Right, instead of answering the question you instead talk about me and where you (erroneously) think I'm coming from.
More politics than philosophy.

We live in a material world, and all our propositional knowledge is material knowledge. All our feelings are bodily feelings. All our coherent thoughts are thoughts about things we have, as embied material beings, experienced. What is the point of saying that consciousness is not material, if not to say it is immaterial..to say that it is something beyond the material world?

Do you think consciousness is mortal, confined to mortal beings, or is it something beyond this temporal world? You believe there is an afterlife, right? Why not be honest about what you believe and what your actual agenda is?

Material conditions are anything that we can detect via the senses. Science tells us there were material conditions prior to humans.

And, as predicted you didn't answer the question I posed re whether you believe that immaterial or disembodied consciousness is possible.

Yes, but I also said that they can be said to arise together, but that all the evidence points to the existence of material conditions prior to there being consciousness in any form that we could understand or know about.

That's likely true, but that's different from the existential claim: — bert1

Okay, but if we know of no consciousness which is not accompanied by material conditions, it follows that we cannot really have a grasp of the possibility, even though we can of course say it is logically not impossible. So, the question becomes 'What significance could such a vague possibility have".

What evidence are you thinking of? — bert1

Cosmological, paleontological.

Do you mean the presence and not-presence of consciousness is determined by material conditions (a very strong claim), or that the type or content of consciousness is determined by material conditions (a different weaker claim). I think you probably mean the former. — bert1

We know of no consciousness which is not accompanied by material conditions. It is arguable, in fact it seems unarguably true, that the type or content of consciousness is determined by the material conditions it is conscious of. So, both are indicated.

Nothing in the OP, or anything I've said about it, suggests an 'immaterial consciousness', although the fact that it will always be so construed by yourself and Janus is philosophically signficant. — Wayfarer

The OP says that consciousness is primary against, presumably, the idea that the material is primary. If consciousness is not, according to you, material, or at least a function of, or dependent on, the material, then the implication would be that it is immaterial, and that disembodied consciousness is possible.

Be honest now and say whether you believe disembodied consciousness is possible. I'm betting you won't answer that question.

The working definition of 'universal', as I am using it, is that it is objective and timeless and its weight is measured as true or false. — L'éléphant

How could there be any such thing in a temporal world? In relation to moral thought the only universality I can imagine would be that most people cross-culturally hold certain things to be good and others evil.

Most people naturally think it is good to be good to "one's own" (as do other social animals). The difficulty, given the natural incapacity to instinctively or viscerally care for more than some rather small number of people, is to get people to expand there instinctive circle of care into a greater circle of intellectual care. But that is arguably what humanity needs if it is to survive.

That said, I have explained that moral relativists -- which is what you're describing -- cannot then make a claim (someone else mentioned this Esse Quam Videri) or a judgment (which, in philosophy is actually a proposition or assertion) that "there is no universal moral truth, only disapproval of despicable acts by most people across cultures" because this claim is an assertion, thereby contradicting their own principle. — L'éléphant

I am not describing moral relativism, because I think there is good emprical evidence that people generally, and cross-culturally, vale and dis-value the same things in regard to the significnat moral issues like murder, rape and so on.

And I'm not saying there is no universal moral truth, I am reducing the notion of universal moral truth to a more human and less rigid scale. I am making an empirical claim for more or less universal facts concerning what humans everywhere value and dis-value.

The "foundation" is not some god-given principle, but the generality of human moral feeling. It should be taken into account that some people are congenitally deficient in the ability to empathize, and others are unable to empathize or regulate their behaviors due to psychological trauma.

These conditions are not the norm, though, and would make it harder for one to possess a moral compass. It's hard know just what the percentage of the population such empathy-lacking people comprise, but it seems clear that it is not a healthy condition, and I see no reason why we should not think in terms of health since we do that with the body.

Predatory people in society are analogous to cancers in the body.

Indeed it does, but outside that imaginative act what remains?

The point of Bitbol's line of criticism, is that both the subject and the objects of scientific analysis are reduced to abstractions in day-to-day thought. But these abstractions are then imbued with an ostensibly fundamental reality - the subject 'bracketed out' of the proceedings, the objective domain taken to be truly existent. But it should be acknowledged, the 'co-arising' of the subjective and objective is very much part of the phenomenological perspective. — Wayfarer

What remains outside of our imaginative acts is whatever there is or was prior to our acting imaginatively.

