Wasn't trying to single you out - It was just some remarks you made earlier in the thread . (Did I mention Charles Pinter to you before? You can find his website here https://charlespinter.com/ . He has many publications in mathematics and has recently published what I consider an excellent book, not strictly speaking on philosophy, but with many interesting philosophical implications, Mind and the Cosmic Order.)

The unexamined life, yes. Not the unexamined "me." — Ciceronianus

Pretty fine distinction, in my view.

Pierre Hadot, classical philosopher and historian of philosophy, is best known for his conception of ancient philosophy as a bios or way of life (manière de vivre). His work has been widely influential in classical studies and on thinkers, including Michel Foucault. According to Hadot, twentieth- and twenty-first-century academic philosophy has largely lost sight of its ancient origin in a set of spiritual practices that range from forms of dialogue, via species of meditative reflection, to theoretical contemplation. These philosophical practices, as well as the philosophical discourses the different ancient schools developed in conjunction with them, aimed primarily to form, rather than only to inform, the philosophical student. The goal of the ancient philosophies, Hadot argued, was to cultivate a specific, constant attitude toward existence, by way of the rational comprehension of the nature of humanity and its place in the cosmos.

Quite germane to the conception of philosophy as a quest for truth.

When we see color I think we only gain knowledge about the physical phenomenon that allows for the phenomenon of color, namely wavelength? — TiredThinker

The point of the thought-experiment is that when Mary sees colour she knows what colour is like, for the first time - something she didn't know before.

If we narrowly interpret the meaning of an "intention" as referring only to the agent's internal state, then intentions as such cannot be teleological, for the agent's actions are explainable without final causes. — sime

Have a glance at the wikipedia entry on the word teleonomy. It is a neologism coined in 1958 by a biologist to accomodate the awkward fact that virtually everything in biology is goal-directed, while trying to differentiate it from the Aristotelian 'teleology', a boo-word for modern science.

Furthermore, there's been an increasing recognition of the significance of telos and teleology in biology, with Aristotelian ideas being re-considered. An idle search of Aristotle and DNA will return some interesting papers on that subject.

Thanks! I was terrible at school maths, much to my later regret in life, but the point is philosophical rather than arithmetical - as jgill says, many maths educators are not the least interested in the philosophical question.

But to what extent is philosophy useful to this self-examination as you call it? — Ciceronianus

'The unexamined life is not worth living' is one of the Socratic maxims. Philosophy itself means, not just the 'love of wisdom' but 'love-wisdom' and it's cultivation. I've been following a series of posts on Medium by a scholar of stoic philosophy, and that is its entire focus. Placing the question in the context of one or another philosophical school allows you to situate the maxims and concepts of philosophy in the context of others who have followed the same path. (This approach is historian of philosophy Pierre Hadot's claim to fame, in such books as Philosophy as a Way of Life. Alain Du Bouton and Jules Evans are two contemporary philosophers who have established a popular following - i.e. they're not academics - and much of whose writing is addressed as "practical philosophy".)

So does enlightenment give no information at all? — Isaac

I would put it like this: that it's more like a change in perspective.

When you have an insight, have you 'acquired information'? You may have no new information at all, but you might realise the information you already have means something very different to what you previously thought.

A good example are the processes involved in a gestalt shift - you see what you've already seen but something but suddenly it takes on a different significance.

Asked and answered as far as I’m concerned

I just don't see how nonduality prioritizes "mind" "subject" "experience" over above "world" "object" "thing" as transcendental idealism does, Wayf, so maybe you can explain to me. — 180 Proof

As mentioned earlier, the point about Buddhist idealism is not that it claims 'the world is mind-created' but that we normally misconstrue the nature of experience and cling to the impermanent as a source of the satisfaction that it cannot provide. It is different to Western metaphysical idealism in that sense, but neither does it support any form of materialism (as you know, materialists were represented by 'carvakas' in the Buddhist texts and always presented as philosophical opponents of the Buddha. See What Is and Isn't Yogācāra Dan Lusthaus. )

As regards Advaita, here is an abridged passage from the Upaniṣad comprising a dialogue with a Vedantic sage, about the nature of the ātman:

"Yājñavalkya, answer this. There is an eternal Being which is immediately presented into experience and directly observed; which is the Self of all beings and internal to everything. Explain it to me. What is that which is innermost to all beings, which is internal to everything, which is non-immediate experience – not immediately experienced as through the senses when they perceive objects, and which is direct, not indirect experience? Explain that to me." ....

Yājñavalkya says: "You tell me that I have to point out the Self as if it is a cow or a horse. Not possible! It is not an object like a horse or a cow. I cannot say, 'here is the ātman; here is the Self'. It is not possible because you cannot see the seer of seeing. The seer can see that which is other than the Seer, or the act of seeing. An object outside the seer can be beheld by the seer. How can the seer see himself? How is it possible? You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding. That is the ātman.

