• charles ferraro
    369
    It is obvious to me that what we think of as the extra-mental world cannot be interpreted as the product of conscious creative activity by the human mind. As far as ordinary consciousness is concerned, I find myself in a world of objects which affect me in various ways and which I spontaneously think of as existing independently of my thought and will. Hence the idealist philosopher must go behind consciousness, as it were, and retrace the process of the unconscious activity which grounds it.

    But we must go further than this and recognize that the production of the world cannot be attributed to the individual self at all, even to its unconscious activity. For if it were attributed to the individual finite self as such, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to avoid solipsism, a position which can hardly be seriously maintained. Idealism is thus compelled to go behind the finite subject to a supra-individual intelligence, an absolute subject.

    The word "subject," however, is not really appropriate, except as indicating that the ultimate productive principle lies, so to speak, on the side of thought and not on the side of the sensible thing. For the words "subject" and "object" are correlative. And the ultimate principle is, considered in itself, without object. It grounds the subject-object relationship and, in itself, transcends the relationship. It is subject and object in identity, the infinite activity from which both proceed.

    Post-Kantian idealism was thus necessarily a metaphysics. Fichte, starting from the position of Kant and developing it into idealism, not unnaturally began by calling his first principle the ego, turning Kant's transcendental ego into a metaphysical or ontological principle. But he explained that he meant by this the absolute ego, not the individual finite ego. But with the other idealists (and with Fichte himself in his later philosophy) the word "ego" is not used in this context. With Hegel the ultimate principle is infinite reason, infinite spirit. And we can say that for metaphysical idealism in general reality is the process of the self-expression or self-manifestation of infinite thought or reason.

    This does not mean, of course, that the world is reduced to a process of thinking in the ordinary sense. Absolute thought or reason is regarded as an activity, as productive reason which posits or expresses itself in the world. And the world retains all the reality which we see it to posses. Metaphysical idealism does not involve the thesis that empirical reality consists of subjective ideas; but it involves the vision of the world and human history as the objective expression of creative reason.

    Is Infinite Reason, Infinite Thought, or Infinite Spirit (as per Hegel) simply a biased form of abstract anthropocentric terminology being used to try to humanize a transcendent reality which, in fact, may be better described as being nothing more than a completely non-rational, thoughtless, blind Will-to-Live (as per Schopenhauer)?
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    If "ultimate reality" is remotely conceivable it is expressed, for example, by ancient Hindus as Brahman (in the formula/mantra Tat Tvam Asi) and Spinoza's (acosmist) Natura naturans, Laozi's Nameless Dao and Buber's Eternal Thou. Schopenhauer named it "the Great Will" (noumenon, pace Kant et al). For classical atomists it is the void (encompassing infinite, swirling, swerving atoms) or as Buddhists say it's Śūnyatā. However, we are not "ultimate beings" and, with only proximate metacognition, our conceptions, like the apophatic theologians teach, are wholly inadequate for grasping that which necessarily is beyond our reach anyway. Even 'metaphysical idealists' are only speaking in analogies when they speak of "ultimate reality".
  • Pantagruel
    3.4k
    a transcendent reality which, in fact, may be better described as being nothing more than a completely non-rational, thoughtless, blind Will-to-Livecharles ferraro

    I think being mindful of this fact of simultaneous uniting and surpassing is indeed key. But is it non-rational, or simply not bound by or limited to rationality? I feel like there is a sense in which our minds, while they may not encompass this reality, nevertheless intersect it.
  • litewave
    827

    If by "ultimate reality" you mean the most general property, that is, the property possessed by every something, it is the property called variously identity, logical consistency, or existence. If you mean the smallest concrete object, it is the non-composite object, also called the empty set; other concrete objects are constituted by combinations of empty sets into larger sets, and by combinations of those combinations, and so on. There may also be composite concrete objects that don't have empty sets "at the bottom" but infinitely differentiated parts instead, as long as their definition is logically consistent; however, that consistency, and thus their existence, may be impossible to prove due to Godel's second incompleteness theorem.

    No "will" or "thought" is necessary for existence, unless by "will" or "thought" you mean logical consistency, because logical consistency is existence.
  • Jack Cummins
    5.3k

    I am wondering about the 'ultimate' reality of all realities. There have been a number of threads about understanding reality, including one of my own. If there is one 'reality' which is the 'truth' above all others, it does seem to me that is probably 'hidden'. If it is hidden does that mean that we are back to the idea of some underlying transcent reality, or the noumenon described by Kant. I believe that this has been spoken of already in this thread.

    But, it does lead me to wonder if it is a fantasy entirely, and, perhaps, we even ask what is fantasy, and is there any basis for declaring it as any kind of reality, subjective or otherwise. So, what I am saying is that we may be up against the idea of absolutes and the other other possibility of absolute meaningless reality. Personally, I am not sure that one or other of the extremes is 'true', or meaningful, but this in itself does point to the questionable nature of ultimate meaning, especially the idea of 'ultimate reality' as a true ultimate. Of course, this does come down to the meaning of the idea of ultimate, and whether this corresponds to any actual ways of thinking and reality in terms of our known experiences.
  • praxis
    6.5k
    Emptiness.
  • Jack Cummins
    5.3k

    But what is 'emptiness' in an exact sense, in terms of our daily lived experiences?
  • litewave
    827


    If emptiness is understood as the content of an empty set, then it is nothing. However, the empty set itself is not nothing but an object, a non-composite object, which is a part of composite objects. In this sense, concrete reality is built up from nothing.
  • Manuel
    4.1k


    :up:



    I think we might be creating more confusion than clarity by distinguishing "ultimate reality" from reality. It may cause people to think that subsequent layers of experience aren't real or fundamental, which leads to quite funny ways of talking about the world and our mental properties to boot.

    If you have in mind something like the bottom constituents of reality, that is, what everything in the universe is made of, we don't quite know. Most of the universe is dark matter or dark energy and only 5% is the baryonic matter we know and love.

    There's also the issue that, mental gymnastics aside, anything we encounter or disclose or relate to in the world is mediated through our mental processes. Once we are gone the (postulated) non-mental features of the world (atoms, quarks, etc.) are quite obscure.

    If we want to go beyond that, or rather, underneath representations, the best guess I've seen is a modification of Schopenhauer's will, essentially a blind striving without rhyme or reason, which seeks to continue striving. We feel this in our own bodies as subject of experience.
  • praxis
    6.5k


    Transience, or what @litewave said.
  • Corvus
    3.1k


    In Platonic idealism, this world is a temporary illusory reality. The ultimate reality is then, the reality of Idea, which is timeless and final.

    Even now, if one is a devoted Christian and has a strong faith in afterlife, and heaven, then the ultimate reality would be the world where the souls migrate after death. In ancient Greek religion, this type of afterlife as the true final ultimate reality had been dominating belief among the population. Socrates must have opted to take the hemlock under the belief that his soul will migrate to the ultimate reality of another world, when he was given options to go into exile rather than accepting the death penalty in the court.

    Therefore the nature of ultimate reality is based on the religious faith, to which the souls of the dead migrate after death, and is believed to be the utmost final timeless true reality contrasted from this world which is believed to be illusory, temporary and transitory.
  • Banno
    24.8k
    Seems you are going about this in the wrong way. You've already divided the world into subject and object, and assumed idealism before you begin.

    A more fruitful approach might be to reflect that your analysis must consist in a text; that what you are doing is putting things into words. So it might not be a bad plan to consider the language you are using.

    There are a couple of things to note here. First off, the language you are using is not exclusively yours. You share it with us. That's rather the point of having a language.

    A consequence of that is that you are already, by using language, embedding yourself in a community of language users. It follows that you can set solipsism aside. It also follows that there are things both you and those with whom you talk agree on. Obvious things such as that I read your post, you are reading this, and that we are doing philosophy. But there are also background items on which we agree, such as that this is all occurring on an online forum, and hence that there are things such as computers and keyboards and screens, and the paraphernalia that produces such things, the various social contexts in which they occur, and the material world in which such things are embedded.

    As you note, this "world of objects... affect me in various ways... independently of my thought and will".

    Yep, reality for the most part does not care what you believe.

    But if you agree with that, then you agree that there is a reality that is in a sense independent of what you believe.

    But idealism is the notion that what is "out there" is dependent on mind.

    Hence, idealism doesn't set out what is going on. Mind does not build reality, but finds itself embedded therein. While we are we are of course only able to construct our notions of what is going on with our minds, it does not follow that what is going on is constructed by mind. One must change one's mind to fit the facts.
  • Tom Storm
    9k
    Even 'metaphysical idealists' are only speaking in analogies when they speak of "ultimate reality".180 Proof

    And when they aren't gifted thinkers, they talk a lot about the ineffable. :gasp: Seems like a good way to hide woolly thinking.
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    Even 'metaphysical idealists' are only speaking in analogies when they speak of "ultimate reality".180 Proof

    But doesn’t the discovery of the BIg Bang give the Cosmos a true starting point and thus justifies an inquiry into “whence it came”?

    When materialists could regard the universe - as some structure of laws and matter - as eternal, there wasn’t a lot of room for an apophatic counter. Things just were what they were. Brute fact and no metaphysics.

    With the Big Bang as a developmental and even possibly evolutionary process, suddenly reality looks rather more organic. It must share something with life and mind. It must be a matter of self-organised Becoming rather than merely brute Being.

    That ought to send materialists in search of a new metaphysics. We don’t need a creating god, as that never solves the riddle. And a creating ground of spirit or mind - the monism of idealism - is just as inadequate.

