My head does not somehow appear in a headache. It does, however, appear in experiences characterized by intentionality, such as seeing or touching.

Sure, in some sense the pain is the object of its awareness. But the word 'awareness' is ambiguous here, for, as I tried to explain, there are two different senses in which you can be aware of pain: 1) as a belief about the state you're in, and 2) as the state you're in.

Beliefs are not perceptions, and therefore it is possible to believe sincerely, that you feel pain, and behave as if you were in pain, regardless of what you perceive, or even evoke and sustain pains by the belief or entrenched behaviour from past experiences of pains etc

But how could I have 'a belief I have a pain'. You either have a pain, or you don't. Even if your pain is entirely psycho-somatic, it appears as pain, not as a belief. Belief doesn't enter into it.

It ain't that simple, your report of pain is not the pain. And although pain is sufficient for awareness of pain, awareness of pain is not necessarily pain.

no, but this conversation is, so I'll leave it for now.

So why is everyone so deluded? Why do people think that there is a world beyond their experience?

Likely it’s so everyone can use the experiences of others to predict personal consequences, without getting nose to nose with a rattlesnake, a rabid racoon or personally view the results of philosophers leaping off mountaintops to "prove" there is no world beyond their own experiences.

If solipsism was true there would be no way to know it or no way to falsify it.
There would be no way to know or falsify anything at all in fact.
Solipsism leads to an ill defined infinite regress.

A solipsist’s conception of Reality is indeed incommunicable, but so is a (true) non-solipsist conception of Reality. It is not just the solipsist that has this problem, but everyone. — Dominic Osborn

This is simply not true.
Solipsism insists that reality exists such that not self is not independent of or distinct from self.
Non-Solipsist's note that this leads to an ill defined infinite regress and that it is not a logically consistent foundation.
Since it is possible to define the term self and the term not self such that they are distinct and independent, non-solipsist's suggest that doing so allows one to form logically consistent theories of knowledge.

We know for a fact that solipsism, by definition, cannot be logically consistent.
So non-solipsis's insist, that by definition, the term not self is distinct and independent from the term not self.

I am grateful for your analysis of my thinking. Your thoughts are well-articulated, educational and clear. And they gave me a lot to think about.


1. “There’s no getting outside my own mental creations”.

Why aren’t you just saying this:? My experience is about something else. (Our mentality is pure symbolism.) Therefore there must be something else.

And why isn’t this just an assertion of duality? You’re saying, simply, that that there are two things, I, or mentality, or the play of symbols, on one side, and something that they are about, perhaps a material world, on the other.


2. “I 'know' – as a reasonable belief derived from scientific investigation – that even when I see
colours, or shapes, or motions, such perceptions are indirect constructions.”

Why do you believe that experience is “pure symbolism”? Why do you “know” that colours, etc. are indirect constructions? Why can’t my seeing green or my seeing blue, the action of seeing, be Reality itself?

I don’t think “scientific investigation” will help you. That is: how do you know, when the scientist is explaining to you that red is in fact light waves of such and such a frequency, how do you know the observation was really made? How do you know he is talking about something? Why isn’t it just another load of shapes and sounds, without reference? However reasonable the explanations sound, however habituated we are to accepting them, how do we in fact justify our faith in an elaborate structure very different in nature from the play of shapes and sounds that make up our experience?

“But we know that if you run the frames of a strip of film through a projector then - at the right rate - you experience an unbroken flow of imagery. Or if we introspect on dreams with accuracy, we discover each is in fact a "still", just a still with a psychological sense of swirling, camera-tracking, motion in which nothing actually changes in the momentary snapshot "view".

So there is abundant evidence - both empirical and even phenomenological - that we can be fooled by the general assumption experience has no composite structure, no "bitty" complexity”

Again, how do you know that a strip of film through a projector is an analogue of experience? How do we “introspect on dreams with accuracy”? Even if it appeared to me that I had this skill, how would I be able to depend on the accuracy of my introspection? How too do I know that when I am introspecting on some aspect of my experience that there is any identity between that which I am introspecting on, in the present, and that which I did experience, in the past?


3. Are you ruthlessly sceptical, like Kant, knowing nothing beyond the play of symbols except that there is something there? Do you indeed apply your epistemic solipsism to primary as well as secondary qualities? Do you indeed go into pansemiotic metaphysics?

Or do you in fact claim to know a lot about what is beyond your experience? You say, “as a reasonable belief derived from scientific investigation”. You say experience is like frames of a film.


4. You are calling Experience Mind or the Play of Symbols. I am calling Experience Reality. Aren’t we just getting our signals crossed here?

This is my position.

I am asserting that the “play of symbols” is Reality itself. That it is not about anything, that it is not in fact a play of symbols at all, that it is an illusion that it is about anything, and an illusion that there is something that it is about.

This assertion is a rejection of the noumenon. It is a rejection of the material world. It is a rejection of anything outside my mind.

The slightly less obvious point, but a point of exactly equal importance, and asserted with equal force––is that it is a rejection of the self too. It is a rejection of the mind, conceived as something distinct from the world. It is saying, “There is no play of symbols. Your imagining that there was a world out there was equally an imagining that this was a play of symbols, that this was in here.”

