What is the alternative? — Wayfarer

I have no idea. But this doesn't sound like a good argument in favor of something. Isn't this close to an appeal to ignorance?

If we are throwing around metaphysical potentialities, why couldn't the universe be entirely self-aware? Could it not be that it's humans alone who are in the dark? I don't understand how we get to arrive at something so specific as the universe is gaining self-awareness. What exactly does self-awareness consist of when it comes to a universe (I am assuming by universe you mean something more like cosmic consciousness)? Is there an end result - all meaning is assimilated and converges and 'bang' a new stage in consciousness commences?

The question of 'meaning' is an interesting one. My intuition is that meaning is something pertaining to human beings and sense making. How does the notion of meaning apply outside of contingent beings?

I sense a fresh thread on this.

If we are throwing around metaphysical potentialities, why couldn't the universe be entirely self-aware? Could it not be that it's humans alone who are in the dark? I don't understand how we get to arrive at something so specific as the universe is gaining self-awareness. — Tom Storm

Everything we see other than us lacks what we have. The only awareness the universe ha is through/in us. (Of course, maybe there are other pockets of it out there in other parts of the universe.)

What exactly does self-awareness consist of when it comes to a universe (I am assuming by universe you mean something more like cosmic consciousness)? — Tom Storm

Speculation. Sure, maybe, anything is possible I suppose. But we only know what we know. And that is, we are self-aware, and not much else is.

Is there an end result - all meaning is assimilated and converges and 'bang' a new stage in consciousness commences? — Tom Storm

I like it!

The question of 'meaning' is an interesting one. My intuition is that meaning is something pertaining to human beings and sense making. How does the notion of meaning apply outside of contingent beings?

I sense a fresh thread on this. — Tom Storm

I hope so! I don't know much about meaning, from any formal, educated pov.

But this doesn't sound like a good argument in favor of something. Isn't this close to an appeal to ignorance? — Tom Storm

I don't think so. Look at the history of ideas, at how philosophy started, the dialogues of Plato. There are very many examples of consideration of this very question. Likewise the Indian philosophical traditions. Some of the accounts are mythical, some rationalist. If you consider the various meanings of 'logos' in Greek philosophy, for example, you will find it is something very like a principle or guiding intelligence. Hence the proliferation of words ending -logy (psychology, anthropology, theology, etc).

I think the idea of a meaningless universe into which humans are an accidental byproduct is very specific to modernity. It co-incides with a new type of awareness, and the discovery of the vastness of the cosmos (although that said, it seems Indian cosmologists entertained realistic ideas of the age of the cosmos.)

What exactly does self-awareness consist of when it comes to a universe (I am assuming by universe you mean something more like cosmic consciousness)? Is there an end result - all meaning is assimilated and converges and 'bang' a new stage in consciousness commences? — Tom Storm

The idea is explored in Mind and Cosmos:

Nagel’s basic argument is this. If materialism cannot explain consciousness, then materialism cannot be a complete explanation of the natural order. This argument is more interesting than it looks. It is perhaps easy to suppose that we could fully explain the beginning of the universe in terms of matter and forces and so on. But if the arising of life and subsequently consciousness cannot be explained in terms of matter and forces – that is, that life and consciousness are not susceptible to reductionist explanations – then materialism has not explained the natural order. Life and consciousness must always have been possibilities within the natural order, even before the conditions for their actual arising were not fully present. Therefore materialism is not a complete theory. Nagel does not stop there. In a chapter on ‘Cognition’, he goes on to argue that the faculty of reason, by which he means the capacity (for a few of us) to intuit truths that are independent of the mind, such as mathematical or logical truths, cannot be explained by evolutionary theory alone. Neo-Darwinian theory must explain the appearance of faculties such as reason as somehow adaptive, but we cannot explain the capacity for insight into the truth in terms of adaptation for survival. And in a chapter on ‘Value’ Nagel argues that our capacity to make correct moral judgements is based on the objectivity of good and bad, it being an objective matter that certain actions are good and certain bad, which is similarly inexplicable in terms of materialism alone. For each of these broad areas – consciousness, cognition and value – Nagel sketches what might count as more satisfactory explanatory theories. One such sort of theory would be intentional – that God has set up the natural order is such a way that there is consciousness, that we can intuit the truth and know good and bad. But Nagel does not explore intentional theories as he does not believe in God. He plays with panpsychism – the theory that mind is somehow in everything – but does not find this kind of metaphysical theory very useful. His preferred tentative solution is what he calls ‘teleological naturalism’, meaning the theory that the natural order is biased in some way towards the emergence of life and consciousness, as more-than-likely directions or potentials of development. He does not develop this theory but merely indicates that it might at least be along the right lines. — The Universe is Waking Up

