An excellent concise and accurate statement of the interactive dualism theory of mind

Creation by divine fiat? Sure... but why do mind and matter have to be created external to God? It implies God not being infinite... God is a mind? If God is still infinite, what use is a mind? Does God have a body ~ then God is not infinite. Actually, why does God need a mind and a body? How does God make them interact? Where did God get a separate mind and body to begin with? What is God creating from? The void? Itself? Why does an infinite being just not create fully within itself? That's what the Hindu Brahman is ~ a transcendental cosmic principle that contains reality within.

I don't understand how God being Infinite would mean there's no use for a mind?

Also unclear to me that bodies have to be finite. Consider the idea that all true soul-bodies of all conscious entities are infinite, and your current body is merely a temporary incarnation within what Attanasio calls the "Cosmic Immensity" of your soul. Perhaps, however, the term "body" to you depends on a limitation?

Besides that I agree God making stuff out of Nothing is logically flawed.

I don't understand how God being Infinite would mean there's no use for a mind?

Minds I consider to be finite things, thus we can distinguish them from not-mind ~ and from other minds. If something is infinite, it cannot be comprehended or observed. Besides... maybe something appears to be "infinite" to our senses, but is actually just finite, albeit vast.

Also unclear to me that bodies have to be finite. Consider the idea that all true soul-bodies of all conscious entities are infinite, and your current body is merely a temporary incarnation within what Attanasio calls the "Cosmic Immensity" of your soul. Perhaps, however, the term "body" to you depends on a limitation?

A "body" I consider to be form, and all known forms are describable, thus being finite in quality, and so, knowable. I consider even soul-bodies to be finite ~ just really vast in scope and nature. An "infinite body" thus to me is a oxymoron ~ it cannot exist, because there is nothing to observe or distinguish compared to something else. The essential existence of a soul might be infinite ~ but for that to exist, it must take form, thus it must take on a "body", even if the nature of it is something too vast to comprehend.

Besides that I agree God making stuff out of Nothing is logically flawed.

Unless Nothing is also part of God, in which case the distinction becomes meaningless...

Unless Nothing is also part of God, in which case the distinction becomes meaningless...

Well I don't think this would make sense logically.

Nothing is just total absence. Admittedly I think this is more an abstraction, with the Real being Eternal, as I lean toward some Monism like Panentheism though I would rather "theism" use the more neutral moniker of the One than "God". The One might be a Person, or it might be common grounding of the Many...or some other option.

A potter makes things out of clay, because the potential to be whatever the potter sculpts - cups, vases, etc - lay in the clay. Causality is not just the active action of the potter (or the active action of fire, electricity, and so on) but also the receptiveness of the clay (or the receptiveness of wood to burning, the receptiveness of wiring for conduction, and so on).

But there cannot be potential in literal Nothing, and as such no receptiveness to God's creative activity....whatever "God" is...

Well I don't think this would make sense logically.

Nothing is just total absence. Admittedly I think this is more an abstraction, with the Real being Eternal, as I lean toward some Monism like Panentheism though I would rather "theism" use the more neutral moniker of the One than "God". The One might be a Person, or it might be common grounding of the Many...or some other option.

A potter makes things out of clay, because the potential to be whatever the potter sculpts - cups, vases, etc - lay in the clay. Causality is not just the active action of the potter (or the active action of fire, electricity, and so on) but also the receptiveness of the clay (or the receptiveness of wood to burning, the receptiveness of wiring for conduction, and so on).

But there cannot be potential in literal Nothing, and as such no receptiveness to God's creative activity....whatever "God" is...

Well... we can sort of "experience" to a total absence... but that just appears as it is ~ a complete skip in time and awareness. But we have no memories or recall of such a state. What about Void experiences in NDEs? Is that an experience of Nothing?

For me... Nothing is merely the appearance of total absence, where there appears to be the absence of anything at all, because as you say, there is no such thing as literal Nothing. But there can be potential even in something at perfect stillness. Just potential not made manifest or existent, so not appearing to be potential.

For there be Some-thing, there must be No-thing ~ finity can only exist in infinity, in contrast.

In spiritual and mystical traditions, there is the concept of Nothingness before Creation, though that may be more of a conceptual thing that our minds require due to being entities that exist and think within a forward, continuous flow of time in space.

[Laird]

Valmar,

Let's start with these:

You are limiting yourself by the framework by which you force everything to need to fit into, because that is how your logic rigidly works.

Can you think past the rigidity of your definitions?

Please, criticise ideas, not people for holding them.

Moving on:

We've established that you are not a covert idealist: you recognise a genuine distinction between that which experiences and that which does not.

You attempt, though, to minimise this distinction, which brings us to the next potential set of meaningful differences between us which ground that minimisation. It seems to me that you claim that (and this is paraphrased):

1. Experience can be extended; that it can have a form, or, in my terms, that it can be (at the same time as being experience) a type of matter ("stuff"), by which you seem to intend something like dual-aspect monism given that earlier in the thread you referenced that term.
   
