Criticism

[Soul_of_Shu]

I glanced at the video some and wish that when videos get posted someone would sum up the main argument in a few sentences.

The main argument is that there is no evidence of transpersonal consciousness that can stand up to the atheistic refutation of it, therefore idealism is unfounded.

[Jim Cross]

I glanced at the video some and wish that when videos get posted someone would sum up the main argument in a few sentences.

The main argument is that there is no evidence of transpersonal consciousness that can stand up to the atheistic refutation of it, therefore idealism is unfounded.

Thanks. That wasn't so difficult, was it?

The problem with that argument is there is no evidence of an external world that is independent of consciousness either. So stalemate.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I glanced at the video some and wish that when videos get posted someone would sum up the main argument in a few sentences.

The main argument is that there is no evidence of transpersonal consciousness that can stand up to the atheistic refutation of it, therefore idealism is unfounded.

Thanks. That wasn't so difficult, was it?

The problem with that argument is there is no evidence of an external world that is independent of consciousness either. So stalemate.

If you'd prefer, here is a transcriptof Williams' arguments, in which he states that BK's take on Schopenhauer is just plain wrong ...

"(BK's) is a bad interpretation of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer’s Will was a blind, mindless, and irrational force. It was the thing-in-itself which we could never know other than through immediate experience of our own consciousness. But Schopenhauer was careful to acknowledge the term Will as a misleading reduction, applicable only to the occasion of labeling the world-in-itself from the human perspective out of our nature as willing beings. A bird would experience it as flight. No word or concept we could devise would be able to exhaust the reality of the world-in-itself. We could just as easily call it the prime force which we experience as Will willing itself blindly, unconsciously, and without purpose. Conscious states such as desires and fears only appear in the phenomenal world, and Kastrup’s mistaken notion of these as innate elements of the world-in-itself is merely an anthropomorphic projection onto the non-reducible Will. A blind, mindless, and aimless force would indeed be a poor base upon which to build an idea of cosmic consciousness."

[Jim Cross]

The main argument is that there is no evidence of transpersonal consciousness that can stand up to the atheistic refutation of it, therefore idealism is unfounded.

Thanks. That wasn't so difficult, was it?

The problem with that argument is there is no evidence of an external world that is independent of consciousness either. So stalemate.

If you'd prefer, here is a transcriptof Williams' arguments, in which he states that BK's take on Schopenhauer is just plain wrong ...

"(BK's) is a bad interpretation of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer’s Will was a blind, mindless, and irrational force. It was the thing-in-itself which we could never know other than through immediate experience of our own consciousness. But Schopenhauer was careful to acknowledge the term Will as a misleading reduction, applicable only to the occasion of labeling the world-in-itself from the human perspective out of our nature as willing beings. A bird would experience it as flight. No word or concept we could devise would be able to exhaust the reality of the world-in-itself. We could just as easily call it the prime force which we experience as Will willing itself blindly, unconsciously, and without purpose. Conscious states such as desires and fears only appear in the phenomenal world, and Kastrup’s mistaken notion of these as innate elements of the world-in-itself is merely an anthropomorphic projection onto the non-reducible Will. A blind, mindless, and aimless force would indeed be a poor base upon which to build an idea of cosmic consciousness."

The transcript is interesting but, in general, it just seems a compendium of complaints and issues various people have had with BK's ideas. It's seems most of them have been gone through in discussions on this forum with no resolution (as usual with philosophy).

Regarding Schopenhauer, knowing little directly about his work, I wouldn't comment but I did feel in reading BK's book he might have been projecting a little of his own ideas on Schopenhauer.

[AshvinP]

The main argument is that there is no evidence of transpersonal consciousness that can stand up to the atheistic refutation of it, therefore idealism is unfounded.

Thanks. That wasn't so difficult, was it?

The problem with that argument is there is no evidence of an external world that is independent of consciousness either. So stalemate.

