Aesthetic reasons to believe
Can those immersed in the philosophical tradition tell me if aesthetic reasoning is used to justify positions on morality and meaning?
Over the years, I have often heard people debating god versus no god - and the argument I seem to hear from many theists is that the world is uglier and less enchanted without a god and/or without contemplative practice. The person expressing such a view appears to regard atheism and humanism and the privileging of science over the 'supernatural' as unattractive, mean and an example of bad taste.
This wording is sometimes veiled underneath additional justifications about personal experience and a venerable (and, yes, beautiful) scriptural tradition. If pushed, they might even break out Aquinas' five ways.
Some folk will also highlight the importance of ritual and spiritual practice which further serves to intensify what appears to be a form of aestheticism. They seem to be saying that their experience of the world, transfigured through the veneration of the divine is deeper, richer and more beautiful than yours (atheist). They see, or hope for, transcendent beauty. You see, or live in, ghastly nihilism.
I remember once talking to an emeritus professor of religion and Nietzsche came up. He shuddered. "An abominable man!' he spat out. I asked why. 'He couldn't fully experience the Creation with such vulgar sensibilities.'
My point here is not the Protestant professor's take on Nietzsche, but the way he seems to be positioning his interpretation around an appreciation of aesthetic grounds. God is the good, the true, the beautiful. We know that because the Greeks and the Catechism still resonate. For the professor, an atheist worldview was ugly and deficient. His account of god provided a type of poetic wholeness, coherence and perfection. Or so he thought.
Any views on this, or am I full of shit?
Over the years, I have often heard people debating god versus no god - and the argument I seem to hear from many theists is that the world is uglier and less enchanted without a god and/or without contemplative practice. The person expressing such a view appears to regard atheism and humanism and the privileging of science over the 'supernatural' as unattractive, mean and an example of bad taste.
This wording is sometimes veiled underneath additional justifications about personal experience and a venerable (and, yes, beautiful) scriptural tradition. If pushed, they might even break out Aquinas' five ways.
Some folk will also highlight the importance of ritual and spiritual practice which further serves to intensify what appears to be a form of aestheticism. They seem to be saying that their experience of the world, transfigured through the veneration of the divine is deeper, richer and more beautiful than yours (atheist). They see, or hope for, transcendent beauty. You see, or live in, ghastly nihilism.
I remember once talking to an emeritus professor of religion and Nietzsche came up. He shuddered. "An abominable man!' he spat out. I asked why. 'He couldn't fully experience the Creation with such vulgar sensibilities.'
My point here is not the Protestant professor's take on Nietzsche, but the way he seems to be positioning his interpretation around an appreciation of aesthetic grounds. God is the good, the true, the beautiful. We know that because the Greeks and the Catechism still resonate. For the professor, an atheist worldview was ugly and deficient. His account of god provided a type of poetic wholeness, coherence and perfection. Or so he thought.
Any views on this, or am I full of shit?
Comments (170)
I think Schopenhauer did more than a fair job describing how this world isnt even close to that description. In fact, if there is one, and it isnt simply hyper-contingency all the way down, he may be even devilish, more akin to the Gnostic rendering.
It was Socrates who posed, Is it good cause the gods like it or do the gods like it because it is good? A world where suffering and hardship is supposed to be part of the cosmic game but is beyond the understanding of its participants, is not beautiful, perfect, or good. At best its as indifferent and amoral as a Cthulhu. Possibly unable to make much more than a suffering world. At worst, he wants this scenario. Is an entity that uses people thus good because it is godly to want to see people suffer? Even worse is the notion that the world could be worse and we should be thankful our world wasnt made in an even more suffering version. Everything about it is suspect.
In an inversion of our norm, if humans are the cruelest animal because we know what we do, and do it anyway, how much more so is something infinitely more knowing? Again, if there is one, signs point to a cosmically indifferent Cthulhu perhaps.
They try to convince folks that their particular flavour/variety of deity, is the only way that a human can know and experience TRUE wonder, awe, happiness, security, purpose, morality etc.
There is a large aesthetic component to the fake shinies on offer. As Hitchens said:
"However, let no one say there's no cure: salvation is offered, redemption, indeed, is promised, at the low price of the surrender of your critical faculties."
I think it's as simple as that, religion simply says, we will take care of all your worries, just trust us, give us a large chunk of your earnings, live exactly as we instruct you, don't question us, accept our story as regards your origin, purpose and responsibility. If you do, then you will be happy, within our community and our protected bubble. You will NEVER have to think for yourself again. The ignorance we offer you is bliss and any outsider is damned forever.
I always hate to quote a fascist terror monger, but Joseph Goebbels was correct when he said,
'the bigger the lie the more people will believe it, especially, if it is repeated many times, and comes from authority.'
I think you could add to that 'especially' part Tom, with your 'and it's reward system is very aesthetically pleasing.'
Thanks. I guess my question is pondering the extent to which people find theism and, for want of a better term, the 'supernatural' attractive because it appeals to them aesthetically. While the loose ends and incomplete circle of atheism is a turn off.
I get your argument, but Im questioning their premise. How can they only see the beauty and not the other?
Charmed life? Perhaps. But verbal accounts at the least provide contrary evidence. Selective data set allows for any number of false accounts. Try harder at seeing the full picture. You dont see the spider ripping off that insects head? The homeless man having a meltdown? The terrible accident? The unwanted chore? The starvation of not doing X to get Y? Disagreement? Physical pain? Emotional pain? Ennui? The uncomfortable situation? The hostile situation? The annoying situation? The dire situation? The deadly situation?
Absolutely, atheism is honest, its adherents admit:
1. We don't yet know the full story of where we come from or why we are here.
2. We have no inherent purpose other than the purpose we create for ourselves.
3. We see no evidence, that any existent in the universe, cares about us, apart from each other and maybe, at least some of our 'pets.'
Religion tries to fill these gaps and sate the human primal fears that such gaps intensify and amplify, in some cases, amplify to the level of horrible states such as nihilism or antinatalism.
I don't understand that. I think points 1 to 3 above make us FREE to make of our future what we will.
What an adventure!!!!
Leave a good legacy Tom and imo, you will have lived a fruitful life.
I leave the poor theists, in their forlorn hope that pascals wager is a good bet.
I also leave the nihilists and antinatalists to choose to live their lives as a curse.
You reap what you sow. Change is always on offer to everyone.
So you deny suffering exists because you dont suffer? Dont we expect infants to get beyond those views fairly early? Like there are fundamentalists who view dinosaur bones as no evidence for evolution and flat earthers think the world is flat. A wrong viewpoint of something doesnt mean much just because they have a different viewpoint. Some viewpoints of what is the case about the world are wrong. A person who cant see blue doesnt mean blue doesnt exist. Suffering exists. Some people explain it as necessary, not relevant or whatnot. But most people dont deny the phenomena of suffering as at least a thing that is part of living.
This simply has to be true to refute the whole beautiful and good of the religious aesthetic. Suffering is a problem. What god wants this? Whatever answer you pick still means we have a god that wants this in his world. Not a beautiful aesthetic. Beauty in suffering is just playing with language to justify anything.
Then explain what you mean by aesthetic faithful? There is no Beaty on suffering or having to learn your lesson by suffering :roll:. Im saying their beauty in X thing has a lot of ugly aspects that they are ignoring.
The 'aesthetic faithful' was referring to the group of people we were talking about in the OP. This was a separate point to where we ended up - talking about people who love life. As I said of this second group most I've known do not have any religious beliefs.
I have no idea why you would raise idea of beauty in suffering or lessons to be learned by suffering. So far you are the only one to have raised this.
I think I would broadly fit into the people variety, you describe above Tom but the aesthetics of the natural world, that I came from and the aesthetics of a (non-light polluted) night time (naked eye) sky view of the universe, or the aesthetics of a scientist such as Carl Sagan, describing what science knows, in a TV series like COSMOS, is very motivational indeed to me.
The difference is that I take full, personal ownership, of the awe and wonder that such experiences inspire. I do the same for any resulting intent or purpose that manifests in me, as a result of the experience.
I don't allow any religious BS to take the credit from me.
I don't thank god, 'mother' nature or the flying spaghetti monster for the fact that the series COSMOS made me want to learn as much as I could, for the rest of my life.
I thank Carl Sagan and his team. All fellow humans.
I thank my own interpretations of natural vistas.
Some people feel insignificant and unimportant, when they view images such as the Hubble deepest field etc. (I have a big poster of it, on one my walls at home.) I fully understand that, but I also very strongly feel, (as Carl Sagan did, and many many other people do) that without lifeforms such as me or you, those vistas have much less meaning or purpose. Perhaps even none at all.
