Notes on Transcendental Subjective Idealism

There is mind-stuff and there is non-mind-stuff, for instance some kind of Fregean objectivities or natural world objects. The problem is clarifying exactly what we mean by 'mind-stuff' (consider for instance Frege's view of the 'subjective' component or thought).  There is a lot of different mind stuff and this stuff is not easy no sort out or define - but it is most certainly distinct from object-stuff though it is object-like in its cognitive-linguistic referentiability. But besides all that there is stuff which is neither mind-stuff nor the objective kind of non-mind-stuff referenced above which we call object-stuff. We call this the self-stuff which is the great object and greater mystery of philosophy. Up to now only a negative definition, we know almost nothing about it.  Let us say that is pertains to the impression of the 'I' , 'me', 'mine' or 'self' . The self-stuff is certainly in relation to mind-stuff and mind-stuff is said to be intentionally directed to object-stuff. All these 'categories'  of things are tightly connected.   If we can say that the objective world manifests itself in or through mind-stuff. But the self-stuff also manifests itself through mind-stuff.  Kant can be read as saying: the objective world could not manifest without the help of the self-stuff. We can think of self-stuff not as an object but as a tendency, a power, a force (mine-making, I-making) that constitutes itself in another in the likeness of an object. Mind-stuff is self-stuff imbued. Self-stuff is usually mind-stuff imbued. This self-stuff pseudo-object is not an inter-subjective object in the way of object-stuff and never can be such.  It is an object only to itself usually through the medium of mind-stuff.  The self-stuff object subsists not through the act of knowing but through ignorance. The usual self-stuff self-presentation object is the archetypal illusion and delusion but not itself self-stuff  which can be seen as tendency, power or force - which is itself not mind-stuff but 'contaminated with' and 'identified with' and 'fueled' by  mind-stuff.  These considerations are all of the uttermost subtlety and difficulty and this is only the tip of the iceberg.  Indeed we have not even scratched the surface of what could be said about self-stuff about the limit-category beyond object-stuff and mind-stuff. The immediate use  of this system of categories is as a means of classifying and clarifying philosophical concepts (such as 'consciousness' or 'subject') and systems  such as various forms of idealism and realism. Let us just say for now that saying that object-stuff is only real and mind-stuff is an illusion or can be reduced to it is sheer and utter nonsense. Likewise saying that all object-stuff is not real and can be reduced to mind-stuff is highly dubious (this supposing we are keeping silence about self-stuff and its sphere of influence). For instance we must avoid solipsism and acknowledge that there is a universally binding moral law. Higher philosophy begins when begin to make an inquiry into and criticism of our personal first-person impression, experience and concept of self or ego or identity. In particular trying to phenomenologically grasp it: what exactly is this, what do I mean by 'I' ? What is present in my consciousness ?  This domain seems also to furnish to foundations for moral philosophy.

A note on 'neuro-idealism'. It is claimed that we perceive the world and act on the world exclusively through the efferent and afferent nerves (spinal cord + cranial nerves + ...). That is our perception and acts are through coded signals in multiple parallel channels. Now:

1) the concept of signal and parallel channel assumes the concepts of space, time and causality.

2) what is the decoder, what is its origin and how does it work ? How is it even possible ? 

3) some kind of minimal decoder would be needed at the beginning to bootstrap the whole process....we can conceive the instructions to build a more complex decoder as transmitted from the world...

4) it dos not seem that space, time and causality were learnt.

5) mind-stuff is like an UI to a self-stuff. A high level symbolic abstraction of the object-world. But all this is itself symbol. The scientific worldview is itself symbolic and provisional.

6) meaning understood objectively...how can 'this chair' in the mind be connected to a definite space-time region of energy and matter ? The latter is not what is 'meant' although it is a reference in some way...reference perhaps is something entirely objective and not determined by the mental-stuff process of 'meaning'. Reference has to be contemplated from without.

6.1. 'The chair...'  and 'The ripple in the lake' : think about the vastly different meanings and meaning-structure. Who ever gave a ripple to someone or put a ripple in their pocket ? But scientific worldview 'objects' are like ripples (timelessly conceived).

7) and yet everything in 6) is mental-stuff and meaning ! Also we do not know much about 'energy' and 'matter' (just enough for technology and weapons) since unfortunately our physics took a wrong turn and/or stagnated.

8) There is syntax and semantics. The syntax cannot in itself reach out to the world of semantics. But it can represent and talk about semantics and a relationship to semantics. Just so the scientific worldview is coded and represented within the common-sense life-world.

