Spiritual enlightenment and arguing about the nature of Reality seem to be, for me, different worlds. — Dominic Osborn

That's the dilemma of Western civilization in a few words. It ought not to be like that, but there's a reason why it is. You seem to be trying to bridge that gap, but I can't tell whether you know that is what you're doing, or whether you're simply 'feeling your way into it'. I suspect it's the latter. But in any case, it is really an important matter.

I shall definitely look at the links you posted. — Dominic

Having posted those links I hope they're relevant. Maritain is a respected Catholic philosopher. I discovered him through that second link I posted, which is cross-cultural comparison of elements of Maritain's philosophy with Zen Buddhism. I picked that up in printed form at the Adyar bookshop years ago. But then, I've been a 'book omnivore' for decades, about these kinds of questions. What I take from them might be very much dependent on my particular perspective.

The vital thing about Thomism, generally, and Maritain, in particular, is that it still has a conception of the hierarchy of being (a.k.a. 'the great chain of being'). This understanding is that there are higher and lower levels of reality, being and knowing. Materialist philosophy (an oxymoron) is based on the lowest level, and denies the others (parodied as 'the flatland' or by Marcuse as 'the one-dimensional man'.) Thomistic philosophy is almost the last outpost of an hierarchical ontology in Western culture, and Maritain one of it's spokesmen (others being Etienne Gilson and the contemporary philosopher Edward Feser.)

Anyway, I happened to find out that Maritain has a book on the 'degrees of knowing' so was a little familiar with him (although a dense and difficult work, 'don't read it at home', the first reader review contains a decent synopsis). From that, I noticed that quotation I provided which is very similar to the OP. So, I think you're actually grappling with a spiritual question. But again, I don't want to send you off on wild goose chases. In these matters, intuition is the only guide.

Reality is not this, Reality is not that — Dominic Osborn

Is this a conscious allusion to a phrase from Indian philosophy? If it is, you will know the phrase I mean.

The positing of a Noumenon is an absurdity: something that exists but is not felt. — Dominic

I think you've misinterpreted the idea. Also I think the way you're conflating Kant and Pierce means you're probably reading things into them that aren't there; they're worlds apart in most ways. (Mind you I'm no expert.)

But there is a precise definition of 'noumenon' in Wikipedia. The word is derived from 'nous', that seminal word now weakly translated as 'mind'. The 'noumenal object' is something that may be perfectly known, i.e., it is an 'intelligible object', like a figure, number, or geometric form, with which the mind is perfectly united in the knowing of it; unlike sensory knowledge, which is always mediated by the sensory organs. 'Noumenon' means literally a 'mental object'. This reflects the ancient division in Western, specifically Platonist, philosophy, between reality and appearance. The phenomenal domain, the realm of appearance, 'the world', is taken by the masses, including many of what are now called 'philosophers', as the real, but is actually mere appearance, reflecting only a semblance of the domain of intelligible forms which alone are real, and of which the mere objects are simply instances.

That is reflected in Kant, in saying that by sensory knowledge, we know only appearances. We don't know the essence of things, or what is ultimately real (if anything). Knowledge is dependent on the intuitions, categories of understanding, and so on, which constitute the apparatus of our understanding. Kant was not a Pyrrhonian sceptic, but he was a sceptic, in the true sense, which is radically different to a scientific sceptic, who takes empirical domain as normative.

I think you've misinterpreted the idea. Also I think the way you're conflating Kant and Pierce means you're probably reading things into them that aren't there; they're worlds apart in most ways. (Mind you I'm no expert.) — Wayfarer

Having read through some of that thread “Living with the Noumenon” I shall give that word a wide berth from now on.

Is this a conscious allusion to a phrase from Indian philosophy? If it is, you will know the phrase I mean. — Wayfarer

No it’s not. And no I don’t know the phrase you mean. Unless you’re talking about something the sense of which is, roughly: Reality is not appearance, but nor is Reality what is behind Appearance.

You seem to be trying to bridge that gap, but I can't tell whether you know that is what you're doing, or whether you're simply 'feeling your way into it'. I suspect it's the latter. — Wayfarer

I suppose what I was unaware of was that what I was doing would be seen as something unfamiliar or even peculiar, or eccentric. I’m repeating myself here––but it seems to me the obvious thing to do. Wouldn’t every philosopher have as his ultimate aim to work out a self-consistent and exhaustive explanation of things? And wouldn’t that then be a religion? And wouldn’t the quest to live life in the right way inevitably presuppose, or be founded on, or generate––an ontology, a description of things, an account of how things are and why they are as they are, etc.?

