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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Therefore, it is evident to me, that the Kantian categories are unacceptable. Something must be altered to bring the real noumena into the realm of "knowable", or else we have created a vast aspect of reality which is deemed unknowable. This is contrary to the philosophical mindset which is the desire to know, in an absolute sense. — Metaphysician Undercover

The categories of the understanding in Kant were adapted from Aristotle.

The issue I see is that Kant has created an epistemological principle, that knowing, knowledge, is of the phenomenal — Metaphysician Undercover

'Kant does not believe that material objects are unknowable or impossible. While Kant is a transcendental idealist--he believes the nature of objects as they are in themselves is unknowable to us--knowledge of appearances is nevertheless possible.'

IEP

This actually allows for the possibility that knowledge of phenomena, whilst effective in its domain, is also radically limited in some fundamental sense. I don't have a hard time accepting that idea.

The Platonist tradition, in the broader sense, does entertain the notion that what we think we know, is in some sense an illusion. That is challenging, as we are strongly disposed to a kind of common-sense realism by both nature and culture; it doesn't occur to us that there may be a sense in which the common-sense and even scientific account of the world is in some sense illusory or mistaken. But in ancient philosophy, it was believed that the masses of people - the hoi polloi - are profoundly mistaken about what they think they know, as illustrated in the Allegory of the Cave.

What is lacking in Kant is any real sense of transcending the bounds of the merely empirical. He says he is an empirical realist and transcendental idealist - if the empirical realist knows the empirical world, what does the transcendental idealist know?

(Actually, I first encountered Kant through a book called The Central Philosophy of Buddhism by T R V Murti. Murti was an Indian academic who had been trained in Western philosophy. This book has extensive comparisons between Kant, Hegel, Berkeley, and Mahayana Buddhism, specifically the school known as 'madhyamika' (middle way) which is the seminal philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism. That has a great deal to say about transcendental wisdom, Prajñāpāramitā. That book has fallen out of favour somewhat but it certainly helped me get my bearings with this topic.)

Do you accept that there is a noumenon? Do you think that it can be known? Do you think that our nature is the same as the nature of the noumenon? If philosophy can't answer these questions, then are there any other ways of knowing them?

I wonder if there is noumenon, might it not be of two types: natural and man made.

Where natural noumenon...trees, man, and other natural items cannot be known because their existence strictly contingent,particular, only possible, not necessary with no telos. We can only know their appearance.

Man made things, swings, homes, cars and the rest have a subjectivity/telos/necessity built into their being they are objective/subjective in themselves. Their being is wrapped up in us, and unlike nature's works, our works can be known, the subjectivity that inheres in man made things make them knowable beyond their appearance... if that makes any sense.

Yes, that's fair enough. I guess I do have great difficulty believing that they would not have seen the ship. And why they would not react, if indeed they did not react; I cannot begin to guess; it does seem very odd given that a ship like that would have been so unfamiliar to them.



I would agree with you about the "atmic" component. I would refer to it as 'spirit'. We are body, mind and spirit which reflects the Holy Trinity as well as many other trinitarian concepts in other religions. The idea I favour is that we (and the world) are 'three-in-one' (created in the image of the Father), and I think the limitation with Kant is that he substitutes practical reason for the spirit; not allowing that it could be possible to know the noumenal via the spirit. I think the problem philosophers commonly have in accepting this notion is that knowledge 'from the spirit' is not like either the concretely determinate empirical knowledge from the senses, or like the logically determinate a priori knowledge from the mind.

Schopenhauer came up before and I think he got it right that we know something of the noumenal via the will, but I think he was very wrong to think that the will is nothing more than a blind irrational striving. Such an idea comes from positing an unbreakable determinism operating on the will, that there is nothing influencing it beyond an ineluctable causality and that it cannot be determined by rationality and spiritual intuition; but must instead be renounced. The anomaly lies in the fact that any effective renunciation of the irrational will must itself be an act of rational will, informed by spiritual intuition.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

That's they very illusion I'm talking about. Prayer is lived. It is not transcendent at all.

