Yep. I'd go along with that.

I guess I find the discursive and 'the rest' to be pretty entangled. — plaque flag

Aha. I can show you how to untangle it. It requires knowing only two or three vital facts. If you know that all metaphysical questions are undecidable then you're half way there.

I am not a fan of Nietzsche. He's brilliant but seems to be floundering around in the dark.

That was an Interesting Eliot quote.

I don't share your view of philosophy and have a much higher regard, but I'm not talking about mainstream western philosophy. . . . . ,

Nicely put. Indra's Net is a wonderful metaphor.

I found your post interesting but couldn't quite understand it. For the mystic time and change would not really exist and this is because they have seen beyond it. The clock still ticks but what is truly and ultimately real is unchanging. This would be Being, not the personal experience.of a being.

The word 'reflexivity' implies some sort of dualism so I'm not sure it's relevant here. I may be misunderstanding what you mean but it. .

I like to think that there's also a discursive path to some discursive analogue of that. I do think that analysis gets us far. But of course I value ineffable experiences that I also won't try to talk much about. — plaque flag

I also believe in the value of analysis, since although it cannot take us all the way to an understanding it clearly signposts what it is we need to understand and disposes of philosophical problems. For a sceptic analysis is the only way forward, since they will not be inclined to do the practice.

. ..

Nice ! That's what I'm basically try to say in this thread. Of course we need account for the fact that there are many of us, each of us the being of the 'same' world from a different 'point of view.' — plaque flag

In this case we're on the same page.

Waves on the ocean or sparks of the divine are common metaphors for our situation as individuals.

“Dost thou reckon thyself only a puny form
When within thee the universe is folded?”

Baha’u’llah quoting Imam Ali,
the first Shia Imam
.

I expect the book you mention is good in its way, but with the possible exception Augustine your post mentions no philosophers who understood mysticism. It seems to be a review of mystical-leaning ideas in western philosophy, not an introduction to mysticism. A book on the implications of mysticism for formal philosophy would look very different. This is no to say it isn't a good book but the title appears to be misleading. .

. . ,

Many thanks for the book recommendation. It looks like a rare book and a much needed one.

t could be. And I could end up revising my beliefs. All I can do is sincerely think and be open and be critical, and so on. — plaque flag

It's wonderful to talk to someone so thoughtful and open minded.

How so ? This voidness ? — plaque flag

Under analysis the phenomena of this world are found to be empty of substance or essence. This is not a metaphysical speculation bur a verifiable fact.

In metaphysics the results of analysis are surprisingly easy to summarise. All extreme or positive metaphysical positions are found to be logically indefensible. This is the reason why metaphysical questions are undecidable, If you reject all these failed positions you are left with a neutral theory, as required for the perennial philosophy. Hence those who reject mysticism are unable to make sense of metaphysics. ,

In my view, 'pure' subjectivity is so radically transparent that it's really just the being of the world. I claim that the world has no other being. Or, at least, that we can't know of make sense of some other kind of being than our own (the world's ) perspectival kind.

For the mystics reality and consciousness are the same phenomenon, and perhaps this is the idea you need to overcome the idea of pure subjectivity. They say the subject-object distinction is functional or conventional, and not ontological.

But I'd be glad to hear more about this 'end before our beginning' as spoken of by Jesus.

This is not an idea endorsed by the church, so be warned. . .

"Blessed is he whose beginning is before he came into being!"

Jesus - Gospel of Thomas - V 20

"The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us how our end will be." Jesus said, "Have you discovered, then, the beginning, that you look for the end? For where the beginning is, there will the end be. Blessed is he who will take his place in the beginning; he will know the end and will not experience death."

Gospel of Thomas - V18

This refers to what in Taoism is 'our face before we were born'. If we can dive this deep we can overcome life and death, and this would be the Grail experience of total 'holiness'. In its proper meaning yoga is the 'art of union with reality',and this definition reveals what meditation is all about. It's about going back to the beginning, before we began to identify as a subject with a perspective.

. . . .

