One hypothetical explanation for consciousness in the "consciousness is fundamental" category is proto-consciousness. I wrote about about this in my Property Dualism thread. All particles, in addition to physical properties like mass and electrical charge, have an experiential property. So every particle experiences itself. And particles functioning as a unit experience as a unit.

Ok, I’m on board now. I agree with your idea that consciousness is fundamental, but I think it needs teasing out a bit. The way I do this is to break apart the preconditioned ideas around the subject. To see the issue from a fresh perspective.

Let me suggest that physical material, the physical universe (that we know, I’ll call it X) is an artificial construct. That the real world Y is immaterial, there are things, beings, space, time, things happen, just like in X, but there is no physical material. In Y there is an equivalent to material, because there are forms and there is extension in time and space. But this material is composed of ideas, concepts, axioms, consciousness and experiences. Things that we typically (here in X) see as mental states and processes.

Now X, being artificial requires a whole series of technologies and infrastructure to produce and maintain. But also it requires, or produces constraints, because it is very rigid and dense. One of those constraints is that consciousness can’t easily be transposed and requires biological structures to bring it into that world. The reason why we see consciousness, ideas, concepts experiences as mental states is because the only place in X where they happen is in biological brains. Whereas in Y, they are everywhere, in everything and form the very material of that world. Remember Y is real, X is artificial.

It's important to disassociate consciousness with anything mental. I believe we have been confusing the two things all along.

Agreed. Consciousness is a state, mental activity is differing types of computation.

However, even if the universe does have a "meaning" (purpose), then, like the universe as a whole, such a "meaning" (purpose) is humanly unknowable (Nietzsche, Camus) – merelogical necessity: part(ipant)s in a whole cannot encompass (completely know à la Gödel(?)) that whole.

Yes, from a perspective from inside the whole, it is entirely inaccessible.

It doesn’t follow from this though, that there isn’t a purpose. Or that that purpose may be reflected in some way within the whole. The purpose might be, for example, to demonstrate the innate patterns entailed in extension.

Unfortunately, I seem to be innately god-blind compared to the emotional & mystical sciences.

In mysticism it is accepted that one is god-blind(although some worship a subjective image, which they feel they know), but also acknowledged that one’s self is god, as, as you say the living cosmos is the manifestation of god. So one plays a game with oneself, reaffirming that one does know god, because one is god, so how could one not know it? Perhaps one is wearing blinkers, which one needs to take off. In a sense mysticism is how to do this.

But they seem to view the god/man relationship as a continuity, with the human soul as a "chip off the old block"*2, so to speak. And that metaphor may also apply to my own notion of a transcendent Mind who has transformed, for unknown reasons, abstract Potential into concrete Actual : our physical world.

Yes, I subscribe to the Hindu cosmogony, not literally, but in spirit.

I take part in those discussions often enough. But I'd like to have a different discussion at the moment.

Agreed, I like the idea you’re proposing. I have a sneaky feeling though, that you are describing something which is identical to what we understand as Matter(as in physics). While saying it is something quite different, like something that plays a role in human awareness. I can see how any living organism can be conscious, which I subscribe to. But as for matter, I don’t have a line of thought that takes me there.

I have no issue with Enformationism. It sounds like a useful theory and compatible with my way of seeing things. G*D being the crux of the issue, is unknown and unknowable*.
While I have an apophatic approach, I also leave wide open what a creator would entail, free from any preconceived ideas.

*while I agree that G*D, or the truths of our predicament are unknown, or unknowable. This does not mean that these things cannot be known, but only that they remain entirely unknown at this point. We don’t know if this information can, or cannot be known by humanity. So I remain open to the idea that this information could be provided at any time. Like a God imminent to us.

I once had a lucid dream where I inhabited a plant, briefly. It was like my consciousness, disembodied, was moving around a landscape. At one point, I moved into a plant and could feel being the shape of the plant and the energies coursing through the xylem tubes. There were intense colours across a spectrum, it was very thrilling. Then I moved out of the plant and across the landscape again and remember looking back at the plant and wanting to be that plant again. It was like I experienced what it was like to be a plant.

