How To Go Beyond Post-Structualism Cognition?

[kieranperez]

Today I was reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. As I was reading and trying to grapple with his language while also trying to contemplate and experience what it is he’s saying, I realized how challenging it is because I’m still at a post-structural stage of cognition because I kept wondering “How do I know what Kant is calling ‘reason’ is what I’m calling ‘reason’? If it’s all completely relative, how do I grasp what it is he’s really saying? I could read this whole thing through my lens and come out with a totally different interpretation”. 

Of course, as far as my own conceptual understanding goes, yes all things are relative and when one reaches systemic/integral cognition, all relative truths are all still relative but things are now understood and cognized to have more truths than others. Though I understand that conceptually, that’s still not in my experience. As far as (my own) post-structural cognition goes in my own experience, all things seem to be just as equally true in the relative world.

How exactly do I go beyond this in my own cognitive experience? Does shadow work play a role? 

[Leo Gura]

4 minutes ago, kieranperez said:

 it’s all completely relative, how do I grasp what it is he’s really saying? I could read this whole thing through my lens and come out with a totally different interpretation”.

That's the whole problem of communication and abstract philosophical work. It's often impossible to really understand.

Some philosophical writing is abstract that there is literally not enough information in the book to clearly know when it meant.

Which is why I shower you guys with so many examples. It's only from lots of examples can you understand the abstractions.

Honestly, Kant is not worth your time to read. Kant is not nearly a profound as people make him out to be. Various distinctions he makes are confused and deluded.

If you want to read some good Western philosophy, try Plotinus or Berkeley.

[kieranperez]

@Leo Gura If i I recall correctly you’re fond if Hume. Thoughts on him? What about Heraclitus and Epictetus or Heidegger?

I wanted to try Kant because of the light Wilber has shared on Kant’s insights and also the kudos I’ve gotten from Ralston and his apprentice Brendan Lea who I talk to. 

The critique Kant seems to make on reason and apriori frameworks seems relatively true so far as human perception and of how we relate to things but not true as far as it being existentially true. 

I thought it might be helpful so I can open myself to introduce new questions so as to broaden my own investigation into my own experience.

Edited September 1, 2019 by kieranperez

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, kieranperez said:

@Leo Gura If i I recall correctly you’re fond if Hume. Thoughts on him? What about Heraclitus and Epictetus or Heidegger?

Hume is nice for starting philosophy but ultimately he's wrong in many foundational ways.

Heraclitus is good but there's so little of him to read. It's just a handful of lines.

Epictetus is great

Heidegger is too confusing for me to bother with. It's not ultimately true enough.

Quote

The critique Kant seems to make on reason and apriori frameworks seems relatively true so far as human perception and of how we relate to things but not true as far as it being existentially true.

Kant is an epistemic idealist. He doesn't go far enough. What he's missing is ontological idealism.

You're better off just reading summaries of such philosopher's work on Standard Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Otherwise you'll waste years read dense books which only make you more confused than you began.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/

You have to be careful when it comes to reading philosophy because it can become a quagmire which distracts you from Truth.

[kieranperez]

@Leo Gura what do you mean by epistemic idealist? I think I get what you’re saying (and if it’s what I’m thinking, a huge light bulb just went off) but I’m still not quite sure.

I gotta bookmark that Stanford link. I forgot to last time you mentioned it in one of your videos.

[Leo Gura]

Read the Stanford article on idealism. It's explained there.

Epistemtic idealism means that human knowledge is a construction of the mind. Ontological idealism means that physical reality is a construction of the mind.

[remember]

@kieranperez  sometimes sources are interesting as a reference for writers because they where the first to ever write or formulate insights/ideas/concepts through observation so it could become a part/starting point of a certain kowledge body. as these new approaches towards world perception mark a certain twist in the development of mankind. if authors reference certain other authors to reference the foundation they built their reflections/theories upon, sometimes they use the first ever source as they either are not deep in the matter of crossreferencing of different authors on the same phenomenon, or they try to state that their reflections are independent from further historical developments and in that sense pure and close to the source of the thought. of course it`s interesting to know where someone is coming from historically in some sense, and a lot of scientiffical struggles are about who said what first, in that they are not very different than designers. in the end it`s a bigger achievement to be the first than to get it more accurate as it stimulates the wow effect in a historical setting. but in sense of comparing the different approches to a certain terminological concept it`s very interesting to read about the small differences in the concepts to understand their mechanical/dynamical structure sensing into the different perspectives to understand fast what approach someone has to the world, without maybe even knowing themselves what approch they have. i`m not a person who does that, but i know people who are pretty good in that and who love to get hung up on these little differences sometimes, as exactly the point of how we percive the world sometimes makes the difference in how we interact with the world.

if you don`t want to discuss these on a referencial level, don`t get too hung up on the reference, get into the concept and perception of it, for your own metaphysics, that`s much more important. but if you want to diskuss these topics with people who are in it very deeply they will always mention names, as if the name was the concept, as if everyone would have read it.

compare the differences and similarities - that`s making it easier - in the end they all talk about the same, with some marginal differences that might not be marginal at all.

also for words like reason - it`s in a sense important to find out in what context reason might have been used during that time. you can compare it to what reason is defined as today. also maybe you are lucky and if you read kant you can find out what he meant with the word, how he defined it.

Edited September 1, 2019 by remember

[tsuki]

@kieranperez To get past what you call the structural phase I would suggest contemplating on the reverse problem.
How do you know what you mean when thoughts run in your mind?
Observe just how many words you use without deliberately choosing them and consciously understanding their implications.
That can be contemplated upon until the notions of words and sentences stop to make sense.

When it comes to self-inquiring on philosophical works, I think that finding new things in your experience is much more important than actually being in accordance with what the philosopher says. If you're having trouble experiencing what Kant wrote, try re-contextualizing his work until you find the meaning you can work with.