A critique of Bernardo's version of idealism: Is it idealistic enough?

[Adur Alkain]

I want to present a short critique of Bernardo’s version of idealism. Before I start, I want to make clear that my purpose is not to undermine his work in any way, but quite the opposite: I want to support him in his defence of idealism in the best way I can: by trying to understand exactly what he is saying, and pointing out possible weaknesses in his ideas. The objections I’m going to present here may very well derive from an insufficient understanding of his views, or they could have a more solid ground. In any case, I hope we all will benefit of the discussion (if there is one).

I’ll put it in other words. I’m convinced that idealism is true. (By idealism here I don't mean any specific version or theory, but the essential notion that consciousness is more fundamental than matter.) I’m also convinced that materialism (the notion that matter is the only reality, and that consciousness is either an “illusion” or the product of the human brain) is not only false, but an important contributing factor in many of the problems we now see in the world (from widespread depression to the environmental crisis). So, my purpose is to help, if I can, in the much-needed paradigm shift.

I don’t think we idealists need to agree in all the details. I think it would be good to have different versions of idealism debating one another. The goal, the way I see it, is to reach as great an audience as possible, and to make our respective theories as powerful as we can. It would be great if we could reach an agreement on all the fundamental ideas, but I don’t think it’s necessary.

Okay, that was just the preamble. Here is, in a nutshell, my main objection to Bernardo’s version of idealism: in my view, it isn’t idealistic enough. I think there are still some residues of materialism in his thinking. I’m aware that these “residues” could be nothing but a misunderstanding, caused in the reader (me) by the kind of metaphors that Bernardo uses in his explanations. But I see them as problematic nevertheless. What follows is a short list of some of those notions that I see as the result of unconscious materialistic assumptions (after all, we all have been indoctrinated in materialism since our early childhood; it’s not so easy to liberate our minds from those assumptions).

1. “Mind-at-large is out there.” I see this as a fundamental error. I’m not sure if Bernardo really thinks that “mind-at-large” is “out there”, but I certainly have seen that view defended in some of the comments on this forum: the idea that “yes, there is a world out there, but it’s not made of matter, it’s made of consciousness”, or something along those lines. The way I see it, there is nothing “out there”. There is no “out there” to begin with. The metaphor of the whirlpool in a stream is misleading for this reason: it seems to imply that we, as conscious observers, are engulfed in a larger world that exists outside ourselves. That’s a fundamentally materialistic view: the idea of a world made of objects, and the idea of us being objects existing “inside” that world. In idealism, it’s the other way around. The world is inside us, not we inside the world. Don’t freak out, guys! I’m not saying that the world is “inside our brains”. We are not our brains. We are not our bodies. That’s another materialistic assumption. (I’ll come back to this later.) The very expression “mind-at-large” is misleading, because it seems to imply too that this “mind-at-large” is larger than us, and is “out there”. For that reason, from now on I’ll use the term Consciousness, with a capital C, to refer to what Bernardo calls “mind-at-large” or “God”. Note that I’m not calling it “Cosmic consciousness”. That’s also a misleading term, in my view. So, In Consciousness there is not an inside/outside. There is nothing but Consciousness. So how could there possible be anything outside it? We could say that everything is inside. But it’s more accurate to say that there is no inside/outside polarity.

2. “We are alters of Consciousness”. In my view, this is another fundamental error. The truth is, our egos are alters. But we are not our egos. Alters are illusions, mental constructs that arise from dissociation and obfuscation in Consciousness. Our egos are illusory mental constructs. But we are not illusions. We are Consciousness.

3. “The world we perceive is Consciousness experienced from a second-person perspective.” I see this as an error too. There is no second-person perspective. There is only the first-person perspective, because there is only one person: Consciousness. How could it be otherwise? Alters or egos are nothing but mental constructs. Alters can’t experience anything. Only Consciousness experiences. Consciousness (or God, if you like) experiences the world in exactly the same way that we do. The world is exactly as we see it. God sees the sun and the moon and the stars and trees and birds and people exactly as we do. We are the eyes of God.

4. “We all perceive the same world because we are all inside Consciousness. We are having a collective dream.” My objection to this is quite subtle. In my view, we are not “inside Consciousness”. We are Consciousness. This is not a collective dream, because there is only one dreamer: Consciousness. So, it is not that there are many of us sharing one dream. There is only one of us (Consciousness) dreaming zillions of dreams at the same time. Many of those dreams overlap, creating all kinds of fascinating drama. Consciousness plays all parts in that cosmic drama. We are the masks of God.

5. “Brains are conscious experiences seen from a second-person perspective.” I think this is the most obviously materialistic notion of them all. The idea is that there is an exact correlation between conscious experiences and brain activity. I think this is plainly absurd. In the same way that it is absurd to maintain that measurable physical processes (brain activity) can generate conscious experiences, it is equally absurd to say the opposite: that conscious experiences can be measured and described in physical terms. On the other hand, I already said that I don’t admit the existence of a “second-person perspective”. Consciousness can only be experienced in the first person. But this leaves us with the question: what are brains? I think this is the hardest problem that any idealistic theory has to face. We probably should call it the Hard Problem of Brains. I will venture to suggest a few tentative ideas: a) When we look at brains and nervous systems and bodies (including the bodies of plants and fungi) we are not seeing conscious experiences. We are seeing “God’s sense organs”. b) Brains and nervous systems don’t generate conscious experiences (that’s why it is possible to have NDE, out-of body experiences, etc.): they modulate conscious experiences. Brains and nervous systems and bodies can be seen as “observation instruments”, like microscopes or telescopes. Microscopes and telescopes enable us the see things that otherwise would remain invisible to us. But they don’t generate what we see, and they don’t “correlate” in any meaningful way with what we see. c) Brains and nervous systems enable the physical body of living organisms to interact with Consciousness, responding to conscious experiences in an intelligent way. d) Brains coordinate and integrate the innumerable sense perceptions coming from all the cells of the body. Every living cell is an observer, an organ of perception, but some cells have specialised in this, like the photoreceptor cells of the retina. Brains process all these perceptions, enabling Consciousness to experience complex and high resolution images, etc. e) Brains, nervous systems and sensory organs were created (or rather, slowly developed through millions of years of evolution) by Consciousness (or God) as an exploring device. All living organisms can be seen as part of a huge scientific experiment carried out by Consciousness.

Okay, this is basically it. Please, if I have misunderstood Bernardo’s views in any way, let me know. And if you simply disagree with my views, or think that I didn’t make any sense, or whatever, please let me know too! :)

[jeffnf...@gmail.com]

Great stuff, Adur. 

I agree with your general point that we should embrace multiple models of idealism. The differences will only sharpen our understanding of the fundamental questions. 

1) I think you pin-point the unavoidable limitation of the metaphor 'mind-at-large,' but in my opinion you overemphasize this to the degree that you imply BK's work relies on the faulty mechanims of the metaphor itself. Nothing that I've read in BK leans on those shortcomings at all. In fact, he has made the same points without using any pictorial language. But so much of his work has the purpose of creating bridge concepts for a particular audence, I'm not sure he could avoid using images that are free of this kind of problem. From what I have read, nobody has done a clearer job of criticizing this particular metaphor than Bernardo himself does at various points. Yet, it gets the ball rolling for many people. Most of whom seem able to quickly point out where it doesn't work.  So I guess I agree with your narrow point, but I'm not sure if there's much more to it than pointing out how the metaphor implies space and 'parts' in a way that are not fundamental. 

2) To me this sounds like a semantic disagreement. BK's model allows me to recognize that my experience is private AND real AND YET an illusion (to the degree that it is *interpreted* to be had by something other than Consciousness Itself. Personally, I am much more sympathetic to a model that specifies all the detailed ways in which our *private* experience (again, don't take the metaphor literally) is vastly intricate and unique, mainly not shared with your *private* experience (and yours and yours and yours); YET still only one Consciousness is "having" all of this vastly differentiated experience. 

3)  Again, I'm happy for all sorts of different ways of languaging this point about perspectives, but IF a given language frame does not point to what BK is pointing to here, I'd object.   A man is in the middle of suddenly and delightfully realizing why a certain verbal trick delights his little daughter. His experience is deep and intricate and about to cause him to say something very specific. At the same moment a scientist is using a new device to look squarely at/into this mans nervous system, revealing a thousand time more patterns of motion and swirls that we currently get to notice from our machines. I am happy to notice that the man's experience is being presented very differently in each context.  And that the device is only capturing (and manufacturing) a partial image that corresponds. An intricate rug seen from underneath may lose almost all of its image, but the rug is still one. 

4)  Your 4th point also seems to be mainly grounded in verbal and pictorial preferences, which, as I said above, is very legitimate. But I still see you pointing to what BK points to. After stating that you'd prefer just using One Consciousness as the referent of the many dreams that It has, you said: 



"Many of those dreams overlap, creating all kinds of fascinating drama."

Yes, yes! And I'd say that "all" the various dramas are being "had" separately.  If we want to point to the amazing ways these dramas are individually had and cultivated (and ignored and judged), we will end up creating some kind of term or phrase that matches up with BK. We could say 'ego' or 'illusory self' or anything really. 

5) You frame your objection to claim that a brain (as perceived by somebody) is an image of an experience by saying: " I think this is the most obviously materialistic notion of them all. The idea is that there is an exact correlation between conscious experiences and brain activity."

Surely, you know that Bernardo says that a brain is a 'partial image' at best. And also that a partial image of a process is not a conceptual structure of causes. 

In arguing against Bernardo, you sometimes use his own arguments. That's a compliment. Your example of thinking of sense organs as God's sense organs actually can fit with the whirlpool analogy quite lovely. If the sense organs are the boundaries between one aspect of God and another self-locating aspect of God, then regardless of which directly they are being 'peered' through, they are God's sense organs. 

Thanks for the food for thought! It sounds to me that your way of articulating Idealism will certainly appeal to those who try to stay away from language that seems to imply too much inherent separateness. or that can sometimes seem to imply that the self-locating aspect of God is a different being inherently. 

Jeff

[Dana Lomas]

I certainly hope I've not given the impression that there is an actual 'out there'. And I'm quite sure that that is also not Bernardo's proposition, as any so-called 'out there' can only be the 'excitations' (though I prefer 'ideations') of M@L as experienced by none other than M@L in alter-mode. Thus M@L is the One Subject from which all its individuated/dissociated expressions emanate experiencing its own excitations as 'objectified' qualia. So while this gives the effective apparency of there being an 'out there' -- and therefore the possibility of relational experience -- there is no world of objectified forms existing independent of consciousness, as physicalism proposes, but only ever, in essence, M@L expressing/exploring/experiencing M@L, wherein  subject/object are an inextricable fusion ... Much as it is stated in the Heart Sutra, that emptiness is not other than form, and vice versa ... although these reconciliations may not be exactly equatable.

[Dana Lomas]

I should perhaps also add that while I resonate with much of BK's take on idealism, I certainly don't consider it to be beyond questioning, but rather a provisional work in progress, subject to revision and adjustment as more consensus insights and language re a contemporary idealism continue to evolve.

[Scott Roberts]

Adur,

An ontology has to explain, in highly general terms, our experience. My impression is that  to adopt your suggestions, the resulting ontology would cease to be explanatory. You have good points to make, but I think BK also makes them, while in your way of making them you end up leaving too much out. To elaborate,...

On Friday, March 8, 2019 at 10:43:12 AM UTC-10, Adur Alkain wrote:

1. “Mind-at-large is out there.” I see this as a fundamental error. I’m not sure if Bernardo really thinks that “mind-at-large” is “out there”, but I certainly have seen that view defended in some of the comments on this forum: the idea that “yes, there is a world out there, but it’s not made of matter, it’s made of consciousness”, or something along those lines. The way I see it, there is nothing “out there”. There is no “out there” to begin with.

