Phenomenological idealism: definitions of common terms

[Eugene I]

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.

Kastrup'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.

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 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.

In 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".

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.

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.

In 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".

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.

[Eugene I]

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.

Great, totally agreed.

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 such assumptions are only appropriate for analytic philosophy.

OK, let's take it by baby steps.
- I now look at the wall in my room and experience the white color of it in my 1-st person experience.
- In your first person experience do you experience exactly the same phenomenon of a while wall in my room? My guess (unless you are telepathic) you answer is "no"
- So now we have a commonly agreed fact - there is a phenomenon (visual experience of a while wall in "my room") that I experience and you do not. In other words, we do not share this experience in our 1-rs person subjective experiences. This is a statement of the fact. Agree or not?
- If we are together in the same room, we will experience visual phenomena of a wall, however visual phenomenon in my 1-st person experience will still differ from the similar phenomenon in yours. For example if the wall is red, you will experience it as red, but if I'm color blind, I will experience it as gray. This is a fact - the qualia of the phenomena are always different in the 1-st person experiences of different people. Agree or not?
- Moreover, in my 1-st person experience I do not have just a single experience of the wall, but a whole flow of various phenomena - perceptions, thoughts, feelings etc. In your 1-st person experience you have a similar flow of phenomena, and again, unless we are clairvoyants, none of the qualia of these phenomena are exactly the same even if we watch the same movie. Agree or not?
- All of the above are simple descriptions of bare facts of phenomenal experience with no interpretation of them whatsoever. I have no idea why and how this happens and not offering any interpretation at this point. Agree or not?
- If you agree, then this fact is important enough to deserve a linguistic term for it. I call it "fragmentation of the fields of 1-st person experiences". If you don't like the word "fragmentation" because of its dualistic resonance, please offer your own term, I don't care which word we use for it.

Step #3. Next, we need to give definitions and agree what the term "abstraction" means. For the reference:

Sure, this is fine definition (except we should be careful with the bold which contains an implicit assumption, or at least will normally be interpreted with this assumption, that ideas are not also aspects of the objects).

Wait, we haven't agreed yet what the term "object" means. This is very important step.
Some suggestions where to start:
- Look at a chair in your room and reflect on the actual sensory phenomena in your 1-st person experience related to it. You will first notice the soup of colors and shapes of the whole visual experience of the room. Then you will notice a thought-image phenomenon that selects certain shapes and colors adjacent to each other spatially and interprets this collection of colors and shapes as a certain distinctive "object". There will be another thought-phenomenon associated with it bearing the meaning of a "chair". Now, the meaning of a "chair" is actually already an abstraction, because it pertains to any possible chair, but in this particular phenomenal experience it associates with this particular group of experiences that we called "chair". So now we experience a group of phenomena, both visual and thoughts, that are formed into the experience of a "chair"
- At the level of phenomenal facts this is all we know about the experience of a "chair". "Without any assumptions about the nature of the phenomenon" do not yet know if what this "object-chair" actually is, whether it exists in some "external world" as a material "thing", or whether it's a manifestation of some other conscious being, or a manifestation of our own conscious activity (like if this experience would be in a dream). All of these would already be assumptions and interpretations of the experience.
- Note that with such definition of an "object" the ideas related to it are (exactly as you said) the the inseparable aspects of the object. But they can be further abstracted from the rest of the phenomenal content and manipulated in the process of thinking.
Agreed? If not, give your 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. The more we abstract in our philosophy and rely on those abstractions in our formulations, the more likely this error becomes. 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.

I agree, that's why wee need to define and agree on the common terms and abstractions that we are going to use and remember (put in writing in this thread) their definitions and what phenomenal experiences they actually refer to.

[AshvinP]

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.

Great, totally agreed.

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 such assumptions are only appropriate for analytic philosophy.

OK, let's take it by baby steps.
- I now look at the wall in my room and experience the white color of it in my 1-st person experience.
- In your first person experience do you experience exactly the same phenomenon of a while wall in my room? My guess (unless you are telepathic) you answer is "no"

- So now we have a commonly agreed fact - there is a phenomenon (visual experience of a while wall in "my room") that I experience and you do not. In other words, we do not share this experience in our 1-rs person subjective experiences. This is a statement of the fact. Agree or not?

Disagree. It is an unwarranted assumption at this stage. The reason this is assumed is because we are ignoring the ideal content of the visual perception. The underlying meaning that we first perceive and then symbolize as "white wall" could very well be the same, only with different shades of meaning due to our spatiotemporal perspective. It is easier to see this when we only consider the same person viewing the same wall at different spatial angles or at different times. After all, we are only reasoning from 1st-person experience. As soon as we posit another subject and start speculating how their experience will appear to them, we have constructed an unwarranted 3rd-person perspective and abandoned phenomenology.

