I don't know a single statement that could more blatantly reveal one's complete geopolitical ignorance.

It’s all relative. Name a nation acting more strategically in it’s own interests?

Can you elaboate on what you mean by "the idea that consciousness is everywhere"?

I don’t know, I thought that was your position.
For me it’s more a case that consciousness is fundamental in the higher (subtle) realms. Not necessarily physical realms.

It seems kind of crazy that a primary particle can have mass and charge. How can that be? What are physical properties that primary particles can have more than one? Brian Greene doesn't even know what mass or charge are.

I thought the idea was that mass and energy and everything else like charge and extension were all interchangeable in Einstein’s spacetime.

What do you mean by artificial?

A construction by a being or intelligence to carry out a purpose.

I would be more open to it if it didn't so obviously undermine European interests.

What the U.S. and Russia are doing in this regard are undermining their interests too. Not for Trump and Putin personally, but for their nations. Trump and Putin are destroying their nations for personal vanity. Europe is thinking strategically.

Putin did something we did not like, so lets rush straight for WW3?

There’s not going to be WW3, Russia is digging a whole to bury itself, it won’t be long now. Putin waved the nuclear Armageddon card on day one of the war, it’s wearing a bit thin. The only alternative is for him to March on Europe, he wouldn’t get past Poland, they have a few scores to settle going back a long way. Remember NATO is a defensive alliance, they are not going to march on Moscow. They will consolidate in Ukraine and a new iron curtain will go up close to the current front line and between Poland and Belarus. Job done and Europe will consolidate and re-arm in the process. Russia will be weakened, which was long overdue, they were getting too strong and compromising Europe. The U.S. will come to it’s senses once Trump is voted out.

The 2+2 a lot of people fail to make is that the US fears Europe becoming a great power, and will do everything it can to prevent that from happening

That’s all very well, but who is the opposition in that war?

The U.S. has enough to worry about with China, they could do with another superpower as a friend to act as a counter balance.

I am a European, but cute try.

I knew that before I posted.

As you noted, naturalism is more open-ended. Materialism is less so, and physicalism is most restrictive. More restrictive= a more parsimonious ontology, which is why I go with it.

I can see that and I can’t deny that it is compelling. I just feel it misses a lot, for me physical material is an accretion, a world of surfaces and doesn’t tell us anything about what is real. So I’m coming from the complete opposite position from you.

I can relate to the idea that consciousness is everywhere, but not necessarily that physical material is conscious, as I regard it as an artificial construct.

I would think it's equally difficult to explain how one ground could manifest in (at least) two different ways that appear entirely separate.

But they might only appear to be entirely separate from our limited perspective, from another perspective they might be related.

This time tanking their international credibility through their blatantly illegal actions vis-á-vis Russia's assets

So it’s ok for Russia and the US for that matter, to carry out illegal actions, but not Europe?

The point is to make long-term normalization between the EU and Russia impossible, that is to say, the point is to bring war with Russia closer.

I think Putin may have a bit of the blame for that. And no it is not likely to result in a war with Russia in the long term, but rather an iron curtain.

Your anti-European bias is showing again.

Otoh, they may be entirely separate.

This is the problem, or so they say. That if they are entirely separate, how do they happen to come together? I like you don’t see it as so much of a problem, but people who subscribe to the distinction between idealism and materialism see a yawning chasm between the two.

I start with natural: That which exists (has existed, or will exist) starting with oneself, everything that is causally connected to ourselves through laws of nature, and anything not causally connected (such as alternate universes) that is inferred to exist, to have existed, or that will exist, through analysis of the universe. Naturalism= the thesis that the natural world comprises the totality of existence).

I’m probably not the person to critique this as I’m not a trained philosopher and come to this from a different school, so the other end of the stick so to speak.
I will say though that; “everything that is causally connected to ourselves through the laws of nature”. Is a catch all so big that due to it being an open ended set, it inevitably includes things which are regarded by Western philosophy as wishful thinking, woo woo etc.

I further narrow it down to the thesis that everything that exists has a common ontological structure: a particular with intrinsic properties and extrinsic (relational) properties to other existents. This implies everything is the same kind of thing, which I label, "physical".

This is where it gets interesting. I would use the word material rather than physical. That there is a spectrum of material including subtle (mental) materials. With physical material at the more dense, or concrete end of the spectrum. I go further in that I regard within the domain of subtle materials, a transcendent super subtle material for which mind (which is on the spectrum) is the correlate of physical material as seen at the bottom of the spectrum and the super subtle material is a higher, or transcendent mind.