It can be said that all "day-to-day thought" consists in abstractions―at least that part of it which is linguistically mediated thought. However, our thoughts are not whatever it is we are thinking about, so the things we think about exist prior to our thinking about them, otherwise we would have nothing to think about. It seems to be true that their existence for us is relational―the forms they take in our perceptions are of course in part a functions of our perceptual systems. It doesn't follow that they have no existence apart from that.

“What does it mean to assert existence independently of the conditions under which existence is ascribed at all?” — Wayfarer

That question makes no sense as far as I can tell unless you mean what does it mean to us? If so, I'd say that it means we are being able to think outside of the narrow perspective of our own experience and allow that there is more to the world than just that. It is a kind of humility and a rejection of anthropocentrism.

It means 'the map(maker) =/= territory' (i.e. epistemically ascribing has (a) referent(s) ontologically in excess of – anterior-posterior to – the subject ascribing, or episteme). — 180 Proof

Exactly, we are not the world―the world is more than merely human.

Right, consciousness is determined by material conditions, and without material conditions there would be nothing to be conscious of. On the other hand without consciousness there would be no one to be aware of material conditions. So, a conclusion might be that neither is primary, and that they co-arise. On the other hand we can certainly imagine that material conditions were present prior to the advent of consciousness or least prior to consciousness as we understand it. All our scientific evidence points to that conclusion.

The one thing that is always missed in discussions like this is that while the foundationalist view claims that there are universal moral truth, anyone who argued against foundationalism is also making -- though maybe not intentionally and without awareness -- a 'universal' claim, mainly that there is no universal truth and morality is based on cultural differences.. — L'éléphant

It doesn't have to be a universal claim, but merely an observation that no one has been able to present a universal truth, such that the unbiased would be rationally compelled to accept it. The closest we can get, in my view is the empirical observation that things like murder, rape, theft, devious deception and exploitation are despised by most people across cultures. The only caveat being that those things may be not universally disapproved of if they are done to the "enemy" or even anyone who is seen as "other".

So a relativist has a conundrum -- how to make an argument against foundationalism without making a universal or truth-based claim? — L'éléphant

So, I think that any foundation which is not simply based on the idea that to harm others is bad and to help others is good, per se, is doomed to relativism, since those dispositions are in rational pragmatic alignment with social needs and they also align with common feeling, and also simply because people don't universally, or even generally, accept any other foundation such as God as lawgiver, or Karmic penalties for moral transgressions or whatever else you can think of.

Right, hence my meaning in saying to know of having it is superfluous. In response to your to have it and know you have it are two different things. — Mww

I can have an itch and scratch it without having being consciously aware of having done so. Or I can have an itch and consciously notice it, and then decide whether to scratch it or not.

Both of those experiences are possible without any self-reflective conceptualization such as "I have an itch".

This seems to stating that awareness is knowledge. Depending on what "awareness" means here would, I think, determine whether the critique applies. — Esse Quam Videri

Awareness can be counted as a kind of knowledge―knowledge by acquaintance or participation, but it is not, on it's own "knowledge that", or propositional knowledge.

Per the example of having an itch above―if I am not consciously aware of having an itch, yet I scratch it then it could be said that my body knew of the itch, even though my mind was not conscious of it.

If I am consciously aware of the itch, it would not seem that the conscious awareness must be of the self-reflective kind.

I think (J will correct me if I'm wrong) one of the motivations for this post was a discussion whether 'reality' and 'existence' and be differentiated, citing C S Peirce, who makes that distinction. Whereas in common discourse, they are naturally regarded as synonyms - that what is real is what exists and vice versa. — Wayfarer

Right, we can certainly specify a sense or senses in which reality and existence may be distinguished, and other senses in which they are synonymous.

They certainly feel different. "Reality" feels more objective, concrete, philosophical, external. "Existence" feels more abstract, subjective, personal, internal. The Tao Te Ching uses "existence" and "being" as more or less interchangeable depending on the verse and translator. This is the kind of thing I meant when I talked about connotation. — T Clark

:up: That all makes sense to me.

