Of course: why not? Science certainly seems to show that things existed prior to consciousness; unless you are a panpsychist. — Janus
unless you are a panpsychist. — Janus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_VedantaThe point to be reached is a foundational consciousness that is unconditional, self-evident, and immediate (svayam-prakāśa). It is that to which everything is presented, but is itself no presentation, that which knows all, but is itself no object. The self should not be confused with the contents and states which it enjoys and manipulates. If we have to give an account of it, we can describe it only as what it is not, for any positive description of it would be possible only if it could be made an object of observation, which from the nature of the case it is not. We "know" it only as we withdraw ourselves from the body with which we happen to be identified, in this transition
the true Self, pure consciousness [...] the only Reality (sat), since It is untinged by difference, the mark of ignorance, and since It is the one thing that is not sublatable"
The longest chapter of Shankara's Upadesasahasri, chapter 18, "That Art Thou," is devoted to considerations on the insight "I am ever-free, the existent" (sat), and the identity expressed in Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7 in the mahavakya (great sentence) "tat tvam asi", "that thou art."[275][276] In this statement, according to Shankara, tat refers to 'Sat,[276] "the Existent"[266][267][277][278] Existence, Being,[web 16] or Brahman,[279] the Real, the "Root of the world,"[276][note 53] the true essence or root or origin of everything that exists.[267][277][web 16] "Tvam" refers to one's real I, pratyagatman or inner Self,[280] the "direct Witness within everything,"[14] "free from caste, family, and purifying ceremonies,"[281] the essence, Atman, which the individual at the core is.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/james1.htmI believe that ‘consciousness,’ when once it has evaporated to this estate of pure diaphaneity, is on the point of disappearing altogether. It is the name of a nonentity, and has no right to a place among first principles. Those who still cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the faint rumor left behind by the disappearing ‘soul’ upon the air of philosophy.
...
To deny plumply that ‘consciousness’ exists seems so absurd on the face of it – for undeniably ‘thoughts’ do exist – that I fear some readers will follow me no farther. Let me then immediately explain that I mean only to deny that the word stands for an entity, but to insist most emphatically that it does stand for a function. There is, I mean, no aboriginal stuff or quality of being, contrasted with that of which material objects are made, out of which our thoughts of them are made; but there is a function in experience which thoughts perform, and for the performance of which this quality of being is invoked. That function is knowing. ‘Consciousness’ is supposed necessary to explain the fact that things not only are, but get reported, are known. Whoever blots out the notion of consciousness from his list of first principles must still provide in some way for that function’s being carried on.
...
My thesis is that if we start with the supposition that there is only one primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of which everything is composed, and if we call that stuff ‘pure experience,’ the knowing can easily be explained as a particular sort of relation towards one another into which portions of pure experience may enter. The relation itself is a part of pure experience; one if its ‘terms’ becomes the subject or bearer of the knowledge, the knower,[2] the other becomes the object known.
Not at all. There is no subject. There is no consciousness. Not 'really.' Just world from perspectives. Never world-from-no-perspective. That's the idea. — plaque flag
For me the issue is semantic. I think of 'physical' objects as enduring possibilities of perception.I don't see any other coherent way to interpret the fossil record and cosmology. — Janus
I am a non-dualist ontologically speaking, but I am not a non-distinctionist epistemologically speaking. In the non-dual context there are no distinctions but I don't think it follows that there are no differences, but rather just that there is no separation. — Janus
I think of 'physical' objects are enduring possibilities of perception.
