Philosophical Speculations

Cleric, we seem to be finally converging to some common ground. What you wrote about converging of Ideal and Perceptional into One at the level of Absolute is fine, I agree. But I was pointing to a different aspect when talking about formless (Experiencing/Volition). Both Ideas and Perceptions are equally consciously Volitional (from the Creator- perspective) and consciously Experienced. The Experiencing-Volitional "force" of Thinking pertains to both Ideas and Perceptions in the same way. All Perceptions are Experienced, and in the same way all Ideas are Experienced. In Scotts terms, The Formless is that which "moves" both Ideas and Perceptions and which Experiences them both.

Eugene I wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 4:07 pm All Perceptions are Experienced, and in the same way all Ideas are Experienced. In Scotts terms, The Formless is that which "moves" both Ideas and Perceptions and which Experiences them both.

When you say that "The Formless is that which "moves" both Ideas and Perceptions" how do you conceive the nature of the volitional moving force of the Formless? Is it guided by Idea? Does it react to Perceptions? Or it's some completely different conscious element which knows how and why it wants to move Ideas and Perceptions, even though this element is completely free from Idea (which would imply that Thinking could never understand the motive of the movement)?

Cleric K wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 6:17 pm When you say that "The Formless is that which "moves" both Ideas and Perceptions" how do you conceive the nature of the volitional moving force of the Formless? Is it guided by Idea? Does it react to Perceptions? Or it's some completely different conscious element which knows how and why it wants to move Ideas and Perceptions, even though this element is completely free from Idea (which would imply that Thinking could never understand the motive of the movement)?

I will not pretend that I know the definite answers, but IMO it's like a two-ways relation so that the formless is what "moves" and experiences the ideas, but ideas are what also shape the experiences and volitional acts of the formless, but without firm conditioning, so that there is interdependence and relations but not deterministic conditioning of formless by forms (otherwise there would be no free will).

Eugene I wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 7:14 pm

Cleric K wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 6:17 pm When you say that "The Formless is that which "moves" both Ideas and Perceptions" how do you conceive the nature of the volitional moving force of the Formless? Is it guided by Idea? Does it react to Perceptions? Or it's some completely different conscious element which knows how and why it wants to move Ideas and Perceptions, even though this element is completely free from Idea (which would imply that Thinking could never understand the motive of the movement)?

I will not pretend that I know the definite answers, but IMO it's like a two-ways relation so that the formless is what "moves" and experiences the ideas, but ideas are what also shape the experiences and volitional acts of the formless, but without firm conditioning, so that there is interdependence and relations but not deterministic conditioning of formless by forms (otherwise there would be no free will).

Eugene, you may have missed my questions before, which are also relevant to what you say above in response to Cleric:

Ashvin wrote:You are proposing a fourfold Unity of W-F-T-E. OK, but the question is and has always been, why are you adding "E" when its unifying knowing function is also accommodated by "T"? Why are we creating two different kinds of "Knowing", one by "T" and one by "E"? Or are you removing "Knowing" from "T" altogether?

Or let me rephrase the question as follows - when you were/are in a state of pure "Experiential knowing", do you hear a booming voice which says to you, "Eugene, listen up! This is pure Experiencing talking to you. There will come a day when you are on a metaphysics forum and people there will attempt to confuse My activity with that of my son, Thinking. You must not let this happen! You must intervene to defend My honor! Even though My activity sounds exactly the same as that of my son Thinking, he is NOT Me and I am NOT him. I really hate it when people get us mixed up, even if it makes no practical difference... they may try to point out I cannot even be saying these meaningful things to you without the activity of my son Thinking, but do not listen to them for they are simply trying to deceive you with My son's arguments. So, make sure they do not lump Me in with the activity of my son Thinking under any circumstances!" Or something to that effect?

DandelionSoul wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 3:29 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 2:19 pm No problem! And don't be turned off by all of our (mostly my) contentious side debates with people here, we have been going at some of these issues like that for awhile. There is no love lost

Thank you for consideration of the essays as well. Deep M@L essay was written by Cleric, who I must say played a huge role in my inspiration to begin writing essays myself. Yes, every experience consists in those three activities. There is also deep connection to the Christian Trinity, although I prefer not to speak of it that way because it runs a high risk of idolatry i.e. assuming the living essence of the Godhead roughly corresponds to our intellectual concepts of those activities. That being said, we could tentatively say it is Father (W), Son (F), and Holy Spirit (T). Of course none of these concepts matter nearly as much as what they are pointing to, which is that we must align our W-F-T to reunite with the Divine and that always starts with Self-knowledge.

