Another recent BK interview

[Soul_of_Shu]

Actually Bernardo was on a discord AMA last week - there were even live calls where people put forward questions and follow up questions. Bernardo said he wanted to do it again.

Sure, I've yet to listen to that, and I will, in hope that it amounts to more than what often seems like preaching to the choir, so to speak, with folks seeking deferential clarification, or more detail about BK's personal experiences, or social/cultural commentary, etc, and actually allows a format for the kind of highly nuanced, in-depth, prolonged interactive exploration and/or refutation of a critique such as Ashvin puts forth.

[Ben Iscatus]

Actually allows a format for the kind of highly nuanced, in-depth, prolonged interactive exploration and/or refutation of a critique

It's good on BK's detailed answers, but not so good on in-depth interactivity. The questioners were mostly not very articulate and the format was clunky, often failing to find the questioner called.

[AshvinP]

Actually Bernardo was on a discord AMA last week - there were even live calls where people put forward questions and follow up questions. Bernardo said he wanted to do it again.

Sure, I've yet to listen to that, and I will, in hope that it amounts to more than what often seems like preaching to the choir, so to speak, with folks seeking deferential clarification, or more detail about BK's personal experiences, or social/cultural commentary, etc, and actually allows a format for the kind of highly nuanced, in-depth, prolonged interactive exploration and/or refutation of a critique such as Ashvin puts forth.

Yeah I only caught the tail end of this and the last question, and there was implicit dualism in BK's answer. When I asked on the forum whether it was ok to offer criticisms of the answer, I was told "no". I haven't listened to whole thing yet and have no idea whether my pre-submitted question was asked. I also submitted a question on behalf of Ben.

Q (from a friend): Hegel believed there is no thing-in-itself, no hidden essence, but that things appear as they are, which makes them intersubjectively knowable. And according to Coleridge's "primary imagination" and Barfield's "final participation", it is possible (at least in theory) to find the indwelling spirit of phenomena. So why does Analytic Idealism go with Kant and say a thing-in-itself is transcendent and unknowable?

There are some people on the server who are receptive to discussion beyond the confines of analytic idealism and I have been posting some comments there. It's worth checking out for anyone interested.

[Ben Iscatus]

I haven't listened to whole thing yet and have no idea whether my pre-submitted question was asked. I also submitted a question on behalf of Ben.

Your question was not asked. The question about Kant may be misplaced, because in the session, intriguingly, BK suggested that Kant was not actually an ontic idealist. If the noumenon is unreachable, then ontic idealism fails. Schop and BK escape this because they accept that we can know MAL by direct acquaintance (endogenous first person experience of core subjectivity).

[Soul_of_Shu]

Actually Bernardo was on a discord AMA last week - there were even live calls where people put forward questions and follow up questions. Bernardo said he wanted to do it again.

Sure, I've yet to listen to that, and I will, in hope that it amounts to more than what often seems like preaching to the choir, so to speak, with folks seeking deferential clarification, or more detail about BK's personal experiences, or social/cultural commentary, etc, and actually allows a format for the kind of highly nuanced, in-depth, prolonged interactive exploration and/or refutation of a critique such as Ashvin puts forth.

Yeah I only caught the tail end of this and the last question, and there was implicit dualism in BK's answer. When I asked on the forum whether it was ok to offer criticisms of the answer, I was told "no". I haven't listened to whole thing yet and have no idea whether my pre-submitted question was asked. I also submitted a question on behalf of Ben.

Q (from a friend): Hegel believed there is no thing-in-itself, no hidden essence, but that things appear as they are, which makes them intersubjectively knowable. And according to Coleridge's "primary imagination" and Barfield's "final participation", it is possible (at least in theory) to find the indwelling spirit of phenomena. So why does Analytic Idealism go with Kant and say a thing-in-itself is transcendent and unknowable?

There are some people on the server who are receptive to discussion beyond the confines of analytic idealism and I have been posting some comments there. It's worth checking out for anyone interested.

Well, having only listened to about half of it so far, I've yet to hear your question asked (I'll let you know if I do, and give a timestamp). As interesting and insightful as some of the Q&A may be, it is a far cry from the dialogos I had in mind in my most recent response to Lou, with BK just answering selected questions, with sparse, if any, interactive followup discussion, as one would expect given that BK is simply not going to be devoting hours to the kind of comprehensive one-to-one interaction that might endeavour to resolve the kind of differences that you have with him, which I'm sure he just finds a distraction from what he sees as his prime directive.

*Edit: I now see that Ben has already disclosed that your question wasn't asked, so I'm not sure I'll continue with with it.

[Lou Gold]

PS: Ashvin,

QUITE CONTRARY to the advice given to you by Dana, I would STRONGLY recommend that you watch and carefully consider the full video. I suspect that you might find yourself in substantial agreement with BK's critique of intellectual thinking and his much deeper defense of myth. Don't waste time wrestling with my views. Go see for yourself.

