A Meta-Philosophical view of the epistemic process of understanding

[Anton Rogachevski]

What do you guys think about the diagram?

I think @Leo Gura would say that's it's all God, self aware. Right?

 

The Epistemic Process

Take a look at this diagram that is depicting human understanding as an epistemic process that is grounded in Phenomenology:

The bigger the circle the more foundational it is, and the inner circle is always second order to the outer one because it relies on it as foundation. Interestingly enough, from a phenomenological perspective experience is first order to it’s metaphysical foundation, while from the outside perspective it’s second order. This clearly demonstrated the Epistemic Dualism discussed in Chapter 2.

The fact that our most abstract way of thinking, mathematics, can correspond to physical phenomena and predict it’s behaviour so well suggests to us that most likely the substance of experience may not be separate or that much different than the substance of the concrete.

I think that psychological health is central to the process of forming a coherent and useful idea about reality. As you can see in the diagram: the psychological process is foundational for forming experience and to create accurate labels without much distortion.

It could be in theory that all is known, and that the “unknown” outside of experience will end up being a wrong metaphysical hypothesis. We can’t know really, and if we did, it wouldn’t be unknown. Knowledge might end up being completely circular, pointing back at itself – It’s not a bug but it’s feature.

As you can see the whole diagram, although reaching outside Philosophy to encompass all of knowledge, is at the same time a small little bubble (red dot) situated within philosophy – an idea, an image. This shows the holographic and self recurring nature of the inquiry.

What can we learn?

The first axiom is that there is experience. Can you doubt that you are experiencing this text right now? I don’t mean whether there is or there is not something “behind” your process of perception, but the very fact of having an experience right now in this moment. If you didn’t have it, we couldn’t talk about anything at all. I think experience is foundational in our epistemic process as an epistemic agent having a direct experience, trying to figure it all out.

Quote

“Experiencing is occurring.”

A hypothesis I can draw is that there may be a biological brain that has this experience. It would be odd if experience was just floating in the air experiencing itself. Theoretically however, what lies beyond the event horizon of experience is forever a mystery, and a hypothesis for the experiencer, because she can only have ideas about it, but she can never verify them empirically. That’s why I call all that lies beyond the limit of experience a “metaphysical hypothesis”, not to degrade it, but to stay humble about my ability to know it.

This kind of proposition is not as far fetched because if we manipulate the brain with electrodes, or introduce psychedelic drugs, we can see a noticeable, and sometimes even a radical change in experience, so we can deduce that there must be a relation between the biological processes in the brain and the way experience appears.

It’s tempting I know, to say that we know as absolute fact that the brain is generating or mediating experience, but to our direct experience these would be ideas and not actual reality. To understand what I mean you need to understand the inherently solipsistic structure of experience, and all the radical consequences it entails for what I call: “phenomenological truth” as opposed to Objective Truth.

 

Edited 6 hours ago by Anton Rogachevski

[integral]

Ideas do not need language. Its prior to the language layer on the chart.

Direct experience has a paradigm hard coded. Like distinctions of objects, objects are not all merged together in direct experience. So we have a hard coded default paradigm. With concentration we can change that paradigm but its not sustained.

The biggest issues with this is it flattens phenomemology with physics. We need phenomemology -> ideas -> to know anything at all. Knowing only happends in phenomemological experience, so then to know physics and biology you have to first be something having an experience. 

[Anton Rogachevski]

@integralYes the arrow of idea goes both ways into the metaphysical and the philosophical. But to have an experience I suppose requires to have a biological body sustaining it. So from the experiencers' point of view his experience is first order, but from the big picture if we look at it like that, it's second order.

Edited 7 hours ago by Anton Rogachevski

[Leo Gura]

You are framing experience in physics, which is incorrect.

Physics is inside of experience, and experience is unframed because it is Infinite.

[Someone here]

6 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You are framing experience in physics, which is incorrect.

Physics is inside of experience, and experience is unframed because it is Infinite.

Brilliant. 
I have a question: how are you sure there is nothing beyond experience?  I understand that you have to first consider this possibility or experience it for it to be considered. 
I think of dreams . During dreams we take them for complete final absolute reality, yet we are not aware that there is a larger reality beyond it (the waking state ).

consciousness is fundamental either way , and infinite . But there could be infinitely higher and higher frames to this present frame I’m experiencing right now without me being able to access it right now .  Are you open to that ? Or you still didn’t change your view that the present frame is all that exists in a solipsistic way ?

[integral]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Physics is inside of experience, and experience is unframed because it is Infinite.

Yes but how to draw the chart so physics is dreamed "not in our control" vs the dream that is "in our control".

 Human Consciousness vs fundamental consciousness.

Experience -> physics -> biology -> brain -> control 

Edited 1 hour ago by integral

[Nemra]

Non-existence doesn't exist because existence is the truth. The existence of anything is true by definition.

So, things are created by just existing and not because of some processes outside of those things, because their existence must be true in the first place.

E.g., magenta exists by being magenta and not because of electromagnetic waves. An atom wouldn't be created by subatomic particles.

It appears that existence is generated by physical, biological, or psychological processes, but this is logically impossible, as such processes cannot function outside of existence without being rendered non-existent.

Edited 13 minutes ago by Nemra

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, Someone here said:

Brilliant. 
I have a question: how are you sure there is nothing beyond experience?  I understand that you have to first consider this possibility or experience it for it to be considered. 
I think of dreams . During dreams we take them for complete final absolute reality, yet we are not aware that there is a larger reality beyond it (the waking state ).

consciousness is fundamental either way , and infinite . But there could be infinitely higher and higher frames to this present frame I’m experiencing right now without me being able to access it right now .  Are you open to that ? Or you still didn’t change your view that the present frame is all that exists in a solipsistic way ?

Experience = Consciousness

Consciousness/Experience cannot be framed because they must be groundless/Infinite due to Oneness.

In the end there can only be One thing. Call it whatever you like, but it must be One. You can call it Consciousness, or experience, or Being, or Reality, or whatever. But it must be One. If it is One, it cannot have a ground or a frame.

By experience I do not mean only your present experience, but any possible experience.

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, integral said:

Yes but how to draw the chart so physics is dreamed "not in our control" vs the dream that is "in our control".

That is easy.

The biggest circle is Infinite Consciousness, and everything else is a smaller circle within that. Your finite self is a small circle inside the biggest circle. That small circle obviously cannot control the biggest circle. Physical stuff is the stuff beyond the circle of the finite self.

Edited 3 minutes ago by Leo Gura