I don't agree. I think the idea of God is not nebulous; it is the idea of an infinite intelligence. Likewise the idea of a person as subject is not nebulous, it is the idea of a finite (embodied) intelligence. Neither God nor person are perceptible objects, if that's what you had in mind by "thing".

To say something occurs 'in the mind' is not the same as to say it occurs in your mind or my mind alone. Consciousness is a collective. — Wayfarer

I was simply restating the questions Kastrup himself has said are the key questions we need to resolve if we are going to fully apprehend the idea of idealism and a Universal Mind.

The idea of a collective unconscious (I'm very familiar with Jung) doesn't of itself really answer the questions Kastrup has raised. Positing the notion of the human as dissociated alters goes some way to make sense of it more fully. Then all you have to do is explain dissociated alters, and so on...

Also the idea of either is nebulous, what could such a thing be? Are human minds connected at some deeper level, or only in the sense that we participate in a common culture? — Janus

Kastrup argues that Jung was an idealist and that the collective unconscious (Jung I think describes it as a primordial reservoir we all draw from) is a version of Mind at Large. You'll note that Jung stated these images were shared across all human cultures. Hence Joseph Campbell's book A Hero with A Thousand Faces which draws together the collective imagery and narrative traditions of the world's hero myths via Jungian archetypes. The basis of the scripts for Star Wars...

Check this out....

I’m going to be lazy and hide behind the following quotes. Let me know if they answer your question.

Ratcliffe says:

“The unquestioned givenness of the objective world that is constitutive of scientific descriptions cannot capture the way in which the given is disclosed by a meaning-giving background. Thus, if anything, it is the transcendental, meaning-giving account that has ontological priority over an objective/causal description.”

Zahavi concurs with Ratcliffe:

“Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our
conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned.” — Joshs

OK, these ontological positions are not the bare phenomenological position of the epoché; wherein the question is bracketed for methodological reasons.

So, "the transcendental, meaning-giving account that has ontological priority over an objective/causal description" for the purposes of phenomenological investigation, but not for the purposes of scientific investigation.

As to Zahavi's "What we call "reality""; we call many things reality depending on what we are investigating or what our ontological commitments are. There is no "ultimately" about it; it remains contextual, unless you want to posit some ultimate ontological truth; but then many different ultimate ontological truths are posited by many different thinkers of different stripes.

In assessing the plausibility of any metaphysical or ontological position, I think the one thing which must be explained is the commonality of experience between humans and even between humans and animals, so I don't think appealing to "mind-and language- dependent structures" is going to cut it, unless you are opting for some kind of idealism which posits a collective mind. In the case of animals of course the "language" part must be omitted.

Well, that depends on what you consider ‘the world’ to be, as distinct from ‘we’. At what point do we end and the world begins? My point is that affect refers to a relative aspect of energy at the level of potentiality. Language structure insists on a subject-object distinction, describing the relation of ‘affect’ as a verb - but I think this can limit our understanding of what affect is in potentiality. The more we understand the broader scope of affect in potentiality, the more self-consciously we can collaborate in the process. — Possibility

We are part of the world of course. But it doesn't seem that the world depends on us, on our perceiving it, in order to exist. Of course to exist in the form in which we (uniquely) perceive, it does depend on us, but even there we also depend on it, or at least that seems most plausible.

I agree that we might think that ultimately, or primordially, experience is prior to the subject-object distinction; but there we would be feigning to dip into the pre-cognitive ocean of being, and I think we can only hint at that, because all we can propositionally say remains firmly in the cognitive realm of subjects and objects.

So, I meant to say that we are affected pre-cognitively, and that 'affect' in this sense signifies some process prior to perception whereby our senses collaborate with the world (as part of, or not separate from, the world, of course) to give rise to sensory phenomena and the conscious and unconscious affects (or responses) we experience in respect of those.

Kastrup argues that Jung was an idealist and that the collective unconscious (Jung I think describes it as a primordial reservoir we all draw from) is a version of Mind at Large. You'll note that Jung stated these images were shared across all human cultures. Hence Joseph Campbell's book A Hero with A Thousand Faces which draws together the collective imagery and narrative traditions of the world's hero myths via Jungian archetypes. The basis of the scripts for Star Wars... — Tom Storm

It's a long time since I've read Jung or The Hero With a Thousand Faces, but what you say seems right to me; that Jung, along with Campbell, posits a cross-cultural commonality of mythical and religious themes.

