I ask myself the question(s) 'What precedes the dreamer. (What constitutes the dreamer.?)' because it seems to me that a dreamer necessitates awareness and is a 'something' having a dream. In other words three things seem required here: (a) a dreamer, (b) a dream and (c) some kind of differential engagement between (a) and (b) otherwise it would be meaningless to speak of either (a) or (b) in isolation? Is that which dreams the same as that which is dreamed? Is that which is mind the same as that which is mentation? Is that which is God the same as that which is creation? In each of those questions is it's own cognitive compass smuggled.findingblanks wrote: ↑Sat Oct 30, 2021 6:04 pm I think the reason I can think M@L as the dreamer is just in the way that my 'mind' is generating whatever bizarre qualities arise as dreams...I'm the dreamer in that context and yet I don't identify with any of those arising qualities. But I don't need to think of it that way. I'd be curious what inclines you away from thinking of the ultimate source as being that within which anything arises...
In the context you note, it would be hard for me to see how we would be talking about an ontological primitive. One of the reasons would be that there is an 'I' observing and differentiating between itself and what is observed in the dream. In other words there is meta-cognition occurring, as well as differentiation, and for meta-cognition to occur, in Kastrup's scheme, it requires a dissociated alter. In fact meta-cognition seems a defining characteristic of the dissociated alter but not, in Kastrup's scheme, of an ontological primitive. So I'm trying to see how far I can move before I come to a cognitive boundary, which could be one of the things which characterise the cognitive arrangement of an alter. That a reflective loop of the excitation of Mind, which is the dissociated alter and from which meta-cognition can occur, cannot 'see' or 'cognise' beyond it's reflective surface. It cannot 'see' beyond the very thing which constellates its' seeing? If it could, then would it not be supra-cognitive and no longer dissociated? Remembering that no dissociation means no meta-conscious, in Kastrup's idealism as I understand it.
If I were to follow this I might feel as if I had cheated myself and smuggled in the idea that my logic is sound because of how it 'appears'. What if it were not so much that it is a logic whose implication is of a ground-floor that is 'nothing'......but a logic that implies a ground-floor that is 'nothing that can be pointed at.'? They are two different starting (ending?) points aren't they?findingblanks wrote: ↑Sat Oct 30, 2021 6:04 pm I'm starting to see how that logic implies a ground-floor that is 'nothing'.