Comments

  • Ontology of Time
    ↪Banno
    You're not answering the question, you're simply deflecting.
  • Ontology of Time
    The subjectivity in me is the same subjectivity in you.
    — Bernardo Kastrup
    is exactly wrong.     — Banno

    Why? What's wrong about it? A mere assertion does not an argument make.
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪Banno
    The context was this quotation:

    Under objective idealism, subjectivity is not individual or multiple, but unitary and universal: it’s the bottom level of reality, prior to spatiotemporal extension and consequent differentiation. The subjectivity in me is the same subjectivity in you. What differentiates us are merely the contents of this subjectivity as experienced by you, and by me. We differ only in experienced memories, perspectives and narratives of self, but not in the subjective field wherein all these memories, perspectives and narratives of self unfold as patterns of excitation — Bernardo Kastrup

    What precisely is the matter with that again?
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪Banno
    Not forgiven so much as expected ;-)
  • Objectivity and Detachment | Parts One | Two | Three | Four
    ↪Count Timothy von Icarus
    :pray: I watched an archival 60 Minutes documentary about Mt Athos the other day and found it very affecting.
  • Ontology of Time
    'field' as an encompassing environment of some sort, a philosophical notion — jgill

    The field of conscious awareness is how I intended it. Aside from physical fields in biology there are morphogenetic fields. "A morphogenetic field is a region in a developing embryo where cells communicate and coordinate to form a specific organ or structure. The spatial organization of cells within these fields is controlled by chemical gradients (morphogens), gene regulatory networks, and cellular signaling (biosemiosis). Morphogenetic fields guide pattern formation, ensuring that tissues and organs develop correctly in relation to the body plan." It would hardly be surprising if 'field' used to describe consciousness has resonances with the biological rather than the way it is understood in physics.

    Why call it a field? — Banno

    Because it's an apt description of the nature of conscious awareness. In this context it is being used phenomenologically rather than physically referring to the way awareness manifests as a unified, continuous whole rather than as collection of discrete elements (per the 'subjective unity of perception'). Within that field, specific phenomena - specific aspects of 'phenomenal consciousness' - manifest as qualia, the qualitative attributes associated with specific stimuli or circumstances or cognitive challenges.
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪Tom Storm
    Thanks, nice of you to say! Glad someone does ;-)
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪Banno
    On further reflection, there is a self-evident subjective field immediately experienced by every subject, namely, the field of their own conscious awareness. Things appear within it, and disappear from it, without literally being either inside or outside of it in any spatio-temporal sense. It is demonstrably a unified field, insofar as to be aware of oneself a subject, is precisely to be the subject in whom a single field of awareness exists.

    So the question for you is, does every point in that field have a mathematical description, as do the points within physical fields? And if not, does that disqualify its description as ‘a field’?
  • Objectivity and Detachment | Parts One | Two | Three | Four
    He has a pretty compelling diagnosis of the psychological impetus for the "disengaged" frame of Hume and Gibbon vis-á-vis questions of religion as well. It represents a sort of control and insulation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    Isn’t that close in meaning to Taylor’s ‘buffered self’? Which is not coincidental with the advent of liberal individualism and the primacy of the egological point of view.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ‘Trump’s speech was 10 minutes longer than the Lion King, but had twice as much lyin’ in it’ ~ Jimmy Kimmel.
  • Ontology of Time
    as long as we're born into history, we can't but move in that world of codes. — ENOAH

    That’s one for the scrapbook! :clap:
  • Ontology of Time
    You make that clear. At least I try and articulate a philosophy rather than hanging around just taking potshots at other contributors, just for the sake of it.
  • Ontology of Time
    perhaps Husserl's prejudice — Janus

    :roll:

    It's virtually all you talk about — Janus

    It's a philosophy forum. I write about philosophy.
  • PROCESS PHILOSOPHY : A metaphysics for our time?
    Kant did at least attribute space and time and maybe causality as innate categories of mind. — prothero

    Yes, as his 'answer to Hume'. As I said, I'm an admirer of Whitehead, at least of what I know of him, but I'm a bit uneasy about the panpsychist element, that's all.
  • Ontology of Time
    Everything we know about reality is shaped by our own mental faculties—space, time, causality, and substance are not "out there" in the world itself but are the conditions of experience.
    — Wayfarer

    You are blithely assuming that. How do you know it's true?     — Janus

    It's not an assumption, it is a philosophical observation and nowadays with ample support from cognitive science.

