Although, then, to argue against myself, and say that there’s no real logic to what I said that can carry any weight:
I might imagine what it would be like to have empathy for the non-dual people, and I might imagine that, for some subset of them, the world is like this: That they simultaneously carry an awareness that: one can’t practically have coordinated thought without some notion of “the world” or “the real world”, and; even that that demarkation of what is “the world” follows from our patterns of taking on the postures of mind that entail objective stances, but; that since those are all entailed in how we take such postures, it’s all relational and all sensational, and in that sense within the same type-category as the subjective. And from there they are happy saying that everything is “contained” within “consciousness”. All of which throws us back out to mere epistemology, and the mechanics of the intersubjective, applied recursively as by Pragmatism, to try to stabilize any of it (for those who want it to be stable; others still find magic much more appealing). Oh well, Eric > On Dec 2, 2025, at 6:50, Santafe <[email protected]> wrote: > > I wanted to reply at this branch point a couple of weeks ago, but could not > at the time. > > This reply is meant also to Nick’s thread “migraine auras, reprise”, which I > got on 29 November, and the reverberations on that one. > >> On Nov 25, 2025, at 12:58, glen <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Changing gears a bit, I ran across the "as if" personality >> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_disturbance>. I can't help but >> wonder about a room full of agents "concealing their inner emptiness, living >> *as if* they had genuine feelings and desires." >8^D I'm at risk of >> Get-Off-My-Lawn, here. But 90% of the time, when I'm in a room with more >> than, say, 5 people, it *feels* to me like they're all philosophical >> zombies, maybe me included. >> >> Are we all *actually* "as if" personalities? And those who think they're not >> are delusional? > > I understand that Glen’s direction here goes somewhat meta from what I was > after, and that it becomes its own line of inquiry, at a considerably higher > level of structural organization than the one I was after. But, in the > assurance of becoming tedious, I wanted to re-harp a little on the level of > description I was after. > > From the other thread: > >> On Nov 29, 2025, at 23:07, Nicholas Thompson <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> As often happens, my original post on mental imagery worked itself away from >> my original purpose, which was to explore the concept of objectivity. > >> Nick > > That was my original purpose, too, because in any conversation that takes the > conflation of objectivity with intersubjectivity to even be conceivable, I > have come to think that the conversation doesn’t have its category > distinctions straight. My own belief’s being that objective, subjective, and > intersubjective, are terms that do such different work that there is no way > they can be either “similes” or “alternatives”, because they are in wildly > different categories. > > I am sure that, after saying it was my purpose to explore the concept of > objectivity, Nick will reiterate that the thread has veered away from his > purpose of exploring the concept of objectivity. So interesting how > different styles of mind can be…. > > > The reason I will be tedious is that I gave part of the argument below in a > rant some months ago, when the mystics with their relentless obscurantism > were driving me crazy (in other lines of conversation), and I was trying to > decide what categories I thought I could think and speak in, that wouldn’t > just devolve into this term-circus inherited from loose common speech. > > The thing I thought was “new” to my point was the claim that we want a term > like “objective” to refer to the states (or postures) of mind that we take on > in relation to assertions in certain circumstances. If I knew what > Phenomenology was, I would believe that the argument I want to make is in the > vein of Phenomenology, meaning about just-what one is doing in engaging > experientially with some activity or assertion. But I haven’t read any > Phenomenology, so I am probably just making up what those guys are about, and > poaching their name. > > > The point, though, being that, for me, all this should start in the body. I > can’t argue in general terms, so I will argue anecdotally from the only case > that made me think I have some concrete and crisp contrast to illustrate a > distinction. > > The anecdote is from the good luck that my first experience of scuba diving > came fairly late into adulthood. Here’s what I would argue the observation > and its content are: > > 1. I have swum throughout childhood, and also breathed for my entire life. I > never did both at the same time (meaning, didn’t breathe while underwater). > I also had the good fortune to never be waterboarded. > > 2. Hence there were two conditions that were familiar to me. One was > breathing. The other was having my head underwater and not breathing. > > 2a. I would argue that, for me, there were two “bundles” of activities and > states of mind that were internally linked, but externally disjoint. There > “is” “however you breathe”, and there “is” “holding your breath when your > head is under water”. I would have had no way to disaggregate either of > these bundles, or even to triangulate on the possibility that there was > anything to disaggregate. > > 3. Then came the first time of putting my head underwater with a scuba > regulator, and initiating breathing through it. The first inhale was choppy > with a very fast pace, hesitant and interrupted, and over an interval of > perhaps a second or two, gave way to the “normal” (or, more-normal, still not > the same as thoughtless breathing above-water) mode. That early stage was > entirely unanticipated, and I think, under any normal use of the