The essence of religion
I find in most or all of the discussions about religion that while willing to go into an issue, the is a general lack of interest to ask the basic questions that would lead to an understanding of what religion IS, that is, what there is in the world that warrants interest in the first place. I would agree with Nietzsche (here, but in few other places) that a great deal of what we fuss over issues from errors conceived out of the imposition thinking has itself created. But to look at these absurdities and call this religion is just a straw person argument, a reduction of religion to a body of easily assailable ideas conceived in ancient minds.
I hold that religion actually has a foundation discoverable in the essential conditions of our existence. Something PRIOR to all the metaphysical fuss and facile refutation. In other words, we suspend the standard conversational themes generally presented here, themes that center on concepts like faith, atheism, theodicy, God, first cause, teleology, and so on; and certainly authoritative texts like the bible or the koran, and the personality cults these inspire. I mean, we put out of inquiry all, or nearly all, that circulates though typical religious mentalities, in an effort to determine if there is something "real" that religion is truly about; something that is not simply a historical fiction conceived in an ancient mind. To do this, one has to ask basic questions about the world, forgetting even the word 'religion'.
My thinking is this: Religion rises out of the radical ethical indeterminacy of our existence. This simply means that we are thrown into a world of ethical issues that, in the most basic analysis, are not resolvable. Yet they insist on resolution with the same apodicticity as logical coercivity. Meaning, just as one cannot but agree with something like modus ponens or the principle of identity in terms of the pure logicality of their intuitive insistence, so one cannot resist the moral insistence of moral redemption. This latter is the essence of religion, and I further claim that in proving such a thing, I am giving the world and our existence in it exactly the metaphysical satisfaction is seeks.
It's a tough sell, in this time of implicit religious disillusionment among thinking people. But then, I don't think anyone has really looked at the issues built into the world through our existence in it, and this is especially true for those who have a kind of scientific default setting in their analytic tendencies. But science doesn't go here, into ethics, that is. Ethics is way out there, beyond the telescope and the microscope.
I wonder where your thoughts lie on the matter.
I hold that religion actually has a foundation discoverable in the essential conditions of our existence. Something PRIOR to all the metaphysical fuss and facile refutation. In other words, we suspend the standard conversational themes generally presented here, themes that center on concepts like faith, atheism, theodicy, God, first cause, teleology, and so on; and certainly authoritative texts like the bible or the koran, and the personality cults these inspire. I mean, we put out of inquiry all, or nearly all, that circulates though typical religious mentalities, in an effort to determine if there is something "real" that religion is truly about; something that is not simply a historical fiction conceived in an ancient mind. To do this, one has to ask basic questions about the world, forgetting even the word 'religion'.
My thinking is this: Religion rises out of the radical ethical indeterminacy of our existence. This simply means that we are thrown into a world of ethical issues that, in the most basic analysis, are not resolvable. Yet they insist on resolution with the same apodicticity as logical coercivity. Meaning, just as one cannot but agree with something like modus ponens or the principle of identity in terms of the pure logicality of their intuitive insistence, so one cannot resist the moral insistence of moral redemption. This latter is the essence of religion, and I further claim that in proving such a thing, I am giving the world and our existence in it exactly the metaphysical satisfaction is seeks.
It's a tough sell, in this time of implicit religious disillusionment among thinking people. But then, I don't think anyone has really looked at the issues built into the world through our existence in it, and this is especially true for those who have a kind of scientific default setting in their analytic tendencies. But science doesn't go here, into ethics, that is. Ethics is way out there, beyond the telescope and the microscope.
I wonder where your thoughts lie on the matter.
Comments (681)
There was a great deal of mysticism and spirituality and superstition long before the organized religions, with sacred texts and a hierarchy of clergy that give rise to most of this 'fuss'.
Whether those early versions of religion have an essence would be difficult to prove. My only concrete source of information about them is archeological, much of which is conjecture. Nore to the point are the surviving oral mythologies of peoples around whose roots are not in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic group of faiths, nor in the far eastern established religions.
