Saving the materialists

[Cleric]

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).

Try https://ouroboricidealism.medium.com/

[Güney27]

Here is a good place to start. Jw explains his position more clearly:

„This is my response to the all-important question posed by Father Adam MacMillan on social media – a medium insufficient to a proper response. Fr. MacMillan asked:

“No it doesn’t have meaning at the quantum level, but why is the quantum level the fundamental level? What if the fundamental level is the human level, and it gets less fundamental in either direction? Hence why relativity and quantum don’t reconcile?

How human consciousness relates to fundamental reality and the irreconcilable natures of quantum physics and relativity have been the leitmotif of my own thinking going back decades to conversations with Leon Lederman at Fermilab in ‘81/‘82. Lederman’s life work was the pursuit of the Grand Unification Theory. Arguing from Poincaré’s Four Geometries and Wigner’s Epistemological Law of Empiricism, I maintained that such a theory was impossible. In the intervening decades my thinking on this has broadened and increased my conviction of this position. From what you wrote, I assume we agree on that fundamental irreconcilability, but differ on the role of a god/creator, and how our consciousness plays into this mystery.

If your suggestion is right that human understanding is the fundamental level, it would seem to follow that our correct view of existence should be capable of understanding it all levels. If our perspective is the fundamental truth, then everything should accord with it. But it doesn’t, which to me suggests that our limited conditions of objective thought are at fault. Let me suggest another approach to this.

The emergence of Quantum Mechanics a century ago was a detonation far more devastating than the atom bomb. Far more than just two cities, it obliterated any possibility of a “worldview”. Before going further, however, it is important to note that QM is a purely classical interpretation of a nonclassical reality. It is a measured quantification of probabilities seen from our emergent consciousness of classical events that points to a reality that violates our very conditions of thought. Rationality in the form of the principle of non-contradiction, locality (and now the very notion of space and time), and causality fail to penetrate the impermeable wall of decoherence. That is why the Copenhagen Interpretation remains the only viable approach. Bohr was a staunch Kantian who refused to project objective categories of thought onto the noumenal. Any attempt to describe quantum reality would necessarily be a projection of our conditions of thought onto an inconceivable reality, and therefore necessarily be wrong. Transcendental Illusion. Thus: shut up and calculate.

We can, therefore, only know of this reality negatively: without causality, without order, without time or space, etc. When we do attempt its description, it is necessarily with inadequate metaphors bound in space and time. Waves, quantum fields, superposition, events, etc. Even the name of “quantum” physics is inapt, as quanta don’t exist as separate entities (number), but simply in our measure of a quantum energy spike along a wave. We simply have no entry into this reality, which has had the unfortunate effect of much of physics descending into its own retreat to metaphysics. In too many cases physics has become the modern Scholasticism, with mathematics as its holy scripture creating ever more fantastical structures, and ending in meaningless conversations of how many worlds can fit on the head of a graviton. In short, the imposition of Ideas rather than knowledge from experience. Bacon would be aghast.

It seems to me the case that our consciousness, at least our objective reasoning, is an adaptation from mammalian consciousness to reduce the environment to carefully selected objects in a small subsystem we can manipulate for advantage. It has nothing to do with ultimate reality, and everything to do with survival. Objective thinking was of practical origin and that remains its primary characteristic; and reduction is the mechanism. Reduction from quantum superposition to eigentstate; from entanglement to causality. And from sensation to object, and from object to idea – all out of harmony with the underlying reality. In front of us (an unavoidable spatial metaphor not to be taken literally) is this incomprehensible reality known to us only as the tiniest reduction that we experience as space, time, color, and substance. We are literally blind to almost everything “in front of us”. Our “world” operates as it does because we interpret the energy we sense as small subsystems. Going back to Wigner, when we expand beyond that limited time, space, and chosen events the order dissipates and chaos recovers what belongs to it. As in the cases of QM and Relativity. A more contemporary expansion of this would be Carlo Rovelli’s Relativistic Interpretation where time and understanding rely on “Ignorance” of almost everything in existence.