Due to the solid concrete incorruptibility (in normal life) of dense physical material, the subtlety of the higher materials is drowned out, or confined. To the extent that our true nature as pure mind is constrained to such an extent that we are confined in a Neanderthal Stone Age (by comparison, and no disrespect for Neanderthals) life of moving concrete objects around the place. And subject to the consequences of dense physical bodies.

I'm very interested in this. Can you explain? If a component is physical, why would it be undiscoverable?

I too picked up on this. I had thought we were not allowed to admit undiscoverable components.

I would point out, though, that something that is undiscoverable in one arena, or domain. Might be discoverable in another, so is really a meaningless statement absent a contextual arena, or domain.

Reminder: I do not insist that every aspect of the natural world is discoverable through science. It may very well be that there are aspects of mental activity that are partly grounded in components of world that are otherwise undiscoverable. This is worst case, but it is more plausible than non-physical alternatives.

I agree with this admission and your position on philosophical zombies. It does leave a rather large gap for “non-physical alternatives” to creep in though.
I tend to steer clear of the division between physical and non physical, because I don’t see why there is necessarily such a distinction. The so called non physical mind and physically existing things, though appearing entirely separate, may be part of the same external manifold that we are not aware of, which may be undiscoverable, but in which the two are grounded.

It doesn't sound like you are disagreeing with what I've said, although it does sound like you think you are.

I began my reply with “yes”, I was agreeing with you.
Going back to where this line of exchange started, whether we do know what it is we know?
I’ll put my reservation slightly differently, yes we do know what we know, but the “what it is” is subjective within our own personal understanding. This necessarily requires a personal perspective and knowing. I’m saying that this perspective can change in a non discursive way and that there are ways of knowing, or there is knowing in non discursive ways. That these changes can occur as a result of an experience of identification, an experience of witnessing something, or an experience of communion (I’ll leave communion to one side for now as it can have a vague meaning). It can also happen due to intuition, but I refrain from including this as intuition does include discursive processes.
So what we know can change, by ways which are not necessarily logical, or rational, but due to changes in ourselves.
If this happens, then what we knew before the change in ourselves was incorrect was it not? What we know changes as a result of something in us, while the circumstances outside of ourselves have not changed.

Going back to what you said earlier;

We know the world non-discursively and that non-discursive knowledge is not separate from what is known. We always already do know the world non-discursively, it is just a matter of learning to attend to that, rather than being lost in discourse and explanation.

Again, I agree, but then I think well what do I know non-discursively and is that coloured or dictated by what I think. Is it a separate (from discursive knowledge) knowledge and how can it be the same as “what is known”?

Apologies if I’m diving a bit deep here, but I’m interested in non-discursive knowing and how our perspective is shaped non-discursively.

I don't deny the reality of altered states of consciousness, and the profound effects they can have on people's lives.

Just to clarify, I’m not talking about altered states. But rather a different way of knowing through experiences.

The Congress is already pushing back at this development:

Yes I noticed that, which is why I mentioned the mid term elections. If the Republicans lose control of Congress (or the Senate), it will weaken Trump and hopefully he will become a lame duck.

In the meantime, he could initiate an emergency, such as war with Venezuela and exercise plenary powers to withdraw troops out of Europe, or something else equally stupid.

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

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

Yes, but that’s not what I’m talking about, I’m talking about orientation. It’s more of a negation of the rational interpretation of insights. The insight is made, witnessed and logged, stored in memory. It is not rationalised. (It is rationalised at a later date in a different department of thought, but that is entirely separate from the experience of the insight). The aim being to arrive at an inner sight, or seeing. The discursive mind is only a passenger on this journey. It’s not so much about feelings either, but more about identification, witness* and communion. A seer develops these faculties so as to develop realisation, knowledge, experience and understanding independent of the rational mind. Yes, the rational mind is also present in this process, but takes a back seat and may offer thought out interpretations now and then.
Then there is another department of mind which combines the two, the knowledge garnered through seeing and the intellectual interpretation and philosophising. The idea being to develop intellectual, architecture, imaginative worlds, so to speak. Which may be of use at some point in developing contemplative techniques.