He doesn’t want it to become a discussion about materialism versus idealism. That’s all. Although that may not be possible on. This forum.

It's the essence of culture.

Quite. This involves direct oral communication and communication embibed by communion between people. Enabling understanding and knowledge not reliant or defined by intellectual discourse and prescription. But rather alongside it, with teaching involving experience and practice which has no intellectual content.

And I have been accused of propagating woo-woo nonsense when I attempt to discuss the possibility of a transcendent god-like entity that I have never experienced in any way, shape, or form.

Yes, it’s unfortunate, we are on a site populated by people who have studied academic philosophy, wherein the current zeitgeist is critical of what has been deemed woo. Not without good reason, though, because there is a lot of woo out there. But when it comes to shooting down people who have a genuine interest and are prepared to exercise some critical analysis, I think it goes a bit too far on occasion.

Have you ever engaged in an Ayahuasca retreat, where many people can have similar experiences, and then discuss their Jaguar exploits in the spirit world with others who will understand what you are talking about?

No, although I did have a few similar exploits in my youth, I don’t seek out people so as to discuss the finer detail of the issue, simply because they are as rare as hens teeth. Taking strong hallucinogenics isn’t a mystical experience, although it does free the self from some, or many of the constraints of an ordinary life, temporarily. However the person taking them is experiencing something akin to a rollercoaster ride. With no idea, or understanding of what’s happening. The guides administering the drugs, know little more than them, and are there to help them ride the waves, peaks and troughs of the experience.

I see the use of drugs in this as a way of helping people to begin to free themselves from their conditioning and give them an understanding of the extent of the conditioning. But after that initial experience the drugs are a hindrance and best left alone. They are destructive to the health of body and mind and can cause atrophy in the parts of of the being specifically required to make further progress.

This is interesting in that it might help to explain what is involved by contrasting what I’m describing with the experience of someone taking one of these hallucinogenic drugs. Some mystical experiences are like the drugged state, such as the experience of a higher being, or presence (fitting the preferred, spiritual teaching). Or a feeling of being outside of the body, or feelings of peace, silence, or visioning profound knowledge, or experiences. I think these are equivalent to the hallucinogenic experiences and are part of the process of freeing parts of the being from their conditioning and mental straight jacket. Rather like the opening of a flower from the tough outer casing of a bud.

However the difference being is that the person is usually following an established spiritual philosophy and ideology through which the experience can be both articulated intellectually and viewed and experienced as part of a social and cultural process of spiritual enlightenment, within a school. Surrounded by students and masters of different levels of development. This context is crucial because it provides fertile ground for a person to grow into knowledge and understanding and become one of the more advanced students sitting alongside them. This entire process is holistic and aspects of it can’t easily, or successfully be removed from it. Although I think one can beyond a certain point leave this setting and continue outside the school and in the world. Having already mastered, or developed the required skills to continue moving forward.

If God is totally ineffable, why would we waste time debating on this effing forum?

The ineffable God* can be known, understood and experienced by being it, in mysticism. Just not directly, It is done by it being witnessed, known through the experience of it and one becomes it, through the mystical practice. None of these means relies on intellectual, thought, or understanding, but rather a direct knowing, or knowledge of it.

That may be why you seldom find Mystics posting on philosophy forums. Of course, a few mystics --- e.g. Meister Eckhart --- have attempted to translate their sublime experiences into mundane words.

I am happy to attempt this, but it may not bear fruit. Who knows?


*as Tom Storm says, the God of mysticism is not that described in religious teachings. It may not be an overarching demiurge, it may be something more mundane, or something else unexpected. The important thing is that it is accessed through the self, the being of the self. Not externally, although, this is not to mean it can’t be known, witnessed, or experienced, externally. But that if this were to happen it would be an external [to the self] intervention.

how can any one/thing not always already be "a conduit for the will ..."?

