New topic split from 'concise criticism of analytic idealism' thread.

[Federica]

AshvinP,

Thank you for your patience.
I wrote ‘selling and buying’ to continue the metaphor, no provocation was intended. Clearly there’s no ‘promotion’ here. There is though a time investment that must be considerable, even when factoring in the incredible pace at which I see you cut through the posts and deliver extensive feedback on this forum. What I am seeing on this forum is quite unusual.

So thank you for the time and the feedback. The next best thing for me now is, I guess, to go read those other central topics that you recommended in other threads, will start there.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Guys, can we keep this thread limited to concise criticism? (looking at you, Ashvin )

EDIT: For anyone interested, the 3rd round of the AMA with Bernardo Kastrup is happening June 30th, 8pm CET (11am PT) at The Analytic Idealism Discord Server.

My apologies, I am the one responsible for instigating this mega digression, not Ashvin...
Most of this thread has actually very little to do with criticism for an AMA.
Does anyone know if there's a way I can clean up and move or duplicate all that's off-topic into a new discussion?
Sorry...

To all concerned: the only reason I've allowed this to digress into a much broader discussion, is because that is what the 'General Discussion' section is supposed to allow for. So for future consideration, if wanting to keep it strictly focussed on a specific topic, please post it in the 'Topic-specific' section.

What I can do now is attempt to split the topic into a separate thread. Please bear with me, while I figure out that process. Also, I will merge the 'Logos idealism' thread with this one, while the original AMA topic will be moved to the 'Topic-specific' section.

[Federica]

Thank you, Soul_of_Shu, for rearranging everything!
I seize the opportunity to also express gratitude for the generous, inspiring replies to my certainly previously adressed questions and more generally for the chance of participating in this forum.
Thank you

[Eugene I.]

This critical question is about Bernardo’s choice to introduce the idea of dissociation as a way to explain the de-combination of universal consciousness into each of our personal psyches.

First, I would notice how Bernardo proceeds to reject a common objection to idealism, namely the natural order objection, which questions how the stable and orderly natural laws that we observe in nature can represent something as notoriously unstable and disorderly as thoughts and emotions at the level of a supposed universal consciousness.
Bernardo rejects this objection like so (The Idea of the World, page 138): “The misconception here, of course, is that of anthropomorphisation: to attribute to universal consciousness as a whole cognitive characteristics known only in small dissociated segments of it, such as human beings.”

So anthropomorphization is, as it seems, not a philosophically appropriate way to go.

Now, when one decides to explain the formation of our personal psyche “through a process of dissociation in universal consciousness analogous to how the psyche of a person suffering from DID differentiates itself into multiple centers of experience called alters” (The Idea of the World, page 172) is not one doing quite exactly that same thing - anthropomorphizing universal consciousness by attributing to it the mental health condition DID, which is, indeed, known only in beings such as us humans?

A possible answer to this challenge is that in the process of individuation some features of the universal consciousness are stronger represented, and some other features may be weaker represented or not represented at all. For example, the ability to dissociate may be retained in the individuated consciousness, while the ability to produce consistent and stable patterns becomes less represented. We, as humans, still do have some degree of stable patterns thinking ability, such as in mathematical or scientific discourses, so the stable pattern thinking is not entirely alien to us, it is just represented in a lesser degree compared to the assumed abilities of the universal consciousness. IMO this approach avoids both extremes of antropomorphisation (MAL is exactly like human consciousness) and anti-antropomorphisation (MAL has no similarities or common features/abilities with human consciousness).

[Federica]

This critical question is about Bernardo’s choice to introduce the idea of dissociation as a way to explain the de-combination of universal consciousness into each of our personal psyches.

First, I would notice how Bernardo proceeds to reject a common objection to idealism, namely the natural order objection, which questions how the stable and orderly natural laws that we observe in nature can represent something as notoriously unstable and disorderly as thoughts and emotions at the level of a supposed universal consciousness.
Bernardo rejects this objection like so (The Idea of the World, page 138): “The misconception here, of course, is that of anthropomorphisation: to attribute to universal consciousness as a whole cognitive characteristics known only in small dissociated segments of it, such as human beings.”