But there is another aspect of human consciousness where you and I meet again, although with different interpretations: The more primordial mode of esthetic experience. It is here your most important question of all finds its rightful ground: “What if the fundamental level is the human level?” But of course we are – how could we be otherwise?

We are fundamentally entangled with all the rest of existence and not separate from “nature” in the way subject/object representation leads us to believe. In the less reductive event of esthetic experience we are aware of an immediate connection, and profoundly. The sensation of color or music is a direct response to the flow of energy that entangles us, and far more powerful than a concept of measurement and calculation. Or an Idea. You and I both search for a path to the holy, and we both look to human experience to provide that path. But as I see it, the trick is to resist metaphysical projection, by which I mean attributing our representational conditions of thought where they have no application. The idea of a creator, or a beginning at all, is such a projection that uproots us from the ground of experience. The hints that quantum reality provides deny such projections, and the insistence of a god, or creator, or rational explanation is the error of our impudently telling existence what it is. To listen esthetically/non-metaphysically, however is to listen to what existence has to tell us. This is what we need to learn to hear the fundamental reality in which we are already a part. “Too late for the gods, too early for Being”.

Perhaps still too early, but there are hints left for us along the way. Authentic esthetic events that point to a fulfilling of our true nature. Beethoven, Shakespeare, Blake, and Van Gogh immediately spring to my mind. Wittgenstein was resigned to our being limited to just pointing at the mystery, but I insist music, poetry, and art are our true modes of pointing – which is not really pointing but a mutually entangled communication.

And here we finally meet at the most profound experience: love. But then I’m an unapologetic and unreconstructed hippy from the Summer of Love, when Being did shine through for a brief moment and the music become so think in the air we couldn’t help but sing. But too early, and soon we retook shelter in the dark. We weren’t ready. That revelation, however, remains as one more trace pointing the way.

Which leads us to our final question of intentionality. I suspect it is so as our being is an instance of fundamental existence striving to experience itself, with man being one stop on that journey. And that is the fount of the holy drawn from the very essence of fundamental existence in which we share as part of fundamental existence. At at the font is overwhelming love, which we are yet too weak to be.“

[AshvinP]

Here is a good place to start. Jw explains his position more clearly:

He would probably love Felipe's ideas and reasoning, which is practically the same, except would question why the Fount should be ideal in nature rather than pure (abstract) chaos/nothingness/energy (that is somehow also the fount of Love). I almost wonder if inviting him to consider Felipe's work could help him realize why immanent cognitive representations are always more fundamental than the ideas reached through them, such as 'negatively known quantum reality'. The rigorously logical philosophical approach that feels itself at home in 'transcendental solipsism' may appeal to him. Eventually the aspect of formless, non-represented cognitive activity would need to be introduced as well, for which our metaphorical concepts (and meditative symbols) can act as portals to heighten inner sensitivity.

Some other questions that pop to mind:

How does cognition reduce the fundamental reality if it is not active along the whole spectrum? How can cognition trapped by objective categories divorced from the Fount rely on evolutionary explanations for thinking consciousness, without succumbing to transcendental illusion? (one must project modern categorical thought forms back into the evolutionary process to rely on the latter). If philosophical-scientific cognition is fundamentally out of harmony with reality, how can we rely on it to discern the relatively greater proximity of esthetic perception to the Fount? Why can't the experience of esthetic color, sound, etc., which suggests profound entanglement with the Fount, be left as it is without adding the concept of 'flow of energy' behind the experience - aren't we more experientially sound when we stick with the esthetic experience and don't imagine quantum energy waves or whatever that should "explain" it?

[Güney27]

Here is a good place to start. Jw explains his position more clearly:

He would probably love Felipe's ideas and reasoning, which is practically the same, except would question why the Fount should be ideal in nature rather than pure (abstract) chaos/nothingness/energy (that is somehow also the fount of Love). I almost wonder if inviting him to consider Felipe's work could help him realize why immanent cognitive representations are always more fundamental than the ideas reached through them, such as 'negatively known quantum reality'. The rigorously logical philosophical approach that feels itself at home in 'transcendental solipsism' may appeal to him. Eventually the aspect of formless, non-represented cognitive activity would need to be introduced as well, for which our metaphorical concepts (and meditative symbols) can act as portals to heighten inner sensitivity.

