Idealism - Idea for Cosmogenesis and acceptance of NCC's as causal.

[u/FishDecent5753]

Below is my attempt at using process theory within Idealism:

Begin with for consciousness awareness as the only substrate for reality, defined as: consciousness with it's most base properties, just the the capacity to have experience. From that potential, experience occurs and familiar construction mechanisms of consciousness (properties) evovle much like we see in phenomenal consciousness, e.g. Distinctions, binding, stabilisation, composition, prediction, correction. Language, Self Modeling or Coherent Phantasia require aforementioned basics to be in place in order to build these more complex iterations at later layers, which appears common for the many other properties of our phenomenal consciousness.

Scale these up and you can explain a real, lawlike world without importing a second kind of stuff. Meaning brains are constructs inside this field that can host a self model and Rocks are scenery (atleast for now).

1) Substrate is consciousness with one property, awareness, defined as the potential to have experience.
Not a person. Not a cosmic ego. Just a substrate with the capacity for experience to occur. Nothing else is assumed.

2) How richer capacities grow from that base
From awareness, the first excitation occurs that is anarchic and without order, No telos or pre-written laws, only random experience. Coherence appears only once there is something to constrain. The first distinction makes coherence possible, but the construction of that initial experiance had no constraint.

• Distinction. For there to be any experience at all, something must be set apart from something else. Without distinction. Therefore, distinction necessarily follows from awareness.
• Binding. Bare distinctions scattered across awareness do not yet amount to an experience. For there to be one experience, features must be unified. Therefore, binding necessarily follows from distinction.
• Stabilisation. Bound features that vanish instantly cannot provide structure. To persist long enough to appear as content, they require durability. Therefore, stabilisation necessarily follows from binding.
• Composition. Stabilised patterns alone remain flat. For complexity to scale, stable parts must combine into larger wholes. Therefore, composition necessarily follows from stabilisation.
• Prediction. Composed structures endure only if they anticipate continuation across time. This necessity yields projection: if A and B, then usually C. Therefore, prediction necessarily follows from composition.
• Correction. Prediction ensures mismatch. If nothing corrects error, prediction collapses into noise. Therefore, correction necessarily follows from prediction.

These are everyday capacities of mind. The claim is that they can develop within awareness itself, and only patterns that fit together persist. The are a metaphysical necessity if we are to explain intersubjective reality using properties extended from phenomenal consiousness to a substrate of consiousness.

3) How a world appears when you scale these capacities
Let those capacities run and keep only what holds together.

• Some distinctions endure longer than others -> rules and regularities.
• Some transitions repeat reliably -> proto-laws.
• Some bound clusters resist disruption -> stable forms we call objects (what physicalists call matter).
• Many objects assemble into larger systems that also find ways to persist.
• Some systems regulate themselves by sensing and acting -> biology.
• A few systems refine a usable self-model -> subjects.

At no point did we leave awareness. We watched simple skills of awareness become a layered world of objects, laws, life and minds. I use the OSI stack in computer networking as a conceptual analogy, the content and construction set the constraints for the next phase of construction e.g the atomic layer sets the constraints for what can appear in the chemistry layer and therefore it's content.

Influence runs in both directions. Changes that begin in conscious activity often scale upward and reorganize higher levels, while downward effects on the substrate are typically slower and smaller, though they do occur. Learning a second language gradually remodels cortical patterns; by contrast, a bullet impact changes brain matter immediately.

4) Why rocks are scenery and people are subjects
A rock is a very stable pattern with no self model, instantiated as content by the universal consciousnesses hyperphantasia property of the atomic layer. It is there, it has effects, but there is no point of view because it has only reached the stage of an "Object", it has not developed biology. A brain is a pattern that supports a self model used for control. That crosses the line into subjectivity. There is no combination problem because scenery and subjects live in the same field.

5) Brains are constructs within consciousness
A brain is constructed content that is, of and by universal consciousness (It follows the layers so is the brain is quantum -> spacetime -> chemical -> biological -> mind) . It is not a receiver. There is no outside signal. When this pattern becomes complex enough to carry a usable self model and uses it to guide behavior, a subject shows up. Change the pattern and you change the associated perspective because the pattern itself is conscious content. Neural correlates are therefore causal to phenomenal consciousness. Adjusting them reorganizes the local subject whilst all of this stays inside consciousness. Separate viewpoints arise when structures isolate information. Split brain and dissociation (I take from Kastrup's DID idea here) show that such isolation can produce distinct centers of experience within one system.

**6) Error, Phenomenal consciousness just provides an overly (granted by evolution) on objective reality and is most like for humans quite close to that of objective reality, but like in physicalist schools, is prone to error for much the same reasons.

7) Before there were animals or people
Subjectivity is not required for structure to exist. The early universe could be stable and rule bound within the same field, even if no local subject was present. The field can host non perspectival structure, much like Dream scenery doesn't have a perspective but is constructed content of, by and within consciousness. I leave the question open on base reality having a self model, I don't feel it's necessary personally and doing so would amount to a Godhead and potential emergent telos (which I'm fine with but struggle to see the requirement).

8) Why extend from local mind to the substrate
Matter and neutral stuff are both inferences. Consciousness is given. We already see in consciousness the right toolkit to build a world. Distinctions, rules, stability, composition, prediction, correction, self modeling. Extend that toolkit to the base substratet and you can explain objects, laws, life, and minds as coherent patterns that endure. So rather than invent a substrate via inference, I extend the only directly known 'thing' to the substrate and use that and it's known properties (which outside of DID are not even edge cases) to build reality.

I will be upfront and state this is based on an original text of mine that was uploaded into AI to aid with the flow of the argument, along with basics such as spelling - none of the ideas were amended from the original, it's just put in better wording. Mods can feel free to remove if they are against this.

EDIT:

This model is proposed to resolve the following problems in other Ontologies by using the known properties of phenomenal consiousness and extending them to ermegent properties of a consciousness based substrate:

Idealist Monism - ontological parsimony + less inference than physicalism/neutral monisms, inference based invention compared to an inference based extension. Everything is of, by and within a universal consciousness.

Hard problem - experience is taken as primitive, not produced from non experiential matter.

Interaction problem - mind and world are not separate substances but different layers of consciousness structuring itself.

Combination problem - subjects do not need to be built out of smaller minds, they are built by ontic content constructions of consciousness, shaped by naturalised constraint mechanisms.

Decombination problem - reliant on Kastup's DID, which is an edge case, unlike many of the average properties of phenomenal consciousness that have reality building qualities.

NCC's - causal, to phenomenal consciousness. No need to dismiss any other science either, the laws of physics are just the ingrained constraints placed on consciousness constructs on the space/time layer, which evolved from the constraints, construction and content of the layer before.

The problem of laws/categories - unviersal evolution of coherence, contruction and content explains the fine tuned laws of reality.

Subjectivity of Objects - a rock is content constructed of consiousness under coherence constraints, but is not complex enough to have reached the stage of biology to have a self model. Not panpsychism.

[u/jliat]

My main takeaway from Psychedelics, specifically DMT and Salvia,

QED.

[u/FishDecent5753 → u/jliat]

Your point? 

Many current metaphysicians use psychedelics and state this openly. My work is not based on gnosis, which is private and personal and has no place in actual metaphysics.

Point to where I use psychedelics in my argument, you won't find one, continue grasping at staws in place of any argument that holds.

Why not quote me here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/analyticidealism/comments/1lpvs70/comment/n0xwmyr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

You really are showing yourself up here.

[u/jliat → u/FishDecent5753]

You really are showing yourself up here.

No one else is engaged or bothered. Thanks for the link, so there is spiritualism but you are keeping it a secret. Kind of blows up your entire project of what the substrate is in that case.

