I agree, but we need to leave a space for "unexplainable" in our deduction, even when we are trying to explain everything, therefore your 4 definitions of "god" can not cover all possibilities. — farmer

The only things that could possibly be unexplainable in principle are supernatural things that have no effects on the world, so that falls into that category of things that could count as God, but couldn't exist.

It's kind of a loop, a god that is influential and unexplainable is denied by your categories.

Because any influence would give somewhere to start an explanation.

Wanting to admit an influential but unexplainable God is just wanting to declare that something is inherently a mystery just because. It’s nothing more than giving up.

But I think "there might be something that is unexplainable" is a more gentle presumption than "anything is explainable". — farmer

Adding to this, 'anything is explainable' might scratch the same old itch that theology scratches. We are afraid of the dark, and stories are perhaps the torches we cling to as we move through it.

Because any influence would give somewhere to start an explanation. — Pfhorrest

I think I fully understand your position now. There's a jumping in either my reason or yours or both, I was keeping saying "A is possible" while you kept claiming "A does not exist". Since we are both so confident, I don't think a further discussion will help, let's stop here.

Thanks for your attention.

I agree with you. Besides, these two respectively define “the dark" different ways, and when you call "the dark" as "the dark", you have already presumptively taken some perspective.

I agree with you about the presumption involved in how 'darkness' is understood. What do darkness-managing stories have in common? Well, the managing of darkness, at least. Perhaps there is also always an other who is lost in the darkness (whoever rejects that particular darkness-management strategy.)

It’s nothing more than giving up. — Pfhorrest

Speaking as an atheist, I find this nothing more a bit too strong. Consider the gap between the believer in some creed and the more cautious person who doesn't quite believe his own creed, including a creed like this 'nothing more.'

Consider Hume's point about our animal faith in the uniformity of nature. Perhaps a certain type of philosopher (or just everyone) needs to keep something tied up in the basement.

I argue exactly that it is not mere animal faith, but a pragmatically necessary assumption. Ab initio we are forced to tacitly assume one way or the other by our actions, and to assume otherwise is simply to give up. The choice is precisely to try or else to give up.

To use your darkness metaphor, it’s all about the choice to either just sit in the dark, pretend it isn’t dark, or else TRY to find your way out of the darkness.

Wanting to admit an influential but unexplainable God is just wanting to declare that something is inherently a mystery just because. It’s nothing more than giving up. — Pfhorrest

It maybe is just an admission that the horizon of knowledge is not the bounds of the universe. I want to try and articulate a notion which is that the scientific mentality of only considering as real, what can be explained in its own terms, is only applicable to what can be subordinated to that approach. Whereas what is traditionally associated with metaphysics, is the attempt to understand what is superordinate to the understanding - what must be the case for understanding to exist in the first place. And that may involve an intuition of something or some being which is 'over the horizon' of direct knowledge - something 'above' or 'prior to' the understanding. (Actually it's something like the sentiment expressed in this Einstein aphorism.)

Consider this: are scientific laws and principles themselves explainable? I'm inclined to say they're not, that they're the basis of explanation, not the target of explanation. I mean, science obviously understands many things, but it doesn't necessarily understand 'the nature of science'. That is why philosophy of science is different to science (and often dismissed on those very grounds - 'philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds', said Feynman.)

So seeking self-understanding in scientific terms seems to me to involve a kind of contradiction. That realisation in itself opens out to a different attitude.

Speaking of 'sitting in the darkness', a metaphor I once thought about, was that science and discursive knowledge is like a lamp held up in the darkness. We can see by that light, everything that comes into the circle which it casts. But perhaps if we extinguish the light, we become aware of a vast space which is dimly lit - we can't see it in the same kind of detail, but we can sense its vastness. And that there is a kind of light inside the dark.

If belief is manifest in action, then perhaps so is explanation. The 'explained' is what we know how to deal with, as long as the world doesn't change on us.

I paraphrase what you said as: nature is uniform, because we need it to be, and not because we can prove or explain it. Can I doubt the uniformity of nature? I don't know. I don't feel that I am deciding to act as if.

not because we can prove or explain it — Yellow Horse

We can’t conclusive prove anything about the external world, only disprove. And uniformity or explainability is not something that can ever be disproven, only something we can give up on or keep trying at. (Any particular claim that it is uniformly some way or explicable in some way is falsifiable, though).

I like 'falsifiable' theories, but doesn't this notion of falsifiable depend on the uniformity of nature? A theory makes some bad predictions or leads to a disaster, so we abandon it. But maybe the world will change so that the theory becomes vital.