Some other questions that pop to mind:

How does cognition reduce the fundamental reality if it is not active along the whole spectrum? How can cognition trapped by objective categories divorced from the Fount rely on evolutionary explanations for thinking consciousness, without succumbing to transcendental illusion? (one must project modern categorical thought forms back into the evolutionary process to rely on the latter). If philosophical-scientific cognition is fundamentally out of harmony with reality, how can we rely on it to discern the relatively greater proximity of esthetic perception to the Fount? Why can't the experience of esthetic color, sound, etc., which suggests profound entanglement with the Fount, be left as it is without adding the concept of 'flow of energy' behind the experience - aren't we more experientially sound when we stick with the esthetic experience and don't imagine quantum energy waves or whatever that should "explain" it?

Ashvin,

If you are interested in engaging in a conversation again with him, I think I could probably arrange that. Just let me know. The questions are really good. There is so many to clarify.
For example when he says that reasoning accrued according to evolutionary processes in the Savana, he imposes something like naive realism on the whole scene, because he believes that there is no brain, no Savana, no things. They are just symbols perceived by humans in our time. How are self organization of energy isn’t reductive knowledge? And how do these energy (whatever that is) „produce“ consciousness? I’m waiting for he’s response on the last question I asked.

What is transcendental solipsism?

[AshvinP]

Here is a good place to start. Jw explains his position more clearly:

He would probably love Felipe's ideas and reasoning, which is practically the same, except would question why the Fount should be ideal in nature rather than pure (abstract) chaos/nothingness/energy (that is somehow also the fount of Love). I almost wonder if inviting him to consider Felipe's work could help him realize why immanent cognitive representations are always more fundamental than the ideas reached through them, such as 'negatively known quantum reality'. The rigorously logical philosophical approach that feels itself at home in 'transcendental solipsism' may appeal to him. Eventually the aspect of formless, non-represented cognitive activity would need to be introduced as well, for which our metaphorical concepts (and meditative symbols) can act as portals to heighten inner sensitivity.

Some other questions that pop to mind:

How does cognition reduce the fundamental reality if it is not active along the whole spectrum? How can cognition trapped by objective categories divorced from the Fount rely on evolutionary explanations for thinking consciousness, without succumbing to transcendental illusion? (one must project modern categorical thought forms back into the evolutionary process to rely on the latter). If philosophical-scientific cognition is fundamentally out of harmony with reality, how can we rely on it to discern the relatively greater proximity of esthetic perception to the Fount? Why can't the experience of esthetic color, sound, etc., which suggests profound entanglement with the Fount, be left as it is without adding the concept of 'flow of energy' behind the experience - aren't we more experientially sound when we stick with the esthetic experience and don't imagine quantum energy waves or whatever that should "explain" it?

Ashvin,

If you are interested in engaging in a conversation again with him, I think I could probably arrange that. Just let me know. The questions are really good. There is so many to clarify.
For example when he says that reasoning accrued according to evolutionary processes in the Savana, he imposes something like naive realism on the whole scene, because he believes that there is no brain, no Savana, no things. They are just symbols perceived by humans in our time. How are self organization of energy isn’t reductive knowledge? And how do these energy (whatever that is) „produce“ consciousness? I’m waiting for he’s response on the last question I asked.

What is transcendental solipsism?

If he is interested on joining a forum thread, we could give it another shot. I always expect most of the value will come from us exploring the perspective and discerning the ways in which it strays from phenomenological experience of spiritual activity, and stretching our imagination to find ways of communicating the core ideas. Perhaps JW could also gain some insights in the process, who knows. But if he is only interested in joining a discussion to teach us about the nature of quantum reality and answer our questions about his position, like last time, then things won't get very far. There is simply no chance to become more sensitive to inner experience without being actively engaged and approaching with the idea that there could be something new to learn.

[AshvinP]

What is transcendental solipsism?

