Why Is MAL Becoming Metacognitive?

[hubble9458]

In contrast to the Abrahamic Religions and "neo-platonism", Bernardo has said he does not think that MAL is identical with Goodness. In his view, the purpose of metacognition is for MAL to gain insight into its otherwise phenomenally conscious instinctual nature. Because this nature includes pain, famine, disease, suffering, and death, it's reasonable to assume MAL's essence isn't the "summum bonum". He has stated reality uses metacognition to realize "I like when I do this, but I don't like when I do that".

Does his view suggest MAL's telos is to become metacognitive? If so, would MAL then attempt to correct the undesired behavior that was previously unconscious?

[lorenzop]

once one adds Goodness to MAL or God etc. then there arises the Problem of Evil, for which there is no satisfying response.

[hubble9458]

once one adds Goodness to MAL or God etc. then there arises the Problem of Evil, for which there is no satisfying response.

I tend to agree with you. The problem of evil is the most convincing thorn in the side of apologists for mainstream religions in my opinion. And if history and current events are the appearance of MAL’s underlying essence, everything doesn’t seem super peachy on its face. I wonder why the neo-platonists, Vedanta, and various other mystical traditions arguably think otherwise?

But my question is also oriented around the purpose of metacognition. Kastrup seems to think MAL is gathering information to fulfill a goal (self knowledge?), even if the motivation to achieve it is purely instinctual. I guess I’m curious what the end state of a universe might look like if it was informed about itself?

[j.joerg@posteo.de]

I'd say that MAL's telos is to know itself. Metacognition is one step on the way. It startet from utter unknowing and progesses to more and more self-knowlage. Like in the case of human evolution or in the case of the development of a single human being. We are part of the MAL and we are part of this process and this telos. And surely we try to stop and correct undesired behavior, suffering, pain, famine, disease and death, don´t we!?

[j.joerg@posteo.de]

I guess I’m curious what the end state of a universe might look like if it was informed about itself?

When it is utterly informed about itself, there will be no further drive and therefore the universe will disapear. This state is probably tantamount to the heat death of the universe or to singularity. When the universe utterly knows itself, there is nothing left to be known, there is only nondual being. And this state of being is tantamount to not knowing anything, since knowing requires the duality between knower and known. Therefore, once the universe utterly knows itself, the whole game starts anew. Big bang. Its all just a game of illusory duality not to be taken all that seriously...

[Cleric K]

I guess I’m curious what the end state of a universe might look like if it was informed about itself?

Hi hubble,
asking this question usually secretly takes something for granted - our implicit conception of what Time is. There have been many attempts on this forum to bring attention to a deeper comprehension of Time but it proved to be difficult.

The difficulty is that the intellect can hardly step out of its sequential thought trains which collapse everything on the Newtonian time arrow. This makes it look like we can reach the 'end state' of perfection and our consciousness will still tick along the Newtonian clock and we (the universe) will look around and say "Now what?". This way of looking at this future state results entirely because we unconsciously project our current evolutionary state of consciousness towards the 'end state'. Just like we make an error if we look at the Earth's surface and extrapolate that it goes flatly in front and behind, so we make an error if we imagine that time is an absolute arrow with past and future infinitely separated. It could be said that the 'end state' actually curves that arrow into a circle/point which contains all potential for states of being. In other words, this can be compared to asking: What happens when I reach the edge of the flat Earth? The fallacy is clear here - we're asking questions formulated in a faulty context. Similarly, we need deeper insight into the nature of Time-Consciousness if we want to speak of an 'end state' in a realistic sense instead of imagining some lone state at the edge of the Newtonian arrow of time. This picture may give some simplified intuition of it:



In certain sense it is not difficult to understand what the picture implies but what is difficult is to conceive from the first-person perspective how consciousness changes as it integrates along the non-linear depth. These ideas are literally mind-bending and it takes some meditative effort to approach them. This post may also be of interest.

[Federica]

But my question is also oriented around the purpose of metacognition. Kastrup seems to think MAL is gathering information to fulfill a goal (self knowledge?), even if the motivation to achieve it is purely instinctual. I guess I’m curious what the end state of a universe might look like if it was informed about itself?

I believe I remember Kastrup has addressed the 'question of MAL's why' by saying that the question itself suffers anthropomorphizing and that 'Nature/MAL does what it does because it is what it is'. This is not an exact report and unfortunately I can't indicate the specific video where he speaks of that. I haven't been watching those recently and the exact memory is failing me, but maybe you can search for the topic in one of those 2/3-hour conversations on his Youtube channel, probably a 2021 video. What I can tell you is that you wouldn't find the answer to your question in the book The idea of the world, the book where BK's philosophy is exposed in an orderly manner.

Regarding Cleric's comment on the understanding of time, I want to say that I also came to this forum with specific questions about Kastrup's philosophy, that I was trying to adopt, and had I read such a comment on that first day, I would have found it simply off-topic. Maybe that's how you find it as well?