I'm not talking about the allure of a conceptual saviour. The issue isn't some imagined safety and victory through a particular concept. It is, rather, a blindness to oneself; a failure to understand that the absence of "intellectual concern" is a practice of one's life rather than something "beyond."

The transcendent is a conceptual notion. A concept of living as opposed to "intellectualising," which is mistaken for the presence (or noumenon) of life itself. An ideality-- "If I think 'outside the intellectual,' then I will access life rather than mere knowledge"-- as if having the concept of what's beyond knowledge amounted to living. It's not true. The transcendent is only another concept.

Now this is not to say those who have the concept of the transcendent do not live. Many people who hold the concept of the transcendent live well. They, however, do so through their lives, not through a transcendent force. In the act of prayer, one lives beyond knowledge, is enacting a practice which other than mere knowing.

The story of the transcendent doesn't get life wrong. Those who believe it really live beyond knowledge. Rather, it gets knowledge wrong. It tells a falsehood about ourselves in relation to knowledge. It confuses the distinction between knowledge and life as a problem for knowledge and understanding, as if life ought to be knowledge.

In this respect, the transcendent does not respect life. It gets treated as a question of knowledge. As if living were about having a transcendent concept rather than being a state of existence. Here the function of the transcendent becomes clear: it is a tool for assert a hierarchy within knowledge, belief, values and cultural practice.

Everyone is by definition more than knowledge. No matter who someone is, they are a state of the world rather than just a representative concept. Quite literally everyone lives, not matter the time or place. The way the transcendent works is by denying this. If someone doesn't have the transcendent concept, then they supposedly failure to live. Not question of harm of ethics, but a literal view that those without the transcendent don't even count as life.

If someone is greedy and burdened by an endless quest for more possessions, they are supposed to be stuck "intellectualising," so obsessed with the idea of possessing more, that they do not live in the world beyond concepts. The transcendent is then posed as a solution to this, as THE remedy to become a living being--e.g. "Stop thinking about those possessions. Value the transcendent instead. Then you will live."

But it's not true. The truth is the greedy person with a horrible life is no less "beyond knowledge" than any contented person. That's why the solution to the greedy one's problem cannot simply be saying: "Well, I am content." It takes more than a concept. They need exist in a contented state.

So the truth there are many more ways to solve the greedy person's problem than the proponent of the transcendent would have us believe. The issue is not that the greedy person lacks life, it's the ways they are thinking and acting which are damaging. Any outcome in which those practices are avoided will work. In some of them, they would even keep a focus on material possessions.

The transcendent is a falsehood. What it says we need isn't true. We always have life beyond knowledge. Problems we encounter may solved in many more ways than with the transcendent concept. No doubt transcendent belief can function as a solution, but is tells a falsehood of how it does so. It's always us living, not a realm of beyond.

Prayer is lived. It is not transcendent at all. — TheWillowOfDarkness

The rationale for prayer is that it connects you to the transcendent. That is the meaning of the Biblical verse, 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.'

I think the triadic structure Punshhh suggests above is a good interpretation.

For sure, the point is to think about the transcendent concept to the exclusion of everything else. Pray think and value God (the transcendent in this case) rather than about anything found in the world. In doing this one "communicates" with the transcendent, feels the wonder, awe and real truth. As far as this goes, it works.

However, it is all you. You are the one that feels. One "communicates" with the transcendent not by speaking to it, but feeling the presence themselves. This is reflected in how many people say one has "to be open to it" for "communication" with the transcendent to occur. It's a person existence that matters, what they feel, which defines the presence of this communication or not.

God does not any action upon someone to think this way. They have to do it, a question not of God's existence, but of the worldly state of the individual. If someone is in the state of rejecting the transcendent the communication of prayer is impossible.

As a "real" state (or rather an irreal state--a thing of a realm someone may know conceptually or interact with), the transcendent is an illusion. The communication of prayer is entirely worldly, a particular way of thinking and valuing of an individual (e.g. "for the treasures of heaven, not the possessions of the world" ).