I'm not saying that we should hide in a bunker, paralyzed by skepticism. Perhaps we just ignore the 'darkness' to get along. Perhaps sanity is 'irrational' and the sane man is Oedipus, self-blinded.

But perhaps if we extinguish the light, we become aware of a vast space which is dimly lit - we can't see it in the same kind of detail, but we can sense its vastness. And that there is a kind of light inside the dark. — Wayfarer

This is a good metaphor. But in his position, the answer would be: when one holds a lamp, he can't assume there is a thing within the light range but not seen.

the point of the metaphor was that you can see things that are in within the circle cast by your lamp. Actually when the image first came to mind it was that of a camp, where you have a lit area, but past the light you have the impression of things moving around in the dark that you can't see. So the only way to see them is either to drag them into the light, or shine a light on them - or put the light out and get used to seeing by moonlight. I suppose it's a metaphor for meditative awareness.

you have a lit area, but past the light you have the impression of things moving around in the dark that you can't see. So the only way to see them is either to drag them into the light, or shine a light on them — Wayfarer

That's what I had in mind, but without the moonlight that you go on to mention. This story of the moonlight would itself be light from the lantern. 'Darkness' is what a basic story doesn't account for, doesn't notice in the first place, or gets wrong in the sense of leading us into trouble.

the point of the metaphor was that you can see things that are in within the circle cast by your lamp.

I like your analogy, it reminds me of the idea that the Christ is the light of the world. Wherein the light is not the light we see with our eyes, or known to science, but a spiritual light, which by its illumination animates life and consciousness, is the very quick of these things.

If I have God as a feeling, then I don't need to argue for God's existence. I just write poetry or prophecy.

If I have God as an 'alien' who can physically preserve me, I don't need to argue for God's existence. Why should I care what the less favored think?

From this perspective, philosophy is intrinsically atheist. It's the 'religion of science' trying to make sense of both science and itself, 'rationally.' It is exoteric (aimed at anyone) as opposed to esoteric (aimed at the blessed, the three-eyed, etc.)

The most archetypical kind of transcendentalist opinion is belief in the supernatural. "Natural" in the relevant sense here is roughly equivalent to "empirical": the natural world is the world that we can observe with our senses, directly or indirectly. That "indirectly" part is important for establishing the transcendence of the supernatural. We cannot, for example, see wind directly, but we can see that leaves move in response to the wind, and so find reason to suppose that wind exists, to cause that effect. Much about the natural world posited by modern science has been discovered through increasingly sophisticated indirect observation of that sort. We cannot directly see, or hear, or touch, or otherwise observe, many subtle facets of the world that are posited by science today, but we can see the effects they have on other things that we can directly observe, including special instruments built for that purpose, and so we can indirectly observe those things.

Anything that has any effect on the observable world is consequently indirectly observable through that very effect, and is therefore itself to be reckoned as much a part of the natural world as anything else that we can indirectly observe. For something to be truly supernatural, then, it would have to have no observable effect at all on any observable thing. — Pfhorrest

What you're saying, is that whatever is not empirically detectable can't be considered real. Basically, and I know you will object to this, this is empiricist positivism - that only what can be known or detected by the senses (augmented by instruments) is real or able to be considered.

However this excludes as a matter of definition the domain of what is subjectively real.Of course, you do allow for the reality of what you consider to be ecstatic states of being, which you (fallaciously, in my view) equate with Nirvāṇa.

So, having introduced that term, let's consider what the Buddhist tradition means by it.

To start with, the Buddha does seem to agree that what is detectable by the senses is all that can be spoken of:

The Blessed One said, "What is the All? Simply the eye and forms, ear and sounds, nose and aromas, tongue and flavors, body and tactile sensations, intellect and ideas. This, monks, is called the All. Anyone who would say, 'Repudiating this All, I will describe another,' if questioned on what exactly might be the grounds for his statement, would be unable to explain, and furthermore, would be put to grief. Why? Because it lies beyond range."

(Sabba Sutta SN 35.23 trs Thanissaro, Access to Insight.)

And indeed, some scholars have argued on these grounds that the Buddha was indeed an early proto-naturalist, or proto-positivist, even. However, that would be mistaken, for the Buddha, having established the identity of ‘the All’, then advises that this is something to be abandoned:

The intellect is to be abandoned. Ideas are to be abandoned. Consciousness at the intellect is to be abandoned. Contact at the intellect is to be abandoned. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the intellect — experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain — that too is to be abandoned.

(Pahanaya Sutta, SN 35.24, trs Thanissaro, Access to Insight).