You'll get no argument from me about idolatry. Metaphysicians are especially at risk of falling for the most insidious sort of idol: the kind we keep in our heads and build out of words and concepts. I tend to think that our relationship to metaphysical concepts (including, and perhaps especially, God concepts) ought to be understood as a little bit more akin to an icon, a picture that helps us connect to the reality it represents, and we run into trouble if we start imagining that those pictures are the reality.

Exactly! Especially in the wake of Descartes and Kant, and their mind-matter and ontic-epistemic dualisms, that sort of idolatry is extremely commonplace in analytic philosophy. I don't think it is much of an exaggeration to say 95% of confusions and incoherences in modern philosophy can be attributed to those dualisms, including many of the ones which plague this forum from time to time. They are especially insidious, as you say, because everyone thinks they apply to someone else's argument and not their own! What about me? Well, I am sure they influence me from time to time, but to the extent they do not influence my writing it is because I explicitly keep them in mind whenever making any sort of philosophical argument, and a good chunk of those arguments are explicitly directed towards pointing out the flaws in that implicitly dualist line of reasoning.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 7:39 pm Or let me rephrase the question as follows - when you were/are in a state of pure "Experiential knowing", do you hear a booming voice which says to you, "Eugene, listen up! This is pure Experiencing talking to you. There will come a day when you are on a metaphysics forum and people there will attempt to confuse My activity with that of my son, Thinking. You must not let this happen! You must intervene to defend My honor! Even though My activity sounds exactly the same as that of my son Thinking, he is NOT Me and I am NOT him. I really hate it when people get us mixed up, even if it makes no practical difference... they may try to point out I cannot even be saying these meaningful things to you without the activity of my son Thinking, but do not listen to them for they are simply trying to deceive you with My son's arguments. So, make sure they do not lump Me in with the activity of my son Thinking under any circumstances!" Or something to that effect?

I think we are just getting confused by terminology.
There is an overall Wholeness of All-There-Is. I call it Reality, or Consciousness, but if you insist that we should call it Thinking, and I'm OK with that.

This Wholeness inseparably includes all aspects - both formless and forms, forces and results of forces, including experiencing, willing, feeling, idea-manipulation and ideas, imaginations, intuitions, sensations and perhaps some other facets unknown to us humans. It gets a little confusing when we call both the Wholeness and the idea-manipulation aspect with the same word "Thinking", so I would use small letter "thinking" for idea-manipulation force, and capital-letter Thinking for the Wholeness.

But what crucially distinguishes it from materialism or other metaphysics is that all of these forms, ideas and aspects are consciously Experienced/Known by/to Consciousness/Thinking. Consciousness/Thinking experiences itself in every of its aspect, volition, idea and form. As opposed to that, matter is always a "zombie-machine": even if it may be formed into a highly intelligent AI, it does not consciously Experience anything, it does not "see" the blueness of the sky. It's only Consciousness that can Experience and Know the blueness of the sky. So The Experiencing is the key hallmark/aspect of Consciousness, but of course not the only one.

So ignoring Experiencing is similar to ignoring Volition - if we ignore Volition as one of the key forces/aspects of Thinking, we are left with no free will and Thinking is reduced to a deterministic machine. Likewise, if we ignore/drop Experiencing/Knowing as one of the key aspects of Thinking, we are left with a "zombie-mode thinking" that can be highly intelligent but would not consciously experience anything. That is why Experiencing told me: "make sure they do not lump Me in with the activity of my son Thinking under any circumstances!" I mean, being inseparable, it is still always lumped together into the Wholeness (from the ontological perspective), but that does not mean it can be ignored (from the epistemological perspective).

Eugene I wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:14 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 7:39 pm Or let me rephrase the question as follows - when you were/are in a state of pure "Experiential knowing", do you hear a booming voice which says to you, "Eugene, listen up! This is pure Experiencing talking to you. There will come a day when you are on a metaphysics forum and people there will attempt to confuse My activity with that of my son, Thinking. You must not let this happen! You must intervene to defend My honor! Even though My activity sounds exactly the same as that of my son Thinking, he is NOT Me and I am NOT him. I really hate it when people get us mixed up, even if it makes no practical difference... they may try to point out I cannot even be saying these meaningful things to you without the activity of my son Thinking, but do not listen to them for they are simply trying to deceive you with My son's arguments. So, make sure they do not lump Me in with the activity of my son Thinking under any circumstances!" Or something to that effect?