What about connotation? Two different words might be accurately, called synonyms, but still have a different mood, tone, or implication associated with them. — T Clark

I hadn't thought about connotation. Would that be a matter of meaning, or association of meaning? I'll have to think on that.

I'm trying to think of two synonymous words that have different moods, tones or implications associated with them. What about 'reality' and 'existence'? They would seem to be synonymous in some contexts but not in others.

What came to mind immediately for me were 'real' and 'to exist', as opposed to 'real' and 'fake'. Language appears to be a complex web of meanings and associations, which would seem to put paid to attempts to establish meaning in terms of 'essence'.

One of the things that comes to my mind is a discussion I read years ago about 'thick terms' in philosophy. Most of those are those terms with great depth of meaning, such as the examples you provide - goodness, existence, reality, consciousness, mind, and so on. — Wayfarer

What do you think "thickness" or "depth" of meaning are, if not either polysemy or ambiguity? That said, are polysemy and ambiguity not related? I think we we have polysemy when the word is and/or has been used in multiple different contexts, and we have ambiguity when the relevant context of usage is not specified. And then we have inherent vagueness, which I think obtains when it is imagined that there is an absolute, context free sense of a term.

One of the problems for me is that each side in this discourse seems to think the other is sociopathic. Today’s discourse is polarized and antagonistic. I’d like to see more civil conversations between people with different worldviews. I’m reluctant to call individuals sociopathic. — Tom Storm

It's not that I'd say the individuals are necessarily sociopaths, but that their attitude of "let them sink or swim" is sociopathic. I don't believe this attitude is good for the individuals in need or for society as a whole (or even for the individuals holding such attitudes). In my view such attitudes and the policies that reflect them contribute to social ill-being in more ways than just their impact on the individuals in need, and in that sense I would class such attitudes and policies as sociopathic.

They are often steeped in Greek philosophy and hold the familiar Aristotelian notion of eudaimonia as the goal or telos of a good life. Yet they are also right-wing, Liberal voters who are happy to cut people off welfare and dismantle safety nets. — Tom Storm

Then they have a narrow view of flourishing as being relevant only to themselves.

In my view, their positions would cause considerable harm to the powerless. And yet they and I both ostensibly hold that flourishing is the goal of a moral system. They think that society is enhanced if people's independence is promoted and vital to this is not subsidising sloth and inertia through welfare. — Tom Storm

I don't believe it is as simple a matter as "not subsidizing sloth and inertia through social welfare". That seems to me like a self-serving rationalization of an essentially selfish attitude.

I do not think they are sociopathic, they just hold a different worldview. And relative to my worldview they are mostly "wrong" on this. — Tom Storm

OK, then we disagree on that. I think their attitude is simplistically self-serving and sociopathic. For me sociopathy is not an "all or nothing" proposition, but is on a spectrum.

We live in a pluralist culture where most people think their views are good and right. The best we can do amongst this mess of contradictions is select the views we endorse and try to promote or nurture them. Or opt out entirely, which is also tempting. — Tom Storm

I see so much wrong with the ways things are that I kind of have "opted out". I mean I don't get personally involved in helping the needy. If I had significant wealth I might, but I'm a lowly pensioner myself, and I have my own suite of interests and pursuits for which there is already not enough time. I do try my best to do no harm, and that's about as far as my concern with others who are not family or friends goes.

I support the idea of social welfare, free education and medical services and, most importantly, taxing the rich to a much greater degree than is presently happening. But no government seems to have the balls to do it. I see there is little I can do about that, other than express my opinion about it. You no doubt are much more directly involved in helping people than I am.

Our society is a messy clusterfuck of pluralism, competing values, and beliefs. It seems that all we can really do is argue for the positions we find meaningful. — Tom Storm

I don't believe morality is a matter of "positions" at all, but of a compass based on the ability to empathize with others. To harm others is undesirable and hence bad because it feels undesirable and hence bad to many or even most people. The other point is that a community is inherently based on mutual respect and care. The fact that some people lack such empathy-based respect and care means that they are, if they don't conceal their disposition, considered to be sociopaths, and sociopathy is generally considered to be a condition of mental illness or incapacity to function in a way compatible with pragmatically necessary social values.

