It is a language phenomenon, but this does not at all diminish the nature of the discovery. It does elevate the nature of language. — Astrophel

I don't see that. I think Gautama's discovery overflowed the bounds of what can be spoken. Hence the famous 'Flower Sermon' which is the apocryphal origin of Ch'an and Zen Buddhism. In the story, the Buddha gives a wordless sermon to the sangha by silently holding up a white flower. No one in the audience responds bar Mahākāśyapa, who's smile indicates his comprehension. It is said to embody the ineffable nature of tathātā, the direct transmission of wisdom without words. The Buddha affirms this by uttering:

I possess the true Dharma eye, the marvelous mind of Nirvāṇa, the true form of the formless, the subtle dharma gate that does not rest on words or letters but is a special transmission outside of the scriptures. This I entrust to Mahākāśyapa.

(Although it has to be acknowledged that Ch'an/Zen Buddhism, regardless, has an enormous compendium of 'words and letters' housed in extensive monastic libraries a part of its teaching repertoire, and indeed the various Buddhist canons exceed in volume by orders of magnitude the collected Biblical writings. But there is always a kind of awareness in Buddhism that the finger that points to the moon ought not to be mistaken for the moon.)

The matter of duality is not dissolved but framed in way outside of contending dependencies — Paine

Could you explain that a little further? A passage that I highlighted, adjacent to the one you quoted, is:

The aim of this essay, as an introduction to absolute idealism, is to make plain that it is impossible to think judgment through this opposition: mind here, world there, two things in relation or not. To dismantle this opposition is not to propose that the world is mind dependent. Nor is it to propose that the mind is world-dependent. These ways of speaking solidify the opposition; they are an impediment to comprehension. — p16

That seems to at least suggest the non-duality of mind and world, saying that construal of 'two things' is an 'impediment to comprehension'.

Note on sources:


Notes on Self Consciousness in Rödl.

Rödl's uses 'self-consciousness' in a way completely different to normal usage ('I felt very self-conscious entering the room with all of those famous people.')

For Rödl, self-consciousness is the implicit awareness that accompanies any act of thought or judgment. When you think <p>, you are not just aware of <p> as an object but also of yourself as the thinker of <p>. Thought is self-conscious because it contains within it a reflexive awareness of its own activity (which is what Rödl means by it being 'internal to thought'.) This inseparability of thought and self-awareness is what Rödl highlights as essential to understanding judgment.

Self-consciousness involves the first-person perspective, which is irreducible to a third-person description. This perspective is not simply a way of referring to oneself (e.g., with the pronoun "I") bu foundational to thinking —it is the form in which all thought occurs. This is where he criticizes Frege, as summarised in an earlier post:

Frege’s contention is that the content of thought (<p>) can be entirely objective and independent of any subject. Frege’s emphasis is on the idea that thoughts exist as abstract, objective entities in a “third realm,” independent of whether anyone thinks them. According to Frege, thoughts are, in principle, accessible to any rational being, and their validity does not depend on any individual subject’s act of thinking. Frege lays this out in a famous essay called ‘The Thought: A Logical Investigation’.

Summary of main points of Frege "The Thought":



Rödl’s self-consciousness aligns with Kant’s transcendental apperception: the 'I think' that must be able to accompany all representations. It is not a contingent property of individuals but a universal structure that makes thought and knowledge possible.

Comparison from CPR:

To say that Kant says something that one knows he does not say is lying, and this is what Rodl does. He demonstrates that in the endnote. — Leontiskos

But I can't see how he does that. Rödl says:

More precisely, he (Kant) says that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations, for all my representations must be capable of being thought. — Rödl, Endnote

Which I checked against the Norman Kemp Smith translation of the Critique:

It must be possible for the 'I think' to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be at all, and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would be impossible, or at least would be nothing to me.

So, again, how is it a lie? I just can't see it.

Still reckon The Tao of Physics is alright. Capra interviewed Heisenberg extensively while preparing the draft. @Arcane Sandwich - you know that book?

I'm still at a loss as to why RFK Jr was picked as head of Health. — jorndoe

Trump doesn’t want to govern, but rule. He basically hates the government, unless and until he can make it conform to his will.

