# Is the Mind Cause or Consequence? **URL:** \ **Category:** Philosophy of Mind\ **Tags:** phenomenology\ **Created:** [June 8, 2026, 9:46pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277 "2026-06-08T21:46:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![Wayfarer](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/wayfarer/32/123_2.png) [@Wayfarer](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Wayfarer)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 8:17am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/263 "2026-06-24T08:17:47Z")
> [@j\_j](#): > > Consciousness is not something present _in_ the world but rather the presence **of** the world. I agree - but no positivist ever would. There’s an old saying, from Wired Magazine, circa early 1990’s, that seeking information from the internet is like ‘drinking from a fire hydrant’. You posts are often like that. An extravaganza of ideas, allusions, references, and quotations. My approach is more, well, quotidian. Plodding, even. ---
**Author:** ![Andy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/aeb1de/32.png) [@Andy](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Andy)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 8:20am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/264 "2026-06-24T08:20:16Z")
> [@Wayfarer](#): > > Well, again, a machine IS reducible to its parts. A car, for instance, comprises a list of parts with a set of instructions that allow it to be assembled. An organism, on the other hand, begins from a single cell — in fact, as far as we know, all life began from a single cell — from which the entire organism then grows, while as the cells divide and multiply, they differentiate themselves into the various specialised functions that comprise the different organs and systems of the body. And all the while, maintaing an operative unity to which all the various cells and organs remain subordinate (except for in the unfortunate case of cancer.) No machine does anything remotely like that. And a cell IS reducible to its parts – its atoms, its molecules, its organelles. The event that is of great significance here is that in which a lipid membrane first completely captured a self-replicating biological molecule, because it is here that we get the first separation of ‘inside’ from ‘outside,’ and it is this separation that engendered self-preservation. This is the seed of teleology. The cell IS the machine that “does things like that.” I don’t think I’m using the word ‘machine’ in a loose sense – I’m not making an analogy – I’m saying that I don’t understand the need for claiming that the cell is NOT a machine. > [@Wayfarer](#): > > The issue with the machine analogy is precisely that machines are not living things. They’re not _beings_ in the sense that organisms are. That is the case that is yet to be made. Does this boil down to a semantics issue? I think you would argue not, but I don’t yet see why. > [@Wayfarer](#): > > do you think there can be such a thing as an ontological distinction? Do you think there can be beings of fundamentally different kinds, or all beings and machines different examples of the same general kind? The way I’ve come to see it, the constituents of the field of experience fall into categories because some aspects of the field exhibit relative invariance compared to other aspects. This is how distinct and invariant concepts emerge from inter-penetrating and changing percepts (as William James would have put it). The pathological end-point of this process is the misconception of substances. I’m not sure how to interpret the phrase “beings of fundamentally different kinds” but I can’t doubt that there are categories, and I reject the notion of substances, so I guess I’d go with the “general kind” being that of the categorial distinction. Some distinctions are more useful than others. I don’t regard our progress in understanding the world to be “catastrophic.” I think it’s overly dramatic to say “_from the living terrestrial nature to the enormity of cosmic space, now understood as mainly devoid of life_” – well yes, empty space is devoid of autopoiesis. That there may be other islands of negentropy than our earth is highly likely given the enormity of the cosmos. “_the new science proceeded by progressive subtraction of vital features from its picture of reality, until what remained was only matter, measurable, mathematical and tractable to the laws of physics._” – Well of course it did – we look for invariants (on the timescales that are of significance to us) because they are what allow us to make sense of the world and to make predictions about it – information that is essential to survival and reproduction. The “vital features” consist of precisely those invariants. “_The rejection of anthropomorphism extended to animals as well — no purpose or interiority could be projected onto nature even if animals seem to display them. Complex behaviour could be described as instinctual and treated as if it were something “programmed” by genetics_” – interiority has been with us since the emergence of the very first “living cell.” “_Now inert matter becomes the norm, the baseline, the “natural and intelligible condition.” Life becomes the anomaly_” – Any chemist will tell you that atoms and molecules are not, for the greatest part, ‘inert.’ I can see no case for claiming that atoms and molecules are, for the greatest part, alive. Jonas: “_life must be reduced to non-life_” – just as the wetness of water must be reduced to cohesive and adhesive forces characteristic of the water molecule; just as the shininess of metal must be reduced to the re-emission of light by an ocean of mobile electrons; just as the hardness of diamond reduces to the electromagnetic force and the crystal lattice structure. Emergence is real. > [@Wayfarer](#): > > So — the reason I differentiate organisms from machines is that seeing creatures as machines denies them the very quality that defines them, namely, that they’re alive. “They’re alive because they’re not machines, and they’re not machines because they’re alive”? ---
