I totally agree. I did not mean to come across as a mechanical idealist. I didn’t think I needed to give a complex explanation of dialectics to make clear I wasn’t a mechanical idealist. Yes, wills and consciousness exist, my point is that they are illusory in so far as “we” think we have “control.” There is no “self” beyond the material world as the dominant mode of thought assumes.
Maybe it's just a matter of language and not an actual philosophical difference, but I think there is still a philosophical difference.
There is no “self” beyond the material world as the dominant mode of thought assumes.
I agree, but I still think you're making the mistake I'm trying to caution against in the sentence prior:
Yes, wills and consciousness exist, my point is that they are illusory in so far as “we” think we have “control.”
They are not illusory, they are material. And while the dominant mode of thought might assume we have more control than we actually do, it doesn't mean we don't have any control. We or our "self", that is entirely part of the material world, does have a certain amount of control because it is a part of that same material world. This control isn't separated from the material world, but a part of it. Your sentence here still sounds like only the material world has "control" and it exerts it upon us from outside, which would imply that we are different from the rest of matter, but in the opposite direction of the idealist free will notion.
I think that in your correct impulse to combat the idealist narratives prevalent today, you go too far in the opposite direction. Similar to how Plekhanov describes here:
No amount of patching was of any use, and one after another thinking people began to reject subjectivism as an obviously and utterly unsound doctrine. As always happens in such cases, however, the reaction against this doctrine caused some of its opponents to go to the opposite extreme. While some subjectivists, striving to ascribe the widest possible role to the “individual” in history, refused to recognise the historical progress of mankind as a process expressing laws, some of their later opponents, striving to bring out more sharply the coherent character of this progress, were evidently prepared to forget that men make history, and therefore, the activities of individuals cannot help being important in history. They have declared the individual to be a quantité négligeable. In theory, this extreme is as impermissible as the one reached by the more ardent subjectivists. It is as unsound to sacrifice the thesis to the antithesis as to forget the antithesis for the sake of the thesis. The correct point of view will be found only when we succeed in uniting the points of truth contained in them into a synthesis.
I think it's still a language thing. We are the universe and the hegemonic view seems to be that we are outside acting in it. By "illusory" I do not mean that the phenomenon is not real, but that the (socially constructed) perception of it is not true to reality. I mean it from the Buddhist perspective that if you meditate on it enough there is not individual thing you can call what is socially conceived to be a self.
I totally agree. I did not mean to come across as a mechanical idealist. I didn’t think I needed to give a complex explanation of dialectics to make clear I wasn’t a mechanical idealist. Yes, wills and consciousness exist, my point is that they are illusory in so far as “we” think we have “control.” There is no “self” beyond the material world as the dominant mode of thought assumes.
Maybe it's just a matter of language and not an actual philosophical difference, but I think there is still a philosophical difference.
I agree, but I still think you're making the mistake I'm trying to caution against in the sentence prior:
They are not illusory, they are material. And while the dominant mode of thought might assume we have more control than we actually do, it doesn't mean we don't have any control. We or our "self", that is entirely part of the material world, does have a certain amount of control because it is a part of that same material world. This control isn't separated from the material world, but a part of it. Your sentence here still sounds like only the material world has "control" and it exerts it upon us from outside, which would imply that we are different from the rest of matter, but in the opposite direction of the idealist free will notion.
I think that in your correct impulse to combat the idealist narratives prevalent today, you go too far in the opposite direction. Similar to how Plekhanov describes here:
I think it's still a language thing. We are the universe and the hegemonic view seems to be that we are outside acting in it. By "illusory" I do not mean that the phenomenon is not real, but that the (socially constructed) perception of it is not true to reality. I mean it from the Buddhist perspective that if you meditate on it enough there is not individual thing you can call what is socially conceived to be a self.