Philosophical Speculations

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Aug 31, 2021 2:44 pm I don't. Cleric and I are practically pleading and begging for you guys to present those ideas, values, and meanings, instead of repeating the same misrepresentations of our position without any substantive or direct interaction with the actual arguments. If you have an alternative viewpoint to offer, then offer it! Put some effort and enthusiasm into it like we do. Write a post, or two, or an essay, or whatever, and let people decide for themselves.

That's what we all do here, and I did it many times expressing alternative views of Eastern traditions, supporting and elaborating on Steve's theology, exploring BK's metaphysics. I'm a possibilian and I do not have a singular set of views that I believe in religiously. I like the diversity of the variants of metaphysics, because it is this diversity that catalyzes and motivates further development of our knowledge about the world. Once the diversity collapses into absolute unity, the evolution and development will stagnate.

Eugene I wrote: ↑Tue Aug 31, 2021 2:51 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Aug 31, 2021 2:44 pm I don't. Cleric and I are practically pleading and begging for you guys to present those ideas, values, and meanings, instead of repeating the same misrepresentations of our position without any substantive or direct interaction with the actual arguments. If you have an alternative viewpoint to offer, then offer it! Put some effort and enthusiasm into it like we do. Write a post, or two, or an essay, or whatever, and let people decide for themselves.

That's what we all do here, and I did it many times expressing alternative views of Eastern traditions, supporting and elaborating on Steve's theology, exploring BK's metaphysics. I like the diversity of the variants of metaphysics, because it is this diversity that catalyzes and motivates further development of our knowledge about the world. Once the diversity collapses into unity, the evolution and development will stagnate.

Well if you can show me even one of my own posts where I intervened in such a view explicated by you, or Steve, or anyone else, without actually making a logical argument, or asking questions and showing actual interest in what was being discussed, then I will honestly consider the possibility that I have done the same thing you are always doing, and try to refrain from doing so in the future. And you need to honestly consider that the vast majority of your responses to our arguments have been of the non-curious, non-inquisitive, non-logical, and misrepresentative sort. Not only recently, but for months on end now. If I really need to dig up examples to remind you, I think you know that I can, but I really have no interest in doing so. What stimulates philosophical diversity and novelty of approach is precisely the curious questioning and logical and reasoned criticism of arguments, not simply empty words of "diversity" for the sake of "diversity" without any interest in precision and clarity.

JustinG wrote: ↑Tue Aug 31, 2021 1:07 pmDana, could you clarify whether you are agreeing with Ashvin that this "new" idealist perspective he refers to supersedes BK's idealism?

My take is that all these views, without exception, are provisional, and I have no expectation that they be definitive. As I've expressed elsewhere, I feel everyone approaches these views with some degree of conditioning that predisposes them towards preferences/proclivities/affinities for any given view. When, once upon a time, due to being predisposed toward certain inexplicable experiences, which materialism failed explain, I began to seek metaphysical explanations, I was compellingly attracted to the Seth books—and still can't dismiss the possibility that there was some Daemon at work in orchestrating that first encounter—and no amount of being dismissed as a screwball being duped by an even greater screwball could have deterred me. And to this day I can still find much of value in those books. The attraction of BK was that he was able to put the ontological primacy of consciousness it in a very cogent context. So I tend to take a very eclectic approach, and try to keep an open mind about all the views expressed here, while as much as possible not letting the conditioning get in the way. And insofar as I can take away from them any insight that can facilitate the Bodhisattva process and project, that is a bonus.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Aug 31, 2021 2:59 pm Well if you can show me even one of my own posts where I intervened in such a view explicated by you, or Steve, or anyone else, without actually making a logical argument, or asking questions and showing actual interest in what was being discussed, then I will honestly consider the possibility that I have done the same thing you are always doing, and try to refrain from doing so in the future. And you need to honestly consider that the vast majority of your responses to our arguments have been of the non-curious, non-inquisitive, non-logical, and misrepresentative sort. Not only recently, but for months on end now. If I really need to dig up examples to remind you, I think you know that I can, but I really have no interest in doing so. What stimulates philosophical diversity and novelty of approach is precisely the curious questioning and logical and reasoned criticism of arguments, not simply empty words of "diversity" for the sake of "diversity" without any interest in precision and clarity.