But, for me, that seer would only be in a beautiful semi-discursive frame of mind. — plaque flag

Okay. But in this case how do you explain the odd fact that the mystics have the only metaphysical theory that works? All others are rejected by analysis. Also, meditation is said to be shallow if it does not go beyond mind.

I think perhaps you underestimate just how deep it is possible to go.

But it should maybe be mentioned that identifying true being with the unchanging is not obviously the way to go, however traditional. — plaque flag

Hmm. I'd say it is the only way to go. No other idea allows us to create a fundamental theory.

The crucial idea here is the principle of nonduality and the unity of all. .

We may have to disagree here. I don't accept Kant's idea (or what is often taken to be his idea) that we are cut off from reality. — plaque flag

Nor me. I feel this is his biggest mistake. It leads him to the view we can know nothing about ultimate reality, which is NOt a logical result. But the voidness of phenomena is a matter of analysis.

I think we are always already 'in' reality, seeing reality. Indeed the vanishing subject, in my view, is reality-from-a-point-of-view. '

This makes sense. But what are you when the subject disappears? This is the question that the perennial philosophy answers. This would be our 'end before our beginning' as spoken of by Jesus. . .

But I do very much think that some perspectives (some conceptual articulations of reality) are richer and more adequate than others. I think we do agree on the value of some kind of scientific rational approach.

Absolutely we agree on this. This is why I endorse the perennial philosophy, for which reality is not a perspective but a phenomenon, Reality would be our identity, not a perspective on something else. Kant shows that the ultimate is inconceivable and unsayable, as the OT story of the golden calf suggests. It would be knowable, however, as it is who we are. ,

The one constructed in the proof. When you read the proof, you see the G that is constructed. — TonesInDeepFreeze

But I can't follow the proof. Does this mean I can never know an example of G?

Of course you're free to investigate whatever you like. On the other hand, for example, the undecidability of the halting problem, which is another way of couching incompleteness, has implications for actual computing.

I'd say computing is mathematics, so I'm not sure this is a valid example. .

Metaphysics is not usually formulated as a formal system. On the other hand, if you state a formal system, we can see whether it has the attributes to which the incompleteness theorem applies.

I can see no point in a metaphysical theory that is not a formal system. It wouldn't be a theory in the usual sense. Thus for me incompleteness ought to be important. I'd like to say that there is only one such theory that escapes incompleteness. but just can't understand the issue well enough to do so.

Of course. Anyone, including advanced mathematicians, may ignore it and still work productively.

Not in metaphysics, or so I believe.

Read 'Godel's Theorem' by Torkel Franzen. He discusses your question in layman's terms.

Thanks. I'll check the reviews but am not hopeful. . ,

I'd wager that most of 'em would say not so much. — plaque flag

Yrs, but should I believe them? They simply don't seem to know.

Understood. But, for me anyway, there's no authority beyond something like our own earnestly critical investigation of the matters themselves.

Agreed in respect of discursive philosophers. For practitioners their authority is direct experience and not speculation. .

I'm not against that. Indeed, I agree with Hegel that the finite is 'unreal,' 'fictional,' [merely] conventional. Reality is one and continuous. I also like Ecclesiastes: all is hebel. Everything is 'empty.' See there how the great void shines.

This is interesting. Do you know where it says this in Ecclesiastes? It shows how easy it would be to interpret the Bible as endorsing the perennial philosophy.

I'd say metaphysics is a kind of grand science, and that it projects illuminating metaphors on the whole of reality. For instance: 'all is vanity [empty].' Or: 'all is one [connected, interdependent].' Of course people like to say that 'all is mind' or 'all is matter' too. Or that all is God creating and recognizing itself. Or that all is 'a tale of sound and fury signifying nothing.'

It ought to be a science of logic, but the views you mention show that few people approach it as such. The voidness of phenomena is a logical result, as Kant shows, but most of these other views fail under analysis and so are profoundly unscientific. . . .

You mention 'truly real,' which is like 'really real.' I'm not against it, but the question for me is almost always one of meaning. What does is mean to call something 'real' ?

