Let me guess, it never reaches absolute zero, or in other words it takes an infinity of time to get there.

I was thinking that in these physical models time need not be short, if it's long then the matter can get on with its stuff regardless. If time just allowed matter some space(in time) matter would just get on with it anyway. Perhaps time is something which we as observers can't do without, but matter can.

I agree, but I think it is dependent on the direction in which the intuition is directed and that the results are correctly interpreted. This does require reaching an accommodation with yourself, along with a sufficient understanding of the psychology and character traits of yourself. So a kind of negotiation and understanding in which you can work with and on one's self.

Yes your analogy of playing a game chimes for me. I have found that this process of loosing one's self in the "game" is an interesting phenomena and something which I have isolated and used in my day to day voyage of discovery in life, or questing, so to speak.

I would like to introduce the idea of the veil, if I may. A veil in mysticism and spirituality is some natural barrier or threashold demarking domains. For example for my cat, my world of intellectual thought is veiled from her experience. This veil consists in our differing levels of mental capacity, communication etc. For us the nature of the immanent may be veiled from our intellect.

Yes we cannot think our way there (to the noumenon) in isolation. However it has occurred to me that there are at least two other routes, which if when crossed referenced and contemplated* through thought, enable one to go further.
Firstly the development of the realisation that one is acquainted with the noumenon by inhabiting the structures it forms, or generates. This can be viewed exoterically and esoterically. Exoterically one is constituted of bits and pieces of noumenon and through a form of communion equivalent perhaps to prayer or meditation, one knows it. Esoterically, one's being, mind, consciousness, experience and intellect are all expressions of the noumenon and can be known through the contemplation of the authorship of the noumenon, i.e. The equivalence of the fact that the style of an artist can be discerned in the character and technique of the brush strokes, which is like a signature of the artist. A signature which can be deciphered in any work they do, because it is their natural style.

Secondly through mysticism, which is a process in, or journey through, life in contemplation and practice of the principles of mysticism, which are found in the works of other Mystics, or discerned by one's self through contemplation.

Regarding intersubjective determinate knowledge of mysticism. It is communicated Esoterically in some literature, although it may be debatable whether this could be described as determinate. Also and I have practiced this myself, through direct verbal and body language communication with a fellow seaker, the verbal tradition. Also as I have said already I anticipate a determinate science of mysticism, but that it has not been written yet.

Regarding the transcendent and the immanent, in stating that they are the same, or perhaps facets of one coin, as you say. I include the idea that what is being addressed in this is something beyond our rational capacity and so making rational distinctions is in danger of identifying a dichotomy which isn't there. For me the transcendent/immanent is a multidimensional eternal presence within the self, which is accessible either through our common natural evolved faculties, although in a small measure. Or by a process of more direct access through the practice of some mystical or Yogic practice. Something which I would also say is limited by the evolutionary point of development of one's soul.


* I have developed a system of thought in the cross reference of different approaches which approximates by analogy the use of calculus in mathematics.

I have personally experienced the presence of the sacred, what I mean is that I have witnessed people in a state of overwhelming awe in the presence of what to them is sacred. In the presence of the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala(McLeod Ganj) during the Vesak festival. Although I have not experienced this awe myself. There is certainly a state of awe of the sacred, it was very real.

I can't see how solipsism is inconsistent and contradictory. Perhaps an absolute solipsism is, but that's not what solipsists are proposing as far as I can see. But rather a local solipsism, which is quite reasonable.

I spent years arguing this on the skeptics (Randi) forum(it was a lot of fun by the way). I would always fall back on the presence of consciousness(mind) in primitive animals, or the impossibility of demonstrating or proving consciousness in computers, robots, or mechanical mimicry etc.

One could view time as a product of extension, or physical change. A physical change which is going to happen anyway and does happen, but an unfortunate consequence of this, depending on your point of view, is the presence of time.

That's why I am claiming that Dennett and others of that school, are the direct descendants of behavioural psychologists like J B Watson and B F Skinner. They too deny the reality of mind and they too treat humans as being essentially automata or robots.

I find that this issue is confusing to people due to the conflation of thought and mind. Thought is a computation carried out by the brain, whereas mind is some intangible quality of being and consciousness. It appears that these eliminativists are making this conflation and by explaining thought as computation(including the subconscious thinking) which can be mimicked by computers and robots, they ignore the intangible nature of mind on the assumption that it is simply a product of a certain complexity of that same computation.