"Nobody can know the ātman inasmuch as the ātman is the Knower of all things. So, no question regarding the ātman can be put, such as "What is the ātman?' 'Show it to me', etc. You cannot show the ātman because the Shower is the ātman; the Experiencer is the ātman; the Seer is the ātman; the Functioner in every respect through the senses or the mind or the intellect is the ātman. As the basic Residue of Reality in every individual is the ātman, how can we go behind It and say, 'This is the ātman?' Therefore, the question is impertinent and inadmissible. The reason is clear. It is the Self.

"Everything other than the ātman is stupid; it is useless; it is good for nothing; it has no value; it is lifeless. Everything assumes a meaning because of the operation of this ātman in everything. Minus that, nothing has any sense." Then Uṣasta Cākrāyana, the questioner kept quiet. He understood the point and did not speak further. — Brihadaranyaka Upaniṣad

Clearly it articulates the supremacy of ātman above the phenomenal domain. I don't think it's too long a bow to draw a comparison between this and Kant's 'transcendental apperception' . I've always believed that point about the inability to 'see the seer of seeing' is significant, and has not been made explicit in the Western canon, as far as I know. It is picked up in contemporary philosophy in the idea of 'the blind spot' as an inherent limitation of objective science.

But they are all thought-based, they all rely on some 'data-harvesting' method, be it meditation, revelation, or enlightenment... — Isaac

Well indeed I would agree that if you equate enlightenment and data-harvesting then there is probably no enlightenment to be had.

That is alarming — Nickolasgaspar

Look out! Idealists under the bed!

The Kantian question, for example, what can I know, places the human being as an abstraction, as it were as a pure spirit that, like a machine, can think about God and the world in a pure form. This idealized, individualized fictional human does not exist. — Wolfgang

Kant may have shortcomings, but he doesn't reduce mankind to abstractions. (My forum name is not 'wanderer' although it might be a nice alternative should I decide to change it.)

OK, I will try again. The point of the 'everyone knows' statement is to depict the apparently-obvious fact that the Universe pre-existed h. sapiens by billions of years, as is common knowledge. So this is a frequent objection to any form of idealism - 'if you say that the world is "created by the mind" then how do you account for the fact that it existed a long time prior to any conscious rational mind?' But your selective quotation of the passage then omits the grounds of Schopenhauer's 'defense of Kant', as he puts it. You then go to a peremptory dismissal: 'Obviously Kant doesn't know either'. But I don't think the 'sage of Konisburg' can be dismissed so easily.

I think the point of the argument is the reference to Kant's view that time and space are fundamental intuitions of the mind - *not* things that exist in themselves. In other words, space and time are not purely objective in nature but are grounded in the observing mind. And this has also dawned upon at least some scientists. (Andrei Linde is a scientific cosmologist.)

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

I don't know if "dead" is the right word, but I think the basic thrust of this paragraph tends to support the Kantian view. The observer has a fundamental role - but s/he is not part of the objective picture. That happens to be a different version of the same overall 'observer problem in physics'.

What I mean is that our understanding of ‘the external world’ as something completely separate from ourselves is mistaken. That's why I keep referring to the cognitive science perspective - their realisation of the role the mind (or brain) plays in constructing what we instinctively understand to be external to us. One way I have put it is that whilst we may be distinct and separate - an inevitable consequence of existence! - we are not, as it were, outside of, or apart from, reality itself. That, I think, is the key insight of non-dualism. So, forgive the New Age connotations, but the fruit of the idealist quest is 'the unitive vision' - which I believe is something your philosophical inspiration, Baruch Spinoza, also considered:

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

The realist sees the existence of constraints as the most significant element, the idealist sees the degree of freedom within those constraints as the most important bit. — Isaac

Very good post, really brings out the issue.

If even our eyes and the fine-tuned measuring devices of the scientist are irrecoverably flawed by subjectivity, then merely 'thinking about it' can't very well be held up as being an improvement.... If even our eyes and the fine-tuned measuring devices of the scientist are irrecoverably flawed by subjectivity, then merely 'thinking about it' can't very well be held up as being an improvement. — Isaac

I think that the really deep aspects of the various world philosophical traditions do far, far more than just 'think about it'. They have their methodologies, strict, rigorous, and highly disciplined. But they're not within the ambit of 'the objective sciences' in the modern sense. Quite why that is, is not so much a matter of philosophy so much as cultural dynamics. Modern scientific method, and 'Enlightenment Rationalism', embody a kind of stance which is historically conditioned by the emergence of individualism and the dominance of technology. There's nothing from within that milieu which can provide a normative framework for judging what is of greater or lesser value, in the grand scheme. That's why I think there has to be a 'soteriological' element - excuse the jargon, but it means 'concerned with salvation', although in Eastern religions, the term is not 'salvation' but 'liberation'. In any case, it means some ultimate reason or ground, some pole star against which to set your moral compass. But then our secular culture has been innoculated against any such ideas as a consequence, again, of our cultural dynamics. Which is why people such as myself have had to search outside the framework of Western culture for resolution.

