Yes I agree, however this does not prevent my enquiry. I have mentioned, I think, that the living of experience is more than our conscious experience of it, our intellectual understanding of it. It is a complex process of immanence, which naturally is more subtle than our intellectual knowledge of it. For me the transcendent is here and now and does not require our intellect to know it.

Yes I know what you say about the way we are conditioned to view the physical world as given by science etc, and that the noumenal is some kind of shadowland. I relinquished such perspectives long ago and view the thing in itself rather like a marriage of some kind of malleable substrate(energy)(possibly dimensionless and unextended),( not meaning to sound to physicalist), with our nature which results in what we experience and a place were we find ourselves at birth.

So the noumenon could be a primordial soup (possibly unextended) of energy, a kind of mirror, a kind of thought experiment in the mind of someone in eternity. Or it could be like in the idea of the mirror, us, extruding our nature and experience as we go, being our own substrate.


Yes I like the description of a manifold of concepts. I use a system of thought like that, a kind of 3D library in my head, such that I can go to any shelf and access an idea I logged in the past. New ideas fly into the correct position on the shelves, within a grand schema, which I have creatively put together. An idea is grasped as it goes in, which might be the process described in your quote, that reduces the manifold to unity. A chime perhaps, it rings true.

Yes I understand what you are saying and I would largely agree. However I would add that where you say "just the logical projection of our in-common perception and conception of objects into the noumenal background". That our in-common perception and conception(and I would include the whole biosphere here), is accompanied by a bodily and an atmic component. By body I mean in the sense that a being, in essence, isn't simply a mind(in the broadest, or idealist sense), but incorporates a vehicle of presence, or being, which could loosely be described as a soul. Also that a being, in essence, also incorporates an atmic(atma) transcendent kernel, or spark of being, or life. I mention this because I regard such components as equally as necessary as the mind, in which we inhabit our experiences.

So one could imagine the scenario that a "soul" (the embryonic soul of the biosphere) incarnates, by projecting, or impressing its presence and nature onto a undiferentiated noumenal background. Such that the common experience of any being within that biosphere, is the same, of a world of persistent physical objects, which they inhabit as mortal beings.

Yes, but some would say "you are the noumenon, how could you be anything else?". This would suggest that to know the noumenon is to know yourself. To know yourself is to know the noumenon. I wonder if it would make any difference, if we were to understand the noumenon, to understand ourselves?

So it is a foil, or mirror of our evolutionarily inherited traits?

Do you know who you are?

Well I think we do know it because we are it, of it. Although we may not understand what it is we know.

Agreed.

Thanks, let's say there is will and representation going on. Is this in the sense in which this process results in our finding ourselves in the world we know? Or is it more in the sense that the process is in reconciling, or adjusting ourselves with our existence, or existence in this world?

Yes, it looks as though I am asking about Thing-in-itself. Is this what Schopenhauer was talking about in the work of his that you mentioned?

So did Schopenhauer use the classical definition of the noumenon? I understand he was critical of Kant's use of the word in saying it amounts to the thing in itself.

So "ideal object" is an object of thought, as opposed to an object of the senses. Yes I understand this, but it seems to be suggesting that the noumenon includes the contents of rational thought, hence rational thought might know the noumenon through reason?

Sensible objects have an intelligible part and an unintelligible part. The intelligible part can be known and understood by rational thought, so is in a sense expressing the ideal object? While the unintelligible part is inaccessible. I thought the noumenon was this inaccessible part, the thing in itself, this is the source of the confusion. Is it Kant who is caused this confusion do you think?

So I take 'the noumenon' to mean something like 'the ideal object'. The 'ideal object' would be grasped solely by the intellect and so would be grasped perfectly, in the way that an intelligible object is (such as a number), but an object of sense is only ever seen from a perspective, and not 'as it is in itself'.

I'm thinking more about the object of sense, although also the ideal object in the sense that it might take a form beyond its conception in the mind of a human.

Ah, so it's insight that makes one blind.

Perhaps it is thought that is the blinker.

Thanks for the link to Stove's Gem, I'll have a look.

It's a quandry for me and I see it as an issue which philosophy has a requirement to address.
Presumably unless one is an idealist (and idealists might also be in this group), there is something existing beyond sensory experience and the intellect, so why not seek what philosophy can tell us about it?

