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[Mlw]

In the beginning of the 20th century people became greatly enthused about the psychoanalytic paradigm, as it seemed to endow life with meaning again. Freud saw it as a further expansion of "primitive animism" (The Freud Reader, p. 576). Jung created a whole Neoplatonic system around the metaphysical realm of the "collective unconscious" where "archetypes" roam about in parallel with conscious activity. Today, the psychoanalytic project has run aground. Research shows that the brain can only focus on a single problem at a time, and thus there is no place for all manner of activity below conscious awareness (cf. Chater, The Mind Is Flat, 2018, p. 130). Our feeble conscious ego is created by the brain, without any additional mental layer in between. Unconscious problem-solving is a myth. Vesa Talvitie says that "[t]here is no need to talk about unconscious mental matters—the term 'unconscious' merely refers to brain processes" (Talvitie, Freudian Unconscious and Cognitive Neuroscience, 2009, p. 83). Dream and myth do not derive from an "unconscious mind", in which "mind-entitities", such as archetypes, roam about. But it doesn't mean that such fantasies are worthless. They make it easier for us to cope with life. We need to project meaning, because we can't live in a universe consisting only of material particles.

So let's put Plato back on the table again! Arthur Herman (The Cave and the Light) says: "For the next two thousand years Aristotle would become the father of modern science, logic, and technology. Plato, by contrast, is the spokesman for the theologian, the mystic, the poet, and the artist" (Preface). The Platonic paradigm can rescue us from the encroaching materialism of the age; its profanity, rationalism, relativism and nihilism. But a return to Plato requires that we solve the problem with his concept of hyperuranian Forms. I think I've found a solution:

The Platonic Form as Self-Generating Triunity - The Resolution of the Third Man Argument

Abstract: Self-predication defines the Form. Unity is constituted (not invalidated) by the Third Man regress. Participation is envisaged as a cognitive process. The harmful consequences of anti-Platonic philosophy in the modern era is discussed.

Keywords: Platonism, Participation, religious faith, Bradley’s regress, Plato, Aristotle, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Arbogast Schmitt, Richard Gaskin.

Read the article here: (use your search engine)

[Hereandnow]

In the beginning of the 20th century people became greatly enthused about the psychoanalytic paradigm, as it seemed to endow life with meaning again. Freud saw it as a further expansion of "primitive animism" (The Freud Reader, p. 576). Jung created a whole Neoplatonic system around the metaphysical realm of the "collective unconscious" where "archetypes" roam about in parallel with conscious activity. Today, the psychoanalytic project has run aground. Research shows that the brain can only focus on a single problem at a time, and thus there is no place for all manner of activity below conscious awareness (cf. Chater, The Mind Is Flat, 2018, p. 130). Our feeble conscious ego is created by the brain, without any additional mental layer in between. Unconscious problem-solving is a myth. Vesa Talvitie says that "[t]here is no need to talk about unconscious mental matters—the term 'unconscious' merely refers to brain processes" (Talvitie, Freudian Unconscious and Cognitive Neuroscience, 2009, p. 83). Dream and myth do not derive from an "unconscious mind", in which "mind-entitities", such as archetypes, roam about. But it doesn't mean that such fantasies are worthless. They make it easier for us to cope with life. We need to project meaning, because we can't live in a universe consisting only of material particles.

So let's put Plato back on the table again! Arthur Herman (The Cave and the Light) says: "For the next two thousand years Aristotle would become the father of modern science, logic, and technology. Plato, by contrast, is the spokesman for the theologian, the mystic, the poet, and the artist" (Preface). The Platonic paradigm can rescue us from the encroaching materialism of the age; its profanity, rationalism, relativism and nihilism. But a return to Plato requires that we solve the problem with his concept of hyperuranian Forms. I think I've found a solution:

The Platonic Form as Self-Generating Triunity - The Resolution of the Third Man Argument

Abstract: Self-predication defines the Form. Unity is constituted (not invalidated) by the Third Man regress. Participation is envisaged as a cognitive process. The harmful consequences of anti-Platonic philosophy in the modern era is discussed.