It really seems analogous to a cancer cell in the body of an organism. Is anyone seriously going to think that cancer is a good thing?

So, in the zombie case the sights, sounds, feelings, emotions and so on were detected but never consciously, even though the zombie is able to report about what was detected in as much detail, and with as much nuance as we are.

In contrast the "blind experiencer" can detect the sights sounds and so on, perhaps not as reliably and with as much subtlety of detail as the conscious experiencer, but they cannot report on it because they believe that they have detected nothing. Let's say this is a failure of connections between brain regions or functions.

So, now it looks like the zombie and the blind-experiencer are actually similar, except that the zombie who has no experience at all nevertheless speaks as though it does, whereas the other consciously believes it has no experience, which amounts to saying it, like the zombie, has no conscious experience. However in fact it does have experiences albeit unconsciously.

The question then seems to be as to how it would be coherent to say in the case of the zombie, that all these feelings, experiences, sights, sounds and so on can be detected and yet to simultaneously say that nothing was experienced, when the zombie itself speaks about he experiences.

Another point that comes to mind is that I think we are not consciously aware of probably almost everything we experience, in the sense of "are aware of' like when, for example, we drive on autopilot.

No doubt you are aware of the phenomenon of blindsight where people are able to navigate environments even though they are not conscious of being able to see anything at all.

Imagine extending that syndrome to experience as a whole where someone would say they were not aware of experiencing anything, even though being able to navigate environments, guess correctly what has been said to them, guess what they had just tasted or smelt or what kind of object they had felt or touched and indeed respond to the question as to whether they experienced anything. all; without any conscious awareness of having experienced anything at all.

The P-zombie case, as specified would seem to be the very opposite to that, in that the zombie would say that they had seen, heard, felt, tasted, etc., while not having actually had any experience of anything at all.

While the experience-blindness case seems weird in that experience is occurring without being conscious of it, the zombie case seems altogether impossible in that they would be reporting experiences which, by stipulation, they didn't have.

Not sure which bullet you are referring to...

Do you think P-zombies are a real possibility or merely something we imagine we can imagine?

The being would have experiences, that created memories that might affect its future behavior - so in that sense, it would be a sort of first-person experience. — Relativist

So, it would be no different than the LLMs in that they are changed by their experiences.

You haven't answered the question which I posed prior to Wayfarer's subsequent response which your post that I ma responding to responds to :

That said the one thing I wonder about with your saying that an artificial mind could be built that has first person experiences coupled with your saying that feelings are the only problematics is whether it would be possible to have first person experiences sans feelings. — Janus

I actually don't like the term "first person"―it is so humancentric. I also don't like the "dimensionless point" model of subjectivity.

The related question that comes to mind is whether you think consciousness is possible absent feelings and whether you equate consciousness with first person experience. Is it possible to have feelings without a sensate body?

If the processes can be programmed, then an artificial "mind" could actually be built that had 1st person experiences. — Relativist

What makes you think the background mental processing couldn't be programmed? It's algorthimically complex, involving multiple parallel paths, and perhaps some self-modifying programs. But in principle, it Seems straightforward. .As I said, feelings are the only thing problematic. — Relativist

I generally agree with your argument and find Wayfarers stipulative point about the fact that all attitudes are first person attitudes to be either irrelevant or trivial.

That said the one thing I wonder about with your saying that an artificial mind could be built that has first person experiences coupled with your saying that feelings are the only problematics is whether it would be possible to have first person experiences sans feelings.

If someone tries to get other people to stop acting cruelly, then I would say that they believe in a moral norm that applies to everyone and not just themselves, even if they say that they "understand that not everyone shares my perspective." — Leontiskos

They might try to stop people acting cruelly because they feel the victim's pain and see the propensity for cruelty as a mental illness (not being able to empathize, feel another's pain).

:cool:

Yes, but that’s not what I’m talking about, I’m talking about orientation. It’s more of a negation of the rational interpretation of insights. The insight is made, witnessed and logged, stored in memory. It is not rationalised. (It is rationalised at a later date in a different department of thought, but that is entirely separate from the experience of the insight). — Punshhh

It doesn't sound like you are disagreeing with what I've said, although it does sound like you think you are. I don't deny the reality of altered states of consciousness, and the profound effects they can have on people's lives. It's been a reality in my own life. I am just wary of drawing discursive conclusions from those altered states.