Yes, I would agree with that, although what I am agreeing with is a bit vague and my own position is not fully formed as yet. My first thought is that it is the polar opposite of the post modern immanence and the post modernists might well just find it laughable.

In summary my current position is along the lines of what Kant said about the noumenon, as unknowable and therefore likewise it's role in our existence and the extent or not of our freedoms. But I would not agree that it is unknowable in principle, only that we can conclude that it is unknowable from the human condition or position at this time. Also I am of the opinion that it can be known through "transcendent insight", or it can be revealed through revelation and thus known by a simpleton, or uneducated person equally as to an educated person.

I am also of the opinion that the transcendent is the immanent and that to make the distinction is a category error, due to the human propensity to externalise and hence externalise the transcendent.

That may be so(and I have little to disagree with), but the intension might have been to tell him the meaning at that point, we can't say that it wasn't. Also there may be people alive who know the meaning, but either don't know that they do, can't be recognised as knowing, or can't explain what they know, or that they know. If one claims to know, we cannot verify it, although that might not matter to him(so why claim it?). Either way, the meaning might be knowable and known.

Such a personality is not free insofar as they act out emotional compulsions. So that is another sense in which the discussion of what might constitute freedom is meaningful - and one near to the idea of freedom in the tradition of philosophy. (That said, there is nothing preventing a discussion of that subject from the perspective of post-modern philosophy.)

Yes and from my perspective there are numerous freedoms available to the being and that the evolution of the soul is a revealing in stages of these freedoms.

So we have;
1, the freedom of movement, a body.
2, the freedom of individuation, a self.
3, the freedom of the self aware, a creative agency.
4, the freedom of imagination, access to a transcendent facet in agency.
5, the freedom from incarnation, self actualisation of the soul.
6, the freedom of the transcendent, nirvana, or the equivalent, such as heaven.
7, the freedom from the manifest, para nirvana, or free of all finite constraints.
8, the freedom from existence, something not even worth trying to understand.

These are just a few freedoms that come to mind.

I apologise for not grasping your position through your use of the word belief. Now I understand, I think.

So following the analogy of the stone, we are as the stone rolling, but perhaps with the choice to change our course, a little, by changing our shape(by analogy) at will. Presumably our ability to change shape has been programmed in to us by the nature of our constituents and processes of our formation. So we are not doing anything radical in any shape change we are capable of.

I can see how a determinist would point always to a prior process of formation of our constituents and that all notion of freedom is illusory. That there is some freedom in a subject due to the presence of an awareness of an individual self and a process of thinking allowing a choice through an awareness of alternative strategies and directions of travel. However that freedom is entirely within the conditioned constraints of a social narrative. Hence no radical freedom, only a little opportunity for constrained autonomy. But the narrative generates the impression within the subject of freedoms.

If we concede these constraints and allow our perceived freedoms to fall under this explanation. What other freedoms are you suggesting, or what is missed in this or these kind of explanation?

(Edit in bold)

Nice, I can see that circle and the sign wave rising up into a third dimension, in each dimension the diamond is expressed, but in greater and greater extended complexity. While it is still present in its completeness in each point in space and time.

Yes the mind is not a realm of illusion, rather that distortion happens on the physical plain. And yes by knowing oneself one realises knowing itself.

What does this tell us about our world though? Nothing. To say any of these things could be says nothing about what is. So yes, all the events of the world could be played out by philosophical zombies, but are they? Is it true? Or are we concious subjects?

My point here is not about if we are robots, but about the philosophical idea of Post modernism(I admit that I am not well read in PM, so this is just speculation), that it could apply equally to a notional world of unconscious robots, with no "freedom". Or there could be world identical to this world inhabited by philosophical zombies, without consciousness. In this world the Post modern philosophy would apply equally. This is because in this philosophy there is only material, energetic forces and computation. Sentient self consciousness as we experience it is an irrelevance in this view.