Keywords: Platonism, Participation, religious faith, Bradley’s regress, Plato, Aristotle, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Arbogast Schmitt, Richard Gaskin.

Read the article here: (use your search engine)

First, you don't pursue a philosophical idea because it seems it might help us be better people. If this is your standard, you find yourself validating all sorts of nonsense. Philosophy insists an alignment with truth, even if this term is problematic, which it is, of course. (Thought, there are those who claim that absent any objective standard for Truth, with a capital 'T' then all bets are off in terms of this metaphysical objectivity.)

Second, it is not the case that talk about the unconscious is simply fantasy. Rather, such talk is self contradictory: to talk about anything at all is to make it conscious. To conceive of the unconscious is really to construct a conscious idea: the UNconscious is really consciousness' response to metaphysics, and metaphysics, whether it is Freud's of Jung's or Christianity's neo Platonism, or Plato's, is unspeakable.

Third, reviving Plato means what, exactly, believing that justice and ethics (and everything else) are grounding metaphysically in some ultimate ground of Being? Yes, it means this, putting aside the limited possibilities of Plato's Ideas, but keeping things general. You have a solution in the Third Man Argument. I remember this: it an infinite regression of metaphysical forms that follows from adding an instantiation to the Form of the instantiation, and thereby requiring a new form to subsume the two. Something like that. But this is an abstract argument that is not going to elucidate ethics.

Or, perhaps you could say what you have in mind.

[Mlw]

[...]

What I have in mind is explicated in the article. I am prohibited from posting a link because of a strange policy that prevents the spreading of information on the Internet. Today there must only be professionally looking sites with uninteresting content, which the search motors link to. Writing articles for one's homepage is today like talking to a wall.

Yes, we do indeed pursue a philosophical idea because it seems it might help us be better people. I defend this view in the article. A philosophical system of thought must interpret the world of man and not only the non-human world. After all, we have not only to interpret reality but also to live with it and with each other.

We may indeed continue to use the word 'unconscious' metaphorically, similar to how we use the words 'soul' and 'spirit'. I am saying that we ought to abandon the metaphysical unconscious, as a resident mental layer of the human psyche.

Like I said, Plato is "the spokesman for the theologian, the mystic, the poet, and the artist". It is necessary to defend the theory of Forms in order to elucidate a human ethics and a human worldview.

[Hereandnow]

Mlw wrote
What I have in mind is explicated in the article. I am prohibited from posting a link because of a strange policy that prevents the spreading of information on the Internet. Today there must only be professionally looking sites with uninteresting content, which the search motors link to. Writing articles for one's homepage is today like talking to a wall.

Yes, we do indeed pursue a philosophical idea because it seems it might help us be better people. I defend this view in the article. A philosophical system of thought must interpret the world of man and not only the non-human world. After all, we have not only to interpret reality but also to live with it and with each other.

We may indeed continue to use the word 'unconscious' metaphorically, similar to how we use the words 'soul' and 'spirit'. I am saying that we ought to abandon the metaphysical unconscious, as a resident mental layer of the human psyche.

Like I said, Plato is "the spokesman for the theologian, the mystic, the poet, and the artist". It is necessary to defend the theory of Forms in order to elucidate a human ethics and a human worldview.

But when you say "Self-predication defines the Form. Unity is constituted (not invalidated) by the Third Man regress. Participation is envisaged as a cognitive process. The harmful consequences of anti-Platonic philosophy in the modern era is discussed" you then leave the entire matter unspoken. Hardly anything to respond to. When you say self predication defines the Form, what the !#$!@@#@# are you talking about? Unity and the third man argument?? This argument was supposed to show how talk about universals and their particulars would have to include the universal itself, leading to yet another form, which is subject to the same problem, and so on. I was forced to write a paper on this many years ago, so I barely remember it, but at least you could SAY how it is that unity is "constituted: by it.

And so on. You have an argument. I wonder what it is, besides, let's revive Plato.

[value]

A link to the article:

The Platonic Form as Self-Generating Triunity - The Resolution of the Third Man Argument
http://mlwi.magix.net/platonicform.htm

Author: Mats L. Winther
http://mlwi.magix.net/ (Various articles on psychological, philosophical and religious topics, with an emphasis on myth and symbol. The pros and cons of Jungian psychology are considered.)