It enriches our lives, but doesn't tell us anything about what is the case, in my view.


On the contrary, it is our most direct arena of discovery. Enabling us to escape our discursive tendencies. — Punshhh

My point was that if you try to frame your insights into accounts of what-is-the-case in some quai-empirical sense, which is precisely not to escape our discursive tendencies, you will inevitably produce something that may or may not have any bearing on actuality. Whether it does or not is rationally undecidable. That said, all that matters is how you feel about it, and no justification is required for that.

I agree with you that the idealism/ materialism debate is senseless. It just doesn't matter. As someone quipped "no matter, never mind".

I think what we call the “actual world” is fraught. If you mean the world of gravity, water, and buses that can run over people, then I have no problem accepting that. If you mean politics and religion then these are somewhat arbitrary social constructions. I am also open to idealism, but I don't see how this is a particularly useful view. — Tom Storm

That is what I meant. I believe that people of all cultures experience the world of sky and earth, plants and animal, gravity, water, food, sex, illness, physical decline and death and countless other things. I don't believe those realities are culturally or mentally constructed, although culture will mediate how we think about them, of course.

I’ve generally held that morality seems to be pragmatic code of conduct that supports a social tribal species like humans to get along, hence almost universal prohibitions on lying, killing, murder, and other harms, along with a concurrent veneration of charity and altruism. Hierarchies also seem baked into this. — Tom Storm

I agree with you about the pragmatic basis of ethics and morality. We don't need a lawgiver. That said many people seem to lack a moral compass, but I don't think religion has helped with that at all. I mean, look at child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and other religion-affiliated institutions. Of course I'm not saying religion is a cause, but the religious idea that sex is somehow dirty or sinful may well contribute to perversions.

I agree with about hierarchies being inherent in human social life (as it is with animals too). Hierarchy is basically a source of, and probably outcome of bias. We have the possibility of approaching morality and ethics rationally (ideally without bias).

That's interesting. I had no religious upbringing as my parents were of a secular mindset, although my mother always said she believed there must be more to life than just this world, and she purchased a book from a book club entitled German Philosophy from Leibniz to Nietzsche which I tried to read when I was about thirteen or fourteen. It awoke something intuitive in me, but of course I couldn't really understand it.

Mum sent me to Sunday School when I was about 7, because she thought I should be exposed to religion so I could make up my own mind about it. Apparently I asked so many troublesome questions they asked her not to send me back.

Anyway you didn't answer my other questions. Of course you are under no obligation to do so.

One other question I would like to ask is whether you believe there are cross-cultural moral commonalities.

Edit: I see you have answered the questions in question as I was writing.

Interesting, thanks. Where did you come across this critter? Does it spend much time above ground? I hadn't noticed a lack of African members, but now that you mention it, I can't recall anyone stating they are from Africa.

Anyway, sorry to sidetrack the thread. I would join in but I fear I am too obtuse, or of the wrong mindset, to properly understand possible world semantics.

Jesus mate, you must have been a precocious child of 7 or 8 to be thinking in terms of culture, reality construction, potential worlds beyond our sense experience and human reality being perspectival. What were you reading at the time?

Do you think the culture, the shaping it does and the values it produces are real in the sense of being actually operative? Are linguistic practices themselves real happenings? What about biology? Is it all a matter of cultural construction too? Do you believe there is an actual world which contributes anything to our sense experience and contributes to shaping culture?

Beeeautiful...was it in your garden in some possible world?

Hmm, I've been pondering this since I was 7 or 8. — Tom Storm

I would have thought you are too level-headed to take such thinking seriously, even at an early age.

We can go there if you like, but I tend to avoid such ideas here as it can be seen as woo woo. — Punshhh

I've spent enough time thinking about it, to be satisfied that there is no point to it, since we can have no knowledge of such things.