"Out" and "in" are real. They are real creations of sense perception. Granted, if all localized consciousnesses were to evaporate, space and its divisions would cease to be, so space is not fundamental. But as long as there are working eyes and ears there will be space. As long as we have sense organs, "outside" and "inside" has literal and metaphorical meaning: that tree I am looking at literally exists 20 feet from me within the spatial world my senses are creating, and your thoughts metaphorically exist outside of my awareness.

 

The metaphor of the whirlpool in a stream is misleading for this reason: it seems to imply that we, as conscious observers, are engulfed in a larger world that exists outside ourselves.

But we are engulfed in a larger world that exists outside ourselves. As idealists, we note that "larger" just means there is more to it than ourselves, and that "outside" ourselves just means we are not aware of everything.

 

That’s a fundamentally materialistic view: the idea of a world made of objects, and the idea of us being objects existing “inside” that world.

It is not just a "fundamentally materialistic view". It is the actual view of everyone with eyes. See above. It is why the metaphor works.

 

In idealism, it’s the other way around. The world is inside us, not we inside the world.

It is not inside me. There are goings-on on the next block from me of which I have no awareness.

 

 The very expression “mind-at-large” is misleading, because it seems to imply too that this “mind-at-large” is larger than us, and is “out there”.

It is larger (metaphorically speaking) than me. What's happening on a planet orbiting Sirius now? M@L knows, but I don't. 

 

 So, In Consciousness there is not an inside/outside. There is nothing but Consciousness. So how could there possible be anything outside it? We could say that everything is inside. But it’s more accurate to say that there is no inside/outside polarity.

But there is, as long as there are working eyes and ears.

 

2. “We are alters of Consciousness”. In my view, this is another fundamental error. The truth is, our egos are alters. But we are not our egos. Alters are illusions, mental constructs that arise from dissociation and obfuscation in Consciousness. Our egos are illusory mental constructs. But we are not illusions. We are Consciousness.

Alters and egos are creations, not illusions. Given idealism, everything that exists is a mental construct, and every mental construct exists (though if it is referential, what it refers to may not). An ego has the power to obfuscate most of Consciousness, and so must be real. An illusion can't do anything.

 

3. “The world we perceive is Consciousness experienced from a second-person perspective.” I see this as an error too. There is no second-person perspective. There is only the first-person perspective, because there is only one person: Consciousness. How could it be otherwise? Alters or egos are nothing but mental constructs. Alters can’t experience anything. Only Consciousness experiences. Consciousness (or God, if you like) experiences the world in exactly the same way that we do. The world is exactly as we see it. God sees the sun and the moon and the stars and trees and birds and people exactly as we do. We are the eyes of God.

This pair of eyes can't see what's happening on the next block. If the mental construct that is my ego were not real, this limitation on what I can see would not exist.

 

4. “We all perceive the same world because we are all inside Consciousness. We are having a collective dream.” My objection to this is quite subtle. In my view, we are not “inside Consciousness”. We are Consciousness.

Then how come we don't know what is going on around Sirius? Note: I accept that there is a sense in which "we are Consciousness" is true. But that is not enough. A better way of addressing this is to say "we are, yet are not, Consciousness." Without the "yet are not" we have no explanation of our limitations.

 

This is not a collective dream, because there is only one dreamer: Consciousness. So, it is not that there are many of us sharing one dream. There is only one of us (Consciousness) dreaming zillions of dreams at the same time. Many of those dreams overlap, creating all kinds of fascinating drama. Consciousness plays all parts in that cosmic drama. We are the masks of God.

But I dream. So why not say that Consciousness dreams up dreamers, which in turn have private and shared dreams?

 

5. “Brains are conscious experiences seen from a second-person perspective.” I think this is the most obviously materialistic notion of them all. The idea is that there is an exact correlation between conscious experiences and brain activity.

As Jeff said, BK's words are "partial image" not "exact correlation".

 

I think this is plainly absurd. In the same way that it is absurd to maintain that measurable physical processes (brain activity) can generate conscious experiences, it is equally absurd to say the opposite: that conscious experiences can be measured and described in physical terms.

The point of saying there is a second-person perspective is to explain that what neuroscientists measure is not a first-person experience -- that what they are measuring is something else. If you drop the second-person perspective from your ontology,you lose the explanation for why there are correlations between neural activity and experiences, yet the neural activity is not those experiences.

 

On the other hand, I already said that I don’t admit the existence of a “second-person perspective”. Consciousness can only be experienced in the first person. But this leaves us with the question: what are brains? I think this is the hardest problem that any idealistic theory has to face. We probably should call it the Hard Problem of Brains. I will venture to suggest a few tentative ideas: a) When we look at brains and nervous systems and bodies (including the bodies of plants and fungi) we are not seeing conscious experiences. We are seeing “God’s sense organs”.

Yes, but we are not sensing what God's sense organs are sensing. So how to explain the difference between seeing an object in space that is a sense organ of God and not what it is sensing, other than saying there are first and second-person perspectives?

 

b) Brains and nervous systems don’t generate conscious experiences (that’s why it is possible to have NDE, out-of body experiences, etc.): they modulate conscious experiences.

BK hypothesizes that they filter out most conscious experiences.

 

Brains and nervous systems and bodies can be seen as “observation instruments”, like microscopes or telescopes. Microscopes and telescopes enable us the see things that otherwise would remain invisible to us. But they don’t generate what we see, and they don’t “correlate” in any meaningful way with what we see.

They don't correlate? How, then, do you explain the mountains of evidence of correlation?

 

c) Brains and nervous systems enable the physical body of living organisms to interact with Consciousness, responding to conscious experiences in an intelligent way.

How would this be possible without meaningful correlation between neural activity and experiencing?

 

d) Brains coordinate and integrate the innumerable sense perceptions coming from all the cells of the body. Every living cell is an observer, an organ of perception, but some cells have specialised in this, like the photoreceptor cells of the retina. Brains process all these perceptions, enabling Consciousness to experience complex and high resolution images, etc.

This is halfway to panpsychism, which introduces the combination problem. How does this explain how someone having an OOBE can see physical events without physical eyes?

 

e) Brains, nervous systems and sensory organs were created (or rather, slowly developed through millions of years of evolution) by Consciousness (or God) as an exploring device. All living organisms can be seen as part of a huge scientific experiment carried out by Consciousness.

I would say that it is experiment in creating self-aware, willful, creative individuals, that "yet are not" God.

 

[Cosmin Visan]

What makes some dreams overlap ? Some kind of principle as with the multiverse ?

[Adur Alkain]

Thanks for your thoughful comments, Jeff!

I think you are right. As I suspected, my views are closer to Bernardo's than I thought. Today I watched him in his new "Thinking Allowed" interview ("Logic, Science and the Meaning of Life") and he was actually saying many of the things I said here in my "critique".

But I think there are some important differences too, with implications that go beyond semantics. Ultimately, I've realized that Bernardo is describing in philosophical terms what in spiritual teachings is commonly known as "nonduality" or "nondual realization", while in my objections I was coming from what A.H. Almaas calls "unilocal realization". These are two distinct perspectives of reality, and both are equally valid.

I'll try to explain this on another post.

[Adur Alkain]

Thanks for your comments, Dana!

I agree with everything you say :)

[Adur Alkain]

Scott,

like I said before, I've come to realize that my disagreements with Bernardo are not based on differing ontologies, but are the result of different perspectives. I think both our perspectives are valid, and they result in (and derive from) different experiences of reality. We don't even have to chose between both. We can explore and experience both. So, it was an error on my part to talk about Bernardo's "errors". :) That said, I'll try to respond to some of your comments.

On Saturday, 9 March 2019 07:33:17 UTC+1, Scott Roberts wrote:

On Friday, March 8, 2019 at 10:43:12 AM UTC-10, Adur Alkain wrote:

1. “Mind-at-large is out there.” I see this as a fundamental error. I’m not sure if Bernardo really thinks that “mind-at-large” is “out there”, but I certainly have seen that view defended in some of the comments on this forum: the idea that “yes, there is a world out there, but it’s not made of matter, it’s made of consciousness”, or something along those lines. The way I see it, there is nothing “out there”. There is no “out there” to begin with.

"Out" and "in" are real. They are real creations of sense perception. Granted, if all localized consciousnesses were to evaporate, space and its divisions would cease to be, so space is not fundamental. But as long as there are working eyes and ears there will be space. As long as we have sense organs, "outside" and "inside" has literal and metaphorical meaning: that tree I am looking at literally exists 20 feet from me within the spatial world my senses are creating, and your thoughts metaphorically exist outside of my awareness.

I don't deny that "outside" and "inside" exist in the world we observe, and that they are real (like the world we observe is real), I'm only saying that the world we percieve is in Consciousness, but we are not. We are Consciousness. From the perspective of Consciousness, there is nothing "out there", and there is no "out there". There is nothing outside Consciousness. See? It's just a matter of perspective. You are talking from the perspective of "alters", I'm talking from the perspective of Consciousness.

 

The metaphor of the whirlpool in a stream is misleading for this reason: it seems to imply that we, as conscious observers, are engulfed in a larger world that exists outside ourselves.

But we are engulfed in a larger world that exists outside ourselves. As idealists, we note that "larger" just means there is more to it than ourselves, and that "outside" ourselves just means we are not aware of everything.

 

Again, a matter of perspective.

 

 

That’s a fundamentally materialistic view: the idea of a world made of objects, and the idea of us being objects existing “inside” that world.

It is not just a "fundamentally materialistic view". It is the actual view of everyone with eyes. See above. It is why the metaphor works.

That's the limited perspective of alters.

 

In idealism, it’s the other way around. The world is inside us, not we inside the world.

It is not inside me. There are goings-on on the next block from me of which I have no awareness.

See? That's what I mean by "materialistic assumptions". You assume that "the next block" exists outside your consciousness. In my view, that's equivalent to assuming that "the next block" exists outside Consciousness, because in this view there is only one Consciousness. So, this is what I'm saying: you are Consciousness. The fact that at this point you don't have awareness of the next block doesn't mean that it is outside you. There are many things that are inside you and that you are not aware of. That includes the experiences of all the "alters" that live in the next block.

 

 The very expression “mind-at-large” is misleading, because it seems to imply too that this “mind-at-large” is larger than us, and is “out there”.

It is larger (metaphorically speaking) than me. What's happening on a planet orbiting Sirius now? M@L knows, but I don't. 

Again, I see this as materialism. In my view, there is no planet orbiting Sirius, unless some astronomer is observing it right now, or unless there are conscious beings living in that planet. When it comes to the physical world, Consciousness only knows what its "alters" or "sense organs" know.

 

2. “We are alters of Consciousness”. In my view, this is another fundamental error. The truth is, our egos are alters. But we are not our egos. Alters are illusions, mental constructs that arise from dissociation and obfuscation in Consciousness. Our egos are illusory mental constructs. But we are not illusions. We are Consciousness.

Alters and egos are creations, not illusions. Given idealism, everything that exists is a mental construct, and every mental construct exists (though if it is referential, what it refers to may not). An ego has the power to obfuscate most of Consciousness, and so must be real. An illusion can't do anything.

 

Egos are the result of obfuscation, not its cause. I think this is very important. An ego or alter arises from identification with the limited perspective of an observer. But that limited perspective (obfuscation) was created by Consciousness itself, not by the ego or alter. This changes everything, as I will explain later.

