Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 12

[Randall]

You mean on the Paracast? As I've said to you on other occasions, I prefer not to participate in discussions recorded for broadcast on the radio. In any case you have heard, or rather read, about the OBE I experienced in this thread or perhaps another thread. I remember writing about it here several times in the past.

Okay. It must have been during one of those periods when I wasn't actively participating. Or maybe I just plain forgot. For joining us on the show, I haven't forgotten your last response, but people have been known to change their minds, so I feel it's better to let them know they are welcome, just in case.

 

[Michael Allen]

Can you be more specific?

I've always felt comfortable in my consciousness, even while I one day experienced a spontaneous OBE. I'll admit to being slightly surprised in the event, but not at all frightened. We're here or wherever for the ride. Why worry about it?

Laughter is a kind of vibration between a perceived or felt contradiction of some aspect of being between seemingly opposite perspectives from (1) the "figure" or (2) the "ground" ... these opposing forces showing off the entire game of consciousness suddenly erupt into the mind of the one "getting the joke." The joke is of course [spoiler alert] that the two forces or perspectives in apparent opposition actually form the basis and framework of existence of a very singular entity or event...the synthesis of opposites forms the unity and the "soul" laughs...but the laughing is precisely the same sort of vibration between the two poles pointing at the center of experience.

Alan Watts considers satori and laughter to be derivatives of this same primordial and very sudden phenomenal eruption

 

[Constance]

@Michael Allen, did you delete a brief post referring to 'satori' and Alan Watts within the last 15 minutes or so? I received a notice of it and read it, but coming back to respond to it I find it's no longer here.

 

[Michael Allen]

@Michael Allen, did you delete a brief post referring to 'satori' and Alan Watts within the last 15 minutes or so? I received a notice of it and read it, but coming back to respond to it I find it's no longer here.

No it was flagged because evidently I did too many edits...happens from time to time. I see the post has been cleared by the moderators now. Let me know

 

[Constance]

Laughter is a kind of vibration between a perceived or felt contradiction of some aspect of being between seemingly opposite perspectives from (1) the "figure" or (2) the "ground" ... these opposing forces showing off the entire game of consciousness suddenly erupt into the mind of the one "getting the joke." The joke is of course [spoiler alert] that the two forces or perspectives in apparent opposition actually form the basis and framework of existence of a very singular entity or event...the synthesis of opposites forms the unity and the "soul" laughs...but the laughing is precisely the same sort of vibration between the two poles pointing at the center of experience.

Alan Watts considers satori and laughter to be derivatives of this same primordial and very sudden phenomenal eruption

I just came across a post in my facebook feed that might appeal to you:

"The Norwegian thinker Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899-1990) took philosophical pessimism even further. Human consciousness is tragically overdeveloped, he said, resulting in existential angst. In his essay ‘The Last Messiah’ (1933), Zapffe referred to it as ‘a biological paradox, an abomination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature’. Humans have developed a need that cannot be fulfilled, since nature itself is meaningless; to survive, he argues, humanity has to repress this damaging surplus of consciousness. This is ‘a requirement of social adaptability and of everything commonly referred to as healthy and normal living’.

Zapffe named four universal defence mechanisms humankind has developed:
isolation, including repression of disturbing and destructive thoughts and feelings;
anchoring, the establishment of higher meanings and ideals. The examples of collective anchoring he gives are: ‘God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the law of life, the people, the future’. Anchoring provides us with illusions that secure psychological comfort. The shortcoming of anchoring is the despair we feel upon discovering that our anchoring mechanism is an illusion;
distraction, the focusing of our thoughts and energy on a certain idea or task to prevent the mind from self-reflection; and
sublimation, a type of defence mechanism in which negative urges are transformed into more positive actions. For instance, we distance ourselves from the tragedy of our existence and transform our awareness into philosophy, literature and art."

I hadn't heard of Zapffe before and am not likely to read him, though I think his hypothesis that humans attempt to escape from consciousness is accurate in our time. You might not choose to read him either since he seems to have been unable to find humor or joy in anything in life, except perhaps mountain climbing.

Turns out that the post was copied from wikipedia:

Peter Wessel Zapffe - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Constance]

ETA: Further note: "Den sidste Messias (English: The Last Messiah) is a 1933 essay by Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe. One of his most significant works, it sums up his own thoughts from his book, On the Tragic, and, as a theory describes a reinterpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche's Übermensch. Zapffe believed that existential angst in humanity was the result of an overly evolved intellect, and that people overcome this by "artificially limiting the content of consciousness." The Last Messiah - Wikipedia[/QUOTE]

 

[Constance]

Here's something I do find funny in a gallows humor sort of way:

 

[Constance]

Another:

 

[Constance]

For the beauty of the earth.

