The Immaterial Structure of Human Experience

by George Lowell Tollefson

Overview

The Immaterial Structure of Human Experience is a philosophical work, a system. It is a quest into the workings of the human mind from the perspective of epistemology and philosophy of mind. Focusing on human experience from a subjective point of view, it does not attempt the kind of empirical approach which would be centered in the senses, as would be the case with one of the sciences.

Instead, the book argues that although we experience our conscious awareness as enclosed within and conditioned by material circumstances, it can best be understood as an immediate and instantaneous expression of spirit.

This immaterialist approach has two goals. First, to establish a broadened empiricism that includes and is centered upon the experience of consciousness, and second, to demonstrate the priority of spirit over matter. It is a new approach to the question, "How do we know what we know?"

Product Details

BN ID:	2940163686056
Publisher:	Palo Flechado Press
Publication date:	08/29/2019
Sold by:	Draft2Digital
Format:	eBook
File size:	642 KB

About the Author

Lowell Tollefson, a former philosophy professor, lives in New Mexico and writes on the subject of philosophy.

Table of Contents

Introduction i

Section 1: Philosophy’s Role 1

1. A justification of metaphysics. 1

2. Rational explanation is an intermittent but unceasing preoccupation of humankind. 3

3. Philosophical insight 4

4. A science of qualification 4

5. The building blocks of philosophy 5

6. The philosophical map 5

7. Philosophy’s strength and weakness 6

8. The philosophical risk 7

9. The thing-in-itself 7

10. Empiricist and rationalist 8

11. Open-ended philosophy 9

12. Truth and fact 10

13. The philosophical matrix 10

14. The individual human mind 11

Section 2: Preliminary Thoughts Concerning the System 14

15. The tradition 14

16. Nature 14

17. Mystery and magic 14

18. Consciousness and spirituality 15

19. Spirit 15

20. The universal oneness of spirit 15

21. The material universe 15

22. One reality. 16

23. Spirit and matter 16

24. The universal oneness 18

25. The imperishable oneness 19

26. The noumenal realm 20

27. The paradoxical unity 21

28. The loss of the spiritual ground of being 23

29. The search for transcendence and unity 23

30. The sense of self and the conviction of the immutability of the self. 24

Section 3: The System 26

31. Some preliminary concepts concerning how the mind works. 27

32. The immaterialist perspective 46

33. Preliminary definitions. 56

34. The paradox of mind 84

35. Individual awareness and spirit 86

36. Berkeley and science 91

37. Kant’s transcendental categories 129

38. The first three Kantian categories as intuitions explained further: from these the development and limitations of human awareness 159

39. The spiritual dynamic 199

40. The priority of spirit 209

41. The limited human mind 216

42. A review of the mapping of the precipitate 228

43. Free-form imagination 252

44. The material domain cannot be prior to spirit 254

45. Further thoughts on consciousness and its phenomenal world 262

46. The human mind 306

47. Because the concept of energy is a measure of material change, it can only be predicated of the material domain 326

48. Change is ultimately seamless within material experience 327

49. Change and the spiritual dynamic 328

50. Indeterminate change and free will 333

51. Speculative thought 354

52. Experience, individual and common 377

53. Natural insight 379

54. Spiritual insight 390

55. The indeterminate mind 402

56. The paradox of free will 409

Bibliography 413

Index of Names 417

Glossary 419