Does this say, then, that beyond the ‘six sense gates’ and the activities of thought-formations and discriminative consciousness, there is nothing, the absence of any kind of life, mind, or intelligence? This is dealt with as follows:

Then Ven. Maha Kotthita went to Ven. Sariputta and, on arrival, exchanged courteous greetings with him. After an exchange of friendly greetings & courtesies, he sat to one side.

As he was sitting there, he said to Ven. Sariputta, "With the remainderless stopping & fading of the six contact-media [vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, & intellect] is it the case that there is anything else?"

[Sariputta:] "Don't say that, my friend."
[Maha Kotthita:] "With the remainderless stopping & fading of the six contact-media, is it the case that there is not anything else?"

[Sariputta:] "Don't say that, my friend."
….
[Sariputta:] "The statement, 'With the remainderless stopping & fading of the six contact-media [vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, & intellection] is it the case that there is anything else?' objectifies non-objectification.

The statement, '... is it the case that there is not anything else ... is it the case that there both is & is not anything else ... is it the case that there neither is nor is not anything else?' objectifies non-objectification.

However far the six contact-media go, that is how far objectification goes. However far objectification goes, that is how far the six contact media go. With the remainderless fading & stopping of the six contact-media, there comes to be the stopping, the allaying of objectification.

(Kotthita Sutta, AN 4.174, trs Thanissaro, Access to Insight.)

In the early Buddhist texts, 'the Buddha' (j.e. 'enlightened one') goes through seven stages of dhyana (contemplative quiescence) culminating in Nirvāṇa which is 'release from the cycle of transmigration' (saṃsāra). This is not, as the last of the above quotations indicate, mere nothingness or non-being. But what it is, is unknowable to the discursive intellect. We might say that it is a form of gnosis that completely transforms our understanding of the nature of things.

Now, whether to take that on faith or not - I don't claim to have any direct familiarity with such states or to have realised such higher states of being. On the other hand, I am disposed towards accepting that statements about them are, in modern philosophical terms, veridical, that is, they convey insight into reality. But what kinds of insight, and what conception of the nature of reality, is what is at issue.

The naturalist worldview that I think you advocate, is very much an artefact of the European Enlightenment. And indeed it has a great deal to commend it, I for one would not have a livelihood without modern science and technology. But even though I respect it, I don't think it circumscribes the horizons of what is real. 'More in heaven and earth' - that kind of thing.

But what it is, is unknowable to the discursive intellect. We might say that it is a form of gnosis that completely transforms our understanding of the nature of things. — Wayfarer

But what are we as outsiders to make of this? It sounds like a knowledge that doesn't involve words.

It sounds like 'God as a feeling' that doesn't want to be 'just a feeling.'

Now, whether to take that on faith or not - I don't claim to have any direct familiarity with such states or to have realised such higher states of being. — Wayfarer

While talking with a friend recently about buried spiritual scrolls, it occurred to me that their role as forgotten/repressed wisdom 'was' the message. The idea of forgotten/repressed spiritual secrets is already more stimulating perhaps than the secrets themselves.

Is the envelope the letter here?

I like 'falsifiable' theories, but doesn't this notion of falsifiable depend on the uniformity of nature? A theory makes some bad predictions or leads to a disaster, so we abandon it. But maybe the world will change so that the theory becomes vital. — Yellow Horse

Every theory is just postulating that the world is uniform in such-and-such way. To falsify it is to show that the world is not uniform in that way. But that tells us nothing about whether the world is uniform in some other way. We can never prove or disprove whether or not it is uniform at all, only assume one way or the other; and we cannot help but tacitly make such an assumption by our actions, choosing to search for the uniformity we presume is in there somewhere, or not.

What you're saying, is that whatever is not empirically detectable can't be considered real. Basically, and I know you will object to this, this is empiricist positivism - that only what can be known or detected by the senses (augmented by instruments) is real or able to be considered. — Wayfarer

Nah, I don’t object to that, so long as we’re only talking about description of reality. My only real objections to positivism are that they were generally confirmationists / justificationists (“verificationists”) rather than falsificationists / critical rationalists, and more importantly, that they refused to engage in or acknowledge that there is more to thought than just description; especially, prescription is an equally important activity, with a whole philosophy comparable to their descriptive philosophy needed to underpin it.

However this excludes as a matter of definition the domain of what is subjectively real. — Wayfarer

I don’t view the objective and the subjective as cleanly separated. Empirical experience is inherently subjective; objective reality as I construe it is just the limit of accounting for more and more such experiences, gradually removing subjective bias in the process. In holding reality to consist entirely of empirical stuff, I’m denying that there is anything utterly beyond subjective experience, affirming that objective reality is made of the same stuff as our subjective experiences; it’s just ALL of them, rather than only some.

