Seems like we are lost in linguistics here. To me everything present in the direct experience of sentient beings is real just as it is present (by "sentient beings" I mean streams of direct conscious experiences). Awareness is present as awareness, thinking as thinking, willing as willing, sense perception of an apple as sense perception of an apple, the idea of "I' is present just as an idea of "I", the idea of "eternal existence" is present as an idea of "eternal existence", and all of it is unified in a single continuous field of experience and all of it is real just as it is directly present in my or someone else's experience (otherwise, what would "unreal experience" mean?). The willing activity of these streams of direct experiences and their inter-connectedness can in principle explain all life and all the universe. If something is not present in any direct experience of any sentient being, there is no ground to assume that it exists. I do not know what "eternally existing" means, this has no reference in my direct experience other than some abstract idea of "eternal existence". All there is in my direct experience always happens "here and now", even though the content is ever-changing while the presence and awareness are never-changing, so I don't know what the idea of "eternity" is actually referring to.ScottRoberts wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 12:22 am So "awareness-thinking-willing" is eternally existing. If you don't want to say it is an "entity", fine -- that is just a debate over the meaning of 'entity'. It is still an ontological claim, just as my starting point that "there is only ideational activity" is ontological. They are ontological because they deny the reality of the non-experiential or non-ideational. But the point with both is that one then needs to go on and find within the fundamental claim an explanation for life, the universe, and everything. And I am saying that if one claims there is no "I" within ATW or within "ideational activity" there is much that cannot be explained. One may not like to call the "I" an entity, like an apple, but one must call it real.
Consider this illustration: suppose you are playing in a computer-generated virtual reality and you see an appearance of a monster (which is a perception). Then an idea emerges in your stream of conscious experience that there is an actual real monster existing "out there". Now, the appearance of the monster (as a perception) is definitely real, the idea that "monster exists out there" is also real, however, does all of that mean that there is actually a real monster existing "out there"? Not at all. This is what usually happens in our steams of experience (mostly habitually and unconsciously) - we fabricate a bunch of ideas about existence of some "things" out there while there is no ground to believe that they actually exist. In this way we become believing in the real existence of matter, or external material universe, or some "eternal existence" of anything at all, including the "I". Again, the presence of such ideas is definitely real, but that does not mean that the "things" they refer to actually exist. As I said before, thinking has enormous power to deceive itself into believing in real existence of some "entities" that actually, as a fact of direct experience, only exist as a content of its own ideas.