Thus, the failing (obscurity) of the OP. — 180 Proof

Look, it's Wittgenstein's claim about ethics, the world and value in the Tractatus. It is Witt you don't understand. It was so obscure for Witt that he refused to talk about it, yet he admits that it is precisely that which cannot be spoken that is the important part of the work.

The OP raises a question of "the essence of religion" and not "what Witty says about religion (in the TLP)". Nothing I've discussed here shows what I do or do not understand about "Witty's ethics", so that's a non sequitur at best. The fact of the matter is, Constance, religion long preceeds (by scores of millennia) philosophical reflections such as ethics and that's where its "essence" (foundation) lies – in facticity (e.g. exigency), not ideality (i.e. effable ineffability).

But you have to ask why he took that position. You think the OP is obscure, but I am saying the issue is obscure, the OP is clear. But it does take a penetrating analysis. What is it about ethics that Witt said was beyond the pale of what language can say? It is the Good (and of course, the Bad)! What in Culture and value he calls divinity. One has to ask, why would he say this?

Constance, religion long preceeds (by scores of millennia) philosophical reflections such as ethics and that's where its "essence" (foundation) lies – in facticity (e.g. exigency), not ideality (i.e. effable ineffability). — 180 Proof

It precedes reflections about ethics logically; historically. who cares. This is an apriori argument.

It precedes reflections about ethics logically; historically who cares. — Constance

Yeah well, the logical precedent happens to be manifest historically since the topic concerns a concrete, social institution and not a mere abstraction. :roll:

This is an apriori argument.

What "argument"? There is no "argument", just speculative observations which are either informed by anthropology, history, psychology, etc or they are not.

But you have to ask why he took that position. — Constance

No we don't because Witty isn't the topic of this thread as per the OP. Folks shift the goal posts when they are confused by the obscurity of what they think they are talking about. As far as I'm concerned, Witty is a non sequitur you've introduced that further obscures the issue.

what if ethics were as apodictic (apriori, universally and necessarily true) as logic? — Astrophel

I would view logic as apodictic in accordance with its own terms. Perhaps a priori, insofar as I would define a priori: a "truth" settled upon and input foundationally and universally, more or less. But not pre-existent nor always present; like a posteriori and phenomena, mediated (constructed and projected). I would not view logic as universally and necessarily true outside of its own construction. I would not impose our logic upon Nature, for e.g. If/when we [superficially] observe logic in nature, we are superimposing it.

As for ethics, same exact paragraph as above, mutatis mutandis.

I am not diminishing the high function of both logic and ethics for us. I am not following a hypothesis that they are neither ultimately real nor necessary in order to stop applying them. On the contrary, I cherish both, even though I am not expert in either. I am just settling on a position which following various paths collected where "I" happened to be.

To reiterate that current settlement, our mundane experiences are mediated, we, as human animals, have become so attached to them, we are no longer attuned to our real and natural aware-ing, the one we share with the rest of nature in variations. Religion reminds us/allows a glimpse into our present being, and reprieve from the speed and chatter of becoming; and, more so, from attachment to the Subject of that becoming. The latter has virtually displaced our true natures with its movements.

From Upanisads to Analects to Sutras, Gospels, Torah and Prophets, Koran, and I would speculate much more, beyond the mythological, legalistic, and ritualistic, there is the consistent thread: surrender your ego (Mind's constructions/projections) to the Universal (God/Nature). That consistent thread, I say, is the essence.

You know that perception is an historical construct, even though it occurs without pause. This is evident in that one's own personal history provides that language learning from infancy, yet when we engage with this language, there is exactly this immediacy in the way a knowledge claim is affirmed in and by language. — Astrophel

Well. That's what I'm saying. And Heidegger must be who I got it from. The so called experience (seems immediate but) is mediated by the language passed on (as it evolves) through history, input into each "unit" of Mind starting in infancy.

And, following Heidegger, this language itself, apart from one's personal history, has a history that goes back through the ages and evolves in historical movements (sound like Hegel? Of course). — Astrophel

What the hell! Yes. I thought Hegel had built that idea, yes. Mind is History. It moves through, not just language qua language, but a multiferous system of signifiers, operating in accordance with its own evolved laws mechanics dynamics. Logic for instance, a "grammar". As is ethics

make that move into the world (this is what Michel Henry argued with passion) and there we are in this "fleshy encounter" of a very direct apprehension that is NOT qualified by the interpretative values of language. Feel the grass, the pinch of the flesh, — Astrophel

Ok, yes. I see your point. Sorry, I got carried off by those parallels. Yes, when I say religion takes us away from "I" and returns us to real being (the body), you are correct. Being feels nature presently; senses before perception floods in with its "fiction".

an unmitigated, unconditioned apprehension of the pure phenomenon that stands before one in vivid presence, — Astrophel

:clap: :up:

Yeah well, the logical precedent happens to be manifest historically since the topic concerns a concrete, social institution and not a mere abstraction. — 180 Proof

But the point is that it being a concrete social institution is exactly what one has to put aside to understand the essence of religion.

What "argument"? There is no "argument", just speculative observations which are either informed by anthropology, history, psychology, etc or they are not. — 180 Proof

No. Read the OP. There are actual claims there. You should read it, understand what it says and say something like, look, here you say this, but this is assailable on grounds X and Y.

No we don't because Witty isn't the topic of this thread as per the OP. Folks shift the goal posts when they are confused by the obscurity of what they think they are talking about. As far as I'm concerned, Witty is a non sequitur you've introduced that further obscures the issue. — 180 Proof

Don't be naïve. Witty is at the very center of the OP. I can't help you if you don't do this, read the OP with a mind to understanding and without the default dismissal, that is. Just read it.

I would view logic as apodictic in accordance with its own terms. Perhaps a priori, insofar as I would define a priori: a "truth" settled upon and input foundationally and universally, more or less. But not pre-existent nor always present; like a posteriori and phenomena, mediated (constructed and projected). I would not view logic as universally and necessarily true outside of its own construction. I would not impose our logic upon Nature, for e.g. If/when we [superficially] observe logic in nature, we are superimposing it. — ENOAH

I have to lean Kantian on this one, but only lean: The apodicticity shouldn't be denied what it is: one cannot, say, even imagine an object being its own cause, to move all by itself, that is. Nor can one imagine logic's tautological principles being any less authoritative than they are. This apriority of the logic of causality is, notwithstanding the contingency of the language that discovers it, itself an absolute. This is saying: no, I really do not know what logic is because, per Wittgenstein, logic is only shown but its nature cannot be known, and: language itself is not apriori. It is as you say historical. But even though I cannot clear the interpretative language dimension of knowing of all doubt (to speak like Descartes), the intuition (whatever that is) is emphatic and and clear as a bell, and it is this coercivity, of logic, not the hermeneutic aporia, that is the absolute. I think to question this collapses into an empty skepticism.

But to call it an absolute is itself bound to interpretative indeterminacy. One simply cannot help this. One CAN doubt anything, true, but to doubt logic as it appears is disingenuous. I would without hazard say, the "intuition" of causality is absolutely inviolable.

Not clear about a posteriori and phenomena. As to nature and logic, I think it important to note that a person is not nature. Nor is it right to argue that that one fits into the natural scheme of things. A person is a self, and a self is a very different kind of being from a tree or a coconut. Our self is a living and breathing, caring, pragmatic, historical temporally structured existence that anticipates a future in a perpetual "not yet".

I know this sounds weird, and I have to say I don't understand it perfectly well, but the more I read the papers on phenomenology, the closer I get. It is best to simply allow oneself to observe and think: there is logic. What IS this? See how it is played out in symbolic logic. The insight the OP and all that follows is trying to show is that this "intuition" of logic is simply inviolable. But because logic is only about the form of thought and not the content, it is only trivially inviolable. Logic QUA logic is vacuous. But now let's look at ethics and we see it is not the form, nor the random opinion, the cultural orientation, the relativity of values, and the like. Here, we move to the essence of ethics/religion, into what all these have to make them what they are. And this requires an analysis of an ethical matter. We find the essence of ethics is value, and so it is with religion. What is value? This has been discussed.

As for ethics, same exact paragraph as above, mutatis mutandis. — ENOAH

Which means you would count value as not something as universally and necessarily true outside of its own construction. But what is its construction? With logic, there is the coercivity in the intuition regardless of the aporia of the language, and this has to acknowledged for what it is. But in ethics, it is the pain of this sprained ankle. Now, what IS "its own construction"? Are you saying that the sprain is entirely a localized affair, there in the ankle, and no where else? I suspect this to be the case.

The trouble is, again, that the view here is phenomenological: There are NO physical locality boundaries, and each being IS Being qua Being. You may find this odd, but this really is the implicit physicalism that pervades science and naturlistic thinking. All is metaphysics, I argue. This sprained ankle is as profound as it gets. Why? Because the pain that is physically localized, is phenomenologically without locality, for it is subsumed under Being as such.

From Upanisads to Analects to Sutras, Gospels, Torah and Prophets, Koran, and I would speculate much more, beyond the mythological, legalistic, and ritualistic, there is the consistent thread: surrender your ego (Mind's constructions/projections) to the Universal (God/Nature). That consistent thread, I say, is the essence.. — ENOAH

I believe you are saying that that consistent thread is value-in-the-world. Note that all you mention is essentially constituted by ethicality, for there is in all this the essential normativity that aligns with ethics. All of these metaphysical systems "insist" on compliance, like logic insists. The argument lies in the observation that value experiences, the ones celebrated in those religions, like logic, cannot be imagined to be other than what they are. Value in ethics and religion is noncontigent, in other words, and apodictic

Look at it like this, say, as is generally assumed, that the Hindu Brahman, the Buddhist Nirvana, the Christian heaven and so on, are not realizable for the confirmation of religious belief. And all there is in the world that would make for our existence's foundational meaning for one in good intellectual conscience lies in the everydayness of things (which is science. We are all scientists in our everydayness). Pretty much the assumption of modern thinking, and philosophy certainly assumes this to be the case, for the most part. This argument takes this assumption and says the religious, metaphysical affirmation one seeks, is IN the very everydayness itself. It is demonstrable world for atheists, agnostics, logicians like Russell and Frege, in the analytic of living and breathing.

