It can't make that claim, that there is no God.

Yes I thought it was a joke. If gods exists nothing would change, or be any different. Apo's metaphysics would be equally valid, the only difference that there could be is that it would be evident that it's explanatory power would be limited to our kind of world. So what's new?

I'm going to the Rothko and Pollock show at the royal Academy next week, I can't wait. It's good art not like the s--t that's usually on offer at the Turner prize show, I stopped going over twenty years ago, when I found myself standing in front a pile of expletive and wondering what was artistic about it.

Presumably you haven't experienced God as Colin has, or you wouldn't be bothering to write this.

I'm happy for you Colin, if you're still reading the thread, although that might not be a good idea. Or perhaps actually it affirms your new discovery. I've been there I know how good it feels.

The cats not stupid, in a way, perhaps mostly subconsciously, she does know what's going on, I've clocked that. More so, as multicellular organisms, we are in a complex symbiotic relationship..., which allows perhaps for a little breathing space for my mind to have all its pie in the sky intellectual life, or the cat to have a daydream about mice, or that when I go off in my car, Im going of to catch giant mice, grind them into buiscits and bring them home.

She might be wrong, it might all be nonsense and I do something weird instead of catching giant mice. But she hasn't been fooled and it doesn't harm her and my continuing symbiotic relationship. No harm done.

Perhaps we all of us on this site are hopelessly wrong, I don't see a problem. We are probably making some progress and at the end of the day, what purpose is being right meant to achieve? If we knew the actual truth of it all, we might all shoot ourselves in the head, or go on strike(go off message).

Not necessarily, perhaps if by God we mean a bearded sky daddy( or conceptions normally provided by religion) but otherwise, for more sophisticated concepts, I cant see how it would be. Your kind of metaphysics might well be on message.

My cat, if she knew some of what I do and how much she is dependent on and under my control. Might run away thinking that I might put a bell collar on her. Or that I was free to give her unlimited treats ,fresh fish and meat, rather than her cat biscuits, she might go on hunger strike. Unless she is privy to my rationale(purpose) for my behaviour, she might find it all unintelligible, pie in the sky. She might not realise that my purpose is actually to give her food and shelter, freedom friendship and a privelidged(relatively) lifestyle and wouldn't dream of doing any less.

Provided she were to continue as she is now(her behaviour), in her ignorance, once she was privy to my world, I would happily give her that capacity(if it were in my control). But I know that without considerable tutoring, if atall possible(due to her evolutionary inheritance), she wouldn't, she would probably become uncontrollable, derranged. So I wouldn't do it if it were possible to do so.

So it is fortunate that she is veiled to those realities at this stage in her(and her species's) development.

Just draw the parallel with humans.

Hierarchy theory, non-linear dynamics, statistical mechanics, etc, are all mathematical enterprises. But to use the elephant analogy, that's still talking at the level of trunks, tails and legs. It is not yet a maths of pan-semiosis, a maths that captures the essential generative seed in fully abstract or universalising fashion.

And maybe, like all theories of everything, we can never get there. It's a mirage, an impossible dream. I'm perfectly willing to listen to and respond to rational arguments in that direction. But then in my own lifetime all I've seen is a rollercoaster of scientific thought heading in this direction.

But say we do come up with the theory of everything, do feel the whole elephant, all we're doing is describing the world we find ourselves in. Fine, it's a good start, but we will not be in the position to answer the philosophical questions about our existence, the mechanisms of our existence, the extent to which what we can come up with, or understand (this theory of everything) is perceiving, or tabulating the basis of our existence. Not to mention any of the purposes of an intelligent creator involved in this circus, or any of the things or beings behind the veil of our predicament.

We are still as blind as my cat is to what I think and talk about. My cat might be highly intelligent, she seems so at times, she might know every inch of the house, the garden and local area. She might know of every mouse, vole and bird, their habits etc to the nth degree. But she is still oblivious to the intellectual world I live in and always will be. It is an utter impossibility for her to know this aspect of her world and the extent to which it is subtly controlling and manipulating her life and circumstances. She is securely veiled from participating in my intellectual world.

Perhaps we will at some point start to pay some heed to what may be behind our veils and start to ponder the bigger picture.

I think the noumenon is poorly defined. As I see it the noumenon is the only actually existing substance(in our world). I agree it can be divided into the two categories you mention.

By introducing the idea of substance, for me, I am introducing a deep mystery, about the means by which an actual substance comes to exist and how the immaterial and the material(physical) is emergent from it.

Yes, spirit works for me, I prefer atman because it fits into a comprehensive philosophy and practice in Hinduism and my mysticism is primarily based around this*, with an important influence from both Christianity and Buddhism. The trinity works well for me, I use father mother son. The principle of the father, the principle of the mother, the principle of the son and draw correspondences thus;

Father = spirit = Will = transcendent = creator = | = 1 = monistic
Mother = body = Presence = immanent = noumenon = O = 2 = dualistic
Son = mind = Action = subject = being = + = 3 = triadic

This trinity can be extended into everything, so for me everything has three grammatical genders, or principles or number(the first, the second, the third, principles).

I would point out in relation to my mention of the body in knowing of the noumenon, by body I mean soul(or its equivalent), for me the physical body is little more than a clothing or sheath for the soul. So for the mystic it is primarily through the medium of the soul that the noumenon is known. The spirit being a more transcendent presence and is more of a source for both soul and noumenon.

Yes I know what you mean about Schopenhauer, when I heard of his "will", it reminded me of the sexual urge of Freud. A kind of brute angst.