So anthropomorphization is, as it seems, not a philosophically appropriate way to go.

Now, when one decides to explain the formation of our personal psyche “through a process of dissociation in universal consciousness analogous to how the psyche of a person suffering from DID differentiates itself into multiple centers of experience called alters” (The Idea of the World, page 172) is not one doing quite exactly that same thing - anthropomorphizing universal consciousness by attributing to it the mental health condition DID, which is, indeed, known only in beings such as us humans?

A possible answer to this challenge is that in the process of individuation some features of the universal consciousness are stronger represented, and some other features may be weaker represented or not represented at all. For example, the ability to dissociate may be retained in the individuated consciousness, while the ability to produce consistent and stable patterns becomes less represented. We, as humans, still do have some degree of stable patterns thinking ability, such as in mathematical or scientific discourses, so the stable pattern thinking is not entirely alien to us, it is just represented in a lesser degree compared to the assumed abilities of the universal consciousness. IMO this approach avoids both extremes of antropomorphisation (MAL is exactly like human consciousness) and anti-antropomorphisation (MAL has no similarities or common features/abilities with human consciousness).

I would regard your hypothesis as one that can be set, explored, argumented, possibly proved or disproved under idealism.
However it doesn’t spare Bernardo the critique.
Let’s say for a moment the hypothesis is true and the personal psyche happens to retain not all but some properties of MAL, to various extents.

BK still has to explain how the act of anthropomorphisation consisting in arbitrarily picking one property of human consciousness - say the unstable and disorderly nature of emotions - and conjuring it up to MAL is ‘of course a misconception’ whilst when the anthropomorphisation consists in picking another human property - say the susceptibility to DID - and conjuring it up to MAL, this is now a valid explanatory foundation for his model.

Also, even if he hadn’t qualified the former as a misconception, he still would have to explain the arbitrary nature of his choice. His argument in favor of it relies on the fact that DID has recently been demonstrated to be a real illness, rather than something the patient was faking.
This unfortunately tells us nothing about the legitimacy of signing up MAL for dissociative identity disorder.


Back to your own hypothesis, I guess it could be set and explored in itself, independent of the question of anthropomorphisation.
By the way I would not call the statement ‘MAL is exactly like human consciousness’ an anthropomorphisation. This would rather be a complete assimilation, identification, or integration, depending on the nature of the movement supposed to bring about such an equation.
I would say anthropomorphizing can only be partial. That’s where the blindspot can live. It amounts to naively looking beyond the human realm through the filter of some specific human features, as for example picturing God in human form with a beard.
Anthropomorphizing, we forget to take off our usual glasses, however we are still aware we are looking at something different from us.

[Eugene I.]

BK still has to explain how the act of anthropomorphisation consisting in arbitrarily picking one property of human consciousness - say the unstable and disorderly nature of emotions - and conjuring it up to MAL is ‘of course a misconception’ whilst when the anthropomorphisation consists in picking another human property - say the ability to suffer from DID - and conjuring it up to MAL, this is now a valid explanatory foundation for his model.

It may be that there is still room for both less-orderly emotional aspect and orderly rational aspect in MAL, but MAL is only projecting on us its orderly activity. As an analogy, let's say a musician is performing some music for the audience - his performance presented to the audience is very orderly exactly according to the score, while his emotional aspect is not presented. The audience can still feel his emotions, but their expression through music never breaks the order of the score. So we can see in this example that we humans can also perform quite orderly activities in spite of the fact that our emotional life can be less orderly. This points to a possibility that there may not be much fundamental difference between how MAL projects the world on us in an orderly manner and how we humans perform some of our orderly activities.

But one point that I disagree with BK is his idea that MAL is a "savage idiot" that manifests the world instinctively without being meta-cognitive about it. To me it makes little sense. Drawing the musical performer analogy again, the musician is always very meta-cognitive and deliberate when performing the music, and such meta-cognition is exactly what makes the orderly performance possible.