The person, the person conditioned by society to behave in a certain way. You know like a Follower of Donald Trump, for example.

But in asking the question about more philosophical accounts of God, I guess I was primarily asking if this is fundamentally a matter of contrasting theistic personalism with apophatic theology/mysticism?

I’ve found that people on this site are guarded about what they think about such a disputed issue. Or perhaps it’s that once they have read philosophy beyond a certain point, they only ever talk, or see things in accepted philosophical terms, or only use those terms. Like a straight jacket on accepted modes of thought, academia.

Whereas I come from the opposite direction, the apophatic approach. Where I am concerned with unlearning these things, negating intellectual contamination. Putting the mind in a box to one side and contemplating the issue through different means*. So I have a kind of straight jacket in that I can’t easily insert my thinking into these accepted philosophical terms.

We are left in a Mexican stand off.

So what to do, do I now have to become fluent in philosophy so that I can become the interpreter. Or do philosophers need to learn the more apophatic mysticism in the other direction to become the interpreter?

Fortunately Wayfarer has put in some of the hard yards in addressing this divide and provides valuable context in discussions. Although I see that he often finds himself under attic from the more physicalist elements of the forum.

There shouldn’t be this divide, especially in a world which is becoming increasingly divided.


*I know it seems counter intuitive to claim to negate thought, while relying on it. To put mind to one side, while continuing to use it. But this kind of approach is common in mystical practice. In the beginning it is more a case of cancelling out conditioning, such as the idea that God is an old man with a long white beard sitting on a throne. Then at a deeper level cancelling out the egocentric thoughts driven by human desire, self importance, envy, greed, selfishness etc. To reach a point of coming to terms with yourself, learning to collaborate, to work together. Followed by a deeper point, or crisis where one reaches an accommodation with your divine self, to collaborate with an idealised version of yourself. To become a conduit for the will of the divine.


There is a whole system and philosophy based around this approach. Which was brought to the West by Madame Blavatsky in the 19th century and became the Theosophical society. Unfortunately for a myriad of reasons she and other members of the Theosophical society became mired in controversy and were ostracised and mocked extensively, even now on this forum.

"both thinkers seem to find it hard to grasp what exactly the other is really saying". So, the key barrier to communication seems to be "systemic and structural cognitive biases" in the form of Realistic vs Idealistic worldviews & belief systems.

Pretty much sums it up. Might as well throw a few flat earthers in there, to get the debate going

Thus enabling a more holistic, or 3 dimensional (by analogy) perspective.
— Punshhh
What do you mean by this?

To see and know ourselves through an understanding of and with the body, through an understand of and being being and through growing, or progressing in these activities. Alongside an intellectual understanding and enquiry. One, or more of these means can inform the others and in a personal way integrate with the others. Forming a broader understanding, or knowing, in which the intellect is no more important in attaining that growth than the other means.

Do you mind if I ask, what does it feel like to hold the beliefs you have? Is there reassurance, or a profound sense of meaning? Or is it ineffable?

I don’t really hold beliefs any more, (apart from beliefs relating to living a life in the world), because they are intellectually derived, rather, I see them as an obstacle. Faith is different, because it isn’t entirely intellectually derived. For me faith plays a role similar to humility, piety(a piety largely absent religious meaning) and a sense of communion (not religious).

Yes, there’s reassurance, a sense of meaning and knowing and an ineffable part, which is what is contemplated beyond what we know in this world. An ability to maintain these things in the face of incoming conditioning and problematic situations with friends and family etc and defuse them.
I suppose the main benefit, is a sense of peace, contentment, happiness etc. While nurturing a sense of wonder and a childlike humility.
(I spent many years engaged in self development, rooting out conditioning, trauma and indoctrination. Alongside meditation, contemplation and rebuilding my personality etc. along with developing a personal spiritual philosophy and mystical practice.)