Magee is absentmindedly stupid in some important ways. — L'éléphant

I'll favour his account over yours in this case.

Is mind ontologically separate from / independent of (the) world?

Does mind correspond to Being and ideas to Beings (well isn't Being / mind also an "idea" – the one we're discussing)? — 180 Proof

Are you referring to the distinction between 'ontological' and 'epistemological' idealism. The former is said to hold that 'mind' or 'consciousness' is a literal constituent of the world (in a way analogous to electrical fields or as an attribute of fundamental constituents). This is something like Galen Strawson's and Philip Goff's panpsychism, which I don't subscribe to. It is an attempt to characterise 'mind' as an objective existent which I don't think can be done. (I critiqued one of Philip Goff's essays here and much to my surprise, he responded although I don't think any kind of conclusion was reached.)

'Epistemological' idealism is said to hold that mind (or experiential states) are fundamental in the sense that everything we know is experiential - knowledge of (x) is a state of experiencing x. It is actually close to some forms of empiricism - Berkeley is considered an empiricist.

Does mind correspond to 'Being' - not sure - I thnk 'being' is a more general term - mind indicates self-awareness.

Don't know if this addresses your questions.

If I was to describe everything I know of sight to a blind person who has always been blind could I even begin to make it clear what I perceive? — TiredThinker

Check out the article on Mary's Room.

The knowledge argument (also known as Mary's room) is a philosophical thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal Qualia" (1982) and extended in "What Mary Didn't Know" (1986).

The experiment describes Mary, a scientist who exists in a black and white world where she has extensive access to physical descriptions of color, but no actual perceptual experience of color. The central question of the thought experiment is whether Mary will gain new knowledge when she goes outside the black and white world and experiences seeing in color.

It's not the same point you're making, but it's related.

hmmm, deep question. I'll come back to this one.

Trees are in the world. They are obviously to some extent a product of human experience (I doubt a creature at a radically different scale to us would identify such an object), but it is also constrained by factors external to our experience, otherwise we'd have no entropic factor in our models, no uncertainty. — Isaac

:100:

I think one of the typical objections to what I'm describing as 'idealism' is 'if the world is "in the mind" how come you can't bend it to your will?' But again, this is where ascertaining what the idealist attitude is actually saying is quite difficult.

I don't think idealism (at least as I understand it) amounts to the claim that 'the world is in your mind' tout courte. I take idealism to mean that there is an ineluctably subjective basis to what we instinctively assume to be a purely objective reality (that's the aspect that Kant first identifies). And as naturalism has had a tendency to try to arrive at theoretical descriptions only in terms of what is objectively given, it will not be able to see that.

But this understanding is starting to become evident in even in science and philosophy. Overall I think there's a shift away from traditional materialism (in the sense meant by Armstrong and Smart) and that the concept of mind in nature is undergoing a major change (an example being the biosemiotics that Apokrisis has so ably explained, which is inspired in large part by Peirce, who is sometimes categorised as an objective idealist.)

Very well stated, but the point could equally be made that philosophy used to contemplate these larger questions, but that its scope has been deliberately narrowed by those modern exponents of it that you mention, perhaps to avoid the very kind of self-examination that the OP is trying to elicit. Enables those exponents to conceal themselves behind the jargon of professionalism and to direct awkward and embarrasing questions into thickets of technicalities.

Consider for example Kierkegaard, a philosopher with whom I am only sliightly familiar. But his entire ouvre is very much first-person oriented and addressed to questions of just those kinds.

The hardest part for me is trying to conceptualise what all 'reality' being the product of mentation actually means — Tom Storm

I make a tentative distinction between 'being' and 'reality'. The root of 'reality' is 'res', meaning 'thing'. So reality is the totality of things, and in that sense is the object of scientific analysis. But 'being' encompasses oneself, one's 'way of being', so it has a broader set of meanings. Much of Aristotle's metaphysics revolve around the various meanings of 'to be' (and, I learn, one of Heidegger's early influences was Brentano's study of the meaning of being, which remained an over-arching theme.)

Second point - Kant said (although this is not often acknowledged) that one might simultaneously be an empirical realist and transcendental idealist. According to Murti, whose book I mentioned, this has resonances with the 'Doctrine of Two Truths' in early Mahāyāna Buddhism (wiki.