To put it metaphorically, though in a bit of a pen-proud way: the play of symbols (what you are calling “the play of symbols”) is the world, though there is nothing looking at it; the play of symbols is the self, though it is not looking at anything.

It is the invention of a not-directly-known world beyond the self which is in fact the invention of the self. "There is a world beyond your experience” says: your experience is confined, local, distinct from something else.

But your experience is Apeiron; your experience is undefined and indefinable. It is not different from anything because it isn’t anything, or rather isn’t anything determined. My experience is all there is because it is the same as your experience.

“...an actual traditional solipsist - as an end game idealist."

OK. Traditional solipsism is idealist. I am not an idealist and I am not a solipsist. I am a neutral monist. It is true that in a previous post (on the other, defunct website) I said I was sympathetic towards idealism, and I am, but that is only because the mental world, in its ungraspability, seems closer to Reality that most material conceptions of Reality––not because I believe Reality is mental.

What should I call what I am calling “experience”? Would Dasein be a better word? Would apeiron?


5. What is right about solipsism?

We know that the solipsist can’t (without involving himself in contradiction) point to his experience and say, “This is the only thing that there is” because “This” can only be meaningful if contrasted with something, because there must be something that is different from “this” that is doing the pointing or the saying, because in speaking at all he is accepting that there is an ear somewhere.

So we know there is something wrong with solipsism.

But there is something right with it too: that is what I am saying. And the thing that is right about it is the following. How can anyone affirm the existence of something beyond their experience? In gesturing towards such a thing in any way at all, in pointing to it, referencing it, conceiving it––they bring it into the realm of their experience.

Solipsism can’t be expressed but neither can the opposite of solipsism.


6. It’s not just solipsism and non-solipsism that can’t be expressed, but Reality that can’t be expressed.

I think I completely agree with you when you say that in an important technical way, what I am calling Experience can’t be talked about, or indeed even identified. If it were the only thing, what would identify it? What would the finger that pointed towards it, even if there were one, be pointing away from? It seems my only resource in trying to identify it is to point to something else and say “It is not that”, but then my pointing is only meaningful if there is something I am pointing to. So I am also asserting that “that” exists.

I agree. I don’t think I can talk about what I called “experience”. In so doing either I have to admit to the existence of other things to contrast it with, or I talk in tautologies: “Experience is infinite. Experience is without characteristics.” Etc..

You say that I try––and succeed (“That’s fine. It’s good logic”)––in sidesteppping this difficulty. I disagree. I think, technically, I fail. There is the same sort of problem. In order that I be able to assert the dissolving together of two things (self and world) I must first of all assert their difference. But then, am I not contradicting myself? The conclusion of my argument is that self and world do not exist as separate entities, but my premise is that they do exist as separate entities.

Why does it “make(s) dialectical sense that such a mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive pair such as self and world could exist” ? Why does that make sense any more than, say, an undivided existence? It’s not that it necessarily makes any sense, it’s just that we are all––prephilosophically ––dualists.

The best we can do in philosophy, in trying to get at the the ultimate nature of Reality, is to identify the inevitably-present either contradictory or tautologous nature of any characterisation of it.

The structure of communication is the structure of Dualism. In communicating at all, Duality appears in all these forms: Mouth and Ear (mind and mind); Thought and Word; Subject and Predicate (within each proposition).

There can’t even be a notion of Reality, for surely “Reality” is only meaningful if it is possible to contrast it with something else, such as, say, illusion. But then you are conceding that there is something other than Reality.

I think this communication problem, and even communication with oneself––thinking––is a fundamental characteristic of philosophy as, say, it is practised on this forum. (What is the way forward? Not talking? Religion (though not necessarily with a god)? Endless attempts at clarification, endless disputation? I love talking about this stuff, but I am not convinced I am being virtuous in doing so.)


7. “Or if we introspect on dreams with accuracy, …”

As I said earlier, I don’t think you can introspect on your dreams. Indeed, given my understanding of experience, as expressed above (as Reality itself) and even possibly your notion of experience (the play of symbols), I don’t think you can introspect on experience of whatever kind.

Experience (according to my understanding) is seeing itself. It is not something that is seen. If something is able to be seen, or introspected on, or known, in the classic sense, then there must be something that sees, that intropects, that knows. If you think that experience can be introspected on, you are accepting dualism. If Experience is something that is seen, then there is something, a self, inside experience, looking at it. Or, if something is seen, then it is the world, and experience is the play of symbols about that world.

“So there is abundant evidence - both empirical and even phenomenological - that we can be fooled by the general assumption experience has no composite structure, no "bitty" complexity.”

Experience, subjective experience, is not something that is susceptible of empirical examination. You can’t see your seeing, and no-one else can either (a subject can’t see into the subjective experience of another subject).


8. “That makes no sense to me. If I am deaf and blind, …?”

I am not going to address here your particular counter-example. Though I know that it does indeed need addressing.

Here is a better analogy (I think): any experience is like a spatial coordinate. It is at once distinct from all other spatial coordinates but implies them too. This is like Buddhist dependent arising. Each part of experience is not excisable from the rest of it. It is not independent of the rest. But it is not identical to any other experience either. (And, if I can here appeal to your agreeing with me about parts and wholes: two experiences of the same person are not related to one another as two parts are related to one another in a whole.)

