Among the questions on Page xxxvii of SDTS is: “(can we) Express the meaning of experience?” I am reminded of a claim made by George Santayana that I read decades ago, in which he says that the beauty of Plato’s Theory of Forms is that it is a perfect inversion of the actual status of human consciousness: namely, that spirit, consciousness, (the recognition of light?) grow out of our animal nature, which eventually can reach a point where reason constructs the grandest and most harmonious visions of art and philosophy. He claims that Plato’s version–that a more beautiful reality stands behind our flawed experiences and perceptions–shines a light on the actual way that our reality grows beyond these limitations as we evolve as an animal species.  My experience with the TSK vision has changed how I view this issue. The sense that something greater is available if I just relax and look is strongly encouraged by the TSK material. And at the same time, there is a strong respect for how human embodiment is the opportunity we have been given to experience a finer reality. TSK’s emphasis on the focal setting of how we look seems compatible with both the sense that there is an underlying (finer) reality to discover and that our perceptions evolve from our embodied foothold. But the separation between an animal looking out dimly and a vast reality it doesn’t know how to appreciate collapses into a simpler recognition that we are alive right now and are not bound by all the limitations with which we have grown so familiar.–Michael
PS: why of the three nowns (Time, Space, Knowledge) is Timely the only adverb?
