On Oct 14, 5:32 am, Colin Geoffrey Hales <c.ha....domain.name.hidden>
wrote:
> Indeed I would hold that our subjective experience (subjectivity)is our
> one and only intimate and complete connection to the underlying reality
> and it is the existence of it (subjectivity) 'at all' which is most
> telling/instructive of the true nature/structure of the underlying
> reality, not the appearances thus delivered by subjectivity.
Yes, and as I've said, I was trying to convey the essence of this
thought with what became (unfortunately) confused with 1-person primacy
on this list. I'd be grateful for help on reformulating this more
coherently if possible. The heart of it is the primary intension of
'exists', whose fons et origo I take to be: 'exists in the sense that I
exist subjectively'. The problem is that as soon as one formulates it
in this way, all sorts of unlooked for windmills spring up for the Don
Quixotes of the logical mind to struggle with. Somehow one must avoid
being distracted into grappling with pseudo-problems of pansychism,
idealism, solipsism etc. - in their timeworn academic clothing - and
focus on the embeddedness, or 'here-ness' that is central to this
primary sense of 'exists', and see that everything else is somehow
derivative of, or emergent from, this primary intension. And, as you
say, by this token we are of course ourselves directly rooted in this
reality, whatever it is.
> The belief that the
> 'underlying reality is actually made of quantum mechanics (as opposed to
> being merely described by it) to me looks like a mass delusion of the most
> bizarre kind.
One implication of this (which I think is also implied by comp) is that
1-person experience derives from a more complex instantiation than the
3-person narrative that emerges from it. That is, there is a global
instantiation level of sufficient complexity to express 1-person
existence 'qualitatively'. At this level, qualitative modalities -
'qualia' - also function as stripped-down 'relata', encoding '3-person
worlds' of structure, relation, transaction, and locality. We may
speculate, for example, that our experientially dynamic discrimination
(A-series) of relation and structure (B-series) emerges from the
'unmediated intuitive grasp' of such relational locality within
qualitative globality. All this strongly entails that we will never
find the 1-person within the 3-person. The evidence of course is
perhaps already staring us in the face, were we to accept it as such.
There is nothing at all in the 3-person that looks like, or that we
have any notion could possibly look like, the 1-person. Maybe this is
why.
David
> <snip>
>
> [Colin Hales]
> No, it's better visualised as 'being a not-mirror' :-)
> Imagine you embedded a mirror in your head, but you were only interested
> in everything the mirror was not. That is, the image in the mirror is
> manipulating the space intimately adjacent to the reflecting surface.
> Keep the space, throw the reflecting surface and glass away. What you are
> interested in is 'being' that space, not the mirror. When you do that
> the 'movie screen' that is the experiential field becomes part of you. Yes
> it's a play, only 1 viewer who literally 'is' the theatre, no regressing
> homunculi.
>
> [David Nyman]
> Oddly, I think I *see* what you mean (and I use the term advisedly). One
> of the problems we experience in discussing these issues (certainly I do,
> anyway) is the lack of a really effective way to share powerful
> *visualisations* of what we're proposing. Not everything we're trying to
> express is formalisable (at this stage anyway) in mathematical or
> strictly logical terms. I've tried to express before this image of the
> relationship between what-is-functioning-as-perceiver and
> what-is-functioning-as-percept, and the picture in my head was always
> something like you describe. And the key aspect is that you *are* this
> relationship, your grasp of the situation is unmediated, there is no
> regress. For me, this is the primary intension of 'exists', and it lies
> at the heart of what I confusingly referred to as 1-person primacy -
> meaning only that you can't come by any of this unless you *are* the
> entity in question. The commitment is total - there is no way of
> climbing outside of this to study the situation 'objectively'.
>
> [Colin Hales]
> Glad to 'see' that you 'see'. :-)
>
> It is very interesting to see how much trouble people have with this and
> it is very ironic because it is the position we naturally inhabit (all
> observation is subjectivity), yet the subjectivity delivers the capacity
> to behave objectively so brilliantly we think we have actually stepped
> back from it... but as you say...
>
> "there is no way of climbing outside of this to study the situation
> 'objectively'"
>
> Yet that is what we scientists insist we are doing! Without subjectivity
> there's no 'objectivity' (in the form of an 'as-if' or virtual
> objectivity) to be had. The descriptions we define as 'objective' and
> describe 'objectively' are merely generalisations in respect of
> appearances of what bruno would call 'objective' (actual) reality...what
> it is that is actually there, whatever it is that is the 'underlying
> reality'..... That also delivers the appearances into your brain/via your
> brain, which as actually made of the underlying reality, not of anything
> we divine through the appearances it delivers.
>
> Indeed I would hold that our subjective experience (subjectivity)is our
> one and only intimate and complete connection to the underlying reality
> and it is the existence of it (subjectivity) 'at all' which is most
> telling/instructive of the true nature/structure of the underlying
> reality, not the appearances thus delivered by subjectivity.
>
> As I think I have said before: 'seeing' is evidence of the underlying
> reality and its capcity to deliver 'that which is seen'. The latter
> delivers two sorts of evidence
>
> a) more evidence of the organisation of the underlying reality
> b) what we regard as objective evidence used by scientists in formulations
> of emopirical laws that organise the appearances but tell us nothing about
> the underlying reality because we throw (a) away for no reason other than
> it is our culture to do so.
>
> There's a lot more to observation than merely 'that which is seen'. The
> act of seeing at all is also observation.
>
> Metaphorically... if you hear "X is true" being said you get 2 lots of
> evidence, not one:
> c) some evidence in support of the proposition that "X is true"
> d) more definite evidence of the proposition "somebody said something"
>
> 'that which is seen' corresponds to "X is true"
> The underlying reality is the 'somebody'
>
> Science calls any consideration of the 'somebody' as evidenceless
> non-scientific metaphysics and spurns/eschews it when is is actually
> _more_ evidenced! in that (d) is a better supported claim than (c)
>
> That's about the lot on 'observation' except to wonder when mainstream
> science (in particular cosmology and neuroscience) finally 'get it'. This
> simple cultural foible hides the key to 'everything'. The belief that the
> 'underlying reality is actually made of quantum mechanics (as opposed to
> being merely described by it) to me looks like a mass delusion of the most
> bizarre kind. Thomas Kuhn should be marching up and down with placard
> saying "NO MORE EVIDENCE-ISM" "EVIDENCE DISCRIMINATION UNFAIR TO
> UNDERLYING REALITY". :-)
>
> cheers,
>
> Colin Hales
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Received on Sat Oct 14 2006 - 09:27:37 PDT