 

[Michael Allen]

I just came across a post in my facebook feed that might appeal to you:

"The Norwegian thinker Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899-1990) took philosophical pessimism even further. Human consciousness is tragically overdeveloped, he said, resulting in existential angst. In his essay ‘The Last Messiah’ (1933), Zapffe referred to it as ‘a biological paradox, an abomination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature’. Humans have developed a need that cannot be fulfilled, since nature itself is meaningless; to survive, he argues, humanity has to repress this damaging surplus of consciousness. This is ‘a requirement of social adaptability and of everything commonly referred to as healthy and normal living’.

Zapffe named four universal defence mechanisms humankind has developed:
isolation, including repression of disturbing and destructive thoughts and feelings;
anchoring, the establishment of higher meanings and ideals. The examples of collective anchoring he gives are: ‘God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the law of life, the people, the future’. Anchoring provides us with illusions that secure psychological comfort. The shortcoming of anchoring is the despair we feel upon discovering that our anchoring mechanism is an illusion;
distraction, the focusing of our thoughts and energy on a certain idea or task to prevent the mind from self-reflection; and
sublimation, a type of defence mechanism in which negative urges are transformed into more positive actions. For instance, we distance ourselves from the tragedy of our existence and transform our awareness into philosophy, literature and art."

I hadn't heard of Zapffe before and am not likely to read him, though I think his hypothesis that humans attempt to escape from consciousness is accurate in our time. You might not choose to read him either since he seems to have been unable to find humor or joy in anything in life, except perhaps mountain climbing.

Turns out that the post was copied from wikipedia:

Peter Wessel Zapffe - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This "thread" of discourse is at a higher level (in the sense that C++ is a higher level "language" than assembly on a particular architecture--arm, intel, sparc, mips, z80) than what I alluded to in my previous postes. Although of most interest is the proposition "humans attempt to escape from consciousness..."--but with the modification that the actual "escape" is more fundamental and forms the basis for what is considered by our own verbalisations of that for which we are searching..."consciousness" (the "hard" problem)

The oscillation of being within itself may naturally express "itself" through the barriers of being we put up with in the attempt to explain ourselves...this oscillation may erupt into laughter when the core nature of all existence is suddenly "here and now" or "there" and it is the laughter that signals the unspeakables needed to fully grok of our own ability to experience experience ("experience squared")

 

[Michael Allen]

I just came across a post in my facebook feed that might appeal to you:

"The Norwegian thinker Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899-1990) took philosophical pessimism even further. Human consciousness is tragically overdeveloped, he said, resulting in existential angst. In his essay ‘The Last Messiah’ (1933), Zapffe referred to it as ‘a biological paradox, an abomination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature’. Humans have developed a need that cannot be fulfilled, since nature itself is meaningless; to survive, he argues, humanity has to repress this damaging surplus of consciousness. This is ‘a requirement of social adaptability and of everything commonly referred to as healthy and normal living’.

...

Peter Wessel Zapffe - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

(further comments not thrown into an "edit" because I don't want to be flagged...)

Interesting...based on your selection and direction of discourse, do you think I am a "philosophical pessimist?" (off-topic: and why we are at it...why do punctuation rules in english require putting the marker inside the quotes at the end of a sentence which has a quotation?)

"tragically overdeveloped" sounds like a judgement or coming up with a "sensible conclusion." Where "sensible" implies a course or action that will likely benefit the user.

I hate to be a broken record but this is a human consciousness judgement of itself...and IT seems to look upon itself and see a "paradox," "abomination," or "absurdity"...on the flipside "nature" is somehow taken as a given and is pronounced as meaningless. What is the root of this unnecessary division of reality...the expectation that the polarity and division is more real than the source? (physicalism...pathological physicalism)

Whence comes the source of the Meaningless Reality and why does the Meaning Generator export it's own power into something non-existent? Cartesian dualism is a nasty little mind-virus.

Edit: (I hope I don't get flagged for this...strike ONE!)


