Platonism

[Reciprocality]

When we perceive something in earnest belief that the identity of the perceived object dwells in that object we are disconnected from the universal in it and disconnected from how that universal is our own intellect thus disconnected from the possibility of universals beyond our own intellect and therefore disconnected from a higher curiosity.

Have you ever observed the face of someone in a restaurant or caffe and looked away without thinking twice about what you saw? This implies that there were nothing in the expression of their face that contradict your awareness of reality. If contradiction is necessary for you to think about the identity itself of something then this implies again that you continuously believe that the identity dwells in the object.

But what if this changed? What if every item in perception were seen as yourself? What if the identity itself of every perception were distinguished from the stimuli of the senses? Wouldn't this be self-reference properly so called? What besides such complete separation between stimuli and identity thus convergence between identity and self would constitute enlightenment? What are the conditions necessary for distinctness in perception and are there distinct things that are in no way universal but instead utterly personal? 

[Adrian colby]

@Reciprocality it would be like ‘beauty’. It’s universal in that beauty is what one finds sensorily pleasing which would be a universal principle that is shared but when it is down to the personal, it is individuated by preferences ( what one finds beautiful, another does not)

it is a result of separation to make distinctions and one could certainly become more universal by aligning with the ‘principles’ or archetypes.

enlightenment in the platonic sense would be the return journey from transcendence with the wisdom of oneness and the process of integrating that with the lived experience by holding the universal principles so that preferences such as extreme dualities do not occur. Making extreme distinctions causes further separation. It’s tricky to master that but if it is held for long enough, the extremes collapse and one lives in a more balanced or enlightened state. 
 

certainly everything around is complexity out of oneness but it is still just a hall of mirrors. When someone reacts to me, it is not just their personality but a reflection of my own as well. Both sides are reflecting. When you are conscious of your own and you start to see your self in others by way of their reactions, you develop a mirror consciousness where there is only one looking at itself. 
 

Your post title caught my attention as I’m just beginning reading ‘monad’ by gallow glass books. It’s a collection of platonist as translated by Thomas Taylor. I’m not great with old English so I was getting it analysed and re written in ordinary modern English as well as querying some terms used that I don’t understand. As I contemplated and questioned, I decided to slowly study page by page with a contemplation on each and ended up making a distinction between transcendence and enlightenment. One being the seeking if the absolute and having the experience of the one and enlightenment being the return journey into the lived experience with the task of balancing the virtues till duality collapsed and a permanent state is achieved that allows bringing the principle of oneness as a unity with the person while integrating it into the lived experience where all is understood and preferences are still made but not because one identifies with but rather that the preference induces a certain desired experience. Not being manipulated by the experience but rather directing it consciously. 

[Letho]

@Reciprocality our disconnection of identity from the object is precisely the crux of the illusion, an illusion that arises from assuming separation in perception. But consider, what if the very act of perception is the meeting point of self and Other, not their divorce? The ‘identity’ does not dwell in the object, nor in the subject, it is of course, a process. To claim that we are disconnected from universal curiosity because we mistakenly tether identity to objects is to ignore the deeper truth. That perception itself is a universal process, an ongoing merging of self and Other. The real question is not how we perceive identity but how we transcend the fragmentation that our mind insists upon.

@Adrian colby you speak of beauty as a principle universalized yet individuated by preference. But what if beauty, like identity, is neither universal nor individual? It is both, that is, an emergent property of the relational dynamic between subject and object, not a fixed characteristic of either. To separate them is to misunderstand beauty as an end instead of an ongoing relation. Similarly, enlightenment is not the mastery of dualities but the dissolution of them. It is when both the observer and the observed collapse into the same, indivisible flow.

Again though Reciprocality, I am curious as to your motivations on these subjects, are you looking to model everything you're working on personally and share it formally or is it the way you enjoy to socialise or merely achieve self understanding? Mixture?

[Letho]

You chase your own shadow, @Reciprocality. In your endless return to the self, there is no rest, no closure, at least from the outside looking in that's how my observational awareness experiences you. Let me continue in answering my own questions towards you above and you can correct my own brief analysis. Each abstraction is experienced as unfoldment and contractive folding towards truth process but not a end in itself. It's light for lights sake and therefore self justifying but ultimately circling back into itself, with no true conclusion. It’s not about progression, is it? Not about becoming something more which gives me a different angle by which I can expand my own consciousness at least vicariously, but about being in the moment, the moment where thought loses itself in thought, where questions only give rise to more questions yes? Or is there a more nuanced perceptual action to experience to observation to creation you can give more nuance to in your subjective experience of life?