**Author:** ![j\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@j\_j](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/j_j)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 8:21am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/265 "2026-06-24T08:21:16Z")
> [@Wayfarer](#): > > I agree - but no positivist ever would. Understanding chairs as logical constructions from the sensory given is close, but there is something decisive in “consciousness is the presence or being of the world itself.” Early Wittgenstein is often taken to be a “positivist,” and crucial passages in the _TLP_ basically say this in other words. Yet even today most fans of Wittgenstein ignore these passages as perhaps embarassing. In his war notebook, even before the TLP, he writes: > All experience is already world and does not need the subject. Experience is “already world” because there is no consciousness-as-picture between the subject and the world. Indeed, there is no subject except as implied by _how_ the world is **just there.** ---
**Author:** ![j\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@j\_j](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/j_j)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 8:22am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/266 "2026-06-24T08:22:40Z")
> [@Wayfarer](#): > > There’s an old saying, from Wired Magazine, circa early 1990’s, that seeking information from the internet is like ‘drinking from a fire hydrant’. You posts are often like that. An extravaganza of ideas, allusions, references, and quotations. My approach is more, well, quotidian. Plodding, even. I hear you. I’ve spent the last couple of years working on my channel, researching and synthesizing and paraphrasing, so for me the pieces all fit together quite nicely — hence my enthusiasm. ---
**Author:** ![j\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@j\_j](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/j_j)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 8:26am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/267 "2026-06-24T08:26:38Z")
> [@Andy](#): > > This is the seed of teleology. The cell IS the machine that “does things like that.” I don’t think I’m using the word ‘machine’ in a loose sense – I’m not making an analogy – I’m saying that I don’t understand the need for claiming that the cell is NOT a machine. As you may know, Von Neumann’s early work on cellular automata was motivated by a desire to see whether machines could self-replicate. He found out (proved) that they could. A version of this is now found in books on automata theory ( theoretical computer science.) ---
**Author:** ![Wayfarer](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/wayfarer/32/123_2.png) [@Wayfarer](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Wayfarer)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 8:29am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/268 "2026-06-24T08:29:05Z")
> [@Andy](#): > > And a cell IS reducible to its parts – its atoms, its molecules, its organelles. | The event that is of great significance here is that in which a lipid membrane first completely captured a self-replicating biological molecule, because it is here that we get the first separation of ‘inside’ from ‘outside,’ and it is this separation that engendered self-preservation. This is the seed of teleology. But doesn’t the part of this statement to the left of the | contradict the part to the right? You could reduce all of the elements of the cell to its component molecules - the elements of the periodic table - but then, you would no longer have a cell, nor any way to get back to a cell. I agree with the part to the left: the enclosure of a living cell in a membrane, and therefore its differentiation from the environment, and also its resistance to entropy, just is the seed of teleology. But there’s no way to _derive_ that from atomic physics or from knowledge of the component parts of atoms. ---
**Author:** ![j\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@j\_j](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/j_j)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 8:31am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/269 "2026-06-24T08:31:16Z")
> [@Andy](#): > > Emergence is real. Agreed. And we can view human self-consciousness through signs and other technologies as emerging from or as nature. I suggest that literary criticism is just as scientific as fundamental physics. It is also a study of nature, though at its most emergent and in that sense complex. There’s a tendency to look for meaning in origin, but these days I look to the future instead. The origin can only tell us so much about what emerges, especially if novelty ( perhaps including an absolute randomness ) plays a crucial role. ---