What they appear to have in common are certain themes: the origin of their particular tribe or nation, their place in respect of other species and the land, a personification of natural phenomena, some rules of behaviour or warnings issued by a supernatural entity to guide on the path to harmonious living. Another very common theme is humankind's disregard of this sage advice, resulting in a permanent misfortune. Then, there are always morality tales and anecdotes about significant events, as well as exaggerated stories of remarkable characters.
I used to think the essence of religion was the illusion of control over nature. But now I believe that's a later addition. I think at the root of these myths and legend is an explanation of a particular society's idea of human nature and its relation to the world. Pagan practices reflect much of this idea - but then they become ritualized, non-spontaneous, inauthentic. Modern religions are largely rote and ceremony, right down to the precise words uttered in prayer.
I think it started as pure philosophy, then wandered into superstition and lost its way in organized religion.
Deeper, more basic, than that, I think religion (i.e. 'immortality' rituals) is our species' earliest collective coping strategy for fear of death (i.e. ontophobia (or meontic veraphobia) aka 'nihilism'). I suspect "ethical indeterminancy" is the effect, not cause, of religion insofar as religion ritually manifests (à la principle of explosion) various performative and symbolic denials of (the 'radical determinancy' of) mortality.
I think this is an interesting answer, and likely is true, roughly. But when I ask about the essence of religion, I refer to something presupposed by those myths and that ancient thinking. Sure, there they were with creative imaginations in full swing, but what were they responding to in the world that was NOT simply an idea summoned into existence? What were people responding to that gave religious thought its basic meaning? Not unlike asking what technology is really about apart from the long talk about machines and electronics. The answer to this question is not going to be more talk about technology; if that were the case, then technology would be just like the way religion is generally regarded by modern enlightened people: definable wholly within the logic of its own existence. But technology has a purpose and an origin that is presupposed by this, which is the basic problem solving of the givenness of our world. That is, we are thrown into a world that is nothing but problems to solve, and technology is a pragmatic response to this.
I treat religion that same way: We all know what it is, and your anthropological ideas are spot on as well. But beneath the "wandering into superstition" there is the basic condition of our existence that provokes and inspires this wandering. In other words, the world itself is a religious "place" in the way I talk about it in the OP. This is the aggravating truth that science cannot deal with, whether it is anthropology of physics. This issue here is metaphysics, metaethics, to be precise.
I quite agree, and kudos for expressing such a deep insight so succinctly. Perhaps for self-aware rational beings such as ourselves, existence is a predicament, a plight which has no obvious remedy. A blog post about Joshia Royce's philosophy of religion put it like this:
As to the sources or origins of 'the religious feeling', they are of course lost in the mists of pre-history. But I will note that when I studied comparative religion, the 'neanderthal flower burials' dating back approximately 35,000 years were often mentioned, as were the discovery of sacred objects carved in bone and stone also from around that time. The conjecture is that all ancient and pre-modern cultures incorporated religious elements from as far back as paleoanthropology allows us to see.
I would also mention the (often overlooked) role of shamanism and ascetic practices as one of the main tributaries of religion, subject of some of the books of scholar of religions Mircea Eliade (e.g. his Yoga: Immortality and Freedom.)
More could be said but that will suffice for one post.
I think religion provides comfort and solace. It supports people to manage the fear of uncertainty, death and the often brutal realities of life. For me, it seems to be an emotional and aesthetic response to experince. And when presented as part of culture and heritage, it plays a critical role in how people make sense of reality. We are habitually drawn to coherence, comfort and harmony - despite a world where chaos and suffering predominate - a transcendental domain promises us an entire realm where unity, and completeness may be found and perhaps intermittently reflected in our lives. Personally, I do not share such a worldview.
Short and simple: The bigness of the world, the sky full of stars, the power of elements.
They could not control or escape storms, floods, wildfires and droughts. But all these things acted in a way that appears purposeful. So they were given names and personalities that fit the behaviour. From there, it's easy for that big imagination to project a whole pantheon of supernatural beings, with their own feelings and agendas.
