Wasn't there a time when the Mods removed this sort of thread on sight?

Or did I dream it

Is navel gazing frowned upon now. Whatever next!

Dasein is more radically in the world than any notion of a conscious subjectivity perceiving objects can convey.

Interesting, I hadn’t realised that philosophy had gone this far. Has a vocabulary been developed, for this subject?

Yes and we know how difficult it is to prove something.

Is it possible to identify a process? Rather than identify, it is more accurate to compare. Compare, but not with a thing, but with a process.

Well we have a narrative of process, rather like our interpretation of ourselves, it is an interpretation. It can be refined through experience and trial and error during our involvement in processes. It can be analysed intellectually, but again this is an abstraction a narrative.

There are schools of practice endeavouring to develop wisdom and mastery of these processes and their interpretation. Shiva Nataraja, symbolises this mastery, an expression of self mastery. The actualisation of divinity, or the whole of creation in a being who can say, I am that I am.

[quote
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nataraja

Asking about "how I being?" we must have something as an example, an image, a template. In this way, one of the key signs of being (which I will propose later) is realized - involvement. That is, something can be itself only on the condition that there is something else or different, from which I deduce that any existence is impossible in a single instance, but is something exclusively in relation to another (Being together).

Agreed.

But on the other hand, when we both look at this "red postbox", how do we know our subjective experiences of the colour "red" are the same?

We are clones from a common ancestor (small group of pre-mammalian predecessors)*. One continuous living lineage. It would be surprising if we saw different things, when looking at the same object.

*I know that there is genetic and sexual variation, but this doesn’t alter our cloned lineage much.

You’re flirting with solipsism a bit there. I’ve no problem with a bit of that, but it might not be of much use here.

The truth may be staring us in the face, but we may well see different truths.

We largely speak a common truth. To claim solipsism with regard to other people is quite extreme.

As I could never run a 4 minute mile because I am limited by the physicality of my body, all brains are limited by their physicality. Brains are physical things.

Yes I agree with you. I was making a point about our ability to understand the truth about existence. That the idea that the answers are complicated, or inconceivable, because if they were simple we would have worked it out by now, are misplaced. That the reason we haven’t worked it out might be for another reason. We are blinkered, or blind to it.

For Heidegger, Dasein’s Being is its existence, but existence understood as the transcendence of a self, an exiting from itself in being ahead of itself in already being in the world. The ‘I am’ , the self, does not pre-exist its relation to the world, but only exists in coming back to itself from the world. The direction of this ‘act’, occurrence, happening, is from future to present, from world to self, rather than the other way around. In the happening of Being, what is the case is secondary to how it is the case, which is in turn secondary to why it is the case. The happening of Being always begins again and again from this wonder.

Interesting, this reminds me of the triadic use of ‘I am’ in Theosophy, which can be tabulated this way.

I am————Personality———— Matter——————-Individuality
I am that——-Soul———————Consciousness——Initiation
I am that I am—Monad—————Spirit———————Identification

To me this suggests that the human being ‘I am’ identifies themself as a being in the world, ‘I am that’. This informs the personality which reflects on what it is (It is that which it is). Which results in when that personality is acting in the world, it acts as a thing (that thing it realises it is)*. But this personality is its own interpretation of itself, so is never actually being itself. It is always its own idea of what itself is. It is always acting out (as if on stage), what it thinks it is, or would be. This means that what is experienced as the self is all the baggage from the past, being projected into the future. A future which is anticipated to be a continuation of what happened in the past.

This then through initiation (trial and error) (eventually) identifies with what it means to be this conscious thing and realises the soul. ‘I am that I am’**.This identifies the personality as an individualised thing that is acting out (as on stage) their own identity in the world.

Then at a later stage, the old sage, identifies the monad and imbues the personality with an identification of divinity, or the world and creation as a whole and that it is the embodiment of this whole in the world. And actualises ‘I am that I am’ and sits under the Bodhi tree.


* this also entails self doubt, confidence, or the lack of etc.