What the hell! Yes. I thought Hegel had built that idea, yes. Mind is History. It moves through, not just language qua language, but a multiferous system of signifiers, operating in accordance with its own evolved laws mechanics dynamics. Logic for instance, a "grammar". As is ethics — ENOAH

Slavoj Zizek would agree. And I think this right. By this thinking, when one observes an object, the object and the observation are one! One spiritually evolving divinity. BUT: one has to put history down explicitly, suspend all of those "historically" derived knowledge claims that implicitly and immediately take hold of the object (the emotion, the attitude, the idea) and allow oneself to to understand that the language and its interpretational possibilities is clearly NOT this sprained ankle's misery. To speak about the misery, within all a particular historical framework's "potentiality of possibilities" is radically OTHER than the misery itself. This is Kierkegaard (Concept of Anxiety) and his complaint against Hegel. This is a long issue.

I've reread the OP and that's why I stand by my first post in response ...

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/903982

one cannot, say, even imagine an object being its own cause, to move all by itself, that is. — Constance

I agree. So it's apodictic. But I still think it is apodictic because the imaginer is already constrained by/conditioned into cause and effect. Ask a relative who shares 98% of our genes if it can so imagine. For the rest of the universe lightning strikes fire ignites is not a Narrative moving in the form of linear time. So our system makes logic apodictic within our system.

language that discovers it, — Constance

And I say, Language that constructs it. This is exactly where we diverge. I am not convinced logic is a "whatever" (attribute, principle, truth?) in Nature; only in Mind. But I remain radically open to any convincing out there. In here, I'm admittedly settled.

this coercivity, of logic — Constance

Then you'd say the same of the Self, it is coercive as he'll. Yet I doubt it's occurrence in the universe anywhere outside of the evolution/emergence of mind, as History, structured by Language.

doubt logic as it appears is disingenuous. — Constance

I agree. And I clarify, logic, its function in human existence (history/mind) is undeniable. I say so what if it is part of the constructed? We must adhere to it to function. Then why deny its universality, pre-language, etc? Because it helps when navigating through the ocean of how things really are, to know you are on a ship. Abandon it? No way. Know what it is. Which again is how religion saves us even from logic. It shows us the ocean from the ship, though we are compelled, or at least best to remain aboard.

Our self is a living and breathing, caring, pragmatic, historical temporally structured existence that anticipates a future in a perpetual "not yet". — Constance

I agree with every word, and yet here's how I think we still differ. For me our real self, is not a self, reacts to feelings, sensations, drives. Among those drives is bonding, a drive so powerful which at any level of analysis reveals how not individual our organic so called self is. That real self is caring. But as for pragmatic, Historically/Temporally structured, perpetually becoming, you describe; like logic, that "Self" me/I, is just another mechanism constructed by History as a fit way to move that temporal narrative becoming along. It works to have a mechanism within the system of signifiers, to signify the body it is occupying and affecting.

it is only trivially inviolable. Logic QUA logic is vacuous. — Constance

Maybe mine is not so far from this.

means you would count value as not something as universally and necessarily true outside of its own construction. But what is its construction? With logic, there is the coercivity in the intuition regardless of the aporia of the language, — Constance

Unless I am misunderstanding the use "Ethics" in some specific way, with Ethics, it is the binary feeling pleasant/not pleasant; there is the coercivity in the intuition regardless of the aporia of the language.

But, let me put it in my terms. At the organic root of ethics, as in all things, is thd binary feeling, or the on not on of bliss. But the construction of ethics is, also like everything else, a dialectical process of competing constructions. The most functional is projected into our world/history.

in ethics, it is the pain of this sprained ankle. — Constance

I'd say the pain of the sprained ankle is one "event", immediate, present and organic. The ethics is constructed seemingly
immediately, but nevertheless constructed.

And I say, Language that constructs it. This is exactly where we diverge. I am not convinced logic is a "whatever" (attribute, principle, truth?) in Nature; only in Mind. But I remain radically open to any convincing out there. In here, I'm admittedly settled. — ENOAH

Now you are talking like Heidegger. And Rorty who, in his Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, says it outright: The world is not discovered; it is made. I said earlier that I agree, and I have agreed all along, and I think if you find yourself at this crossroad, you have made an important step toward really understanding our "being here". It is foundationally hermeneutic, or dialectically evolving. I brought up Zizek. He holds in his Hegelian views that our current perspective-in-zeitgeist is like a software program in which one cannot see the mountains in a setting because it is simply not there in the one's and zeros, in the possibilities of the program, so from our pov, there are no mountains and it is absurd to speak as if there are. A wonderful way to talk about the absence of what we cannot even imagine, but is in the currently transcendental possibilities.

But discovery, this must occur within the possibilities of this zeitgeist. Kierkegaard spent a lot of ink on Hegel. Hegel, he says, simply forgot one thing: that we exist! THIS is where Henry comes in and the essence of religion becomes clear, for while I can see how powerful this idea of the hermeneutic delimitations of thought and understanding is, I am IN a world that is in NO way interpretatively distant. But one instantly leaps on this assumption: interpretative distance pervades everything. There is nothing that "survives," as "in itself" for when the mind turns to say what a thing is, there is no thing itself in the saying. The thing itself itself belongs to this finitude of language and culture. But this is well understood, already, and yet there is in the reduction (and one has to look at Husserl's Ideas, or Cartesian Meditations, or The Idea of Phenomenology to see how important this "epoche" is to the neo Husserlians that challenge scope of hermeneutical prohibition) the presence or givenness of the world.

Now one can see why this reduction is used to give religion its meaning that was lost in the modernist critique. Once one sees that the presence of the world CANNOT be "presence" for the moment it is spoken in this context, it is "under erasure" (Derrida) it vanishes in its authority as meaningful language. And this is where we stand in the world as enlightened beings, very aware that our language cannot possess the "givenness" of the world, yet there it stands before one, the world of beingS, the chairs and tables and interests and things and moods and anything that is "said" being now "under erasure".

If this makes sense to you, then you are parsecs ahead of this zeitgeist we live in, as was and is Gautama Siddhartha. It is a matter of understanding in the rarest sense, in the occurrent seeing and being here, that we are not "here" at all.

Then you'd say the same of the Self, it is coercive as he'll. Yet I doubt it's occurrence in the universe anywhere outside of the evolution/emergence of mind, as History, structured by Language. — ENOAH

No, the "self" is, in the context of talking about selves, entirely grounded in language's contextualities. But in the revelation that follows the "under erasure" above, things becomes manifest that were not before. The self, too, is revealed by language, but it is IN language that the delimitations (above) are "discovered" for one has to admit that anything that steps before one to be understood, is "revealed" to language. BUT, and this is the hard part, there is a counterpart to this revelation that has no name. You see the point here: one cannot be rid of language, for to even try is an attempt in language. And so, it is in language that we "discover" what is not language. Language has already evolved to this radical manifestation of confronting the tout autre of language. Here, history is no longer an interpretative obstruction, nor does it inform understanding.

I agree. And I clarify, logic, its function in human existence (history/mind) is undeniable. I say so what if it is part of the constructed? We must adhere to it to function. Then why deny its universality, pre-language, etc? Because it helps when navigating through the ocean of how things really are, to know you are on a ship. Abandon it? No way. Know what it is. Which again is how religion saves us even from logic. It shows us the ocean from the ship, though we are compelled, or at least best to remain aboard. — ENOAH

The whole point of bringing logic into the discussion is simply provide an unproblematic model for what certainty is. No more than this. The reason I do this is due to the way people, philosophers, treat ethics as something that is as variable as belief systems, as customs and "taste". Nietzsche tore away from this, but his ethics was a purely naturalistic one, a "blood and guts" ethics of the gladiatorial (which he praised). N did not understand ethics due to his abhorrence of metaphysics and he thought Christian world hating other worldly divine judgment and condemnation simply had to go. And he was partially right, but he just didn't understand what ethics was. Ethics is the metaphysics, the metaethics, of this world. This is the claim here.

I agree with every word, and yet here's how I think we still differ. For me our real self, is not a self, reacts to feelings, sensations, drives. Among those drives is bonding, a drive so powerful which at any level of analysis reveals how not individual our organic so called self is. That real self is caring. But as for pragmatic, Historically/Temporally structured, perpetually becoming, you describe; like logic, that "Self" me/I, is just another mechanism constructed by History as a fit way to move that temporal narrative becoming along. It works to have a mechanism within the system of signifiers, to signify the body it is occupying and affecting. — ENOAH

And I say you are wise to talk like this. For me (I don't like the condescension of preaching or even advising) the next step is a very strange one. There is no history. There never has been. Give the self a brief analysis: I am now, in the reduced moment, that is, in the nunc stans, the here and now. something of analytic possiblities AS an occurrent phenomenon. I perceive the world around me, and I recall, as I see all that informs me about the world, my education, and this education defines the possibilities of meaning making. I cannot tell you about the the grammatical nuances of Swahili, but I do know about English.

But looking more closely, we see that In the actual event, the past is never discovered (in this analysis); rather, the past is part of an anticipatory dynamic of what could be. Even when one explcitly recalls, the recollection itself is a "not yet" of becoming the next moment. My recollection, in the process itself of recalling, anticipates what will come to be in the next moment of the thought, the utterance, the experience. And the past is analytically absorbed into this singular dynamic of recalling and anticipating. This is what we ARE, constantly on the precipice of an unmade future. It is never settled into some primordial ontology, but never stops being a projection of possibilities into a future. So the past entirely loses it identity AS the past. The most fundamental analysis annihilates common sense time. The present? This is our freedom to choose, but then ALL meanings get lost in this analysis of time.

Consider: a curious question ask, what is the past? One has never witnessed the past; it is always the past IN the present in which it is acknowledged. It is literally impossible to witness the past.

Unless I am misunderstanding the use "Ethics" in some specific way, with Ethics, it is the binary feeling pleasant/not pleasant; there is the coercivity in the intuition regardless of the aporia of the language.

But, let me put it in my terms. At the organic root of ethics, as in all things, is thd binary feeling, or the on not on of bliss. But the construction of ethics is, also like everything else, a dialectical process of competing constructions. The most functional is projected into our world/history. — ENOAH

Why not allow the world to be what it is? There is nothing in the pain of a sprained ankle that is dialectical. One is not comparing nor is the event historical in any way. It has a "thereness" that transcends analysis. This is an important idea. Ethics may be a construct, the the "raw material" if you will of ethics is anything but.

I'd say the pain of the sprained ankle is one "event", immediate, present and organic. The ethics is constructed seemingly
immediately, but nevertheless constructed. — ENOAH

But then, drop that tag, "but nevertheless constructed." Why is this there? The construction issues from the entanglements of value in play. These are incidental. That I owe the bank money, and in order to maintain the confidence in its institutions a society requires debts to be paid, yet I live in poverty and there has been such an absence of justice in my background, I feel well justified in avoiding this obligation, and so on; all this is dismissed in the reduced analysis, for we want to know what the essence of ethics is, not the many "states of affairs" we find ourselves in.

The pain screams out from the living present. What is IS is worn on its sleeve, so to speak. It is the world "speaking" the ethics of not bringing this into existence.

THIS is where Henry comes in and the essence of religion becomes clear, for while I can see how powerful this idea of the hermeneutic delimitations of thought and understanding is, I am IN a world that is in NO way interpretatively distant. — Constance

You have a very helpful way of putting thoughts into perspective. I see the truth in the above clearly. That latter part is what I've been calling being not knowing.

Now one can see why this reduction is used to give religion its meaning that was lost in the modernist critique — Constance

Aha, right

And this is where we stand in the world as enlightened beings, very aware that our language cannot possess the "givenness" of the world, yet there it stands before one, the world of beingS, the chairs and tables and interests and things and moods and anything that is "said" being now "under erasure". — Constance

Yes, yes. The tragedy of the (uniquely) human condition, resolved not by the ideas of, but by the precise practice of tge essence of religion. By, as SK intuited, but I am adjusting, resigning yourself to the infinite impossibility of possessing the real world as a Subject, yet knowing enough that the objective is only a representation and also, can never possess it--and yet taking the leap anyway; for me, the leap into being. It cannot be an intellectual pursuit because that utilizes and constructs knowledge; it must be a leap of silent faith that for that timeless moment you will face being, your organic self, when you land.

It is a matter of understanding in the rarest sense, in the occurrent seeing and being here, that we are not "here" at all. — Constance

Nice


[/b]uote="Constance;909299"]And so, it is in language that we "discover" what is not language. Language has already evolved to this radical manifestation of confronting the tout autre of language. Here, history is no longer an interpretative obstruction, nor does it inform understanding.[/quote]
I think this may be a point of difference I have with current convention period. The idea behind the treminology being, Language (Mind) cannot be relegated to an emergence, or worse, illusion or fiction, it must maintain its privileged status in this imaginary hierarchy of Truth/Reality (which we adamantly deny but all assume) because, after all it is only by (I sense Heidegger in this but know I am extrapolating) going through that process of becoming which language affords, that we uniquely made in g's image (also implicit) get to know being.

But mind has many built in mechanisms which propagate the illusion tgat its the privileged reality, and that's why it has thrived. One of them is that knowing is the highest aim, that it is an unveiling rather than what it really is, a making-up.

No, thank you very much. I don't want to know being. Many have constructed skyscrapers of that. I want to be being. And genius that Mind is, it has provided a tiny rare and extremely muddled and buried crack--one so muddled and buried that highly intelligent people protest against all of the shit covering it up, thinking they are protesting it; a not only harmless, but clearly beneficent construction.

I'll post and address the rest separately

(I don't like the condescension of preaching or even advising) — Constance

Let's get this one out first. I get the sentiment. We just have to plow through. I'm learning that. Your info is invaluable, if I haven't made that clear.

logic into the discussion is simply provide an unproblematic model for what certainty is. No more than this. — Constance

Of course. I agree that should be the approach. Provided no false barriers are created.

treat ethics as something that is as variable as belief systems, as customs and "taste". — Constance

I agree that such an approach to ethics is a corruption of the "purer" root of relatively, being that ethics have a solid and rigid place in our world, but we can recognize that they are yet an evolving, moving, process of construction and then
projection.

There is no history. There never has been. — Constance

YES. This is what I've been wondering in the inverse. Despite history and its fleeting and empty moments, Being is consistently present.

Why not allow the world to be what it is? There is nothing in the pain of a sprained ankle that is dialectical. One is not comparing nor is the event historical in any way. It has a "thereness" that transcends analysis. — Constance

Yes you are entirely correct. What I meant was the analysis; this takes place instantly; this is the Dialectic. The pain is the only reality, the thereness which transcends dialectic. But as you know, instantly and ineluctably, we are flooding the being-natural-aware-ing-pain-ing with dialectic. "My ankle hurts. Why did I leap for that Frisbee? Should I be on morphine?" Simplified but you get the picture. These re-present the thereness (of) pain-ing with meaning about pain. Not real, real.

this is dismissed in the reduced analysis, for we want to know what the essence of ethics is, not the many "states of affairs" we find ourselves in. — Constance

Aha! Right. I'm doing to ethics the very thing I'm defending religion from. Right, the essence.

There is another way of putting it--this essence of religion--and now, having pondered, I see that thinking my focus was beyond ethics, you were right, and I wasn't right enough. The metaphysical is ethical--at least on this focus. Because here is the exact thing I've been "pushing" just worded differently.

The essence of religion Is to pursue, or at least know, the Truth that there is a being, and a species of being, for which you are an agent, a tool, and more so, a fiduciary who must apply the highest good faith in carrying out such a duty. You are not a thing in itself which can exploit that being, though you think you can and in the process construct suffering.

The essence of religion Is to pursue, or at least know, the Truth that there is a being, and a species of being, for which you are an agent, a tool, and more so, a fiduciary who must apply the highest good faith in carrying out such a duty. You are not a thing in itself which can exploit that being, though you think you can and in the process construct suffering. — ENOAH

Consider:

On truth: I think there are some questions that have a kind of zazen nature to them, a "sudden enlightenment," and this question is among these: How does anything "out there" in the great externality of the world, get "in here" referring to internal knowledge claims about the out there?

To understand religion in its essence, one has to understand existential indeterminacy. This is an foundational epistemological, and therefore, ontological, problem.

Keep in mind one thing: there is nothing at all epistemic about causality.

there is nothing at all epistemic about causality. — Constance

What if it only appears to us as a linear process x-->y, because whatever "happened" to x and to y was immediately post constructed as x-->y and re-presented that way by Mind to "the" aware-ing ans assimilated in that form as "knowledge". But in "actuality" it was always just xy?

Is that not suggestive of causality being an epistemic process and effect?

existential indeterminacy. This is an foundational epistemological, and therefore, ontological, problem. — Constance

And only "resolvable" as such. That is, within and limited to the framework of those "studies" and their specific ways of using language to reconstruct already constructed "realities."

These have functions but they do not open up/unveil for discovery any ultimate truths. The latter, which I still hold to be, our organic bodies, their survival, and the organic prosperity of our species and the rest of nature to which we belong.

What if it only appears to us as a linear process x-->y, because whatever "happened" to x and to y was immediately post constructed as x-->y and re-presented that way by Mind to "the" aware-ing ans assimilated in that form as "knowledge". But in "actuality" it was always just xy? — ENOAH

I followed you all the way up to "But in "actuality" it was always just xy." If your reasoning here is right, and I don't think it is wrong (meaning I do think causality in thought in an interpretative imposition on the world), then how does one get around the "post construction" of anything which is acknowledged at all, even and especially "just xy"? It is a Kantian problem, and the reason why we are forced into a transcendental telos of thought thinking about thought. Thought cannot think about the essence of thought, and talk about "in actuality" because this would take a perspective outside of thought. It COULD be that x and y are in some metaphysical, non relational simultaneity, but to speak like this takes one into the iffy world of speculative metaphysics.

But I am sure you are right about the way our ideas about the world are indeterminate. They are hermeneutical, and open to possibilities. When I see my cat I "see" the structures of my own thought in play, but I am so absorbed by the taking this world "as" (a Heideggerian term) the totality of my thoughts that I never am able to see freely that all of my apprehensions are open and viable for decision making.
But to step back: "xy" also belongs to this totality, I mean, to think of two things not being separated by the usual sequential thinking about causality, still affirms each of the two things PRIOR to this problem. There being something "there" at all is prior to anything one could say about its relations with other things, but then, to talk about its thereness begs the epistemic question, how does "it" get into judgment at all?

I am one for removing my eyes from text and thinking, and allowing an existential issue to "speak" on its own. So here I am, and I look up, and there is the cat, and I know the cat is there. And there is this very intuitive knowing. This is the ground, this direct intimation that escapes Descartes' doubting. Foolish to doubt the "thereness" of the sight and feel of the cat. But now look to the simple mechanics. The cat is there, not me, and I am here, and there MUST be a non magical way to explain how the, if you will, brain thing, "receives" the cat thing.

Causality is taken here to be simply the apodicticity of objects having to be caused to move. What is "really" going on here is precisely the point of the thought experiment of asking how anything "out there" gets "in here".

how does one get around the "post construction" of anything which is acknowledged at all, even and especially "just xy" — Constance

By remaining present. By being. By not being-knowing-and-becoming.