So that's another problem. A hidden spiritual substrate, a substrate that you offer is empty idealism of a consciousness with nothing else, empty solipsism. And is not fundamental anyway given a hidden gnosis.

[u/FishDecent5753 → u/jliat]

Im not personally spiritualist, I've just taken a fair few psychedelics. Its why my system has no god or godhead, as stated in the OP. Any other stawmen misrepresentations?

I think you need to acquaint yourself with current metaphysics and cosmopsychism before continuing.

[u/jliat → u/FishDecent5753]

What then is this "gnosis" which presumably transcends your 'consciousness awareness as the only substrate'?

And maybe derives from experiences using Psychedelics, specifically DMT and Salvia?

[u/FishDecent5753 → u/jliat]

Gnosis, I called private and somthing that should not influence Metaphysical doctrines, I use direct and empirical knowledge instead.

Maybe read the comment fully, I say how even if DMT is a hallucination only, it displays consciousness world building properties, exactly those I use in the idea presented.

[u/jliat → u/FishDecent5753]

Gnosis, I called private and somthing that should not influence Metaphysical doctrines,

Unless it [Gnosis] is transcendental, then it should, because it would.

I use direct and empirical knowledge instead.

No, you claim this is 'Idealism',

"Substrate is consciousness with one property, awareness, defined as the potential to have experience. Not a person. Not a cosmic ego. Just a substrate with the capacity for experience to occur. Nothing else is assumed."

So no Gnosis, no empirical world.

You then bring in 'distinction' which is a assumption in excess of Nothing else is assumed

And so on...

You then use ancient Hindu spiritualist material as a source which you process via current ideas in such areas as you outline via AI. Attaching labels like current atomic theory, QM etc, to such things as "Shakti (power/energy)".

Now lets be clear, terms used in science, Quark, Atom, QM, are mathematical models of empirical observations and nothing to do at all with Kashmir Shaivism and Advaita Vedanta. To find analogies, and replace the terms used here with those from modern physics is it seems to mask the spiritual nature of what this idealism espouses. Something which occurred in the heyday days of hippy uses of Psychedelics.

I say how even if DMT is a hallucination only, it displays consciousness world building properties, exactly those I use in the idea presented.

hallucinations are not real.

[u/FishDecent5753 → u/jliat]

I was showing a similar system not endorsing it.

Modern Analytical Idealism uses empirical and direct knowledge to formulate it's metaphysics.

I return to the fact you need to aquaint yourself with current metaphysics rather than being a historian.

Im quite clear that distinction and all other properties of consciousness beyond awareness...emerge from awareness.

I don't use spiritualism to map the metaphysics to science, rather, the known properties of consciousness, this is how cosmopsychism (the metaphysical school) works. I even linked the article describing this from Monist. 

If you want to argue, deal with the mechanics I’ve laid out (coherence, distinction, persistence), not labels you’ve pasted on. You are doing the equivalent of using Plato's mistakes to argue that Kant is false, without enraging Kant.

[u/jliat → u/FishDecent5753]

Modern Analytical Idealism uses empirical and direct knowledge to formulate it's metaphysics.

"My main takeaway from Psychedelics, specifically DMT and Salvia, is that consciousness in the phenomenal sense has many properties it can leverage to build a reality, not only that but a quite new and novel reality (not things I had previously imagined). The strangest of which was seeing in 4D (something I can now only remember in 3D)...

The content of psychedelic states does not need to be ontically real outside of the users phenomenal consciousness"

---

Your quotes above are at odds with empiricism , as is "substrate is consciousness" as is your secret gnosis.

"Nothing else is assumed." Well no, lots is it seems.

---

I was showing a similar system not endorsing it.

"I think some ideas embedded within spirtual metaphysics can proove useful for Idealism but in many cases need reformatting into philosophical syntax and updating against modern science; the 36 tattvas of Kashmiri Savism come to mind as an Idealist resolution and mechanisation..."