Yes I know what you mean about ignoring living people. Also I agree with most of what
PM appears to be saying about freedom, there is some freedom in the autonomous choices we as living people make every day. While most of the structure in our lived lives is conditioned through the social narrative, along with the physical bodies and environment we find ourselves to exist in. However I still think there is a valid point in what I was trying to say about Trump and Ghandi. I can illustrate this with an example in my own life. Something which is real and the results of it are real.

Throughout my youth and younger adulthood, I became negative about money, my father was very frugal and stopped my pocket money and would never buy me anything, even though he had lots of money. I also picked up on a stressful worry about money in him which made him the way he was. When I became an adult I became a parent without adequate planning at a young age and struggled with money, this also lead to some resentment and envy to people who had money. This became an acute fear and stress for me and in a sense I think I also became instrumental in making the situation worse. It became a pervasive stress and worry in my life leading to a kind of negative depression.

But then a change occurred. For (primarily) other reasons, my relationship broke down and I split from my partner and young children, it was an even greater financial struggle at the time, but due to my interest in philosophy, spirituality, self help etc. I took a radical course, which most people in my position would not have taken. I lived hand to mouth on the minimum money required to survive, I saved every penny and then a few months later I took a flight to India and travelled to the Himalayas. I was on a spiritual quest, but equally I was seeking a way out of my problems. I had an insight about money, that provided I could put a bit of food in my mouth every day and put a roof over my head somehow it really didn't matter. This realisation was far more involved than this, but essentially the same. Also due to a postal strike in India at the same time, some of my money which was being posted to me by my mother didn't arrive and I had to survive for a month on 50 Rupees. I was meditating 3 or 4 hours a day and eating a bowl of rice and dalh each day and it became obvious to me to distance myself from my conditioned life back home, including my entire psychology around money. I experienced a great feeling of freedom, all that conditioning had been lifted from me. I had numerous epiphany's and in a very real sense rebuilt my life following simple spiritual values.

I was cured and on my return back home all my problems had evaporated, I still had to earn money to pay the bills and child support, but it was all an easy task of sensible money management, even taking on some debt and working to pay it off. Money was an insignificant tool in living now and I exercised my freedom from it, to this day.

So my point is that through a seeking for some deeper meaning, farsighted principles and ideals. I found a freedom from my conditioned life and have gone on to repeat the process in numerous parts of my life and the lives of my friends, family and associates. I dismantled and creatively rebuilt myself by what amounted to transcendent inspiration, intuition.

There are other freedoms than simply having immediate choices in ones day to day life.

Again I think you are missing the point by suggesting that a spiritual person is seeking to escape the living in the world. For me spirituality is more a focus on my being and living in the world, thoughts about transcendent concepts, heaven, nirvana etc, are simply ideals considered in contemplation regarding universals and how they may intersect with this world etc. I am as I said before content here and now and don't need to go anywhere from here.

Regarding 4, the special or hidden meaning of my life or those of others is obviously something different from what is intended or conveyed by my life or theirs. It is therefore something which can be neither intended by us nor conveyed to us. So, why speculate what it might be, as it can never be known?

This is incorrect, it might be told to us. It might have been told to someone in the past who wrote it down.

Yes I know that there is precious little input into subjectification which could be claimed to be unique, or farsighted. This doesn't mean that it doesn't occur, or that folk who seek idealised systems of thought, or who develop intuition, aren't modelling, or able to tear down and rebuild, their own subject.

I accept that a transcendence is not required to understand and explain the narrative, I know this, but it doesn't mean that there isn't such a thing, or something unknown/undetected involved in our lives.

I was just listening to the news quiz (BBC radio4) and Trump was described as a St Bernard dog shaved and put in a suit. Chuckle chuckle.

In your reply to me, I know it is a subject who expresses, or acts out freedom. But this same subject has been generated, shaped moulded by social and cultural conditioning. The subject has been instructed, groomed in how to behave and where freedoms and a lack of freedoms are and can be accessed, or relinquished. This could all be carried out by a race of philosophical zombies or robots for example. In the example of Rosa Park, it is simply an example of a tipping point being reached in a point of heightened tension within the system. Also the fact that this event was amplified to a national and historally important event was due to it being chosen as a pawn in a larger sociology political process. Again, this could all be carried out by a group of robots.