But, yes, we are flooded, our brains, with images of becoming and it is hard, arguably impossible, to escape.

But in the spirit of this particular discussion, though we may be trapped by our condition, if anything provides a window, an opportunity for a glimpse, it is the essence of religion, which I (presumably not alone) am positing as attending, not to the self, and the weaved narratives it appears in; but, rather to being; first, by being its unfettered, unencumbered reality; second, upon returning, as one ineluctably does (instantly), to the self; then, by attending to the welfare of the body, the species, and the nature we share with all others. Not to desire more; not to settle complacently for less. And, not to entertain the inevitable desires of the self, flooding the brain with reasons to go way beyond the welfare of reality (I.e. the body, species, nature).

It COULD be that x and y are in some metaphysical, non relational simultaneity — Constance

If, never mind Eastern Monism, Parmenides is right, xy happen all at once.

I'm not confidently proposing Parmenides, but the thought that reality (and here's where I traditionally lose you et. al.) happens all at once explains a few things.

Mind evolved everything by its function, many of them conventionally thought of as, if not noumena, noumena-like. Reason and logic, among them; first grammar, all of these still evolving. And difference, hence, dialectic, movement. It constructs and projects more or less in narrative form (nature is); becoming, linear time, causality. All of these not actually separate categories, mixed, built upon, etc.

So xy which are, let me be lazy and say tree falls and landing on a person, kills it. In the event's being when it exists or ceases to exist is irrelevant. It is present being. It is only for our post construction that time becomes relevant, along with its movements, logic to structure the narrative, cause and effect.

In reality, tree--falling--landing--organic dying.

In mind, what killed Plato? A tree fell on him?

There being something "there" at all is prior to anything one could say about its relations with other things, but then, to talk about its thereness begs the epistemic question, how does "it" get into judgment at all? — Constance

Very possibly I am not understanding something technical in your question. But it gets into judgement, 1. Because that is what Mind is, a knowing system; meaning is its "aim/product," 2. It happens autonomously. Like vision does to begin with (I.e. pre'consciousness') etc. For a hypothetical human never born into an age of humans with Mind, I.e. History, an apple comes into its line of vision (randomly, or because it is foraging) and it truly sees this aspect of its nature as, whatever, food; and it, whatever, eats it. For Mind, "judgement"--apple, ruit, healthy, red, green, large, ripe, crunch, squirt, sweet, etc etc etc--floods our brain autonomously, just as pre historically, the drive to eat might alone, have flooded the brain of the human organism, and yet, no less autonomously.

Foolish to doubt the "thereness" of the sight and feel of the cat — Constance

Yes I agree. When I describe mind as constructions and projections, or even fiction, that is not to say there is not a real and present world going on, and of which we are. But we no longer receive it purely through our senses, it has been heavily seasoned and processed by our imagination .

And why? Why did our imagination evolve to displace our sensations with constructions of its storehouse in memory? In order to thrive. Like any theory of evolution. It's not so much a teleology, as it is a post facto raison d'etre. Because Mind evolved from a bunch of reminders stored in memory to trigger feelings and actions, into a Hollywood sized industry of making stories to do so, it grew to what it is today. It has full control to the extent that nature has bought into its Fiction via tge human animal.

With AI fast on the way, Mind will carry on without the human animal, and perhaps, the essence of religion--i.e. to cherish the body--will become our eschatological, not just metaphysical, and ethical salvation.

By remaining present. By being. By not being-knowing-and-becoming. — ENOAH

Two ways to look at this, and they both belong to something I believe you accept. One deals with the "present". Now, it is not that I entirely deny this as an existential possibility, but it has to be given a broader context. When I am in the present and I witness the world around me (and I think those who are able to do this the best are the, well, call them practitioners of the religio-philosophical methods of the East. It is said that Gautama Siddhartha was the quintessential phenomenologist for a good reason: serious meditation reduces the world to its essential or "pure" phenomena, and brings one into the most direct intimacy with the world. This little description does not reveal the affective dimension of what occurs in this rigorous practice, something missing from Husserl and the rest, but is, I am arguing, the principle part) the agency of the "I" of my encounter with the world, even when matters turn profoundly insightful and deeply felt, is going to be constituted by the interpretative language education that gave me my "presence" out of infancy. The important part of this lies in the question, does this language and the "totality" of my educational grounding which prior to the "sublime experience of presence" determined my thinking, discover "something else" revealed as one approaches the ground zero, if you will, of the famous nunc stans. This something else is metaphysics
Of course, there is this terrible burden of philosophy that interferes with what I believe is the very simple (if difficult to achieve) revelation. But then, it is philosophy that requires us to speak what it is that this is about. Being and becoming have a long history of discussion and analysis, from the Eleatics and Heraclitus through Heidegger. The trouble is, Western philosophy is decidedly not mystical (in fact anglo american philosophy has done everything it could to distance itself from this), on the one hand; yet the world IS decidedly mystical as a world, on the other.
The other deals with time construction of the self. To observe, think, imagine, experience AT ALL, is to be in the becoming of things, for we ARE becoming in our nature. The absolute stillness of "being" is conceived by Plato as the changeless form that this world is an inferior manifestation of. I don't think at all that you have this in mind; I think what you have in mind is an actual event such that one discovers in the flux of one's existence a presence relative to the busy, what Heidegger calls "the they" self, so immersed in the daily goings-on if things, never pulling out and throwing the question of existence into the world, never lifting one's head out of the sand, so to speak. When one does this, one, in a very important way, stills the world. One no longer is concerned about catching buses and planning vacations. THIS kind of becoming is terminated, and the question (the piety of language) asserts itself.

But this does not change the "becoming structure" of experience. We are time, and each moment this "not yet" the stilling of which cannot be imagined. So, there is stilling and there is "stilling". I can still conscious activity, but I cannot still the construction of the moment itself. This would not be the "no self" of the Buddhists; it would be are duction to literal nothingness.

But, yes, we are flooded, our brains, with images of becoming and it is hard, arguably impossible, to escape. — ENOAH

Brains? The phenomenological view I am suggesting puts the brain among the many things found in experience. It is an inversion of the physicalism that implicitly dominates our thinking. A brain does not generate consciousness and all its thoughts and images; rather, consciousness is primary. Brains and everything else are discovered IN consciousness.

A bring up the question about how things out there get in here inorder to show that the default physicalist view is simply impossible for it makes knowledge impossible, because causality has no epistemic part of its nature. We are not "connected" to the world causally. We are connected in consciousness, in an occult intimacy that only phenomenology can discover. Science will never understand this.

But in the spirit of this particular discussion, though we may be trapped by our condition, if anything provides a window, an opportunity for a glimpse, it is the essence of religion, which I (presumably not alone) am positing as attending, not to the self, and the weaved narratives it appears in; but, rather to being; first, by being its unfettered, unencumbered reality; second, upon returning, as one ineluctably does (instantly), to the self; then, by attending to the welfare of the body, the species, and the nature we share with all others. Not to desire more; not to settle complacently for less. And, not to entertain the inevitable desires of the self, flooding the brain with reasons to go way beyond the welfare of reality (I.e. the body, species, nature). — ENOAH

And I share this enthusiasm for a world cleared of the muddle of entangled living. But terms like unfettered and unencumbered reality are philosophically problematic. Experientially, perhaps not, though this will have its limits, and will be vaguely understood at best, not unlike the term religion, all mountains, so they say, arrive at the same peak, meaning what one believes doesn't matter, for faith itself liberates one from the constraints of everydayness. I am sure there is something to this (even Kierkgaard has been accused of defending silliness), but I stand on the side of clarity AND metaphysics, not just clarity (the positivists who, by denying the term 'metaphysics' has any meaning beyond nonsense, completely trivialize our existence and have now ended up in what has been described as the trash heap of philosophy) nor just metaphysics (e.g., Christian faith; or the vague sense of something more). As I see it, one has to be clear about this mysterious threshold, and this requires a careful dissection of the structure of experience-in-the-world, the average everydayness.

I mean, before we can talk about what is unfettered, we have to know what it is that is doing the fettering. If we are "trapped" then this implies some untrapped condition, and this is not available to one who is IN the "fettered" state. One has to commit what is called an apophatic search: define what is in the world and the way that it obstructs insight. It is not as if what is there on the proverbial other side announces itself in the many contexts of our affairs. It is it absence that is notable, hence the apophatic method.

Very possibly I am not understanding something technical in your question. But it gets into judgement, 1. Because that is what Mind is, a knowing system; meaning is its "aim/product," 2. It happens autonomously. Like vision does to begin with (I.e. pre'consciousness') etc. For a hypothetical human never born into an age of humans with Mind, I.e. History, an apple comes into its line of vision (randomly, or because it is foraging) and it truly sees this aspect of its nature as, whatever, food; and it, whatever, eats it. For Mind, "judgement"--apple, ruit, healthy, red, green, large, ripe, crunch, squirt, sweet, etc etc etc--floods our brain autonomously, just as pre historically, the drive to eat might alone, have flooded the brain of the human organism, and yet, no less autonomously. — ENOAH

I did not make it complicated on purpose. Sorry for the confusion, but I meant it to be taken at face value: there I stand before the apple and I know it is there, and it is not me, and it is over there, and all this falls into place in the plainness of observation, but now the hard part: how is it that my knowing extends to something at all? Not through complex system of relatedness, all of which are essentially causal, because such systems cannot penetrate, if you will, the media of sensory, neural nor external conditions. Consider that the perfect model for epistemic connectivity is a mirror, and so seeing th images delivered by sights are like mirror images of the world. The question asks, How is it even remotely possible for such an image to be "of" the world, given that the intervening condition are the most opaque imaginable. Nothing can be more opaque than a brain. But then even if the brain operated like a mirror, upon inspection of its properties, what is a mirror image is something is most emphatically NOT that thing. Further, in the case of a true mirrored image, the object being mirrored is already known. I see a mirrored image of the Taj Mahal, and look up from the image, and there IS the Taj! In perception, there is no looking up to confirm. The image is itself its own being. One cannot look away from it to discover the Other. All there is or has ever been available to experience is experience.