2. The experiencer (mind) simply is its extended, formal experience.
   
3. The "stuff" outside of experience is no different than the "stuff" of experience.
   
4. Therefore, it is possible for the experiencer (mind) to extend the scope of its experience to incorporate adjacent stuff from outside of its experience into itself as experience.
   
5. Some experiencers (minds) can choose to do exactly that.
   

I don't think that any of these claims stand up to scrutiny. Taking them one by one:

1. Experience is subjective and qualitative, and therefore is not the sort of phenomenon that can be extended. At most it can have the subjective quality of extension by, for example, being an experience of an extended object, including, for example, the experience of the biological body of the experiencer.

Moreover, claiming, with reference to dual-aspect monism, that experience has another "aspect" than the experiential not only fails the test of parsimony, but redefines that term. It is like saying that numbers have another "aspect" than the numerical. It is strictly absurd.

2. The claim that experience constitutes an experiencer is mistaken for the reason I gave in previous posts: that experience is contingent on the experiencer, and thus that the experiencer is logically prior to its experiences, which thus cannot constitute it. Rather than being constitutive of an experiencer (mind), experience is undergone by - often enough volitionally - an experiencer (mind).

Therefore, experience can at most correlate with an extended form (i.e., with some sort of "stuff"; the "matter" pole of the mind-matter duality). It cannot be an extended form. I get that affirming this correlation is tempting when starting out from a monistic idealist framework, on which (inner) experience has an outer "appearance", and I've entertained it too, but, again, parsimony militates against this: it is not necessary to make this affirmation, and it seems to serve no useful purpose.

3. Given the above, the "stuff" outside of experience therefore is different than experience itself: the latter is subjective, qualitative, and non-extended - not a type of "stuff" - whereas the former is non-subjective, quantifiable, and extended - a type of "stuff".

4. Therefore, the experiencer (mind) cannot extend the scope of its actual experience into (as) the stuff beyond it.

5. Therefore, it cannot choose to do so.

None of this is, though, to deny the possibility that in various more spiritual realms an experiencer can manifest and control a form which it both experiences as itself (as we experience our physical bodies) and projects to others. Nor is it to deny the possibility that a mind or collective of minds can - as, for example, by delegation of the divine power of creativity - create with their own intent, whether deliberately or accidentally, an entity with its own mind and associated form, such as a so-called egregore.

One more specific response to the post to which I'm responding before moving on:

If they (tables, chairs, etc) are the experiences of the singular Experiencer, then they are contingent on and private to that Experiencer, so how on earth do the (other) plural experiencers simultaneously experience them as their own private experiences, and not just from a singular perspective (which one would expect given a singular Experiencer), but from their own unique perspectives?

Because each incarnate experiencer is perceiving through a similar human frame, which shapes the quality of experience to be rather similar.

You miss the point: the relationship between experience and experiencer is one-to-one. The experiences of the singular Experiencer (and of any experiencer) are thus private and unique to it; it is not possible for one experiencer to have the experiences of another (that is, not literally; of course, via telepathy they can be perceived indirectly).

While you agree with me that idealism is incoherent, you don't seem to recognise this incoherence.

Returning now, having laid out some groundwork, to your post to which I'd deferred a response, and sticking to the bits that remain relevant after our subsequent exchange and the above:

All metaphysics have some kind of origin "story" as it were. You cannot "reduce" Monism to Dualism, as that doesn't make logical sense.

The basis on which you argue for monism though seems to be the minimisation of the distinction between that which experiences and that which does not experience, based in turn on a minimisation of the significance of experience itself. The above shows that this minimisation is mistaken. Experience is radically different from non-experience, and thus the experiencer (who experiences) is radically different from that which does not experience.

Your idea of God-as-a-person is also an origin story ~ with God as the Monad, the first entity, the first mind, that came before creation. So, ironically, I can reduce your Dualism to Monism.

Again, there are many ways of counting when it comes to monism versus pluralism. In this context, I count types of substance, not their origins, thus: substance dualism (mind versus matter as distinct substances).

Again, you seem to not comprehend or understand what I am describing ~ I have never described infinity "transmuting" into something else. Everything is still infinity ~ just a manifestation, a form, resulting from the limitation of infinity into finity, giving form and existence.

This, along with your earlier, explicit affirmation - that "infinity is the foundational or fundamental entity for me. It is existence and beingness in its purest, fullest sense" - simply affirms my point: by "infinity" all you really mean is "being", so your argument for monism reduces to "all beings have being, therefore monism". This, though, is based on a denial of the radical differences in types of being, i.e., actual substances: those which experience and those which do not.

But you don't leave it unspecified ~ you believe that a God-as-a-person created a reality where there is mind and matter, where you reduce God-as-a-person to being a creative being, a mind

There is no reduction in being a creative being!