There is no point in being wonderous, if there is no existent that can witness and acknowledge such wonder.
Bonza Mate! (Sorry Tom but I have lot's of expat Scots friends in Perth Oz and some REAL Aussie friends, that they are married to, or are the offspring of. They made me an honorary 'aussie baw bag,' so I feel I can use 'stereotypical terms' like 'bonza' without sounding too offensive.)
I remain unsure of your personal position as regards being an overall life celebrant or you remain on the outskirts of, or a significant distance from, that camp. What do the aesthetics of the universe do for you?
Quoting universeness
Occasionally, when I am in the outback, I am struck by the extraordinary star scape. The Australian bush is primeval and powerful and it often scares me. But nothing I've seen appears to have influenced my view of life.
Quoting universeness
I think life and humans are pretty dreadful, but what can you do? I don't whine. I don't celebrate. I have a tendency towards optimism which, try as I might, I can't suppress. Absurdism works for me too.
Ok, thanks for painting me a clearer picture of the world according to Tom.
'Ace mate, hope you can sink more amber fluid, as long as you don't have too many ankle biters to look after!'
Oh, I am so jealous of that one! That 'outback' dark sky vista must be one of the best available from anywhere on the Earth.
:fire: :100:
Do you think reason and faith have nothing between them other than hostility?
Is there any value in faith being the equivalent of a measured credence level, you assign to a particular proposal? Fideism seems a bit unnecessarily inflexible to me, in as far as it can be called an epistemology.
I don't like the 'ownership' theism claims over words like 'believe' and 'faith.'
I don't understand the question.
It's not clear to me what you're asking here?
Oddly, transcendent beauty transcends faith or any particular value system. Even ghastly nihilism can be seen aesthetically.
Ironically Nietzsche rejected Christianity and God precisely on aesthetic grounds. And he thought most philosophy through the ages essentially boiled down to a rationalisation for morality, aesthetics :
"It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown."
Aesthetics, morality, beliefs... all of them are in some way personally embodied and intertwined with what motivates someone as a living human being. Truth is not something we arrive at after some un-motivated dialectical process. Reason usually only comes in after the fact.
Quoting Tom Storm
It is, unconsciously... but usually no philosopher will admit as much consciously, that is the philosophers conceit, their pride in their reason getting in the way.
In the Tractatus Wittgenstein treated morality as an aesthetic rather than intellectual matter. A matter of what one sees and experiences, of how one stands in relation to the world.
Once for exams I had to defend Nietzsche in front of a bunch of Jesuit priests at Boston College. It was a long time ago. I don't recall what I said, but they seemed satisfied or maybe just placated. To my advantage, they are the bad boy trouble makers of the Catholic Church. I think I probably argued along the lines of seeing his attack on Christianity as something for Christian critical self-examination.
Personally I think the 'aesthetic' is too easily relegated to the sidelines of philosophical chat. Kant himself attempts in the least studied of the critiques to relate the 'aesthetic' to the 'teleological'. That is the area of opinion that you are ascribing to 'religion': that there is some wholeness, in this supposedly religious view, that integrates talk about 'meaning' and talk about 'aesthetics'. (Morality is another step on)
There is a division between the 'artistic' and the 'scientific' well-known in modern culture that is present in, for instance, ugly scientific (and indeed philosophical) writing. Sometimes there is a strange sort of pride in how nearly unreadable scientific work is, and how pointlessly elegant are artistic works which do not have 'truth conditions'.
Hannah Ginsborg has written about this (including a Stanford entry on the topic) but it is under-explored. One reason I love Wittgenstein, for instance, is that I think his works are beautifully written. Essays in the style of the PI would however be ill-rewarded in contemporary academe (and unreproducible by AI). This is an area that nags at me personally, although I do not have answers to offer. When I went back to study Philosophy at University in later life I went with a lifetime of experience of how to write, and I was shocked at how little good writing, as I understand it, was valued, compared to bullet-point essays that Google Bard can now reproduce (actually, more elegantly than most such essays are in the raw).
I am not that surprised by your response, as I am unsure whether the point I am trying to make is of significant importance. I will try again.
Fideism, described as:
Fideism is an epistemological theory which maintains that faith is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile to each other and faith is superior at arriving at particular truths.
Quoting 180 Proof
So, if I make a statement like 'I give a high credence level to the basic premise of string theory,' PARTLY because I am attracted to it's aesthetic (or it's beauty). Would I, in your opinion, be as guilty of being 'romantic' about science, in the exact same way that I might accuse a theist of being irrational/romantic/unreasonable, about the credence level they assign to the existence of their god?
I would accept that both positions are currently faith based and both have aesthetic aspects to them.
I use the concept of me having a faith in string theory, to deliberately walk the line, between those theists who try to claim science is a religion and a non-theistic use of words like 'believe' and 'faith' within science. That's what I meant by Quoting universeness
Do you agree that some equations are more aesthetically pleasing than others?
If an aesthetic, inspires a person to learn more about a topic, is that an 'aesthetic reasoning,' that we should always guard against?
I don't care if someone states something like 'I chose to study astrophysics because I loved Carl Sagan's voice, and that's why I ended up discovering .........' or I BELIEVE science has more value that any religion etc.
Is Tom correct when he types:
Quoting Tom Storm
Hitchens saw value in the word numinous as well, whereas I have always associated that word with other rather woo woo words like transcendent.
So, I will always combat any claim that science is in anyway, a religion, but I think Tom's 'aesthetic reasoning,' concept you repeated in:
Quoting 180 Proof
is not as problematic to me as fideism, and such aesthetic reasoning can go farther than rationalise morality and meaning.
Such can give an individual very significant new intent and purpose, to learn science, with a dedication level, which is at the least, the equal of any 'spiritual epiphany,' or 'born again' experience, based on some authentic calling a theist experiences, via the aesthetic (beauty) of the concept of a god.
Am I making any more sense in what I am trying to point towards?
Theists often claim a calling which is 'higher than any other calling,' including any call to human science, and I think we should NEVER forget to totally challenge that arrogant, unjustified claim.
Your OP made me think of a discussion @frank started a while ago - Occam's razor is unjustified, so why accept it?
Quoting frank
I disagreed with him in the discussion, but since then I've thought about it and I think he's right. It is an aesthetic standard, but I still find it compelling, or at least appealing. I'm not sure how that fits into your discussion, but it's what came to mind.
:up:
Fuck yeah ! (Is this just an Americanism? Or you got it over there too?)
:up:
:up:
Important point. Why do people drink moonshine ? Because they can ?
Don't forget the festival of cruelty. Maybe people often check the news to get their fix of others' suffering, pretending it's a drag (maybe it's also a drag, such being our twisted complexity.) Some vivisect themselves. One who despises himself still respects himself as one who despises. It may be that the humiliation of our rivals is a sweet nectar indeed. See Rorty on private irony. He whispers our nasty secret. Why those who question the gods and seek to remove all hiding places from the thunder ? Isn't antinatalism one more knife ? The ultimate rhetorical killjoy ? An attempt at 200 proof moonshine ?
Could be. Rationalisation sounds like a more precise account of it.
Quoting praxis
Indeed. I think that's what I'm saying - the aesthetics of atheism and nihilism is a turn off aesthetically to some. So it must be a 'turn on' for others. But you've got me thinking. Is there anything which can't be regarded aesthetically?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Nice. Thank you.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I suspect this is right.
Quoting Fooloso4
I need to follow this up.
Quoting mcdoodle
Interesting.
Quoting mcdoodle
Yes. I referred to some people who use it to 'rationalise' religious belief, but it may well be used in a range of ways.
Quoting mcdoodle
I'll check this out.
Quoting universeness
I just see it as a variation of wonder and awe which are quotidian experiences. But I do have a penchant for some religious language. They haver fun words.
Quoting T Clark
I think it is related. Thanks.
Quoting plaque flag
Fuck yeah! We've got all your words down here.
Nicely done. Yes, Nietzsche is like the loyal opposition, a human adversary against which to sharpen their beliefs. But a lot of Christians seem to like Nietzsche too, given some of the consequences he predicts for the culture following the death of God.
Here are some relevant statements from the Tractatus:
6.41:
In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value existsand if it did exist, it would have no value.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.
6.42:
So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics.
Propositions can express nothing that is higher.
6.421:
It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)
6.422:
There must indeed be some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but they must reside in the action itself.
(And it is also clear that the reward must be something pleasant and the punishment something unpleasant.)
