Apologies for a bad choice of word. I didn’t mean taboo in that sense. I’ve only ever used it in the sense of a quiet, or unspoken, consensus not to go somewhere. — Punshhh

Fair enough―I guess "taboo" could just mean 'not acceptable'. It has been used on here in the other sense―to suggest that there is a fear of religion and/or the transcendent that explains why it is eschewed in philosophy.

The Buddhist, vedantic and Abrahamic traditions out of which philosophy and the sciences sprang was steeped in the understanding and implicit acceptance of a transcendent ground of being. — Punshhh

I'd say that is true of the Vedantic and Abrahamic traditions. It's not so straightforward with Buddhism―there the predominant idea seems to be that there is no ground of being. On the other hand Buddhism as a whole is a multifaceted movement, and very much open to various interpretations.

Their walls are plastered with divine iconography in which a transcendent, or divine ground of being is implicitly portrayed. — Punshhh

Such images are always imaginary amalgamations of imagery derived from this world of course. Think about the portrayal of God in Michelangelo's work in the Sistine Chapel.

Perhaps it is time to look at the elephant in the room and include it in discussions of the ground of being. — Punshhh

I suppose you could say that the ground of being, if it were anything more than just an idea, would be transcendent. And the idea itself is thought of as an idea of something transcendental (as opposed to transcendent) insofar as it is not empirically evident.

How do thoughts relate to brain in this model? What would it mean to say a thought is not reducible to a neural process? If phenomenology isn't monist what exactly does co-emergence mean? — Tom Storm

Phenomenology brackets the question about the external world, of which I would say neural processes, if considered mind-independent, would be part. I see phenomenology as attempting to elaborate what lived experience is like, and I think it oversteps its bounds if it meddles with metaphysics and ontology. Of course lived experience is primary for us but it doesn't follow that it is primary tout court. I think that claim would be the epitome of anthropocentrism―and hence I find claims that the physical world did not exist prior to human life absurd.

So, I think phenomenology would treat neural processes as an idea which is secondary and derivative of our lived experience. There is a sense in which I can agree with that. Hundreds of years ago there was of course lived experience and there was then no idea of neural processes. But that there was at one time lived experience and no neural processes is an epistemological, not an ontological, fact. Did neural processes only come into existence when we could detect them? That would also seem to be an absurd conclusion.

I'm not sure what the idea is here. If consciousness is an aspect of the energy, what other aspects does this energy have? What does it do? Do you mean the energy is electromagnetism, and consciousness is an aspect of that? Or some other form of energy? — Patterner

The idea would be more that energy is fundamentally intelligent, directed. I wouldn't call that consciousness. I don't think intelligence, experience and consciousness are all the same. I see consciousness emerging out of experience and experience emerging out of intelligence. By 'intelligence' I don't mean discursive intelligence, but more like instincnt and more than instinct―creative problem-solving. You could call it 'will', but the danger there would be that the idea of premeditation might sneak in.

Imagine we are looking at a picture which can appear as either a duck or a rabbit. The system of rationality (the particular way the lines and curves are defined and organized into a whole gestalt frame of meaning) differs between the duck and the rabbit, and it differs qualitatively, valuatively, as a ‘felt’ sense of meaning . A physicalist will say , yes but we can locate the underlying facts which explain this difference. — Joshs

I don't understand visual phenomena like the duck/ rabbit as rational at all. I see them as just ambiguous patterns which can resemble more than one thing. Does it look like a beak or ears? Which resemblance do I notice first?

We can as phenomenologists study the process of constructing qualitative systems of rationality, but this will not lead us to a physicalist explanation, since the physicalist explanation presupposes the developed framework of a qualitative system of rationality. — Joshs

Physicalism does not rule out qualities, though. All physical things have their attributes or characteristics, which is the same as to say qualities. A particle may have the quality of mass or not. An orange has the quality of roundness, and of appearing to us as orange. In fact I can't see how anything non-physical could have a quality. If by 'quality' you just mean 'human feeling' then sure physical objects as such do not have human or animal feelings, and they may not even evoke the same feelings in different percipients.

There are is no end to the variety of qualitative systems of meaning we can constitute, and physicalism is just one historically produced narrative. It is not the world which is physical, or based on energy, it is a narrative which emerged a few centuries ago and which we have been quite attached to. We are so blinded by the usefulness of that narrative we can’t see through it or beyond it, as though we were all living in The Truman Show. — Joshs

Everything you say there is equally a narrative told from a particular perspective which is just one among many. I don't say the world is "based on energy" I say it is most primordially energetic, ever-changing. Your saying that physicalism is just a narrative which we have become attached to, is itself a psychologising narrative designed with the intention of refuting physicalism as a mere attachment. Physicalism comes in many forms, as does naturalism. These are all attempts to understand the world we find ourselves in while being informed by science. None of these metaphysical pictures is certain―the best we can hope for is plausibility given what we know from experience. I think you are in danger of succumbing to a postmodern relativism.

