Re: Phenomenology and Praxis: Philosophical Questions Not Asked Enough
Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2021 12:39 pm
Shajan624 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 05, 2021 10:36 amMathematical forms appear to be related to the ‘grammar of thinking’. That’s all we can say to begin with if we don’t make any assumptions about the nature of the mental realm.AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Sep 03, 2021 5:04 pm We don't need to assume anything about the nature of the mental realm right now (although if we can agree there is only mental realm and no realms of different essence, i.e. idealism, that would help). We only need to answer the question of whether the assumptions arise from people independently figuring out or being told the meaning of "triangle", and/or whether we are drawing on, for all intents and purposes, a pre-existing transpersonal meaning of "triangle". Do you think we can confidently answer that question?
I am curious how this can be extended to non-mathematical forms, for example what are thought forms associated with ‘seeing colour red’ and can it be communicated to another person like we could with the triangle form?Reality of consciousness and the inner urge to find comprehensible patterns from experience - these are my starting points and no other assumptions.AshvinP wrote: But, the overall point being, if we start with our conclusions and their disagreements, there is really nowhere left to go. Instead we should start with what can be easily agreed upon in the givens of our experience, without any added assumptions or biases from our respective presupposed conclusions, and see what conclusions naturally flow from those agreements.
The collection of such patterns were known as ‘natural philosophy’ earlier, but now simply ‘science’. Strangely, science of life has come to view consciousness as unreal, contradicting my felt certainty of its reality. IMO, we should enquire into the roots of scientific knowledge to understand science’s problem with consciousness.
Scientific knowledge grew exponentially in the past 300 years. Practically there was no such knowledge a couple of thousand years ago. How/why did the ‘third person view’ begin and how did it reach such a dominant position in a short span of time?
Shajan,
So it sounds like we can agree there is a "grammar of thinking" i.e. meaningful structure to experience, which is shared by thinking beings such as humans, and all experience contains this shared cognitive element?
re: color red - that brings us to territory where we must specificy all the possible details in the context of the color perception. I am sure we can agree there is no experience where we experience "redness" in isolation. I do hold there are shared qualities of color-experience we can explore, but it will require extra effort for that reason. That is why it is much easier to begin with mathematical objects which can be formed within and are self-contained. Even if we form the color red impression without seeing the color, we are going to do so in a specific context of other qualities.
The reason for the third person scientific view is many layered. On a relatively surface level, we could say it's the rise of rationalism and dualism in the 15th to 16th centuries, which isolated inward mental stuff from outtward material stuff. Once we put that in the overall context of cognitive evolution, we may add that its part of a natural progression towards the sovereignty of the individual as locus of Thinking activity which will make possible integration of experience from differentiation. I further conclude that overall progression is the result of evolving activity of living spiritual beings who are responsible for our thoughts and feelings and corresponding physiological processes, yet are supersensible to normal present day cognition. Clearly we will disagree on at least one if not two or all of those, definitely the last one. Which is why it does not really make sense to start with the question of why. But if you want to provide your answer maybe we can find some areas of agreement within the inner logic of the evolutionary progression.