6.43:
If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the
world, not the factsnot what can be expressed by means of language.
In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to
speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.
This reminds me of Schegel versus Hegel, which I mentioned in passing before. As I see it, the world as spectacle requires the assumption of at least a minimal self as spectator. Kojeve's comments on skepticism are probably also relevant here.
[quote=Hegel]
Fichte sets up the ego as the absolute principle of all knowing, reason, and cognition, and at that the ego that remains throughout abstract and formal. Secondly, this ego is therefore in itself just simple, and, on the one hand, every particularity, every characteristic, every content is negated in it, since everything is submerged in this abstract freedom and unity, while, on the other hand, every content which is to have value for the ego is only put and recognized by the ego itself. Whatever is, is only by the instrumentality of the ego, and what exists by my instrumentality I can equally well annihilate again.
... But in that case the ego can remain lord and master of everything, and in no sphere of morals, law, things human and divine, profane and sacred, is there anything that would not first have to be laid down by the ego, and that therefore could not equally well be destroyed by it. Consequently everything genuinely and independently real becomes only a show, not true and genuine on its own account or through itself, but a mere appearance due to the ego in whose power and caprice and at whose free disposal it remains. To admit or cancel it depends wholly on the pleasure of the ego, already absolute in itself simply as ego. Now thirdly, the ego is a living, active individual, and its life consists in making its individuality real in its own eyes and in those of others, in expressing itself, and bringing itself into appearance. For every man, by living, tries to realize himself and does realize himself.
Now in relation to beauty and art, this acquires the meaning of living as an artist and forming ones life artistically. But on this principle, I live as an artist when all my action and my expression in general, in connection with any content whatever, remains for me a mere show and assumes a shape which is wholly in my power. In that case I am not really in earnest either with this content or, generally, with its expression and actualization. For genuine earnestness enters only by means of a substantial interest, something of intrinsic worth like truth, ethical life, etc., by means of a content which counts as such for me as essential, so that I only become essential myself in my own eyes in so far as I have immersed myself in such a content and have brought myself into conformity with it in all my knowing and acting. When the ego that sets up and dissolves everything out of its own caprice is the artist, to whom no content of consciousness appears as absolute and independently real but only as a self-made and destructible show, such earnestness can find no place, since validity is ascribed only to the formalism of the ego.
True, in the eyes of others the appearance which I present to them may be regarded seriously, in that they take me to be really concerned with the matter in hand, but in that case they are simply deceived, poor limited creatures, without the faculty and ability to apprehend and reach the loftiness of my standpoint. Therefore this shows me that not everyone is so free (i.e. formally free)[52] as to see in everything which otherwise has value, dignity, and sanctity for mankind just a product of his own power of caprice, whereby he is at liberty either to grant validity to such things, to determine himself and fill his life by means of them, or the reverse. Moreover this virtuosity of an ironical artistic life apprehends itself as a divine creative genius for which anything and everything is only an unsubstantial creature, to which the creator, knowing himself to be disengaged and free from everything, is not bound, because he is just as able to destroy it as to create it. In that case, he who has reached this standpoint of divine genius looks down from his high rank on all other men, for they are pronounced dull and limited, inasmuch as law, morals, etc., still count for them as fixed, essential, and obligatory. So then the individual, who lives in this way as an artist, does give himself relations to others: he lives with friends, mistresses, etc; but, by his being a genius, this relation to his own specific reality, his particular actions, as well as to what is absolute and universal, is at the same time null; his attitude to it all is ironical.
[/quote]
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/introduction.htm#s7-3
I think you've nailed down a great issue. Of course the professor just couldn't appreciate the kind of beauty available to the atheist, that maybe the cosmos is more open and terrible and wonderful for those who don't pretend to know its origin or final law.
Then it's just hard to do much with the professor's tacit feelings cookoff. Maybe there should be a poetry contest ?
Quoting Fooloso4
I now remember encountering this some time ago. Given the role an ethical system might have on the suffering of conscious creatures can we say they are precisely the same thing? The consequences of ethics versus the consequences of aesthetics seem to operate in different worlds to me.
Quoting Fooloso4
This one is like trying to make sense of the Tao Te Ching.
Our moral choices can change the world - but not the facts; that which can be expressed. OK.
This I don't get -
In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to
speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man
Translation please, Sir. Is it the nature of subjective experience?
Is there annotated Wittgenstein available on line? I can stare at a couple of sentences of his for hours and get precisely nowhere.
I think this is right. Is it Norman Rockwell versus Salvador Dali...? too obvious and pat, maybe. I've come to think that rival aesthetical perspectives may be as significant a source of misunderstanding and conflict as anything generated by politics.
So here is a little (not so much a) secret:
Antinatalism is a protest against evil and impositions.
It's about representation and signifiers, not necessarily the outcome.
It respects people's suffering. Everything else is gaslighting, justifying why other people need to do X, or just fixing broken things (including our own broken tranquility).
One last chunkydense quote, which I hope you'll tolerate. I'm a bit of an 'atheist Christian' or some such in the sense that the incarnation myth speaks to me (as myth / metaphor /poetry). There's a Romantic-atheistic way to assimilate its beauty and insight.
[quote=Hegel]
The true content of romantic art is absolute inwardness, and its corresponding form is spiritual subjectivity with its grasp of its independence and freedom.
This inherently infinite and absolutely universal content is the absolute negation of everything particular, the simple unity with itself which has dissipated all external relations, all processes of nature and their periodicity of birth, passing away, and rebirth, all the restrictedness in spiritual existence, and dissolved all particular gods into a pure and infinite self-identity. In this Pantheon all the gods are dethroned, the flame of subjectivity has destroyed them, and instead of plastic polytheism art knows now only one God, one spirit, one absolute independence which, as the absolute knowing and willing of itself, remains in free unity with itself and no longer falls apart into those particular characters and functions whose one and only cohesion was due to the compulsion of a dark necessity.
Yet absolute subjectivity as such would elude art and be accessible to thinking alone if, in order to be actual subjectivity in correspondence with its essence, it did not also proceed into external existence...
...the Absolute does not turn out to be the one jealous God who merely cancels nature and finite human existence without shaping himself there in appearance as actual divine subjectivity; on the contrary, the true Absolute reveals itself and thereby gains an aspect in virtue of which it can be apprehended and represented by art.
...the determinate being of God is not the natural and sensuous as such but the sensuous elevated to non-sensuousness, to spiritual subjectivity which instead of losing in its external appearance the certainty of itself as the Absolute, only acquires precisely through its embodiment a present actual certainty of itself. God in his truth is therefore no bare ideal generated by imagination; on the contrary, he puts himself into the very heart of the finitude and external contingency of existence, and yet knows himself there as a divine subject who remains infinite in himself and makes this infinity explicit to himself.
[/quote]
I get you. I'm partial to the Good Samaritan story. It opened up a broader notion of morality to me when I was a kid. We can't help but be shaped by tradition - Nietzsche's shadows on the cave wall...
I'm afraid Hegel is like a too rich chocolate cake. I can only have a nibble before feeling done...
.
:up:
That remind me of Lakoff's take on metaphor as the way we cognize. William James wrote of the (existential) world as a stage for heroism. I hypothesize that a vision of the world and an always complementary heroic role to play to within it are something like a rockbottom map in all of us for an otherwise terrifying chaos. I guess/hope there are sophisticated/evolved versions of this where the narcissism has become more magnanimous and inclusive.
[i]Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.
Underneath an artist's preoccupations with sex, society, religion, etc. (all the staple abstractions that allow the forebrain to chatter) there is a soul tortured beyond endurance by the lack of tenderness in the world.[/i]
Fair enough. That is some dense stuff. To me this is the essence:
God in his truth is therefore no bare ideal generated by imagination; on the contrary, he puts himself into the very heart of the finitude and external contingency of existence, and yet knows himself there as a divine subject who remains infinite in himself and makes this infinity explicit to himself.
We created the incarnation myth because we feel like gods trapped in crucified dogs. How could such glory live in food for maggots ? How else could it live ?
:up:
I do like the respect for people's suffering. But it can also cause people's suffering. I can hurt people by wrecking their final vocabulary (their spiritual substance, really) in the name of fixing them or waking them up. 'Don't you see that you should not have been born, sir ?'
I don't preach the gospel of ironic atheism, for instance, to people who might not be able to run that program in their lives. Whiskey for me is poison for them.
Far as I've been able to tell, Wittgenstein is talking about Feeling that eludes conceptualization. He also seems to make ethics a matter of taste (emotivism?).
The Tractatus is a rejection of ethical systems.
