BK's latest article on "self-deception"
Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2022 2:42 am
I think this is the most epistemically nihilist I have ever come across from BK. The question is, how is this functionally any different from mind/matter dualism? It has simply placed the subject/object dualism in the realm of mind. It has disconnected ideas (subject) from perceptions (objects). Ironically, this leads to an even more pessimistic outcome than explicit materialism-dualism, because the latter at least says we can continue using our ideas and Reason to explore Reality. BK says even that cannot be done, but we must simply take our experiences as they are and wait for death to figure out the rest. BK also said in this article - "Rio exists within me". We can concretely sense what has occurred here. An entire city, which clearly has deeper layers of meaning, has been reduced to the localized intellect identifying itself with "MAL". Functionally, this kills all motivation to penetrate to the deeper layers of meaning. Why try to lawfully grow into an understanding of the archetypal ideations responsible for "Rio" if it's really just "within me"?
https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2022/02 ... n.html?m=1
The irony is that BK and other analytic philosophers are always engaging in this systematic reasoning activity, and engaging this activity presupposes that they are moving towards more comprehensive Truth with their Reason. The intellect denies the possibility of what it is actually doing; thinking denies Thinking.
His last two sentences in that article are a great example of this dynamic - (1) The demiurges and aliens are all, indeed, just mind-made hallucinations; but so is this, right now. (2) If you can wrap your mind around that, you will see the world with very different eyes.
What does it mean to "see the world with different eyes"? Does it not mean to see the world better than you were seeing it before? The very concept of "seeing better", especially in the philosophical context, implies a move towards a more harmonious understanding of Reality itself.
https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2022/02 ... n.html?m=1
BK wrote:The second message is a mirror image of the first: in insisting that the dreams were true, the obfuscated mind was indirectly insisting that the truth is dream-like; that our sense of reality, right now, is as much internally conjured up by mind as my sense of reality was during the dreams... In other words, our sense of reality isn't derived from objective observations, but arises endogenously instead; it's a phenomenon of mind, in mind.
...
If mind can conjure up that kind of robust certainty during a purely mental event—even when explicitly and repeatedly confronted with sceptical questions about the reality of the event—how can we be sure that it isn't doing precisely the same right now? If it is, then this ordinary reality, too, is mind-made; this, too, is real in the same sense that my glorious return to Rio was real five times: it is mentally real, and that's all there is to it and anything else.
As such, the message from trance states is not that the demiurges and aliens from the Pleiades are realities outside mind; to conclude that is to invert the meaning of the metaphor, to get things backwards. The message is, instead, that this waking reality, too, is not outside mind; for in both cases our sense of reality is endogenous—a cognitive hallucination, or a hallucination of beliefs and reasoning, as opposed to perceptions —not an external, objective fact.
...
Self-deception is mind's way to talk to, and make sense of, itself; for it can only express itself to itself through the production of inner imagery.
Stronger yet, mind's prime directive is to deceive itself, for only through self-deception can reality—any reality—be conjured up into existence and thereby evoke enough affection. Parmenides already hinted at this at the very birth of the Western mind. Peeling the layers of self-deception is like peeling an onion: at the end, nothing is left other than the mere potential for experience. The demiurges and aliens are all, indeed, just mind-made hallucinations; but so is this, right now. If you can wrap your mind around that, you will see the world with very different eyes.
The irony is that BK and other analytic philosophers are always engaging in this systematic reasoning activity, and engaging this activity presupposes that they are moving towards more comprehensive Truth with their Reason. The intellect denies the possibility of what it is actually doing; thinking denies Thinking.
His last two sentences in that article are a great example of this dynamic - (1) The demiurges and aliens are all, indeed, just mind-made hallucinations; but so is this, right now. (2) If you can wrap your mind around that, you will see the world with very different eyes.
What does it mean to "see the world with different eyes"? Does it not mean to see the world better than you were seeing it before? The very concept of "seeing better", especially in the philosophical context, implies a move towards a more harmonious understanding of Reality itself.