I feel like Bernardo is getting carried away in a scary direction

[Eugene I.]

Instead of answering my question re ‘meaning’ and ‘world content’ - specifically giving an example of what you are talking about - you throw up another wall of nonsense including nuggets like ‘thought-bubbles’.
I think you are suggesting that the world includes a layer of meaning- ok -can you provide an example of this meaning other than saying meaning is everything we experience.
For example, there is the phrase ‘human being’, and this phrase means something. Are you saying the meaning itself is stored in the world? The universe is also a dictionary?

Ash's version/understanding of idealism is fundamentally Platonic, that explains everything. It's the philosophy of the primacy of the Idea, as opposed to the primacy of Consciousness that is the creator of all ideas. Both of these philosophies claim the territory of idealism, but in fact they are very different ontologies incompatible with each other and should be named differently to avoid confusion. It is true that in the Western philosophical tradition the term "idealism" has its roots in the Platonic version of idealism, and that the word "idea-lism" points to the primacy of the Idea, but this is just a historical artefact. I think for the philosophy of the primacy of Consciousness Hoffman's term "Consciousness realism" seems to be more appropriate than "idealism".

[AshvinP]

Instead of answering my question re ‘meaning’ and ‘world content’ - specifically giving an example of what you are talking about - you throw up another wall of nonsense including nuggets like ‘thought-bubbles’.
I think you are suggesting that the world includes a layer of meaning- ok -can you provide an example of this meaning other than saying meaning is everything we experience.
For example, there is the phrase ‘human being’, and this phrase means something. Are you saying the meaning itself is stored in the world? The universe is also a dictionary?

Ash's version/understanding of idealism is fundamentally Platonic, that explains everything. It's the philosophy of the primacy of the Idea, as opposed to the primacy of Consciousness that is the creator of all ideas. Both of these philosophies claim the territory of "idealism", but in fact they are very different ontologies incompatible with each other and should be named differently to avoid confusion. It is true that in the Western philosophical tradition the term "idealism" has its roots in the Platonic version of idealism, and that the word "idea-lism" points to the primacy of the Idea, but this is just a historical artefact. I think for the philosophy of the primacy of Consciousness Hoffman's term "Consciousness realism" seems to be more appropriate than "idealism".

This is more fair than a characterization of my position than the usual "it is all religious cultic indoctrination", so I thank you for that.

Yes, I hold to a Western idealism which does not add abstract "consciousness", which no one has ever experienced, onto the ideational activity and ideas we always experience. Even in the deep mystical state, the meaning of "pure awareness" is there, which means the Idea is still there, which means our Thinking which perceives ideas is still there. As BK says in that quote, meaning is inherent to Nature and our role is to contemplate and understand it as MAL evolves through our own knowing activity (from our first-person relational perspective).

The only way to circumvent this plain reality is, not by logical reasoning, but by heavy abstraction from experience. That is what Kantian philosophers in the analytic tradition engaged in. We can even see how it regresses in Western culture since Kant, leading directly to the heights of physicalism, and also in BK's own philosophical outlook from The Idea of the World to his latest article. Reminding that I did not start this thread, but another person who clearly perceives the nihilistic digression.

The mind container is real feature of abstract thinking. In the material perceptual world, if I am speaking with an engineer about constructing a bridge and say, "don't worry about the weight, design, load bearing, etc, it's all just steel... it's just matter and energy and so are we", the engineer will appropriately perceive my claim as hyper abstraction, even if theoretically accurate, and ignore me. He may add that I am pridefully reducing the forces at play in the design of bridges to my own mineralized thought-marbles, which is why I say those higher forces don't matter. My thought-marbles and those forces are "equal". They are all equally real, true, etc, so why bother knowing them when I already encompass them with my own thought-marbles?

This is the attitude abstract analytic philosophy now takes towards the ideational forces which structure Nature around us and the entire Cosmic landscape. It's easy to see the nihilism in this attitude. Our own thought-marbles cannot sustain the meaning we naturally seek out and rely upon for motivation, imagination, and inspiration. We cannot rule out the possibility of the higher meaning simply because we have not experienced it or, more accurately, because we are unaware that we are always experiencing it. Our own thoughts take their limited meaning from these higher Cosmic forces. There is real concrete continuity and nothing else, other than our own intellectual ego, is stopping us from seeking it out.

[lorenzop]

Instead of answering my question re ‘meaning’ and ‘world content’ - specifically giving an example of what you are talking about - you throw up another wall of nonsense including nuggets like ‘thought-bubbles’.
I think you are suggesting that the world includes a layer of meaning- ok -can you provide an example of this meaning other than saying meaning is everything we experience.
For example, there is the phrase ‘human being’, and this phrase means something. Are you saying the meaning itself is stored in the world? The universe is also a dictionary?