From what I understand, it is similar to what JW expressed except more internally consistent. If this is the case - "Any attempt to describe quantum reality would necessarily be a projection of our conditions of thought onto an inconceivable reality, and therefore necessarily be wrong" - and we take it seriously enough, then we should be wary of even speaking about some noumenal quantum reality that can be approached, positively or negatively. Even such negative or metaphorical descriptions are falling into the trap of transcendental illusion. All we know is our current state and its immanent experiential aspects. Whether there are other entagled objects, fields, minds, past, future, primal fount, etc. simply can't be known or coherently spoken about through speculative philosophy.

In a certain sense, this is the kind of starting point we also need to work our way through to steer clear of ordinary philosophical habits and prepare the grounds for a phenomenology of spiritual activity. For the latter, we don't need to go beyond the current lawfully metamorphosing state and its intuitve knowing aspect and speculate on quantum or conscious domains of reality. Eventually, though, it dawns on us that this intuitive knowing aspect can be greatly refined through symbolic spiritual scientiifc concepts, imaginations, and meditative symbols, and even ordinary sensory concepts attained via natural science when understood in their symbolic function. Then the whole World content becomes a means of growing more inwardly sensitive to the primal entangled symphony, when met with our creative and moral intentions.

If we were to establish some of these basic foundations, then I wonder whether something similar to this exercise could be helpful for someone like JW who places much value on esthetic (imaginative) perception - viewtopic.php?p=24162#p24162. Ultimately we need to realize we are already inwardly active at deeper scales beyond the planar (objective) thinking that understandably feels flat and crippled to reach higher truths for most people who have thought our modern experience through.

[lorenzop]

Reading Owen Barfield StA and PoF again made me thinking about the standard theory of perception in the current perspective of mainstream materialism. If, like the materialist think, the world around us is only a dream, somehow generated trough our senses and the stimulis of the unrepresented, that would implicate that the brain and the senses are dream pictures too, and that would negate any knowledge. It would defeat its own axioms. Like Barfield pointed out, that would mean there was no evolution we could know about, and all neuroscience would be worthless. It’s a very simple fact that anybody without training in these fields could understand quite easily. Realizing this more deeply made me think that if it is so easy to acknowledge, why the mainstream world view hasn’t changed after this works been published. Either I don’t understand the mainstream materialistic view completely, or they are really not thinking that far. If this line of thought is completely valid, I’m what sense would scientific research like levins for example, would make really sense under the assumption mentioned above. I really try to understand the materialistic thinking person in a sense. But I don’t know to many in person which are very educated in philosophy or science in real life, which I could ask to investigate their thought context.

Mainstream materialism does not suggest the world "is only a dream". Mainstream materialism suggests the world is physical, and our perception of this physical world is highly veridical. I'm not defending it, just pointing this out.
Perhaps you're suggesting materialism says our perception is dream-like - in that like dreams, our perception of the world is generated within our skull. Even so, materialists do not suggest the world is a dream. I think you are misrepresenting materialism.

[Güney27]

Reading Owen Barfield StA and PoF again made me thinking about the standard theory of perception in the current perspective of mainstream materialism. If, like the materialist think, the world around us is only a dream, somehow generated trough our senses and the stimulis of the unrepresented, that would implicate that the brain and the senses are dream pictures too, and that would negate any knowledge. It would defeat its own axioms. Like Barfield pointed out, that would mean there was no evolution we could know about, and all neuroscience would be worthless. It’s a very simple fact that anybody without training in these fields could understand quite easily. Realizing this more deeply made me think that if it is so easy to acknowledge, why the mainstream world view hasn’t changed after this works been published. Either I don’t understand the mainstream materialistic view completely, or they are really not thinking that far. If this line of thought is completely valid, I’m what sense would scientific research like levins for example, would make really sense under the assumption mentioned above. I really try to understand the materialistic thinking person in a sense. But I don’t know to many in person which are very educated in philosophy or science in real life, which I could ask to investigate their thought context.