I think the case can be made that at least esoteric spirituality presents this kind of understanding in symbolic or mythological terms. Why symbolic or mythological? Because it is a very difficult thing to discern!

— The Universe is Waking Up — Wayfarer

What's this?

How about "immaterial subjects" in the sense of immaterial ideas abstracted from the objective material world — Gnomon
I'm fine with that. — Relativist

I suspect that --- for fear of straying into the seductive mindset of spooky Spirituality --- those who espouse the metaphysical doctrine of Materialism dare not use their imaginative faculty (Reason) to infer intangible invisible subjective abstractions, that exist only in the matterless, and unverifiable, realm of Ideas, Concepts, Thoughts & Fantasies.

However, as an amateur philosopher, with no job or tenure to project, I feel free to follow the evidence of inference wherever it leads ; yea, unto the shadow of Religion, that enthralls the "weak" minds of millions around the world. Gods & ghosts are indeed "immaterial objects". But so are Logic & Math & Reason itself ; "reified" as Abstract Nouns : "a noun denoting an idea, quality, or state rather than a concrete object". Such as Love, Beauty, Honesty, Democracy, and yes Consciousness.

All of those immaterial concepts are held dearly by some people, despite their immateriality, and the implication of some kind of parallel existence in a Platonic realm. So, I ask myself : am I one of those gullible "anti-realists", who can't discern the difference between an abstraction and an actuality? Are you "fine" with that kind of subjective imagination? Some on this forum are appalled at the conceit that immaterial abstractions could exist in a material world. :wink:

It's from a review in a UK Buddist online magazine, of Thomas Nagel's 2012 book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.

Why specifically the formulation of growing self-awareness? — Tom Storm

If the material universe popped into existence with a "bang", can we imagine that, like a planted seed, it came pre-set with un-realized Potentials that took eons to mature (actualize) into the complex cosmos we humans are now scanning with our far-seeing technological eye-extensions? The Webb space-scope is said to be looking back to the beginning of the universe, even as it reflects our insignificance to the near-infinite bubble of being that was born in a Planck-scale bit of possibility.

Was "awareness" a property or quality of the nascent cosmos? If not, how did sentience & consciousness emerge from an explosion of space & time & matter & energy? Is it not reasonable to say that there is a "growing awareness" or that the "cosmos has, eventually become aware of itself", only in the last few millennia of evolution? Is it possible that Awareness evolved, along with Life and Mind, from an insentient & lifeless state of fecund oblivion?

Of course, such poetic imagery is forbidden for pragmatic science, but is a bit of creative license allowed on a philosophy forum? :smile:


Oblivion : the state of being unaware or unconscious of what is happening.

It's from a review in a UK Buddist online magazine, of Thomas Nagel's 2012 book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. — Wayfarer

Ah. Yes, I've read the book. (Even understood it now and then.) I just didn't know what your quote was from.

