Oh dear. I want to reply to all that. I'll try to be ruthless. 

A major point of disgareement seems to be the relationship between the mental the spiritual. Just to be clear, I would have three categories, mind, matter and the real, where the first two could be combined under Bradley's Appearance.

> Perhaps I could say that society deposits its knowledge in the consciousness of individuals, but does not reduce to them.

I could live with that, but I'd still prefer to say that individuals deposit their knowledge in society. Perhaps it's the same idea in effect.

> When you put two apples on the table, they mathematically add up to two apples. But they are two apples only becasue of a subjective frame, such as an exclusion of the apples in the basket next to the table from which the apples were drawn. So there is a mathematical statement about their unity (adds up to two), but they have no relation with each other, and so this unity is an artifice, not emergent except in thought. 

Ah yes.  But does this really make any difference? The whole point of a model is that it leave things out. It does at least seem that the world works mathematically when we take a partial view of it. By 'mathematically' I'd also mean 'logically.'  That is, the world would hold no suprises for the ideal reasoner.   

> Why is absolute idealism no longer viable? Has something happened to descredit it?

>> A good question for which I have no answer. One thing seems certain, it is not a matter for proof or logic.

If there is one issue to keep alive here I'd like it to be this one. I couldn't really disagree more. I'm not sure that Bradley's proof is successful, it's highly discursive, unlike Nagarjuna's, but I'm sure any faults in it can be fixed. You seem to see objective idealism as a personal choice, while it's proponents claim it is a cosmological scheme. Would it be useful when we address social problems? I don't see many social problems among Buddhists. Absolute idealism is a doctrine of non-harm since if it accurately describes our situation this would be the only rational response to it.  

> I think I understand Bradley's point, but don't agree with it. What is meant by the universe as a "whole"? It can mean several things. It can refer to all that is in the universe, and I don't think this is a problematic concept or implies any ontological bifurcation. 

Another subtle issue that there's no time for. Stating that the world as a whole refers to everything that is in it would be like saying that the set of all sets refers to everything in that set.  This is clearly inadequate. A paradox arises from the distinction between container and contained. The 'world as a whole' must include both and would transcend this distinction. In this sense 'world as a whole' may be a meta-mathematical concept. This would be Paul Davies' view, or close to it. which he describes by reference to Rucker's Mindscape, the class of all ideas. Bradley is very good on the difficulty of conceptualising the world as a whole where it is truly a unity, and not just the contents of something not included.   

>  The notion that contemplation of self leads beyond self is quite conventional among the philosophers I mentioned and is not peculiar to eastern mysticism. Heidegger, for example, thought that we might deconstruct the history of philosophy to reach back to the pre-Socratics to recover their awareness of the ground of being.

I generally agree with Heidegger on metaphysics and Being, but the idea we can recover the idea of Being from reading books seems very odd to me. Anyway, countless modern philosophers cover the same ground as the pre-Socratics.   

> My own objection to this is that the possibility from which being is an actualization is always anchored in being and thus accessible to us today, and our ability to grasp that possibility is won through establishing what Heiddeger called a "caring" relation with other persons who offer possiblities for our own becoming (vs. Foucault), and rather than look to the past (where there are no living people, but only dead evidence, despite Dilthey), we can do better by accessing the possiblities of the present, for we are more developed (less probable) than people in the past. Etc. Etc.

Here I agree with your view and also the view to which you object, on the basis that all roads lead to Rome. 

>If an emergent level depends on its base level, although can't be empirically reduced to it, then we have the probem of what explains supervenience, which as far as I know no one has resolved. 

I'm afraid I also fear treading here. The topic is too technical for me. Perhaps I could risk referring back to your point about the unity of a system of apples depending on an external observer.   

> I'd be interested in knowing to what essay you refer. If science and daily life are confined to what are contingent, would religion and mysticism be thereby excluded and fall into the same category by this negation?

I can only speak for myself here, and would say that science, daily life, religion and mysticism are useful categories but really all the same thing.  

I worry that I shouldn't have pushed my essay on you but it's the only philosophical essay I've written, or may ever write, and I'd love to get some feedback. I thought it would be okay to mention it in this quiet backwater. The execution is poor, but the ideas should stand up to analysis. Professors of philosophy were definitely not my target reader. My target reader was me at the time I started looking into the topics and couldn't find anything like it. It's here http://philpapers.org/archive/JONFMT.1.pdf 

Peter