**Author:** ![j\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@j\_j](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/j_j)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 8:43am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/270 "2026-06-24T08:43:53Z")
> [@Wayfarer](#): > > But there’s no way to _derive_ that from atomic physics or from knowledge of the component parts of atoms. For small living structures, isn’t this just a combinatorial problem ? Basically it’s computationally intractable. Or has been. But why couldn’t humans eventually put atoms together in the right way to create a cell from scratch ? Do you think it is impossible in principle ? ---
**Author:** ![Andy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/aeb1de/32.png) [@Andy](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Andy)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 8:53am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/271 "2026-06-24T08:53:55Z")
> [@Wayfarer](#): > > You could reduce all of the elements of the cell to its component molecules - the elements of the periodic table - but then, you would no longer have a cell, nor any way to get back to a cell. Yes – we can have a pile of enough gears and springs and panels to make a car but it wouldn’t be a car. Having all the bits is only half the story – the other half is the specific way they combine. There is an inordinate number of ways that atoms can combine into molecules, and molecules into organelles. But given enough time, many of these combinations will emerge, and most will decay away again. So emergence is always building on whatever has shown resilience against that decay. > [@Wayfarer](#): > > there’s no way to _derive_ that from atomic physics or from knowledge of the component parts of atoms. Right – there is no way to _derive_ it from the lower level because the future is too open, but the _possibility_ was always there. ---
**Author:** ![j\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@j\_j](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/j_j)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 9:00am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/272 "2026-06-24T09:00:11Z")
> [@Andy](#): > > Right – there is no way to _derive_ it from the lower level because the future is too open, but the _possibility_ was always there. This is huge in cryptography of course. Let’s say only one pattern of 256 bits opens the vault door. Well there are 2^{256} patterns to try. I found the exact expansion: > **115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,853,269,984,665,640,564,039,457,584,007,913,129,639,936**. This massive **78-digit integer** represents the total keyspace of a 256-bit encryption system, such as SHA-256. ---
**Author:** ![Patterner](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/patterner/32/192_2.png) [@Patterner](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Patterner)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 11:38am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/273 "2026-06-24T11:38:28Z")
> [@Wayfarer](#): > > So machines and organisms operate by very different principles, the first assembled from the outside by an artisan or engineer which designs and builds them, the second from within itself. While that’s true, it may change. We might assemble living things one day. Of course, that could depend upon the uncertain definition of _living_. I think the more important difference is in the things they do once they are assembled. ---
**Author:** ![Wayfarer](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/wayfarer/32/123_2.png) [@Wayfarer](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Wayfarer)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 11:47am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/274 "2026-06-24T11:47:16Z")
There’s a saying in Indian philosophy, or rather a definition, that ‘intelligence is the ability to make distinctions.’ And I feel there are many basic distinctions being glossed over here. ---
**Author:** ![Andy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/aeb1de/32.png) [@Andy](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Andy)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 12:01pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/275 "2026-06-24T12:01:37Z")
The ability to discern differences is only half the story. We need to be able to discern identities too. ---
**Author:** ![Patterner](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/patterner/32/192_2.png) [@Patterner](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Patterner)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 5:04pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/276 "2026-06-24T17:04:27Z")
> [@Wayfarer](#): > > There’s a saying in Indian philosophy, or rather a definition, that ‘intelligence is the ability to make distinctions.’ And I feel there are many basic distinctions being glossed over here. Let’s hammer them out! 😃 What’s the first basic distinction that’s being glossed over? ---