.... How does the ancestral object exist ? — plaque flag
This is difficult to parse. Perhaps you mean that consciousness is always consciousness-of ? — plaque flag
I'd say that those ideas and details are philosophy. Tho I will grant you that the point is to grasp some 'theorems' of value. In math, for instance, a theorem might be 'obviously' true after a certain amount of experience. But proofs are a kind of hygiene: we make sure we aren't deluded, and we find a ladder to aid the intuition that really matters. — plaque flag
t's only a narrow, prejudiced version of positivism that's problematic, — plaque flag
You yourself say that metaphysical questions are undecidable. That's a fairly positivist claim, it seems to me. — plaque flag
The great thinker is only realized (for me) within my own cognition. I have to 'become' that great thinker in order to understand them. So the false humility thing is indeed a confusion, though a true humility with respect to fallible and endless interpretation is fitting. — plaque flag
I think 'illusion' has to be a kind of metaphor here. As I see it, all 'experience' is 'real.' — plaque flag
In this context, the so-called illusion becomes so with the detachment.
I transform the world into an 'empty' spectacle by a change in attitude or investment.
How would you define 'enlightenment'? I've tended to be wary of binary understandings of t
I've look into that book, but I didn't find it gripping enough to keep going. I may give it another chance. I'm trained as a mathematician, so I recall it being technically daunting. — plaque flag
My mere suspicion is that it'll be similar to Wittgenstein somehow, who also worked at the intersection of mysticism and logic. If you care to paraphrase the gist of the work, I'm all ears. What does it mean to you ?[/qquote]
Wittgenstein had no idea what mysticism is. From his writings it is not clear he ever read a book about it. Brown is in another league.
Roughly speaking Brown is saying that the original phenomenon is free of all distinctions, this a mathematical point, true continuum, unity or void, ((all of which are partless) and the first distinction or 'mark' in this tabula rasa is the beginning of the creation. In set theory this is the idea that for a Venn diagram the blank sheet of paper is fundamental and mathematics begins with the first mark we make or circle we draw.
Was 'Bertie' a fool ?
Still, this is all just gossip basically
I think you should justify your dismissal of Wittgenstein. In my view, you are underrating him. I'm not his agent, and I don't take him for an authority. It's just think he deserves the fame. Same with Heidegger -- though I'd drag into Husserl more and stress some undernoticed early Heidegger (lectures 1919 on.) — plaque flag
The view I endorse may be called Transcendental or Absolute Idealism. It would not be possible to confuse this with realism. I dislike calling this Idealism, however, since there are too many ways of interpreting this word.Idealism singles men out from the world as unique, solipsism singles me alone out, and at last I see that I too belong with the rest of the world, and so on the one side nothing is left over, and on the other side, as unique, the world. In this way idealism leads to realism if it is strictly thought out.
This is early Wittgenstein. A lean, direct presentation of nondualism.
But (I think we agree) the 'deep' subject is no longer subject but the very being of the world itself -- its only kind of being (that we can know of, speak of sensibly.)
That metaphysical questions are undecidable is also my view. As soon as we say anything like "reality is mind-dependent' or 'being is nothing but consciousness' we have gone off-track.
Distinctions begin with consciousness. — Janus
It is said that full enlightenment is union with reality, the death of the individual and the ego.and the transcendence of life and death. To be a little enlightened would be to have glimpsed beyond the veil and realised the possibility of being fully enlightened. Not many people can be authoritative on this topic but there is plenty of literature. — FrancisRay
That metaphysical questions are undecidable is not a view any more than that F=MA is a view. — FrancisRay
Maybe, but this would have nothing to do with whether or not it is unreal and some sort of illusion.. — FrancisRay
Hmm. I see no reason to make this assumption.It;s something to work out or explore, not to preempt with assumptions. — FrancisRay
Nobody can understand philosophy for us. But what I;m suggesting is that you don't need to be a great thinker to do this. One just has to take account of the facts. — FrancisRay
Yes, although I'd prefer to say there is no 'deep' subject and that in the final analysis being is also non-being.
. — FrancisRay
Heidegger was a great and perceptive thinker and I'm a fan, but he muddles the issues to the point of incomprehensibility and did not crack the case. — FrancisRay
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/mach.htmThe ego is as little absolutely permanent as are bodies. That which we so much dread in death, the annihilation of our permanency, actually occurs in life in abundant measure. That which is most valued by us, remains preserved in countless copies, or, in cases of exceptional excellence, is even preserved of itself. In the best human being, however, there are individual traits, the loss of which neither he himself nor others need regret. Indeed, at times, death, viewed as a liberation from individuality, may even become a pleasant thought.