Wait, we haven't agreed yet what the term "object" means. Please give your definition. This is very important step.
Some suggestions where to start:
- Look at a chair in your room and reflect on the actual sensory phenomena in your 1-st person experience related to it. You will first notice the soup of colors and shapes of the whole visual experience of the room. Then you will notice a thought-image phenomenon that selects certain shapes and colors adjacent to each other spatially and interprets this collection of colors and shapes as a certain distinctive "object". There will be another thought-phenomenon associated with it bearing the meaning of a "chair". Now, the meaning of a "chair" is actually already an abstraction, because it pertains to any possible chair, but in this particular phenomenal experience it associates with this particular group of experiences that we called "chair". So now we experience a group of phenomena, both visual and thoughts, that are formed into the experience of a "chair"
- At the level of phenomenal facts this is all we know about the experience of a "chair". "Without any assumptions about the nature of the phenomenon" do not yet know if what this "object-chair" actually is, whether it exists in some "external world" as a material "thing", or whether it's a manifestation of some other conscious being, or a manifestation of our own conscious activity (like if this experience would be in a dream). All of these would already be assumptions and interpretations of the experience.
Agreed? If not, give your 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. The more we abstract in our philosophy and rely on those abstractions in our formulations, the more likely this error becomes. 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.

I agree, that's why wee need to define and agree on the common terms and abstractions that we are going to use and remember (put in writing in this thread) their definitions and what phenomenal experiences they actually refer to.

Here I would use "object" to mean any phenomena which can potentially become the object of our observation, including our own inner activity and experiences. In your example of "chair", you are simply assuming we first perceive the physical structures and then construct the meaning based on the physical structures we select. There is no warrant for that assumption and, in fact, cognitive science confirms we first perceive the underlying meaning and then symbolize it with these perceptual structures (technically, we symbolize based on what meaning is absent in our perception, which then stimulates our cognitive activity to seek out the absent meaning, the inner semantics, and render the perceptions, the outer syntax, an intelligible whole of experience).

[Eugene I]

Here I would use "object" to mean any phenomena which can potentially become the object of our observation, including our own inner activity and experiences. In your example of "chair", you are simply assuming we first perceive the physical structures and then construct the meaning based on the physical structures we select. There is no warrant for that assumption and, in fact, cognitive science confirms we first perceive the underlying meaning and then symbolize it with these perceptual structures.

I never said the visual phenomena come "first". I just started from them in order go through their hierarchy. I agree that they come together as an entangled "package".

Note that at this point we only defined an "object" as a collection of 1-st person perspective phenomena that includes sense perceptions and thought forms bearing some meanings pertaining to such perceptions.

OK, let's take it by baby steps.
- I now look at the wall in my room and experience the white color of it in my 1-st person experience.
- In your first person experience do you experience exactly the same phenomenon of a while wall in my room? My guess (unless you are telepathic) you answer is "no"

- So now we have a commonly agreed fact - there is a phenomenon (visual experience of a while wall in "my room") that I experience and you do not. In other words, we do not share this experience in our 1-rs person subjective experiences. This is a statement of the fact. Agree or not?

Disagree. It is an unwarranted assumption at this stage. The reason this is assumed is because we are ignoring the ideal content of the visual perception. The underlying meaning that we first perceive and symbolize as "white wall" could very well be the same, only with different shades of meaning due to our spatiotemporal perspective. It is easier to see this when we only consider the same person viewing the same wall at different spatial angles or at different times. After all, we are only reasoning from 1st-person experience. As soon as we posit another subject and start speculating how their experience will appear to them, we have constructed an unwarranted 3rd-person perspective and abandoned phenomenology.

Agree on the 3-rd person perspective, but wait!
- How did you arrive (based on the facts of yours and mine 1-st person phenomenal experiences) at the statement that we are looking at the same "wall"? Isn't it already an assumption? Is not it based on implicit assumption that there is some actual "self-existing object" in some "external world" that we both perceive? If not, what would the term "the same wall" mean here?
- Here is a problem: the meaning may or may not be the same (see next item), but we just defined an "object" above as a collection of both sense perceptions and meanings. Now, if you just take the meanings and abstract them from perceptions, then we could mutually arrive at a common experience of the meaning of a "chair object", but this is only if we strip/dissociate the meanings from the content of the concrete sensory experiences. If we do not make such dissociation, we can not assume that we are looking at the same "object" because the sense perceptions are still different. So now, in order to arrive at the assumption that we experience the same "object", we need to abstract the meaning from the sensory phenomena, in other words, dissociate the "object" (as it is defined above as a collection of all phenomena associated with it).
- Now, whether or not we actually experience exactly the same meaning is a whole different question. Here is a problem: how do we know (prove) that when we look at the same chair, the meanings that we phenomenally experience are exactly the same? Your experience of the meaning is experienced from your 1-rst person perspective, mine is experienced from my perspective. How do we compare them if I can only experience such thought forms our own perspectives? What I'm getting to is that the statement that we can experience exactly the same meanings is already an assumption. We can adopt such assumption, but we need to agree that it is an assumption first.