In any case, I tend towards (without being thoroughly committed to) dualism about original minds too - perhaps best described as "ditheistic moral dualism" - which presupposes both morally good and morally evil minds while not stipulating how they arose, and thus potentially allows for the presupposition of matter too, without stipulating how it arose either, so the way you've summarised my view so definitively is not correct.

thus unwitting creating a Monism of mind where this mind can, for... no logical reason, create a separate substance that is not God...

There very definitely is a logical reason: minds (of which God is one), being characterised by experience, which itself is subjective and qualitative, are not subdividable, so if you want other minds and a realm into which for them to incarnate, you need a new (non-minded) substance.

I've pointed this out already though, so we're starting to go around in circles. The point of diminishing returns draws near.

which is more complicated than matter just being an extension of God with particular qualities.

Hence, I suggested the panentheistic possibility of God having a "body". That body would be an "extension", recognising that there is a clear distinction between mind (which experiences and is non-extended) and body (matter, which does not, except via embodied mind, and which is extended).

It is unsatisfying to just handwave away the problems of interaction as not being so because you don't see the problem, maybe not even being able to acknowledge the problem...

I haven't seen any cogent explanation of why interaction would be a genuine problem, so there is nothing to acknowledge.

The handwaving, it seems to me, is from those who assert that there's a problem. "It's like, how could they interact, man? I mean, they're, like, two different substances." I don't find this at all convincing. I've seen no actual reason given.

This is even more convoluted... why would "God" need to have a body...?

See above.

I (have come to) see it differently than mind "contorting" itself. I don't see mind as extended in the first place, so it can't be contorted in that sense. Rather, its field of awareness can be extended, to the degree that it experiences a body as though that body was a true part of itself, via that extended field of awareness.

Then "mind" can extend itself... if it can be a field.

You're misunderstanding what I mean by "field of awareness". I just mean the scope which the experience covers, not a literally extended thing.

If a collective of souls, spirits, can conjure existences outside of themselves in the ground of infinity, then this sphere of incarnate reality can exist as such.

As above re idealism and the experiences of the singular Experiencer, you miss the point: if dream reality is the experience of some (dreaming) experiencer, then that experience is private and unique to that experiencer, and there must be some means by which it is transformed and transmitted to the other participants in the "dream" so that they can have their own corresponding experience from their own perspectives.

In any case, I've reconsidered the two options I proposed: "firstly, that we are in a base physical reality; secondly, that there is no physical reality and we are all just minds". On dualism, the first option doesn't make sense after all: minds cannot truly be "in" physical reality; they can only correlate and interact with it. The question of the true location of minds then is a curious one whether one adopts monism or dualism. It might not even be meaningful except on a higher conceptual understanding on which "location" as we literally mean it is a sort of metaphor for that higher understanding.

We haven't really agreed on a definition [of "substance" --Laird], frankly.

Well, I agree with the definition you quoted in post #113, so I'm not sure what we supposedly disagree on.

You are using it in the sense of almost... physical stuff.

I'm saying that there are two types of substance (fundamental being). One is instantiated as minds - which experience - and the other is instantiated as matter, broadly conceived as any "stuff"-like substance (which does not experience except indirectly via embodied minds).

Experience [...] is substance like all else.

I think it's clear from the above why in my view this assertion - along with (perhaps even motivating) the five claims which I refuted top-of-post - is badly wrong.

I agree ~ an experiencer that is truly not experiencing... is an existence in isolation, beyond perception, even to itself. It would have no form, no perceived existence, it would be logically infinite, having no qualities. Yet it would exist, undoubtedly.

And yet at the same time you think that an experiencer is its experiences ("experiencers are defined by experiences"). How can it be its experiences if it can exist without them?

I have felt the experience of being able to extend and expand my mind

Notice that it was an experience. That alone doesn't justify the inference that your mind was literally expanding.

I have not stated such a thing. People experience personal Gods, but that does not mean that the experienced entity is the same as the transcendental that defies proper description or experience. The personal God is not experienced as infinite light or the godhead. They are distinct concepts.

Re the bit I've coloured orange: you very much implied it. Your original claim which started this part of the exchange was that there is no evidence for a personal God. When I presented evidence, you dismissed it as either mere experiences which aren't literal, or (by implication, false) religious interpretations, and countered with "mystical experiences of an infinite light, of the godhead, that mystics experience", etc. If you didn't intend such experiences as disproof of a personal God, then why bring them up in this context?

You differentiate Krishna from Brahman, but, in fact, Krishna is the personal aspect of Brahman, not a distinct entity, thus nor is Brahman the "source" of Krishna.

Then you do not understand Hinduist philosophy if you're going to make such a claim. Perhaps brush up on what Brahman is, and how the very gods themselves relate to it. Brahman has no "personal" aspect as such ~ everything in existence is rooted in Brahman proper:

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

Interestingly, the very quote you provided from that article notes that (links and footnotes elided; orange added by me) "Brahman is discussed in Hindu texts with the concept of Atman (Sanskrit: आत्मन्, 'Self'), personal, impersonal or Para Brahman, or in various combinations of these qualities depending on the philosophical school."