In that sense, phenomenology neither asserts nor rules out a “beyond”; it simply declines to turn what exceeds experience into a theoretical object. There’s something quite Buddhist about this also: a refusal to indulge metaphysical speculation, paired with an insistence on attending carefully to the nature of existence/experience moment-by-moment. — Wayfarer

This is one reason why it attracts me. If only it wasn't so fucking difficult. :wink:

‘wax on, wax off’ ~ Karate Kid.

This is one reason why it attracts me. If only it wasn't so fucking difficult — Tom Storm

Do you mean the theory or the practice? If phenomenology consists in attending to experience, then the theory is unnecessary―which is not to say the practice is easy.

The theory; trying to make sense of Husserl or Merleau-Ponty is very difficult, especially if, like me, you don’t particularly enjoy theory and have no background in philosophy. But I recognize in myself that the things I resist are often the things I would benefit from understanding better.

I don't understand visual phenomena like the duck/ rabbit as rational at all. I see them as just ambiguous patterns which can resemble more than one thing. Does it look like a beak or ears? Which resemblance do I notice — Janus

What I mean by rational is that when we recognize a
series of lines and curves as a duck, each line and curve has a particular role that it plays in forming the pattern that appears as the duck. In other words, the pattern is constituted as a structure of relations according to a particular logic. When we see the image as a rabbit, the role of the lines and curves in constituting this pattern is different. What appears as a line when the image looks like a duck may no longer be seen as a line. So the pattern constituting the rabbit expresses a different logic or relations. I call the logic of pattern a system of rationality.

Physicalism does not rule out qualities, though. All physical things have their attributes or characteristics, which is the same as to say qualities. A particle may have the quality of mass or not. An orange has the quality of roundness, and of appearing to us as orange. In fact I can't see how anything non-physical could have a quality. If by 'quality' you just mean 'human feeling' then sure physical objects as such do not have human or animal feelings, and they may not even evoke the same feelings in different percipients. — Janus

Do these qualities inhere in the things themselves independent of our encounter with them, or only in our response to these things, in how they affect us? By quality, I mean human feelings in the sense that the quality of an object is something that is felt, sensed by us. According to this definition, if a physical object, defined by qualities such as mass or roundness, may not evoke the same feelings in different percipients, then we cannot call these qualities of the object, but qualities of the interaction between the object and ourselves. Are qualities like mass and roundness universally felt as the same by all of us, or do we simply hypothesize that the differences among us in qualitative sense of the same object amounts to subjective variation in the experience of an objectively invariant quality inhering in the object itself? Can we ever prove this hypothesis, or must we take it as a given if we are to act as physicalists?

I would add that my example of the duck/rabbit image is meant to show that individual qualities don’t just appear to us as what they are in isolation. They appear within systems or patterns of inter-related qualities. Mass and roundness mean what they mean within a larger system of qualitative relations constituting a theory or model which you can think of as a meta-quality (what I’ve been calling a system of rationality). Think of mass or roundness like the lines and curves within the duck or rabbit image. It’s not just that what constitutes a line or curve differs depending on the larger gestalt configuration it belongs to. It’s that the very concept of something like mass or roundness depends on a larger system of qualities that we perceive in things.

Everything you say there is equally a narrative told from a particular perspective which is just one among many. I don't say the world is "based on energy" I say it is most primordially energetic, ever-changing. Your saying that physicalism is just a narrative which we have become attached to, is itself a psychologising narrative designed with the intention of refuting physicalism as a mere attachment. — Janus

I’m not trying to refute physicalism. It isnt wrong and it isn’t merely an attachment . It is a model and models are intrinsic and necessary to our experience. Are all models relative? Phenomenology says that is it is what all models have in common (the subject-object structure of temporality) which is non-relative, rather than it being the case that we can get beyond perspectivalism to how the world really is in itself absent our participation.

I've read some of both, and much much more of Heidegger, and where I find difficulty is only where the language is obscure or ambiguous. The basic ideas are very simple, the elaborations are tortuous, and in my view, often unnecessarily analytical (and not always in a good way).

My view is that the great philosophers contribute one or two or a few new ideas, new ways of looking at things, and that is their value. The rest is "filler" for me―a waste of time. I think the idea of attending closely, as closely as possible, to experience is a great idea, and it wasn't invented by Husserl, Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty. There is so much mythology that gets built up around these figures, who were just very smart, very obsessed men who came up with some good ideas.

That said, if the academic life is attractive to you, then I would say 'go for it'. As for the practice, the more I attend to my experience without falling into trying to analyze the fuck out of it, the richer my life becomes. What more can we realistically hope for than an enriched life?