And then there is the death of one's parents. Who has not felt the presence of a dead mother or father hovering over their bed some nights? Who has not asked a gravestone for forgiveness or guidance or a blessing? We miss our caregivers and mentors; we don't want them to be gone. So we make shrines and bring fruit and flowers and celebrate them on a designated day.
What's to prevent one of those dead chieftains from being promoted to a place in the stars or among the natural elements?
Quoting Constance
That's a very different conversation, but has its roots in the same time period.
But you jump to the chase. This denial of our mortality has a more basic analysis, for the question is begged, why bother with this issue at all? Fear of death assumes there is something fearful about death. Ask a question about fear and its object, one turns to its object, as one would with lions and tigers. Unless you are suggesting that religion is essentially a neurotic fear of nothing at all, it seems you might be, assuming metaphysics is nothing, really, and death is no more than mundane death, a mere termination of life.
But this ending as a "mere" ending and no more is a model carried over from things that are not moral agencies, and is entirely improper for understanding human death. Human death has the drama of crisis, and the fear itself in this crisis lies qualitatively outside such a model, that is, trees and clouds and worn out garden tools may come and go, but there is no meaning to this termination for that which is terminated. For human agencies, caring and value are in play, and this makes death an ethical/aesthetic (Wittgenstein held the two are essentially the same. He was right) matter. Thus, death for us can only be understood in the context of a review of the nature of ethics and value.
There is nothing of the mundane termination in this at all. Quite the opposite!
And of course for all the psychological benefits, if scrutinized from an atheistic point of view. It's helpful. So why not let people be helped?
:roll:
It reminds me of the positivists, who responded to Wittgenstein's Tractatus in a way he never intended. Wittgenstein is the most extraordinary person, one who loved Kierkegaard, insisted on being sent to the front lines of the war just to face death, one who loved and lost deeply, and who waxed reverential on what was truly important, that part of the Tractatus which was unspoken. You know how the Tractatus ends famously with "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" Positivist Otto Neurath, added, "We must indeed be silent, but not about anything." See, this is where the line is drawn: Neurath didn't understand Wittgenstein at all! The latter lived life with such passion (the kind of passion that drives one to suicide, as it almost did for him, and certainly did for his brothers) and it was clear that this was a passion that reached out for consummation most emphatically into the world, and it was this that one had to be silent about. Broadly speaking, value-in-the-world cannot be reduced to the mere saying, and when it is spoken, it is dulled and trivialized.
The world itself cannot be spoken, but the positivists were not, as Joshia Royce said, able to respond to this. They just saw this as a strict taboo on metaphysics, and were happy to hear this..
you are right, I think: it really comes down to whether or not one can acknowledge the world like this. Likely, I would argue, it is a latent ability in all of us. I have an analytical accounting for this, but it would take too much time to say. But this "uncanny" feeling, I say (not argue), has most alarming expression in our compassion and empathy. To understand the gravitas of this is to be struck as if by lightening by the breadth and depth of suffering, and it is to see that for this to be a simple "stand alone" matter is flat out impossible.
It didn't start with all that knowledge of the universe or planets genetics or evolution. It started with "Where did I come from?",a question every five-year-old asks. They're not looking for purpose or meaning or specialness, just a simple answer. "We found you under a cabbage." "You grew from a seed in Momma's belly." "The angels brought you from heaven." Any of those will do for a five-year-old - at least for the moment. For an intelligent, imaginative adult troglodyte, there has to be a bigger, better story. There are dozens of origin stories. And from there, a whole realm of the supernatural opens up to speculation, projection, poetry and manipulation.
Quoting Outlander
Religion offers lots of things, including structure, self-worth, rules of social behaviour, rituals, opportunities for catharsis, community, solace and superiority. Not all of those are constructive.
