Lou Gold wrote: ↑Fri Feb 11, 2022 6:51 am
Understanding and accepting that I'll not convince you of my way of seeing, let me suggest that the phrase "true hallucinations" is quite meaningful. Referring back to my duck/rabbit example, the only way I can transform the whole image into a duck is by evoking the image of a duck as if it was real by naming it. And does this mean that real ducks do not exist beyond the image exercise? Of course, not!
Lou,
Everything is meaningful because Reality is meaning (see Flat MAL thread in general discussion). The question here is what meaning is conveyed in BK's article.
Hallucinations, like illusions and mirages, is the meaningful image of
deception which leads to physical death. If I am in a desert, dying of thirst, and I go off towards an oasis that turns out to be a mirage, I have likely sealed my fate. Physical death, in turn, is the meaningful image of unconsciousness. It is no coincidence that BK feels "liberation" from illusion or hallucination is the merging back into primordial instinctive Consciousness, i.e. back to unconsciousness. He waffles around on that a bit, but he has made clear that his first preference would be unconsciousness rather than continued individuated existence if there was a choice. So the latest essay is just a natural and logical continuation of his view into its more extreme, i.e., polarized form and outcome.
re: duck and rabbit image - I will just quote Cosmin, because I agree with his broad assessment:
https://philpapers.org/archive/VISMAC-3.pdf
Cosmin wrote:The first step is to establish that qualia are meaning, thus reducing the ontological category of “qualia” to the more natural ontological category of “meaning”. The most obvious one is the place where the concept of meaning is usually employed, and that is in language... The next easiest example is in cases such as the duck-rabbit image, as in Figure 8 (duck-rabbit image). This is a visual quale, but what is interesting here is that the particular quale that we get to experience depends on us attributing meaning to the image. The moment we attribute the meaning of “duck”, that same moment we experience the visual quale of “duck”. The moment we attribute the meaning of “rabbit”, that same moment we experience the visual quale of “rabbit”. Thus, visual experiences themselves are being modified according to what they mean. Actually, visual qualia themselves are a form of meaning.
...
We thus see that even more primitive qualia are also meanings. And this is true for qualia in general. The next step in the analysis is to explain how does meaning originates. One such reason is evolution, but “evolution” is again an ambiguous term, and given the fact that time itself is a quale in consciousness, evolution cannot be the one described today by Darwinism, but it must be an atemporal kind of phenomenon. Actually, evolution must be a side effect of the workings of meaning inside consciousness. Thus, “evolution” is not the primary selector of qualia/meaning. The primary selector, as we are about to see, must be an interplay between meaning and context.
We can go further to see what is always mediating that interplay between meaning and context in our experience, and that is our Thinking activity. Because it mostly runs quietly and sacrificially in the background, we often assume it isn't even there, but it is always there performing that mediating function. Your
conscious intention to see the rabbit or duck form is
a critical aspect of that context for the meaning. You cannot simply see any form you choose, but ideal evolution has run its course so that your Thinking can mediate smoothly between two different perceptual forms to express the meaning of the image, which we could liken to "
small cute animal with beak or ears attached to the head". This meaning is
not different for everyone - it is the same meaning. That is the only reason why the visual "illusion" works for everyone who participates in it. That is the reason why we can communicate, inform, empathize, adopt virtues, etc., bridging the gap between fragmented perceptions and shared meaning, and establish human culture which then provides us the moral and conceptual foundation for awakening to our own creative spiritual activity within the Cosmic organism.