledge about finer details and underlying structures of the Universe. This has been and will continue happening in both natural and spiritual science.

I posted one question here related to the above. So, we agree that we are evolving towards deeper and broader knowledge of the structures and ideas of Consciousness. But where is it leading us? Towards integration and overcoming the alter-dissociation? Or towards further expansion into a never ending universe of conscious forms? Or may be both?

[Eugene I]

Exactly right. All of these nihilistic approaches in the modern age share that one common element - personalizing and isolating the thought-sphere in one way or another. Sometimes it is explicit in the case of materialism, sometimes less so in the case of Schop philosophy of Will, sometimes the topic is completely ignored (which is effective denial of shared thought-sphere) like in the case of Rovelli and company. One way or another, they all find their respective ways of dragooning the human spirit.

My take on it is that there are definitely shared thoughts and ideas, as well as there are private ones. But does the fact that some thoughts are shared proves that these thought are "eternal"?

[Jim Cross]

If you stop thinking of the world as made of "things", and only processes, then the answer is more obvious and satisfying. It is in the very essence of process to differentiate and unify in a rhythmic fashion. That is how we experience our own mental essence in every moment, as we observe and contemplate the world around us. No dualism of mind and matter (or any other "substance") is needed, and in fact the interaction problem makes it even harder to envision how two separate essences give rise to ever-changing phenomenon.

Same applies to processes. An eternal essence can't create any thing or any process. It can't cause things to change in time.

What's more processes are not eternal. They have beginnings and ends. So no soul.

Your processes of willing, feeling, thinking, also imaged in your blood circulation, heart beating, and in-and-out breathing, this very moment, which all interpenetrate and evolve and feedback into each other, disproves your assertions written above. You would not be able to write those assertions if those differentiating and unifying processes were not always occurring. We should not elevate our own mental abstractions above that which is Self-evident in our immanent experience. When did your physiological processes begin and end? You will have to use some completely arbitrary cutoff to answer that question.

Arbitrary. How about birth and death? Yeah, that's arbitrary, I guess. Whatever happened before or after can't be remotely considered "me".

[Jim Cross]

So it is no-thing.

That, of course, means no self or soul exists.

Things in fact lack essence, according to Nagarjuna, they have no fixed nature, and indeed it is only because of this lack of essential, immutable being that change is possible, that one thing can transform into another. Each thing can only have its existence through its lack (sunyata) of inherent, eternal essence.

A self or soul seems more idea construction, but then under idealism what isn't? I prefer not to fill in the "__" with the term Self—as the Ramana school teaches. This take on śūnyatā is that it refers to no-thingness, rather than some nihilistic notion of utter nothingness, and whatever Nagarjuna is nagging on about, it is surely not such a notion. In any case, whatever this no-thingness process is, please point out its point of origin.

No point.

[Eugene I]

PS: The scientific investigation (in both natural and spiritual sciences) is a slippery road between two "unhealthy" extremes. One is a "flat reductionism" - to reduce the reality only to the bare facts that are experientially known to us (in extreme case, only to facts known personally to "me" - a gate to the solipsism hell). The other one is "fairy tale religion" - being open to a variety of scenarios of the nature and the structure of the universe, to start adopting and believing in paradigms unsupported by and not necessitated by the known experimental facts (and as we know, many of those can be quite bizarre). The approach that both natural sciences and philosophy adopted after a long bumpy road is to use a pragmatic epistemological principle of parsimony (Occam razor): "entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily". That does not mean that we should not be open to and should not entertain the possibility of the existence of such entities. It only means not to be quick to fall into believing in their existence without a sufficient support of experimental/experiential evidences.

[AshvinP]

- I have no idea whether any "eternal essence" (other than the TFWE activity itself) exists or not, so I have no ground to either affirm or deny it. I'm OK with labeling the TFWE itself as "eternal essence".

OK, and I have no problem saying W-F-T is the eternal essence, either. I leave out "E" because it is implicit in W-F-T. Where we differ, I presume, is that I hold W-F-T in its polar essence accounts for all forms, including ideas, and so yes they are eternal. There is fundamentally only One Polar Essence. But anyway, I am going to leave it at that, because this part of our discussion has become so abstract and low resolution that we cannot possibly go anywhere productive from continuing to discuss it, as we also know from previous experience.

I am still waiting on an answer to my question posed to Eugene. What next?

I know what you are asking, and definitely agree that we, purposely or not, both as individuals and a community, are on the path to and heading towards acquiring deeper knowledge about finer details and underlying structures of the Universe. This has been and will continue happening in both natural and spiritual science.

I posted one question here related to the above. So, we agree that we are evolving towards deeper and broader knowledge of the structures and ideas of Consciousness. But where is it leading us? Towards integration and overcoming the alter-dissociation? Or towards further expansion into a never ending universe of conscious forms? Or may be both?

These questions are all very abstract modern age questions, and they are trying to "leap in one bound to the eternal" (Bergson). They want to skip over all the details which would actually make possible the answering of the questions. That is why I am asking for a more specified question - think about it like you have been given a grant to explore a specific scientific inquiry in any particular field. What is the research question we should get started on to work our way to some true knowledge of Nature (including spiritual realm)? If we are, in fact, "on the path to and heading towards acquiring deeper knowledge about finer details and underlying structures of the Universe", we must first ask some specified questions before we get those finer detailed answers, right?