[Federica]

Ok, but this is just a restatement of your initial comment. You don't address one of the points I've made in response to it...

To address your point I would say: maybe, but how would you navigate to that conclusion?

[Eugene I.]

Ok, but this is just a restatement of your initial comment. You don't address one of the points I've made in response to it...

To address your point I would say: maybe, but how would you navigate to that conclusion?

I agree that BK is shooting himself into the foot when stating that "any anthropomorphisation is misconception" wile resorting to exactly anthropomorphisation in his DID analogy. In my hypothetical model above I just offered a possible way around such contradiction.

[AshvinP]

AshvinP,

Thank you for your patience.
I wrote ‘selling and buying’ to continue the metaphor, no provocation was intended. Clearly there’s no ‘promotion’ here. There is though a time investment that must be considerable, even when factoring in the incredible pace at which I see you cut through the posts and deliver extensive feedback on this forum. What I am seeing on this forum is quite unusual.

So thank you for the time and the feedback. The next best thing for me now is, I guess, to go read those other central topics that you recommended in other threads, will start there.

Federica,

No problem. When I am inspired to write, as I am now, the words are quite effortless and do not take much time. If anything, I feel that I need to put some more time into my posts, i.e. post less yet add more substance. It is never ceases to amaze me what the human spirit can accomplish when it truly desires to do so. This is a great obstacle for our time and relates to our previous discussion about the bodily borders, i.e. dissociated bubble consciousness theory. These things are not merely theoretical. If we experience ourselves as these bubbles, then how can we possibly fit more of the World Content into our own thought-content? How can we begin to encompass higher archetypal ideations as our own? It seems ridiculous to even consider a possibility from that bubble perspective. And thereby we feel excused of much thinking responsibility, because we can't be responsible for that which is not possible to begin with.

So the biggest obstacle to overcome for us today is simply the shift in perspective which gives us genuine conviction that we are not atomized bubbles and that our consciousness does, in fact, span the entire spiritual Cosmos. It is this shift which gives us motivation to even attempt to test the 'dissociated' boundaries of our habitual modern intellectual thinking. Until then, it is quite reasonable for the intellect to declare all such attempts to be abstract, pie-in-the-sky speculation, while the bubble thinking is considered "concrete" and "realistic". Everything is inverted with the atomized perspective - outer perceptions are more 'real' than inner ideas, external social/political/economic 'causes' are more practical than inner transformation, conservative sympathies and antipathies which determine our thoughts at the very surface of the rational intellectual consciousness are more realiable than our deepest and boldest intuitions, theoretical models about "mind" are more useful than lived experience of higher consciousness.

These are not radically new ideas. Depth psychology discovered the mechanism of 'projection' decades ago. Centuries before that, it was said, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" and "first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye". It is a great revelation when these sayings are understood not only as moral wisdom, but also as natural laws which unfold according to Logical structure (even if we can't fully discern that structure with our conceptual Maya). Mostly importantly, when they are understood as rhythmic laws manifesting in our own cognition and perception of the world from day to day, moment to moment. That the logical structure underlying evolution is of supreme moral significance, as it provides the natural basis for the interests and goals of Earth and all its inhabitants to be harmonized over time, and that evolution proceeds through our own sacrificial and redemptive ideational activity which is, in all actuality, the basis for all physical-perceptual manifestations.

[AshvinP]

I had a chance to ask BK a couple questions this afternoon in the critical AMA. Unfortunately I couldn't transcribe his answers, but maybe a recording will be made available. For now, I will try to summarize my initial question, his response, my response, and then a follow up I wrote on the discord server in response, which also incorporates some things we have been discussing here recently.

I think all idealist philosophers agree materialism arose when we began abstracting our thinking agency out from observation and investigation of nature. Newton set up a prism, observed white light passing through and differentiating into colors of the rainbow - he concluded the light contained the colors within it and the prism drew them out. He then concluded these colors exist independent of any conscious activity. But he forgot to account for his own agency in arranging and observing the experiment. This is still the dominant understanding of colors today.