The vital thing about Thomism, generally, and Maritain, in particular, is that it still has a conception of the hierarchy of being (a.k.a. 'the great chain of being'). This understanding is that there are higher and lower levels of reality, being and knowing. Materialist philosophy (an oxymoron) is based on the lowest level, and denies the others (parodied as 'the flatland' or by Marcuse as 'the one-dimensional man'.) Thomistic philosophy is almost the last outpost of an hierarchical ontology in Western culture, and Maritain one of it's spokesmen (others being Etienne Gilson and the contemporary philosopher Edward Feser.) — Wayfarer

Materialism is anathema to me, so I like that bit, but otherwise I am––initially––repelled by these ideas. That doesn’t mean I shan’t have look at them.

Reality is not this. Reality is not that — Dominic Osborn

Neti-neti is a Sanskrit expression that translates to "neither this, nor that." This expression is used in Hinduism, mainly in Jñāna yoga and in Advaita Vedanta. Neti-neti is a form of analytical meditation that helps the individual understand the nature of brahman (absolute reality) by first understanding what is not Brahman.

Source

Reality is not appearance, but nor is Reality what is behind Appearance. — Dominic Osborn

'The world is not as it appears, nor is it otherwise' ~ Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra.

Wouldn’t every philosopher have as his ultimate aim to work out a self-consistent and exhaustive explanation of things? And wouldn’t that then be a religion? And wouldn’t the quest to live life in the right way inevitably presuppose, or be founded on, or generate––an ontology, a description of things, an account of how things are and why they are as they are, etc.? — Dominic Osborn

Yes, yes, and yes.

I am––initially––repelled by these ideas. — Dominic Osborn

If it's because they're Catholic, then I should let you know, I am not. It's because I believe the idea of an 'hierarchical order' is essential, and they're one of the culturally Western sources of such ideas.

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 — Dominic Osborn

That's still a triadic move. My point was that to speak about "pure experience" is already to have leapt from the monadic position of "just experiencing" to talking triadically about the I-ness of being a self having experience of a world.

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. — Dominic Osborn

Yes, speaking about experience as itself a "thing" is to claim - triadically - that the experience has world-ness along with the I-ness. The whole point is that we are now thinking about experience in this meta-fashion where it is something distinctive - a state of mind, a field of qualia, a mental representation - that mediates between a witnessing self and a material world.

So in reality we jump straight from one to three in talking about "just experience". It has this complex structure that involves both I-ness and world-ness as its basic division - and hence, potential relation.

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.. — Dominic Osborn

I'm not sure on what basis you are claiming to say these things. It doesn't seem to be on the basis of either rational argument or probable evidence. It involves the awkward epistemic manoeuvre of first believing we are in a triadic modelling relation with reality - recognising qualia as a mediating level of sign - and then dropping the modelling part to then claim that the mediating signs might be all that exist.

My approach is the consistent one. It accepts that we are in a modelling relation with reality and, from there, draws the practical conclusion that dreams of absolute knowledge are an epistemic pipedream. We can only hope to minimise our uncertainty in regard to the noumenal.

So you want to doubt the world. I only want to doubt our knowledge of the world.

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. — Dominic Osborn

If they are so non-dual, why do you call Knowledge and Being by different names? (Yes, I realise you will now call them two aspects of experience - and so we circle back to the necessarily triadic structure that betrays the discursive nature of idealism.)

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. — Dominic Osborn

For an absurdity, it is unreasonably effective wouldn't you say. Science is founded on it for a start.

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? — Dominic Osborn

There might be spooks and pixies dancing on your desk. All you can know is that you have minimised your uncertainty about that to the extent that that seems possible.

So the positing of the noumenal is simply the rational acceptance that perceptual experience has its limits. One shouldn't claim absolute knowledge about reality even if we seem to have a pretty damn useful handle on this thing we call reality.

The conceiving of the Definite and the Possible simply proposes Duality again. Why do you accept the notion of "Possibility" uncritically? — Dominic Osborn

But my point was that all categorisation has to proceed dichotomously. You have to have an intelligible division into a this vs a that to play the game.

So it is not dualism - a division lacking a bridge. It is a dichotomy - a division that is self-defining in that each half defines its "other".

