Saving the materialists

[AshvinP]

The tricky thing (as seen in the conversation posted above by Ashvin) is that if we speak of knowing this prime reality, he would affirm that it is possible and we do that with Stimmung. It is very difficult to point out what it means to know that reality in a higher sense. I guess one way to show that something more is implied, is by asking whether he conceives of a Cosmic scale, fully conscious inner existence that, for example, shapes the inner reality of the planetary systems, within which our micro life is embedded.

I will add here that people such as JW, and also the guy I quoted above, are highly critical of BK's analytic idealism because they feel it is dogmatic metaphysics, speculative reasoning about a transcendent realm of 'consciousness'. They feel such an approach was already thoroughly evaluated and ruled out by Kant. And that is generally correct - that is what BK (and many others) are doing and it was discerned as self-contradictory and defeating by Kant and neo-Kantians for a number of reasons.

They feel that their approach, in contrast, sticks with immanent experience (which, of course, is generally equated to bodily experience). They often align themselves with Goethean phenomenology for this reason (and I think FB does this as well), and imagine the metaphysicians and spiritualists are simply projecting familiar immanent experiences into the "beyond" to fashion an encompassing theory. On the other hand, the aesthetic sense (of music and poetry, for ex.) is undeniable experience and so is bodily experience, which for JW bottoms out at the experience of energetic flux (also reached by quantum science). He feels experience reveals that there is no consciousness without life, and there is no life without this energetic dynamic. Of course he fails to discern that the meaning of "energetic dynamic" can only be discerned through his real-time thinking activity.

For that reason, I think any talk of Cosmic-scale conscious activity will be immediately discarded as irrelevant metaphysics, transcendental speculation already conclusively ruled out by Kant. As we know, this prejudice comes from the unwillingness to refocus attention from the content of the concepts used, which indeed are often pointing to remote metaphysical realities, to the inner gestures symbolized by the concepts, to gradually heighten sensitivity to the latter through the portal of the concepts. Until that happens, the concepts symbolizing invisible inner gestures can only be understood by them as an attempt at dogmatic metaphysics like BK except in more spiritualistic or esoteric language/form.

I think it's important that these concerns with dogmatic metaphysics are reflected back to them, so it is shown that the essential Kantian critique is grasped and acknowledged as valid to some extent. I will share my response to the other guy, which borrows from the Phonograph essays, in case that can be helpful in some way. Although JW may be even more difficult to get a straightforward answer from because he seems to have rejected the cognitive nature of the 'prime reality' as well.

***


Ok, great, I am happy that your position does not foreclose on investigating the conditions of cognitive experience (which are themselves cognitive in nature). Then the question becomes, what does such an investigation look like? As you put it:

"The question isn’t whether we can investigate the categorical conditions of experience—Kant’s own work demonstrates we can and must—but rather how we can do so without falling into transcendental illusion."

This is a critical question and it points to this tricky phrase, "transcendental illusion". How can we be sure whether the concepts we use to symbolize supersensible realities are (a) pointing to phenomenal aspects *within* the subject's own cognitive capacities and expression of those capacities or (b) trying to point to some metaphysical realm of attributes, ideas, beings, etc. (essentially like BK's MAL, but also the particle-waves or quantum fields of materialists, the realms and beings of spiritualists, etc.).

I think we agree that the vast majority of modern philosophical and religious systems, and scientific theories about the 'nature of reality', are like (b) and point to the "beyond" that we all agree is both unnecessary for true knowledge and fatally self-contradictory. Rather, to be firmly within (a), our concepts need to become like descriptions of first-person cognitive experience and its inner dynamics. Our philosophical method should become a *science* of the conditions of cognitive experience. I agree that Kant started out on this path and attained some basic results. How can we go further?