**origin of ‘I am that I am’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_that_I_Am

To me it seems likely that improved and more widespread knowledge of our natures is the best hope humanity has for avoiding the bleakness that the denial of our natures is leading towards.

The only hope that humanity has is the transfiguration of our natures, otherwise we are doomed to become extinct due to the overstretch of resources and resultant conflict.* The fossil record has numerous examples, why would we be any different.

Cause; the self obsessed over use of resources.
Effect; extinction, or collapsed civilisation struggling to survive in a polluted world.

* I remember when I learnt of the plight of the mutinous crew of the Bounty. When they became shipwrecked on Pitcairn island. Rather than cooperate and survive, they killed each other.

Then we have bleak future ahead of us then.

We are confronted by aliens all the time: alien cultures, politics, ethics and philosophy. We have enormous difficulty in understanding these aliens, and they are right in our midst. They are our neighbors. Thomas Kuhn said that new scientific paradigms become accepted not because everyone is made to understand the new science, but because the old generation dies off.

Yes, we are cumbersome and slow to learn new tricks. But this trick might not be so difficult. I think part of our problem is we have convinced ourselves that it is complicated. Simply because we have not worked it out yet. But this may be a mistake, the trick might be quite simple, but we are blind to it. Have we considered that we are blind, cannot see the obvious?

You see, philosophers and other thinkers have probably thought of the answer amongst all the wrong and equally plausible answers. But we just don’t know if they have, or which one it is. It might well be one of the less plausible answers, or just something so obvious we just can’t see it. I don’t think it is sensible to assume that it is complicated, inconceivable, or profound. We might just be stupid, or blind.

How fortunate.
If only we could all behave sensibly, we could throw off all this physical stuff we are wearing like an old coat and hang out in peace and harmony. I think there’s a word for this.

An alien may as be different to us as we are to a cat.

Would a cat understand if we explained Sartre's theory of existentialism to it?

Would we understand if an alien explained what they know to us?

But in the example I gave, I was not addressing the likelihood, or possibility that an alien would come along who could tell us. I am assuming that. But rather, if such an alien were to arrive and tell us, we would likely have no difficulty in understanding it.
The secrets of existence may be very simple, like a biology lesson. We are just in the unfortunate position of being blind to this truth.
There may be sufficient information, or clues in the world we find ourselves in to work it out. That it just requires some clever, or intuitive thinking to work it out.

Or rather a change in orientation, ‘metanoia’, in us.

While the basic fact of the matter is that Being is an act, not a thing. (Something that is hardly news to Buddhists.)

Or to me neither.

That change you’re referring to is ‘metanoia’, a transformation of perspective.

Thanks, a useful word.

Husserlian Phenomenology is not at all concerned with material existence as it is focused on the experience of consciousness. It is not merely sayign everything is Mental it just does not care about material measurements -- the aim being to figure out an approach that can better ground science in subjectivity.

I don’t know if this has any bearing on any of this, but it plays a role in my thinking.
The idea that each being is a pure consciousness (or spirit) and the world they are born into gives enough structure around them to articulate being and experience. Another way of seeing this is that each human is a consciousness, a pure being. But if this structure weren’t there no one would be able to determine who was who and where one person ended and another began. Also we would all know each others thoughts all the time. The whole world would just be a chaotic mess.

So the constraining structures in our world play a major role in defining who we are when we are in this world. But also they may play a role in educating us to prepare for a world where these structures are reduced and we need to be able to maintain our defining qualities without them. To anchor these features in spirit.

The reason I mention this is that in mysticism there is the idea that there are experiences in which the mind, or normal mental processing involved in the experience, is superseded by the body, or something approximating the soul. Indeed there are whole areas of practice seeking to do this.”
— Punshhh
There certainly are. What's more there are many reports of such events taking place. But are they veridical? By which I mean, not merely are they in fact accurate reports? Are they, perhaps retrospective, even filtered through the expectations of those practicing the practice? Many times, even if you take the reports at face value, they don't look as if they are necessarily veridical, but have quite different aims.