One of my canonical texts

Speculation. Sure, maybe, anything is possible I suppose. But we only know what we know. And that is, we are self-aware, and not much else is. — Patterner

Indeed. I have no specific confidence in any metaphysical models. I don't subscribe to philosophical naturalism or accounts of higher awareness. The best we can say is that humans generate opinions and some seem to 'check out' and other's can't be assessed.

I think the idea of a meaningless universe into which humans are an accidental byproduct is very specific to modernity. — Wayfarer

Which doesn't mean it is wrong. But I wouldn't make the claim it is meaningless - how would we know? I would however say that meaning is hard to discern and in the eye of the beholder and given that we are meaning making creatures, it never takes long for humans to create a narrative (generally based on the zeitgeist) to account for our interactions with and place in reality.

His preferred tentative solution is what he calls ‘teleological naturalism’, meaning the theory that the natural order is biased in some way towards the emergence of life and consciousness, as more-than-likely directions or potentials of development. He does not develop this theory but merely indicates that it might at least be along the right lines. — The Universe is Waking Up

I can see how following certain inferences would lead some people into this space. I am more cautious. I can't explain why some people enjoy folk dancing... how can I account for anything to do with intrinsic purpose in the universe?

I think the case can be made that at least esoteric spirituality presents this kind of understanding in symbolic or mythological terms. Why symbolic or mythological? Because it is a very difficult thing to discern! — Wayfarer

I think this is a useful insight.

Was "awareness" a property or quality of the nascent cosmos? If not, how did sentience & consciousness emerge from an explosion of space & time & matter & energy? Is it not reasonable to say that there is a "growing awareness" or that the "cosmos has, eventually become aware of itself", only in the last few millennia of evolution? Is it possible that Awareness evolved, along with Life and Mind, from an insentient & lifeless state of fecund oblivion? — Gnomon

No idea. But all I can say is that any judgments about this are human and therefore limited and subject to a myriad of biases and presuppositions. My own speculative tendencies wouldn't consider human life to be significant enough to be rated as a 'growing awareness'. Perhaps a growing malignancy if we consider pollution and climate change. We know so little about anything that I don't think we even have the capacity to gauge just what is remarkable or important, except by quotidian human standards.

If the material universe popped into existence with a "bang", can we imagine that, like a planted seed, it came pre-set with un-realized Potentials that took eons to mature (actualize) into the complex cosmos we humans are now scanning with our far-seeing technological eye-extensions? — Gnomon

Not my area of expertise or interest, I'm afraid.

My own speculative tendencies wouldn't consider human life to be significant enough to be rated as a 'growing awareness'. — Tom Storm

How are we not? Regardless of how, regardless of whether or not it implies anything about anything, regardless of how incalculably tiny a fraction of the universe we are, we are, unlike anything else we are aware of, aware. Perhaps the only speck of awareness in the universe. Or maybe not even a speck, but growing.

So are you saying subject to human judgment humans are significant? :wink:

Perhaps the only speck of awareness in the universe — Patterner

In whose eyes are we a mere speck, other than our own? In the absence of any perspective there's no scale against which to make the comparison against which our physical size may be judged. It's true that in our age the Universe has been revealed to be of absolutely unthinkably vast dimensions but again, by whom has this been discovered?

That's a rhetorical way of pointing out the sense in which the Universe knows itself through human eyes. As far as we're aware, they're the only one of such a kind that exist.

I know this is a little hackneyed, but a (bona fide) quote from Albert Einstein expresses something similar:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind. — Letter of condolence sent to Robert J. Marcus of the World Jewish Congress (12 February 1950)

Likewise, in Spinoza's Ethics (and 'Spinoza's religion' was the only kind Einstein would ever acknowledge acceptance of):

Spinoza finds lasting happiness only in the “intellectual love of God”, which is the noetic vision of the single “Substance” (I prefer 'subject') underlying everything and everyone. The nature of this vision is clearly announced by Spinoza when he says that “[t]he mind’s intellectual love of God is the very love of God by which God loves himself” (Ethics, Part 5, Prop. 36). Since, for Spinoza, God is the Whole that includes everything, it also includes your love for God, and thus God can be said to love Itself through you.'

