Philosophical Speculations

JeffreyW wrote: ↑Fri Nov 26, 2021 4:46 am ...
It is also a gross error to suggest I remain trapped in dualism. I propose that consciousness is a physical part of Being, just as everything else is. It is the idealist who is trapped in dualism when he tries to claim consciousness as non-physical.

I have every desire to continue this conversation, which could turn very interesting. But I do ask that we at least proceed from a better understanding of what I have presented. Sometimes people project onto me what they have seen others write.

JW,

I don't see how it can turn interesting when you are ignoring every substantive part of my argument. I keep pointing out how the concepts are functioning in your system and you keep going back to an analysis of specific abstract terms used by previous thinkers and how they differ in form alone from the abstract terms you use. In your last comment, you once again illustrate my point - "I have continually said that we can only know Being POETICALLY or musically in its unmediated experience, but only what Being reveals to us. If we know it poetically, then you could hardly claim I say we cannot know or say it, but rather I limit ontological knowledge to poetic speech, music, and art - not objective representation."

That is nothing other than Schopenhauer's epistemic position. The intellectual gymnastics which must be done to distance your own view from Schop are impressive, but not at all convincing. Anyone can contemplate the underlying meaning of what you wrote there, compare it to the underlying meaning of Schop's epistemology, and see they are exactly the same. Schop is clearly within the tradition of Kantian epistemology as well. You have taken your own personal inability to perceive the ontic and objectively valid ideal dynamics of aesthetics and projected it onto Reality itself. You say it is now a limit which applies to Being and its phenomenal representations, now and (practically) forever. So, ironically, you objectify Being and reduce it down to the size of your intellect, rather than letting-it-lie where it remains in its full richness and seeking to overcome your own limitations.

Tarnas wrote:The modern mind has demanded a specific type of interpretation ofthe world: its scientific method has required explanations of phenomena that are concretely predictive, and therefore impersonal, mechanistic, structural. To fulfill their purposes, these explanations of the universe have been systematically "cleansed" of all spiritual and human qualities. Of course we cannot be certain that the world is in fact what these explanations suggest. We can be certain only that the world is to an indeterminate extent susceptible to this way of interpretation. Kant's insight is a sword that cuts two ways. Although on the one hand it appears to place the world beyond the grasp of the human mind, on the other hand it recognizes that the impersonal and soulless world of modern scientific cognition is not necessarily the whole story. Rather, that world is the only kind of story that for the past three centuries the Western mind has considered intellectually justifiable. In Ernest Gellner's words, "It was Kant's merit to see that this compulsion [for mechanistic impersonal explanations] is in us, not in things." And "it was Weber's to see that it is historically a specific kind of mind, not human mind as such, that is subject to this compulsion.

- The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 26, 2021 5:12 am

JeffreyW wrote: ↑Fri Nov 26, 2021 4:46 am ...
It is also a gross error to suggest I remain trapped in dualism. I propose that consciousness is a physical part of Being, just as everything else is. It is the idealist who is trapped in dualism when he tries to claim consciousness as non-physical.

I have every desire to continue this conversation, which could turn very interesting. But I do ask that we at least proceed from a better understanding of what I have presented. Sometimes people project onto me what they have seen others write.

JW,

I don't see how it can turn interesting when you are ignoring every substantive part of my argument. I keep pointing out how the concepts are functioning in your system and you keep going back to an analysis of specific abstract terms used by previous thinkers and how they differ in form alone from the abstract terms you use. In your last comment, you once again illustrate my point - "I have continually said that we can only know Being POETICALLY or musically in its unmediated experience, but only what Being reveals to us. If we know it poetically, then you could hardly claim I say we cannot know or say it, but rather I limit ontological knowledge to poetic speech, music, and art - not objective representation."

That is nothing other than Schopenhauer's epistemic position. The intellectual gymnastics which must be done to distance your own view from Schop are impressive, but not at all convincing. Anyone can contemplate the underlying meaning of what you wrote there, compare it to the underlying meaning of Schop's epistemology, and see they are exactly the same. Schop is clearly within the tradition of Kantian epistemology as well. You have taken your own personal inability to perceive the ontic and objectively valid ideal dynamics of aesthetics and projected it onto Reality itself. You say it is now a limit which applies to Being and its phenomenal representations, now and (practically) forever. So, ironically, you objectify Being and reduce it down to the size of your intellect, rather than letting-it-lie where it remains in its full richness and seeking to overcome your own limitations.

Tarnas wrote:The modern mind has demanded a specific type of interpretation ofthe world: its scientific method has required explanations of phenomena that are concretely predictive, and therefore impersonal, mechanistic, structural. To fulfill their purposes, these explanations of the universe have been systematically "cleansed" of all spiritual and human qualities. Of course we cannot be certain that the world is in fact what these explanations suggest. We can be certain only that the world is to an indeterminate extent susceptible to this way of interpretation. Kant's insight is a sword that cuts two ways. Although on the one hand it appears to place the world beyond the grasp of the human mind, on the other hand it recognizes that the impersonal and soulless world of modern scientific cognition is not necessarily the whole story. Rather, that world is the only kind of story that for the past three centuries the Western mind has considered intellectually justifiable. In Ernest Gellner's words, "It was Kant's merit to see that this compulsion [for mechanistic impersonal explanations] is in us, not in things." And "it was Weber's to see that it is historically a specific kind of mind, not human mind as such, that is subject to this compulsion.