I think we need to first fully appreciate exactly what you say - the investigation of cognitive capacities necessarily manifests as an expression of those capacities. In other words, the mental pictures (thoughts) we use to investigate the conditions of cognitive experience are themselves continually constrained and structured by the conditions it is investigating. The whole process can start to feel like a recursive paradox, in that sense, like a dog chasing its own tail. As we try to chase the structure of our thinking activity with our mental pictures, the former continues to morph and we can never catch up with the *real-time* cognitive process. That is because our mental pictures about the process are continually receding from the real-time process, like dead skin shed from a snake. Our thinking becomes like a hand that tries to draw a picture of ‘itself drawing a picture of ‘itself drawing a picture of itself ‘…’ ’ ’, and so on in an infinite recursion. (see image below)

So is it possible to have actual knowledge of the real-time process through which our cognitive states of being metamorphose? I say such knowledge is indeed possible, although, unsurprisingly, it requires us to conduct our cognitive activity in novel ways. It is obvious that simply producing more and more intellectual models about the "conditions of experience", no matter how refined, will always maintain the duality between the theoretical process that we experience in our thoughts and the actual process through which these same theoretical thoughts flow. Initially, we can seek the reality of the actual cognitive process only as a quite indistinct feeling. Hopefully, over time, this feeling will become something much more refined, attaining a meaningful texture imbued with clear intuition, just like our mental pictures are imbued with intuition. That refinement is attained through imaginative concentration (and this is where spiritual science starts).

I can elaborate more on that but I am interested to hear your thoughts. Does this seem like a real possibility and a fruitful avenue of investigating the conditions of cognitive experience, which does not reject Kant's foundation but builds on it?

[Güney27]

Jw,s answer:
“I don’t see thinking as purely subjective or as a copy of the world. Thinking begins with an entanglement that defies a subject/object dichotomy. Consciousness exists through our entanglement with superpositional prime existence which we perceive through a reductive act as the aspect of Eigenstate. It’s an awareness (Wahrnehmung”) that arises as a cooperative energy event between our mind and prime reality. At this level all is just energy fields from which we derive two modes of thinking: Esthetic/Mood (Stimmung), and Objective/Practical. I like the German “Stimmung” for its overtone meaning of “voicing” - a sympathetic vibration with what we entangle. It’s why experiencing music is more powerful than reading the score. This in not a copy of the world, but an enactive experience with it. Directly from this experience can arise thoughts quite different from objectification - more logos than logic. This isn’t reducible to subject/object dichotomy.
The latter is purely representational in the sense used by Kant and Schopenhauer. It reduces sense data from which it projects before us something akin to a hologram. This project is what is commonly thought to be the universe, but it doesn’t exist outside the human mind. It isn’t a copy of the world, but a depiction of a world we create from input from prime existence. These representations are not arbitrary but conditioned by the imposed sense data and our conditions of objective thought.”

Actually JW's response is not bad (if we try to take it in an optimistic way). What he calls "Esthetic/Mood (Stimmung) and Objective/Practical" are practically the vertical and horizontal thinking from the phonograph metaphor. In a way, just like we described vertical/depth thinking activity as bringing into focus spread out aspects of the Cosmic intuitive context, so he means something along similar lines with Stimmung - voicing.

The problem is - as revealed from the long conversations that Ashvin had with him in the past - that in the end, the inner experiential aspect of this prime reality (just like for all mystics) remains something that can only be aesthetically felt. Lucid intuitive life is admitted only at the level of voiced thoughts. The experiential aspect of prime reality remains something completely orthogonal to the intuitive movements of our intellectual self.

For example, if we consider poetry, we can sense aesthetic satisfaction even when listening to poetry in a foreign language. We can still enjoy the rhythms, the rhymes, the articulations, etc. Unless he has changed his stance in the meantime, he feels the prime reality as such aesthetic poetry, yet it is denied that these rhythmic vibrations are actually expressions of fully conscious intuitive life at Cosmic scales, let alone that our intellectual self can find its concentric stance within that Life.

The tricky thing (as seen in the conversation posted above by Ashvin) is that if we speak of knowing this prime reality, he would affirm that it is possible and we do that with Stimmung. It is very difficult to point out what it means to know that reality in a higher sense. I guess one way to show that something more is implied, is by asking whether he conceives of a Cosmic scale, fully conscious inner existence that, for example, shapes the inner reality of the planetary systems, within which our micro life is embedded.

I don’t think so. He thinks of prime existence of something chaotic and unconscious if I’m getting him right. It’s something physical.
For him the “outside world” is nothing more than a symbolic representation of the prime existence. If I’m getting in right, SS speaks of something similar, that our perception of the surrounding world (or shared imagination the term that ashvin used in the discussion with jw) is a symbolic representation too, but of the activity of higher minds, that we perceive as our body and the surrounding universe and that shape our conscious experience, in a way like we shape the frames in our thinking life, when we guide the transformation of mental images trough our conscious intentional activity.

Jw answered to my questions I asked:

“No, I reserve dream for a specific mode of consciousness. Remember, I pose two types of thought: Esthetic and Objective, which are distinguished by their relation to prime existence. But first we have to consider “mind” and “ consciousness”.

Mind is the enigma and is mostly hidden from us. The unconscious mind dwarfs the conscious mind and works more mysteriously. I believe the mind straddles the superstition/Eigenstate divide, itself of prime existence while reducing it to representations accessible to our objective waking mind. Perhaps we could think of it as a quantum version of Freud’s unconscious.

Let’s first consider the objective conscious mode. This is what we’re conditioned to accept as the “reality” of the universe, but is a constructed holograph-like projection produced out of raw sense data consisting of electromagnetic waves by means of the rules of our innate categories of understanding. Whirl our imagined universe doesn’t exist independent from our minds, our construction of it is bound by the rules and conditioned by the sense data. While we could call it illusory, it couldn’t be thought to be a dream because it isn’t arbitrary. It’s what gives us the illusion of a deterministic universe.

Dreams are free from this determinism and use the sense data in a more quantum way. The waking rules are gone and replaced by the more primary workings of the unconscious mind. In a deep sense, dreams can be more real, if we think of “real” as prime existence, than waking representations and narratives.

This brings us finally to our second mode: esthetic thought. Music, art, and poetry can be thought of as a sort of lucid dreaming. We’re consciously interacting with non-deterministic prime reality and consciously playing with the course of experience. The lucidity guiding the choices of collapse to Eigenstate.”

I responded:

“Interesting view point! The problem I see is that when you say, that perception is nothing but a constructed representation of something, you negate your own theory. If everything is a representation of “das ding an sich”, then your brain which you make accountable for that act is still only a representation, and not the thing which is really responsible for the experience. It’s like saying that everything in a dream is a dream item, but somehow the brain and the nervous system, are of a different nature. If we live in a simulation, studying the the dynamics of the dream landscape, have not much meaning, and we couldn’t conclude something about the true reality. It’s like saying that if a lucid dreamer studied its dream body, he would understand the brain, which is the real prime existence.”

[Güney27]

JW responded but I would be happy, if ashvin could help me to decipher his response. My impression of Jw is that he is a really educated and knowledgeable person. He shares the same underlying currents that makes him question reality in a deep sense.
I’m glad that there are such people.

He responded:

“Your response is insightful, but starts with a misconception of what I was trying to say - partly due to my clumsy articulation and partly
because I’m trying to abbreviate something that so far has taken a couple hundred pages in the book I’m writing.

I think the problem centers on your characterizing what I’m saying within the framework of Kantian epistemology. My fault because I’d used some Kantian terminology as a shortcut. Keep in mind I posit two distinct modes of thought, the esthetic and the reductive objective. The former doesn’t exist for Kant, and your comment concerns the latter. Perception in the esthetic mode doesn’t reduce to a constructed object.

I don’t speak of a Ding-an-such as such. Kant seemed to think such a thing existed, but my background stems more from quantum physics, where “things” are somehow emergent in a decohered environment. There are no things in prime existence, and in our universe there are no things at the quantum field level. The combination of the Bell and the Leggett inequalities demonstrates this. A thing arises from the interplay and self-organization of quantum fields and our consciousness. In quantum physics that is called an event. In the objective mode we reduce that event to an object, but only by blinding ourselves to the greater complexity. In the esthetic mode, the originary meaning of “thing” as “gathering” is retained. Closer to the picture in quantum theory, a thing is an event arising from the gathering of consciousness and other self-organizing energies. A purposeful pre-objective apprehension.

That brings us to brain, which you rightly point out is a reductive representation. The problem is I don’t reduce consciousness to brain, although the brain is probably the center of the gathering of
consciousness. Consciousness is an energy event within self-organizing energy fields as is everything else in our universe. It’s interesting that we measure consciousness as its various wave types but don’t take them seriously. Consciousness is this energy field and the failure to acknowledge that leads to the failure to explain consciousness by means of neural connections and ensnarement in the illusory mind/body problem.“

He is in the process of writing a book, which will elaborate his position more intensely.