I do see all as within the self in the world, to the extent that it is focussed equally in myself in the world as if I were being a solipsist. But also I am a being in the world in which I live, in the moment, here and now. This is why I have said I agree with you. I am trying to say that imminent in the being is a transcendence, but not to some other place, but to the self, to the lived world.

Hence the illusion of transcendence-- that's just immanence. Sometimes people call or think this immanence is "transcendence." The thinking of the concept of the transcendence can be the expression of immanent.

Within the transcendental narrative, the concept of transcendence becomes attached to the expression or a meaningful life and so the concept comes to represent the immanent expression. People mistake immanence (the expression of the transcendent concept) for the presence of an outside force which defines meaning.

You right about life (the transcendent concept is an expression of meaning), but wrong about knowledge. You won't describe the transcendent for what it is. You maintain and defend the distinction of transcendence as a force or presence. Transcendence is immanent, not the other way around.

I think this comes out in your reading of self too. With respect to the self, my point is the opposite. All is not within the self at all. The immanence of prayer is not everything. Someone who communicates with the transcendent in prayer is not everything and they are certainly not thinking about the whole world. To think as if one were a solipsist is to make a grave error.

The self is defined by the opposite, by being a difference from everything else. No matter what we do, we'll only be and know a fraction of the world. My point wasn't that all was of the self, it was specifically, that the act of prayer was of the self, meaning it was not an act involving a transcendent force.

So is the self a mirror image of the different?
Is the different a representation of the self reflected?

I am unacquainted with your idea of meaning and the infinity of meaning. I will have to give it some more thought. Can you answer how meaning in the self relates to meaning in the world

My point wasn't that all was of the self, it was specifically, that the act of prayer was of the self, meaning it was not an act involving a transcendent force — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't disagree with this, but I think the self is more than I take you to think it is. So prayer does not involve some objectified or externally transcendent 'force'. The way I think about it, it involves an immanent internally transcendent spirit. That said, you also have to realize that what is said is just what is said, and nothing more; although it can certainly point or fail to point, like the needle of a compass, at something more.

The self is an expression of an existing difference-- the meaning of a individual subject who is distinct from all other things. It cannot be reduced to say everything is one. In a sense it is noumenon, the living of an individual distinct from all other states. (all other states of the world are, similarly, noumenon in this way.)

Representations of self is a bit of a different question. They are ways of thinking or understanding the self. The first paragraph of this post, for example, is a representation of self. It's a concept or knowledge about the self, rather than the self itself. I might be giving an accurate description of the self, but that representation isn't the self-itself. (as a contrast, I could misunderstand the self, I could be a solipsist, and the self-itself would still be so. I would still be a subject distinct form all other things. I just wouldn't realise it).

There are many representations of the self, some accurate, some false. In this sense we might say they are "reflected." By understanding the self in some way, we have an image relating to self-itself, some which are distorted (e.g. "everything is me" "there is no self") and some which are not (e.g. "I am an entity distinct from everything else" ). Sometimes representation of the self is an image of this difference, other times a representation of self lacks that image entirely.

Can you answer how meaning in the self relates to meaning in the world — Punshhh

I'm inclined to say it never does but it always relates. The tricky thing about selves (distinct individual subjects) is they are defined in themselves and given with the rest of the world. Where do I come from? How is that the immanent comes to be expressed through me?

Well, we could say it's because of the various other states of the world with their particular immanent expressions. As I am, I am the product of many different other causal states with particular immanent expression (e.g. humans, mother, father, education, culture, etc., etc.), all of which were given to make me as I am.

Yet, it is also true that I was an inseparable part of making all those events. If I never existed as a baby, I could not have been born. If I didn't make the choices I did, might exist differently (i.e. with a different immanent expression) than I do today. Any of those casual relationships also relies on my presence, how I react to them in the moment, to define how I exist and my particular immanent expression at any time. Despite my existence (and so particular forms of immanent expression) being set by the states around me, the presence of those state alone cannot be said to give my particular immanent expression (a certain meaning).