    But since Anaximander first argued for the spontaneous self-organisation of an Apeiron, a metaphysics of sense-making rationalisation - a dissipative structure - has been kicking about in the back room of organicism. We can certainly see it in Hegel and Peirce, as well as others,
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    If by "ultimate reality" you mean the most general property, that is, the property possessed by every something, it is the property called variously identity, logical consistency, or existence.litewave

    Instead of talking of some ultimate property - which is a monistic concept - we can instead switch to seeking some ultimate relation, or form of interaction. And that then becomes a triadic concept (as it irreducibly involves two complementary opposites in a synergistic spiral of development).

    But of course we can reify the two sides of the relation. We can see that the most general property of reality is logical consistency (global law) applied to naked possibility (local action). Or Logos and Flux, synechism and tychism, the laws of physics and its material degrees of freedom - the many ways the same story has been told down the years without every really being understood as the meta-metaphysics behind the metaphysics and even physics.
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    A consequence of that is that you are already, by using language, embedding yourself in a community of language users. It follows that you can set solipsism aside.Banno

    And so we move the conversation from the tradition of metaphysics to the tradition of philosophy of language as an apophatic and anti-metaphysical stratagem. We call it “our” common ground to signal which way the in-group lies.

    Same old, same old.

    Hence, idealism doesn't set out what is going on. Mind does not build reality, but finds itself embedded therein.Banno

    Yes, yes. We don’t need to exhume the rotting carcass of idealism and ritually bash it to death all over again.

    The OP rightly raises the metaphysics that goes beyond either brute realism or mystery-mongering idealism. It asks about rational structure - the structuralism of a logical relation. An ultimate kind of thing as it runs like a shining thread through every level of human discourse from maths to physics. But also the discussion of rational structure usually stumbles over the “mental” aspect - the place that meaning, purpose and point of view have in a structuralist metaphysics.

    So it is a live debate - metaphysics that physics is still cashing out as it learns more about the organismic point of view and so comes to understand the Cosmos as a thermodynamic system.

    A primer on the technicalities - https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/layzer/growth_of_order/
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    Cosmogenesis is not comparable to a/biogenesis. Universes are not organismistic. Category mistake, my friend. "Life" – homeostasis-reflexive metabolic self-replicators – is a dissipative, entropic subsystem that's niche-adapted along a cosmic entropy-gradient. "The Big Bang", it seems to me, is just the temporal horizon of the Hubble volume. "Anaximander, Hegel & Peirce" notwithstanding, what does selecting any explicit metaphysics have to do with natural sapients scientifically observing (the micro-macro-micro fractal) nature to which they belong?

    ... the metaphysics that goes beyond either brute realism or mystery-mongering idealism. It asks about rational structure ...apokrisis
    ... which risks conflating, or confusing, a map reason favors (i.e. reifies) with the territory encompassing reason.
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    Category mistake, my friend.180 Proof

    That depends on your definition of an organism.

    "Life" – homeostasis-reflexive metabolic self-replicators – is a dissipative, entropic subsystem that's niche-adapted along a cosmic entropy-gradient.180 Proof

    I agree. But then follows a path from semiosis to pansemiosis. And are you arguing that cosmology’s turn towards quantum information and holographic principles ain’t a metaphysics of pansemiosis?

    I’m not saying the work is done and we can all go home. This is the bleeding edge of modern thought. We are seeing big efforts in terms of a Cosmos defined in terms of rational structure. String theory, loop quantum gravity, entropic gravity. So the fundamental relation is certainly far simpler than a living and mindful system. It boils down to the bare thing of a symmetry breaking. And that in turn requires an Apeiron or Peircean vagueness … the GUT field of Big Bang theory or whatever other notion of vanilla potential exists at the Planckscale.

    "The Big Bang", it seems to me, is just the temporal horizon of the Hubble volume.180 Proof

    It is both where the spatiotemporal metric is at the smallest it will ever be, and the energetic fluctuation is the largest it could ever be.

    So it is not just one thing but a dialectic of two complementary things. If you want to discuss cosmogenesis, it starts with this telling duality, or a symmetry breaking that is already asymmetric in terms of how we conventionally view spacetime expanse vs energy density.

    How could the start of everything be both the smallest possible in one sense, and yet the largest possible in the other?

    For some metaphysics, that is a bug. For a better metaphysics it is a feature - just what is predicted.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    How could the start of everything ...apokrisis
    A hasty generalization, no? We do not know for a fact that the BB is "the start of everything". No doubt, a speculative shorthand or placeholder (e.g. Apeiron) ...
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    It is weak to revert to claims about never really knowing whether or not something is the case. Can you offer good reasons to doubt the Big Bang is the start of spacetime and mattergy as we know it?

