Bernardo vs Graham Oppy!!

[AshvinP]

By the way, for those who watched the debate and have seen Oppy apply his method before, I wonder if you found his line of questioning interesting. I was happy to see that Bernardo quickly realized that Oppy wasn't 'going at him' in the usual manner but, rather, trying to see the general structure of Bernardo's model. They did not have enough time at all, so I hope they chat again and can dive into

1) Bernardo's objections to the 'identification' approach.

and

2) Really explore the aspects of 'parsimony' that they were just starting to touch on at the end.

It's interesting, because at the 42:20 mark you mention, I felt BK was disappointed that it was going "more friendly than anticipated". Maybe that's just me projecting my own disappointment into it. I wouldn't blame him if that was his sentiment also. Not much interesting comes from people simply agreeing with each other to be "friendly".

Either way, BK made some great points as usual. He says "it is our cognitive limitation which needs to impose causality on the world" (paraphrase), which is generally accurate. But, as always, incompleteness is the enemy of harmonized facts. He could reason further to say, "and it is my own cognitive limitation which also fails to perceive the deeper meaning the symbol of physical causality is pointing to". That is the natural conclusion if we continue reasoning from there. But when our critique is suddenly pointed back at our own preferred conclusions, through nothing but the natural unfolding of its inner logic, we then decide to stop reasoning further. Is that a coincidence? Regardless, the natural consequence of that incompleteness is that he must conclude causaulity as something completely arbitrary imposed on the 'external' mental reality by our 'internal' cognition. It is a conclusion born of assuming it into the argument from the outset. That's also why he then concludes "individuals don't actually exist" (why would they if 'individual cognition' takes us further away from MAL?) and there is a discernible lawful structure to 'external' Nature but not to 'internal' "meta-cognitive" Mind. All of these conclusions flow naturally from thinking constrained by the initial flawed assumption born of unexamined sympathies and antipathies related to how we want Reality to be. It funnels thinking in one direction towards abstract perceptual contents of the 'personal mind container' and away from concrete meaning of the unified, transpersonal domain.

[findingblanks]

Ashvin, even though we'll probably never know what Bernardo was feeling in that moment when he smiled and said, "This is going more friendly than I anticipated," I appreciate that you interpreted it very differently than I did. I can see your viewpoint. Yeah, he may have been disappointed. It still comes across to me as a moment of connection and rapport and a nice surprise. Who knows. And, yes, Bernardo makes many great points.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I'm a storyteller always searching for a compelling story. Part of that search is to contemplate how others are applying their preferred story.

Yes, I seem to recall you mentioning that you're a storyteller once or twice before

And to this peep, heart-felt, soul-deep philosophia is the profound storytelling I find most meaningful. I get that it may not speak to you, and you seek a different story from others, perhaps more of a re-imagined mythos like the indigenous ones you often share here that clearly better speak to you. You say you're dubious about either/or stories, suggesting that too many here are offering an either/or story. I may well be one of them, as with others here, in that either what passes for thinking at the root of the current predominant paradigm must shift, evolve, metamorphose, to foster the mindful praxis so desperately needed, and give it a chance to supersede the status quo, or, failing that, we're stuck with the status quo. But I'm open to other options.

[Lou Gold]

OK, there seem to be lots this-or-that options... ontology-or-no-ontology, physicalism-or-idealism, different kinds of science, reality-or-imagination, read-the-book-or-not, know-the-author-or-not, etc. How would folks apply their favorite option (and with what consequences) to this recent reading of the book? Please keep it simple: what difference would your preferred model make?

I would try hard to abandon the notion of "model" altogether. This is one thing we keep mentioning here but is rarely understood. It's not hard to understand - no philosophy degree or even familiarity with analytic idealism is needed. Only some minimal thinking effort and good will.

What is implicit in all "models" is the "correspondence theory of truth". It is really exactly what is sounds like, and it lives as a tempting force within all of us. That is key to remember - what we call it doesn't matter so much as how it actually functions in our experience. It is our default way of perceiving and thinking of the world content. We assume that Nature is there with her appearances, and it is our task to fashion inner concepts which model her independent behavior external to us. If we were snuffed out of existence in the next moment, we assume that her behavior would continue exactly the same as it always had. When we return to existence, we assume it is our task to fashion a historical model of what happened when we were gone (which are really things we no longer remember, because we are never actually snuffed out of existence). Whenever we speak of ideas being "right" or "wrong", we have already adopted this view. This happens every day and every lifetime for everyone. We never overcome this default mode by rearranging concepts and calling ourselves "idealist", "monist", "phenomenologist", "participatory cognitionist", and what not. We only set out on a path to mitigate its influence when we seek to deeply know it, to even Love and appreciate it, as it lives within us. Here I mean "Love" which wants the best for it, whatever it is, not "love" which wants it to remain exactly as it is. Love which deeply desires for it to reach its full potential, just as we can deeply desire to reach our own.