As a matter of fact I remain very puzzled about the complexity and non-complexity of experience. I think it is (metaphorically) between the two. I don’t think it is many things. If it were many things it would have to have breaks in it (according to my philosophical position). On the other hand I don’t think it is simple either; I don’t think it is one thing. The Buddhist notion of “dependent arising” expresses this ambivalence, though it too is opaque. Somehow––and I wish I could be clearer––each experience is at once separate from every other experience and implies it (every other) too. Or somehow each experience is at once distinguished from all others but, because at its heart it is nothing at all, or everything, it is also not distinguished from all others. Look at something for a long enough time, or say a word over and over again, and it melts away, or morphs into other things.

Experience is the name I am giving Reality, for the minute, and so my struggle to characterise experience is my struggle to characterise Reality. I can’t characterise it, and nor, I believe, can anyone. I can only say what it is not. And I say that it is not many things and that it is not one thing. I say it is neither complex nor simple.


9. “But what warrants you treating the pain as real, the rock as illusion?”

Didn’t understand your question here.

I think the pain is real and the seeing of the rock is real. I don’t think there is a rock independent of me. That is the illusion. We, as incorrigible though misguided believers in the complexity of our experience, believe in the complexity of our experience because we believe that our experience is of something (the world) and because we believe that that something is complex. I believe (falsely) that my seeing of the rock and my seeing of the tree are distinct experiences because I believe (falsely) that there is such a thing as the rock, independent of me, and such a thing as the tree, independent of me, and that the rock and the tree are independent of one another. With your example it goes like this: I believe (falsely) that my having the pain and my seeing the rock are experiences that are distinct from one another because I believe (falsely) that the pain is of the foot and the seeing is of the rock and that the foot and the rock are distinct from one another.


10. Your second post (of that day) I really have no understanding of. If you can be bothered I would be interested in hearing more.

I suppose you are not claiming that you are here precisely demonstrating how a complex world gets started; you are just trying to give me an idea of how it gets started, but I still don’t understand at all.

How was the world formed?

God divided the heavens from the earth, then he divided the earth up into sea and land, etc..

Yes but how did God get separated from His creation in the first place, in order to start making those divisions? I can understand how the cake gets cut up if you have a cake and a knife to begin with, but what I want to know is how did the knife get separated from the cake?

That’s what I am asking Aristotle, Hegel, Peirce and you.

“you have the division”

Why? How?

“…[a] thing moving apart from itself…”

How?

I have been so busy answering Apokrisis that I haven't got to the other posts yet. Thank you for your replies: I shall get to them.

If you have nothing but your own experiences to predict the consequences of your encounters with reality than how did you survive your encounters with such things as traffic, poisonous plants, snakes, rabid animals, disease, cold weather, deep water, etc., to write this question. You must be an amazingly lucky person.

However reasonable the explanations sound, however habituated we are to accepting them, how do we in fact justify our faith in an elaborate structure very different in nature from the play of shapes and sounds that make up our experience? — Dominic Osborn

You are reverting to a demand for absolute knowledge when I am describing what can be justifiably believed as the result of accepting a particular epistemic process - pragmatic reasoning.

So it will always be the case that scepticism wins against claims of absolute certainty. I accept that.

But then I shrug my shoulders and get on with life in the most well-founded way possible. And that is to follow a process of empirical reasoning based on hypothesis and test. Even "stuck inside experience", we can divide our experience into the ideas we hold and the impressions that result. I can have a theory about physics and then I can read the numbers off a dial. It is all "just experience". But it has now a structure in which what I think is causally tied to what I see.

So it is not just that the explanations sound reasonable. They look reasonable. I can directly experience the consistency of the connection between my ideas and impressions.

I am asserting that the “play of symbols” is Reality itself. That it is not about anything, that it is not in fact a play of symbols at all, that it is an illusion that it is about anything, and an illusion that there is something that it is about.

This assertion is a rejection of the noumenon. It is a rejection of the material world. It is a rejection of anything outside my mind. — Dominic Osborn

Fine. But if we can achieve a tight causal connection between our ideas and our impressions by presuming that there really is a world out there acting as the third thing of a constraint on our acts of interpretance, then why would we have any good ground for disbelieving in such a vital prop of our state of experience?

So your inconsistency would be in depending on the noumenon to justify the game having a consistent structure, and then - for no other reason than that absolutism entails scepticism - turning around and rejecting the noumenon.

You see the self-defeating paradox in what you argue? The noumenon is required to get you to the point that it is sufficiently established that you can then "meaningfully" reject it.

If you don't really have any strong thoughts about the noumenon, its existence is neither here nor there. To accept it, or to reject it, makes little meaningful difference.

It is only after you have strong reason to believe in it, that you can meaningfully talk about turning around and not believing it.

So sure, scepticism just comes for free with strong belief as a crisp rational possibility. If you can say yes, the very meaning of "yes" is that you could have said "no". But just because you could have said "no" doesn't mean no is now the right answer - what you ought to be saying instead.

Thus there is always the formal possibility that the noumenon is not the case. But you would be arguing now for a belief in the logical alternative that completely lacks any supporting evidence, and against the logical alternative built around the existence of all the supporting evidence.