To be truly real a phenomenon would have to be independent, irreducible, non-contingent and unchanging. What we usually call 'existence' is dependent or relative existence. It requires that the phenomenon 'stands out' from a background. But, as Schrodinger points out, as well as the myriad dependent phenomena there is the 'background on which they are painted'. This is what would be truly real. You could think of it as the information space necessary for an information theory, or the blank sheet of paper required for a Venn diagram and set theory,

The idea is not that the conventional world does not exist, but that it exist only in a weak and non-metaphysical sense. Thus Heraclitus states 'We are and are-not', and in this way takes account of both aspects of the world, or both levels of analysis, the conventional and the ultimate. This is an example of the 'two truths'. Hence the seemingly contradictory language of mysticism. . . . . , . . ,

. . . . .

But is it important beyond mathematics ? — plaque flag

I don't know. I wish a mathematician would tell me but they don't seem to know either/ .

Why would it be a catastrophe? — Skalidris

It would actually be progress but in evolutionary terms it would be a sudden catastrophic change of course, not an evolution. To abandon dualism would for most people mean entirely scrapping their previous philosophical ideas, theories.and ideological commitments.

There are three possible solutions for metaphysics - dualism, monism and non-dualism. To abandon dualism means is to endorse the last of these, and this is to abandon western philosophy.

I see no future for western academic philosophy and there are university chancellors who feel the same and are cutting it from the curriculum. It is dead and cannot evolve but only go around in ever decreasing circles. .

This is why I predict a revolution. It will come when philosophers wake up to the perennial philosophy.and realise it is the only hope for the future of their discipline. It is not currently of interest to most philosophers, but it might become so when jobs at stake. .

To be clear, the problem is not people who can't understand the mathematics, but those (not necessarily ones lately in this thread) who refuse (through years and years of their ignorant, confused, and arrogantly prolific disinformational posting) to even read the first page of a textbook on the subject. Such people are a bane and toxic to knowledge and understanding. — TonesInDeepFreeze

I can see this point. But I feel mathematicians are somewhat to blame for not being able to explain why the issue is important beyond mathematics, which is where most people live.

. .

The basic idea of what the theorem says can be stated roughly in common language:

If T is a consistent theory that expresses basic arithmetic, then there are sentences in the language for T such that neither they nor their negations are provable in T; moreover, either such a sentence is true or its negation is true, so there are true sentences not provable in T. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Okay. I get this.

The basic idea of the proof is not as easy to say in common language, but we have:

For a consistent, arithmetically expressive theory T, we construct a sentence G in the language of T such that G is true if and only if G is not provable in T. Then we prove that G is not provable in T. But this cannot really be understood and be convincing if one doesn't study the actual mathematics of it; otherwise it can seem, at such a roughly simplified level, as nonsense or illegitimate trickery, though it is not, as would be understood when seeing the actual mathematics, not the oversimplified common summary.

Okay. But what is an example of G for some system T? .

Mathematically, there is no legitimate debate about the theorem. It is as rock solid a mathematical proof as any mathematical proof. It can be reduced to methods of finitistic constructive arithmetic.

I get this. I just don;t see it's significance beyond mathematics. Stephen Hawking used to have as essay online titles 'The End of Physics', arguing that incompleteness means physics cannot be completed, but he later took it down. It ought to mean that metaphysics cannot be completed, but I;I've not seen this argued. .

In the philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of computability, there are different diverging perspectives about the theorem.

Amen to this.

In any case, one cannot reasonably philosophize about the theorem without actually understanding it mathematically as a starting point. I wouldn't make claims about the philosophy of mind based on studies about the electrical chemistry of the human brain without first really understanding those studies. Should be the same with metaphysics referring to mathematics.

I'd half agree. My view is that if mathematicians are unable to work out and clarify the implications of incompleteness for philosophy then philosophers can ignore it, since they're hardly likely to do any better. But I don't want to ignore it. I feel it's important but cannot pin down the reasons. I don't find mathematicians helpful on this issue since they don't seem able to make clear why philosophers should even be interested. Perhaps they needn't be. Do you have an opinion?

