How May Esoteric Thinking and Traditions be Understood and Evaluated Philosophically?
I am wondering about the nature of esoteric forms of philosophy,;including those in the philosophy of religion and other fields of thought, such as in comparative religion, the anthroposphy of Rudolf Steiner, theosophy and systems of thinking which challenge Weatern materialistic assumptions. Having written a thread about the difference between thinking about whether the idea of the existence of 'God' or atheism, differ as a starting point for thinking about philosophy, I became aware that the question may go deeper, even though the concept of 'God' or gods may be part of the discussion.
The book which I am reading and thinking about is, 'The Secret History of the World', by Jonathan Black, (2007). The reason why I think that this book is an important area for philosophy evaluation is the way in which it looks at symbolic aspects of human thinking in human thought, including the basis of Egyptian ideas underlying some ideas of religious thinking.
Nevertheless, it does challenge idealism at a fundamental level. In particular, the author challenges the idea of some 'spiritual way' as a means of 'a momentary lapse of concentration...without first noticing it and with a light heart', but as avoidance of 'the walk down to the road that leads straight down the road to the lunatic asylum'.
The reason why this idea may be important is the questionable area of thinking about symbolic and actual thinking about the nature of 'reality'. The religious and mythical ones may involve imagination and mythical aspects of the human quest. However, these may also be considered and contrasted with the realism of science, and how much is known or unknown in this respect.
So, I open this thread about esoteric ideas and thinking, especially with the question of how far such traditions of thought may obscure or elucidate areas of the unknown in understanding human consciousness and its relationship with philosophy. It may come down to the question of materialism, but also the way symbolic thought stands between materialism and idealism and the phenomenological aspects of 'mind'. Ant thoughts....?
The book which I am reading and thinking about is, 'The Secret History of the World', by Jonathan Black, (2007). The reason why I think that this book is an important area for philosophy evaluation is the way in which it looks at symbolic aspects of human thinking in human thought, including the basis of Egyptian ideas underlying some ideas of religious thinking.
Nevertheless, it does challenge idealism at a fundamental level. In particular, the author challenges the idea of some 'spiritual way' as a means of 'a momentary lapse of concentration...without first noticing it and with a light heart', but as avoidance of 'the walk down to the road that leads straight down the road to the lunatic asylum'.
The reason why this idea may be important is the questionable area of thinking about symbolic and actual thinking about the nature of 'reality'. The religious and mythical ones may involve imagination and mythical aspects of the human quest. However, these may also be considered and contrasted with the realism of science, and how much is known or unknown in this respect.
So, I open this thread about esoteric ideas and thinking, especially with the question of how far such traditions of thought may obscure or elucidate areas of the unknown in understanding human consciousness and its relationship with philosophy. It may come down to the question of materialism, but also the way symbolic thought stands between materialism and idealism and the phenomenological aspects of 'mind'. Ant thoughts....?
Comments (318)
Metaphor runs deep in our thinking: from being light-hearted to being on top of, and hence superior to, to having feelings, these not being tactile but instead being emotions one touches upon in ones own total self rather than actively enacting as a consciousness (e.g., feeling a pang of envy rather than being envious)a very long list, actually, with many examples not being as easy to expressall these convey a deeper sometimes hidden (esoteric) meaning relative to that which is literally affirmed.
As with the arts, some sometimes find metaphors to be the optimal means of conveying deeper, sometimes hidden (esoteric) truths. This then works well for conveying these truths to others who already are of a common enough mindset in many other respects. But it will backfire whenever others hold different foundational semantics, for the latter will at times drastically misinterpret what was intended to be conveyed.
Then theres the analytic approach to philosophy. The leading benefit to this method of conveying truths is an improvement in clarity as to what is being addressed. But this comes at the cost of dryness, which serves as a big impediment to conveying what was intended. And, unlike the former method, it also limits what is conveyed to concepts that are already commonly known, making it that much more difficult to convey new ways of understanding or else realities that are not already publicly accepted and acknowledged. Here, then, the metaphors employed will be static in already being common standard, rather than being dynamic and new.
They mythical (and, by extension, much of the religious) can thereby be interpreted as the metaphorical, with Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell coming to mind in this field of study. Hence, as attempting to convey deeper, and at times hidden, truths or else realities.
These are my preliminary thoughts on the matter.
What would be useful would be to avoid general abstract statements of affirmation on behalf of the esoteric and for someone to present a specific instance of the esoteric providing a measurable benefit or the kind of elucidation you refer to. As opposed to the poetic and symbolic, which can be provided through music, nature, architecture, sex or verse, etc.
The esoteric can on the whole not be tested so how do you propose we demonstrate its efficacy and how do we determine the good from the fallacious?
Quoting Jack Cummins
Hidden knowledge is often where the powerless go to find strength and solace (a Rabbi once told me this was the power behind the Kabbalah's use although I imagine this may be a controversial claim). Also popular with those who wish to think they are better than the average person because they know the secret. They are closer to the Truth. This is the fertile delta of conspiracy theories and again theres often a connection to people who feel left out and a bit lost in the world - QAnon anyone?
I thought this was a decent book - I believe he was a researcher for Graham Hancock, who is a friend of mine.
The stuff about the naming of the weekdays and its connection to social order was quite interesting to me. However, I read this in 2011 or thereabouts so don't grill me lol
Metaphorical thinking may sometimes be dismissed at the cost of deeper understanding. Some may see the basics of logic as the most encompassing understanding, but it may lead to its questioning, and what are its limitations?
There is, however, another sense of the term as used to describe the practice of many mainstream philosophers prior to the 19th century. Nietzsche is responsible for bringing to our attention this practice that was once well know but was all but forgotten by contemporary readers:
A recent book on esotericism in mainstream philosophy is Arthur Meltzer's Philosophy Between the Lines. There is an online appendix
A few quotes from a wide variety of philosophers:
The idea of the esoteric, secrets and the hidden may be problematic, especially as it involves the mysterious and the unknown. In general, the unveiling of 'the unknown, may be more helpful as opposed to it remaining unknown. The idea of 'the hidden' in philosophy may be problematic, as if trying to go beyond 'gaps', but it may end up with obscurity rather than any meaningful explanabtions. In this way, the ideas of the esoteric may involve more of a demystification rather than clarification of ideas and understanding.
.
What would be a tangible example of what you have in mind?
The ideas of David Hume and Hume's fork may be important for making rational sense of what may appear to be irrational. The idea of the exoteric and the esoteric are also important in thinking of causal explanations and ideas of meaning. The bridge between both aspects may be important, as well as the way in.which esoteric meaning may be involved subjective meaning, such as in.the understanding of dreams.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Mythos as light that casts shadows of Logos on the cave wall ...
... in other words, "esoteric forms" in contrast to reflective (and defeasible) reasoning?
Quoting Jack Cummins
IMO, more like mythification of ideas, etc.
My understanding is the way in which ideas may come into play would be in the archetypal aspects of life, including the interplay between life and death, and symbolic dramas, involving the conundrums of light and dark gender opposites and the whole interplay of dualities and symbolic or mythical aspects which arise in human existence and experience.
Tell me/us why "exoteric" philosophy is not sufficient or in principle, if not practice, fails to do what it sets out to do.
As regards to the 'mystification' of ideas, an important area may have trying to bring mythos and logos together in a compatible way.
I get what you're saying, and in many ways I agree. As one example, in the absence of transparency and clarity, many who are unscrupulous will use the very notions of authority which they find others heed toward self-serving and unscrupulous ends. But this will apply as much to religions as it will to the sciences - with politics making use of both. I've too often heard of the label "scientifically proven" employed in circles which have no idea what the empirical scientific method is (being inductive, for one example, science always further evidences but does not ever conclusively prove, although it can conclusively falsify) ... and, as a result, a selling and buying of snake oil ensues. And of course, religion is often used as a facade for gaining advantage over those one dislikes or else deems to be in some way weak, etc.
That said:
Quoting Tom Storm
The same will apply for a plethora of other things: ranging from the more ubiquitous notions of goodness, and justice, and the aesthetic to far more concrete things such as whether the romantic partner that states they love you in fact so does.
Not finding these many other issues either inconsequential or else somehow unreal, I then don't find this test-based reasoning to be sufficient in justifying a renunciation of the esoteric (in any of its various senses).
Its like saying the world should denounce all fables because on the whole we cannot test their contents and moralities, we cannot demonstrate their efficacy as guides to morality and how life should be best lived, and we cannot determine those that are good in this regard from those that instill fallacious morals and ideas.
I'll venture to say that those who so dismiss metaphorical thinking can only be hypocrites, for - as per my initial post - they live and breathe in metaphorical thinking just as much as anyone else does. As to basics of logic, these to me strictly consist of the laws of thought, which by their very nature we all abide by whether we like to or not. These same laws will hence apply to metaphorical thinking just as much as they will to literalist thinking.
I wonder to what extent ideas of the esoteric and exoteric are 'different'; such as in ideas of rebirth and resurrection of the dead. In particular, in ideas of rebirth, reincarnation and resurrection, it come down from to which parts of one's 'self' may continue in some other form. It involves an aspect of the esoteric, in the depths of what it means to be human, but, also, most likely in the outer representations, bodily and psychologically dramas arising in human life social life.
:100: :up:
Metaphor, however, is not synonymous with esoterica.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/877179
Metaphorical thinking may be such an important aspect of human thinking, especially in the use of language, with limits of logic in the scope of rational thinking. Images may colour so much of the scope and spectrum for imaginative thinking, drawing upon sensory experiences as opposed to the mere apparatus of logic..
... and they may not. Which is it? What are you talking about, Jack? :roll:
Quoting javra
Well, I'm a skeptic, so I find notions of justice and goodness pretty nebulous too. It's fairly easy to tell with a partner whether they are there for you or not. There are key indicators. But nothing in life is certain. But that's not the same as saying everything has an unknown status.
But the esoteric seems to go a step further. Justice and goodness are pragmatic navigation points in most people's lives and we encounter instantiations of them daily. The esoteric remains inscrutable. But maybe Jack can elucidate what he means.
Quoting Jack Cummins
As someone who has found myth underwhelming I find this hard to agree with. I'm not saying you are wrong (there's a lot of stuff I avoid in life; sport, popular music, myth, stand-up comedy) but why is myth important?
Quoting 180 Proof
Metaphors we all commonly know, like being "lighthearted" or like having "feelings", will in one sense not be esoteric to us. In other ways, because their precise meaning (which we all typically get intuitively) will be difficult to express in literal manners, this in a philosophically satisfactory manner, they can yet be appraised to hold hidden (and in this sense esoteric) meanings.
Other metaphors - the ouroboros comes to mind as an example - will be esoteric in that we do not feel comfortable that we intuitively grasp what they, as metaphors, intend to convey. Or, as is the case with the ouroborous, at least what they intended to convey in past times when they were quite commonly utilized and portrayed in certain populaces.
That said, sure, metaphor is not equivalent to esoterica. But I do find that the two are entwined.
What Hume calls here philosophical and pernicious truths are similar to what Nietzsche calls deadly truths. Hume is saying that mankind prefers lies or errors that are salutary and advantageous to society.
On the one hand, if the philosopher seeks the truth then he will favor truth over consequences, but on the other, if he recognizes a responsibility to educate and benefit mankind, he will be compelled to hide them. He will have to develop an esoteric art of writing that will obscure such truths from those who may be harmed by them while at the same time speak truthfully to those who are well suited and prepared to hear it.
Instances are found in different traditions, but one example is the understanding that Plato's written teachings, or what was preserved in the transcribed dialogues, was supplementary to an unwritten doctrine (which obviously we know nothing about!)
A book that @Fooloso4 alerted me to, Philosophy Between the Lines - the Lost History of Esoteric Writing, James Melzer, discusses the esoteric in relation to philosophy proper. He says esoteric writing in philosophy 'relies not on secret codes, but simply on a more intensive use of familiar rhetorical techniques like metaphor, irony, and insinuation.' And also the capacity of the aspirant to read between the lines - to catch an allegorical element that may or may not be there. And that is dependent on the student's acuity, their own ability to absorb what is being said.
Another that I discovered in Buddhist Studies was The Twilight Language by Roderick Bucknell, which explores the symbolism of Buddhist teachings from the Pali through to Tantra. All throughout Buddhist culture, there is an interplay of teaching, symbolic form, allegory and metaphor, embodied even in the sacred architecture of the Stupas or the symbolic contents of sacred art and iconography.
So, why the need for these allusive and metaphorical modes of expression? Isn't it because the real meaning can't simply be spelled out, made explicit? That what is being conveyed, teacher to student, is something that requires a certain kind of insight, and one that not everybody possesses? 'Those who have ears to hear, let them hear'. Or eyes to see, for that matter. Secular culture is deeply inimical to that kind of ethos, we expect, indeed demand, that whatever is worth knowing is 'in the public domain', that it can be explained 'third person', so to speak. Hence the tension between traditionalism and modernity, often resulting in the association of traditionalism with reactionary politics.
The point being the subjects at issue are deep and difficult to convey, although again, in the modern world, with universal access to all kinds of information, that can also be lost sight of. When the Chinese monks Faxian and Xuangzan travelled east from the Heavenly Kingdom in the 3rd-4th centuries CE, they had to travel with oxen and donkeys, on foot, across deserts and mountains, beset by bandits and other dangers, to bring back the precious Buddhist scrolls from India. Now, translations of all these texts are freely available to anyone with a computer in the comfort of their study. So what? we will say.
Fair point. As someone whose values and worldview are secular I agree that this is essentially a debate between competing cultures (apologies to CP Snow). The problem is that the values of secularity and those of esoterica are often held by those who insist that not only is their understanding superior, but the other worldview is detrimental to the human race.
This may be true of occult esoteric beliefs but there is a difference between hiding things from children and the idea of some hidden dimension of reality. Philosophers are traditionally and for the most part elitist. They regard mankind as children that they must hide the truth from. But there are a few who by temperament and maturity no longer need protection.
There are not, however, two sets of books. The two different teachings are within the same pages.
Quoting Fooloso4
Ill exaggerate this to make the intended point clearer: Who among us does not presume themselves better than all lesser animals in knowing something that is unknown by leaser animals? Be this something systems of mathematics, conceptual understandings of reality, the capacity to experience sublime beauty in life, or so forth.
Appraising ourselves as being better and worse than others in some respect is, it seems to me, intrinsic to our being.
Now, where the sh*t hits the fan, does one then equate being better than another in respect X to being of greater value than the other addressed?
Speaking for myself, if one can excuse the immodesty, I once risked my wellbeing by aggressively driving away an adult bulldog with no leash in a playground from my at the time puppy which the bulldog wanted to kill. (At hearing the scuffle, the owners came and took the bulldog away and that was that.). But my point being, I didnt then deem my dog worthless and expendable on account of me knowing maths, holding conceptual understandings of reality, having the capacity to experience beauties, etc., all of which my dog was and could only forever remain fully ignorant of.
Tom, I doubt that you deem your views to be on a par in value to those views you vehemently disagree with and thereby are averse to. Neither do I or anyone else. But this being better than another (here addressing humans) on account of knowing something the other doesnt does not necessarily entail that one then deems oneself as superior in value as a life relative to the life of those one debates with.
Neither ought this to be the case for a parent relative to their children, nor ought this be the case for a teacher relative to their students, nor ought it to then be the case for one of them elitist philosophers that @Fooloso4 was addressing relative to their audience of folk who dont yet get what the philosopher supposedly gets.
Of course, what often enough does happen in reality-bites scenarios is not this stated ideal but a sense of authoritarian entitlement, wherein one does then deem themselves superior in value relatively to others who lack those insights which one personally has. This leads to bad parents, bad teachers, and to what Id then appraise as bad philosophers. Same can also be said of bad scientists, bad leaders, bad doctors, bad presidents, etc. I'll even say bad pet owners, at least when it comes to more intelligent pets.
To sum things up, I damn well want my parents, my teachers, etc., and the philosophers I read to be better than me in terms of what they have, or had, to teach. And they ought to confidently known this before attempting to impart lessons to me. But if any were to think of me as an inferior in terms of the value of my life, they could then stick it where the sun dont shine as far as I care. And I expect no less from those I interact with on this forum and whose views I at times disagree with.
A maybe messy and touchy topic, but there it is.
In the past it was often necessary to keep certain things concealed to avoid persecution and censorship. That is no longer as much of a problem, but if we are to read and understand these works it is necessary to read between the lines and make connections. We no longer have to worry about explicit discussions of atheism or nihilism either, at least in most communities. The cat is out of the bag.
Are there still reasons to write or speak esoterically? Perhaps, but in my interpretive practice I do just the opposite. I attempt to bring things into the light.
Hey, I'm just a simple minded skeptic. I often think that many of the stories human tell each other (especially in the realm of meaning) are just narratives to fill the time and make us feel better.
Quoting javra
So this isn't a frame I use. If I am assessing someone as 'better than me' then we run into the problem that it is my assessment that has determined this judgment. How can I reliably judge who I should listen to or read? How can I identify, from a foundational bedrock of inadequacy, that which is better than me? This is probably going to come down to how someone impacts me emotionally and whether their style captures my imagination.
But my concern is simply with the old trope - "I have a secret that the ordinary pissants don't know about.' Having kicked around in Theosophy circles for some years I know that genre of person well and how they disparage the average person for their 'crass materialist consumerism' yet all the while they are obsessed with material things, status, and are subject to all the same issues of substance abuse, relationship breakdowns and petty rivalries. In other words, they are just crass materialist consumers - just another pissant with a little secret...
Quoting Fooloso4
Wow, that's the basis for a massive conversation right there. Thanks. This is probably not the right place.
But just quickly: can you sketch how ones read between the lines? I've read some of what you have written about Plato - in what sense can this (between the lines) be applied to his understanding of the good, for instance? You seem to prefer a secular reading. Is that a modern cultural reading, or are you making some additional judgements?
I'm reading a very hard-to-find textbook, Thinking Being, by Eric D Perl, 'metaphysics in the classical tradition'. The whole point of the book is 'the identity of thought and being'. He starts with Parmenides, then Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and Aquinas, and claims to be explicating a common theme found in all of them. But it occurs to me that it's not at all clear what 'thought' means in this context. I'm sure it doesn't mean the ordinary 'stream of consciousness' that occupies our mental life from moment to moment - what we generally understand by thought Its much nearer in meaning to the Sanskrit 'citta' which is translated 'mind', 'heart', or 'being', depending on the context. Perhaps its nearer in meaning to the idea that the thought of the world is the world.
Speaking of Krishnamurti (and of esoteric teachings), here is a characteristic remark:
[quote=J Krishnamurti] What is the basic reason for thought to be fragmented?
What is the substance of thought? Is it a material process, a chemical process?
There is a total perception, which is truth. That perception acts in the field of reality. That action is not the product of thought.
Thought has no place when there is total perception.
Thought never acknowledges to itself that it is mechanical.
Total perception can only exist when the centre is not.[/quote]
Now, I would contend that what is referred to as thought in Perls Thinking Being, and what Parmenides means by thought, is exactly what K. means by total perception. It is an insight into the whole of existence. Not a scientific insight, obviously, as scientific knowledge of reality far, far exceeds what any one individual may know or comprehend. Rather it is the unitive vision of both mysticism and philosophy. Krishnamurti often refers to an insight which acts at a glance, as it were (I think a term for this is aperçu.) It is distinct from deliberation or a gradual process of disclosure, but a sudden insight which reveals a hitherto unseen vista, like a lightning bolt (that being one of the seminal images of Tantra.) When the centre is not means what is seen when all sense of I am seeing this is in abeyance.
And I think that insight shows that what we take to be thought, and what we take to be reality, are themselves states of misunderstanding (avidy?) - which modern culture takes as normality. So, it is to be expected that very few see it.
Which is what makes it esoteric.
This "insight" is partial because existents are only part(icular)s of ineluctably encompassed by existence and is, therefore, only "a glance" of an illusion of "the whole". However much a lightning flash momentarily illuminates in the night, the enveloping darkness the unknown unknown always remains; an existential reminder that one always already knows that one cannot know ultimately (e.g. Socrates, Pyrrho, Epicurus, Montaigne, Spinoza, Hume-Kant-Wittgenstein ...), which is why philosophy, consisting of questions we do not know (yet) how to answer, always only begins. Btw, Wayf, I don't think it's helpful to further conflate, or confuse, philosophy with mysticism (or with woo :sparkle:) as @Jack Cummins' OP suggests.
The idea of known unknowns from Socrates to Wittgenstein may be seen as a form of mysticism. The danger of 'woo' may be more connected with concrete thinking, especially in organised religious movements. For example, the esoteric tradition of Gnosticism looked at a more symbolic way of thinking than taught within mainstream Christian thinking.
The whole area of metaphorical thinking is so wide and expansive, as is speculation. It may be why some people are put off philosophy entirely. I have come across a few people who began studying philosophy and changed courses because they preferred facts. Of course, it may not come down to the esoteric, or hidden; because the outer aspects of 'reality' and life dramas are important. It may be about different layers of meaning and interpretation in thinking.
One does it by the example of others and practice. In the Phaedrus Socrates says:
(264c)
Plato is telling us how to read him. His dialogues are like living creatures. Each part has a function and plays a role within the whole. He is to be read accordingly. As with a living creature, it moves. There are no fixed doctrines in Plato. The movement is dialectical. From hypothesis to hypothesis. "Stepping stones and springboards (Republic 511b). The Forms are these hypotheses.(Phaedo 105c)
But as any reader off the Republic knows the Forms are presented as the fixed unchanging truth. Clearly, we have not arrived at the truth. And that, odd as it may seem, is the key. Socrates, who tells this story of transcendent knowledge, does not know. His human wisdom is his knowledge of ignorance.
Quoting Tom Storm
Quick answer, the Good cannot be known. The best we can do is determine what through inquiry and examination seems best to us while remaining open to the fact that we do not know.
Not so quick answer:
Socrates Argument For Why the Good Cannot Be Known
The argument is not easily seen because it stretches over three books of the Republic, as if Plato wanted only those who are sufficiently attentive to see it.
I begin by collecting the releverent statements. Bloom translation.
"So, do we have an adequate grasp of the facteven if we should consider it in many waysthat what is entirely, is entirely knowable; and what in no way is, is in every way unknowable?" (477a)
"Knowledge is presumably dependent on what is, to know of what is that it is and how it is?"
"Yes."
"While opinion, we say, opines." (478a)
"If what is, is knowable, then wouldn't something other than that which is be opinable?" (478b)
"To that which is not, we were compelled to assign ignorance, and to that which is, knowledge."
"Opinion, therefore, opines neither that which is nor that which is not." (478c)
... although the good isn't being but is still beyond being, exceeding it in dignity (age) and power."(509b)
"You," I said, "are responsible for compelling me to tell my opinions about it." (509c)
... in applying the going up and the seeing of what's above to the soul's journey up to the intelligible place, you'll not mistake my expectation, since you desire to hear it. A god doubtless knows if it happens to be true. At all events, this is the way the phenomena look to me: in the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of the good (517b-c)
He makes a threefold distinction -
Being or what is
Something other than that which is
What is not
And corresponding to them
Knowledge
Opinion
Ignorance
The middle term is somewhat ambiguous. What is not is something other than that which is, but to what is not he assigns ignorance. Opinion opines neither what is nor what is not. Between what is entirely, the beings or Forms, and what is not, is becoming, that is, the visible world. Opinion opines about the visible world. But the good is beyond being. It is the cause of being, the cause of what is. It too is something other than what is and what is not.
What is entirely is entirely knowable. The good, being beyond being, is not something that is entirely. The good is then not entirely knowable. As if to confirm this Socrates says that he is giving his opinions about the good, but that what is knowable and unknowable is a matter of fact. As to the souls journey to the intelligible and the sight of the idea of the good, he says that a god knows if it happens to be true, but this is how it looks to him. He plays on the meaning of the cognate terms idea and look, which can be translated as Form. A god knows if it happens to be true but we are not gods, and what may happen to be true might also happen to be false.
The quote at 517 continues:
" but once seen, it must be concluded that this is in fact the cause of all that is right and fair in everythingin the visible it gave birth to light and its sovereign; in the intelligible, itself sovereign, it provided truth and intelligence and that the man who is going to act prudently in private or in public must see it." (517c)
But it is not seen, for it is not something that is and thus not something knowable, and so no conclusion must follow. In order to act prudently, he says, one must see the good itself. Whether one is acting prudently then, remains an open question. The examined life remains the primary, continuous way of life of the Socratic philosopher. A way of life that rejects the complacency and false piety of believing one knows the divine answers.
Truths is knowledge which is usually hidden away from us according to ancient Greek philosophers.
Truth in Greek is Altheia, i.e. something to be revealed from what is hidden.
Hence truths require verification and proof in philosophy. What is obvious and apparent in daily perception are not qualified as truths. In that sense, isn't mysticism usually related to religious sense? You wouldn't say that a sceptic and mystic are the folks whose beliefs are the same kind.
The idea of initiation does seem essential to many forms of esoteric thinking, including both secret societies, like the Freemasons, as well as theosophy. The tradition which I am most familiar with is theosophy, especially the ideas of Blavatsky and Alice Bailey. These were also developed in a different direction by Benjamin Creme.
I spent some time reading Creme's writings, which were also about initiation through personal evolution through many lives. He also spoke of the coming of Maitreya, who was supposed to 'emerge' from the East End of London until Creme died in the middle of the last decade. Creme took many ideas literally, including the belief in a hierarchy of invisible Masters.