Because I had a similar experience of coming here with the intention of asking questions and deepening my understanding of reality, I want to say that in case you don’t find, in your current inquiries, complete satisfaction within Kastrup’s philosophy, then maybe you might be curious what an alternative/next step could be to approach your question about telos in a way that breaks free from the circular reasoning of the type 'it does what it does because it is what it is'.
So I would like to share what that subsequent step has been for me, at that initial point, that I found on this forum. It is this question: in this overall process of inquiry that we are engaging in, when we sit down and are willing to put in time and energy, with the best intentions, and we ask ourselves those tough questions, and try hard to apply our reasoning to them - because we simply need to understand! - what is it that we are doing exactly, in this philosophical exploration? Is it really legitimate to jump into the object of our inquiry, say MAL's telos, without paying any preliminary attention to the mental movement that we are taking in order to jump into the inquiry? How does this act of directing attention to that object of inquiry work, are there any precautions we want to gain awareness of before we just go all in? Or is it fine to simply go in and start reasoning, instinctually? Is it fine to start analyzing and pondering the best we can, right off the bat, the moment we realize we own the quest?

It's in a sense like in science. Before one jumps in and starts practically experimenting on something, it's important to have a few considerations about method - what am I doing exactly, how should I frame and set up the experimentation, is what I am doing reproducible and falsifiable, etc etc. In other words, there should be some attention paid to some philosophy of science, before one jumps in and starts operating. We want to first check that we are not just 'coming as we are' to the experiment, although with the best intentions. We know that 'come as you are' is a good tagline for an invite to a friendly garden barbecue, but not really for an invite to a scientific endeavor.

Similarly, before we tackle a philosophical quest by simply starting the thinking, does it not make sense that we pay some preliminary attention to a sort of 'philosophy of philosophy' where we first look at how we are going to use the tools we are about to leverage - thinking, reasoning, analyzing… Is there anything we should realize or pay attention to before we open the floodgates of our inquiry, in order to set us up for an aware and free approach to the big questions?

[AshvinP]

But my question is also oriented around the purpose of metacognition. Kastrup seems to think MAL is gathering information to fulfill a goal (self knowledge?), even if the motivation to achieve it is purely instinctual. I guess I’m curious what the end state of a universe might look like if it was informed about itself?

I believe I remember Kastrup has addressed the 'question of MAL's why' by saying that the question itself suffers anthropomorphizing and that 'Nature/MAL does what it does because it is what it is'. This is not an exact report and unfortunately I can't indicate the specific video where he speaks of that. I haven't been watching those recently and the exact memory is failing me, but maybe you can search for the topic in one of those 2/3-hour conversations on his Youtube channel, probably a 2021 video. What I can tell you is that you wouldn't find the answer to your question in the book The idea of the world, the book where BK's philosophy is exposed in an orderly manner.

Regarding Cleric's comment on the understanding of time, I want to say that I also came to this forum with specific questions about Kastrup's philosophy, that I was trying to adopt, and had I read such a comment on that first day, I would have found it simply off-topic. Maybe that's how you find it as well?

Because I had a similar experience of coming here with the intention of asking questions and deepening my understanding of reality, I want to say that in case you don’t find, in your current inquiries, complete satisfaction within Kastrup’s philosophy, then maybe you might be curious what an alternative/next step could be to approach your question about telos in a way that breaks free from the circular reasoning of the type 'it does what it does because it is what it is'.
So I would like to share what that subsequent step has been for me, at that initial point, that I found on this forum. It is this question: in this overall process of inquiry that we are engaging in, when we sit down and are willing to put in time and energy, with the best intentions, and we ask ourselves those tough questions, and try hard to apply our reasoning to them - because we simply need to understand! - what is it that we are doing exactly, in this philosophical exploration? Is it really legitimate to jump into the object of our inquiry, say MAL's telos, without paying any preliminary attention to the mental movement that we are taking in order to jump into the inquiry? How does this act of directing attention to that object of inquiry work, are there any precautions we want to gain awareness of before we just go all in? Or is it fine to simply go in and start reasoning, instinctually? Is it fine to start analyzing and pondering the best we can, right off the bat, the moment we realize we own the quest?

It's in a sense like in science. Before one jumps in and starts practically experimenting on something, it's important to have a few considerations about method - what am I doing exactly, how should I frame and set up the experimentation, is what I am doing reproducible and falsifiable, etc etc. In other words, there should be some attention paid to some philosophy of science, before one jumps in and starts operating. We want to first check that we are not just 'coming as we are' to the experiment, although with the best intentions. We know that 'come as you are' is a good tagline for an invite to a friendly garden barbecue, but not really for an invite to a scientific endeavor.

Similarly, before we tackle a philosophical quest by simply starting the thinking, does it not make sense that we pay some preliminary attention to a sort of 'philosophy of philosophy' where we first look at how we are going to use the tools we are about to leverage - thinking, reasoning, analyzing… Is there anything we should realize or pay attention to before we open the floodgates of our inquiry, in order to set us up for an aware and free approach to the big questions?

Great comments here, and the above is very well asked/stated! Allow me to add another soundtrack to your questions/insights

[Federica]

Great comments here, and the above is very well asked/stated! Allow me to add another soundtrack to your questions/insights

Thank you!
Nice rock-philosophical finds : )