Mainstream materialism does not suggest the world "is only a dream". Mainstream materialism suggests the world is physical, and our perception of this physical world is highly veridical. I'm not defending it, just pointing this out.
Perhaps you're suggesting materialism says our perception is dream-like - in that like dreams, our perception of the world is generated within our skull. Even so, materialists do not suggest the world is a dream. I think you are misrepresenting materialism.

Hi lorenzop,

The word dream isn’t probably a good one. But the physicalist view is (there are different perspectives of course) that there is a world devoid of all qualitative aspects of our experience (without colors, sensations, smells, meanings ……) that is only material or physical. There are just this stimulating physical „things“ that are absorbed by your senses, and somehow trough the whole processes in the brain, you experience a world, full of qualities. Your brain constructs your consciousness. That is the standard perspective of materialistic thinking about the nature of perception.




The criticism Barfield and Steiner have written in their books, still hold the same ground because although these theories are much more detailed now, their principles aren’t new. Anil Seth is a perfect example of a neuroscientist who is talking about these ideas. For him consciousness of the world is a „controlled hallucination“.
What exactly do you think I am misrepresenting?

[Federica]

Mainstream materialism does not suggest the world "is only a dream". Mainstream materialism suggests the world is physical, and our perception of this physical world is highly veridical. I'm not defending it, just pointing this out.
Perhaps you're suggesting materialism says our perception is dream-like - in that like dreams, our perception of the world is generated within our skull. Even so, materialists do not suggest the world is a dream. I think you are misrepresenting materialism.

You know what, Lorenzo? When I read Güney’s post the first time, for a moment I thought exactly like you: “Materialism says the opposite! It says that reality exists out there independent of us, quantifiably, not that the world is a dream”.

But the issue with this thought is, it’s too attached to the truth of the word, to a supposedly strict definition of the word “dream” in a very specific way. You may think: A word has an exact definition, and whatever meaning lies outside that definition is false. The problem is, this attitude is not helpful for understanding and self-understanding. In fact, the meaning of “dream” is not entirely captured in any exact definition. We need fluid concepts. This has nothing to do with Steiner or esoteric doctrines. This is more and more recognized by mainstream logic and science, too. See this article, for instance:

Researchers have invented a new system of logic that could boost critical thinking and AI

The modern discipline of logic, the sturdy backbone of science, engineering, and technology, has a fundamental problem. For the last two millennia, the philosophical and mathematical foundation of logic has been the view that meaning derives from what words refer to. It assumes the existence of abstract categories of objects floating around the universe, such as the concept of “fox” or “female” and defines the notion “truth” in terms of facts about these categories.

For example, consider the statement, “Tammy is a vixen”. What does it mean? The traditional answer is that there exists a category of creatures called “vixens” and the name “Tammy” refers to one of them. The proposition is true just in the case that “Tammy” really is in the category of “vixen”. If she isn’t a vixen, but identifies as one, the statement would be false according to standard logic.

Logical consequence is therefore obtained purely by facts of truth and not by process of reasoning. Consequently, it can’t tell the difference between, say, the equations 4=4 and 4=((2 x 52 ) -10)/10 simply because they are both true, but most of us would notice a difference. If our theory of logic can’t handle this, what hope do we have to teach more refined, more subtle thinking to AI? What hope do we have of figuring out what is right and what is wrong in the age of post-truth?

This is quoted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here.

If your navigation through the meaning of Güney’s post doesn’t glance beyond the first step in the reasoning - the word "dream" - to try and triangulate how to find early on the overall meaningful trajectory, then the risk is that you focus on the first word, “dream”, and rush in the direction indicated by the strict definition of “dream” according to your life experience, and you are led away from the meaning Güney was building up using a number of words as an organic whole.

This is the inferentialist account of meaning; rather than assuming abstract categories of objects floating around the universe, we recognise that understanding is given by a rich web of relationships between elements of our language.
Consider controversial topics today, such as those around gender. We bypass those metaphysical questions blocking constructive discourse, such as about whether the categories of “male” or “female” are real in some sense. Such questions don’t make sense in the new logic because many people don’t believe “female” is necessarily one category with one true meaning.
As an inferentialist, given a proposition such as “Tammy is female”, one would only ask what one may infer from the statement: one person might draw conclusions about Tammy’s biological characteristics, another about her psychological makeup, while yet another might consider a completely different facet of her identity.