"Zapffe's view is that humans are born with an overdeveloped skill (understanding, self-knowledge) which does not fit into nature's design. "

An unfortunate statement which seems to have some real meaning until you realize that the conceptualization of nature's design depends on the entity under extreme analysis.

 

[Constance]

@Michael Allen, you've written two interesting responses to my post re Zapffe, and I'm extracting segments from both responses here because for the first time I think I might be beginning to understand, from these remarks, where you're coming from. From your first response:

"Zapffe's view is that humans are born with an overdeveloped skill (understanding, self-knowledge) which does not fit into nature's design. "

An unfortunate statement which seems to have some real meaning until you realize that the conceptualization of nature's design depends on the entity under extreme analysis.

There's still some ambiguity there for me, so I have to ask whether by "the entity under extreme analysis" you mean a) that concepts of nature will vary among different members of our species coming from different experiences and backgrounds, or b) that any and all concepts of nature produced in human minds are essentially alike in being meaningless. If your answer is b), which I think it might be, that opens up a lot of room for discussion.


From your second reply:

The oscillation of being within itself may naturally express "itself" through the barriers of being we put up [delete: with?] in the attempt to explain ourselves...this oscillation may erupt into laughter when the core nature of all existence is suddenly "here and now" or "there" and it is the laughter that signals the unspeakables needed to fully grok of our own ability to experience experience ("experience squared").

First an editing question: have I clarified your meaning by suggesting that you delete the 'with' in the first sentence? In other words, are you saying that it is impossible that we should be able to make progress in understanding ourselves, our values, our ideas, and indeed the nature of our tacitly self-referential consciousness? In still other words, are you saying that our consciousness, both prereflective and reflective, does not in fact exist and that we are deluded to believe that it does exist? If I'm reading these statements correctly, it seems that in your view the sense of being that some of us have and attempt to describe in philosophy and other disciplines is an illusion. Let me know if I'm beginning to grok you.

ps, no I don't think you are a 'philosophical pessimist'.

pps, what are 'the unspeakables' that we need to recognize in order to "fully grok our own ability to experience experience"?

 

[Michael Allen]

@Michael Allen, you've written two interesting responses to my post re Zapffe, and I'm extracting segments from both responses here because for the first time I think I might be beginning to understand, from these remarks, where you're coming from. From your first response:



There's still some ambiguity there for me, so I have to ask whether by "the entity under extreme analysis" you mean a) that concepts of nature will vary among different members of our species coming from different experiences and backgrounds, or b) that any and all concepts of nature produced in human minds are essentially alike in being meaningless. If your answer is b), which I think it might be, that opens up a lot of room for discussion.

With (a) the variance is a symptom of something much deeper. While it may be true that (a) would follow, it is not the complete picture.
Within (b) lies an overstatement that orbits around the term "meaningless"--which I didn't intend. So perhaps there is a (c) that I am getting at:

What I mean is that the being with the "overdeveloped skill" seems to rely on a premise of some design principle that exists outside and independent of the "overdeveloped" being. But it may be this overdeveloped skill that brings about the illusion of some concrete and preeminent design...if we start with the the assumption of this independent and pre-eminent design (which we assert as something for which we "do not fit") then we end up back where we started. We don't throw meaninglessness into the "world" when the "world" is itself a generator and consumer of "reality."

Let me work more on the second point

 

[Michael Allen]

ME: "The oscillation of being within itself may naturally express "itself" through the barriers of being we put up [delete: with?] in the attempt to explain ourselves...this oscillation may erupt into laughter when the core nature of all existence is suddenly "here and now" or "there" and it is the laughter that signals the unspeakables needed to fully grok of our own ability to experience experience ("experience squared")."


First an editing question: have I clarified your meaning by suggesting that you delete the 'with' in the first sentence? In other words, are you saying that it is impossible that we should be able to make progress in understanding ourselves, our values, our ideas, and indeed the nature of our tacitly self-referential consciousness? In still other words, are you saying that our consciousness, both prereflective and reflective, does not in fact exist and that we are deluded to believe that it does exist? If I'm reading these statements correctly, it seems that in your view the sense of being that some of us have and attempt to describe in philosophy and other disciplines is an illusion. Let me know if I'm beginning to grok you.

ps, no I don't think you are a 'philosophical pessimist'.

pps, what are 'the unspeakables' that we need to recognize in order to "fully grok our own ability to experience experience"?