But also notice:

Of course there is an external reality, I notice that at the latest when I drive my car in front of a tree. But what do we do with external reality? We don't image them like a camera obscura does. We transform reality into a neural modal reality. We don't know how 'close' our neuronal reality is to the outside world and will never know, because we can only think with neurons. So we can't make a comparison. — Wolfgang

:100: This is now becoming accepted by much cognitive science, although the implications are open diverging interpretations. But this is why (at risk of repetitiveness) I keep referring to Charles Pinter's book Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why this Insight Transforms Physics. A sample:

The Eighteenth Century philosopher Immanuel Kant was the first thoroughly modern European thinker. His ideas about the human mind anticipated much of contemporary psychology: Indeed, most of the founding ideas of cognitive science are prefigured in Kant’s writings.

The process of mentally uniting many objects together into one global experience, he called transcendental apperception. Thus, transcendental apperception refers to the act of forming Gestalts. Kant had the original insight to recognize that a Gestalt is not merely a group of objects, but something entirely new and original. For example, the Big Dipper is not just a group of seven points, but is a pattern, in which the points play a supporting role. We can almost imagine the disembodied pattern without the points. He called a mental unity synthetic when it consists of being aware of a number of different things as one. There is one more element in Kant’s conception of Gestalts: In order to tie things together there must be a single common subject, or self, and her or his awareness must be unified. Kant had the insight to recognize that the self, or center, to which we attribute the experience of seeing and knowing, is itself a mental construction—something like distal attribution. (In the present case, proximal attribution.)

Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (pp. 45-46). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.

:up:

I still think the most engaging, pellucid accounts of idealism I've encountered are those of Bernardo Kastrup - mainly via the odd paper, his blog and his engaging series of Essentia Foundation lectures on Analytic Idealism on YouTube. — Tom Storm

I rather like him, I read (actually, listened to via my Audiobook sub) Decoding Schop's Metaphysics and have listened to part of More than Allegory, plus read various of his articles. He's actually building up a pretty substantial body of publications.

Do you have thoughts on this mind-at-large? Schopenhauer calls it a striving blind, instinctive will. Berkeley, of course, calls it God. But clearly it doesn't have to be a God surrogate. — Tom Storm

Buddhists would say that all attempts to conceptualise the 'real' in terms of mind-at- large is again a form of objectification or 'eternalism'. As you know, Buddhism generally rejects the idea of a creator deity and 'higher self'.

One of the Pali texts has the Buddha saying:

By and large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "non-existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. — Kaccayanagotta Sutta

But then, in Buddhism, the 'origination of the world' is a psycho-physical process, not the act of divine creation. He goes on

"'Everything exists': That is one extreme. 'Everything doesn't exist': That is a second extreme. Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma via the middle: From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications.... — Kaccayanagotta Sutta

And from that to the 'chain of dependent origination'. Due to attachment and 'clinging' the ordinary person doesn't see things as they truly are. And so on. Sorry for the excursion into Buddhist philosophy but it does provide an alternative kind of idealism (later fully elaborated in the Yogācāra and Vijñānavāda schools. I might add, I first encountered Kant through T R V Murti's Central Philosophy of Buddhism, which is what made these connections for me.)


:chin:

Thanks!

by mentioning quantum physics... — schopenhauer1

Yes, I know. :roll: But I've done the readings, I'll defend my ground.

I think the predicate "external" in this context is assumed to be synonymous with "independent of any minds". — 180 Proof

That is correct. I'm now regretting NOT selecting 'idealism' as that is what I actually believe.

I have repeated a passage in Bryan Magee's 'Schopenhauer's Philosophy' many times here:

'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ... that is impossible.'

Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was [that] the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.

The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.

This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood.

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.

Magee goes on to say:

...in practice it is surprisingly difficult to get transcendental idealism taken seriously, even by many good philosophers. Once, in Karl Popper's living-room, I asked him why he rejected it, whereupon he banged his hand against the radiator by which we were standing and said: 'When I come downstairs in the morning I take it for granted that this radiator has been here all night' ‚ a reaction not above the level of Dr Johnson's to Berkeleianism.

Likewise, G. E. Moore mused that, if idealism were correct, then the wheels of the train would dissappear when all the passengers were boarded, due to their not being perceived.

So what is going on here? My argument is that the ideas of what constitutes existence and non-existence are too simplistic. I don't believe that any mature idealism actually claims that the object (whether it be 'an apple' or the entire world) literally vanishes when not being perceived. What I think idealism is arguing is that any idea we have of existence (and so, non-existence) is in some basic sense a mental construct - vorstellung, in Schopenhauer's terminology, vijnana, in Buddhist philosophy. That is what the massively-elaborated h. sapien forebrain does with all that processing power - it generates worlds. And seeing that, as Schopenhauer says in his very first paragraph, is the basis of philosophical wisdom.

