Philosophical Speculations

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2024 5:31 pm

lorenzop wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2024 5:01 pm 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.

lorenzop wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2024 4:45 am

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2024 5:31 pm

lorenzop wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2024 5:01 pm 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.

There is a wide variety of materialism\physicalism thought - from simple to more nuanced - some that address QM, some that dance around it.
I'm not aware of any materialist thought that denies the reality of the 'physical world itself' . . . even if that physical world be only abstractions such as Information, or Probability Waves. I belief your writings (and Clerics) have suggested there's underlying Immortal Ideas and\or Content\Meaning which would also label as a flavor of materialism. IOW, Materialism = belief in any inherent structure whether that structure in mentation or physical.

Cleric wrote: ↑Thu Nov 14, 2024 9:37 am Well, I remember how even Eugene got frustrated when he tried to converse with JW He couldn't convince him that our direct inner phenomena (like color, sound, etc.) are more immediately given than 'energy'. The only explanation I can think of is that by the moment he conceptualizes 'direct experiential phenomena' it already becomes an abstract token, at the same level as energy, atoms, etc. In other words, the inner ability to stabilize inner experience and contemplate inner phenomena must be lacking. Instead, one half-consciously flows through phenomena and feels cognitive concreteness only at the level of finished thoughts. However, at that level, 'inner phenomena' and 'energy' are equally abstract - they are only mental images. In other words, for him, it is as if asking "Is reality made of atoms of inner phenomena or energy?" Then naturally he prefers 'energy' because it feels more general and primal (it can easily encompass both the conscious and the unconscious, while inner phenomena seem more restrictive because they already require consciousness).

It must, however, not be overlooked that only with the help of thinking am I able to determine myself as subject and contrast myself with objects. Therefore thinking must never be regarded as a merely subjective activity. Thinking lies beyond subject and object. It produces these two concepts just as it produces all others. When, therefore, I, as thinking subject, refer a concept to an object, we must not regard this reference as something purely subjective. It is not the subject that makes the reference, but thinking. The subject does not think because it is a subject; rather it appears to itself as subject because it can think. The activity exercised by man as a thinking being is thus not merely subjective. Rather is it something neither subjective nor objective, that transcends both these concepts. I ought never to say that my individual subject thinks, but much more that my individual subject lives by the grace of thinking. Thinking is thus an element which leads me out beyond myself and connects me with the objects. But at the same time it separates me from them, inasmuch as it sets me, as subject, over against them.

Federica wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2024 3:02 pm Eugene, how would you comment on this PoF passage?

It must, however, not be overlooked that only with the help of thinking am I able to determine myself as subject and contrast myself with objects. Therefore thinking must never be regarded as a merely subjective activity. Thinking lies beyond subject and object. It produces these two concepts just as it produces all others. When, therefore, I, as thinking subject, refer a concept to an object, we must not regard this reference as something purely subjective. It is not the subject that makes the reference, but thinking. The subject does not think because it is a subject; rather it appears to itself as subject because it can think. The activity exercised by man as a thinking being is thus not merely subjective. Rather is it something neither subjective nor objective, that transcends both these concepts. I ought never to say that my individual subject thinks, but much more that my individual subject lives by the grace of thinking. Thinking is thus an element which leads me out beyond myself and connects me with the objects. But at the same time it separates me from them, inasmuch as it sets me, as subject, over against them.

Güney27 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2024 9:26 pm 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.“

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2024 12:33 pm

lorenzop wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2024 4:45 am

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2024 5:31 pm


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.

There is a wide variety of materialism\physicalism thought - from simple to more nuanced - some that address QM, some that dance around it.
I'm not aware of any materialist thought that denies the reality of the 'physical world itself' . . . even if that physical world be only abstractions such as Information, or Probability Waves. I belief your writings (and Clerics) have suggested there's underlying Immortal Ideas and\or Content\Meaning which would also label as a flavor of materialism. IOW, Materialism = belief in any inherent structure whether that structure in mentation or physical.

So you went from criticizing Guney for inappropriately characterizing and strawmanning materialism as understanding the world as a perceptual dream, to then equating BK's idealism (belief in inherent structures of mentation) with materialism

Lorenzo, I just have to assume that, unlike Eugene for example, you are not interested in discussing in good faith and learning about these things. It seems like you just want to pop in on occasion to have an argument and 'put us in our place', so to speak. Now you are saying spiritual science is also 'a flavor of materialism', which simply means you haven't even attempted to understand our writings yet after all these years. The understanding of everyone else on this forum who is still around has deepened and evolved, but yours seems to remain static and even regresses. That is simply because you don't allow yourself to engage with the unfamiliar ideas in humility and good faith.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2024 3:26 pm Neither the physicists nor the Essentia host discern the entire time what was said above, that their real-time thinking which discerns the limitations must have already transcended those limitations, just like only a 3D being can discern the constraints of a 2D plane while a 2D being would be entirely merged with those constraints.

our attention is concentrated only on the object we are thinking about, but not at the same time on the thinking itself. The naïve consciousness, therefore, treats thinking as something which has nothing to do with things, but stands altogether aloof from them and contemplates them.