Another straightforward point I would make is to ask, how much of science is dependent upon the identification of the quantifiable attributes of phenomena? Which enables the application of mathematical logic to physical causation. It seems obvious to me but I don’t see much commentary on it. including in the article. He says ‘mathematics has nothing to do with physical reality’ but doesn’t the success of rocket science say he’s wrong?

I think skepticism started out very differently to what it has become. It started as 'withholding judgement regarding that which is not evident', rather than the kind of armchair skeptic claim which challenges any claim to knowledge. As such, it's aim was propaedeutic in some sense, not a global claim about who knows what and how.

There's a thematic connection between Pyrrho's skepticism, the Buddhist 'suspension of judgement', and the phenomenological epochē, which has been explored in various books and papers. I'll come back to that in a later post.

Have a glance at a recent long thread on a similar topic, Mathematical Platonism.

And after an excessive amount of digging we learned that Rodl contradicts himself in the endnote, which to me constitutes a lie — Leontiskos

The paragraph preceeding the endnote is as follows:

As thinking that things are so is thinking it valid to think this, the I think is thought in every act of thinking: an act of thinking is the first person thought of itself. As being conscious of thinking that things are so is not a diferent act from thinking this, the act of the mind expressed by So it is is the same as the one expressed by I think it is so. As the act of thinking is one, so is what it thinks; as the I think is thought in every act of thinking, the I think is contained in every thing thought. This cannot be put by saying that, in every act of thinking, two things are thought: p and I think p. On the contrary. Since thinking p is thinking oneself to think it, there is no such thing as thinking, in addition to thinking p, that one thinks this. If our notation confuses us, suggesting as it does that I think is added to a p that is free from it, we may devise one that makes I think internal to p: we may form the letter p by writing, in the shape of a p, the words I think.

This bears repeating: there is no meaning in saying that, in an act of thinking, two things are thought, p and I think p. Kant said: the I think accompanies all my thoughts.³ — SCAO, P3

^3. Critique of Pure Reason, B 131. More precisely, he says that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations, for all my representations must be capable of being thought. This presupposes (what is the starting point of Kant’s philosophy and not the kind of thing for which he would undertake to give an argument) that the I think accompanies all my thoughts. — Footnote

Norman Kemp Smith translation of the Critique of Pure Reason p153:

The Original Synthetic Unity of Apperception

It must be possible for the 'I think' to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be at all, and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would be impossible, or at least would be nothing to me.

(I take it that Rödl's comment that this is 'not the kind of thing for which he would give an argument' is tantamount to 'it goes without saying' or 'it is assumed'.)

So - what about this constitutes a lie or a contradiction?

//

A little further along in the same section from the CPR, further argument which lends weight to Rödl's interpretation

The thought that the representations given in intuition one and all belong to me is therefore precisely the same as the thought that I unite them in one self-consciousness, or can at least so unite them; and although this thought is not itself the consciousness of the synthesis of the representations, it presupposes the possibility of that synthesis. In other words, only in so far as I can grasp the manifold of the representations in one consciousness, do I call them one and all mine. For other wise I should have as many-coloured and diverse a self as I have representations of which I am conscious to myself. Synthetic unity of the manifold of intuitions, as generated a priori, is thus the ground of the identity of apperception itself, which precedes a priori all my determinate thought. Combination does not, however, lie in the objects, and cannot be borrowed from them, and so, through perception, first taken up into the understanding. On the contrary, it is an affair of the understanding alone, which itself is nothing but the faculty of combining a priori, and of bringing the manifold of given representations under the unity of apperception. The principle of apperception is the highest principle in the whole sphere of human knowledge. — Critique of Pure Reason, Sythetic Unity of Apperception

//

Yes, and there are those fortunate few who aren't sure! — J

Looks like I'm not done yet, after all ;-)

I have two apples. But I want to eat three. — Arcane Sandwich

Presumably, they will have seeds. All you need, is patience.