So I'm not against your approach, — plaque flag

To be clear. it's not just my approach, it's the Perennial philosophy.

but I favor an inclusive approach. It's all real. Confused daydreams are real, and they exist in the style of confused daydreams. All entities are semantically-inferentially linked in a single nexus. Language is directed at the one common world.

You might like to look at Buddhism's doctrine of two truths. This states that space-time phenomena - , which in Buddhism are dhamma or 'thing-events' ,- are conventionally real but ultimately unreal. This is why they are said to 'not really exist'. One could say that by reduction they are unreal, and what is truly real would be irreducible, Nobody claims that nothing exists, although some western scholars confuse Buddhism with nihilism. ,

Metaphysics has to reduce the many to the one, and if we assume the many is truly real this cannot be done. I think you'd have to admit that the incomprehension of philosophers suggests that they're missing a trick. .

FWIW, I think a certain kind of knowledge strives to transcend both time and space --to be valid or worthy at all times and places. But this is the only kind of negation of space and time I can make sense of. It's a negation of the relevance of where 'o clock for the divine thinking that is everywhen and all ways. — plaque flag

Okay. But this is not a metaphysical idea. In metaphysics the idea that time and space are truly real doesn't survive analysis. It is a difficult idea for sure, but not incomprehensible. Ive been quoting Kant, Leibnitz and Weyl, who all endorse the unreality of space-time. So did Erwin Schrodinger, and as far as I can make out modern physics seems to be arriving at the same conclusion. .

So are you saying that space is an illusion ? Along with time ? — plaque flag

Yes. It has to be both or neither. This is Weyl's view also. As an illusion extension it is just as real as it seems to be, but as a metaphysical phenomenon it would be reducible.

Leibnitz makes the point thus:

"In Leibnitz’s view, the ultimately real, something that depends on nothing else for its existence, cannot have parts. If it had parts, its existence would depend on them. But whatever has spatial extension has parts. It follows that what is ultimately real cannot have spatial extension, …”

Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy
Ed. Thomas Mautner (2000)
,

What metaphysical presupposition are requited for physics? I cannot think of any but perhaps I'm missing something. . .

I mean the idea of something existing which cannot even in principle be perceived, something like 'things in themselves,' when it's also assumed they are only ever mediated by appearances -- by phenomena in the crude prephenomenological sense. — plaque flag

Ah. So you disagree with Kant? He concludes that it is a necessary definition of the ultimate phenomenon that it cannot be perceived or conceived since it lies beyond thee categories of thought. . But clearly it does not exist in the usual sense of ;standing out'. It has nothing from which it can stand out.

This is the classical Christian idea of God, that God exists but not in the way you and I exist. I don't like the word 'God' but the argument holds for the ultimate phenomenon whatever we call it.

.

I would say it is the pure present we only experience as a fiction , and that, most primordially, the only thing we do experience is the tripartite structure of time. — Joshs

Yes. The idea of the eternal now requires the idea that we can transcend the experience-experiencer duality. As you seem to say, if we cannot do this the idea makes no sense.

We never experience the pure present. There isn't time to experience it. But we can be in it. This explains how yogis can sit for weeks without moving. They are not experiencing the passing of time.

The nonduality teacher Sadhguru began to become famous after sitting on a rock for two weeks. When he came back to everyday li0fe found himself surrounded by admirers. He thought he'd been sitting for half an hour and was taken by surprise. . , . .

To be 'punctiform' is to be a point with no extension. Thus the 'eternal now' is outside of time.and should not be thought of as a brief amount of time. In this sense time is not punctiform.[/quote]

These problems arise for space and time and for the numbers and the number line and Weyl dismisses all of them as a fiction. The idea that any of then are made out of points is paradoxical/. He concludes that the idea of extension is paradoxical when we reify it, and endorses the 'Perennial' explanation of extension as a fabrication of mind. .
.

o me it's still feels pretty bold to doubt the 'independent object.' It reads almost like impiety, even if one is an atheist. — plaque flag

Sorry but I don;t quite understand your post. What do you mean by 'independent object'? . .