Knowledge is a lack of ignorance - a minimisation of uncertainty, as I say. And ignorance it the opposite - a maximisation of uncertainty or a lack of knowledge. Likewise, the definite is that which lacks indeterminancy, and vice versa.

So it is hardly uncritical. A dichotomy is the definition of critical thinking - the sharp division that renders the world generally intelligible.

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. — Dominic Osborn

But that is the possibility which your idealism requires.

My pragmatism can see the bent stick in the water as a straight stick that only looks bent because of the water. I accept that there is a phenomenal vs noumenal distinction which is a difference that can make a difference.

But you are arguing that a stick that looks bent is always a bent stick. Appearances are all there are to reality.

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. — Dominic Osborn

Again, my ontology is based on things needing to be first separated in order that they then can interact. So it is irreducibly triadic and doesn't fall into the paradoxes inherent in dualism.

There can't be an interaction without a difference. Thus you need at least two different things. And furthermore, for such a state of being to persist (and thus be said to "exist"), the interaction must serve to maintain the difference that is the basis of the interaction. The interaction can't be a passing fluke. It must develop into a systematic habit.

Triadic semiosis in a nutshell.

Your Theory:
So you think, presumably, Reality proceeds (conceptually) from Apeiron, via a process of dichotomy, into Multiplicity. Is that right? Is it the case that the first dichotomy is self and world? Does the world then divide into two? Does the self then divide into two? How does it work?

Is the structure of Reality, in so far as there is one, the same as the structure of our categorisation of it? That is, is its structure just how we (the Mind) categorise it? Or does the world have a hand in how we caterorise it? Does it constrain our choices of how it is to be categorised? That is: is Reality the interplay between Mind and World, and is the structure of Reality the consequence of a collaboration between Mind and World?

In a previous post you said,

“You have the apeiron. And it divides in logical fashion. Part of it, by concentrating the possibility of warmness, leaves another part that is subsequently a concentration of the cooler. And if such a separation is possible, what is to stop it proceeding to its limits. Coupled to a further consequent separation - the dry and the damp - you then get all four basic elemental categories, fire, air, water and earth. Or in modern physical parlance, plasma, gas, liquid and solid.

Thus systems thinking supports an ontology that is triadically developmental. You start with an unformed potential (that is no kind of substantial state - mental or material). And then all you need is the rational possibility of some "this" which then, in its very becoming, must produce its matching "that"."

I don’t know whether you saw my questions about this. I understand very well that you see things as developing triadically. But what is it that is developing triadically? Is this a natural process? Is this the process by which the natural world becomes as it is (developing first into plasma, gas, liquid and solid)? Or is it the process of thought? Or is it both of these together, somehow?

I understand than an act of categorisation, a mental act, is one in which a mother divides into two daughters. For example, if nothing is said, then nothing is determined: there is only Apeiron. If I then say, “That is the world”, I imply a “This” and a self. So Apeiron, the mother, gives birth to two daughters (variously named, “This” and “That” and “Self” and “World”).

But what I want to know is:

Why is that which is the case determined by my saying “This” and “That”? Labelling things doesn’t alter their natures. Why aren’t we still at the stage of there being only Apeiron?

Why is the change unidirectional? Why doesn’t any dichotomous development not immediately go into reverse, as soon as it happens?

What is the cause of the dichotomous, triadic development? Why does it happen? How does it happen? I really don’t understand what you mean here:

“Part of it, by concentrating the possibility of warmness, leaves another part that is subsequently a concentration of the cooler.”

So a part of Apeiron “concentrates the possibility of warmness”. It sounds like you’re saying something like “Things divide”. Why “possibility” of warmness? Why do you phrase it in this peculiar way? Why don’t you just say, “Part of Apeiron is warm; part is cool”? Or are you quoting from Anaximander?

Nor do I understand what you mean here:

“It is a dichotomy - a division that is self-defining in that each half defines its "other".”
Either two things are distinct from one another, in nature, like night and day, or an arbitrary line is drawn across Apeiron, dividing it into two. I can’t understand this “self-defining”.

I can’t see how the dichotomous development that you are talking about is not just a linguistic or conceptual thing.

My Theory:

I know that everyone thinks there is a triadic structure at the base of things: Experience, Self and World. My claim however is that it is developed from an earlier or more basic division. My claim is that it is you who has leapt from the monadic position to the triadic.