Brahman, then, even according to your own citation as quoted does have a personal aspect, at least according to some philosophical schools.

Scroll down a little further under the heading Bhakti movement and you can find this (orange added by me): "[Nirguna Brahman and Saguna Brahmanand are] the same Brahman, but viewed from two perspectives, one from Nirguni knowledge-focus and other from Saguni love-focus, united as Krishna (an 8th incarnation of Lord Vishnu) in the Gita."

Then check out the article on Krishna, in which scholar Edwin Bryant is quoted on the Bhagavata Purana (orange added by me): "The tenth book promotes Krishna as the highest absolute personal aspect of godhead – the personality behind the term Ishvara and the ultimate aspect of Brahman."

Krishna and Brahman can then be seen to be two different aspects of the same reality, at least according to some philosophical schools and some scriptures, with Krishna being the personal aspect of the Supreme Reality.

Hence, the existence of a personal (Supreme) God on Hinduism, albeit that it's a more complicated than that.

[Laird]

Returning as promised to your questions, Sci:

If two substances interact, does that indicate they are the same substance?

No.

Can two substances have their own causal explanations, or does there have to ultimately be one explanation for all causation? If the two substances interact, then are there three causal explanations?

To me, a causal explanation is one that is given in a specific context, e.g., the "causal explanation" of the ball flying into the back of the net is that Johnny kicked it with his soccer boot, causing it to embark on its trajectory.

This doesn't seem to be what you mean. Can you please define what you do mean by a "causal explanation", perhaps providing an example?

Can the One be a Person yet also not a Person?

No. A person is a conscious being. One either is or is not conscious, and thus either is or is not a person. (With the caveat that it is possible for persons to temporarily be unconscious, as when under general anaesthetic, not that I expect that that would ever be the case for a Person with a capital P).

If the One is not a Person, does this mean the Many are uncreated & Eternal existing on some common Ground of the Real?

That's an important question, because it points to the implausibility of mind (persons) arising from non-mind (matter). This is why I think that starting with mind (Mind or minds), even if also with matter, makes more sense than starting with some amorphous "infinity", from which it is hard to understand the origin of minds, as Valmar prefers to do.

As that implies, my direct answer is: very probably, yes; it's unclear how they could otherwise come into existence.

To me, a causal explanation is one that is given in a specific context, e.g., the "causal explanation" of the ball flying into the back of the net is that Johnny kicked it with his soccer boot, causing it to embark on its trajectory.

This doesn't seem to be what you mean. Can you please define what you do mean by a "causal explanation", perhaps providing an example?

I mean something akin to the argument from Aquinas that all Causal Ordering is due to the Supreme Intellect, in short because for such a relation to hold one needs both cause & effect (result) to exist....yet the only way the result could exist before it comes as an effect is in a Mind.

Very short summary of the argument, but this is what I had in mind.

Another example would be the idea of Powers given by Anjum & Mumford, among other like Nancy Cartwright.

Yet another is the Pan-Experiential "Liberal Naturalism" of Gregg Rosenberg where Consciousness is the "Carrier" of causation.

I hope the examples provide clarity to what I was looking for, but I can try to explain further if need be.

[Laird]

I hope the examples provide clarity to what I was looking for, but I can try to explain further if need be.

It seems that by "a causal explanation" you mean the basis or grounding of causality: why and how it is that one thing can cause another in the first place, and in the most general sense.

In that case, I don't really have an answer to your original question:

Can two substances have their own causal explanations, or does there have to ultimately be one explanation for all causation? If the two substances interact, then are there three causal explanations?

I'm agnostic on this. I haven't pursued or even considered the question of the basis of causality with the same interest that you have. I'll just make this observation: that it seems that minds as substances have a causal power that matter as a substance doesn't seem to have, that being the power to originate rather than merely participate causally.

Beyond that, who knows what the answer to your questions are? I tend towards thinking that there's ultimately one explanation though.

Valmar,

Let's start with these:



Please, criticise ideas, not people for holding them.

Apologies, but it does seem to get a little hard in moments, when it is hard to separate idea from person, when the seeming lack of comprehension gets frustrating. At times, it seems like the ideas themselves are not the problem, but the strong of belief with which we hold them.

Moving on:

We've established that you are not a covert idealist: you recognise a genuine distinction between that which experiences and that which does not.

You attempt, though, to minimise this distinction, which brings us to the next potential set of meaningful differences between us which ground that minimisation. It seems to me that you claim that (and this is paraphrased):

1. Experience can be extended; that it can have a form, or, in my terms, that it can be (at the same time as being experience) a type of matter ("stuff"), by which you seem to intend something like dual-aspect monism given that earlier in the thread you referenced that term.
   