There's an essay I often link to that makes exactly this point Wittgenstein, Tolstoy and the Folly of Logical Positivism, published in Philosophy Now magazine (but originally by the British Wittgenstein Society so its provenance is sound.) I've not studied him closely, but the mystical aphorisms at the end of the Tractatus have always seemed to me very much the concluding aim of the overall work. Regrettably that final line, about 'remaining silent', is often used as a kind of fire-blanket to throw over discussion of anything spiritual.
The other note you're striking, is the primacy of feeling - not simply wishy-washy emotionality, but nearer the dread or 'anxiety' of Kierkegaard. And I'm sure you're right in pointing to that. In Buddhist literature, there is a recognised phase of spiritual growth, "nibbida" (Pali) or "nirveda" (Sanskrit), often translated as "disgust," "disenchantment," or "turning away," denoting a turning point in spiritual growth where an individual becomes disillusioned with the vanity and suffering inherent in worldly existence. (Something I myself have not experienced, but have no reason to doubt that it occurs.)
You might point out that I am considering practical effects much more than existential causes, but that's because religion, unlike philosophy, must adapt to survive in the social environment. Then again, I might be too analytical about this.
Quoting Constance
The moral function of religion generally didn't emerge until later, and was built on already existing religions. The first religions had no need to explain morality, because the stories were probably shared among close communities. Close communities hold their members accountable with social pressure. Originally, familiarity was enough to maintain cordiality. Once the group groes too large for personal connections to hold it together, or some start questioning rules (or appear likely to do so), only then is religion needed to justify morality. (See the progression from only somewhat didactic tales about animism and folkloric gods to the clear moral laws laid out by the Abrahamic religions.) Importantly, this will only work when modifying already established religious beliefs; otherwise, it will be dismissed as a fable.
That is all assuming that religion was created to perform the function of moral arbiter. However, i think it's more likely that religion, which was often used explain the unexplained or unctontrollable, merely expanded its domain to also explain why the group has morals in the first place. That way, morality is no longer culturally man-made, but god-given. In order to better understand morality, we relinquished our authority to the stories of the past, and religion finally explained all.
I am not sure if I am allowed to post a poem here, but I wrote this poem and I think it summarizes my view on this probably better than if I simply tried to explain it (I am not sure why) But anyway, here it is.
To All Atheists
An atheist,
With feelings so strong,
Denies theres a God,
Which is something quite wrong.
For God is a word
That people invented,
As thats how words work,
How meanings cemented.
I could call God love,
The other one hate.
Just different words
I can fabricate.
But love and hate
Are things that are real.
We know this for sure;
They are things we can feel.
So God is inside us,
A force that we own,
Not a man with a beard
In the clouds on a throne.
Hes the urge to show kindness,
Despite lack of gain,
Compassion for others
In hardship and pain.
But if the word God
Causes aversion,
And gives good reason
For casting aspersion,
Replace it with kindness
Compassion or love,
And forget the man
Looking down from above.
But to me it seems clear,
All this is absurd.
For the only difference
Is just in a word.
Correction. Many atheists actually don't deny the existence of gods. I am an atheist. I don't make a positive claim like that. Many contemporary atheists would put it more like this: I have not heard any good reasons/arguments for accepting the claim that gods exist.
The rest of the poem basically amounts to saying that there is no god and that a concern for the wellbeing of conscious creatures will be a sufficient surrogate. That's pretty much what secular humanists have been arguing for generations.
Quoting Beverley
I think you'll find that many theists will disagree with this formulation - the notion of transcendent meaning can't be reduced or substituted by a few nouns or verbs.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/903982
Quoting Tom Storm
In this context, the only positive claim I make is 'I deny that theism is true' (i.e. insofar as g/G is real, I find theism's claims 'about g/G' are neither true nor coherent).
Quoting Tom Storm
How about just dropping this traditional idea of some domain or place. Such a thing is off-putting from the start. Sounds like a place to meet Jesus, and this kind of metaphysics is the stuff myths are made of.
It'll take some thought.