The idea that, outside perception, everything simply ceases, is to try and assume a viewpoint with no viewpoint. We can't imagine anything - not the apple, not 'the world' - outside the framework of concepts, somatic reactions and sensory perceptions within which the statement 'x exists' is meaningful. For the purposes of naturalism we assume a mind-independent domain of objects which has nothing to do with us, but that is a pragmatic judgement, not a metaphysical principle, and as such, one that surely quantum physics has well and truly torpedoed beneath the waterline.

So that's the sense in which I endorse idealism, and I should have checked it.

Would you be willing to provide a synoptic overview of what you mean by ‘fundamental abstraction’? (Or will the answer be, ‘read my paper’ ;-) )

I’m a Boomer, and my quest originated very much in the 1960’s. I had a few vivid epiphanies - at least that’s what it seemed - that hinted at some larger truth. Then, it being the 60’s, I was influenced by the counter-culture - not that I was really part of it - and the popular Eastern mystics of the day (remember Sgt Peppers?) and also what can be politely referred to as entheogens. At the time, there was a perceived division between hippies - we all wanted to be hippies - and the ‘straights’ (not in reference to sexual orientation). The straight world was the military-industrial complex, consumerism and materialism. ‘Hip’ had faintly gnostic overtones (actually Hipgnostic was a firm that designed album covers for many major 60’s pop acts). So my quest began with enlightenment, the Adyar Bookstore, and various minor sojourns to associated places and visiting speakers. Never really joined anything although flirted with a few movements.

Of course in the many years since I’ve seen how much of my behaviour then was not wanting to accept the responsibility of adulthood (although I eventually did, marriage and children, now adults). After school I tried ‘dropping out’ but immediately learned that meant doing drudgeries for not much money. I was kind of adrift for a long while, fancied myself a musician although without the flash to make anything from it. So when I enrolled (as a late-entry student) I set about studying what I considered enlightenment, through history, psychology (no joy there!), philosophy, religious studies and anthropology. The latter two proved the most fruitful for my quest (although they never bore fruit career-wise. )

In the years since, I’ve come to realise that maybe a lot of my quest was motivated by the ‘God-shaped hole’ that was left when I declined Anglican confirmation. I realise a lot of what I write is very much shaped by Christian Platonism, which I seem to have acquired somewhere (sometimes I think in a past life). It’s possibly also because I tried to follow a curriculum of mindfulness meditation for many years and it surfaces certain kinds of ‘samskara’ (in yogic terminology) which can be like thought-formations shaped by one’s culture of birth. I did quite a bit of awareness training in my late 20s and 30s which overall has had a beneficial influence.

I suppose the philosophical conviction that now animates me is along the lines of there being a forgotten wisdom (e.g. Huston Smith, Pierre Hadot) - that the West really does have its own wisdom tradition but it sits uneasily alongside the predominant scientific secularism of today’s culture. Harking back to my youth, I think there really is something in the ‘age of Aquarius’ and ‘the greening of culture’ - a real and fundamental shift in the collective consciousness, which is happening even despite all the dreadful things that are going on in the world.

I agree that phenomenology uses the term 'phenomena' in a much more specialised way. But I still don't think 'phenomena' is a useful description for whatever mental contents you might have. And in any case, where this all started was in relation to the question 'who is seeing what?' which then leads to the question of the relationship of mind and world. That lead to the discussion of whether animals have that sense (which I don't think they do) and the sense in which it is unique to self-conscious rational sentient beings like us.

As regards 'non-dual experience', I think maybe that ought to be another topic, although I suppose it does have some important light to cast on the question of 'who perceives what'. It's just that the other posters here presumably don't have much of a grasp of non-dualism (which is a very elusive topic anyway). I have some reference material I could locate later but don't particularly want to pursue it further here.

Apart from internality and accuracy, what is qualitatively different about the song you hear and the song you play in your head? — hypericin

That only I can imagine the music in my head. It's not 'an appearance' for anyone, not even me.

'Phenomenon:1. a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question. "glaciers are interesting natural phenomena".'

this blog post by Edward Feser differentiating concepts from sensation and imagination might be relevant.

The question I asked is along a different trajectory: I was asking whether you imagined enlightenment as being in a constant state of ecstasy, such as might be experienced when tripping, or when having a "mystical" or intense aesthetic experience. — Janus

I think my response would always be 'defiled' or 'contaminated' by my own preconceptions and expectations. I also think there's considerable danger in envisaging such states in terms of what we consider pleasure or ecstacy. (I actually I recall a remark in the preface to Zen Mind Beginner's Mind where Suzuki roshi remarks that, if you have an enlightenment experience, you may not like it!)

When you visualize, or play a song in your head, is that not phenomenal? — hypericin

No. Phenomena are 'what appears' - sensory input. The stream of consciousness is just that, a stream of consciousness. 'Phenomena' is a hugely overused word nowadays, because it's come to mean, basically, 'everything' - which makes it meaningless, as it doesn't differentiate anything.