 

 

3. “The world we perceive is Consciousness experienced from a second-person perspective.” I see this as an error too. There is no second-person perspective. There is only the first-person perspective, because there is only one person: Consciousness. How could it be otherwise? Alters or egos are nothing but mental constructs. Alters can’t experience anything. Only Consciousness experiences. Consciousness (or God, if you like) experiences the world in exactly the same way that we do. The world is exactly as we see it. God sees the sun and the moon and the stars and trees and birds and people exactly as we do. We are the eyes of God.

This pair of eyes can't see what's happening on the next block. If the mental construct that is my ego were not real, this limitation on what I can see would not exist.

So this is my point: The limitation or obfuscation is real, and is created by Consciousness in order to experience itself in a certain way. The ego or alter is a mistaken identification with that limited perspective: the ego  forgets that it is Consciousness. Obfuscation or limitation doesn't necessarily imply amnesia or forgetfulness. What I'm saying is: it is possible to perceive the world in a limited, obfuscated way, and still be completely aware that one is Consciousness. You can look at a bird perched on a tree, for example, and know that you are that tree and that bird too. You can't perceive at the moment what the bird is perceiving (although you can get glimpses of it: I'm talking of actual experiences I've had), but you still know that you are Consciousness, God, the whole universe.

 

 

This is not a collective dream, because there is only one dreamer: Consciousness. So, it is not that there are many of us sharing one dream. There is only one of us (Consciousness) dreaming zillions of dreams at the same time. Many of those dreams overlap, creating all kinds of fascinating drama. Consciousness plays all parts in that cosmic drama. We are the masks of God.

But I dream. So why not say that Consciousness dreams up dreamers, which in turn have private and shared dreams?

Consciousness is a "lucid dreamer". Consciousness doesn't forget itself in the dream. Consciousness doesn't forget that it is playing a part. Unless when it does. That is when the ego appears, out of forgetfulness. Ego takes the drama seriously, and then all the fun of it goes away. The important point here is: you don't need to be an ego (identified with your part, forgetting that you are Consciousness) to take part in the drama. You can realize that you are Consciousness and have all the fun you want. :)

5. “Brains are conscious experiences seen from a second-person perspective.” I think this is the most obviously materialistic notion of them all. The idea is that there is an exact correlation between conscious experiences and brain activity.

As Jeff said, BK's words are "partial image" not "exact correlation".

 

I think this is plainly absurd. In the same way that it is absurd to maintain that measurable physical processes (brain activity) can generate conscious experiences, it is equally absurd to say the opposite: that conscious experiences can be measured and described in physical terms.

The point of saying there is a second-person perspective is to explain that what neuroscientists measure is not a first-person experience -- that what they are measuring is something else. If you drop the second-person perspective from your ontology,you lose the explanation for why there are correlations between neural activity and experiences, yet the neural activity is not those experiences.

Neuroscientists experience everyhting from a first-person perspective, like everybody else. You can't measure or study somebody else's experience. I don't know much about "correlations" between neural activity and experiences. What are they? Let's say the experience of love. What kind of neural activity (neurons firing up, etc.) can possibly "correlate" with that? Let's say that when I feel love certain parts of my brain show intense activity, and that when I feel sadness other parts of my brain fire up. Is that a meaningful correlation? You can show somebody a brain scan (MRI or whatever neuroscientists use) and tell them: "look, this is the sadness you felt yesterday when your mother died". Does it make sense? It doesn't, to me.

 

 

 

Brains and nervous systems and bodies can be seen as “observation instruments”, like microscopes or telescopes. Microscopes and telescopes enable us the see things that otherwise would remain invisible to us. But they don’t generate what we see, and they don’t “correlate” in any meaningful way with what we see.

They don't correlate? How, then, do you explain the mountains of evidence of correlation?

What mountains of evidence? Can you give me an example? And I don't mean an example of the type "if your brain is injured in this way, you can no longer perceive smells". That would be equivalent, in my metaphor, to saying "if your telescope breaks, you no longer will be able to see Saturn's rings". There is no "correlation" between my telescope and Saturn's rings. When I look at my telescope instead of looking through it, I'm not seeing "Saturn's rings from a second-person perspective".

 

d) Brains coordinate and integrate the innumerable sense perceptions coming from all the cells of the body. Every living cell is an observer, an organ of perception, but some cells have specialised in this, like the photoreceptor cells of the retina. Brains process all these perceptions, enabling Consciousness to experience complex and high resolution images, etc.

This is halfway to panpsychism, which introduces the combination problem. How does this explain how someone having an OOBE can see physical events without physical eyes?

I have no answer to this. As I said, I think this is the Hard Problem of Brains. All my ideas about it are purely tentative.

I don't know if any of this makes my view clearer to you. In any case, thanks for your detailed comments!

[Scott Roberts]

On Saturday, March 9, 2019 at 11:33:58 AM UTC-10, Adur Alkain wrote:

like I said before, I've come to realize that my disagreements with Bernardo are not based on differing ontologies, but are the result of different perspectives. 

I understand the perspective you are describing, having read mystics for a long time. My criticism is that this perspective needs more work before it can serve as an ontology. Without that work, it is revelation. The fact that you have had some glimpses of these truths does not change that. Now I happen to think these revelations are legitimate (with a couple of caveats -- see below). But before one can present them as an ontological perspective, one needs to take heed of Gotthold Lessing's dictum:

"Revelation is not rational when it is revealed, but is revealed so that it may become rational."

So just telling people that there is only the one Consciousness and we are that Consciousness doesn't cut it. Instead one needs to start with where we are -- limited ego-bound beings experiencing ourselves in space and time, and derive those claims, or show how taking the revelation as an hypothesis serves to explain the existence of ego-bound beings. My responses in my last post were basically saying "You say that I am God? Then why am I not omniscient?" Now one can answer these questions, but if one doesn't go through the "making revelation rational" process, one's answers are no more than "you have to take it on faith." When you respond to my statement that I don't know what is happening in the next block with "but you really do know", well, convince me. Otherwise, I would have no reason to take you seriously.

On those caveats. You hold with a nondualist view of reality, and so do I. But there is more than one nondualism, and its not clear to me which sort you uphold. A major distinction is between what I call eliminative nondualism and non-eliminative nondualism. The former tends to use the word "illusion" a lot. In the extreme case, they regard any object of consciousness as an illusion. Non-eliminative nondualism instead regards the creation of objects of consciousness as a fundamental property -- God cannot not create, so to speak, and what is created is just as real as God. (I am a non-eliminative nondualist, and for how I reconcile the apparent dualism between God and Its creations, see here).

Another, somewhat related, distinction within the mystical community lies in differing views of the individual. Here the issue is whether at death, or at some point beyond death, one's individuality simply disappears. Or is it eternal. Here is where the phrase "you are, yet are not, God" comes into play. My position is that if one's individuality is not eternal, and that if it is not in some way distinct from God, there is no point in it existing in the first place. So rather than saying the ego is an illusion, I would say it is real, but (typically) holds false beliefs about itself. (Note: I am not saying the ego is the individual, but in our current stage of development it is pretty much the only part of ourselves we experience.)

I will address the NCC business separately.

 

[Scott Roberts]

On Saturday, March 9, 2019 at 11:33:58 AM UTC-10, Adur Alkain wrote:

Neuroscientists experience everyhting from a first-person perspective, like everybody else.

But they are not experiencing what I am experiencing when they look at my brain, yet there is some correlation between what they are experiencing and what I am experiencing. Consider if you and I are conversing. I experience what you are thinking from a second-person perspective, that is, I observe your words and gestures and from that gain, roughly, an idea what you are thinking. (If we talk about something else, we are having a third-person perspective on that something else). So I have first-person perspectives on what I am thinking and observing, and a second-person perspective (I-you experience) with what you are experiencing. Now suppose I look at a rock. I have my first-person experience of seeing a rock. But also, assuming the rock is a bit of a manifestation of M@L, I am having a second-person experience of the experience of M@L. Of course, being an obfuscated ego, I don't actually learn what M@L's experiencing "is like". I just see the rock. As would be the case if I just heard your voice in a monotone speaking in a language I don't know. So likewise, a neuroscientist watching my brain in a fMRI is having a second-person perspective on what I am experiencing, but just watching the brain doesn't tell him or her anything about what I am experiencing, and so needs me to describe what I am experiencing to make the correlation.

 

You can't measure or study somebody else's experience.

You can study it -- just ask them what they are experiencing.

 

I don't know much about "correlations" between neural activity and experiences. What are they? Let's say the experience of love. What kind of neural activity (neurons firing up, etc.) can possibly "correlate" with that? Let's say that when I feel love certain parts of my brain show intense activity, and that when I feel sadness other parts of my brain fire up. Is that a meaningful correlation?

It is certainly a correlation. It is meaningful if by this means one can develop therapies, or perhaps tell whether someone in a coma is actually experiencing anything.

 

You can show somebody a brain scan (MRI or whatever neuroscientists use) and tell them: "look, this is the sadness you felt yesterday when your mother died". Does it make sense? It doesn't, to me.

 

Right, that is precisely what it isn't (only an eliminative materialist would say it is). Hence the need to speak of first- vs. second-person perspectives to point out why looking at the brain scan is not the experience, even though it correlates with the experience.

 

What mountains of evidence? Can you give me an example?

Well, there is this paper of Bernardo's, but if you get hold of any "journal of neuroscience" you will find experiments of people put in fMRI's, shown pictures or asked questions or what have you, with correlations over a number of subjects found between what they say they are experiencing and what is observed happening in their brains.

 

And I don't mean an example of the type "if your brain is injured in this way, you can no longer perceive smells". That would be equivalent, in my metaphor, to saying "if your telescope breaks, you no longer will be able to see Saturn's rings". There is no "correlation" between my telescope and Saturn's rings.

There is a telescope. With it you can see Saturn's rings. Without it you can't. So your ability to see Saturn's rings is correlated with your having a telescope. That does not mean the telescope is the cause of Saturn's rings, just as finding neural correlates of consciousness does not mean the neural activity is the cause of consciousness.

 

When I look at my telescope instead of looking through it, I'm not seeing "Saturn's rings from a second-person perspective". 

Right. you are looking at that which, if looked through, would let you see Saturn's rings. So looking at neural activity one is not seeing the experiencing of the subject, but only that which correlates with the experiencing of the subject -- a second-person perspective of that experiencing.

 

[Adur Alkain]

Scott,

okay, if that's what you and Bernardo mean by "correlation", I have no problem with it. And I do understand Bernardo's idea of the "second-person perspective", I simply think it is unnecessary. I will elaborate on this on my next post.

[Adur Alkain]

Scott,

I really love this conversation! I just realized that the best way to make sense of my position is to use the idea of the "three levels of reality" that I stumbled upon when I was writing my "idealistic interpretation of quantum mechanics". Here it is:

There are three levels of reality: 1. The level of experience. 2. The level of thought. 3. The level of the laws of nature (probabilities of experience).

Level 1 is where we actually live. This is the most real of the three levels. Whatever you experience, it is the truth for you. There are many ways of experiencing reality, but all of them are valid. And the great thing is, we don't need to choose between different ways, we can explore them all.

Level 2 is the level of philosophy and ontology. Here is where we can have our discussion. If we have several compiting ontologies, we can discuss which of those ontologies offers a better description of level 1. Any ontology also needs to explain in some way level 3, the level of the laws of nature (or laws of experience).

So, for example, we all can experience reality as a world of separate, material objects. Some of us also have experienced reality as nonduality, pure awareness, etc. An ontology that can integrate these different ways of experience will be superior to an ontology that can only account for one very limited way of experiencing reality (this is what materialism does). On the other hand, if an ontology can't even integrate the known laws of nature of level 3 (like materialism or Biblical literalism) it should be discarded.