I did consider his literal perspective, but do wonder if a more symbolic interpretation is more useful, such as Rudolf Steiner's, idea of the cosmic Christ, rather than Maitreya as a specific person. However, I have attended transmission meditation workshops by Share international, the group founded by Creme and have found it the most helpful of all meditation practices. One idea, which I found interesting too was Creme's controversial suggestion that Jesus was only the Christ during his ministry, and he also saw parallels between Jesus as Christ and the Buddha. I believe that the Theosophical Society rejected the ideas of Creme but Share international continues on after Creme's death.
??????????: that is outward, so as to be in contact with the space beyond the object
??????????: that lies inwards.
Aristotle works are divided into esoteric (or acroamatic) and exoteric (page 5). For much of the Ancient Age, the known works of Aristotle were the exoteric works, and the esoteric were only known by some inner circles. Today it is almost the reverse, as the exoteric works have been mostly lost.
Make of that what you will.
Quoting javra
It feels to me as if people in the past had some modicum of honour. It was possible to respect, and even love, those that wanted you dead, because you also wanted them dead, so it was that history pitted us against each other. Or maybe I am romanticising the epics of the past.
Quoting Fooloso4
That statement is more about you than it is about the politics of our times.
Ill give it one last go: We all appraise ourselves as being better than some others in some respect, including that of comprehending something which these others seem hindered in grasping; but this does not entail that we thereby deem these others lives as being of lesser worth to our own or else in any way beneath us. This lack of entailment will then likewise apply to those philosophers - previously quoted - who have grasped something which the average man has not; something which is thereby esoteric to the masses. Hence, that a person A deems themselves better than person B in some respect doesnt then necessitate that A finds themselves to be superior relative to B (such that B is then deemed inferior to A by A). In short, being better than does not entail being superior to. And we often want others to be better than us - this while likewise wanting that they not put themselves above us. Socrates, for example, was better than the masses in many respects but this does not then mean that Socrates found himself to be superior to the masses. The manner of his attested to death speaks to this. And, in for example addressing the Forms, Socrates had a lot of esoteric knowledge which he did his best to impart: by all appearances, he comprehended things which the average man was hindered in grasping.
So, yes, some philosophers are better than us in knowing things which we do not - things we have a hard time in grasping - but this betterness does not then necessitate they they're pricks which deem us as being beneath them.
Quoting Fooloso4
Can you expand on this? It so far seems to me to be contradictory: From my understanding, the Form of the Good is supposedly the most real of all givens that are or could be. As such, irrespective of how difficult the Form of the Good might be to know, the Form of the Good necessarily is and, hence, necessarily holds being (although of course not of a physical kind). This seems to me in part evidenced by your previous statement:
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Lionino
Hard to say how much truth there is to its scenes of battle, but I greatly liked, and still greatly like, Homer's Iliad on this very count.
What topics or issues do you think should still be kept secret?
Is there an inner circle today?
Is the contemporary esoteric teachings to be found within the exoteric or separate written or oral teachings? Or do you think it is not to be found in what is said but in some experience most of us do not experience?
With regard to the course handout: The "Verstehen approach" is a caricature. A set of claims that neither Strauss nor his more capable students would support. They do not regard any of the philosophers they read as infallible. While they are careful not to use anachronistic terminology, it is not that we cannot put the works into our own terms. We cannot do otherwise. We do not speak or write in ancient Greek. We should, however, be careful not to rely on terminology that is conceptually foreign to the author. The facts are that language changes over time and that philosophers often use terms in ways that are different from more common usage even in the same language in the same period of time.
I don't think any topic should be kept a secret, though some topics are a secret¹, it is a matter of us admitting that some are not accessible to us.
1 How it is like to be a bat.
But my comment did not refer to that. Speaking of certain topics does result in persecution and censorship today.
If there is a Form of the Good but we do not know what the Good is, what can we say about it that we know to be true? It is not that it is difficult to know but that if only what is entirely is entirely knowable and the Good is beyond being, beyond what is, then it cannot be known.
Quoting javra
As it is presented by Socrates is not the same as what is true. As he says:
Quoting Fooloso4
There is a play on words here. The Greek term eidos, means and can be translated as 'look'. But since he is ignorant he does not see the Forms themselves. How it looks to him is how it seems to him it must be if there is to be knowledge.
Quoting javra
Plato's Timaeus begins with Socrates wanting to see the city he creates in the Republic at war. He wants to see the city in action. The fixed intelligible world, the world of Forms, is not the whole of the story. The Forms are part of a whole that is indeterminate, a whole in which there is contingency and chance.
You are right. My statement was qualified:
Quoting Fooloso4
This does not mean that persecution and censorship does not exist, but the ideas that philosophers in the past thought they needed to hide are now spoken of openly. If not everywhere, at least in places where free speech is valued and practiced.
That A cannot know what X is does not imply that A cannot know of X's occurrence and of certain properties by which X is delineated.
By analogy, we know that no one knows what takes place within a gravitational singularity and, hence, of what a gravitational singularity thereby in this sense is. Despite this, we do know via inference that gravitational singularities occur - with one such occurring in the center of the Milky Way - and likewise know of certain properties by which they are delineated (e.g., black hole event horizons that lead toward the black hole's gravitational singularity wherein all notions of spacetime break down). A gravitational singularity of itself is thereby an entirety which is not entirely knowable.
Suppose Socrates/Plato in fact had no inferential knowledge of the Good's occurrence as Form (which is other than having knowledge, of any type, regarding what the Good is as Form). Do you then take all of Socrates/Plato's accounts (dialogues) regarding the Form of the Good to be entirely BS (if not outright deceptions)?
As to the Good being beyond being, while I don't speak Greek, much less Ancient Greek, there seems to be something lost in translation. For example, when appraised via modern English, in claiming that "the Good is beyond space and time" the Good is nevertheless postulated to be (although this not in any manner requiring any type of distance or duration).
This latter aspect, however, might just remain a matter of disagreement. But if you can evidence to the contrary, I'd be interested in the evidence you'd have to present.
Socrates makes the distinction between things that we say are just or beautiful or good and the just or beautiful or good itself. Without knowledge of the thing itself we remain in the world of disputed opinion.
Quoting javra
In the Republic Socrates says that the Good: "provides the truth to the things known and gives the power to the one who knows". It is "the cause of the knowledge and truth". Further, "existence and being" are the result of the Good. (508e - 509b) And In the Republic Socrates says that the Good: "provides the truth to the things known and gives the power to the one who knows". It is "the cause of the knowledge and truth". Further, "existence and being" are the result of the Good. (508e - 509b)
Quoting javra
He does say that the Forms Just and Beautiful exist. But they do not exist in time and space.
Quoting javra
I have no evidence beyond what can be found in the text. There certainly is disagreement regarding interpretation, but I do not know of one that I find more convincing.
There is, however, another problem. Something I already pointed out:
Quoting Fooloso4
If we cannot know the good then we cannot know that it is beyond being, or that it is the cause both of things that are and knowledge of them. All of this is entirely consistent with Socrates claim that human wisdom is knowledge of ignorance.
Quoting Fooloso4
:up:
I think that's a very delicate question of interpretation. Later in the tradition of Christian Platonism, there is the principle of 'un-knowing', apophatic theology and the 'way of negation'. It is a universal theme also found in Indian and Chinese philosophy ('he that knows it, knows it not. He that knows it not, knows it'; 'Neti, neti' ~ 'not this, not that'.) So perhaps 'ignorance' in this context means something different than what it is normally taken to mean.
(I also notice a remark in 'Thinking Being', that Parmenides' prose-poem has been given to him by 'The Goddess', and so 'this grasp of the whole (which is the subject of the proem) is received as a gift from the Divine'. Perl also mentions Heraclitus' dictum 'Human character does not have insights, divine has' - Thinking Being, Studies in Platonism, Neoplatonism and the Platonic Tradition, Eric D. Perl, Brill, 2014).
Perhaps this separation of the world from the Divine that we moderns axiomatically assume (if we even make room for the divine!) was not so stark for the Greek philosophers.
Quoting Jack Cummins
It's more that as enlightenment is taken to be the universal panacea, the supreme good, then everyone wants it, or wants what they think it is. It is therefore ripe for exploitation by the cynical of the gullible, who exist in very large numbers. And it's also very difficult to differentiate actual mysticism from mystical-sounding waffle, so there's abundant scope for delusion in this domain.
But as Rumi said, there would be no fool's gold, if there were no actual gold.
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting javra
My interpretation of 'beyond being' is that it means 'beyond the vicissitudes of existence', 'beyond coming-to-be and passing away'. That idea is made much more explicit in Mah?y?na Buddhism than in Platonism, but I believe there is some common ground. And that the reason intelligible objects such as geometric forms and arithmetic proofs are held in high regard (in Platonism, not so much in Buddhism) is that they are not subject to becoming and ceasing, in the way that sensible objects and particulars are. So they are 'nearer' to the ground of being, or 'higher' in the scala naturae, the great chain of being.
There's an account of this in John Scotus Eriugena, The Periphyseon, from the SEP entry on which this excerpt is taken. I have taken the liberty of striking out 'to be' and replacing it with 'to exist', as I think it conveys the gist better.
1. The sense in which is God is 'above' or 'beyond' existence, and, so, not something that exists, is central the apophatic theology. It was a major theme in the theology of Tillich, who said that declaring that God existed was the main cause of atheism. See God Does Not Exist, Bishop Pierre Whalon.
That SEP entry on Eriugena was written by Dermot Moran, who is also a scholar of phenomenology and Edmund Husserl. He has a book which argues that Eriugena's was a form of medieval idealism that was to greatly influence the later German idealists (via Eckhardt and the medieval mystics).
My interpretation of the forms/ideas is that they too are beyond the vicissitudes of existence and non-existence, that they don't come into or pass out of existence. And so, literally speaking, they don't need to exist! Things do the hard work of existence. Or, put another way, they exist 'in a different way' or 'on a different level' to material things. But modern ontology does not generally allow for 'different ways of existing' or 'different levels of existence'. It is strictly one-dimensional. That's the nub of the issue.
:100: And I'm in agreement with your post in general.
As I previously mentioned via analogy of gravitational singularities, this conclusion is erroneous. Here's another example, Kant knew that he did not known what things-in-themselves are but nevertheless knew that they are, that they are not phenomenal, and that they are a necessary cause for our perceptions of objects. As this again evidences, to not know X does not mean that one does not know of X's occurrence and of at least some of X's properties (by which it can be differentiated from not-X).
My mistake. I did understand the point you were making what I wasn't clear about was its applicability to my initial comments. But I do get it: some people may know things we don't and that's no reason for them to be smug and disdainful. Agree.
I'm more interested in the common phenomenon in the world of esoterica where some people falsely think they have knowledge and consider anyone who isn't in their in-group to be a plonker. But it's a small point and not pivotal to Jack's OP.
We can know nothing whatsoever about whatever might be "beyond being". The idea is nothing more than the dialectical opposite of 'being'. Fools have always sought to fill the 'domains' of necessary human ignorance with their "knowing". How much misery this has caused humanity is incalculable.
The issue was how does one define, else understand, being - this, specifically, in terms of Plato's affirmations.
Quoting Janus
I happen to agree. Hence my contention that there is something lost in translation in saying that "the Good is beyond being". This would entail that the Good is not. Which is contrary to Plato's works.
:100: :fire:
I suspect this reflects the influence of Plato, but we should not conclude from what is in some way similar that they are the same.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think Tillich got the idea of God as the ground of being from Meister Eckhart or perhaps Heidegger.
Quoting Wayfarer
But the Forms that are affirmed to exist, to be, are said to be 'beyond coming-to-be and passing away'.
Quoting Wayfarer
In the Republic Socrates says that they are the only things that truly exist because they do not come into being or pass away.
Quoting Janus
We seem to either be suffering from an absence of mirrors in which to see our own selves and conducts on this forum or else from a self-righteous arrogance of somehow being beyond foolishness. Or maybe both.
Because science and its paradigms does not seek to accomplish the exact same feat? Or any other field of human knowledge?
The proscription of thought, debate, and investigation on a philosophy forum by some is telling.
Quoting Janus
Pales by comparison to the view that ignorance is a virtue.
Nice. I was just thinking very similar thoughts. I suspect this goes to the core of the OP's question. The esoterica of the gaps....
What is erroneous is importing ideas about gravitational singularities and from Kant in the attempt to understand Plato. You might conclude that Plato is wrong, but that is another story.
And yet you go on to say in another post:Quoting javra
Quoting javra
See above:
Quoting Fooloso4
And:
Quoting Fooloso4
Right - but if they are 'beyond coming-to-be and passing away', then how can they be said to exist? Of all the things around us, which of them does not come into existence or pass away. Doesn't that apply to all phenomena?
An illustration: does the number 7 exist? Why, of course, you will say, there it is. But that's a symbol. The symbol exists, but what is symbolised? Are numbers 'things that exist'? Well, in a sense, but the nature of their existence is contested by philosophers - very much to the point. And it's also a point made in the passage from Eriugena, where things that exist on one level, do not exist on another. That's what makes all of this a metaphysical question.
My heuristic is that forms (etc) don't exist, but they are real, in an analogous sense to the way constraints are real in systems science. They are something like the way things must be, in order to exist - like blueprints or archetypes. Like, the form 'flight' can only be instantiated by wings that are flat and light. The form 'seeing' can only be instantiated by organs that are light-sensitive. And so on. But they don't exist as do the particulars which instantiate them.
Were Socrates/Plato to have understood "being" within the linguistic and cultural contexts of their time as consisting of that which comes into being and goes out of being, then the affirmation that the Good is not that just expressed would make sense.
By comparison:
Quoting Fooloso4
You affirm this conclusion as though it is true, or else as though it is the truth of what Socrates/Plato intended. Yet how is this affirmation not equivalent to the nonsensical statement that a certain given is neither X nor not-X? Or do you find this affirmation in any way sensible?
I think it ironic how often Socrates' claim of ignorance is ignored. As I read them both Plato and Aristotle are skeptics is the sense of knowing that they do not know. We remain in the cave of opinion. It is not that we do not know anything, but when we do not know what we do not know and believe we do know we are no longer even in the realm of opinion but ignorance.
Does the number 7 come into being and pass away?
Quoting Wayfarer
If I remember correctly, you come down on the side of them as always existing and unchanging.
I would say plainly not. You will recall that Jacob Klein book that you recommended me, which I have read, in part, although much of it is very specialised. But it does affirm a very general point about Platonist philosophy of mathematics, to wit:
Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra.
This is why knowledge of geometry and arithmetic, dianoia, was held to be 'higher' than knowledge of sensible things. It is paradigmatic for 'the unity of thinking and being', which, according to Perl, is the underlying theme of the Western metaphysical tradition.
Quoting Fooloso4
Very much your opinion, in my opinion.
You clearly take issue with for a secular and, shall we say, 'modern' reading of Plato and Aristotle? You think his take, though scholarly, stops short where it matters, right?
Do you think is projecting his perennialist biases upon Plato?
At heart in most of these discussions you hold the position that there is a realm beyond the quotidian world and that this can be understood/accessed through a range of approaches - e.g., Buddhism, Tao, Jnana Yoga, and the classical Western philosophical tradition, which has been filleted by secularism and modernist understandings.
Your view seems to be that a competent reading of Plato does not necessarily support the above.
I think the issue can be raised for many terms that we understand perfectly well until we try to pin down a definition. It is probably nothing more than a problem with language, with its inexactitudes, ambiguities.
Quoting javra
Did someone say that the Good is beyond being? I would have thought that it is only beings or events which could be good or otherwise.
Socrates's being aware that he does not hold infallible knowledge of anything whatsoever does not equate to a state of him ignoring that which is the case (this act of either willfully or unwillingly ignoring being the state of ignorance). Quite the opposite. Otherwise one runs into equating wisdom to ignorance - wherein one again deems ignorance to be a virtue.
Quoting Fooloso4
Here we agree in full.
You haven't been following the discussion too closely, then. Yes, Socrates/Plato stated that the Good as Form is beyond being.
If there are areas in regard to which humans are necessarily ignorant (which I believe is unarguably true) and there is an inveterate human tendency to find this unacceptable, then the filling of this space of mystery with dogma is inevitable.
Science seeks to coherently and consistently explain what is observed while all the time remaining cognizant of the defeasible nature of its theory and knowledge. This is not even remotely similar to the human tendency to simply "make shit up" in the face of the unknown. This is not to say that some scientists, being fallible humans, do not make shit up (falsify the data).
What "proscription of thought, debate and investigation" is going on here in your opinion? Perhaps you could offer an example which is not merely the expression of a different opinion. The other point is that once one starts to talk about "ineffable knowledge" one has entered a realm where argument simply cannot go. Do you think that can that be counted as "doing philosophy"?
Quoting javra
I haven't read the entire thread. Since Socrates and Plato are not participating in this discussion perhaps you could provide a quote from the latter which unambiguously states this.
Given an example of such "necessary ignorance" which should remain off limits to investigation?
Quoting Janus
Ha. Scientific hypothesis are "made up shit in the face of the unknown" which can be empirically tested for.
Quoting Janus
See my first question. If we are necessarily ignorant of X than there is an implicitly affirmed proscription of thought, debate, and investigation as pertains to X.
Quoting Janus
Funny. All I have are opinions of various strengths, some of which pass a threshold beyond which I term these opinions fallible knowledge.
Quoting Janus
Where have I affirmed "ineffable knowledge" in any of this debate?
I like it!
Anything that is beyond human perception and judgement...that is anything purportedly "beyond being" or transcendent...God, rebirth, karma, heaven, hell...need I go on.
Quoting javra
Scientific hypotheses are not arbitrary imaginings but are abductive inferences as to what, consistent with the overall body of canonical human experience and judgement, might be the explanation for this or that observed phenomenon. This is an entirely different kettle of fish to religious dogma or esoterica.
Quoting javra
OK, now you seem to be speaking as though that proscription is a right and good thing. I had thought you were railing against it. So, which is it?
Quoting javra
I meant an example of someone being unjustifiably proscriptive as to what others are allowed to think.
Quoting javra
I haven't said you affirmed any ineffable knowledge...I mean, how could you? But some do affirm that those who are thought (by themselves and others) to be enlightened are capable of ineffable knowledge. So, I am trying to understand whether you are one of those who affirm such things. The other question, even if you do affirm such a possibility, is whether you think it can be part of philosophical discussion.
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_of_the_Good#Uses_in_The_Republic
BTW, if you tack on questions to me after you've made a post, I might not see them. But maybe you already knew this?
Quoting Janus
And how are any of the examples you've given "beyond human judgement"? Plenty of people judge these notions all the time. Some favoring these notions and others opposing their validity.
Quoting Janus
Many who will uphold religions and essoterica will of course disagree with the dogma that they are "arbitrary imaginings". You seem to have some superior knowledge to the contrary. Care to share?
Quoting Janus
I'm against any proscription of thought regarding reality. Hope that's blunt enough. The thought-police ought not prevent others from thinking freely as they will. As far as I see things, the ideas which result thereof can then be in part judged by natural selection.
Quoting Janus
Yea. Any suppression of free thought regarding any existential topic will serve as an example of "unjustifiabley proscriptive". Scary to me to think otherwise. But repressive regimes are not unheard of.
Quoting Janus
Dude, knowledge of what a sublimely aesthetic experience is felt to be shall often enough be ineffable ... other than by saying something like "the beauty of that there is beyond words".
But that aside, why should attempts at effing the heretofore ineffable be off limits?
I respect his knowledge of the texts and have benefitted from it in many discussions about Plato. And Im also aware of the deficiencies of own learning. In generations past, these texts were the subject of The Classics and classical education but I encountered little of them until well into adulthood. But on the other hand, Plato is one of the founding figures of Western culture and I feel as though a certain amount of it has seeped in to me solely due to my cultural heritage (and I have at least done some readings) But as I now understand it, a classical education in Plato required reading all the dialogues, in a prescribed order, and with associated commentary, as part of a structured curriculum. At this stage in life, I am not going to achieve that.
So Im not equipped to criticise Fooloso4s interpretation, save to say that in my view its rather deflationary. I think Platos dialogues can be read on many levels and are open to many kinds of interpretation, and that there are kind of off-ramps for those who are not inclined to the esoteric face of his philosophy. But I agree with Lloyd Gerson that Platonism and naturalism are incommensurable, whereas for most here, naturalism is axiomatic and anything that can be categorised as supernatural - and its a broad brush! - is off limits.
Quoting Tom Storm
Thats what philosophy is, or used to be. Pierre Hadot makes that quite clear in his Philosophy as a Way of Life and other publications. I think the watershed was the division of mind and matter, and primary and secondary attributes, associated with Galileo, Descartes and Newton and the scientific revolution.
[quote=Bhikkhu Bodhi, A Buddhist Response to the Contemporary Dilemmas of Human Existence; https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/response.html] The underlying historical cause of this phenomenon seems to lie in an unbalanced development of the human mind in the West, beginning around the time of the European Renaissance. This development gave increasing importance to the rational, manipulative and dominative capacities of the mind at the expense of its intuitive, comprehensive, sympathetic and integrative capacities. The rise to dominance of the rational, manipulative facets of human consciousness led to a fixation upon those aspects of the world that are amenable to control by this type of consciousness the world that could be conquered, comprehended and exploited in terms of fixed quantitative units. This fixation did not stop merely with the pragmatic efficiency of such a point of view, but became converted into a theoretical standpoint, a standpoint claiming validity. In effect, this means that the material world, as defined by modern science, became the founding stratum of reality, while mechanistic physics, its methodological counterpart, became a paradigm for understanding all other types of natural phenomena, biological, psychological and social.
The early founders of the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century such as Galileo, Boyle, Descartes and Newton were deeply religious men, for whom the belief in the wise and benign Creator was the premise behind their investigations into lawfulness of nature. However, while they remained loyal to the theistic premises of Christian faith, the drift of their thought severely attenuated the organic connection between the divine and the natural order, a connection so central to the premodern world view. They retained God only as the remote Creator and law-giver of Nature and sanctioned moral values as the expression of the Divine Will, the laws decreed for man by his Maker. In their thought a sharp dualism emerged between the transcendent sphere and the empirical world. The realm of "hard facts" ultimately consisted of units of senseless matter governed by mechanical laws, while ethics, values and ideals were removed from the realm of facts and assigned to the sphere of an interior subjectivity.
It was only a matter of time until, in the trail of the so-called Enlightenment, a wave of thinkers appeared who overturned the dualistic thesis central to this world view in favor of the straightforward materialism. This development was not a following through of the reductionistic methodology to its final logical consequences. Once sense perception was hailed as the key to knowledge and quantification came to be regarded as the criterion of actuality, the logical next step was to suspend entirely the belief in a supernatural order and all it implied. Hence finally an uncompromising version of mechanistic materialism prevailed, whose axioms became the pillars of the new world view. Matter is now the only ultimate reality, and divine principle of any sort dismissed as sheer imagination.
The triumph of materialism in the sphere of cosmology and metaphysics had the profoundest impact on human self-understanding. The message it conveyed was that the inward dimensions of our existence, with its vast profusion of spiritual and ethical concerns, is mere adventitious superstructure. The inward is reducible to the external, the invisible to the visible, the personal to the impersonal. Mind becomes a higher order function of the brain, the individual a node in a social order governed by statistical laws. All humankind's ideals and values are relegated to the status of illusions: they are projections of biological drives, sublimated wish-fulfillment. Even ethics, the philosophy of moral conduct, comes to be explained away as a flowery way of expressing personal preferences. Its claim to any objective foundation is untenable, and all ethical judgments become equally valid. The ascendancy of relativism is complete.[/quote]
Not everyone will defend so stark a position as expressed here, but it is undeniably a major influence on todays culture. And do notice the hostility that criticism of it engenders. Im never one to deny that I am ignorant in many things, but I dont proclaim that ignorance as a yardstick of what ought to be discussed.
It should be quite apparent that for them the opinions of that time or any other time and place are not decisive.
Quoting javra
I do not affirm that it is true, but I think it is an accurate description of what the text says.
Quoting javra
Is what is beyond being something that is or something that is not?
In the Sophist we find the following exchange:
Theaetetus:
We really do seem to have a vague vision of being as some third thing, when we say that motion and rest are.
Stranger:
Then being is not motion and rest in combination, but something else, different from them.
Theaetetus:
Apparently.
Stranger:
According to its own nature, then, being is neither at rest nor in motion.
Theaetetus:
You are about right.
Stranger:
What is there left, then, to which a man can still turn his mind who wishes to establish within himself any clear conception of being?
Theaetetus:
What indeed?
Stranger:
There is nothing left, I think, to which he can turn easily. (Sophist 250)
Being is neither at rest nor not at rest. Neither in motion nor not in motion. And yet, we would not to deny that what is is either in motion or at rest.
Added: See also above and copied in my response to Wayfarer below:
Quoting Fooloso4
What any text says can only be understood via interpretation of the said text; namely, of what was intended by the text's author. Plato's writing is no exception to this.
Quoting Fooloso4
As I thought I already made clear, to me what is beyond being is by entailment not being, hence it is not.
As to the example you've given, it is nonsensical to me. Hence my opinion that something might be lost in translation of "being" from that era and language to our own. You have not yet addressed my question of whether "neither X nor not-X" is sensible to you.