In the end, that doesn't sound like sound reasoning does it? The proper use of scepticism surely is just to discover unexplored alternatives - gaps in our current explanatory beliefs - and not to simply disbelieve our beliefs.

1. “There’s no getting outside my own mental creations”. — Dominic Osborn

If you only had access to self this would lead to an ill defined infinite regress such that you could be sure of nothing.
Not the existence of your self and not the existence of anything which is not self.

If you are sure of the existence of self the only logical way of achieving that is by reference to some not self which is distinct and independent of self.

If you are sure of existence self, this logically entails the existence a distinct and independent not self.

Not only is it unnecessary to doubt that existence of self and therefor not self,
It is logically impossible to demonstrate that it is necessary to doubt the existence of self and not self, because of infinite regress.

Solipsism cannot, with logical consistently claim..
"We can only be sure of the self and nothing else."
In reality being sure of the existence of self logically entails the existence of a distinct and independent not self.

In reality if such a distinction were not possible we would be stuck in an infinite loop of self referencing self referencing self.
We are not stuck in such a loop, we do have a clear and distinct impression of the existence of self therefor we can conclude that in reality solopsism is not the case...and cannot logically be the case.

Solipsism is not only unnecessary doubt, it is logically impossible to prove that it would be a necessary doubt.

Those that claim to be sure that the self exists are not solipsists, as this logically entails the existence of an independent and distinct not self.

Only those that claim...
"We can be sure of nothing including the existence of self."
Are consistent.
But because we can not be sure if they are right, or rather if we are sure they are right then we are not sure they are right.

Claiming we cannot be sure of anything at all is not a claim we can be sure of, and it is not logically possible to prove it correct because it would be self refuting.

In the end, that doesn't sound like sound reasoning does it? The proper use of scepticism surely is just to discover unexplored alternatives - gaps in our current explanatory beliefs - and not to simply disbelieve our beliefs. — apokrisis

Those arguing for the case of solipsism don't seem to realize that not only is such skepticism unnecessary.
It is logically impossible to even prove that it would be necessary if in reality solipsism was true.

Most of them argue that we can only be sure of the existence of self without realizing that to aviod infinite regress the terms self and not self must be defined such that they are distinct and independent.
If these terms are indistinct it creates an infinite loop of self reference which allows no conclusion about the existence of self or anything.

I have been trying in vain to explain this but people don't realize that they are being inconsistent and contradictory.

I am not familiar with Putnam and I am not sure that I understand what you are saying (not that that is your fault).

Perhaps if I, rather boringly, restate my philosophical stance, you’ll be able to identify for me what I am not understanding.

I have been calling Reality “experience”. That might not be a good word. As I say, it implies something that is experienced and something that experiences, a world and a self, both of which (I am asserting) are illusory. A better word might be Anaximander’s “apeiron”, which means, roughly, that which is not determined, that which (as it were) has all qualities and no qualities. Apeiron or experience, according to my philosophical stance, is all that there is. Apeiron is not about anything and neither is there anything that is about apeiron. Apeiron does not mean anything and neither does anything mean apeiron. Indeed, according to this admittedly absolutist stance, there isn’t such a thing as meaning. For there to be such a thing as meaning there have to things that mean and things that are meant, words and objects, or thoughts and objects. Any theory about meaning, whilst the purveyor of it might not be a traditional Cartesian dualist, presupposes this sort of duality.

The reason I say it's not an argument, but an assertion, is because it doesn't strike me at all as being self-evident or even arguable, that there are not many things that exist, that are of much greater age than oneself. Anything which you know existed before you were born - your parents would constitute an excellent example - certainly constitutes 'evidence'. If you say 'that's not evidence', then first you have to make the case for why it doesn't, or what would constitute 'evidence', or what, in fact, you are trying to say. — Wayfarer

Fair point. I should have warned the reader that I begin from a place of extreme scepticism. This tendency is not common out there in the world, but amongst philosophers it is at least familiar. I, like Descartes, like Berkeley, like Hume and like Kant, think that––in trying to ascertain the ultimate nature of Reality, or perhaps in trying merely to ascertain the limits of what can be known about it––that is the proper place to begin.

This is that place: Everything that I experience must pass through the bottleneck of my consciousness. All I really directly know are the contents of my mind. I can make no assumptions about the nature of the things that are responsible for these contents. Nor even can I assume that there is anything at all outside my mind. My parents do indeed seem older than me, but how do I know that they are even there when I turn my back on them? (etc. etc.).

This is not however the end point of the discussion, but the beginning. This sceptical position can of course can be criticised, in the way that, for example, Apokrisis and others have criticised it.

"As for there being 'only experience', as i have said, 'experience' is a transitive verb, i.e. 'I experience it'. It presupposes a subject of experience in a domain of objects."

Absolutely. The word “experience” presupposes something that experiences and something that is experienced. It might have been an unfortunate choice of word. What I wanted to express, by choosing that particular word, was that there was no part of existence that was outside the ambit of my experience. That is the idealist side of my thinking. And this is the side that you object too. What I also wanted to express, but this did not come through strongly (judging by the responses) was that there was nothing that was having that experience. That is the physicalist side of my thinking.