What do you imagine the experience of the "enlightened ones" is like? — Janus

I learned in Enlightenment 101 that the state of enlightenment is inconceivable, but let's not get too far into the long grass.

Your depiction of 'religious people' refers to a specific kind of religious mentality, most like fundamentalist or creationist Christians to whom science is threatening. But there are entire spectrums of 'religious people' who have completely different attitudes to the question.

In the 19th Century there was a kind of popular movement among English intellectuals to portray religion and science as mortal enemies. It's called 'the conflict thesis'. Most of the so-called 'new atheist' authors, and many who preach scientific materialism on the Internet, adopt that view, but it is a very blinkered view.

The sources I actually quoted in earlier in this thread were not 'religious people' at all but biologists and scientists. But those whom I quoted have believe that materialism - the view that there is no fundamental difference between the chemical and organic domains - is insufficient because it can't explain some of the basic characteristics of life, like memory, intention, homeostasis, the encoding and transmitting of genetic information via dna etc. But in your view, to question materialism is to be 'a religious person', meaning, a fundamentalist or science-denying flat earther. In fact the kind of materialism you argue for is a direct descendant of Christian monotheism, in that it allows only one kind of fundamental principle, but now it's matter (or matter-energy). The 'jealous God' dies hard.

I think non-dual awareness is very ordinary, it is just everyday experience. — Janus

You do wonder, then, why it's origins and traditions lie mostly with renunciates and sannyasins.

You might be referring to the 'ordinary mind' approach of Zen but bear in mind it is situated in Japanese society with high levels of ritual and aesthetic enculturation. It appeals to Westerners because it sounds very approachable but I think the reality is different.

When you think to yourself, "I'm having a nice day", you are generating the phenomenal experience of a voice in your head saying "I'm having a nice day". — hypericin

I don't think of internal mentation as being phenomenal. Phenomena means 'appearance' or 'what appears'.

The question was: if they don't possess symbolic language then they don't conceive of their experience dualistically (meaning they would not "consider themselves as subjects), but does it follow that they would experience nothing, as praxis claimed? — Janus

I completely accept that animals are subjects of experience- that they're beings, distinct from objects or things. I thnk the Cartesian view of animals as automata is grotesquely mistaken. But the key indicator of human awareness just is the sense of what is mine, what am I, what I possess, and so on. That is the basic fact that is symbolised by various 'myths of the fall'. We reflect on meaning, on suffering, on loss, in a way that animals cannot. One of my pet peeves is the way modern philosophy blurs that distinction, mainly due to misinterpreting Darwinian evolution as a philosophy, which it isn't (i.e. we're fully determined by evolutionary biology.)

While animals do not speak, nothing stops them from generating their own phenomenal experiences, and thus having at least a rudimentary sense of self. — hypericin

Well, first, I'm not at all certain what 'generating your own phenomenal experience' means. Do you mean, hallucinating?

Animals, I imagine, live in the eternal present, in a non-dual state of awareness. — Janus

I'm sure that's a kind of romantic myth. They're also incapable of wrestling with the meaning of existence, that is the perogative of rational sentient beings. (See Are Humans Special, David Loy.)

Hah! Interesting. That I did not know. But the Scottish educational system is one of wonders of the modern world, according to some (e.g. How the Scots Invented the Modern World. Trivial fact: I attended Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen for a couple of semesters in early high school whilst my father was on sabbatical at the University there.)

I don't believe animals parse experience in terms of subject/ object. — Janus

Animals do not deploy dualistic language; do you think they do not see at all? — Janus

What they lack is the ability to consider themselves as subjects, i.e. they're absent rational self-awareness. Yes some can pass the mirror test, but I bet none of them are thinking 'what am I doing here?' or 'what does being an elephant mean, really?' They don’t have the predicament of selfhood.

Worth reflecting that Charles Darwin was greatly influenced by 'the Scottish Enlightenment'.

'The Scottish Enlightenment was a period of cultural, intellectual, and scientific advancement that took place in Scotland in the 18th century. It was a time of significant progress in many areas, including philosophy, economics, science, education, and politics.

During this period, Scotland produced a remarkable number of great thinkers and writers, including Adam Smith, David Hume, Adam Ferguson, and Francis Hutcheson. These intellectuals challenged traditional beliefs and practices, and championed new ideas such as individual freedom, scientific inquiry, and the power of reason.

One of the most significant contributions of the Scottish Enlightenment was the development of the concept of political economy. Adam Smith's book "The Wealth of Nations" laid the groundwork for modern economic theory by arguing that markets should be free from government intervention and that individual self-interest could lead to the greater good of society.

The Scottish Enlightenment also saw advances in education, with the establishment of the University of Edinburgh and the development of a national system of education. This focus on education helped to create a more informed and literate population, which in turn contributed to the development of a thriving literary and cultural scene.

