what does it mean that the world is mental

[Madhava Krishna]

Due to the very perplexity of day to day life I am unable to look at all conversations and answers. So I have these very fundamental issues about what is the idealistic worldview, which I may have overlooked. And to me all of them do not tie up together it seems.

1. According to BK there is an objective world but it is a mental world. Now I request what does this *actually* mean?

a) The objective world is grounded in our perceptions and therefore is mental

b) All experiences of the world is mental and hence it is a mental world

c) The world is nothing but a sample from an infinite possibility of mental experiences that plays out in the mirror called the mind which consciousness sees.

d) That the act of perception through the five forms of perception (seeing, hearing etc) is a conscious activity and is a conscious process and hence the world is a process in consciousness

However none of the above definitively means that the world is composed of so as to speak elements of the mind. Or in what way from the above can one come to the conclusion that matter is subservient to the mind or matter is grounded in the mind.

2. Also I do not think BK says there is no objective world from whatever I have listened

As always I am more than grateful for replies and insights. 

[Dana Lomas]

What M@L experiences in spatiotemporal dissociation of its alter-mode creaturehood is its immanent ideation made imaginal.

[Ben Iscatus]

The world out there is the contents of the mind of Mind-at-Large (MAL), i.e. MAL's dream or thoughts or feelings. We are partitioned off (dissociated from) MAL's mind (though ultimately part of it). Our senses are the ways our dissociated minds form partial representations of MAL's mind. These representations we call the physical universe. 

[George Merc.]

You seem to be trying to understand Idealism from a materialistic frame of reference. 
Which I don't think is possible until one deconstructs Materialism itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eehz5YKnBf4

On Friday, January 8, 2021 at 12:25:30 AM UTC-5 mkrish...@googlemail.com wrote:

[T S]

The Ontological Primative is pure timeless awareness and it excitations

If pure timeless awareness were to be perceived, it would present as its own excitations (as Noumenon)

If there was something it was LIKE TO BE all excitations, one could describe that as being pure timeless awareness.

In this sense, pure timeless awareness does not directly know its own excitations (for it is ONLY WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE them)

However with dissociation, we could say in some sense that it does know itself (to the extent that its dissociative experience is born of itself and therefore is MADE OF its own excitations)

The dissociative alter is subject/object experience (the phenomenon/representation of the noumenon).

Subject/object experience is WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE a localised portion of pure timeless awareness's excitations, now appearing in and as spacetime.

The rest of the noumenon (including the alter and other alters 'boundary') appears as 'matter' and energy (the animate and inanimate universe).

[Lou Gold]

What M@L experiences in spatiotemporal dissociation of its alter-mode creaturehood is its immanent ideation made imaginal.

i...i...i

[Madhava Krishna]

Ok. But can this be presented wherein the M@L becomes a logical inference than a presupposition?

[Brad Walker]

IMO objective reality is a simulation precomputed by a Creator deity; all of cosmic history is already written, predetermined.  We're the first person perspective (like an FPS game) of the transcendental subject experiencing the universe from all perspectives. Time is illusory. I find this more concrete, elegant, and conclusive than other idealism variants, although some find it boring.

[Scott Roberts]

On Friday, January 8, 2021 at 12:06:01 PM UTC-10 mkrish...@googlemail.com wrote:

Ok. But can this be presented wherein the M@L becomes a logical inference than a presupposition?

Idealist assumption: There is only conscious activity (CA). (Otherwise one runs smack into to the hard problem of consciousness or the hard problem of interaction.)

Assumption: There is more CA than my own (rejection of solipsism).

Observation: What I perceive through my senses is for the most part in agreement with what other humans tell me they perceive.

Observation: The CA of human and other biological entities cannot change what is perceived just by willing it to be different.

Conclusion: There are other forces at work than the CA of biological entities.

Conclusion: Given the Idealist assumption, these forces must be the CA of one or more non-biological entities, which we refer to as M@L.

 

[David Sundaram]

Hi-Ho MK -

Ok. But can this be presented wherein the M@L becomes a logical inference than a presupposition?

'IT' can be re'presented' in any number of ways. What follows is my way of thinking and talking about IT. 😎

Any scheme of Logic (think of 'Mathematics') is an invent ed construction. Operationally speaking, in terms of the 'direction' of its use in relation to ''apparent' 'facts', there's 'inductive' logic and 'deductive' logic. See https://www.livescience.com/21569-deduction-vs-induction.html

As 'seen' from the point of view of deductions made therefrom, M@L may be 'thought' to be presupposed.

In my 'view' - as I said there are any number of 'em 😀 - one's ex-peer-ence, hence one's 'sense-ation' of 'the world' as well, doesn't just involve/include/derive from the 'thoughts' 'in' one's 'mind', it involves/includes/derives from the 'e-motions' (moods and motives) 'in' one's 'heart' (or 'spirit').