Klein points out that Aristotle distinguishes between three kinds of number:
arithmos eidetikos - idea numbers
arithmos aisthetetos - sensible number
metaxy - between
(Metaphysics 987b)
The third kind is something in between, not an eidetic nor a sensible number. See above:
Quoting Fooloso4
I think all of our readings are by default modern. We cannot escape being modern. It is our cave. But my reading differs from that of others who are modern.
From an interview with Stanley Rosen, an influential scholar who has written extensively on Plato:
This tracks pretty close to my own readings
:up:
Quoting Fooloso4
:up: :up:
I don't understand what you are saying here. My questions were in the post. As to the quote from Plato, It is fragmented and out of context (from Wikipedia) so I don't want to comment on it.
Quoting javra
"Beyond human judgement", as I use it, means beyond decidable judgement. Of course, people may have opinions, but those opinions cannot be informed opinions if what they are about is something outside the range of human perception.
Quoting javra
As implied above, I count them as arbitrary imaginings if they do not refer to anything intersubjectively corroborable. So, it is not dogma, but presents a valid distinction between what can be tested and what cannot. And no, I have not said that ideas that cannot be tested have no value, but that they cannot coherently function as claims if there is no way to for the unbiased to assess their veracity.
Quoting javra
Where are the thought police? All I'm seeing is critique, not suppression.
Quoting javra
Again, where is the "suppression" you speak of? Is disagreement and critique not allowed in your ideal world?
Quoting javra
"Effing the ineffable" is the job of art and poetry, not rigorous philosophical discussion. Poetry may be evocative, but it presents no arguments. That which cannot be tested empirically or justified logically is outside the scope of rational argument. That doesn't mean it has no value, so don't mistake me for saying that.
Thank you both for your explanations. I feel lucky to be able to partake in these sorts of conversations with people who know their stuff and understand their presuppositions.
This quote from Rosen is very helpful.
This covers off on much of what I thought phislophy is for.
Quoting Wayfarer
I get it and I am interested in this way of looking at things. I want to understand it as best I can. Don't you think however that there is also a lot of hostility in the other direction (from those who hold idealist positions), who persistently disparage physicalists?
Quoting Bhikkhu Bodhi, A Buddhist Response to the Contemporary Dilemmas of Human Existence
I can see how one might argue like this. It's an emotive and tendentious response. The idea that all of 'humankind's ideals and values are illusions' is something I have intuited to be the case since I was 7 or 8 years old. I guess I am still interested to find out if my intuitions were right or not.
I myself try to refrain from sarcastic or ad hominem criticisms. Although I did notice recently that I was compared to a young-earth creationist for questioning what I call 'common-sense physicalism' (i.e. the idea that the mind can be understood through neuroscience). Of course I criticize physicalism, as I think of it as something like a popular myth. It's something that is generally just assumed to be the case, as being self-evident, 'common sense', such that questioning it seems incredible to a lot of people. (I was rather put off by the strident hostility and polemicism of Kastrup's book Materialism Is Baloney, even though on the whole I'm in Kastrup's corner. I think it can be criticized without that kind of language. )
Regarding Bhikkhu Bodhi's talk - the context of that was a keynote speech at an interfaith conference. (Bhikkhu Bodhi, born Jeffrey Block, is an American monk who was English-language editor of the Buddhist Texts Publication Society.) I don't think that description he gives is at all exagerrated or overly polemical.
Quoting Fooloso4
In the SEP entry on Strauss I note that the relationship of 'reason and revelation' is one of the over-arching themes of his work:
In other words, Strauss admits the possibility of religious revelation throughout his work. What he does not seem to consider, it seems to me, is the possibility of gnosis or divine illumination, which seems distinguishable from 'revelation'. Nevertheless, obviously a scholar of great depth and range, someone else I'll never really get the chance to read.
:100:
Some people do seem to seek for 'enlightenment' or even the bliss of 'Nirvana' as an end. From my perspective, this is a rather narrow perspective because it shortcircuits the processes which may be as essential in learning, just as much as the moment of enlightenment. What is known as 'The Dweller on the Threshold', to quote a Van Morrison track, may be important and the understanding of suffering. Without the initial sense of sufferings the quest of the Buddha would not have the significance which it has.
That is self aggrandizement.
You were compared to a YEC for claiming there is no scientific evidence for the view you are opposed to. See your statement that directly lead to the comparison:
Quoting Wayfarer
'There is no scientific evidence for evolution.'
'There is no scientific evidence for the earth being billions of years old.'
See the science denialist pattern?
You flatter yourself by referring to yourself as "questioning".
I'd suggest something more like, "It tends to take a substantial amount of life experience for humans to recognize and weed out naive intuitions sufficiently to reach the point of being philosophically interesting." I.e. it's just an aspect of human nature.
Much of what we find in Plato, including the ascent to a transcendent realm of Forms in the Republic is philosophical poetry. In the Phaedo, in order to save philosophy from the failure of rational argument Socrates resorts to mythos to overcome misologic. (89d)
Wittgenstein said:
(Culture and Value)
and:
(Culture and Value)
Those who love Plato's image of clear unambiguous world of Forms bristle at what Aristotle calls Plato's "indeterminate dyads".These dyads include:
Limited and Unlimited
Same and Other
One and Many
Rest and Change
Eternity and Time
Good and Bad
Thinking and Being
Being and Non-being
Each side stands both together with and apart from the other. There is not one without the other.
Ultimately, there is neither this or that but this and that. The Whole is not reducible to One. The whole is indeterminate.
(at least that seem quite evident in this particular and interesting thread).
One that leans towards math, science, and logic. (Ill call this hard philosophy)
And another that adds to that rational foundation a certain speculative or experimental metaphysics or metalogic. (Ill call this speculative philosophy for lack of a better term. Avant-garde? lol).
The second broader type doesnt (usually) dismiss the first type, it simply adds other topics or approaches to that rational basis.
Those tending towards the first type of requiring proof that can be shown in writing may think the second type is straining the definition of philosophy.
This tension (or rivalry) parallels the relationship of the hard sciences like physics to the social sciences like psychology.
The potential weakness of hard philosophy is becoming too narrow, too rigid, even (perhaps somewhat ironically) too dogmatic.
The potential weakness of speculative philosophy is making assertions that are not backed up with something of worth, with at least some persuasion if not evidence.
Obliviously, one can fall anywhere on this linear spectrum. Maybe an X-Y Cartesian graph would be more accurate.
A quick snapshot of the two polar positions is the interest or value one places on the subject of metaphysics (and exactly where one draws the line on what is or is not valid metaphysics).
Another litmus test is whether one considers Eastern philosophy (taken as a whole) to be actual philosophies, or simply religious beliefs.
Here's a translation I found online:
Quoting Plato, Republic, (509b)
What is here translated as "essence" is in some cases translated as "being", and it was interpretations of this that I was addressing. (you can skip backwards and forwards in the link for further context)
Quoting Janus
As just one example among many, consciousness is "something outside the range of human perception". Yet to proscribe philosophical investigations of consciousness seems a bit authoritarian.
Quoting Janus
What then do you make of value theory in general? Ought it not be philosophically investigated? Meaningful tests regarding, for example, the very validity of dichotomizing intrinsic and extrinsic value are certainly not yet available, if ever possible. Does this, according to you, make the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value something that "cannot coherently function as a claim"?
Quoting Janus
... Critique regarding what should and should not be philosophically investigated. More precisely, this all started with your stern "critique" of my inquiring into what Socrates/Plato meant by the Form of the Good being beyond being. As in, according to you, this should not be looked into. I take that to be suppression.
Quoting Janus
Though we disagree in some respects, beat me to it in the example he provided to the contrary.
---------
Well said.
There are several newer translations that are preferable to Shorey's.
Wayfarer brought to my attention this new online translation of all the dialogues: https://www.platonicfoundation.org/
Horan translates the passage as follows:
This is in line with the highly regarded Bloom translation. The term in question is ousia. Since there was no equivalent term in Latin Cicero coined essentia, from the Latin esse, to be. It means, literally, "the what it was to be". Given the various way the term 'essence' has come to be used, it causes a great deal of confusion as a translation of the Greek.
Quoting javra
My example is not to the contrary. It supports it.
I'm aware of that. While I do not speak Ancient Greek, from my studies the word in Ancient Greek can convey different meanings or else sub-meaning. Here is one reference to this. It can be noted that while etymologically derived from "being" and, in turn, "to be", the term does not have "being" as its one unequivocal meaning.
Again, that the Good is not - this on account of being beyond being (as "being" is understood today) - is something I find nonsensical; and, hence, extremely unlikely to have been what was intended by the text.
Quoting javra
Quoting Fooloso4
To be clear, do you by this intend to express that the Socratic dialogues by which Platonism was established are not rigorous philosophical discussions - this on account of often being poetically expressed?
If so, we then hold a difference of opinion as to what reputable philosophy can consist of.
Isn't that true of many words? If not 'being' then what do you suggest it means in this context?
Quoting javra
In the Seventh Letter Plato says:
Although I'm not sure, something along the lines of Wayfarer's suggestion currently seem quite plausible:
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Fooloso4
I find that passage you quote itself open to a wide enough range of interpretations. And so I can't make heads or tails as what type of reply it's supposed to be - this to the question of whether you yourself find the Socratic dialogs are reputable, or else worthwhile, philosophy.
BTW, I should add to the just posted that, as per Neo-Platonism wherein the One is equivalent to the Good, one can interpret that only the Good is a perfectly fixed constant. Other Forms, such as numbers, etc., while far more permanent that others, would yet not be "a perfectly fixed constant" on which all else is dependent. Obvious speculation on my part as to what Socrates/Plato intended, but again it so far seems plausible to me: Only the Good is beyond what Wayfarer describes in the formerly given quote in an absolute and perfect sense, whereas all other forms are not - despite some of these other forms being far more permanent than others.
Added this just to clarify my current best assumptions.
I fully accept the established facts of evolution and cosmology. But they do not necessarily entail physicalism. They are equally compatible with an idealist philosophy. The fact that you think theyre in conflict is only due to your stereotyped ideas of what you think idealism must entail.
Considerably more than a few. Its a multi-million dollar business. A while back there was a series of lawsuits in the USA over the copyright on any number of Sanskrit terms associated with yoga studios and yoga practice. If its not worth money, it doesnt mean anything to a lot of people.
What is made explicit, as I have pointed out, is that all of the Forms are beyond coming-to-be and passing away but unlike the Good, they are said to be entirely and to be entirely knowable.
To say that the good is beyond being is not to say that it is less than being, that it is not. It exceeds being, it is more than not less than what is.
Yes, it probably says so much about Western culture and the nature of consumerism and shallowness. It all comes down to money and images for so many, to where it turns the initial ideas of esotericide upside down and inside out. It probably links with what Alice Bailey wrote as the problem of glamour.
It is not even just ideas of spirituality but the whole culture around the arts as well, including the industry around Van Gogh and Kurt Cobain, which is about the seductive images as commodities. It is so different from the 'hidden' experiences of the genuine pursuit. Many of the genuine seekers may be hidden in corners of libraries and in various isolated places. Even with the popular genres of mind, body and spirit and mindfulness in pop psychology it may mean that, in many ways, the esoteric will always remain esoteric, as 'rejected knowledge'.
In the Analogy of the Divided Line, isn't knowledge of the forms distinguished from knowledge of sensible things, and knowledge of geometery and mathematics? Knowledge of the forms being described as 'noesis', that which is the activity or pertains to nous, intellect.
I think that for heuristic purposes, a distinction can be made between 'being' and 'existence'. This is not a distinction that is intelligible in Ancient Greek due to the specific characteristics of the Greek verb 'to be' (for which see an illuminating paper The Greek Verb 'To Be' and the Problem of Being, Charles Kahn.) The distinction between reality and existence draws attention to the fact that the forms (i.e. intelligible objects) are not existent qua phenomena ('phenomena' being appearance). They are properly speaking noumenal objects, not in the Kantian sense of an unknown thing, but an 'object of nous'. So, in that sense, they are real but not existent (hence my rhetorical question, 'does the number 7 exist?')
Lloyd Gerson puts it like this in his paper Platonism Vs Naturalism:
This implication of matter-form dualism is preserved in Thomist philosophy:
[quote=Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Robert E. Brennan] if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.[/quote]
So, put roughly, the ideas are real, but not phenomenally existent. The sensible phenomenon is existent, but not truly real. Of course modern philosophy is overall nominalist and empiricist and will not acknowledge these ideas. That is why Gerson argues that Platonism and naturalism are incommensurable.
Again, to try and contextualise this, against the background of the scala naturae, the great chain of being, it means that sensible objects, being material, are at the lowest level. Matter is 'informed' by the ideas as wax is by the seal. That is the sense in which they're higher and less subject to decay (i.e. passing in and out of existence).
This much seems clear:
1)There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any treatise (suggramma) of Plato
and
2) his philosophical thinking does not at all admit of verbal expression like other studies.
Quoting javra
If philosophy is the desire for wisdom we should be wise enough to know that we are not wise. In the Apology Socrates says that he knows nothing noble and good. (21d)Knowledge of his ignorance is the beginning not the completion of his wisdom. It is, on the one hand, the beginning of self-knowledge and on the other of the selfs knowledge of the world.
Socratic philosophy is zetetic. It is inquiry directed by our lack of knowledge. If Socrates is taken to be, as I think Plato and Xenophon intend, the paradigmatic philosopher, then the fact that he remained ignorant until the end of his life should be kept front and center.
You do not say what you regard as "reputable and worthwhile philosophy" but I take it to mean some set of logical propositions that inform us about the truth of things. In that case, you would not regard Socratic philosophy to be reputable and worthwhile. But I do.
'Consumer culture' is the engine of capitalism, the whole world's economy depends on it. And it's really diametrically opposed to any form of renunciate philosophy, as many have pointed out.
I am not interesting in turning this into yet another discussion of the limits and problems of materialism.
What in my opinion and consistent with knowledge of ignorance is that whatever it is we might take the Forms to be we do not have knowledge of them. They remain hypothetical. They remain for us images on the cave wall.
Now you might believe that some have attained knowledge of them, but that is just an opinion. The coin of the realm of the cave.
You keep saying that 'we' do not know and can never know the forms - does this 'we' include Plotinus, Proclus, all the philosophers before and since? Perhaps the reason 'we' do not have knowledge of them is because of the very materialism you deem not worth discussing. Might that not be a blind spot?
Thanks much! :smile:
Quoting Jack Cummins
True. And you may have just coined an interesting word (even if it was a typo). :blush:
Further to this, and apropos of the issue of esoteric philosophy. The following is a comparison of a passage from Parmenides, who is generally understood as the originator of classical metaphysics, and an esoteric school of Mah?y?na Buddhism called Mahamudra.
Parmenides is generally understood as a mystical philosopher, his prose-poem was delivered to him verbatim by 'the Goddess' that he met 'on the plains beyond the gates of day and night'.
From the final section of Parmenides:
Compare a passage from the Aspiration Prayer of Mahamudra:
I don't think consciousness is outside the range of human perception; you perceive yourself to be conscious, no? Note, I count proprioception, somatosensory awareness and self-reflection as forms of perception...what else could they be?
Quoting javra
Humans have values; there is no conceivable way of determining the existence of value outside of the human realm. The closest we could come to that would be understanding purpose in animals. Human valuing is intrinsic to humans, or rather I would say the pragmatic necessities that drive value-forming are intrinsic (in the sense of being necessary) to human social life.
Sure, we can investigate philosophically the human phenomenon of value-formation; this would be an aspect of phenomenological and/ pr anthropological inquiry.
Quoting javra
Am I not allowed to argue for what I believe can and cannot be coherently philosophically investigated? I don't believe things like God, karma, rebirth, heaven and hell can be coherently philosophically investigated on account of the fact that I have never encountered any coherent philosophical investigation of such matters, I have only encountered dogma regarding those and like subjects. And believe me, I have looked long and hard. I am not alone in this assessment: "that whereof we cannot speak,,,"
That said of course the human phenomenology of belief in such things can also be investigated, but this is not the same as investigating the things believed in.
Quoting javra
I read what @Fooloso4 wrote and did not interpret what he said as being contrary to my position on this.
I think it helps to see that what is knowable or not is not only about what kind of "object" is involved but the difference between a cause and the effect inovlved.
Quoting Plato, Republic, 508D, translated by Horan,emphasis mine
This passage is immediately followed by the analogy of the divided line, where the kinds of generated beings are related to one another as limits of what can be known.
Those who believe in esoteric or hidden knowledge don't want to accept this limitation. I see all attempts to argue for substantive gnosis as being stillborn from the start, as being examples of the human tendency to confabulate on the basis of what is wished for. I think the spiritual leader or guru phenomenon has been with humans all along, and that it consists in charismatic individuals convincing themselves and others that they have some special knowledge of the unknowable.
That said I have no doubt there have been good teachers of techniques designed to help in loosening the bonds of the ego and the miseries attendant upon clinging to ideas of the importance of the self, but those teachings are entirely pragmatic, this-worldly, more to do with ethics than with metaphysics.
This is not to say that certain metaphysical ideas have not gone along with such self-transformative schools and practices, but they are merely aids to practice, and do not ever constitute any determinate knowledge of any transcendent truth. Such ideas vary enormously from school to school, and I guess these differences reflect the dominant cultural worldviews in different eras and societies.
:chin: Give an example of how "idealism" is "equally compatible" (as e.g. physicalism is) with the established facts of "evolution" or "cosmology". Thanks.
Btw, you're profoundly mistaken, Wayfarer: the supposition physicalism is only a paradigm, or set of methodological criteria (i.e. working assumptions), for making and interpreting explanatory models of phenomena and, therefore, not "entailed" by modern sciences.
I agree. Physicalism is supposed for all practical purposes, as physical objects are what methodological naturalism deals with. But that is not physicalism as a metaphysical view. It's physicalism as a metaphysic that I take issue with. That's why I say that @wonderer1 is wrong. He thinks that my philosophical view seeks to dispute the facts of evolution, cosmology etc. I don't dispute the facts. I only dispute that they mean.
If you lived in a culture, such as India or China, where reincarnation was part of the culture, you might have a different view of that. And I suggest you're not interested in any 'coherent philosophical investigation' of such matters because you're pre-disposed to reject consideration of them. Hence your self-appointed role as secular thought police, which we see on display here with tiresome regulariy.
Quoting Janus
Not for nothing Alan Watts' last book was The Book: on the Taboo... And it is a cultural taboo, of that there is no doubt, as one who regularly questions it.
:clap: :fire: Excellent, well put! Thinking is questioning being-oneself-in-question and not merely believing in answers ("esoteric" or otherwise).
"Forms" ... remain hypothetical" ... images on the cave wall" :100:
Nice. Both passages you quote strike me as coming from folk that have tried to express heretofore inexpressible insights via prose and, as such, I can find an aesthetic appeal to both.
Of course, when concepts are poetically expressed, their successful conveyance will in part greatly depend on an already established background of implicit yet commonly shared understandings with the audience. This as can be said of most any poetic expression.
Tangentially brings to mind a poem by S. Crane that addresses the issue of all knowledge being opinion:
Which I in part interpret as presenting the case that the more aware one becomes of ones own lack of perfect knowledge in respect to anything, the more one will long for grasping the firmness of some unwavering truth or truths. Which I find to be Socratess predicament. But when one thinks one holds perfect knowledge in some respect or other, such longing does not occur.
At any rate, in Nietzsches phrasings (although I gather youre not enamored with his works), theres the Apollonian approach and then theres the Dionysian.
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian#Nietzschean_usage
If the analytic is Apollonian in its clarity, then the more poetic - such as the two quotes youve provided - will be Dionysian, filled with greater life.
It strikes me that, at least traditionally, the notion of a unity of being (such as can be said of "the One", for an additional example) has largely been expressed in Dionysian manners. And it is these very Dionysian ways of expressing and, maybe, even of being that strikes many as esoteric, difficult for most of us to comprehend.
Well, since very few philosophers or scientists dogmatically advocate "metaphysical physicalism", you're taking issue wirh a non-issue (or strawman), just barking at shadows in your own little cave, Wayf. :sparkle:
So, again, please demonstrate how, as you claim, 'the established facts of evolution and cosmology are "equally compatible" with idealism (i.e. antirealism) as they are with physicalism'.
Thought police! A nice case of projection! What a joke; it is you who are saying I am not allowed to argue for what I believe to be the case, so who's the thought policeman? :roll:
The truth of spiritual ideas cannot be either empirically or logically demonstrated and hence cannot be rationally argued for. The arguments are always in the form of authority, the idea that there is some special hidden knowledge available only to the elect.
If you have an actual argument that could demonstrate the contrary, I'm all ears; but you always run away when I challenge you, which makes it plain that you have no such argument. Your modus operandi is to act as the pedagogue quoting the same tedious passages over and over as If they are somehow authoritative. Your whole mode of thinking seems to be mired in notions of authority.
I have been thinking about these issues since I was about sixteen, and for some time I thought as you do, until I found that I could see no cogent ground for such thinking to stand upon. That religious thinking has no ground is my honest, considered opinion after a very long time of reading and thinking about these kinds of issues. And here you are trying to cast me as a thought policeman instead of engaging in any actual discussion of what I actually say. It seems to be a typical reaction of the defensive, of those who feel they have a position to protect but lack the means to rationally justify it. I'm happy to be proven wrong, so go ahead and do so, if you can.
Quoting 180 Proof
:up: Don't hold your breath: Wayfarer seems to be here to issue dispensations of authority, and confirm his own biases, not to question and subject his beliefs to the rigors of argument.
No doubt.
Nonsense. Banno frequently cites the surveys of academic philosophy which show that only a minute percentage of them support idealist philosophy. Philosophical and scientific materialism are the de facto belief system in secular culture. And if I were indeed 'barking at shadows' then how come it elicits such volumes of antagonistic cynicism from you?
Quoting 180 Proof
First please demonstrate why idealism implies anti-realism in the first place.
Quoting Janus
What I quoted was not an argument, but an angry denunciation.
Quoting Janus
Again, you're just singing from the positivist playbook
positivism
1.
PHILOSOPHY
a philosophical system recognizing only that which can be scientifically verified or which is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and therefore rejecting metaphysics and theism.
On the Forms.
I don't find the idea of forms at all remote or esoteric. They live on in Aristotelian philosophy and are implicitly part of Western philosophy generally.
Here are examples:
Quoting Edward Feser
Quoting Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy - The World of Universals
[quote=Jacques Maritain, The Cultural Impact of Empiricism; https://www3.nd.edu/~maritain/jmc/jm0112.htm]For Empiricism there is no essential difference between the intellect and the senses. The fact which obliges a correct theory of knowledge to recognize this essential difference is simply disregarded. What fact? The fact that the human intellect grasps, first in a most indeterminate manner, then more and more distinctly, certain sets of intelligible features -- that is, natures, say, the human nature -- which exist in the real as identical with individuals, with Peter or John for instance, but which are universal in the mind and presented to it as universal objects, positively one (within the mind) and common to an infinity of singular things (in the real).
Thanks to the association of particular images and recollections, a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder; he does not know what is sugar or what is intruder. He plays, he lives in his affective and motor functions, or rather he is put into motion by the similarities which exist between things of the same kind; he does not see the similarity, the common features as such. What is lacking is the flash of intelligibility; he has no ear for the intelligible meaning. He has not the idea or the concept of the thing he knows, that is, from which he receives sensory impressions; his knowledge remains immersed in the subjectivity of his own feelings -- only in man, with the universal idea, does knowledge achieve objectivity. And his field of knowledge is strictly limited: only the universal idea sets free -- in man -- the potential infinity of knowledge.
Such are the basic facts which Empiricism ignores, and in the disregard of which it undertakes to philosophize. [/quote]
A different topic altogether, but I wanted to comment: If perception necessarily addresses the apprehension of phenomena, then no, one as consciousness does not perceive owns own consciousness. Moreover, were consciousness perceivable then the philosophical problem of other minds would not be a problem of any kind.
Quoting Janus
You sound victimized. Let's refresh.
Quoting Janus
You view this as "an argument for what you believe" whereas to me it is nothing more and nothing less than an emotively expressed authoritarian assertion: one which wants to disallow me from thinking freely.
A difference of options.
(Just saw that Wayfarer stated something similar, but will post this anyway.)
"The philosophical problem of other minds", seem to me to be more a problem that some people have that is caused by philosophy rather than something to be taken very seriously.
Yes, we can't very reasonably say we perceive other minds, but I certainly have plenty of good reason to think that I recognize other minds. I.e. that minds have recognizable signatures. Don't you have good reasons to think so as well?
Isn't the performative contradiction rather obvious?
Evolution and cosmology were examples pertinent to young earth creationism cases of science denial.
Do you still deny that there is scientific evidence for physicalism?
I regard creationism as on a par with flat-earth theories and the like. It has no merit whatever. But young-earth creationism and anti-scientific ideologies are not typical of mainstream Christianity, and they're certainly not typical of idealism. That you seem to equate them shows a misunderstanding on your part.
As a child, I grew up on the excellent Time-Life series of books on naturalism and evolution, I'm thoroughly versed in evolutionary theory and am interested in paleontology and especially in paleoanthropology. I hadn't been much aware of Biblical creationism until Richard Dawkins started kvetching about it in the early noughties (I grew up in Australia, and creationism has very little presence here. For instance the creationist ideologue, Ken Ham, had to re-locate from Australia to Kentucky to attract an audience.) As for cosmology, I follow that with interest also, you might notice I started a thread on the JWST. I read a fair amount of popular science books and articles. So I don't have any problems with science.