Overall, the Scottish Enlightenment was a period of great intellectual and cultural achievement that helped to shape modern Western thought and values. Its legacy can still be felt today, particularly in the fields of philosophy, economics, and education.'

Darwin was historically later, but his ideas were very much influenced by it. Enlightenment values very much stressed individual thought but were also anchored in the Adam Smith's idea of 'enlightened self interest'. It was all for political and economic freedom and development and not an inhumane political philosophy.

The elephant in the room in this thread is vitalism — javra

'Vitalism' is a reference to Henri Bergson's 'élan vital' - conceived as a 'vital force or impetus'. It is generally said to have been completely discredited by genetic science.

But then, I think it's mistaken to believe that the élan vital exists in the sense that, say, enzymes exist, or magnetic fields exist. There's no such actual thing or force. But it might be interpreted metaphorically to signify a quality that living organisms possess. I think a way of conceiving it might be along the lines of the relationship between meaning and the symbolic form in which meaning is encoded. You wouldn't try to identify 'meaning' as some ingredient of the ink and paper on a page you were reading. Nevertheless the meaning is what makes the words 'come alive', so to speak; without it, you lliterally have a meaningless string of characters. Meaning is implicit in the text.

When I was just last in New York, I went for a walk, leaving Fifth Avenue and the Business section behind me, into the crowded streets near the Bowery. And while I was there, I had a sudden feeling of relief and confidence. There was Bergson’s élan vital—there was assimilation causing life to exert as much pressure, though embodied here in the shape of men, as it has ever done in the earliest year of evolution: there was the driving force of progress. — Julian Huxley

I would have checked 'idealism' but for the fact that I think the usual notion of what it means is mistaken in such a way that is basically incorrigible.

But I've noticed a couple of recent intellectual trends which might serve in its place

Radical constructivism is an approach to epistemology that situates knowledge in terms of knowers' experience. It looks to break with the conception of knowledge as a correspondence between a knower's understanding of their experience and the world beyond that experience. Adopting a sceptical position towards correspondence as in-principle impossible to verify because one cannot access the world beyond one's experience in order to test the relation, radical constructivists look to redefine epistemology in terms of the viability of knowledge within knowers' experience. — Wikipedia

Note the convergence with QBism in physics:

(Other interpretations) all have something in common: They treat the wave function as a description of an objective reality shared by multiple observers. QBism, on the other hand, treats the wave function as a description of a single observer’s subjective knowledge. It resolves all of the quantum paradoxes, but at the not insignificant cost of anything we might call “reality.” Then again, maybe that’s what quantum mechanics has been trying to tell us all along — that a single objective reality is an illusion. — Quanta Magazine

I will admit I am interested in Bernardo Kastrup's 'analytical idealism'.

-----

The danger of this poll is that it feeds the layperson’s impression that the existence of the external world is the central issue in philosophy. — Jamal

It still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us … must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof. — Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B519

Plus ca change....

I thought you of all people would be interested in exploring ideas outside of established science — Philosophim

That is not 'an idea outside established science'. It is what is described as physicalism, reductionism or materialism. Some scientists adhere to it, but others do not.

Do you have anything to comment about the idea of life being a self-sustaining chemical reaction? — Philosophim

I've mentioned a source recently - a journal article in biology, as it happens - that disputes this contention. It claims that there is nothing in any known chemical process which can account for the ability of organisms to store and transmit biological information, to maintain homeostasis, and so forth. 'Ernst Mayr, one of the architects of the modern synthesis [advocates] the view that life is fundamentally different from inanimate matter. In The growth of biological thought, p. 124, he made this point in no uncertain terms: 'The discovery of the genetic code was a breakthrough of the first order. It showed why organisms are fundamentally different from any kind of nonliving material. There is nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program which stores information with a history of three thousand million years!’

The idea that ‘life is chemistry plus information’ implies that information is ontologically different from chemistry.'

Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists.

So - why do you think that life can be described as a 'self-sustaining chemical reaction'? Do you have any grounds for that belief?

I wouldn't say life is an illusion, just another state of matter. — Philosophim

Gee where would I look in my chemistry and physics texts for the description of that state?

"Final cause" is the intent, the purpose — Metaphysician Undercover

:up: I think the whole idea of final causation was a casuality of the Scientific Revolution and the rejection of scholastic/Aristotelian ideas of causality. Note however Aristotle's Revenge by Edward Feser

I've very briefly perused something of the history of the synthesis of Greek and Hebrew thought which characterised the early Christian era. It is a deep and recondite topic! I have the impression that Origen, Clement of Alexandria, and others of that genre were profound intellects (and note that Origen was anathematised for the 'monstrous doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul').