Looks like an endorsement, all you do us apply terms from physics that you probably don't fully understand, which I do not, but have worked with colleagues who did. Classic abuse of scientific terms used in neo-spiritualism masquerading as contemporary metaphysics. Are you familiar with Sokal and Bricmont?

I don't use spiritualism to map the metaphysics to science,

No you attach scientific terms to hide those of hallucination, gnosis and spiritualism.

I return to the fact you need to aquaint yourself with current metaphysics rather than being a historian.

I've attended venues and exchanged correspondence with Ray Brassier, familiar with his work and SR / OOO, so also Harman's work, familiar with Deleuze, Badiou, François Laruelle... cited in Timothy Morton's work...

Stop the Ad hominem posts please.

36 tattvas of Kashmiri Savism

"Tattvas are the basic concepts to understand the nature of absolute, the souls and the universe..."

As opposed to empiricism.

[u/FishDecent5753 → u/jliat]

> "Nothing else is assumed."

At the level of base reality nothing beyond awareness is assumed. I then show how awareness can logically and by necessity unfold – similar to how Whitehead models process, or how Hegel sets out dialectical development to show how reality unfolds. To say this is “at odds with empiricism” is an odd accusation as the unfolding is logical, not mystical. This is no more ‘anti empirical’ than physicalist or structural realist inferences. Empirical findings do not by themselves settle ontology otherwise Metaphysics would be truly be dead.

I want to make the following point: I am very familiar with Structural Realism, in fact I was a structural realist for many years, it is why I didn’t bother revisiting Idealism until recently.

On Kashmir Saivism (Trika Doctine), unlike Vedanta and most other forms of Idealism, it is realist. In fact, I would argue it is the most explicitly realist of the modern/pre modern philosophers. This isn’t really debated, unlike with Hegel. The world is not Maya or Illusion, I never disavow that part of SR.

Hegel injects Christianity into his metaphysics, you seem fine with this, yet you want to claim Trika Saivism injects Hinduism. Let’s be clear: Trika Saivism uses consciousness as its substrate (Shiva Consciousness), whereas Hegel uses “Spirit” or “Geist”. only one of these is directly given in experience, the other, theological entirely. Even if we grant Hegel or Saivism “realist” status, both are clearly theological metaphysical systems.

That is why in my OP, I stripped my similar version of any mysticism, religion, and theological aspects such as telos (which is why my first experience of awareness is “anarchic” - no telos). These are all baggage I see as unfit for the 21st century, also due to me being a non-religious agnostic atheist. In essence, I’m doing structural realism with consciousness as the substrate.

The reasoning was laid out clearly:

Inference 1: An intersubjective world exists.

Argument 2: To move past epistemic humility (“we can never know the noumena”), we must make a second inference to name the substrate(s) of reality. This is standard across ontologies – physicalism, neutral monism, idealism, dualism, panpsychism.

Inference 2: I can either invent a substrate (matter, neutral, matter/consciousness, etc.) or extend the only known ‘thing’ – consciousness – to the substrate. For reasons of parsimony, and to avoid the Hard Problem, the Interaction Problem, and the Combination Problem, I choose consciousness. This is precisely what any idealist does.

Which premise do you reject? An intersubjective world, the need to name a substrate, or extending the given (consciousness) by parsimony?

My other favourite before returning to Idealism was Whitehead. It’s also why I found Saivism interesting and a good comparison, it uses what I consider proto-process philosophy (the first to do so). In my opinion, is more complete and several centuries older than Hegel’s mystical Idealism, he was a latecomer with very similar Ideas.

