Grant,
Thanks for the response, and no worries on the timing.
GrantHenderson wrote: ↑Thu Sep 30, 2021 10:48 pm
The manuscript you shared reflects my position well.
I think I should reaffirm that — as per my view — the mind doesn’t “recreate internally the total perceptual content which exists externally”, but
falsely assumes that it does…(Hence why that anomaly has proven so deceptive
). And this is an important aspect of my formulation.
We still have to account for the empirical fact that we only have direct “control” over limited aspects of that which we experience (limbs, toes), and not other aspects (like the weather). While
objectively there is no impenetrable boundary separating the internal from the external, it is
true that mind at large must ascribe some sort of boundary, even if the nature of that ascription is logically fallacious.
Yes, I agree we need to account for this empirical fact and all empirical facts. That is actually my biggest criticism of BK's idealism - it really accounts for no empirical facts. It is helpful to discern some overarching principles which make sense of the broad fact, for ex., that there is a sensory world with apparent 'boundaries' in the first place, but that is
not the same as accounting for what those 'boundaries' actually are i.e. how they function in our immanent experience. I don't want to get too sidetracked into that discussion yet, though. For now, it seems your logic above makes clear that the "boundaries" are not real ones and therefore the "limited control" cannot possibly be
absolute without contradicting the underlying metaphysical idealism. I think most idealists agree with that, but the main difference is that BK idealism says, "
when the artificial boundaries are dissolved after physical life, there is no more structured cognition of the sort necessary for science". That is where the flawed assumptions creep in and then lead one to conclude, "
Mind cannot scientifically know Itself".
When you say Mind "
falsely assumes that it 'recreates internally the total perceptual content which exists externally'", are you then implying this is why Mind cannot,
in principle, know itself? In other words, Mind tries to recreate the total content within its dissociated boundaries, and convinces itself that it is doing so, but it really isn't and it never can? If so, then we still disagree. My view, reflected by Cleric and Goethe in the quoted post, is that one-half of the World's perceptual content arrives to us
from within by way of our inner concepts, while the other half arrives from without as [outer] sensory-perceptions. In the process of knowing we are not simply observing the phenomenal world, but we are
co-creating it. Much of this happens subconsciously by way of inner intuitions and imaginations which arrive together with the sensory-perceptions, but also our normal intellectual reasoning is engaged in this co-creative process as well. When we shift to that perspective, it should become much more clear why there is no fundamental limit to what (or how) we can know of the total World Content.
Grant wrote:I think this false identification of the mind as ontologically unequal to reality is the only reason it can perceive qualitative discernments. For example, as mentioned in the text you shared “Every isolated word is understood only if it is taken as a part of the idea of the whole sentence”. This still means that the meaning of the “isolated word” must in some way be distinguished from the meaning of all other words. If the meaning of all words were indistinguishable, there would be no way to attribute any meaning to any particular word, and therefore there would be no “isolated words” to distinguish between. In the same way, your hypothesis that the mind can be completely cognized and have informational properties simultaneously doesn’t seem to work (as far as I can tell). Could you clarify how this would work as per your framework?
P.S. Sorry for the late response. Work has been busy.
Well, I think we sort of agree here, but I just wouldn't call the process of qualitative differentiation "false". I don't hold there is any reason why the Mind must cognize Itself as
divided from or
separate to the qualitative discernments, even though that is generally how we all cognize the world in the modern age. My position is that, in the ancient past, and also in the future, qualtiative discernments of Mind will be distinctions
without divisions. The words will retain their meanings without ever being reified into meanings isolated and separate from the holistic meaning of the sentence, paragraphs, etc. they are embedded within. Again, this is all very hard to imagine from the perspective of abstract intellect, whose entire purpose (until recently) has been to reify distinctions into divisions (and that serves an integral purpose in my overall framework), but such mere intellect is really a momentary blip on the vast 'timescale' of the Cosmos.
PS - When I speak of "purpose", I am not talking about any external agent guiding the Cosmos, but rather the natural unfolding of the inner ideal logic through which the phenomenal perceptual-conceptual world is manifested.