Let's make it clear what 'physicalism' is. Per the SEP entry on same:
That is what I'm disputing. But it doesn't mean that I believe that evolution or the Big Bang didn't occur, or that the Universe is not as science describes it, or other empirical facts. There's no need for me to do that.
Turning to the SEP entry on Idealism, what I argue for is nearer to this:
I wouldn't put it exactly like that but it's at least a starting-point (I put it in my terms in the Mind-Created World OP.)
There have been, and are, scientists who are inclined to idealism, and of course many that are not (and probably many more that fall into neither camp.) But neither view is a scientific theory per se. They are metaphysical conjectures or philosophical frameworks.
Just for a lark, I googled 'idealist scientists', and look who comes back:
I feel I'm in good company :-)
Bullshit, more projection, I felt no anger when I wrote itit simply presented my thoughts on the matter.
Quoting Wayfarer
:lol: It would be laughable if it wasn't so lameinstead of argument you seek to dismiss what I say by characterizing it as being representative of one of your bogeymen. I don't agree with the positivists regarding verification, nor do I think that speculative metaphysics is worthless.
Even if what I've been arguing was an example of positivist thinking, so what? If you disagree with it you still need to provide some argument for your disagreement if you want what you are doing here to be more than merely expressing your opinion or presenting your favorite passages which are themselves nothing more than mere assertions. When are you finally going to come up with an actual argument?
"One as consciousness"? One is not consciousness; one is either conscious or not, and one can indeed perceive that one is conscious when one is conscious. I know I can, although I suppose I cannot speak for you.
Quoting javra
More projectionI don't feel victimized at all because I am not subject to your prescriptions or proscriptions, even though it seems you would have me be so. You were erroneously making out that I am seeking to dictate what others should think, rather than recognizing that I am merely exercising my right to question and critique what others are asserting and asking for arguments to back up those assertions. If you don't want to play you don't have toI don't mind either way.
Quoting javra
That's nonsenseI don't care what you think, but if you present thoughts on here, then I think it is fair to ask for justification of those thoughts. So, if you think we can know something about whatever lies beyond being, then explain how we might do that. I'm asking because I can't see any way to do that, and if you can't explain how you could do that then I will continue to believe that you are either bluffing or simply deceiving yourself if you continue to assert that such a thing is possible..
Answer my question, Wayfarer, and then I'll answer yours.
The topic raisrd by OP is "the nature of esoteric forms of philosophy" and not "secular culture". Stop trying to shift the goalposts. :sweat:
I'm not shifting them. You're just not seeing them :rofl:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/842295
Furthermore ...
Quoting 180 Proof
And (from the same thread) ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/844726
Quoting Wayfarer
Again, changing the subject or you're just confused, sir: "metaphysical physicalism", which you claim to "take issue" with, is not synonymous with "scientific materialism". :roll:
Anyway.
The jist of my criticism of that post: Insofar as mind is nonmind-dependent (i.e. embodied), only conceptions interpretations of nonmind are "mind-created" abstractions from nonmind (i.e. mappings of the territory). Consequently, "idealism" equates mapping (meaning) to the territory itself as if from outside the territory (re: transcendence / transcendental (i.e. dis-embodied viewpoint)) which is a cognitive illusion, or delusion :sparkle: whereas "physicalism" proposes using (useable) aspects of abstractions from the territory for mapping other aspects of the territory ineluctably from within the territory (re: immanence i.e. embodied viewpoint). IME, modern scientific practices work in spite of the former 'metaphysical bias' and are facilitated by the latter methodology. This is why I think idealism and physicalism are not "equally compatible" with modern science.
Quoting Wayfarer
I never claimed or implied "idealism implies anti-realism"; I think the terms are interchangeable because they both, in effect, denote a 'rejection of the nonmind-dependence of mind.' (i.e. both imply a version of dis-embodied cognition). :sparkle:
I think so. But we (you and I) don't know what Plotinus or Proclus knows, do we? They claim to know something we do not. You seem inclined to believe them. I am not. Many others have claimed to know something we do not. I am not inclined to believe them based on their reports of mystical experience.
Quoting Edward Feser
According to Plato's Divided Line mathematical objects are not known by noesis. They are hypothetical, objects of reason or dianoia.
Russell's universals unlike Forms are not causes.
See Paine's post above.
Just as I have consistently argued for the existence of a spectrum of consciousness there is also evident a spectrum of knowledge (possibly there is a connection). Individuals with certain mental capacities are capable of grasping complex mathematical concepts far beyond the ken of most folks. Savants can have incredible mathematical (and other) skills, often with minimal formal training.
Given the breadth and depth of human knowledge and experience, I don't find it in the least surprising that people of varying constitutions and varying experiences have a variety of different types of knowledge, or that some people have intuitions and awareness that some others do not share. In fact, it would be surprising if there were not such a variety. Brain scans of Buddhist monks exhibit a variety of unique features, including enhanced neuroplasticity.
If someone claims to have mathematical knowledge it can be demonstrated. Can the same be said of someone who claims to have mystical knowledge?
Are you suggesting that those are the only possible kinds of knowledge? "Mystical" could in one sense just mean "beyond our current understanding." In which case, the negative prejudice associated with the word is attributable to the critic. IMO there is knowledge appertaining to the possible transcendence of consciousness, especially in the case where expansion of knowledge could also be construed as expansion of consciousness. In which case, people who claim not to be able to understand something are telling the truth, and are simply not capable of (or interested in) experiencing the type of consciousness in question.
Does anything more follow from "is possible" than is possible?
This touches on my interest in intuition, understood as deep learning in neural networks. It seems to me that there are two seperate issues involved.
1. Having demonstrable knowledge.
2. Having an explanation for that knowledge.
Though I haven't done any meaningful degree of study of the history of explanations for intuition, my impression is that intuition has been mysterious and subject to being explained in supernatural or mystical terms until the 1980s, when the beginnings of a neuroscientific basis for understanding intuition were developed.*
Given that intuition has been (and probably still is for most) such a mystery, it seems understandable to me that people often have practically demonstrable knowledge while often being mistaken in their beliefs as to the basis of that knowledge.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectionism
Intuitions often turn out to be wrong. In all such cases there is no demonstrable knowledge.
Quoting wonderer1
This has been the case with many advances in science.
Possibly.
Aye. In many a way its right up there with p-zombies and brains in a vat. But these are only a problem in practice if one is in search of infallible knowledge. Otherwise, such philosophical problems, or issues, in and of themselves give no warrant whatsoever to doubting ones fallible knowledge of reality at large, which includes other minds.
But that does not then dispel the philosophical, or more specifically epistemological, problem of other minds. "Problem" because that is what the issue is traditionally termed and known by. For example:
Here granting that an AI program has the capacity to become conscious, how would one (fallibly) know when it so becomes? One certainly cant perceive its consciousness or the lack of. So it would be an inference based on its behaviors. And yet how can we so infer the moment that it becomes conscious?
Heres another more unavoidable example: At which point in the chain of life does consciousness first occur? Some say that only humans are conscious beings, such that, for example, dogs and cats are not. While I take the opposite view, I have been unable to successfully argue for dogs and cats being conscious beings so as to convince those who disagree. Again, we cannot perceive consciousness, nor the mind which is contingent upon it. We can only infer it from behaviors. And there so far is no established principle(s) by which this inference can be made in impartial ways that thereby resolve the disagreements among humans. (And there are related issues, such as that of whether lesser animals experience emotions, but I'll cut this short.)
In sum, unless one is in search of infallible certainties, I dont find any performative contradiction in acknowledging the issue - this, for instance, as it was presented in the two examples just provided - while at the same time not in any way doubting one's fallible knowledge of other minds. Goes hand in hand with fallibilism.
Ha! And possibly not.
Duely noted.
Yes, that is the definition of possible. The question is, to what extent is knowledge instrumental in actualizing the possible? A savant card-counter could win a huge amount of money from a game of blackjack that would leave most people broke. That's why I never eliminate possibilities unnecessarily. You don't know what you don't know.
Here's a nice quote from Thomas Hardy that illustrates a reversal of the materialistic prejudice through the clever usage of real and corporeal. It involves Mr. Melbury who is deeply animated by considerations of possibilities regarding his daughter's future, which would have been observable "Could the real have been beheld, instead of the corporeal merely."
I love this locution. I'm going to start regarding the day to day world as the "corporeal"....
My question in line with this tread is the extent to which possible knowledge is mistaken for actual knowledge. I might grant that it is possible that someone has knowledge of a transcendent reality that most of us know nothing of, but it is a questionable leap across an abyss from what cannot be absolutely ruled out to ruling it in, to accepting it as privileged knowledge of a higher reality.
Quoting Pantagruel
That they can do this is not merely a theoretical possibility. They can demonstrate their ability to do this. How does one demonstrate that there is a realm of Forms that they have knowledge of?
Addressing this via the more general issue of insight into deeper levels of reality and with the following in mind:
Quoting Pantagruel
If a Buddhist monks worldview is in no way comprised of actual knowledge but only of arbitrary imaginations which are thereby devoid of any rational justification and, hence, rational grounding; then the empirically verifiable benefits of their upheld worldview upon their Central Nervous System would by entailment be nothing more than a wild coincidence devoid of any explanation. This then gives warrant in either accepting that a) at least some Buddhist monks have actual knowledge into the nature of reality (edit: this as they by in large claim to have) that others dont grasp or else b) utterly inexplicable coincidences (which are by definition devoid of any meaningful connection) occur not only very commonly but with very predictable regularity between worldview upheld and its effects upon quality of life and CNS.
Does scenario (b) hold a significantly greater justification than scenario (a)? (And yes, I take it that both scenarios could well be deemed absurd from different vantages.)
No infallible proof to be had by this either way. But to me it does illustrate a sturdy enough justification for upholding the possibility, if not outright actuality, of some peoples insights into reality which others by in large lack. Insights that are in no way secret for most Buddhists desire to be as transparent about them as they can be - but are nevertheless esoteric in that most others find these insights difficult to comprehend.
Can you provide a reference?
The article Buddha's Brain: Neuroplasticity and Meditation says, "When the framework of neuroplasticity is applied to meditation, we suggest that the mental training of meditation is fundamentally no different than other forms of skill acquisition that can induce plastic changes in the brain."
What is that worldview? Is it individual or common to all Buddhist monks? What are we to make of divergent views within and between Buddhist schools of thought?
Quoting javra
What do they say about the nature of reality? Why should we accept that what they describe is actual knowledge into the nature of reality?
Quoting javra
That a worldview has benefits for those who hold it only shows that holding this worldview has benefits, not that the worldview corresponds reality. An unrealistic or false worldview might also have benefits.
What is the basis of the worldview? Is it the result of what is viewed, of what is seen in a way similar to the philosophers of the Republic see? These philosophers are, by the way, markedly different from Socrates or how philosophers are described in other dialogues. Or is it a worldview that is based on opinion and attitude? Something we can all accept and benefit from?
Quoting Fooloso4
That worldview is Buddhism. Just as physicalism is an umbrella concept to many a variety, so too is Buddhism.
Quoting Fooloso4
What Buddhism in general upholds. My previous post was not about you accepting it; it was about sufficient justification to uphold that it might be, if not in fact being. Hence, justification which presents the case that while you can uphold your rejection, others can be quite warranted in accepting the possibility.
Quoting Fooloso4
Something fishy about this affirmation. Many, if not all, unrealistic or false worldviews, or views in general, will lead to unwarranted suffering if not untimely deaths (the issue of climate change comes to mind as just one example of this). It to me is what generally makes unrealistic or false perspectives unfavorable. But this can open wide a can of worms, which I don't currently want to get into.
Currently short on time so I'll leave it at that.
Isn't that enough? The fact that thought can have similar effects to practical physical enaction is meaningful to me.
You had said there were "unique" features, so I was curious as to support for this uniqueness.
As I said, this seems quite unique to me. I don't know whether I would be capable of it. There are other studies looking at long term effects in emotion regulation networks as well.
Actually my questions are in response to the question you asked.
Quoting javra
If that worldview is based on knowledge of reality then why not a single unified view or description of reality?
Quoting javra
How can the question of whether there is sufficient justification that it might be when there is divergence with regard to what it might be?
Quoting javra
Unless I misunderstood you, you argued in favor of the benefit of holding "the Buddhist worldview." My point is that there can be different worldviews that are beneficial.
:nerd: :up:
In Platonist philosophy, forms are causal only in the sense of serving as models or archetypes. For example, the reason any particular beautiful thing is beautiful is because it participates in, or imitates, the Form of Beauty. In this sense, the Forms impart things with their essence and make them intelligible to human minds. But they're not causal in the material sense, they're rather more like what would become the 'formal cause' in Aristotle (and I don't know if that has a counterpart in modern thought). Russell's comments, and the others quoted, are illustrative of universals in the Aristotelian sense and are relevant to the argument that the faculty of mind which grasps the forms is different in kind to the sensory faculties, a difference which is downplayed or lost in empiricism (per Maritain). Those passages I quoted all converge on the fact that the forms or ideas are not abstract entities in some non-existent ethereal realm, but are rather the principles of intelligibility in particular beings.
Quoting Fooloso4
As mystical insight is experiential and first-person, the criteria for assessing it are different to those of mathematics and science, which are objective and known in the third person. But there is an abundant cross-cultural literature describing it, not that I expect many here to be interested in it.
Quoting Fooloso4
But then, you're making ignorance the yardstick for how their claims are to be judged. Why should we accept that interpretation, which calls into doubt many other interpretations?
Quoting 180 Proof
The clear implication of this post:
Quoting 180 Proof
But please don't go to any trouble to re-explain it, besides, it belongs in the other thread on 'arguments for physicalism'.
The ability to bring about such states is akin to expertise in music, art or poetry, and what is known is akin to aesthetics, not science or logic. So, to go back to previous examples I have given, the existence of God, karma, immortality, heaven and hell and so on cannot be demonstrated in any way analogous to how scientific knowledge and mathematical truths can. Similarly, aesthetic quality, beauty and sublimity cannot be demonstrated, they can only be felt or not.
Getting this clear is important because failing to understand the difference between determinable knowledge and intuitive feelings and faith leads to the possibility of fundamentalism and abuses of the gullible by those who seek to deceive for gain, or those who deceive themselves into believing they have some kind of special access to transcendent absolute truths or ultimate knowledge to offer.
See, for example, Socrates discussion of his "second sailing" (99d):
(99d-100e)
He goes on to admit that this this is inadequate and that material causes are needed as well, but this discussion is in response to Anaxagoras' claim that Mind is the cause of everything. There is some ambiguity. Socrates says:
(97d)
Is Socrates referring to his own mind or the human mind of Mind. I might say universal Mind.
Quoting Wayfarer
The problem is, how can we assess it?
Quoting Wayfarer
Such stories are weak evidence for anything real corresponding to them. Should we accept that there are Olympian or Egyptian gods?
Quoting Wayfarer
I assume you do not accept every claim about things you do not know.
Yes, but they do not answer the question I asked.
Quoting Fooloso4
Because the knowledge of reality the worldview is based on (this being different than being equivalent to) will not be perfectly comprehensive of all aspects of realty and, by my appraisal, it certainly cant be infallible. As a brief justification, this because no human can be omniscient, if this notion is even logically cogent to begin with.
Nothing in science is infallible or perfectly comprehensive, and scientific paradigms from the theory of relativity to the theory of evolution have variations within them. Yet we dont thereby conclude that scientific paradigms are not based on (fallible) knowledge of reality.
Quoting Fooloso4
See the above mentioned.
Quoting Fooloso4
This is, or at least can be, part and parcel of an outlook termed perennialism. And it does not contradict all such different views being founded upon incomplete and fallible knowledge of a singular reality, superficially incommensurate as these different worldviews might be.
Again, in answering these questions Im not presenting an argument for why esoteric insights into reality should be accepted by you but, instead, arguments for why it is unwarranted to dismiss the possibility in such a manner that one then claims irrational others who find the possibility viable. And yes, I find that it boils down to underlying suppositions of physicalism vs. non-physicalism. Neither of which can be conclusively evidenced, much less upheld with infallible knowledge.
Ok. A lot of people place a lot of stock in logic, mathematics, and science. Let's take string theory. It looks all highly scientific, is based on a lot of advanced math. It's an hypothesis. Is it "determinate knowledge"? Maybe. It's a complex hypothesis about the nature of reality. Same thing for dark matter and dark energy cosmology. Bunch of unknowns.
There are things which are trivially evident, and there are things which are harder to grasp. Exactly where that line gets drawn that you call "determinate knowledge" is a function of innate ability, expertise, and experience.
I am, as I mentioned, reading a recent book Thinking Being: Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition by Eric Perl (which is out of print and impossible to get, except that a kindly soul has posted a PDF of it.)
From which, in a discussion of the 'separateness' of the forms, and the idea of levels of being, we read:
I'm still only part-way through this book, but it's making a lot of things clear to me. (I learned about it in one of John Vervaeke's video lectures.)
Quoting Fooloso4
As I understand it, it requires both aptitude and application. If you look into the various mystical religious movements - sufism, Zen, Vedanta, Christian Mysticism - you will find there is extensive literature, a recognised lineage of teachers, in short a framework within which these disciplines are transmitted and made meaningful.
Quoting Fooloso4
Especially if you're predisposed against them. But this is what hermenuetics is - intepretation of ancient texts, (often but not always religious in origin). Also consider 'mythos' as indicative of stages in the development of consciousness e.g. Julian Jayne's Bicameral Mind, in which the mind once operated in a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeysa bicameral mind, the breakdown of which gave rise to what we now think of as 'consciousness'. Richard M Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness is another model.
Quoting Fooloso4
Of course not. In none of this am I putting myself forward as an exemplar or possessor of esoteric knowledge. But I've studied comparative religion, Mircea Eliade, William James, Evelyn Underhill, and I don't believe it's all moonshine. Whereas, seems to me vital for a lot of people to believe it must be. It's what Max Weber calls the great disenchantment.
Which brings me to:
Quoting Fooloso4
Socrates says that the free prisoner would think that the world outside the cave was superior to the world he experienced in the cave and attempt to share this with the prisoners remaining in the cave attempting to bring them onto the journey he had just endured; "he would bless himself for the change, and pity [the other prisoners]" and would want to bring his fellow cave dwellers out of the cave and into the sunlight (516c).
The returning prisoner, whose eyes have become accustomed to the sunlight, would be blind when he re-entered the cave, just as he was when he was first exposed to the sun (516e). The prisoners who had remained, according to the dialogue, would infer from the returning man's blindness that the journey out of the cave had harmed him and that they should not undertake a similar journey. Socrates concludes that the prisoners, if they were able, would therefore reach out and kill anyone who attempted to drag them out of the cave (517a).
In all humility, I think this accounts for a lot of the [s]outrage[/s] resistance that advocacy of philosophical idealism provokes. Moderns don't want the world to be like that.
I think it is fairly clear what is determinate knowledge and what is not. Scientific hypotheses or theories in general are never definitively proven or certainly known to be true, the observed phenomena they predict that may warrant their veracity can certainly be confirmed or disconfirmed. Only basic empirical observations and mathematical and logical truths are known to be true.
Is String Theory a scientific theory or a metaphysical speculation? That is a different question, and I don't know the answer to that. Apparently, String Theory is woven out of some very elegant mathematics; whereas what we usually term 'metaphysical speculations" are not, so does that tell us anything about ST? Maybe, I'm not mathematician, so I don't have an opinion about it.
The same goes for DM and DE. Current astrophysical theory suggest that they exist, but of course it could be wrong due to some factor(s) that are not currently known. Science doesn't yield absolute truths, and nor does it purport to; it is always and only ever a work in progress.
Humility or no humility, you really are deluded it seems; in that you apparently can't but interpret mere disagreement as outrage.
Sure, things that are trivially true are usually trivially evident. But some things are not trivially evident. And to people who lack the ability to comprehend the basis of organic chemistry, for example, there is a whole lot of determinate knowledge that is not clear. So if you are talking about an ideal knower, who is equally well-informed (and equally capable) in all areas, then maybe it is clear. But if there are such knowers, they are less rather than more common. Agreeing in theory as to what constitutes knowledge, and agreeing in practice as to the details of knowledge are not at all the same thing. For the bulk of human history, knowing how to throw a stone accurately in the terrestrial gravity field was far more important than knowing that the interior angles of a triangle sum to 180 degrees.
Quoting Janus
I assume that you are classifying privileged internal mental states as empirical observations then, since I know and experience the truth of my own experiences.
[quote=Thomas Nagel]In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper--namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself. I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.
My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed.[/quote]
Tell me this is not a factor in these discussions. :lol:
People can be reliably trained in chemistry and other scientific disciplines, such that things will be evident to them. This is not so in music, art, poetry or mysticism: people cannot be reliably trained to be able to alter their consciousness to achieve excellence in these fields. They can be reliably trained to understand the techniques involved in any discipline, but this does not guarantee success, even in mathematics and science there is a creative aspect that cannot be taught but is down to personal talent.
Quoting Pantagruel
You may or may not know "the truth of your own experiences" whatever that might mean. Assuming for the sake of argument that you do know, the point is that you are the only one, so such knowledge can never be intersubjectively corroborated.
Quoting Wayfarer
You obviously think it is a factor. This is one of the quotes you regularly post. I don't agree with that passage: I am not afraid of religion. I would not want there to be a god of the kind present in the OT. I am not afraid of eternal life; an eternal life of bliss and constant learning would be great as far as I am concerned. I am not afraid of heaven; reuniting with my loved ones in eternity would also be great. Obviously, I don't long for Hell, but I am not afraid of it because I have no reason to believe it is real. So, it is not a factor for me, at least, and I am not going to do a Nagel and speak for others.
Nagel doesn't specify what kind of God he does not want to exist. And he is unwarrantedly projecting his own psychology to others.
How can they be fundamental features of the world when there is no evidence that they are? Christians think there is a fundamental purpose, meaning and design, Buddhists not so much, as far as I understand it. People can for sure believe there is a fundamental purpose, but this is, as the name suggests, fundamentalism, one of the greatest curses humankind has brought upon itself or had brought upon it by authorities wishing to control the masses.
Of course, both human and animal life are replete with purpose meaning and design, but these purposes, meanings and designs are as diverse as the animals and humans who have and exemplify them.
If I don't have certainty of my own experience I can't very well have certainty about anything else, since anything else will always be an aspect of that experience.
As far as being "reliably trained," you oversimplify. Not everyone can be reliably trained, it requires at least some aptitude. Conversely, for people with the appropriate aptitude, the contention is that they are being educated with spiritual knowledge, whose broadened awareness is the practical result. Knowledge of the human spirit evolves right along with civilization. Some people even think that is what civilization is. Hegel, to name one. As well as the hordes who have tried to follow in his footsteps.
Does that mean that at least some of what you claim the Buddhist knows about reality that the rest of us do not know is not something known by the Buddhist after all?
Quoting javra
Right, but science is self-corrective. When it becomes evident that a theory is problematic it is revises or replaced. That is a feature of science.
Quoting javra
Analogously: is there sufficient justification for the claims of Christianity? Since there are many and at least in some cases contradictory claims in order to answer that wouldn't you need to know which claims? Doesn't the same true of Buddhism?
Quoting javra
One criticism of perennialism is that it tends to homogenize divergent claims.
Quoting javra
Where have I said that?Quoting javra
Speaking for myself, it boils down to whether there is sufficient evidence for me to accept extraordinary claims.
In trying my best to understand this question, I'll say yes: Fallible knowledge can be wrong in principle. But this question strikes me as addressing the epistemological issue of fallible vs. infallible knowledge. And, although it currently seems to me to be the elephant in the room to all this, it is not a topic I currently want to engage in.
Quoting Fooloso4
Where have I said that you said it?
Perhaps sooner or later you will come across something that addresses what I am saying rather than correcting misunderstandings that someone else might make.
You have missed the point about universals and mind.
Quoting Wayfarer
There are people who are attracted to this kind of thing. The hook is always that you have to buy into it and be committed to it. To assess it you must first accept it.
Quoting Wayfarer
There is a difference between the interpretation of a text and accepting its claims. The fact that similar stories come up in different places is not a good reason to accept the stories as true.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, I have considered that. I don't buy it. I think it shows a lack of understanding of mythos and a gross underestimation of the sophistication of its authors.
Quoting Wayfarer
If you have escaped the cave then you would see things differently than us cave dwellers. I have not. I can only see things as I can from within the cave.
You beat me to the punch citing Phaedo where Socrates asks what causes could be understood or claimed to be true. That bears directly upon the reference to generative power in the Republic and the passage I quoted earlier:
Quoting ibid
We can recognize the generative power of the sun without doubting its presence or knowing how it is possible. If the sun analogy is to carry forward into the presence of the Good, a similar gap confronts us.
In the analogy of the divided line, the generation of the forms is not revealed by stating they were made by the Good. Presumably, by this account, no amount of getting better at getting closer to the 'real objects' will reveal how the generation occurs by itself.
