but when that is taken to be a true account of the nature of being, then it goes too far. — Wayfarer

I'm not saying it is a true account of the nature of being (whatever that might mean), but rather merely, leaving aside our personal interests, a natural, hopefully unbiased, account of things as they appear to us.

It's not arbitrary, but it is contingent, both on what there is to see, but also on how we see it. — Wayfarer

I have never disagreed with that.

The difference therefore, is that "representation" implies something else which is being represented, while "appearance" has no such implication. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is often said that our perceptions are representations of that which affects our senses. I would prefer to speak of "presentations". In either case something is either repsented or presented is implied. It is also common to hear that our perceptions consist in what appears to us and that what we perceive is determined by whatever affects our senses.

In either way of speaking the things which affect our senses are not themselves representations or appearances, If we are perceiving we are perceiving something, and the question as to whether the perception resembles what the thing that is perceived is like when it is not being perceived seems to be an incoherent question. I hope that clears it up for you.

You've often said you have devoted time to reading Heidegger. Would you agree with this synopsis of his views on objectivity?

"Heidegger argues that scientific objectivity is grounded in a specific metaphysical framework: the Cartesian subject-object dichotomy. This framework presumes that the world is composed of objects existing independently of the observer, available for detached study and measurement. Consequently it overlooks the more fundamental ways in which humans encounter the world as being-in-the-world (Dasein). Scientific objectivity reduces things to mere "present-at-hand" (Vorhandenheit), stripping away their richer modes of existence as they are experienced in the lifeworld.

Heidegger’s overarching concern is that science forgets or obscures the question of Being (Sein). By focusing only on what can be measured or quantified, science neglects the broader ontological context in which things appear as meaningful. This leads to an impoverished understanding of reality, where the richness of Being is replaced by a narrow focus on instrumental utility or efficiency."

Everything about human understanding is in terms of subjects and objects. I think the human-independently real is non-dual, but that does not mean it is totally homogeneous. Although it is a perspective that derives from science, which means in the final analysis, from experience, I think the idea of objects being energetic perturbations in a field is the closest I can come to conceptualizing the human-independently real in non-dual terms.

I don't believe that science and ordinary observation, of which science is an augmented form, are impoverished understandings of reality—they merely present a different perspective than the "zuhanden" perspective (which itself does not succeed in transcending the subject/object dichotomy in my view. I don't believe any discursive understanding can transcend duality because our language itself is inherently dualistic. No experience at all is possible without the primordial distinction between self and other.

None of which is to deny the empirical fact that boulders will roll over cracks and into canyons — Wayfarer

Okay, and do you also agree with this:

The second point, regarding shape, is that if a boulder rolls over a small crack it will continue rolling, but if it rolls into a "large crack" (a canyon) then it will fall, decreasing in altitude. This will occur whether or not a mind witnesses it, and this is because shape is a "primary quality." A boulder and a crack need not be perceived by a mind to possess shape. — Leontiskos

You cite Schopenhauer and Berkeley. Are you agreeing with them in toto?

It is often said that our perceptions are representations of that which affects our senses. I would prefer to speak of "presentations". In either case something is either repsented or presented is implied. It is also common to hear that our perceptions consist in what appears to us and that what we perceive is determined by whatever affects our senses. — Janus

The problem with "presentation", as with "appearance", is that this denies us any intelligible relation to the independent reality. In fact, without something represented, the mind might just produce presentations and appearances without any external "thing" at all. So, to recognize the reality of the external world, and that there is some kind of relation between it and what the mind produces, it is common to understand what the mind produces, as a representation. This is what allows that the external world is in fact, real.

that what we perceive is determined by whatever affects our senses. — Janus

That what we perceive is "determined by" what affects our senses, is proven to be wrong by hallucinations, delirium, even dreaming. So, despite the fact that it is "common" to hear this, it is common in the sense of vulgar and uneducated. This is the result of a determinist attitude which trickles down from scientism, and the awe which common people have for the great power unleashed by the scientists' application of determinist principles. Scientism inclines people to believe that "determined by" is applicable to living systems.

