Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 26, 2021 2:17 pm
...when we speak of things metaphysical, when we speak of 'spiritual influence' or the intervention of spiritual forces in our own world, we are speaking of things not only somewhat different from this *external world* that surrounds us, and non-comparable, but of entirely subjective perceptions that must pass through the filter of our own subjective being.
Now, I understand why you might assume that. If one had had no other experience but that, that is exactly what one would think, of course. One would think that anything "metaphysical" could not be real or objective in the same way that the external world is.
But let me submit to you that that is not the only way things can be. If one person has not experienced a real London, that does not mean that a real London does not exist, or that London can only be an "imagination." It may well be true that the first person only "imagines" London, since she has no first hand knowledge of it at all; but it does not mean the second person has only an imaginary London. Perhaps he or she
lives there.
So in this sense the mutable being, the mutable vehicle -- our biological selves encased in biological instruments of (limited) perception -- that must perceive, analyze, think choose and decide. Everything about us is constantly mutating. The very platform of our selves will eventually fall away. The structure, the instrument, that perceives, will eventually dissolve away.
This is true: but we must be very careful here, not to make a mistake that many people -- indeed most people today -- seem to make. And that error is to make an epistemological claim (i.e. a statement about what we
know) and then use it to make a further claim about ontology (i.e. about what
really exists, independent of our knowledge).
It is quite true that the "instrument" with which you and I understand the word is flawed and failing. Think of it like a murky telescope. But that's a very different question from whether or not the object at the other end of the murky telescope exists.
So yes, we obviously have to adapt ourselves to the physical world that surrounds us. There is really no choice in that matter. And all beings, all living beings and all of humankind does this -- can do nothing else but this.
Right. Now you've sorted out epistemology and ontology. No matter what, individually, we know or fail to know, it's only the things that correspond to the real world that will prove adaptive.
Our mind, our perceptions, what we think, what we envision, the entire view that we have, and indeed our entire *imagined world* is just that: something that is unalike the surrounding world, something largely epiphenomenal to that world.
A murky telescope indeed.
However, even a murky telescope does show us something real. If it does not, it's not a telescope at all. It's a sealed tube of some kind.
So if one speaks of 'God' one is referring, really, to an imagined notion. An image one holds in the mind.
No, no...let's not slip into that error now.
The "imagining" is a product of our murky telescope. It says nothing at all about the real condition of the Entity at the far end.
But Weaver's thesis is, like a true Platonist, largely the same as what I am saying, is it not? It is the restricted, limited, fallible being that can only use its fallible instruments to develop the most accurate picture possible.
I won't speak for Weaver or the Platonists, of course. But the limitations of our epistemology do not say anything about the ontological status of the being at the end of the telescope.
And I think you agree, do you not? For you accept, I think, that there is a real world "out there," so to speak, and one that does not morph with the failures and waverings of our perceptions. Indeed, were there no real, actual, objective world out there, there would be nothing for us to see at all...no cause of the perceptions, however flawed those perceptions might sometimes be.
Something "out there" is making you perceive a computer screen right now. And even if your visual accuity is never 100%, the fact that you're looking at a computer screen, and not a goat, a battleship or an armchair, is being "imposed on" your consciousness by something. And that something is really there.