The question of that creative power is interpreted in many ways. There are creation accounts and myths, such as those found in the Timaeus and other dialogues, which imagine how the world may be constituted. It is not an appeal to a 'materialist' set of principles to observe there is a difference when Plato is using those stories and drawing the limits to our explanations through arguments. We have been arguing about Gerson's thesis since I got here. Much of that dispute involves how to read that difference in Plato's language. In view of these years of wrangling over texts and their meaning, do you see the opposition to Gerson's thesis as only a part of this one?:
Quoting Wayfarer
It depends on what you mean by "being certain of my own experience". Perhaps there is no absolute certainty anywhere to be found, but you can be certain as you can be that you are looking at a tree if you are looking at a tree, or that 2+2=4, and a plethora of things that are usually classed as "general knowledge:".
Quoting Pantagruel
I assumed that it would be taken as read that aptitude would be required.
Quoting Pantagruel
What is spiritual knowledge though, beyond being in an altered state of conscious or "broadened awareness"? What facts or metaphysical truths can it guarantee? If you think there are such facts or truths, how does it guarantee them? That "some people" think or "Hegel" thinks something is no guarantee of its truth, is it? How could it be?
More to the point, you seem to accept that there is:
Quoting javra
Unless I misunderstood you, you point to Buddhism in support of this claim.
A doctrinal note - a Buddha is not (just) human, nor a God, nor a Demi-god (yaksa). Buddha means awakened,
Good point. I should have pointed out that the question of generation (and decay) is what the passages I quoted from the Phaedo regarding Forms and causes are about.
The ambiguity of Mind/mind is that whether Socrates has shifted from Mind to mind or whether what his human mind does in making things intelligible is an imitation or likeness of what Mind does.
In Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy, Lloyd Gerson argues that Platonism and naturalism are basically incommensurable. On this forum, naturalism is ascendant. (This is a rather good online lecture and summary of Gerson's book. I'm also finding Eric Perl's book, mentioned above, very informative, although I doubt anyone here will like it.)
Incidentally, I've announced elsewhere I'm signing out for February to concentrate on other projects, so bye for now.
:wink:
Quoting Janus
*yet. We may be merely embarking on an arena for which we have no handbook. Definitely less likely though.
Quoting Tom Storm
My own take on this issue is that it is precisely the unknown that is at issue. The unknown, or mystery, is, in one respect, only that which remains to be known. If there is any confidence in what is known, and I am asking 'is there?' then we can 'safely' continue the practices we have, the Scientific Method, etc. and delve, delve, delve like good little Doozers until we are Margery, the All Knowing Tash Heap (Fraggle Rock).
But what if it is the nature of reality itself to deny knowing? What if what we know is only there to delude us? I am not just being coy here.
Can we really know anything? Is the verb to know different than the verb to be when combined with awareness? How is the difference between those two perspectives treated?
I offer that in the case of 'to know', we do indeed delude ourselves of a certain certainty that in fact is not actually present. What we find in 'science' does not refute this sentiment at all. In fact, science itself is based on making incremental progress towards ... something. We could also debate what that something is. Is it truth? Is it practical success in the world, where truth is not required but instead a fair approximation will do nicely, thank you!
I offer that in the case of 'to be' aware does not specify arrival. I mean, when one is aware of something, it can be discussed. But to say one is aware of something presumes not too much one way or another about the extent of the knowledge had. I do think this distinction is not only relevant, but itself a disposition that can be called finally, wise.
This is not Sparta! This is Philosophy! And I for one prefer the old ways, the mud and the glory! Give me the love of wisdom! And then be about your business, if you claim to be a lover of wisdom. The which means, at least be aware (ha ha) of the difference between 'knowing' and 'being aware'.
This thread, and correct me if I am wrong @Jack Cummins, for I have certainly not read all of it, is about the esoteric, and I myself would put forth that less is understood about wisdom than any other subject possible. That is precisely because wisdom is all other virtues or 'good' traits combined. Leave out even one virtue, among a list whose member virtues are not known, and you fail at wisdom. What, then, must we do? This is at least the thread of living dangerously!
I will spare everyone the arguments along the lines of intelligence and wisdom being two different things. But I did read quite a few posts so far in this thread that suggest to me that argument has not yet been won entirely, a thing of great disquiet for me. Really? Well, I said I would spare everyone, so I will start then with a first statement. Wisdom >> Intelligence!
That means, if the symbolism is not clear enough, that wisdom is superior to intelligence. If there are professional logical symbols that mean 'is only a part of' then I would use those symbols instead. But, the heavy takeaway is that wisdom is a superior skill in every way to intelligence. Some might claim, as I just kind-of did, that intelligence is a part of wisdom, and that is fine. But the real right way to say it for Scotsmen and Klingon's alike is that awareness is part of wisdom. Intelligence is only a personal facility with awareness. One might argue that lessens again the importance of intelligence, but that is not my primary goal.
It could be asserted, and I do, that life's only purpose is the earning of wisdom. The divergent nature of that assertion is epic, but I am not trying to derail the thread. Wisdom is the most esoteric mystery that there is.
So, there seems to be some worry about the relationship between logic and a penchant for esoteric goings on, or interest in the esoteric. I mean is that not obvious? This is where I suppose many and most will be offended or start objecting in earnest and I would not have it any other way. Logic is only fear. There is nothing else to logic but the emotion of fear. I'm sure the anger is welling up against me even now. It's nothing but tragicomical to me when proponents of logic say things like, 'stop getting emotional and instead use reason'. Do not make me laugh! Logic is only emotion, only fear.
{My argument that logic is only fear is much more extensive than this, but this bit will suffice for this thread's purposes}
Fear is the limiting force within reality. It is responsible for all aspects of the drives for comfort and certainty. And why then is fear a limiting force? Well, ask yourself, where do you draw the line on comfort? Where is that border within reality for you? Are we a hive mind? Or do you need to believe that you are a separate individual? Is that more comfortable for you? Fear is talking. Everything we consider identity to be is only a separation born of fear. It is for comfort as a goal. And its rigidity is the limit, the asymptote of that effect. Fear takes short cuts. Fear is Pragmatism. Fear is Logic. Fear is thought itself (more on that in another thread).
There are many words that express fear, whether or not the user is aware of this truth. 'Certainty' is one of them, perhaps the worst. This is the delusion of 'knowing', instead of 'to be' aware of something, which, as mentioned, is to me the healthier, the wiser, response or way to be. Another fear word is the word 'like'. Like is the friendship component of the 3 parts of love. The other two being passion and compassion. We like those that are like us, speaking to identity. 'Comfort' is a fear word. We are comfortable with those that we are not afraid of. But there is more to this.
Fear type people have more trouble socializing than other types do. Why is that? It is because any overt expression of fear spreads fear within the group. So, animated or excited states cause fear and that leads to, one word is best, panic. This gives rise to the more traditional, colloquial, and horridly derivative meaning of the word fear. That definition of fear is entirely insufficient and rather dull-minded. No, fear needs a new better, more primal definition. And wouldn't you know it, I have one handy, for some reason. Here it is: 'Fear is an excitable state that arises from matching a pattern from one's past'.
This excitement of 'knowing' or being aware of something is not conducive in some way to social interaction, and that effect is multiplied when anything serious is being attempted in groups. Sports and especially partying are not great theaters for fear to strut its excitement. Times are changing but nerds the world over were shunned, feared, for this reason. They ruin the comfort of others, often enough. Now get a bunch of fear types together (looks around the forum 'knowingly') and things are fine because that excitement is indeed comfortable to such types. Fear types are good with fear.
Are we getting to the point eventually? Maybe! You let me know!
So, what is the first (and only) fear? It is fear of the unknown. Enter our trusty OP and esoterica. Rare or hidden or unknown knowledge. What could possibly inspire more fear/excitement? It's bad enough getting with a bunch of logicians and nerds of all walks of life and having them regale you, foaming at the mouth, about their subject of expertise. Now, we are adding a new wrinkle and this one folds space. You have to do spice to gaze into the unknown, and we all know the unknown gazes back into you. It's positively terrifying. It's actually like a new stage of fear, the old fear revisited, the unknown as a topic or pattern. And now we are making things up! Because the unknown is still unknown right? Or is it?
Would we even accept a map of the unknown if it were handed to us? Should we? Raise your hand in your chair at home if you really do want to know it all! Although my hand is up, I am one who believes that the wise wisely inflict necessary suffering on the unwise. I understand that more and more awareness means more and more suffering. The more awareness we have, the more we realize that wisdom is the only 'good' path. Is your hand still up? In the amazing and amazingly hokey movie 'Krell' the cyclops race is gifted with foresight at the cost of one of each of their eyes. But the gods were cruel. They only allowed this gift with respect to the individual knowing when and how they would die. The beauty of awareness is thus very well demonstrated.
The OP shows a clear worry about two things in particular to me, the nature and subject of God, and the value of logic and reason versus the mysteries of the unknown. It's of interest in part because there is evidence that the two are related.
I am not saying God is only the mystery, the unknown. God is also that which is already known, both sets of things, combined. But fear and its subset, logic, both, are only ... cowardly responses to all that is, reality. We must look to other emotions to balance fear. And there are only two other emotions, anger, and desire. {All emotions are only a mix of these three} It is desire that represents the unknown. Unlike what people would normally say, desire does not make us go there. It represents it. Fear is driving the need to become aware. Desire represents that which has yet to be tamed, had, known. Desire is mystery itself, chaos. This is in contrast to what fear is, order. And what is logic, if not orderly?
The limiting force (fear) and the limitless force (desire) come together to create this situation where we are aware of things somewhat on one side (still deluded) and aware that we are not aware of things on the other side (also deluded). The dividing line is now, the present.
If we add the conjecture as mentioned that God is only all of it, everything, known and unknown, then the purpose of life seems to be to become God. It's not a new idea, exactly. But understanding the interactions between fear and desire more correctly is a new way of looking at that old idea. Hopefully, that is enough fuel for commentary.
But Fooloso, wouldn't you agree if mystical knowledge is demonstrated, then it would be no longer a mystical knowledge?
The quote above isn't from me. I think I was responding to someone else, citied it and you have picked it up under my name. I don't know if philosophers are elitist.
Perhaps the challenge is knowing in the face of uncertainty, in other words, belief. For me, the notion of spirituality aligns precisely with the noumenon-phenomenon (mind-body) problem and is to that extent "de-mystified", although it is still mysterious. Yes, we can have some certainties of the material world, which are in a sense trivial. These form the framework of our human existence, the stage whereupon we live our lives. And those human truths are not so easily acquired or proven. And of course, when human knowledge has reached a high level of sophistication, we begin to discover that the so-called simple truths of the material world are not themselves straightforward, when we finally reach the horizons of the quantum and the cosmic.
In the human body, muscles work in opposing pairs. And the ultimate strength of any muscle is always limited by the weakness of its antagonist partner. I conceive the mind (spirit) matter dyad to be like that. Indeed, all knowledge. Hence the power of dialectic.
Such understanding ranges from the comprehension of the babblings of children to Hamlet or the Critique of Pure Reason. From stones and marble, musical notes, gestures, words and letters, from actions, economic decrees and constitutions, the same human spirit addresses us and demands interpretation. (Dilthey, The Rise of Hermeneutics)
I hear some of us are rarer birds than that: thinkers.
That would depend on what you mean by the term. As I understand it, it is knowledge gained through some kind of transcendent experience. It is known only to those who have had this experience. Some attempt to bring about this experience in one way or another by an altered state of consciousness. Others claim that it is something that happens to you without regard to what you do. Not ever having had such an experience I cannot evaluate it. I cannot say whether it reveals something about the world or human beings or the individual. I do not know to what extent it is an interpretation of what happens.
The term mystical is also used to mean what lies beyond both experience and explanation, that is to say, beyond knowledge. The arche of existence or that there is anything at all.
Yes, I have read Gerson's thesis and some of his essays on Aristotle. We have argued about them for years. A search for "De Anima" in the site search function gives a flavor for the dispute. My question to you was if you see that disagreement only in terms of your objections to 'modern' naturalism.
For my part, the two issues are only connected through a history of interpretation and not through trying to understand Plato and Aristotle on their own terms.
Ah, sorry. Not quite sure how that happened.
The standard definition of "Esoteric" is very unusual and understood or liked by only a small number of people, especially those with special knowledge:, which suggests intentional hidings of their knowledge into their own circles, societies or cults. Therefore demonstrating the intentionally hidden knowledge for the circle members or initiated followers only to the uninitiated, outsiders or public would be contradicting the meaning of the concept as well as their intentions, gist, purposes and ideas for the esoteric and mystic knowledge.
In general esoteric knowledge is totally different type of knowledge from the general philosophical knowledge in methodology, objects and beliefs, and the main difference being the hidden exclusiveness of the knowledge only for the chosen few.
If by esoteric knowledge you mean knowledge that is hidden because it is being kept secret then if it is made public it would no longer be esoteric. But the definition you give also includes what is understood only by a small number of people. In that case it would remain hidden from us because it is beyond our abilities to comprehend it.
In any case, your question was about:
Quoting Corvus
There are mystery cults that keep their knowledge hidden from those who have not been initiated. The initiation might include texts and teachings, or intoxicants or other measures to induce altered states. When the mysteries are revealed then they are for the initiated no longer mysteries.
Quoting Pantagruel
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Pantagruel
:100: :smile: :up:
Thanks very much for your posts and insights. I can appreciate some nutritious and delicious food for thought.
Your emphasis on fear of the unknown is interesting, especially in relation to logic. That is because scientific logic, including materialism may come from that angle, as once Christianity, especially Catholicism did in the past. The esoteric, or occult, was feared as taboo and still is in some religious circles. I found the section on the esoteric, paranormal and magic when I was about 12 years old. My family discouraged me from reading it and for a long time I did avoid it. Later, when I was exploring various philosophy ideas, including premonitions, some fairly evangelical thinking student friends were horrified, seeing such ideas as 'Satanic' lies.
On philosophy forums, there are so many divergent views but, in spite of it many are wary of it, as nonsensical lies often, opposed to science. So, there may be a crossover at times between scientific and religious fundamentalism. Fear may be the 'demon' lurking in the background and logic, or even commonsense may be the certainty which many wish to cling to.
I am not sure that a certain amount of common sense and trust in the empirical is not important to avoid confusion. I have worked with people with acute psychosis and have seen the grave dangers of getting carried away with 'delusions', such as belief in magical and psychic powers. So, it may be about holding onto a certain amount of critical 'realism', but also about juggling this with the limits of reason. Also, each person may come to this in a unique way based on personal experiences.
That (put very concisely, and of course benefiting from elaboration) is a description of what possible evidence of a metaphysical / spiritual / transrational nature might entail.
And importantly, how it might even begin to be verified.
Of course, one can reject or quibble with his positing an eye of contemplation.
One can take it or leave it, and live a productive and full life.
But I think this quote (along with Wilbers other writings) describe what metaphysical experiences, and the often vague descriptions of them, are aiming for in an extremely general way.
(Although most of us philosophical and mystical seekers and wanderers dont have a community of wise souls also engaged in spiritual exercises in the neighborhood to guide us.)
Quoting Fooloso4
Sure. My point was that in either case, the knowledge is not for demonstrating to public whether you are able to comprehend it or not. Even if you were a new initiate to the secret society, they will make you to work from the bottom to the top with dedication and hard work for acquiring the knowledge. They won't demonstrate the mystic knowledge, and show you the whole lot at one go, just because you joined their school or club.
We may not be talking about the same thing. Philosophers have hidden their meaning not because it contains mystic knowledge but because they want to avoid censorship. Two examples: the trials of Socrates and Galileo.
Plato took seriously the accusation against philosophy by Aristophanes. He did not think it corrupts the youth but it certainly leads them to question the ancestral beliefs. As Aristophanes shows in his play The Clouds, in the wrong hands this can be harmful. Plato and other writers have no control over who reads their works. He wrote in such a way that only those who are thoughtful enough and can question the text in the right way will see what is between the lines and make connections that the casual reader will not.
Yes, I agree.
However, to that Id add the less common (but still significant) trait of wisdom traditions to place value on openness, simplicity, and plain (if not completely pure) awareness rather than (or in addition to, perhaps) knowledge and concepts.
Zen is known for this, for example the book Zen Mind, Beginners Mind.
Also, the Tao Te Ching can be read and (somewhat understood) by nearly anyone in an hour.
In mystic Christianity, Jesuss encouragement to become as children etc etc.
Interesting. I find this in some ways directly speaks to what love of wisdom i.e., philosophy was initially intended to be about. I can also relate to a number of other concepts youve evoked. But I wont now get into discussing them.
--------
Aldous Huxley makes a distinction between knowledge and understanding. Here's and overview:
Quoting A. Huxley
In relation to this, to me, something like the Jeopardy show illustrates a great quantity of knowledge regarding the world that does not exhibit, nor necessitate, any significant understanding regarding the world. The two are not the same.
Wont contribute much due to time constraints, but I thought this distinction between knowledge and understanding fits in rather well with what youve expressed.
:up: Exactly, thanks! Great quote.
I probably put everything into a yin-yang relationship, but understanding is definitely the under-appreciated yin mental ability of the two.
It helps dealing with life and humans, as opposed to things and calculations.
But obviously knowledge is essential and unavoidable, though I tried valiantly to do so in school lol.
Loved your personal history by the way. Very endearing. I had similar experiences. With my rather committed Methodist parents the snooty scoffing at anything remotely interesting was rather epic. My gateway drug was going over to friend's houses to play D&D and eating spicy foods. Ha ha! It opened up my world so much that there was no going back. And all because my parents saw the beginning roots of my old soul loneliness and they wanted me to spread my wings and have friends. Whoopsie!
I quoted only the last part.
The question you ask there is the focal point of wisdom itself. That is 'Where is the line between the GOOD or necessary suffering and evil or unnecessary suffering?' But that line is fluid as well in some senses. For many they are so tough, and toughness is good, that they can dip heavily into unnecessary suffering and still realize it and return to the necessary only. Others prefer to 'find the bottom' and I find that type particularly vexing, especially when you love them. That type is the tragic romantic artist type, in general. They embody mysticism and are considered the tribal quintessential female type, although men can be it as well, like all types.
What you suggest is correct. You say holding on to ... Exactly! One virtue must be used to balance the other. Failure in raising any single virtue is a lack of wisdom and balance.
Granted all our paths are amid a subjective envelope of experience. But the truth and morality, and that which offers us the feedback of genuine happiness are objective. That is covered in another thread.
We are not perfect, so the great mystery remains unconquered. Fear will drive us into the unknown and desire will embody it to pull from the other side. That is how it is.
Thank you, yes, just so. I loved the quote by Huxley. He was a far out cat. I am betting he drank more than one pangalactic gargle blaster. And those surely facilitate 'understanding'.
I have to respectfully disagree as I did in my post.
Understanding is meta-level more important than knowledge. Thus, 'understanding' is clearly both yin and yang. It is all.
It does seem that some of us are more inclined to pursue the 'hidden path'. Many ways I do try to avoid it, but it keeps rearing its ugly head. In some ways, it may be better to live a mundane existence of treading the known pathways because the esoteric is a difficult path. It is almost like the 'shamanic call', although there is itself a certain grandiosity to some claims to a calling.
That is almost the opposite predicament to the way in which some people stumble upon the 'unknown' through the use of mind-altering substances. I have used them but only as a a means to understanding the nature of the 'doors of perception'. That is so different from people who are partying and using substances as a form of recreation. That may be why so many end up with drug-induced psychosis. It may involve an 'opening up' which is too dramatic, such as Gopi Krishna describes in his work on the 'kundalini serpent' which can be too overwhelming and lead to 'madness'.
A certain amount of humility is probably worth holding onto as well groundedness in realism. I love the work of Krishnamurti because he rejected the title of spiritual teacher, when that was projected upon him. Part of the reason why I raise the thread topic is because the questions of philosophy are sometimes seen as separate from the esoteric quest. Aldous Huxley was an important writer, including his work, 'The Doors of Perception/ Heaven and Hell', as well as , 'The Perennial Philosophy'.
A fuzzing of it all may be problematic, but, at the same time some of the issues of philosophy have been approached by many thinkers and artistic people, so it may be an intricate area for thinking about, such as the quest for the symbolic 'philosophers stone', which, hopefully goes beyond the fantasy world of Harry Potter. Fantasy literature explores important themes, but it may lose connection with the basics of philosophy at times, if it becomes too speculative in the grand process of human imagination.
Evolution itself, personal growth, will demand that we each face our demons. If a person is sufficiently fearful only, as in (my opinion) not wise, they could go their entire lives and both seek and remain blissfully ignorant of the mystery's call well inside their comfort zone. That is tragic really, to any notion of personal growth. But some of us are explorers on that ocean and some of us stay comfortable and dull (opinion) in 'civilization', coloring inside the lines.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Well, I agree that some people have that grandiose affectation thing. And it kind of does overlap with the longing of desire that embodies the mystery. But I think the ones I meet like myself that take on this burden are usually halfway preferring that it would leave them alone, and yet, resigned to do what is necessary to grow if the Kobiashi-Maru keeps putting itself right in front of them. Sometimes the only way out is through.
Further, since I am a broadcaster as well, and not all such called mystics are, I feel it my duty to push people out of their comfort zones and I usually offer to stand beside them as they face their stuckedness. Oddly though, like a Gandalf or the typical wizened type, I find that whereas I am capable of supporting others on their firewalks, few indeed have the capacity to return the favor. The nature of my challenge is always a 'this foe is beyond you' moment. Still, I have indeed been pleasantly surprised by the sudden ally who is often a serendipitous dancer, that while remaining oblivious to the real problem, nonetheless has an instinctual ability to avoid or defeat some of my foes. That 'Lucky Star' type person is very rare though and they tend to be a bit part only and not hang around, which you would want.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I was like you at first and then amid the party scenarios I still found that there were more and more often the 'meeting the godhead' moments. I never did Ayahuasca, but I am curious. From accounts I trust as well as many that I do not, it seems that particular experience is rather likely to catalyze the more 'religious experience' type scenarios. Still, it stands to reason that the infinite, the mysterious, the esoteric, is accessible at all times. The movie and story tropes that suggest we must go to Mt Silea on Vulcan or the Eternal Swamp of Doom are just over-blown drama. The Abyss and Elysium both are accessible, to me, everywhere.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Any experience, even daily life, carries the same risks. I would characterize too much fear and safety consciousness as a regular and 'safe' form of madness, if you follow. The 'public mass delusion' of 'polite society' is anything but in reality, for example.
Quoting Jack Cummins
One of my favorite quotes is apropos at this time:
"It is no great measure of success to be well-adjusted to such a profoundly sick society.' - JK
I paraphrased, but that is the essence of it. The speaker will now apologize. ;)
Quoting Jack Cummins
I am not as well read as I might seem to be. I know Huxley of course but have not read most of his stuff. I am wary of being 'polluted' by other creative thinkers. In conversation I have had many many people accuse me of stealing ideas that I thought were genuinely mine. To me, it doesn't matter as much as to them, but, I certainly do not like being considered just a parrot.
Quoting Jack Cummins
That's an old one, really, parroted by the Potter books, lol.
The idea of a focus or magic item or thing with the right properties is similar to the Vale of Hidden Treasures as a destination. Such foci are crutches only and never really needed. Truth is ubiquitous. At least that is my opinion. I have never needed quiet or a place to meditate, for example. And the thing people declare to me they get from meditation confused me forever, because it's my waking state. it took decades for me to realize that. So, maybe its not all that.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I agree, and they take off on limited sets of philosophical frameworks and thus make the same errors as old school aphorisms do, over-emphasizing certain virtues at the expense of others.
One clear example to me is the Jedi in Star Wars. They are so wrong, they almost could not be more wrong. Almost all their aphorisms are terrible anti-wisdom. Don't get me wrong. I love the stories. But their wisdom is pathetic.
Fear is the gateway to the dark side. - Yoda (Nope. Fear is just as moral as it is immoral and all logic and thought are only fear (to me)).
Fear is the mind-killer - Thufir Hawat (Dune) (Nope. The mind is a construct made almost entirely of fear).
In Star Trek the Vulcans eschew emotions for logic. (Nope. The joke is on you, Vulcans (Roddenberry). Logic is only fear).
Your ideas on fear may be particularly important because fear itself may be such an essential trigger for thinking and exploration. In itself, fear may have led to the nature of questioning religion, and its dogmas.
On a wider level, fear may evoke so much in thinking, especially the 'lazy approaches' of conventional thinking and logic. At times, this may be a useful basis for criticising the ideologies inherent in religious thinking. Alternatively, it may provoke some kind of response to materialism and its extreme rejection of the idea of 'spirit' itself, as a source of everything, whether it is considered to be 'God', or some other numinous force inherent in consciousness, especially human consciousness.
I also wonder about the ideas of Hegel on 'spirit' here. His understanding is not simply about the 'supernatural' as separate from the nature of experience itself, but as imminent in the evolution of consciousness on a collective and personal basis. It may be that mysticism itself was a problem because it tried to separate the nature of experience and reason as though they were different categories of knowledge and understanding.
Ok, thank you very much for your reply. :up:
To expand on my post somewhat
As you noticed, I play a little game with myself categorizing a pair of related things into Yin-Yang.
Summer (to me in the northern hemisphere) is yang. Winter is yin, for example.
Dogs are yang cats are yin lol.
This is NOT a hard and fast list with absolute right or wrong answers of course maybe just a metaphysical puzzle.
To me, the concept of Yin is very foundational, like the roots and soil, the Earth itself.
Being foundational, it might be often overlooked or taken for granted.
So by saying that understanding is yin is no slight or disrespect to understandings worth, of course.