[AshvinP]

JW responded but I would be happy, if ashvin could help me to decipher his response. My impression of Jw is that he is a really educated and knowledgeable person. He shares the same underlying currents that makes him question reality in a deep sense.
I’m glad that there are such people.

He responded:

“Your response is insightful, but starts with a misconception of what I was trying to say - partly due to my clumsy articulation and partly
because I’m trying to abbreviate something that so far has taken a couple hundred pages in the book I’m writing.

I think the problem centers on your characterizing what I’m saying within the framework of Kantian epistemology. My fault because I’d used some Kantian terminology as a shortcut. Keep in mind I posit two distinct modes of thought, the esthetic and the reductive objective. The former doesn’t exist for Kant, and your comment concerns the latter. Perception in the esthetic mode doesn’t reduce to a constructed object.

I don’t speak of a Ding-an-such as such. Kant seemed to think such a thing existed, but my background stems more from quantum physics, where “things” are somehow emergent in a decohered environment. There are no things in prime existence, and in our universe there are no things at the quantum field level. The combination of the Bell and the Leggett inequalities demonstrates this. A thing arises from the interplay and self-organization of quantum fields and our consciousness. In quantum physics that is called an event. In the objective mode we reduce that event to an object, but only by blinding ourselves to the greater complexity. In the esthetic mode, the originary meaning of “thing” as “gathering” is retained. Closer to the picture in quantum theory, a thing is an event arising from the gathering of consciousness and other self-organizing energies. A purposeful pre-objective apprehension.

That brings us to brain, which you rightly point out is a reductive representation. The problem is I don’t reduce consciousness to brain, although the brain is probably the center of the gathering of
consciousness. Consciousness is an energy event within self-organizing energy fields as is everything else in our universe. It’s interesting that we measure consciousness as its various wave types but don’t take them seriously. Consciousness is this energy field and the failure to acknowledge that leads to the failure to explain consciousness by means of neural connections and ensnarement in the illusory mind/body problem.“

He is in the process of writing a book, which will elaborate his position more intensely.

Yeah, everything he is saying is of course accurate at the level of its conceptual meaning, as a nice quantum-style theory of the collapse of consciousness into decohered elements, but the problem is he doesn't understand alpha, beta, gamma, delta waves for example as symbols for the inner experience of spiritual activity at different inner scales. His approach is essentially that of Schopenhauer but instead of conceiving the prime as 'instinctive consciousness', he feels that he is more faithful to modern science by conceiving it as self-organizing energies. Perhaps Cleric has some ideas here.

I wonder if it's useful in these circumstances to take Cleric's route in the recent essays of pointing attention to how the concepts of 'energy, waves, etc.' are mental replicas of bodily experiences gathered throughout life. Perhaps that will demystify them somewhat, so it is seen that they are essentially no different than explaining the Universe and consciousness in terms of other mental pictures borrowed from bodily experience, like particles, fields, beings, and generally more 'thing-like' objects. We may feel like we are dealing with more 'fluid' and 'superimposed' substances with our quantum model, but in the end we are explaining it all in terms of our thing-like mental pictures, whether those thingy pictures are imbued with the meaning of "energy/waves" or "atomic particles" makes little difference.

The other question is, what does esthetic perception look like in practice, apart from submerging into music, poetry, etc.? How does it bring us intuitive insight into the lawful dynamics of the self-organizing energies, in the same way we have intuition of the phenomenal dynamics when intending to count, sing a song, tell a story, etc.?

[Güney27]

JW responded but I would be happy, if ashvin could help me to decipher his response. My impression of Jw is that he is a really educated and knowledgeable person. He shares the same underlying currents that makes him question reality in a deep sense.
I’m glad that there are such people.

He responded:

“Your response is insightful, but starts with a misconception of what I was trying to say - partly due to my clumsy articulation and partly
because I’m trying to abbreviate something that so far has taken a couple hundred pages in the book I’m writing.

I think the problem centers on your characterizing what I’m saying within the framework of Kantian epistemology. My fault because I’d used some Kantian terminology as a shortcut. Keep in mind I posit two distinct modes of thought, the esthetic and the reductive objective. The former doesn’t exist for Kant, and your comment concerns the latter. Perception in the esthetic mode doesn’t reduce to a constructed object.