As this gets deeper it is more difficult for me to explain using philosophical terminology, as I don't routinely use that for such explanations, so you will have to bare with me in the use of unauthodox phrases, metaphor and creative analogy.

By inhabiting I am referring to our conscious entity, our thinking rationalising self. It is, due to abstraction and lack of understanding of its position in the world, separate or veiled from its actual presence in the world. So in mystical contemplation it is necessary to acknowledge that the rational mind is apart from its subject of contemplation. Indeed that it is blinkered, veiled and in a sense is the obstruction to a clear sight of the world. And the rationalising self, which is doing the contemplation, is by its abstract nature seperate from the phenomena of its existence and is only able to contemplate phenomena(hence an obstruction in the contemplation of the noumenon). Mystical practice as I see it is a repeating of this kind of contemplation of difference, abstraction and inhabitation, in order to realise a lack of the same, in the rational mind. So one develops a, by analogy, climbing frame of matrix for the rational mind to see beyond the conditioned mind we are given by our peers.

By bits and pieces, I was referring to the predicament that while we are the noumenon, we don't apprehend it as it is, only in part(bits) and incomplete subjectively(pieces). For example the noumenon does presumably contain in its nature dimension, or extension and we see and understand this through seeing and knowing it in the world. But this is only a part of its nature and we only ever see a part, a part determined by our evolutionary inheritance as beings. So in a sense our world of experience is a mirroring of our nature.

I would say though that I don't think we can conclude that the noumenon is differentiated, or that it is as we might like to imagine it. A contemplation of its nature is another issue as I see it.

Yes I know this is straying from the OP, I am thinking of starting a new thread to discuss these ideas.

I agree with you and John and Wayfarer because for me those things which are considered in some way external to the world, mind, consciousness and experience, are of the world, part of the world. I know that john says the noumenon is unknownable(at this point for us), but for me he is saying that it is unknowable in abstraction, as a subjective experience. But this does not mean that it is not known through the body as the world. So we both do and don't know the noumenon. Also Wayfarer says the world expresses the mind, so there isn't material absent mind. But this does not mean that there is no noumenon, or thing in itself in the world that we know through our bodies. We all agree and talk about the same thing from different perspectives.

All is in the world, we just don't know what the world is intellectually in abstract subjective terms, whilst we do know it and know there is nothing external to it through our bodies and living in the world.

Beyond the end of our nose?

Let me guess, it never reaches absolute zero, or in other words it takes an infinity of time to get there.

I was thinking that in these physical models time need not be short, if it's long then the matter can get on with its stuff regardless. If time just allowed matter some space(in time) matter would just get on with it anyway. Perhaps time is something which we as observers can't do without, but matter can.

I agree, but I think it is dependent on the direction in which the intuition is directed and that the results are correctly interpreted. This does require reaching an accommodation with yourself, along with a sufficient understanding of the psychology and character traits of yourself. So a kind of negotiation and understanding in which you can work with and on one's self.

Yes your analogy of playing a game chimes for me. I have found that this process of loosing one's self in the "game" is an interesting phenomena and something which I have isolated and used in my day to day voyage of discovery in life, or questing, so to speak.

I would like to introduce the idea of the veil, if I may. A veil in mysticism and spirituality is some natural barrier or threashold demarking domains. For example for my cat, my world of intellectual thought is veiled from her experience. This veil consists in our differing levels of mental capacity, communication etc. For us the nature of the immanent may be veiled from our intellect.

Yes we cannot think our way there (to the noumenon) in isolation. However it has occurred to me that there are at least two other routes, which if when crossed referenced and contemplated* through thought, enable one to go further.
Firstly the development of the realisation that one is acquainted with the noumenon by inhabiting the structures it forms, or generates. This can be viewed exoterically and esoterically. Exoterically one is constituted of bits and pieces of noumenon and through a form of communion equivalent perhaps to prayer or meditation, one knows it. Esoterically, one's being, mind, consciousness, experience and intellect are all expressions of the noumenon and can be known through the contemplation of the authorship of the noumenon, i.e. The equivalence of the fact that the style of an artist can be discerned in the character and technique of the brush strokes, which is like a signature of the artist. A signature which can be deciphered in any work they do, because it is their natural style.