Yes, I do agree with this, but it becomes complicated because I subscribe to the idea that what we know can be radically altered by the addition of one new thought, like when we have a lightbulb moment. — Punshhh

I was only referring to ordinary knowledge of the world. I think the kind of intuitive ideas you are referring to may or may not be knowledge, and that there is no way to tell. That said, I'm all for imaginative speculation, but I value that in terms of the feelings it may evoke, not because I believe it tells me anything about reality.

The non-discursive knowledge I referred to is the knowledge of participation, familiarity, feeling. It enriches our lives, but doesn't tell us anything about what is the case, in my view. If we try to convert it into discursive knowledge we inevitably seem to go astray.

The matter of pure reason is interesting. I understand reasoning, I’m not sure what “pure” adds to it. — Tom Storm

What I had in mind was simply reasoning based on unbiased premises. Take, for example, the dialogue between Thrasymachus and Socrates about the nature of justice. Thrasymachus argues that justice consists in the "advantage of the stronger". That can be challenged on the basis that such an opinion is based on a bias in the favour of power. Of course the powerful can force a situation where their wishes carry the day and are purported to be just, but it doesn't stand up to rational scrutiny. So, there is no purely rational (i.e. unbiased) justification for equating the wishes of the powerful with justice.

We might still be subject to Descartes' 'evil daemon', meaning that what we've gone through life thinking is real and substantial might in the end be illusory. I think that's a legitimate cause of angst. — Wayfarer

There is no escape from the downward spiral of such absurd thinking, except to reject it for what it is.

I think you did pretty well, and I agree with the general argument you've presented. Another tack, in my view, would be to point out to anyone who cares that their moral views be supported by "pure" rationality, that there is no purely rational reason why anyone deserves less moral consideration than anyone else.

This is the basis of the idea that we are all equal before the law. no one would want to live in a society wherein murder, rape, theft, slavery, exploitation and so on are condoned or even advocated.

There may be no moral facts, but there are facts about people's moral attitudes. I doubt you could find anyone who advocates the above -mentioned acts. There can be honor even among thieves.

I don't have time to read that now to find out whether the article accords with my own understanding of Whitehead, but I'll just note that according to my understanding, for Whitehead the subject is not a transcendental ego, and subjecthood is not confined, as I said above, to humans, animals or even plants.

So, "subjects" for Whitehead does not refer just to us, and he was opposed to human exceptionalism. Actual occasions of experience would count, I think, for Whitehead as subjects, in that there is a subjection to experience. He also speaks of subjection and superjection, but I am not clear enough from memory to explain that right now.

I don't know what you allude to by "strangely familiar" but Whitehead would certainly agree with you that scientific understanding should not be confined merely to thinking in terms of efficient causation.

The other thing to remember about Whitehead is that although his initial training was in physics and mathematics, he though poetic language is of prime importance in philosophy, and that all explanations are more or less inadequate to experience.

The "bifurcation of nature" can be understood in more than one way. Whitehead specifically had Kant and the German idealists (other than Schelling whose philosophy he admired and was influenced by) when he spoke of the bifurcation of nature. "Phenomenon/ noumenon", "Will and Representation", "Appearance and Reality", "Subject and Object", "Matter and Mind" and so on—he saw all as being philosophically misleading, at least as I read him.

As I understand Whitehead, actual occasions of experience are for him the real existents, and objects are mere hypostatization's. However, he was a "pan-experientialist" in that he did not confine experiencing to humans, animals or even plants. This "experiencing" would explain how Levin's "bots" are drawn (by feeling and not by any sort of imposed-from-above conscious intention) to the self-organizing behaviors they exhibit.

I mean even fundamental particles organize themselves in a profoundly ordered way.

I kind of do too, but it feels important to hold it up as a desideratum. Even unreachable goals can be motivating, and express something aspirational about the overall human project of knowledge. — J

Totally agree. I'm with Peirce on the idea of metaphysical and scientific truth as something asymptotically approached by the community of enquirers.