I think we are just getting confused by terminology.
There is an overall Wholeness of All-There-Is. I call it Reality, or Consciousness, but if you insist that we should call it Thinking, and I'm OK with that.

This Wholeness inseparably includes all aspects - both formless and forms, forces and results of forces, including experiencing, willing, feeling, idea-manipulation and ideas, imaginations, intuitions, sensations and perhaps some other facets unknown to us humans. It gets a little confusing when we call both the Wholeness and the idea-manipulation aspect with the same word "Thinking", so I would use small letter "thinking" for idea-manipulation force, and capital-letter Thinking for the Wholeness.

But what crucially distinguishes it from materialism or other metaphysics is that all of these forms, ideas and aspects are consciously Experienced/Known by/to Consciousness/Thinking. Consciousness/Thinking experiences itself in every of its aspect, volition, idea and form. As opposed to that, matter is always a "zombie-machine": even if it may be formed into a highly intelligent AI, it does not consciously Experience anything, it does not "see" the blueness of the sky. It's only Consciousness that can Experience and Know the blueness of the sky. So The Experiencing is the key hallmark/aspect of Consciousness, but of course not the only one.

So ignoring Experiencing is similar to ignoring Volition - if we ignore Volition as one of the key forces/aspects of Thinking, we are left with no free will and Thinking is reduced to a deterministic machine. Likewise, if we ignore/drop Experiencing/Knowing as one of the key aspects of Thinking, we are left with a "zombie-mode thinking" that can be highly intelligent but would not consciously experience anything. That is why Experiencing told me: "make sure they do not lump Me in with the activity of my son Thinking under any circumstances!" I mean, being inseparable, it is still always lumped together into the Wholeness (from the ontological perspective), but that does not mean it can be ignored (from the epistemological perspective).

Alright so then I will modify my question to ask, why are you separating "experiencing" and "knowing" of the sky's blueness. It is an ontological separation, because we all agree "matter" does not actually exist - the Wholeness is only mental activity. So if you say "Experiencing" is a form of "knowing" the sky's blueness which is not encompassed by the "knowing" of the sky's blueness via "Thinking", then there are two separate essences of "knowing". Does the "knowing" via Experiencing reflect the meaning of "blue sky" to us like the knowing of Thinking, or is it devoid of all meaning? If the latter, then what exactly is the function of this "knowing" via Experiencing?

I won't speak for Cleric, but I think it's clear that I am asking these questions mostly as a way to point out how non-parsimonious, confusing and redundant your approach to "knowing" is. I cannot imagine any suitable answers to the questions above, but maybe you will surprise me. You may also claim that you are simply relating your personal experience, but then my question about the booming voice becomes a literal one - how is it that you are so certain this "Experiential knowing" is the not the same exact activity as what we are calling "Thinking knowing" (which encompasses all the aspects of Thinking Cleric has discussed before)?

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:29 pm Alright so then I will modify my question to ask, why are you separating "experiencing" and "knowing" of the sky's blueness. It is an ontological separation, because we all agree "matter" does not actually exist - the Wholeness is only mental activity. So if you say "Experiencing" is a form of "knowing" the sky's blueness which is not encompassed by the "knowing" of the sky's blueness via "Thinking", then there are two separate essences of "knowing". Does the "knowing" via Experiencing reflect the meaning of "blue sky" to us like the knowing of Thinking, or is it devoid of all meaning? If the latter, then what exactly is the function of this "knowing" via Experiencing?

I won't speak for Cleric, but I think it's clear that I am asking these questions mostly as a way to point out how non-parsimonious, confusing and redundant your approach to "knowing" is. I cannot imagine any suitable answers to the questions above, but maybe you will surprise me. You may also claim that you are simply relating your personal experience, but then my question about the booming voice becomes a literal one - how is it that you are so certain this "Experiential knowing" is the not the same exact activity as what we are calling "Thinking knowing" (which encompasses all the aspects of Thinking Cleric has discussed before)?

We are slowly walking through terminological woods, because it seems that we use the same words but imply different meanings.