Mystical traditions, contemplative practices, and certain strands of idealist or existentialist philosophy have all tried to develop alternatives to that constraint. Which is not to reject Kant but to broaden the context in which his questions are considered.

In that sense, the question isn’t just “what can we know?” but “what counts as knowing?” And that’s still very much a live question.

Very much so, do you know about 95% of my philosophy and what I spend my time thinking about, I can’t write on this forum. Because it’s a different language from what is discussed here. At best it gets pigeon holed as some kind of panpsychism, or mysticism. And yet I can’t go to a spiritual, or mystical based forum to discuss it there because they are places full of people with very little critical rigour in their philosophies, or ideologies. Most of it is out and out woo. I expect you know what I am referring to as you spent time involved in the New Age movement.

I have three, or four friends and family members who I can debate with on these issues and I’m happy to carry on in isolation apart from that. But there doesn’t seem to be a community where this is discussed with any kind of intellectual rigour.

I know that there are spiritual based organisations and communities within the schools of thought, such as Buddhism, Yoga, Theosophy etc. But I don’t want to become involved in any of these movements at this point. I’ve been there and done that.

This brings me to a more speculative point: perhaps we will never be able to fully understand ourselves. Not for mystical reasons, but because of a structural limitation: a system may need more complexity than itself to fully model itself. In other words, explaining a human brain might require more computational capacity than the brain possesses. Maybe we will someday fully understand an insect, or a fish—but not a human being.

I would suggest that mysticism is the only way to fully understand ourselves. This is because it endeavours to develop understanding not simply through the intellect, but also through the body, through being and through growth. Thus enabling a more holistic, or 3 dimensional (by analogy) perspective.

Also I would suggest that fully understanding anything, other than abstract concepts is not possible. Because it would require an understanding of the whole context in which it resides. Something which we are not in a position to do.

To address your question about AI and subjectivity. I don’t see why subjectivity, or anything else a human brain does can’t be modelled. But subjectivity etc is not the same as consciousness, which is something present in living organisms. Resulting from biological processes, rather than computation in the nervous system. Just like the robot in Star Trek, known as Data, AI can conceivably be programmed to perform anything a human can do, but it simply isn’t conscious. It’s a machine carrying out preordained processes.

Yes, fair enough. I was just pointing out that philosophy can’t answer the question in the OP. However we can conclude that the laws of nature can be seen as innate, fundamental (to our world) and can be described.

Wherever it comes from, it's teleological.

Yes, but that’s not an answer, it’s a description.
Going back to more than one, could there, logically, be more than one without the innate pattern? Or could there be other patterns?

No worries.
As for your question,

My question Is metaphysical, not linguistic

I have concluded that the laws of nature are innate. That whenever there is more than one, a pattern emerges which on a greater scales results in these laws. As to where this comes from, who knows.

For example, the law of gravity explains why a ball will fall when I drop it, but it'll stop falling when you catch it.

That’s not an example of breaking the law of gravity at all. Gravity still applies because the ball is still pressing down against your hand with the same force as when it was falling. It’s just that your hand formed an obstacle which that force was not strong enough to overcome. For example, if the ball was a 10kg shot put, your hand wouldn’t have stopped it, it would have pushed your hand out of the way.

Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s top foreign correspondent who has contacts in Gaza has reported that doctors treating Palestinians in the vicinity of the Israeli feeding stations are giving accounts of the type of injuries they are seeing. They are mainly gunshots to the head, abdomen, women’s breasts and weirdly the buttock. Also numbers of young children shot in the head. The wounds are consistent with high velocity sniper fire. The people shot in the buttock die a horrible death due to feces contamination of the body cavity resulting in sepsis. There is a theory that this is intentional. They don’t have the resources to treat them, they just patch them up.

For the 'average' person, the real question seems to be: what is God for?