I think we agree in that the materialistic ontology can be safely thrown into the dustbin of history. You are defending a ("non-eliminative") nondual ontology. I'm proposing what we can call a "unilocal ontology". I'll try to delineate the differences between both ontologies, and explain why I prefer the unilocal.

1a. In nonduality, there is still the notion of "space". Everything we see are manifestations of M@L, but we see them manifesting in space. Space is in some way fundamental. From a nondual perspective, it still makes sense to speak of inside/outside.

1b. In the unilocal perspective, there is no space. Everything we see is in in the same location. Space is an illusion. (Some people call this "nonlocality", but I prefer to call it "unilocality", following A. H. Almaas.)

2a. In nonduality, the world we experience from our limited, individual perspective is an illusion. (In your "non-eliminative" version of nondualism, you probably don't see this world of our experience as an illusion (do you?), but in any case, it is not fundamental.)  The real (or fundamental) world is out there, and is only experienced by M@L. In our limited perspective, we can't even conceive it (although we may get glimpses of it in deep meditation states, etc.).

2b. In unilocality, the world we experience from our individual perspective is real, and fundamental.

3a. In nonduality, the individual (or ego) is an illusion. It is nothing but a mental construct. Only M@L is real.

3b. In unilocality, the individual is not an illusion. The individual is a pure and complete manifestation of Consciousness. Ego is a mental construct, and is distinct from the real individual, which we can call soul. The soul is real (and immortal). The ego is an illusion (and temporary).

I think these 3 are the main differences between the two ontologies of nonduality and unilocality. If I understand your views correctly, your "non-eliminative nondualism" lies somewhere between traditional (or "eliminative") nondualism and unilocality.

You seem to be especially attached to the notion of fundamental space (point 1). So let's start with it. There can be various reasons to defend the notion of fundamental space, but they are essentially akin to the reasons we can have to defend the existence of matter. We seem to experience a world of material objects in space, but does that mean that matter and space actually exist? No. The philosophical arguments to dismiss the notion of space are much more powerful, I think. First, it is more parsimonious. Second, it is more coherent (how can there be space if there is no matter, no physical world made of objects, no world outside Consciousness?). Third, it is consistent with the discoveries of modern physics (level 3): Einstein's relativity theory showed that spacetime is not absolute; quantum mechanics has proved that nonlocality and "spooky actions at a distance" are real.

There are also some good metaphysical reasons to get rid of the notion of fundamental space. Nonduality, like unilocality, says that ultimately we are God. Consciousness or God is all there is. You asked: "You say that I am God? Then why am I not omniscient?" Well, if you let go of the notion of space, you will realize that you ARE omniscient. You only think you are not omniscient because you believe in space: you believe there is a whole universe out there, outside your experience. But again, if there is no space, there is no "out there". You know the whole world, because there is no world outside your experience. You look at your friend Jane, and you think "I don't know what's in her mind, therefore I'm not omniscient." But you only think that because you believe that Jane is out there, outside you, another object in a world of objects. She isn't. She is in you, and you are in her. Usually we don't percieve things this way, but it's only convenient for practical purposes (most of the time: in my humble experience, there is nothing better than making love to a woman and being able to feel her feelings, to feel her body from the inside... :)). Are you sure you don't know what's in her mind? Maybe you just aren't paying attention. Maybe you are too busy with the content of your own mind. I think telepathy is a real phenomenon. Unilocality (the notion that we are all in the same location) provides an elegant explanation for telepathy.

Okay, let's look at point 2. Is the world we perceive an illusion? Is it the reflection of some more real, more fundamental world? In Bernardo's terms, is it the second-person perspective on the first-person experience of M@L? The best way to talk about this, I think, is to talk about the experience of "awakening". In section 3.2 of Brief Peeks Beyond, Bernardo uses the analogy of the dream: you fall asleep on your couch and dream you are with your girlfriend in the middle of a beautiful landscape with mountains and a lake. Then you wake up and find yourself back on your couch. This is consistent with nonduality. In nonduality, the real world looks nothing like the dream world. It may be conceptualized as "pure consciousness", or "empty awareness", or "emptiness". In any case, it is very different to the world of everyday life we experience in the dream. In unilocality, this is not so. To use Bernardo's analogy: in unilocality, when you wake up you are still in the beautiful landscape with the lake and the mountains. And what's even better, your girlfriend is still there! But now you can also experience what she is experiencing, you know her thoughts and feelings from the inside (first-person perspective), You now know that she and you are one: Consciousness. This is what awakening means, from the unilocal perspective. It is an actual experience that we can have, not a fantasy.

Of course, you may say: "I can't take that on faith." Fair enough, but let's look at it from a purely philosophical perspective. Here again, the unilocal ontology is more parsimonious than the nondual one. In unilocality, we don't need to postulate some mystical or hypothetical realm (the first-person experiences of M@L, or whatever it is) outside our everyday experience. The only thing we need to assume is that the people (and living beings) we see around us also have experiences, like we do. If you apply Occam's razor but don't want to go the whole way into solipsism, unilocality wins.

And finally, point 3. Is the individual an illusion, or is it fundamental? This has vast existential implications, obviously. In nonduality, our individuality ends with death, and we merge with M@L. In unilocality, our individuality or soul is fundamental, and it goes on after the end of the physical body. From an experiential perspective, I think it's undeniable that we experience ourselves in a personal, individual way. We all feel that our individuality, our personal soul, is real and fundamental. This is especially true in the West, where all traditional spiritual teachings value the individual soul as real. The notion of individuality being an illusion comes from the East, and the reasons to subscribe to it are purely philosophical. But we can also find philosophical reasons to defend the reality of our individuality. You give a very good one: "My position is that if one's individuality is not eternal, and that if it is not in some way distinct from God, there is no point in it existing in the first place." Exactly: why would God create an illusion? Just to make us suffer? No, the individual is not an illusion. The illusion is to believe that the individual is separate from God, and therefore separate from other individuals. The illusion is to believe that the individual is an object in a world of separate objects. That illusion is called ego.

You say "So rather than saying the ego is an illusion, I would say it is real, but (typically) holds false beliefs about itself. (Note: I am not saying the ego is the individual, but in our current stage of development it is pretty much the only part of ourselves we experience.)" I think you are just getting entangled in words here. Ego is a word that can mean different things: in psychology it can be defined in several ways, but I'm using it in the sense it's used in most spiritual teachings: ego is a false sense of self, a mental construct with which the soul mistakenly identifies itself. In this sense, the ego doesn't hold any beliefs and doesn't experience anything. It is the soul that experiences. And yes, for most of us the soul experiences itself through the illusion of the ego most of the time. But that's no reason to confuse the two. The ego is a fragile mental construct (this can be unequivocally proven through the use of psychedelics) that can't survive the death of the physical body (well, actually some spiritual teachings maintain that the ego can survive physical death, but not for long). The soul, on the other hand, is indestructible and immortal.

To conclude, I personally find that the unilocal ontology is more elegant, parsimonious and consistent than the nondual one. This doesn't deny that it is possible to experience reality in both ways. Nondual realizations of pure consciousness or empty awareness are real and true (I have had those experiences myself). But the unilocal ontology can integrate those nondual experiences, while the nondual ontology cannot (as far as I can see) integrate unilocal experiences, in the same way that both can integrate dualistic experiences (experiences of a world of material objects), but the materialistic ontology can't integrate either of the two.

[Scott Roberts]

There are some misconstruals of my position here, so this is a mix of correction and disagreement and some agreement.

On Sunday, March 10, 2019 at 1:47:33 AM UTC-10, Adur Alkain wrote:

There are three levels of reality: 1. The level of experience. 2. The level of thought. 3. The level of the laws of nature (probabilities of experience).

Level 1 is where we actually live. This is the most real of the three levels. Whatever you experience, it is the truth for you. There are many ways of experiencing reality, but all of them are valid. And the great thing is, we don't need to choose between different ways, we can explore them all.

Level 2 is the level of philosophy and ontology. Here is where we can have our discussion. If we have several compiting ontologies, we can discuss which of those ontologies offers a better description of level 1. Any ontology also needs to explain in some way level 3, the level of the laws of nature (or laws of experience).

As I said previously, I regard all experience as mental construction (well, with the exception of awareness of formlessness, which is experience of the power that constructs). There is a level 2, and that is experience of language. Language consists of mental constructs that refer to other mental constructs. Sense perception is language, only we have lost the ability to perceive through the "words" (sense objects) to the meaning behind them. (As you mentioned an admiration of Barfield, I'll plug my essay Idealism vs. Common Sense, which discusses Barfield and goes into this a bit more). Non-linguistic -- level 1 -- mental construction is mathematics, as mathematical objects do not refer beyond themselves.

 

So, for example, we all can experience reality as a world of separate, material objects. Some of us also have experienced reality as nonduality, pure awareness, etc. An ontology that can integrate these different ways of experience will be superior to an ontology that can only account for one very limited way of experiencing reality (this is what materialism does). On the other hand, if an ontology can't even integrate the known laws of nature of level 3 (like materialism or Biblical literalism) it should be discarded.

Agreed. It must also answer the question of why there are materialists and dualists, which the essay mentioned above addresses.

 

I think we agree in that the materialistic ontology can be safely thrown into the dustbin of history. You are defending a ("non-eliminative") nondual ontology. I'm proposing what we can call a "unilocal ontology". I'll try to delineate the differences between both ontologies, and explain why I prefer the unilocal.

1a. In nonduality, there is still the notion of "space". Everything we see are manifestations of M@L, but we see them manifesting in space. Space is in some way fundamental. From a nondual perspective, it still makes sense to speak of inside/outside.

You are ignoring what I said in my first post in this thread: "Granted, if all localized consciousnesses were to evaporate, space and its divisions would cease to be, so space is not fundamental." I regard space as only existing when one perceives space.

 

1b. In the unilocal perspective, there is no space. Everything we see is in in the same location. Space is an illusion.

Consider this analogy: Michelangelo creates the statue of David. Would you say that Michelangelo is real but the statue is an illusion? It seems to me that that is what you are saying if you say that Consciousness is real, but a creation of Consciousness (the spatial world) is an illusion.

 

(Some people call this "nonlocality", but I prefer to call it "unilocality", following A. H. Almaas.)

I'd go with "nonlocality". 'Location' is a spatial term.

 

2a. In nonduality, the world we experience from our limited, individual perspective is an illusion.

Not in my nonduality.

 

(In your "non-eliminative" version of dualism, you probably don't see this world of our experience as an illusion (do you?), but in any case, it is not fundamental.)

Right, so why are you contrasting your view with a view neither of us holds? (And I'll assume you meant "non-dualism" where I bolded "dualism". )

 

  The real (or fundamental) world is out there, and is only experienced by M@L. In our limited perspective, we can't even conceive it (although we may get glimpses of it in deep meditation states, etc.).

I'm afraid I can't make sense of this. I do not equate "real" with "fundamental". There is fundamental reality and contingent reality. And I would say that fundamental reality is not spatial, so not "out there". I would say that all that exists is "M@L experiencing" rather than "experienced by M@L". And is the last sentence your view or mine, or both?  

 

2b. In unilocality, the world we experience from our individual perspective is real, and fundamental.

While I would say it is real but not fundamental. Also, since the world I experience with my senses is spatial, how do you reconcile this with (1b), where you say there is no space?

 

3a. In nonduality, the individual (or ego) is an illusion. It is nothing but a mental construct. Only M@L is real.

In my nonduality it is not an illusion, but it is, like everything, a mental construct.

 

3b. In unilocality, the individual is not an illusion. The individual is a pure and complete manifestation of Consciousness. Ego is a mental construct, and is distinct from the real individual, which we can call soul. The soul is real (and immortal). The ego is an illusion (and temporary).