So, what I am saying is that there is nothing on the far side of experience (no world independent of it) and nothing on the near side of experience either (no self independent of it). If the word “experience” cannot be understood without implying these things, then I shouldn’t have chosen it. Should I have chosen the word “apeiron” (from Anaximander)? “Dasein”?

“I think the way that non-dualist philosophies transcend that is indeed by de-constructing that sense of self-and-other, or self-and-world as separate realities.”

I believe, as these non-dualist philosophies believe, that there aren’t these separate realities: self and other, or self and world. I don’t believe that the “plight of existence” is “a subject of experience in a domain of objects”.

So why is everyone so deluded? Why do people think that there is a world beyond their experience?

Likely it’s so everyone can use the experiences of others to predict personal consequences, without getting nose to nose with a rattlesnake, a rabid racoon or personally view the results of philosophers leaping off mountaintops to "prove" there is no world beyond their own experiences. — JayAre

I agree with this. People think there is a world beyond their experience 1. Because they fear that there is and 2. Because they hope that there is. That is: what makes people believe that there is something other than experience is their will that there is. (This is what I say towards the end of the OP in the paragraph beginnning “Because of Desire.”)

I would argue that––if we only had the courage––we would be able to accept death without fear. We would recognise that being dead is no worse than being alive. I know that that is an extreme view, but I still hold it.

If you have nothing but your own experiences to predict the consequences of your encounters with reality than how did you survive your encounters with such things as traffic, poisonous plants, snakes, rabid animals, disease, cold weather, deep water, etc., to write this question. You must be an amazingly lucky person. — JayAre

I ought to explain; I did explain; but perhaps I should explain again. My philosophical stance is one that, in my ordinary, everyday life, I aspire to. I behave (more or less) just like everyone else. I have the same fears and the same hopes. I believe, in my everyday life, prephilosophically, that there are other people, and other minds. I strive however (though I always fail) to recognise that these hopes and these fears are without objects. I strive to recognise that these objects are delusionary. I have managed to escape death on the roads so far because it is this everyday self that is in charge.

I strive also to recognise that my self is illusory. (It has been (incidentically) instructional for me to note that of the two pillars that form the basis of my thinking (no world independent of experience and no self independent of experience) the first of these pillars is the only one that anyone has had any interest in. It reveals the physicalist bias of these forums (fora?).

I have been trying in vain to explain this but people don't realize that they are being inconsistent and contradictory. — m-theory

I enjoyed that link you posted.

I think you have much more support than you realise. I certainly agree with you. Other replies on this thread have too.

But:

1. You are using the word “self” to mean what I am meaning by “my experience”. So what you are saying is that I cannot assert that only my experience exists (a statement I agree with).

2. Is it unquestionably the case that in order that something be true it must be uttered?

3. The charge against solipsism hits home. But why does the Berkeleyan argument (I am unable to express a belief in anything outside my experience, without its becoming part of my experience) not also hit home? Why are you preferring one of these killer arguments over the other?

I believe, as these non-dualist philosophies believe, that there aren’t these separate realities: self and other, or self and world. — DominicOsborne

You have to walk the walk, and I don't think you're doing it.

I can't see how solipsism is inconsistent and contradictory. Perhaps an absolute solipsism is, but that's not what solipsists are proposing as far as I can see. But rather a local solipsism, which is quite reasonable.

I readily and absolutely concede that.

I think what you're attempting to articulate is a non-dualist perspective. The difficulty is that such expressions are situated within a particular 'domain of discourse', owing to the fact that the non-dual traditions are essentially dialectical, comprising dialogues and discussions about religious ideas concerning mokṣa or spiritual liberation. In that respect, the ancient Indian texts which are the sources of non-dualism are somewhat similar, in form if not content, to Platonic dialogues, in that the conversants often represent particular perspectives or points of view about the question at hand.

I think the key point is, however, that that kind of non-dualist perspective is generally articulated by the archetypical sage who has gone beyond the sense of individuated personality. So when the archetypical sage speaks of experience, he isn't speaking in terms of 'my experience' so much as perspective beyond the personal (which is why in sentences spoken by them, the first-person pronoun is often capitalised, i.e. My, Mine.) So I think the issue with your post is that you are attempting to articulate that transpersonal perspective, as a philosophical argument, but it's not really conveying the point, possibly because you have not yet realised it yourself, in that you're not really seeing it from such a perspective. (I'm not intending that as a slight.)

So as far as putting such an argument, philosophically, it might be a useful exercise to see if you can articulate it in the terms of the Western philosophical tradition itself, although that would be quite a challenging undertaking. But you might find this blog post useful.

I feel that this thread––if it is my input that determines it––is either coming to an end or is changing direction. You and Wayfarer both have a hand in this.

I read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy piece on Pragmatism and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy piece on Contemporary Skepticism. Not all of either piece I could understand, but I understood enough to recognise that you are taking the pragmatist side of the argument and I am taking the scepticist side, and that further debate would necessitate further reading on my part, something that I might not be inclined to do. If however I were to make the effort, it would a) take some time and b) shift the focus of discussion away from the Theory of Everything theme of the OP, meaning that further discussion might more appropriately take place in a new thread.