I would say _metaphorically_ that specific bits of knowledge grows out of a deep field of understanding, and is supported by it and depends on it.
Also, as is commonly known, both yin and yang contain each other in seed form.
(The black dot in the whiteness, the white dot in the blackness).
So one could say that understanding is all, both yin and yang.
Being underappreciated, understanding could use some love lol since knowledge and information seem to be ruling the world.
(A knowledge that seems to be often lacking context, compassion, and understanding etc, and aims for pure power OVER (as opposed to WITH) everyone and everything around).
But when saying understanding is everything, it seems like then its no longer TWO complementary parts flowing together like the Yin / Yang symbol.
I wonder where that leaves knowledge though?
:victory: :smile:
Doubt is indeed a core part of fear. It's part of the drive to become aware, this doubt. I love doubt! Absolutely, question the conceptions offered of the absolute, because whoever thought of it, should be doubted! ;) I have to remind my critics that I ask them to doubt me. It's only fair.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Well, I cannot quite figure your angle on this one. Fear has many great qualities. But amid doubt, many turn to certainty. That is always the failure of fear. Religious dogma often has that quality of nigh unto unquestioning belief. It is a misappropriation of fear as well. Part of the trouble with fear and its need for awareness is that once practiced enough, fear delivers great results. It's the betting man's option, Pragmatism. It only takes just a little while of that before a false confidence develops. Real confidence is born of anger, the toughness to stand against the odds. Fear will say, 'that does not compute!'. Or, 'why did you go all in on a 2-7 hand? That should not win!' {Texas Hold-em} But those used to fear/logic as a path in life often have this delusional sense of worthiness. And since fear is the limiting force, that which separates and categorizes, such types are prone to overconfidence, confidence born of fear. That is delusional.
If you're curious, desire has the opposite effect. It fills its wishful dreamers with troubles aplenty. Amid their low probability efforts life seems cruel and they seem broken, especially to themselves. This then is the reflection of desire, delusional worthlessness. And there again, the mystery is revealed. Balance where it is least expected.
Then Hegel and I agree quite closely. Indeed, there is nothing supernatural at all, to me. It is all here. The unicorns are dreams and dream are clearly real. I concur entirely that the mystery is here, present, and real. Nothing is beyond the infinite nature of choice. The evolution of the body is happenstance and only serves to make choice harder for some, due to this condition or that. In general, let's say, the more evolved form has an easier time expressing greater moral agency. But there is no case for denial of the infinite power of choice. Assuming the effort is put in, anything is possible, just not probable at all.
Yes, good point! :up:
I think there are major discoveries yet to be made about our little planet, despite the feeling that everything useful has already been discovered or invented.
I can understand labeling something as supernatural as a quick and handy heuristic device to describe something that defies easy description.
But like most labels, this one is rather ill-fitting.
Ancient people labeling the phenomenon of lightning as supernatural is understandable, but of course incorrect by our current (haha) science.
And conversely, a modern person labeling something like ESP as supernatural (and thus imaginary, unprovable, or plain evil) is closing the door on investigation prematurely, in my view.
Important to note also that labeling anything vaguely supernatural as absolutely true and real just because it makes one feel warm and fuzzy inside is obviously dangerous and intellectually unsound.
(For what it is worth, I have a personal conspiracy theory that the hard sciences receive far more attention and $$$ funding than social sciences because they are better suited for producing cutting-edge weaponry. Hope Im wrong about that...)
No trouble at all. It's what I do. Communication is just not much of an option for me. Are you a kindred spirit?
Quoting 0 thru 9
Yes, a favored model. I do enjoy yin/yang. All things Eastern have that compelling juxtaposition to Western thought. Much more compassion than passion. And boy does the east ever have issues with desire. Sometimes I worry about them. I find my base is more Greek. Passion c'est tout! Not really, but that path comes more naturally to me than sequestering desire and just doubting it.
Quoting 0 thru 9
Well yes, yang is sun, even in eastern thought.
Quoting 0 thru 9
Ha ha, the friendship love of dogs vs the aloof prickly nature of most felines does fit, yes.
Quoting 0 thru 9
I think these patterns are indeed the norm. I do not think it is unreasonable at all.
What about this: (politically incorrect warning)
Cold climates that are yin in nature give rise to their opposite, yang investiture.
Warmer climates that are yang in nature give rise to their opposite, yin investiture.
Nature is nothing so much as a force always aiming at least energy balance.
But amid that process, evolution and the call of desire pulls us onward to growth.
Quoting 0 thru 9
I cannot find that yin or yang is more foundational.
In fact the third force that binds them is the only real foundational force. That is anger/essence/being.
Yin is desire and mystery, enveloping and dark.
Yang is fear and excitement, pointed and bright.
Quoting 0 thru 9
I would say that it was, as I did, and for the reasons stated.
'Understanding implies wisdom, both yin and yang, and in fact an equal part of that third force that binds them.' But that is just my take on it.
Quoting 0 thru 9
Well yes.
This is what is hard to relate, but I think you touched on it well here. No matter how you wedge the sphere, all wedges partake of the north pole. Finally then, all paths lead via desire to understanding. The trouble is that there is always a more direct path. Or, let's say only one path is direct from any location in the sphere. That path is then, the 'best' one.
Quoting 0 thru 9
Yes, that is similar in concept to my wedge and north pole comment.
Quoting 0 thru 9
Exactly! How to get the science types off their high horse though, serving the elites and control rather than ... love ... for lack of a better word. Even love is conflated so badly. I prefer the 'Good'.
Quoting 0 thru 9
Knowledge is mostly a yang thing pulled into being by the third force. Anger-infused fear. This is where the patterns of the past have already combined into a present. That is the case for knowledge. The future (desire) remains unknown. And of course, as mentioned, we delude ourselves to think we understand the past. Ask any two scientists and they are bound to find some specific point to disagree on. So what is this flimsy knowledge thing anyway? I still prefer the term and the meaning of awareness to knowledge. It seems more accurate and humble, a state, rather than a final destination.
I'm thinking about revisiting Hegel, in light of my recent readings which highlighted Collingwood's emphasis on the immanence of the concrete universal in the concrete mind, attuned as it is to the fullness the actual (the totality of what is occurring at any given time) versus the bits and pieces of reality that we comprehend using our powers of abstraction and categorization.
I do believe that consciousness is already and constantly enmeshed in a reality that is, perhaps, unimaginably more complex that what is compassed by our representations of it (as Hamlet said to Horatio). Which is why I endorse and embrace a philosophy of enaction, assuming that our actual capabilities will always precede and engender our further understanding. As Descartes notes, the will is much wider in its range and compass than the understanding....
Hegel is often seen as obscure and disregarded. However, his emphasis on 'spirit' in history may overcome the basic dualistic understanding inherent in ideas of mind and body; especially in relation to the idea of qualia and its relationship between science and materialism.
In some ways, Hegel may be esoteric, but going beyond the basics of spiritual understanding. Also, in that sense, Nietszche can be seen as esoteric, in the sense of going beyond conventional understanding. It may be that ideas of the 'esoteric' are too boxed into the categories of the challenge between religion and science as a black and white area of philosophical thinking, missing some blindspots, which may go outside of the conventions of metaphysics, into a more fluid picture of ideas.
I wonder about the nature of doubt even though many have feared it. I was brought up to doubt, but I committed the sin of being the doubting Thomas or whatever guise. Where would philosophy stand without doubt and scepticism, as recognised by David Hume.
It is also important to think about desire in relation to esotericism. Some may see desire as a problem, including the basic perspective of Buddhism, which looks at desire as something to be overcome. However, desire may be a starting point for expanded awareness as William Blake argued, especially in 'The Marrriage of Heaven and Hell. Blake even wrote that the reason why Milton 'wrote in fetters' was "because he was part of the devil's party without knowing it'.
In other words, desire may be the opposition or 'demon', which gives rise to conflict in the first place, in the ongoing process of the evolution of consciousness.
Zen would be a knowledge that is impossible to demonstrate due to the nature of the knowledge, which is subjective and intuition based.
I have no idea what Tao Teching would be. Never heard of it in my puff.
For Jesus and Christianity, I know very little too. Only thing I know is that Jesus has died, but resurrected in 3 days (hence the Easter day). After the resurrection, we don't know where on earth he has been living. This cries for an esoteric inquiry.
I read a little about the underground religious sector stemmed out of Christianity called Gnosis, which is heavily into pagan rituals. These folks would be deeply into esoteric knowledge.
But it seems evident that none of these folks above would agree to demonstrate their esoteric or mystic knowledge even if they knew what they are.
I think the notion of esotericity and its meaning (as discussed) is a crucial factor. I also commented on the various aspects of skills and capabilities both in acquiring and expressing understanding. The question is, is esotericity just a function of the difficulty of plumbing those depths, both of knowledge and action, the demonstrated conviction of the belief in the truth of one's knowledge? This is a good summary of a central question for me.
It may also depend on how different the idea of the exoteric and esoteric are and what they entail. The first person who made me aware of the distinction was a school religious studies teacher. However, he was one of the most conventional Catholic thinkers I came across, especially opposed to the validity of comparative religion. I remember him saying that the Buddha believed he was God and mistaken, which seemed to gloss over the nature of spiritual thinking entirely. The teacher was a rigid thinker but I did meet him once later and he had softened so much, speaking of 'how memories come and go', and with what appeared to be far less concrete thinking.
I am inclined to think that concrete thinking is the problem, especially in why people hold onto dogmas, of both religion and science. The exoteric may be about the shared, or intersubjective guidelines for thinking, whereas the esoteric may involve the mysterious nature or conundrums of personal consciousness and its evolution. Each of us is living with the outer boundaries of intersubjective consciousness, tailoring it to the way in which the dramas of life enfold uniquely.
The esoteric thinkers may focus more on the subjective aspects and deviations from cultural norms, especially the development of one's own perspective and signature in the grand scheme of philosophy. It may involve relativism but, with more of an emphasis on lived experience, especially looking beyond the surface of ideas.
In that sense, it is about the unique and individual quest for understanding life and its meaning. It probably goes beyond actual concrete ideas of the nature of 'spirituality' , in a rigid sense, to the mythic aspects of what it means to be human. Here, I am not suggesting that it falls into a framework of Jungian or mythic interpretation, as it may involve the widest aspects of cultural interpretation, and anthropological perspectives.
I think you are using concrete in a different sense than me though. Being concrete refers to the complete, complex totality which is the now. Any particularization of which is really an abstraction (a dogmatic one, as you note). So from the perspective with which I use the term concrete (the total-synthetic now), dogmatic thought is the opposite of concrete. It is the abstract denying its own abstract nature and pretending to concrete existence (i.e. to be the only comprehensive explanatory scheme).
I guess that even the idea of concrete thinking has varying meanings and associations. I have come across it's used mainly in psychiatry, when referring to the most literalism of ideas. I am sure that your perspective works as well, in relation to the position of 'now' consciousness although time itself is so fluid a concept as change is constant. I am more inclined to view concreteness as taking ideas as af they are physical objects or less subject to evaluation.
My main understanding of its relation to esotericism is that ideas are taken as more fixed entities rather than being juggled and juxtaposed by individuals. So, I would see fluidity as opposed to concreteness as being about ideas as definitive, like Plato's idea of the forms as opposed to arising differently in specific contexts. There is probably an interplay, with the esotericism of Plato being about the 'eternal aspects of meaning, as opposed to the "now'. This may be the opposite of where you are coming from and from the basic paradigm of realism.
Generally, I see realism as being very different to esotericism in its claim to objectivity. Nevertheless, I guess that some esoteric thinkers, such as Plato would see the eternal basis of ideas and processes as aspects of objective 'truth'. That makes this whole area a tricky part of philosophical reasoning.
:smile: :up:
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Not exactly sure about the investiture part means, but yes Id agree that one gives rise to its partner and lover.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Yes, I am maybe adding my own take on Yin being foundational.
However, between Earth and Sky/heaven, Earth is yin. And earth is our home base
And everyone of us is of a woman born, our earthly source so to speak.
(Even Macbeths downfall Macduff! :snicker: )
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Thanks! Sometimes a direct path is best. Sometimes not.
(Just once, Id love to drive my car in a straight line to my destination, but some fussy people might object to my driving through their yard lol).
But seriously, chasing the unicorn of wisdom can lead one on some unexpected paths.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
I have a sinking feeling that science in general is not as free to meet its own standards as is advertised on TV. Science weighs the evidence, but Money has its finger on the scale.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Yes, that was what I was getting at in general before saying knowledge is on the yang side.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
You somewhat lost me there seems a tad too absolute or polemic, for lack of a better word.
Is knowledge always tainted and well, bad?
Knowledge is always incomplete, little bits here and there, maybe it works now.
Maybe everything changes tomorrow, as it often does.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
But this I understand and agree with, for what its worth.
Regarding knowledge as flimsy is a healthy practice.
A skepticism to keep one feet on the ground, and prevent the brain from swelling up with so many facts that ones head inflates like a helium balloon and floats away to the sky :starstruck:
[b]Question for you (and anyone else):
How do you see the relationship between good / evil and Yin / Yang? [/b]:chin:
Hegel says that within the development or self-movement of spirit the esoteric becomes exoteric. (Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, 13) That is, what is at first only known to a few becomes in the completion of its development knowable to all.
Within the all-inclusive circle the implicit in consciousness becomes explicit for consciousness. Hegel gives the following analogy:
(21)
The embryo begins as something hidden. Through its self-movement it becomes something that is no longer hidden, something that stands out on its own.
This movement takes place in both directions. Science moves from what is outward or exoteric to what is internal and hidden or esoteric. And from what is esoteric or known to the few to what can be known by all.
Nietzsche points to:
What was once known to philosophers, but not to others, was in his own time no longer known even to philosophers. The reason for this that in these cultures:
"Often seen as" by whom? After Kant, Hegel is probably the most influential philosopher in the Continental tradition (e.g. ... Marx ... Sartre ... Habermas ... iek...)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/#LifWorInf
Being comfortable with doubt is wise. I enjoy my doubt as it confirms a lack of certainty, and shows us clearly that the courage of anger is required to stand up even when in doubt. You have to choose and act, on less than perfect information. And that's how it should be. They don't call it the burden of choice for nothing!
Quoting Jack Cummins
I agree and that was my point in some other response in this thread. It's clear the East views passion/desire with skepticism. I do, but that's back to doubt.
Still, embracing desire as useful, just like fear, is super important. Each of the three primal emotions is critical to have and maximize. Each balances the other.
Anger and fear are often misunderstood and denigrated. But desire is held in high esteem in the West, where it needs more restraint. In the East I would argue desire is way too downplayed, denigrated, like the West denigrates anger and fear. Anger especially is vilified and that is wrong, not wisdom at all.
To go with cult sentiment (The Bible, ha ha) here is a quote: 'The kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force!' The point (to me) being really, It's not fear, anger, or desire alone that are the issue. Its whether they are in alignment with objective moral truth, the Good, or not, that is actually important.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Well, I confess I have not read that Milton book. And I honestly can't quite get what Blake was referring to. The Devil's party? Is that a political reference or one related to a topic in the book? I just can't connect on that one. Maybe you know?
Quoting Jack Cummins
I do not think to vilify desire either. Denigration of emotion does not help. That is the same mistake I just mentioned where in the West anger and fear are denigrated and in the East desire is denigrated. All of that is old anti-wisdom passing as wisdom. We need a better approach to morality and that is what my coming book is about.
The real trick to morality is first admitting that it has to be objective, and then that genuine happiness is the demonstrable evidence of alignment with the good. The takeaway for moral choice is that increasing moral agency is defined as maximized fear, anger, and desire, all three, balanced for wisdom. That is the path, the only path, to the good.
Polemic, yes. That is anger, maximized. If it is correctly stated, then it should be fervent and aggressively stated. Mean what you say, because I sure do.
Yes, all choice is partially bad. And as mentioned the word 'knowledge' is already in error compared to the derivative term, 'being aware'. So that is two wrongs already. Both issues relate to the unattainable nature of perfection. The first in that the only certainty we have is that we are never exactly correct (perfect). And the second is, knowing this, we must properly eschew the term 'knowledge' because it implies the immoral certainty of knowing instead of 'being aware'.
Now you might contend I am splitting hairs here, but I have the beer-infused shampoo to handle that. They have to come together. Now we just need a song for that. Oh wait ...
It's the stance, the attitude of wisdom, that is often missing. Even if there is some understanding, it is not enough. We could always do better. And the day to day people go about their business at the mean, and that is not even the Aristotelean mean, sadly. Its more like a lowbrow average, the practical minimum effort required to 'get er done'. So sad!
Quoting 0 thru 9
Exactly. Openness to change is the actual ideal. It acknowledges that conclusions are immoral. There is only one conclusion in this universe and that is perfection, the good. You could also say love and in doing so you are instead embracing the entire system, free will as a base, that ideally leads to the objective good via wise choice(s).
I love it when people quote the definition for insanity. Clueless people do this all the time. It's a great example of Pragmatic aphorisms that are anti-wisdom, really. You've heard it, surely: 'Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results' is often called the definition of insanity. Wrong! Doing the same thing over and over again and REMAINING OPEN to possibly different results is called the Scientific Method. Think about it. Honest readers will be shocked. It's true though. So many typical purveyors of wisdom are anything but, and often these same types will declare someone like me a sophist. Hilarious!
Here is another one for you, and these are all from me, pearls cast, and hopefully not before swine, 'The one-eyed man is king in the land of the blind!' Nope! Not even close. He is deemed insane for speaking about 'visions' and 'colors', delusional things that do not exist to almost everyone. See the series 'See' with Jason Momoa as Baba Voss for confirmation of this anti-wisdom aphorism as nonsense that most people would still say is wisdom. Real wisdom is hard. It's esoteric and full of strangeness that in the end is truth.
The wise are deemed insane by the unwise, because they understand in a meta-level way that others simply cannot usually grasp.
Quoting 0 thru 9
Exactly! Bring the fear types, the nerds, and double that for any academics, down a peg or two. Doubt is required of the humble. That is wisdom.
Quoting 0 thru 9
It's leading, provocative and the answer is rather dull and obvious.
Fear and Desire, yang and yin, both require the balancing foundational force of anger to balance them. So the yin/yang model is woefully incomplete. Add in the third force and you start to make sense.
But even then there is another issue. I mentioned it earlier in this post.
The good is MAXIMIZED and balanced fear, anger, and desire. The higher the moral agency the more of each is expressed. And the good only happens best in perfect balance. That means yin and yang MUST be equal in all things. And the balancing foundational force must also be equal. That is the only path to the good.
From what I take to be the Taoist perspective, or at least my own take of it, the good is found in harmony between yin and yang which then serves as a return to WujiWuji being in the Taoist cosmology the nameless Tao which produces the One, from which is produced the Two, from which is produced the Three, from which all things are produced. Bad, and by extension evil, for me is then a discord, or disharmony, between yin and yang.
To say that good is a harmony between yang-as-good and yin-as-bad, or similar takes, to me so far makes no sense. As though too much good is then bad? But good is a balance between them?
And I so far interpret these latter type of interpretations to be heavily influenced by western or else westernized thought: wherein light (hence yang) symbolizes good and shadow/darkness (hence yin) symbolizes bad.
But consider snow blindnessor, more technically, any condition where one would witness only whiteness/light in the complete absence of darkness/shadows. This creates an inability to see just as much as complete darkness does. So understood, neither light/yang nor darkness/yin would of itself be bad when balanced with the other: in balance, they are good together. This while both become bad (and by extension maybe evil such as in causing temporary blindness) when out of balance with its dyad.
Sorta gets back to the notion of the metaphors one lives by.
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I see this is in rough agreement to 's comments.
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ps. made a number of typos in haste. Corrected what I've found.
I agree. It's clear Taoism and my own model are close. I do not know Taoism. But the sort brief you give on it makes this somewhat clear. Thank you.
Quoting javra
Agreed. That makes no sense. ;)
Quoting javra
Sadly, yes, although as anyone with a pulse can notice, things, they are a changing! The move from yang to yin in the West is epic and actually now overbalanced. Chaos/desire is on the rise, and the chaos proponents have no idea where balance is, so they are #ourturn burning the house down also, just with yin instead of yang. Not good! No, not good at all!
Quoting javra
Amen my Daoshi brother or sister or they, choose your delusion.
Quoting javra
And the collective 'we' need to erase these delusions. I do not think they help. True balance is obtained only amid the polarity that leads to the trinary nature of reality. Nature did not specify and qualify diversity in this way by accident. We might do better, but I kind of doubt it. Still, any arrangement of the entities is fine so long as real wisdom is the goal.
Quoting javra
Thank you, yes. There is accord.
Quoting javra
Maybe so, but your meaning is solid and not mistaken.
Thanks much for the reply.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
:grin:
Im myself a perennialist, meaning I choose to belief that most mystical experiencesfrom the globally shamanic to those strictly contextualized by either Western or Eastern thoughtand the multitude of various religions these have often enough brought about, address a universally applicable but hard to express truth, what has sometimes been simply termed the Real. And that interpretations of whats been said of these experiences often enough get polluted by inappropriate projectionssuch as can be exemplified by Westerners construing the light and dark of the yang and yin to signify goodness and badness, respectively. To not here get into the unscrupulous use of such esoteric knowledge (or, maybe better yet, understanding either way, this being an aspect of direct awareness) for authoritarian purposes by others that lust for power; needless to add, this without having the given awareness concerned: wherein unscrupulous ignorants present themselves as infallible authorities regarding such knowledge, infallible authorities which deem that they are to be blindly obeyed at risk of an otherwise incurred grave pain and suffering. (To me, one blatant example of this is that JC the peace-loving mystic in comparison to too many a pope and priest serving the role of the unscrupulous ignorant who lusts for authoritarian power.)
Perennialism is quite the expansive topic and, ever the fallibilist, I don't claim to have any infallible knowledge regarding it. But getting back to the quote, while I dont mean to here argue for perennialism, this nevertheless being my chosen belief, I view Daoism as one more path upon the same mountain toward the mountains universally applicable zeniththis traveled toward zenith at the same time being the very ground which all religions have in common, though each religion/path interprets this same zenith in sometimes vastly different manners.
Basically, while I acknowledge Daoism, I dont deem myself to be a Daoist ... in the strict sense of the term at least.
And as to my label for my own gender, Ill add that I'm an old-school male. :smile: Closest I can get to more modern libertarian views on gender in regard to my own self is to consider myself a butch lesbian stuck in a males body. :wink: No complaints with that. :razz:
Maybe all this is much ado about nothing, but I thought it worthwhile to express all the same. :grin:
Quoting Chet Hawkins
:100:
Ok thanks for identifying it. Nothing wrong with a little polemic for spice.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Haha, yes I know what you mean. I think every culture attempts to produce members that will continue that specific culture. In a way similar to each organism trying its best to survive and reproduce.
Nothing wrong with that, in fact its why were all here now with millions of other organisms.
But what happens when the culture is going off the rails, headed for a collision?
It seems the best one can do is to understand the situation and roots of the problem, while surviving.
Maybe the esoteric understanding humans need to know most urgently is how did humanity get to this point? And what can I (or we) do about it?
Humans are in a physical calamity with nature, but also one concerning awareness, thinking, and beliefs.
Quoting javra
Excellent answers, both of you! :cool: :up: Thanks for the responses and effort! Much appreciated.
I was wondering if anyone here still held on (even subconsciously) to the bright yang is good, dark yin is evil belief.
Glad to hear that you dont fall for that odd mixture of Zorastrian / Abrahamic good vs evil, and the completely different Tao, the way of nature and of the Universe.
(Not to say a mythic dramatization of good vs evil is not potentially helpful. As long as one isnt scapegoating and projecting ones own faults onto someone else).
I started a thread to discuss the way our current civilization has gone awry, and what kinds of thinking (old and new) could help, if anyone wishes to continue that particular conversation.
Yes it does. Think of the relationship between the word (concept) concrete and actual concrete. Concrete is what it does, it is its function. It is solid, it binds together. But actual concrete is a complex amalgam of diverse formulae, including contaminants. What is actually concrete (i.e. what exemplifies the concept) is actual concrete, including all of its apparently contingent features, adulterants, contaminants. Reality overflows our attempts to encapsulate it. Concrete is what fuses the disparate. What is identical cannot be (therefore does not need to be) more fused than it already is. This is how Collingwood differentiates the abstract unity of a set (a unity of abstractly identical entities) versus the concrete unity of a world, a unity of unique, discrete identities.
Your way of understanding 'concrete' is useful and important, and another approach which is particularly important in relation to esotericism is the understanding of the inner and outer aspects of life, including Jacob Boehme's thinking and other writers, like Meister Eckhart, who spoke of, 'Heaven and hell are within oneself and are to one another as nothing'. The idea of heaven and hell as inner experience are different from the conventional religious understanding of a spatio-temporal dimension in an afterlife, detached from the body.
Jonathan Black, in 'The Secret History of the World' makes reference to the idea of subjectivity and objectivity spoken of by Julian Jaynes in 'The Bicameral Mind: The Origins of Consciousness'. Jaynes spoke of how at one stage of consciousness the division between the inner and outer was not clear, with so much being projected onto gods or God. This is very different from the state of present consciousness, in which the psychological dimension is understood and it is important for considering the nature of concrete thinking in which the differentiation of the inner and outer aspects are extremely blurred.