So the pattern constituting the rabbit expresses a different logic or relations. I call the logic of pattern a system of rationality. — Joshs

Fair enough. The direct experience for me is just seeing a visual pattern that can be read either way. Being interested in reading and writing poetry and also drawing and painting this is nothing new or surprising to me. Just as we often see forms or faces emerging form natural formations of rocks or clouds for example, so when I paint in a more "abstract" mode I often find similar images emerging there.

Do these qualities inhere in the things themselves independent of our encounter with them, or only in our response to these things, in how they affect us? By quality, I mean human feelings in the sense that the quality of an object is something that is felt, sensed by us. According to this definition, if a physical object, defined by qualities such as mass or roundness, may not evoke the same feelings in different percipients, then we cannot call these qualities of the object, but qualities of the interaction between the object and ourselves. — Joshs

I'd say that some qualities are relational and others are intrinsic to physical objects. Opacity of most things other than glass, the heaviness (mass) of stones and wood, the liquid flowingness of water and so on. I think roundness is a real non-relational quality, as I do form and pattern in general. Due to scale some characteristics may not be perceptible to some creatures; insects for example.

Are qualities like mass and roundness universally felt as the same by all of us, or do we simply hypothesize that the differences among us in qualitative sense of the same object amounts to subjective variation in the experience of an objectively invariant quality inhering in the object itself? Can we ever prove this hypothesis, or must we take it as a given if we are to act as physicalists? — Joshs

I believe anyone will feel the mass of a stone for example. It may feel heavier to a smaller, weaker person, obviously. If you tested a thousand people and asked them which of two stones, a relatively small one and a relatively large one, is the heavier, I don't believe there would be any disagreement. I believe that if you showed any number of people a sphere and a cube and asked them to identify which is which, that there would be no disagreement. This shows that the characteristics of objects are not human-dependent. Even my dog can tell the difference between a ball and a heavy stone―he won't try to pick up anything too large for his jaws.

I’m not trying to refute physicalism. It isnt wrong and it isn’t merely an attachment . It is a model and models
are intrinsic and necessary to our experience. Are all models relative? Phenomenology says that is it is what all models have in common (the subject-object structure of temporality) which is non-relative, rather than it being the case that we can get beyond perspectivalism to how the world really is in itself absent our participation. — Joshs

I'm not trying to defend physicalism either. As a metaphysical position I probably find it the most plausible. That said, I'm not totally averse to Kastrup's speculations (although I would say it is mind not consciousness which might be more coherently considered fundamental). On the other hand I am naturally averse to thinking in terms of fundamentality at all.

If I put on my physicalist hat, I would say that the physical, that is energetic configurations, are inherently mind-like in some way that is very hard, maybe impossible, to articulate clearly. I don't know if you are familiar with the experiments being carried out by Michael Levin. If not, if you are interested search his name and you will find plenty of material. I won't go into detail, but he hypothesizes a "platonic morpho-space" which he thinks is his currently best hypothesis to explain what he observes with clumps of human and other cells spontaneously organizing themselves such as to be able to problem solve in various ways. It's fascinating.

I agree with you that we certainly cannot "get beyond" human perspectives, but I think some perspectives are more plausible than others. That said, since there is no universally acceptable criteria for assessing plausibility, and since others will not find most plausible what I do, I acknowledge that metaphysics is largely a matter of taste.

Fair enough.

That said, if the academic life is attractive to you, then I would say 'go for it'. As for the practice, the more I attend to my experience without falling into trying to analyze the fuck out of it, the richer my life becomes. What more can we realistically hope for than an enriched life? — Janus

Sure. I am neither inclined to practice nor to theorise, but I am interested in understanding the range of perspectives out there. I find embodied cognition and its implications fairly compelling, and I tend toward a constructivist view of reality, with sympathies for anti‑foundationalist thought. I am also interested in any conceptual framing that seeks to potentially dissolve old problems and dichotomies.

:ok:

The idea would be more that energy is fundamentally intelligent, directed. — Janus

Can you say anything else about this? Any idea how energy is intelligent? (I agree that it is not the same as consciousness.) What is the intelligence directed towards, and how is the intelligence accomplished?

There is no change without energy, no constitution of anything without energy. The changes, the possibilities for different constitutions of things, seem to be lawlike, directed towards particular kinds of forms. What is matter if not energy? Particles are configurations of energy, fields consist of energy. Cells, which are basically electrochemical networks have recently been found to clump together to form multicellular networks which, without having evolved, can cooperate to solve problems. See the work of Michael Levins for more information.

It's not so straightforward with Buddhism―there the predominant idea seems to be that there is no ground of being. On the other hand Buddhism as a whole is a multifaceted movement, and very much open to various interpretations.

I hesitate to make statements about Buddhism as I didn’t study it deeply. I would say though that the implication of a transcendent reality underlying our known world is implicit everywhere. True, there is supposedly no God and no soul as such. But there are bodhistvas galore and people who achieve a realisation of Nirvana, who are enlightened. There is reincarnation, although modern commentators seem to contort this into something that isn’t the transmigration of souls, but the transmission of some kind of common being, or essence which is undefined.