The annointing of some of the Greek philosophers as 'Christians before Christ' was partially a recognition of Greek wisdom, and also a way of trying to harmonise Greek philosophy with Biblical revelation. This was a process of synthesis that took place over centuries or even millenia. But there were always deep tensions in that project, as foreshadowed by the Biblical exclamation, what has Athens to do with Jerusalem? and Jesus' wisdom as representing foolishness to the Greeks'. There nevertheless was a profound synthesis of the two in the early medieval period notably Eriugena and the mysterious 'pseudo-Dionysius'. But the tensions became truly manifest with Luther, I think, who excorciated Aristotle's influence on Aquinas.

Also don't overlook the ubiquitous presence of the word 'logos' in all of the disciplines with the suffix '-logy' (psychology, ecology, etc.)

Also interesting analysis of how Aquinas reconciled 'creation ex nihilo' with the Greek 'nothing comes from nothing' http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/calhoun/socratic/Tkacz_AquinasvsID.html

According to one of the two main accounts of causality, namely the perspectival "interventionist" interpretation, a causal model is a set of conditional propositions whose inferences are conditioned upon variables that are considered to have implicative relevance but which are external to the model, such as the hypothetical actions of an agent — sime

Very illuminating, thank you. Also has relevance in quantum physics, I would think.

What I don't follow is the relevance of a "final cause", — sime

I'll let MU answer for himself, but I had thought the Aristotelian 'final cause' was 'the reason why x exists'. For instance, the final cause of a match is fire, as that is the reason why matches are made. That's also a good example, because the efficient cause of the fire is the match, which says something about the possible relationship of 'efficient' and 'final' causes.

Once a chess game is played (even in one's mind) that chess game becomes real. — EnPassant

I'm a follower of an excellent chess channel on Youtube, hosted by an ebullient Serb, Agadmator. He makes a point of saying, in every game, the point at which 'this position has never previously been reached before, from here on. it's a totally new game'. Usually happens around moves 8 -11. I guess databases must be used to identify that, but it serves once again to remind one of the infinite number of possible combinations of moves in Chess.

'Belief' from the perspective of atheism is invariably portrayed as 'acceptance with no evidence', but 'belief' in this sense can also be seen to be instrumental - something like an openness or the willingness to accept, rather than a pre-determined refusal to consider.

As for where philosophy proper sits in all this, it doesn't demand the kind of obedience to dogma typically associated with religion. But it may require an openness to dimensions of being that are out of reach for what is typically called 'empiricism', because it may demand a knd of introspective awareness that can't be validated in the public square, so to speak. And earlier philosophy did have an aspect which is quite close to religion in some respects, as explained by Pierre Hadot:

Askesis of Desire: For Hadot, famously, the means for the philosophical student to achieve the “complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things” epitomized by the Sage were a series of spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the student’s larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things (Philosophy as a Way of Life 84). Hadot acknowledges his use of the term “spiritual exercises” may create anxieties*, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion than typically done (Nussbaum 1996, 353-4; Cooper 2010). Hadot’s use of the adjective “spiritual” (or sometimes “existential”) indeed aims to capture how these practices, like devotional practices in the religious traditions (6a), are aimed at generating and reactivating a constant way of living and perceiving in prokopta, despite the distractions, temptations, and difficulties of life. For this reason, they call upon far more than “reason alone.” They also utilize rhetoric and imagination in order “to formulate the rule of life to ourselves in the most striking and concrete way” and aim to actively re-habituate bodily passions, impulses, and desires (as for instance, in Cynic or Stoic practices, abstinence is used to accustom followers to bear cold, heat, hunger, and other privations) (PWL 85). — Pierre Hadot entry IEP

* or hysteria :lol:

Suppose one of the above had found a distinct resolution, then what would it mean for others? — jorndoe

As I suggested above, I think rules might be introduced to deprecate self-referential text by these systems. In other words, that prevent them from responding to questions about their purported identity and 'feelings'. As a matter of philosophical principle, I don't accept that any of this technology actually constitutes or amounts to be an actual subject of experience, but that the algorithms which run them can, of course, simulate subjectivity. I think that should be one of the major subjects of discussion as the technology develops. (Oh, and thanks for those interesting links, will find some time to explore them later.)

Check out Bernardo Kastrup's analysis The Lunacy of Machine Consciousness (paywalled but one-time access allowed.)

I can run a detailed simulation of kidney function, exquisitely accurate down to the molecular level, on the very iMac I am using to write these words. But no sane person will think that my iMac might suddenly urinate on my desk upon running the simulation, no matter how accurate the latter is. After all, a simulation of kidney function is not kidney function; it’s a simulation thereof, incommensurable with the thing simulated. We all understand this difference without difficulty in the case of urine production. But when it comes to consciousness, some suddenly part with their capacity for critical reasoning: they think that a simulation of the patterns of information flow in a human brain might actually become conscious like the human brain. How peculiar. — Bernardo Kastrup

The ready acceptance of the idea of sentient AI says something deep about our culture's grasp of the nature of mind and consciousness.