[Martin_]

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 w

ord "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.

Ashvin, do you also agree with the following hypothetical exchange:

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 experience the same phenomenon of the color of the wall that you experience. We do share the experiences of the same phenomena, our spaces of conscious phenomena overlaps.

The bold is already a major assumption which has strayed from the phenomenological approach. You are already assuming a monism in which there are a two subjects with overlapping "spaces" of conscious phenomena (I am including ideal content of appearances in "phenomena"). If any such monism 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 "unity of the fields", in the sense you are using it, is a pure assumption at this point and is only appropriate for analytic philosophy.

[AshvinP]

Here I would use "object" to mean any phenomena which can potentially become the object of our observation, including our own inner activity and experiences. In your example of "chair", you are simply assuming we first perceive the physical structures and then construct the meaning based on the physical structures we select. There is no warrant for that assumption and, in fact, cognitive science confirms we first perceive the underlying meaning and then symbolize it with these perceptual structures.

I never said the visual phenomena come "first". I just started from them in order go through their hierarchy. I agree that they come together as an entangled "package".

Note that at this point we only defined an "object" as a collection of 1-st person perspective phenomena that includes sense perceptions and thought forms bearing some meanings pertaining to such perceptions.

I don't think they come together, rather the meaning precedes the perceptual structures. In the modern age, we naively assume the exact reverse of this process. Jung talks about this same process in the psychological concept of "projection" - inner meaning [which we are not conscious of] is projected outwards as perception.

I do not accept that definition of "object". For one thing, ideas are not reducible in our immanent experience of them - they are not formed by cobbling together a bunch of 'smaller' ideas, but rather arrive as coherent wholes.

How did you arrive (based on the facts of yours and mine 1-st person phenomenal experiences) at the statement that we are looking at the same "wall"? Isn't it already an assumption? Is not it based on implicit assumption that there is some actual "self-existing object" in some "external world" that we both perceive? If not, what would the term "the same wall" mean here?

I am saying we cannot assume anything in phenomenology, only that there is 1st-person experience. That is why I said we should stick to only one subject observing phenomena, not two subjects looking at the same wall, different walls, or any other wall. Only one subject is what we have experiential warrant from the outset. When this one subject experiences the "white wall" from different spatiotemporal angles, is it experiencing entirely different meaningful concepts or different shades of the same concept? I think our reasoning through such experiences without any assumptions will show that it is the latter. It is even easier to recognize this with mathematical objects, such as "triangle". One subject can endlessly think up triangle-forms which are inwardly observed, and they all carry the same conceptual meaning of "triangle", but perhaps with different perceptual shades of meaning depending on conditions particular to the subject in any given instance of observation.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, do you also agree with the following hypothetical exchange:

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 experience the same phenomenon of the color of the wall that you experience. We do share the experiences of the same phenomena, our spaces of conscious phenomena overlaps.

The bold is already a major assumption which has strayed from the phenomenological approach. You are already assuming a monism in which there are a two subjects with overlapping "spaces" of conscious phenomena (I am including ideal content of appearances in "phenomena"). If any such monism 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 "unity of the fields", in the sense you are using it, is a pure assumption at this point and is only appropriate for analytic philosophy.

No because I reject the assumption of two separate "spaces" of meaning which just happen to "overlap" in certain instances. A phenomenological approach makes no such assumption and therefore we are dealing with a unified 'space' of experience in which there exists varying peripheral spatiotemporal perspectives perceving the same ideal content, loosely illustrated by the image below.

[Eugene I]

I don't think they come together, rather the meaning precedes the perceptual structures. In the modern age, we naively assume the exact reverse of this process. Jung talks about this same process in the psychological concept of "projection" - inner meaning is projected outwards as perception.

I do not accept that definition of "object". For one thing, ideas are not reducible in our immanent experience of them - they are not formed by cobbling together a bunch of 'smaller' ideas, but rather arrive as coherent wholes.

