[MD] Platt's Individual Level

[Case]

[Case]
>"I think Phaedrus gave up on account of the fact he failed at the time to
>grasp that there is no separation between subject and object."
>
>I agree that from the subject's point of view there is no difference 
>between objects and the subject's impressions of them. But to say that
there are no objects strikes me as a very different thing. Phaedrus might
have done well to stay and try to make some sense of what his teacher was
saying but this interpretation is rubbish. Just because we are in principle
separated from the objects of the world does not mean that they do not
exist.

[Dan]
This seems to be a subtle misinterpretation of the point I was making. In 
the context you've set up (one of subject-object distinction) we are indeed 
"separated from the objects of the world" but that is not at all what I am 
saying, which is that there is no "object in itself" lurking behind what we 
perceive as an object of the world. There is only the idea of the object 
(intellectual patterns of value) and that idea is how we measure reality. 
Always! Whether the object exists (or not) is beyond what we can know since
we cannot experience the world directly.

[Case]
Perhaps we are out subtling each other here. Do you actually mean to say:
"there is no 'object in itself' lurking behind what we perceive" or that,
"Whether the object exists (or not) is beyond what we can know since we
cannot experience the world directly."

These seem very different to me. I am with you on the later point but the
first seems to lead down a rabbit hole of solipsism.

[Case]
>In what sense does saying the world is illusory not negate cause and
>condition?

[Dan]
This is a little more difficult to answer but I'll do my best. Let's say 
life is like riding in a boat. In this boat, you work the rudder, the sail, 
and plot a course - still, the boat carries you and you're nothing without 
the boat. Riding in the boat, you cause the boat to be a boat.

[Case]
Riding in the boat gives a certain context to the boat. True enough but it
would be illusory to conclude there are not other contexts for understanding
boatness.

[Dan]
You need to really consider this point carefully: at this moment, the boat 
is the world - the sky, the water, the shore, they have all become 
circumstances of the boat, unlike the circumstances that are not the boat. 
In this fashion, reality is our causing reality - it is reality causing us 
to be ourselves.

[Case]
At any given moment "riding in the boat" is all that. But the boat is still
a boat, the sky is sky, the water is water and the shore is shore. I would
not assume that "I" am the only context they can have. One of the gifts
humans are blessed with is the ability to contextualize and to see patterns
of relationships. My understanding of oriental philosophy is that it is an
error to assume that the patterns we have are the only patterns there are;
in other words to confuse the patterns with what is. It is not the making of
patterns that is bad it is the clinging to the pattern we have made.

[Dan]
So when riding in the boat, mind and body, subject and object, are all 
workings of the boat. The whole of earth and space are workings of the boat.

Cause and condition are all part too. So though the world be illusory this 
in no way negates cause and condition.

[Case]
I would emphasize the point made above: your metaphor is not about the noun
boat, but about the verb, riding in the boat. Nevertheless, I believe in the
context you set forth cause and condition are merely properties of the
illusion. In your metaphor you allude to "circumstances that are not boat"
but what could that possibly mean? Or if we are only talking about an
illusion, what vessel contains the illusion?

[Dan]
I hope this helps answer your question.

[Case]
Sorry about that.