I have been interested in the concept Forms and will be following the discussion.

The following study may be of interest. It shows that all of reality is entangled by 'kind' which is vitally Plato's Forms.

(2020) Is nonlocality inherent in all identical particles in the universe?
The photon emitted by the monitor screen and the photon from the distant galaxy at the depths of the universe seem to be entangled only by their identical nature. This is a great mystery that science will soon confront.
https://phys.org/news/2020-03-nonlocali ... verse.html

[Mlw]

(Thanks, 'value', for posting the links.) In the article I link to a longer article (Turtles all the way down) where I say something more about the unity of the proposition, according to Richard Gaskin's book, The Unity of the Proposition (2008). He says that it is the regress itself which is ultimately constitutive of unity. In Plato, the Form of the Good shines its light on the other Forms, activating them. If we apply the trinitarian formula, then the Form of the Good corresponds to the Christian concept of the Trinity:

• The Father loves the Son (John 3:35 and 5:20)

The above proposition is triune (subject, copula, object). It means that God is love, which is the light that shines on the world. In the 'turtles' article I explain that, because there is separation, the persons have the relation of Love. From this follows a relation regress, which constitutes the unity of Love. The reason why God is Love is because the persons have the property of Love. In God there's no contradiction between having the property and being the property.

A Form is always three producing unity. Already Augustine, who had a favourable eye to Platonism, foresaw that stable matter partakes in this triune Form. He rejected the view that matter is continuous and argued that, at the lowest level, there is still form, as a reflection of the Trinity. Today the structure of protons and neutrons is believed to consist of three quarks, always in communication. (This is called 'perichoresis' in theology.) The combination of Plato and Augustine proved very fruitful. Only in the beginning of the 20th century, science concluded that solid matter is discontinuous.

Augustine also foresaw the second law of thermodynamics. He exemplifies with a wave that strikes the shore. It splits up and the drops fly in different directions. If we turn the arrow of time in the other direction, then the wave would come together. This doesn't make sense, he says. And then he concludes that everything falls apart with time. He also explains that the universe was created in an instant, at which moment also time began. Above all, he formulates a conception of human nature and human society which has proved correct. That's why Robert Jastrow (God and the Astronomers, 1978) says:

• For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. (p. 116)

Augustine, with the aid of Plato, had already thought it up! But this shouldn't be possible, according to the anti-Platonic empiricist paradigm, according to which all truth is mysteriously contained in the material object. In medieval times, the professors didn't have recourse to Plato's books, except the Timaeus (at least parts of it). So Augustine was interpreted in terms of Aristotle, and even in nominalist terms. The result was a warped Augustinianism. John M. Rist (Augustine Deformed: Love, Sin and Freedom in the Western Moral Tradition, 2014) argues that we must return to a true Augustinianism informed by Platonism. He argues that it was catastrophic, the way in which philosophy and theology went astray. Accordingly, Richard H. Schlagel claims that modern philosophy has failed miserably. See: 'The Waning of the Light: The Eclipse of Philosophy' (The Review of Metaphysics 57, Sept 2003, 105-133). (It's available on freelibrary..com.)

[Pattern-chaser]

Second, it is not the case that talk about the unconscious is simply fantasy.

Yes, OK...

Rather, such talk is self contradictory: to talk about anything at all is to make it conscious. To conceive of the unconscious is really to construct a conscious idea: the UNconscious is really consciousness' response to metaphysics, and metaphysics, whether it is Freud's of Jung's or Christianity's neo Platonism, or Plato's, is unspeakable.

To talk about anything at all requires us, because of the way our minds work, to be aware (however briefly) of that thing; to be conscious of it. That much, I think, we can agree on. And so, of course, if we talk about the non-conscious mind, we are conscious (aware) of our conception of it. That says nothing about the unconscious; it describes how we are (must be?) aware of the thing(s) we're currently talking about — in this case, the "unconscious".