I don’t speak of a Ding-an-such as such. Kant seemed to think such a thing existed, but my background stems more from quantum physics, where “things” are somehow emergent in a decohered environment. There are no things in prime existence, and in our universe there are no things at the quantum field level. The combination of the Bell and the Leggett inequalities demonstrates this. A thing arises from the interplay and self-organization of quantum fields and our consciousness. In quantum physics that is called an event. In the objective mode we reduce that event to an object, but only by blinding ourselves to the greater complexity. In the esthetic mode, the originary meaning of “thing” as “gathering” is retained. Closer to the picture in quantum theory, a thing is an event arising from the gathering of consciousness and other self-organizing energies. A purposeful pre-objective apprehension.

That brings us to brain, which you rightly point out is a reductive representation. The problem is I don’t reduce consciousness to brain, although the brain is probably the center of the gathering of
consciousness. Consciousness is an energy event within self-organizing energy fields as is everything else in our universe. It’s interesting that we measure consciousness as its various wave types but don’t take them seriously. Consciousness is this energy field and the failure to acknowledge that leads to the failure to explain consciousness by means of neural connections and ensnarement in the illusory mind/body problem.“

He is in the process of writing a book, which will elaborate his position more intensely.

Yeah, everything he is saying is of course accurate at the level of its conceptual meaning, as a nice quantum-style theory of the collapse of consciousness into decohered elements, but the problem is he doesn't understand alpha, beta, gamma, delta waves for example as symbols for the inner experience of spiritual activity at different inner scales. His approach is essentially that of Schopenhauer but instead of conceiving the prime as 'instinctive consciousness', he feels that he is more faithful to modern science by conceiving it as self-organizing energies. Perhaps Cleric has some ideas here.

I wonder if it's useful in these circumstances to take Cleric's route in the recent essays of pointing attention to how the concepts of 'energy, waves, etc.' are mental replicas of bodily experiences gathered throughout life. Perhaps that will demystify them somewhat, so it is seen that they are essentially no different than explaining the Universe and consciousness in terms of other mental pictures borrowed from bodily experience, like particles, fields, beings, and generally more 'thing-like' objects. We may feel like we are dealing with more 'fluid' and 'superimposed' substances with our quantum model, but in the end we are explaining it all in terms of our thing-like mental pictures, whether those thingy pictures are imbued with the meaning of "energy/waves" or "atomic particles" makes little difference.

The other question is, what does esthetic perception look like in practice, apart from submerging into music, poetry, etc.? How does it bring us intuitive insight into the lawful dynamics of the self-organizing energies, in the same way we have intuition of the phenomenal dynamics when intending to count, sing a song, tell a story, etc.?

But aren’t waves, fields ….. still content of the symbols of the dream, when he says that the brain constructs reality? I’m not really getting his thinking here.

I think he would say that that we are not dealing with substances and that is a misconception of his position, he uses words to hint at something, which isn’t a thing, but users thing like words as symbols to hint at something.

And didn’t we come to the conclusion of quantum fields trough reductive knowledge instead of engaging in art?
It isn’t really easy to follow his thoughts here.

[Güney27]

My response:

“Ok. Let’s assume we are in a dream (just as a metaphor for the constructed illusion that arises while quantum fields and our brains – or our consciousness, whatever that is – interact). But your starting point is that you are thinking about sense perception (which, in your view, represents something else) in the form of a mental construct through your thinking activity. In physics, we describe the dynamics of phenomena that appear to us through the senses and try to intuit what these phenomena are by thinking about sense perception and building intellectual models of it.