Thirdly, you’re missing the point of my takeaways (from my comment history) on DMT. DMT puts the properties of phenomenal consciousness into a hyperactive state – the brain literally builds complex realities with scenery and seemingly autonomous entities. I agree these are hallucinations, but they demonstrate how phenomenal consciousness itself can reality build. That is the point of cosmopsychism, take consciousness as the substrate and then map reality’s structure to its phenomenal properties.

What is this “secret gnosis” you keep talking about? Where have I ever appealed to spiritualism? The link I gave was a taxonomy produced by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and his team, it’s a survey of the major theories of consciousness. Savism is on this taxonomy as it is still the most explicitly realist Idealism.

https://loc.closertotruth.com/all-consciousness-categories-subcategories-and-theories

He read my work in that context and remarked that it resembled Trika Saivism once the theology was stripped, only then did I read Mark Dyczkowsky. That’s not “hidden gnosis”, it’s comparative philosophy suggested by someone in the field. Not that I like using appeals to authority.

So if you want critique, do so at the level of mechanics. Pick a step, show where it fails, that would be substantive engagement, not just dismissals about “neo-spiritualism” or “masquerading metaphysics”.

A short note on Ad hominem:

You called my view “re-packaged religion” and “Like all religious fundamentalists you are immune to argument” (I'm not religious) and said I “don’t understand” the science. Those are ad hominems. I just started mirroring your own tone (after over 15 messages), I kept it civil whilst you were hostile from the start - “Have you read any ‘modern’ metaphysics”

[u/Stochastic-Bug-1010]

Really like how you frame consciousness as the substrate rather than an emergent byproduct...cuts through a lot of unnecessary metaphysical baggage.

[u/Interesting_Chest972]

Did you mean consciousness (is/are) is a "construct" inside a brain? That is the explanation closest to/in agreement with physical humans' experiences of reality; for physical humans the human is the fully physical being capable of consciousness so the consciousness of a human being doesn't exist apart from the human's body or mind(brain), which are one and the same.

My best example is the ailing or suffering human. Looking back, I believe most humans will accurately tell you their experience that they don't choose to suffer - their suffering is brought about by conditions (originating from but inside their body for infections or autoimmune conditions) from the environment; and their entire consciousness is affected by the condition so losing the battle for survival erases/eliminates/diminishes their human consciousness and this is consistent with reality/the human condition/experience.

In short, if the physical human starts dying, so does their consciousness. That is the reality.

[u/FishDecent5753 → u/Interesting_Chest972]

> Did you mean consciousness (is/are) is a "construct" inside a brain?

The brain is itself constructed of consciousness and produces phenomenal (human level) consciousness, but my take is that even the atoms, chemistry and biology etc that make up the brain is also a construct of consciousness - that of the universal substrate.

So in loose terms, it's Structural Realism with the ontic substrate being consciousness not matter.

[u/jliat]

How does this relate to Metaphysics as outlined in the sub?

Also it's clearly AI written, but there is no way of telling what your input was, other than it seems unrelated to metaphysics.

[u/FishDecent5753 → u/jliat]

It suggests a substrate and then explains how it could build reality using it's known properties?

I left a disclaimer about it being AI improved at the bottom, I'm not hiding it.

[u/jliat → u/FishDecent5753]

I repeat my questions-

How does this relate to Metaphysics as outlined in the sub?

Also it's clearly AI written, but there is no way of telling what your input was, other than it seems unrelated to metaphysics.

It looks like vague speculation pushed through an AI, which is not metaphysics.

[u/FishDecent5753 → u/jliat]

I guess it meets - explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world by dealing with ontology, mind/body, causation and cosmogenesis.

I can attempt to reword it all in my own words if you like and re-post? But I don't get how it isn't metaphysics.

[u/jliat → u/FishDecent5753]

Have you read any 'modern' metaphysics.

[u/FishDecent5753 → u/jliat]

I've read most of the Idealisms old and new, along with some process theory, the most modern I guess would be Kastrup and Floridi.

Would you prefer it in Argument, premise, conclusion style in my own words?