Yes and that is a big problem within mysticism in the current world. It is taught in different ways in many different places. There is no common accepted terminology, or practice. But a philosophical analysis is different from practice and with the caveat that it may be little more than anecdotal, it can be considered and discussed.
There are some things that can be found to be in common in all schools and a can form the basis for further study. For example, to develop means of stilling, or escaping the mind, the world of thinking about things. And to instead acquaint one with one’s body and with other plants and animals via communion and interaction, screening out, or independent of the thinking mind.
There are many other commonalities to be found.

I really like your examples. I shall add them to my collection of stereotype or generalization busters. But extending that model to people, IMO, doesn't help much. I can take on board that people are not just fixed objects, like rocks, but are also a collection of processes, in constant change. So are many of the things that we see. But the phenomenon of a standing wave is very different from the brain waves that you may be thinking of. For one thing, they don't create the same kind of illusions.

Yes, the analogies do become a bit strained when you throw in people. But perhaps if we see the human body as a vehicle that we ride and see out of through the senses. I would include the mind with body ( the computation that goes on in the mind) and reduce the person to an onlooker, soul, or spirit.

Perhaps another analogy is appropriate. That of fire, a world of fires. We have the fire of the strong atomic force, the fire of the weak atomic force. The fire of electricity, the fire of spirit. All these fires interact in complex ways and can accommodate standing waves in an instant. That the fire of spirit equates to consciousness and beings are standing waves in that fire. Being a fire it can readily interact with the other fires, while remaining distinct. Perhaps the fire of electricity is analogous to the activity found in the brain. Electricity can take on many forms and structures with the right structures to work in.

At this moment in time I only know the reality that I exist within at this moment in time. I cannot know anything outside this reality because I cannot know what I don't know.

Yes, I know this and I agree. This is the starting point from which we can begin an enquiry. But unless we dare to go beyond this, then we are stuck, while wearing a pair of blinkers.

I realised this a long time ago and a looked for ways to find out something more. Others have done too and can tell us about it and we can seek a common thread. One in which our conditioned biases etc are screened out.
Also I consider that we would be able to (have the capacity to) know extra knowledge of it were imparted to us. That for example, if an alien were to arrive and tell us how things are, to give us the full explanation of existence in a manual. That we would understand it easily and would find that it tally’s in some way with a natural law, that we have worked out about our bit of experience. Or it might not be an alien telling us, it might be ourselves, animals, or plants, or even gods.

Then how do dead people have knowledge of physical events suring NDEs when their brain is shut off?

I don’t know. There are perhaps two likely reasons for this. The brain is still active for a while, the soul remains somehow with the body.

The brain seems superfluous, like why do we need a brain to cognize and emote about God when we would be expected to have some kind of relationship with God in the afterlife.

Because the brain anchors our consciousness in this physical world. If this weren’t happening our consciousness would be somewhere else entirely and even if it were somehow here, but disembodied. It would have no awareness of the physical stuff that the brain enables us to access.

The world is not a picture, ok. But how then to know it? What do you think about this?

Yes, I know what you are asking.
What I was implying in my post about looking at the railings from the vehicle. Is that we see a picture in the standing wave, the strobe effect. It looks static to us, but in reality it is not, it is moving. But what it is that is moving isn’t what we see, what is moving is a natural element of nature, like water, air, fire, or light. The picture we see is emergent in this and we play a part in seeing it and producing what we see.

By analogy, when a person looks at a rainbow. The position of the rainbow is dependent on their position, the position of the rain and the position of the sun. The position of the rainbow is directly influenced by the position of the viewer. And if there isn’t a viewer, there isn’t a rainbow.

The standing wave is like this, it is only seen and known by an observer and what is seen is determined by the nature of the observer.

Going one stage further, the person viewing the picture is also a standing wave, so something in the movement of the observer and the movement of what they are seeing provides enough stability, is still enough for the experience to seem to be substantial and static in some ways.