Let's look at an example of a subject who has so much freedom he is one of the most free subjects in existence(on our planet), Donald Trump, he is free to do most anything he wants, or is inclined to do. What does he do, I don't know, but I expect that he simply indulges his animal desires, while feeling socially isolated, psychologically inadequate, childish, naive, etc etc. Is this freedom? he is confined within the constraints of his conditioned subject, perhaps his fight for the presidency is the only thing he has left as a possibility of braking free of his distorted circus of a life and experiencing for a brief moment some freedom.

Let's look at another example of a subject, Ghandi, someone who was content with his food bowl and the ability to weave his own loin cloth. He lived far more freedom than Trump does, by the freedoms expressed from his mind and enjoying a few genuine friendships and a humble constructive role within his society.

Ghandi exercised his intellect and sculpted, crafted his own mind and psychological life with freedom of imagination and creative intellectual vision. Such freedom emerges in the mind of a subject who is somehow transcendent of their social conditioning.

I have read the quotes of John's comments in your last post to him. It seems to me that it is the use of the word belief which is problematic. In one passage this belief is alluded to in the phrase "because we cannot think of ourselves as such" - read belief, in another "has no faith" -read lack of belief and in another belief as of "on the basis of our intuitions and lived experience".

Belief is an ambiguous and vague term, personally I have rid my language and thinking of belief, beliefs, I see no value in, requirement for, it.

This made it difficult to understand John's point initially, but now I see it as a use in which belief refers to something known, lived and experienced without question. As much a part of us as our daily bread. I read an ambiguity mixed in with this due to a transcendent spirit or soul being alluded to, in the notion of a "radical freedom". Something which is I think a nonsense to a physicalist or materialism based philosophy, hence Streetlight's cartoon.

For me personally, well I was planning to move to the south of France in a few years. That could become more complicated, or even a nonstarter now.

Otherwise the EU didn't effect me as far as I can tell. It's difficult to detect the subtle influences though, which have crept in over the last forty years.

I am critical of the Eu organisation, but I do enjoy and favour the freedoms it has given us, as a European citizen. If it could have been reformed from within, that would have been my preferred option, but I can't see how it can be, it is so disfunctional and dogmatic.

Woooooowhat! Sweet Jesus!

Incidentally, this line of reasoning is more or less exactly what drew me towards these kinds of thinkers; the notion of human freedom as guaranteed by some liberal conception of universality always struck me as cartoonish and ridiculous, and it always seemed to me that it'd only be by working through the processes of subjectivization that one could ever, in any coherent manner, speak about freedom.

As I said to Πετροκότσυφας any kind of universal transcendent ground, or basis of our existence need not relegate freedom as absurd or ridiculous. Yes you are correct to identify some human freedoms in subjectivisation, but that's not surprising, because they are culturally derived and subjectification is the means by which they are generated, or rather subjugated, and controlled in the cultural narrative. Unless you are blinkered to any freedoms which might be found outside this subjectification, there are other freedoms to be both found and lived.

There are freedoms to be observed and participated in with other beings(organisms) in the biosphere. There is freedom to be found and enjoyed in the imagination and in creative expression. There may be other freedoms available which are orthogonal to our evolutionary directed experience as organisms.

Why would one choose to ignore other freedoms?

Because to think 'live is lived' is exhausted by our 'thoughts, beliefs, intuitions and experience' is to conceive of life in a horrifyingly narrow and morbidly 'intellectualist' manner. Rather than live life in ones head, life generally is concerned with the things I do, the things I say, the actions I take. And perhaps even more importantly, the things done to me, said of me, that impel me and make claims upon me; life as composed of habits, regularities, flourishes of creative engagement amongst rhythms of time and movement, punctuated with time wasting, routine, imposition, sleep, intensity, and so on.

If one confines freedom to physical actions and the way in which within the society freedoms are bestowed or deprived, it is in itself to relegate freedom to a byproduct of a mechanistic robotic process, presumably deterministic to boot. I wonder if there are any ranks of thought police involved in this narrative.

Well for people our age, although I keep hearing something about playlists. I haven't tried one yet. But yes 6music is more established and recognised now.

Wicked! I've been listen to Sleaford mods recently, can't put it down!

Just a thought, have you tried BBC 6music online? that's where it's all happening these days.

Thanks, both interesting articles. I'll have look.