Here, we are asked to be scientists, and so what does a scientist do? She observes, and what is there to be observed cannot be ignored just because it is alien to popular and acceptable thinking. Religion has to be "observed" for what it is, and this involves removing what is merely incidental, like the long robe ceremonies, the endless story telling, and on and on. These are the mere trappings of religion. But what IS it that is in the world that religion is about? This is the point.
I wonder if you see the idea so far. I don't care to look at the religious texts and promises involving historical events and absurd miracles. And I certainly don't care about how theology invents metaphysical problems. I want to know the nature of something that is there to be observed, like natural condition is there for a natural scientist, PRIOR to it being taken up by cultures and their institutions and turned into an infinitely debatable construct.
How about just dropping this traditional idea of some domain or place. Such a thing is off-putting from the start. Sounds like a place to meet Jesus, and this kind of metaphysics is the stuff myths are made of.
It'll take some thought.
Here, we are asked to be scientists, and so what does a scientist do? She observes, and what is there to be observed cannot be ignored just because it is alien to popular and acceptable thinking. Religion has to be "observed" for what it is, and this involves removing what is merely incidental, like the long robe ceremonies, the endless story telling, and on and on. These are the mere trappings of religion. But what IS it that is in the world that religion is about? This is the point.
I wonder if you see the idea so far. I don't care to look at the religious texts and promises involving historical events and absurd miracles. And I certainly don't care about how theology invents metaphysical problems. I want to know the nature of something that is there to be observed, like natural condition is there for a natural scientist, PRIOR to it being taken up by cultures and their institutions and turned into an infinitely debatable construct.
It is not a matter of a psychological response to scary things in the world that is being inquired about any more than geology is a matter of investigating the curiosity of looking into rocks and minerals. Religion IS metaethics, and this requires a look at what ethics is, and so how is it you know you have before you an ethical case at all? What are the features of an ethical case that make for ethicality? This is not a psychological question or an anthropological question. It is much, much simpler: what are the necessary conditions for a problem to be an ethical problem?
Answer this, and you have opened the door to an inquiry into the nature of religion. I opened this door, ajar, as it were, in the OP.
Condition A.) Involvement or presence of a sentient being and Condition B.) the possibility for that sentient being to be impacted by the action or inaction of another sentient being through no action or declared will and intent of their own (ie. against their own will or sans consideration/input).
It is incredibly broad and open-ended, yes.
Well, it is a nice poem, I have to admit. Not Wordsworth, but charming.
But what does it argue? asks philosophy. It argues that words invent pseudo problems about matters that have noting to do with words. Religion in its essence lies outside of language. This is a big issue.
Do you think God is intuited? One could say that love or happiness is intuited, meaning if you are in love there is something that is altogether NOT language that defines the experience, but what can one "say" about it? Nothing, really, other than declaring it to be the case, but "it" in this declaration will be simply given and not reducible to further analysis. Consider pain: put a lighted match to your finger for a couple of seconds. Now what was that? There is nothing to say, save how intense and unpleasant it was. But what is was, well, we all "know" pain, but this is simply a matter of familiarity, and really not some kind of penetrating understanding. Pain qua pain is in the bare givenness of the world.
My point is this: when it comes to unmentionables like this, we are dealing with value-in-the-world, and the world cannot be spoken. Value-in-the-world is transcendental, and indeed, the world is transcendental. I think this is what your poem is about.
If you already believe you have a firm grasp on what you consider the essence of religion, why did you ask? I happen to disagree, but I do not have an ethical case, only an anthropological and psychological theory.
Quoting Constance
But that was not the OP question, was it? And, no, it's much simpler; it's more contrived. Quoting Constance
I don't think so. I think morality came into - was wedged into - religion much later, and ethics became a philosophical subject later still. The rules of social behaviour - codified and explicated as ethics - exist outside of religion and don't require any supernatural component or coercion.
The need to explain is ours. Certainly when religions were laid down in ancient societies, there was not the philosophical detachment from the concerns that were in play needed to give such affairs more basic inquiry.