Even when one observes a brain, one is only observing a phenomenon. My point is to make very clear that the indeterminacy I talk about with respect to the essence of religion is ontologically and epistemically absolute. Therefore, ethically absolute.....save the one thing that survives, which is value. It survives Descartes misconceived cogito, it survives physicalism (just reviewed here with this confusing question), is survives hermeneutics (one is not interpreting that one is in pain or pleasure), it survives comparisons of utility (better to torture one than a thousand; but then, this does not diminish the one in the least) It survives all second guessing.

A kick in the teeth possesses a dimension of wrongness that issues from the world.

Have to go so no time to respond to your last comment. Sorry.

the agency of the "I" of my encounter with the world, even when matters turn profoundly insightful and deeply felt, is going to be constituted by the interpretative language education that gave me my "presence" out of infancy. — Constance

serious meditation reduces the world to its essential or "pure" phenomena — Constance

Yes!

does this language and the "totality" of my educational grounding which prior to the "sublime experience of presence" determined my thinking, discover "something else" revealed as one approaches the ground zero, if you will, of the famous nunc stans. — Constance

With respect. That expresses a lingering in the very thing that "metaphysical" aware-ing you're implying. That thing--yes, call it language (Human Mind)--from which the sublime presence is, we agree, a "reprieve", but actually, simply, a turning inward, into silence, asks the question, and you, with respect, "let it" (its all autonomous anyway), but "here" in presence, where reality is being (what it is-ing which we call being), there are no questions, no discovery.

The instant "you" discover the "experience" of sublime presence, it has ceased being aware-ing-ed. And organic attention is once again flooded by made up images from memory and reprocessed for "the world" by the imagination; all in lightning speed and incessantly.


I will continue to read your response. I wanted to separate the above because it is essential to my thinking, and as it becomes clearer, so will your critique. I am witness to that very process!

this terrible burden of philosophy that interferes with what I believe is the very simple (if difficult to achieve) revelation. But then, it is philosophy that requires us to speak what it is that this is about — Constance

I completely agree. And, actually, philosophy, burdened by logic and reason, and all, is still the best path to unders

then, it is philosophy that requires us to speak what it is that this is about — Constance

Sorry. Maybe I pressed something.

Anyway philosophy is brilliant. It keeps mystics grounded. There are a million charlatans for every Buddha.

As I see it, one has to be clear about this mysterious threshold, and this requires a careful dissection of the structure of experience-in-the-world, the average everydayness. — Constance

Yes. I respect that highly. In my untrained way, yet I strive for that. I take risks because I'm unconstrained; it can be fruitful. But I totally wish to stay within the boundaries, or be certain of cause to cross them. And the latter, I would not presume to do alone.

But terms like unfettered and unencumbered reality are philosophically problematic. Experientially, perhaps not, though this will have its limits, and will be vaguely understood at best, not unlike the term religion, all mountains, so they say, arrive at the same peak, meaning what one believes doesn't matter, for faith itself liberates one from the constraints of everydayness. — Constance

Ok. Yes. And yet, that's what I think I mean to say. So, I need to understand the problem. First, this so called unencumbered reality is like everything, the wording is a stab at a target, and I am not a well trained fencer. In itself is implied, its failure. But that can be said of everything, all wording, to obviously varying degrees. But none is immune. But I know you mean beyond that. So does this help. When speaking of reality; not only do I have no business qualifying it with conditions like unencumbered, but I have no business period. What I reiterate is I do not and cannot know reality; I can only know the seasoned version. I can only be reality; which is that (not that "I" already am) that already is.

In perception, there is no looking up to confirm. The image is itself its own being. One cannot look away from it to discover the Other. All there is or has ever been available to experience is experience. — Constance

Yes, I totally get that. There might even be a melancholy to it. But that's because Mind moves egotistically. The system "desires" manifestation of its constructions (because the organic infrastructure upon which it drives is structured to fire images to the aware-ing part of the organism for conditioned responses. So "it" that is, experience and the Subject to which it attaches, "want" to extend into the being itself. It's not an illusion it's a process of evolution wherein a thing thrives by growing. So "you" which constructs meaning, knowledge, want to extend that fiction into being itself. But being is being, not knowing. And not just into being, "you" want knowledge to extend beyond being but into an imagined eternity; and so Mind evolves to construct itself in History as spirit. And being a functional construction, it sticks.

The absolute stillness of "being" is conceived by Plato as the changeless form that this world is an inferior manifestation of — Constance

That is sublime. I'd adjust my own take to it by saying "the world" is just the images constructed by mind and flooding organic consciousness. Plato, afterall, laid that foundation regardless of the given locus in the history of evolving interpretations. No skin off his back.

an actual event such that one discovers in the flux of one's existence a presence relative to the busy, what Heidegger calls "the they" self, — Constance

Ok, but the "event" only in the context of the essence of religion, i.e., to save us from our "selves" remind us we are all one, all of us, not even, just humans.

In the rest of "thought", it is in my opinion, though thought of as Philosophy of Mind,
the heart of metaphysics, explains, therefore "negates" epistemology, and, since Ethics is the offspring of the two...etc.

However, the Heideggerian process you described, and, maybe, on a strictly intellectual level, Husserl's bracketing (though I am a novice at both Hs, not for lack of sweat squinting, and tears), is close enough to what I'm proposing. Zazen just happens to be almost bang on, if properly practiced. Soto. Rinzai is probably a close second. I say just happened because I made the connection after witnessing tge hypothesis that Western philosophy built.

I note that, in my opinion, for both Hs as for Zazen, and Koans; the "reward" that sublime experience of presence you called it (it is utterly uncallable, so that feels right, why not) is extremely momentary. It's "hope" or "promise" from a "religious", but I submit, Hs perspective, is to "jolt" you so that you're on to the truth. And, as you instantly and inevitably return to the Narratives, maybe yours will be restructured autonomously to follow a path more functional for the Host organism, and its species and planet.

But this does not change the "becoming structure" of experience. — Constance

That's right, I agree. Inevitably Mind's autonomous process is still flooding the brain and triggering the body with its constructions.

But this seems to be raised by others as a reason to insist that because they are experienced, and ineluctably our experience, they cannot be any less real than the organism, or at least that they and the organism are one. But they aren't one with the organism, they are images stored in memory and moving by an evolved law which flesh only provides the perfect hardware for. Once the data is input, it has evolved to function. But the data, though existent and functional, is not Real like the flesh is real. And the flesh is the real consciousness; it's organic aware-ing. Even a plant has it when it grows toward the light, or it's roots search for water. But Mind is just data making us feel by projecting stories. The stories are not real. An apple is what it is; not what we perceive when Mind constructs and projects "A is for Apple".

. I can still conscious activity, but I cannot still the construction of the moment itself. This would not be the "no self" of the Buddhists; it would be are duction to literal nothingness. — Constance

It's a physical exercise, but it's easy to stay stuck in Mind with advice like watch your breath, or worse, count them. I believe one must hone in on that breathing is. Not I am or my breaths: just breathing [organism breathing]. There are no fireworks; nor eureka I'm sure. It's more like Kierkegaard's knight of faith. To the world you are still just a clerk, if you have masterfully glimpsed being, by momentarily being. To yourself you remain a clerk, but you now "realize" something "true" outside of the constructed truths.

Brains and everything else are discovered IN consciousness. — Constance

Yes, I agree, if you are saying my reliance upon this object "brain" being what it really is, is a projection of Mind. In which case so is everything I say.

If you're saying the organ brain only exists as a construct projected, and that the thing brain in itself may be vastly different, I accept that possibility, but think it's far more likely our organic senses are not tricking us. There are objects and bodies in the world around us. We could sense them as they are so called in themselves. But Mind floods sensation with images and churns out perception. So now we can't help but see the seasoned version. We aren't outright seeing an alien world, but compared to apes, it's alien enough.

We are connected in consciousness, in an occult intimacy that only phenomenology can discover. Science will never understand this. — Constance

I think, psychoanalysis has gotten pretty close. I think science could Crack a lot of the code. And phenomenology, as did Plato, laid a strong foundation. But I think what none of those can do is know what reality is, or truth. They can only construct it, just as I too, am only constructing. Phenomenology, from Kant to Husserl does, I agree, ironically (?) also express this essence of religion; it points to the fact that there is Truth "hidden behind" the knowledge.

this is not available to one who is IN the "fettered" state — Constance

I think this would be true if there were two selves. There is only the organic aware-ing being. There is no knowing, no meaning, nothing but aware-ing the present is-ings. View that aware-ing as unfettered reality; being unencumbered by the projections of becoming. We were so obviously once an animal like that. Our [what I've been calling] brain was fed images to trigger conditioned responses. Now our brain us flood with stories. And tge organism aware-ings the "I" in tge stories as itself. Neither the "I" nor the stories are anything. They're empty nothing. So no one is in the fettered state needing to get out. The body just needs to aware-ing its organic being so that tge stories follow a--ironically just as fictional--path which is more functional to the Body and the species.

With respect. That expresses a lingering in the very thing that "metaphysical" aware-ing you're implying. That thing--yes, call it language (Human Mind)--from which the sublime presence is, we agree, a "reprieve", but actually, simply, a turning inward, into silence, asks the question, and you, with respect, "let it" (its all autonomous anyway), but "here" in presence, where reality is being (what it is-ing which we call being), there are no questions, no discovery.

The instant "you" discover the "experience" of sublime presence, it has ceased being aware-ing-ed. And organic attention is once again flooded by made up images from memory and reprocessed for "the world" by the imagination; all in lightning speed and incessantly. — ENOAH

A reprieve from explicit thinking. But to encounter at all, the agency of a self is constituted by knowledge assumptions, as when I glance at a cloud and thoughtlessly, passively, know it is a cloud and anticipate what it can do having had many cloud experiences and read cloud texts, technical, poetic, and so forth. But while there are no explicit assumptions, one is not a feral being nor an infant child: the presence is registered in a language context and the significance of this is contextual as well.

Discovery: just as there is no discovery when get in my car and start the engine, or enter a familiar classroom of desks, lectern, white board, and so forth, and familiarity fails to deliver? See below.

The question, the piety of language. Consider what a question is phenomenologically. Hammering away, the head flies off and the hammering ceases. A question emerges as stoppage produces inquiry. It is an "openness". What was there yields now to a brief nothingness before attempts to reestablish hammering. A question as it opens discovery of possible remedy is mundane. Consider that metaphysics begins with a question: something in the continuity of our existence that reaches for a solution and finds nothing, yet the openness remains. It is not a fabrication, as a fantasy might invent. It is existential, not "ontic" but "ontological" (in case you are interested in Heidegger's language). Call this openness eternity (not Heidegger).

This nothing: Eternity in time and space is familiar, and this is not simply quantitative: when one reaches out to these eternities, one is confronted with an existential impossibility that is not reducible to an abstraction, though we are mostly familiar with this kind of reduction and so familiarity, once again, trivializes something pretty amazing. Now think of eternity, not in space or time, but in the existing things around you and see how this familiar intuitive anomaly of perception trailing off into eternity, now throws the world into question, rendering indeterminate not merely space and time, but everything, every breath taken.

I am not disagreeing with you, essentially. My purpose is to close the gap made by language that separates the ordinary world from the esoteric: one does not find the esoteric in the world; rather, one realizes that this world is always already metaphysical and our ordinary language has its final self analytical revelation in the discovery of its own radical indeterminacy, and hence, the world's, as with the brief inquiry in the the nature of what a question is above. Language erected boundaries of discovery, but in doing so made it possible to think at all, made it possible to be an agency that can be aware at all. And all thinking is categorical, and thus what is apprehended is implicitly categorical and when the thought comes to you that there is more, something radically Other, that mysteriously has "presence," THIS is categorical thought at work. To be an agency at all is categorical (and just to be clear, the cow that looks up and sees greener grass elsewhere is non-symbolically, proto-categorically "thinking". How? It is the essential logical conditional structure, if...then.... as she lifts her legs to move to greener grass).

Also, to say there is no past (history), present or future, but rather that these belong to an impossible singularity, does not cancel the way this "singularity" (which is, of course, itself a boundaried word) "works". Everything is now enclosed in a question, and the past is now "the past", under erasure, if you are Derrida. In other wods, the language one deploys in the dismantling of the assumptions that are at work (deconstruction, i.e., language's self analysis) can never be transcended for it constitutes agency, but this in NO way undermines the nature or significance of what is disclosed. Rather, it brings language into the fold of metaphysics.

Language itself is its own indeterminacy as well as the openness itself--the question, the openness TO the wonder of the world.

Ok. Yes. And yet, that's what I think I mean to say. So, I need to understand the problem. First, this so called unencumbered reality is like everything, the wording is a stab at a target, and I am not a well trained fencer. In itself is implied, its failure. But that can be said of everything, all wording, to obviously varying degrees. But none is immune. But I know you mean beyond that. So does this help. When speaking of reality; not only do I have no business qualifying it with conditions like unencumbered, but I have no business period. What I reiterate is I do not and cannot know reality; I can only know the seasoned version. I can only be reality; which is that (not that "I" already am) that already is. — ENOAH

Well, I just read and think like you do, but I read different things. But consider that all one has every encountered as the world is phenomena. One knows the world in experience, and it is impossible to imagine what something would be outside of phenomena. Such a construction "outside of phenomena" is literally nonsense, something Wittgenstein famously announced, but just ask the question I asked above for the down and dirty: how does anything out there get in here? How does a tree get into a knowledge claim about the tree? Complete nonsense. Of course you can trace the causal sequences of any sensory connection, but what you cannot do is explain how causal connectivity can be epistemic. This very, very weird inquiry leads only one place: consciousness is LOGICALLY prior to any acknowledgement of the world. Logically because the being of something is logically bound to the perception of that thing, that is, what it IS is an event. And the being that is intimated as an impossible "presence" is an event, too. But I say this only because analysis demands it, for to understand what Being one is already IN Becoming (to use this kind of Platonic talk). What we say is "Being as an absolute" itself cannot escape the world in which it is discovered for this would be ony "bad metaphysics," the kind of metaphysics that exceeds what is there in the world to posit. Being is, after all, a word, conceived in the time matrix of phenomenal being, and to call something Being "outside" of this makes no sense.
But again, this in no way diminishes the nature and importance of what one experiences. It rather wants the explanatory approach to what this is to make sense, and I can see where this leads to trouble: for to take that extraordinary step into the "cloud of unknowing" is to silence the world and its affairs and stand before all things as one stands before an original primordiality. This is not alien to me. But it does not necessitate the reduction of the self to nothing. Quite the contrary: The self is elevated, profoundly reified, and acknowledged as the very source of the divinity objectified by popular religion. None of this is undone. But one's finitude is understood as infinite. This is a way to understand Kierkegaard's knight of faith.

Yes, I totally get that. There might even be a melancholy to it. But that's because Mind moves egotistically. The system "desires" manifestation of its constructions (because the organic infrastructure upon which it drives is structured to fire images to the aware-ing part of the organism for conditioned responses. So "it" that is, experience and the Subject to which it attaches, "want" to extend into the being itself. It's not an illusion it's a process of evolution wherein a thing thrives by growing. So "you" which constructs meaning, knowledge, want to extend that fiction into being itself. But being is being, not knowing. And not just into being, "you" want knowledge to extend beyond being but into an imagined eternity; and so Mind evolves to construct itself in History as spirit. And being a functional construction, it sticks — ENOAH

You see, I agree and disagree throughout this. See what I wrote above. How does one move beyond the fiction that attempts to make a claim into being itself? How does one get out of this "karma" if you will? The answer: a faithful analysis of the phenomenal world one faces. A structural analysis called the phenomenological reduction (epoche).

And if you are the kind of person who at the outset of philosophical inquiry is already, well, say, very spiritual, then perhaps phenomenology is a viable method. I think phenomenology is the only way, frankly, for all of the spiritual practices that lead to deeper understanding are inherently phenomenological. The formal writing is the Western jnana yoga. And it is VERY rigorous as it dismantles the world.

That is sublime. I'd adjust my own take to it by saying "the world" is just the images constructed by mind and flooding organic consciousness. Plato, afterall, laid that foundation regardless of the given locus in the history of evolving interpretations. No skin off his back. — ENOAH

Plato? Rationalism really does not carry the matter very far. But this is a big issue, for per the above, thought and the world are one! Kant (a rationalist, too) put it like this: sensory intuitions without concepts are blind; concepts without intuition are empty.

Ok, but the "event" only in the context of the essence of religion, i.e., to save us from our "selves" remind us we are all one, all of us, not even, just humans.

In the rest of "thought", it is in my opinion, though thought of as Philosophy of Mind,
the heart of metaphysics, explains, therefore "negates" epistemology, and, since Ethics is the offspring of the two...etc.

However, the Heideggerian process you described, and, maybe, on a strictly intellectual level, Husserl's bracketing (though I am a novice at both Hs, not for lack of sweat squinting, and tears), is close enough to what I'm proposing. Zazen just happens to be almost bang on, if properly practiced. Soto. Rinzai is probably a close second. I say just happened because I made the connection after witnessing tge hypothesis that Western philosophy built.

I note that, in my opinion, for both Hs as for Zazen, and Koans; the "reward" that sublime experience of presence you called it (it is utterly uncallable, so that feels right, why not) is extremely momentary. It's "hope" or "promise" from a "religious", but I submit, Hs perspective, is to "jolt" you so that you're on to the truth. And, as you instantly and inevitably return to the Narratives, maybe yours will be restructured autonomously to follow a path more functional for the Host organism, and its species and planet. — ENOAH

The bracketing is a method, nothing more. It aligns with what Buddhist thinking only if one can see how the pure description of phenomena is exactly what where rigorous meditation takes one. Only when one actually sees this, one steps beyond the intellectual level. It is an apiori argument, moving from the "presence" of apprehending the world and its objects, to what has to be the case given that this is the case. This is something Buddhists really don't do very well. For example, take this from the Prajnaparamita, on the extinction of self:

Sariputra: So, how does a Bodhisattva course as one coursing in perfect wisdom?

Subhuti: One does not course in skandhas, nor in any sign of such skandas, nor in ideas such as 'skandhas are signs', nor in production of skandhas, nor in any stopping or destruction of such, nor in any idea such as 'skandhas are empty', or 'I course', or 'I am a Bodhisattva'. And, this also doesn't occur to this one, 'one coursing thus courses in perfect wisdom and develops it'. One courses but one does not entertain such ideas as 'I course', 'I do not course', 'I course and I do not course', 'I neither course nor do I not course', and the same [four] with 'I will course'. One does not go near any dharma at all as all dharma are unapproachable and unappropriatable. So, a Bodhisattva purely cognizes and is as undifferientiated concentrated insight 'Not grasping at any dharma' by name or appearance, and regardless whether vast, noble, unlimited and steady, not shared by any of the Disciples or Pratyekabuddhas. As one dwells as this concentrated insight, a Bodhisattva quickly realizes full enlightenment which Tathagatas of this time predict for one such as this. But as one dwells in such concentration, one neither reviews nor thinks 'I am collected', 'I will enter concentration', 'I am entering into concentration', 'I have entered into concentration'. All these thoughts or notions in any and all ways do not exist for one such as this.