I think about these things in imaginary visual form in the minds eye. I find it works better for me to articulate concepts in this way. When it comes to the basis of spacetime, I tend to visualise all space and time as one existing point extended into a nearly endless quantity of points of extension analogous to atoms. The one point is somehow split, or divided through a kind of symmetry breaking, so the large quantity is equal to the one, just a different form of it.

It's a much simpler thing I'm talking about; which is that if people do not believe they are free they will not experience freedom nor will they act freely, but instead their acts will be determined by their slavery to the ideas that deny their freedom.

Do you mean(in other words) that one allows the possibility of ones self acting freely. By making this space it frees the self that it can feel and act freely, unconstrained?

It's too early to say what the economic repercussions are. There are strong arguments on both sides in the media about the fluctuations in the £.

Anyway, it's my perception that the economy was not the reason why most people voted the way they did. I was a poling officer for the vote, and the mood in my poling station was that people were fed up of the creeping control from Brussels and the lack of sovereignty and were happy to take an economic hit. This was in rural Suffolk.

Also, it was an anti-establishment backlash, so the media being of the establishment will inevitably show some bias in favour of the doom and gloom perspective.

You don't need to remind me about the suffering and injustice in the world, I am acutely aware of it at the moment. Anyway, I will fall in line with Willow on this one. I am still thinking of my own position of freedom here, it doesn't normally figure highly in my priority of subjects to contemplate.

Not the true world, simply the world we find ourselves in. Do we really understand it? I know some folk might think they do. Anyway my point was that even if we find a rational explanation it still might be mistaken as a result of our limited knowledge. We cannot presume that the underlying nature of this world is going to appear in any way rational from our incomplete perspective.

You do realise presumably that this question cannot be answered from our limited knowledge and understanding of the world we find ourselves in? Whatever freedoms one might rationally identify, may only have that appearance. Without access to the underlying basis of this world we are the blind leading the blind, surely?

A case can be made that if there is something universal about human nature, then we don't have the radical freedom, ethical responsibility etc that you seem to want to preserve. If there is an essence and that essence is given by something outside the subject (by something transcendent, say), where is the freedom?
— Πετροκότσυφας

This presumes that this universal human nature is a rigid framework of some sort. It need not be, only the phenomenological stage or ground upon which that human dwells need be universal("all the world's a stage").
As I have pointed out it is incorrect to consider the transcendent somehow external to the subject. It is only ever accessed, received through the intangible being of the self. One ought to realise that temporal and spatial extension are a projection, from the transcendent realm, so each being is symultaniously in (dwelling) the transcendent realm and in the spatio temporal world. It is the world of extension that is external.

But what in the world has belief got to do with freedom?

I can't speak for John, but as I see it what he is referring to is something along the lines of this. To have a conscious conception of the freedom one is engaged in. I have experienced this, rather like in a lucid dream in which you realise you are fully conscious in the dream and then experience a literal freedom in your actions. Even more so, if you can somehow control the dream, something I was never able to do. A freedom that is fully actualised in living action. This smacks of revelation to me, but one which embeds a realisation of freedom within oneself.

You were asking about seeing monads. It would mostly be with the mind's eye. Even unity of consciousness is really something detected by the intellect.

Yes the intellect has to fashion a suitable conceptual form. I find this monad sort of disappears when I visualise it. But I still know it's there so that's sufficient to continue.

BTW: an interesting comparison is Leibniz to Einstein on the relativity of space.

Yes, I quite like imagining a banana is the only thing in existence and then trying to visualise it, how big it is, is it infinitely large or small? What colour is it? However I imagine it requires some kind of sensual stimulus. I do know what it tastes like though.

I know how you feel, but really we owe it to our descendents who are not here to respond, to at least try to preserve the ecosystem, ourselves and make some progress towards securing our long term survival. It's not much to ask, is it?

@TheWillowOfDarkness.

It's more than that. When I say "infinite" or "meaning," I am only pointing to something which my language never is. All language does this. My thoughts and speech about my eye are not my eye. Talk about my computer is not my computer. Speech about the infinite is not the infinite.

Yes, I know this and I understand your perspective. I agreed with you in my first reply to you.
Here I was picking up on the idea that there can be meaning in the infinite, I find this problematic, I would always defer to the use of eternal rather than infinite.