I regard (following Seth) the ego as the soul's portion that is focused on physical reality. Since there is a focusing on physical reality, the ego is real. I agree that it is temporary. I also do not regard any individual as pure and complete. One is always changing as well as not changing (see my Time essay for what I mean by this.)

 

I think these 3 are the main differences between the two ontologies of nonduality and unilocality. If I understand your views correctly, your "non-eliminative dualism" lies somewhere between traditional (or "eliminative") dualism and unilocality.

(Again, I assume you meant "non-dualism".) From what I have gathered so far, I see unilocality as somewhere between eliminative and non-eliminative nondualism. You regard the individual as real but space as non-existent. I would say they both exist.

 

You seem to be especially attached to the notion of fundamental space (point 1).

Not true. (See above). So the rest of this paragraph is irrelevant.

 

Nonduality, like unilocality, says that ultimately we are God.

I would say that ultimately we are, yet are not, God.

 

Consciousness or God is all there is. You asked: "You say that I am God? Then why am I not omniscient?" Well, if you let go of the notion of space, you will realize that you ARE omniscient.

In the first place, I have let go of the notion of space as fundamental, and here I still am not omniscient. But there is also the possibility of not experiencing space at all, and not being omniscient. This is esoteric material, if one believes it, but the dead Frederick Myers through a medium (Geraldine Cummins) describes five levels of post-mortem development, before passing on to communion with God and omniscience. In the first four of those levels one continues to have some sense of inner and outer, but in the fifth, that goes away. Yet on that fifth level there is still no omniscience.

The rest of this paragraph is still only saying "We are all God, so we are all omniscient". But does it still follow if we are, yet are not, God? 

Okay, let's look at point 2. Is the world we perceive an illusion? Is it the reflection of some more real, more fundamental world? In Bernardo's terms, is it the second-person perspective on the first-person experience of M@L? The best way to talk about this, I think, is to talk about the experience of "awakening". In section 3.2 of Brief Peeks Beyond, Bernardo uses the analogy of the dream: you fall asleep on your couch and dream you are with your girlfriend in the middle of a beautiful landscape with mountains and a lake. Then you wake up and find yourself back on your couch. This is consistent with nonduality. In nonduality, the real world looks nothing like the dream world. It may be conceptualized as "pure consciousness", or "empty awareness", or "emptiness".

Not in my nonduality. Instead, Nirvana is Samsara, emptiness is form, form is emptiness.

 

In any case, it is very different to the world of everyday life we experience in the dream. In unilocality, this is not so. To use Bernardo's analogy: in unilocality, when you wake up you are still in the beautiful landscape with the lake and the mountains. And what's even better, your girlfriend is still there! But now you can also experience what she is experiencing, you know her thoughts and feelings from the inside (first-person perspective), You now know that she and you are one: Consciousness. This is what awakening means, from the unilocal perspective. It is an actual experience that we can have, not a fantasy.

Sounds the same as my nonduality, but not eliminative nonduality.

 

Of course, you may say: "I can't take that on faith." Fair enough, but let's look at it from a purely philosophical perspective. Here again, the unilocal ontology is more parsimonious than the nondual one. In unilocality, we don't need to postulate some mystical or hypothetical realm (the first-person experiences of M@L, or whatever it is) outside our everyday experience. The only thing we need to assume is that the people (and living beings) we see around us also have experiences, like we do. If you apply Occam's razor but don't want to go the whole way into solipsism, unilocality wins.

Actually, eliminative non-dualism wins in the parsimony sweepstakes, as it need only postulate formlessness as fundamental, whereas with unilocality and non-eliminative nondualism one must regard both formlessness and form as fundamental (though not any particular form). The trouble with eliminative nondualism is that it has no way to derive form from just formlessness, so it fails to explain the existence of form. 

 

And finally, point 3. Is the individual an illusion, or is it fundamental? This has vast existential implications, obviously. In nonduality, our individuality ends with death, and we merge with M@L.

Not in my nondualism.

 

IThe illusion is to believe that the individual is separate from God, and therefore separate from other individuals. The illusion is to believe that the individual is an object in a world of separate objects. That illusion is called ego.

See above on what I call ego.

 

To conclude, I personally find that the unilocal ontology is more elegant, parsimonious and consistent than the nondual one.

Which nondual one?

 

This doesn't deny that it is possible to experience reality in both ways. Nondual realizations of pure consciousness or empty awareness are real and true (I have had those experiences myself). But the unilocal ontology can integrate those nondual experiences, while the nondual ontology cannot (as far as I can see) integrate unilocal experiences, in the same way that both can integrate dualistic experiences (experiences of a world of material objects), but the materialistic ontology can't integrate either of the two. 

For how this nondualist integrates them, see my Tetralemmic Polarity essay. 

 

[Lou Gold]

Scott,

I regard all experience as mental construction (well, with the exception of awareness of formlessness, which is experience of the power that constructs).

This grabbed my attention: experience of the power that constructs

Can you elaborate?

[Scott Roberts]

Quoting from my Tetralemmic Polarity essay: (emphasis added)

The way to see this is to consider our own thinking, for as it turns out, our thinking exemplifies this interplay of form and formlessness. A thought has a form, and if we consider what thinking is in addition to all thoughts -- one might call it the power to think, or something like that -- well, this power to think is formless. Without thoughts there is no thinking, and without the power to think there are no thoughts. It is the formless aspect of thinking that unites concepts (forms) into more complex forms, that allows awareness of them. Thoughts and the power to think completely depend on each other.

and

 Normally, we are only aware of form. But the mystical experience of Nirvana can be called an awareness of formlessness. One could say that the polarity of awareness has shifted from form to formlessness.

So putting these together, we have that awareness of formlessness is awareness of the power to think, which creates mental constructs (thoughts). 

[Lou Gold]

Scott,

This is for you to contemplate. It's not for debate.

Thought and awareness are not the same. The meditator empties his mind of thought in order to become aware. Awareness has power because it reveals what is.

[Scott Roberts]

On Monday, March 11, 2019 at 2:03:59 AM UTC-10, Lou Gold wrote:

Scott,

This is for you to contemplate. It's not for debate.

Why should I contemplate a claim that I have reason to think is false?

 

Thought and awareness are not the same.

In my essay Divine and Local Simplicity, and the Question of Will I give my reasons for saying that awareness and thinking are the same. So either you haven't read this essay, or you have but disagree with its conclusions. If the former, fine, but now you know where this statement of yours can be challenged. If you have, then you can't just tell me I am wrong without also telling me where my reasoning is faulty. 

 

The meditator empties his mind of thought in order to become aware. Awareness has power because it reveals what is.

There is wordy thinking and wordless thinking. The meditator is seeking to stop wordy thinking through an act of will which is the thought "be silent". With wordy thinking silenced, intuitive, wordless thinking is allowed in.

 

[Lou Gold]

Scott,

OK. You contemplated it and choose to debate.

I'll read your essay and decide if I want to debate it.

Meanwhile, let me just note that a silent mind for me does not feel like the absence of "word thoughts." It feels like a "peace that passeth understanding."

[Adur Alkain]

Scott,

I have read your essays "Idealism vs. Common Sense" and "Tetralemmic Polarity", and I must say, I'm very impressed! Now I value your comments even more, and I understand your position better. Thanks again!

I think I can agree with you in most points. The main issue that remains is the problem of "space".

On Monday, 11 March 2019 01:18:08 UTC+1, Scott Roberts wrote:

As I said previously, I regard all experience as mental construction (well, with the exception of awareness of formlessness, which is experience of the power that constructs). There is a level 2, and that is experience of language. Language consists of mental constructs that refer to other mental constructs. Sense perception is language, only we have lost the ability to perceive through the "words" (sense objects) to the meaning behind them. (As you mentioned an admiration of Barfield, I'll plug my essay Idealism vs. Common Sense, which discusses Barfield and goes into this a bit more). Non-linguistic -- level 1 -- mental construction is mathematics, as mathematical objects do not refer beyond themselves.

I have read Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances, so I think I understand what you are saying. I don't completely agree (I think the language of perception is not the same as the language of mental constructs: the first corresponds to what A. H. Almaas calls "direct knowing", the second to what he calls "ordinary knowing"), but I prefer to leave that discussion for another time.

 

Agreed. It must also answer the question of why there are materialists and dualists, which the essay mentioned above addresses.

I have some ideas about the rise of materialism/dualism. I think it arose as a kind of "white magic", a defence against "black magic". All primitive societies where "original participation" still exists or existed share the belief in magic, sorcery, witchcraft. My hypothesis would be that some psychically powerful individuals could use that "original participation" to influence and maybe even "mind control" others. They could induce in them dreams or visions, for example. Materialism and dualism would arise as a very effective defence against that. I think there are many traces of this in the Old Testament. Judaism can be essentially understood as a "spiritual materialism". It's probably the most dualistic of religions. (Barfield has a very different take on this, I think, but there it is.) And there are some explicit commands against magicians, etc. This is just a hypothesis, of course, and it may sound far-fetched, but I think the fear of magic must have been at least a contributing factor. I don't think it's a coincidence that the rise of modern Cartesian materialism coincided in time with the Witch-hunt mass hysteria. Not only that. I sense that behind the fanaticism of many materialists of today may still lie an unconscious fear of magic. You can see this very clearly in the debate around the legalisation of psychedelic drugs, for example.

 

1b. In the unilocal perspective, there is no space. Everything we see is in in the same location. Space is an illusion.

Consider this analogy: Michelangelo creates the statue of David. Would you say that Michelangelo is real but the statue is an illusion? It seems to me that that is what you are saying if you say that Consciousness is real, but a creation of Consciousness (the spatial world) is an illusion.

 

(Some people call this "nonlocality", but I prefer to call it "unilocality", following A. H. Almaas.)

I'd go with "nonlocality". 'Location' is a spatial term.

Okay, let's call this ontology "nonlocal". From the point of view of Consciousness, on the level of experience, it feels more like "unilocality" (everything is in the same location), but on a conceptual level, the level of ontology, "nonlocality" makes more sense.

 

 

 I do not equate "real" with "fundamental". There is fundamental reality and contingent reality. And I would say that fundamental reality is not spatial, so not "out there". I would say that all that exists is "M@L experiencing" rather than "experienced by M@L".

 

2b. In unilocality, the world we experience from our individual perspective is real, and fundamental.

While I would say it is real but not fundamental. Also, since the world I experience with my senses is spatial, how do you reconcile this with (1b), where you say there is no space?

Your criticisms here are valid. My ideas were inconsistent, and I didn't define clearly what I meant by "fundamental". So, yes, I think you are right: The world we experience is real, but not fundamental.

Let's talk about space. The main reason I started this thread is that I intuitively feel that there is something "off" about all the spatial metaphors Bernardo and others in this forum tend to use (whirlpools, a M@L that is somehow "out there", etc.). So I'll try to explain again the problem I have with space.

Given that the world we experience is real (but not fundamental), and that it appears to be spatial, we could conclude that space is also real but not fundamental. Yet, I think space (and time, but let's no go there now) is not really a feature of the world we experience, but a feature of the way we experience the world: I think it is less real than our sense perceptions. It is an abstraction. And in some fundamental way, I think it's an illusion.

I'll take your analogy of Michelangelo and the statue of David. Michelangelo is real, and the statue is real too. Michelangelo sees the statue in space, so you could say that Michelangelo creates space too. But the problem begins when Michelangelo sees himself as an object in space, just like the statue. That's the illusion. How can Michelangelo be inside something he created himself? It's like that mind-boggling lithograph by M. C. Escher, "Print Gallery". Consciousness can create the world we see, but it cannot be inside that world. It can only dream itself inside that world. The world is real, but the conscious being that experiences itself inside that world is having an illusion.