* I have brought up witnessing in other threads, to bear witness is something important in the development of intuition. The best way to illustrate it is in the case of a traumatic event. If a person witnesses a traumatic event something is burnt into their memory and they can never un-see it. The distinction being that the intellectual mind is absent during this process. This faculty can be developed absent the traumatic event and used in contemplation.

Yes, Europe is now under a pincer movement, or piggy in the middle in terms of rhetoric. We will see if Zelenskyy agrees to anything with Trump, or if the U.S. stops the sale of munitions to Europe, which are used to supply Ukraine. There is more escalation to come, but it looks likely that Europe is going to have to step up to the plate.

If the U.S. can’t anymore sell arms to Europe, they might start to sell them to countries like India, Argentina etc. Also there will be chaos if the U.S. has to move their troops out of Europe. Trump could order that with a click of his fingers at any time.

I was only referring to ordinary knowledge of the world. I think the kind of intuitive ideas you are referring to may or may not be knowledge, and that there is no way to

Some scientists have lightbulb (eureka) moments too. Or what was Einstein up to when he came to his realisation about the speed of light and relativity?
There are a number of applications of this idea. Look at the tree example, I have been talking about. I sometimes contemplate the commonality between myself and a tree. Given that we are both alive, are constituted of almost identical cells. We grow and are present in the moment. There are opportunities for lightbulb moments here and it is a contemplation with strict parameters and doesn’t require much in the way of imagination. But more a process of stepping outside one’s pre-conditioned ideas and forming different ways of thinking and knowing.

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

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

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

Karma in so much as there is a causal thread of some kind. Karma is bound up in reincarnation and requires an entire transcendent cosmogony. We can go there if you like, but I tend to avoid such ideas here as it can be seen as woo woo.
Perhaps it can be broached in the sense that there is a lineage of some kind in our evolution as a group (the biosphere as one group, or being). With a causal thread and an evolutionary progression. With each individual being on the planet playing their part in the story.

I think we do know what it is we know.

Yes, I do agree with this, but it becomes complicated because I subscribe to the idea that what we know can be radically altered by the addition of one new thought, like when we have a lightbulb moment. This one new thought can in a sense rearrange what we knew prior to the lightbulb moment, such that what we know has changed. A reorientation process within the mind. So we might know one thing one day and something quite different the next. (This is an important process for me, which I have developed quite a lot). So I do agree that we do know what it is we know, but we must as you say provide the caveat that we don’t know the thing in itself, or why we and the thing in itself are here. So we are in a sense blind, but can feel with our hands a world that we find familiar.

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

I agree entirely and I go further, I screen out the intellectual mind and its findings a lot in contemplation. Although there is an art in using thought in a more non-discursive immediate process of discovery.

Could be as the events of a Block Universe.

I have experienced that, where time is a dimension. But it raises some serious questions and invites in transcendent realities.

Yes, the US is a very divided country, yet Europeans won't forget that Americans have now two times elected Trump as President.

Yes, this is a big and long lasting change and Europe has woken up and will secure their own security and future.
But with Trump gone, or muzzled the Republican party will likely be in turmoil for a while, so there will be a democrat government for the next term. Presumably the Russian invasion will have finished by the end of that term. Also Europe will be well on the way to ensuring their security and will probably play a leading role in NATO by then.

Many will see this paper stating the US being the ally of Russia against Europe. That's not going to happen, there's a vast majority of Americans who do see the traditional stance of the US beneficial, yet Trump is the one who calls the shots.

There is a cognitive dissonance in the U.S. when Trump sides with Putin. Remember the MacCarthy period, and the Cold War. Many people in the US won’t like the idea that the president, pretty much on his own has defected to the other side.

Even if we frame 'the world' as the 'in itself', forever beyond human experience (as Kant would have it) it seems undeniable that if we and the animals didn't know anything the world we would not survive for long, and it seems that that "knowledge" is not discursive knowledge at all, but is given pre-cognitively

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

So the conclusion would be that we do know things about the world, but cannot prove that we do. It is merely the inference to what seems to be (to me at least) the best explanation for what we do experience.

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

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

The mid term elections are only a few months away and Trump will only have three years left. I expect the European leaders realise this and that business as usual will resume afterwards. So all they need to do is sweet talk and stall Trump until he’s out of office. In the meantime, they are probably trying to catch up with what assistance they will need to give to Ukraine if the U.S. gives up entirely, like refusing to sell munitions to the EU.

I don’t think any attempts to stay in office by Trump will succeed. He’s lacking serious strategy and there is too much resistance to it in the US. He’s not far off finished.

do you see the connection?