Notice your choice of words. You say the perception is "determined" by what "affects" our senses. To affect something is to have an effect on it, to influence it. So if the sense organs are "affected" in their function, and their function is intermediary between what is sensed, and the mind which holds the perception, we cannot conclude that the perception is "determined" by what affects the senses. We have a relation of influence (affection) between the thing sensed and the sense organ, and we might assume a similar relation of influence (affection) between the sense organ and the perception in the mind. But this is far from what is required to say that the first "determines" the third.

In either way of speaking the things which affect our senses are not themselves representations or appearances, If we are perceiving we are perceiving something, and the question as to whether the perception resembles what the thing that is perceived is like when it is not being perceived seems to be an incoherent question. I hope that clears it up for you. — Janus

That clears it up, but it shows you misunderstood. The perception is the representation. The thing being perceived, i.e. what is represented, is what is said to have existence regardless of whether it is perceived (independent existence). That is what independent existence signifies, that it exists whether or not it is perceived. Now, the point is that this thing which has independent existence ( has existence regardless of whether it is perceived) does not necessarily have any resemblance whatsoever, to the perception of it, while it is being perceived.

You cite Schopenhauer and Berkeley. Are you agreeing with them in toto? — Leontiskos

Schopenhauer, more than Berkeley. Where I part company with Berkeley, is his dismissal of universals - his nominalism, in short. I think it leaves many gaps in his philosophy. But whenever I read his dialogues, I'm reminded of how ingenious a philosopher he was.

Schopenhaeur likewise - I'm almost totally on-board with his 'world as Idea', but the major issue I see with his philosophy of will is that, if will is 'irrational and blind', then how come the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences? I think Schopenhauer has blind spots of his own, much of them attributable to his hatred of Christianity. But he's still brilliant in my view - 'the last great philosopher', I'm sometimes inclined to say.

I will add, I've learned a ton of stuff about all manner of subjects since joining this forum, and including Husserl and Heidegger, about whom I knew next to nothing when I joined. I would like to think my overall approach is maybe nearer to a kind of phenonenology than to idealism per se.

The issue I wanted to highlight is that I think it's kind of hard to imagine having perception without some minimal intellectual capacities, because then it seems to me it would be hard to retain the perception. — Manuel

I can't imagine why anyone would want to deny animals even a minimal amount of intelligence. I have to stress I don't believe that conceptualization is some amazing special ability. The amazing ability here is syntactic language, conceptualization is merely a part of describing language-use.

Examples of animals suffering from abuse and being fearful of humans for a while seem to suggest some degree of association, which goes slightly beyond "mere" perception. — Manuel

The thing is, if you go down this road of "creating associations always involves the use of concepts" I believe you will end up attributing powers of conceptualization to very simple organisms, including machines.

'According to metaphysical realism, the world is as it is independent of how humans or other inquiring agents take it to be. The objects the world contains, together with their properties and the relations they enter into, fix the world’s nature and these objects [together with the properties they have and the relations they enter into] exist independently of our ability to discover they do.' — Wayfarer

I have to agree with you that this is too much baggage, I think the concept of reality/the world is a necessary primitive, but I don't know if it has to be conceptualized in terms of objects, properties, relations etc.

But do you not make a distinction between disagreements about how the world ought to be conceptualized and disagreements about how the world actually is? When people speak of mind-independent objects is believe I understand and agree with their meaning, even if I realize their conceptualization of reality is not the be-all end-all.

My take on collective consciousness more akin to Hegel's 'geist', which describes the way geist (usually translated as mind or spirit) manifests collectively in culture, history, and shared institutions. — Wayfarer

Kastrup is my go-to example because his is the only version of idealism I believe I've somewhat managed to understand. I certainly don't understand Hegel. One thing I particularly like about Kastrup is his immense commitment to parsimony.

Schopenhauer, more than Berkeley. Where I part company with Berkeley, is his dismissal of universals - his nominalism, in short. I think it leaves many gaps in his philosophy. But whenever I read his dialogues, I'm reminded of how ingenious a philosopher he was. — Wayfarer

Although I know very little about medieval philosophy, I get the impression that the debate between Realism and Nominalism would be pertinent to the topic of a Mind-Created World vs whatever the alternative might be : a Self-Existent Material World?