Ash's version/understanding of idealism is fundamentally Platonic, that explains everything. It's the philosophy of the primacy of the Idea, as opposed to the primacy of Consciousness that is the creator of all ideas. Both of these philosophies claim the territory of idealism, but in fact they are very different ontologies incompatible with each other and should be named differently to avoid confusion. It is true that in the Western philosophical tradition the term "idealism" has its roots in the Platonic version of idealism, and that the word "idea-lism" points to the primacy of the Idea, but this is just a historical artefact. I think for the philosophy of the primacy of Consciousness Hoffman's term "Consciousness realism" seems to be more appropriate than "idealism".

Pheww got it - thanks a ton. I could not understand Ashwin's language/argument.

[Eugene I.]

Yes, I hold to a Western idealism which does not add abstract "consciousness", which no one has ever experienced

Consciousness is not abstract, it is the reality most intimately and directly experientially known to each of us - our ability to consciously experience, will, think, imagine, perceive. We all share the same ability and we all know it. In the philosophy of Consciousness Realism this ability is the fundamental ontic prime of the reality that creates within itself the world of forms - ideas, imaginations, thoughts, perceptions etc.

[Jim Cross]

Instead of answering my question re ‘meaning’ and ‘world content’ - specifically giving an example of what you are talking about - you throw up another wall of nonsense including nuggets like ‘thought-bubbles’.
I think you are suggesting that the world includes a layer of meaning- ok -can you provide an example of this meaning other than saying meaning is everything we experience.
For example, there is the phrase ‘human being’, and this phrase means something. Are you saying the meaning itself is stored in the world? The universe is also a dictionary?

Ash's version/understanding of idealism is fundamentally Platonic, that explains everything. It's the philosophy of the primacy of the Idea, as opposed to the primacy of Consciousness that is the creator of all ideas. Both of these philosophies claim the territory of idealism, but in fact they are very different ontologies incompatible with each other and should be named differently to avoid confusion. It is true that in the Western philosophical tradition the term "idealism" has its roots in the Platonic version of idealism, and that the word "idea-lism" points to the primacy of the Idea, but this is just a historical artefact. I think for the philosophy of the primacy of Consciousness Hoffman's term "Consciousness realism" seems to be more appropriate than "idealism".

Hoffman, I think, has said he isn't an idealist.

"Conscious realism is a proposed answer to the question of what the universe is made of. Conscious realism asserts that the objective world, i.e., the world whose existence does not depend on the perceptions of a particular observer, consists entirely of conscious agents".

How would we know since we can only ever be conscious of a subjective reality? Leap of faith?

[Eugene I.]

How would we know since we can only ever be conscious of a subjective reality? Leap of faith?

Similar question can be directed towards materialism, or "relational philosophy" or any other metaphysical or ontological scheme. They are all based on assumptions or leap of faith, there is no way to know with absolute certainty what is "there" beyond or "underneath" the subjective reality of our own personal subjective experience.

“It still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us … must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof.” Critique of Pure Reason, B519

Kant's attempt to overcome this scandal failed and lead to the "Kantian divide" that contaminated the Western philosophy. But that means that the scandal remains and seems to be unresolvable. Any philosophy other than 100% single-subject scepticist solipsism is necessarily based on a leap of faith. We just have to accept it and live with it.

"I believe that one of the greatest mistakes made by human beings is to want certainties when trying to understand something"

The genius of Borges expressed it in a more poetic way.

Hoffman, I think, has said he isn't an idealist.

That's right, he is being terminologically clear and distances himself from the traditional Western Platonic-biased understanding of idealism.

[lorenzop]

The various flavors of Idealism, Dualism, Materialism, and Nihilism, Solipsism, etc. All these isms are models which can be neither right or wrong - they can only have various degrees of explanitory power, and predictive capability.
Even the notion of a 'mind' is a model since we really only experience one thought/perception at a time . . . there is no 'mind container'.

[mikekatz]

The meanings and ideals do exist as forms of consciousness and like any other forms of consciousness - perceptions, imaginations, acts of will, thoughts etc. They are all creations of consciousness, and they are all experienced by consciousness. There is no nihilism here. But they do not exist somewhere in a "Plationic world of ideas" beyond consciousness and have no absolute existence of their own independent of consciousness. And the sets of these ideas and ideals is unlimited. None of them is better or higher or more valuable or truer than the other in any absolute sense. That is because the criteria of truthfulness and value are also ideas and creations of consciousness, and there is also an unlimited variety of such criteria. How would consciousness know which criterium of truthfulness is the "right one"? It would need another higher-level meta-criterium of truthfulness for the criterium of truthfulness, and for that to be defined another meta-meta criterium of truthfulness will be needed, and so the search for the criterium of truthfulness goes into a bad infinity. Does it mean that the criteria of truthfulness do not exist, or that they are all wrong? No, they do exist, and they are right but each only on its own terms and grounds. It is the same as to ask which of the infinite number of mathematical geometries is "true" and which is "wrong". There are no true and wrong geometries, they are all valid and lawful on their own terms, and they all equally exist in the realm of mathematical ideas.