Nevertheless, for what it’s worth, I might mention a couple of things that you said that I didn’t agree with.

You are reverting to a demand for absolute knowledge — apokrisis

Trivial point, but this suggests I previously moved to a position of requiring less than absolute knowledge. I don’t remember moving to such a position.

Incidentally I do––yes––“demand absolute knowledge” though to put in this way makes me sound hysterically unreasonable (!) All it really means is that I don’t think there are two realms, a realm of knowledge, here perhaps, and a realm of the Unknown, elsewhere.

Even "stuck inside experience", we can divide our experience into the ideas we hold and the impressions that result. — apokrisis

I don’t believe––as I have said––that experience is something that may be introspected on, let alone then divided up into different categories. I shan’t defend this assertion here. I tried earlier in this thread and I would only be repeating myself.

You see the self-defeating paradox in what you argue? The noumenon is required to get you to the point that it is sufficiently established that you can then "meaningfully" reject it. — apokrisis

Yes, in order to reject something, there has to be something to reject. I see the point. But then you are asserting that in rejecting something you are accepting it, which is just as absurd, indeed less subtly so. I think it depends on what is meant by “rejection”. When I say “I reject the noumenon”, it indeed suggests that I have turned the thing over in my mind, and so have at least provisionally acceded to its having a kind of reality, but what I really mean (and now I tread more circumspectly) is that I do not accept the noumenon. Do I in this way avoid the self-contradiction?

The debate between pragmatism and skepticism seems to presuppose:

1. The sceptical position is a kind of hellish prison which must be found a way out of.

2. We know that the sceptical position is false, in advance of the discussion of it; it is just that we can’t quite find the conclusive argument with which to dispatch it.

What do you think of this comparison of Pragmatism and my philosophical stance (which has a strong sceptical bent)?

Pragmatism is explicitly allied with scientific thinking and methods. This thinking presupposes something that you know (your experience) and something that you don’t (what is outside it). It presupposes a scientist and a world that that scientist finds out about. It says that how we prephilosophically think about things is more or less how things are: we are subjects inside a world of objects, knowing bits and pieces about those objects but with much more to find out, etc..

Pragmatism belongs to that perennial strain in philosophy: the back to common sense strain. It seeks not to overturn the conceptions that we have about Reality or about things in general, or to radically alter them, but to sharpen them, refine them, clarify them, etc..

Pragmatism is on the side of the status quo. It is non-extremist. It wants to bolster the society that we already have rather than to overturn that society. It wishes to help society to continue doing what it does, but with more circumspection.

Pragmatism, perhaps more so than many other “-isms”, sits particularly comfortably within contemporary Western philosophy. It is measured, moderate and reasonable, and it has modest ambitions. It does not seek out the edges of philosophy, or at least these edges: literature, religion, action. Why would it? ––It thinks philosophy is virtuous.

I am really wholly on the other side. (This is just a declaration of allegiance, for what it’s worth. I shan’t here justify anything.)

I think that we are all (including myself) habituated (as I say) to dualistic thinking (in so many ways) but that Reality is not two things or many things.

I think common sense is really common ignorance. I think Reality is more wild and more strange than we can even imagine.

I am as it were instinctively hostile towards the world and towards our society (though also, fortunately for everyone else, completely powerless).

I am at the religious pole of philosophy rather than the scientific. I think philosophy is virtuous in so far as it seeks an end to debate rather than a perpetuation of it, in so far as it seeks to translate words into practise, in so far as it recognises that Reality is ultimately unspeakable.

You have genuine insight into my philosophical stance and into what has been my philosophical project. Perhaps you can advise me further.

“The difficulty is that such expressions are situated within a particular 'domain of discourse', …”

“…that kind of non-dualist perspective is generally articulated by the archetypical sage …”

“the issue with your post is that you are attempting to articulate that transpersonal perspective, as a philosophical argument, …”

“[To] articulate it in the terms of the Western philosophical tradition itself […] would be quite a challenging undertaking.”

There is a common point across each of these excepts from your post: that my philosophical stance needs to be articulated in a particular form. Why is this so? This is not a rhetorical question.

Also, I am not clear on why I am not articulating my philosophical stance in terms of the Western philosophical tradition. Again, this is not a rhetorical question.

If indeed, as you say, I am not articulating in terms of the Western philosophical tradition, what would such an articulation (in broad outline) look like?

So I think the issue with your post is that you are attempting to articulate that transpersonal perspective, as a philosophical argument, but it's not really conveying the point, possibly because you have not yet realised it yourself, in that you're not really seeing it from such a perspective. — Wayfarer

You may very well be right that this post comes across as solipsist rather than anti-self, even though it tries to explicitly state that it is against solipsism, for the reason that I am (so deeply) spiritually unenlightened.

Thanks for pointing out that blog to me: very useful indeed and very interesting.

If indeed, as you say, I am not articulating in terms of the Western philosophical tradition, what would such an articulation (in broad outline) look like?