This is interesting, my next question is what are we for?
For people like me the second question leads one to ask the first.
Some people just seem to want to know the answer to these questions, so in a sense God is an answer. Perhaps this urge, or need to find out what’s going on, why we are here, what we are doing(in the grander scheme of things) is part of being human. Either this urge is because there is a spiritual dimension and we preparing to return to it. Or there isn’t and it is just some evolutionary trait that happened and we’re inadvertently indulging in some kind of wishful thinking, or coping mechanism.
Is this all just a happenstance coming together of random circumstances. Or is there something else going on?
I suspect people have been asking this for a very long time.

There may be a translation issue here, I come to this from a mystical tradition where the mind is a faculty of being, not foundational of being. So to me what is being described in that passage is how a conscious being is constituted. Mind is present only in so much as it is the operation of a structure in the nervous system, or brain and performs (like hardware in a computer) the role of projecting consciousness and presence and facilitates the activity of awareness, presence as flowing through time, (nowness) and the thinking, or intellectual faculty.

The distinction I’m making is that mind in terms of thought, knowing, understanding etc is secondary to what the brain is doing in these processes. So mind is present only in so much as it is a constituent part of the processes of the biological organism and any role it plays in hosting soul, or spirit. The higher faculties of mind, self conscious awareness, knowledge, understanding thinking etc are just one of these roles that the brain performs and is secondary to the others.

So I see mind in terms of a progression from the brain, facilitating the mind, which facilitates the higher brain functions. Brain-mind-higher mind function.

So ‘toward-itself’ and ‘out-from-itself’, transcendence are projections of being facilitated by the mind, forming the sense of self. That self then does the thinking, knowing, understanding.

I’m just thinking out loud here.

but the situation is different with Heidegger:

Human existence can relate to beings only if it holds itself out into the nothing. Going beyond beings occurs in the essence of Dasein. But this going beyond is metaphysics itself. This implies that metaphysics belongs to the “nature of man.” It is neither a division of academic philosophy nor a field of arbitrary notions. Metaphysics is the basic occurrence of Dasein. It is Dasein itself. (What is Metaphysics)

Seems to be straying into the mystical there. Requiring understanding and knowing not just through the lens of the mind. But from other parts of the being.

The universe contains many laws which govern how the universe operates e.g. laws of physics. The question that is puzzling me right now is why are there laws in the first place and why is the universe not lawless instead ?

Because laws are harder more complex and elegant to formulate than if there was no laws at all, why are they in nature ?

If it was lawless there’d probably be no life and no one to ask these questions

There are lots of interesting answers given in this thread. However I like to approach ideas about nature from a different view point and compare and contrast from two different view points. To perform a kind of calculus.

So what’s been presented in this thread are ideas about nature derived from what we find before us when we are born into this world. Including an already fully formed society and culture with all the knowledge of humanity. A world where physical material works in a predictable way following laws of physics etc. and we inhabit bodies which have evolved to inhabit this world over millennia and are very finely tuned to this environment and interacting with each other and other plants and animals. Resulting in a stable complex persistent world, that to a large extent we take for granted as a peaceful normal state of affairs.

Now by contrast I will offer an alternative perspective on this same state of affairs from the spiritual dimension.

Imagine a God, or being with immense powers to create, or generate things. This being has a ground, or substance, a blank canvas of material potentiality to work with. Such that the being can order it into a multitude of forms and complexities at will.

Now imagine that this being creates a world of interacting beings, an angelic world. This angelic world will have a nature and forms dictated by what is required for them to have a form that can be interacting beings that are able to interact. They need to be separate, more than one, they need to be able to act independently of the other beings. They need a common environment, or place in which to be and to interact. So they need a space and some time. Rather like virtual interacting bots that can be created on a computer screen. Now we already have a few basic laws of nature. These laws are requirements, necessities for this little world of angelic beings to exist in this ground and interact.
When it comes to their environment, how they interact, and what they do while interacting. That depends on what they have and can do within the constraints of those few laws of nature that they have. So they may well be able to speed up time, slow it down, reverse it. They may be able to do the same with size, appearance, even change and alter the place they inhabit totally. Merge with each other move through each other. Have bodies made up of other groups of beings etc etc etc.*