    In what does that causality inhere?
    — Wayfarer

    From the point of view of science that question doesn't matter. It may well be unanswerable. Whatever the explanation, the fact is clear that we understand the physical world in terms of causation, which includes both local processes and effects and global conditions.     — Janus

    Right! 'The question doesn't matter'. And yet, you continually defer to science as the arbiter for philosophy.

    The Husserlian approach, and the phenomenological approach in general I am fairly familiar with on account of a long history of reading and study. It is rightly only concerned with the character of human experience, and as such it brackets metaphysical questions such as the mind-independent existence of the external world. — Janus

    But notice that Husserl says that consciousness is foundationally involved in world-disclosure, meaning that the idea of a world apart from consciousness is inconceivable in any meaningful way. That is the salient point.

    I'm not concerned with questions of 'materialism vs idealism' or 'realism vs antirealism' because I think these questions are not definitively decidable. — Janus

    But you have long since made up your mind, going on what you say.
  • Ontology of Time
    Something that is not in question.
    — Wayfarer

    What is your explanation for that?
    species, language-group, culture
    — Wayfarer
    don't suffice.     — Janus

    Everything we know about reality is shaped by our own mental faculties—space, time, causality, and substance are not "out there" in the world itself but are the conditions of experience. So when you blithely assume that

    I've often said that the physical nature of the world is understood in terms of causes — Janus

    In what does that causality inhere? Wittgenstein remarks that 'At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.' Why does he call it an illusion? I say it's because the perception of causal relations is itself mind-dependent. It is because we can form ideas of what things are, and then perceive the necessary relations of ideas, that we can establish causality in the first place. It's not merely 'given' to us in the way that naturalism assumes. Which is also the basis of Husserl's criticism of naturalism:

    In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge,
    all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot
    be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness
    should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since
    consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in
    the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in
    any ontological sense—this would be a subjective idealism, itself a
    consequence of a certain naturalising tendency whereby consciousness is
    cause and the world its effect—but rather that the world is opened up, made
    meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable
    apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world,
    reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational,
    disclosive role. For this reason, all natural science is naive about its point
    of departure, for Husserl (PRS 85; Hua XXV 13). Since consciousness is
    presupposed in all science and knowledge, then the proper approach to the
    study of consciousness itself must be a transcendental one—one which, in
    Kantian terms, focuses on the conditions for the possibility of knowledge,
    ...
  • Ontology of Time
    I know form observing their behavior that my dogs perceive the same environment I do — Janus

    Something that is not in question.

    Do you seriously want to deny that there are differences between individuals, that people may do different things for the same reasons and the same things for different reasons? — Janus

    That's not relevant. What I'm criticizing is the view that matters OTHER than those that can be measured scientifically - such as values - are, therefore, up to the individual, that they're essentially subjective in nature.
  • Ontology of Time
    If you believe that is wrong, then you would need to explain how those commonalities could explain the specific shared content of our perceptual experiences. You haven't done that. — Janus

    The fact that you and I see the same things is precisely because we belong to the same species, language-group, culture, and the rest. I'm not, again, saying that the world exists in your or my mind which is what you think I'm saying. We draw on a common stock of usages, meanings, and so on. But there are times when that breaks down - when individuals from two cultures meet, for example, with completely incommensurable understandings of the same thing, they will see different things. Again, I'm not denying objectivity or that there is an external world, but that all our knowledge of it is mediated.