So what is going on here, what is Nirvana and Para-nirvana, for that matter. If a transcendent ground of being were not implicated these phrases and ideas would be meaningless, just novel ways of describing the annihilation of death.

Such images are always imaginary amalgamations of imagery derived from this world of course. Think about the portrayal of God in Michelangelo's work in the Sistine Chapel.

Yes, but they are allegorical of transfigured, God like beings inhabiting a heavenly realm.

It’s time we accepted that all this religious activity, iconography and religious practices are shouting from the roof tops that there is a heavenly world, a Nirvana underlaying our known world, that is primary to it and that our world is a pale reflection of this reality.

I suppose you could say that the ground of being, if it were anything more than just an idea, would be transcendent. And the idea itself is thought of as an idea of something transcendental (as opposed to transcendent) insofar as it is not empirically evident.

Yes, although I would not confine it to a ground of being. I see transcendent relationships in our world of experiences. Although it might not fit the definition in terms of being something other worldly.

For example, for the cells in my body, they live a life in a colony of cells making up a body. They have a community, of which they are a part. But they have no idea that I as the head of the community, so to speak, am thinking about moving the whole community at great speed in a vehicle to a Cathedral to look up at shaped stones at the tops of columns. My activity as a human is transcendent of their lives as cells performing a group task in a community of cells. What they do, why they do it etc bares no relation to what I do and visa versa. It is a transcendent relation in a shared body, or colony of living cells, or beings.

Now if we take this analogy and extend it upward (in a hierarchy of being) to a situation where there is a community of people equivalent to the community of cells. That community of people (cells), has no idea that the head of the community which might be God, or Gayá has some conversation going on with other exalted beings in other galaxies for example, that bare no relation to our lives and visa versa, while it is a transcendent relation in a shared body, or colony of living beings (cells).

Now Michelangelo might have been representing these God like beings in his frescos in the Sistine Chapel, but depicting them as human, because their true nature is inconceivable to us, is in a transcendent relationship with us. In which case it bares no conceivable relation to our concept of iconography.

I suppose you could say that the ground of being, if it were anything more than just an idea, would be transcendent. And the idea itself is thought of as an idea of something transcendental (as opposed to transcendent) insofar as it is not empirically evident.

This is where it becomes problematic, transcendent relationships are problematic empirically, because they cannot be reduced analytically. They need evidence of the transcendent partner in the relationship and its interaction, or co-dependence. But if the evidence of the transcendent partner can only be found through revelation, or enlightenment. It requires us to take seriously what those reports tell us. Or in other words to believe religious doctrine. It is an exercise in the blind leading the blind, in the absence of revelation.

I don't think in terms of transcendence because the idea of a transcendent realm or reality seems unintelligible to me, or else simply a reification of a conception of this world into another imaginary register, so to speak, and I don't think the idea is at all helpful philosophically. — Janus

I think there is something to be made of the idea. For example, the table is somehow more than the sum of its parts. One might recognize this by saying that the table transcends its part. But there is no particular glamour or value involved here. It is just that the parts need to be integrated, arranged, put together in a certain way before the parts become a table. In addition, one can recognize that any description of the table will fail, in some sense, to "capture" everything about the table, so the object transcends the descriptions of it.

How the world 'is' independent from (sc. the representation ordered by our own cognitive apparatus) is unanswerable because we can't get out from our own perspective. I believe that there is a truth in there but at the same time, they overreach. — boundless

I agree with that - especially that there is a truth in there. Philosophy pushes into binary yes/no responses. But, for example, it is true that we can't get out from our own perspective. What idealists tend not to notice is that our perspective throws up problems that it cannot deal with. So we are forced to reconsider and develop a new perspective. The disruption is the world talking back to us.

Because, it has no reason (I am using this word without any reference to 'purpose' here) to be intelligible, otherwise. It might be intelligible, yes, but I don't think there is any need for that. And yet, it seems that it is. It could be a complete 'chaos' and yet it is ordered. My question is: why is it so? — boundless

If it has no reason to be intelligible, it has no reason not to be. But this misunderstands what intelligibility is, in two respects. Intelligibility is always partial, never finished. What we understand generates new questions and hence new understandings. But also, the category of the chaotic is, curiously enough, a matter of perspective. A disordered pile of books is only chaotic because it is not ordered in a way that is interesting to us. There are in fact, endless ways in which they could be ordered. Our problem is only to pick which order we impose on them. Radical chaos is different. In such a world, we would be unable to identify any object, process or event; there could be no constituents to be ordered or chaotic.

My own speculative answer is that even what we call 'mindless', 'inanimate' matter has a structure because it derives from a 'Principle' of both 'being' and 'intelligibility' (and this IMO is an 'argument' - speculative argument, not a 'proof' - of the existence of a 'Divine Mind'). — boundless

I'm really not qualified to speculate with you, I'm afraid.