When I say Experience/(slash)Knowing, I use slash as a sign of sinonimity, not a sign of separation.

Now, there are two different meanings of the word "to know". One is to know some meaning intellectually: "I know that NY is located in US" or "I know that 2x2=4" or "I know that the sky is blue". Such knowing is the knowing of meanings, I'll call it knowing-1. The other meaning of the word "to know" is to know "experientially" - to "see", "experience" and "experientially know" the blueness of the sky (knowing-2). Even when we think about abstract ideas like an idea of a circle and know-1 their meanings, we still also simultaneously know-2 them - we also experience the meanings and ideas. It is true that in reality both are always lumped together - you can not know-1 any meaning without also experiencing/knowing-2 that meaning, and you can not know-2 any form (idea, sensation, feeling) without knowing-1 its meaning at least to a tiny degree.

So if that's the case, why am I still distinguishing them (notice: distinguishing, not separating!)? First, its because knowing-1, according to our experience, is widely variable - we can be in a highly intelligent mode deeply comprehending the meanings and even, in super-cognitive mode, comprehending Cosmic Meanings, or we can be in a dumb mode like deep sleep hardly comprehending any meanings at all. However, knowing-2 never ever changes: we still experientially equally clearly know-2/experience every form, sensation or idea that appear in our space of consciousness. Second, materialistic-AI machine can still manipulate ideas/meanings: it can know-1 that "2x2=4" or that "NY is in US". It can look at the sky and know-1 with its color recognition algorithm that "the sky has blue color". However, it can never know-2 the blueness of the sky, it can never consciously experience it. This is why distinguishing (not separating!) the knowing-2 is so crucially important to idealistic metaphysics and is one of the key characteristics/aspects of Consciousness that distinguishes it from matter or from some "neutral" OP (per neutral monism ontology).

For example, there are variants of simulation hypothesis posing that we are living as localizes processes of a highly hierarchically complicated simulation created by highly-intelligent God-super-quantum-computer-AI machine with enormous computational and idea-manipulation resources. Well, it could be possible, except for one oops - such super-AI, no matter how powerful its computational resources would be, could never ever consciously know-2/experience anything at all.

Eugene I wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:16 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:29 pm Alright so then I will modify my question to ask, why are you separating "experiencing" and "knowing" of the sky's blueness. It is an ontological separation, because we all agree "matter" does not actually exist - the Wholeness is only mental activity. So if you say "Experiencing" is a form of "knowing" the sky's blueness which is not encompassed by the "knowing" of the sky's blueness via "Thinking", then there are two separate essences of "knowing". Does the "knowing" via Experiencing reflect the meaning of "blue sky" to us like the knowing of Thinking, or is it devoid of all meaning? If the latter, then what exactly is the function of this "knowing" via Experiencing?

I won't speak for Cleric, but I think it's clear that I am asking these questions mostly as a way to point out how non-parsimonious, confusing and redundant your approach to "knowing" is. I cannot imagine any suitable answers to the questions above, but maybe you will surprise me. You may also claim that you are simply relating your personal experience, but then my question about the booming voice becomes a literal one - how is it that you are so certain this "Experiential knowing" is the not the same exact activity as what we are calling "Thinking knowing" (which encompasses all the aspects of Thinking Cleric has discussed before)?

We are slowly walking through terminological woods, because it seems that we use the same words but imply different meanings.

When I say Experience/(slash)Knowing, I use slash as a sign of sinonimity, not a sign of separation.

Now, there are two different meanings of the word "to know". One is to know some meaning intellectually: "I know that NY is located in US" or "I know that 2x2=4" or "I know that the sky is blue". Such knowing is the knowing of meanings, I'll call it knowing-1. The other meaning of the word "to know" is to know "experientially" - to "see", "experience" and "experientially know" the blueness of the sky (knowing-2). Even when we think about abstract ideas like an idea of a circle and know-1 their meanings, we still also simultaneously know-2 them - we also experience the meanings and ideas. It is true that in reality both are always lumped together - you can not know-1 any meaning without also experiencing/knowing-2 that meaning, and you can not know-2 any form (idea, sensation, feeling) without knowing-1 its meaning at least to a tiny degree.