You halve an orange. You are saying that there are three things because there is 1. The whole orange, 2. The right half and 3. The left half. But it can also be said that at no point either in time or in space are there three things. Either there is the whole orange or there are the two halves. That’s what I mean when I say that the division can be seen as dualistic.

I think there is first a division into Experience and Not Experience. (This first division may also be seen as the division of Experience into two, one of which is conceived as Experience and the other as Not Experience.) Then there is a division of Not Experience into Self and World.

What I am saying is that you either conceive Experience and the World (in which case Experience is conceived as the Self) or you conceive Experience and the Self (in which case Experience is conceived as the World). You don’t conceive three things all at once. You either imagine (falsely) that there is world beyond and outside your experience (in which case you conceive experience as your self (perhaps you think of it as your mind) or you imagine (falsely) that there is a self beyond or outside your experience (in which case you conceive experience as the world). Neither of these dualities (Experience-and-World and Experience-and-Self) implies the other. Each can stand on its own. You could go around thinking, “Everything that makes up my experience is just my mind. There is however a World outside it”. Or you could go around thinking, “Everything that makes up my experience is the World. There is however a Self that is doing the experiencing that can never itself be experienced”. You (Apokrisis) build your triadic structure from these dualistic elements.

As I said in the OP, this dualistic structure, (which is at the base of false picture that we have of Reality) is related to Value in the following way. We desire or we are repelled. In so doing it seems to us (without the closest analysis) that there are three things: Experience, that which we desire (or are repelled by) and––ourselves. These things however, that which we desire (or that which we are repelled by) and that which desires––and of course this seems to be the exact opposite of the truth––are one and the same thing.

I think that whatever is not Apeiron has no existence whatsoever. Since neither the world (conceived as something distinct from Apeiron) nor the self (likewise conceived) has any existence at all, they are identical. In just the same way I might say that, for example, a round square and a triangular pentagon are identical.

You will perhaps agree with this, at least: your triadic Reality of Self (or that which interprets symbols), play of symbols, and possible Noumenon says that there is such a thing as Ignorance, that there is such a thing as the Unknown. That there is such a thing is that there is also such a thing as a Knower and a Known. Therefore my denying there is such a thing as Ignorance is also my denying your (and everyone else’s) triadic structure. My arguing that there is only Apeiron and your arguing that there is a triadic structure is the same argument as this argument: you think there is such a thing as the Unknown; I don’t.

Of course, I am aware that this claim (that there is no Unknown) is a grand one. And that it overturns everything.

You think the identification of experience (or indeed of anything) necessarily begins the dichotomous development of everything. I too think that the identification of experience (or of anything) is to allow that there are two things. But here is where yours and my conceptions of reality differ, and indeed, are opposites: You think this dichotomous process is real; you think the daughters of this dichotomous process are real; you think the dichotomous development continues to proceed: once begun, it continues. You think the dichotomous branching is legitimate; you think it is to be accepted. I for my part reject the entire process, right at the beginning. I think we begin with Apeiron and end with Apeiron. I think everything that is built on it is false.

You think that––because the dichotomous beginning is real––I can only get to my claim that there is only Experience by having the daughters of that dichotomous process fall away or wither. I say I can get there because the dichotomous beginning is false in the first place.

I'm not sure on what basis you are claiming to say these things. It doesn't seem to be on the basis of either rational argument or probable evidence. — apokrisis

The remarks that you are referring to here assume Experience is Reality. If Experience is Indeterminacy, Vagueness, then so is Reality.

There are no breaks in experience. There is nothing that it is not. I have never experienced a break nor have I every experienced anything beyond it. That is my evidential base. Not probable evidence incidentally, but absolute evidence.

There can only be a number of things if there is nothingness between those things. Nothingness is an incoherent notion. That is my rational base.

Experience is infinite and unbroken. There is nothing that it is not. Therefore there is nothing that it is either. Hence it is Indeterminacy, Vagueness.

If they are so non-dual, why do you call Knowledge and Being by different names? — apokrisis

I agree that these identity propositions are problematical. This strikes me as a question that goes down a Phosphorous and Hesperus path. I don’t know whether we want to take it.

(Yes, I realise you will now call them two aspects of experience - and so we circle back to the necessarily triadic structure that betrays the discursive nature of idealism.) — apokrisis

I am aware of the obfuscatory nature of words like “aspect”. “X has two aspects, a and b” really means, when you dissect it down to its bones: X is one thing and X is two things.