You say "the UNconscious is really consciousness' response to" ... something else. Here, you seem to deny the very existence of the "UNconscious", dismissing it as a figment of our imaginations, or something similar. I can't see this is, can, or could be, the case. What about Coleridge's 'Kublai Khan'? What about the hundreds of solutions to problems I have been working on have apparently just 'appeared' from nowhere, after I've 'slept on it', or because it came to me in the shower, or whatever? Where did these things come from? Did they appear by magic?

Based on empirical observation, there are parts of our minds of which we are not, and cannot be, 'consciously' aware. We call these parts of the mind the unconscious or non-conscious mind. We separate them from our conscious minds, almost as if they are distinct, and not all parts of the same thing. We have minds, and some parts of those minds are not available to direct introspection. What's the big deal?

Your approach seems to be that the conscious parts of our minds are the only parts that really exist? Perhaps I have misread or misunderstood what you're saying here?

[Mlw]

[...]

Unconscious problem-solving is an illusion. The phenomenon can compared with that famous picture of a Dalmatian, consisting only of black spots. First we can't see the dog, but then suddenly we see it. Nick Chater says about problem-solving that

• the solution is found in a single cycle of thought when we contemplate the problem again. Having broken free of our previous and incorrect analysis, by happy chance our brains alight upon the correct solution. The mental fragments are recombined in just the right way, click delightfully together, and the problem is solved. (The Mind is Flat, p. 166)

The unconscious has not been involved. Indeed, you have slept on the problem, but this only means that you can look at the problem with fresh eyes the next day. There exists no mental unconscious. It has been refuted by brain research. The brain, however, becomes attuned to one's conscious tasks, and thus one gets better and better at it.

[Hereandnow]

Pattern-chaser wrote
To talk about anything at all requires us, because of the way our minds work, to be aware (however briefly) of that thing; to be conscious of it. That much, I think, we can agree on. And so, of course, if we talk about the non-conscious mind, we are conscious (aware) of our conception of it. That says nothing about the unconscious; it describes how we are (must be?) aware of the thing(s) we're currently talking about — in this case, the "unconscious".

Put it this way: Simply put, something that is by nature unconscious, cannot be verified, for to verify it is to make it conscious, and in that moment of conscious thought, one has made conscious what is inherently unconscious. The point is, we can never witness the the unconscious. Not that we have not witnessed it, but we cannot, because in a perceptual event, qua perceptual, we are witnessing what is conscious.

This doesn't mean that Freudians are just speaking nonsense. We should take the whole idea of a structured unconsciousness in its true form: it is a theory about what cannot be seen, not about what is some latent idea in the paradigms of psychology or neuroscience, but absolutely cannot be witnessed, and yet, is arguably plausible because we can build an empirical theory based on the plethora of empirical models we have that are very well conceived and efficient. That is to say, Freud's UNconscious, with its ego, ID, superego, and essential dynamics, is really an empirical theory that is bound to, if you can stand it, the "finitude" of empirical theories, like those about the electromagnetic spectrum, plate tectonics, and all the rest.

Calling it "the unconscious," which is impossible, is just a shorthand for inferring from what can be seen to what cannot, aka, extrapolation. Not unlike the Big Bang, which cannot be seen either, but we can follow the evidence through the principle of sufficient cause, and trace the matter to an unobservable past event. Here, the assumption is that the Big Bang actually could be witnessed, if we had the perceptual apparatus in place way back then. But the unconscious is radically different. Analysis shows this extrapolation is really a metaphysical extrapolation.

Based on empirical observation, there are parts of our minds of which we are not, and cannot be, 'consciously' aware. We call these parts of the mind the unconscious or non-conscious mind. We separate them from our conscious minds, almost as if they are distinct, and not all parts of the same thing. We have minds, and some parts of those minds are not available to direct introspection. What's the big deal?

Your approach seems to be that the conscious parts of our minds are the only parts that really exist? Perhaps I have misread or misunderstood what you're saying here?