I just don't agree in general with the core idea of Steiner/Cleric's/your metaphysics that the metamorphic process is converging into a unified worldview and unified set of meanings/values/ideas which will exclude any diversity of alternatives, and that unified set is exactly the Steiner's PoF. This idea claims that PoF is by definition superior and exclusive to any alternative worldviews, so the exclusivity and superiority claim is a built-in feature of this philosophy.

Eugene I wrote: ↑Tue Aug 31, 2021 1:37 pm PS: Justin, it sounds like you are a Marxist. I was raised in USSR and studied Marxism at University (I would rather not, but it was a mandatory course). I would be interested in discussing it (philosophical and social aspects of it, not political). You might want to open a thread about it (if it's ok with moderators). My question about Marxism is: why is that it may sound so convincing and compelling and make a lot of sense to people, but for some reason whenever it has been practically tested as a social system, is has so far always collapsed into some sort of dictatorship and socio-economic disaster?

Since it mainly seems to be mostly of interest to you and Justin, why not take it into PM mode so I won't have to follow it?

Soul_of_Shu wrote: ↑Tue Aug 31, 2021 3:32 pm Since it mainly seems to be mostly of interest to you and Justin, why not take it into PM mode so I won't have to follow it?

Right, we can certainly do that, but I just think other people might also be interested. But we would definitely need to commit to not discussing politics.

Is it just on my end, or is the site kind of glitchy today, intermittently spinning its wheels and failing to load?

Eugene I wrote: ↑Tue Aug 31, 2021 3:28 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Aug 31, 2021 2:59 pm Well if you can show me even one of my own posts where I intervened in such a view explicated by you, or Steve, or anyone else, without actually making a logical argument, or asking questions and showing actual interest in what was being discussed, then I will honestly consider the possibility that I have done the same thing you are always doing, and try to refrain from doing so in the future. And you need to honestly consider that the vast majority of your responses to our arguments have been of the non-curious, non-inquisitive, non-logical, and misrepresentative sort. Not only recently, but for months on end now. If I really need to dig up examples to remind you, I think you know that I can, but I really have no interest in doing so. What stimulates philosophical diversity and novelty of approach is precisely the curious questioning and logical and reasoned criticism of arguments, not simply empty words of "diversity" for the sake of "diversity" without any interest in precision and clarity.

I just don't agree in general with the core idea of Steiner/Cleric's/your metaphysics that the metamorphic process is converging into a unified worldview and unified set of meanings/values/ideas which will exclude any diversity of alternatives, and that unified set is exactly the Steiner's PoF. This idea claims that PoF is by definition superior and exclusive to any alternative worldviews, so the exclusivity and superiority claim is a built-in feature of this philosophy.

No, Eugene. I don't know how many more times and ways this can be explained to you. You do not understand PoF or our corresponding philosophy. Over the last few months, we have not said "you don't understand" and left it there - we go into excruciating detail of why you don't understand, especially Cleric. Then you stop commenting for awhile and pop back up with the same exact misrepresentations you are expressing above. Notice you are almost always the first to mention "Platonism", "Hegel", "Christianity", "Steiner", "Anthroposophy". Cleric's essay especially make arguments completely independent of all those labels. They are in the domain of "phenomenology" and "praxis" and nothing else. One could reject all of those labels above and still come to same firm conclusions about our experience of the world. I am going to post a separate thread listing some of these specifically phenomenological issues which cannot be reduced to labels and are actually not understood by most Platonists or Hegelians or Christians. Like I said before, if you start from antipathy against shared world of ideation and reason from there, none of it will make sense for obvious reasons. That is the anti-phenomenological and anti-pragmatic approach. Now I am done with this particular thread. As you know by now, if on a future essay or post you make the same misrepresentations as you or Justin are making here, I will continue pointing attention to it, probably just requoting what I have already said here.

It has nothing to do with labels. I needed to call it with some name when I'm referring to it, so that's why I was using those labels. But from now on I'll just Call it "Cleric's phenomenological philosophy" (CPP). Still, the core idea of the CPP is the convergence of the metamorphic process towards integration into a singular interconnected organism under the authority of the Sun Man with a singular set of shared ideas/meanings/values, which means that diversity will eventually disappear.

Eugene I wrote: ↑Tue Aug 31, 2021 3:28 pm I just don't agree in general with the core idea of Steiner/Cleric's/your metaphysics that the metamorphic process is converging into a unified worldview and unified set of meanings/values/ideas which will exclude any diversity of alternatives, and that unified set is exactly the Steiner's PoF. This idea claims that PoF is by definition superior and exclusive to any alternative worldviews, so the exclusivity and superiority claim is a built-in feature of this philosophy.