Quoting Tom Storm
He makes a distinction between the world and my world. The world is the world of facts. He denies any values in the world of facts. (6.41)
My world is solipsistic. It is mine alone. It is the world as I see it. As I experience it.
This explains in what sense the world becomes a completely different world. How the world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man. The facts of the world do not change, but how I experience it does. To be happy is to be in accord with the world, to not set one's will against the world.
:up:
This leads to Feuerbach and others grasping that the divine predicates are of course just the kinds of things we humans like, so that God is an idealized human (and a tribal god is an idealized/idolized tribe member/leader, which would not be a human in our nowcommon global or generic sense.)
:up:
If (?) we make Dali something that never quite arrives but is always over the horizon...
Fear of death is maybe (also) fear of change. Some paint us as thrown into endless interpretation, the hard work of sensemaking. Others call this our being condemned to be free. A god of deathless stone who offers the Final Word offers freedom from freedom, sleep for the mind weary of making it new.
I saw a documentary on atheism once. The documentarian said a world without religion seemed "thin" to him. He was an atheist, but he appreciated the full bodied mythology, art, and community associated with religion.
It wasn't a reason to believe. Maybe more of a reason for tolerance.
The question in the Euthyphro is: what is piety?
Socrates proposes that the pious is what is just. (11e) The gods as well as men are to be held to the standard of the just.
Sure. That's more technically careful (I've looked into the text very recently), but I still maintain that its existential payload is that the gods themselves must conform to human values. Else we'd call them demons rather than gods. Exemplars, heroes, egoideals, Fathers, Mothers,...
My world is a private language? Is not my world then a beetle in a box?
Quoting Fooloso4
Why can't the man simply write clearly? Why the fucking riddles and bloody obtuse prose style? :razz:
Nice. Thank you.
Excellent OP, Tom!
The way I see it there is beauty in courage and cowardice is ugly. Greed, jealousy, hatred, exploitation and cruelty are ugly. Generosity, admiration, love, nurturance and kindness are beautiful.
Quoting Tom Storm
I think the debate over God being understood in aesthetic terms is like debating the aesthetic worth of art works, poetry or music. Taste is individual, so such debates are ultimately pointless. That said the aesthetic value of something that has been around for a long time may be argued on the basis of its having become canonized, thus showing it to have some universal appeal.
Contemplative practice is also, I think, a matter for the individual; it seems to work for some and not for others. I don't think science should be privileged over the supernatural or vice versa per se; people are drawn to the ideas that resonate with how things seem to them and what inspires them personally and argument is pointless because the presuppositions that are foundational to each side of the divide are radically different even though those on both sides may have what they take to be the best interests of humanity at heart.
Quoting Tom Storm
Again I think that is an absurd argument. It might seem to someone that veneration of the divine is deeper, richer and more beautiful than nihilism, but that is merely a personal preference. Others may see it the other way around.
Quoting Tom Storm
Some religious thinkers understand and appreciate Nietzsche. Others have a powerful hatred of what they take him to represent. Personally I have great admiration for Nietzsche and respect for his ideas even though I also think he profoundly misunderstands religion in some ways and gets it profoundly right in others. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are a good pair to compare and contrast in this context. Both were sons of pastors and both reacted against the comfortable "lip service" forms of religion they found around them.
The salt and pepper brothers!
Quoting Janus
It is, but 'taste' is also where the passion is. I'm fascinated by passion and commitment and why some ideas and not others.
Quoting Janus
I think lots would agree. I have a sister in-law with terminal cancer. There are some friends of hers who have said - don't get treatment, all you need is prayer. This for me is when the supernatural becomes problematic. When it exceeds its speculative limitations and becomes a course of potentially harmful action.
Quoting Janus
Good point.
Thanks.
Conversely atheists may claim that a calling to science is higher than a calling to religion, which would be an equally arrogant claim. The world would be a far better place if people learned to speak only for themselves, and fully realize that they speak only for themselves. That said the voice of organized religion can often be one of the worst offenders, but it is still far from being the only offender.
I think this is true but so hard when identity is often based on a community of shared values which often feels or is marginalized.
Right, but people don't fight egregiously over whether Rembrandt was a greater artist than Leonardo or Jackson Pollock is better than Andy Warhol, or T S Eliot better than Wallace Stevens. So, I think it is political ideology which causes much of the conflict between science and religion, even though it's not always, or even often, framed that way. People believe society would be better off if one or other of theism or atheism was predominant. And this brings in the idea of human flourishing, of which kind of life overall is more beautiful: the religious or the secular. Ideologues do not find it enough to merely make the choice for themselves and leave others to their own devices.
Quoting Tom Storm
On the other hand the suffering that can be involved with chemo and radiotherapy may not be worth the trade-off in terms of the little extra life they are capable of offering. If a person is an ardent beleiver they may find great comfort in prayer and be able to come to terms with their impending death in a way that may be impossible while undergoing the rigors of modern oncological therapy.
Again it must be a personal choice, and there are no guarantees either way.
Quoting Tom Storm
I agree; when marginalized communities have little or no voice the problem is compounded. But I would argue that the marginalization often results from those in power having little or no respect for the sovereignty of the individual. Of course the sovereignty of the individual must be balanced against the social responsibility that comes with that sovereignty, which is of course the respect for the sovereignty of other individuals.
A single act of charity or sacrifice can bring tears to the eyes, much like a piece of music. So I think there is something to the idea that morality, even basic manners, has a certain beauty to it.
As Oscar Wilde wrote, the only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. The beautiful is often useless, and theism is in possession of both qualities.
Actually they do. Well they did in my world - Melbourne arts scene. There were fights and feuds so bitter over issues like abstract versus figurative, Warhol versus Goya (often framed via Robert Hughes criticism) you wouldn't believe the vehemence. Including fist fights in the pub. And consider the Nazi's and their 1937 exhibition of degenerate art and what this meant for the artist's welfare. And speaking of artist's welfare - ask Shostakovich about what it was like to displease Stalin and the politburo with few dud bars in a symphony. Not producing the right kind of art has been ever bit as problematic around the world as not holding the right belief systems.
But I do take your point.
Quoting Janus
No. They are saying you don't need pain killers or treatment if you have faith. They are cunts.
Quoting Janus
Indeed.
Quoting NOS4A2
Nice. There's a great deal in this idea.
The same kind of thing happened in the Sydney art scene in the late sixties and early seventies. But I see that as tribal politics being enacted by interested parties (the artists themselves who were vying for exposure and recognition) rather than purely fighting over aesthetics for aesthetics sake.
Quoting Tom Storm
Okay, that is an extreme cuntish position. Anyway, she should be left to make up her own mind in my view.
For Homer and Hesiod the gods were willful and capricious. Plato demoted the gods, but I think would would argue that it was not to conform to human values but to the just, the beautiful or noble, and the good. At the same time rather than conform to human values as they were shaped by the poets he sought to reform or transform human values. The Euthyphro is a key text in this regard.
No, not at all. The latter is about an underdetermined, or stop-gap, idea (i.e. cipher) and the former concerns a precise mathematical model of nature with, so far, an unknown truth-value. There are more grounds than just "aesthetic reasoning" to favor e.g. string theory.
Of course. Symmetry and parsimony, for example, are salient indictators of 'beauty', conceptual or otherwise.
I don't equate "inspires" with reasoning in any sense. For instance, motives themselves are not beliefs or judgments.
I prefer terms like sublime or, even better, ecstatic to more woo-like words "numinous" & "transcendent".
The only claim about theism I think is worthy of sustained, principled challenge is to the demonstrably untrue claim that 'theism is true'.
That was a dilemma in the context of the Greek gods, because they might disagree with one another about what is good. It is a false dilemma in the monotheistic context, because the theists can always say that it is good because God loves it and God loves it because it is good.
Suffering and hardship are not merely supposed to be part of the cosmic game they are part of it, as are joy and ease. Whether the world is thought to be beautiful, perfect or good is a matter of perspective, disposition, opinion.
I agree the claim that theism is true should be challenged, even dismissed, but not on the grounds that it is demonstrably untrue, but that it is demonstrably not demonstrably true or false, which means it is demonstrably unjustified. On the other hand if someone says that theism seems true to them, then I would leave that alone.
Logic underlies both the facts of the world and language. Language represents states of affairs.
Quoting Tom Storm
It certainly seemed that way to me when I first read him. It took me a lot of time and work to see that there is a clarity to his style.
The motto attached to the Tractatus says in translation:
Of course he says a lot more than three words, but like his work in architecture what he says is without ornament. In the preface he says:
He links what a man knows to what is heard or said. The penultimate statement of the Tractatus is:
What one who understands him gets from the book is a way of seeing in distinction from something said to be known.