Contrary to the definition below, I naively assumed that Realism could be summarized as "what you see is all there is". Which would exclude Universals & Abstractions & Qualia, and Universal Mind, that are knowable only as ideas. Please comment on those alternative worldviews. Thanks. :smile:


Nominalism
The theory that only physical particulars in space and time are real, and that universals are only names or labels for groups of things or events. Nominalists believe that the mind cannot create concepts or images that correspond to universal terms.
Realism
The theory that universals exist in addition to particulars, and that all entities can be categorized as either particulars or universals. Realist philosophies include Platonic realism and the hylomorphic substance theory of Aristotle.
Nominalism and realism were two major theoretical positions in the later Middle Ages, and were particularly important to theological scholars. For example, Thomas Aquinas was a prominent realist philosopher who argued that essence and existence were distinct. William of Ockham was a prominent nominalist philosopher who argued that universals were psychological labels.
___Google AI overview

I have tried throwing sticks too large for the dog to pick up. Or bricks. He will chase them but as soon as he realizes it is too big or hard to pick up in his mouth he loses interest straight away. In any case when you say the dog chases movement it seems you agree that the dog and I both see something moving at the same place and time and in the same direction and the same distance. — Janus

Ok, so we can guess that what initially gets them going is motion associated by a gesture you make which is related to "play time". Once the reach the object, maybe they try to life it up, maybe they get confused for a moment and then they look at you or ignore the object.

Here's the issue: why don't they pick up the object? Is it because they experience its structure as being too big and then retreat? Or is it an innate predisposition that makes them realize that this thing is too heavy (not related to structure) ?

I don't know. I think we can agree that the best we can do in the human case, which is the case in which we have the most data, is to try to understand a little why people do what they do - and even that is very hard very frequently.

When it comes to other animals, we are effectively guessing. Maybe they don't pick it up because they perceive a structure that's too big, maybe it's an innate response related to heaviness or pain avoidance.

I have never denied that the dog has a different experience of the world. I have no doubt he experiences the things I experience differently, but the difference is not all that radical and can be made sense of by considering the differences between my constitution and the dog's constitution. The dog sees his food bowl as 'to-be-eating-from' and his bed as 'to-be-laying-in' and given the way I experience those things in terms of size, shape and hardness the dog's behavior towards those things is consistent. — Janus

Here is where we disagree, and I don't see a remedy. I think the experiences are, in large part, very different. Sometimes there can be overlap - no creature is going to run into a fire or jump from a large distance. But whereas I think you are attributing this to shared structure, I think it's an innate response (not conscious) related to survival.

How much we share is very difficult to ascertain, but I think we could be misleading ourselves if we take ourselves to be reliable narrators of things outside us (the world, including other animals). It was no until we began to doubt our shared experiences, that modern science arose.

Also, one should mention dogs are the creatures which we have most co-existed with out of all animals, making them particularly misleading, imo.

I can't imagine why anyone would want to deny animals even a minimal amount of intelligence. I have to stress I don't believe that conceptualization is some amazing special ability. The amazing ability here is syntactic language, conceptualization is merely a part of describing language-use. — goremand

That's interesting to me. I think conceptualization of any kind is quite remarkable, even proto-conceptualization. But language is a unique instance, so far as we know, so it is, in a sense, more "special".

The thing is, if you go down this road of "creating associations always involves the use of concepts" I believe you will end up attributing powers of conceptualization to very simple organisms, including machines. — goremand

It's tricky to know where the cut-off point between explicit consciousness (such as elephants or monkeys) stops and mere reaction kicks in, maybe a fish or an oyster. But I do believe there is such a point.

To talk in this manner about machines, is to play with words, it's not substantive as I see it. So, we agree here.

But do you not make a distinction between disagreements about how the world ought to be conceptualized and disagreements about how the world actually is? When people speak of mind-independent objects is believe I understand and agree with their meaning, even if I realize their conceptualization of reality is not the be-all end-all. — goremand

That is a very perceptive question, and the precise point at issue in another current thread on metaphysical realism and anti-realism (there's a lot of crossover between the two threads). As I'm generally advocating an idealist approach, then I'm in the anti-realist camp, although the term bothers me, because I am still acutely aware of many real things that have to be dealt with on a daily basis. ('Life is like a movie, but with actual pain'.)