Eugene, these statements of yours sadden me. Don't you even try to understand what we're talking about? I've always thought that as someone who has practical experience in meditation you would be one of the first not only to understand the ideas in thinking but also experience them in depth.

If after all these months you still don't understand (or don't want to understand), I'm really losing any hope.

I'm running out of images, metaphors, allegories to point attention to the essential nature of the question - and yes, we must break away from the intellect if we are to experience any of these things. Break away from the intellect but not from livingly experienced Thinking.

Here's one more metaphor. The World as a computer, a running hypervisor (a meta-OS that can virtualize many other OSes running on the same PC, as if they were running on different hardware) and running many diverse programs. Your statement is that one group of programs say "Hey, there's too much fragmentation and diversity. Let's agree upon a simple set of APIs, protocols, user interface themes, standard position of the icons, etc., etc." If this is your vision about things I couldn't support you more! This would be precisely stagnation and tyranny.

But if anyone has understood at least the tiniest bit of what the metamorphic evolutionary process is about, then it would sound more like "Hey, programs. We're not limited in running within these OS-es that we run. We can access the hypervisor and have consciousness for all the different OSes running here. Not only that but we can expand consciousness also in the hardware itself, where our Thinking is transformed into the very electric currents running in the circuits. Not only that but we can rise even to the level of Consciousness within which the very hardware itself is just an idea - one of infinite possible. Yes, we can explore endlessly the kinds of outputs that we can generate within our context (the candy shop paradigm) but true creativity consists in finding ways to rise more and more within the layers and experience more and more of the unlimited reality."

Now I know that you'll say that this is exactly what you have in mind too. But it's not exactly the same. Because in your view each program must first terminate and only then it has the chance to reshuffle - switch OS, switch hardware, etc. But the programs who have gained access to the kernel and beyond say that this is not the case. If the program doesn't learn how to expand consciousness into the inner workings of the World while still running, it won't find that way after it terminates either.

As we have spoken many times, it's your choice to believe that a running program is locked within its OS process (that is, it can never escape the sequential processing of the intellect) and must patiently wait to terminate in order to reshuffle. That's OK, you have the right to believe that. But at least be honest and when you speak against the ideas presented, speak precisely.

Even though you don't believe it's possible to expand consciousness into the deeper layers of reality while the program is still running, at least don't twist our words as if we try to force everyone to run under one OS, one color theme, etc., etc. I hope my analogy could show at least that - it's precisely the opposite - everything that we say, including PoF which you have obviously not read if you think that it tries to force everyone to arrange their icons in the same way, speaks for the sole purpose to raise the Spirit towards the inner realities that are free of the rigid environment as defined by the OS. Every exercise I've mentioned, every idea, every drawing, has only one purpose - to help the thinking locked into the sequential intellectual processing to find within itself the free Spirit and follow it as it gains consciousness of all the software and hardware layers of reality. If this sounds supremacists, claiming superiority, totalitarian, then please show me some other path of experience (not system of beliefs) that can really lead the individual into the internals of reality. I'm open to consider any! Of all that I have tested none comes even close. Yes, psychedelics render a nice screensaver but in themselves don't lead to the internals. Eastern methods manage to execute the sleep() system call and suppress all execution for a while but as you yourself said, no one has ever been able yet to find the source of the assembler instructions that are being fed in the execution pipeline. If you call tyranny the path that actually shows fully practical and verifiable methods for leaving user-space and entering kernel-space and beyond, I simply find this devoid of any logic whatsoever.

Then if you say "But you speak about Sun Spirit and stuff. This is so restricting". Well, what if a program awakens, passes through the OS layers, then the hypervisors, enter the electric currents and finds that there's a multi-core CPU there, and that every OS, every service, every program are running on the CPU? A program may say "I don't believe it. I'll behave as if I'm running on a completely individual, dedicated CPU just for myself. Don't try to put me in your bag." Other may say "Yes, currently we're running on a common CPU but once we terminate we'll be free to switch to other CPUs on the Cloud or design our original ones".

I repeat, whoever wants to believe blindly in something just because it sounds pleasing to the ego's ears is free to do so. But I really beg you - at least try to understand that the "tyrannical unification" that you missee in everything presented here is actually the only logical, real and verifiable way to Freedom. Not hoped for freedom after termination but Freedom that can be tested now, while the program is running.