Good answer and thank you for being patient.
Quoting Fooloso4
Important distinction, transition even.
There's so much homework to do in this philosophy caper... I probable need to focus on a few sections of the Tractatus and see how it sits with me.
The problem being that one doesn't affect others (more than being a bit sad at a philosophy) while the other has a major affect (a whole other person and stuff). So I don't know. I don't know. Have you thought of the poison of the other side as well? I mean that side gets 98% of the airtime and all.. and you know with the billions of people that result from it, their side has had major consequences I'd say for forced converting to those ideas (and only one side forced converts). The other says a sad song that people clutch their pearls at... So, just saying.
But I think it can apply to the monotheistic god. That is to say, what is a god who allows/approves/creates/wants suffering? If that is good to want that, then truly it is beyond human good and evil, and the implication of that is quite interesting. A person who creates a stumbling block to watch people suffer and overcome it (or not), is more than suspicious.
From the theistic perspective, that you, a mere mortal, may think the creation is not good is just your (false) opinion and is irrelevant to what is not a logical dilemma or contradiction for the theist. Far greater minds that ours (Leibniz) have thought this is the best of all possible worlds, which is not to say he is right, but just to point out that there is no obvious fact of the matter.
All of these in whose eyes though ?
Quoting Fooloso4
:up:
Bingo!
To me it matters whether or not a movement has a real chance in my decision to spend much energy on it. If I'm not really going to change things, then what am I gaining by persisting in talking about it ? My guess would be an heroic sense of identity. I write this without malice, because I think we're all caught up in this game of self-esteem. Maybe it's in our evolved hardware. We know that your namesake played the flute on climbed on prostitutes. A philosopher need not be a saint. His life may tell a deeper truth than his work. He's a aesthetic man. Nietzsche's ghost took a timemachine back to convert him into a mere poet of the ghastly demonic will to live which he mostly enjoyed incarnating, the musical old goat.
Our fundamental tactic of self-protection, self-control, and self-definition is not spinning webs or building dams, but telling stories, and more particularly connecting and controlling the story we tell others - and ourselves - about who we are.
Dennett
:up:
You didnt pay attention to my argument on my original argument on this. If the same entity wanted Bad things to happen to creatures as part of his divine game, it begs the question as to what morality this entity holds. I also said you can say its beyond our mere human notions of good and evil but the implication of this is still strange. A Cthulhu god or demiurge who actively wants or indifferent different to suffering. You dont need contradiction for that to be odd. It subverts our ideas of goodness making the term irrelevant or worse. Using people to suffer for some plan in any universe seems wrong.
@Janus
These are just posts on a philosophy forum. Existential therapy. Thats all. Communal recognition. Do you see this too?! Im not merely information but Quoting plaque flag
That being the case, here we are dissecting the meta-narrative. Impersonal analysis of the tragedy. Hamlet is a tragedy. It may be a story, but to deny this fact is to deny basic facts of what is the case. Suffering is real. People are not just fictive driftwood when they suffer. There is a Subject behind it. The story is covering this up and dressing it up. Now we are in fantasy and not what is the case.
This is a crucial landing zone/launch pad imo. Who are the true owners/inheritors of such stories? All humans? No particular human?
This is the concept of YOU helping, when every other potential helper chose to refuse the risk!
The aesthetic of that is very powerful indeed, in MOST human beings. BUT, most of us don't choose to OWN such, either as individuals or as a collective. We ascribe it's source to be 'beyond US.'
How different might the human race be now, IF, when still in the wilds, and we first looked up at the sky at night, we considered what we saw, as what WE are and where WE CAME FROM.
Not something separate from us and better/superior to us, but completely manifest WITHIN US.
The good Samaritan story (so good that you 'automatically' capitalised the word Good Tom) is a product of the deep human psyche. It is such a powerful aesthetic to us, because WE KNOW it is one of the moral standards AT OUR CORE. That's why the theists gained so much ground initially, because the vast majority of our species, recognised the moral standard behind that story, as the manifestation of the core of OUR OWN HUMANISM. Unfortunately too many of us got sidetracked, and assigned our core humanism to BS godism! and we have suffered from that delusion to devastating historical affect, including our initial acceptance of slavery (in the same way as it is biblically accepted,) and the divine rights of kings (in the same way Jesus insists we render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.)
Quoting plaque flag
Think of the aesthetic ugliness of the imagery here. Trapped, horrible death via crucifixion, resident inside low creatures such as dogs (a creature that most of us actually love dearly and many consider a family member). We created gods, yes, but only because we have yet to consider ourselves as worthy of our own existence. That's also why such ridiculous idea's as antinatalism and nihilism get any oxygen at all, imo. Why do some feel like 'gods trapped in crucified dogs?' I think it's because such people are not in communication with their own core HUMANISM (or Samaritan, to project Tom as a kid!).
Quoting Fooloso4
I fully endorse and 'live within,' the 'my world that IS mine alone,' as you depict it in the above quote BUT it is not solipsistic! There are other worlds/universe's, currently, over 8 billion of them and I can join in common cause with as many of them as possible.
Quoting Janus
But I witness very important differences in the behaviour and claims of both camps. Scientific endeavour is much more humble and rational than religious endeavour. I have never witnessed a scientist 'preach' a theory or writhe on the floor of a lecture hall in physical rapture about E=MCsquared whilst intermittently speaking in tongues. I have witness such from religion. Scientists accept that science can be wrong. Theists do not accept god can be flawed.
I do accept however that many scientists and many people (me included,) would claim that a call to science may help @Tom Storm's sister in law more than a call to religion.
Ive encountered this attitude many times. To me, it demonstrates just how far some religious people are from reality. Lets see, God created an eternal torture chamber and, at one time, sent everyone there because of the sin of Adam and Eve. But wait! There is good news! God is loving; so he impregnated a woman who wasnt his wife so their little boy could grow up to be horribly tortured to death. Now, God lets a select few people into heaven all those that accept his son as their personal savior. No, its all those who follow the dictates of the One True Church, the Catholic Church. No, thats not right either. Its all those who are baptized by immersion. Hm. It looks like his son didnt clearly say what is needed to get into heaven. But if youre a Christian and youre lucky enough to be in the right denomination and have the right belief they you get to go to heaven. Everyone else, hell.
A wonderful world view? I leave the answer to the reader.
I agree.
Quoting 180 Proof
I don't get that. What motivates you to 'reason' something, surely you must have been 'inspired' to?
Quoting 180 Proof
Yeah, as replacement terms, those would also work for me but I wonder if we are missing an important point here. Is it not important for science to claim as much right to 'positively' employ words such as numinous, transcendent, faith, belief, etc, in contextually accurate (but still positive) ways?
Would this be similar to the need for black people to claim the 'n' word insult and render it relatively benign within their own cultural discourse.
Perhaps Scots, should do the same with the less offensive but still quite insulting term 'Jock.'
There are many other more powerful and less powerful examples but do you think that such struggles for 'ownership' of words are important? There is a aesthetic issue here, due to the presumptions such words incite when applied in context.
Quoting 180 Proof
I agree but I think you underestimate the power of a claim of 'follow me, as I absolutely speak for the highest power in the universe.' This is what the biblical Jesus combinatorial character is depicted as claiming. Many people WILL follow that pied piper clarion call, blindly. Should we just accept that, or is it vital to challenge the claim that theism occupies the highest ground and highest aesthetic, that it is possible to imagineer?
Some years ago I participated in a discussion of the Tractatus. I ended up going through a lot of it, making connections. Not quite the annotated work you asked about but it might held give you a better idea of where he is going as he moves through the text.
This is Wittgenstein's term.
Quoting universeness
He came to see this. In the Tractatus he regarded language as transcendental, determined by the logical scaffolding that supported both language and the facts of the world. He later rejected this notion and came to see language as social and about more than facts.
:up: Thanks for the clarifications.
Consider the sigil of a lion on a shield on the morning of a battle. The glory and immortality of its god is the glory and immortality of the tribe.
Why would one feel trapped ? Shakespeare gave us Hamlet, perhaps still the most aware character ever written, trapped in a petty revenge plot. But I think also of Hobbes' kings who wage war to expand their holdings just to secure those they had already. The project known as humanism is that of us becoming gods. Antinatalism resents us not being there yet, us still being embarrassingly vulnerable. Humanism is willing to put in the work, put bodies on the altar, in the hope of a relative utopia to come ,though I will include ironism as a last late rancid version of humanism.