Secondly through mysticism, which is a process in, or journey through, life in contemplation and practice of the principles of mysticism, which are found in the works of other Mystics, or discerned by one's self through contemplation.

Regarding intersubjective determinate knowledge of mysticism. It is communicated Esoterically in some literature, although it may be debatable whether this could be described as determinate. Also and I have practiced this myself, through direct verbal and body language communication with a fellow seaker, the verbal tradition. Also as I have said already I anticipate a determinate science of mysticism, but that it has not been written yet.

Regarding the transcendent and the immanent, in stating that they are the same, or perhaps facets of one coin, as you say. I include the idea that what is being addressed in this is something beyond our rational capacity and so making rational distinctions is in danger of identifying a dichotomy which isn't there. For me the transcendent/immanent is a multidimensional eternal presence within the self, which is accessible either through our common natural evolved faculties, although in a small measure. Or by a process of more direct access through the practice of some mystical or Yogic practice. Something which I would also say is limited by the evolutionary point of development of one's soul.


* I have developed a system of thought in the cross reference of different approaches which approximates by analogy the use of calculus in mathematics.

I have personally experienced the presence of the sacred, what I mean is that I have witnessed people in a state of overwhelming awe in the presence of what to them is sacred. In the presence of the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala(McLeod Ganj) during the Vesak festival. Although I have not experienced this awe myself. There is certainly a state of awe of the sacred, it was very real.

I can't see how solipsism is inconsistent and contradictory. Perhaps an absolute solipsism is, but that's not what solipsists are proposing as far as I can see. But rather a local solipsism, which is quite reasonable.

I spent years arguing this on the skeptics (Randi) forum(it was a lot of fun by the way). I would always fall back on the presence of consciousness(mind) in primitive animals, or the impossibility of demonstrating or proving consciousness in computers, robots, or mechanical mimicry etc.

One could view time as a product of extension, or physical change. A physical change which is going to happen anyway and does happen, but an unfortunate consequence of this, depending on your point of view, is the presence of time.

That's why I am claiming that Dennett and others of that school, are the direct descendants of behavioural psychologists like J B Watson and B F Skinner. They too deny the reality of mind and they too treat humans as being essentially automata or robots.

I find that this issue is confusing to people due to the conflation of thought and mind. Thought is a computation carried out by the brain, whereas mind is some intangible quality of being and consciousness. It appears that these eliminativists are making this conflation and by explaining thought as computation(including the subconscious thinking) which can be mimicked by computers and robots, they ignore the intangible nature of mind on the assumption that it is simply a product of a certain complexity of that same computation.

Yes, I would agree with that, although what I am agreeing with is a bit vague and my own position is not fully formed as yet. My first thought is that it is the polar opposite of the post modern immanence and the post modernists might well just find it laughable.

In summary my current position is along the lines of what Kant said about the noumenon, as unknowable and therefore likewise it's role in our existence and the extent or not of our freedoms. But I would not agree that it is unknowable in principle, only that we can conclude that it is unknowable from the human condition or position at this time. Also I am of the opinion that it can be known through "transcendent insight", or it can be revealed through revelation and thus known by a simpleton, or uneducated person equally as to an educated person.

I am also of the opinion that the transcendent is the immanent and that to make the distinction is a category error, due to the human propensity to externalise and hence externalise the transcendent.

That may be so(and I have little to disagree with), but the intension might have been to tell him the meaning at that point, we can't say that it wasn't. Also there may be people alive who know the meaning, but either don't know that they do, can't be recognised as knowing, or can't explain what they know, or that they know. If one claims to know, we cannot verify it, although that might not matter to him(so why claim it?). Either way, the meaning might be knowable and known.

Such a personality is not free insofar as they act out emotional compulsions. So that is another sense in which the discussion of what might constitute freedom is meaningful - and one near to the idea of freedom in the tradition of philosophy. (That said, there is nothing preventing a discussion of that subject from the perspective of post-modern philosophy.)

Yes and from my perspective there are numerous freedoms available to the being and that the evolution of the soul is a revealing in stages of these freedoms.

So we have;
1, the freedom of movement, a body.
2, the freedom of individuation, a self.
3, the freedom of the self aware, a creative agency.
4, the freedom of imagination, access to a transcendent facet in agency.
5, the freedom from incarnation, self actualisation of the soul.
6, the freedom of the transcendent, nirvana, or the equivalent, such as heaven.
7, the freedom from the manifest, para nirvana, or free of all finite constraints.
8, the freedom from existence, something not even worth trying to understand.