2. The experiencer (mind) simply is its extended, formal experience.
   
3. The "stuff" outside of experience is no different than the "stuff" of experience.
   
4. Therefore, it is possible for the experiencer (mind) to extend the scope of its experience to incorporate adjacent stuff from outside of its experience into itself as experience.
   
5. Some experiencers (minds) can choose to do exactly that.
   

There is no "minimization" of the distinction, so much as a recognition that the distinctions are themselves overlaid by the Experiencer onto their Experiences. It is an understanding I've reached through contemplation of not only personal experience, but also many mystical experiences where the Experiencer witnesses merging with or joining the Godhead, as it were ~ becoming one with the universe. Logically, the distinctions between Experiencer and Experiences appear to be stripped away, albeit temporarily.

I don't think that any of these claims stand up to scrutiny. Taking them one by one:

1. Experience is subjective and qualitative, and therefore is not the sort of phenomenon that can be extended. At most it can have the subjective quality of extension by, for example, being an experience of an extended object, including, for example, the experience of the biological body of the experiencer.

Moreover, claiming, with reference to dual-aspect monism, that experience has another "aspect" than the experiential not only fails the test of parsimony, but redefines that term. It is like saying that numbers have another "aspect" than the numerical. It is strictly absurd.

Why can it not? Nowhere have you explain why it explicitly cannot be, when I can feel my body and mind, and notice that I can extend my mind towards my foot, or my sight towards the tree outside my window ~ my foot being down there, and the tree over there. Extension would seem to me to be a natural extension (excuse the pun) of the Self. The Self must extend, else it is just a point in existence, and cannot be a field. Fields, by their nature, are extended. And the Self is everywhere in that field, the Self being the center itself, whatever it chooses the center to be.

2. The claim that experience constitutes an experiencer is mistaken for the reason I gave in previous posts: that experience is contingent on the experiencer, and thus that the experiencer is logically prior to its experiences, which thus cannot constitute it. Rather than being constitutive of an experiencer (mind), experience is undergone by - often enough volitionally - an experiencer (mind).

Per my comprehension of these words, Experiencers logically do not exist prior to Experience. Prior to Experience... there is just an Existence without Experience. An infinite, undefined potential. What is an Experiencer without Experience, if they're not Experiencing?

Therefore, experience can at most correlate with an extended form (i.e., with some sort of "stuff"; the "matter" pole of the mind-matter duality). It cannot be an extended form. I get that affirming this correlation is tempting when starting out from a monistic idealist framework, on which (inner) experience has an outer "appearance", and I've entertained it too, but, again, parsimony militates against this: it is not necessary to make this affirmation, and it seems to serve no useful purpose.

Metaphysics isn't about "useful purpose" ~ it is about frameworks and models, trying to comprehend the nature of what we perceive.

So, per your model, neither the Experiencer *and* Experience, despite being distinct, can be extended...?

If the Experiencer directly, rawly, Experiences being a certain form ~ say, human ~ then the Experiencer is simply extended to the limits they draw around their Experience ~ they define as being this form, and what is Experienced outside of this form is not the Experiencer, despite it still being within Experience.

What do you happens when we perceive something far away with the faculty of sight? Are we the Experiencer not extending ourselves to reach the thing being perceived? What about the sensation of being stared at? Seems to require extension ~ the Experiencer extending itself beyond the body to Experience the sight of another.

It seems that so many of these words become arbitrarily defined ~ and then they become a limiting model of reality, not being reality itself.

3. Given the above, the "stuff" outside of experience therefore is different than experience itself: the latter is subjective, qualitative, and non-extended - not a type of "stuff" - whereas the former is non-subjective, quantifiable, and extended - a type of "stuff".

Only the noumenal is truly outside of Experience ~ the phenomenal is always within Experience. Experience is always in relation to stuff. Only in Experience is the Self, the witness, is not "stuff", because it is non-phenomenal. In this regard, Kant was quite right.

4. Therefore, the experiencer (mind) cannot extend the scope of its actual experience into (as) the stuff beyond it.

Answered above ~ it can, through the senses, which are naturally extensions of Experience and so the Experiencer.

5. Therefore, it cannot choose to do so.

What prevents that? Definitions? In my experience, it appears that it very much can.

None of this is, though, to deny the possibility that in various more spiritual realms an experiencer can manifest and control a form which it both experiences as itself (as we experience our physical bodies) and projects to others. Nor is it to deny the possibility that a mind or collective of minds can - as, for example, by delegation of the divine power of creativity - create with their own intent, whether deliberately or accidentally, an entity with its own mind and associated form, such as a so-called egregore.

This physical realm is also a spiritual realm ~ albeit of a very certain nature. I do not demarcate between mind and associated form, because mind and physical form must overlap perfectly so that the layer of mind that organizes and directly the matter of the physical form can function as it needs to. The mind, in a sense, becomes one with the associated form ~ it must identify with it.

Why else do you think we have Physicalists and Materialists who believe whole-heartedly in their ideologies? The "distinction" is merely one the Experiencer has made, because it is their mental model. In the Physicalist and Materialist bizarre mental model... there is no mind, just brain processes.

One more specific response to the post to which I'm responding before moving on:


You miss the point: the relationship between experience and experiencer is one-to-one. The experiences of the singular Experiencer (and of any experiencer) are thus private and unique to it; it is not possible for one experiencer to have the experiences of another (that is, not literally; of course, via telepathy they can be perceived indirectly).

Ah... my experiences have demonstrated this to also be quite incorrect. I have experienced becoming one in mind with my tiger and loong companions. I have been able to perceive most directly through their memories ~ the world through their memories ~ I've been able to enter their dreams, I have, with some effort, perceived through their senses directly, though that seems to take more effort and energy than dreams or memories. I am even quite privy to their passing emotions and thoughts, if I am focused.

So, all of that directly contradicts your words quite thoroughly. It used to be a surreal experience, now it just feels more and more normalized.

While you agree with me that idealism is incoherent, you don't seem to recognise this incoherence.

I don't believe that Idealism is "incoherent" ~ merely locked in unhelpful definitions that limit and distort how reality perceived. Which is why I was able to look beyond it, because I realized the limits and distortions just got in the way of recognizing what I was perceiving.

Returning now, having laid out some groundwork, to your post to which I'd deferred a response, and sticking to the bits that remain relevant after our subsequent exchange and the above:


The basis on which you argue for monism though seems to be the minimisation of the distinction between that which experiences and that which does not experience, based in turn on a minimisation of the significance of experience itself. The above shows that this minimisation is mistaken. Experience is radically different from non-experience, and thus the experiencer (who experiences) is radically different from that which does not experience.

Everything I speak about is something I deem to be very much within Experience. I only know of myself, the Experiencer, within Experience. If we strip away all Experience ~ not just senses, but thoughts, memories, beliefs, emotions, everything ~ then I become completely undefined ~ I am no longer an Experiencer, as I have no Experiences by which I am defined into being. I am an Existence without form, without purpose, without meaning. Existence in isolation.

So, there is no minimization ~ just a radically different mental model from yours built on a bunch of powerful spiritual experiences that have forced me to expand my mental horizons and shift my views so as to avoid confusion, incoherent thoughts and perhaps even a schism or mental breakdown.

Again, there are many ways of counting when it comes to monism versus pluralism. In this context, I count types of substance, not their origins, thus: substance dualism (mind versus matter as distinct substances).

I do not count these different types of "substances" as being true substances. I count them as derived, with some being indestructible, immortal, eternal, undying ~ qualities that these derived substances appear to have.

I believe in, essentially, a Dualism with a Monist base, though the Dualism can still give rise to a Pluralism. Pluralism on top of Dualism on top of Monism.

This, along with your earlier, explicit affirmation - that "infinity is the foundational or fundamental entity for me. It is existence and beingness in its purest, fullest sense" - simply affirms my point: by "infinity" all you really mean is "being", so your argument for monism reduces to "all beings have being, therefore monism". This, though, is based on a denial of the radical differences in types of being, i.e., actual substances: those which experience and those which do not.

This, again, is a complete misunderstanding of my words. True infinity is prior to being ~ it is neither being nor not-being ~ because it is entirely undefined, except by the unfortunately vague definition of "infinity". Being I equate to form ~ and all forms have qualities and definitions, and so, actual existence.

There is no reduction in being a creative being!

Depends on what we define as a "creative being" ~ for me, the very Source of reality in whole cannot be a Person or have a Mind or have a Body. The Source logically must contain not only all possibilities and qualities, but also possibilities and qualities yet unknown.

Thus the Source of reality, God, Tao, Brahman, etc, must be beyond possibility and quality ~ it contains all of them, yet is none of them distinctly.

Thus Source, God, cannot logically have a Mind or a Body or be a Person ~ it means that God is not Infinite, but is a finite being.

But, if we shift the definition of God a little... then there are infinite Gods, infinite Creators, none of them being Infinity or Source proper, but each inheriting by nature the power to limit and create, to give life to form, to create forms without life yet with quality ~ i.e. physical matter.

In any case, I tend towards (without being thoroughly committed to) dualism about original minds too - perhaps best described as "ditheistic moral dualism" - which presupposes both morally good and morally evil minds while not stipulating how they arose, and thus potentially allows for the presupposition of matter too, without stipulating how it arose either, so the way you've summarised my view so definitively is not correct.

You have certainly made strong allusions towards a stipulation of how you believe they might have arisen, however.

There very definitely is a logical reason: minds (of which God is one), being characterised by experience, which itself is subjective and qualitative, are not subdividable, so if you want other minds and a realm into which for them to incarnate, you need a new (non-minded) substance.

I've pointed this out already though, so we're starting to go around in circles. The point of diminishing returns draws near.

Yet you have, nowhere, explained why God, Source, etc, is a Mind or needs to have one, philosophically.

If Minds are characterized by Experience... then they are defined by it into existence, no?

Minds can easily subdivide within themselves, albeit being in full control of how and why and when and everything else.

I think Minds subdivide all the time, as it were ~ beliefs, thoughts, dreams, emotions, sensory perceptions. It's all arbitrary distinctions, yet we can also draw our own inner distinctions.

So you have provided no meaningful philosophical reasoning for why God, Source, etc, must create something outside of itself that isn't itself, implying that God, Source, isn't infinite.

Hence, I suggested the panentheistic possibility of God having a "body". That body would be an "extension", recognising that there is a clear distinction between mind (which experiences and is non-extended) and body (matter, which does not, except via embodied mind, and which is extended).

That is a Dualistic possibility. I am also Panentheistic ~ albeit of Neutral Monism. So, I do not believe that God can logically have a finite form ~ a body or a mind.

I haven't seen any cogent explanation of why interaction would be a genuine problem, so there is nothing to acknowledge.

The handwaving, it seems to me, is from those who assert that there's a problem. "It's like, how could they interact, man? I mean, they're, like, two different substances." I don't find this at all convincing. I've seen no actual reason given.

Interaction is handwaving because you need an explanation for why distinct things can interact, if they of an entirely different nature. There's a strong reason why pure Dualism has been more and more left behind for Monisms of Materialism, Physicalism, Panpsychism, Idealism, Neutral Monism, Transcendentalism, etc.

Pure Dualism just raises more questions than it has even deigned to answer ~ claiming that there are no problems.

If there's no problem ~ then why do so many perceive such strong problems with Dualist metaphysics? Obviously there is one... and you can't justr

See above.


You're misunderstanding what I mean by "field of awareness". I just mean the scope which the experience covers, not a literally extended thing.

I fail to comprehend the distinction ~ hence I find it unnecessarily arbitrary and confusing.

As above re idealism and the experiences of the singular Experiencer, you miss the point: if dream reality is the experience of some (dreaming) experiencer, then that experience is private and unique to that experiencer, and there must be some means by which it is transformed and transmitted to the other participants in the "dream" so that they can have their own corresponding experience from their own perspectives.

And why does there have to be?

The Experiencer is merely perceiving a slice of the dream reality that the dreamer Experiencer is conjuring for them. The dream reality as a whole is within the Experiencer's Experience, but that does not preclude other participants from joining in on the dream, albeit a limited slice of it as the rules of the dream allow for.

We incarnate being perceive a limited slice of the total physical reality through physical avatars, which are also part of the physical reality, all of which is within the awareness of the spiritual beings who conjure and maintain physical reality. There is no precluding it.

I have entered into the dreams of my astral companions and perceived directly from their point of view in the dream ~ maybe they're vaguely aware of me, maybe they're not. So, it is normally private and unique ~ unless Experiencers come together or come within the reality or dream another has conjured or is themselves within.

In any case, I've reconsidered the two options I proposed: "firstly, that we are in a base physical reality; secondly, that there is no physical reality and we are all just minds". On dualism, the first option doesn't make sense after all: minds cannot truly be "in" physical reality; they can only correlate and interact with it. The question of the true location of minds then is a curious one whether one adopts monism or dualism. It might not even be meaningful except on a higher conceptual understanding on which "location" as we literally mean it is a sort of metaphor for that higher understanding.

I've also consider the nature of location... I think now that minds are wherever they choose to be. My mind, it would seem, currently chooses to be located as my physical body, with the center being just behind the eyes, though perceiving with eyes. My awareness expanding from that center.

But... I am only one aspect of a greater mind ~ the soul. And from experience, my soul has multiple aspects, awarenesses, minds, all operating independently from each other ~ yet able to interact under very particular circumstances, the soul being the bridge.

Well, I agree with the definition you quoted in post #113, so I'm not sure what we supposedly disagree on.

The way we use words like "Experiencer", "Experience", "God", "substance", "being", etc, etc. Our definitions are apparently so alien that we cannot find much common ground.

I'm saying that there are two types of substance (fundamental being). One is instantiated as minds - which experience - and the other is instantiated as matter, broadly conceived as any "stuff"-like substance (which does not experience except indirectly via embodied minds).

And I see this distinction as entirely arbitrary and unnecessary, because it invites confusion as to how two types of fundamental being and substance can interact, if they are different instantiations. Why one can only be extended, and the other not. Why they must be absolutely distinct.

My experience demonstrates that mind can identify as matter without any issue ~ Physicalists and Materialists do it with sobering ease.

But form can also be imbued with awareness ~ thought forms, tulpas, egregores. Even physical forms.

I think it's clear from the above why in my view this assertion - along with (perhaps even motivating) the five claims which I refuted top-of-post - is badly wrong.