My spontaneous response is that I think classical philosophy had the insight that we do not, by default, know what anything actually is. If you go back to Parmenides, his fragmentary prose-poem says outright that most human beings are ensnared in an illusory domain where they entertain opinions about unreal things. And come to think of it, in today's hyper-connected and social-media-dominated world, that really doesn't seem so far-fetched. Wisdom is not being deluded, but then, delusion is ubiquitous. Not necessarily to the point of gross delusion and actual mental illness, but in the middle of the bell curve of normality. So we tend to look to science and objective judgement as the arbiter of what is real and the antidote to delusion, but the problem with that is that science is largely quantitative and arms-length. Actual life is too close to bring such an approach to bear. But the effect of that belief is to form the notion that reality is what already exists, and we gradually expand and enhance our knowledge of it. That is what is generally understood by realism. So in that context, 'mind-independent' means objective, not a matter of opinion, the criterion of what is actually so. I copied some scrapbook lecture notes on Heidegger above which address this point.

'Heidegger argues that scientific objectivity is grounded in a specific metaphysical framework: the Cartesian subject-object dichotomy. This framework presumes that the world is composed of objects existing independently of the observer, available for detached study and measurement. Consequently it overlooks the more fundamental ways in which humans encounter the world as being-in-the-world (Dasein). Scientific objectivity reduces things to mere "present-at-hand" (Vorhandenheit), stripping away their richer modes of existence as they are experienced in the lifeworld.

Heidegger’s overarching concern is that science forgets or obscures the question of Being (Sein). By focusing only on what can be measured or quantified, science neglects the broader ontological context in which things appear as meaningful. This leads to an impoverished understanding of reality, where the richness of Being is replaced by a narrow focus on instrumental utility or efficiency.'

I've only read a little of Heidegger, but that diagosis makes perfect sense to me.

Although I know very little about medieval philosophy, I get the impression that the debate between Realism and Nominalism would be pertinent to the topic of a Mind-Created World vs whatever the alternative might be : a Self-Existent Material World? — Gnomon

In Aristotelian philosophy, the mind is united with the forms of particulars by the understanding. That prevents the sense of separateness or 'otherness' that haunts modern culture. That's a big topic.

But whereas I think you are attributing this to shared structure, I think it's an innate response (not conscious) related to survival. — Manuel

But is it not most reasonable to think they are responses (whether innate or not) perhaps to survival, or perhaps to enjoying themselves or whatever, to different things in different situations? And when we observe them do not those responses make sense to us in terms of what we see those different things in different contexts to be?

I mean you seem not to want to admit that the dog sees a ball, and yet you say the dog sees me making a gesture or movement. So my dogs see me and I'm an object in the environment. My dogs recognize me—of that there is no doubt. Now they may well not see me in the same way as people do (but then different people may not see me in exactly the same way either).

Also you say that dogs will not jump into a fire or from a high place—so it follows that they perceive fire and high places. They also do not bump into trees or walls (unless they are blind which was the case with my mother's cocker spaniel when I was a kid). They behave differently and consistently towards different things in the environment and that behavior makes sense in terms of how we perceive those objects. I don't know what else to say. If you remain unconvinced then I have nothing further to add.

But is it not most reasonable to think they are responses (whether innate or not) perhaps to survival, or perhaps to enjoying themselves or whatever, to different things in different situations? — Janus

Of course, there is no doubt, they react to things and are often happy with humans and other dogs, sometimes even with other creatures.

I mean you seem not to want to admit that the dog sees a ball, and yet you say the dog sees me making a gesture or movement. So my dogs see me and I'm an object in the environment. My dogs recognize me—of that there is no doubt. Now they may well not see me in the same way as people do (but then different people may not see me in exactly the same way either). — Janus

You seem to want to say that you know what dogs see. I don't claim to have that level of epistemic access, that is why Nagel wrote and people debate "what it's like to see a bat".

