Both Objective and Subjective

So which is it -- are we

  • minds generated by physical bodies, living in a real physical world; or
  • minds that generate "body" and "physical world" as part of our thought-activity, and part of our coupling with other minds in the overall creative mind-field
??

Trick question, of course: It's not either/or!

Both perspectives are sensible and important, and Cosmism embraces both.

Mind is part of world; world is part of mind.

Subjectively, each of us in-some-sense "builds" the world ourselves, from our sense-perceptions -- but yet, isn't it amazing how this world we "build" takes on so many properties that we didn't explicitly put in? Clearly, although there's a sense in which the world is something my mind builds up from its perceptions, there is also something going on in the world beyond my individual self and what it could possibly make. It feels more accurate to say that there is some pattern or possibility field "out there", and my mind's activity uses its sense-perceptions as a seed out of which the world crystallizes, drawing in material from this field as it goes.

Objectively, on the other hand, each of our unique experience-streams seems to emerge from dynamics in particular hunks of physical tissue. Tweak the brain a bit, with a scalpel or a screwdriver or merely a little red pill, and the mind changes radically.

There's no contradiction between these two views. Together, let's use them together.

Mathematically, one can model this sort of "circular creation" using structures called hypersets. But one doesn't need fancy math to understand what's going on -- one simply needs to look openly at reality and experience, and not try to impose any particular perspective as primary.

1 comment:

  1. Nice one. I've been looking for ways to reconcile the endless metaphysical debate between realism and anti-realism, and this does it perfectly. Some other reconcilitory positions include transcendental idealism, model-dependent realism, and pragmatism. To that, we can now add this philosophy, which I dub "polyphonic realism"

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