These are just a few freedoms that come to mind.

I apologise for not grasping your position through your use of the word belief. Now I understand, I think.

So following the analogy of the stone, we are as the stone rolling, but perhaps with the choice to change our course, a little, by changing our shape(by analogy) at will. Presumably our ability to change shape has been programmed in to us by the nature of our constituents and processes of our formation. So we are not doing anything radical in any shape change we are capable of.

I can see how a determinist would point always to a prior process of formation of our constituents and that all notion of freedom is illusory. That there is some freedom in a subject due to the presence of an awareness of an individual self and a process of thinking allowing a choice through an awareness of alternative strategies and directions of travel. However that freedom is entirely within the conditioned constraints of a social narrative. Hence no radical freedom, only a little opportunity for constrained autonomy. But the narrative generates the impression within the subject of freedoms.

If we concede these constraints and allow our perceived freedoms to fall under this explanation. What other freedoms are you suggesting, or what is missed in this or these kind of explanation?

(Edit in bold)

Nice, I can see that circle and the sign wave rising up into a third dimension, in each dimension the diamond is expressed, but in greater and greater extended complexity. While it is still present in its completeness in each point in space and time.

Yes the mind is not a realm of illusion, rather that distortion happens on the physical plain. And yes by knowing oneself one realises knowing itself.

What does this tell us about our world though? Nothing. To say any of these things could be says nothing about what is. So yes, all the events of the world could be played out by philosophical zombies, but are they? Is it true? Or are we concious subjects?

My point here is not about if we are robots, but about the philosophical idea of Post modernism(I admit that I am not well read in PM, so this is just speculation), that it could apply equally to a notional world of unconscious robots, with no "freedom". Or there could be world identical to this world inhabited by philosophical zombies, without consciousness. In this world the Post modern philosophy would apply equally. This is because in this philosophy there is only material, energetic forces and computation. Sentient self consciousness as we experience it is an irrelevance in this view.

Yes I know what you mean about ignoring living people. Also I agree with most of what
PM appears to be saying about freedom, there is some freedom in the autonomous choices we as living people make every day. While most of the structure in our lived lives is conditioned through the social narrative, along with the physical bodies and environment we find ourselves to exist in. However I still think there is a valid point in what I was trying to say about Trump and Ghandi. I can illustrate this with an example in my own life. Something which is real and the results of it are real.

Throughout my youth and younger adulthood, I became negative about money, my father was very frugal and stopped my pocket money and would never buy me anything, even though he had lots of money. I also picked up on a stressful worry about money in him which made him the way he was. When I became an adult I became a parent without adequate planning at a young age and struggled with money, this also lead to some resentment and envy to people who had money. This became an acute fear and stress for me and in a sense I think I also became instrumental in making the situation worse. It became a pervasive stress and worry in my life leading to a kind of negative depression.

But then a change occurred. For (primarily) other reasons, my relationship broke down and I split from my partner and young children, it was an even greater financial struggle at the time, but due to my interest in philosophy, spirituality, self help etc. I took a radical course, which most people in my position would not have taken. I lived hand to mouth on the minimum money required to survive, I saved every penny and then a few months later I took a flight to India and travelled to the Himalayas. I was on a spiritual quest, but equally I was seeking a way out of my problems. I had an insight about money, that provided I could put a bit of food in my mouth every day and put a roof over my head somehow it really didn't matter. This realisation was far more involved than this, but essentially the same. Also due to a postal strike in India at the same time, some of my money which was being posted to me by my mother didn't arrive and I had to survive for a month on 50 Rupees. I was meditating 3 or 4 hours a day and eating a bowl of rice and dalh each day and it became obvious to me to distance myself from my conditioned life back home, including my entire psychology around money. I experienced a great feeling of freedom, all that conditioning had been lifted from me. I had numerous epiphany's and in a very real sense rebuilt my life following simple spiritual values.

I was cured and on my return back home all my problems had evaporated, I still had to earn money to pay the bills and child support, but it was all an easy task of sensible money management, even taking on some debt and working to pay it off. Money was an insignificant tool in living now and I exercised my freedom from it, to this day.