So are you saying subject to human judgment humans are significant? :wink: — Tom Storm

No. I'm saying we're a 'growing awareness'. Significance doesn't enter into it. Same with the growing plant in my yard.

However, as human judgement is the only kind of judgement there is, judging ourselves to be significant does, indeed, make us so. We are causing things to come into being that would not come into being anywhere in the universe if not for us.



I'm just talking about physical size. An unmeasurably small part of the universe contains billions of points of self-awareness. IMO, that immeasurably small part is, hands down, the most interesting part. Not simply because of its uniqueness. Rather, because of the way in which it is unique.

No. I'm saying we're a 'growing awareness'. Significance doesn't enter into it. — Patterner

OK. But then why does it matter? What's your demonstration of 'growing'?

In whose eyes are we a mere speck, other than our own? In the absence of any perspective there's no scale against which to make the comparison against which our physical size may be judged. — Wayfarer

Indeed. On this we can agree.

OK. But then why does it matter? What's your demonstration of 'growing'? — Tom Storm

There are quite a few more of us now than there used to be.

My own speculative tendencies wouldn't consider human life to be significant enough to be rated as a 'growing awareness'. Perhaps a growing malignancy if we consider pollution and climate change. — Tom Storm

Sorry to hear that gloomy outlook. It seems to focus on the small percentage of bad stuff that the media calls "news" : "if it bleeds, it leads". I would hope that philosophers could ignore the gory headlines to see the 98% of good stuff that goes un-reported. Ironically, some people seem to think that cynicism makes you appear smarter than the happy-go-lucky sheep.

Like the horizon, Utopia is always somewhere off in the future, and recedes as fast as we approach. But the confidence that we can get closer is what drives the change-agents in the world. For example, catalytic entrepreneur Elon Musk is afraid of a Matrix-like takeover by AI machines, and possible eradication of meat people. But he retains a positive outlook, that humans will survive, and perhaps prevail, by adapting, even by emigrating to Mars. That dynamic of bad now vs good future seems to be what drives him to be such a technological innovator.

Throughout the centuries, philosophers have been acutely aware of the bad stuff, but stoically focused on making it better, incrementally, bit by bit. Biological evolution takes eons to make significant improvements in the status quo. And social improvement does not advance nearly as fast as technological progression. But that's only because society consists of conflict-of-interest people, not cog & wheel machines. A philosophy of Optimism may not be justified, but Pragmatism works. :smile:


Why do so many people believe that cynicism is a sign of intelligence?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/trust-games/202111/the-myth-the-cynical-genius

Evolutionary Progress?
How could anyone who accepts an evolutionary view of life deny that progress has occurred?
https://watermark.silverchair.com/50-5-451.pdf

I know that materialism rendered a holy of holies becomes a death trap. At the other end of the spectrum, skittering around, spewing glib, scientific catchphrases scintillating with the current cachet in smartypants verbiage becomes another death trap.
— ucarr
Is that your disdainful view of philosophical speculation? :cool: — Gnomon

No. Im sufficiently repentant to know I've got no cause for being disdainful about anything.

When the Enlightenment gave birth to Empirical Science, it threw-out the philosophical baby with the bath-water. The Materialism and Scientism found on this forum are the off-spring of that "disjunction" between Ideal & Real worldviews. EFA is, in part, an attempt to heal the rift between the science of Matter, and the science of Mind. :smile: — Gnomon

Holism is one of your main themes?

What are some specific ways materialism reasons erroneously when arriving at its reductionism?

Both Math and Language are theoretical in conception (principles), but practical in application (details). :nerd: — Gnomon

Theoretical Philosophy is the study of the principles for human knowledge, the development of the sciences and the basis for scientific knowledge, the principles of thought, argumentation and communication, metaphysics and the history of the subject itself. — Gnomon

Since you cite this quote from Lund University, I assume it speaks for you. Is it your understanding principles, by definition, are theoretical and therefore subject to revision?

I'm not sure I buy your distinction between theoretical philosophy on the one hand and math and language on the other because, to my understanding, the latter are no less subject to revision than the former. As a matter of fact, language is an obvious example of applied principles subject to frequent updating as evidenced by the topicality of the vernacular. Take for example, ending sentences with a preposition. That used to be a no-no. Nowadays it's the speaker's decision.

Philosophy and Its Contrast with Science
Science is about contingent facts or truths; philosophy is often about that but is also about necessary truths (if they exist) — Gnomon

Since scientific theory, by definition - and also by methodological principle - always expresses itself tentatively, its tentativeness, being necessary (albeit somewhat paradoxically), is not contingent.

Obversely, since theoretical philosophy, by definition – and also by methodological principle – always expresses itself universally, its universality, being theoretical (albeit somewhat paradoxically), is not necessary.

So, scientific theory and theoretical philosophy have common ground in their management of the contingent/necessary disjunction operator; their approaches to it from opposite poles is therefore a trivial difference.

Employing the above symmetry, I proceed to claiming the conceptual distinctions between science and philosophy are trivial with one exception: the phenomenal.

I’m now inclined to think the crux of the mind/body problem is the question of the scope of perception_cognition by the senses or through immediate experience.

I suspect the possible mistake of reductive materialism is its belief material/immaterial are necessarily parallel categories.

My materialist mode of inquiry, theory and hypothesis impel me towards a bold speculation: as science progresses, it subsumes more and more of the claims traditionally ascribed to immaterial spirit. Talking fancy, the ne plus ultra for this line of reasoning is to claim God, the supposed immaterial spirit, exists as an existentially real, physical being. To be sure, God’s physicality effects a cosmic scale perturbation of the human scale of empirical experience. The job of science, being physicalist, therefore entails reconciling the human scale of empirical experience with God’s cosmic scale of empirical experience along the continuum of the phenomenal universe.

What’s important for Enformaction is that it not distort the degree to which its multi-mode holism differs from my unary physical holism. The difference is small, not large. The former parallels material/undefined/immaterial whereas the latter subsumes these three categories.

Sorry to hear that gloomy outlook. It seems to focus on the small percentage of bad stuff that the media calls "news" — Gnomon

I don't think this is correct. Climate change is not a 'small percentage of bad stuff' it's a significant ontological concern. Who is talking about 'news'? And that’s a fairly cynical view of media.

I am neither pessimistic or optimistic - neither approach seems apropos to me. I am simply aware.

Ironically, some people seem to think that cynicism makes you appear smarter than the happy-go-lucky sheep. — Gnomon

I'm not sure about that, but I do know that people use philosophy in this way. I wonder why you have introduced cynicism when nothing I have written is cynical.

Evolutionary Progress?
How could anyone who accepts an evolutionary view of life deny that progress has occurred? — Gnomon

Why did you drop this question into your response? When did evolution come up? When did progress come up? Are you on a kind of automatic pilot of pedagogical didacticism? :wink:

OK. But then why does it matter? What's your demonstration of 'growing'?
— Tom Storm
There are quite a few more of us now than there used to be. — Patterner

I'm assuming this is intended as a joke and it is kind of funny.

Nothing is ‘ ultimately material’. No material ultimate has been discovered, despite the construction of the most complex apparatus in the history of science. The standard model of physics is itself a mathematical construction. — Wayfarer

I’m thinking math began when cave people looking at their fingers started seeing repeatable patterns.

Since matter is neither created nor destroyed, why do folks think tangible stuff is perishable? Why should not the label instead be reconfigurable?

I suspect you’ll blow off the above as anecdotal fluff, so let me follow with my best attempt to ask probing questions.