Yes, but firstly the child in question is either diseased, or has a disorder. So is a person with all the apparatus, but it doesn’t work properly. Animals with central nervous systems will rely on them for the experience of feelings etc. I’m talking of organisms which don’t have a disorder and will have alternative, or primitive feelings. Secondly, by feelings, I don’t mean like our feelings. With a central nervous system and an advanced bran. But primitive feelings, more like a state, rather than a subjectively defined state within an integrated person. Perhaps a tree knows in some way if it is not any more healthy, that it is diseased. Knows that there are other trees and plants in its environment and communicates with them. All this might well go on in what we would describe as an unconscious way. But perhaps that is our failing, that we think that consciousness requires sentience and other states that we see as normal.

Imagine that a tree in a forest has a sense of holding hands (roots) with the other trees around it. A sense of communion, a knowledge of this state and a response to it. Trees and other plants might experience movement, agency through growth, they do continue growing their whole life, where as we stop growing in adolescence and experience it in an entirely different way.

I probably wouldn't want to go out on a limb

You wouldn’t want it to snap off, it could hurt (the tree).

An organism feels.

I’m not saying a tree is in any way conscious as we understand it to be. Which is why I suggest it may be inconceivable to us. But what we could perhaps conceive of is a sense, or feeling of being, being alive. As opposed to the total lack of feeling, or being in an AI device.

Thanks for the link. Some interesting ideas about how beings can feel and act independent of a central nervous system.

This is what is in question, I think. Nagel, in the passage I quoted in response to @Wayfarer, doesn't think this follows. And I don't see why it must, though no one would deny that we learn more about an experience if we're the ones having it.

Yes, I’m not denying that. I was emphasising the importance of mind as body and that different kinds of body have different kinds of experience, unique to them. I agree that rational intelligent minds can observe other kinds of bodies (minds), but it’s always an observation from the perspective of the experience of different kind of body, (third person) when it is done. Also, I think we can (we have the capacity to) as rational intelligent beings break out of our inherent perspective and develop understanding of other experiences.

Or at least they may be. Unless we stipulate a certain meaning for "experience" which we're not entitled to ("everything that happens to an entity is an experience"), I don't think we can know whether a tree has them.

But surely it has the experience of being a tree? Yes, I know we never be able to know for certain, but it has a shared presence with us is our physical domain. A domain where there is a common scale, a tree is approximately ten times our height and lives about as long, or a few times longer than us. Senses and reacts to stimuli in that environment which we sense and react to. If there is mind of some kind in the body of the tree as there is in our bodies, surely there are experiences being felt. Albeit so far removed from our kind of experience, that it may be inconceivable to us. For example, it is known that trees in a forest communicate with other trees. They may have a feeling of being in a group, chemical messages are being sent through the group. They may be detecting the presence of destructive fungi at one end of the forest and sending messages about it to other parts of the forest etc.

We should note that Nagel qualifies this in an important way. “Something will inevitably be lost,” he says – namely, what it is like to have the subjective experience. “No objective conception of the mental world can include it all.” But do we ask the objective viewpoint to include everything, or only (only!) to understand everything?

This is the nub of the issue, there is an entire perspective, or vista involved in experience which is missing from the objective account. “What it is like to have the subjective experience”, “what it is like”, only hints at it, but is itself conceptual language, talking about concepts to other concepts. In order to understand the experience, one has to be the being experiencing it. And by being, I’m not talking of the mind*, I’m talking of a living creature. Also the use of the word subjective, is confining experience to thought and reflections on thought. Experience doesn’t at first include thought, that comes later, although thought itself is an experience, it is experience of a reflective activity in the brain following experiences.

To illustrate this, I will go back to the tree, what is it like to be a tree? Many people will say, a tree doesn’t have a mind, a central nervous system, so doesn’t have experiences and without a brain, it can’t know what it is like. That it’s meaningless to ask the question, one might aswell ask what it is like to be a stone. They are missing the point and in doing so, throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Who are we to say a tree doesn’t have experiences, it shares the same biology as us (short of having a nervous system) it is alive, responsive, can be healthy, can be diseased. It has a presence during storms, heat waves, a lifetime of seasons. It is there, is reacting to, is growing through all these events and circumstances. These are events being experienced by a living being. Not only this, but as a being, the tree will have an inner life, a feeling of being alive of being a me, a myself, just like we do. It doesn’t require a brain to know what it is like, or to have experiences.
Now apply this logic to a human and we might be getting closer to what it is like to experience something, including experiencing subjectivity.