I meant "barriers we build in the attempt to explain ourselves" --> now that I think of it, a better analogy is "towers" which are built to help us examine the full ground below (another analogy...ground of our own being) but the tower acts as a barrier or blind spot to the very foundations which explain the tower's "emergence" from the ground. Another way to think of it is the breaking of being (i.e. sound, material experience) into components in opposition. For instance, sound is an oscillation of "sound-silence"--and our detection of material things are a spatial "oscillation" between emptiness (space) and something imposing (filled space...plenum).

I am not saying that consciousness either "exists" or "does not exist," but that it is foundational to both notions. An "illusion" is a kind of "existence" that masks something else--but both notions reside within the world...not in the foundation which allows such notions to even have meaning. An illusion has "meaning" after the world-engine has engaged itself into some particular consciousness--not before.

So experience squared is the experience of experience...understanding experience squared depends on two levels, one of the first level and another on the second as well as a third that comprehends the entire chain.

Regarding the "unspeakables," I can only say that is precisely where the laughter begins. If we could explain the laugher to another who didn't get the joke, while some other did, then laughter would fill the universe and all would come to a very chaotic and quick ending.

 

[Constance]

Unfortunately, I'm still not groking what you are trying to express. It might help if we could agree to a common terminology within which I could identify your viewpoint on nature and on the nature of consciousness. I'll insert a few questions in your post:

I meant "barriers we build in the attempt to explain ourselves" --> now that I think of it, a better analogy is "towers" which are built to help us examine the full ground below (another analogy...ground of our own being) but the tower acts as a barrier or blind spot to the very foundations which explain the tower's "emergence" from the ground.

What do you have in mind as "the full ground" of what we would need to know {but are barred from knowing} in order to understand the nature of our own being and consciousness?

I am not saying that consciousness either "exists" or "does not exist," but that it is foundational to both notions. An "illusion" is a kind of "existence" that masks something else--but both notions reside within the world...not in the foundation which allows such notions to even have meaning. An illusion has "meaning" after the world-engine has engaged itself into some particular consciousness--not before.

Would you define what you mean by "the foundation which allows such notions to even have meaning."? Also what is "the world-engine"?

So experience squared is the experience of experience...understanding experience squared depends on two levels, one of the first level and another on the second as well as a third that comprehends the entire chain.

What and where are the ostensibly three levels on which 'experience' occurs?

Regarding the "unspeakables," I can only say that is precisely where the laughter begins. If we could explain the laugher to another who didn't get the joke, while some other did, then laughter would fill the universe and all would come to a very chaotic and quick ending.

That sounds dire. "The Unspeakables" sounds like a title we might come across in studying the Theatre of the Absurd.

Look forward to some clarifications.

 

[Soupie]

I also appreciate MAs postings but can’t make heads or tails of them.

I’d be curious @Michael Allen if there were a contemporary philosopher of mind who shares a similar approach to the mbp as you. You’ve reference the work of Metzinger a few times as well as Dennett. Do their approaches to the mbp parallel your own?

Or do you feel that your conception ofand/or approach to the mbp is novel and unique?

Sometimes sharing the work of established thinkers that parallels your own can be helpful.

 

[Constance]

I've been rereading the last several pages of our discussion and want to repost the following extract from McGinn cited by Randle, in order to pose some questions that I can't answer (not yet having read enough of McGinn). I'll interpolate these questions.

I suspect that @Michael Allen would appreciate this quote from McGinn's paper:

"It is just that, in the case of the mind-body problem, the bit of reality that systematically eludes our cognitive grasp is an aspect of our own nature. . . . "

What is this "bit of reality"? Is McGinn referring here to consciousness as 'a bit of reality'?

". . . . Indeed, it is an aspect that makes it possible for us to have minds at all and to think about how they are related to our bodies. . . ."

It seems that McGinn recognizes here that it is consciousness that enables the development of mind, thus grounding philosophy, science, and all other human projects (including artistic expression, the construction of states and political systems, social theory, ethics and morality, etc.) Hardly 'a bit of reality'.

". . . This particular transcendent tract of reality happens to lie within our own
heads. A deep fact about our own nature as a form of embodied
consciousness is thus necessarily hidden from us. Yet there is nothing
inherently eerie or bizarre about this embodiment. We are much more
straightforward than we seem. Our weirdness lies in the eye of the
beholder."

