Phenomenological idealism: definitions of common terms
Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2021 2:28 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 4:51 amEugene I wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 4:09 amKastrup's philosophy is a model originally derived from direct human experience. Our experience tells us that we experience a flow of conscious phenomena in our own minds. However, we also learn from experience of communication with other people that they also have a similarly structured flow of phenomena in their minds, but in most cases these flows are different and do not overlap, even though there is a continuous communication and interconnection going on between them. There is a certain interconnected fragmentation of the total flow of conscious phenomena that we all observe together. These are bare experiential facts. What we also do by utilizing our ability of rational and intuitive thinking is that we reflect the facts of experience and create ideal interpretations or models ("theories") relevant to the facts of experience that would describe them with a certain level of accuracy. The purpose of such reflective modeling is very practical - it help us to make sense of the experience and predict its outcomes depending on our decisions and acts of will. In a way, a good reflective model should comply with both Russel's "Correspondence Theory of Truth" and Charles Pierce's "Pragmatic Theory of Truth". If the experience changes or expands, the theory should also adopt to the changing experience (or to be replaced with a different theory). So, as long as a theory is always related to the relevant experience, it is not an abstraction. However, it becomes an abstraction when it is "abstracted" from the concrete experience and becomes a system of ideas on its own. A theory may start as relevant to an experience but later become an abstraction, or it may be made up as an abstraction from start and stay irrelevant to any experience, or it may later become relevant to experience. For example, the Riemann geometry was first developed as an abstract math model, but later was found to be relevant as a basis for an accurate General Relativity model.AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 3:06 am That should be a major problem for anyone who thinks knowing inquiries should shed more light on phenomena, not less light. This form of idealism actually takes a precisely formulated theory of living organisms, which no doubt contains some very important insights regardless of our metaphysical position, and replaces it with an abstract concept shrouded in complete darkness.
The BK's model of alters is a simple model relevant to our experience of interconnected fragmentation of conscious phenomena. He used the DID as an explanatory analogy for such fragmentation, and that is where the term "alter" came from. As such, the BK's model is not an abstraction, but a practical model within the framework of idealism (which is "consciousness is all there is"). However, when people learn about the BK's model but ignore or unaware of the actual experience to which this model pertains, then that's when the BK's model becomes an abstraction specifically in those people minds. In other words, BK's model is not an abstraction the way it was developed by BK, but often becomes an abstraction when people misinterpret it.
Eugene,
I can't even type out these explanations to you anymore, because I think it is giving me arthritis. The underlined are pure abstract assumptions. The bold are explicit dualisms which flow from those flawed assumptions. Your 2nd paragraph is an accurate summation of why BK's philosophy is rooted in abstractions which are not first derived from experience, but instead uses analogy of DID to explain it's own abstractions. All of it is abstract analytic philosophy and not phenomenology, in the way either of those terms have ever been used in the history of philosophy. And correspondence theory of truth has not, is not, and will never be compatible with pragmatic understanding of truth.
Is it possible you and Mark simply don't know as much about Western philosophy and German idealism as you think you do? That is a good theory to explain why you consistently get these things wrong. It is supported by the evidence you both admit to never having read much of the philosophy. And your forever keeping of Thinking in the blind spot is what leads you to state and restate various versions of dualism in practically every comment without realizing it. It is not frustrating that this is done, because many many people do it, actually we all do it at various times, but it's frustrating that you won't ever consider the possibility that you are not the sole exception.
Eugene I wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 12:33 pmIn order to resolve this we need to start from scratch and align with basic definition of terms. Since we both speak about phenomenology and seem to agree that conceptual models need to be grounded in phenomenal experience, we first need to define what the word "phenomenon" means. So, step #1: please give your definition of "phenomenon".AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 4:51 am Eugene,
I can't even type out these explanations to you anymore, because I think it is giving me arthritis. The underlined are pure abstract assumptions. The bold are explicit dualisms which flow from those flawed assumptions. Your 2nd paragraph is an accurate summation of why BK's philosophy is rooted in abstractions which are not first derived from experience, but instead uses analogy of DID to explain it's own abstractions. All of it is abstract analytic philosophy and not phenomenology, in the way either of those terms have ever been used in the history of philosophy. And correspondence theory of truth has not, is not, and will never be compatible with pragmatic understanding of truth.
For the reference:
The discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.
Do you agree with this definition? If not, please give your own.
Step #2. If you agree with the above definition (I do), then answer these questions:
- In your 1-st person subjective experience you experience certain qualitative phenomena, such as the color of the wall in your room. In my subjective 1-st person experience I do not experience the same phenomenon of the color of the wall that you experience. We do not share the experiences of the same phenomena, our spaces of conscious phenomena do not overlap. This is experiential fact as experienced from our the 1-st person perspectives. True or not?
- If true then linguistically we can conventionally call this observation "fragmentation of the fields of 1-st person experiences". The particular selection of the word "fragmentation" does not matter as long as we know what phenomenal experience it refers to.
Step #3. Next, we need to give definitions and agree what the term "abstraction" means. For the reference:
Abstraction is the process of generalization by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a black-and-white leather soccer ball to a ball retains only the information on general attributes and behavior of a ball. Similarly, abstracting “happiness” to an “emotional state” reduces the amount of information conveyed about the emotional state. Abstraction typically results in the reduction of a complex idea to a simpler concept or a general domain, which allows the understanding of a variety of specific scenarios in terms of certain basic ideas. Abstract things are sometimes defined as those things that do not exist in reality or exist only as sensory experience, but there is a difficulty in deciding which things "exist" in reality. It is difficult to reach agreement on whether concepts like God, the number three, and goodness are real, abstract, or both.
In philosophical terminology, abstraction is the thought process wherein ideas are distanced from objects.
Abstraction uses a strategy of simplification which ignores formerly concrete details or leaves them ambiguous, vague, or undefined. Effective communication about things in the abstract requires an intuitive or common experience between persons wishing to communicate.
According to such definition, any manipulation of ideas by thinking when they become distanced from objects (phenomena) becomes an abstraction.
Do you agree or not? If not, please give your definition of abstraction.
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 2:24 pmEugene I wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 12:33 pmIn order to resolve this we need to start from scratch and align with basic definition of terms. Since we both speak about phenomenology and seem to agree that conceptual models need to be grounded in phenomenal experience, we first need to define what the word "phenomenon" means. So, step #1: please give your definition of "phenomenon".AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 4:51 am Eugene,
I can't even type out these explanations to you anymore, because I think it is giving me arthritis. The underlined are pure abstract assumptions. The bold are explicit dualisms which flow from those flawed assumptions. Your 2nd paragraph is an accurate summation of why BK's philosophy is rooted in abstractions which are not first derived from experience, but instead uses analogy of DID to explain it's own abstractions. All of it is abstract analytic philosophy and not phenomenology, in the way either of those terms have ever been used in the history of philosophy. And correspondence theory of truth has not, is not, and will never be compatible with pragmatic understanding of truth.
For the reference:
The discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.
Do you agree with this definition? If not, please give your own.
Yes, that is fine, IF we also add "without any assumptions about the nature of the phenomenon". That is practically the hardest part for people to avoid when engaging in phenomenology, but absolutely necessary.
Step #2. If you agree with the above definition (I do), then answer these questions:
- In your 1-st person subjective experience you experience certain qualitative phenomena, such as the color of the wall in your room. In my subjective 1-st person experience I do not experience the same phenomenon of the color of the wall that you experience. We do not share the experiences of the same phenomena, our spaces of conscious phenomena do not overlap. This is experiential fact as experienced from our the 1-st person perspectives. True or not?
- If true then linguistically we can conventionally call this observation "fragmentation of the fields of 1-st person experiences". The particular selection of the word "fragmentation" does not matter as long as we know what phenomenal experience it refers to.
The bold is already a major assumption which has strayed from the phenomenological approach. You are already assuming a dualism in which there are two subjects without overlapping "spaces" of conscious phenomena (I am including ideal content of appearances in "phenomena"). If any such dualism is correct, then it can only result as a conclusion after we have carefully reasoned through our 1st-person experience of phenomena. So no, the "fragmentation of the fields", in the sense you are using it, is a pure assumption at this point and is only appropriate for analytic philosophy.
Step #3. Next, we need to give definitions and agree what the term "abstraction" means. For the reference:
Abstraction is the process of generalization by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a black-and-white leather soccer ball to a ball retains only the information on general attributes and behavior of a ball. Similarly, abstracting “happiness” to an “emotional state” reduces the amount of information conveyed about the emotional state. Abstraction typically results in the reduction of a complex idea to a simpler concept or a general domain, which allows the understanding of a variety of specific scenarios in terms of certain basic ideas. Abstract things are sometimes defined as those things that do not exist in reality or exist only as sensory experience, but there is a difficulty in deciding which things "exist" in reality. It is difficult to reach agreement on whether concepts like God, the number three, and goodness are real, abstract, or both.
In philosophical terminology, abstraction is the thought process wherein ideas are distanced from objects.
Abstraction uses a strategy of simplification which ignores formerly concrete details or leaves them ambiguous, vague, or undefined. Effective communication about things in the abstract requires an intuitive or common experience between persons wishing to communicate.
According to such definition, any manipulation of ideas by thinking when they become distanced from objects (phenomena) becomes an abstraction.
Do you agree or not? If not, please give your definition of abstraction.
Sure, this is fine definition.
I have a sense where this is going, so I will just say now that there is no problem with abstractions as such. This also speaks to Dana's post above about writing and representation. The problem comes in when we forget that we have abstracted from the phenomena and assume the abstractions themselves are adequate explanations for the phenomena. So if some reading what I am writing right now look at the words and think to themselves, "these words explain why meaning arises, because the appearance of the word-forms stimulates my mental activity to create meaning, and naturally someone else's mental activity will create different meaning", then they have reified the abstraction.