*I don’t confine mind to thought, thinking. For me it is in a real sense, the whole being of a living entity. So there is a kind of thinking going on in a being, independent of the brain, in the biological activity in the body. The thinking going on in the brain is a more integrated intelligent expression of this.

Reason has no authority beyond consistency, and must remain true to that which supports it, i.e. actual experience, or lose all coherency.

And this Reason can tell us that we, or the animals being discussed, don’t and can’t know anything about the world. Other than what is presented to us via our senses. Which necessarily includes experiences. That we can deduce some things about the structure of the world by experimentation. But that is all. And yes we can philosophise about it all to our hearts content, but those philosophical thoughts can’t get past the limits I’ve just pointed out.
Except in one thing, the basic philosophical calculation that we know our mind, our being exists. So we do know one thing, this can not be doubted. Yes, we know there appears to be something else, but all we have is appearances, so how can we know anything about it.

We are like the crocodile surviving very efficiently in the world, while not understanding anything about it. The only difference being, we have worked out one of two more things about what is going on.

I've lost track of what we were disagreeing about, or whether we were disagreeing at all.

I quite liked the way the thread had become a peaceful, friendly, discussion about the topic. So I went off peste about the idea of a general theory of consciousness, or mind.
What I was suggesting is that there are ways to look at the issue which do accommodate idealism etc, but which take a new approach, as opposed to the orthodox materialism, reductionism, dualism, versus monism etc etc. I gave one example, to view all life as one being, as a starting point, there are many more.

I don't think we are one "hive mind" at all―look at the great differences between cultures, and the polarizations within particular cultures.

Those differences don’t preclude what I’m suggesting here. Yes there are many differences even between individuals in a family. But these differences are on the surface, the world of surfaces that we know. I’m implying there is a uniformity beneath the surface. If we look at biology we can start to see the uniformity. If we list the organs in the body we will find that they are present in most animals without exception. This is even more so when we look at internal cellular structure. Cells as we find them now have changed little in their essential structure for over a billion years.

Each tree has a unique pattern of branches and twigs, the possibilities for variation are almost infinite, so we can conclude that no two trees in the universe will be alike. But this is an approach which only sees the variation. I’m suggesting an approach from the opposite direction, that of unity, unity in life. Rather than looking for infinite variation, to look for unification. If one is able to view all life on earth as one being, one is able to follow a line of reasoning stripped bare of many of the tripping hazards in these discussions. I don’t like to get bogged down in discussions about DNA, but in essence all DNA is the same, it’s only the sequence that differs, the encoding. This encoding determines everything about the variation in the body of the being in question. Perhaps there is a uniformity beneath the workings of the DNA, there is probably a whole world to discover about how quantum theory can be applied to this. Not to mention discoveries about how life first developed and can be synthesised.

and I don't think we are locked in our own little solipsistic worlds.

I’m only suggesting this in viewing the one being (our biosphere as one being), as a whole, this being lives in a solipsistic world in it’s interactions with the neumenon of the world. All individual animals and plants are living in different aspects of that whole experience. It is solipsistic in the sense that it is an isolated arena, that of a planet in space (the sun does exert some influence).

I even think it is possible that we share some kind of collective unconscious, as Jung suggested,

Quite, but not just unconsciousness, but a common arena of activity. A common landscape, scale, temporal manifold. Take two people sitting in a restaurant eating pasta. They may have different hair clothes sauce on their food. But so much of what is going on is a shared experience and circumstance, one which may well require an underlying unity of being for it to happen.

I see Nature as endlessly creative and diverse.

None of this precludes what I am proposing. It is a diversity within an isolated arena of activity.

Because part of the problem with experience is that it’s so close to us that we don’t even see it. And it’s only in contemplative practice that you really have to deal with it.

It’s a bit like the idea that a fish in a fish bowl doesn’t know that it’s suspended in water. It doesn’t notice the water, the way that we don’t notice air, unless it’s windy. The fish can’t comprehend what water is, perhaps we can’t comprehend something too.

The practitioner of meditative practices knows about this and experiences, at some point, being, being absent our conditioned world.

And how all things in that context seem to me may not be how they seem to you―even though there will likely be commonalities due to the fact that we are both human.

