Saving the materialists

[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.

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'.

Ashvin,

Isn’t that the only possibility in materialistic thinking. When one says, that quality’s are secondary, emergent phenomena which somehow spring into existence, then the secondary qualities are something equivalent to a lawful hallucination. Because like anil says, in the brain there is no sound, no color and so on but only quantitative information input, so there are no qualities outside of it. I’m not very familiar with materialistic philosophy and it different view points, so I just try to follow there thoughts. Did you read what Coleridge thought from Barfield? Seems like he has the same realization that Steiner had few decades before him.

[Federica]

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".

Yes, and BK is perhaps the perfect representative of this self-fulfilling, evolved materialism which converges more and more towards critical (analytical) idealism, and away from naïve realism. The good thing is, this “screen of perception” standpoint exposes both outlooks more and more clearly to the fatal error pointed out by Steiner in PoF, and reported at the beginning of this thread: if perception of reality is only our own subjective hallucination or dream, then we can’t count on our self-perception, and we can’t count on any “objective observations” of phenomena, since knowledge of those phenomena can only come to us through hallucinations of organs and brains, not through the real organs and brains, according to their premises.

[Güney27]

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.

So basically it’s the realization that there is only the given, and any attempt to understand it’s essence is projecting abstract models onto it, which isn’t very productive outside of the practical technological applications? Then it’s a very good step in my view, because it’s orient us back into our immediate experience, and points to the inability of the intellect to explain question beyond the scope of descriptive models for technology.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

Isn’t that the only possibility in materialistic thinking. When one says, that quality’s are secondary, emergent phenomena which somehow spring into existence, then the secondary qualities are something equivalent to a lawful hallucination. Because like anil says, in the brain there is no sound, no color and so on but only quantitative information input, so there are no qualities outside of it. I’m not very familiar with materialistic philosophy and it different view points, so I just try to follow there thoughts. Did you read what Coleridge thought from Barfield? Seems like he has the same realization that Steiner had few decades before him.

Yes, that's the only possibility when our mental pictures of 'the fount' (whether particles, waves, energy, God, MAL, etc.) are made into the foundation from which we imagine qualitative experience (including thinking experience) emerges. As our mental pictures grow dimmer and dimmer, more gray on gray, because they aren't replenished via conscious communion with the true Fount (the spiritual hierarchies), qualitative sensory experience begins to feel more and more like our personal dreamscape where we can indulge our pleasurable fantasies and not worry about how our actions fit into the wider World flow, since the latter has been abstracted into some inaccessible and inconceivable realm. This is related to how 'spiritual' people are increasingly pursuing psychedelics, lucid dreaming, and VR simulations as well. Underpinning a lot of these intellectual developments are simply the animalistic desires that many of us have grown accustomed to and subconsciously want to find a way of justifying. Even spiritual pursuits can become indulgent in this way if we rely on only our mental pictures of "higher worlds" and passively wait for the 'real higher worlds' to visit us in the future or after death.

I remember reading some of that book, but it's pretty hazy. Certainly a lot of 'Romantic' philosophers/artists had similar intuitions of higher worlds that took on more philosophical-scientific from around the time of Steiner. The unique thing about Steiner is that he channeled these intuitions not only into a philosophical, scientific, or theological system, but into a practical method of spiritualizing our thinking-feeling-willing consciousness. Not only the works on practices for higher cognition, but the whole of his philosophical works and spiritual science is such a method if we approach the communications in a living and artistic way. This sets Steiner's impulse (the Michaelic impulse) far apart from anyone who came before or even after him, to this day.

[lorenzop]

I'm advising to NOT use words ('dream') in a fluid and loose manner with the intent of weaking the materialism argument. Materialism, as a metaphysics, has enough problems as it is without straw manning.
IOW, advance the strongest materialism\physicalism position BEFORE attacking it.
The challenges it faces are more about how to account for mental phenomena within a physical framework, not about denying the reality of the physical world itself. Not that the physical world is dreamlike, but the generation of our experience of the world is dreamlike.

[AshvinP]

I'm advising to NOT use words ('dream') in a fluid and loose manner with the intent of weaking the materialism argument. Materialism, as a metaphysics, has enough problems as it is without straw manning.
IOW, advance the strongest materialism\physicalism position BEFORE attacking it.
The challenges it faces are more about how to account for mental phenomena within a physical framework, not about denying the reality of the physical world itself. Not that the physical world is dreamlike, but the generation of our experience of the world is dreamlike.

But that's simply incorrect - the strongest materialism/physicalism position is the one that every philosophically educated materialist has gravitated toward over recent decades. Why else would they gravitate toward it? Denying the reality of the 'physical world itself' (sensory experience and its lawful transformation as some fundamental reality) is exactly what they are doing, because they feel it's the most logically coherent possibility given their underlying axioms and the mounting evidence of QM, cognitive science, psychology, etc. They would call your understanding of 'the materialist argument' the biggest strawman because it's so easily refuted by both philosophy and science.

[Güney27]

I'm advising to NOT use words ('dream') in a fluid and loose manner with the intent of weaking the materialism argument. Materialism, as a metaphysics, has enough problems as it is without straw manning.
IOW, advance the strongest materialism\physicalism position BEFORE attacking it.
The challenges it faces are more about how to account for mental phenomena within a physical framework, not about denying the reality of the physical world itself. Not that the physical world is dreamlike, but the generation of our experience of the world is dreamlike.