I guess I am assuming that nature of concrete thinking is related to thinking about the nature of the concrete. I recall discussing Jaynes' theory with my Chaucer professor at an end of term gathering at his home in Rosedale in 1988. I do know it involves the hypothesis that the hemispheres of the brain were not fully integrated thousands of years ago, so that communications between them were perceived as messages which might have been interpreted as coming from gods.
The way in which you combine Hegel and the idea of Hegel is especially useful for considering the concept of the 'supernatural'. It may have led to so so much confusion about an 'out there' zone, separate from experience itself. It may elevate religious and spiritual experiences beyond the realms of nature.
If anything, some aspects of esotericism may seem to reinforce this, such as mysticism as being transcendent, as well as the idea of esotericism as being the 'special' experience of the 'elite' initiates, and detached from imminent experience, including numinous experiences.
When thinking of the concept of the supernatural, one book which I thought to be extremely important is Lyall Watson's, Supernature'. In this work, Watson sees the division between biological nature and so called 'supernatural ' experiences to be be problematic. He argues that sensory and extrasensory experiences may be misunderstood by trying to separate them from the understanding of nature and biology. The underlying idea being that the idea of the supernatural and magic itself may be unhelpful.
Going back to Hegel, in his writing, including his writing on the nature of mind and history, he may have been such an important thinker as seeing reality as imminent, as opposed to transcendent.
Yes, this is a key pillar of his thought. Hegel saw that it was a mistake to try to reduce all of being to the objective. He resisted the modern tendency to say that only what can be quantified truly exists, the reduction of all being to the language of mathematical physics. He also resisted the contrary tendency towards subjective idealism and relativism, seeing this as a path to solipsism and away from truth.
In Hegel, the objective and subjective, nature and mind, are just parts of a greater whole. Neither can be reduced to the other because neither fully exhausts the limits of being. Both are categories within the greater, all encompassing realm of the "Absolute."
The truth is the whole, encompassing both sides of the subjective/objective equation. The truth of the horrors of World War II or the sublimity of Dante's verse can't be summed up in a phase space map of "all the particles" involved in either. Neither is the truth of an oak tree simply an individual's experience of it. Both sides of being lie within the orbit of a greater whole.
But things are only known through mind, and mind is itself subject to greater world-historical tends. Individuals are the accidents of world historic institutions and movements. The universals that shape mind evolve overtime. E.g., the communism of Karl Marx in 1848 is not the communism of our modern era. Likewise, even out understanding of concrete universals like species and genus has evolved with time.
However, I wouldn't say that Hegel was particularly esoteric. He was obscure, to be sure, and at times a very unable communicator for his ideas, but his is still ultimately a philosophy of intelligibility and rationality, albeit one with a sympathy for the mystic.
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To the original question in the thread, I don't think the mystics can be fully fathomed through philosophical analysis. Saint John of the Cross, Jacob Boheme, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Merton these authors can be examined with the tools of philosophy, but ultimately there is a practical element in what they speak of that doesn't fit with what is generally termed "philosophy," (though this element was an essential part of ancient philosophy).
What they speak of can be understood, but not known. Saint John of the Cross talks of darkness needing to engulf reason that faith might light the apophatic way to divine emptiness. The anonymous English author of "The Cloud of Unknowing," states that a cloud of total forgetting must lie between the soul and all things to glimpse the divine "darkness above the light." These, writers, Pseudo Dionysius, etc. might be engaged with on a philosophical level, but that will only ever reveal half the story. A person who reads John of the Cross but who does not fast and reject comforts, who does not deny the self and grow "poor in spirit," is like a person who reads "The Freedom of the Hills," learns about the techniques of rappelling and building anchors, but has never scaled a single cliff or reached a single alpine summit. It seems to me like a "Mary's Room," type difference, the difference between "reading about," and doing, or of "knowing of," and "being."
Mystical literature is often written precisely to produce such experiences, to insert the experiences of the adept into the head of the reader. But this isn't successful if they are approached in a detached manner.
I do think it's important to distinguish between the obscure or purposely vague and the experiential though. "Esoteric" can refer to the vague as well, but it's a different sort of thing from the mystical.
Plotinus offers a good example of that as his "contemplation" is a training for experiencing beauty. It is interesting how he opposed the Gnostics who had their own set of practices for personal 'liberation.' Different views of struggle in the world frame the experiences. Plotinus says this, for instance:
It is possible that in everyday terms people often muddle the idea of esoteric and obscurity, even to the point where philosoph itself is seen as esoterica in comparison with what is seen as conventional logic or thinking. That in itself may make life idea of the esoteric in philosophy as a confusing area, a little outside of the main area of thinking about the nature of mind.
Also, because it combines issues of mind and consciousness with issues which could be seen as being the territory of the philosophy of religion, or transcendent reality, makes it complicated. Some of the writers on mysticism don't help this by the emphasis on going beyond language, because philosophy is involved with conceptual and linguistic understanding.
One of the books which I have found to be fairly helpful in this respect is 'Cosmic Consciousness', by Robert Bucke, because he writes case studies of certain individuals experiences, which includes many great creative individuals as opposed to framing it in a specifically religious or spiritual perspective.
The way you describe the difference between the Gnostics and Plotinus, demonstrates the divergences in esotericism. In particular, it points to the way in which attitudes to the body are viewed.
Many esoteric thinkers have been in favour of contemplation, meditation and going beyond the body' in the development of the spirit, especially the rejection of the 'higher' self rather than the 'lower' self. Gnosticism is a little different and tension over how the body and sexuality may be viewed. Similarly, tantric thinking has a very different approach here to some other Eastern esoteric schools of thinking.
This means that the esoteric traditions have many intricacies in connection with philosophy. Plotinus was a significant writer and his influence affected ideas within religious and philosophical thinking, and its complex interplay. There are probably so many crossovers, involving the transition of ideas crossculturally on an esoteric level as well as in organised religion.
Jaynes' theory is also important for thinking about psychosis itself because it also suggests that people heard voices. Even within psychiatry there is a recognition of differences between hallucinations and pseudo hallucinations.
At times, I have had pseudo hallucinations, such as on the borderline of sleep. However, when I experimented with LSD briefly I did hear literal.voices, which seemed to correspond with my own thoughts. It did make understanding between inner and outer experience very confusing.
It does seem to suggest a very deep neuropsychological basis for understanding of the nature of reality. It probably also connects with the ideas of Iain Gilchrist in 'The Master and the Emissary', which looks at hemispheres in conjunction with developments in thinking, including the history of philosophy itself.
I agree that views of the 'body' seem to always be in the different narratives. I was taking the Count's remarks about detachment as an invitation to see experiences as a life beyond their various descriptions and that relationship makes comparisons even more difficult than is presented by different theories of the real. I do believe that different practices lead to different experiences, but I am very much limited by what I can attempt as my experiment. The sense of boundaries in this regard does not give me a geography of other places. I question the idea of a global view that would permit such a map. I submit the example of how slippery "materialism" is in different narratives as evidence for my case.
So, without a quote whom you are responding to is unclear. I will take this as general discussion then. But your 'you' is no one in particular here.
So, at time you seem to be saying that you think Hegel is onto something (e.g. correct) about the supernatural being imminent (e.g. accessible and natural), in which case I agree. Then at times you say religious and spiritual things are 'elevated' beyond the realms of nature, in the same paragraph even. I disagree. I too realize there is a nature juxtaposition or Hegelian dichotomy here. But, for me, and given what you seem to be saying most, for your interpretation of Hegel as well, there is NOT an assertion finally that anything we experience is not within reality. That is my assertion also. Clearly, any experience we have is within reality.
Dividing 'reality' into parts is always an immoral error of fear. Fear, the limiting force, is trying in its excitement to separate in order to understand. The concept of reduction is a fear process (like all thought). The person at real harmony with truth does not do this willingly except as an experiment, for example. Such a person correctly keeps their understanding of unity in place even as they pretend to separate connected issues. The synthesis is respected before the dichotomy that produced it is examined. There was an origin to reduce from, and the polite and aware observer is not allowed to disregard that unity.
Quoting Jack Cummins
This is a mistake in thinking, to me. This tendency to separate 'for real' in one's thoughts is dangerous and the immoral error of fear.
Also here again, as usual, is the conflation of the two types of worthinesses, a central error within reality. The intrinsic worthiness of all, of each piece of reality is built in, it being an inseparable part of all. But the functional worthiness of each piece depends upon the locus of choice, the delusional entity we refer to as the self.
When you speak of elites that have a different skillset than ... the non-elites, when you speak even of their special experience, you are not, repeat not, saying anything other than they are more aware of the unity that is the synthesis. Any, repeat any delusional locus of choice (ego, self) is only and always sitting amid the same experience effectively as any other. It is not, repeat not the amount of metichlorians in the bloodstream that are causal to this effect. It is the effort of the execution of free will only. Morality's best indicator is the effort put into the choice made. That is the MAXIMAL part of my argument before.
Further, there is nothing at all magical about this. It simply stands to basic reasoning that the more and more virtues you tie in to a single choice made by the locus of choice, the harder and harder, the more effort, that choice would take. Think of it as a reverse gravity north pole on a sphere and this image is particularly compelling. It works very well as a visual aid. I still think it's too simple but for that you might have to read my book. So, divide the sphere into discreet wedges (also delusional). After all the only non-delusion is perfection, unity, all, God, whatever you prefer to call that thing, all of it. Now draw straight lines up at least, but maybe hyperbolically outward into the void in which the sphere is suspended in your mind. You end up in one case with a cylinder with one half sphere at the bottom, or in the hyperbolic case with a kind of circular pyramidal structure with indeed a partial sphere as its bottom. The length of any line drawn making either is similar to effort in the northern direction. That is the direction of the good. But now the real task is shown.
The original north pole of the sphere, as 'high' as any point in our dual model (straight and hyperbolic paths both shown). But that perfection is only a single point. Now we are left wondering what all that space is around it if that space is not perfection also. It is not perfection is my assertion. Why?
The why is the effort is hard. Think of effort now as gravity, but its clearly reverse gravity is it not? As things or choices, actions, become more and more hard they are less and less likely to be chosen. Your non-elites in your paragraph above are unwilling (not unable finally) to expend the effort to do the right thing. They remain 'blilssfully' unaware. And there are so many of them, that the wise elites, the more aware ones, are thus made rare. Quelle suprise!
The trick is that all, repeat all virtues are required to be at their highest effort to reach perfection. Leave out even one and we miss the point (quite literally in the model and figuratively in speech). That combination of literal and figurative is a hint at that same nature of perfection itself. The nature of the Hegelian dichotomy is another clear hint. Depending on the way a circle is measured how many 'units' are contained in its circumference? We could restate Zeno's paradox here but it to simply follows the demands of my model, of the sphere model. The now "Standard Solution" for that paradox is to accept that the runner can, repeat can complete the effort of passing through all those infinities. This is nothing at all but the infinite nature of choice itself, a law of the universe.
What Achilles needs to run through the infinities is effort. The effort simply must touch on and utilize as many virtues as the hero can bring to bear on subjective experience. Somewhere amid that effort enough is enough and each infinity is crossed. The reason why each limit of fear, each delusional barrier is crossed, is that one virtue is transcendent and unifying to another. When we consider the limit of one virtue, the other virtue makes easy progress. This is the very nature of reality itself.
Thus it is the effort missing in the non-elites that is the immorality. It would likewise be an immoral choice to assume that the non-elites are not capable, them being possessed of the same infinitude of choice, but merely choosing to put in less effort. All of reality fits this model.
Quoting Jack Cummins
As mentioned, I entirely agree with this. The problem is that separation, reduction, etc deny the synthesis of unity which is the only thing that really finally is in existence. All the smoke and mirrors of failed choices within the subjective realm cloud the proper grasp of perfection. That is precisely because it takes perfect effort to arrive at perfection. There is no other reason.
Perfect effort is so hard that even the best of us now elite thinkers on it are probably tragicomically wrong in our assessments of it. We should remain doubtful of even our best efforts because the maintenance of that doubt is the fear amplitude necessary for proper awareness and preparation, even joy itself. To seek comfort and lower the excitement of doubt/fear is immoral cowardice defined.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Again, I simply agree. There is nothing about perfection that is not accessible to every moral agent. We are to blame for everything at all times without exception. It only takes greater effort from us amid choice to 'get past' our immoral failure of laziness.
PS: Structure often contains a built in ease to facilitate moral agency. This is why humans exist as opposed to only the hydrogen atom. So, my earlier example of mitichlorians may be wrong, probably is wrong. The development of mitichlorians would then be, when they develop, a terrible thing that the observers can find that would then suggest to them incorrectly that only such entities could use the force (infinite choice). What is present in the immoral choice/belief that should not be is again the limited and limiting nature of fear's immoral cowardice. In 'seeing' more, in being more 'aware', the fear type limits all of reality and cut's off the rest as insufficient. This is the cowardly mistake of fear. It's trivial to understand, once you accept it. The 'elite' observer might then proclaim 'These Jedi are beyond normal humans! These elites are superior!' And the elites would be right. But they are only right in one limited and immoral way. That is that functionally there is more agency baked in to the Jedi than to someone without such concentrations of mitichlorians in their blood. And the mistake is that this cannot be then used to declare intrinsic worthiness is some kind of sham, that the elites are superior period and finally (they are not). The infinite choice still exists in the lesser form(s) and must be acknowledged and harmonized with. Drawing the line is the mistake. The limit of fear is the mistake, finally. Respect the synthesis as a first principle!
I am sorry that I do not quote in my replies. It is because it does not seem possible on my particular model of phone. I would probably need to be able to connect it to a mouse, like on a laptop. Also, your answers are good insofar as they are detailed but make many varying points so I would probably feel I need to make more than one post to address them. Saying that, I hope that my posts don't come across as totally lacking, as I do see writing on a forum.as being different to fuller forms of writing. Some write extremely short replies and I tend towards neither extremes.
As far as Hegel and the idea of the imminent I think that there is an ambiguity in how he views it. In some ways, he leans towards naturalism but not in the way that most people do in the Twentieth First century and that is probably a reflection of his own historic context. He was leading the way in coming out of grand metaphysical dramas and schemes but was prior to the paradigm of current scientific thinking. In this, he was involved in a process of demystification but this picture was only just starting to appear. Since then, it has become far more prominent with so many shifts backwards and forwards in many ways.
Regarding the idea of the whole and the parts, it may be a mixed issue. To go beyond academic thinkers it is a bit like the song by the Waterboys of seeing, 'The Whole of the Moon', which may be symbolic of the issue. In esotericism, patterns and correspondences, as in the pictures of astrology. It also involves the idea of the microcosm as a reflection of the microcosm, which goes back to the thinking of Plato.
As far as seeing the whole, this may be challenged by the idea of pluralism and the various viewpoints of the observers. Some may see there being a 'perfect' or attainment of perfection, but whether this exists objectively is open to dispute. Members of spiritual disciplines may believe in perfection but the idea of elitism is a particular issue. Certain thinkers may have seen their own view as 'superior', but it does raise questions about the politics of knowledge. In relation to esotericism, there may have been power elites who were able to maintain such positions. For example, in Catholicism, there was the power of the Vatican. In this way, the 'secret knowledge' may have maintained elitism, as opposed to those who lacked knowledge, which was more predominant when education was less accessible to those at the bottom of the hierarchies of power.
As far as fear comes in, fear operates in different subtle ways. It can lead to the acceptance of the norm, but it can be used as a political tool. There may have been an interplay, such as in the idea of the way in which ideas of heaven and hell were transmitted as being about everlasting reward or punishment rather than as mental states of bliss or agony.
From p. 1 of this thread ...
Quoting 180 Proof
i.e. What does "esoterica" significantly add (or subtract) that "exoterica" is missing in philosophy?
:chin:
Also this post, Jack ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/877179
I used the term 'esoterica', which is a rather vague one, as used in the magazine published by the Theosophical Society. But, in relation to your question of the esoteric as opposed to exoterica, it may come down to a different framework for philosophy. The esoteric is often based on spiritual teachings for development of disciples on a specific path. The exoteric, is in contrast, based on a set of teachings which are aimed at the social organisation.
The underlying difference is an emphasis or focus, which may raise more questions about the social construction of knowledge. It is likely that the people who see themselves as the initiates or disciples see the ideas as being more about a quest or way to 'truth', as a serious focus in life. When this is levelled down to the esoteric it probably gets watered down to a structure for social conventions and norms.
In relation to this thread, it may come down to examining the validity of ideas and themes in the esoteric traditions. There is still an interest in the esoteric in spirituality and religion. However, it is slightly separate from philosophy in some ways, which has followed the trends of academic science. Nevertheless, a lot of important ideas and developments had their roots in forms of esoteric traditions. So, it may be whether Western and Eastern esoteric traditions has anything important and significant for thinking in the Twentieth first century for the scope of the philosophical imagination or not?
I was actually going to make a thread on just this subject. I think that, as we try to get more precise and definite in our language, we can begin to lose our grasp on a description. In part, I think this has to do with our cognitive limitations. There is only so much information we can consume at once. We rely on compression to understand complex ideas, and this in turn means that we rely on a partially subconscious understanding of terms that we do not fully "unpack" in consciousness. E.g., if you have studied "Hegel's dialectical" you don't need to fully unpack what it entails to evaluate passages mentioning it.
What seems like obscurity, or poetry, then, can be a means of communicating a more dynamic message. We can communicate things that, if we tried to be more definite, would be lost in an avalanche of detail. For example, I could describe my son's water bottle to you as "orange and deep blue, with little sharks with space helmets on floating around in space on it." You don't have a great idea what it looks like, but you have the essentials. If I tried to describe it without referring to the dynamic whole, i.e. that it is a water bottle of such and such color, and rather turned to describing minutia,listing off the hex codes of the various colors used, etc. you might have no idea what sort of object I was even describing.
So much milage can be made out of obscure thinkers like Heraclitus because their poetic style is very dynamic. Similarly, Dante can communicate a wonderful picture of medieval philosophy that is enhanced by its poetic nature.
Heisenberg had a similar sort of intuition re language that he tried to set down.
I would just add that bandwidth is also an issue here. You can't hold a long description all in your mind at once. Poetics help with compression.
:100: :clap: :smile: Couldnt have said it any better than both of your responses!
Your posts are fine. Yeah, I tried to figure a way to help you quote on a phone, but, the infrastructure to support good quoting is not on this site, as far as I can tell. There should be a ctrl key combination that means 'highlight for a quote everything in this single post'. That is sorely needed. Another function that is needed is a sub-thread list follow function. It would be another ctrl key sequence that first found your first post in a thread and then with repeated presses following any and all replies to that chronologically within the thread. I am a developer with 40 years of experience now. I know the functions a very good app needs to be effective because I use so many apps and get so very very frustrated with them.
I think forum writing for most is most often fairly weak, almost like facebook or social media posts. I am not attacking you, but, really addressing the points in a dialogue has its BEST incarnation in forums. There is no better place to get detailed. You are not going to wrote a book of dialogues, and if you do, you would start with an online forum to collect them. Malkovich, Malkovich!
Quoting Jack Cummins
I get it, but, none of what you said invalidates or makes a strong point for imminent not meaning a focus on the present tense. So, if there is some other meaning I missed, let me know.
I get it that anger, the present tense emotion, the emotion of imminent intent, staying present, being, is denying desire-side chaos puzzles of imagination. Imagination is desire side effort. So, of course, part of anger demands that we should not want. Wanting is for someone that unwisely believes that we do not have infinite free will. Wanting is for someone that believes they are insufficient unto themselves. The reflection of desire is thus worthlessness. This is a law of nature.
So, I get it that Hegel used the concept of the imminent to fight off mystery and mysticism's self-indulgent dramas.
IME, philosophizing is like playing Chess (or Go) in which critical paths (i.e truths) are only "hidden" in plain sight by the dialectics of complementary & oppositional moves; thus, IMO, there aren't any "mysteries", just intractable uncertainties (i.e. ineffable / unanswerable questions) for us to play out (or reason together about). For me, Count, talk of "hidden knowledge" "spirituality" "poetry" "the whole at a glance" "mystical" etc with respect to philosophy (as per the OP) confuses and mystifies rather than clarifies, or makes explicit (i.e. problematizes), what we are actually doing when we philosophize (as per e.g. freethought ... Spinoza, Hume ... Witty, Dewey ... Q. Meillassoux), that is, I think, dialectically proposing 'rational-critical suppositions' which are, as much as possible, free of dogmatic cant, pseudo-science sophistry & occulting mystagoguery. :sparkle: :eyes: :mask:
Great answer. In fact, we don't just lose the complexity of words, we lose touch with the complex-totality of the reality upon which words are based. Esoterica are one way we have of preserving the ineffable that for the moment exceeds our grasp. Perhaps until such time as deeper understanding and experience cloaks them in more familiar garb.
As far as forum writing goes, it is so different from so many other forms. The reason why I have used this forum is because I find that the dialogue with so many people throughout the world makes it so good. When I was on academic courses, there was less, or a different kind of intensity. I never really achieved any clarity of thinking. I still find it hard to pin down a particular perspective above all, but I do find that, in conjunction with my own reading, engagement with TPF enables me to analyse my own thinking more critically.
The idea of the imminent may be about the present primarily; it may correspond with Eckart Tolle's argument about time, in which amidst the perception of past, present, and future, it is only possible that perceive in the present 'now' consciousness. Both ideas of past and future may be a potential for both romanticism and fear. The scope of eternity may also be seen as being about a static achievement while a sense of eternity as immanence may involve a contemplative picture of blending in with the endless aspects of life and its flow. It may be a way of seeing beyond desire itself.
Perhaps the latter is the result of unreasonable expectations about the former. As if by asking a question there must then be an answer. The natural sense of awe and wonder is lost. Replaced by artifactual realms beyond and a desire for escape and transcendence.
So it seems to me.
Your post raises the whole question of what is trivial and what is not in the understanding of life. The approach of the esoteric or exoteric may or not be important here, as it is such a wide area of exploration and interpretation.
My own slant on this was that my initial divergences from Catholicism were the more with esoteric thought as a way of going beyond literalism. Esotericism was also a way of going beyond the fundamentalism of many other religious ideas. I did begin to have many conversations with an atheist friend and could also the validity of thinking beyond God or spiritual perspectives, and my thinking does shift a lot.
The question of mysteries or philosophy as a game of chess is an interesting metaphorical question. Ancient thinkers often emphasised mysteries, going back to the development of Egyptian thinking and mystery schools. In the present time, the idea of mystery may seem strange. I probably do gravitate towards the idea of mystery, as I once wrote a thread on whether philosophical mysteries can be solved at all, focusing on the idea of God, life after death and free will. Such ideas are answered so subjectively because there is no proof. How much one sees mystery as a complete open arena for imagination or just a little bit of a gap may vary, and the tension between the esoteric and exoteric aspects of thinking. The esoteric traditions are more inclined to come from a contemplative approach, in line with the awe and wonder of the ancients. Chess as a game and art involves cleverness and the quality seen as smart thinking. However, there is a danger that it can become too superficial a matter of cleverness, or rhetoric. Most probably, my own perspective is that we need both awe and wonder and smartness for philosophy to be an in depth quest for understanding life. I am not wishing to suggest that your own approach is superficial as I know that you have read widely and in depth.
I guess that I see the area of the esoteric as an important area for getting to grips with essential recurrent themes. Of course, it is possible to skip over the division between the esoteric and exoteric, just as the differences between Western and Eastern thought don't have to be a specific point of focus.
:up: :up:
I missed this response of yours earlier.
In your first sentence you seem to suggest that belief is, or at least can be, knowledge. I can see a sense in which belief might be thought to be a kind of knowledge: our beliefs constitute lenses through which we experience and understand, that is, know, the world. But that is the knowing of acquaintance, familiarity, not the kind of propositional knowing I had in mind when I asked the question.
It's not clear to me on what basis you think the noumenon-phenomenon "problem" is equivalent to the "mind/ body problem". For me the former just represents the limits of our knowledge and as such is not a problem, but a demarcation or delimitation.
The absolute nature of things is an intractable mystery in one sense, but in another it can simply be seen to be closed to us as a matter of definition: that is that we cannot by mere definition see beyond our perceptions, experience and the judgements that evolve out of those. Anything that we project into that "absolute" space must be confabulation.
"The simple truths of the material world" and "the quantum and the cosmic" are all of them firmly in the domain of the empirical and the logical; they cannot transport us beyond the realm of our own experience and imagination.
Of course we can, via imagination and dialectical reasoning, conceive of matter and spirit in various ways, but none of that constitutes intersubjectively decidable knowledge.
:100: :up:
:100: :up: :up:
Quoting Jack Cummins
Have you ever considered the 'left-handed' school, or counter-tradition, of freethinking in philosophy (a wiki link is below)? Once the insight had struck me that "answers" were mosty just questions' way of generating more questions, I finally gave up the "religious" pursuit of "answers" (and stopped titling at windmills!) for philosophizing reasoning to the best, or most probative, questions only about what natural beings (encompassed by nature and with limited natural capacities) can learn about nature and therefore about how to flourish. :fire:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freethought
NB: Also consider both the Buddhist Parable of the Poisoned Arrow and Epicurean Tetrapharmakon as ancient examplars, East and West respectively, of questions of flourishing (i.e. eudaimonia) in spite of a perennial lack of "answers to mysteries" ...
:death: :flower:
The movement of freethinking is a useful one, in spite of its link with freemasonry. As far as the idea of flourishing despite the presence of mysteries, it is important because there is the opposite danger of becoming unable to do so.