I haven't spent time like you have in meditation — Astrophel

There is something I want to add, which I think you will understand. It is that 'spending time' and 'making an effort' in meditation counts for nothing. There is nothing that can be accrued or gained through the conscious effort to practice meditation and any feeling that one has gotten better or gained something through such efforts is mere egotism. That is all.

It's kind of down to the least worst option. As it so often is.

That’s OK! I appreciate your courtesy.

Blistering critique of Albo in today’s SMH which I’m afraid is pretty on-target.

is it too much of a stretch of the imagination to relate the lyrics of this song, to the first part of Chapter 25 of the Tao Te Ching? — Arcane Sandwich

I don’t really go in for such comparisons. I will sometimes post graphics or videos to make a point, but rarely, and usually when their direct.

I don’t remember Aristotle’s argument for God (as the Unmoved Mover) talking in terms of created vs. uncreated things… — Bob Ross

Perhaps not but it seems natural that Aquinas would see the ‘unmoved mover’ as at least an analogy for the Divine Intellect?

I suggest that before you contact Priest, you could develop the idea a bit more by running it through ChatGPT. It will give you feedback on whether it judges the idea valid. It might also be able to code an actual model (although I don’t know.) Worth a shot, at least.

I’ll only add, because of the title, a lot of people will read it to find fault with it, while others (like myself) will read it to find support for their view

And that ain’t philosophy - that’s human nature :wink:

(Note you've posted an incorrect URL above, it's thephilosophyforum.com)

I think a lot of this conversation is rather lost in the weeds of Rödl's terminological minutiae. It might benefit from standing back and calling out what the book is about at a high level (gleaned from various sources).

I don’t think Rödl’s Self-Consciousness and Objectivity is a direct argument for absolute idealism, despite the title. Rödl meticulously analyses foundational questions about self-consciousness, judgment, and objectivity in ways that challenge implicit assumptions within analytic philosophy. His goal is not to advocate idealism but to build a case that shows how idealist principles resolve issues that other frameworks cannot. In doing this, Rödl reframes concepts like the nature of judgment and the role of self-consciousness, implicitly demonstrating how idealism underpins intelligibility, rationality, and objectivity.

It is very much written for the philosophical professoriate, particularly those trained in analytic methods, who dominate the discourse in the modern academy. Its style and structure reflect this intent, and as such it operates at a high level of abstraction. By embedding idealist principles in dense, systematic arguments, Rödl avoids presenting idealism as a speculative doctrine. His strategy is to show how it emerges necessarily from a deeper analysis of thought and reality.

Myself, I don't think I'm going to persist with it. I'm not well-equipped for this kind of technical philosophy and it really doesn't interest me that much. I'm already a convinced philosophical idealist, which I'll continue to explore and advocate for through other means. What with the abundance of information available in the Information Economy and the availability of time, I'm going to take leave of this topic and concentrate efforts elsewhere.

In fact, I challenge you to find a quote by Rodl in his book An Introduction to Absolute Idealism where he says that a mind-independent world does not exist. …Hegel is not an Idealist in the sense of Berkeley, for whom the world does not exist outside the mind. — RussellA

Berkeley denies the existence of matter as an independently real substance, but he does not deny the reality of the external world. For him, the world consists of ideas that exist either in finite minds (like ours) or in the infinite mind of God. Berkeley’s famous dictum, esse est percipi (“to be is to be perceived”), means that objects exist as ideas in minds. However, he maintains that the continuity and stability of the world are underwritten by God’s beholding of the Universe. He was not a solipsist; he does not claim that the world exists only in your or my mind or that it would come into existence only with humans. Instead, he holds that the world exists as a shared reality, grounded in God’s infinite perception.

The statement that “the world does not exist outside the mind” conflates Berkeley’s denial of material substance with a denial of external reality altogether. For Berkeley, the world is real, but its reality is mental or spiritual, not material. It exists as a collection of ideas dependent on being perceived by finite minds or God. It is the nature of the world that is at issue, not the contention that it is ‘merely a phantasm of the mind’.

Hegel was idealist, but his philosophy was focused on the dialectical development of Geist (spirit) and the unfolding of reason in history. For Hegel, reality is the expression of rational structures, not reducible to subjective or finite minds.