I agree that there is suffering in the world. I'm of course not trying to silence you. Does the story 'cover up' subconceptual pain ? I'd say that the story is just not that pain itself, and that other stories miss the pleasure in life. To reiterate, I respect the edge and the nerve of antinatalism. It 'questions to the very end.' But, with Nietzsche, I don't stop but perhaps even truly start there.
I agree with your description of humanism's ultimate goal, but I think the goal will forever be an asymptotic approach, which I am very happy about, as to reach the omni qualifications required for the god standard, would mean there are no more questions, which is a return to a state of a mindless singularity, with no intent or purpose. Perhaps Roger Penrose's CCC theory best mirrors my thinking here. I also agree with your projection of impatience onto antinatalism, although I think it's a more pointless position than that label suggests. Yes, humans will continue to do the work, but your attached 'sacrificial' imagery, adds nothing of value that I can find commonality with.
Are we still fighting for the same tribe today and for the same reasons, in your opinion?
If you think we are, then is that wise? Is it not time to reinterpret your lion shield aesthetic?
What tribe do you belong to?
According to Genesis we are already gods, although that was not the intention and not a task we were ready to take on. A responsibility that god took from us when it became clear that nothing man set out to do would be impossible for them (Genesis 11). What was stolen from them was stolen back by the thinkers of Enlightenment Humanism and the goal of a universal language.
Oh great, I'll read with interest. Cheers.
:up:
Quoting universeness
This is a Hegelian point. History moves toward more freedom and justice. People suffer terrible things now in this world. That's why an antinatalist thinks its cruel to bring children into such a place. But an optimist considers that things will keep getting better, that it's good overall to keep making babies. That some are born to endless night is considered a price worth paying, a reasonable sacrifice for the general weal.
To tell you the truth I was a bit disappointed that there was not more response at that time.
The link brings you to my first post. I trust you will be able to look passed the noise, but after that settled down there were some questions that were helpful.
I think you misread me. In our 'impostume of peace' in which nailbiting adolescents find new diseases every day to wear for a camera that follows them endlessly, it's easy to forget that humans aren't necessarily alienated from their gods, wallowing beneath them in confusion and fear. Humanism itself has a lion on its shield. Christ the lion is the light bringer, Lucifer, child of thunder, the morning star. I speak metaphorically to dig out the emotional charge of Enlightenment's Oedipal autonomy project. 'I will not serve. I will not have been thrown. Nothing is sacred but my own freedom to question.' [Our God is a devouring fire.] Satan laughing spreads his wings. Our metaphysics is a gloriously anemic mythology.
[i]Enlightenment is the human beings emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use ones own understanding [= reason[33]] without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. Sapere aude! [Dare to be wise!] Have courage to make use of your own understanding [= reason]! is thus the motto of enlightenment.
Reason must subject itself to critique in all its undertakings, and cannot restrict the freedom of critique through any prohibition without damaging itself and drawing upon itself a disadvantageous suspicion. For there is nothing so important because of its utility, nothing so holy, that it may be exempted from this searching review and inspection, which knows no respect for persons [i.e. no person bears more authority than any otherGW]. On this freedom rests the very existence of reason, which has no dictatorial authority, but whose claim is never anything more than the agreement of free citizens, each of whom must be able to express his reservations, indeed even his veto, without holding back[/i]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-reason/#ReasCommPrin
I belong to the tribe of philosophers. I'm a piece of the self-articulating Hegel bot.
:up:
Moloch demands a tower ! Drop us on fossil fuels and watch the explosion of selfreferential complexity.
The appeal to reason works because it is appealing. (or doesn't because it fails to meet the standards of reason -- it is unappealing by the standard of reason)
The trick with aesthetics is to get it off the ground you have to, in some sense, be talking about more than what you individually like. And that's similar to the appeal to reason -- it's just appealing to another sensibility or standard.
Right, but the thrust of the Euthyphro dilemma is the undecidability between whether something is good because the gods love it or whether the gods love it because it is good. The problem comes with the possibility of disagreement between the gods as to what is good, just as it is with humans.
God, however is a single entity, so there is no possibility of disagreement, and thus no inconsistency or contradiction in saying that something is good because God loves it and God loves it because it is good.
Whether there is a God, or whether what God loves is good are separate questions, and nothing to do with the Euthyphro.
And the way you see it is completely free from bias, right?
I think that's a useful observation. I guess if we set standards of 'good' and 'bad' aesthetics, we probably need something like Platonic forms, right? Or else aesthetics is untied to anything but cultural and personal values, which are transitory. As a reluctant anti-foundationalist, I gravitate to the latter.
In terms of having a conversation, though, I'd say you have to have some kind of standard -- be it a Form or no -- that isn't just "yeah I like that" to count as a conversation in aesthetics. Not that sharing what one likes is bad or anything. Just different from what it takes to talk aesthetics.
It seems obvious that there is universal aesthetic value: Shakespeare just is better than Mills and Boon, right? I think aesthetic value is real, and that you can be, given the aptitude for it, trained to get better and better at recognizing it. Some just see better than others, which sounds elitist, and probably is. But the aesthetic rating of particular things cannot be argued for and established propositionally.
What is beauty? Who can say? Must all things of an aesthetic character be beautiful? It seems not. I don't think it has anything to do with platonic forms. The way I see it the essence of aesthetic value is some kind of potent livingness or other.
And in my conversations with people this is often how they consider their judgements. As somehow objective and true.
Quoting Janus
I dislike and avoid both. But I know what you are saying.
You are essentially talking about sophistication and layering. But not all great art is complex or nuanced.
Quoting Janus
I think a lot of people believe this. I am uncertain. I don't know how we would justify this but maybe we can.
I personally think that to judge something as aesthetically valuable is a bit like pragmatic accounts of truth - subject to certain purposes. If you are going to appeal to middle-aged English professors (for instance) Shakespeare is better than Dan Brown. If you are appealing to my mum (now dead) Brown is better.
But how do we determine whether Mozart is a better composer than Beethoven? When works are nuanced and complex it's a more complex conundrum.
Deserves it's own thread.
It may not. But I suspect if we are going to say there is a standard of beauty then where is this located? How is this standard to be understood, except as an 'immutable form' or something culturally located?
I think it is pretty much universal: when people see or feel a quality, they tend to think others should see or feel it too.
Quoting Tom Storm
You dislike both but can you perceive the quality in Shakespeare? I can, and I don't particularly like his works either, in the sense that I have no desire to read them.
Quoting Tom Storm
I don't think we can justify this, but I think it can be recognized. It's a conundrum to be sure. I think it has something in common with the Eastern conception of enlightenment or awakening.
I don't see it as being subject to purposes, because I think great works have no particular purpose. You know: "art for art's sake".
Quoting Tom Storm
For me Beethoven is the greater composer, both in terms of harmonic inventiveness and "depth", but I can't give you any argument for that beyond mere assertion.
Quoting Tom Storm
I don't think it has to be located anywhere; I think it's just a matter of seeing. As an analogy, where is our ability to recognize pattern located? Every leaf of a particular species of tree is different and yet the same; where is that difference and sameness located? The question seems meaningless.
I think this kind of recognition is pre-cultural; even animals can do it. And I can't see anything immutable about it, so...where does that leave us? With a mystery...something inexplicable and yet wonderful.
Perhaps the best things in life just cannot be explained...to be explicable is to be pedestrian.
Ha! Shakespeare is more nuanced and 'deeper' more skill.
Quoting Janus
Agree on both points.
Quoting Janus
Whenever people say a question is meaningless I suspect it is redolent... gravid with meaning. :razz:
Quoting Janus
How then do we determine which are the best things? :wink:
NIce retort and a fair point. Perhaps I should have said "undecidable" instead of "meaningless".
Quoting Tom Storm
We just see which ones are the best. :razz: Seriously though, no one's seeing is perfect...or maybe only the sage's. But again even if the sage's seeing is perfect, that 'fact' cannot be discursively established.
No. It's an efficacious habit acquired through learning and experience. What "motivates" reasoning? Survival. No doubt though, creative (non-instrumental) uses of reason are "inspired".
As for reclaiming words, I take your point, universeness, however, I don't think epistemic concepts and bigoted slurs are comparable. I don't care that the religious claim "faith" I prefer trust instead since that term doesn't connote 'worship' or 'make believe'. Also, as I discern it, science consists in 'belief that' statements methodologically in contrast to 'belief in' convictions (biases). Magical thinkers' vocabulary simply doesn't concrrn me to the degree many of their public-facing 'fairh-based practices' do. :mask:
Raises an interesting question. Assuming we can identify who is deserving of the appellation 'sage' what kind of taste (aesthetic preferences) do sages have? What if the Dalai Lama (say) prefers the films of Michael Bay to those of Stanley Kubrick? What if good taste is an exclusive purview of the profane...