    I've already said many times that understanding human or even animal behavior cannot be achieved by physics. I've often said that the physical nature of the world is understood in terms of causes, and animal and human behavior in terms of reasons. — Janus

    But you also say that those reasons are individual, that they're subjective, that they're matters of individual opinion. Again that can be illustrated with reference to your own entries. The point about philosophy generally, is to ascertain the nature of that framework - the space of reasons, as it has been called - such that it's not just a matter of opinion or individual proclivities. Metaphysics, originally, was intended as the foundation of that enquiry, the 'philosophy of philosophy'.
  • Ontology of Time
    Right, it's an abstract entity, an idea, not an ontologically substantive being then. — Janus

    You mean, not a thing, therefore, not real. What you mean by 'substantive' means 'can be verified scientifically'. There's no conflict between the fact that ideas and languages change, and that they are real.

    so you haven't really answered the question. — Janus

    Just be clear about this: I've answered it, but you either don't understand that answer, or don't accept, the answer. So instead of constantly complaining that I'm evading the question or not answering it, just recognise that. OK, you don't accept it, but don't say I'm not addressing it. I am saying that the cognitive systems through which we view the world are also constitutive of the world we view, meaning that the world is not really mind-independent in the sense that empiricism presumes.

    You never fail to mention positivism, apparently in an attempt to discredit what I argue, rather than dealing with it point by point on its own terms — Janus

    Because you constantly appeal to what is empirically verifiable by science as the yardstick for what constitutes real knowledge. If I had time, I could provide many direct quotes from you, saying that. It's not as if I'm accusing you of something radically objectionable: positivism is an identifiable and powerful influence in modern thinking, and you frequently appeal to it and to verificationism. Folllowed by 'and what about OSHO?!?' ;-)
  • PROCESS PHILOSOPHY : A metaphysics for our time?
    ↪prothero
    Yes, an interpretive framework is definitely needed. Whitehead's seems to be close to a form of panpsychism ('consciousness everywhere'), which, while I can sympathise, I've already questioned in a previous post.

    I fully endorse that phrase of his, 'outside subjectivity nothing whatever', but I interpret its meaning differently. I don't mean that there is some invisible meta-mind - like Berkeley's God - holding everything in existence. What that means to me, is that outside the constructive activities of mind, there can be no conception of anything whatever. So that even though, in the empirical sense, we can picture and analyse the world prior to the arrival of h.sapiens, even that activity is in an obvious sense, still mind-dependent, in that it relies on perspective and measurement. What the world is outside of or apart from that is an empty question. (More in keeping with Buddhist philosophy, which is a kind of moderated realism.)

    That's what I mean by saying that the idea of consciousness as 'conscious awareness' is fallacious. Consciousness in the broader sense comprises the entire framework within which knowledge is obtained in the first place. The mistake of naturalism is to then try to understand that process in consciousness from the outside, so to speak, as something objective or external, when it is implicit in the very act of knowing.
  • Ontology of Time
    The argument that we all operate with similar mental structures cannot explain more than the common ways in which we perceive and experience, it cannot explain the common content of our experience. I've lost count of how many times that point has remained unaddressed or glossed over.

    In any case we cannot understand those structures other than via science, and in vivo they are precognitive, part of the in itself, which would indicate that the in itself has structure, and so is not undifferentiated at all. Structure without differentiation is logically impossible.

    If structure exists independently of any mind, then it exists independently of all minds, unless there is a collective mind, and we have, and could have, no evidence of such a thing.     — Janus

    The 'collective mind' is not a separate entity, not some ghostly blob hovering over culture. It's more like expressions such as “the European mind” or “the Western mind.” In these cases, there are, on the one hand, individual minds—each with its own personality and proclivities—but also a vast pool of meanings, references, and, of course, language, which is common to all of them. That is the 'collective' nature of mind, and it closely resembles ideas found in Hegel’s philosophy.

    Whereas Kant emphasizes that knowledge is shaped by the individual mind’s cognitive structures, Hegel highlights the collective dimension of knowledge. For Hegel, knowledge is not merely an individual achievement but emerges through historical and social processes—hence concepts like the Zeitgeist (spirit of the times). There is a tension between individual perspectives and the need for universal concepts. This is why, in Hegelian thought, consciousness develops dialectically: individuals grasp reality through immediate, personal experience, but this experience must be mediated by shared categories of thought and language. The ideas we have of the world are not merely personal; they are shaped by a linguistic and conceptual framework that has been historically developed through collective reasoning and cultural transmission.