All of this has great practical relevance for your question and link. The correspodence view sees these natural phenomena and subconsciously thinks, "how do I rearrange the concepts that I already have to make sense of these things happening in the world out there". A "particpatory" view of thinking, again remembering it is not the outer label which matters but the inner meaning of what it is pointing to as a symbol, sees these natural phenomena as question marks. They are the punctuation at the end of questions we have not thought to ask Nature yet, perhaps because we don't know how to even formulate it, or we are anxious about popping the question. These natural questions invite our Thinking into them so we may discover new concepts - more holistic ideas - which explain why and how they appear to us. Notice we have not made any metaphysical judgments whatsoever at this point - we don't know what the natural phenomena are "made of". The natural phenomena are like clues on a treasure hunt which will naturally lead our concrete Thinking activity towards constellating their deeper meanings. So, the short answer to your question above is, we need to treat Nature more seriously than some object to which we "apply our favorite option". We cannot rush to impose our preferred intellectual "solutions" on her. She is not going to react favorably to that treament, and that is perfectly understandable. She deserves much more deep Thinking attention than most people are willing to give her today.

Good thoughts Ashvin. I can align with much that you say. Truly, it's about the search for better questions and techniques for chasing them. I do think models have a function as tools but one must maintain humility in face of the Great Mysteriousness. We use different language but are often on the same page. One thing that I found especially interesting in the article was the statement by the scientist wrestling with potentially earth-changing events, “Unlike any other field of exploration, we are at the absolute frontier here.” I suspect that much of your effort is about wrestling with how to place human thought comfortably nearer to the frontier.

[Lou Gold]

I'm a storyteller always searching for a compelling story. Part of that search is to contemplate how others are applying their preferred story.

Yes, I seem to recall you mentioning that you're a storyteller once or twice before

And to this peep, heart-felt, soul-deep philosophia is the profound storytelling I find most meaningful. I get that it may not speak to you, and you seek a different story from others, perhaps more of a re-imagined mythos like the indigenous ones you often share here that clearly better speak to you. You say you're dubious about either/or stories, suggesting that too many here are offering an either/or story. I may well be one of them, as with others here, in that either what passes for thinking at the root of the current predominant paradigm must shift, evolve, metamorphose, to foster the mindful praxis so desperately needed, and give it a chance to supersede the status quo, or, failing that, we're stuck with the status quo. But I'm open to other options.

Dana, I'm not dubious about either/or stories. There's a time and a place for them. The both/and of QM does not vanquish the utilities of the either/or of Classical Physics. Indeed, the oceanography story is largely based on materialist science, which has much to offer. I appreciate the new modelling of ocean currents. I know your love of philosophia. I also know of your love for nature. If you'd like to share how you bring these loves together, it would probably be a lovely story. And, no problem if it's not the right time or place for it.

I have a deep love for Sophia and, yes, I offer flowers to the Queen of the Sea and ask Her to help me see clearer and deeper as I search for compelling stories to share.

[Cleric K]

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[Ben Iscatus]

If you want to provide a specific claim of BK, then I can also explain why I think it is incomplete (not "wrong"). As mentioned before, and as Steiner pointed out often, the error in these modern philosophical, scientific, and systematic models in general come from incompleteness, and that is a natural and inevitable logical consequence of adopting implicit dualism, naive realism, and the corresponding hyper-abstraction of our Thinking activity.

I'm late in (this was 2 pages back), but if FB will forgive my intrusion here, I'd like to comment on this.

In a post this year (see his website) on Religion, BK criticised the pope's attitude to certain types of sexual activity. He said that the religious myths and scriptures were treasure houses of intuitive understanding of transcendent truth. But he thinks none of them are literally true (none are reified, all are metaphors) - and that it is our "moral duty" to reinterpret them with nuanced understanding as we evolve and grow. If I were asked to name this approach he suggests, I'd call it "cognitive transformation" or even "cognitive metamorphosis"! I'd say it was only a hair's breadth from your own views. At least, I reckon it turns the Kantian Divide into a pretty porous Berlin Wall. Now of course, BK says we can never fully know the thing in itself...but, apart from the perceptual interface issue, this is just common sense - because "continuous" cognitive metamorphosis implies that we never get to a point where we can reify the thing - and neither science, poetry nor art could move if the last formula had been written, the last word had been uttered or the last interpretation had been painted.