I don't think we can identify sages reliably...maybe other sages can. Even then maybe there are not 'universal' sages but rather musical sages, mathematical sages, philosophical sages. painterly sages and so on.
Take musical sages: maybe there are jazz sages, classical sages, heavy metal sages, punk sages...maybe sagehood is a specialized business...who knows? :nerd:
:clap: :100:
Nice.
We can think of reason as a network of semantic norms which is used on itself. Philosophy rationally articulates in an accumulating way what it means to be rational. Neurath's boat. We take most of these norms (meanings of concepts, legitimacy of inferences) for granted as we argue for exceptions and extensions to those same norms.
I want to meet a sage sage.
Adjective and noun: a wise sage.
Tracing that path back, I would say that the fact that abiogenesis happened, was not an act of optimism.
All species that reproduce don't exclusively do so due to optimism. Some species reproduce asexually.
Reproduction is fundamentally a natural survival instinct for a species survival.
The fact that some newborns (in many species it's actually most) don't make it to adulthood.
I just don't think a term like sacrificial, fits the 'natural selection,' imperative very well as natural selection has no intent. Humans are able to reduce human suffering, so the antinatalist remains a boring defeatist imo.
Quoting plaque flag
No, you have simply chosen to place such an image on such a defensive implement and imagineer humanist's brandishing such. I can just as easily suggest that humanism itself is a small innocent child, tying to think it's way into a more enlightened state. Which aesthetic attracts more people is a matter of preference, yes?
Quoting plaque flag
I always appreciate pretty prose but your imagery to me, seems very old. I don't know if your last sentence in the above quote means that you in fact reject the misleading imagery that traditional human mythologies/religions have tried to peddle to us, so that the nefarious few can opiate the masses.
Perhaps you should take more note of the scientific KISS advice. Keep It Simple Stupid!
Quoting plaque flag
Sounds good to me!
Quoting plaque flag
I agree, with the exception's that people must 'hold back,' from inciting or performing violence unless they are under actual or immanent attack.
Quoting plaque flag
I continue to learn more about that rather 'quirky' tribe. It has an academic/expert section, which I think DO assist and compliment my preferred tribe of scientists.
I continue to be convinced that the final arbiter of any philosophical posit IS scientific scrutiny.
But, I freely admit that my scientific musings have become deeper, wider and more personally meaningful, since I joined TPF and read what your philosophy tribe types.
My lack of academic prowess on the details of who, what, when and why of past and present philosophers, does mean that I often misunderstand what a particular knowledgeable philosopher is typing. I appreciate it when such folks attempt to correct any misinterpretations they think I am displaying. I also appreciate that doing so might be frustrating for them at times, but I feel the same way, when I think they misunderstand scientific/political/social or sometimes even humanist concepts.
Quite a biased observation/question.
Do you have a bias towards what you consider good/true/positive/correct/beneficial?
I understand the preferences you identify.
Looks like we are equally biased. You seem to admire/see value in, a two faced god, whereas I prefer the 'ness' part I have (and you have,) of the universe.
:up:
1. Making ones work easier
2. Co-operativism such as alliviating the work for mutual benefit where skill transferability is possible to the workforce.
3. Use of material and materialism.
You might ask well what does this have to do with religion and wanting to believe well most faiths promise to make this earthly drudgery easier.
Well, that would only be of any value, at all, to those who choose to label their life on Earth as a drudge.
Divine hiddenness demonstrates that god(s) do 0 to alleviate any suffering of anything on Earth.
Most faiths offer relief from the drudgery YOU have decided to highlight, as a glass half empty style preference, only after you are DEAD and only if you agree to their terms, despite the truth of:
However, let no one say there's no cure: salvation is offered, redemption, indeed, is promised, at the low price of the surrender of your critical faculties. - Christopher Hitchens ( and he even had Christ in his first name!!) :scream:
It is a poor author that makes a living bashing faith be it of any denomination.
The concept of god creating and abandoning creation is not new.
The thought I had the other day was what if he created the universe and then went on to do bigger better things but then one of his attributes is LOVE.
You do not abandon things you love or do you?
On the contrary, all hail to those who will speak truth to all manifestations of power, especially religious faith based power, regardless of their toothless threat of eternal damnations. If those who peddle religious lies can make a living from doing so, then why would you insult those who make a living combatting such? I made my living from the field of Computer Science (now retired).
Quoting invicta
I know, but the fact that deism is an ancient proposal adds 0 to it's credibility.
Quoting invicta
Yeah, 'what if's,' can be entertaining and entertainment is very subjective and preferential, yes?
Quoting invicta
So if you love drugs, alcohol, violence, a person who does not love you back, an organisation that totally abuses you and takes all your worldly goods, a lie, etc You would not abandon such love that is proving to be very destructive to you? What aesthetic meaning does a song like this have for you?
It is a poor author who makes a living fleecing multitudes with supernatural snake-oil of any kind.
Thats actually a rich one
Yeah, rich, evil, vile ....... some folks love their abusers.
Um, I'm not sure your quibble here, as I see no difference really to what I am saying. The basis of Euthyphro is whether something is good because the gods command it or whether it's the gods command it because it is good.
This goes into what I am saying implying that if a god likes suffering to occur and wants to see this (for whatever reason, whether utilitarian or he just likes seeing it play out a certain way), that implies that god likes (in some aspect, known or unknown as to why to us) suffering. To our mere mortal morality, this calls into question the idea of a "loving" being that likes to see suffering (even if for some grand cause outside the individuals who must endure this suffering from their perspective). At that point, the entity is at odds with our common notions of "good and evil" and then that has even more implications, etc. If suffering is at the caprice of a deity's whim, but commands us to not cause suffering, does god get to subvert his own morality to us, by not setting an example? But even more interesting, is creating a world of suffering and seeing it play out moral in the first place? And if it is, how would you justify morality simply because it is the will of a deity? What makes that moral in itself? If divine morality is immoral or amoral in comparison to human morality, that seems oddly not characteristic of a "loving" and kind-hearted god. And in that case, indeed look at the Gnostics.
Fair enough, and I'm not arguing for it, but this still sounds like optimistic progress narrative to me. I don't object to that narrative. I'm just making it explicit. A 'young' humanism is going to build a real heaven down here...or at least try. An older and maybe rancid humanism becomes more ironic and ambivalent, still faithful to rationality but not so sure that the species is going anywhere better.
Quoting plaque flag
That's interesting! I think I'd say boats -- as a metaphor for a tradition. Then there are boat builders of various kinds.
I much prefer the maritime metaphor for terra incognita.
:up:
Fair enough ! I joke about being a HegelBot because I focus on the most self-referential aspect of the world, trying to see our seeing, know our knowing. But others have to study particles and puppies and parabolas. Are all of the boats connected ? How about a fleet ?
Quoting Moliere
Same here, very much so. It's about sanity and self-esteem. Even in evolution, which is historical in its own way, the little organism has to be coherent enough to make puppies, the keep the game of invention going. To me is what it means to be thrown. We can't fuck with all of the boat at the same time or we will drown. And if we need tools to work on the boat, we break off a plank or something to use as a hammer. Bricoleurs !
The bricoleur, says Levi-Strauss, is someone who uses 'the means at hand,' that is, the instruments he finds at his disposition around him, those which are already there, which had not been especially conceived with an eye to the operation for which they are to be used and to which one tries by trial and error to adapt them, not hesitating to change them whenever it appears necessary, or to try several of them at once, even if their form and their origin are heterogenousand so forth. There is therefore a critique of language in the form of bricolage, and it has even been said that bricolage is critical language itself If one calls bricolage the necessity of borrowing one's concepts from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent or ruined, it must be said that every discourse is bricoleur.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/53180-the-bricoleur-says-levi-strauss-is-someone-who-uses-the-means
An anemic mythology is one that's reduced to a minimum of metaphoricity. Note that you use 'opiate' as a metaphor, so that rationality is tacitly a kind of discipline which does not drug itself. I don't think it's necessary or even possible to avoid such tacit mythmaking and myth enacting. I was hinting in general that humanism is not crystalline and ahistorical.
I think Popper is wise on this. Science offers myths, but its myths are better than others because they are developed within a 'secondorder' tradition of criticism and synthesis. No idea is sacred except for that idea itself, that no idea is sacred. Because no idea is sacred and no metaphor is final, the system can endlessly fall forward and upward. Its (anti-)conclusions are just the least stupid (most comprehensive, most compact,...) ideas/myths so far.