Let me speak in your terms, yes dogs see certain balls they play with. How they see it and most importantly, if it is similar to the way I see it, I cannot say - it's not possible to say because we are not dogs.

I am not denying they see things and play with things. I just think you are claiming to know more than what is possible for us to know. Maybe I am wrong - I freely admit that. Maybe dogs do see balls very similarly to the way we do and maybe dogs see you in a way that other people do. I would be extremely skeptical.

When you say other people don't see you in the exact way - well, I mean - if you mean "exactly the same way" for other people is somewhat akin to a dog also seeing you as other people do, but in a slightly different way, then I don't know what to say here. These seem to be astronomically different.

And again, no bullshit or false modesty or anything, I could be completely wrong. I only say that I just don't find it convincing.

Also you say that dogs will not jump into a fire or from a high place—so it follows that they perceive fire and high places. They also do not bump into trees or walls (unless they are blind which was the case with my mother's cocker spaniel when I was a kid). They behave differently and consistently towards different things in the environment and that behavior makes sense in terms of how we perceive those objects. I don't know what else to say. If you remain unconvinced then I have nothing further to add. — Janus

They do not jump from high places or don't go into fire as soon as they are born! If that is not innate, I don't know what is. So, they don't do something before they even develop into a mature animal. Clearly, they do many things at the very moment they perceive the world, there is no time for "learning from perception" here, it's at first instance.

And that goes for many animals, turtles racing to the ocean as soon as they hatch, birds reacting to mother giving them worms before they can see, etc, etc.

Now, if dogs see fire and high places like we do, again, I don't know. Maybe.

Sure, again, they don't run into concrete things, no animal does that I know of. I am not saying they don't see a world and react to it. But that it makes sense to you (or me, or any other human being alive) says very little about how the dog actually experiences the world, that's a massive leap into claiming knowledge about a different creature.

Ending on a point of agreement, I hope: they may have some basic "ideas", such as play, prey, anger, protection, the basic things all animals need for survival. In so far as we also have these basic notions, there is some overlap, sure. Clearly food, mating, danger and like basic emotions we also have, beyond that, I don't know how they see and experience the world. I can guess, but that's the best we can do.

That's interesting to me. I think conceptualization of any kind is quite remarkable, even proto-conceptualization. — Manuel

The way I see it conceptualization per se is not even an ability or a behavior, it's an abstraction that only makes sense in a particular context. It's like the "ability" to make a move in chess.

It's tricky to know where the cut-off point between explicit consciousness (such as elephants or monkeys) stops and mere reaction kicks in, maybe a fish or an oyster. But I do believe there is such a point. — Manuel

I really do not believe there is such a point, and I don't think consciousness is relevant to the issue at all.

My spontaneous response is that I think classical philosophy had the insight that we do not, by default, know what anything actually is. — Wayfarer

This doesn't exactly answer my question. What I want to know is if you substantively disagree with the realist worldview or if you merely dislike the way it frames or conceptualizes reality (or maybe, just the fact that it's been privileged with a kind of conceptual hegemony).

To use Kastrup as an example again, I am convinced that he substantively disagrees with mainstream physicalism. He doesn't just look at the same things in a different light, he has a radically different worldview. So are you like him in that respect?

To use Kastrup as an example again, I am convinced that he substantively disagrees with mainstream physicalism. — goremand

As do I, for reasons I have given in the original post, and defended in numerous subsequent entries.

I'm sure that's true, but it isn't obvious to me from the OP or from what I've read in your other posts. The proposition that "reality is created by the mind" at first seems like an attack on physicalism/realism (whichever term you like), but when I look at your explanation in detail the term "reality" instead seems to refer to "our particular conception of reality", which is amounts to a rather humble claim, not really an attack at all.

Does this mean that what's external to mind is possibly a matrix of different quality than what's perceived by mind?

I'm sure that's true, but it isn't obvious to me from the OP or from what I've read in your other posts. The proposition that "reality is created by the mind" at first seems like an attack on physicalism/realism (whichever term you like), but when I look at your explanation in detail the term "reality" instead seems to refer to "our particular conception of reality", which is amounts to a rather humble claim, not really an attack at all. — goremand

Please pardon my intrusion. Yes, is not the type to make arrogant or aggressive attacks on debatable philosophical positions. He's usually more subtly nuanced. And his "humble" approach may seem less impressive than the more arrogant assertions of Scientism.