Which 'beholders' is McGinn referring to? Does he mean beholders like himself, coming from analytic philosophy before its encounter with phenomenology? Analytical and phenomenological philosophy both recognize/comprehend 'transcendental' aspects of mind, but phenomenology also recognizes transcendental aspects of prereflective consciousness, even of protoconsciousness. Would McGinn find consciousness less 'mysterious' if he were to read more widely and deeply in phenomenological philosophy?


I think that @smcder is likely in the best position to respond to these questions given his familiarity with McGinn's work.

 

[Constance]

“NATURE AS EXPRESSIVE SYNTHESIS: THE SENSIBLE AWAKENING OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL BETWEEN KANT, HUSSERL AND MERLEAU-PONTY”

DON BEITH
University of Maine, Department of Philosophy. 04469 Orono, Maine, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: The critical insights of transcendental philosophy and phenomenology evolve out of a tension in the nature of consciousness. On the one hand, consciousness is a synthetic activity or intentional that discloses the horizon in which meanings and objects have conditions of possibility. On the other hand, in perception we find the workings of sense that point to a dynamic, expressive origin prior to the pure activity of consciousness. Our investigation is concerned with explaining how this passivity of consciousness is itself a synthesis that arises out of our expressive bodily nature. There is a clear logical connection between the ways Immanuel Kant, Edmund Husserl, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty conceive of a synthesis within sensibility and bodily affectivity, where each thinker requires us to conceptualize nature as a mode of expressivity, with the implication that transcendental conditions of possibility must, mysteriously, happen within the very intercorporeal and temporal fields that they render possible.
Key words: Phenomenology, transcendental idealism, Kant, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, consciousness, temporality.

INTRODUCTION
"The critical insights of transcendental philosophy and phenomenology evolve out of a tension in the nature of consciousness. On the one hand, consciousness is a synthetic activity or intentionality that discloses the horizon in which meanings and objects have conditions of possibility. On the other hand, in perception we find the workings of sense that point to a dynamic, expressive origin prior to the pure activity of consciousness. Our investigation concerns how this passivity of consciousness is a synthesis that arises out of our expressive bodily nature. There is a clear logical connection between the ways Immanuel Kant, Edmund Husserl, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty conceive of a synthesis within sensibility and bodily affectivity, where each thinker requires us to conceptualize nature as a mode of expressivity, with the implication that transcendental conditions of possibility must, mysteriously, happen within the very intercorporeal and temporal fields that they render possible.

Kant’s provocative concept of “transcendental affinity” in his 1781 Critique of Pure Reason reveals a level of kinship between our pre-reflective experience of nature and the pre-conceptual association of sensation by the imagination. The primordial associative workings of the imagination resonate with a pre-objective nature that is not yet determined by concepts, but rather prepares itself to be thought. As a bridge between cognition and sensibility, imaginative synthesis as immanent to the field of experience breaks down the logical distinction between a priori and a posteriori. For Husserl, the very form of experience is temporally dynamic, and consciousness as a
necessary condition of experience is manifest in and through an affective awakening.

Husserl works, like Kant, in his Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis [to expose] a level of immanent, flowing synthesis, termed operative intentionality. Consciousness emerges through a call-response structure and is animated by this level of affective bodily synthesis at which the dichotomies of activity and passivity, a priori and a posteriori, self and world, do not hold. For Husserl, transcendental consciousness happens out of an affective, pre-conceptual awakening. In Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception and Institution lectures we find a combination of these two problems. Merleau-Ponty explores consciousness, like Husserl, as a temporally emergent and awakening field of sense, but like Kant, Merleau-Ponty finds this imaginative proto-production of sense to be the mark of a deep affinity between consciousness and nature as expressive
institutions.

Kant’s affinity with nature is phenomenologically manifest through the natural generality of the lived body, and the expressive, acquired depth of its natural past. Consciousness must emerge from nature, and must awaken through emotion, and this requires driving the implications of Kant’s critique of the imagination and Husserl’s phenomenology of operative intentionality to their furthest logical conclusions: an overcoming [of] division of dualisms of activity/passivity, fact/essence and contingency/necessity, past/present, by showing nature itself, and its institutions of life and consciousness, to be an expressive movement from nonsense to sense. This way of thinking resituates transcendental conditions of possibility as transformative events within histories of local, divergent forms of life and consciousness. If we drive these philosophical methods to their furthest logical conclusions, transcendental idealism and phenomenology mutually illuminate the radical embeddedness of transcendental conditions of possibility within a generative time of natural expressivity. . . ."