If you'd prefer, here is a transcriptof Williams' arguments, in which he states that BK's take on Schopenhauer is just plain wrong ...

"(BK's) is a bad interpretation of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer’s Will was a blind, mindless, and irrational force. It was the thing-in-itself which we could never know other than through immediate experience of our own consciousness. But Schopenhauer was careful to acknowledge the term Will as a misleading reduction, applicable only to the occasion of labeling the world-in-itself from the human perspective out of our nature as willing beings. A bird would experience it as flight. No word or concept we could devise would be able to exhaust the reality of the world-in-itself. We could just as easily call it the prime force which we experience as Will willing itself blindly, unconsciously, and without purpose. Conscious states such as desires and fears only appear in the phenomenal world, and Kastrup’s mistaken notion of these as innate elements of the world-in-itself is merely an anthropomorphic projection onto the non-reducible Will. A blind, mindless, and aimless force would indeed be a poor base upon which to build an idea of cosmic consciousness."

I suspect the above is not a fair criticism of BK's interpretation of Schop - the latter seems pretty accurate to me. I agree that there is anthropormorphic projection going on with both Schop and BK re: MAL, but it seems this guy is using that criticism to further fortify the non-reducible "prime force" from genuine inquiry through Reason. That is especially clear with the bold assertion that desires and fears have nothing to do with the noumenal. We shouldn't confuse our own current experience of desire and fear with the noumenon, but the underlying ideal content of those experiences is certainly numinous and provides us with valuable knowledge of the noumena if we go deep with our thoughtful inquiries into their phenomenal representations.

[findingblanks]

Looking forward to watching this. Thanks.

[findingblanks]

Oh boy...I have to interrupt after Adrian's first criticism....I think I'll just to a live response as I listen to this video. I"m so glad you shared it:

I hope this isn't the pattern that will follow. He finds a linguistic moment in which BK sounds as if he is saying that there is/could be reality outside of consciousness. Adrian found a great quote! Anybody who has studied BK knows that he makes no room for a reality outside of consciousness, not because it is inconceivable but because he thinks it is irrational. Maybe Adrian isn't aware that BK argues for a moneism. Otherwise, why would he take a spoken moment like that and claim it a contradiction?

Next Adrain takes on BK's argument for consciousness as ontological primitive. It sounds like Adrian will go on to describe how hard it is to argue for ontological primitives. I'm not sure BK would disagree? Remember, BK is NOT claiming he's proven something. He's claiming that his arguments are more reasonable than the alternatives.

He shows another video of BK talking about excitation and fields, string theory, kind of highly speculative things that 'are not empirically grounded...' Ultimate subject vs ultimate object. BK talks about the trick of switching the starting point from a subject to object and how even if you are thinking in terms of fields, you can still think of them as objects.

Adrian comes back: Oh no....... This is Adrians first comment after listening to BK:

:"Here he states that quantum fields are the elemental level of the universe..."

I now feel very confident that Adrian has not studied BK. First of all, BK did not just say that. He used quantum fields as an analogy for his own analogy of consciousness and its excitations/ripples.

I'll keep listening but that this is not an objection to BK at all. So far.

Okay, Adrian then goes on from this mistaken view of BK to then mistakeningly apply it it to the idea of quantum fields uniting... We are far far far away from what BK even said in that clip.

I think I'm going to stop here unless somebody posts that there is a section of this video that really does apply to BK. It's clear that Adrian has good intention and is a sharp guy. But the fact that his first claims about BK are so off base...It's a long video.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Oh boy...I have to interrupt after Adrian's first criticism....]

Just to clarify, the youtube commentator doing the critique of BK's metaphysics is Jeffrey Williams. Adrian Sinclair is the interviewer in this video on which the critique is based.

[findingblanks]

Ah, thanks. I'll edit that once I'm at a keyboard. Thanks, Soul!

[Mark Tetzner]

And Dana, I take that back. You have been an amazing admin and contributor to this forum, for him to shoot you a quick "appreciate it" would have been a good idea.