Now imagine the creator being decides to increase the complexity of this little world of angels. Inevitably there will be more requirements for laws of nature necessitated. There may be more than one kind of being. Which means they will need to be differentiated into groups, with their differentiated modes of communication. There might be a broader, more complex kind of place or world that they inhabit. Which means there would need to be more stable structures to work with. There would have to be rules for what the individuals in that world can do the change the world, or other beings on a wim. Because it would interfere with the stability of the more complex system they inhabit.

So we have a more complex world with differentiated structures, beings, rules of behaviour etc, which are necessary for that degree of complexity. Constraining the angelic beings in what they can do. Even though, these beings may still have full control at will of their form, the forms around them and how they interact. They inevitably have to conform to the rules of that degree of complexity, to remain there, and sustain it.

Now let’s jump forward a long way into a vastly more complex world of angels. There would at some point of complexity be a requirement for more solid objects, physical material. There would have to be more formal constraints on what each individual angel could do in that world. There would be more rigid laws of nature. The angels can still magically change anything at will. But they are strongly required to abide by the laws because it could have far reaching consequences in that world it they are not fully observed. They might be a history of disasters when beings had defied the laws, resulting in the creator being modifying the angel’s limiting their ability to change things. This might include encoding things so that they can’t access certain abilities without knowledge of the codes.

Eventually the physical material they are working with would become so constrained with such strict laws and the angels would be so limited in their abilities that they would have to learn to inhabit physical bodies in that world with no magical abilities left, no knowledge of the creator being, or the more foundational rules of the world works. In a sense they would be imprisoned in physical bodies in an entirely physical world.

We have come full circle in this alternative cosmogony to the world we inhabit from a different world, the world of spirit. However the same laws of nature apply, for seemingly different reasons. But are they really any different, they are equally necessary in each world. Indeed we could be in either and have no idea which one we are really in, or have no way of finding out.

*what I am describing correlates closely with the cosmos as described in Hinduism.

No worries, people around here are always willing to help. Although as I say, the consensus tends to follow what is accepted by academic philosophy. There are other schools and religions that see it differently, so it’s not necessarily decided

Hey man, I’m the resident mystic here (or at least the one who admits it). I know what you’re saying and have many ideas about this stuff. Ideas I couldn’t explain to the others, or if I could they’d dismiss it as wishful thinking or something like that. You have to accept that the people here are philosophers and have a way of thinking and talking about things.

It may be more a case of them not knowing how to discuss what you are presenting in a way that’s meaningful for both them and you. Or they might think there’s just so much to unpick there that it’s just not worth even trying.

I’m happy to discuss it, but you have to accept that I might not be able to grasp just what you are thinking, because it is a personal experience for you. But we might be able to reach some common understanding.

I thought we’d already got there with the idea of spacetime. One point at the Big Bang inflated into a near infinite quantity of points forming a network of points, extended over space and time. With the voids between them producing a space and the interactions between them preducing time, or duration, cause and effect. Resulting in a vast space, the universe and a vast period of time. Followed by the emergence of variation forming the complexities we see before us.

can't think of a single time I have encountered a description from a different political or philosophical direction though. That would actually be the shocking thing in context, something like an appeal to platonic solids as properly "platonic" would be more outrageous than the excrement.

Yes, I know. (although anyone who hasn’t read any philosophy would have no idea what that is). It’s always something cool, or hip, like the way images of Che Guevara were everywhere back in the day.

Although political content in art goes back a long way. What we have here is a loss of direction, where is the equivalent of the radical art movements of the 20th Century, like cubism, modernism, abstract expressionism, now? There’s nothing, it’s as though it’s all been said already, there’s nothing else to say. Or maybe it’s gone underground, I haven’t kept up with what’s happening in virtual, or AI art. Most of the major art exhibitions these days are retrospectives. All the publicly available works by a famous artist gathered together, which then go on tour of the worlds prestigious galleries to draw in the crowds.