    As for the concern about the common content of experience, the explanation lies in the interplay between shared cognitive structures and intersubjective meaning. While universal cognitive structures explain how we perceive, the content of our experience - and therefore the meaning we attribute to them - is influenced by common linguistic categories, shared cultural contexts, and biological constraints. This does not require positing a separate “collective mind” but simply recognizes that cognition is always situated within a web of inherited meanings and social interactions.

    Finally, regarding whether this perspective can be empirically proven—this is not an empirical hypothesis but an interpretive model of epistemology. It is not something that can be tested in a laboratory but rather a framework for understanding how knowledge and meaning emerge in human experience. Demanding empirical validation for such conceptual frameworks is again an appeal to verificationism, a discredited aspect of positivism.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ...what was ominous in 2016 is dangerous in 2025, especially in Europe. Russian military aggression is more damaging, Russian sabotage across Europe more frequent, and Russian cyberattacks almost constant. In truth, it is Putin, not Zelensky, who started this conflict, Putin who has brought North Korean troops and Iranian drones to Europe, Putin who instructs his propagandists to talk about nuking London, Putin who keeps raising the stakes and scope of the war. Most Europeans live in this reality, not in the fictional world inhabited by Trump, and the contrast is making them think differently about Americans. According to pollsters, nearly three-quarters of French people now think that the U.S. is not an ally of France. A majority in Britain and a very large majority in Denmark, both historically pro-American countries, now have unfavorable views of the U.S. as well.

    In reality, the Russians have said nothing publicly about leaving Ukrainian territory or stopping the war. In reality, they have spent the past decade building a cult of cruelty at home. Now they have exported that cult not just to Europe, not just to Africa, but to Washington too. This administration abruptly canceled billions of dollars of food aid and health-care programs for the poorest people on the planet, a vicious act that the president and vice president have not acknowledged but that millions of people can see. Their use of tariffs as random punishment, not for enemies but for allies, seems not just brutal but inexplicable.

    And in the Oval Office, Trump and Vance behaved like imperial rulers chastising a subjugated colony, vocalizing the same disgust and disdain that Russian propagandists use when they talk about Ukraine. Europeans know, everyone knows, that if Trump and Vance can talk that way to the president of Ukraine, then they might eventually talk that way to their country’s leader next.     — Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic
  • PROCESS PHILOSOPHY : A metaphysics for our time?
    ↪prothero
    One point I would stress is that 'consciousness' far exceeds 'what I am consciously aware of'. After all, you're not consciously aware of cell mitosis and digestion and all the other parasympathetic and autonomic processes maintaining your organism, but should they be disrupted or cease, then you'll become aware of it very quickly indeed (or not, in the case of death). As in Indian consciousness researcher put it:

    Consciousness in the Indian tradition is more than an experience of awareness. It is a fundamental principle which underlies all knowing and being … the cognitive structure does not generate consciousness; it simply reflects it; and in the process limits and embellishes it. In a fundamental sense, consciousness is the source of our awareness. In other words, consciousness is not merely awareness as manifest in different forms but it is also what makes awareness possible … It is the light which illuminates the things on which it shines. — K. Ramakrishna Rao
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    A sharply divided Supreme Court on Wednesday denied the Trump administration’s request to block a lower court order on foreign aid funding, clearing the way for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to restart nearly $2 billion in payments for work already done.

    Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberal justices in the 5-4 order, which was the high court’s first significant move on lawsuits related to President Donald Trump’s initiatives in his second term.

    ...Soon after the ruling, U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali ordered the government to develop a schedule for restarting the payments.