Reduction by itself isnt necessarily a bad thing, but we want to aim for the right kind of reduction. Reducing phenomena to physical processes relying on objective causal mechanisms is concealing kind of reduction since it slaps abstractive idealizations over what we experience, hiding the richness of that experience. Husserlian reduction and Wittgensteinian seeing bracket the flattening generalizations of empiricism so we can notice what is implicated in them but not made explicit. — Joshs

I agree that reduction is not necessarily a bad thing. It depends, I would say, on the context, and there is a huge dose of pragmatism required here, rather than the simple-minded pursuit of truth. But I have to say, Wittgenstein's project seems to me the most promising approach. Husserl and Heidegger, for me, amplify and elaborate the range of theoretical stances available, but do not manage to arrive in the lived world. Perhaps Wittgenstein does not get there either, but he does identify where we need to go.

The aspect called physical reality comprises events and objects which in themselves are devoid of affect, relevance and mattering. They simply ‘are’ as neutral facts of the real. Relevance is a gloss we as subjects add to them. — Joshs

Well, there is a case for saying that relevance is not properly though of as something added to the neutral facts, but something that underlies the project of thinking of things as neutral facts. In other words, we pursue the project of understanding the world stripped of relevance in pursuit of our human lives. So that project needs to be seen in the context of our lives.

I agree with that - especially that there is a truth in there. Philosophy pushes into binary yes/no responses. But, for example, it is true that we can't get out from our own perspective. What idealists tend not to notice is that our perspective throws up problems that it cannot deal with. So we are forced to reconsider and develop a new perspective. The disruption is the world talking back to us. — Ludwig V

:up: We might have a distorted, imperfect knowledge but we are not ignorant. "We see through a glass, darkly" to borrow a Biblical phrase but we are not blind. Knowledge comes into degrees.

If it has no reason to be intelligible, it has no reason not to be. But this misunderstands what intelligibility is, in two respects. Intelligibility is always partial, never finished. What we understand generates new questions and hence new understandings. But also, the category of the chaotic is, curiously enough, a matter of perspective. A disordered pile of books is only chaotic because it is not ordered in a way that is interesting to us. There are in fact, endless ways in which they could be ordered. Our problem is only to pick which order we impose on them. Radical chaos is different. In such a world, we would be unable to identify any object, process or event; there could be no constituents to be ordered or chaotic. — Ludwig V

Good point. But still, if it is intelligible it seems 'natural' to ask ourselves if there is a 'reason' of that intelligibility.

I'm really not qualified to speculate with you, I'm afraid. — Ludwig V

Of course, you are free to avoid such speculations. But I find them very interesting, fascinating and so on.

I'd say that some qualities are relational and others are intrinsic to physical objects. Opacity of most things other than glass, the heaviness (mass) of stones and wood, the liquid flowingness of water and so on. I think roundness is a real non-relational quality, as I do form and pattern in general. Due to scale some characteristics may not be perceptible to some creatures; insects for example. — Janus

Interesting. Here is where phenomenology (and hermeneutics, enactivism, poststructuralism and the later Wittgenstein) differs. The claim there is no such thing as a non-relational quality. Furthermore, a quality is an event, a change of relation. A quality doesn’t first come into existence and then sit there self-identically over time. Quality is the flow of the Heraclitean stream, always returning to itself differently. Phenomenology shows us how we are able to construct relatively stable patterns of sense from this qualitative flux

t. I believe that if you showed any number of people a sphere and a cube and asked them to identify which is which, that there would be no disagreement. This shows that the characteristics of objects are not human-dependent. Even my dog can tell the difference between a ball and a heavy stone―he won't try to pick up anything too large for his jaws. — Janus

No, it shows that there is enough similarity between the ways that each of us construct pattens of sense-making out of the flux that we can create abstractive idealizations that we call empirical objectivity. When we do this we convince ourselves that the multitude of similar perceptions among a community of observers amount to different vantages on the absolute ‘same’ object. In believing in the identity of objects independent of our idealizing abstractive
interaction with them, we ignore the gradually but continually shifting experience of them for each of us over tome, as well as the differences between persons. Note
that we do t invent our experience of the world
out of whole cloth. Whether do when we theorize empirical objects is begin with real but shifting patterns of interaction and harden them into formal logico-mathematical unities (this self-identical object).

If I put on my physicalist hat, I would say that the physical, that is energetic configurations, are inherently mind-like in some way that is very hard, maybe impossible, to articulate clearly. I don't know if you are familiar with the experiments being carried out by Michael Levin. If not, if you are interested search his name and you will find plenty of material. I won't go into detail, but he hypothesizes a "platonic morpho-space" which he thinks is his currently best hypothesis to explain what he observes with clumps of human and other cells spontaneously organizing themselves such as to be able to problem solve in various ways — Janus

Levin buys into a mathematical platonism that goes back to Leibnitz and ignores all the thinking since Kant that this OP is drawing from. He assumes arbitrary mathematical truths in themselves which are utterly non-relational and then wants to integrate these pure ‘non-physical’ truths with evolutionary processes.

Like pi, e, and many other remarkable constants, forms emerge from mathematics in ways that cannot be explained by any kind of history or properties of the physical world – they would be this way even if the physical world was entirely different.

phenomenology neither asserts nor rules out a “beyond”; it simply declines to turn what exceeds experience into a theoretical object. There’s something quite Buddhist about this also: a refusal to indulge metaphysical speculation, paired with an insistence on attending carefully to the nature of existence/experience moment-by-moment. — Wayfarer

It may be a different situation with Husserl than Edith Stein or Max Scheler. For him a beyond of experience is not impossible but meaningless. There is no coherent sense to be attached to a reality that is not even in principle accessible to intentionality, because “accessibility in principle” is built into what it means for something to be something. The world always exceeds what is currently given, but it never exceeds the structure of givenness as such. Husserl isnt just declining to speculate; he is showing that certain speculative questions rest on a confused picture of meaning and existence.

But still, if it is intelligible it seems 'natural' to ask ourselves if there is a 'reason' of that intelligibility. — boundless

Well, my first reaction is to examine the question to work out what will count as an answer.

A disordered pile of books is only chaotic because it is not ordered in a way that is interesting to us. There are in fact, endless ways in which they could be ordered. Our problem is only to pick which order we impose on them. Radical chaos is different. In such a world, we would be unable to identify any object, process or event; there could be no constituents to be ordered or chaotic. — Ludwig V

I think that's as good an answer as you are ever going to get.

Of course, you are free to avoid such speculations. But I find them very interesting, fascinating and so on. — boundless

Fair enough.

But there are bodhistvas galore and people who achieve a realisation of Nirvana, who are enlightened. — Punshhh

Are there? How do you know?

There is reincarnation, although modern commentators seem to contort this into something that isn’t the transmigration of souls, but the transmission of some kind of common being, or essence which is undefined. — Punshhh

Again, how do you know there is reincarnation?

Yes, but they are allegorical of transfigured, God like beings inhabiting a heavenly realm. — Punshhh

Yes, of course they are allegorical―I was only pointing out that all our supposedly transcendent imagery really derives from what we have seen in this world.

It’s time we accepted that all this religious activity, iconography and religious practices are shouting from the roof tops that there is a heavenly world, a Nirvana underlaying our known world, that is primary to it and that our world is a pale reflection of this reality. — Punshhh

I don't see any reason to believe that. That said, I don't deny that others might feel they have reasons to believe it. For me the idea that our world is a pale reflection of some other reality is unsupportable, since this world and our experiences in it and of it are all we know.

Or in other words to believe religious doctrine. It is an exercise in the blind leading the blind, in the absence of revelation. — Punshhh

This makes no sense to me. There are many religious doctrines, incompatible with one another, and I have no desire to be led by the blind.

Interesting. Here is where phenomenology (and hermeneutics, enactivism, poststructuralism and the later Wittgenstein) differs. The claim there is no such thing as a non-relational quality. Furthermore, a quality is an event, a change of relation. — Joshs

Sure, there is a sense in which it can be said that the quality of roundness or mass is a mere potential unless it interacts with something, is felt. But that doesn't change the fact that objects that have mass and are round may exist without ever having been perceived by any human or even animal. A round rock might be dislodged by water or wind and roll down a hill in a remote place that has never been visited by humans, or even animals.

No, it shows that there is enough similarity between the ways that each of us construct pattens of sense-making out of the flux that we can create abstractive idealizations that we call empirical objectivity. — Joshs

This seems incorrect to me. Sure, the ways in which we see things are mediated by our sensory systems, but it is the ways things are seen, not what is seen that is mediated. If everybody sees a cube on the left and a sphere on the right that cannot be explained by the similarity of the human visual system alone.

Levin buys into a mathematical platonism that goes back to Leibnitz and ignores all the thinking since Kant that this OP is drawing from. He assumes arbitrary mathematical truths in themselves which are utterly non-relational and then wants to integrate these pure ‘non-physical’ truths with evolutionary processes.

Like pi, e, and many other remarkable constants, forms emerge from mathematics in ways that cannot be explained by any kind of history or properties of the physical world – they would be this way even if the physical world was entirely different. — Joshs

Levin is merely speculating at this stage, and his thinking is more in line with Spinoza, Hegel and Whitehead than with Leibniz. He is a scientist, so maybe he doesn't labour under an academic assumption that insight is to be found only in the mainstream, or that there is a progressive line of academic authority in philosophy.

Levin is about testing explanatory hypotheses for phenomena which cannot be explained in terms of mechanical causation or evolution and thinking rather in terms of final and formal causes, ideas which, as you no doubt know, go back to Aristotle.