It never seems to be spelled out though, just what this "storehouse" of archetypal imagery is supposed to be. In that sense it is, for me, a nebulous idea like Platos' realm of the forms, the Buddhist notion of the "alaya-vijnana" or storehouse consciousness, the theosophical and anthroposophical idea of "akashic records' and Sheldrake's "morphogenetic fields".

I think all these kinds of ideas fall apart and fail to make much sense without a further positing of a universal mind or God.

Agree with you on all counts.

it doesn't seem that the world depends on us, on our perceiving it, in order to exist. — Janus

To this idealism is opposed transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensiblity). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding. CPR 369

Kant calls transcendental realism the “common prejudice” (A740/B768) and describes it as a “common but fallacious presupposition” (A536/B564; cf. Allison 2004: 22). Transcendental realism is the commonsense pre-theoretic view that objects in space and time are “things in themselves”, which Kant, of course, denies.
— SEP

I think the idea of God is not nebulous — Janus

Strange. I think it is the nebulous idea par excellence.

Strange. I think it is the nebulous idea par excellence. — Wayfarer

I don't know why you would say that in view of the existence of a very long history of theology. God is not a determinate object, obviously, but people can, have and do think quite coherently about the idea of God. Can you say the same about the ideas of Plato's forms, the collective unconscious, etc.?

I have no idea why you posted that quote from the SEP. I haven't anywhere said that things in themselves are "objects in space and time". When I say "world" I am not referring to the world as perceived, to such objects as perceived, but to whatever it is that, in collaboration with our senses, gives rise to such objects.

I am saying that whatever that is, everything we know seems to tell us it must be independent of our perceptions; i.e., that it would still exist regardless of whether we perceive it. To deny that would be to deny the existence of anything prior to the advent of humans, which seems quite absurd.

God is not a determinate object, obviously, but people can, have and do think quite coherently about the idea of God. — Janus

But there is vast disagreement about that. The Great Schism between Orthodox and Catholic for starters. Theistic personalism v classical theology. List could go on indefinitely, let's not get bogged down in that.

I am saying that whatever that is, everything we know seems to tell us it must be independent of our perceptions; i.e., that it would still exist regardless of whether we perceive it — Janus

Which is exactly the point made in that passage, which is why I referenced it: 'The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding.'

The italicized phrases mean the same, do they not?

But there is vast disagreement about that. The Great Schism between Orthodox and Catholic for starters. Theistic personalism v classical theology. List could go on indefinitely, let's not get bogged down in that. — Wayfarer

The fact that people can think different things about God is not relevant to the point, though. We can think about God was the point.

but people can, have and do think quite coherently about the idea of God. Can you say the same about the ideas of Plato's forms, the collective unconscious, etc.? — Janus

You're partly on the money here I think but I'm somewhat struck by this as I have never thought the idea of a god was coherent, unless you opt for a Protestant anthropomorphic, personal god, which to me would seem somewhat unsophisticated and lacking in plausibility. Is god 'energy' or the ground of being.... what can it mean? Theology may well amount to great scholarly edifices made of paying cards for all we know.

Nevertheless, I think god seems more graspable than Platonic forms on the basis of god's centrality to our culture despite its supposed secularism. Think of all the movies, TV shows and art featuring god/s. Comedian George Burns played god in a hit movie back in the 1970's, but who would you get to play the collective unconscious or the Platonic realm? It would have to be Daniel Day Lewis or Toni Collette...

surely it must be said that things in themselves are necessary for the appearance of phenomena, no? — Janus

Actually, the ding an sich is necessary for perception, the passive impression on the sensory apparatus. Post-impression, it is the active faculties of representation that intuits the sensation, which gives phenomenon. You know the drill.....“arranges the matter of the object according to rules”.

Epistemological juxtaposition: the thing we represent to ourselves, the ding an sich is the thing we don’t. Not to be thought of from an ontological perspective at all; the ding an sich certainly exists....as whatever it is. The whatever it is we know as something.....is the thing.
————

The other point is that to "eliminate" the thing in itself is to posit an alternate necessary condition for the appearance of phenomena. — Janus

Except there is no need to posit an alternative, when the one posited is both necessary and sufficient in its own right. Technically whatever the necessary condition would be, would have to be applicable only to things as they are intuited by us, under the assumption the human cognitive system is in fact representational. So, if anything, the thing in itself would be posited as that to which the intuitions could not apply. Eliminated, if you will, from being conditioned by space and time.