The universe is a two faced god and we are its two faced acolytes..
Quoting Moliere
They have strict codes of conduct those Pythagorean Punk sages: don't bring up the square root of two. A looser punk sage was Diogenes.
Quoting schopenhauer1
My point has just been it is only an either/ or question in the context of the Greek gods, not in the context of Abrahamic theology. Anyway I am not a believer in God, so the question doesn't matter much to me.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yaldabaoth, the flawed creator of a flawed creation?
The most recent data shows that the universe contains 8 billion human faces, all on different heads!
For a non-theist, you do seem to like and find employment for a lot of their woo woo.
Yes! You chose to represent yourself using a non-existent two faced god!
The above quote also has a theistic flavour. My point is not a strong criticism of you, its more just a 'heads up' that some of what you type, along with your chosen handle could be misinterpreted, as you holding or being sympathetic to, 'magical' views. I just could not be bothered dealing with having to counter the misinterpretations and either explain the apparent imbalance or insist that I don't care what impressions others have.
Death.
'... closer to you thqn your jugular ...'
I find that question more of a special plead, than a serious question. You will not be surprised that my answer as an atheist, is obviously going to be that I am convinced 99.999% that there are no, nor has there ever been, an entity/existent, that qualifies for the god label, due to it's irrefutable DEMONSTRATION, that it possesses all of the required omni qualifications. Perhaps you have some other notion that you would personally label god. The universe demonstrates none of the omni qualifications required, that I have saw evidence of. The only activity I am aware of that is, and forever will be, an asymptotic effort to reach the omni qualifications, is human intent and purpose. This emergent property of the intent and purpose of any lifeform that exists within the universe and is of the universe will forever fall short of the god label, in the same way that the numerical value, referred to as a googolplex, falls short of the infinity label.
Quoting Janus
Most of this quote seems to agree with my position, except for the slightly anthropomorphic references to the universe as if it had intent. I was not assigning YOU responsibility, for what I cannot be bothered with, I was merely explaining to you, why I think a non-believer, (such as you have presented yourself,) choosing a handle like Janus is rather bizarre, but I accept that is only my opinion.
I actually agree in a sense that some things cannot be divorced from their cultural context. For example, Pauline Christianity subverts more-or-less a ethno-religion (Judaic/Israelite Practice/belief) and makes it universalized it into a more Platonic Greco-Roman (a kind of New Age religion) context. Perhaps this is the same in the opposite direction. That is to say it is taking the Israelite deity and imputing Greco-Roman sensibilities to it.
Correct. So I guess. I don't care if you use strictly "Euthyphro" or not. I am just interested in debating the argument I have been laying out and you keep pointing to Euthyphro being out of context. That's fine, but let's debate what I am debating then, whatever you want to call it and stop debating semantics at this point.
Quoting universeness
I'm not pleading for anything, special or otherwise. You're right your answer doesn't surprise me, and it probably won't surprise you to learn that what you are convinced of means little to me, and that in any case I don't believe in the God of theology.
Quoting universeness
I haven't implied that the universe has intent. The god of new beginnings, Janus, is not at all associated with the Abrahamic pantheons. That you might think my choice "bizarre" is none of my concern. Happy trails anyway...
I think you're right about the Greco-Roman influences on Christianity.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Aesthetics is a matter of taste. If someone finds Christianity and the idea of God beautiful, I have no argument with them believing. You seem to find life mostly ugly, I don't; I find it mostly beautiful, so we are coming at this from different ends of the stick. Finding life ugly can actually be a motivation for religious faith. The lesson here is that not everyone does, or should, see things just the way you or I do. It's not really a matter of argument at all in my view.
This wasnt my argument though either.
Nicely constructed.
Apparently I misunderstood you then; my apologies.
Cheers Tom.
Perhaps that is the most significant difference between us. What people are convinced of and what level of evidence is sufficient to convince individuals to support or hold a particular viewpoint, means a great deal to me, as it is the source of the actions they take.
:up:
Really? All theism is based on metaphysical beliefs, imo. Do theists not act based on such beliefs?
Of course some religious ideologues do bad things, but so do some non-religious ideologues.
Where did the concept of the divine right of Kings to rule over masses of people come from?
Where does the idea that theistic believers are moral are non-theists are immoral come from?
Where does an action such as 'a teacher who is not a catholic, cannot teach in a catholic school,' come from? (only changed relatively recently.)
What was the actions of the crusades based on?
What is the action of a holy jihad based on?
I find your suggestion that theistic beliefs only ever result is such benign actions, as attending a church, almost comedic, in it's naivete.
My main point was that I do really care about what other people think, as it influences the actions they take, very strongly, and that has a direct affect on the type of society humans currently have to live under.
You have stated that you are a lot less concerned about what others think about the viewpoints you hold.
I think that such attitudes, are part of the problems we have and not part of the solutions we need.
Beauty is often treated as the starting point. I would suggest that it is the end point aimed for. The question of the beautiful stands beside the question of eros. The philosopher desires wisdom and is drawn to the beautiful. Both are seductive and are for that reason problematic, requiring a degree of critical distancing.
In moral teachings the beautiful is often connected to the good. We aspire to be and desire to have what is beautiful and what is good, as if with one we get the other. What is at issue is not simply the aesthetic judgment of what is beautiful but the poetic making of the idea or image of what is beautiful. For the former is dependent on the latter.
Would not the concept of beautiful and how one sees it depend upon one's wisdom?
Quoting Fooloso4
In people, the beautiful are often amongst our most treacherous. :razz:
More often on one's education and opinions. Most of us are not wise but we may be fortunate enough to have teachers who are wiser than us.
As I already said I'm no fan of ideology, religious or otherwise. I have nowhere claimed that religious belief only leads to benign actions.
If you think it leads to maleficent actions in the majority of cases then I would say it is you that is naive and/or ideologically driven in your thinking.
I don't agree with your normative correctness; I find the notion stifling and a kind of thinking found only in ideologues. As I said I have no time for ideologies; I think they are the very divisive forces that underpin the main problems humanity faces.
I think you constantly attempt to fog and obfuscate the main point I am making regarding your comment about not caring about what others think of your viewpoints.
You have tried a few varieties of poor responses instead of accepting the criticism constructively.
I have wasted enough time on what has now become a pantomime exchange.
As to not caring about what others think of my viewpoints, I don't think I am anywhere near alone there. In all my time on these forums i have rarely seen anyone change their views on account of a counterargument.
Please do yourself a favour and don't waste any more time on this, you started out off the mark with your purportedly "constructive criticism" and don't seem to have gotten any closer to it along the way.
Thankfully, you are far more isolated in this than you realise.
Quoting Janus
My responses to you on this exchange were not targeted at you. You are already fully cooked.
But you never answered it. Let me lay it out again...
Quoting schopenhauer1
You were sort of engaging here?
Quoting Janus
Goodness. That's interesting. Do we come here to sharpen our monomanias, perhaps? :razz:
Quoting schopenhauer1
is a given. It's a possible, even reasonable, attitude, but other attitudes are also possible and reasonable.
That's basically all I've been saying/
No, I don't think you do because you are cutting out the rest of my quote, and it seems deliberate. In other words, how is this not a Cthulu god, one beyond "good and evil"? But don't even use that, use the quote I originally sent you as I said it better. OFten here I have to repeat myself and the repetition is just a mere shadow of my original :D.
Okay, you say that the god who created the world must be beyond good and evil; is that because you see the world as being beyond good and evil or just plain evil? In any case. all I've been saying is that some see the world as good, and therefore they can with consistency think the creator good.
[i]So, Plato, you say that the soul is immortal? Bukowski asked, taking a bite of his hamburger.
Yes, that is correct, Plato replied. The soul is eternal and cannot be destroyed.
Well, thats a load of bullshit, Bukowski said, taking another bite of his hamburger. The soul is just a bunch of chemicals and electrical impulses. When you die, those chemicals and electrical impulses stop, and thats it. Theres no afterlife.
That is a very simplistic and materialistic view of the soul, Plato said. The soul is much more than just a bunch of chemicals and electrical impulses. It is the essence of who we are, and it cannot be destroyed.
Whatever you say, Plato, Bukowski said, finishing his hamburger. But Im going to keep eating my hamburgers, and Im going to keep enjoying life, and Im going to die when I die, and thats all there is to it.
And with that, Bukowski stood up and walked away, leaving Plato standing there, dumbfounded.[/i]