Lou, to be clear, I simply pointed out that Ashvin was unlikely to find anything new from BK that he hasn't heard before, which might change his mind about BK's approach to idealism, as apposed to his own. Ashvin is surely informed from reading MTA about BK's take on myth, and may well resonate with it. However, given how significantly they part ways after that, in response to Ashvin's original question about what difference BK was offering this time, it just seems that solely by listening to the same arguments all over again, it's doubtful that anything BK offers this time is likely to bridge the gap. What really might be helpful is if they were to actually talk it out between them, to get at the core of the differences, and therein see if they might be reconciled. But the way that BK is now mostly going about communicating at his audience at large, via carefully selected interviewers who mostly defer to his view, rather than having any open dialogos with the likes of Ashvin about his critique, whether in the context of this forum or elsewhere, alas that now seems to have been precluded.

Thanks Dana. Good elaboration. I agree that a direct dialog might reveal some still hidden unspoken stuff that must eventually surface. However, I also see a similarity that might prove to be an obstacle: both seem to be better at debate than exploratory dialoging. My take, along with Ashvin but in a different not-philosophical way, is that BK is skirting the need for religion, another loaded word, but it's what I mean in saying that a great weakness in Analytic Idealism is the absence of a compelling story.

PS: I would love to see Bernardo in dialog with Becca Tarnas.

[AshvinP]

I haven't listened to whole thing yet and have no idea whether my pre-submitted question was asked. I also submitted a question on behalf of Ben.

Your question was not asked. The question about Kant may be misplaced, because in the session, intriguingly, BK suggested that Kant was not actually an ontic idealist. If the noumenon is unreachable, then ontic idealism fails. Schop and BK escape this because they accept that we can know MAL by direct acquaintance (endogenous first person experience of core subjectivity).

The question is valid re: the so-called limits of human reason. Schop adopted Kant's position on that. Then he "escapes" by saying introspective experience makes contact with the noumenal Will, but we can't have any ideas about that experience. This, of course, makes no sense. If any meaning is experienced and memory-states formed, then ideation is also present. We certainly cannot conduct any logical inquiries into the structure of the noumenon, according to them. Practically this is the same as Kant. It is really no different than a materialist "escaping" the hard problem by becoming a panpsychist.

[Lou Gold]

Adding to Bernardo's assertion that the rational intellect is in it's evolutionary childhood and reflecting on our presently very difficult world, I'd like to offer the hopeful image,"You're My Space" by Evgeniya Gapchinskaya who became a recognized master, along with famous artists of Ukraine. Her works are recognisable by optimism and childish naivety in them! They seem to remind that somewhere in the depths of their souls all people remain children. Know hope!

[AshvinP]

Adding to Bernardo's assertion that the rational intellect is in it's evolutionary childhood...

I wonder what the consciousness which produced the Bhaghavad Gita, only some 3,000 odd years ago, is like. I wonder why that consciousness, surely different in qualitative functioning from the rational intellect, has simply vanished from existence until some philosopher decides to allow for its existence. Until the analytic philosophers decree a new mode of consciousness has arrived, do we all have to settle for 100% uniformity of rational intellect? Can we only have hope for higher consciousness when they give us the green light to proceed? Does every analytic philospher's current intellectual limits have to be the limits of Reality itself?

[Lou Gold]

Adding to Bernardo's assertion that the rational intellect is in it's evolutionary childhood...

I wonder what the consciousness which produced the Bhaghavad Gita, only some 3,000 odd years ago, is like. I wonder why that consciousness, surely different in qualitative functioning from the rational intellect, has simply vanished from existence until some philosopher decides to allow for its existence. Until the analytic philosophers decree a new mode of consciousness has arrived, do we all have to settle for 100% uniformity of rational intellect? Can we only have hope for higher consciousness when they give us the green light to proceed? Does every analytic philospher's current intellectual limits have to be the limits of Reality itself?

Indeed, it seems that the rational intellectual approach of Western culture is in many ways especially underdeveloped despite it's prowess in other ways. As they say, "Give a child a hammer and everything looks like nails." There's surely no reason to presume no variation in the great diversity of being human. Even amongst the so-called "powerful" we notice individuals who are more and individuals who are less caring-and-sharing, more or less me-than-we. It's not a Dissociated Identity Disorder. It's a Divine Identity Diversity. A great problem is the culture of shame-and-blame. Do that to a child and he/she will respond "Not me it was him/her who did it." Jung, along will Pogo, met the enemy and "he is us", which is rather terrifying. Concluding, along with the compassionate Thich Nhat Hanh, that a pirate raping a 12 year old girl is one of his true names is not easy. Nowhere, to my knowledge of the interview, does BK suggest that Reality is limited. Rather, he seems to acknowledge it as more like a Great Mysteriousness, which in my more naive way seems like another name for God.