Thanks Phil, helpful as always.

You’ve been clear and fair about your position and of others’. Can you expand on objective reality/matter as primary at some time? What is objective reality/ matter it self for us but projected indication and notion. Science through what we can sense and measure can only approach its happening through models of how it must be, and philosophy through what we sense and conclude can only contextualise its being and existence through theories about what it must be like. Yes, it is primary, I feel as well, but then we keep to what we think and say but also express of what we sense, feel and are. We reach for the ideal or idea, are stuck in notion and sense, and getting closer, dare I quote, in “the logic of one’s argument”, we are further from reality.

I find the left right distinction in politics interesting. We are centred right in our projected sense, is my message as you know. In this philosophical stage, is Kant and Lenin centred right ? Either side of the objective reality that presents for us to sense and consider ? Do you think it helpful and useful to place objective reality next to the whole body, who creates and places our notions but also our sense of the objective world ? I feel the rest of reality belongs next to the whole body because he or she is primary to our experience in our reality, of them – objective reality apart from the whole body can only manifest as indications. One might go further and say that the whole body is the noumenon we can never know about that is the source of our phenomenon.

Truly, Tach.

Tach’s blog

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Hello Tach,

‘Objective reality’ or ‘matter’ refers to all that exists. Science tells us, as you know, that the universe has existed for 13.8 billion years and that consciousness has functioned for the tiniest part of that. Matter is continually re-organising/re-structuring – both randomly (e.g. evolution) and according to what we know as ‘laws’ (the two are related). Consciousness, self-consciousness and thought etc. arose then developed as a result of that re-organising. Where consciousness is matter aware of itself (the world), self-consciousness is matter (the world) reflecting on itself. All of this is consistent with science and is the materialist perspective.

When a person believes that all that is is the work of God or some intentionality, they are asserting that objective reality/matter is secondary to consciousness/’mind’ (I wish I never saw that concept again) etc., that objective reality/matter is its product. Similarly with philosophical idealism (irrespective of its stripe – subjective, objective, absolute, voluntarist etc.). All philosophical idealisms put consciousness prior to matter/objective reality in some way.

As Lenin argues, although Kant acknowledged ‘things-in-themselves’, he (Kant) wrote (again, as you know) that they are unknowable and that space, time and (what we know as) causality are what we bring to the world – they are not objective, they do not exist independently of us. In so doing, he failed to understand both the nature of the world and how we relate with it – on the basis of our unceasing practical experience of/engagement with it.

To acknowledge what science tells us about the world, to accept our deepening knowledge of the world and then to hold that an immaterial force is at work (i.e. one contrary to the laws of nature, with or without intentionality) is, in Lenin’s and my view, fundamentally contradictory – on the one hand what science is and tells us is accepted, and on the other denied.

Then where could the scope be found for our sense of unity with others, with the world? My view is that such feeling and thought do not deny the materialist perspective – as I processed above, we are matter reflecting on itself, matter organised in particular ways reflecting on matter organised in particular ways. There is one, material world and the most profound feeling in response to this unity is entirely consistent with materialism. What do you think?

Best regards, Phil

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