Of course, you do allow for the reality of what you consider to be ecstatic states of being, which you (fallaciously, in my view) equate with Nirvāṇa. — Wayfarer

You clearly know more about Buddhism than I do, so I won’t argue about whether or not the kind of state I call “ontophilia” really is or isn’t the same thing as “nirvana”, but I would like to explain why it seems so to me.

Essentially, it is because in ontophilic states as I’ve experienced them, there is a sense of utmost peace and detachment. There is so much positive feeling welling up from inside about nothing in particular that it feels like one could not possibly want for anything, such that even death of oneself or the whole universe is not a frightening prospect. At the same time, because of that same overwhelming positivity, it seems intrinsically worthwhile to keep on living, and to keep the world going well too. Either living forever or dying right now, or anywhere in between, seem acceptable. Everything seems acceptable. There is no want or longing.

In contrast, the opposite of that feeling, “ontophobia” as I call it, is existential dread, where one is constantly afraid of death, yet also finds living to be a misery, and the prospect of living forever seems a fate perhaps worse than death. Nothing is acceptable, and one feels a bottomless hole of perpetually unfulfillable desires inside them, a hunger for something that can’t exist, and so a hunger that can’t possibly be sated.

As I understand it, nirvana is supposed to be just such a state of detached contentment, the extinguishing of all desire, the opposite of existential dread. So it really sounds like what I mean by ontophilia.

we cannot help but tacitly make such an assumption by our actions, choosing to search for the uniformity we presume is in there somewhere, or not. — Pfhorrest

We can't help ourselves, as Popper saw. We creatively project structures/uniformities on the world. So where is the choice you mention? We can find ourselves attached to a critical tradition in which one gives reasons for one's theories and adapts them to criticism.

'Darkness' seems to be tacitly assumed within any critical tradition (a tradition of being anti-traditional.)

Below is nice quote from Sartor Resartus, the section called 'Natural Supernaturalism.' Carlyle was raised religiously, struggled for an intellectual freedom, and ended up using 'God' in a fresh way. For him the world itself was a 'miracle' that lost its color through our habitual exposure to its regularities, and our immersion in the business of life.

************************
"Again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual authentic Ghost? The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human Life he so loved; did he never so much as look into Himself? The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress the threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we? Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade away again into air and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact: we start out of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as years and aeons. Come there not tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of beatified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (poltern), and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead,—till the scent of the morning air summons us to our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake and Day? Where now is Alexander of Macedon: does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Napoleon too, and his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns! Was it all other than the veriest Spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that made Night hideous, flitted away?—Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million walking the Earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once."

"O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gathered round our ME: wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his strong war-horse, fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart: but warrior and war-horse are a vision; a revealed Force, nothing more. Stately they tread the Earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! the Earth is but a film; it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink beyond plummet's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy herself will not follow them. A little while ago, they were not; a little while, and they are not, their very ashes are not."

"So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the end. Generation after generation takes to itself the Form of a Body; and forth issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What Force and Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:—and then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality and are alive? On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped in; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But whence?—O Heaven whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God.

*****************

In general it's an amazing text.

We can't help ourselves, as Popper saw. We creatively project structures/uniformities on the world. So where is the choice you mention? — Yellow Horse

We cannot help but assume one way or another, through our actions. The choice is which way to assume, by which actions we take.

Below is nice quote from Sartor Resartus

Nice text, clearly written by someone who has conceived of being as spirit, or flame. Finishing with the realisation of the decent and return to the source.

So it really sounds like what I mean by ontophilia. — Pfhorrest

Maybe! I haven't had many such experiences myself. I have had momentary epiphanies which have been life-changing, though. (Must say, I'm not taken by 'ontophilia' even though I can see the semantic sense of it.)

I don’t view the objective and the subjective as cleanly separated. Empirical experience is inherently subjective; objective reality as I construe it is just the limit of accounting for more and more such experiences, gradually removing subjective bias in the process. In holding reality to consist entirely of empirical stuff, I’m denying that there is anything utterly beyond subjective experience, affirming that objective reality is made of the same stuff as our subjective experiences; it’s just ALL of them, rather than only some. — Pfhorrest

I think that's where you differ to philosophers of a couple of generations back. The separateness of the subjective and objective realms was a deep assumption for scientific realism. I think that realisation is quite accepted now, but was central to the Bohr-Einstein debates. (See does the universe exist if we're not looking?)