I don’t think this is such a big issue (although it may be a stumbling block empirically), yes it’s true that there is no way of making a direct comparison between minds. But it may be the framing of the question that’s at fault. Rather like what J said.
For me this question is tackled by changing perspective. We know that we are (biologically) a colony. Indeed, we are largely clones (I am aware of sexual variation and heredity). Our constitution is identical, similar to how it is for trees. So it might be worth viewing people as one being (colony) divided into units within a colony. So we are identical, like trees, but with variation in the shape of the tree, or the variety (let’s put speciation to one side for now), some seed might fall on fallow ground some on fertile ground etc.
Now this brings collective consciousness more to the fore. If we treat humanity as one being, the question of what someone else is thinking disappears. If you think about it 99.9% of what we do is identical, with variation, as in trees. Variation in thinking and knowledge, indeed belief might be of little import and as a whole, the colony includes the full spectrum of thought and mental activity and each individual contributes in their own unique way.
Personally I go further and regard the entire biosphere as one colony with each kind of plant, or animal expressing a different aspect of the whole. A lot can be worked out about each from comparison with others. All animals and plants (leaving viruses etc to one side for now), are colonies of identical cells, with very slight variation and where the differences to be found between different kinds encoded in the DNA, not in different cell architecture, (in multi cellular organisms the DNA dictates different roles for cells, which will cause them to adapt to perform different tasks, like people playing different roles in society).
This enables me to view one being (colony) interacting with one material (the world). One being and one neumenon. One soul approaching one (instance of) neumenon producing one being. One undifferentiated soul* approaching one undifferentiated neumenon, resulting in, well the history of the world.

* replace the word soul with your own preference.

The problem with trying to model consciousness itself is that it is the thing doing the modeling, and we cannot "get outside of it", so we seem to be stuck with making inferences about what it might be from studying the brain being the best we can do, or going with what our intuitions "from inside" tell us about its nature.

This is what I was talking about in the other thread, (Cosmos created mind), I am interested in developing ways to break out of this straight jacket. But I don’t have the philosophical language to ground it in digestible philosophy. It just comes across as fanciful wishful thinking.

I see two initial problems, firstly the problem of how a mind can talk about itself with itself and not be convinced that it’s impossible to do it impartially, or that it’s an insurmountable stumbling block.
Secondly how we break out of the state that the world presents us with to some kind of objective starting point, or foundation.

In mysticism (my brand of mysticism) the first problem is covered extensively with a series of processes and practices. But which comes across to a philosopher as dogmatic spirituality, or wishful thinking.
Secondly I have developed a series of conceptual tools by which one can break out of the straight jacket of the world being the way it presents to us. Which again comes across to philosophers as woo woo, spirituality, or wishful thinking.

I don't find it plausible that how they present to us is determined by consciousness, but I think it is more reasonable to think that it is determined by the physical constitutions of our sensory organs, nervous system and brain, as well as by the actual structures of the things themselves.

Yes, but the physical constitutions themselves are parts of the structures of the things themselves. Even the mind, via the brain, as used in our day to day thinking is shaped, framed by these structures. Sooner, or later we have to start considering something that isn’t shaped in this way, in consciousness, but is nevertheless shaped by other as yet unrecognised structures. This is usually described as the soul, although I prefer to describe it as the higher mind.*

Unless we go there, no one is going to make any progress on putting together a unified theory.

* by higher mind, I mean a part of our mind that is recognised as conceptually free, or independent of the mind clothed in the world that we inhabit mostly in day to day life. Like a kind of Platonic region, concerned with pure thought, being etc.

Nothing you've described is inconsistent with physicalism.

That’s not surprising because I’m in agreement with most of what physicalism says. I was narrowing down what part of existence we know. Existence as a whole and the mechanism of existence is not part of that. So to say;

-that mind is foundational to existence;

Is to conflate that bit which isn’t part of it with the existence we know. The bit of existence which we experience isn’t all of existence and isn’t foundational. This is self evident because we have limited capacities to experience and know things.

This is a mereological issue. Just because objects are reducible to particles doesn't imply they are not actual, functional entities in the world. By "functional", I mean that they can be analyzed in terms of their interactions with other functional entities.