It’s not so much coincidence as parallel development. Have a browse of the Wikipedia entry on it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age

the self-consciousness of the "I" is separate to not only to any thought but also to what is being thought about. — RussellA

Separate in what sense? You would at least have to agree that they are both held by the one mind.

Rodl is an Indirect Realist — RussellA

His book is titled ‘an introduction to absolute idealism.’ If he was an indirect realist perhaps he wouldn’t have used that description.

Our modern age thinks of organisms as machines, with upbuilding parts. For Aristotle an organism is very different than a machine, having a substantial form. — Leontiskos

But I get the impression the more holistic Aristotelian view is making something of a comeback, precisely because of his anticipation of self-organization.

If China Invades Taiwan, It Would Cost World Economy $10 Trillion

A China-Taiwan War Would Start an Economic Crisis.

My interpretation is that it is pointing to the inadequacy of spoken language to convey the depth of meaning that is inherent in 'the Way'. Arguments about it, 'it means this', 'no it doesn't, it means that', and so forth, have already missed the mark. The true way or eternal Tao is not a verbal expression or description or anything that can be said. Like I said every time you asked me: there is something you find in Eastern philosophies, 'the Unconditioned'. It's not God, or not like a 'sky-father' figure. But then as soon as we ask 'well what is it then?' then we've missed the mark again.

:pray:

There’s an article on SEP about ‘divine illumination’ which links back to Augustine. It is said to have been an idea that more or less died out in medieval times, but I think Augustine was right on the mark.

The original text probably would have had ‘created’ where this text has ‘composed’, would it not? I think it reads more authentically:

1. Created beings are made up of parts.
2. A created being exists contingently upon its parts in their specific arrangement.
3. A part of a created being is either created or uncreated.
4. A part that is a created being does not, in turn, exist in-itself but, rather, exists contingently upon its parts and their specific arrangement.

Etc.

Ancient and medieval philosophy recognised the ‘creator-created’ distinction which is fundamental to this form of argument. But the metaphysical background is very different to today’s. It is set against the background of the Scala Naturae, the ‘great chain of being’, which recognises the distinction between creator and created, and various levels of created being, such as mineral, plant, animal, human, and angel (in ascending order). It also, and not coincidentally, was implemented in the hierarchical ecclesiastical and political order of medieval culture.

As naturalism rejects the created-creator distinction as a matter of principle, this style of argument is incommensurable with their basic premisses; there’s really nothing in the naturalist lexicon that maps against it notwithstanding the attempts to find equivalences between quantum fields and the divine intelligence.

In other words, It’s the kind of argument that will appeal to those with a predilection for it, and not at all to those who don’t.

As we see ;-)

Of course - but context is everything! What I mean by ‘context’ is that meditative awareness and samadhi are embedded in a cultural milieu which facilitates those practices and insights. That’s one point of Sangha, the association of the wise. But meditation has been a bit oversold in the West as a panacea or magic bullet.

I pursued Buddhist meditation for many years and attended several retreats, including the well-known 10-day Vipassana retreat. I learned a lot from that, and it’s an ongoing endeavour although I haven’t been able to maintain the same routine I did for many years. The ‘hindrances’ that the Buddhists mention are real, and overcoming them difficult. (See this old OP, Most Buddhists Don’t Meditate.)

So those states of spontaneous insight are real but rare. I attended services at a Pure Land sangha for some time just prior to Covid (not having another Buddhist association in the area.) I learned that according to Pure Land, meditation practices are discouraged. They are recognised as effective, but they’re said to belong to the ‘way of sages’ which is difficult (according to them, practically impossible) to bring to fruition. Instead their way is grounded in faith in the saving vows of Amida. I found this caused a kind of conflict for me, as it seemed very like the religion that I had declined to join - the interest I had in Buddhism was that it seemed to offer an alternative to mere belief. Yet, here we are again! (Although that said the core beliefs of Pure Land Buddhism and Christianity are completely different. It’s the psychodynamic of faith that is similar.)

This is all ongoing, I haven’t come to any kind of conclusion about it. There were things I learned from those years of practice and contemplation that will always stay with me.