**Author:** ![Wayfarer](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/wayfarer/32/123_2.png) [@Wayfarer](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Wayfarer)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 10:41pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/277 "2026-06-24T22:41:59Z")
> [@j\_j](#): > > Understanding chairs as logical constructions from the sensory given is close, but there is something decisive in “consciousness is the presence or being of the world itself.” But doesn’t that all point back to Kant? I’m not going all in on ‘Kant über alles’ and I recognise that criticisms that have been made of him. But the sentiment identifiably goes back to Kant and before him to Descartes. They in turn were among the major sources for Husserl’s phenomenology. (Heidegger wrote a volume on Kant as you will know and Kant is said to be a major influence on Being and Time.) Whereas in the ‘Anglosphere’ Kant and the later German idealists were rejected by the analytic philosophers. ([Here is an interesting magazine article](https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/philosophy/39183/how-the-untimely-death-of-rg-collingwood-changed-the-course-of-philosophy-forever)on how the early death of Collingwood and the ascendancy of Gilbert Ryle also greatly excacerbated the Analytic-Continental divide in philosophy.) > [@Patterner](#): > > What’s the first basic distinction that’s being glossed over? Materialism (or physicalism) is monist. There is only a single substance, matter-energy, and everything that exists arises from it and returns from it. (Also bear in mind the philosophical as distinct from everyday meaning of ‘substance’ [reference](https://iep.utm.edu/substance/).) So the fundamental distinction that materialism (or physicalism) glosses over is that between living and non-living things. Organisms comprise the same elements as any other objects albeit with some recognizably distinctive features. As Hans Jonas put it: > From the physical sciences (at the time of the Renaissance) there spread over the conception of all existence an ontology whose model entity is pure matter, stripped of all features of life. What at the animistic stage was not even discovered has in the meantime conquered the vision of reality, entirely ousting its counterpart. The tremendously enlarged universe of modern cosmology is conceived as a field of inanimate masses and forces which operate according to to the laws of of inertia and of quantitative distribution in space ~ Phenomenology of Life, p10 But I claim there’s an **ontological distinction** between the organic and inorganic domains, and I think that is the distinction which is being glossed over — and must be, if materialism is to hold true, as there can only be one real substance, from which all else is derived. ---
**Author:** ![j\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@j\_j](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/j_j)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 10:48pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/278 "2026-06-24T22:48:42Z")
> [@Wayfarer](#): > > But the sentiment identifiably goes back to Kant and before him to Descartes. I must disagree. Dualism reifies consciousness as one kind of stuff against another kind of stuff. Echoing Fasching and others, I suggest we understand consciousness as _being itself_, which is not _a_ being. ---
**Author:** ![Wayfarer](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/wayfarer/32/123_2.png) [@Wayfarer](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Wayfarer)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 11:09pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/279 "2026-06-24T23:09:39Z")
> [@j\_j](#): > > Dualism reifies consciousness as one kind of stuff against another kind of stuff. Cartesian dualism does that, and it is something analysed in depth by Husserl in his Cartesian Meditations. He says that Descartes on the one hand recognises the fundamental role of consciousness, but on the other, mistakenly reifies it by designating it ‘res cogitans’, a ‘thinking thing’, which, says Husserl, makes it a ‘little tag-end of the world’: > Descartes had correctly identified the ego as ‘the greatest of all enigmas’ (C 80; K 82) but unfortunately went on to misconstrue it in naturalistic fashion as an objective substance in the world. Descartes, as Husserl puts it in his Cartesian Meditations, treated this ego as a ‘little tag-end of the world’ (ein kleines Endchen der Welt, as he says in CM § 10, p. 24; Hua I 63)—a real entity rather than as the condition for the possibility of unified experience and as a domain of meaning-constitution. Or, as Husserl puts it in the Crisis, Descartes treated the pure subject or ego as a ‘residuum’ (Residuum, C 79; K 81) left in the objective world ~ Dermot Moran, Husserl’s Crisis, p 293 But I agree, the consequences of Descartes’ dualism have been profound and often harmful, subject of an earlier thread, [Descartes’ Ghost.](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/descartes-ghost/133) > [@j\_j](#): > > Echoing Fasching and others, I suggest we understand consciousness as _being itself_, which is not _a_ being. Fasching’s essays are on the topic of comparing Advaita (non-dualist) principles to arguments in philosophy of mind — and there is a history of comparisons of Kantian and Indian philosophy (e.g. an addendum to Bryan Magee’s ‘Schopenhauer’s Philosophy’.) So again the relation of phenomenology and ‘transcendental subjectivity’ in Kant is something that can be documented. There are also cross-cultural comparisons of Heidegger and Eastern philosophy (although Heidegger also resisted any easy identification of his work with Asian philosophy, saying that