The infinite cannot be known in the personal. It cannot be an interpretation. Either requires that the infinite be subject to change, for it be a object depending on the actions, understanding or existence of the finite human.

Yes I agree, but I don't see it as this simple, see below.

Transcendent accounts consider the infinite something to be obtained, through study, through living, through following a tradition: belief in the spiritual (to use Wayfarer's term), then the infinite will be present, the world will be saved from the absence of the infinite. Ironically, the argument for the transcendent is that we become the infinite, that we cease living in the finite realm and enter the eternal.

Here we need to tease out the esoteric from the exoteric understanding and use of transcendence as it has been handed down to us from the traditions. The notion of attaining the infinite(being delivered into eternity) and following a study and practice and then reach Nirvana and leave behind the finite. This is the exoteric understanding that is disseminated widely through our culture and the religious traditions.
By contrast, the esoteric understanding of transcendence (as it has been handed down to us by the traditions) is a discipline undertaken under strict direction from a master in which the initiated disciple relinquishes the exoteric in every form, stills the mind and metaphorically breaks into the eternal soul within themselves(which is veiled at this point in our evolution). This can be viewed as the opposite of breaking out of something, one breaks into that inner sanctum which is veiled to us in this world, rather like the pulling away the scales which protect a developing bud to allow the flower to bloom.

This process and the language used by the initiated would always have been concealed from the uninitiated.

We might describe immanence as the understanding that the infinite is inaccessible to us. No matter what we do, we will not live the infinite. Whatever our lives, we will still be finite creatures of change, no matter how much we understand the world or the infinite which it expresses. While there is infinite expressed everywhere and anywhere, the most we will ever do is point to it, no matter how much we understand (or do not understand) it.

Yes, this is strictly true of infinity, but do you realise that infinity is a human invention? We should be using the word eternity, or some other word which refers to an endlessness, but also allows for the unknown, which allows for realities and events which seem illogical, or impossible to us from our limited perspective.

It is in the respect that immanence and transcendence are similar, both refer to eternity expressed in reality. The difference is that transcendence understands eternity to be an object obtained or accessed though specific action, while immanence understands it to be necessary and unavoidable. Even you, more a pluralist in these matters, would say that it's particular action, a particular life, a particular mystic tradition which brings the eternal, which accesses it.

This comes to the heart of the matter. For me eternity is also unavoidable, but currently (due to our evolutionary incarnate predicament) unavailable, or veiled to us in our day to day existence. It is due to the veil that eternity is transcendent, but the mystic realises that the veil is the hard casing of a bud, to speak metaphorically and that our body has within it, in a latent form, the apparatus to release our true nature in some way into our incarnate selves.

I say that no-one needs to do anything to express the eternal. Everyone necessarily does so, no matter who they are. The whole world does. God (the eternal) is necessary and not something that is obtained or acts. Even the despairing or suffering express it. There is no means to obtain it (God, tradition, etc.,etc.) because it not the sort thing that is obtained. It's outside the world of change, greed and desire. No-one ever accesses it, no matter how much they understand or feel it.

Yes, I agree, the eternal is everywhere, is all, we are eternity devices, but we just don't see it.

The implication though is that we can't expect to understand it through our invention of logical thought alone. Our understanding would naturally develop through a natural process of unfolding/opening/revealing/unveiling. Because logic can't, at least at this time encompass the eternal.

So as far as I can see we are in agreement.

I am interested in the take from the christian tradition, it might help me to access the ideas better. I will look up Michael Henry. Can you recommend any other sources, perhaps in the Christian mystical traditions?

I am very interested in the Pomo being discussed in the other thread, but lack the vocabulary within the tradition. It mirrors closely my own studies which are from the perspective of the mystical traditions, but in a different language of metaphor. Personally I don't see a need for a fuss about one's the particular route into the study, or who is or isn't a deist, an atheist, materialist, idealist etc. If god exists, or not, these things are not important to me in a study of ideas. It is the ideas themselves that I collect and I am well aware that we are all focussing on pretty much the same ideas anyway, just with our own personal take, or colouring.

Yes that might well be the case, but they are using terminology which apes what we are familiar with in a study of the self. It's like they are coming up with some insights into the self by looking into a mirror, but without considering what might be there which isn't currently known, or what doesn't fit within a current logical narrative.