We all have a very direct experience of this. We cannot see the back of our heads. That proves that we are not in space. We generate it with our minds. (I know this sounds stupid, but when you are on LSD it feels like a deep metaphysical insight.)

The conclusion is clear: space must be an illusion. The statue of David is not really in space, although it appears to be. The statue is in Michelangelo. Michelangelo is Consciousness. The statue is in Consciousness. It is not in space.

Anyway, maybe this is too subtle, or just nonsense. It isn't important. Let's say, like you say, that space is real, but not fundamental. That still means that Consciousness itself is not in space. Space is in Consciousness. Consciousness is more fundamental than space. That's the important part.

Let's look at the implications: if Consciousness is more fundamental than space, that means that when I see another person "out there", she is not really "out there". Unconscious objects, like statues, can be in space, because they are not fundamental. They are part of the world we see. But conscious beings (who are Consciousness) cannot be in space. Of course, their bodies are in space, like all physical objects, but their consciousness isn't. This is nonlocality. This is consistent with phenomena like telepathy. And it shows that consciousness is definitely not in the brain, or in the body. It is the body that is in consciousness, not the other way around. So, I don't think it's correct to say that our individual consciousness is like a whirlpool. Our physical body is like a whirlpool, but our consciousness contains that whirlpool, and everything else.

[Adur Alkain]

Oh my God, Lou,

that's what I need right now, after squeezing my brain for hours, responding to Scott and trying to figure out what the heck was in my mind when I started this thread... a "peace that passeth understanding"!! :)

[Lou Gold]

OK Scott,

I read the essay and it does not make much sense (as in qualia) to me. Therefore, I have no intention of debating it. This does not mean that I think you are wrong. My awareness simply shows me that you participate in the great mysteriousness of consciousness in a different way than I do. I have contemplated your way and opened a portal of possibility that for you logic and reason may be in part a genuine mystical experience but you are firm in your denial of ever having had a mystical experience. However, from this non-mystical stance you go forth to categorize or explain what a mystical experience like Nirvana could be (formlessness). I see how you might find this an interesting approach. You find the polarities and work them through the horns of a tetralemma to arrive at knowing something. About thought, you bifurcate it into wordy thought and non-wordy thought. I simply go still and become more aware. You arrive at your way. I arrive at my way. Both of us end up knowing a little and mostly not knowing much. But I bet that both you and I, like Adur recognize the "peace that passeth understanding" when its blessing arrives.

[Scott Roberts]

On Monday, March 11, 2019 at 2:08:31 PM UTC-10, Adur Alkain wrote:

Scott,

I have read your essays "Idealism vs. Common Sense" and "Tetralemmic Polarity", and I must say, I'm very impressed! Now I value your comments even more, and I understand your position better. Thanks again!

Good to hear.

 

Let's talk about space. ....

Given that the world we experience is real (but not fundamental), and that it appears to be spatial, we could conclude that space is also real but not fundamental. Yet, I think space (and time, but let's no go there now) is not really a feature of the world we experience, but a feature of the way we experience the world: I think it is less real than our sense perceptions. It is an abstraction. And in some fundamental way, I think it's an illusion.

Well, you may just be repeating Leibniz' objections to Newton's idea of absolute space. That is, Newton imagined an infinite 3-dimensional box in which objects existed. Leibniz argued that what we call "space" is just a network of spatial relations -- that we know where things are only by their spatial relation to other things. So I would agree that Newton's box is an unwarranted abstraction.

 

 

I'll take your analogy of Michelangelo and the statue of David. Michelangelo is real, and the statue is real too. Michelangelo sees the statue in space, so you could say that Michelangelo creates space too. But the problem begins when Michelangelo sees himself as an object in space, just like the statue. That's the illusion. How can Michelangelo be inside something he created himself? It's like that mind-boggling lithograph by M. C. Escher, "Print Gallery". Consciousness can create the world we see, but it cannot be inside that world. It can only dream itself inside that world. The world is real, but the conscious being that experiences itself inside that world is having an illusion.

Michelangelo is having a (shared) dream. So our disagreement seems to be whether to call that dream an illusion. I say it is not, because even though Michelangelo can realize he is dreaming the space, he must treat that space as real to make the statue. I (roughly) define "real" as what one must take into consideration to act effectively. So as long as Michelangelo is creating the space in which he sees his body and the block of marble, he must treat the spatial separation between him and the marble as real to carve the statue.

 

We all have a very direct experience of this. We cannot see the back of our heads. That proves that we are not in space.

It does? How is it different from not being able to see through a brick wall?

 

We generate it with our minds. (I know this sounds stupid, but when you are on LSD it feels like a deep metaphysical insight.)

One can figure it out without psychedelics -- see below.

 

The conclusion is clear: space must be an illusion. The statue of David is not really in space, although it appears to be. The statue is in Michelangelo. Michelangelo is Consciousness. The statue is in Consciousness. It is not in space.

Absolute space is a false abstraction. Spatial relations are real while we are physically embodied and awake and want to do things like eat, or admire the physical proportions of a statue.

 

Anyway, maybe this is too subtle, or just nonsense. It isn't important. Let's say, like you say, that space is real, but not fundamental. That still means that Consciousness itself is not in space. Space is in Consciousness. Consciousness is more fundamental than space. That's the important part.

Agreed. But if you want to convince a materialist (or dualist) that space is in consciousness, I think calling it an illusion hurts more than it helps. 

Let's look at the implications: if Consciousness is more fundamental than space, that means that when I see another person "out there", she is not really "out there".

Yes she is, as long as you are awake and not in some non-ordinary state of consciousness.

 

Unconscious objects, like statues, can be in space, because they are not fundamental. They are part of the world we see. But conscious beings (who are Consciousness) cannot be in space. Of course, their bodies are in space, like all physical objects, but their consciousness isn't. This is nonlocality. This is consistent with phenomena like telepathy. And it shows that consciousness is definitely not in the brain, or in the body. It is the body that is in consciousness, not the other way around.

Agreed.

 

So, I don't think it's correct to say that our individual consciousness is like a whirlpool.

The point of the whirlpool analogy is just to say that as the whirlpool is made of water, so is our localized consciousness "made of" Consciousness. All analogies break down (otherwise they wouldn't be analogies).

 

Our physical body is like a whirlpool, but our consciousness contains that whirlpool, and everything else.

No, our body, like everything else our senses perceive, lies on the boundary between our consciousness and the consciousness of M@L. Now "boundary" is also a spatial metaphor.but all our talk of mentality uses what once were physical metaphors, so one just has to get used to it.

If the purpose is to get people to realize that space is not fundamental, there is an easier way to do so. It is that even a physicalist, or especially a physicalist, has to admit that the space one directly perceives is created in the act of perception. Now a physicalist would say it is created by neural activity, but what is it created from? Photons in the eye and vibrations in the ear. That is, the neurons get their inputs at the sense organs, and from that compute a visual scene, and that is what is seen. So now the challenge is to get the physicalist to recognize that the spatial assumptions in this scenario (e.g. "at the sense organs") are made from viewing the perception-created visual (and aural) scene. So it is circular.

Now add the growing number of theoretical physicists who regard space (and time) as derivative, and add Hoffman's thesis that perception does not evolve for truth and his computer interface metaphor, and there is a strong case, without any appeal to mystical experiences, that the only space there is is the one created in the act of perception.

 

[Lou Gold]

Scott and Adur,

I seem to recall a story that Michelangelo said that he saw the statue of David in the block of marble and that he sculpted to reveal it.

[Dana Lomas]

And in some fundamental way, I think it's an illusion.

I prefer to avoid some of the ambiguous connotations of the term 'illusion' by referring to space as an apparency. Perhaps Hoffman's take is helpful when he refers analogously to not having to take the 'desktop' literally, while still taking it seriously, as a real interface with a more fundamental reality.

[Lou Gold]

Dana,

I also like "apparency."  

It also has some archetypal connections. The Patroness Saint of Brazil >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Aparecida

The Marion Catholic movement is loaded with iterations such as Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexico) and Fatima (Portugal).

[Scott Roberts]

I would like to retract something I said in my last post. I said that Newtonian space is an unwarranted abstraction. It is, rather, a highly useful abstraction, one we use all the time, for example in planning a road trip, or sending rockets to the moon. 

But this leaves me in hot water with my definition of "real", as that which we must take into account for effective action. Well, I did call the definition "rough", meaning it likely would have to be qualified in various ways. Still, if NASA uses the Newtonian model isn't this Newtonian model effective, and therefore real? 

I think this can be resolved with claiming that the only real space is that which we create with our senses, but I want to noodle on it some more.

[Adur Alkain]

On Tuesday, 12 March 2019 07:56:17 UTC+1, Scott Roberts wrote:

 

I'll take your analogy of Michelangelo and the statue of David. Michelangelo is real, and the statue is real too. Michelangelo sees the statue in space, so you could say that Michelangelo creates space too. But the problem begins when Michelangelo sees himself as an object in space, just like the statue. That's the illusion. How can Michelangelo be inside something he created himself? It's like that mind-boggling lithograph by M. C. Escher, "Print Gallery". Consciousness can create the world we see, but it cannot be inside that world. It can only dream itself inside that world. The world is real, but the conscious being that experiences itself inside that world is having an illusion.

Michelangelo is having a (shared) dream. So our disagreement seems to be whether to call that dream an illusion. I say it is not, because even though Michelangelo can realize he is dreaming the space, he must treat that space as real to make the statue. I (roughly) define "real" as what one must take into consideration to act effectively. So as long as Michelangelo is creating the space in which he sees his body and the block of marble, he must treat the spatial separation between him and the marble as real to carve the statue.

I find your definition of "real" a little too utalitiarian. I would say simply that everything we experience is real. If I feel love, or pain, or joy, that's real. An illusion arises when I'm confusing my experience with something else. For example, I see a picture ("artistic rendering") of the solar system, or of the Milky Way, and I believe I'm looking at a faithful depiction of something that exists out there, outside consciousness. That's an illusion. Or I talk about the Big Bang, and I believe I'm talking about an actual event, not about a theory, a mental concept. That's another illusion.

I can see the statue, and I can touch it. The statue (my experience of it) is real. But I can't see our touch space, I can't experience space directly. Space is a mental concept, like the Big Bang. If I see space as what it is, as a mental abstraction, there is no illusion. But most of us tend to think that space is a fundamental aspect of reality, a container that contains us and the whole universe, with it's galaxies and billions of stars billions of light years away, etc. That's the illusion I was talking about. My point is that, even for us who have realized that the physical world doesn't exist outside consciousness, it's difficult to let go of the idea that space exists outside consciousness, containing it.

 

We all have a very direct experience of this. We cannot see the back of our heads. That proves that we are not in space.

It does? How is it different from not being able to see through a brick wall?

Well, the difference is obvious. You can walk around the brick wall, or climb over it, or pull it down with a sledgehammer. But whatever you do, you will never be able to see the back of your head. There is a fundamental difference between your own head and all the other objects you see in the physical world. This fundamental difference needs to be accounted for in some way. The materialistic ontology does a very good job of this: according to it, the world I see is inside my skull. This would explain why my head is fundamentally different from all the other objects I see. But how can an idealistic ontology explain this strange phenomenon? If the world I see is not in my head, why can't I see my head?

From a materialistic perspective, the fact that I can't see my own head is not a problem: according to materialism, what I see is not the physical world, but an image of the physical world that only exists inside my brain. But according to idealism, what I see is the real world. My experience of the world is identical to the world, because the world is experience. So, how come my head is not part of that experience? I don't know if Bernardo adresses this problem somewhere. In my view, the only solution is to say that the reason I can't see my head is that I am looking through my head. I am Consciousness, or God, looking through this physical head as through a window. I am not this body. I'm using this body as a "Mars rover". I am not the Mars rover. I am God. This is the distinct sense you get on LSD, the sense of being God looking at the world through the window of a particular body.