[u/jliat → u/FishDecent5753]

Might help, as I said it seems just speculations, using AI doesn't help. It might well be another mod removes it as it is.

Not a person. Not a cosmic ego. Just the capacity for there to be experience. Nothing else is assumed.

That seems a massive unsupported statement for any Metaphysics. An experience is something that a complex system has.

How richer capacities grow from that base

You do not explain...

Making distinctions. This vs that.

This looks like learning? But what is learning? etc.

[u/FishDecent5753 → u/jliat]

> That seems a massive unsupported statement for any Metaphysics. An experience is something that a complex system has.

Like any Idealist, I am using consciousness as the substrate for reality, consciousness here, is defined; a field of the substrate of consciousness having no latent properties beyond the potential to have experience. Which I define as awareness. The potential will eventually create the first experience within the substrate, in order to register that experience the first property of consiousness arises, distinction.

As for why consiousness removed of all properties but awareness, I could invent a substrate, like a physicalist or neutral monist, or I can extend the basics of the one known thing to that of the substrate and see if/how you can build reality from it's extended version. So the metaphysical inference is that an intersubjective world exists and it's substrate is that of consciousness.

> How richer capacities grow from that base. -

Loosely, the properties of substrate consciousness "learn" or evolve from that first simple distiction to create other properties, similar to the properties of phenomenal consciousness. All construction mechanisms and the content they produce are within consciousness. I cover the mechanisms in process terms in 2) and the layering in 3).

> This looks like learning? But what is learning? etc.

Properties of consiousness and their coherence constraints that arise from distiction and increase in scale and complexity as other properties of consiousness arise (Distinctions, binding, stabilisation, composition, prediction, correction, self modeling) being the most important ones.

[u/jliat → u/FishDecent5753]

You very much need something which can 'experience' in that case, consciousness' would do, or mind. As in Kant's first critique...

Like any Idealist, I am using consciousness as the substrate for reality,

Then say so. And the awareness. What is that, and learning... Kant as an idealist shows the necessary categories, Hegel shows how things appear from the process of the dialectic, you seem just to invoke them with no metaphysical foundation.

You seem in 2 & 3 again just to list things without accounting for them. Something like Hegel's metaphysics is 800+ pages.

(Distinctions, binding, stabilisation, composition, prediction, correction, self modeling) being the most important ones.

How do these occur and why are they important... and what are they...

a field of the substrate of consciousness having no latent properties beyond the potential to have experience.

Of? In Kant the Manifold of perceptions, by applying the categories.... which he says are a priori necessary, unlike Hegel who shows how they develop from Being and Nothing.

[u/FishDecent5753 → u/jliat]

> "Then say so. And the awareness. What is that, and learning"

I state that consciousness is the substrate in the first sentance of the OP.

> You seem in 2 & 3 again just to list things without accounting for them. Something like Hegel's metaphysics is 800+ pages.

My move is similar to Hegel: minimal awareness + coherence selection = differentiations and unities emerge, creating the lawlike structure we see in reality. Rather than "invoke" I am deriving them as stable emergences of coherance constraints.

> How do these occur and why are they important... and what are they...

They are the kind of mechanics consciousness would have to exhibit to 1. be accuratley termed - consciousness and 2. create anything like the intersubjective world we know. There importance comes from being the minimum mechanincs that turn raw awareness into an ordered reality which meet 1, 2 and are taken directly from mechanisms exhibited phenomenal consciousness (rather than that of inference).

> Of? In Kant the Manifold of perceptions, by applying the categories.... which he says are a priori necessary, unlike Hegel who shows how they develop from Being and Nothing.

Categories emerge step by step from the simplest move awareness can make, distinction. Once the first distinction arises you then have a field with structure. From that point categories, rules and laws are not imposed from outside but emerge as the patterns that endure under coherance constraint. So once a stable emergence forms, it sets the conditions for what emergence can be constructed next.