Do you hold a metaphysical commitment to the claim the phenomenal world is undergirded by an immaterially extant realm ultimately real albeit undetectable to the senses?

If so, can you elaborate some essential attributes of this immaterially extant ground of existence?

How would you manage your commitment if it turns out that the intellect and its perceptions are another sensory faculty? The argument here is that if consciousness is physical, then its perceptions must likewise be physical. For example: we know spacetime is physical. It follows then that anything existing in time, as in the case of thought, holds possession of time duration. Finally, therefore, thoughts, being always time-positive, are physical.

Conversely, if consciousness and its perceptions are immaterial, then how explain the intersection of the material and the immaterial? Is there a bizarre, transitional realm, neither material nor immaterial? How might the boundaries between these realms be measured? Does impossibility of measurement raise doubts about their existence?

Since matter_energy is neither created nor destroyed, it follows that they, like immaterial reality, having no origin, have no beginning. This makes them co-eternals. If so, how is it that immateriality logically priority to materiality?

My hypothesis claims that If spirituality is higher-order thermodynamics (teleodynamics), then matter/energy are two positions on one continuum. I call spirit absential materialism.

In your article in Medium, you say,

• we must already have ‘the idea of equals’
  
• It is the innate capacity which provides us the ability to make such judgements
  
• Science sees the Universe through...mathematical hypotheses
  
• the grasp of abstract relations and qualities, are quite literally the ligatures of reason
  
• But even though they’re real (mathematical hypotheses), they are not ‘out there somewhere’.
  
• this essay...takes for granted the division of mind (‘in here’) and world (‘out there’) as being, to all intents, separate realities. And that itself is a metaphysical construction!
  
• Charles Pinter’s book, Mind and the Cosmic Order provides considerable evidence for
• the kind of scientifically-informed idealism that I’m wishing to elaborate in my essays.
  
• This implies reality can propagate without a location in space, i.e., that immaterial reality has no whereness…

How do humans access knowledge of real things not located anywhere? This question is important because it implies that cognition, no less than sensory perception, must have a spacetime location. Try to think about anything without spatial and temporal extension and you’ll soon discover language cannot proceed meaningfully without them. Try to do anything cognitive without special and temporal extension and you’ll soon discover you cannot.

In closing, I ask, is it reasonable to label your metaphysical commitment as Existence Dualism (physical objects extant as real material things; ideas extant as abstract immaterial things)?

I'm assuming this is intended as a joke and it is kind of funny. — Tom Storm

Well, I tried to present it inn a humorous way. But not really a joke. In that way, we are, unarguable, growing. It's entirely possible our population will continue to grow, and we'll spread out among the other planets, and maybe even the stars. Awareness may come to occupy a larger percentage of the universe.

But likely never a noticable percentage. Even if we came to occupy the entire galaxy, what percentage of the universe is that?

More arguable is the idea of the awareness, itself, growing. Our awareness is currently greater than that of our ancestors who lived at any point in the past, or any other awareness on the planet. But is it still growing? Can't really say. I don't even know what that would mean.

Ok. For me this sounds more like a matter of quantity rather than quality.

Our awareness is currently greater than that of our ancestors who lived at any point in the past, or any other awareness on the planet. — Patterner

I'm reasonably certain a lot of people will find this problematic. Is the modern mind an improvement on the pre-modern? How would you measure improvement? More reason, more science, less superstition, less religion? The die hard secular humanists will agree to this.

Ok. For me this sounds more like a matter of quantity rather than quality. — Tom Storm

Yup.

I'm reasonably certain a lot of people will find this problematic. Is the modern mind an improvement on the pre-modern? How would you measure improvement? More reason, more science, less superstition, less religion? The die hard secular humanists will agree to this. — Tom Storm

I didn't say it's an improvement. Just that it's more aware. We are certainly more aware than our cave-dwelling ancestors were. Even if our brains are identical to theirs, we have learned much since then. Greater body of knowledge. We are aware of more things. And more kinds of things. Odds that improvement?