So if that's the case, why am I still distinguishing them (notice: distinguishing, not separating!)? First, its because knowing-1, according to our experience, is widely variable - we can be in a very intelligent mode deeply comprehending the meanings and even, in super-cognitive mode, comprehending Cosmic Meanings, or we can be in a dumb mode like deep sleep hardly comprehending any meanings at all. However, knowing-2 never ever changes: we still experientially equally clearly know-2/experience every form, sensation or idea that appears in our space of consciousness. Second, materialistic-AI machine can still manipulate ideas/meanings: it can know-1 that "2x2=4" or that "NY is in US". It can look at the sky and know-1 with its color recognition algorithm that "the sky has blue color". However, it can never know-2 the blueness of the sky, it can never consciously experience it.

For starters, I would just call your "knowing-1" informational knowing or propositional knowing, rather than "knowing of meanings", because as is implied by the bolded statement, meaning is inherent to all forms of knowing (you have to use the word "meaning" to even speak of any quality of "experiential knowing"). There are multiple levels in which the meaning operates, such as intellectual, imaginative, intuitive, etc., but it is all still the same meaning operating in those levels. More directly relevant, though, is that the types of knowing you delineate above are almost exactly the same as what we delineate via "intellectual", "inspirative", "imaginative", "intuitive" knowing via Thinking. There is no difference there, except we actually have more 'shades' of knowing than you do above.

Finally, there is the polarity of Permanence-Change. Scott's mumorphism, which Cleric and I have also tried to express here in many ways, indicates that the force of Thinking activity has two poles of Permanence-Change just like all other fundamental activity. There is an aspect of Thinking which remains the same (formless Thinking which connects thought-forms) and an aspect which constantly changes (thought-forms and Thinking which is changed by thought-forms), just like with everything else in our experience. So the existence of that polarity is not a reason to ditch Thinking as the only "knowing" force. I think it is more clear than ever know that you failed to understand the full scope of what we were calling "Thinking" (perhaps because I did not make it clear enough) and therefore thought it was necessary to bring in another "knowing" activity which was never, in fact, necessary.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:30 pm For starters, I would just call your "knowing-1" informational knowing or propositional knowing, rather than "knowing of meanings", because as is implied by the bolded statement, meaning is inherent to all forms of knowing (you have to use the word "meaning" to even speak of any quality of "experiential knowing"). There are multiple levels in which the meaning operates, such as intellectual, imaginative, intuitive, etc., but it is all still the same meaning operating in those levels. More directly relevant, though, is that the types of knowing you delineate above are almost exactly the same as what we delineate via "intellectual", "inspirative", "imaginative", "intuitive" knowing via Thinking. There is no difference there, except we actually have more 'shades' of knowing than you do above.

I agree, my description was a simplification for clarity, but of course all of those "intellectual", "inspirative", "imaginative", "intuitive" ways are all just different modes of knowing-1 force/aspect of Thinking.

Finally, there is the polarity of Permanence-Change. Scott's mumorphism, which Cleric and I have also tried to express here in many ways, indicates that the force of Thinking activity has two poles of Permanence-Change just like all other fundamental activity. There is an aspect of Thinking which remains the same (formless Thinking which connects thought-forms) and an aspect which constantly changes (thought-forms and Thinking which is changed by thought-forms), just like with everything else in our experience. So the existence of that polarity is not a reason to ditch Thinking as the only "knowing" force. I think it is more clear than ever know that you failed to understand the full scope of what we were calling "Thinking" (perhaps because I did not make it clear enough) and therefore thought it was necessary to bring in another "knowing" activity which was never, in fact, necessary.

As I said, we can lump formless and forms, permanence and change together into the Wholeness of Thinking, I'm fine with that definition.
There is still a reason we epistemologically distinguish (without implying any ontological separation) change from permanence, time from timeless, form from formless. And for the same reason (that I sketched in my previous post) I still think that it is important to epistemologically distinguish the experiential knowing-2 as an aspect of Thinking that so crucially distinguishes it from materialistic AI machine.

Imagine arguing with a materialist who would claim that a super-AI-quantum-EM-computer can be as "intellectual", "inspirative", "imaginative" and "intuitive" as a human, and therefore all our conscious activity could be equally well explained by materialism. But we all know the Chalmers argument - such super-AI, regardless of its level of intelligence and intuition and imagination, would still be a "philosophical zombie" - it would not be able to consciously experience (know-2) anything. This is the actual meaning of the "hard problem of consciousness" and the key difference between consciousness and materialistic AI.