European culture has it’s own destiny to consider — with which I agree .) ‘Consciousness is being itself’ is characteristic expression of popular Vedanta. For example Swami Sarvapriyananda of the New York Vedanta Society, who has many online lectures (ideal complement to Fasching’s essays.) The phrase he returns to repeatedly is _prajnanam brahma_ — consciousness is Brahman — one of the four ‘Mahavakyas’ or great sayings of the Upanishads. So there are convergences, but also differences, between idealism, phenomenology, and Vedanta, in that all three agree on the fundamenal reality of consciousness (sat-chit-ananda in Vedanta), but that doesn’t mean they are all the same or saying the same things. But none of them subscribe to materialism in any way shape or form. (Also I’ll note again that what empiricism denotes by ‘sensation’ and phenomenology by ‘consciousness’ are very different.) ---
**Author:** ![j\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@j\_j](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/j_j)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 11:22pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/280 "2026-06-24T23:22:47Z")
Yes, “consciousness is being” is a Vedantic idea. Kant _can_ be read as a phenomenalist, but most people read him as a dualist. Idealism, so far as I know, tends to be understood as a monism rather than a pluralism. This suggests a reification of mind and therefore a reification of consciousness. As you know, Kant was annoyed that people read him as another Berkeley. Yet he put time and space “inside subjects” as universal forms of **re** -presentation. To understand perceptions as internal representations is be a dualist, in my judgement. But Sartre reads Husserl boldly in the intro to _B&N_ as an ontological phenomenalist. In this case, the consciousness associated with a subject is _the being of perceived objects themselves_, **not** the being of internal representations. How can “my” consciousness be the being of objects themselves ? Through the conception of objects as ideal manifolds of their aspects or moments. The “thing-in-itself” is a logical (spatial, temporal, and interpersonal) synthesis of the things moments. > MODERN thought has realized considerable progress by reducing the existent to the series of appearances which manifest it. Its aim was to overcome a certain number of dualisms which have embarrassed philosophy and to replace them by the monism of the phenomenon. Has the attempt been successful? In the first place we certainly thus get rid of that dualism which in the existent opposes interior to exterior. There is no longer an exterior for the .existent if one means by that a superficial covering which hides from sight the true nature of the object. And this true nature in turn, if it is to be the secret reality of the thing, which one can have a presentiment of or which one can suppose but can never reach because it is the “interior” of the object under consideration-this nature no longer exists. The appearances which manifest the existent are neither interior nor exterior; they are all equal, they all refer to other appearances, and none of them is privileged. > … > That is why we can equally well reject the dualism of appearance and essence. The appearance does not hide the essence, it reveals it; it is the essence. The essence of an existent is no longer a property sunk in the cavity of this existent; it is the manifest law which presides over the succession of its appearances, it is the principle of the series. To the nominalism of Poincare, defining a physical reality (an electric current, for example) as the sum of its various manifestations, Duhem rightly opposed his own theory, which makes of the concept the synthetic unity of these manifestations. > … > Yet the existent in fact can not be reduced to a finite series of manifestations since each one of them is a relation to a subject constantly changing. Although an object may disclose itself only through a single _Abschattung_, the sole fact of there being a subject implies the possibility of multiplying the points of view on that _Abschattung_. This suffices to multiply to infinity the _Abschattung_ under consideration. Furthermore if the series of appearances were finite, that would mean that the first appearances do not have the possibility of reappearing. which is absurd, or that they can be all given at once, which is still more absurd. Let us understand indeed that our theory of the phenomenon has replaced the reality of the thing by the objectivity of the phenomenon and that it has based this on an appeal to infinity. The reality of that cup is that it is there and that it is not me. We shall interpret this by saying that the series of its appearances is bound by a principle which does not depend on my whim. > … > But the appearance, reduced to itself and without reference to the series of which it is a part, could be only an intuitive and subjective plenitude, the manner in which the subject is affected. If the phenomenon is to reveal itself as transcendent, it is necessary that the subject himself transcend the appearance toward the total series of which it is a member. He must seize Red through his impression of red. By Red is meant the principle of the series — the electric current through the electrolysis, etc. But if the transcendence of the object is based on the necessity of causing the appearance to be always transcended, the result is that on principle an object posits the series of its appearances as infinite. Thus the appearance, which is finite, indicates itself in its finitude, but at the same time in order to be grasped as an appearance-of-that-which-appears, it requires that it be surpassed toward infinity. ---