"Life is meaningless" is surely a mood everyone has felt at some time. How can we fall into such a mood? (other than reading Sartre's Nausea :smile: ). Usually by noticing, often with horror, that the values we hold, and organize our lives around, cannot be discovered in the world in the same way we discover what Heidegger called (in Manheim's translation) "essents" -- rocks and birds and math problems and everything else that has being but not being-there-for-us (Dasein, more or less). But as you say, living as a human is more than that, or at least so some of us believe. — J

Right, Heidegger captures that mood nicely in his idea of Vorhandenheit translated as 'present-at-hand" in its contrast with Zuhandenheit, translated as 'ready-to-hand. When we are dealing seamlessly with the world the ready to hand becomes transparent, and the meaning of things is found in their use as "affordances". The hammer and nails "disappear" when we are in that 'flow' state, and it's when something goes wrong and we suddenly become aware of the hammer as just a brute object, a bare existent, without meaning other than to be analyzed into its components, that we fall into a state of "rootlessness" (my word, not Heidegger's) wherein things become meaningless objects.

As a musician you would be aware of that meaningful flow state. Meaning is found in feeling, if we attempt analyze it, it disappears. For me, to live fully is to live a life of intense feeling, with the intellectual concerns informed by, not separate to, that life. I tried reading Nausea once—I wasn't able to get far with it. On the other hand I love Camus' works, which are explicitly about finding the deepest meaning without the need for transcendence.

Levin himself says he doesn't have a clear idea of what "platonic space" is. He posits it because mechanistic causation cannot really begin to explain morphogenesis. If the platonic space is not an inherent "minding" within things, then we have a problem of understanding just what and where we should think it is.

Embryogenesis already shows that cells somehow cooperate to produce very specific forms. The idea of a platonic space is, at this stage at least, an explanatory add-on. We know that something non-mechanistic, something livingly organic, must be at work everywhere in the world, but we have no clear idea of what it could be.

Whitehead, whose philosophy you know I have long admired, sees the whole of nature as organic, and in that sense physics would be rightly a part of biology. Whitehead has no room in his philosophy for a "transcendental ego", and I agree with him in that—I think it is a linguistically driven reification—a "fallacy of misplaced concreteness", to use Whitehead's phrase.

In this sense we know about this domain, or arena we find ourselves in. But what is that? And is that the world, or effectively a mirror in which we see ourselves? The world giving us what is apposite to our nature. — Punshhh

I don't know the answer to that—we are given what we are given. Are you suggesting Karma?

Yes, we do know things about the world, but we don’t know what it is we know, or what it means, apart from what it is to us and means to us. So again, the mirror.

I’m not suggesting Solipsism, but rather that for whatever reason the world is veiled from us and that veil presents as our nature. We are the veil, it is for us to clear the veil and make it transparent. So we, our being, can see the world through it. — Punshhh

I think we do know what it is we know. I would just say that discursive knowledge will be forever incomplete, and also that discursive knowledge of a thing is not, and cannot be, the thing itself, because the discursive knowledge is an idea and the thing known is not.

We know the world non-discursively and that non-discursive knowledge is not separate from what is known. We always already do know the world non-discursively, it is just a matter of learning to attend to that, rather than being lost in discourse and explanation. Mind you, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with discourse and explanation, just that it needs to take its place alongside our non-discursive awareness, lest we lose ourselves in the confusion that comes form "misplaced concreteness" (Whitehead).

We already do that for much of our days. The "spotlight" of conscious awareness is operative for far less of our time.

:smile: Cheers. I am not averse to Platonism, and I don't think Aristotle was either. The latter viewed the forms, and potentiality and possibility, as immanent rather than transcendent. I think it is our outdated notion of matter as "mindless stuff" that leads to positing a transcendent realm of perfect forms and universals. I like Whitehead's idea of a "world-soul", which I see as being akin to Spinoza's "natura naturans" (nature as a creative force). Spinoza calls that God, but God in Whitehead is not the creator, but rather the first and necessary creation that unifies all experience, and evolves along with everything else.

There is some interesting research being done by Michael Levin et al, which seems to show that not all self-organizing forms must have evolved. It does seem to suggest an inherent self-organization of matter, a kind of pansychism and Whitehead's philosophy also incorporates this idea. But the idea is not that of some eternal, overarching, transcendent mind or consciousness that is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. For me soul is equivalent to psyche (in line with Jung) not with consciousness. The greater part of the soul or psyche is unconscious. Our consciousness does not create the world, but is always already "thrown into the world", subject to forces of which it can be but dimly consciously aware, but which are nonetheless felt. Whitehead's philosophy makes much of feeling.