As I’ve understood the theory anyway. That, and a buck/50......

I have never thought the idea of a god was coherent — Tom Storm

Tricky. The way I put it is that such ideas are coherent within a domain of discourse. Within such a domain, there is a shared understanding of key terms, texts and practices which makes it meaningful to speak of a concept or idea.

But on the other hand there is in spiritual/religious discourse, the principle of a non-conceptual understanding. Obviously that sounds vague, but a snippet from Karen Armstrong might cast some light. She says in relation to traditional spirituality that:

myth was a programme of action. When a mythical narrative was symbolically re-enacted, it brought to light within the practitioner something "true" about human life and the way our humanity worked, even if its insights, like those of art, could not be proven rationally. If you did not act upon it, it would remain as incomprehensible and abstract – like the rules of a board game, which seem impossibly convoluted, dull and meaningless until you start to play.

Religious truth is, therefore, a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we cannot learn it in the abstract; we have to plunge into the pool and acquire the knack by dedicated practice. Religious doctrines are a product of ritual and ethical observance, and make no sense unless they are accompanied by such spiritual exercises as yoga, prayer, liturgy and a consistently compassionate lifestyle. Skilled practice in these disciplines can lead to intimations of the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman or Dao. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd.

But even when they're realised by practitioners, they may still not be understood on the conceptual level. That's what philosophers and scholars do, or attempt, but the gist might be something that those who practice it are incapable of describing verbally, other than by what they do.

Apropos of the conversation generally, I googled 'Husserl Natural Attitude' and the top return was a pretty decent blog post at a university-run site.

A relevant excerpt:

From a phenomenological perspective, in everyday life, we see the objects of our experience such as physical objects, other people, and even ideas as simply real and straightforwardly existent. In other words, they are “just there.” We don’t question their existence; we view them as facts.

When we leave our house in the morning, we take the objects we see around us as simply real, factual things—this tree, neighboring buildings, cars, etcetera. This attitude or perspective, which is usually unrecognized as a perspective, Edmund Husserl terms the “natural attitude” or the “natural theoretical attitude.”

When Husserl uses the word “natural” to describe this attitude, he doesn’t mean that it is “good” (or bad), he means simply that this way of seeing reflects an “everyday” or “ordinary” way of being-in-the-world. When I see the world within this natural attitude, I am solely aware of what is factually present to me. My surrounding world, viewed naturally, is the familiar world, the domain of my everyday life. Why is this a problem?

From a phenomenological perspective, this naturalizing attitude conceals a profound naïveté. Husserl claimed that “being” can never be collapsed entirely into being in the empirical world: any instance of actual being, he argued, is necessarily encountered upon a horizon that encompasses facticity but is larger than facticity. Indeed, the very sense of facts of consciousness as such, from a phenomenological perspective, depends on a wider horizon of consciousness that usually remains unexamined. Any individual object, Husserl wrote:

“Is not merely an individual object as such, a ‘This here,’ an object never repeatable; as qualified ‘in itself‘ thus and so, it has its own specific character, its stock of essential predictables which must belong to it … if other, secondary, relative determinations can belong to it.”

Hence, any individual object necessarily belongs to multiple “essential species,” or essential structures of consciousness...

But there is vast disagreement about that. The Great Schism between Orthodox and Catholic for starters. Theistic personalism v classical theology. List could go on indefinitely, let's not get bogged down in that. — Wayfarer

The fact that people can think different things about God is not relevant to the point, though. We can think, and many things have been thought, about God was the point. Same cannot be said for the collective unconscious, karma, akashic records and so on.

'The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding.'

The italicized phrases mean the same, do they not? — Wayfarer

No they do not. I haven't said that "outer appearances" could exist independently of us. It is whatever it is that presents to us as outer appearances that exists independently of us. Anything we say about what it is will be classed as an appearance for us, and yet if we want to say that those things existed prior to the emergence of humans (which seems obviously to be the case) then we can only refer to them as "things as they exist in themselves" or some such.

if we want to say that those things existed prior to the emergence of humans (which seems obviously to be the case) — Janus

This is just what Kant describes as 'transcendental realism'.

Kant says there are things in themselves, but that we can say nothing about them other than they must exist; how is that different to what I've said?