One way to express this idea in a very mundane way is to talk about qualia, the way analytic philosophers talk about pure phenomena. Note that when you observe the color red, you certainly CAN acknowledge this color as itself, its simple presence, and when you do this, all conceptualizing is suspended (bracketed), and contexts are ignored, and there is no question at all that you stand before the color red as it is apart from the language that informs you about it being red. Granted, the best you can do is stare, for the moment an idea comes to mind, the purity is violated, but again, the "red" (now in brackets, for the language is suspended) stands as "its own presupposition" so to speak: it needs no justification or explanation. It "explains" itself. Acknowledging this is done in language, of course; I mean, to speak as I do now, I am bringing this qualia INTO context or "skandha" but note: language does not undermine the integrity of the non categorical "red" before me. Skandhas engaged now as I explained do not misrepresent. Misrepresentation only occurs when one makes the mistake of identifying the otherness of the Real with categorical thinking, as we do when we talk about our dogs and cats and subway rides. Talk about these things is rich with skandhas or predication and description and so on.

I'll have to finish later.

[quote="Constance;910735"]The self is elevated, profoundly reified, and acknowledged as the very source of the divinity objectified by popular religion. None of this is undone. But one's finitude is understood as infinite. This is a way to understand Kierkegaard's knight of faith.[/quote]

This nothing: Eternity in time and space is familiar, and this is not simply quantitative: when one reaches out to these eternities, one is confronted with an existential impossibility that is not reducible to an abstraction, though we are mostly familiar with this kind of reduction and so familiarity, once again, trivializes something pretty amazing. Now think of eternity, not in space or time, but in the existing things around you and see how this familiar intuitive anomaly of perception trailing off into eternity, now throws the world into question, rendering indeterminate not merely space and time, but everything, every breath taken. — Constance

Here, we seem to agree. And I have picked up from you, and with gratitude, will adopt, that, though it is impossible to assimilate being into knowing (becoming), maybe one could at least try to maintain that presence of being by perceiving it in every breath of the ordinary, though it incessantly passes over it.

I like that, but am compelled to see that as (to modify Kierkegaard) a movement in the aesthetic. I mean that, if that's what you mean, and I like it, still, who's kidding who. We are still (as is SK's leaping knight) moving within the realm of the ordinary, becoming.

But still Maybe what that's saying--if you eliminate the Dualism of a spiritual--is that the essence of religion; the religious movement is neither an ethical, nor a "metaphysical" (as in emancipation from Mind's hold on consciousness), but an aesthetic movement. A symbolic reminder that Mind and the phenomenal (I include noumenal) is a motion picture, a dynamic construction/projection, and that we really are is the stillness of being.

the presence is registered in a language context and the significance of this is contextual as well. — Constance

And there is nowhere a human be-ing that has ever existed, or can exist without it; this mandatory mediation of language?

Call this openness eternity — Constance

provided I understandd the "gap" in the hammering and this correctly, I ask,

Is this openness accessible to any other earthly being, to your knowledge? Or does it require the special human being, a seeming combination of things, one of which no other creature seems to have.

By way of side note:
I cannot help but read in both out text, no matter how artfully delivered by you, and many others, for instance, just speculation built by the available tools and materials both of which neither express nor have any ontological reality like the rest of the natural universe does. But thd constructions and projections of Mind, of History; they're images in memory, and their reality is just a function which happens to trigger feelings in reality; that is, in a human organism. They're code, the very Narratives structuring our experiences, is an empty fleeting function. What is real; what matters, are the feelings and sctions triggered by thd code.

close the gap made by language that separates the ordinary world from the esoteric: — Constance

I'm proposing the esoteric is within the boundaries of the ordinary; both are constructed. I have the same dispute with phenomena/noumena. The gap which is unbridgeable, leaving us on the "wrong" side, is between the ordinary and Ultimate Reality. The latter, it turns out, is just Nature. Our body being our body. Eating and Breathing. That's real. You want to access Ultimate Reality? Turn for a sec from the ordinary and just be aware-ing organic being. We can't mate, bond, eat, etc. without instantly re-receiving them with our make-then-believe. Is it not obvious what must be real? Why is that--natural being without the intervention of becoming--what is real for every other atom in the universe save and except the ones forming us (which, by the way, came from the other creatures we consume, etc). [Unless you fully accept dualism. The universe has a material and a "spiritual" domain and Mind is the evolved spiritual domain. But I really believe if either view: Mind is an autonomous but empty process which evolved/emerged in an advanced animal with language (the basic structure of Mind) vs Mind is the spiritual realm occupying or animating the material realm; which seems a stretch? It is dualism.

all thinking is categorical, and thus what is apprehended is implicitly categorical — Constance

phenomenology laid some potent Foundations.

All thought is categorical is a law of that autonomous process of construction and projection called Mind. It evolved that way to allow for movement, then growth. Difference, linear time, dialectic, meaning/belief. The Narrative form. Logic, reasoning, Aristotle, Kant, categorical thought. These are not realities but evolutions in an artificial autonomous process advancing and growing as History.

Religion says. Don't get fooled.

this "singularity" (which is, of course, itself a boundaried word) "works". — Constance

The singularity and its workings, from my pov, if we are talking Being-Ultimate-Reality (the body/nature), has neither works nor interest in works nor is there any access to knowledge about its works because Mind constructs all of the above. It, Reality, cares not. It Reality, just is-ing.

we say is "Being as an absolute" itself cannot escape the world in which it is discovered for this would be ony "bad metaphysics," the kind of metaphysics that exceeds what is there in the world to posit. Being is, after all, a word, conceived in the time matrix of phenomenal being, and to call something Being "outside" of this makes no sense. — Constance

Fascinating how fundamental this question is. Yes. And what I believe religion might provide an admittedly weak and fleeting answer to. We can't access being through the world we have constructed; and being can escape that world because it already always has/does.

The world which we constructed on top of being, the one where, because we are being we don't have to discover being; and yet because we make becoming, we yet make and pursue being out of becoming. Hence, our being is always a representation and not the real and present; which we are; but which we ignore. [Probably what Buddha meant by Avidya/ Ignorance]

The self is elevated, profoundly reified, and acknowledged as the very source of the divinity objectified by popular religion. None of this is undone. But one's finitude is understood as infinite. This is a way to understand Kierkegaard's knight of faith. — Constance

I agree this is SK's, and understand why it may be yours, though we seem only to diverge here. But I see the self as a mechanism which has gone far out of hand; and if I could melt into humanity and lose myself, that I suspect would be the highest, though unattainable, state of reality while in the world.

That's right, I agree. Inevitably Mind's autonomous process is still flooding the brain and triggering the body with its constructions. — ENOAH

But the giveness or presence of these constructions still IS presence. This is a pretty big point, I think. Apprehending the extraordinary nature of this world lies not in the denial of these constructions that flood the mind. Such constructions constitute the world in its everydayness. The error is in the interpretation of these constructions, not in there being there at all.

But they aren't one with the organism, they are images stored in memory and moving by an evolved law which flesh only provides the perfect hardware for. Once the data is input, it has evolved to function. But the data, though existent and functional, is not Real like the flesh is real. And the flesh is the real consciousness; it's organic aware-ing. Even a plant has it when it grows toward the light, or it's roots search for water. But Mind is just data making us feel by projecting stories. The stories are not real. An apple is what it is; not what we perceive when Mind constructs and projects "A is for Apple". — ENOAH

Tricky and a very good point. The matter goes to the basic description of what lies before you. When you stand and behold the world, it is a structured event. It is not chaos. Without structure it would be the "blooming and buzzing" of an infantile mind. This is what makes truth possible, not what makes truth, truth, but is essential for truth.

But the experience and its content and the gravitas of this world, for this I look to Michel Henry, and beyond, though the Christian bent I can do without. OTOH, Christian metaphysics doesn't have to be tied to churchy narratives.

It's a physical exercise, but it's easy to stay stuck in Mind with advice like watch your breath, or worse, count them. I believe one must hone in on that breathing is. Not I am or my breaths: just breathing [organism breathing]. There are no fireworks; nor eureka I'm sure. It's more like Kierkegaard's knight of faith. To the world you are still just a clerk, if you have masterfully glimpsed being, by momentarily being. To yourself you remain a clerk, but you now "realize" something "true" outside of the constructed truths. — ENOAH

I think there is a eureka. This really does go to the OP: Value-in-being designates all that makes something important and it is at the core of religion and ethics. Dreadful things happen, as do wonderful things. But once it is seen that ALL of these common affairs are transcendental, if terribly entangled, then the contingencies fall away, that is, the states of affairs so common and trivializing are suspended in the openness of one's gaze. What happens then is hard to say, for we don't live in a culture that talks about it.

And I am not trying to be argumentative, but something "outside" of constructed truths is hard to imagine. Certainly outside a culture's collective beliefs and practices, and so on, but once one grasps the truth you refer to, it becomes structured, for a person is a structured perceptual agency. Again, this in no way diminishes what it is. God could comes to me, impart his divine wisdom, and I woule be free to talk about it in a very structured way IF my interlocutor also was made aware as I was.

If you're saying the organ brain only exists as a construct projected, and that the thing brain in itself may be vastly different, I accept that possibility, but think it's far more likely our organic senses are not tricking us. There are objects and bodies in the world around us. We could sense them as they are so called in themselves. But Mind floods sensation with images and churns out perception. So now we can't help but see the seasoned version. We aren't outright seeing an alien world, but compared to apes, it's alien enough. — ENOAH

Actually, no, I am not saying an organ brain only exists as a construct project. The assumption of the question How does anything out there get into knowledge claims? is that we do in fact see what is there, not some representation or mental image. I am sure the brain is actually there as seen. It is not about the impossibility of perception of the world; rather, it is about the possibility. I observe it and it is there, but I cannot say how this is made possible given the standard physicalist model of the world. There is only one rule to this "method" of phenomenology, which is to report about and analyze as faithfully as one can about what stands there, clear as a bell, and this coffee cup is clear as a bell, there in space and time just as science says it is. No one questions this while IN the interpretative mode of scientific and everyday acceptedness. BUT: leave this interpretative pov, and move to phenomenology, then one is in a different world: a completely different interpretative context (ever wonder how a chair can be a chair, an aggregate of wood and synthetic fibers, a vast system of atomic energic stability, a prop in a play, and so on, all in the one chair? How about a weapon as I throw the chair at an intruder? Or a symbol of third world oppression suggested by the Made in Cambodia label? Meaning is contextual, and the more one moves away from narrower contexts, one eventually ends up in philosophy and religion, the final foundational questions.