The given is that we experience certain conscious phenomena that are in constant metamorphosis, and we think about them in order to understand them, manipulate them for certain purposes, and so on. Through your thinking about the world, at some point, you form the conclusion that “a thing arises from the interplay and self-organization of quantum fields and our consciousness. In quantum physics, this is called an event. In the objective mode, we reduce this event to an object, but only by blinding ourselves to the greater complexity. In the aesthetic mode, the original meaning of ‘thing’ as ‘gathering’ is retained. Closer to the picture in quantum theory, a thing is an event arising from the gathering of consciousness and other self-organizing energies. A purposeful pre-objective apprehension.” These fields and so on are still contents within your dream, which you, through your thinking, label as prime existence. Imagine that you are in a dream and want to investigate its origin: “What is all this here?” You then proceed to think about the dream content, studying the surrounding world in more and more detail. At some point, you come to the conclusion that your investigation points to the fact that there is no such thing as objects, but only hypothetical dream waves, which aren’t really like waves but analogous. You now have a perfect model of your dream and have found something that could account for its existence (fundamental dream waves). Through your study of the dreamscape, you can manipulate it thanks to your knowledge of its dynamics. What you truly have is an abstract thought construct, and still, your same perception through your dream senses. You feel confident and comfortable. Then, suddenly, you wake up. You now remember that you were dreaming the whole time. It was just a dream; all your theories and constructions were worthless for discovering the truth about your experience. That’s really the method we use when we build abstract frameworks through our intellect to gain knowledge. Isn’t that the method you use as well? You think about perception and then build abstract frameworks through intellectual thinking. You construct a framework through reductive knowledge, not through your second mode of aesthetic knowledge.

Another question arises when I think about the other mode of knowledge: How does aesthetic knowledge allow you to intuit something about prime existence? How do you gain insight into its dynamics and essence?”

[AshvinP]

But aren’t waves, fields ….. still content of the symbols of the dream, when he says that the brain constructs reality? I’m not really getting his thinking here.

I think he would say that that we are not dealing with substances and that is a misconception of his position, he uses words to hint at something, which isn’t a thing, but users thing like words as symbols to hint at something.

And didn’t we come to the conclusion of quantum fields trough reductive knowledge instead of engaging in art?
It isn’t really easy to follow his thoughts here.

I think your response was a very good one that hit the main points - let's see what he responds. Ultimately he needs to awaken to exactly what you pointed out - the fact that he is thinking about the dream space, the esthetic space, the quantum flux, etc. to build observations and reach conclusions about their primal nature. It is evident that we can never philosophize from within the dream space, but only once we awaken and try to remember what the dream sequences meant and how they relate to wider reality. It is the same when we submerge into music/art. Hopefully this fact will dawn upon him at some point.

[Cleric]

Yeah, everything he is saying is of course accurate at the level of its conceptual meaning, as a nice quantum-style theory of the collapse of consciousness into decohered elements, but the problem is he doesn't understand alpha, beta, gamma, delta waves for example as symbols for the inner experience of spiritual activity at different inner scales. His approach is essentially that of Schopenhauer but instead of conceiving the prime as 'instinctive consciousness', he feels that he is more faithful to modern science by conceiving it as self-organizing energies. Perhaps Cleric has some ideas here.

Well, I remember how even Eugene got frustrated when he tried to converse with JW He couldn't convince him that our direct inner phenomena (like color, sound, etc.) are more immediately given than 'energy'. The only explanation I can think of is that by the moment he conceptualizes 'direct experiential phenomena' it already becomes an abstract token, at the same level as energy, atoms, etc. In other words, the inner ability to stabilize inner experience and contemplate inner phenomena must be lacking. Instead, one half-consciously flows through phenomena and feels cognitive concreteness only at the level of finished thoughts. However, at that level, 'inner phenomena' and 'energy' are equally abstract - they are only mental images. In other words, for him, it is as if asking "Is reality made of atoms of inner phenomena or energy?" Then naturally he prefers 'energy' because it feels more general and primal (it can easily encompass both the conscious and the unconscious, while inner phenomena seem more restrictive because they already require consciousness).

We'll see if Guney's question would result in the same pattern. His two kinds of thinking suggest that he has gotten a tiny bit deeper in the experience of thinking (at least I don't remember him mentioning this in the past) but still, even though he speaks of the logos in a way that goes in the right direction, it's obvious that this logos only becomes a conscious experience as the conscious mind (which is "dwarfed by the unconscious mind that works more mysteriously"). As discussed so many times, this stance allows one to maintain the threshold wherever they are comfortable and feel fully justified (there's simply no other alternative) to only speak metaphysically about the mysterious nature of the unconscious energy fields.

