Because I wanted to give you a reply uninfluenced by what Ashvin and Cleric have added to your post, I haven’t yet read the entire thread. And for this same reason, I don’t know whether your understanding has evolved since you wrote this. I’ll comment on this version, as of yesterday, just please disregard if outdated. My understanding has evolved since yesterday, to the extent that I wasn't interpreting will, in the WFT triad, in the correct way, at the time I wrote what you quoted.
Stranger wrote: ↑Mon Feb 13, 2023 6:16 pm First, I agree with Cleric and Ashvin that all phenomena are always part of the given, no matter whether they are (or appear to be) the percepts or results of further conceptual processing of percepts. But this living process of the temporal interplay between some phenomena and their consequent processing by cognition is indeed complex and mysterious. Thinking builds new though-ideas as "reflections" of previously experienced phenomena (those can be precepts, feelings, acts of will, or other thought-ideas),
Yes, I agree with that, and have now a clear idea of what an “act of will” is, in particular. So hopefully we are all on the same page on this: what you call “reflections” elaborated by thinking (I think Ashvin has called them “thought-perceptions”) are the given of experience, and they can reflect various conscious phenomena as you stated. Just to be clear, these reflections are not mere reflections, they are a restoration where the percept is re-inflown with the relevant concepts, so we can have our usual experience of flow of conscious becoming in coherent manner.
Stranger wrote: ↑Mon Feb 13, 2023 6:16 pm and then the newly formed ideas can be in certain degrees of coherence with the phenomena that they reflect upon (sometimes they are completely incoherent, sometimes they are more coherent). It is worth noting that the "reflection" idea of a phenomenon is never fully equivalent to the original phenomenon, but it is always some kind of a transmuted form of it. That does not mean that there is no shared ideal content. Nevertheless, all of these phenomena always remain an inseparable part of the "given" which is a living content of Consciousness.
Ok, here I am not completely sure what you intend with this varying degree of coherence/incoherence of the reflection. I would rather suggest the idea of completeness/exhaustivity of the reflection, as previously presented by Cleric. In short the reflection is never an absolutely complete work of restoring full reality by matching back the percept with the relevant concepts/meaning, and this is precisely why we can perceive/have consciousness of the reflection. If that match was perfect, the reason for existing of the perception would be hollowed out, offset completely, it would disappear, and we would be projected in the wholeness of pure meaning/pure spirit/pure idea. Perception is only there as a useful riddle/detour to meaning/reality for us humans. It creates traction for us to feel the call of meaning. Finding the whole meaning would annihilate perception, because its deep usefulness would be exhausted.
As Cleric put it (the traction I mentioned is called void here):
Cleric K wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 11:54 am For example, we can try to fill the void with meaningful essence in the shape of a 'hexagon'. It's like saying: "this thing (we can't address it with its real concept because that would immediately fill the void perfectly and the perception would vanish) looks to me like a hexagon." The void sucks in our ideal nature into itself and we assume the meaning-shape of a hexagon. Yet, just like the pencil, the perception doesn't completely disappear because the idea that we experience is not a perfect fit. The hexagon fills the circle but there are six sectors of the circle that remain:
Now these sectors will continue to exercise suction on our essential being, which would suggest infinity of other shapes of meaning that could fill the sectors. If we imagine this process even further we can picture how a whole Universe of perceptions and meaning can sprout forth.
Stranger wrote: ↑Mon Feb 13, 2023 6:16 pm But I agree that dividing WFT into such categories is somewhat "artificial", and that it is a result of ideational reflection of thinking experiencing itself and its own functioning and capacities. Yet, I think such division has some ground and usefulness because it reflects different "qualities" of the thinking aspects and aspects of the phenomena it produces. It is practically useful to differentiate between these aspects and qualities, while always remembering that such differentiation is a result of the cognitive "reflection" of thinking experiencing itself.
Yes, I guess we all agree on that.
Stranger wrote: ↑Mon Feb 13, 2023 6:16 pm But we are now approaching a mystery-question whether the "reflection" of Thinking when it experiences itself can be entirely equivalent to Thinking itself, or if it always remains a "reflection", a content of an ideation only. Which comes to a key question of the phenomenological idealism: is Thinking fully equivalent to its Idea of itself (by Idea I mean phenomenologically experienced Idea, not a "metaphysical" one)? For example, think about this mystery: Thinking certainly exists and it knows it, and we all know it (otherwise we would not be thinking), and knowing it means that Thinking has an idea of its own existence. But is the idea of Thinking's own existence fully equivalent to the existence itself (which is the same as to ask: is the existence an idea and only and idea)? A while ago I was confident that existence is not only an idea, and I argued for this conviction on this forum, but now I'm not so sure anymore, it remains a mystery for me at this point. Perhaps is it more appropriate to say that it is in fact the Idea that includes its own existence (in other words, self-causing Idea). As a phenomenological fact, existence is a directly knowable reality, Thinking (Consciousness) directly phenomenally knows that it exists, and in that sense this knowledge is equivalent to existence. Same applies to all other aspects of Consciousness such as awareness/experiencing, willing, thinking, feeling etc.
My understanding of the mystery-question would be: Thinking with capital T continually knows itself through the multiplicity of various beings (through a hierarchy, living on/as an ideal/spiritual landscape). A curlicue, a detour, a modality within this hierarchy is humanity/the perceptual World (practically the same thing, in the economy of the whole engine, because perception is what man does by being human). So Thinking has an unimaginably complex knowing of itself, and the phenomenologically experienced idea you speak of (ours) is one modality of the unitary Thinking engine. We are responsible for becoming conscious of that modality being integral to the full reality of Thinking. Maybe you are looking at the question starting from the standpoint of human condition, experiencing the idea of existence? Maybe starting from the standpoint of Thinking reality itself, comprising humanity but also other beings (although impossible intellectually, but as an intention) could balance out the elements of the question. Although I have not experienced it, I would imagine that the consciousness of the full coincidence of Thinking and its existence (spiritual nature of all reality), only can emerge for us humans in higher cognition. We can’t solve it by squeezing our brains now. And I would say, the same is true, when we zoom in on humanity, for the phenomenologically experienced idea: it can be “entirely equivalent to Thinking itself” when pervaded by consciousness. With this, we come back to the hexagone example: When the percept is fully and perfectly re-enliven by its ideal half (the full and fully fitting bundle of concepts it is calling for) the reflection disappears and only pure ideal reality remains.