Actually, the ding an sich is necessary for perception, the passive impression on the sensory apparatus. Post-impression, it is the active faculties of representation that intuits the sensation, which gives phenomenon. You know the drill.....“arranges the matter of the object according to rules”. — Mww

Yes, I agree that this is what I think Kant means.

Epistemological juxtaposition: the thing we represent to ourselves, the ding an sich is the thing we don’t. Not to be thought of from an ontological perspective at all; the ding an sich certainly exists....as whatever it is. The whatever it is we know as something.....is the thing. — Mww

Right, exactly what I've been saying to @Wayfarer above; but he seems to think it amounts to transcendental realism. I have made this point before; when we think of the empirical from our perspective it is real ( because accessed via the senses) and when we think about the transcendental from our point of view it is ideal ( because it is whatever is beyond what can be accessed via the senses, and thus can only be (more or less) thought about, imagined.

If we reverse this and think about the empirical from the "point of view" of the transcendental, it is ideal because it is conditioned and formed by our ideas and judgements, and thinking about the transcendental from this perspective it is real, because it is whatever it is in an absolute sense independently of our cognitions. This is the same as if we posited the situation from how we can imagine God's perspective.

Of course all of this is us thinking, but we are able to put ourselves in "other shoes" via the imagination. It's the best we can do, so it will have to suffice.

You're partly on the money here I think but I'm somewhat struck by this as I have never thought the idea of a god was coherent, unless you opt for a Protestant anthropomorphic, personal god, which to me would seem somewhat unsophisticated and lacking in plausibility. Is god 'energy' or the ground of being.... what can it mean? Theology may well amount to great scholarly edifices made of paying cards for all we know.

Nevertheless, I think god seems more graspable than Platonic forms on the basis of god's centrality to our culture despite its supposed secularism. Think of all the movies, TV shows and art featuring god/s. Comedian George Burns played god in a hit movie back in the 1970's, but who would you get to play the collective unconscious or the Platonic realm? It would have to be Daniel Day Lewis or Toni Collette... — Tom Storm

It's true; there are many conceptions of God from impersonal deistic conceptions to personal theistic ones. And I agree it could all be "edifices made of playing cards", just mere imagination pointing to nothing beyond itself. That is why such things are always, and always must remain, matters of faith in my view.

:lol: Daniel Day Lewis or Toni Collete as the collective unconscious or the platonic realm. Very imaginative, and somehow apt!

if we want to say that those things existed prior to the emergence of humans (which seems obviously to be the case) — Janus

I've quoted this before but it remains on point.

'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ... that is impossible.'

Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was [that] the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.

The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.

This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood.

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices. — Bryan Magee, Schopenhauer's Philosophy, p106

I think Schopenhauer is either wrong or doesn't mean what you think he does. It doesn't seem to me that you understand the concept of transcendental idealism. To repeat, the transcendental is ideal only in the sense that we cannot do more than think about it, that is it cannot be more than an idea for us, since it is not accessible via the senses.

Is it therefore merely imaginary or is it real? If it is real then that amounts, in another sense, as I have already explained, to transcendental realism; i.e. that the transcendental is ultimately real (even though ideal to us).

If you are going to comment please address what I have actually said and point out what you think is wrong with it. If you can't do that then we can't have a satisfying discussion and neither of us will learn anything.

Wow, what if you just deny absolutely the existence of anything non-material, and name the Physical Universe the Metaphysical? Than there is no idiocy such as "transcendental" realities.

Idea exist in flesh when they are thought, or on paper or in magnetic memory. Ideas implicit, processes built into the nature of any and all existence, such as causality, exist in dynamic, physical processes. Nothing exists without Matter.

There is no such thing as an Infinitude, or an Infinite Being; everything is bounded, that is the nature of being an Object, Body, Thing, what have you.

Consciousness is itself proof of the Objective Extant, Physical Universe, as there is absolutely no way to create a Consciousness except through Evolution in a Material Universe; and to such who would suggest we could have been created by a Divinity, that's just an appeal to mysterious magic, and ignores the infinite regression Creator Creators.

Give it up: what you see is what you get, and any Philosophic experiment, be it in Thought or otherwise, needs to operate within the parameters of the Standard Model of Cosmology accepted by the worlds' physicists, or it is just fantastic speculation.

