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I was wondering what your thoughts were with regards to the nature of reality.
Do you consider reality to be an extension of thought?
Do you consider objects as being thoughts?
Or even living beings in their own right?
(Albeit a different order of life altogether.)
How does that relate to panpsychism and to animism?
Do you consider panpsychism and animism as being two sides of a singular coin?
This is an idea that I think is really worthy of consideration. We were churning this out during a conversation this weekend on a live panel.
I have time-stamped the specific part of the conversation for convenience
So I thought to bring it here and share it with you guys. What do you think? What are your views?
Ps. Sorry I couldnt embed the stream here as it was a livestream and WF struggles with video recordings of liveStreams
Objects are not physical.
There exists a physical reality independent of the mind, but as you separate it into distinct things it is already inside your head several layers of abstraction deep.
Now I'm intrigued.
What exactly is it ypo've observed in your "observation of commonly accessible reality", that proves that "there exists a physical reality independent of the mind"?
Is reality not observed through the mind, by the mind using the mind to formulate reality?
Is neuroscience wrong when it suggests that all the information from the senses, apart from smell, of course, all route via the Thalamus and is sent and then processed as follows? vision via occipital lobe, hearing, the temporal lobe, Taste & Touch the parietal lobe and lastly Smell, the temporal lobe, after which the brain binds them all together in the associative regoions under control of the parietal lobe and a cohesive sense of reality is imagined. The whole process is not unlike the formation of a dream really, only difference is muscles are deactivated along with the prefrontal cortex and the senses in the lymbicd system becomes highly active.
If so, how can you experience "physical reality"without dreaming it up through your brain, which takes time btw- so even the reality you think you experience is actually retrospective, hence one can only experience the past and not the true present.
Some parts of the experience takes fractions of a second to process and render and other parts of "reality"can take as long as 2 seconds or even 3 or 4.
Reality is a hierarchy of lights gradiated from the God. Everything is graded by intensity of light in opposition to its privation. Physical properties belong to the lower levels as real, yet dusky, corporeal particulars. These are extramental entities that receive or obstruct light; they are not relegated to mental abstractions.
Ooh I like that description, Very creative
Though I would ask:
When you say: " they are not relegated to mental abstractions", you are speaking about mental, tghus the mind. Is this correct?
And the mind and thoughts are very different, wouldnt you agree?
Mind is a fram whereby thoughts are catalogued and processed, however thoughts are are of a different order of being, no?
Sort of how a bread knife processes breat though is vastly of a different order of being to that of the bread it processes, no?
Hence, could those entities be thoughts or thought conbstructs and are thoughts phenomenal in their own right and can tghus influence physical reality and change it directly, right? Terlekinesis, levitation, pyromantics etc...
No. Thought is one kind of phenomenon that arises withing reality. Reality itself is empty in the Buddhist sense - it has no essence. There is nothing you can point to and say "this is what reality actually is." Instead, there are just phenomena that arise and pass away.
No. Living beings are dynamical wholes poised between past and future and engaged in a multi-level dance with their environment by which they are ultimately constituted.
The problem with panpsychism is that it repeats the cardinal sin of most western metaphyics, namely the hypostasization of an objective, aperspectival truth or reality. Animism, as I understand it (and which I identify with), is different: pointing us instead to a reality which is fundamentally relational. It is an invitation to relationship with the world around you and with the multitude of perspectives in which we find ourselves.
Are all thoughts alike? are some not larger and more complex arangements of smaller thoughts as larger entities- like a sea sponge for example?
Why assume that thoughts aren't perceived wholes?
What is the basis for this assumption specifically?
No - pure panpsychism does not at all treat objects with as you put it: "hypostasization of an objective, aperspectival truth" at all. It suggests that the what we might deem to call the "laws of physics", are expressing intelligence, memory and has some degree of consciousness in order for such to be the case. That the viewer and that is viewed are all essentially expressions of conscious activity would be an esoteric premise. btw we arew not allowing the materialists to slant the definition with their own ideologies, though leaving the concept open ended in as much whether chicken or egg came first be irrelevent.
Do objects not have a begining, an ending and "age",k deteriating with time? Thus are they poised between past and future?
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Are all thoughts alike? are some not larger and more complex arangements of smaller thoughts as larger entities- like a sea sponge for example?
Why assume that thoughts aren't perceived wholes?
What is the basis for this assumption specifically?
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No - pure panpsychism does not at all treat objects with as you put it: "hypostasization of an objective, aperspectival truth" at all. It suggests that the what we might deem to call the "laws of physics", are expressing intelligence, memory and has some degree of consciousness in order for such to be the case. That the viewer and that is viewed are all essentially expressions of conscious activity would be an esoteric premise. btw we arew not allowing the materialists to slant the definition with their own ideologies, though leaving the concept open ended in as much whether chicken or egg came first be irrelevent.
Also the fact that reality is relational is not at all changed by the concept. Thats an inference you chose to make thats not really relevant imo.
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Thats an assumption that cant be proved btw, so cant be stated as a fact. Its an opinion. One that contradicts most occult cosmological systems, as well as elements of mysticism. Not that thats some gospel to go by, though its pure materialist nonsense imo. Newto did away with Aether till Cern discovered the quantum field. The definitions of the two ironically dovetail, yet the materialists stubbornly hold to their religious ideologies, calling it science, though its more of a seance really.
Thats an assumption that cant be proved btw, so cant be stated as a fact. Its an opinion. One that contradicts most occult cosmological systems, as well as elements of mysticism. Not that thats some gospel to go by, though its pure materialist nonsense imo. Newto did away with Aether till Cern discovered the quantum field. The definitions of the two ironically dovetail, yet the materialists stubbornly hold to their religious ideologies, calling it science, when it seems its more of a seance really.
Sure, thoughts are also wholes. And I suppose that we perceive our thoughts. But that doesn't mean that objects are thoughts. Objects are features of our environment, while thoughts are basically reflective. I don't think there is any absolute dichotomy between these, but neither one constitutes the other, and for general purposes they are pretty different from each other.
No - pure panpsychism does not at all treat objects with as you put it: "hypostasization of an objective, aperspectival truth" at all. It suggests that the what we might deem to call the "laws of physics", are expressing intelligence, memory and has some degree of consciousness in order for such to be the case.
Right. And what we might deem to call 'the laws of physics' is a hypostasization of an objective, aperspectival truth. It is a claim about an order of being that is absolutely, independently of the relationships though which we know about it. Idealism commits this error just a much as materialism. In short, I am suggesting that we drop speculative theories about "what reality is," which invite us to confuse the map for the territory, and instead pay attention to the ways that meaning, intelligence, embodiment, and materiality dance and co-manifest in our lives and experience.
Thats an assumption that cant be proved btw, so cant be stated as a fact. Its an opinion. One that contradicts most occult cosmological systems, as well as elements of mysticism. Not that thats some gospel to go by, though its pure materialist nonsense imo. Newto did away with Aether till Cern discovered the quantum field. The definitions of the two ironically dovetail, yet the materialists stubbornly hold to their religious ideologies, calling it science, when it seems its more of a seance really.
This ("Thought is one kind of phenomenon that arises withing reality") is about as far from an assumption as one can get. Rather, it is a fairly straightforward experiential report.
This ("Thought is one kind of phenomenon that arises withing reality") is about as far from an assumption as one can get. Rather, it is a fairly straightforward experiential report.
Just pay attention to your experience and ask yourself two questions: First, do thoughts arise? And second, are thought the only kind of phenomena that arises?
Might I ask:
