The Pervasive Worship of the Intellect
Mathematical proofs are applicable to manifestations, not their source.
When I'm not liking tweets supporting the segment of the population speaking out against tyranny and the accompanying transfer of wealth and power to the elite class, I've been continuing to explore philosophical discussions regarding the role of consciousness in reality. It’s blindingly obvious to me that every single issue that’s on everyone’s radar at the moment can be traced back to the prevalent misapprehension of reality that dominates our age, irrespective of the wide range of positions we all hold. Anyway, I've recently been captivated by Bernardo Kastrup's efforts in the resurrection of idealist thought through his ontology of Analytic Idealism. Yesterday I came across the following YouTube panel discussion hosted by the Essentia Foundation. Most interesting to me was the exchange over the last 15 minutes or so between Don Hoffman and the other panel members, addressing Hoffman's concern that widespread acceptance of a consciousness-primary ontology will require a mathematical proof to gain acceptance:
Hoffman's premise that an idealist philosophical foundation cannot become widely accepted until a precise, testable mathematical model can be developed relies on the assumption that humanity can only arrive at agreement upon the genuine nature of reality by engaging the intellectual aspect of the mind. His error is in this assumption. As as aside, it is interesting that he acknowledges that both relativity and quantum physics assumes spacetime as fundamental (idealism makes no such assumption), but that's an entirely different discussion.
I found it surprising that none of the panelists mentioned the Mind-Math-Matter circularity issue (Penrose’s math-matter-mind triangle. The triangle suggests the circularity of the widespread view that math arises from the mind, the mind arises out of matter, and that matter can be explained in terms of math), nor was the question of whether math was invented or discovered brought up, which has occupied many scholars for some time. For those puzzling about these questions, the triangle problem assumes the materialist premise of equivalency between the mind and the brain, while idealism sees all matter - which naturally includes the brain - as arising from consciousness. The brain is related to conscious experience, but there remains no viable premise - let alone an explanation - of any kind as to how consciousness could possibly arise from inert matter. Idealism sees no triangle problem, it sees only matter arising from consciousness, and mathematics as descriptive of matter, with mind (consciousness) foundational to both. The origin of mathematics question is similarly resolved with a consciousness-primary ontology; as the human mind is regarded as a fragment of the underlying consciousness or mind, mathematics would be regarded as a discovery of an aspect of universal consciousness already extant.
Hoffman's contention is very illustrative of how powerful our core assumptions can be, even for those - like Hoffman - who are entirely sympathetic to and supportive of a consciousness-primary reality. He recognizes that the materialists dominating the most influential positions of the academy will demand a demonstrable proof to abandon materialism, and concludes that the only way to gain traction is by appealing to their intellect. This is his error.
Iain McGilchrist's premise of the Master and its Emissary is a contemporary take on the genuine issue at stake, but to say McGilchrist's position is new is beyond ludicrous. Parmenides addressed this explicitly in the discussion regarding the “roads of inquiry”, when the goddess states, “I hold you back as well from the [road of inquiry] that mortals fabricate, twin-heads, knowing nothing. For helplessness in their chests is what steers their wandering minds as they are carried along in a daze, deaf and blind at the same time: indistinguishable, undistinguishing crowds who reckon that being and non-being are the same but not the same. And, for all of them, the route they follow is a path that keeps turning backwards on itself.”
The path that turns backwards upon itself is the path that assumes that the nature of reality itself can be accessed through application of the intellect to the perceptions that appear on Bernardo Kastrup's “dashboard”. It cannot be so, as idealism posits (correctly) that everything and anything we can perceive or conceive, whether those perceptions appear as physical reality, or as thoughts or emotions that arise independently, or relate to other perceptions, all are manifestations of an underlying consciousness, and it's perfectly reasonable to interpret the quantum field as confirming that premise, at least in respect to the matter that composes the cosmos we inhabit. No one is required to do so, it's not a “proof” of idealism, but it's certainly not contradictory. As difficult as that may be to grasp, even more challenging is the deeper implication, and where “backwards upon itself” is revealed: not only are the entirety of our perceptions manifestations of the core consciousness, but so is the intellect which we’re attempting to interpret and investigate reality with. I'm of the opinion that Parmenides reference to humanity as “twin-heads” is identical to McGilchrist's allegory of the Master and Emissary. The Emissary is the intellect, a wonderful tool that allows exploration and manipulation of the manifestations of reality, but the source of the manifestations can only be known - indeed is already known, if not yet realized - by the Master, that aspect of the mind that is ignored and drowned out as the Emissary is unleashed upon the world. It’s the noise the Emissary creates in response to the perceptions on our 4D screen (Kastrup’s Dashboard) that blinds us to the very existence of the screen through its fixation on the visual, auditory and emotional images that appear on the screen. (4D is not a typo - it’s intended as representative of the auditory and emotional components that appear on our screen of perception).
To suggest that idealist philosophy can only be demonstrated by development of mathematical formulas is no more reasonable than demanding that love, fear, compassion, anger, contempt or any other emotional state requires a mathematical proof to validate. All of these emotional states are universally accepted as true, not because we have been convinced of them, or were demonstrated to us via mathematical proof, but because we are all intimately familiar with them on an intuitive level.
All that said, philosophy itself is ultimately impotent in providing a demonstrable proof of the nature of reality in any form, mathematical or otherwise; it can only provide a conceptual framework within which the genuine nature of reality can be directly realized. This is how and why Kastrup's efforts to provide that framework by presenting idealism as an analytic argument are so enormously valuable. Simply by presenting his arguments clearly while engaging reason, he creates the conditions in which significant doubt can arise in the listener regarding the foundational assumptions behind not just our current science, but all of society and human relations. The point here is that once one entertains the slightest bit of doubt regarding prior assumptions, they'll simultaneously discover the necessary humility to entertain alternatives to their prior assumptions, which in turn can raise questions about other assumptions, and so on.
The genuine nature of reality will forever remain knowable only through direct insight, realization, and experience, and of all the sciences, the only discipline that can assist with, or encourage, direct personal insight and realization is psychology. It is in understanding, from a first person perspective, the fundamental psychological processes at work, that each of us can create the inner condition that provides fertile ground for insights. This is turn requires understanding that one needs only to quiet the intellect, and arrive at an inner perspective that includes witnessing our own intellectual processes. It is a meditative state of mind that we're aspiring to, but accepting that acquiring a meditative state of mind requires meditative practice will often serve only to further obscure the fact that the meditative state is the default state of mind. It's ordinary and deeply grounded, and extraordinary only in it's simplicity. It's what's left when we stop thinking all the fucking time.
Of all of the approaches to psychology in existence at the moment, it is the Three Principles approach that holds the most promise, and it also dovetails perfectly with idealism. That said, many 3P practitioners today appear to me to be themselves misunderstanding its enormous implications, and engaging in largely superficial applications of whatever understanding they may have arrived at. Even those who do grasp it firmly tend to underestimate the consequences and implications of the widespread failure of humanity to understand their own psychological processes - especially among those currently regarded as the mentally “healthy” population. As I discussed in the linked post above, the Three Principles suggests that we’re all existing moment to moment on a hierarchy of levels of consciousness, and given the current state of the world and it’s alarming obsession with tyranny at the moment, one isn’t engaging in extreme judgment to observe that the collective level of consciousness is not particularly high. (And yes, I do recognize that my own alarm regarding the rise of tyranny is reflective of my own reactivity to what’s appearing on my personal 4D screen, which effects my personal level of consciousness).
Regardless, Hoffman's contention that acceptance of a consciousness-primary ontology is dependent upon acceptance of mathematical proof relies on a faulty assumption that demonstrates how pervasive the worship of the intellect is today. It may be centuries away, but the day will eventually come when idealism is universally accepted, when genuine happiness and contentment will be commonplace, when it's understood that the intellect is a valuable tool for navigation of the manifestations of reality, nothing more, and is treated as such, and finally, when this era is primarily recognized for the profound and widespread neurosis that prevailed. The evaluation of our era will be, “Wow. Were those people nuts.”
That day won't arrive via mathematical proof, it will arrive once mankind understands what it means to use the intellect, and not be used by it.