Here's how I expressed this 'abstraction' (arrived at via inductive logic) in my treatise:

"Every aspect of Life (i.e. of Being-n-Doing) is an emanation of Life’s omnipresent Essence (d/b/a Source) that, by virtue of Its Power, is endowed with (1)  the capacity to be conscious to some degree, which consciousness, or presence of ‘mind ’, enables ‘it’ to ex·peer·ience whatever vibrations (occurrences, data-packets, etc.) ‘it’ is therefore capable of perceiving (i.e. registering) and so possibly responding to, and (2)  the motive‧ation, or ‘spirit ’, to ex·press ‘itself ’ by way of causing, (generating, transmitting, propagating, etc.) whatever vibrations (occurrences, data-packets, etc.) ‘it’ is thereby motivated to ‘make’ in response thereto. In full zoom perspective, every nodal and multi-nodal feature of Life may be ‘seen’ to be a subsidiary soul, or gestalt of Life, which is facultatively imbued with ‘mind ’ and ‘spirit ’ by, and consequently both experiences and expresses ‘itself ’ in relationship to and with other nodes of Life ‘in’ the matrixial 'framework' of,  a (supra nodal!) Soul, which is the Mind-n-Spirit constellation (which many regard and relate to as having personal attributes, though all personal attributes, IMO, actually derive from IT) of That which is All That Is."

Some have presented this idea more simply by way of saying things like "We are all just 'thoughts' in the 'Mind' of 'God'."; others by way of saying things like "We are all 'creatures' ['creative' beings 'created' by and] living 'in' the 'heart' of 'God'." -- “In him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). and “ am the Seed of all being, … no creature moving or unmoving can live without Me.”  (The Bhagavad Gita,  Ch.10), for examples.

BTW, as indicated by the following statement from his book More than Allegory, BK also acknowledges the significant role 'e-motions' play in the scheme of Life, he just (I think, for the most part at least) prefers to regard them as being in some sense secondary to the mental/Mind aspect of M@L's Being-n-Doing.

" ‘Mind-at-large then became more and more enamored with such ever-richer imaginings and was pulled into them, which in turn amplified the emotional charge of the tangle and pulled mind-at-large even faster in. This runaway process led once again to surging internal pressure—this time in the tangle—which had to be released somewhere. When it eventually was, the release took the form of the first cluster. The cluster’s dense knot of cognitive associations was created from the emotional energy thus liberated. ‘You can visualize all this as follows,’ he continued. ‘The surging emotional pressure inside the tangle forced it to bulge out or herniate at its weakest spot, in the form of new, tightly packed cognitive associations. This small, compact but complex bulge, hernia or protrusion—the first cluster—sprouted in layers of cognition above the tangle. In the language of your science, the event corresponded to the flourishing of the first biological organism. Indeed, you can visualize clusters as the flowers of the tangle, growing right above it. In other words, living beings are like the flowers of the inanimate universe that underlies and gives rise to them.’ "

[Ashvin Pandurangi]

a) The objective world is grounded in our perceptions and therefore is mental 

In connection with what Scott laid out, the world being all "mental" is an axiom of idealism rather than a conclusion based on our perception of the world. It is the only axiom we need to start with for idealism, compared to several that are necessary for other ontologies. We need one more, as Scott points out, for objective idealism. 

You can think of these axioms as 'miracles' that every philosophical worldview must be granted to get off the ground. Objective idealism requires relatively less than other ontologies and can provide relatively more explanatory scope with each one it is granted. And, so far, it is has not run into complete dead ends like materialism, dualism and panpsychism. 

On Friday, January 8, 2021 at 12:25:30 AM UTC-5 mkrish...@googlemail.com wrote:

[Madhava Krishna]

Wow!! Thanks a lot to all. While I understand some straight up, others may require more time to digest. The bottomline seems that we are starting with an assumption/miracle that presupposes the existence of M@L or CA as the substratum of reality or all that is. Now while one may say modern science too relies on miracles such as the Big Bang but they are proved mathematically and ties up well with many observed phenomena. Or at-least that it corroborates with Hubble Lemaitre law?

I personally do not have a problem presupposing M@L or CA but to present it as an alternative ontology seems like a tough ask? While it may circumvent the hard problem of consciousness it could run into rough weather elsewhere? Nonetheless, it is my wish too that it sees the light of the day.

[Scott Roberts]

On Sunday, January 10, 2021 at 11:18:11 AM UTC-10 mkrish...@googlemail.com wrote:

Wow!! Thanks a lot to all. While I understand some straight up, others may require more time to digest. The bottomline seems that we are starting with an assumption/miracle that presupposes the existence of M@L or CA as the substratum of reality or all that is. 

No. Only "All is CA" is presupposed (and the rejection of solipsism). M@L is inferred, not presupposed.

I personally do not have a problem presupposing M@L or CA but to present it as an alternative ontology seems like a tough ask? While it may circumvent the hard problem of consciousness it could run into rough weather elsewhere? 

Yes, but the problems it runs into have imaginable solutions, which is not the case with physicalism or dualism. Inquiring into these imaginable solutions is a large part of what we do in this forum.

[Brad Walker]

Look into cosmic fine-tuning, an area where physicalism has jumped the shark with the infinite cosmological multiverse. Not only is the universe apparently fine-tuned for life, but also complex minds and sophisticated civilizations. Closer To Truth has a few episodes on fine-tuning--a random one: https://youtu.be/CjFtFQfHiCs

There are two avenues for idealism: the hard problem of consciousness, and cosmic fine-tuning. Evolutionary creationism is arguably idealistic. Also any physicalist that doesn't accept Many Worlds Interpretation is contradicting Sean Carroll's Black Mirror episode worldview.

[Ashvin Pandurangi]

"Now while one may say modern science too relies on miracles such as the Big Bang but they are proved mathematically and ties up well with many observed phenomena"

"Modern science" is not an ontology but rather one method of ascertaining Truth.  This method is not in tension with idealist ontology. In fact, I would say it is only idealist ontology which allows us to make sense of the method's experimental results in the 20th century.