    Aid groups had argued that the Trump administration was flouting Ali’s order to pay its bills and hailed the high court’s decision as a sign that the president cannot ignore the law.     — Supreme Court says judge can force Trump administration to pay foreign aid

    (Gift Link)

    The suspension of US Foreign Aid and U.S.A.I.D. has wrought havoc not only in developing nations, but also amongst many rural communities in the US which provide the primary production that is distributed through these channels. Read about the consequences.

    It's baffling that the political right is cheering on Trump's destruction of the Federal public service. Many of the services being cut are essential for public welfare, not 'corrupt bureaucracies'. Trump and Musk seem motivated more by hatred of the Government than by an intention to actually improve it.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    By all reports, the SOTU address was another fire hydrant of mendacity, constantly applauded by the MAGA zombies. Business as usual.
  • Ontology of Time
    . . . excitation of the one universal field of subjectivity.
    — Wayfarer

    Isn't this a religious-like flaw of begging the question or an infinite regress?     — PoeticUniverse

    It would take a lot more explanation, or conversely, a great deal more reading, to elaborate on what this means, and as the various contributors here think it's all bullshit, I'm not inclined to try. There are plenty of other topics to talk about.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    ↪ssu
    A great deal of what Trump does is motivated by spite. It's unbelievable that the leader of such an important country is so consistently petty and spiteful.
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪jgill
    ↪Banno
    Particles are the excitations of electromagnetic fields. But particle physics is wholly quantitative, it deals only with the measurable attributes of observed phenomena, something which is axiomatic to science generally. In physicalist philosophy, the observer is seen as being a consequence or outcome of those observed quantitative phenomena. But such observations leave out the subjective reality of existence and the role of the observing scientist, as a matter of principle. Which is why the qualitative nature of conscious experience is anomalous in this overall worldview, hence the significance of David Chalmer's 1996 paper on that topic.

    Objective idealism begins from different premisses. It doesn't begin with the presumption that the quantifiable objects of empirical science are foundational or fundamental and that the observing mind can be explained with reference to them. In a sense, it incorporates the Cartesian principle of the primacy of mind, cogito ergo sum - that the existence of the observer can't plausibly be denied - even while eschewing the infamous mind-matter division that is also Cartesian. It points out that whatever is observed, measured, known, is always observed, measured and known by an observer, who as a matter of definition is not amongst the objects of analysis.

    Aside from Bernardo Kastrup, other objective idealists are C S Peirce and (arguably) Plato (although the term 'idealism' was not coined until the early modern period.)

    ↪Mww
    :up:
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    ↪ssu
    ↪jorndoe
    What scares me is the effect of a probable and severe US downturn on the world economy generally. Europe already is stagnating, plus it now has the additional burden of compensating for Trump's treachery in Ukraine. Here in Australia things are humming along OK but we're a minnow in world economic terms, and if there's a big worldwide downturn it is bound to affect us. Almost every economist agrees that the tarrif policy is going to be a complete disaster. My son has three cafés which have been doing fine but it's a sector that's highly vulnerable to reductions in spending and he's flat out just staying afloat as it is. He's never really seen a real recession - we managed to avoid one in the GFC - but the possibilities are grim.
  • Objectivity and Detachment | Parts One | Two | Three | Four
    Wayfarer and Count Timothy von Icarus may enjoy a recent piece written by James Ungureanu, "The Perfume of an Empty Vase: The Rise and Fall of Evidential Religion." — Leontiskos

    Very good. I have a précis of Harrison's earlier Fall of Man and Foundations of Science and have read other articles of his. I think that 'history of ideas' approach is indispensable for understanding the present.
  • What is faith
    Does Buddhism have a word for faith? Do they reject its content? — Gregory

    ‘Saddha’, meaning ‘to place one’s heart upon’. It’s less about belief, more about insight, in the Buddhist context. It’s a very difficult distinction to grasp because it is nearly always looked at through faith-coloured glasses.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪Ludwig V
    I think Trump is acting spontaneously out of his admiration of Putin. He wants the power Putin has to destroy enemies and have journalists killed. Putin represents Trump’s idealized vision of a strong man, the man that Trump can never be but aspires to be. But Putin is not actually that strong, he’s the cunning and lucky thug that Yeltsin passed the torch to, so even in that Trump is wrong.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    But I don't buy the idea that Trump is simply an agent of Putin. — Ludwig V