It’s not a means to an end, as there's self-excitation like purposeless joy in music and it's creation but music with no resolve other than to find the next verse with an irreconcilable chorus with an identity that never stays completely the same and certainly never completely solid, it's solidarity in the motions of consciousness not in its concrete immovability outside rigour in process. The tree doesn't care for the sun’s arrival, it simply receives it. Your inquiries are like that, that is they're without purpose beyond the unfolding itself. You are the process, not the result. Growth? It’s a byproduct, not a goal. It’s just how the system works when it’s in motion. The sun will rise tomorrow, but you won’t be any different for it just of it, and "Whatever the fuck with it" is your voice in knowing you will just continue on with the same process.

It’s easy to mistake this for the absence of meaning, but people would be shortsighted to do so. The meaning is in the pattern, in the experience of transformation of the pattern rather than being a permanent parking place in an eventually outdated carpark oce you've gone now to something akin to an advanced UFO not as a goal but as a process of simply rising in the morning with the sun and experiencing the right process with the sun. You’re not running from something, you’re choosing to remain in motion.

So, I ask you this: If the endless pursuit is the only thing you value, then why bother looking for meaning beyond that if this is rivjt? Your chase is its own reward, is it not?

But perhaps I’m missing something. What do you think?

Edited yesterday at 07:52 AM by Letho

[Reciprocality]

4 hours ago, Letho said:

Not about becoming something more which gives me a different angle by which I can expand my own consciousness at least vicariously,

@Letho It is expansion, but by division of what already is, not addition. You can always trace the expansion into some unresolved friction, forgotten tendency, general behaviour, etc. again, self reference.

4 hours ago, Letho said:

So, I ask you this: If the endless pursuit is the only thing you value, then why bother looking for meaning beyond that if this is rivjt? Your chase is its own reward, is it not?

But perhaps I’m missing something. What do you think?

Why bother looking for meaning beyond the inside if all that meaning can be simulated on the inside, why bother meeting with others if the motivation to their action is decoded via the universal that it represents and that universal can be distinctly identified without perception of the action that once implied it and upon which we once inquired for the purpose of now possessing it?

From what I can gather you did not miss much, were rather spot on, and not by accident since all introspective paths leads precisely here and could only have somewhere else to lead if one were in any way different but such is not and could not be the case.

I am formalising the theories as you suggests, the little that I engage this forum is purposed to conversations like this where I can somewhat connect with people who in their own words articulates precisely what I do, tension is accumulated in all closed systems (even the self-referential one) which is why being seen or acknowledged by others can offset that tension, my engagement in the forum allows the energy to be parallelised or dissipated more quickly, which gives more space for the more particular investigations that all the general theories gain their possible rigour from.

 

4 hours ago, Letho said:

Not about becoming something more which gives me a different angle by which I can expand my own consciousness at least vicariously, but about being in the moment, the moment where thought loses itself in thought, where questions only give rise to more questions yes?

The questions would only and could only endlessly give rise to new questions if old answers were disregarded at the same or higher pace as new answers were incorporated. Insistence on coherence and consistency on the other hand can allow exhaustion of any finite domain, but if you mistake reality for infinity then your engagement with the universals are decoupled from one another and all you are seeing is a chaos of particulars, which in turn will produce the distress that our memory and intellect were purposed to minimise through order.

 

4 hours ago, Letho said:

The sun will rise tomorrow, but you won’t be any different for it just of it, and "Whatever the fuck with it" is your voice in knowing you will just continue on with the same process.

what else?

Edited 23 hours ago by Reciprocality

[Reciprocality]

The chase is its own reward, and it is so for the same reason any other chase leads to any other reward.

All life on our planet experience distress in sufficiently complex circumstances, this distress is the teleological uniformity of life, it is the necessary precursor for the evolution of the various ordering mechanism that entails all throughout animal history, whether it be by mere sufficient reduction of stimuli such as happens at the lower end or the heuristics-producing, narrative spinning and memory compiling ego that strengthens itself at every turn or whether it is the inquiry into causes, motives and foundations in processes, behaviour and propositions.

To identify distinctly that which happens with very little to no exceptions is as taxing as it is rewarding, for the same reasons any tough task is worth it in the end.

[Reciprocality]

7 hours ago, Letho said:

our disconnection of identity from the object is precisely the crux of the illusion, an illusion that arises from assuming separation in perception. But consider, what if the very act of perception is the meeting point of self and Other, not their divorce? The ‘identity’ does not dwell in the object, nor in the subject, it is of course, a process.

@Letho I don't deny processes or continuous change in the composite of parts, but you seem to suggest that the universals are themselves changing, yet universals are relational or simple and relationality and simplicity is the inverse of composites and change.

Some years ago you stated that my methods were rather deductive and your more inductive, this distinction appears to be relevant again as you find partiality where I find exhaustion. What can be gained from mere generalisations of particulars that can not be superseded by only thinking those particulars that entail universals? 

If it is knowable that all xs are ys and all fs are xs and no gs are xs then what is there to gain from piling up some fs today and then some gs tomorrow that may or may not be ys until discovery of xs?