In that sense, it seems that JW has gone one step further than BK, because he at least sees the thinking processes as precipitating from MAL/energy in the process of Stimmung. I haven't heard BK ever address the question of thinking, but I suppose that if asked, he would go in a more reductionist direction, similar to ML, and he would rather suppose that thoughts and ideas (and additionally the sense of intellectual self) emerge as a kind of epiphenomena - higher-order groupings of elemental mental excitations of the instinctive/unconscious MAL field.

[AshvinP]

Yeah, everything he is saying is of course accurate at the level of its conceptual meaning, as a nice quantum-style theory of the collapse of consciousness into decohered elements, but the problem is he doesn't understand alpha, beta, gamma, delta waves for example as symbols for the inner experience of spiritual activity at different inner scales. His approach is essentially that of Schopenhauer but instead of conceiving the prime as 'instinctive consciousness', he feels that he is more faithful to modern science by conceiving it as self-organizing energies. Perhaps Cleric has some ideas here.

Well, I remember how even Eugene got frustrated when he tried to converse with JW He couldn't convince him that our direct inner phenomena (like color, sound, etc.) are more immediately given than 'energy'. The only explanation I can think of is that by the moment he conceptualizes 'direct experiential phenomena' it already becomes an abstract token, at the same level as energy, atoms, etc. In other words, the inner ability to stabilize inner experience and contemplate inner phenomena must be lacking. Instead, one half-consciously flows through phenomena and feels cognitive concreteness only at the level of finished thoughts. However, at that level, 'inner phenomena' and 'energy' are equally abstract - they are only mental images. In other words, for him, it is as if asking "Is reality made of atoms of inner phenomena or energy?" Then naturally he prefers 'energy' because it feels more general and primal (it can easily encompass both the conscious and the unconscious, while inner phenomena seem more restrictive because they already require consciousness).

We'll see if Guney's question would result in the same pattern. His two kinds of thinking suggest that he has gotten a tiny bit deeper in the experience of thinking (at least I don't remember him mentioning this in the past) but still, even though he speaks of the logos in a way that goes in the right direction, it's obvious that this logos only becomes a conscious experience as the conscious mind (which is "dwarfed by the unconscious mind that works more mysteriously"). As discussed so many times, this stance allows one to maintain the threshold wherever they are comfortable and feel fully justified (there's simply no other alternative) to only speak metaphysically about the mysterious nature of the unconscious energy fields.

In that sense, it seems that JW has gone one step further than BK, because he at least sees the thinking processes as precipitating from MAL/energy in the process of Stimmung. I haven't heard BK ever address the question of thinking, but I suppose that if asked, he would go in a more reductionist direction, similar to ML, and he would rather suppose that thoughts and ideas (and additionally the sense of intellectual self) emerge as a kind of epiphenomena - higher-order groupings of elemental mental excitations of the instinctive/unconscious MAL field.

That makes sense, and it seems this is what happens to practically everyone but at varying inner thresholds and to varying degrees. With FB, for example, he could sense the givenness of inner psychic phenomena but once we get to inner activity/gestures, it starts to become more like the concept of 'energy' for JW. Perhaps not to the same extent, but he remains quite insensitive to the inner gestures. Then when we speak of "intentional activity", he feels there are many different interpretations of such activity that are equally valid, including something like Schopenhauer's instinctive Will activity. I suspect the person I was dialoguing with on Facebook will be the same - once we got to the domain of intentional activity, everything comes to a halt. I will share the latest two comments on that front, and since he normally responds quickly, I have the sense that mine was the final one (he liked it but didn't respond).

I agree with you that it is necessary to “conduct our cognitive activity in novel ways to have actual knowledge of the real-time process through which our cognitive states of being metamorphose”—and I have been working to develop my own method of conduct to achieve this end (namely, “to have actual knowledge of the real-time process through which our cognitive states of being metamorphose”). My method is still in development in its particulars although the gist of it is already in place—I call it “Ouroboric Idealism”. Ouroboric Idealism begins with mind (or consciousness), precisely as Husserl’s phenomenology does—it involves an analysis of consciousness itself, without presupposing any transcendental reality (things-in-themselves are not presupposed, other minds are not presupposed). Ouroboric Idealism finally concludes that consciousness (or mind) is essentially ouroboric—namely, I can, as a mind, never interact with anything beyond my own immanent activity. I have a YouTube channel called “Ouroboric Idealism” where I publish videos that discuss this ouroboric philosophy (linked below).