I would say physics is the study of appearances as filtered though a particular set of metaphysical suppositions, what Husserl calls objectivist metalhysics. All science is doing metaphysics, but implicitly rather than explicitly. — Joshs

I'd rather say physics doesn't need to make metaphysical suppositions. It has banished metaphysics to a different department. Physicists often stray into metaphysics and sometimes hold strong views, but when they do they're no longer doing physics. Materialism is the typical methodological assumption, but this is not a scientific theory.and it is not even necessary to physics. . . .

Heidegger would say that the notion of ‘appearance’ of a world before a subject is itself grounded in a particular metaphysical presupposition.

I'd agree. But the idea that appearances can appear in the absence of a subject to whom they appear makes no sense to me. They seem to be mutually dependent phenomena.

Husserl shows that (the 'experience' of ) time is stretched. There is no pointlike now, except as a useful mathematical fiction (the glories of R). But the gap between the so-called experience of time and time itself is also a fiction. 'Time in itself' is silly talk, 'decadent' metaphysics without an intuitive foundation. — plaque flag

You might like the read Herman Weyl's famous book on the continuum. He correctly states that we do not experience time. It is a fiction created from memories and anticipations. This is what Husserl means by saying time is stretched. It has to be stretched in order to creatr the illusion that we are experiencing it. The 'eternal now' is what Weyl calls the 'intuitive continuum, which is unextended, and the fictional time we seem to experience he explains as a theoretical construction. His book is mostly mathematics, but his philosophical ideas are well described by commentators and in his other writings. .

As you say, the idea of time as a metaphysically real phenomenon is inherently paradoxical. But the eternal now is transcendent to time. . . .

Ah, I see. That's a reasonable way to understand bracketing. But phenomenology is a big tent. Husserl alone was amazingly prolific and always revising (his work is too large and complex for me to begin to pretend to have mastered it. But I see that mountain of it. And once Husserl embraced transcendental idealism (and lost some worthy followers), he was a full-fledged metaphysician doing first philosophy. Doing it pretty well often enough it seems to me. — plaque flag

Yes, a fair point. It's only a very small step from your neutral phenomenology to transcendental idealism, which is a neutral metaphysical theory. But it's a much bigger and braver idea that leads beyond phenomenology and perhaps this is why he lost followers.



I read those quotes carefully and they seem to support my point. Metaphysics extends beyond phenomenology. The boundary is rather messy, however, and I can see why they become confused. The study of appearances is physics and the natural sciences and the the study of their origin and true nature is metaphysics and mysticism, so I'm not sure how phenomenology could be defined as a distinct subject. The boundaries are always going to be messy. . . .

I wonder if we all agree on the definition of phenomenology, since all those I've seen are quite vague. .


. ., . .

Sure there is. Just read a textbook on the subject. But if you're not interested in doing that, then indeed there's little hope that you'll understand the subject.

This is a technical subject. It requires study. Just as, say, microbiology is a technical subject and you can't expect to understand results in microbiology without knowing at least the basics. — TonesInDeepFreeze

This is clearly true, and it must be frustrating trying to talk to people who can't follow the calculations. Still, I find it odd that it's so difficult to express the basic idea in a non-specialist language.

My interest is philosophical, but the implications of incompleteness for metaphysics seems to be a matter a debate among scholars and there is little agreement.

We must have radically different conceptions of phenomenology. I'd say it's largely the opposite of naive realism. Though I will grant that it sometimes comes back around to a highly sophisticated direct realism. — plaque flag

The point is that phenomenology is exclusively concerned with observable phenomena or appearances and has nothing to say about the origin and essential nature of phenomena. Thus it is defined as being free from any claims concerning existence. It doesn't stray onto metaphysics but is a non-reductive approach. Nothing wrong with this but it cannot produce a fundamental theory.