This is quoted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here.

...and you are all about tolerance too, right? Let’s be tolerant and fluid with words and concepts as well

[AshvinP]

Reading Owen Barfield StA and PoF again made me thinking about the standard theory of perception in the current perspective of mainstream materialism. If, like the materialist think, the world around us is only a dream, somehow generated trough our senses and the stimulis of the unrepresented, that would implicate that the brain and the senses are dream pictures too, and that would negate any knowledge. It would defeat its own axioms. Like Barfield pointed out, that would mean there was no evolution we could know about, and all neuroscience would be worthless. It’s a very simple fact that anybody without training in these fields could understand quite easily. Realizing this more deeply made me think that if it is so easy to acknowledge, why the mainstream world view hasn’t changed after this works been published. Either I don’t understand the mainstream materialistic view completely, or they are really not thinking that far. If this line of thought is completely valid, I’m what sense would scientific research like levins for example, would make really sense under the assumption mentioned above. I really try to understand the materialistic thinking person in a sense. But I don’t know to many in person which are very educated in philosophy or science in real life, which I could ask to investigate their thought context.

Mainstream materialism does not suggest the world "is only a dream". Mainstream materialism suggests the world is physical, and our perception of this physical world is highly veridical. I'm not defending it, just pointing this out.
Perhaps you're suggesting materialism says our perception is dream-like - in that like dreams, our perception of the world is generated within our skull. Even so, materialists do not suggest the world is a dream. I think you are misrepresenting materialism.

In addition to Anil Seth, I would also point out Carlo Rovelli who JW referenced and seems to align closely with. There is an unmistakable trend of materialist thinkers moving more and more toward 'the world is only a dream/hallucination/simulation" etc. We have to realize that materialism as a philosophical outlook (but not necessarily as a way of living) has vastly evolved since the 19th century where the physical world we perceive was considered 'real' and 'veridical'. And this could be the only logical progression for it, since the role of thinking-thought (still often referred to as 'the brain') in structuring perception is becoming more and more evident. Therefore perception becomes more and more subjectivized like thought and whatever inconceivable domain is left over is postulated as the "true reality".

As Barfield put it, "Twentieth-century science has abolished the 'thing' altogether; and twentieth-century philosophy (that part of it, at least, which takes no account of imagination) has obediently followed suit. There are no objects, says the voice of Science, there are only bundles of waves or possibly something else; adding that, although it is convenient to think of them, it would be naïve to suppose that the waves or the something else actually exist. There is no 'referent', echoes the philosophy of linguistic analysis deferentially, no substance or underlying reality which is 'meant' by words."

For JW, Rovelli, et al., it is becoming naïve to suppose that any familiar sensory perception or concept can illuminate the veridical structure of reality. Likewise, Steiner predicted the intensification of this trend which was already evident at the beginning of the 20th century:

At present the physicists only talk about there being nothing outside us but vibrations, and that it is these that, for example, bring about red in us. What the physicists dream of today will come true. At present they only dream of it, but it will then be true. People will... "know" that all those things are caused by their own organism. They will consider it a superstition that there are colors outside that tint objects. The outer world will be grey in grey and human beings will be conscious of the fact that they themselves put the colors into the world... People who then see only the outer reality will say to the others who still see colors in their full freshness, “Oh, you dreamers! Do you really believe there are colors outside in nature? You do not know that you are only dreaming inside yourself that nature has these colors.” Outer nature will become more and more a matter of mathematics and geometry. ... People in the future will not believe that the capacity to see colors in the outer world has any objective significance; they will ascribe it purely to subjectivity.

- Rudolf Steiner, Necessity and Freedom (1916)

For JW, though, he at least leaves a door open for aesthetic experience, similar to Schop. I wonder if he is familiar with Barfield, who also philosophized about the spiritual nature of poetry and the evolution of consciousness from 'original participation' to our modern human solipsistic state, and from that to 'final participation'.