In regards to Western philosophy, one obvious comparison with your OP is with Berkeley's esse est percipe, so it might be helpful if you were to think about your similarities and differences to Berkeley, then to consider the objections to Berkeley. That would be like writing a term paper on the subject, so if you're not enrolled in a philosophy degree, you may not be able to do that. (It's something I went through, though, insofar as I did do two years of undergraduate studies in Western philosophy). As I said at the outset, your writing is very clear, it might be very helpful to go through such a process to see if or where your thinking fits into it. (Incidentally, bookmark Early Modern Texts, it's a useful resource comprising a large number of early modern philosophers edited into contemporary English.)

With regards to Eastern philosophy, what I am saying is that when 'the enlightened' speak of 'experience', they do so from a different perspective than that of the ordinary person. So the words they use have particular nuances and meanings which may take us a lot of study to understand. I wouldn't be too hung up on being unenlightened - we all are! That's the human condition. But it might help to seek instruction in Buddhist meditation.

Have a look at this title, it is co-authored by the author of the blog post I mentioned. Emptiness and Joyful Freedom by Greg Goode et al. https://amzn.com/1908664363

Incidentally I do––yes––“demand absolute knowledge” though to put in this way makes me sound hysterically unreasonable (!) — Dominic Osborn

The problem is that "knowledge" requires the two definite things of the knower and the known. So it is inherently dualistic. And yet you want to claim a monism that is simply "experience".

So talking about absolute knowledge of your experience (or even like Descartes, claiming the certainty of I think, therefore I am) is to have already divided or structured that state of experiencing in a more particular fashion.

We do have an idea of what "just experiencing" is like - when "we" are lost in the flow of events or actions in unselfconscious fashion. But to then reflect on the fact that that is what "experience is like" is what introduces a counterfactual level of thinking that we call "knowing". That is, it is now logically entailed that there is something which experiencing is not. And how can we be sure that absolutely is the case - except pragmatically, as a belief supported by adequate doubting and testing?

The debate between pragmatism and skepticism seems to presuppose:

1. The sceptical position is a kind of hellish prison which must be found a way out of.

2. We know that the sceptical position is false, in advance of the discussion of it; it is just that we can’t quite find the conclusive argument with which to dispatch it. — Dominic Osborn

I don't accept that characterisation.

First, pragmatism values scepticism. But also points out that in practice it is self limited to the differences that could actually make a difference. So in regard to solipsism, if it makes no difference in practice to how you act in the world, then your indifference in that regard shows that you are simply pointing out a difference that you believe makes no difference.

The world could be real, the world could be an idealistic illusion. But if you carry on regardless, that proves the distinction is moot and lacking in meaning. It's just something you are saying for the sake of argument.

Second, pragmatism doesn't need to find a conclusive rational argument. It just needs to show that in the end, it makes no difference to the way you decide to act. Again, you don't really doubt unless that doubting makes some kind of difference to what you do.

This thinking presupposes something that you know (your experience) and something that you don’t (what is outside it). — Dominic Osborn

Well really it supposes three things. It is not dualistic but triadic. So there is "you", your "experiences" and "the world".

Except - in the Peircean semiotic original understanding of pragmatism - the "you" becomes a state of interpretance, the "experiences" become the signs that mediate interpretation, and "the world" becomes the noumenal.

So the notion of the self rather dissolves into a habit of interpretance - that we end up itself naming as the egoistic "I", taking it as a sign of a thing. That thing being a noumenal "self". It is because "I-ness" seems such a regular feature of our structure of experience that we come to believe there is this actor just beyond experiential reach behind the scenes.

So you see that you are taking a Cartesian view of the mind as a perceiving soul. Peirce strips that right down to a general structuring relation.

Pragmatism belongs to that perennial strain in philosophy: the back to common sense strain. — Dominic Osborn

That is the popular notion of pragmatism - the one that William James bastardised. Peirce had to start calling his philosophy pragmaticism because of that.

This quotation seems relevant to the OP:

There is, Maritain writes, an intuition that is awakened in persons when they are engaged in thought — that is, that it seems impossible that they, as thinking beings, should at some time have not been. As a thinking being, one seems to be free from the vicissitudes of time and space; there is no coming to be or ceasing to be — I cannot think what it is "not to be". Nevertheless, we all know very well that we were born — we came into existence. We are confronted, then, with a contradiction — not a logical contradiction, but a lived contradiction. The only solution to this is that one has always existed, but not through oneself, but within "a Being of transcendent personality" and from whom "the self which is thinking now proceeded into temporal existence" (Approches de Dieu, in Oeuvres complètes, p. 64). This being "must contain all things in itself in an eminent mode and be itself — in an absolutely transcendent way — being, thought and personality. This implies that the first existence is the infinite plenitude of being, separate by essence from all diversity of existents." (p. 66).

From the SEP entry on Jacques Maritain (a noted neo-Thomist philosopher).

I also know of a comparitive study of Maritain and Zen Buddhism - God, Zen and the Intuition of Being, James Arraj.

Apokrisis and Wayfarer: might take a few days to come back to you --- something wrong with my computer --- don't go away.

I concede that many of the things I say are mere statements of position. You are interpreting them through a Peircian (or Kantian) lens, and are in the process revealing the Peircian structure of your world-picture. At this stage I think we are two separate and unengaged gears whirring around. I can’t see that my armour is yet Peirced, and I am certainly not getting through to you. There may have to be some more to-ing and fro-ing before we reach a biting point.