- The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View

Perhaps we can’t, because I believe you are misrepresenting my arguments at every step. There probably is no path forward, which is fine.

JeffreyW wrote: ↑Fri Nov 26, 2021 4:48 am Thanks again, and once more I ask your indulgence as I try to learn these things. If you think this is bad, you should see me try to string a video together. Oddly enough, I do have GarageBand down pretty well.

Well, maybe because creating music is more vital to you than creating rhetoric, and perhaps so it should be. In a way I can see why you might prefer a face-to-face dialogue, and not have to be concerned about code and emoticons and such ... except of the body language kind such as this ...

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 26, 2021 1:23 am I just came across a text by Richard Tarnas (known for "archetypal astrology") which does a great job summarizing the general dynamic that is occurring here with JW, BK, and just about everyone else.

WOW, thanks for pointing, never heard of him but that "Passion of the Western Mind" is an excellent book, will be reading

JW wrote: Perhaps we can’t, because I believe you are misrepresenting my arguments at every step. There probably is no path forward, which is fine.

Let me just list out some points I think your arguments are putting forward and you can tell me how accurate they are. Please ignore the terms used if they differ from yours, because I am asking about the core meaning underlying them, i.e. the function in your overall philosophy.

1. In ancient times, all aesthetic qualities of Being were perceived concretely/physically. At some point, perhaps around time Socrates, Plato, etc. this concreteness was divided when representational thinking made its ascendancy.

2. Since then, all Western philosophy has been abstract metaphysical attempts to intellectually recover and represent that which is unrepresentable, leading to many flawed positions such as rationalism and dualism, Kant-Schop epistemology, etc.

3. Currently, representational thinking simply builds up abstract mental models which have little or nothing to do with Being as such. The very framework of abstract space-time in which we think is completely veiling Being, whatever it is.

4. Through contemplation of poetry and music, one can experience and know qualities of Being, but this knowing cannot be systematized into any representational framework. When any such attempt is made, the aesthetic knowledge has been abstracted, reduced, and rendered meaningless.

5. We are still evolving and, at some point over evolutionary timescales of aeons, we may recover ancient perception of aesthetic qualities of Being in some form or fashion.

(Somewhere in this framework you also assert we can be epistemically confident that physical energy etc. is closer to Being as such than conscious experience of the world content, but maybe we can leave this aside for now).

I have continually said that we can only know Being POETICALLY or musically in its unmediated experience, but only what Being reveals to us. If we know it poetically, then you could hardly claim I say we cannot know or say it, but rather I limit ontological knowledge to poetic speech, music, and art - not objective representation.

In more general terms, we can know the Being introspectively intuitively, and art is one way to do it, but not the only way. There is also meditative mystical introspection and experience. Being is Be-ing, and we know intuitively that we "are" and every thing and every meaning we know and experience also "IS", there is an existential aspect in everything we ever know. This aspect glues everything together into oneness - everything "IS" and unified in its Being-ness. We can not make sense of it by representational rationalizing, but we can still experience it introspectively and intuitively.

PS: the key question is whether we believe that the Being and our introspection into it are two different "things", i.e. our introspection is only a "representation" of the Being and not the introspection into the Being as it actually is. As soon as we adopt such belief, it creates the Kantian divide between unknowable Being-noumenon and our comprehension of its meaning and our experience of it (phenomenon). But if we don't adopt the "Kantian" belief, then there is no gap between the Being and our knowing of it, in other words, Being is Be-ing (existence) and simultaneously its own self-knowing and meaning.

Eugene I wrote: ↑Fri Nov 26, 2021 1:34 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 26, 2021 1:23 am I just came across a text by Richard Tarnas (known for "archetypal astrology") which does a great job summarizing the general dynamic that is occurring here with JW, BK, and just about everyone else.

WOW, thanks for pointing, never heard of him but that "Passion of the Western Mind" is an excellent book, will be reading

No problem, I just came across Rick Tarnas recently. Hopefully it doesn't dissuade you from reading him, but he is very familiar with Anthroposophy and sent his daughter to a Waldorf school. But he remains firmly within the more academic explications of what Steiner also pointed to.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 26, 2021 4:57 pm No problem, I just came across Rick Tarnas recently. Hopefully it doesn't dissuade you from reading him, but he is very familiar with Anthroposophy and sent his daughter to a Waldorf school. But he remains firmly within the more academic explications of what Steiner also pointed to.

I'm a slow guy, need time to digest the Anthroposophy step by step

WOW, thanks for pointing, never heard of him but that "Passion of the Western Mind" is an excellent book, will be reading

If you know any Astrology, his Cosmos and Psyche is also very good.