If you don't agree, fine, but wait, there are already unwarranted assumptions in what you said here:
- "the meaning precedes the perceptual structures" - wow, that's a huge assumption, How do you know or prove that, not based on what Jung said, but based on your 1-st person experience?
- "ideas are not reducible in our immanent experience of them - they are not formed by cobbling together a bunch of 'smaller' ideas, but rather arrive as coherent wholes". I did not say that they are reducible to anything. They are presented as a whole "package" in our experience. So what?
- Since you disagreed with my definition of "object", please give yours.

I am saying we cannot assume anything in phenomenology, only that there is 1st-person experience. That is why I said we should to only one subject observing phenomena, not two subjects looking at the same wall, different walls, or any other wall. Only one subject is what we have experiential warrant from the outset. When this one subject experiences the "white wall" from different spatiotemporal angles, is it experiencing entirely different meaningful concepts or different shades of the same concept? I think our reasoning through such experiences without any assumptions will show that it is the latter.

I agree about just considering one 1-st person perspective. But here you have another unwarranted assumption. When you look at the wall from 2 different angles, you have two different "packages" of perceptions, but it is true that there many be the same meaning associated with them both.
- Now, how from the above fact do you arrive at the statement that you are looking at the "same wall"? How the fact that there is the same meaning associated with two "packages" of phenomenal experiences leads to the conclusion that the "object" is the same. And before we decide on that, we still have to agree on the meaning/definition of "object", and we are not there yet.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I've no tailor-made definitions yet ready to offer, so will just follow along for now. However, I've decided to dive into Franklin Merrell-Wolff's Transformations in Consciousness: The Metaphysics and Epistemology. Franklin Merrell-Wolff Containing His Introceptualism which seems promising in terms of offering some definitions. It ain't cheap, but there's a significantly large free sample available through google play, if interested.

Table of Contents:

FOREWORD BY RON LEONARD

INTRODUCTION

PART I: FOUR SCHOOLS OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY

1 Toward a Synthetic Philosophy

2 Naturalism

General Naturalism

Materialism

Positivism

3 The New Realism

4 Pragmatism

Vitalism

Empiric Voluntarism

Percept and Concept

Pragmatic Science

Gnostic Realization

Idealistic Pragmatism

Test by Consequences

5 Idealism

Ideas: Plato to Kant

The Primordial Image: Jung

Reason as Nous and Logos

6 Introceptual Idealism

Freedom and Necessity

Introception and Introspection

Self and Divine Otherness

Ideas: Hegel and Schopenhauer

The Self

Unidentified Introception

The Problem of Formulation

Conception, Perception and Introception

PART II: INTROCEPTUALISM

7 Introception

The Flow of Consciousness

Introceptual Process: St. John of the Cross

Conception and the Mystic Thought

8 Transcendentalism

Conception and Introception

Innate Ideas

The Subject Transcends the Object

9 Reality and Appearance

Conceptual Presentation

Substantiality Is Inversely Proportional to Ponderability

Knowledge through Identity

10 The Meaning of Divinity

PART III: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CRITIQUE OF MYSTICISM

11 Judgments of Meaning and Existence

12 Three Mystical Paradigms

Mysticism

The Christ

The Buddha

Shankara

Self (Atman) or No-Self (Anatman)

A Mathematical Model of Ego Metaphysics

13 Mystical Knowledge

Critique of Leuba's Methodology

The Mystic Thought

Knowledge as Negation

Shift in the Base of Reference

Leuba's Antinoetic Argument

14 Significance of Immediate Qualities of Mystical States

EPILOGUE

[Eugene I]

No because I reject the assumption of two separate "spaces" of meaning which just happen to "overlap" in certain instances. A phenomenological approach makes no such assumption and therefore we are dealing with a unified 'space' of experience in which there exists varying peripheral spatiotemporal perspectives perceving the same ideal content, loosely illustrated by the image below.

Wow, wait!
Before arriving at this, you need first to answer my previous question: how do you know that we are experiencing exactly the same ideas? How did you arrive to this statement based on your 1-st person phenomenal experience?

I wrote above:

- Now, whether or not we actually experience exactly the same meaning is a whole different question. Here is a problem: how do we know (prove) that when we look at the same chair, the meanings that we phenomenally experience are exactly the same? Your experience of the meaning is experienced from your 1-rst person perspective, mine is experienced from my perspective. How do we compare them if I can only experience such thought forms our own perspectives? What I'm getting to is that the statement that we can experience exactly the same meanings is already an assumption. We can adopt such assumption, but we need to agree that it is an assumption first.

You said that we can only resolve it by taking a single 1-st person perspective. Fine, let's try, but I think it makes the problem even more difficult. Because if we are both looking at the allegedly the "same wall", how can we prove that we are experience the same meaning if we are not even allowed to compare our experiences?