So to answer your question, but how then to know it?
To develop wisdom, an appropriate philosophy, to develop ways to connect with nature, to learn from nature.

In fact, no one can know if there is reality itself of which one's own reality is just a part.

It is not as clear cut as that. Some people know a little more than that and can infer a little more again, some can intuit this. Also some can seek guidance, some can develop wisdom, some can learn to interpret ancient teachings and mythologies and gain insight. Others will be taught.

to think of an object not as a completed entity, but as a process.

I agree, the way I see it is like we are fellow travellers, continually on a journey. What we see are things in motion. If the motion were to stop, there would be nothing there. The things are in the motion itself.

We are in vehicles travelling at speed, if you stare at the railings going past, you see a standing wave, a strobe effect, as though the railings are standing still alongside you.

If I see the colour red, is it possible for me to directly see the cause of my seeing the colour red.

If I don't know something, is it possible for me to decide to search for it.

If there is another reality outside my own reality, can I ever discover it.

I exist within my own reality, whatever that reality is. It is logically impossible to discover what exists outside my own reality using knowledge that is part of my own reality.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

I am indeed thinking about standard or normal use. It's use in the context of divine revelations may be different,

What I was thinking of is that there is the ability (in us) for us to witness something inconceivable to us, which we are entirely unable to comprehend. It may be in our unconscious, or the body, that records an imprint of what was witnessed, while our mind, alters it to something more manageable.
In this passage from Ezekiel, this is going on I think.

Ezekiel 10; Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. 11 Such were their faces. They each had two wings spreading out upward, each wing touching that of the creature on either side; and each had two other wings covering its body. 12 Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went. 13 The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. 14 The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning.

15 As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. 16 This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like topaz, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. 17 As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not change direction as the creatures went. 18 Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.

There is also the issue of presence (communion) and grace (a kind of hosting by an angelic being).

The reason I mention this is that in mysticism there is the idea that there are experiences in which the mind, or normal mental processing involved in the experience, is superseded by the body, or something approximating the soul. Indeed there are whole areas of practice seeking to do this.

Another example is the lyre bird in Australia, which mimics sounds so perfectly, it’s like hearing the original sound played back on a tape recorder. There must be something superseeding mental activity involved.

coherent

Reminds me of that word, “proof”.

Noodling around on the Internet, I happened upon a book by one Robert Ornstein, who's earlier book on the evolutionary roots of consciousness I bought in the 1990's. (He died in 2018). On Amazon, I find his last book (published posthumously) is called God 4.0:

This passage chimes with me, I have found that there are thresholds or veils in the mind, which blind us to what, what possibilities, are beyond. That it requires a creative means of circumventing, or dissolving these barriers to progress to a broader perspective and recognition of other architecture and possibilities.
I can illustrate this by a description of formal philosophy. It has a rigorous and refined structure which has been developed over a long period. Into which the aspirant is introduced, trained, tested. Taught how to use the architecture, to develop their own architecture, do a PHD. This leaves the aspirant who masters this knowledge a master of critical and analytical thought. But it also results in them finding that in ordinary life these ideas go over the head of their friends and family and in a way they are isolated and have to find other masters of the same art to converse with about these matters.

Now there is another formal architecture of mind out there running parallel to this using a different system. But with different bases, presuppositions, techniques. Which is based more around lifestyle, self realisation, and deconstruction of conditioning. Followed by a rebuilding of mind and being assembled around a spiritual, mystical, or religious architecture. Rigorously developed over millennia, which similarly leaves the student a master of this approach to life and similarly isolated amongst their friends and family.

I would suggest that this is the root of all this sparring and it is incumbent on us to bridge this divide in some way. To circumvent this veil so that we can converse in a more meaningful way.

Thanks, I largely agree with that. Although soul has a lot of baggage and definitions, roles played vary a lot. We are grappling with something intangible, but which we know intimately, but may not know what we know, or that we know it.