In the sense in transcendent beliefs, the idea that one's meaning is created, enforced, constituted or grounded on a force outside the self, there can be no relation. One's meaning cannot be expressed without themselves. Beyond that, I'm not sure it makes much sense to speak of how does the meaning of self relate to the meaning of the world.

The question appears to pose the idea that meaning comes to us without ourselves. As if we could look out into the world, notice the presence of some meaning, and it would somehow define our meaning without ourselves being present. It seems more or less driven by the question: "How do I gain meaning?" or "What part of the world will give me meaning?" Almost treating the question of meaning as if it were an empirical inquiry-- "If only we can find the theory of meaning, then will be able to control the world so it has meaning."

But meaning is infinite. We (and the world) are never without it. Even in the deepest depths of despair, people and the world still mean something, they still matter. Suicide is not driven by meaningless ( "what happens doesn't matter" ) but by meaning ("life is too horrible to allow it to continue" ). In this sense, nothing gives meaning. It always is.

The relationships of the world and self to meaning aren't interesting for providing a way to obey meaning when we have none. Rather, they are interesting for attaining particular immanent expressions within the self. What to I need to stop feeling horrible, to stop despairing, to flourish, etc.,.etc.; it's about obtaining a contented and ethical self. Sometimes this is transcendent belief and it works well.

With respect to knowledge though, the transcendent belief tells a falsehood. It mistakes one's own success (flourishing, finding contentment, etc.,etc.) for their absence. To make itself inciting, it tells the falsehood it's the world has no meaning and needs it to become meaningful.

The result is people making arguments and thinking like Wayfarer. An understanding where nihilism reins (the world is, in-itself, meaningless) and the transcendent belief is a requirement to add meaning in the world. It simultaneously reads the everyman as discontent and then proclaims itself to be the only solution to their problem. In this respect, it functions as a self-serving generator of anxiety. The person who was content with their life, but has never really given much thought to spiritual or philosophical matters, is suddenly assaulted by the proclamation they are meaningless. A practice not concerned, in terms of understanding, with the individual's flourishing and contentment (that would be "heathen" focus on the self) but rather increasing and maintenance of that particular transcendent tradition.

My approach is considered "evil" for this reason. Not because I argue there ought not be belief in the transcendent or that it doesn't work, but rather because I make the transcendent unnecessary for meaning. Since I say meaning is infinite, so that the world cannot be without it, the transcendent has nothing to do. Such beliefs are merely one way people might be contented or flourish. They could do so in many other ways, just as well. A plurality that the transcendent traditions find abhorrent, even secluded mystical ones.

If one cannot say: "If my tradition was wiped out tomorrow, people in the world could still flourish and the world is meaningful. All that is lost is what I love, practice and consider valuable," then they are guilty of believing this transcendent illusion, that the meaning and of the world and everyone in it is dependent on the practice of their tradition. (and in this respect, it's not just religions and mystics which do this. We see plenty of it in wider philosophy, science, etc., etc., too).

My approach is considered "evil" for this reason. Not because I argue there ought not be belief in the transcendent or that it doesn't work, but rather because I make the transcendent unnecessary for meaning — TheWillowOfDarkness

The only real problem with you, is that a large proportion of what you write is meaningless, and that there's a lot of it. It would be advisable if you stop lecturing and start learning.

Thankyou for your considered reply, I am getting a handle on this now. The postmodern stuff is new to me, but I expected to come across it at some point, but I need to learn the vocabulary. I am still puzzling over your idea of an infinite meaning. Let's say we have a state in the world x it would have many different meanings for different subjects experiencing it. Are you saying that there could be potentially an infinite number and variation in the subjects experiencing it and therefore an infinity of possible meanings in X?

I say again, I think my transcendent is not much different to your immanent. My use of transcendent is probably unconventional. I really don't recognise the transcendent as something other, apart from a myth of popular interpretations of religion and spirituality. For me the transcendent is transcendent as other, but that other is us, it is the imminence in us, but is in some ways inaccessible, veiled from us. Hence is transcendent in that it is veiled in this way.