That is, it is now logically entailed that there is something which experiencing is not. And how can we be sure that absolutely is the case - except pragmatically, as a belief supported by adequate doubting and testing? — apokrisis

Not quite sure what you mean here. If it is “logically entailed that there is something which experiencing is not” why are we therefore not sure that that is absolutely the case? Where is the room for doubt? What is the point of testing?

Well really it supposes three things. It is not dualistic but triadic. So there is "you", your "experiences" and "the world". — apokrisis

I think it can be seen as triadic but it need not be seen so. The belief in a world beyond your experiences can be seen as ultimately the same belief as the belief that there is a self. Each (the world beyond your experience and the self “inside” your experience) is merely a different version of the Noumenon. The belief in a world beyond your experience is simultaneously the belief that your experience has the character of “I-ness” about it (and, as I have previously said, each of these beliefs is as false as the other). The belief in a self beyond your experience (or, as I suppose we all imagine it: the belief in a self inside experience or on this side of experience) is simultaneously the belief that your experience has the character of “world-ness” about it. (Apologies for these awkward expressions.) There are two versions of duality here, not three things.

I don't accept that characterisation. — apokrisis

[of the debate between pragmatism and skepticism].

Point taken. I should have said not, “The debate between pragmatism and scepticism seems to presuppose: …” but simply, “The debate about scepticism seems to presuppose: … ”

I do understand that everything we apprehend is––ultimately––the form of our apprehension. That is Kant’s and Peirce’s point. What you think I am saying is, roughly: Either a) Reality has a certain character or b) Indeterminacy, Vagueness––is without qualities. The first you will say, correctly, is untrue, and the second you will say, correctly, is a tautology. What I think I am saying is that Reality is Indeterminacy, Vagueness. Or, what I am saying, to put it another way, is: you can’t say anything about Reality. I then go on to say that all you can say is what Reality is not. So I then say, Reality is not many things, Reality is not one thing; Reality is not the Physical World; Reality is not the Mind; Reality is not this, Reality is not that, etc..

I don’t think Knowledge is inherently dualistic. I think being “lost in the flow of events or actions in unselfconscious fashion” is knowledge (of those events or actions). I don’t consider Knowledge and Being to be separate. I think your definition of Knowledge mirrors your (dualistic) conception of existence: an existence essentially consisting of a knower and a known, a self and its experience (with the possibility of a third thing too, the Noumenon). I think Knowledge is non-dual and Being is non-dual.

What is inherently dualistic is saying. And this extends to thinking too, in the sense of talking to oneself (without moving one’s lips). If you say something: 1. There is something that that says and something that is said, 2. There is something that is said and something that is the meaning of what is said.

You think the situation is like this: there is a Reality that we are familiar with. This Reality may or may not exhaust existence. There may or may not be something other than this Reality. You, and Kant, and Peirce, and many others, think this is––almost beyond argument. I think you, and Kant, and Peirce have swallowed an absurdity, an absurdity however that is so widely and deeply felt and held that it almost passed into the realm of fact.

The positing of a Noumenon is an absurdity: something that exists but is not felt. If whether something is perceived or not has no bearing on whether or not it exists, why are there not not spooks and pixies dancing on my desk here? The positing of the Noumenon is the conceiving of Ignorance. But the conceiving of two realms, the Known and the Unknown simply proposes Duality again. Why do you accept the notion of "Ignorance" uncritically?

The positing of the Noumenon is the conceiving of possibility. This that I am experiencing definitely exists. What I am not experiencing possibly exists. The conceiving of the Definite and the Possible simply proposes Duality again. Why do you accept the notion of "Possibility" uncritically?

If there is a Noumenon (and we don’t believe there is anything that is experiencing it), Esse ist percipe (a principle I accept) is contravened.

If there is a Noumenon, the Identity of Indiscernables (another principle I accept) is contravened. I am talking about this bit: “The world could be real, the world could be an idealistic illusion. But if you carry on regardless, that proves the distinction is moot and lacking in meaning.” What I am saying is that if it looks the same then it is the same. It can’t be the case that there are two different things, an existence in which the world is real and an existence in which the world is idealistic illusion, but each looks the same to me.

Duality divides the Noumenon into two parts: the part that is its name and the part that is named. The name is within consciousness and the named is is outside it. The Noumenon may be thus conceived (named) and not conceived, in the sense that what is named is not itself conceived. (Another trick, that is to say: “conceive” has two meanings.)

There’s another reason I don’t think there is a Noumenon.

Either the two parts (Phenomenon and Noumenon) are in some way joined, in which case they are not really two after all, or they are not joined, in which case there must be a thing, nothingness, between them, which is at once an existing thing, and must be, in order to hold the two things apart, and also a non-existing thing because, were it to exist, it would join the two things up. But there cannot be a thing that both exists and does not exist.

Spiritual enlightenment and arguing about the nature of Reality seem to be, for me, different worlds. That of course shouldn’t be. My life should inform my philosophy and my philosophy should inform my life: of course.

How do I bring these things together? It’s something I should work on: you’re right. I say that, and I say it periodically to myself, but nothing ever happens.

I shall definitely look at the links you posted. And I like that big quote you posted. Maritain: not a name I know, but I shall find out about him.