**Author:** ![Wayfarer](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/wayfarer/32/123_2.png) [@Wayfarer](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Wayfarer)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 11:57pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/281 "2026-06-24T23:57:10Z")
> [@j\_j](#): > > Kant _can_ be read as a phenomenalist, but most people read him as a dualist. > > Idealism, so far as I know, tends to be understood as a monism rather than a pluralism. This suggests a reification of mind and therefore a reification of consciousness. As you know, Kant was annoyed that people read him as another Berkeley. Yet he put time and space “inside subjects” as universal forms of **re** -presentation. To understand perceptions as internal representations is be a dualist, in my judgement. But Sartre reads Husserl boldly in the intro to _B&N_ as an ontological phenomenalist. In this case, the consciousness associated with a subject is _the being of perceived objects themselves_, **not** the being of internal representations. > > How can “my” consciousness be the being of objects themselves ? Through the conception of objects as ideal manifolds of their aspects or moments. The “thing-in-itself” is a logical (spatial, temporal, and interpersonal) synthesis of the things moments. Kant’s dualism is not the same as Descartes’. The dualism he admits to is _empirical_ dualism — within experience, we can distinguish outer sense (spatially organised representations of matter) from inner sense (the transcendental unity of apperception). That distinction is real but it’s a dualism _within_ representation, not between two fundamentally different kinds of _substantia_ (CPR A370.) As for idealism being a monism: the problem of reification looms large again here. To assert ‘one mind’ is already to depict this ‘one mind’ as a possible object — which it can never be! The way I express it is to say that the the mind appears _as_ us, not _to_ us. It is never a ‘that’ which can be grasped as object or other. That too is a point elaborated in Vedanta, it’s probably in one of Fasching’s essays. But that insight itself requires a kind of gestalt shift or metanoia which is obviously hard to articulate or convey. How can “my” consciousness be the being of objects themselves? — notice again here the implicit ‘self-other’ division — my mind, here, and object, there. This really is a fundamental question in all philosophy so demands caution. The pragmatic way I address it is in terms of cognitive science, specifically, an awareness of the way the brain synthesises and constructs the _lebenswelt_ of lived experience. This is what the brain and body are doing at every moment. So ‘things’ appear to us within that manifold as identifiable kinds, types, species and so on. That is the sense in which the mind creates or constructs the experienced world. But the insight phenomenology and enactivism are converging on, is that this is a world that we’re not ever outside of or truly apart from (which I think is the vital insight of existentialism generally.) I think of the original insight of Greek metaphysics as aiming to grasp the ‘what-it-is-ness’ of every thing. To see is to re-cognize, to be able to assimilate the seen into the manifold of the understanding. That is what ‘nous’ is doing. In Aristotle _nous_ is the faculty that enables rational thought. For Aristotle, nous is distinct from sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, which other animals possess. Nous is the faculty of reason, which enables the ‘seeing of what is’ in a way that is unique to rational sentient beings. So in response to Sartre, an Aristotelian reply would be that the appearance is intelligible _precisely because_ the intellect grasps the universal form immanent in the particular presentation. The essence isn’t hidden behind the appearances like a secret interior — but neither is it reducible to the series of appearances as Sartre wants. It’s what makes the series _coherent_, what allows us to say these appearances are all appearances _of the same thing_. (This is where the idea of ‘esse’ has to be carefully distinguished from the ‘in itself’.) Gilson would put it in terms of the _act of existing_ — esse — being irreducible to either the phenomenal series _or_ a ‘hidden substantia’. The thing exists as _this kind of thing_, and the intellect’s grasp of _what_ kind of thing it is — the quiddity, the _what-it-is_-ness— is precisely what makes recognition possible. You see the cup not as a series of sense impressions that you then synthetically unify, but _as_ a cup — immediately, because the intellect abstracts the form from the sensory presentation. (It was Gilson who coined the expression that ‘philosophy always buries its undertakers’.) ---