I think there is something to be made of the idea. For example, the table is somehow more than the sum of its parts. — Ludwig V

Sure, a very different sense of 'transcendence' that the one I was addressing.

For him (Husserl) a beyond of experience is not impossible but meaningless. — Joshs

But I'm a bit uncomfortable with the suggestion that this is a state of kind of dumb indolence. I was responding to @Tom Storm question about 'God, Brahman, The One'. In that context, I said that phenomenology was not overtly concerned with the question of the 'ultimate nature or ground'.

But here I have to acknowledge the way that Buddhism has influenced my attitude. Specifically the book Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. This is a Sōtō Zen text which stresses the 'ordinary mind' practice. Ordinary mind teachings suggest that enlightenment is not a distant, supernatural state to be achieved in a future life, but is found in the natural, unconditioned state of one’s own mind during everyday activities. But at the same time, this "ordinary" mind is not the habitual, reactive mind filled with habitual tendencies, judgment and grasping, but rather a state of "no-doing" or wu wei.

It is here that the parallel with epochē can be seen. As you probably know, there is scholarship on the parallels between epochē in Greek scepticism and Buddhist philosophy, originating in the encounter of Pyrrho of Elis with Buddhist traditions in Gandhāra. In both contexts, dogmatic views (dṛṣṭi) were seen as a source of disturbance or suffering. But this did not amount to scepticism in the modern, argumentative sense. The suspension involved was not a matter of withholding belief pending proof, but a practical discipline aimed at loosening attachment to reified ways of seeing, in order to transform one’s mode of experience. It was inextricably connected with meditative awareness, which in the Buddhist context, is the actual seeing of how 'dependent origination' conditions consciousness.

So the point is, behind all of this, there is considerable philosophical sophistication which can easily be misunderstood. Sōtō, in particular, is built around the writings of Master Dogen and his work the Shobogenzo, which is a classic of Buddhist philosophy and practice. Since the Kyoto School, there's been quite a bit of comparative literature on Heidegger and Dogen.

It may be a different situation with Husserl than Edith Stein or Max Scheler. For him a beyond of experience is not impossible but meaningless. There is no coherent sense to be attached to a reality that is not even in principle accessible to intentionality, because “accessibility in principle” is built into what it means for something to be something. The world always exceeds what is currently given, but it never exceeds the structure of givenness as such. Husserl isnt just declining to speculate; he is showing that certain speculative questions rest on a confused picture of meaning and existence. — Joshs

Interesting and an important point.

Specifically the book Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. This is a Sōtō Zen text which stresses the 'ordinary mind' practice. Ordinary mind teachings suggest that enlightenment is not a distant, supernatural state to be achieved in a future life, but is found in the natural, unconditioned state of one’s own mind during everyday activities. — Wayfarer

"If you continue this simple practice every day, you will obtain some wonderful power. Before you attain it, it is something wonderful, but after you attain it, it is nothing special."

Where is the quote about before you attain enlightenment, you put on your robe and eat your rice. But after you obtain enlightenment, you put on your robe and eat your rice.

Edit:. I might be thinking the same book.
"To have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point; we just do what we should do, like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism."

But at the same time, this "ordinary" mind is not the habitual, reactive mind filled with habitual tendencies, judgment and grasping, but rather a state of "no-doing" or wu wei. — Wayfarer

Yet nothing is left undone.

Are there? How do you know?

Again, how do you know there is reincarnation?

It’s in the iconography and teachings, although reference to this sort of thing has been toned down for the Western market. Presumably because Westerners are not inclined to take it seriously, because of the results of the Cartesian divide etc. I’m not saying that I believe it because it’s in the iconography and teachings, but acknowledging it’s presence there in.

Yes, of course they are allegorical―I was only pointing out that all our supposedly transcendent imagery really derives from what we have seen in this world.

Yes and the conversations, if they can be described that way between cells will derive from what they are familiar with in their living processes. This might seem to be facetious, but there is an important point about transcendent relationship here. The minor partner (the one who is transcended) has no idea of the nature of the transcendent partner, it is inconceivable, incomprehensible, bares no relation to their experiences.

I don't see any reason to believe that. That said, I don't deny that others might feel they have reasons to believe it. For me the idea that our world is a pale reflection of some other reality is unsupportable, since this world and our experiences in it and of it are all we know.

I’m not saying that anyone should believe it, or that I believe it. But that we should at least acknowledge that it was believed by all the adherents of these religions movements and is depicted en masse in their iconography and teachings. And was accepted as true by the whole population prior to the Cartesian divide.

This makes no sense to me. There are many religious doctrines, incompatible with one another, and I have no desire to be led by the blind.