Hmmmm They way you put this makes it a tough cookie. I am convinced that all of it, every scrap of existence, is metaphysics. Looking closely at Freud and the rest takes us to a kind of threshold of metaphysics, as we are forced to acknowledge that things are not as they seemed to be. Consciousness is not a "part of our mind" but IS our mind. Consciousness is metaphysical, not to put too fine a point on it. It is not simply an ego, as Freud said, faced with the a social dynamic that insists on sublimating basic instincts (though there certainly is something to this), but is already within the depths of its own "unconsciousness" and by this I mean we face metaphysics in ourselves.

This is the tough cookie.

[Pattern-chaser]

[...]

Unconscious problem-solving is an illusion. The phenomenon can compared with that famous picture of a Dalmatian, consisting only of black spots. First we can't see the dog, but then suddenly we see it. Nick Chater says about problem-solving that

• the solution is found in a single cycle of thought when we contemplate the problem again. Having broken free of our previous and incorrect analysis, by happy chance our brains alight upon the correct solution. The mental fragments are recombined in just the right way, click delightfully together, and the problem is solved. (The Mind is Flat, p. 166)

The unconscious has not been involved. Indeed, you have slept on the problem, but this only means that you can look at the problem with fresh eyes the next day. There exists no mental unconscious. It has been refuted by brain research. The brain, however, becomes attuned to one's conscious tasks, and thus one gets better and better at it.

OK, I'm not convinced, but let's leave that aside, just for now. Perhaps we'll return to it later. At the moment, I'd like to ask you for clarification:

Do you have links that might support the highlighted statements? I'd like very much to examine them myself...?

[Pattern-chaser]

Hmmmm They way you put this makes it a tough cookie. I am convinced that all of it, every scrap of existence, is metaphysics. Looking closely at Freud and the rest takes us to a kind of threshold of metaphysics, as we are forced to acknowledge that things are not as they seemed to be. Consciousness is not a "part of our mind" but IS our mind. Consciousness is metaphysical, not to put too fine a point on it. It is not simply an ego, as Freud said, faced with the a social dynamic that insists on sublimating basic instincts (though there certainly is something to this), but is already within the depths of its own "unconsciousness" and by this I mean we face metaphysics in ourselves.

This is the tough cookie.

I find myself in the same position here as I was when beginning my previous post.

OK, I'm not convinced, but let's leave that aside, just for now. Perhaps we'll return to it later. At the moment, I'd like to ask you for clarification:

Do you have links that might support the highlighted statements? I'd like very much to examine them myself...?

In this case, I wonder what you mean by "metaphysics"?


I'm not asking you to define the word, or the meaning that the word represents/carries. I'm wondering about what you mean when you use it. It looks as though you are using "metaphysics" as a scientist exclusively committed to science might do. I.e. you use "it's metaphysics" to mean 'this is trivial, imaginary, and not really worth the trouble of serious consideration'.

Is that so, or am I reading too much into what you wrote?

[Hereandnow]

Mlw wrote:
Unconscious problem-solving is an illusion. The phenomenon can compared with that famous picture of a Dalmatian, consisting only of black spots. First we can't see the dog, but then suddenly we see it. Nick Chater says about problem-solving that
the solution is found in a single cycle of thought when we contemplate the problem again. Having broken free of our previous and incorrect analysis, by happy chance our brains alight upon the correct solution. The mental fragments are recombined in just the right way, click delightfully together, and the problem is solved. (The Mind is Flat, p. 166)

The unconscious has not been involved. Indeed, you have slept on the problem, but this only means that you can look at the problem with fresh eyes the next day. There exists no mental unconscious. It has been refuted by brain research. The brain, however, becomes attuned to one's conscious tasks, and thus one gets better and better at it.

But take a simple act of perception: I observe a tree, but in my occurrent observation, the tree sits there in a singular encounter, but I know that it is my long historical familiarity with trees in a culture that has familiarized me with uncountable tree associations in contexts of all kinds and differences, that makes the tree accessible as a tree. So the singularity of the tree encounter is really a complex act of recognition, as is revealed in, say, an illustrative figure of brain storming that shows the body of implicit relations in the single thought. What stabilizes thought and observation of particulars, is a "region" of thoughts and memories that gather around this one event. Hegel talked about universals a lot, and the idea here would be that when I say, look. a tree! it is not the actuality before me that "knows" but the universal that subsumes the particular! Many, many things are, "look, it's a_____! and now, as I am looking and exclaiming, it is merely an application of a universal.