For an absurdity, it is unreasonably effective wouldn't you say. Science is founded on it for a start. — apokrisis

Effective for what? Certainly not for Redemption. Certainly indeed for carrying on as before. Science is certainly founded on it. And, of course, my claims are also the claims that science is nonsense. You think Science is, at base, a man finding out about the world. I think Science is at base the proposition: there is a man finding out about the world.

Something else:

I have said that Reality is unspeakable. I think that all we can do, in philosophy, to describe its nature, is to say what it is not. But perhaps we can express it in the same way that we can express numerical infinity: Whatever number you have, add one to it. So you can say: Reality is at the end of a certain process. Not this, not that, not that, not that … It is down that road there. (Isn’t this like one of the proofs for the existence of God? That which is greater than whatever you conceive. Can’t remember what it’s called.)

Sorry for the delay.

Thank you for your comments and I am very sorry to be so long in replying.

If it's because they're Catholic, then I should let you know, I am not. It's because I believe the idea of an 'hierarchical order' is essential, and they're one of the culturally Western sources of such ideas. — Wayfarer

I am not repelled because of the Catholic origin. But tell me what you mean about a hierachical order.

'The world is not as it appears, nor is it otherwise' ~ Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra. — Wayfarer

Ravishing.

The hierarchical order is an idea which was represented as 'the great chain of being', the title of a 1936 book by an Arthur Lovejoy. The import is that the great chain of being is a cosmology that can be traced to Plato and Aristotle (and beyond). It begins with the supposition that being is superior to non-being (the latter being a mere absence or deprivation and therefore not a good). A good God, Plato argued, would cause any possible being to exist and thus created a Universe full of all possible things. This Lovejoy calls the principle of plenitude, the maximally full World (also known as the Pleroma, represented in the image of the 'cornucopia', the Horn of Plenty, held by the Goddess Fortuna).

Eventually, philsophers would postulate a vast chain of Being(s) stretching from the perfect (God) to the lifeless matter. Mankind was somewhere in the middle of the chain - above the animals but below the Angels.


Woodblock representation from here

which was the conceptual background of virtually all Western philosophy up until the dissolution of the 'medieval synthesis'.

The key point in all of these is that the source of everything is Being beyond the vicissitudes of existence or non-existence, from which everything emanates through a process of cascading down through the hierarchy to give rise to the manifest forms that we see with the sensory eyes. In all of these traditional cosmologies, there are "levels of being" such that the more real is also the more valuable; these levels appear in both the "external" and the "internal" worlds, "higher" levels of reality without corresponding to "deeper" levels of reality within. On the lowest level is the material/physical world, which depends for its existence on the higher levels; on the very highest/deepest level is the Infinite or Absolute (God, in the Abrahamic traditions, Brahman, in the Vedic traditions, arguably also the Dharmakaya of the Mahāyāna).

These ideas are generally very unfashionable in the Western academies nowadays, you'll only find them in various comparative religion and mythology departments and also amongst the 'perennialists' who believe there is a 'sophia perennis', a perennial philosophy, of which the various spiritual traditions are aspects. Whereas, materialism by definition seeks to understand everything in terms of what all of these traditions understand as the least real aspect of the whole (although in fairness that approach has yielded considerable scientific power and utility.)

However, OP clearly showed why the concept of another person is inconsistent.

However, OP clearly showed why the concept of another person is inconsistent. — maplestreet

I'm not sure what comment of mine you're responding to, but the initial post of the thread claimed there is a problem with this based on ideas such as "I only experience my own experience" where I'd bet anything that he actually experiences things like other people, and he's really just noting that his experience is his (well, duh) while making the infantile conflation of his experience per se with what the experience is of. "I experience x" is what the experience is of.

Take a sentence like "The cat is on the mat."

That sentence is about a cat being on a mat. It's not about the sentence itself. To be about the sentence itself, we'd need to make it something such as "This sentence is about the cat being on the mat."

Now, the sentence in question can only be the sentence in question. It can't literally be something else. It can't literally be the cat on the mat. But that doesn't affect that it's about a cat on a mat. It's not about the sentence itself. So saying that sentences can only be about sentences would suggest that someone has serious cognitive problems when it comes to a basic understanding of what language is/how it works.

That's the same sort of thing that's going on in his "I only experience my own experience."

In regards to your comment "I am starting to believe we all might be part of one big consciousness", you might be interested in the paper: "If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious" http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/USAconscious-140721.pdf

Interesting article.