tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post1283861766705796402..comments2024-03-28T17:44:11.289+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: Introspection, Intuition, Imagination - (Imagination *is* knowing.)Bruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-41640781027896521292017-06-14T06:31:32.482+01:002017-06-14T06:31:32.482+01:00@WmJas - This post comes in the context of many pr...@WmJas - This post comes in the context of many previous ones on the theme - so I was not attempting to cover all the bases but to make a concise summary. <br /><br />Maybe you could do some word searches to find the relevant blog posts? Ill try and explain a bit:<br /><br />"How could an uncaused thought be true, except by chance? "<br /><br />Because uncaused thoughts are divine; and the divine is the only uncaused thinng in reality. <br /><br />Divine entities (God, angels, Men...) participate-in thinking - the thinking is not inside their heards (as it were - which would be solipsism) but the thinking takes place in a universal and real realm. <br /><br />Uncaused means that real-true thinking, in this universal realm, is not (like most of our thinking) a passive product of prior causes; real and universal thinking comes from teh divine self in an active and intrinsically creative way. <br /><br />That is agency. To be agent means Not to be a passive outcome, but to be a source of primary causation. <br />Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-87565225714037815042017-06-13T22:50:14.585+01:002017-06-13T22:50:14.585+01:00This is a very difficult concept for me to grasp. ...This is a very difficult concept for me to grasp. How could an uncaused thought be true, except by chance? If imagination is intrinsically true, it must have some causal relationship to reality, to extramental states of affairs. If imagination itself is uncaused and yet intrinsically true, that can only mean that the causation runs the other way: that imagination causes reality to be what it is, that we dream the world into being. This is very close to nihilism/solipsism, so I don't think it can be what you mean, though you do seem to hint as much when you call imagination "creative."Wm Jas Tychonievichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07446790072877463982noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-53782513228831872572017-06-13T16:11:13.891+01:002017-06-13T16:11:13.891+01:00@AUgust - If you *try* to imagine a pre-specified ...@AUgust - If you *try* to imagine a pre-specified something, esepcialy in a group, then that is 'Fancy'. It is passive. It is similar to watching a movie, or being hypnotised. <br /><br />Imagination (by the Coleridgean definition, elaborated above) is the consequence of thinking by the real self. Until this true thinking is happening, you cannot know what is going to come from it. It is like the creative insight of a genius. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-58764772981708477592017-06-13T15:22:50.956+01:002017-06-13T15:22:50.956+01:00I have learned that imagining a thing to be true i...I have learned that imagining a thing to be true increases the likelihood that you will believe the thing to be true. And this is not always good.<br /><br />Indeed, this was something I learned going through a Christian meditation with other people. The meditation was a biblical passage, and the idea was to imagine yourself there. I think, like most crap in this modern world, it was meant to elicit feelings. But it also meant people who didn't know what that era was like imagined things that were inaccurate, and that inaccuracy could easily lead to misunderstanding.<br /><br />Your 'Imagination' and the more ordinary sort must therefore be much more distinctly different. It would have to be more like Imaging- or seeing. <br />Augusthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08758314961163692341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-76881036300348654652017-06-13T14:30:28.325+01:002017-06-13T14:30:28.325+01:00I am delighted by this post because I have recentl...I am delighted by this post because I have recently been wrestling with just this matter of interior knowing in connection with Jung's great work of imagination (in the sense you define it here), The Red Book. External epistemology just doesn't work in what St Teresa called the Interior Castle. I am working hard on Barfield as a result of reading this blog and recognise your use of participation and find Barfield's understanding of the evolution of consciousness overlaps with my own and more importantly illuminates and expands it. I have, but have not yet read, a PDF of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria. Like you I feel compelled to take the step of recognising this kind of inner experience of truth a form of knowing. As handy as it is to know through the calculus when the tide will be in, inner knowing predates Newton and remains, I firmly believe, the more important form of knowing. lgudehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12774491337993415578noreply@blogger.com