Chinese dynastic polemics, I would say. Again I have very little fluency in these texts, better to find a Chinese speaker!

No that's definitely in the ball park! 'Axial age', as I say. That's a very useful idea in this context. It's associated with Karl Jaspers but has also been written on by Karen Armstrong. It's about the fact that around 6th-3rd centuries B.C.E. a number of prophets and sages were active, including Pythagoras, Lao Tsu, the Buddha, and others, who set the wheels in motion for what were to become the great cultural formations of India, China and the West.

How would you explain this part, specifically, to an English audience? — Arcane Sandwich

I studied comparative religion, and one of the major authors in that field is Mircea Eliade, a Romanian-American active at the University of Chicago mid-century. It takes some reading. The problem with modern Western culture is that so many of those ideas are stereotyped under the heading of religion, when they're very different from how that term is usually interpreted.

Something mysteriously formed,
Born before heaven and Earth.
In the silence and the void,
Standing alone and unchanging,
Ever present and in motion.
Perhaps it is the mother of ten thousand things.
I do not know its name
Call it Tao.
For lack of a better word, I call it great. — Lao Tzu (Laozi)

I'm always reticent when it comes to this text as it is deeply intertwined with Chinese culture and language and my knowledge of them is cursory. But I can see parallels in other Axial Age texts and concepts. The idea I'd like to call out is an expression 'the uncarved block' which is found in Taoist texts. It refers to the unconditioned, the unmade, which is also the subject of the above. There is no parallel in the English lexicon or culture. It is associated with ancient asceticism and shamanic or yogic practices of trance states, what Indian culture would call samadhi. But these are non-conceptual states, hence 'for the lack of a better word' and 'I do not know its name'. Other like sayings are 'the nameless if the mother of the ten thousand things'. Some parallels can be drawn with Plotinus' One, but with great intepretive care.

Therefore, One should not follow what is Great (Tao), one should instead follow Nature (what is not Tao). — Arcane Sandwich

But this should never be confused with modern naturalism, which has been conscientiously defined to exclude such nefarious and amorphous ideas.

So what about Wayfarer's talk about clinging "to the transitory and ephemeral as if they were lasting and satisfying"? — Astrophel

That's not an idea of my invention, it is simply my paraphrasing of Buddhist lore - it is something any Buddhist would say. I can't say I understand anything of Henry's criticism of Husserl, or indeed much of that post at all.

My very sketchy grasp of the issue of desire and suffering is more like Schopenhauer's - that will is a primordial kind of thirst, from which the seeker must be de-coupled on pain of being driven into endless rounds of becoming. The 'old wisdom school' of early Buddhism was starkly dualistic, renunciation was severe and irrevocable, and the ordinary human condition poles apart from the enlightened state, never the twain to meet. The development of Mahāyāna radically changed that approach, enlightenment or liberation was seen as implicit within the human state instead of being radically different from it. This is subject of a lot of literature, I couldn't try and summarise it here, except to say that Mahāyāna nondualism dissolved the radical otherness Nirvāṇa found in the earlier schools (this is according to Edward Conze, Buddhism its Essence and Development).

There are many points of convergence between Buddhism and phenomenology. Buddhist culture has been phenomenological from the very outset, with its emphasis on attaining insight into the psycho-physical systems which drive continued attachment (and so rebirth). Their philosophical psychology ('abhidharma') based on the five skandhas (heaps) of Form, Feeling, Perception, Mental Formations and Consciousness, and comprising a stream of momentary experiental states ('dharmas') is utterly different from anything in the Semitic religions and even in ancient Greek culture (although there has always been some back-and-forth influence.) Here is a brief Wikipedia article on Husserl's reading of and reaction to the abhidharma literature.

The influential book The Embodied Mind by Varela, Thompson and Rosch contained many reference to Buddhism and was in many ways moulded by it (notwithstanding Evan Thompson's later re-evaluation of his relationship with Buddhism in his 2020 book Why I am not a Buddhist.) But again it emphasises the confluence between the Buddhist śūnyatā and the phenomenological epochē and the primacy of skilled awareness and attention to the flux of experience.