9) Learn to question, question, question and learn the humility of knowing your not knowing.

New Update (10/9/2024) : we have had radical new insights about the matters discussed below. The discussions below are not quite right,  not precise enough or incomplete if not wrong.  The new insights need to be expounded with great caution and rigour.

Update (10/9/2024): there are serious dangers, ambiguities and confusions surrounding subjective idealism which are impossible to avoid.  Both the individual psychological self and the phenomenal world must be considered illusory and relative at the same time, at once. There is no question here of a psychological phenomenism. An enlightened sort of cosmic realism, in the Stoic sense, can be equally a good way to overcome the illusions of the individual psychological self (Man cannot bear too much reality).   There is confusion here with the term 'subjective'.  'Realism' is also a very vague term. For it is not a denial of realism to posit that reality has infinitely more dimensions and modes of interrelation than given immediately to the individual psychological self and its ordinary categories of experience. Hegel was right to see that consciousness and its world must evolve together - and this does not involve denying the reality of a world even if ultimately becoming a higher form of consciousness itself.

Or better: consider the following interpretation couched in terms of the allegory of the cave:

The prisoner's spectacle of the shadows is the 'phenomenal world'. But not 'phenomenal' in the sense
of a mere chimera, a meaningless, arbitrary delusion. The dance of shadows is an 'illusion' but a special kind of 'illusion' which implies a intelligible real causal link to something else beyond the shadows that is indeed real - the objects of which the shadows are shadows of. The objects are real and the process of projection, of casting a shadow, is real and part of the rational order of the world of objects and the light source. To say 'the shadows are the objects' or 'the objects are the shadows' is false. But rather the shadows point to the objects and so as thus they are 'manifesting reality'. Kant's transcendental aesthetic describes the screen, the wall of the cave on which the shadows are projected. The categories reflect the condition and position of the prisoners.

Perhaps 'subjective idealism' (whatever one's position regarding it) is a dangerously ambiguous term because it could be interpreted as : the shadows are projections of the prisoners themselves !

My (broadly Hegelian) position is: there is an objective world more real, more intelligible, different yet connected to the one we ordinarily perceive and there is a form of consciousness and intellect more accurate and truthful than the one we usually employ - which is correlated to our usual manifest world. But this trans-objective objectivity and trans-subjective subjectivity does not contradict the relative validity (within their own limits) of the initial subject and its object. 

The great object of philosophy is the self, the criticism and analysis and inquiry into the self and the operations, projections, constitution, identifications, dynamics, appropriations of the self. From thence must follow the moral law.

(end of update)

How are we to understand the analysis of experience ? Is the analysis of experience the same as the analysis of consciousness ? What is the ultimate goal of such an analysis, is it purely theoretical (like for any other science) or does the goal contain something else in addition, for instance an integral transformation of human consciousness and life-experience itself ? And how precisely are we to understand such an integral transformation which would seem to have roots in classical philosophy ? Arguably some traces of this goal are to be found in Kant and Husserl, perhaps more in the ethics-centered Kant than in Husserl where a transformation of consciousness occurs in a more methodological context rather than as a goal itself.
For us the analysis of consciousness and its goal will be centered on the concepts of 'illusion', 'delusion' and 'suffering'. These concepts permeate and play a far more fundamental role in western philosophy than is generally realized or acknowledged.
For us the goal of the analysis of consciousness will be knowledge which dispels the natural illusions and delusions of consciousness as well as the bringing of an end to suffering. These two goals are connected. One way to look at the illusions and delusions of consciousness is through the phenomenological concept of 'claim-of-being' or Hume's theory of habit and association. Consciousness somehow presents to itself objects which embody claims and beliefs not immediately justified by what is immediately given in consciousness itself. Rather these objects are saturated with the structuring and coloring and association of mental material which contribute to objectification in the realm of being.
Another central aspect of our analysis of consciousness will be importance of the human body. This is a very subtle and nuanced concept with which we must be careful to steer away from simplistic generalizations or physicalist dogma. Our approach to the human body involves the first-person experience of the body, that is, the body qua fundamental component of natural consciousness and experience. Any analysis of consciousness must involve an analysis of body-experience and body-consciousness. The overcoming of delusion and suffering must involve the analysis of body-consciousness and very importantly a special shift of focus and attitude towards this body-consciousness. The subtlety lies in that on one hand we are deluded in our ordinary experience by forgetting the essential conditionality and foundational role of body-consciousness for the whole architecture and dynamics of our consciousness, and on the other hand body-consciousness is ultimately itself delusion and mere claim-of-being alongside other objects of consciousness. It would be interested to compare this to Schopenhauer's parallel considerations on this paradox.