For example, his stated position in the OP does not deny the physical "reality" (science) that we all sense, but his interpretation also includes some aspects of Idealism (philosophy). I can't speak for Wayfarer, but this thread has been going on for over a year. Yet, some posters still can't reconcile his "proposition", that harks back to the ancient origins of theoretical philosophy, with the Physicalism/Materialism/Realism of modern pragmatic science. Each has it's own purview, but Philosophy specializes in inferred generalizations, not observed details. For philosophers, the "mind-created world" is a Cosmos, not an aggregation of particles. Just keep that distinction in mind.

FWIW, Marc Wittmann Ph.D. --- research fellow at the Institute for Frontier Areas in Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg, Germany --- recently wrote an article in Psychology Today magazine entitled Physicalism Is Dead*1. It's less an attack on Physicalism/Realism than a presentation of alternative views of the Mind/Body relationship. It's not about specific scientific facts, but about the philosophical interpretation of general principles. :smile:

*1. Wittman's key points are :
# The reductionist physicalist position entails that phenomenal consciousness does not exist.
# Scientists increasingly realize that phenomenal consciousness can't be explained by the workings of the brain.
# For idealism, subjectivity undeniably has primacy when it comes to knowledge about ourselves and the world.
# For dual-aspect monism, consciousness and the brain are two different aspects of a same underlying reality.

Note --- Phenomenal Consciousness is the Mind that we experience subjectively, not the Brain that scientists study objectively.
"Yes, phenomenal consciousness is the subjective aspect of experiencing the world. It's the rich, first-person experience of what it's like to be you, including your thoughts, memories, and internal biological processes." ___Google AI overview

Physicalism Is Dead :
Alternative views on the mind-body problem are becoming increasingly popular.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/sense-of-time/202411/physicalism-is-dead

when I look at your explanation in detail the term "reality" instead seems to refer to "our particular conception of reality", which is amounts to a rather humble claim, not really an attack at all. — goremand

How do you get outside the human conception of reality to see the world as it truly is? That is the probably the question underlying all philosophy. And one aim of the original post was for me to present idealism in a way that isn't understood to mean that the world is all in the mind or the product of the imagination. And it's not an attack on 'realism' per se. It's a criticism of the idea that the criterion for what is real, is what exists independently of the mind, which is a specific (and fallacious) form of realism.

:up: The times certainly are a'changing.

You seem to want to say that you know what dogs see. — Manuel

The dog's behavior shows that he sees me and the ball and many other things in the environment. His behavior towards different things I see him reacting in different ways to is consistent with the qualities I perceive in those different things. That's all I'm claiming. I am not claiming that he sees things exactly as I do or that I can eneter his mind such as to know what he sees with certainty.. I am not even claiming that I can enter your mind and know with certainty that you see things exactly as I do. But if we are looking at an object and I see various small and subtle details on that object I can be fairly confident that if I point to them and ask you what small and subtle details you see there that your account will accord pretty much with mine. That suggests that what is there is real independently of us. Unless of course our minds are connected in some way unbeknownst to us and we are somehow sharing in a collective dream.

They do not jump from high places or don't go into fire as soon as they are born! If that is not innate, I don't know what is. — Manuel

They wouldn't react that way if they were blind and felt no bodily sensations, though, would they? If not then we can conclude that they feel the heat and sense the height just as do. I don't know if this is universally true, but it is said that dogs already react instinctively to snakes when they are very young, but would you expect them to do that if they could not sense the presence of the snake?

But that it makes sense to you (or me, or any other human being alive) says very little about how the dog actually experiences the world, that's a massive leap into claiming knowledge about a different creature. — Manuel

Again, I'm not claiming exhaustive knowledge or certainty about how dogs experience the world, but I think observing them react to things in the environment in ways consistent with the qualities we perceive those things to have, plus the fact we know they have sense organs and bodies not all that different to ours give us reason to believe that they at least see the things in the environment that we see, and that those things exist independently of us and the dogs, whatever the ultimate nature of those existences are. So, I don't see that I'm claiming anything which is not consistent with our experiences. That said of course we cannot be absolutely certain of anything.