Do philosophers of blind or instinctive Will also make a similar abstraction from thinking agency when concluding they can discern this 'Will-itself' in the absence of any cognitive element? For ex., if they enter into a sensory deprivation chamber and observe endogenous surging Will impulses in the absence of any sensory input, and concludes he has experienced the blind Will in itself behind the world's appearances. Have they not also then ignored their cognitive intention to enter into that state, their cognitive discernment of the state's meaning, and their formation of memories during that state which can be later recalled and conveyed in some limited form? So, by concluding they experienced only the blind Will impulse itself, have they not abstracted out their own self-aware thinking agency like the materialist does with the prism color experiment?

Due to my attempt to pack so much into this brief question, BK misunderstood and thought I was endorsing Kantian philosophy contra Schopenhauer. He thought I was dismissing all attempts to know essential relations via philosophy and science, when actually I was going in the opposite direction. He went on for some time on that and I didn't want to interrupt him. During this, he brought up Goethe's color theory independently and compared it to Newton's, saying the latter is technically more accurate and the best we can do right now. Again, my position is the complete opposite. But I will say BK has a good intuition for these things - he brought up several things I was thinking without me saying it explicitly.

Newton's theory and Schop's philosopy have epistemic value - but we must say there is Will impulse along with a self-aware cognitive element. Then we end up with something closer to Hegel's evolutionary idealism, which of course is aligned with Christian theism, Body-Soul-Spirit, W-F-T as the ontic prime, evolving through nature and culture, and particularly through the human being who awakens to the essential World Process in his own thinking. Removing out thinking agency is certainly easier for applied science, but that doesn't mean we can't reinsert it as an objective element. Eventually, it requires higher cognition which can perceive what has become supersensible to normal waking cognition.

BK responds and says that, basically, while he dislikes Hegel because he writes like an 'elitist', he actually agrees with the evolutionary philosophy of consciousness and thinks it is more developed than Schop. He says Goethe may have been right about colors as well. But again, he feels like all of this is simply beyond the orbit of modern philosophy and science and cannot be raised as arguments to the materialist.

This relates to the hierarchical dissociation you mentioned earlier - there is no reason to say humans are the tip, but plenty to say we are very low on the hierarchy and there are much more lucid, awakened perspectives above us which are concentric with our own, and therefore we can grow into these higher perspectives. From there, we can actually confirm Goethe's color theory with supersensible perception.

BK says he basically agrees and even brings up Kaballah and Christian esotericism, without me mentioning either. But he avoids the supersensible cognition-perception issue, and to be fair, I had said that we could leave that for another time. So, basically, he doesn't question the logic of any Christian-oriented evolutionary idealist position, but simply feels it's beyond the scope of any precise reasoning. Here's my follow up written response.

Elk wrote: Did you find his answers satisfying?

Me: Yes, I found them very lucid and solid reasoning, and have brought him to the threshold of a more complete philosophy. I just think he isn't aware of Steiner and/or has dismissed it as 'woo-woo' without enough serious consideration, because that's exactly where we find the reconciliation of philosophy/science with Western esotericism and spirituality, through phenomenology and highly logical reasoning.

Elk: I still don't know how to feel about the memory issue... It makes sense he went the metacognitive/subconscious route, but still...

Me: Yeah, well, it's never going to be that satisfying when it remains so abstract, even if technically accruate (and I think it is). But that's the best we can do unless there is a possibility of growing into higher consciousness which can actually perceive where memories go and are stored (yes, this can be done).

Lately I have been thinking a major part of the problem is the lack of self-love. We feel something like 'spiritual science' with higher ideational perspectives we can know from within is "too good to be true", something we don't deserve as puny humans with all our flaws and corruption. I get that sense from Bernardo sometimes. We should never be prideful, but we should also have courage and give more credit to our potential Self. In this way, self-love can also become love of God.