If I may be permitted a personal observation. You, Ashvin, are clearly intuitive, highly intelligent, well educated, insightful and linguistically gifted. But you have issues, right? Don't let resentment of BK be one of these issues standing in the way of your spiritual progress. Zen out! This advice may seem particularly cheeky coming from me of all people, and way OTT considering this is only an internet forum, but a lot of time is spent here at the moment, and there's a lot of defence of entrenched views. I even think that Cleric would agree!

[AshvinP]

If you want to provide a specific claim of BK, then I can also explain why I think it is incomplete (not "wrong"). As mentioned before, and as Steiner pointed out often, the error in these modern philosophical, scientific, and systematic models in general come from incompleteness, and that is a natural and inevitable logical consequence of adopting implicit dualism, naive realism, and the corresponding hyper-abstraction of our Thinking activity.

I'm late in (this was 2 pages back), but if FB will forgive my intrusion here, I'd like to comment on this.

In a post this year (see his website) on Religion, BK criticised the pope's attitude to certain types of sexual activity. He said that the religious myths and scriptures were treasure houses of intuitive understanding of transcendent truth. But he thinks none of them are literally true (none are reified, all are metaphors) - and that it is our "moral duty" to reinterpret them with nuanced understanding as we evolve and grow. If I were asked to name this approach he suggests, I'd call it "cognitive transformation" or even "cognitive metamorphosis"! I'd say it was only a hair's breadth from your own views. At least, I reckon it turns the Kantian Divide into a pretty porous Berlin Wall. Now of course, BK says we can never fully know the thing in itself...but, apart from the perceptual interface issue, this is just common sense - because "continuous" cognitive metamorphosis implies that we never get to a point where we can reify the thing - and neither science, poetry nor art could move if the last formula had been written, the last word had been uttered or the last interpretation had been painted.

If I may be permitted a personal observation. You, Ashvin, are clearly intuitive, highly intelligent, well educated, insightful and linguistically gifted. But you have issues, right? Don't let resentment of BK be one of these issues standing in the way of your spiritual progress. Zen out! This advice may seem particularly cheeky coming from me of all people, and way OTT considering this is only an internet forum, but a lot of time is spent here at the moment, and there's a lot of defence of entrenched views. I even think that Cleric would agree!

The real interesting thing here is whether we can take our differences to be prompts to ask more questions, to Think more, and to discern how our different views issue forth from the World Harmony, which we all agree must underlie the phenomena world, by penetrating into their deeper layers of meaning. Cleric and my own criticism of BK's view, as also reflected in various views on this forum, is that they deny this opportunity altogether. This is what naturally happens when the ideas remain as purely abstract intellectual speculations. It is very clear from the fact that BK has been saying the same thing, debating the same people, and people here have been asking the same few questions about analytic idealism for years. Some people really don't like change, I suppose, but that is the principle of evolution! Evolution can be embodied in our Thinking experience, can become a living principle of our Thinking organism, and not simply thrown around as an intellectual theory to make us feel like we have understood things, like the physicalists also do. There is absolutely no "resentment" of BK. He holds the same view as almost everyone in the Western world, so there is nothing about this which is even remotely personal to him. We just happen to be on his forum with people who are familiar with his work, so it's easiest to use him as a reference point. On other forums, I use other people's thought-systems as reference points.

re: religious myths as mere metaphors - that is the Divide clearly at play. A consistent idealist monism does not have a division between what is "metaphorical" and what is "literal". It really shouldn't be so hard to perceive these dualisms at work - they are staring us right in the face. The entire physical world we perceive around us is a "metaphor" for ideal structured meaning, in a very literal sense, so the same is true of myths which imaginatively rely on that physical imagery to point back towards its spiritual Origin.

[Soul_of_Shu]

If you want to provide a specific claim of BK, then I can also explain why I think it is incomplete (not "wrong"). As mentioned before, and as Steiner pointed out often, the error in these modern philosophical, scientific, and systematic models in general come from incompleteness, and that is a natural and inevitable logical consequence of adopting implicit dualism, naive realism, and the corresponding hyper-abstraction of our Thinking activity.

I'm late in (this was 2 pages back), but if FB will forgive my intrusion here, I'd like to comment on this.

Ben ... To your recent comment, I've added an attribution of the author to the above quote (in this case Ashvin), which is helpful to keep track of who said what, especially when the quote is taken from 2 pages back. Before submitting, to add the attribution, the BBCode at the beginning of the quote would be [ quote="Ashvin"]

[Soul_of_Shu]

Speaking of goading (well, no-one was speaking of goading, I'm just being cryptic ), I see JeffreyW is still at it in BK's twitter feed, commenting on the Oppy 'debate'—after he said here he has no further interest in BK—also quite disappointed with Graham's performance, saying he "missed key opportunities to discredit Kastrup's claims", and further goading BK by suggesting he evades discussions with "non-analytic philosophers" who can really present a challenge. Of course, BK has not responded.