How do you get outside the human conception of reality to see the world as it truly is? That is the probably the question underlying all philosophy. — Wayfarer

I don't think that is the most important question in philosophy by any stretch because the simple answer is "You can't get outside of human conceptions of reality". (There are human conceptions of reality, not just one conception).

And it's not an attack on 'realism' per se. It's a criticism of the idea that the criterion for what is real, is what exists independently of the mind, which is a specific (and fallacious) form of realism. — Wayfarer

Of course the criteria (there is not merely one criterion) for what is real do not exist independently of the mind that asks the question—that is true by definition. What is real though most plausibly does exist independently of the mind or at least that part of reality which is dependent on the mind is only a part, the part we can know. The rest is forever out of reach, and I think we have every reason to think that is so.

How do you get outside the human conception of reality to see the world as it truly is? That is the probably the question underlying all philosophy.
— Wayfarer

I don't think that is the most important question in philosophy by any stretch because the simple answer is "You can't get outside of human conceptions of reality". (There are human conceptions of reality, not just one conception). — Janus

Yes. It strikes me that much of the argument provided by can also be used to support a robust skepticism of the transcendent. Since we can't access reality, how do we know there is a reality beyond the reality we know? Perhaps it's perspectives all the way down. :wink: English philosopher Hilary Lawson makes similar arguments to Wayfarer, but is led to skepticism rather than mysticism - mysticism being just one more mind created reality and futile project to arrive at Truth.

Since we can't access reality, how do we know there is a reality beyond the reality we know? Perhaps it's perspectives all the way down. :wink: — Tom Storm

Well, consider the role of not knowing, of intellectual humility, of ‘all I know is that I know nothing’, of ‘he that knows it, knows it not.’ ‘Accessing reality’ sounds like something you need a swipe card for.

‘Accessing reality’ sounds like something you need a swipe card for. — Wayfarer

Maybe that's were we've been going wrong. It might even be an app...

‘all I know is that I know nothing’, — Wayfarer

I'm pretty satisfied not knowing.

Different thing. There’s also a sense in which modern culture normalises philosophical ignorance, lack of insight. I’m not referring to that.

mysticism being just one more mind created reality — Tom Storm

Insofar as it is mind-created it is delusory. Mysticism proper is seeing through what the mind creates. There’s a term for that in Buddhism, called ‘prapanca’, meaning ‘conceptual proliferation’, detailed in a text delightfully called the Honeyball Sutta.

English philosopher Hilary Lawson makes similar arguments to Wayfarer, but is lead to skepticism rather than mysticism - mysticism being just one more mind created reality and futile project to arrive at Truth. — Tom Storm

I think skepticism is the right position, philosophically speaking. The transcendent can mean nothing to us, philosophically and that's why I say it is not the most important philosophical question. But the fact that we can have a feel for the transcendent is, I think of philosophical, of existential, importance. That feeling just is the mystical. The mystical cannot yield discursive knowledge, it just gives us a kind of special poetry. It can be life-transforming, and that transformation does not consist in knowing anything, but in feeling a very different way. Not everyone responds to that, and ultimately, I don't think it matters.

The ancient skeptics were not polar opposites to mystics. Pyrrho of Elis famously sat with the Buddhists of Gandhara and brought back a version of Madhyamika which became Pyrrhonian skepticism. Hence also the resonances between Buddhist philosophy and phenomenology which was central to The Embodied Mind. Francisco Varela took a form of lay ordination in a Buddhist order just before his untimely death.

Insofar as it is mind-created it is delusory. Mysticism proper is seeing through what the mind creates. — Wayfarer

Yes, I am familiar with the belief and I was involved in these sorts of pursuits many years ago.

The mystical cannot yield discursive knowledge, it just gives us a kind of special poetry. It can be life-transforming, and that transformation does not consist in knowing anything, but in feeling a very different way. — Janus

That's an interesting way of putting it. I guess something similar to Wittgenstein's, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

And repeated ad infinitum by the Vienna Circle.