I'm not arguing with the idea that mind and matter arise from a source,that is neither, since this is my view, and can see why you might call this a neutral phenomenology, but for a fundamental theory we would have to go beyond phenomenology and endorse a neutral metaphysical theory. This has implications for all metaphysical dualities and not just mind -matter.

This comment seems to sum up the issue-

"In fact, part of the way one starts to do phenomen-
ology is to push aside any doctrines or theories – including sci-
entific and metaphysical theories. This pushing aside is part of
the method of phenomenology. The phrase ‘way of seeing’ could
be written ‘method of seeing’ – it is certainly a methodologically-
guided way of seeing. Accordingly, some authors suggest that
phenomenology is best defined as a method rather than a philo-
sophical theory. The ‘whatever appears to be as such’ and the
‘manner of appearing’ or ‘its manifestation’ – these are all ways of
talking about the phenomena, which is a Greek word for appear-
ances. For Husserl, phenomenology (literally, the ‘science of
appearances’"

What Is Phenomenology? - Shaun Gallagher

Thanks. I read GEB many years ago and enjoyed it but was unable to see its importance. This may or may not be because it went over my head. I did like the idea of strange loops. The idea was not new to me but t liked the name he gave them. I'd been thinking of them as feedback loops, being a guitarist.who likes to use them. The world seems to be made out of these loops.

I never quite grasped what Hofstaedter was trying to say, however, and this may be directly connected with my inability to see what Godel was saying. . .

. .

According to various textbooks, the 'transcendental ego' refers to 'subjective consciousness devoid of empirical content', namely anything that pertains to the external world or to the ego's psychological states (e.g. feelings or moods) — Wayfarer

These textbooks are not explaining transcendental idealism. The phrase 'transcendental ego' is an oxymoron since the ego would be an illusion, and the ultimate state of consciousness would not be subjective. If we reify the ego as a subjective phenomenon then we are not going to be able to solve any problems since the idea doesn't make metaphysical sense. It would be subjective idealism, which has to be abandoned for transcendental idealism.

. . .

I find your approach odd. That the ultimate is not mind or matter is the claim of the Perennial philosophy, and I wonder why you don't consider this a solution to the problem.

It is a neutral metaphysical theory for which consciousness is fundamental and there are no philosophical problems.

The trouble with phenomenology is that it is effectively naive realism and can never produce a fundamental theory. . . .

'I don't see the world differently. Or this is still not strong and clear enough. I am the world from a different perspective. The world [so far as we can know or even make sense of ] only exists perspectively. ' — plaque flag

For the world of time and space this is the case. But what Sartre is saying, and also Kant,and the Perennial philosophy, is that by reduction all perspectives can be reduced and for a fundamental analysis would not really exist. All Kantian phenomenon would be empty of substance and illusory, and this would include the ego and the individual 'I'. .

I misread your word 'neutral' as 'natural; - sorry about that.

In what sense do you call it neutral? . .

The idea of a transcendental subject or ego sounds like dualism to me and not a fundamental idea. For a fundamental theory the subject and and the ego would have to be reduced. For transcendental idealism both would not really exist. The subject-object duality would be, in Sartre's words, of a functional order only, and the ego would be a fantasy. (As your title seems to suggest}.

The phrase 'natural phenomenalism' is intriguing. I'm struggling to figure out what it might mean. Does it refer to particular theory or approach?

.

Thank you to all those who've spent time explaining this but for me it's probably a lost cause. I'm unable to make sense of it.

My interest is in the philosophical implications, but there is a variety of views on this and I have no way to distinguish the wheat from the chaff.

Thanks for trying, it's much appreciated, but I can't see the mathematical significance of a self-referential statement that states 'This sentence' is false'. What sentence?

It would help if I could find a statement that is true but provably undecidable, but I've never seen one. Do you have an example?

Your piece of paper example doesn't do it for me since the two statements make contradictory claims and clearly cannot both be true. We can invent these paradoxical circular arguments easily enough but where do they occur naturally?

.