https://www.academia.edu/36952347/N...dental_between_Kant_Husserl_and_Merleau-Ponty


Recent book by Beith: The Birth of Sense

Description:
"In The Birth of Sense, Don Beith proposes a new concept of generative passivity, the idea that our organic, psychological, and social activities take time to develop into sense. More than being a limit, passivity marks out the way in which organisms, persons, and interbodily systems take time in order to manifest a coherent sense. Beith situates his argument within contemporary debates about evolution, developmental biology, scientific causal explanations, psychology, postmodernism, social constructivism, and critical race theory. Drawing on empirical studies and phenomenological reflections, Beith argues that in nature, novel meaning emerges prior to any type of constituting activity or deterministic plan.

The Birth of Sense is an original phenomenological investigation in the style of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and it demonstrates that the French philosopher’s works cohere around the notion that life is radically expressive. While Merleau-Ponty’s early works are widely interpreted as arguing for the primacy of human consciousness, Beith argues that a pivotal redefinition of passivity is already under way here, and extends throughout Merleau-Ponty’s corpus. This work introduces new concepts in contemporary philosophy to interrogate how organic development involves spontaneous expression, how personhood emerges from this bodily growth, and how our interpersonal human life remains rooted in, and often thwarted by, domains of bodily expressivity.

The Birth of Sense: Generative Passivity in Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy (Series In Continental Thought): Don Beith: 9780821423103: Amazon.com: Books

 

[Randall]

If consciousness is simply a facet of existence, like gravitation or electromagnetism, it seems logical to suggest that it would be part of the evolution of the creatures which possess it. Therefore I see no reason why earlier versions of humans, and other creatures with similar but less evolved neural structures, wouldn't also have it. This would support the suggestion that we aren't particularly special in terms of possessing an ability to experience the world. Many other animals must also experience the world in their own ways. This being the case, if we equate consciousness with the spiritual notion of a soul, then there are plenty more souls than human ones in our world. I think anyone who loves their pets would probably agree.

 

[Michael Allen]

Unfortunately, I'm still not groking what you are trying to express. It might help if we could agree to a common terminology within which I could identify your viewpoint on nature and on the nature of consciousness. I'll insert a few questions in your post:

ME: "I meant "barriers we build in the attempt to explain ourselves" --> now that I think of it, a better analogy is "towers" which are built to help us examine the full ground below (another analogy...ground of our own being) but the tower acts as a barrier or blind spot to the very foundations which explain the tower's "emergence" from the ground."

What do you have in mind as "the full ground" of what we would need to know {but are barred from knowing} in order to understand the nature of our own being and consciousness?

I cannot "have it in mind" because as my analogy indicates I am putting my mind as a pedestal/tower/barrier to help actively develop and sustain some "understanding" of the same. I can only point to something that appears to be a problem in search for the solution to itself. The "full ground" can be a placeholder for that which is the entire framework for which we know not what but nevertheless forms the basis of our consciousness.

ME: "I am not saying that consciousness either "exists" or "does not exist," but that it is foundational to both notions. An "illusion" is a kind of "existence" that masks something else--but both notions reside within the world...not in the foundation which allows such notions to even have meaning. An illusion has "meaning" after the world-engine has engaged itself into some particular consciousness--not before. "


Would you define what you mean by "the foundation which allows such notions to even have meaning."? Also what is "the world-engine"?

No. As a matter of fact that is is the closest I get--otherwise I would define it. But the generator of meaning and notion to present it's own foundation of it's own abilities may be impossible. By "world-engine" I mean something like what Heidegger points to with "Being-in-the-world"

ME:"So experience squared is the experience of experience...understanding experience squared depends on two levels, one of the first level and another on the second as well as a third that comprehends the entire chain."

What and where are the ostensibly three levels on which 'experience' occurs?

First level is something like an unconscious reflex against "external" events
Second level is the awareness that this reflex is something to care about...
Third level is the vague feeling that the first two are part of the same reality...or the awareness that our own notions are self-and-world...the big picture.

There may be others...

ME:"Regarding the "unspeakables," I can only say that is precisely where the laughter begins. If we could explain the laugher to another who didn't get the joke, while some other did, then laughter would fill the universe and all would come to a very chaotic and quick ending. "

That sounds dire. "The Unspeakables" sounds like a title we might come across in studying the Theatre of the Absurd.

Look forward to some clarifications.

Why it is simplicity itself: when we finally fail to capture some story in words, we laugh.