Then there is the issue of money in art, it’s sold its soul. Damian Hurst’s diamond skull, For The Love Of God illustrates this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_Love_of_God

Damian Hurst’s response to the grotesque capture of the art world by big money.

Yes, I quite like talk of zombies.

And therefore I'm exploring alternatives - but the alternatives still need to account for the very obvious dependencies on the physical I mentioned. It seems to be that this could most simply be accomplished by supplementing a physicalist account with something more (e.g. some sort of ontological emergence). But no one seems to be going in that direction. Rather, they're suggesting starting from scratch - treating the mind (or thoughts) as something fundamental and (it seems) unexplained.

I haven’t offered anything more in response to yourself because I wasn’t sure what you were asking for. Now that you have asked it, I can respond.
I wouldn’t offer an ontological emergence, in the sense that consciousness (as observed in higher order mammals) emerges from complexity of computation in the brains of animals, or the complexity of nervous systems, or other biological systems. Although I would offer the idea that a rudimentary consciousness emerges from cellular biology, which is the ground for the higher order consciousness we are addressing. As such this consciousness is present in all cellular and multi cellular organisms.
But I do offer an emergence of a unit of complex being, which equates with what is generally referred to as a soul (baggage accepted).

Strictly speaking the physical world could have evolved higher order mammals without this unit, which are not conscious(we don’t know the precise role played by consciousness in the life of higher order mammals and if it is a necessary condition). They could all be entirely unconscious and the world would be identical to the world we live in.

So we have an emergent part of a being which has no physical requirement. But in our ignorance of the truth of reality, we cannot independently observe it, or analyse any necessary role it plays. Any analysis of the physical world doesn’t require it, or identify it.

We are left blind to the reality in the absence of any greater explanation of the reality we find ourselves in.

It was a bit of both. They were nice people, ordinary, down to earth art students, who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. They were surprised when their fame first happened and quickly realised that producing sensationalist works, just fuelled the media scrum. Some of them realised, or already knew that the establishment had lost its way and we’re basically given carte Blanche to do whatever they want and it would be regarded as credible High Art. As long as the art world was being reinvigorated, anything goes.
Much of the work was taking the Mickey out of the establishment and seeing how far they could go without being censored. And then when some were censored* it just fuelled it even more.

Charles Satchii, a wealthy advertising mogul, saw an opportunity and set the whole thing in motion on the world stage. Another example of big money becoming involved in the art world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_British_Artists

*there was a work which included a dead human foetus, which was censored.

Yet I don't think this is regression. It's simply art transforming to an institution that will desperately want to do something new

Yes, definitely. I’m referring more to the tearing down of traditions in art. Now we have a clear space for new art movements to move into.
There are lots of new exciting movements in art, a favourite of mine is a revivification of nature and landscape in art with the recent work of David Hockney for example,
https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/exhibitions/david-hockney-a-bigger-picture
Who has a major exhibition in Paris at the moment.

I am largely immune to art (it mostly bores me rigid) but why would you argue this? Is your dislike of modern art rooted in a preference for classical and formalist traditions, and in the sense that contemporary art conflicts with your ideas of beauty and moral coherence?

I do like a lot of modern art, but I saw the art establishment self immolate during the 1980’s and 90’s.
This was actually the post modern period in art. It had been left with a radical ideology by the modernists (1950-70’s) and interpreted it as a requirement to tear down, the last vestiges of formalism and tradition in High Art. To debase art to the point that art was whatever the artist says it is. This resulted in a race to the bottom of art and art exhibitions, where sensationalism, shock value was the goal. I attended all the exhibitions in London at the time during the 1990’s and realised that art as anything meaningful had died, to be replaced by shocking sensationalised works, where the goal was to get newspaper headlines about how extreme and perverted art had become.