In my view, the best way to understand Ouroboric Idealism, however, is to understand the distinction between metaphysical and transcendental solipsism—concerning which distinction I recently published an essay (which is also linked below).

https://youtube.com/@ouroboricidealism? ... gVl14zKgLN

https://ouroboricidealism.medium.com/transcendental.


Thanks, I have checked out the article and will explore the YT videos. You mention immanent representations several times, for example:

"Transcendental illusion, or maya, entails mistaking any immanent representations (whether perceptions, ideas, judgments, memories, sensations, feelings, etc.) for knowledge of transcendental reality of any kind whatsoever"

I agree that, phenomenologically speaking, we can only say we experience the 'now' moment with these immanent representations. These representations include sensory perceptions, kinesthetic sensations, thoughts, memories, impulses, emotions, etc. They also include temporal intuition. Embedded in any 'now' state is the intuition that we have existed through some trajectory of states up to this 'now' state and we can anticipate the now state to metamorphose in certain lawful ways, for example if we intend to count to 10, we can anticipate the next perceptions of our inner voice even if we are on "1" and haven't pronounced the other numbers yet. Notice this temporal intuition is still phenomenologically given and immanent, we don't need to speculate about some "past" or "future" as transcendent dimensions.

If all we could know was a single frame of existence, we would never have any consciousness of continuity through time. Even if these frames were changing, our conscious experience would consist of completely disconnected frames of existence, it would be like quickly flashing completely random states of existence. So, experientially, we live in an ever-metamorphosing state of existence. We only know that because we intuitively grasp that this state was one thing just an instant ago and it will be another thing very soon. Our intuition of this metamorphosis is not static but can become poorer or richer depending on how we conduct (or fail to conduct) our cognitive activity. For example, imagine that we explain something to somebody or simply tell a story. Then the way our experiential states transform is intuitively known. We know what we are trying to explain, we know what the story we are telling is about and where it's headed. We don't need to represent this knowledge as clear-cut concepts or pictures. This intuitive knowing, which is only vaguely felt, becomes the 'curvature' through which our cognitive states and speech are sequenced.

I am not sure if you address this particular phenomenological aspect of existence in your articles or videos, and if you have, please point me in that direction. My own idealist approach is about purifying and refining this intuitive knowing whenever we are engaged in intentional cognitive activity. Another useful example is singing. With our inner voice, we inscribe something in the phenomenal flow of experience which is not random. We have an intuitive orientation to the 'curvature' through which our voice vibrates. In our intuitive context, we have the dim awareness of the song as a whole, where along the song we are, how our voice curves, and so on. Although we can't represent this intuitive context of our intentional activity like we represent sensations, our feelings, or our mental pictures (thoughts), i.e. we can't encompass it as some type of perception 'in front of our mind's eye', that doesn't make it transcendent - it is still immanent to our real-time experience.

Can we refine this intuitive experience further and further, as if 'splitting an atom' to unleash more and more of the temporal intuition that is always implicit in this intentional activity? That is the question that spiritual science asks and answers in the affirmative, not in any theoretical way, but by illustrating exactly how it is done and what sort of knowledge can result from its scientific method. The concepts employed are analogous to this attached image - when we see the image, we won't assume it intends to give us third-person pictures of people doing asanas so we can memorize them and build up a theoretical model or framework, but rather it is giving us symbols that can anchor our first-person experience of going through the same physical motions. Likewise, the concepts of spiritual science are symbols of 'thought-asanas' that help us anchor our first-person experience of going through the same intuitive movements by which they were reached.



BK is an interesting case. If he understands Kant/Schop concretely, then it should be natural that he gravitates more toward JW's view of thinking precipitating from the top-down and formless 'MAL/energy potential'. Yet instead it seems he would borrow the mental pictures of elemental processes from the 'dashboard interface' and say thinking complexifies out of those. I haven't heard him comment on the details of the thinking process explicitly, either, although he has speculated on MAL's archetypal ideas before.

[Federica]

https://youtube.com/@ouroboricidealism? ... gVl14zKgLN

https://ouroboricidealism.medium.com/transcendental.

Is this the correct essay link?
From my side, it leads to a 404 page (and the video is difficult to listen to for me, with the basic AI voice).