"Whenever we bring clearly before us what we are, we waver always between pride and modesty. We must certainly not give way to pride, but neither must we surrender to modesty. It would be a surrender if, after taking account of our place in the world from a cosmic standpoint, we were to fail to reckon our human task in the highest possible terms. We can never think highly enough of what we ought to be. We can never take seriously enough the deep sense of cosmic responsibility which must overcome man if he holds in view the relationship of the whole universe to his human existence."
-Rudolf Steiner

I do want to add, there was one part of his answer that I was not satisfied with, in the sense that it could not be defended logically. When I mentioned the 'hierarchical dissociation' at the end, and how there must be more awakened ideational perspectives between humans and MAL, did you notice he distanced from calling it "hierarchical"? I can't remember the exact words, but basically he proposed the relation could be more horizontal between humans and these angelic perspectives (of Western esotericism, which he mentioned), or orthogonal in some way. Metaphysically, this leads to dualism or pluralism if we reason it out. But more importantly, it can't be reconciled with empirical observation. BK prides himself on his naturalist philosophy and rightly so, but this is at odds with that.

Scientifically, it simply can't be defended logically in terms of our observation of natural processes in living organisms. Part of the problem is if we view animals, plants, etc. as external objects spread out spatially in Nature. We must look to their inner processes over time (not space) to discern all these kingdoms are embedded within the individual human organism. The animal kingdom, with its soul forces (perceptions, impulses (movement), feelings, basic thoughts) is embedded within our blood circulation, nervous system, and bone system. The plant kingdom in our life forces - respiration, growth, digestion, nutrition, metabolism, etc. (animal and human blood is simply plant sap metamorphosed into a more spiritualized form - it's no coincidence green is the polar opposite color of red). The mineral kingdom in our physical forces - four fundamental ones.

Paracelsus remarked that all the animals we perceive are like letters and the individual human is the alphabet. This is accurate. If we take all the inner qualities of the various animal species, we get the human being. The individual animal forms are Maya - they don't live as individuals but as groups. Their equivalent of the human "I" is to be found in packs which reflect their group-soul, supersensible to normal cognition. It is this group-soul which consciously and thoughtfully directs all the particular animal forms, like a single body directs its limbs and digits. The plants also have their "I" consciousness, their group soul, in even higher spiritual planes. And so do the minerals. Particular animal forms are in a state of dream consciousness, plants in a state of deep dreamless sleep, and minerals in a state of even deeper coma.

The human individual embeds all these modes of consciousness - in fact, we are always sleeping with respect to our will and dreaming with respect to our feelings during the day. We are only awake to our thinking while awake. While asleep, it's the polar opposite - we are asleep to thinking and more awake to feeling and willing. So all of that is to say the lower organisms are hierarchically nested within us. Everything we perceive outside is simply what remains unconscious within us. When we become more conscious of these processes, outer perceptions become inner experiences. The same logic must hold true for the higher angelic perspectives, unless we are OK with moving from naturalism to supernaturalism (dualism). We are like the systems, organs, tissues, cells, of higher beings, depending on which level we are speaking of. The angelic ideational perspective embeds the human kingdom and all lower kingdoms. The archangels embed the angelic and all lower, so on and so forth all the way to the triune Godhead.

"Once, in the old Mysteries, they knew how to speak about the Beings of the universe. They knew that realities could not be described by talking either of Matter or of what is called Spirit in the ordinary consciousness — a grey spirituality, conceived pantheistically as present in all things. They knew that if one wants realities, one must have particular Beings. But consciousness of these Beings has gradually been lost — to the same degree that in Man himself the equality of individual being has developed more and more. Man has become more and more intellectual ever since the first third of the fifteenth century. What he knows about himself becomes more and more abstract. But behind this abstract life there is a being living more and more within itself; increasingly rich in inner spirituality. Man lost the dreamy consciousness he once possessed of the Beings of the universe, in becoming a self-apprehending being himself. He must realize again that only when we can point to individual Beings in the universe do we grasp realities...