term, > “involuntary”. > > 3a. So, for the first time, I had more than one “state of mind”, or “mental > posture” I could be in while breathing. That made it possible to see that > breathing was not an irreducible activity. > > 3b. I say I was lucky to only have this experience fairly late in life, > because it probably helped to solidify the two irreducible bundles (breathing > normally versus holding my breath); if I had started scuba very early, I may > have had such a quick adaptation to the new activity, or it may have been > buried in so many adaptations to so many new activities, that I might not > have noticed it as something salient. > > 4. My abstraction step is to say that “taking for granted” that there is air > outside my head is reported, physiologically, in the normal breathing > activity, and no-longer taking that “for granted” was reported, > physiologically, in the very different “doubtful” mode of breathing. The > deliberative and intentional layer of acting can be recognized as separate > and operating in a context set by much-else that is the foundation-posture > within which intention operates. > > Anyway, without further belaborment, you get the point: There are all kinds > of physiological reports of when I am taking something for granted. That I > am standing on a floor in a room and not on top of a flagpole on the Empire > State building, that my head is not underwater, that there is not an uncaged > tiger in the room with me, or one of Stephen Miller’s thugs, or some other > known predatory and sadistic thing whose attention I don’t want on me. > > I wanted to assert that the essence of whatever the term “objective” needs to > refer to, was the taking-on of this posture of de facto taking something for > granted. The mystics who claim they take nothing for granted, and everything > is a hypothesis, seem to me to be talking nonsense. Your heart takes all > sorts of things for granted just by persisting in its beating, as we can > verify from the cases when it doesn’t do so. When they say “everything” they > might really be referring to some relatively high-level cognitive > integrations, but of course if they admitted that, they wouldn't be able to > hide in their obscurantism and keep everybody guessing whether they might be > magical. > > But back from my rant: I want to claim, here in my armchair, that if there > are good, stable foundations for terms like “objective”, or Glen’s (and > proper usage's) “metaphysical commitments”, they should be these: the myriad > things that lie below deliberative thought, rooted as deep as physiology in > some cases, and more shallowly as habit in others, that we _always_ “take for > granted” as part of coordinated mental functioning. Things can migrate a bit > across that boundary — one can come to breathe quite smoothly through a scuba > regulator — and one of the fascinating things, to me, about the changes that > take place as we “come to understand” things that are new to us, is that the > deep fabric of “understanding” involves a reworking of where some activity, > experience, assertion, etc., and their attendant states of mind, fall w.r.t. > this split of taking or not taking for granted. > > Relative to the above, “intersubjective” is a quite shallow and procedural > word, having to do with the mechanics of epistemology, and how we scaffold > our discourse and our growth-activities of coming to understand things. > These terms have their own structure, of course, also fine to analyze and get > good language around, but they are quite different from shifts in postures of > mind that we might sometimes have parallax to see. (And then, “subjective’ > is a typological term, about the categories of phenomena that we associate > with “sensations” etc., and for which meaning is inherently about relations, > of the phenomenon to some self, the phenomenon to its sensation-aspect, etc. > So a third, entirely distinct, kind of semantic work the term is doing.) > > Back to Glen’s branch in the above thread, I could probably imagine an > analysis in which some of these distinctions do propagate up to how identity > is formed, and whether or in what ways it is stable or unstable, as in > borderline personality disorders and associated. Or maybe not, and the > identity-stability question is a distinct matter (?). > > Anyway, thanks for patience or indulgence if anybody read this far, > > Eric > > > > >> >> On 11/24/25 5:06 PM, Steve Smith wrote: >>> I'm finding your Lean4 fascinating for it's balance between intuitive >>> enough to (almost) read and (known to be) formal enough to trust to be >>> testable/executeable. >>> Reminds me vaguely of the semester I learned BNF and kept finding myself >>> expressing (only to myself) observations about the world in that idiom... >>> later Prolog captured that part of me (for a while) . >> >> >> -- >> ¡sıɹƎ ןıɐH ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ >> ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα σώσω. >> >> >> .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / >> ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom >> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,jIIX-vnSRSTFLjqcol2Pj_ZOSJLSn57vbTIaAhJ9P6UHqvMjJS--UBNRWu-Sxzhmyjt2j1qb3_YeIdj2sNtrjs8tfWVTG9hheCU7AZWpsdKjRMwFIqMa9k-Mbhc,&typo=1 >> to (un)subscribe >> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,3-fMzma3iL--s7KW1hsZ4W41wVxqtVdybnXokfuTHcbAM-bM8VWFvSiOoaoAWHIDNLrz2O7xntOLfPEszhJWw3uEWqRMXsGsBgHk4RaqIBm0heY,&typo=1 >> FRIAM-COMIC >> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,zhwRtMRzjTFOltd7ZZfYp2A7srpxSzAb7uptV65Xx1W02PiQOshg0dgl6bSMedjS4UYKXCV4uilGwnwRG5h-iAzUEnoRV3ZHAmAx52bXEqe8Bg,,&typo=1 >> archives: 5/2017 thru present >> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,afVYawFjkRXuyxIx99GuYbltSk1-IRzD6YitkNRZyO5UWDhswY3PSzQ9QmhR_CHz9sYXr8erwuHNExhrU9pFU-Cyqd-ow8YGJ-EbermfCVJcA533nv4,&typo=1 >> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. 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