...
Similarly, class-consciousness, class-prejudice, the feeling of nationality, and even the narrowest-minded local patriotism may have a high importance, for certain purposes. But such attitudes will not be shared by the broad-minded investigator, at least not in moments of research. All such egoistic views are adequate only for practical purposes. Of course, even the investigator may succumb to habit. Trifling pedantries and nonsensical discussions; the cunning appropriation of others' thoughts, with perfidious silence as to the sources; when the word of recognition must be given, the difficulty of swallowing one's defeat, and the too common eagerness at the same time to set the opponent's achievement in a false light: all this abundantly shows that the scientist and scholar have also the battle of existence to fight, that the ways even of science still lead to the mouth, and that the pure impulse towards knowledge is still an ideal in our present social conditions.
The primary fact is not the ego, but the elements (sensations). ... When I cease to have the sensation green, when I die, then the elements no longer occur in the ordinary, familiar association. That is all. Only an ideal mental-economical unity, not a real unity, has ceased to exist. The ego is not a definite, unalterable, sharply bounded unity. None of these attributes are important; for all vary even within the sphere of individual life; in fact their alteration is even sought after by the individual. Continuity alone is important.... But continuity is only a means of preparing and conserving what is contained in the ego. This content, and not the ego, is the principal thing. This content, however, is not confined to the individual. With the exception of some insignificant and valueless personal memories, it remains presented in others even after the death of the individual. The elements that make up the consciousness of a given individual are firmly connected with one another, but with those of another individual they are only feebly connected, and the connexion is only casually apparent. Contents of consciousness, however, that are of universal significance, break through these limits of the individual, and, attached of course to individuals again, can enjoy a continued existence of an impersonal, superpersonal kind, independently of the personality by means of which they were developed. To contribute to this is the greatest happiness of the artist, the scientist, the inventor, the social reformer, etc. — Mach
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69400/tradition-and-the-individual-talentSome one said: “The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.” Precisely, and they are that which we know.
...
What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career.
What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. — Eliot
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Vision_of_the_Last_Judgment_(1982)Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed & govern’d their Passion or have No Passions, but because they have Cultivated their Understandings. The Treasures of Heaven are not Negations of Passion but Realities of Intellect, from which all the Passions Emanate Uncurbed in their Eternal Glory. The Fool shall not enter into heaven let him be ever so Holy. Holiness is not The Price of Enterance into Heaven. — Blake
Also, his dismissal of the idea that there is a 'set of all sets'. . . — FrancisRay
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/PerspectivismIn his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty gave a phenomenological analysis of perception and elaborated how one constitutes one's perceptual experiences, which are essentially perspectival.
The essential partiality of our view of things, he argued, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time, does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be co-present with us and with other things than through such "Abschattungen" (profiles, adumbrations).
The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background—to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads).
Clearly being a great thinker is not enough. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if being very clever is a drawback. . — FrancisRay
That metaphysical questions are undecidable is not a view any more than that F=MA is a view. .We can certainly agree on your final vastly important point. . — FrancisRay
Before long you;ve got people who are content merely believing that someone is Enlightened but not really concerned to get there themselves. The belief in the distant possibility suffices (hence the envelope being the letter — plaque flag
As I see it, we all see the same world, but we do see from different positions. You see the world and understand metaphysical questions are undecidable so that the claim fits or articulates the world.
You give offer your testimony. But (as I've stressed elsewhere), saying that P is true is just saying that you believe P. Is just claiming P. Your testimony is your testimony. And that's it. — plaque flag
It tries to give meaning to a metaphor --- or to a tendency to treat some experience as somehow 'unreal.' — plaque flag
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.