The realities consist of all these Beings, living in the cosmos: Spirits of Wisdom, Spirits of Movement, Spirits of Form, archai, archangels, angels, human I's, animal group-souls, the cosmic souls of the plants and so on.

Not even the animals, as they live on earth, are realities; they too are illusion; the realities are the group-souls.

The whole plant world on Earth is no reality; the earth-soul is the reality. Plants are only as hair upon the earth organism, like the hair upon our own organism.

Men knew that all these Beings I have named existed in the universe, and shine out, manifesting themselves, revealing themselves in speech. They knew that this expression in speech proceeded from their essential being. And that universal resounding, which arises from the confluence of what is spoken by the particular Beings in self-revelation, this is the Logos." (Steiner)

We can verify this within first-person experience as well. Let's say we have an idea of 'going to the store', which then provides supersensible context for all perceptual states of being within its overarching structure. That idea, and many similar ones during the day, would be nested within the higher idea of 'plan for the day'. The former idea and its encompassed states of being are dependent on the latter, but not vice versa (although what happens during the 'going to the store' idea could certainly feedback and modify the 'plan for the day' idea, and most likely will in some way). These are both our active ideas, i.e. ones we feel creatively responsible for. For the person who never plans their day, what for one person is the active 'plan for the day' idea will be, for them, passive/reflective 'what the day had planned for me' perceptions (not ideas). So the lack of active, creative thinking makes what is otherwise experienced as outer 'destiny' or 'fate' to be experienced as one's own inner creation, to some lesser or greater extent.

At a certain point along each individual's ideal spectrum, we pass from active/creative to passive/reflective. Practically the 'day-night cycle' idea is passive/reflective for most people (yet this is certainly not an absolute property for all people, since there are 'laws of nature' which can pass into our creative domain, like our breathing activity, temperament, habits, etc.). For most, the day-night idea is simply a given and all lower nested ideas we are creatively responsible for are contingent on its rhythmic unfoldment. The same would obviously apply for 'month cycle', 'season cycle', etc. We can notice how the 'slower' rhythms above structure the 'faster' rhythms below - a single season will structure a great number of first-person states of being within the ideas below which are nested within its domain.

From the perspective which is creatively responsible for the 'season' rhythm, one ideal movement of the rhythm structures many rhythmic movements of lower ideas, like our daily plans. We could say this higher perspective experiences what feels like several months of movements for the lower perspective (average human), according to our measuring of time, in what feels like a single hour (this is not precise correspondence, of course).

So the higher ideational perspectives are moving faster through their states of being while the lower ones are moving slower through theirs. This gives a coherent and logical explanation for why lower perspectives experience time-flow as they do within the ideational consciousness of higher perspectives that they are nested within, which experience time-flow differently, how the 'future' (higher integrated rhythm) is always influencing the 'past' and present states of being as they unfold, and how, from the highest integrated ideational perspective of All-Being, all possible states of being occur within the ever-present 'now'. It really opens up the possibility for us to take much more creative responsibility for our unfolding states of being than we imagine possible, simply through the development of active and creative thinking faculties which can grow into the higher integrated perspectives (simple, but not necessarily easy). All that we perceive, feel, think, and do can ultimately be traced back to nested ideational beings and their inner activity which is concentric with our own.

In summary, there is no reason why Hegel's 'elitist' evolutionary idealism, Goethe's color theory, Husserl's phenomenology, or anything similar needs to remain abstract theory, maybe right or maybe wrong, who knows. These systems and many more can all be verified with scientific precision from first-person experience and sound reasoning. If someone like BK were to do this, to undertake that endeavor (which, as mentioned, Steiner undertook) and make the ideas his own, no abstract materialist opposition could say a thing. It would not be fighting abstractions with abstractions, but with living and verifiable reality. A reality, as BK also noted to his credit, which has been thoroughly investigated and documented by Western esotericism, like Kabbalah and Christian mysticism. The hierarchies mentioned above by Steiner were first outlined by Dionysius the Areopagite in the first few centuries AD. There is a wealth of resources on these living realities if we know where and how to look for them.