But if I am God, I am not looking only from this particular window (or "camera"), I'm looking through zillions of windows at the same time. Every conscious being is a window for God to look through.

 

Let's look at the implications: if Consciousness is more fundamental than space, that means that when I see another person "out there", she is not really "out there".

Yes she is, as long as you are awake and not in some non-ordinary state of consciousness.

Her body is out there, but she is not her body. This has nothing to do with your state of consciousness. Unless you are a materialist, you can't believe that people are their bodies. Human beings are consciousness, and consciousness is not "out there". Consciousness is nonlocal.

 

 

 

Unconscious objects, like statues, can be in space, because they are not fundamental. They are part of the world we see. But conscious beings (who are Consciousness) cannot be in space. Of course, their bodies are in space, like all physical objects, but their consciousness isn't. This is nonlocality. This is consistent with phenomena like telepathy. And it shows that consciousness is definitely not in the brain, or in the body. It is the body that is in consciousness, not the other way around.

Agreed.

 

So, I don't think it's correct to say that our individual consciousness is like a whirlpool.

The point of the whirlpool analogy is just to say that as the whirlpool is made of water, so is our localized consciousness "made of" Consciousness. All analogies break down (otherwise they wouldn't be analogies).

 Yes, I get that, but I still don't like the analogy. Consciousness cannot be localized. Our bodies can be localized, but not our consciousness. Whirlpools are a good analogy for our physical bodies, and for other physical objects we perceive. Physical objects are made of consciousness. But our individual consciousness is Consciousness.

 

Our physical body is like a whirlpool, but our consciousness contains that whirlpool, and everything else.

No, our body, like everything else our senses perceive, lies on the boundary between our consciousness and the consciousness of M@L. Now "boundary" is also a spatial metaphor.but all our talk of mentality uses what once were physical metaphors, so one just has to get used to it.

 

I don't think there is a boundary between our individual consciousness and Consciousness (or M@L). What kind of boundary would it be? What evidence do we have of a "mind-at-large" that is separate from our individual consciousness? None. I think this idea of a separate M@L is the result of olds way of thinking. It isn't based in experience. We may think that there must be something bigger than us out there, thinking the world into existence, and that what we see is a second-person experience of those unfathomable thoughts that M@L has. I don't see any reason to believe this. In my view, we are thinking and perceiving the world into existence ourselves, without the help of some big inescrutable Mind that exists out there. We are God, and we'd better get over it. :)

[Cosmin Visan]

What do you mean you can't experience space directly ? Just go to a 3D movie and compare the sensation of seeing a 3D movie with the one of seeing a 2D one.

[Scott Roberts]

On Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 3:25:00 AM UTC-10, Adur Alkain wrote:

I find your definition of "real" a little too utalitiarian. I would say simply that everything we experience is real. If I feel love, or pain, or joy, that's real.

Ok. I think both definitions have merit.

 

An illusion arises when I'm confusing my experience with something else. For example, I see a picture ("artistic rendering") of the solar system, or of the Milky Way, and I believe I'm looking at a faithful depiction of something that exists out there, outside consciousness. That's an illusion. Or I talk about the Big Bang, and I believe I'm talking about an actual event, not about a theory, a mental concept. That's another illusion.

I have a problem with calling them illusions, and prefer the word 'delusion' (I have the same problem with translating the word 'maya' as illusion, again preferring 'delusion'.) The difference is that an illusion -- like a mirage or hallucination -- is a real experience, but one is deluded in thinking that the water of the mirage can be drunk. Likewise one can see spatial relations, and that is real, but one is deluded in thinking the spatial relations persist when not seen.

 

I can see the statue, and I can touch it. The statue (my experience of it) is real. But I can't see our touch space, I can't experience space directly. Space is a mental concept, like the Big Bang. If I see space as what it is, as a mental abstraction, there is no illusion. But most of us tend to think that space is a fundamental aspect of reality, a container that contains us and the whole universe, with it's galaxies and billions of stars billions of light years away, etc. That's the illusion I was talking about. My point is that, even for us who have realized that the physical world doesn't exist outside consciousness, it's difficult to let go of the idea that space exists outside consciousness, containing it.

Well, that's the difference between Newtonian space and Leibnizian space that I talked about. One is deluded in thinking that Newtonian space exists as space, but Leibnizian space is real (it is experienced). However, there is a sense in which the Newtonian (or as one should now say, Einsteinian) conception is real, and that is that we use it to send rockets to the moon. What is real is the mathematical structure that Newton's (and subsequently Einstein's) mathematics approaches. Here the virtual reality analogy is helpful. There is a real set of program code and database entries that determine what the avatar can see, and if it shoots an arrow at an enemy, the underlying program will change the database accordingly. The interface (what is seen and changed by the controller) is real and spatial in the Leibniz sense, while the code and database are also real, but not seen. Similarly, the mathematical structure of the Newtonian world is real but not spatial.

 

It does? How is it different from not being able to see through a brick wall?

Well, the difference is obvious. You can walk around the brick wall, or climb over it, or pull it down with a sledgehammer. But whatever you do, you will never be able to see the back of your head.

Make it the wall of a prison in which you are strapped into a chair.

 

There is a fundamental difference between your own head and all the other objects you see in the physical world. This fundamental difference needs to be accounted for in some way. The materialistic ontology does a very good job of this: according to it, the world I see is inside my skull. This would explain why my head is fundamentally different from all the other objects I see. But how can an idealistic ontology explain this strange phenomenon? If the world I see is not in my head, why can't I see my head? 

Easy. My eyes are in the front of my head and can only see what is in front of them, just as a camera cannot take a photo of its back. It is a consequence of having a body while in a state of localized consciousness.

 

From a materialistic perspective, the fact that I can't see my own head is not a problem: according to materialism, what I see is not the physical world, but an image of the physical world that only exists inside my brain. But according to idealism, what I see is the real world. My experience of the world is identical to the world, because the world is experience.

The world is more than my sense perceptions of it. It is also the laws that underlie it (the Newtonian world), which I can discern to some extent through thinking.

 

I don't think there is a boundary between our individual consciousness and Consciousness (or M@L). What kind of boundary would it be? What evidence do we have of a "mind-at-large" that is separate from our individual consciousness? None. I think this idea of a separate M@L is the result of olds way of thinking. It isn't based in experience. We may think that there must be something bigger than us out there, thinking the world into existence, and that what we see is a second-person experience of those unfathomable thoughts that M@L has. I don't see any reason to believe this. In my view, we are thinking and perceiving the world into existence ourselves, without the help of some big inescrutable Mind that exists out there. We are God, and we'd better get over it. :)

Unless we can talk about localized consciousness and ourselves as not God we don't have an adequate ontology. An ontology needs to be able to account for our experience, which is ego-bound, limited, non-omniscient, etc. If all you say is "you are really God" then our limited experience is not accounted for. To explain our limited experience one needs ideas like "alter" and "boundary between localized self and the rest of Consciousness" and "second-person perspective". Of course a nondualist ontology also needs to state that the separation is only apparent, and for that a whirlpool analogy is helpful.

It's the old Buddhist distinction between absolute and contingent truth. Ontology needs to include both. 

[Adur Alkain]

That's a great example, Cosmin!

There is no 3D space in a 3D movie screen. You may think that you are experiencing 3D space, but it is an optical illusion. This example clearly shows that we don't experience space in the same way that we experience pain, cold, the colour red, etc. In these examples, the experience is the thing in itself. In the case of space, the experience is a mental deduction about the relative position of objects on a hypothetical 3D space. That's what I meant when I said that we can't experience space directly.

[Lou Gold]

@Adur and all

There is no 3D space in a 3D movie screen. You may think that you are experiencing 3D space, but it is an optical illusion. This example clearly shows that we don't experience space in the same way that we experience pain, cold, the colour red, etc. In these examples, the experience is the thing in itself. In the case of space, the experience is a mental deduction about the relative position of objects on a hypothetical 3D space. That's what I meant when I said that we can't experience space directly.

I agree that the reflection is a mere finger pointing to the moon but I disagree that space can't be an experience like "redness." Sometimes, the artists open a portal of perception before the physicists are able to conceptualize it. Consider this photo of a sculpture by Henry Moore, who I consider as the greatest sculptor of the 20th Century >>>

In viewing it, I experience space and I experience matter. I also experience space defining matter and matter defining space combining into a photograph which is also an experience for me. Everything here is a sensual experience (appearance) for me no less real than the redness of an apple.

I once wrote a photo essay about it >>> http://lougold.blogspot.com/2007/05/henry-moore-re-visionary-artist-ive.html

[Adur Alkain]

Scott,

I feel we agree in everything.

On Thursday, 14 March 2019 23:01:19 UTC+1, Scott Roberts wrote:

In my view, we are thinking and perceiving the world into existence ourselves, without the help of some big inescrutable Mind that exists out there. We are God, and we'd better get over it. :)

Unless we can talk about localized consciousness and ourselves as not God we don't have an adequate ontology. An ontology needs to be able to account for our experience, which is ego-bound, limited, non-omniscient, etc. If all you say is "you are really God" then our limited experience is not accounted for. To explain our limited experience one needs ideas like "alter" and "boundary between localized self and the rest of Consciousness" and "second-person perspective". Of course a nondualist ontology also needs to state that the separation is only apparent, and for that a whirlpool analogy is helpful.

It's the old Buddhist distinction between absolute and contingent truth. Ontology needs to include both. 

 

I can accept the distinction you make between absolute and contingent truth. As long as we don't forget that, as you say, the separation between Consciousness and "localized self" is only apparent, I can accept the idea of alters or ego-boundaries.

When I say "we are God", all I'm saying is that we are not separate entities, although most of the time we experience ourselves as such. All I'm saying is that God often experiences itself in a limited, non-omniscient way. That's what God does. But God never ceases to be God.

Maybe this whole notion of separateness/unseparateness is another "tetralemmic polarity", like form/formlessness. :)

 

[Lou Gold]

Adur (and Scott),

From my intuitive logic, I've often grokked Scott's tetralemmic polarity as a spiritual or mystical exercise, analogous to a Zen Koan, which forcing a crumbling of the logic of polarity, vanquishes the illusions of separation and reveals an experiential awareness of union.

I don't know if Scott might agree?

[Cosmin Visan]

To quote John Searle: The illusion of consciousness is consciousness.

[Scott Roberts]

On Friday, March 15, 2019 at 10:01:25 AM UTC-10, Adur Alkain wrote:

Maybe this whole notion of separateness/unseparateness is another "tetralemmic polarity", like form/formlessness. :)

Well, there is a God/Soul tetralemmic polarity, which I mention in the essay (one cannot say the soul is God, one cannot say the soul is not God, one cannot say the soul is and is not God, one cannot say the soul is neither God nor not God). But strictly speaking separate/unseparate is not a tetralemmic polarity, since one can say that ultimately there is no true separation. (Sorry, just being picky.) 

[Adur Alkain]

So, you mean that God and soul are ultimately not separate? I would agree with that!

And I definitely agree that God/soul is a tetralemic polarity. I love this level of subtelty! :)

[Scott Roberts]

On Friday, March 15, 2019 at 1:43:22 PM UTC-10, Adur Alkain wrote:

So, you mean that God and soul are ultimately not separate?

Yes, as illustrated with the whirlpool analogy. 