* I'm referring to yoga, for example the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

So the mechanical is reality modelled in terms of just material and efficient cause. In other words, formal and final cause have to be supplied by an external creator, a transcendent mind. Then the organic is immanent by contrast as all four causes, including formal and final, arise internally through self-organising development.

So is there a ghost in the machine after all?

Nice Parmenides quote. It illustrates nicely the objection from the perspective of spirit and the broader view.

*stutters into the mike, adjusts collar* could you, um, comment on that?

Get ready for the dance of the seven veils;)

It's worse than that, time like space is a result of extension. Pondering the products of extension doesn't tell us anything about the nature of the origin of the extension. Chattering about notions like infinity in relation to extension, or what is beyond this extension(our world) is pie in the sky.

I agree with your point, but I would point out that within experience there is often a component in which the material (body) of the self undergoes modification (experience), which is chemically or spiritually independent of the experience of the selfconscious subject. So the experience is extended beyond the selfconscious subject which is referred to in your point. For example, one might experience an epiphany in which the body of the subject is altered in a real way, so questioning the beliefs, or opinions of the subject would not recognise or confirm this alteration.

I say this because during a mystical experience aspects of the self which one is not aware of, but which are nethertheless a part of the living self, have the experience too, or are altered by the experience. Such aspects might be entirely unknown to humanity, including for example, the noumenon.

I may appear to be attempting to reduce the noumenon to a conceptual space, but this conceptual space is a tool of apprehension in a sense, used in contemplation to develop a living awareness of myself as a living being, in communion with the noumenon. You see it is through the development of communion(prayer) that one knows absent intellectualisation.

I do understand what you say about transcendence, but this is not what I am doing, as I have said, I am content here and now. This exercise in knowing is a practice, a lifestyle, a hobby, a pastime.

The way I think of it is this: "our particular kind of processing system" is phemomemal--a conceptualization, a mental construct--based on certain phenomena which are grounded in the noumenon/ And the noumenon also is a mental construct, one inferred from phenomenal experience as a realist hypothesis to explain the source or ground of phenomenal experience.

Well yes this can work as a rationalisation, but to relegate the noumenon to a "mental construct" is to ignore its possible existence external to the human mind. Or are you simply adding a further layer of phenomena between us and the noumenon and calling it a ground?

Also you may be correct in saying that we can't rationalise the noumenon, but this does not mean that it cannot be explorered and known by other means.

Well, I think we cannot say much if anything meaningful about what the noumenon "is" in any sense other than that it is what we interact with via our particular evolved capabilities, and this interaction produces our particular creature experiences, by which we megotiate our way in the world.

Yes, via the philosophical rational route perhaps, but there are other ways to know the noumenon, to reconcile ourselves with our predicament and look to ourselves.

Ok, thanks. I am not likely to read Schopenhauer any time soon as my lifestyle is to busy to do much reading at the moment. It does sound like a nod in the direction of the spiritual, which is also my direction.

You raise some interesting points, firstly, to account for the objectification of an atemporal monistic will. I see this as an issue from every perspective(apart from those that ignore it), as I see it the issue is in our capacity, or conceptual language to account for it sufficiently. In reality I suspect that we are ill equipped to grasp such areas of the existent, that it is of a different form of existence to what we are equipped to deal with and may be veiled to us for various reasons, the obvious reason being that it is as a mechanism by which our very presence is engineered, hence can't be conceived by that which it produces, by analogy a telescope is not designed to see its own workings, but rather some view in the far distance.

Having said this, it is something which I contemplate and for me the solution is in the form of a transcendent process, in which it is realised that dimensional differences and the spatiotemporal extension we find ourselves in, are from the stand point of the atemporal a construct, one in which there is, from the view point of the atemporal, a revealing, or illumination through processes or emanation,or percolation. This necessarily presumes an eternity which is a mediator between us and the monistic source and that the technology of that eternity is sufficient to perform the construct.

Regarding the "first organism", I see it more as a step change from an eternal organism through a budding process.

The issue of eternity is implicit in these explanations, but need not be problematic, if one realises that it need not necessarily involve infinity, which is a human invention. Also the omni's suffer from the same issues of regression. But aside from this, I don't see it as a requirement for us to grasp by analogy the lens of the telescope, when we are explaining the trees on the horizon, but rather to accept that there is a telescope, which is seeing, and look to the bigger picture and realise our predicament for what it is.

Regarding the platonic forms, well eternity crops up again, in that what appears universal to us, is in eternity, an individual notion.

Yes, I'm inclined to agree with this, but I am an insatiable explorer of ideas, a magpie perhaps. Also I have come across some rarefied ideas and it's nice to share them.

I understand what you say here, it's interesting, but quite different to my perspective. So are you saying that it is the will which is directing the form of the representation, in its striving towards its goals?
Is the representation the experience of the being, or is that something else?

I haven't read Kant yet, so will take your word for it for now. I do think that the noumenon is knowable, but not because of the findings of a philosophical mindset specifically, but rather that it is natural for it to be so. Actually I do think that the noumenon can be known through knowledge of the empirical, wherein it is considered that the body is our medium of understanding, in concert with the mind, rather than the mind on its own as a purely rational entity. I say this because I doubt the human intellect can get there through reason alone, due to a lack of capacity and lack of appropriate orientation. This is why in mysticism and some religious practices a directed process of living and contemplation is practiced.

This is not to say that it could not be known through intellect alone, but not in this case.

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?