And yet at the same time you think that an experiencer is its experiences ("experiencers are defined by experiences"). How can it be its experiences if it can exist without them?

Because of what an "experiencer" is, per the raw definition. An experiencer experiences... so...

Notice that it was an experience. That alone doesn't justify the inference that your mind was literally expanding.

Minds do not extend physically ~ they expand mentally. I experienced literally that. If one can experience it, it is no inference.

Re the bit I've coloured orange: you very much implied it. Your original claim which started this part of the exchange was that there is no evidence for a personal God. When I presented evidence, you dismissed it as either mere experiences which aren't literal, or (by implication, false) religious interpretations, and countered with "mystical experiences of an infinite light, of the godhead, that mystics experience", etc. If you didn't intend such experiences as disproof of a personal God, then why bring them up in this context?

Because you are failing to understand the distinctions...

Perceived personal Gods are experienced, but that does not mean that this is their ultimate nature as perceived, nor does it mean that such entities are equivalent to experiences of an infinite light, godhead or otherwise. You are conflating them, when I perceive them as being qualitatively distinct in nature ~ they are experienced quite different.

But people can and will conflate them based on belief, on the nature of their altered perceptive capabilities and such.

I do not believe that perceived personal Gods are literally "Gods" ~ they are entities, spirits, thought forms, egregore, and otherwise. Vast in nature, perhaps ~ but not an actual God, in any sense. People can misperceive based on the attributes they believe a God has.

Interestingly, the very quote you provided from that article notes that (links and footnotes elided; orange added by me) "Brahman is discussed in Hindu texts with the concept of Atman (Sanskrit: आत्मन्, 'Self'), personal, impersonal or Para Brahman, or in various combinations of these qualities depending on the philosophical school."

Brahman, then, even according to your own citation as quoted does have a personal aspect, at least according to some philosophical schools.

Yes, according to the philosophical school. But within the mystical branches of Hinduism, Brahman has no personal aspects ~ it is impersonal, giving rise to all else that is personal. Only in the more philosophical and religious circles might actual personal qualities be arbitrarily assigned.

Scroll down a little further under the heading Bhakti movement and you can find this (orange added by me): "[Nirguna Brahman and Saguna Brahmanand are] the same Brahman, but viewed from two perspectives, one from Nirguni knowledge-focus and other from Saguni love-focus, united as Krishna (an 8th incarnation of Lord Vishnu) in the Gita."

Again, arbitrarily human assignments. Religion imposed on spiritual and mystical entities.

Then check out the article on Krishna, in which scholar Edwin Bryant is quoted on the Bhagavata Purana (orange added by me): "The tenth book promotes Krishna as the highest absolute personal aspect of godhead – the personality behind the term Ishvara and the ultimate aspect of Brahman."

Krishna and Brahman can then be seen to be two different aspects of the same reality, at least according to some philosophical schools and some scriptures, with Krishna being the personal aspect of the Supreme Reality.

Hence, the existence of a personal (Supreme) God on Hinduism, albeit that it's a more complicated than that.

Yes, but that does not mean that the personal God is literally, absolutely, the same as the transcendent Brahman of the mystical traditions.

In the mystical traditions, even the personal Gods owe their very existence to the transcendent Brahman, making the Gods not much different from humanity.

[Laird]

Valmar,

I do now think that our exchange has reached the point of diminishing returns in which it will only become tedious and repetitive from here on, so I'll simply make a couple of final(ish) points:

Firstly, I think the main mistake (from my perspective) that you make is to confuse experience of with experience as.

The distinction is clearer in some scenarios than in others. For example, the experience of the computer screen in front of us is obviously not an experience as the computer screen in front of us.

It's slightly less clear in the case of our bodies, but we know that we can exist in the absence of our bodies, so clearly the experience of our bodies is not an experience as our bodies.

My contention is that this extends to all experience. You say, for example, that you have experienced your mind expanding, and you interpret this as an experience as your mind expanding. I say in turn that you are not justified in drawing that inference, and that all that can safely be said is that it was an experience of your mind expanding.

No experience of is an experience as because the experiencer cannot "touch" themself, just as the tip of the finger cannot touch itself.

Secondly, and relatedly:

As above re idealism and the experiences of the singular Experiencer, you miss the point: if dream reality is the experience of some (dreaming) experiencer, then that experience is private and unique to that experiencer, and there must be some means by which it is transformed and transmitted to the other participants in the "dream" so that they can have their own corresponding experience from their own perspectives.

And why does there have to be?

Because, presumably, the dream reality is merely one of subjective experience, and a subjective experience with respect to a perceived "outer" reality has some unique perspective on it. Therefore, if there is to be more than one percipient of the dream reality, there needs to be a way to translate it into an appropriate perspective for each percipient.

I'm not sure what you consider a dream reality to be if not a subjective experience.

In any case, I hope to explore this more in the Physicalism Redux thread with Sci.