Very late responding to this but I appreciate you elaborating. That makes sense to me.

pretty cool website graph for charting the influence of philosophers
s4n0i.github.io/schoolofathens

Lol.

The way commies talk about this guy you would think he's the second coming of Christ

Wonder how they measured this stuff

from what I understand the guy put it together in like an hour from a large source of data, so I don't think it's totally accurate. Still pretty cool though I was able to guess a lot of philosophers before I clicked on them based on their size. Immanuel Kant, Plato, Hegel, Wittgenstein etc. ...Heidegger and Descartes should have been larger. And it's lacking Eastern philosophers, but I think their influence is a bit harder to trace based on Western data

He prolly just looked at the Wikipedia pages and looked at ‘influenced by’ or something

Finally got around to picking up Aristotle’s principal work The Metaphysics and it makes sense why I ran into an issue with causality for Thomism in retrospect, Aristotle’s notion of causality is tied to the existence of an independent material substance and I reject that substance due to my idealism that holds reality is qualitative and fundamentally mind-dependent, Kant also attributes causality as something that is structured a priori by the mind

Maybe Schopenhauer will be able to iron this out for me whenever I get around to his stuff

nah Hume is right. We have no idea the link between cause and effect. Causality is just as incomprehensible as time, space and noumenon. it can be observed a posteriori but not validated through logic or reason (yet)

You don’t feel like Kant’s a priori synthetic propositions cut into Hume’s argument against causality?

In a certain sense I side with Kant, as I still agree with many aspects of transcendental idealism. But in my opinion it still doesn't tell us - or at least prove - anything fundamental about causality (as an answer to the 'hard' problem itself.)

To be fair it's not really an idea I dedicate much mental bandwidth to anymore.

What’s your stance on the nature of causality wholly? Do you think it’s something that will never be resolved?

hmm, i'm not really sure. It depends on how long human beings are around for. But in the same way I don't think noumenal reality can ever be accessed, and in the same way I don't think we'll ever discover the idea of "why there's something rather than nothing", or the hard problem of consciousness....

But that may be a bias, just be because the idea of causality is so
incomprehensible to me personally. Ironically the answer to the question may exist somewhere outside of consciousness and/or beyond the faculties of cognition, which is how I feel about a lot of these things. The thing is there are people who believe that some of these questions have already been answered, I just happen to (vehemently) disagree with them.

do you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?

I feel similarly for the hunt for the answers of some these questions, (at least particularly for the hard problem of consciousness) I closely align with the Upanishadic take on the nature of it (it also harmonizes with my idealism as consciousness/mind as fundamental):

”You have only told me, this is your inner Self in the same way as people would say, 'this is a cow, this is a horse', etc. That is not a real definition. Merely saying, 'this is that' is not a definition. I want an actual description of what this internal Self is. Please give that description and do not simply say, 'this is that' –“

”Yājñavalkya says: "You tell me that I have to point out the Self as if it is a cow or a horse. Not possible! It is not an object like a horse or a cow. I cannot say, 'here is the ātman; here is the Self'. It is not possible because you cannot see the seer of seeing. The seer can see that which is other than the Seer, or the act of seeing. An object outside the seer can be beheld by the seer. How can the seer see himself? How is it possible? You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding. That is the ātman."

”Nobody can know the ātman inasmuch as the ātman is the Knower of all things. So, no question regarding the ātman can be put, such as "What is the ātman?' 'Show it to me', etc. You cannot show the ātman because the Shower is the ātman; the Experiencer is the ātman; the Seer is the ātman; the Functioner in every respect through the senses or the mind or the intellect is the ātman. As the basic Residue of Reality in every individual is the ātman, how can we go behind It and say, 'This is the ātman?' Therefore, the question is impertinent and inadmissible. The reason is clear. It is the Self. It is not an object-na vijñāter vijñātāraṁ vijānīyāḥ, eṣa ta ātmā sarvāntaraḥ.”

"Everything other than the ātman is stupid; it is useless; it is good for nothing; it has no value; it is lifeless. Everything assumes a meaning because of the operation of this ātman in everything. Minus that, nothing has any sense"

”Then Uṣasta Cākrāyana, the questioner kept quiet. He understood the point and did not speak further.”

Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad, 2.4.14-15, translated by Swami Sivananda, The Upanishads: Volume 1

I find that the very nature of consciousness (well, even stripping the more spiritual and metaphysical dressing that Hinduism grants it) is unable to be explained due to it being the foundation for all subjective experiences. There’s an ofness to qualia and a je ne saís quoi to the conscious experience that cannot be replicated or broken down mechanistically, and that’s one of science’s main ways to understand and a***yze reality. I find the cases for consciousness being identical with the brain (or being a product of processes neurologically one way or another, alà emergentism) to be fairly unconvincing. I think the attempt to breakdown or find the nature of consciousness to be ouroboric and akin to trying to find water while being deep inside of an ocean.

lol

@Very_Based Why’d you scrap the post you made in here? I read it and was digesting it

I thought it was very well written and I liked some of the poetic flair you dotted in there, it closely aligns with how I think about consciousness, reality and experience overall.

Besides the two paragraphs in bold I wasn't sure if it really applied to your previous post so I deleted it. Thanks though, maybe I'll repost it tomorrow

this guy covers all bases

this was in my recommended it’s pretty good