The point of all this is to say that in any occurrent moment of perceptual awareness, the singularity itself lies in a collective that makes thought possible. Whether it is from the pov of memory and history, or from some form of Hegelian logic (or whatever. There are other ways in this) it is clear that what is singular is complex, and we do not acknowledge this complexity in the singularity. It always is, A tree or A star, or this or that. So in our understanding of what a conscious event is, we have no choice but to refer to something unconscious implicitly in the apparent singularity of the event.

The "flat mind" sounds like a form of behaviorism which was also reductive to what was observable physicality. But philosophically, this runs dry very quickly.

[Hereandnow]

Pattern-chaser wrote
In this case, I wonder what you mean by "metaphysics"?


I'm not asking you to define the word, or the meaning that the word represents/carries. I'm wondering about what you mean when you use it. It looks as though you are using "metaphysics" as a scientist exclusively committed to science might do. I.e. you use "it's metaphysics" to mean 'this is trivial, imaginary, and not really worth the trouble of serious consideration'.

Is that so, or am I reading too much into what you wrote?

I don't have trouble defining metaphysics: it is the foundational indeterminacy of our existence. Ask what a thing is, or a thought, feeling, whatever, and you will find, in the faithful pursuit to the end!, that meaningful utterances fall away. How trivial this is is entirely up to the individual. I am inclined to say that like everything else, some are "good" at it, while others are not, where being good at it refers to an ability to understand the intuitive values that present themselves, that is, the uncanny experience that one exists at all!

[Mlw]

OK, I'm not convinced, but let's leave that aside, just for now. Perhaps we'll return to it later. At the moment, I'd like to ask you for clarification:

Do you have links that might support the highlighted statements? I'd like very much to examine them myself...?

I can't post links! I refer you to books about the subject matter, such as the books I mentioned. Another book which goes into these questions is Talvitie, et al.: Psychoanalysis and Philosophy of Mind - Unconscious Mentality in the Twenty-first Century (2015). Talvitie has a downloadable article on academia..edu: 'Biting the Bullet: The Nature of Unconscious Fantasy'. Nick Chater appears in several videos on YouTube.

This idea about the "mental unconscious" has given rise to a Gnostic cult that leads people astray. That's why we need to get back to the concept of transcendence, Plato's hyperuranion. The Forms aren't immanent; they are transcendent.

[Mlw]

We need a stable metaphysic, a wholeness to guide us. Ernest Gellner (Legitimation of Belief, 1974) points out that when relativism becomes normative no distinctions may be made between better and worse in perceptions, morals, cultures, etc., and therefore no action is possible. Thus, the real refutation of relativism is that it is empty (p. 47). This sheds light on the current situation in Western society. The theologian Ruth Page (Ambiguity and the Presence of God, 1985) explains that a metaphysic is required because the world is so ambiguous, mutable, and pluriform, or else we will be afflicted by disorientation and insecurity.

• An implication of that point of view is that without the goal of final truth there is no stimulus to advance understanding, for relative knowledge is scarcely better than opinion, and one perspective is as good or bad as any other since there is no absolute criterion of validity. Relativism could also lead to the judgment that if morality is dependent on relative perception of the good, then all is permitted and anarchy is loosed upon the world. With relativism, if absolutes are lost, everything except description is lost or the way is open to irrationality. The understandable reaction to this is to cling to the notion of absolutes, even when that becomes difficult to justify, for the ideals, security, simplicity and motivation they offer, and for their centre of gravity outside fallible humanity. (p. 81)

This is the reason why Plato invented the theory of the Forms, as a means of coping with the relativism of his day, namely Sophism. Today we know that there are no Absolutes in the form of mental archetypes, unlike what Carl Jung thought. We have no other choice than to abandon the metaphysic of the unconscious. It seems that our situation is desperate on the stormy sea of modernity. But Plato and his transcendental archetypes provides a safe harbour.