[Scott Roberts]

On Friday, March 15, 2019 at 10:34:09 AM UTC-10, Lou Gold wrote:

From my intuitive logic, I've often grokked Scott's tetralemmic polarity as a spiritual or mystical exercise, analogous to a Zen Koan, which forcing a crumbling of the logic of polarity, vanquishes the illusions of separation and reveals an experiential awareness of union.

I don't know if Scott might agree?

For the record, your use of the term "polar logic" is the opposite of what I (following Coleridge) mean by the term. You seem to be using it to mean "either/or" logic, i.e., conventional Aristotelian excluded-middle-not-allowed.

As to its utility as a mystical exercise, I would like to think so, but I sometimes wonder whether it cuts the ground out from the koan exercise. If the exercise is to "crumble either/or logic", well, polar logic (in my usage) has already done that -- well, not crumbled it, just shown its inadequacy when applied to God or mind or Buddha-nature. Which is why I see its main utility as metaphysical -- keeping it in mind prevents one from treating God or mind as objects.

 

[PanLamda]

I agree with this post, and i think bernardo's theory can be viewed as a type of "dual-aspect" russelian monist, possibly of what it is now called "cosmo-psychism" (i prefer holo-psychism). So there is one type of thing, but both 1rst and 2nd person-point-views are equally valid descriptions of reality and sort of contemplate each other, by having real effects on each other.

 For example, even when Bernardo insists that there is only 'mind" at the same time he talks of alters interacting within "consciousness" which just seems bread-and-buttter real space-time to me (although now phrased "mentalistically") and that by e.g. interacting with your body-your 2nd prson point of view-i have real effects on your consciousness e.g. by pushing you. Again your body is phrased "mentalistically" as the "exterior" of your consciousness, but this just always seemed as word-play to me, re-difining physical objects as the "exterior" of mental-objects and leaving all things as they are. 

Regardless, i have to say im more supportive of these types of positions lately than pure 1st-person idealism that you describe which i agree with you, it is a more "pure" version of idealism, since in idealism you strictly need only the 1rst-person point of view.  But i can see why Bernardo makes that move. This type of "pure" 1st-person-only idealism had a problem with the world and causality and common-world-experience among the "dreamers". How do 1st person-dreams cohere into one reality and have effects on each other? Berbardo solves this by making the move of proposing an "exterior" 2nd-person point of view, but this just re-defines the external world in mentalistic language and i can't see how it is ontologically different to russelian-monist or standard cosmo-psychist positions (other than word-playing). 


So, i guess the question remains, how just a 1st person consciousness creates all these dreams and systematic causal structures and why do they have the properties they have? Berkeley just used the typical theist answer. "God does it" and lives it at that but nowadays few people would take this view as a satisfactory answer.

Anyway, i like the consistency of your idealistic view, even though i'm not convinced due to such "common-dreams" problem. The only consistent conclusion would be pure solipsism. "Its my dream" and thats what it is. Maybe with some mental gymanstics one could say "its my dream", and no seperate "alters" or "individuals" exist, all these are my dream, different identities maybe of my dream but not seperate individuals, which Berbardo sometimes seem to imply at his most idealistic. Still, one could ask "yeah, but why my dream is the way it is and how in hell i'm dreaming this and why am i dreaming this dream-world?" which i guess really nobody knows the answer and just accepts it axiomatically.

 I have to say that you lost me in the last paragraph. It suddenly got very "physicalistic" with the problem of brains, e.g. by being "sense-organs of God" and all that, it implies that there is an external world after all with some specific mechanisms-such as brains-doing the sensing. A simpler answer would be that there is no problem of brains, it is just part of the dream as well and causality is an illusion or part of this dream as well e.g. when you hit me "i lose consciousness" is no more "real" than when i dream in my sleep that cats that bite me cause me pain. This ofcourse would imply that the whole world, science and everything are part of an illusion.  Cudos for the overall position though. 

[Lou Gold]

Scott,

Increasingly, I think we are actually saying something similar. I'm sensing that your use of "polar logic" is indeed opposite to "either/or" logic. This confused me earlier but I see it now. Another way to crumble the either/or cookie.

I don't know that it cuts the ground out of the koan exercise. It's not the same but different paths can lead to a similar place and would fit different personalities. I can see that the use of thetetralemmic approach is itself an act of crumbling the old logic.

Additionally, in BK's most recent interview he speaks of an ongoing cultural shift or evolution toward developing meta-awareness, which strikes me in many ways as quite similar to mystical awareness when it becomes the extraordinary ordinary (e.g. before enlightenment the monk chops wood, hauls water, builds the fire and cooks rice; and after enlightenment he does the same).

[Adur Alkain]

Lou,

in my very biased opinion, the greatest sculptor of the 20th century was Jorge Oteiza. He was greately influenced by Henry Moore at the beginning of his career, but he went further (I think) in his exploration of form and space. In the end he came to an experimental conclusion in his "empty boxes" series, in which he showed that by disoccupying space you can reach pure emptiness, which is the fundamental ground and source of space and form. In Oteiza's work, space and emptiness are not sensual, but metaphysical.

https://www.museooteiza.org/jorge-oteiza/

[Adur Alkain]

Thanks for your comment, PanLamda!

On Saturday, 16 March 2019 03:11:54 UTC+1, PanLamda wrote:

Regardless, i have to say im more supportive of these types of positions lately than pure 1st-person idealism that you describe which i agree with you, it is a more "pure" version of idealism, since in idealism you strictly need only the 1rst-person point of view.  But i can see why Bernardo makes that move. This type of "pure" 1st-person-only idealism had a problem with the world and causality and common-world-experience among the "dreamers". How do 1st person-dreams cohere into one reality and have effects on each other?

So, i guess the question remains, how just a 1st person consciousness creates all these dreams and systematic causal structures and why do they have the properties they have? Berkeley just used the typical theist answer. "God does it" and lives it at that but nowadays few people would take this view as a satisfactory answer.

My view is pretty close to Berkeley's, and I find it quite satisfactory. But I don't need any kind of supernatural God. My God is the pantheistic God: God is Nature. There is only one person, that's why all the 1st person perspectives combined (including animals, plants, fungi and even bacteria) create the same world, the world we experience.

 

Anyway, i like the consistency of your idealistic view, even though i'm not convinced due to such "common-dreams" problem. The only consistent conclusion would be pure solipsism. "Its my dream" and thats what it is.

Solipsism only is possible if you believe that you are a separate entity. I don't. There is only one Consciousness.

Maybe with some mental gymanstics one could say "its my dream", and no seperate "alters" or "individuals" exist, all these are my dream, different identities maybe of my dream but not seperate individuals, which Berbardo sometimes seem to imply at his most idealistic. Still, one could ask "yeah, but why my dream is the way it is and how in hell i'm dreaming this and why am i dreaming this dream-world?" which i guess really nobody knows the answer and just accepts it axiomatically.

I think the answer to the question "why is my dream the way it is" is pretty obvious: evolution. It is similar to the answer that materialists give to the question: "why is this world the way it is?".

The answer to "why am I dreaming this dream-world?" is more difficult, and we can only speculate. Maybe the answer is as simple as "because it's interesting". I can imagine a story of evolution starting with God experiencing itself as a single cell organism, and then beginning to replicate itself and to combine and recombine itself in more and more complex organisms, acquiring more and more subtle and sophisiticated experiences of itself. The driving force would be a sense of curiosity and creativity.

 

 I have to say that you lost me in the last paragraph. It suddenly got very "physicalistic" with the problem of brains, e.g. by being "sense-organs of God" and all that, it implies that there is an external world after all with some specific mechanisms-such as brains-doing the sensing. A simpler answer would be that there is no problem of brains, it is just part of the dream as well and causality is an illusion or part of this dream as well e.g. when you hit me "i lose consciousness" is no more "real" than when i dream in my sleep that cats that bite me cause me pain. This ofcourse would imply that the whole world, science and everything are part of an illusion.  Cudos for the overall position though. 

 

I don't see any physicalism in my idea of brains and bodies as the "sense-organs of God", but I can see why the metaphor could be confusing. What I'm saying is that our bodies, including our sense organs, are like instruments of observation, like telescopes or microscopes. Or like Mars rovers. Telescopes and microscopes and Mars rovers don't sense anything, it's Consciousness that does the sensing, using those instruments as a way to enhance its perception. Consciousness or God creates the physical world in its mind, so it can also create these physical bodies with sense organs and brains to observe and experience the physical world in different, increasingly sophisticated ways.

[Lou Gold]

Adur,

Thanks to the turn-on to Jorge Oteiza, who seems quite interesting.

Given my strongly sensualist bias, I suspect I'll still prefer Moore's to a more metaphysical production. I also love Moore because he grounded greatness (got it off the pedestal), broke with the Venus image of the feminine and portrayed the Mother more as She might feel to a child. For sure, I'm a sucker for that (pun intended). 

[Scott Roberts]

On Friday, March 15, 2019 at 5:53:45 PM UTC-10, Lou Gold wrote:

I don't know that it cuts the ground out of the koan exercise.

I don't know either.

 

Additionally, in BK's most recent interview he speaks of an ongoing cultural shift or evolution toward developing meta-awareness, which strikes me in many ways as quite similar to mystical awareness when it becomes the extraordinary ordinary (e.g. before enlightenment the monk chops wood, hauls water, builds the fire and cooks rice; and after enlightenment he does the same).

Umm. What BK means by 'meta-awareness' is just being aware of being aware of something, not anything mystical. It is the same ego-bound subject/object consciousness, only with the object not being a tree but the fact that one is aware of a tree. However, it is a highly significant development in human consciousness. One doesn't find it discussed in pre-modern philosophy, but is what is behind Descartes' "I think, therefore I am". It is not that pre-moderns weren't aware that they were thinking, but they didn't focus on that fact, other than to note it as what God implanted in humans that distinguishes us from non-human animals. Indeed, the word 'consciousness' only came to be used as we use it in the modern period (previously it was used to mean 'conscience"). Its evolutionary significance is that it increases our individuality. 

[Lou Gold]

Scott,

What BK means by 'meta-awareness' is just being aware of being aware of something, not anything mystical.

I grok what you mean? On your terms, which is to focus on the final state of attainers, this is not mystical. However, in my view development of mystical awareness is a mixture of moments in an ongoing process. In other words, I view Paradise as a verb including ups and downs. In other words, Jesus (Son of Man) was Son of God all the way to final resurrection and transcendence.  

 One doesn't find it discussed in pre-modern philosophy, but is what is behind Descartes' "I think, therefore I am". It is not that pre-moderns weren't aware that they were thinking, but they didn't focus on that fact, 

Firstly, I'm more with Spinoza and feel that "I feel, therefore I am."

Secondly, indigenous pre-moderns focused on "way seeking" in order to maintain balance in their eco-niche in which they were participants, which for them was the more important focus, whereas moderns having left the niche began a process of thinking about how to deal with the problems of separation, including wondering who they were. Whole civilizations, cultures and logics (some very powerful) emerged from this problematic. However, as BK noted in his recent interview, there are many logical systems including "intuitive logic."

[Lou Gold]

Scott,

It is not that pre-moderns weren't aware that they were thinking, but they didn't focus on that fact, other than to note it was what God implanted in humans that distinguishes us from non-human animals. Indeed, the word 'consciousness' only came to be used as we use it in the modern period (previously it was used to mean 'conscience"). Its evolutionary significance is that it increases our individuality. 

Indigenous peoples do not say that plants and animals are not conscious. Indeed, they often report conversing with them.

Yes, "consciousness" previously meant "conscience" which was more appropriate to their problematic of maintaining right balance with their niche. 

Yes, the consciousness of separation unleashed individualism, which includes a new set of challenges both positive and negative and the possibility of getting more destructive and out-of-balance with the Earth ecosystem than was ever possible prior to this significant evolutionary event. Thus, we are where we are.