The times of naive absolutist views on reality with beliefs that in the world of forms there is only one world, one truth, one true geometry, one true frame of reference and one true time in the universe, one true ethics, one true God, one true Church, are gone. The reality of the world of forms is multidimensional and unlimited, and that is because consciousness is unlimited in its ability to create any forms and ideas. So then, is there anything absolute and not dependent on or conditioned by such unlimited variety of forms? Of course there is: it is consciousness itself - "That" which creates and experiences all these forms and ideas. It is futile to search for anything unconditional, permanent, absolute or true in the realm of forms and ideas. The only absolute and unconditional here is That which is searching - the consciousness/thinking itself.

✔✔✔

[lorenzop]

The meanings and ideals do exist as forms of consciousness and like any other forms of consciousness - perceptions, imaginations, acts of will, thoughts etc. They are all creations of consciousness, and they are all experienced by consciousness. There is no nihilism here. But they do not exist somewhere in a "Plationic world of ideas" beyond consciousness and have no absolute existence of their own independent of consciousness. And the sets of these ideas and ideals is unlimited. None of them is better or higher or more valuable or truer than the other in any absolute sense. That is because the criteria of truthfulness and value are also ideas and creations of consciousness, and there is also an unlimited variety of such criteria. How would consciousness know which criterium of truthfulness is the "right one"? It would need another higher-level meta-criterium of truthfulness for the criterium of truthfulness, and for that to be defined another meta-meta criterium of truthfulness will be needed, and so the search for the criterium of truthfulness goes into a bad infinity. Does it mean that the criteria of truthfulness do not exist, or that they are all wrong? No, they do exist, and they are right but each only on its own terms and grounds. It is the same as to ask which of the infinite number of mathematical geometries is "true" and which is "wrong". There are no true and wrong geometries, they are all valid and lawful on their own terms, and they all equally exist in the realm of mathematical ideas.

The times of naive absolutist views on reality with beliefs that in the world of forms there is only one world, one truth, one true geometry, one true frame of reference and one true time in the universe, one true ethics, one true God, one true Church, are gone. The reality of the world of forms is multidimensional and unlimited, and that is because consciousness is unlimited in its ability to create any forms and ideas. So then, is there anything absolute and not dependent on or conditioned by such unlimited variety of forms? Of course there is: it is consciousness itself - "That" which creates and experiences all these forms and ideas. It is futile to search for anything unconditional, permanent, absolute or true in the realm of forms and ideas. The only absolute and unconditional here is That which is searching - the consciousness/thinking itself.

✔✔✔

I'd agree - well stated.

[Lou Gold]

The meanings and ideals do exist as forms of consciousness and like any other forms of consciousness - perceptions, imaginations, acts of will, thoughts etc. They are all creations of consciousness, and they are all experienced by consciousness. There is no nihilism here. But they do not exist somewhere in a "Plationic world of ideas" beyond consciousness and have no absolute existence of their own independent of consciousness. And the sets of these ideas and ideals is unlimited. None of them is better or higher or more valuable or truer than the other in any absolute sense. That is because the criteria of truthfulness and value are also ideas and creations of consciousness, and there is also an unlimited variety of such criteria. How would consciousness know which criterium of truthfulness is the "right one"? It would need another higher-level meta-criterium of truthfulness for the criterium of truthfulness, and for that to be defined another meta-meta criterium of truthfulness will be needed, and so the search for the criterium of truthfulness goes into a bad infinity. Does it mean that the criteria of truthfulness do not exist, or that they are all wrong? No, they do exist, and they are right but each only on its own terms and grounds. It is the same as to ask which of the infinite number of mathematical geometries is "true" and which is "wrong". There are no true and wrong geometries, they are all valid and lawful on their own terms, and they all equally exist in the realm of mathematical ideas.

The times of naive absolutist views on reality with beliefs that in the world of forms there is only one world, one truth, one true geometry, one true frame of reference and one true time in the universe, one true ethics, one true God, one true Church, are gone. The reality of the world of forms is multidimensional and unlimited, and that is because consciousness is unlimited in its ability to create any forms and ideas. So then, is there anything absolute and not dependent on or conditioned by such unlimited variety of forms? Of course there is: it is consciousness itself - "That" which creates and experiences all these forms and ideas. It is futile to search for anything unconditional, permanent, absolute or true in the realm of forms and ideas. The only absolute and unconditional here is That which is searching - the consciousness/thinking itself.

Perhaps one might add that consciousness is instinctively creative and, since creativity is both constructive and destructive, it is also instinctively homeostatic in a dynamic process, in which contextual regularities appear as laws of behavior, ethics, harmonies, truths and more.