Why synthetic judgements that may be false and involves semantic content that couples with personal motivation when you can have universality at the expense of particular subjects? What do we gain except personal approval by correct coupling of the social semantics with referents, what besides personal motivation couples two things that did not couple purely intellectually? What besides manual efforts is employed towards these synthetic judgements and why prefer these to the spontaneous and infallible judgements of universals?

Edited 22 hours ago by Reciprocality

[Reciprocality]

@Letho Let us say a friend is behaving in a way that you can not understand, this way is neither beautiful or ugly, neither shallow or deep, neither kind or mean.

Would their behaviour be so incomprehensible that it is entirely different from humanity at large? 

When you are incapable of judging the situation you may begin questioning the quality of your judgement itself, but this may be a needless restriction to acquired semantics. So what is the alternative? The alternative is to create a universal identity of their behaviour itself, the result is that the upcoming days or weeks one will find this behaviour in others and stand the chance to inquire with far more tools at to the causes (motive) that create them thus leaving the domain of synthetic semantic judgements for the domain of universal principles that dictates entailments the same way as the past dictates the future.

Your conscience is only freed from circumspection when you see with clarity the absurdity of a given contrary.

[Letho]

@Reciprocality it’s vital that you read my response to Carl Richard, heh I'll link it down the bottom, take in the whole but particularly focus on my exploration of intelligence as both the illuminator and the boundary, the paradox of creation and perception. This mirrors your universal pursuit but also challenges it. You perceive universals as static relational truths, while I argue intelligence reshapes them actively, not by addition, but through collapsing boundaries of perception into realization. The moment of insight isn’t a mere “exhaustion” of the domain but the quantum shift where perception and mind’s capacity fold into one. The universal is not an end; it’s a dynamic mirror reflecting the act of chasing itself.

You seem reluctant to admit how deeply your engagement relies on what you dismiss, so social interplay, synthetic judgment, the “messy particulars.” Your participation here offsets tension, but that tension is the process of intelligence redefining the universal in real time. Is it possible your focus on "formalization" locks you in the false duality I described to Carl, aka the chase as definition, not freedom? Freedom by the way, is the true meaning behind my surname, it's very sacred to my lineage including mastering the philosophizing of freedom itself.

If truth, intelligence, and the absolute are mirrors, as I argue, then your methods risk polishing one so intently that the others dim. Universals are only useful insofar as they remain malleable to the tension of particulars. I ask you this: is your self-referential focus revealing truths or enclosing them? Are you defining intelligence’s capacity, or allowing it to define you?

Let this response ignite friction, not as critique, but as the very tension that compels you forward. It's clear you enjoy a challenge that opens and refines.

Anyhow take it easy (or not heh it's just a cultural expression in my country) and all the best, I'll be back late December for any future responses. 

 

[Reciprocality]

1 hour ago, Letho said:

Your participation here offsets tension, but that tension is the process of intelligence redefining the universal in real time.

@Letho If this is true for some or all universals then it should be possible to investigate and create a thought experiment where their malleability are revealed, if you could do this I would test it and post the evaluation here afterwards as well as look for inconsistencies between it and my assertions here.

The tension certainly is a factor of novel application of the universal, but I believe it is the world-idea and not the units of its metric that gets changed, even if those units ties thereby to units previously foreign.

 

1 hour ago, Letho said:

You seem reluctant to admit how deeply your engagement relies on what you dismiss, so social interplay, synthetic judgment, the “messy particulars.” Your participation here offsets tension, but that tension is the process of intelligence redefining the universal in real time. Is it possible your focus on "formalization" locks you in the false duality I described to Carl, aka the chase as definition, not freedom? Freedom by the way, is the true meaning behind my surname, it's very sacred to my lineage including mastering the philosophizing of freedom itself.

You perceive universals as static relational truths, while I argue intelligence reshapes them actively, not by addition, but through collapsing boundaries of perception into realisation.

Is your self-referential focus revealing truths or enclosing them? Are you defining intelligence’s capacity, or allowing it to define you?

Are you implying that static universals goes contrary to the collapsing boundaries of perception and realisation, which I take to constitute our everyday intuition? Could one even have anything collapsable if it were everywhere made out of jelly? 

Can there be change in one thing without the absence of change in the other thing? Would the malleability of a baby grow into a unified sense of self without much of the unchanging behaviour of its parents? Could a rubber ball bounce off of the floor if it too like above were made out of jelly?

If not then what is different in this topic which also encompasses change? And if there is no such difference then what besides the universals constitutes the rigidity necessary for change or growth?

 

To your question on self-reference: Most of my nature, knowledge and relational principles are hidden from my direct continuous access, new truths spring from old ones, new angles arise from old angles, new motives spring from resolution between antithetical ones, what would make this enclosed, what would not be revelatory in it and which possible alternative revelations are there besides those that sprung from what we already are, whether through observation or thought?