The question is, what phenomenological interpretative pov all about? One thing it is about it is the complete dismissal of normal science and everydayness. One looks at different things. What is THERE is the phenomenon and its "thereness" is reduced to what you call presence.

But the giveness or presence of these constructions still IS presence — Constance

Hmm. But is it in the constructions? Or is it in the Organism providing both the infrastructure and feedback?

The error is in the interpretation of these constructions, not in there being there at all. — Constance

Such constructions constitute the world in its everydayness. — Constance

Yes, the interpretation is another "level" error. You're right, their being there, is not an error. It is what it is. The first "level" error is one of interpretation, but maybe not what you had in mind.

The primary error regarding the constructions is in interpreting them as presence, and real. When they are not. They are becoming and fleeting, there and gone, perpetually. This error may be harmless, but is potentially problematic on several grounds, all of which only directly apply to within the constructions themselves. One primary one is interpreting the Subject for tge actual being it mechanically represents; its stories, for being, for reality. I lost my job only matters within the story. Your body is breathing. Praise "gods".

This is what makes truth possible, not what makes truth, truth, but is essential for truth. — Constance

We differ so subtly, yet we each seem planted on the subtly. I would add to that directly preceding, "is essential for understanding truth; understanding, being ultimately, like knowledge, certainty, another word for belief. In otherwords, the constructions make "truth" a possibility within the system of constructing becoming (note: not constructing being, contra existentialists like H and S, being is not constructed, it already always is-ing). The constructions are not essential for truth, which always is-ing. But they are essential for belief.

OTOH, Christian metaphysics doesn't have to be tied to churchy narratives. — Constance

100% and if it is "good" metaphysics, it can easily erase or displace; e.g. God-->nature, etc.

am not trying to be argumentative, but something "outside" of constructed truths is hard to imagine — Constance

No argument here. I'd say impossible to imagine by definition, since imagine (for me) is ineluctably constructions.

So, I say, the only access to reality outside of constructions, is to be, without constructions. It's not a thought thing, it's a doing thing. But I admit, it lasts nanoseconds.

I observe it and it is there, but I cannot say how this is made possible given the standard physicalist model of the world — Constance

I believe it's because you are seeing only the coffee cup for what it is in itself. But quickly, rapidly, Signifiers flood the brain and these code certain feelings which the signifiers in turn hijack with Narratives. That's what phenomenologically you end up seeing. Naturally you do see the coffee cup for what it is. As does an owl or a beaver; anything not affected by human Mind.

I think, psychoanalysis has gotten pretty close. I think science could Crack a lot of the code. And phenomenology, as did Plato, laid a strong foundation. But I think what none of those can do is know what reality is, or truth. They can only construct it, just as I too, am only constructing. Phenomenology, from Kant to Husserl does, I agree, ironically (?) also express this essence of religion; it points to the fact that there is Truth "hidden behind" the knowledge. — ENOAH

On noumena: noumena is not an ontological division but a division in ontology: when we think of noumena we have in mind that indeterminacy found IN phenomena, not some distant and impossible transcendence that cannot be known at all (Kant, and the cause of a great deal of trouble among those who want to keep metaphysics out of serious thinking). All that one may affirm is grounded in the world before us, and the phenomenal IS the noumenal. They are only interpretatively distinct, meaning when one thinks noumenally or transcendentally, one turns toward what one encounters in the world that gives rise to this in the first place.

Psychoanalysis is another construction on the foundational givenness which this discussion seeks. I don't know which you have in mind. Savaj Zizek takes Lacan seriously, and I am reminded of R D Laing's Divided Self that tries to reconceive psychological problems free of the traditional pathological assumptions. But this begs the ethical and religious questions that lie deeper in the phenomenological givenness. Religion is logically prior to psychology, meaning its issues are presupposed by psychology just as they are by physics or biology. The perceptual act itself generates metaphysical questions. The cup on the table possesses the entire range of possible inquiry for the world at the basic level, for all that is the world is derivative epistemically. Epistemology and ontology are the same thing in two words.

This last sentence needs to be taken very seriously. To be is to be perceived. This says nothing about other things beyond the scope of perception not existing. But it does say that what the term 'existing' can possibly mean to us is bound to the conditions that make existence possible.

Plato's metaphysics I have never had use for. And I think rationalism of any kind is going to stand outside of your principle critique of "presence". For Plato, presence in the world as becoming refers us to the talk about being as such as a formal concept. Take a look at what Kierkegaard has to say about this in his Repetition as he champions the "becomingness" of the world as the very source of presence now reconceived as a spontaneous renewal of givenness where freedom Platonic "recollection" is discovered. John Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics is very good on examining this idea.

Truth hidden behind knowledge? I once wrote about conceiving the ancient mind beholding the sun without the knowledge assumptions of modern science which lay instant claim on the epistemic/ontological event. Of course, putting the danger of getting things miserably wrong aside (violent rituals to appease anthropomorphic gods, e.g.), for this is not the point; the point is the existential profundity that is lost on us. Original sin for Kierkegaard is the "habits of the race" which is Christendom and the pageantry and devotion and institution of culture. So bound to the "tranquilization" of the "they" of inauthentic existence, as Heidegger will later put it, one never rises up to even ask basic questions.

I think this would be true if there were two selves. There is only the organic aware-ing being. There is no knowing, no meaning, nothing but aware-ing the present is-ings. View that aware-ing as unfettered reality; being unencumbered by the projections of becoming. We were so obviously once an animal like that. Our [what I've been calling] brain was fed images to trigger conditioned responses. Now our brain us flood with stories. And tge organism aware-ings the "I" in tge stories as itself. Neither the "I" nor the stories are anything. They're empty nothing. So no one is in the fettered state needing to get out. The body just needs to aware-ing its organic being so that tge stories follow a--ironically just as fictional--path which is more functional to the Body and the species. — ENOAH

The brain certainly IS the physical center to where thought, emotion and the rest IF one is studying neurobiology. Phenomenology is prior to this. There is no brain. Of course, there is a brain, but look at it like this, if I am studying particle physics, I don't talk about brains, neurons, synaptic density, and the rest. Or if I am talking about a gymnast's skill I don't talk about how the nervous system works. I CAN, but this is not the contextual "region" for it. But, we generally agree that talk about physics is more basic than that about skilled activity, and so closer to ontology, that is, foundational inquiry into being, what IS. Phenomenology observes that there is something more basic than physics, which is the "thing itself" (not Kant's thing in itself): presence or givenness itself. To know a brain is there is to see a brain, and "seeing" is not a brain function. Seeing is the act of consciousness awareness. Consciouness does not produce a brain. It witnesses a brain in a conscious event. The question is, how is this possible?

I agree that a brain floods us with stories, but these are not "empty nothings." The story's aboutness is an empty nothing just as so many finctions are. But phenomenologically, there are meanings in play, an event in experience, thinking and imagining, and these are real. THOUGH, even the concepts that can be in play at all possess this same unreality. Big question.

and the phenomenal IS the noumenal. They are only interpretatively distinct, — Constance

Understood. Thank you.

Epistemology and ontology are the same thing in two words — Constance

I understand that statement as applying only because, ultimately, any "ology" is rooted in epistemology, in the sense that we construct all knowledge including ontology.

However, the subject of ontology is falsely applied to/by knowledge, causing the confusion that perception can access the "ontology" of "things," when I believe it cannot. It can only access the [constructed] knowledge.

term 'existing' — Constance

From my pursuit, I have been moved to separate existence and reality. Mickey Mouse exists, but he is a fictional character, ultimately empty of reality. The same, I have settled at, applies to the Mind, the experiences constructed and projected by the Mind, and the Subject of every "sentence," constructed and projected.

John Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics is very good on examining this idea. — Constance

Thank you!

So bound to the "tranquilization" of the "they" of inauthentic existence, as Heidegger will later put it, one never rises up to even ask basic questions — Constance

I do not dare dispute that all three, Plato, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger have their role at advancing the puck to the net. The shadows, the inauthentic, the They, are all recognitions of the way our organic aware-ing becomes lost, entangled, enmeshed, in the constructions/projections. However, these thinkers and their concepts, like the thinkers herein and their concepts (myself included, if I can be so bold), are sill no less lost/entangled. At some point the puck can be carried no further and the players must leave the game altogether; not to enter some mystical transcendent reality, but to go home where they really always are in the first place (poor metaphor, but you get my drift).
Plato, SK, H, et al., simply cannot uncover truth because they are still using covers; theirs, perhaps, a bit less opaque, but still, covers.

"seeing" is not a brain function. Seeing is the act of consciousness awareness. — Constance

seeing is a brain/bodily/optic faculties function. Perceiving (or, choose your word) is an act of consciousness as in Mind. The organic aware-ing (consciousness) does witness "a brain" in its truth/reality; but promptly Mind displaces that sensation with perception structured by Signifiers.

phenomenologically, there are meanings in play — Constance

Phenomenologically, yes. Meaning, yes. Meaning is what the constructions/projections have evolved to construct and project. Meaning does not exist in Nature. An animal without language, regardless of its sophistication ( a prehistoric homo sapiens) does not look at something and contemplate its meaning. It looks at something and responds by feelings, drives, and/or action.

For us, "what does it mean" is the perpetual question in the face of every perception. But what it means is simply "informed" by data already input and reformed to suit any given perception.

The meaning is not some reality we uncover. It is ultimately empty nothings.