There may be things we are not aware of that other creatures are. How does the Monarch butterfly migrate from Canada to the exact same trees in Mexico that it's great great grandparents left in the spring? They're aware of stuff I'm not. But I'll bet they aren't aware of themselves, or their own awareness. With my awareness and intelligence, I can do what they do. And quite a few other things. But their awareness and intelligence do not give them many of the things I have. Not even the ability to not make that migration. So I'll consider my awareness greater than theirs.

I’m thinking math began when cave people looking at their fingers started seeing repeatable patterns. — ucarr

Math may have beginning because we noticed repeatable patterns in material objects. But math is not a material object. The mathematical writings in book or on computer screens are material things, but they are not math. They are how we share mathematical ideas.

The best we can say is that humans generate opinions and some seem to 'check out' and other's can't be assessed. — Tom Storm

This seems very much the reasonable view.

Do you hold a metaphysical commitment to the claim the phenomenal world is undergirded by an immaterially extant realm ultimately real albeit undetectable to the senses? — ucarr

If you read the OP Mind-Created World you will see that I deny that. From my perspective your criticisms are a product of the Cartesian tendency to objectify the mind as 'thinking substance', something which can be thought of as an existing object, a denizen of an 'extant realm undetectable to the senses'. I'm explicitly not saying that. My argument is that the mind is never an object of perception, it is 'the unknown knower' to draw on a phrase expressed in Indian philosophy. It is never appears to us as object, but as us, as the subject. And 'the hand can only grasp what is other to it', to quote the Upaniṣad again.

this essay (Nature of Number) takes for granted the division of mind (‘in here’) and world (‘out there’) as being, to all intents, separate realities. And that itself is a metaphysical construction! — ucarr

Nowhere do I say that - that is your interpretive paradigm. At the end Mind Created World, I quote the phenomenologist Dan Zahavi:

Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned.

The distinction between self and world is a mental division, a division of the totality of experience into subject and object. Whereas we are not outside of, apart from, or other to reality. That is a key insight of non-dualism, albeit a difficult perspective to realise.

Try to think about anything without spatial and temporal extension and you’ll soon discover language cannot proceed meaningfully without them. — ucarr

Quite. Concepts without percepts are empty, percepts without concepts are blind, said Kant.

i think it is indisputable that science sees the world through mathematical hypotheses - the mathematization of physics and other sciences was the cardinal achievement of the scientific revolution. And yet there is still controversy as to why this can be so, and the related question of whether mathematics is discovered or invented. This is motivated by what has been described as 'the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences'. Mathematical logic has become internal and fundamental to the scientific apprehension of the world, through the process of conjecture, hypotheses, observation and experiment. But the nature of number itself is not a scientific, but a metaphysical, question. The controversy revolves precisely around the question of in what sense mathematics can be considered real as distinct from products of the mind. The realist view is that mathematical regularities are implicit in nature itself or at any rate are not simply useful fictions or constructions. The question then becomes, what kind of existence do they have? Mathematical platonists say that numbers are real independently of whether anyone perceives them or not, 'in the same sense', said Frege, 'just as a planet, even before anyone saw it, was in interaction with other planets'. But although they're independent of any particular mind, they can only be grasped by a mind. So they are 'intelligible objects', bearing in mind that 'object' is used in a metaphorical sense of 'the object of thought'. That is the sense in which there is an 'intelligible realm' that doesn't exist on the level of sensory perception (per Plato's analogy of the divided line) but is real in a noetic or intellectual sense.

My hypothesis claims that If spirituality is higher-order thermodynamics (teleodynamics), then matter/energy are two positions on one continuum. — ucarr

Einstein showed that matter and energy are interchangeable through his famous equation e=mc². It has nothing to do with spirituality per se.

As for 'existence dualism', the philosophy I'm trying to articulate is nearer to objective idealism.