    And if you want to argue a further regress, like Linde’s eternal spawning inflation, that also is past finite due to the same Planck presumptions being built into it. You just chuck out the dimensional constants that particularise our little bubble of that larger Planck multiverse.

    So a serious discussion is one that asks about the triadic and reciprocal nature of the three Planck constants and the way they place all known physics on the vertices of Okun’s cube.

    It is all suspiciously Peircean when you peer under the covers of the maths that works. :razz:
  • Outlander
    2.1k
    It is weak to revert to claims about never really knowing whether or not something is the case.apokrisis

    Is it now? Apparently all science and widely perceived progress is based on weakness. Do you still believe all events that we're not born with the knowledge of (which is all of them) is based on gods and magic?

    Perhaps then, it is even weaker to call any criticism of one's beliefs or even a simple reminder that "hey. perhaps you might not know all there is to know" weak and to be tossed to the wind.
  • charles ferraro
    369
    Hegel praised ultimate reality, while Schopenhauer condemned ultimate reality. Why? Because each characterized ultimate reality in diametrically opposed ways and each spelled out for humanity the diametrically opposed ethical implications and consequences that followed therefrom.

    Was one correct and the other incorrect? Or were they both just highly sophisticated b.s. artists?
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    Can you offer good reasons to doubt the Big Bang is the start of spacetime and [matter] as we know it?apokrisis
    No. But "as we know it" is not remotely the same as the "everything" you stated the BB was "the start of".

    Hegel praised ultimate reality, while Schopenhauer condemned ultimate reality [ ... ] Was one correct and the other incorrect? Or were they both just highly sophisticated b.s. artists?charles ferraro
    No. On the contrary, they were philosophers, not sophists.
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    No. But "as we know it" is not remotely the same as the "everything" you stated the BB was "the start of".180 Proof

    Great. I’m interested. What is missing from the story? Do you have a list?
  • litewave
    827
    Instead of talking of some ultimate property - which is a monistic concept - we can instead switch to seeking some ultimate relation, or form of interaction.apokrisis

    Interaction is possible only in worlds that contain a time dimension. Worlds without time seem to be possible (logically consistent) too, and since I don't see an ontological difference between a possible world and a "real" world, reality also contains worlds without time.
  • Wayfarer
    22.3k
    mattergyapokrisis

    Hey, that’s a great word.

    the discussion of rational structure usually stumbles over the “mental” aspect - the place that meaning, purpose and point of view have in a structuralist metaphysics.apokrisis

    Isn’t that because according to the current scientific consensus, life and mind are a matter of happenstance, the accidental outcome of a non-intentional process. So, without wanting to bring God into the picture, the question is, how is it that this apparently accidental process gave rise to an intelligence that actually reflects the whole cosmic process? How is it that through the apparently random processes that give rise to living species, a living species evolves that can figure out the whole process that gave rise to it? That sounds suspiciously NOT like a coincidence.

    It is a perennial philosophical reflection that if one looks deeply enough into oneself, one will discover not only one’s own essence, but also the essence of the universe. For as one is a part of the universe as is everything else, the basic energies of the universe flow through oneself, as they flow through everything else. For that reason it is thought that one can come into contact with the nature of the universe if one comes into substantial contact with one’s ultimate inner being. — SEP entry on Schopenhauer
  • Alkis Piskas
    2.1k
    Topic: Characterizing The Nature of Ultimate Reality



    First of all, "Characterizing The Nature of Ultimate Reality" is a pleonasm, since the word "nature", as it is used here, means the characteristics of something. So, it's as if you are saying "characterizing the characteristics"! :smile:

    Then, what do you mean with "Ultimate Reality"? It's certainly not something so commonly discussed so that it's meaning is more or less obvious. You should therefore define or describe it. Otherwise, how can one talk about its nature?
  • charles ferraro
    369


    How, then, given your position, was it at all possible for so many philosophers to have tried to describe or explain ultimate reality throughout the ages? Each seemed to think they could do so. It was something, in fact, quite commonly discussed by them.
  • Alkis Piskas
    2.1k

    How, then, given your position, was it at all possible for so many philosophers to have tried to describe or explain ultimate reality throughout the ages?charles ferraro

    I don't think they were using the term "Ultimate Reality" itself but they talked about what does that represent. In fact, I found a single definition of the term "Ultimate Reality", in Merriam Webster: "something that is the supreme, final, and fundamental power in all reality". Even Wikipedia refers to Merriam Webster and that definition. Then, if you read Wikipedia's article on "Ultimate reality", or similar articles from other sources, you will see how this concept is viewed differently among different religions.

    So, I believe my comment about defining "Ultimate Reality" was correct.

    But, even if you don't want to give me credit for that comment, you could at least do it for my first comment about the title of the topic. I don't know, something simple, like "Thanks for noticing it!"
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