I suppose what I was getting at in my question is that we, humans, are basically the same as the other examples in your illustration, but with a computer bolted on. A chimp might have an early IBM computer bolted on. These additions vastly increase processing power, but what do they add apart from that?
Very little I would suggest in terms of their sense of presence, being, consciousness. It roughly boils down to the ability to think, and self reflect, with an enhanced sense of sentience. Otherwise we are pretty much the same. In some ways, perhaps it amounts to a regression. Certainly when it comes to social and ecosystem behaviour, no other animal is so stupid.

I’m not accusing you of this, but we should remain guarded against belittling the experience of other animals and indeed plants. Or placing ourselves on a pedestal.

In my practice I revere the presence and wisdom in the plants and animals around me.

Some people are unaware of physicalism for the same reason fish are unaware of water.

Does a fish know what it’s like to be wet?

Animals and plants are pretty much identical to humans when it comes to the cellular structure. So how come their soul is markedly different to that of humans?

Certainly. How I define non-physical is, 'That which is not comprised of something physical.' For me there is a strange notion in science that has not been answered yet. It very well could be that this is an opportunity for something non-physical, but then again it can also be a placeholder until we figure out more.

For me it is 'attraction'. And I don't mean the love kind. Weak force, strong force, gravity...there is something so counter to the idea of what is physical in this. Let me explain.

As far as I can see, you are talking about how gravity works. Well Einstein gave an explanation, that in the fabric of spacetime there is an effect like a gradient between masses drawing them together. Yes there may be something immaterial about that, but the theory doesn’t suggest it.

Another is an uncaused reality, and this one I'm much more certain on. This is mostly attributed to a god, but I mean the reality that the universe ultimately, must be uncaused.

I understand your thought process here, but I fall in behind Bob Ross and Timothy on that discussion. Although personally I would say how we and the universe came into existence is a deep mystery and it’s pointless trying to work it out until someone (who knows) comes along to tell us how it works.

And focus on the above well-known argument is that if we assume a different kind of something then we are met with a problem of not being able to understand Causation as we have one unknown entity interacting with another without knowing anything about its basic workings.

Not necessarily, as I suggested, experiential worlds are and can only be this way. The different kind of something, (if it’s there) uses the experiential world as a vehicle. Utilises the structure for some reason.

To jump into highly speculative territory the mental stuff could be atemporal and therefore to talk of 'causation' would make little to no sense.

The other stuff could be atemporal* and as you say talk of causation (as we see it) would make little sense. Unless we posit a demiurge training baby demiurges through the experiential worlds. As I suggested in my first post.

* I had a lucid dream in which I experienced time atemporally. Laid out like a series of rooms viewed from above, the past on the left and the future on the right.

Consciousness emerges out of a subtle interplay of electrical states and processes within the cells of the body. This life then animates the body (a colony of cells). Resulting in sentient conscious beings.

The dynamical structures at issue, in the case of living organisms, are autopoietic in the sense articulated by Maturana and Varela. The whole is structured in such a way as to ensure the production of the parts, and the parts (e.g. the organs, or cellular organelles) are structured in such a way as to sustain the organization of the whole.

Yes, we are a colony of cells which readily (it seems) organise into complex organisms and organisms with rational minds. Minds in which reason can free the being from the mythological interpretation of the world. To emerge from the Dreamtime into a world of insight in the clear light of day. There does seem to be a teleology going on there.
But what is the next stage, are we supposed to launch off into space, colonise other planets and form the intergalactic federation? Are we supposed to stay here on earth and start manipulating material into some sort of nirvana? Or are we supposed to focus on sustainability and nurture the biosphere which kindly brought us into being?
There is a steep trajectory here and unless we answer these questions sharpish, we will more likely fall back into another fallen species in a long line failed experiments*.

*it may already be too late.

That is, if we assume that physicalism is actually wrong (I know you are familiar with IF questions) and there is something else going on, then the Causal relation between Mental and Mental Acts compared to Physical to Physical may very well be quite different. If so then obviously there is a problem when then framing a Physical to Mental or Mental to Physical causal stream.