Stranger wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2024 3:14 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2024 3:02 pm Eugene, how would you comment on this PoF passage?

It must, however, not be overlooked that only with the help of thinking am I able to determine myself as subject and contrast myself with objects. Therefore thinking must never be regarded as a merely subjective activity. Thinking lies beyond subject and object. It produces these two concepts just as it produces all others. When, therefore, I, as thinking subject, refer a concept to an object, we must not regard this reference as something purely subjective. It is not the subject that makes the reference, but thinking. The subject does not think because it is a subject; rather it appears to itself as subject because it can think. The activity exercised by man as a thinking being is thus not merely subjective. Rather is it something neither subjective nor objective, that transcends both these concepts. I ought never to say that my individual subject thinks, but much more that my individual subject lives by the grace of thinking. Thinking is thus an element which leads me out beyond myself and connects me with the objects. But at the same time it separates me from them, inasmuch as it sets me, as subject, over against them.

Well, it seems to me that Steiner is referring to a different meaning of the word "subject", and in that sense I agree with Steiner here. In a way, what he said is similar to advaitic view that the Reality (which they call "Atman" and which Steiner calls "thinking") is beyond the dichotomy of "subject "and "object". But I used the word "subjective" in my post in a different sense as a synonym of "immanent first-person experience of thinking activity", which has nothing to do with any "subjects" or "objects".

Stranger wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2024 2:42 pm But the key point here is that the very base and source of our knowledge about reality is our first-person subjective conscious experience, always and by definition. There is no way we can ever experientially transcend this and experientially know anything that is not of a nature of subjective experience. Therefore, anything we can ever know is either our first-person direct subjective experience, or an abstract thought, which ironically also is always part of our subjective experience. Most metaphysicists miss this key point: regardless of what kind of metaphysics it might be (Kant's "thing in itself", matter, energy, flying spaghetti monster etc), as a matter of our factual subjective experience, it will always remain as an abstract idea appearing within the realm of subjective conscious experience. It means that the conscious subjective experience is always prior to any abstract idea of any "transcendent" base reality. In other words, as a matter of experiential fact, it is not subjective experience that emerges from some base non-conscious reality, but always and inevitably the other way around: the abstract idea of the non-conscious base reality always emerging within the realm of subjective experience that always exists prior to any abstract ideas. In other words, if we remain grounded in bare facts of our primary subjective experience and not in abstractions, it is the first-person subjective experience which is always the base reality and in which any abstract ideas of "transcendental realities" emerge as a byproduct of the activity of conscious experience.

Steiner wrote:If our existence were so linked up with the things that every occurrence in the world were at the same time also an occurrence in us, the distinction between ourselves and the things would not exist. But then there would be no separate things at all for us. All occurrences would pass continuously one into the other. The cosmos would be a unity and a whole, complete in itself.

Federica wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2024 5:12 pm Nice to read that. I think, though, that subjective activity fundamentally means the same thing in both contexts: an activity that is willed within the context of our individuality. Coming back to this:

I think this is well said and true in terms of point of departure. However, once the subjective activity you speak of is made more conscious and brought more in focus, our individuality starts to know by participation, as far as thinking activity is concerned, something that is not merely subjective, but more like a shared medium in which the individual can grow into, dissolving one's individuality to an extent. This is possible because thinking is being, as Ashvin pointed to in your thread. This thinking nature is what Steiner in the quote calls "neither subjective nor objective. I'm not referring to philosophical or scientific thinking here. I'm not referring to intellectual thinking, that is, steered, sequential navigation along conceptual paths, but to the activity which is joined in meditation.

Steiner wrote:If our existence were so linked up with the things that every occurrence in the world were at the same time also an occurrence in us, the distinction between ourselves and the things would not exist. But then there would be no separate things at all for us. All occurrences would pass continuously one into the other. The cosmos would be a unity and a whole, complete in itself.

In our intellectual thinking within the context of the world content we are subjects of experience who are distinct from the things of the world, and all you've said is valid, "by definition", but in meditation we progressively change that and, ever so slightly, we begin to participate in something that goes beyond subjective experience.