What are the most general divisions or analyses that can be made of consciousness as a whole ? The division in the Pali suttas into the five khandas can been compared to analysis of cognition and experience in Kant, specially bearing in mind their close dependency. Viñanna has the characteristics of Kant's transcendental unity of apperception. And yet the suttas speak of an infinite, absolute, all-illuminating consciousness as well. Kant makes an analysis of the different concepts of 'subject' and 'soul' (the empirical ego) which are in his view confused in the paralogisms of reason. But he also introduces the 'intelligible character' unknowable and yet the foundation of morality and freedom.
We might say that satipathâna (the setting up or establishment of mindfulness) is the central methodology of the process of analysis and integral transformation of consciousness in the Pali suttas, playing a role parallel to Husserl's transcendental reduction or epokhê. And yet, unlike for Husserl, we are left with the question: what is the subject of cognition of satipathâna ? Just as for Husserl, it is patently not a naturalistic ego or the ordinary cognitive subject. Instead of trying to answer this question directly let us consider Hegel's theory of the beginning and method of philosophy. Hegel does not take the ordinary empirical ego as a foundation for knowledge; the empirical ego is considered somewhat 'illusory' and needing to be overcome or led first to the state of absolute consciousness which is no longer the standpoint of the said individual empirical ego. The idea of a pure logic, a pure consciousness, a pure cognition, etc. which many associate with Husserl are all found in Hegel. If Hanna argues that Kant should be considered the father of modern anti-psychologism then in Hegel it certainly had arguably one of its most remarkable developments. Note also the almost Zen-like utterance at the beginning of the Greater Logic: the purpose of this introduction is to convey the point that Knowledge needs no introduction or beginning. But let is return to Kant. The suttas point out a path for overcoming the dualism and limitation of concepts and conceptual proliferation (papanca) yet express important insights and truths in an evidently conceptual and logical form. All the khandas are mutually conditioned and dependent. In the same way Kant reduces and relativizes the understanding to phenomenality and yet admits a transcendental critical use of reason which can attain definite knowledge of the structure, conditions and dependencies of phenomenal cognition and consciousness. Also though the noumenon is unknowable by the understanding it is thinkable. In the suttas there is the concept of truth and knowledge regarding an unconditioned which transcends the khandas. There is also the analogue of critical knowledge (vipassana, pañña), an attainable understanding of how the khandas originate and are mutually co-dependent (paticcasamupada).

But what is satipathâna, or more generally, what is the method for the analysis of consciousness and experience ? We will not attempt to give a complete answer. Rather we can safely say than an important aspects involves the transformation of consciousness's own consciousness of it itself, its own self-relation. While all consciousness arguably involves an essential element of self-reflection or self-directedness, this transformation involves the relationship of consciousness as whole to itself. Consciousness must become aware of itself as it really is (self-transparency), wherein it is presented naked, immanent, here and now, in its dynamics and structure without assent or belief in its ontological projections. Consciousness becomes a consciousness of consciousness itself qua immanent stream of 'thoughts', anchored in the here and now of internal experience, but ontologically projecting - in claims-of-being- indefinitely into past and future and possibilities. The awareness of the total sphere of thought from the perspective of the here and now and contentment, is the true transcendental viewpoint in which the primordial role and nature of temporality (neglected in ordinary naturalistic consciousness) is clearly discerned. We will return further ahead to the structure of this stream of 'thoughts'.