**Author:** ![j\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@j\_j](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/j_j)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2026, 1:17am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277/282 "2026-06-25T01:17:03Z")
> [@Wayfarer](#): > > Kant’s dualism is not the same as Descartes’. The dualism he admits to is _empirical_ dualism — within experience, we can distinguish outer sense (spatially organised representations of matter) from inner sense (the transcendental unity of apperception). That distinction is real but it’s a dualism _within_ representation, not between two fundamentally different kinds of _substantia_ (CPR A370.) But you are talking about “representations of **matter**.” And you are suggesting that there **is** a genuine interior. From my POV, this is still to wander in the maze of ingredient ontology. Now if a post-Kantian thinker were to emphasize that the inner/outer distinction was merely pragmatic and fuzzy and nothing deep ( as Mach or Mill might), that would be progress. I like [Brandom’s approach to the TUA](https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts/Kantian%20Lessons%20about%20Mind%20Meaning%20and%20Rationality.pdf). Basically the normative subject is fundamentally time-binding. Selfhood is an institution, perhaps the oldest institution of our species. A body is trained into saying “I” and performing a self-consciously responsible temporal synthesis of that body’s sayings and doings. > Kant’s idea is that his normative characterization of mental activity—understanding judging and acting as endorsing, taking responsibility for, committing oneself to some content—is the place to start in understanding and explaining the nature of the representational, object-presenting judgeable contents of those judgings. This explanatory strategy is Kant’s pragmatic turn. It is this order of explanation that is responsible for the most general features of Kant’s account of the form of judgment. The subjective form of judgment is the “I think” that can accompany all our judgings, and so, in its pure formality, is the emptiest of all representations. Thought of in terms of the normative pragmatics of judgment, it is the mark of who is responsible for the judgment. (A corresponding point applies to the endorsement of practical maxims.) The transcendental unity of apperception is ‘transcendental’ because the sorting of endorsements into co-responsibility classes is a basic condition of the normative significance of commitments. Committing myself to the animal being a fox, or to driving you to the airport tomorrow morning, normatively preclude me from committing myself to its being a rabbit, or to my sleeping in tomorrow, but they do not in the same way constrain the commitments others might undertake. > … > Kant’s specific conception of positive freedom is normative. Being free is being able to adopt normative statuses, paradigmatically, to commit oneself, to undertake responsibilities. It is the capacity to bind oneself by conceptual norms, in judgment and action. This is exercising a certain kind of inferentially articulated authority— a kind that comes with a correlative rational responsibility to have reasons for one’s endorsements. To use an example suggested by Kant’s metaphor in “What is Enlightenment?” consider what happens when young people achieve their legal majority. Suddenly they can enter into contracts, and so legally bind themselves. Hence they can do things such as borrow money, start businesses, and take out mortgages. This change of normative status involves a huge increase in positive freedom. The difference between discursive creatures and non-discursive ones is likewise to be understood in terms of the sort of normative positive freedom exhibited by the concept-users. On this account, being free is not only compatible with constraint by norms, it consists in constraint by norms. Since the norms are conceptual norms, their content is articulated by reasons. Positive normative freedom is the capacity to act for reasons, not in a causal sense, but in the normative sense of the ability to bind oneself by norms that make one liable to assessment as to one’s reasons. In other words, rational conversation as such tacitly assumes a “forum” or [ICC](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jurgen-Habermas/Philosophy-and-social-theory#ref1036980) (Habermas). Grasping this is seeing that “the problem of the external world” is pure confusion. > The notion of an “ideal communication community” functions as a guide that can be formally applied both to regulate and to concrete speech situations. Using this regulative and critical ideal, individuals would be able to raise, accept, or reject each other’s claims to truth, rightness, and sincerity solely on the basis of the “unforced force” of the better argument—i.e., on the basis of reason and evidence—and all participants would be motivated solely by the desire to obtain mutual understanding. Although the ideal is never perfectly realized (which is why Habermas appeals to it as a regulative or critical ideal rather than as a concrete historical community), the projected horizon of unconstrained communicative action within it can serve as a model of free and open public discussion within [liberal] societies. Likewise, this type of regulative and critical ideal can serve as a justification of deliberative liberal-democratic political institutions, because it is only within such institutions that unconstrained communicative action is possible. [Previous page](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277.md?page=13) [Next page](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/is-the-mind-cause-or-consequence/1277.md?page=15)