Re Michel Henri - not sure, I’ve only read some brief articles and excerpts although he certainly seems congenial to my philosophy.

Propositions can never to removed from the existence in which they are discovered in the "first" place. — Astrophel

:100:

I think the question is whether sense of self is direct or indirect. If it were direct, then it would seem that there is nothing I would not know about myself. I would be fully transparent to myself. If it is indirect, then self-consciousness is not always present. — Leontiskos

What I am may be a mystery, but that I am can only be denied on pain of contradiction.

Philosophers chasing after propositional truth (logos) is patently absurd. — Astrophel

Thank you, although whatever brilliance is there is of course the Buddha's. But apropos that particular point, it might be of interest to note that the great sage of Mahāyāna Buddhism, Nāgārjuna, maintained always that he had no thesis of his own, and that his only purpose was to show the contradictions inherent in the theses that were proposed by others.

Rödl seems to think that we have some kind of direct access to the self; that we are transparent to ourselves; and first-person thinking exemplifies this as a qualitatively unique mode of thought. — Leontiskos

Are you familiar with a term I've only recently acquired, 'ipseity'? It means precisely 'a sense of self' or of being a subject. And indeed only living beings, so far as we know, can conceivably have that sense (leaving aside the possibility of angelic intelligences). I know that I am, in quite a different sense than I know that the things around me are - as pointed out by Descartes, of course. I can't really understand how that can be called into question. (I read once an aphorism that I can't find a source for, 'a soul is whatever can say "I am"', which struck me as extremely profound.)

Only the bearer of the hand can know if the hand hurts. — Patterner

Of course. Why this seems puzzling or obtuse to anyone beats me.

I recall you saying you read Perl's "Thinking Being," but I forget exactly what you thought about it — Count Timothy von Icarus

Very impressed with it, particularly the early chapters - the chapter on Plato is indispensable. It corrects the almost universal misconceptions around the nature of the Forms, showing that they are more like what we would today understand as intellectual principles, than the kinds of 'ghostly images' that most people seem to take them for. I'm still assimilating the remainder.

There is a sense in which Plato, Plotinus, St. Augustine, Eriugena, St. Maximus and Hegel are all "idealists," or even Aristotle, St. Thomas, and Dante, but I think they offer a path around some of the questionable conclusions of a lot of modern idealism — Count Timothy von Icarus

I said to @Leontiskos recently that it's said that Aquinas was a realist, not an idealist, but his realism is very different from today's. Why? Because the contemporary criterion of objectivity that underlies modern realism —the mind-independent object —would have been foreign to him. Aquinas' epistemology was based on assimilation, where the knower and known are united in an intellectual act:

The Aristotelian-Thomistic account... sidesteps indirect realism/phenomenalism that has plagued philosophy since Descartes. It claims that we directly know reality because we are formally one with it. Our cognitive powers are enformed by the very same forms as their objects [which are] the means by which we know extra-mental objects. We know things by receiving the forms of them in an immaterial way, and this reception is the fulfillment, not the destruction, of the knowing powers — Cognition in Aquinas

But by the time Kant arrives on the scene, the idea of the "mind-independent object of sense perception"—the modern criterion of objectivity—had taken hold, courtesy of the empiricists. Which is what Kant (and before him Bishop Berkeley, in a different way) was reacting against. I see that as the main motivation for what we now call idealism, and why we can retrospectively call Plato an idealist, even though it’s plainly an anachronism as the term itself was not devised until the early modern period.

Whereas for Aquinas', the notion of "mind-independence" in that modern sense would have seemed alien. And that's where "idealism" as the opposite of materialism originates - with the modern era and the "Cartesian divide". That phrase in the quoted passage "we directly know reality because we are formally one with it" is crucial. Notice the resonance with Hindu nondualism, although in many other respects they diverge (although nevertheless I noticed recently that one of Raimundo Pannikar's three doctorates was on a comparitive study of Aquinas and Adi Sankara.) It represents what Vervaeke calls "participatory knowing", which is very different to propositional knowledge.

They're very deep theological questions. Better to ask a theologian. I still say the idea of kenosis is key.