Yes, but I’m saying something broader than that. For example in a thought experiment I can say the Earth is a being, Gaia for Gaia the physical world might be like a thin protective layer in her skin, that she is barely aware of and her family is made up of other planets and stars. In conversation what to her is the equivalent of a word spoken in a minute might in our terms be a few million years of seismic events and most of her life is an experience of transcendent realities entirely inconceivable to us. Rather like comparing our lives to that of an individual cell in our bodies. The cell could not comprehend, or understand anything about our lives and yet we share consciousness and there is a germ of being that the cell feels, which we and Gaia also feel in some way.

I can't imagine why you would think physicalists necessarily have to deny the subjectivity associated with being human. But it's irrelevant, because you still have provided no justification for the ontological claims I highlighted:
-that mind is foundational to existence;
- that the supposed ‘unperceived object’ neither exists nor does not exist. Nothing whatever can be said about it.

(I’m not speaking for Wayfarer, rather saying it how I see it.)
It’s not a claim about existence, it’s a claim about our world, the world we find ourselves in. The point being that our mind as an intrinsic aspect of our being interacts with the natural external realm (neumenon), such that what we experience is commensurate with the character of our being. Or in other words, the world meets us in a form appropriate to our nature of being. In the case of a plant, or tree, the neumenon will be meet it with an entirely different experience appropriate to its being. Something which it would be impossible for us to understand without being a tree ourselves.

As for the unperceived object refer to Kant, or quantum physics. It’s just a soup of interacting infinitesimally small particles passing energies around. It is only experienced as an object when experienced by a being on our scale (approx’ 6 feet tall as opposed to infinitesimally small), with our inherent sensory apparatus (I include the body as a whole in these apparatus)*

* I am working with the idea that all beings, are one being manifest as many beings in incarnation. So looking at the whole universe, it is as a whole, one being meeting one neumenon. But experienced by the beings as a vast extended universe of separate particles and beings.

For me, all we are, all we do, all we know, is derived from our interactivity with the rest of the world. I suspect there's a lot we don't know about the universe, though, and that interaction may include aspects of which we're not yet aware.

You speak a lot of sense.
I would add that there are likely things we are not aware of about ourselves which are with us at all times rather like the way we see our shadow cast by a light. Or even that we are the shadow cast by that we don’t know.

My issue is how one uses possibilities in further reasoning.

What I’m getting at here is that by examining feasible possibilities, one can see the orthodox explanations in a different light. This helps to develop a broader context and develop ways of thinking outside of the orthodox paradigm. Add into the mix the extent of what we don’t know, then one can in a sense break free of the orthodox. This is how mysticism makes use of philosophy.

An example, when contemplating being I sometimes imagine all beings are one being, manifest as many separate beings extended through time and space. So in a sense, all beings have a part of themselves which is that one being simultaneously, while living as many separate beings. This can become an axiom in a sense from which implications can be drawn about how this might offer a different view about what beings are and how they interact in the world. If I watch a murmeration of birds. Here in the U.K. you can watch vast flocks of starlings flying in formation. Displaying complex patterns which have through evolution developed the ability to confuse peregrine falcons. The flock is acting as one being in that moment. Are these birds watching each other to know how to fly in formation? Are they using some kind of telepathy? Are they literally being one being? Well in my example, they are one being, they are not watching each other, or using telepathy, but that part of themselves which is that one being. And through doing it in this way, they become extra responsive and gain an edge on the peregrine.

But...there's no reason to think this is the case- there's no evidence of it, and it's not entailed by accepted theory.

But there’s no reason to assume that it isn’t the case either. It’s a possibility, so having an understanding of what we don’t know helps us to not make assumptions, or broad brush conclusions about the world and existence. I’m not accusing you or any (with one or two exceptions maybe) of the posters here of doing this. As philosophers you are open minded about these ideas.

Now taking the idea a stage further, it brings into question what is natural, maybe only the neumenon is natural and all appearances, or phenomenon are artificial. For example, this whole big bang theory with reality emerging from a worm hole, or a singularity. It comes across like comic book pseudoscience. It makes more sense to me that what is going on is that extension (including temporal extension) is an illusion/projection (like the Truman Show) and that something more akin to the Hindu cosmogony, of transcendent being makes more sense.

I see your point, you could be seeing yourself walking in your mind. But you can also be in ignorance (in the politest possible sense) in your head too. This was my point, unless you are omniscient in your world, you are ignorant of it’s make up and origin.

You two should try a bit of mud wrestling for that (I’m joking). The Greek philosophers enjoyed a bit of wrestling.

It seems to me that you are in agreement. As long as you both accept there is something going on there that we haven’t quite got to the bottom of yet.