In any case, and getting back to the topic - Buddhism is not a theistic religion, in the sense that it's not oriented around God. Although, that said, devas - divine beings - are assumed to be real in the early Buddhist texts, but the realisation of Nirvāṇa doesn't depend on this. That's one of the reasons that Buddhism became attractive to modern Europe - some of the early translators presented it as more compatible with science, in fact the reason the word 'enlightenment' was used to translate the Buddhist term 'bodhi', was because of the consonance of that term with 'enlightenment values'. However later scholars have cast doubt on this interpretation of Buddhism, pointing out that in practice it remains firmly embedded in a mythological culture in which 'the Buddha' to all intents and purposes has assumed the role of an all-knowing deity.

While talking with a friend recently about buried spiritual scrolls, it occurred to me that their role as forgotten/repressed wisdom 'was' the message. — Yellow Horse

If the reference is to the Nag Hammadi scrolls, the story behind them is indeed fascinating. They were unearthed from a cave in Egypt in the 1970's and after the house mother had found they weren't particularly good fuel for cooking on, taken to an antiquities market. They were found to be a treasure trove of lost Gnostic gospels, including one that has since become famous, The Gospel of Thomas.

The point about the gnostic gospels is that they present an alternative form of early Christianity. I studied comparative religion and Buddhism as part of my philosophical quest, hence my interest in it. During the course of those studies, I formed the view that the early gnostics were a lot more like today's new-age and countercultural religious types. It's much more like Eastern religious practices, with much less emphasis on belief - doxa - and more in developing wisdom - gnosis. As it turned out, however, the gnostics were basically buried by what emerged as mainstream Christianity, and in such cases, history was definitely written by the victors.

Here's a list of current titles on Gnostic Christianity including many drawn from the Nag Hammadi finds.

It's much more like Eastern religious practices, with much less emphasis on belief - doxa - and more in developing wisdom - gnosis. — Wayfarer

I like what I know of it. What I was getting at, though, was that the idea of suppressed spiritual knowledge was already by itself a spiritual text, a myth/symbol with a certain potency.

A life can be satisfactorily structured as a pursuit, with not suffering but despair as spiritual danger.

---------------------------------------
His disciples said, "When will you appear to us, and when will we see you?"

Jesus said, "When you strip without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample them, then [you] will see the son of the living one and you will not be afraid."

(Gospel of Thomas)

clearly written by someone who has conceived of being as spirit, or flame. — Punshhh

Yes indeed, and I agree with you that being is spirit or flame (or time or...). Carlyle apparently influenced Emerson, and other passages remind me of highlights of 20th century philosophy.

The book is online at Gutenberg.org, which saves me from typing these out.

**************
"Yes, Friends," elsewhere observes the Professor, "not our Logical, Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative one is King over us; I might say, Priest and Prophet to lead us heavenward; or Magician and Wizard to lead us hellward. Nay, even for the basest Sensualist, what is Sense but the implement of Fantasy; the vessel it drinks out of? Ever in the dullest existence there is a sheen either of Inspiration or of Madness (thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two), that gleams in from the circumambient Eternity, and colors with its own hues our little islet of Time. The Understanding is indeed thy window, too clear thou canst not make it; but Fantasy is thy eye, with its color-giving retina, healthy or diseased. Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows'-meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they called their Flag; which, had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen? Did not the whole Hungarian Nation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph pocketed their Iron Crown; an implement, as was sagaciously observed, in size and commercial value little differing from a horse-shoe? It is in and through Symbols that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being: those ages, moreover, are accounted the noblest which can the best recognize symbolical worth, and prize it the highest. For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the Godlike?
**************

That's from the 'Symbols' section. Personally I like to render unto science what is science's. This might sound like 'religion is just symbols,' but this is only reductive if we underrate symbols.

I don’t view the objective and the subjective as cleanly separated. Empirical experience is inherently subjective; objective reality as I construe it is just the limit of accounting for more and more such experiences, gradually removing subjective bias in the process. In holding reality to consist entirely of empirical stuff, I’m denying that there is anything utterly beyond subjective experience, affirming that objective reality is made of the same stuff as our subjective experiences; it’s just ALL of them, rather than only some. — Pfhorrest

While this is a pretty awesome way of viewing things (reality as the intersect of dreams), it ignores the successful-in-my-view destruction of the subject in 20th century philosophy.

I don't mean that the concept loses its utility, but only that it is undermined as a foundation.

Rather than building up the shared world from individuals, it (counter-intuitively) looks more plausible to me to work in the other direction.

I suspect you’re thinking more of access consciousness than phenomenal consciousness. I take different approaches to the two. Access consciousness is a function of physical stuff, where physicality is empiricality which is grounded in phenomenal consciousness. Poetically you could say it’s minds made out of mental contents, where the “contents” are ontologically prior to the minds that later are able to contain them.