So my point is that through a seeking for some deeper meaning, farsighted principles and ideals. I found a freedom from my conditioned life and have gone on to repeat the process in numerous parts of my life and the lives of my friends, family and associates. I dismantled and creatively rebuilt myself by what amounted to transcendent inspiration, intuition.

There are other freedoms than simply having immediate choices in ones day to day life.

Again I think you are missing the point by suggesting that a spiritual person is seeking to escape the living in the world. For me spirituality is more a focus on my being and living in the world, thoughts about transcendent concepts, heaven, nirvana etc, are simply ideals considered in contemplation regarding universals and how they may intersect with this world etc. I am as I said before content here and now and don't need to go anywhere from here.

Regarding 4, the special or hidden meaning of my life or those of others is obviously something different from what is intended or conveyed by my life or theirs. It is therefore something which can be neither intended by us nor conveyed to us. So, why speculate what it might be, as it can never be known?

This is incorrect, it might be told to us. It might have been told to someone in the past who wrote it down.

Yes I know that there is precious little input into subjectification which could be claimed to be unique, or farsighted. This doesn't mean that it doesn't occur, or that folk who seek idealised systems of thought, or who develop intuition, aren't modelling, or able to tear down and rebuild, their own subject.

I accept that a transcendence is not required to understand and explain the narrative, I know this, but it doesn't mean that there isn't such a thing, or something unknown/undetected involved in our lives.

I was just listening to the news quiz (BBC radio4) and Trump was described as a St Bernard dog shaved and put in a suit. Chuckle chuckle.

In your reply to me, I know it is a subject who expresses, or acts out freedom. But this same subject has been generated, shaped moulded by social and cultural conditioning. The subject has been instructed, groomed in how to behave and where freedoms and a lack of freedoms are and can be accessed, or relinquished. This could all be carried out by a race of philosophical zombies or robots for example. In the example of Rosa Park, it is simply an example of a tipping point being reached in a point of heightened tension within the system. Also the fact that this event was amplified to a national and historally important event was due to it being chosen as a pawn in a larger sociology political process. Again, this could all be carried out by a group of robots.

Let's look at an example of a subject who has so much freedom he is one of the most free subjects in existence(on our planet), Donald Trump, he is free to do most anything he wants, or is inclined to do. What does he do, I don't know, but I expect that he simply indulges his animal desires, while feeling socially isolated, psychologically inadequate, childish, naive, etc etc. Is this freedom? he is confined within the constraints of his conditioned subject, perhaps his fight for the presidency is the only thing he has left as a possibility of braking free of his distorted circus of a life and experiencing for a brief moment some freedom.

Let's look at another example of a subject, Ghandi, someone who was content with his food bowl and the ability to weave his own loin cloth. He lived far more freedom than Trump does, by the freedoms expressed from his mind and enjoying a few genuine friendships and a humble constructive role within his society.

Ghandi exercised his intellect and sculpted, crafted his own mind and psychological life with freedom of imagination and creative intellectual vision. Such freedom emerges in the mind of a subject who is somehow transcendent of their social conditioning.

I have read the quotes of John's comments in your last post to him. It seems to me that it is the use of the word belief which is problematic. In one passage this belief is alluded to in the phrase "because we cannot think of ourselves as such" - read belief, in another "has no faith" -read lack of belief and in another belief as of "on the basis of our intuitions and lived experience".

Belief is an ambiguous and vague term, personally I have rid my language and thinking of belief, beliefs, I see no value in, requirement for, it.

This made it difficult to understand John's point initially, but now I see it as a use in which belief refers to something known, lived and experienced without question. As much a part of us as our daily bread. I read an ambiguity mixed in with this due to a transcendent spirit or soul being alluded to, in the notion of a "radical freedom". Something which is I think a nonsense to a physicalist or materialism based philosophy, hence Streetlight's cartoon.

For me personally, well I was planning to move to the south of France in a few years. That could become more complicated, or even a nonstarter now.

Otherwise the EU didn't effect me as far as I can tell. It's difficult to detect the subtle influences though, which have crept in over the last forty years.

I am critical of the Eu organisation, but I do enjoy and favour the freedoms it has given us, as a European citizen. If it could have been reformed from within, that would have been my preferred option, but I can't see how it can be, it is so disfunctional and dogmatic.

Woooooowhat! Sweet Jesus!