I think there is something else going on, but that the causal relationships in our experiential world are the way they are because that is how experiential worlds work. That the other thing going on works with that as a vehicle, or structure.
Although, another option might be that our experiential world is an artificial construct. Rather like a play, in which the causal relationships are determined by the narrative chosen by the playwright. Take A Mid Summer Nights Dream for example. Where the world is reinterpreted as a world of fairies and fairylore explains why and how things happen the way they do.

But if there is nothing fixed, how do we know that we are travelling? Or rather, how do we tell the difference between our travelling and the rest of the world travelling?

We don’t, normally, we just get on with our lives. I’m just identifying that all is in motion. Although I think we talk about things happening, in motion, perhaps more than we realise.

To be perceived is to stand out as a gestalt. To stand out as a gestalt is to be identified, although not necessarily in a linguistically self-reflective sense, since non-linguistically enabled animals are obviously capable of identifying the things that matter to them in their environments.

Yes in the way animals perceive, is what I was getting at. This is also present in a human, because we are also an animal. There are circumstances in every day life in which this kind of perception is exercised.

But when I say witnessed, to bear witness. I am going deeper, into our psyche. What we witness, even if not perceived, is recorded as the imprint of the experience of witnessing something. This imprint can be recovered later as part of memory. For example, one might glimpse a weird painting, a Salvador Dali for example. With no idea who the artist is and the nature of his work. But later on, while learning about the artist remember what was witnessed and recognise the same painting when viewing a selection of his work. It had left an imprint (or an emotion, a reaction) even if seen for just for a fleeting moment.

For me it is 'attraction'. And I don't mean the love kind. Weak force, strong force, gravity...there is something so counter to the idea of what is physical in this. Let me explain.

Another is an uncaused reality, and this one I'm much more certain on. This is mostly attributed to a god, but I mean the reality that the universe ultimately, must be uncaused.

Thanks, I’ll give it some thought and get back to you.

A little ironic considering I've been asking for a clear definition of non-physical and an example of its existence that does not entail the physical. I'm not arguing to just argue, I'm discussing with you and will happily agree if what is being said is clear and logical.

Apologies, that’s just how you came across to me. I did say that a “proof” (which is what you were asking for) was not going to be possible, though.

For Deleuze it is in the nature of differences that they always produce themselves within and as assemblages, collectives. The relative stability of these multiplicities does not oppose itself to change but evinces continual change within itself that remakes the whole in such a way that the whole remains consistent without ever being self-identical.

I work with the notion of anchors (crosses), a series of which the being transcends throughout their development. From primitive life forms to the transfigured being. Each cross anchoring the being within an arena of experience.

We “identify” based on the criteria (even habitual, unaware) of a specific shared practice (the kind of object), which is different than vision, the biological mechanism. Identification also having to do with which aspect, what you are looking at (on the object) as evidence, and the other criteria for identification (perhaps particular to this kind/type of object), not to mention how “seeing/perceiving” itself works (not immediately, wholey), instead involving focus (where we are looking), that we are usually telling someone else what we see, etc.

Yes you are right, I should have qualified my statement to the effect that I was considering pure being. Being unhindered by conditioning and social practice. I come to this discussion from the mystical perspective, in which my time is concerned with witness by (pure) being. Rather than language associated with experience. In the example I gave the person witnessing the inconceivable is taken out of themselves, thus leaving the conditioning behind.

Now I am thinking of how beings are witnessing in their daily lives and I think it is more like how you say.

object? “To be perceived, something merely needs to be witnessed.”

I think there is some ambiguity around the word perceived. (Which I realised after posting) I was thinking of it meaning something is noticed, but not identified. Whereas for Ludwig, it might have meant to identify what was seen.

This is one issue I spend a lot of time on in my practice. But not necessarily in a format amenable to philosophical analysis.

I mentioned in an earlier post there are a few things that might be non-physical, they've just never come up.

Care to elaborate?