If you’re going to argue that, you may as well add that there hasn’t been a progression in science and technology either.

Well I will argue it with three examples. The arts are a matter of conception, expression and forms of beauty. Something which evolves and devolves with changes in societies and cultures. Science and technology are quite different pursuits.
(Forgive my lack of pictures, as I don’t have an image hosting account at the moment, so will have to link to articles about the pieces.)

Firstly pre-Cycladic art reached a high standard in depiction of beauty and refinement between 5,000 and 2,000 BCE. Such refinement was arguably not equalled until cubism in the 20th Century. I suspect that Picasso for example, copied, or was influenced by it (along with examples of African tribal art).
https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/cycladic-figures

Secondly, the blue vase of Pompeii, the skill in design and execution may not have been equalled since the time it was made in Ancient Rome.
https://www.interno16holidayhome.com/2019/02/22/discovering-the-blue-vase-of-pompeii/

Thirdly, the Pantheon in Rome. An architectural gem, which may not have been equalled in the 2,000years since it was built.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome

Architecture has rarely reached such heights of design and execution. Over the intervening periods. And indeed the great pyramid of Giza, is such a mind boggling feat of construction. It is probably only now, with laser technology, that we have the ability to reproduce it.

I wouldn't say that. Simply after the technique was basically universal, which any art school could teach, then the focus was simply to have other techniques than photorealism. That in the end you had modern art isn't at all a death of high art.

I should have qualified what I meant about the death of art. I mean of the art being produced at the time of modernism, not the art of previous periods. In the art establishment during the 20th century what constituted High Art of that period was what the art establishment deemed to be High Art being produced at that time(during the 1950’s and 60’s). It has always been like that to a lesser extent. So when someone in the art establishment talks about High Art, they are usually referring to the art being produced at the time they are saying it. This is also reinforced by the current fashion in art of the time, which follows the zeitgeist. So during the modern period, what constituted High Art evolved very quickly through the process of developing from Impressionism, cubism, surrealism and expressionism, into modernism.

It was this current idea of what was High Art, which died a death into modernist absurdity, sometime during the second half of the 20th Century.

During the post modern period, High Art lurched from one development to another culminating in conceptual art, which was nonsense asserted as High Art and grotesque perversions of modernism, asserted as High Art.

Any particular substantive sense we attempt to assign to what is within the living present will always be a higher order constituted product, merely subjectively relative and i. need of bracketing and reduction, with no metaphysical justification in itself

This is where I suspected metaphysics would end up (not having read it sufficiently myself). Rather like the mystic, standing beside the door of the unknown. Unable to proceed any further, hence the appeal (from the mystic) for guidance from the other side of that door. Where is the equivalent appeal from the Metaphysician, I wonder? To AI perhaps.

As I read that back, I read Hal, of 2001 A Space Odyssey, rather than AI. A fitting metaphor, I think.

The abilities, or skills in the creative arts ebbed and flowed with the prosperity and decline of societies. There hasn’t been a progression in high art particularly, just an expansion into the depiction and expression of subjects and ideas that weren’t previously represented, for whatever reason, in the medium. Culminating in the radicalism of modern art and now in the post modern era, High art has died. Ravaged and crucified by the modern and post modernists. Leaving the ground open for new artistic expression, an explosion of every conceivable kind of art unhindered by previous constraints. The creative arts are struggling a bit, primarily because they require more skilled craftsmen. Many crafts, including my own, are dying. Or their remnants remain in settings where there is sufficient patronage to make a living. Although, the creative content will be preserved and reproduced using advanced technology. Highly skilled robots, will take over, as there will still be the demand for the product.

So having neutered Congress by purging it of any non-MAGA members, Trump has now successfully neutered the judiciary, the last bastion against his plainly totalitarian impulses.

Shame, America. Shame.

Yes, indeed, this is a dark day in America’s history.