I am not here looking for any historical analysis or speculation as to how and why certain beliefs rose to prominence, the internal societal pressures brought to bear, and so forth. Here, the question is more simple: I am asking what there is in the world that gives religion its fundamental justification. What makes religion more than just what your analysis yields, beyond the various non religious motivations and rationalizations.
What kind of a "place" is the world that calls for religion to be in the explanatory response to it? Religion deals with metaphysics, specifically, the metaphysics of ethics: the need for grounding AT ALL for our affiars beyond what is plainly there in the delimitations of finitude. Otherwise, as you would have it, religion is reducible a social dynamic.
Quoting Constance
Look for something real, that later gives rise to the words "religion" or "God", but not yet. Great metaphysical question for this forum.
Quoting Constance
"discoverable" "foundation" "essential" "prior" - these are all objective references, almost empirical. Good for metaphysical inquiry.
Quoting Constance
The "indeterminacy of our existence." That which is prior, that which is the condition of our existence, involves indeterminacy, and to us, as a condition of human existence in particular, a condition of "our" existence, we find ourselves thrown into an ethical indeterminacy. And this begets religion.
Am I in the ballpark?
I would break it down like this: "religion arises out of our sense of the indeterminate. It does so in three steps: We sense the indeterminacy of things. We sense ourselves, like the other things, are indeterminate as well. And we sense an ethical indeterminacy when those other things are humans like ourselves."
But I now changed it to "a sense of" the indeterminate. I use "a sense of" the way you use "our". It is the human part that particularizes "existence" into "our existence." Human sentience applied to the thrownness of objects, creates a particular sense of things. We sense in a particular way. We sense "our" meaning ourselves, in existence. Our mere presence in the universe is the presence of a particular sense of things, and this is tied up with the prior reasons we use the word "our" when discussing existence.
So along with indeterminacy, comes the "our", or the sense of indeterminacy, or the discovery of indeterminacy, which only arises in ourselves, as humans.
Our mere human presence in the universe, brings with it a sense of the indeterminacy. The indeterminacy of things, for us, must therefore include the indeterminacy of what we ourselves are. This, to me, now makes a radical indeterminacy.
And all of these beget religion. I like it.
I obviously love the word "thrown" you use later, and the seeking something "prior". Every good metaphysic must incorporate thrownness.
I do not see the thrownness itself as something determinate or indeterminate. You might bias it towards the indeterminate, but the thrownness itself doesn't create the indeterminacy. The determinate and the indeterminate jostle for position in the thrownness, but the thrownness is just there, it's the prior, the condition of existence itself.
The indeterminacy, is ourselves thrown in the mix - we are the introduction of indeterminacy in this mix.
So something human starts to look prior to the indeterminate. This creates circular reasoning. We use "our" existence to discern "radical ethical" of the "indeterminate." But if it is "our", it might automatically include the "ethical" - and existence itself might beget the indeterminate from "our" presence in existence. So I still have to wonder what was prior, what is the condition of existence at all that begat the "our" - the self-reflection in the thrownness that found radical ethical indeterminacy.
For now, we are already thrown, among the given, subject to the prior condition, and where the human and so many humans are thrown in such condition, at least, there is ethical indeterminacy.
Quoting Constance
I want to keep the sense of indeterminacy as one facet of our existence that begets religion, but see other ingredients to the bread of religion (pun intended).
I would add that religion arises not only out of our sense of indeterminacy, but also our sense of impossibility. We have to sense it, as a real object, like the indeterminacy. But it is a sense not of the indeterminate, but the determined impossibility.
We've all experienced something that cannot be, yet it is. It's anything we can't explain, such that every explanation we construct may be impossible. Those moments of paradox, where you can say "I don't believe it!" while staring at it. That real sense of the impossible, gives rise to religion.
Both the indeterminate, and the impossible, can be called the mysterious. They both give birth to "why" and "how" and "what" and "whether real".
Both of them make a predicament out of action. Ethical indeterminacy undoes any sound ethical judgment of how to act. Impossibility undoes any commitment to taking action as well.