The worst possibility is to become so burdened by the nature of philosophical problems as to be incapacitated or dysfunctional. At an an extreme point, it would be possible to become so overwhelmed as if one needed answers in order to live. This may defeat the purpose of life as a quest rather than as a solution. It is not as if answers can always be found and this not mean that the questions are not worth asking, for generating creativity.
Do you fear becoming "overwhelmed" by particular questions or inquiry as such?
At the moment, I don't feel overwhelmed by questions, and the actual existential aspects of life are greater. However, there have been times in which I was in the past, especially when working night shifts. I used to agonise and, generally, I find that night thinking is more fear based. But, saying that, I do really enjoy philosophy and the exploration of new ways of seeing and framing 'reality'. The mysteries themselves are part of the adventure.
It is the knowing of things that by their nature or current status resist propositional knowledge. The fact that you reject this kind of knowledge in favour of propositional is perhaps the problem. Since that's the gist of the OP I'll just reiterate my response.
I suspect one person's "mysteries" (pace G. Marcel) are another person's misconceptions ... or false positives (D. Dennett) or nostalgias (A. Camus).
One person's blindness is another person's wilful ignorance.
One person's exit is another person's entrance.
Misconceptions and blindness may have variable effects for people, depending on circumstances and intention. Fantasies and delusions may inspire great acts and art and the worst atrocities at all. It may be questionable whether it is better to be blindly inspired or let down by the exposure of the secrets and lies or survive the exposure of raw harsh truths.
The acts of martyrdom may not have been taken on without a belief in a literal afterlife. It is questionable whether many current thinkers would be prepared to die like Socrates. The exoteric quest is more in favour of the needs and rights of the ego and 'monkey mind', as opposed to the heavenly, or inner treasures and quest for 'truth'. And, of course, an atheist may be able to go 'through the eye of a needle' in the search for truth and, esoteric atheism is a possibility.
When in Plato's Phaedo Socrates says:
(64a)
this should be seen in light of what he said in the Apology:
(40c).
Not knowing what will be, the focus of the philosophical life must be on the here and now. On living a good life, an examined life. If one lives a good life then there should be no fear of punishment if there happens to be a next life. But if dying is the end then we should not squander what is given to us by living in expectation of rewards that may never be.
Quoting Jack Cummins
The quest for truth cannot occur at some other time in some other place. One interpretation of the claim that the kingdom of heaven is at hand is that it is to be found within, here and now. To look elsewhere, away from oneself, is to turn away from where one's responsibilities lie and one's inner treasures are to be found.
I find it hard to know how Socrates and Plato thought of immortality. I was taught by a tutor on the philosophy of religion that immortality may consist of life after death until a resurrection of 'the body at the end of the world. The tutor was a Christian, influenced by Plato.
The idea of a 'heaven within' seems important in the interpretation of the Christian teaching, 'That it is easier for 'a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into the kingdom of God'. It is based on esoteric thinking although I was taught this in secondary Catholic school religious studies. Of course, it is in contrast to the exoteric wealth and splendour of the Vatican and the architecture of Rome.
The idea of inner wealth of 'heaven within' is also captured in the Buddhist emphasis on nonattatchment. It is not the wealth itself which is being criticised ultimately, but the value being placed on material wealth as opposed to the treasure within'..
The fact of the matter is: they don't know, but there are serious problems that cast doubt on the possibility. As with Forms and particulars one is the difference between the Form Soul and the soul of an individual. Another is the difference between a person and his soul. Even if the soul is immortal that does not mean that the person is. In one formulation Socrates' death means the separation of body and soul. His soul can become the soul of something else (Phaedo 82a-b), but what would it mean for Socrates to become an ass?
Quoting Jack Cummins
There is no such thing as "the 'Christian teaching". There are various teaching within the NT, inspired teachings many of which were destroyed by the Church Fathers as heretical, and teaching that developed later such as the "official doctrines" determined by the Council of Nicaea. In addition there are the practices of esoteric interpretation and mystical Christian teachings.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I tend to stay away from such comparisons where similarities are pointed out and differences ignored. In addition there is the problem of translation. Terms such as 'heaven' are typically unduly inflluenced by Western Christian perspectives. I do not know enough to sort it all out and suspect that most others cannot either.
I have read 'Phaedo' a few years ago and did read some of the thread on it on this forum, which I found helpful in thinking about the book.
The entire idea of 'soul' is a very complex idea and used in such varying ways, including the question of the individual soul and beyond. I managed to think about it more clearly in relation to the transpersonal school of thought, including the ideas of Thomas More, which is more about the depths of human nature than a literal entity which survives as an individual construct.
You are quite right to say that there are no clear Christian teachings because there are so many cross currents of thought, ranging from influences as diverse as Egyptian idea and the blending of ideas from Plato and Aristotle, such as in the thinking of Augustine and Aquinas, as well as ideas of Plotinus and many influences.
It is probably wise to stay away from comparisons of Christianity and Buddhism which gloss over differences. I may have been influenced by such texts because I have read theosophical authors. Also, I probably dipped in and out of various Eastern texts in a rather chaotic manner, including those such as 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead'. In some ways, the academic study of the comparative religion is probably the most thorough. I did do a year of undergraduate studies in religious studies but that only covered the mere basics. Certainly, when studying Hinduism I was aware of the problems of translation and was at least fortunate to have a tutor who had studied Sanskrit.
There is a danger of oversimplification and generalisations in approaching the various traditions. I am sure that this can result in some very confused thinking. I am sure that I have blended ideas together in a very haphazard way at times and it is easy to end up with some very strange conclusions, which may show the dangers of the speculative imagination in philosophy.
If you are not merely referring to know-how or to belief and the fact that our worldviews may to some degree change the way we actually live and perceive and judge the world, can you give me an example of such non-propositional knowledge?
I don't know what "problem" you are referring to: is it perhaps the fact that I apparently disagree with you?
Just to be clear, I don't favour the propositional over know-how or knowledge by acquaintance, or the ways in which our conceptions and beliefs may condition our experience and judgement, my argument all along has merely been that there is no intersubjectively decidable knowledge apart from the empirical and logical; the rest is subjective.
Afficionados of esoterica generally don't want to admit that, though.
Believers in intuitive knowledge don't agree with your definition of knowledge. Correct. Propositional knowledge is a latecomer. Long, long before anyone ever had the notion that there was propositional knowledge people knew things. Every day people make decisions based on intuition and in the absence of adequate evidence. That's the nature of life. Propositional knowledge is inadequate.
Those two conditions are what the "afficionados" do not wish to acknowledge in relation to so-called "higher" knowledge, if not in relation to personal intuitions.
I don't recall where esoteric knowledge became infallibly divine revelation in this discussion. That's a straw man by me, and not reflective of how I view intuitive knowledge.
Esoteric knowledge is usually claimed to be knowledge by revelation or enlightenment, and hence.
by implication, to be infallible. The very concept of gnosis, direct knowing, exemplifies this character.
I don't see any evidence that those extreme forms of esotericism are what is in question here. However I can see this degenerating into a mishmash of historical and critical terminologies and I don't see the benefit of that. Most people would consider loop-quantum gravity to be an esoteric topic. Its very complexity renders it inaccessible. What is esoteric for some is not necessarily for others. Which may be the point.
So, what do you think counts as esoteric knowledge then? Or can you give an example of what you would count as an esoteric tradition?
Difficult physics and math subjects are not esoteric in my book, they are just difficult.
Well, yes, that is the hope. The lay or professional-adjacent thinkers interested in a topic are actually more engaging and less ridiculously critical than academia. Academia is really a servant of the elite trends. In that way, academia always fails us all. The academic rebel is much much more likely to be actually helping society. The heavy hand of order and hierarchy is far too typically strangling truth from academia. The thing that helps real groundbreakers is the very new nature of their work. This is an unforeseen problem for elites, because the rolling up the accreditation of new information to academia is a way to cheat truth, not to help its being revealed. Something new gets out of hand too quick for them to cap by its very nature. It's fun and great for everyone when that happens.
Quoting substantivalism
Indeed, but he stops short as far as I am aware of declaring the why of all of that. He does realize the importance of Now.
Quoting substantivalism
I call now, the eternal now. We cannot escape now. If there is a new future, then there is a new now. So even though now seems more finite somehow than the past or the future, it is not.
"intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest."
So while you may not agree that a difficult subject matter that is likely to be understood by only a small number of people counts as esoteric knowledge, it fits well with the definition. I believe Heisenberg thought that quantum theory was esoteric, in that it housed inner-mysteries, even for its initiates....
Knowledge will always retain a unique subjective element because it exists as known by a subject, and nothing in reality lives in a pure abstraction. The meaning of 2+2 might be invariant, but its meaningfulness will always be as unique as every situation of application is.
As Hanover just mentioned on the Kant thread:
If we concede there are conditions for our knowledge and our knowledge is subject to those conditions and if those conditions are peculiar to the perceiver, how is our knowledge of anything objective?
I concur completely with this assessment. Knowledge always exists exactly to the extent that it is enacted...by someone.
:roll:
Neural networks function precisely by being able to detect and utilize connections which are not trivially evident, but hidden with the complex datasets that are the representations of things. Who is really to say how many "hidden" connections actually exist in the fabric of our reality? Does the fact that we have already discovered so many mean that we should stop looking? Or that we should look even harder?
What kind of people seek out esoteric knowledge? People who have questions that exoteric (accepted) knowledge does not answer. Esoteric traditions often involve learning detailed rites and detailed normative schemas, suggesting how we ought to react and respond, to live. Who is to say those are incorrect? Freemasonry exhorts values of charity and integrity. Even if the only value of esoteric knowledge is the subjective benefit conferred by the knowledge itself...isn't that enough?
Thanks for your reply and the whole issue of the esoteric and academic are an interesting contrast, especially in relation to the development of knowledge. Esotericism, apart from an approach of the 'inner' may involve certain elite groups. This may apply to the academic as well, and there may have been important power allegiances.
I wonder how all of this stands in the information age. There is more of a demand for transparency and going beyond 'secrecy'. I wonder how this will come into effect, and what will remain 'secret' behind the scenes? Also, the information age gives so much access to knowledge, and how will this affect individuals' understanding? Does it mean that the quest for philosophical knowledge will be about assimilation of knowledge alone? This could be very different from the inner searching for meaning and knowledge.
I also wonder how how much of understanding of the esoteric, as opposed to the exoteric, stands in relation to the information age. Knowledge as 'out there ' may be so different. It is so much more about a widest view of knowledge, and it may be so much an exoteric quest, of information. To some extent, there is the issue as to whether the exoteric aspects of knowledge may be viewed witn a complete loss of the esoteric? Also, there is the question as to whether the 'esoteric" is to be understood simply as an aspect of the psychological, or in other ways of philosophy thinking?
The concept of the 'esoteric ' has indeed covered so much and been used and disbursed in so many ways. Its use probably goes back to Hermeticism and Plato. Here, Plato, spoke of 'forgotten knowledge', as if the ancients may have been aware in a way which was becoming ' lost'.
So, the idea of the esoteric and esoterica is a question for 'inner' vs 'outer', as well as aspects of archaic and future possibilities. I even wonder about the psychosocial aspects. Those who are marginalised, as well as struggling, may have more interest in the esoteric, as opposed to those thriving in mainstream societies. So, it may even involve socio- political aspects of philosophy.
Here, I am not wishing to reduce meaning to the socio- political aspects of life experiences. However, ideas come into play in such a complex way, involving the entire psychosocial and political dimensions of thinking.
The art of philosophy is important but it involves all of these facets of life. The 'esoteric ' may involve the 'rejected', especially ideas of subversity. It is such an area for thinking, and may involve many aspects of critical thinking about religion, politics and so many assumptions which may exist in the nature of human social life.
Hegel says this:
(Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, 13)
But this is only one way in which the term is used and it stands in opposition to others.
Yes, this sounds reminiscent of Derrida and Foucault.
PoS is on my to-reread list. Unfortunately my already much re-read copy is falling apart. I'm thinking about duplicating my entire collection of German Idealism on the Kindle. Electronic textual notes are really starting to grow on me.
Derrida and Foucault are important as means of perspectives of critical thinking. If anything, what I see as being the worst possibility here, is where ideas are reduced, even beyond the spectrum of the exoteric and esoteric.
The outer life and its ideas are important, but when it comes down to outer, or conventional. norms of meaning and understanding, so much may become lost. Those who exist on the peripheries of social may be marginalised. The question of the esoteric, may involve so much about the contexts and framing of meaning.
Which is why I find the esoteric can only always be fallacious by default to those who fall back onto the belief that they live in a fundamentally meaningless world. Here is one example to help illustrate the point:
All the various empirical sciences would unravel into worthlessness, into lack of authority, were the notion of objectivity to be eliminated from their practicesscientific knowledge at that juncture becoming nothing more nor less than yet another persons or cohorts purely partial and biased opinion regarding that which is inductive. And yet, the very notion of objectivityof a complete lack of partiality and biasis itself an esoteric subject: It is an ideal striven for in the sciences, in journalism, in jurisprudence and the very act of judging cases (this at least in democracy-aspiring societies). Yet what this ideal of a completely objective awareness or of a completely objective judgment (both of which pertain to the inner workings of consciousness rather than to a commonly accessible physicality) is supposed to befor emphasis, an ideal of objectivity toward which we can then either be closer to or further fromis anything but exoteric knowledge. Yet I dont see how one can in the same breath uphold in non-contradictory manners that a) objectivity as concept/ideal is a meaningless construct and that b) the empirical sciences are any form of genuine authority regarding the physical world.
How one frames the meaning of the term objectivity will then greatly determine how one discerns good from bad (or pseudo-) science, good from bad journalism, and good from bad judges (etc.).
Yet, for lack of better terms, the notion of objectivity as here mentioned remains strictly applicable to spiritual rather than physical realms: to the psyche and many of its so far esoteric aspectsto include the potential of ego becoming completely impartial and unbiased awareness and, thus, fully egoless. (As an apropos: which can for example bring to mind esoteric notions such as that of ego-death.)
The question of the esoteric and default issues of meaning is a good question. Meaning, or lack of meaning are arbitrary and objective, and esoteric ideas are variable in this sense. The notion of a way may depend on some objective basis of meaning amidst this. The subjective and objective meanings of 'pathways' of the psyche and spirituality are so variable, within different frameworks. Ego death itself is questionable here as well, as to what extent it about going beyond conventional ideas of 'self' and wider frames of reference, as seen in the various transpersonal perspectives.
The usage of 'esoteric' relevant to this thread is in connection to religious or spiritual teachings and metaphysical claims, not to disciplines like quantum mechanics and relativity; the latter are disciplines that yeild predictions whose obtaining or failure to obtain are observable.
You seem to be, whether willfully or not, muddying the waters.
Actually, it is in relation to philosophy specifically, which covers a lot of ground. Including I think the general meaning of esotericity and esoterica. The OP and I had no problem establishing a fruitful dialog in the context of my observations. Perhaps it is you who misunderstands.
What I am finding is that the information age, or at least this most modern pulse of it, which includes the key piece, the personal smartphone, makes communication trivial, but a burden at the same time.
I remember the first time I felt like I was a programmer and a paramedic at the same time. Some idiotic manager dared to call me after hours for something I had warned management about. I told him exactly how I felt about that. I was too skilled at the time, too clutch for them to fire me, but the writing was on the wall. The proximity of everything empowers the sellouts. I had some half rate hack of a developer in a meeting later that year calling me out for disloyalty. He literally said the company owed me nothing and I owed the company solid 9-5 work. I just smiled at him and it wasn't me that humorously asked if he had his iron cross on his Gestapo badge, but I did laugh a little too loud. Double brownnosing points for delivery of foolishness with a straight face. Crosshair believes it! Good soldiers follow orders. {Bad Batch - Star Wars}
These days I have Gen Z types telling me that I cannot join their facetime groups because I'd just be an old creeper. When all respect for depth is lost, only the trivial versions of success are lauded. Wisdom is easily cast aside as too hard, not for everyone. And today's elites enforce that trend. They have no use for wisdom, or so they think. I guess dog eat dog is fun, until you're long of tooth and tired of fighting younger competition. It never was fun for me. Maybe there is a cycle. Maybe the esoteric mysteries shift in and out of vogue. But I see interest and respect for it diminishing at the same time as almost everyone realizing there is an empty hole right in the center of who they are.
It seems to me one big thing is true, there is no time left for grace. Right when you get the time, the dog eat dog thing will pop and murder you. I guess there is always a meringue though, a froth of excess in the 'winners' win that yields a kind of eddy in which the new version of wise can flourish for a time. But it's no longer enough time to be a wizard on a hill in his tower. These days being a champion of the esoteric truths is more like capture the flag. You can hide and run fast and maybe even be the one who lucks out and gets cover fire from allies you didn't know you had, and then you ring that bell, once.
I find that life and ideas have become rather shallow and 'trivialised' in the information age, with clicks of smart phone, Wikipedia and links. It seems to be the opposite of esotericism, with so much information readily available, with often little reference to the specifics of ideas and usefulness of the particular significance for understanding. Of course, I am wary of over generalisations, especially as many people on this forum do read widely, and engage on a deeper level as opposed to some social media sites.
It may be about being able to dip into ideas in the information age, but still being able to pursue ideas in a deeper way, and this may be the potential artistry. It may not be easy though, and I have to admit that I still enjoy time alone with a paper book as a companion, as a way of 'tapping into' the creative mindset of the writer.
I agree entirely.
I have begun in my life to quit games and social circles that despite my insistence on making things harder and thus more meaningful and fun (for me at least), continue to dumb things down and deny the incredible depth required to suffer and grow.
I think Soren Kierkegaard had a similar sentiment to us both, where he was saying like, 'I don't want to make things easier. I am here to make things harder, by choice.' to paraphrase.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I do as well. But is that not a depth of immersion still in keeping with our increasing of nuances? I think it is.
:up: Yes. Thanks for that.
If someone asks what is this knowledge you seek?, does it ALWAYS have to be in the form of information that can be outputted from one brain into packets of words, which are fed into other brains to download exactly the file that was in the first brain (if it is to be considered worthwhile)?
Some say yes, some say well maybe not
What if one is trying to expand ones consciousness? (Whatever that means to one).
Or try to experience pure awareness?
As useful as concepts are, at that point they might be a drain on the brain battery always time for that later.
So maybe knowledge might not be the best word? Awareness? Experience? Understanding?
Electric lights are a necessity, especially at night.
But if one wants to see the stars very clearly, you have to leave the bright city.
Searching the mind for a state deeper than the intellect is somewhat like that.
Words start to fail at these borders of consciousness.
If a skeptic thinks that is a failure, more words will not convince them that anything spiritual isnt just fancy relaxation or entertaining fiction, at best.
But heres some more words anyway :grin:
A. Tell me a freethinker what of significance I am missing or fail to understand by dismissing so-called "esoteric" doctrines in order to critically think through and contemplate "exoteric" questions.
B. Describe concrete differences which "esoteric" ideas make to practicing (non-academic) philosophy.
Yes. Even if it were only this, that would be enough. But the fact is, if you radically alter the nature of your being, the way that you live, you can begin to see patterns of feedback from people, society, and the universe, that you did not before. To that extent, it can be 'scientific'. As I have said and will continue to say, the human mind is very limited, so to presuppose that there are not further dimensions to understanding is just poor reasoning. Evolution documents their emergence.
:up: Excellent, thanks. Id only quibble microscopically and change out mind (as a whole) for intellect (a part of mind, though quite useful of course).
Quoting Pantagruel
Devil? Esoteric? Careful you dont slide into THE OCCULT!! :fire: :death: :eyes:
(just kidding :wink: )
I am inclined to agree @Pantagruelabout the limitations of 'the mundane'. It seems such a 'flat perspective'. Of course, I am not wishing to go into a fantasy world of the 'hidden', and a lot does come down to what is 'true, as well as what works as a philosophy to live by and with.
I am not sure that there is any absolute objective meaning and it may come down to Victor Frankl's point of finding meaning in daily existence, including suffering. So some of the ideas to which each of us gravitated towards may be about subjective choice. Saying that, I am not wishing to suggest that psychological biases are the main basis for belief. They may contribute to what paths of thinking one goes down, but it does involve reason as well.
Personally, I wish to pursue ideas from the exoteric and the esoteric because I am not sure that 'truth', logical or psychological can be split into one or other categories. So, I see it as a whole area of exploration in the widest sense of 'the examined life'. My own dipping in and out of so many different perspectives may be a bit like crawling through a maze at times, and I may be my worst enemy here. However, it is also a quest for 'waking up' and looking beyond surfaces. The idea of 'hidden' may be mythical as opposed to an objective 'reality' beyond the visible.
Quoting Jack Cummins
As I understand it, philosophy concerns making explicit problematizing the "limitations of the mundane" beginning with reasoning itself (e.g. Plato, Kant) so attempts to reason-without-limitations (i.e. thinking/knowing-beyond-thinking/knowing) is, it seems to me, pseudo-philosophical nonsense (Witty) or not doing philosophy at all (e.g. religious / spiritual / therapeutic fantasy). Except maybe in poetry, IMO, there is no "beyond".
We exist on a plane of immanence (Deleuze et al) that is unbounded in all directions. We are also inseparable from this plane (i.e. "the mundane"), therefore, though limited, we are not merely finite beings. :fire:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_of_immanence (scroll down half way)
Aren't we all? :monkey:
Play Chess or Go, Jack: the real is always "hidden" from you in plain sight on the board (i.e. "the mundane", "the surface") while you play the game (i.e. live/think). Play Jazz music or European / Indian Classical music truth is there if you listen with both your body and your ears.
I am not sure that the risk of being seen as an outsider is the biggest risk of following an esoteric philosophy. The risk would be of being mistaken if it involves extreme ideas.
Changes in lifestyle may accord with following a tradition, but that applies to religion if taken seriously. I remember when I was going to Christian Union when I was a student, all the things which were considered to be wrong morally. In particular, sp much music that I liked was considered as 'wrong' to listen to..
Generally, there is more tolerance in some groups, with less emphasis on 'sin' as such. Changes in lifestyle may involve abstaining from alcohol, vegetarian or veganism. Of course, there is the point where someone joins a sect or a cult, but that is a bit different, and most esoteric thinkers are more likely to attend meditation groups. Also, most people who take an interest read or blend ideas.
Of course, there may some dangerous ideas and I am familiar with there being some concern that the ideas of Alestair Crowley being dangerous. Also, there may be dangers of confusion due to dabbling with ideas like fortune telling and astral projection.
I think the willingness to test is not only an acceptance of some starting place of conception but willingness to change responses. The Tao that cannot be spoken is behind action in a way explanation is always after the event. François de La Rochefoucauld said it in French, which makes it more elegant:
"Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it."
I hope that I am slightly less ignorant than two decades ago, If that is true, it is because I feel and do things differently. As the Art of War notes at the beginning, if you need this book, you failed to learn the preceding lessons.
As far as the 'beyond' it may come down to how many dimensions exist. It may be that reality is multidimensional, according to each perceiver's point of view and its shifting nature. This would not be transcendental but imminent, although it is possible that there is cosmic consciousness, which may be more about Maslow's idea of peak experiences, self-actualization and creativity.
Poetry may be one way of going 'beyond', as well as other forms of art. Both making and viewing aspects of art may have a transformational effect. I am inclined to listen to music in that way, almost meditating to it or using it to enter alternate states of consciousness. I have had moments of synthasesia without taking any hallucinogenics. There is meant to be a physical basis, as opposed to spiritual one, for synthasesia, as a result of the nodules in the brain for the development of the senses, especially sight and sound having a common origin.
Sure you can interpret things differently if you alter your consciousness, but it doesn't follow from that that anything determinate is the case about the nature of what is actual in contrast to what might seem actual to you in your altered state.
Such things cannot be scientific because to be scientific is to be intersubjectively assessable according to pragmatic criteria which are accepted by all those who wish to eliminate bias, merely subjective beliefs or ides based solely on imagination.
Where have I claimed there are no possible further dimensions to human understanding? You can take your own understanding wherever you like in the sense that you can believe whatever is believable to you. If you believe anything strongly enough it will alter your experience to be sure.
I wasn't implying you had said, it was just an ongoing observation.
Like stoicism. You can read all the stoicism you want. But there is a difference between reading it, and believing it to the extent that you actively, even transformatively embrace it. Or perhaps something more esoteric. But along those lines.
This is how I feel.
If Mahayana, and particularly Zen, falls under "esoteric," then, I think, simply put, the whole idea is to "transcend" philosophical thinking. What is the sound of one hand clapping must necessarily abstain, not only from logic, but from any "form" of "discursive" or other "conventional" "thinking" or "problem solving."
Not sure I can say the same. I wouldnt even know how to assess this. I dont think I feel or do things much differently. I am more competent in a range of domains but I doubt this has come with measurable wisdom.
Well, the tiny units I introduced is also a caution regarding assessment. I was agreeing with Pantagruel that trying to learn a discipline required working with its language. But my acceptance is thoroughly bound with the skepticism I have expressed previously about mapping territories.
I harmonize with the way Marcus Aurelius spoke of his teachers and influences. He just lays them out there and lets the reader find their own.
I tend to intuit my way through, almost entirely by feeling and with a fair amount of imitation. Which might help explain why I have never taken an interest in maths, physics or technical matters.
My life has mixed up those different kinds of action where I do not know where one begins and the other ends.