The goal of overcoming illusion, delusion and suffering depends on both the analysis and coming face-to-face with this primordial thought-flow it its pristine originality and giveness, and on the possibility of conscious suspension of this flow itself which implies a radical in-folding, self-folding and inversion of the deep structure of consciousness. The idea of such a possibility is found in classical and Hellenistic philosophy as well as, in a certain partial form, in Hegel and Schopenhauer.
In this process we obtain direct intuitive knowledge of the deep structure of consciousness, how components apparently distinct and independent in ordinary consciousness are unified in a common essence and origin. For instance 'ego', 'thought' and 'will'.
Ordinary thought is like a whirlwind or stormy sea, opaque and extremely difficult to see and analyze and much less to control and ultimately suspend and calm. This is where the beginner's stages of satipathâna come in. The body, the breath, concentration of the present moment, the here-and-now, contentment, letting-go and so forth, are so many powerful anchors leading to calm and self-transparency of consciousness. But all these anchors are far from sufficient, they are no substitute for transcendental philosophical insight. That is, seeing consciousness as it really is. Seeing the world as immanent in consciousness, and consciousness as temporally conditioned, as subjective, as filled with being-claims but no actual being-verification. Seeing that thought is all about make-believe projections into past and future and what is far away but is really just here and now and subjective. What is really here, what is really is here now: the stream of mental phenomena and their projections or seemings. This was Hume's great discovery. The world turns out to be an immanent world, the stream of consciousness and its percepts (i.e. elements of sensory-data compounded and woven in consciousness).

We find the common root and unity between the will, reason and the ego-self-positing - and then the unity between will, reason, ego and the world-consciousness. The illusion of world and self are dissolved by insight-analysis. By the focus on the here and now. What are bliss and freedom but the abrogation of the ego-self and with its will, reason and its world ? Bliss and freedom are characterized by mastery over the illusion of space and time, by the power of ubiquity and timelessness.


Consciousness is woven on the senses and specially inner sense, imagination, recollection, anticipation, etc. The beginner's cultivation of satipathâna is sharpened on the body, then the breath, then outward perception and finally inner perception thereby leading to inner silence (corresponding to hearing) and inner emptyness (corresponding to sight). The process must begin with the body and breath and with awareness of general processes of nature as pertaining to the body as manifest in transience, compositeness, etc.

We now consider the important question of the role of psychology in the process of analysis and integral transformation of consciousness. Psychology can be seen as non-philosophical or at least less-philosophical analysis of certain more concrete and well-known aspect of consciousness. But psychology is not only theoretical, it also aims to be practical, therapeutical, to effect beneficial permanent change on consciousness itself. Just as the body-consciousness has been wrongly neglected in much of the western philosophical tradition, so too has the vital integration of psychology into philosophy: that is, a certain psychology is a vital methodological component of an integral analysis and transformation of consciousness, as long we avoid 'psychologism' or confusing consciousness with the ordinary empirical ego, as we saw above. Phenomenological consciousness must first be an ordinary psychological consciousness focused on feelings as feelings, mental states as such and the 5 hindrances accompanied by some insight analysis and their active uprooting, examining consciousness in function of obsessions, attachments, ill-will, etc.Consciousness is so complex and vast that it is important to know where to begin, where to look at first, what to do first. Only then can genuine philosophical phenomenology and awareness of thought as such take place. This was an error of many past philosophers, neglecting psychological preparation. We now consider a philosophical-psychological analysis of consciousness relating to the overcoming of attachment and obsession. Consider an object which the mind is deeply attached to or obsessed with. This object dwells in the mind and is constantly intentionally directed at and becomes the self-reinforcing center of an entire growing web of associations. But what is this object really, immanently and purely in consciousness as such ? Nothing more than a complex web and circuit of recollection, anticipation, etc. all woven from percepts, units of recollected or imagined sensory input. But there was a point in time, a moment, in which a different kind of percept occurred, the full act of perception here and now, the spark which occasioned the explosion of a continuous stream of reverberation and self-amplification in consciousness. Yet the object itself is habitual self-reinforcing web of recollection and anticipation, imagination, variation, recombination, based on 'faint copies' of a sparse moments of full perception. Thus the 'object' of attachment is both an illusion and a delusion. In the suttas when the 'mind' (manas) is considered as a 'sense' then it is to be understood as pertaining to the inner reverberations and conceptual articulations of raw sense-perception data. What about a world outside of consciousness, a thing-in-itself, a hypothetical cause for the full act of perception in the here and now ? We will not go into this deep question here. We merely remark that this hypothetical 'real world' cannot be changing or in time, it cannot have a 'now' and 'afterwards' - for these concepts only make sense as immanent in consciousness.
Our philosophical claims are that there are beyond any shadow of a doubt multiple different consciousnesses many of which are caught in the same web of illusion, delusion and suffering as our own consciousness. We reject solipsism. The moral categorical imperative is to realize that you and other beings are in such a web, to strive to liberate both yourself and others from it. The first steps are following the universal duty of compassion (see the work of S. Shapshay on the compatibility of Kantian and Schopenhauerian ethics) and teaching and arguing for transcendental subjective idealism.