Cleric wrote:Martin, what do you make out of JW's insistence that Energy is the basis of all? And the question was not even if Energy or Consciousness is the basis - it was the simple fact that before we can even speak of a basis we must think. So whatever we chose as our basis it always comes second to thinking. This is not something that only Ashvin tried to point out but also Eugene and others. For me as a bywatcher, the way JW was refusing to even try and understand what everyone is trying to point him at, was simply scary. It's scary how someone who emerges from academia and is supposed to be the authority on such topics, has his own thinking completely in the blind spot. From that point onwards any attempt to make a meaningful conversation turned into slippery twisting evasive maneuvers. And the scary thing is that he didn't even seem to be aware that he's avoiding one of the most central points that thinkers of today must comprehend with perfect clarity.
If we put a metaphorical and metaphysical gun to JW's head and asked him what label suits him best, then I think he would have responded dual-aspect monism, which is not so far off from idealist monism which recognizes the polar relation of Idea-perception, Ideal-real, Spirit-matter, etc.. That is pretty clear from all his comments about the 'entanglement' of Energy and Consciousness. What JW was completeley unaware of, and he is certainly not alone in this regard, was that the meeting of these dual-aspects take place in his own Thinking. Another way of expressing the polar relation is meaning and sense-perception. It is in our own immanent Thinking activity where we find sense-perceptions (thought-forms) which are already united with their meaning. This is all what we have discussed in relation to PoF many times already, so I won't rehash it here.
The key insight for me was that everyone directly or indirectly involved in this discussion - JW, BK, and whoever else - is searching for what is "prior to" everything else. We all basically agree that it is very important to identify this "prior to". And JW goes further to say the "prior to" cannot be any abstract metaphysical concept, such as "consciousness", "idea", "will", "substance", "ego-I", "energy/matter", etc., and I agree with that critique of BK's idealism (although it also applies to JW). So if we must look to immanent experience for this "prior to", the only conceivable place to look, quite literally, is our own Thinking. It is impossible to conceive of another place to look, because "looking", like all other similar verbs, presuppose Thinking. One way to test of whether we are genuinely following this thinking logic to our own Thinking activity is whether a sense of joy, excitement, awe, and/or any similar feeling washes over us.
We have just found what philosophers have been looking for centuries and millennia right here in our own activity that is most immanent and transparent to us. The activity we employ constantly throughout the course of our day. It is the very same activity that we used to perceive that activity's significance. It doesn't matter what dual-aspects are being employed in someone's thought-system, because they are all manifestations of Idea-Perception (Meaning-Form) in the same manner, and we know with certainty that both aspects are immanently present in our Thinking experience. It doesn't matter how well-read someone is on philosophy, how many languages they speak, how many famous intellectuals they studied under or worked with... Thinking is the great equalizer and unifier, and anyone can verify that in their experience. As Cleric aptly put it - "Thinking is not restricted in the loops of the intellect. Thinking moves along the full spectrum. Thinking is humble."