    I don’t think Putin or Russia did anything to cultivate Trump as an asset, but that nevertheless that is what he has become, much to Russia’s surprise and delight. It’s beyond their wildest dreams, something they could never have engineered.
  • What is faith
    are the purpose of koans to bring out faith? — Gregory

    It’s rather odd to ask this question in this context. A Zen koan is a deliberately puzzling or paradoxical challenge intended to demonstrate the inadequacy of discursive knowledge in the pursuit of satori. That is quite a different thing to what is usually understood as religious faith.
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪Banno
    Couldn’t resist - the values are qualitative. Hence, qualia. And goodnight.
  • Ontology of Time
    What is the value of the subjective field three centimetres in front of of you nose? — Banno

    The question is not apt, because the subject is ‘that to whom experience occurs’. The subject never appears as ‘that’. Another person may appear objective to you, but the fact that you refer to them with proper pronouns (he or she) recognises that they too are subjects of experience.

    I can see I’ve opened a can of worms by bringing in Kastrup. I might start another thread on him. But I’m logging out for the evening, have a nice one.
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪Banno
    As I said - it's simply an analogy. The atoms of physicalism are nowadays understood as 'excitations of fields'. The fact that the mind might be understood in terms of an excitation of a field is analogous. That is all.

    This could be so, and is similar to Whitehead. — PoeticUniverse

    Quite right .
  • Ukraine Crisis
    It's so transparently fallacious: every day, Russia is still sending waves of killer drones and missiles, attacking on several fronts, and causing and sustaining casualties. When Trump says that Ukraine 'does not want peace', does that mean, they refuse to just lay down their arms and stop trying to intercept those missiles? It's blatantly ridiculous. Trump has made America the mouthpiece of Putin's propaganda. Congress and the Senate should be screaming blue murder.
  • Ontology of Time
    The bit where you think you have the answer, but don't. — Banno

    No worse than thinking there's no question.
  • Ontology of Time
    When are you going to wake up to the fact that I understand Kastrup's 'arguments' perfectly well, and yet do not agree, in fact find them nonsensical — Janus

    Kastrup has PhD's in computer science and philosophy.

    Where Kastrup entered the conversation again, was in the other thread, as the commentary you provided on Wittgenstein was from Kastrup's website, The Essentia Foundation. It contained this paragraph:

    Moreover, not only is Wittgenstein self-conscious about the contingency of our sense-making; he is also self-conscious about a problematical idealism that it seems to entail, where by ‘idealism’ is meant the view that what we make sense of is dependent on how we make sense of it[Editor’s note: this is not the objective idealism promoted by Essentia Foundation, which does entail the existence of states of affairs that are not contingent on human cognition].

    That was what prompted me to google 'Objective idealism', and the quote I gave here, was from an essay by Kastrup on that subject. It was provided to distinguish objective idealism from the trivalising way in which it is generally depicted as implying 'the world is the product of an individual's mind' or is 'all in the mind'.

    what values does Kastrup set for each point in the subjective field? — Banno

    Bernardo Kastrup's 'field of subjectivity' is a way of describing mind or consciousess as a universal that manifests through manifold particular forms. In plain language, he's saying that what we think of as individual minds—your or my consciousness, that of living beings generally—are not completely separate but rather are localized within a broader, all-encompassing field of awareness. But that should be a separate discussion. I brought up Kastrup because of a comment made in another thread.

    In any case it is implausible that quantum mechanics has any determinable implications for the metaphysical realism vs idealism debate. — Janus

    :rofl: The 'nature of the wave function' is the single most outstanding philosophical problem thrown up by quantum physics. To this day, Nobel-prize winning theorists still do not agree on what it is, and that disagreement is completely metaphysical as a matter of definition (i.e. cannot be resolved by observation, but related to the meaning of what has been observed.)

    ↪Tom Storm
    Thank you Tom.
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