Transcendence is a psychological state; it is the Imagination leaping superior to its own knowledge as it, often, assists the Subject to new perspectives on his or her or their studies; but it still is a material phenomenon of the Subject's brain and other physiological systems.

Like, I said, can someone Conceive of another way of creating consciousnesses except through Evolution?

Like, I said, can someone Conceive of another way of creating consciousnesses except through Evolution? — Michael Sol

The other logical possibility is that consciousness is uncreated.

If you are going to comment please address what I have actually said and point out what you think is wrong with it. — Janus

I have been sincerely trying to do that on each occasion. It seems you're not understanding what I'm trying to convey. I think you're approaching it from the natural attitude (beginning from 'From a phenomenological perspective....')

The other logical possibility is that consciousness is uncreated. — Janus

Now you're speaking my language.

Uncreated? Forever extant? Huh?

it still is a material phenomenon of the Subject's brain and other physiological systems. — Michael Sol

How many neurotransmitters does it take for a ‘57 DeSoto? Which particular pathway are they on? What’s the maximum permissible distance of the channel? How would one ever find out? Why would he care, if the image is given without ever knowing any of those material conditions?

Maybe it’s like the sum over histories...we don’t know how many or which way, and any attempt to find out disrupts exactly what we’re trying to discover, so it is logical that it is ever neurotransmitter going in every possible way. Which, of course, teaches us not a damn thing about how neurotransmitters give us mental objects.

Give it up: what you see is what you get.... — Michael Sol

Excellent advice.

(Sigh)

MWW wrote:

"How many neurotransmitters does it take for a ‘57 DeSoto? Which particular pathway are they on? What’s the maximum permissible distance of the channel? How would one ever find out? Why would he care, if the image is given without ever knowing any of those material conditions?"

Um, I don't know any of the specifics about the volume of blood, diameter of my veins and arteries, nor the specific oxygen content of my blood cells when leaving the lungs, yet I am confident that all of those material processes exist and can be measured by scientists. And a simple google search will show you that there are many of the latter doing just that.....

"if the image is given..." Huh? If I see a Desoto or its picture, I obviously know that designers thunk it, capitalists built a factory to make it, and all sorts of people were employed to build and sell it... Obviously, the physical conditions, whether in the factory or in the heads of those involved in the vehicle's production, are all implicit in the image...

Again, as I say, as we cannot even conceive of a Consciousness that did not come into being except through Evolution, isn't our own Consciousnesses proof of the Objectively Extant, Material Universe that bred it?

In Kant, transcendental realism only means space and time, while still the forms of objects, resides in them as intrinsic properties. By transferring space and time to intuition as pure representations, they are removed as properties of, by making them merely the necessary conditions for, objects of perception. Sheer genius......space and time are both incontestably infinite, and no empirical knowledge is at all possible of objects with infinite properties, so investigating the possibility of empirical knowledge necessarily begins by removing that which prevents it.

Are space an time pure intuitions? Dunno...maybe not. But if they can be, and in conjunction with the rest of the speculative system predicated on logic alone, at least it works out well enough for its intended purpose.
———-

when we think about the transcendental from our point of view it is ideal ( because it is whatever is beyond what can be accessed via the senses, and thus can only be (more or less) thought about, imagined. — Janus

Correct. In Kant, transcendental merely indicates that which is given from a priori pure reason alone, having many conceptions subsumed under it.

I don't know any of the specifics..... — Michael Sol

Yet you insist the specifics are necessary. In any case, if you don’t know the specifics, you cannot say with any authority, or prove with any certainty, what the specifics actually do. You can draw logical inferences til Doomsday, and be either right or wrong with equal opportunity.

the physical conditions (...), are all implicit in the image — Michael Sol

Exactly. And, of course, implicit in, is very far from proof of. Same for consciousness, insofar as consciousness ne’er was any kind of being except a conceived being, as opposed to a material being.

But I grant that without evolution the human species would not have advanced enough to conceive such an abstract being as consciousness. At the same time, however, such grant must be given, because that’s apparently what happened. But that does not, in itself, immediately eliminate every other means by which consciousness could have been conceived.

In a way, evolution defeats itself, in that our intellectual advancement by means of it, has also enabled us to consider the possibility that our abstract consciousness was given to us by some external something-or-other. It’s just simple logic, man. If we don’t know the specifics that cause a thing, we are at liberty to allow something else as cause for that same thing. Been that way since mud huts and fig leafs.