All I’m saying is that if we are going to consider transcendence, we have to somehow translate what is revealed to people during revelation into something amenable to philosophical discourse. That there is no other way. It is rather like Kant’s neumenon. Philosophy accepts the neumenon into discursive discourse, why not transcendence? It’s rather like a positive form of neumenon.

As for your other comments - perhaps look at the original post if you haven’t already rather than the passage in isolation? — Wayfarer

Well, yes, if I had read the whole piece, I would not have got so excited about the Wittgenstein reference. But now that I have, I don't see that everything that I said was so far off the mark as to deserve no reply. But then, one can't expect a reply to everything.
As I understand it, the practice of tying one's comments to quotations is to try to ensure that comments are directed at something specific. I think that's good practice, although it is sometimes rather limiting.

Its primary method is the epochē or “bracketing,” in which one suspends the “natural attitude” — the habitual assumption that the world exists just as we take it to do. This suspension is not a denial of the world; it is a way of clarifying the pure content and structure of experience without smuggling in our preconceived notions of what it means. The resemblance between Husserl’s procedure and the Buddhist practice of “bare awareness” in mindfulness meditation is not coincidental. — Wayfarer

What bothers me here is that the methodology of our physics makes a very similar move. It brackets those aspects of the world that cannot be handled by its methods. So my question becomes how phenomenology resolves what classical physics leaves out . In a sense, perhaps it does, but it sits alongside physics, insulated from it - as physics is insulated from phenomenology. Both are theoretical projects and result in the hard problem rather than solving or dissolving it.

The resulting puzzles — the Hard Problem most of all — arise not from the mysteriousness of consciousness, but from the misapplication of categories that cannot, by design, encompass them. — Wayfarer

Quite so. So phenomenology is part of the defence of consciousness, but not part of the solution of the problem.

... Bitbol’s central claim: the attempt to derive consciousness from material processes reverses the real order of priority. Whatever is presumed to exist in the physical world already presupposes consciousness as the field in which such ascriptions occur. — Wayfarer

As I understand it, you do not deny the truth of the naturalistic, causal account of the relationship. So what does "priority" mean here? Does it mean something more like "logical priority", in which Eucldi's axioms are prior to his theorems, but not temporally prior to them? Or something like Heidegger's "always already"?

But consciousness does not appear from the outside. It is the medium within which anything like “outside” and “inside” is first constituted. — Wayfarer

I don't see how consciousness can be both the medium withing which inside and outside are defined and at the same time one limb of the dialectical pair.
The solution is simple. It is to accept that knowledge is always of something, and therefore, most often, connected to the outside. Ditto consciousnes, experience, concepts etc. You seem to think that knowledge exists in its own right, quite independently of what it is knowledge of. But knowledge is defined in relation to its objects (and to its subject as well) So the supposed gap is bridged.

... Bitbol’s point is not that materialism is wrong in its domain, but that it becomes inappropriate — and conceptually unstable — when extended to the nature of conscious experience. — Wayfarer

I could say exactly the same about idealism.

Sure, there is a sense in which it can be said that the quality of roundness or mass is a mere potential unless it interacts with something, is felt. But that doesn't change the fact that objects that have mass and are round may exist without ever having been perceived by any human or even animal. A round rock might be dislodged by water or wind and roll down a hill in a remote place that has never been visited by humans, or even animals. — Janus

If our customary starting point for grounding reality is objects-in-themselves, self-identical substances which exist first before they interact, then there must first be something before it can be perceived by something else. For Husserl and the other thinkers I mentioned there are no thing-in-themselves. Not just because humans or animals must be present for them to be perceived, but because a world seen in itself, apart from humans or animals, is a temporal flux of qualitative change.

The real places that “have never been visited by humans, or even animals” is this qualitatively changing flux. When humans interact with this flux such as to produce certain. relatively stable patterns, we create abstractive idealizations, a garb of ideas we place over the patterns. We then interpret the patterns in terms of ‘physical objects’ and say such things as that a round rock has been dislodged by water or wind and rolls down a hill in a remote place. For sure something in the world has taken place, but our contribution to it is much greater than just passively observing it.

Levin is merely speculating at this stage, and his thinking is more in line with Spinoza, Hegel and Whitehead than with Leibniz. — Janus

Spinoza, yes. Hegel and Whitehead, no. For the latter two the idea of mathematical truths that are utterly independent of history, world, relation, or realization is not just false, it is philosophically incoherent. Hegel explicitly criticizes mathematics for mistaking abstraction for truth. Mathematical truth does not explain reality, it abstracts from it. Mathematical entities achieve certainty only by stripping away determinacy, relation, and mediation; they are true as abstractions, not as accounts of reality.

Whitehead would never say that mathematical forms “emerge from mathematics” independently of the world. Mathematics, like logic, is an abstraction from the patterns of actuality, not a transcendent realm dictating those patterns from outside. He would say Levin’s platonism reifies potentiality and ignores the relational, processual conditions under which anything, including mathematics, can be intelligible at all.