I asked you if you could clarify my misunderstanding, you didn’t.
Now you claim that I’m strawmanning. I gave you a link to a video, where a neuroscientist with a completely standard materialistic framework explains the current view on the problem of perception.
Our conversation could be more fruitful, if you explain to me the misunderstanding that I’m not aware of. I’m not denying that there are other problems with the materialistic framework, but that’s another topic.

[lorenzop]

I'm advising to NOT use words ('dream') in a fluid and loose manner with the intent of weaking the materialism argument. Materialism, as a metaphysics, has enough problems as it is without straw manning.
IOW, advance the strongest materialism\physicalism position BEFORE attacking it.
The challenges it faces are more about how to account for mental phenomena within a physical framework, not about denying the reality of the physical world itself. Not that the physical world is dreamlike, but the generation of our experience of the world is dreamlike.

I asked you if you could clarify my misunderstanding, you didn’t.
Now you claim that I’m strawmanning. I gave you a link to a video, where a neuroscientist with a completely standard materialistic framework explains the current view on the problem of perception.
Our conversation could be more fruitful, if you explain to me the misunderstanding that I’m not aware of. I’m not denying that there are other problems with the materialistic framework, but that’s another topic.

I may have misunderstood your first post, and you did correct yourself in a following post. I’m clarifying that materialism doesn’t suggest that the world is a dream , but that our perception can be described as dream like or an hallucination. According to materialism the world is physical or independent of consciousness.
Note I am not defending materialism, only attempting to clarify the position.

[Güney27]

I'm advising to NOT use words ('dream') in a fluid and loose manner with the intent of weaking the materialism argument. Materialism, as a metaphysics, has enough problems as it is without straw manning.
IOW, advance the strongest materialism\physicalism position BEFORE attacking it.
The challenges it faces are more about how to account for mental phenomena within a physical framework, not about denying the reality of the physical world itself. Not that the physical world is dreamlike, but the generation of our experience of the world is dreamlike.

I asked you if you could clarify my misunderstanding, you didn’t.
Now you claim that I’m strawmanning. I gave you a link to a video, where a neuroscientist with a completely standard materialistic framework explains the current view on the problem of perception.
Our conversation could be more fruitful, if you explain to me the misunderstanding that I’m not aware of. I’m not denying that there are other problems with the materialistic framework, but that’s another topic.

I may have misunderstood your first post, and you did correct yourself in a following post. I’m clarifying that materialism doesn’t suggest that the world is a dream , but that our perception can be described as dream like or an hallucination. According to materialism the world is physical or independent of consciousness.
Note I am not defending materialism, only attempting to clarify the position.

Of course they think there are real entities ( I just mean something existing) that are unknowable in principle.

According to materialism the world is physical or independent of consciousness.

According to it the world (the term we use for our sense perception) is a hallucination, but something else is independent and the cause of it.

I agree that the term dream I used is a bit confusing.

[Güney27]

I don’t see how this answered my response. I think I have to use another Metapher instead of dream. But basically he just explained me his theory. Anyway, it’s thoughtful to contemplate.

JW:

„You ask exactly the right questions. As for scientific thought, such as physics, you have it right, and quantum physics has brought this to the forefront. In Heisenberg’s 1953 response to Heidegger in his essay “The Representation of Nature in Contemporary Physics” and his 1959 book “Physics and Philosophy” he talks of how science can no longer claim to study nature, but only our way of perceiving nature. What I call Prime Existence is Heisenberg’s cohered quantum state, which lies beyond our comprehension. Any attempt to understand it necessarily reverts to empty metaphysical invention, which his Copenhagen interpretation refuses. He further explains that no scientific theory could ever grasp the entire universe, and echoing Wigner, he sees systematic theories as severely limited and inevitably subject to dissolution. Quantum Mechanics was for Heisenberg an attempt to explain in classical terms what appears after wave collapse, which follows certain rules imposed by our innate modes of thought. Prime reality is what exists on the other side of wave collapse, which does not follow our rules and is beyond our comprehension. In your terms, we suddenly woke up to find we can’t really access our preconscious mind, an apt analogy for not being able to access prime existence.
Esthetic knowledge is entirely different. The waves you refer to are not prime existence, but the most primary level of existence we can experience. They are real in our universe and measurable. In the terms of quantum physics, we can thing of them as the closest Pointer State.

Esthetic knowledge requires a rethinking of what knowledge and truth are, which for millennia have been bound to objectivity and reason. As quantum discovery has shown us, objectivity and reason have great practical value, but only as a result of blinding ourselves to complexity. This gives us certain rules to follow within a very limited field but deceives us into thinking it is actually the truth. Whereas scientific knowledge gives us correct measurements and relations, it tell us nothing about what things are - their ontological essence. In other words, objective thought projects rules and conditions onto the universe which otherwise do not exist - that is the essence of objectivity. Esthetic knowledge, in contrast, opens itself to the EXPERIENCE of something, and when we inhere in that experience we access true essence. The implication is that the opening of ourselves to the experience, which accepts rather than imposes, gives a deeper knowledge that can be reduced to logic or objects. It has no practical value, but something more urgent - it grounds us in our own nature, which itself derives from prime existence. We are not separate from Prime Existence (or Quantum coherence) as we are a part of it. I think of this as conscious beings being the manner in which Prime Existence experiences itself. It is a sensual experience of the wavelike nature at the Pointer State of the universe. Much like the physicist John Archibald Wheeler’s “Universal U”. In so doing, philosopher leaves behind metaphysics and analytics and returns to its original task of experience the nature of what is, what we are, and our relation to what is.“