Impossibility deserves more consideration, along with indeterminacy, and ourselves in it.
Another prior condition may be our sense of time. Seems too simple, but somehow, we sense the eternity of time itself. Now we have a sense of time that is opposite of time, something always present instead. This is an impossibility contained within time. This makes the beginning and end of time indeterminate. The present, as eternity. We may find every eternal thing impossible in all of this changing motion and thrownness, but we sense it as part of the mystery.
The eternal and the impossible equally give rise to science. We ask how about the impossible, to understand it and show how it is possible, how it fits with the eternal laws that allowed it to be possible in the first place.
There is much that needs to reworked here and developed, but I was being too ambitious for a Tuesday night. Maybe you can make more of this.
Indeterminacy, impossibility, and time as eternity - human senses of what is thrown before ourselves taken as a community (therefore ethical indeterminacy) - giving rise to religion.
I think another missing element is language itself. Without it, we have no way to distinguish the indeterminate for the other ethical relata (other humans). It's all too indeterminate without the anchor of language to make the community. Language itself becomes a prior condition of shared indeterminacy. Language is part of the thrownness.
So indeterminacy, impossibility, maybe time as eternally present despite change itself, and the language that captures these things among the various communal selves as in "our existence" - all beget religion.
From the radical ethical indeterminacy, we get the ten commandments and the laws.
From the impossibility, we get walking on water and rising from the ashes
From eternity we get Omni-presence.
From language we get the word of God, prophesy and a way to mediate all of this.
Good post. Hope I gave you some things to think about, because you did to me.
No. It's about awe and wonder.
Quoting Constance
Too big for us, and we don't like to let go.
That's all. Ancient prelates built on that to control the masses.
Fair enough. Sounds like philosophy.
Do you have a definition or a simple, descriptive account of the 'transcendent'?
The human fear of death.
Quoting Constance
But religion isn't a natural condition, nor did it exist "prior to it being taken up by cultures". It is part of our social system, the direct result of it, so to pluck it out of a culture and dissect it, probing for its "true nature" separated from the human flesh is absurd. If you want to examine religion outside of the social context, you ultimately find a primitive form of philosophy, a desire for understanding.
It is, as all OP's, an invitation to disagree, agree and explore. Do keep in mind that anthropology and psychology are not philosophy. It is not that you disagree, rather it is that you can't access the issue. On the other hand, philosophy requires meditative thought, and this is simply a matter of being open to ideas. If I mention the word metaphysics, there is something very intuitive about this, and its doesn't require reading Kant or anyone else. In a way, being a very educated person, you already have what you need to carry on through and argument, for all that is required is reading the details of the ideas involved closely.
Psychology? Freud was a metaphysician, and Jung is no longer mentionable he was so far out there; R D Liang's Divided self is puts forth the question as to whether insanity is really so insane. The issues these and others raise get, on occasion, very close to philosophy and metaphysics. But of course, you would know more than I. Jung and religion? The self and religion vis a vis the openness of the concept of self? If the self is an open concept, then what does this make ethics and value and religion that hinges on just this?
I read in the Abhidhamma explicit attempts to cultivate this disgust by with unsavory associations and other techniques. This book is a fascinating analysis of the contents of the conscious mind. So detailed about emotions, appetites and their objects. Emotions are not only taken seriously, they are raised primacy, and this is the critical move: Speak sincerely about foundational ideas, and it should be plainly evident that our thinking is in the service of our affective pursuits. When I said in the OP that one thing Nietzsche was right about was his observation that all of our metaphysics is grounded in entirely contrived issues, at the heart of this is the primacy of thinking, as if God were no more than a supremely cognizant being. I mean, the idea is patently absurd, because though qua thought has no value at all. Thought is in the service of this mysterious dimension of pathos that carries extraordinary meaning into consciousness, and the Buddhists know this.
Existence qua existence is like reason qua reason in that neither can shoulder the burden of the meaning we discover in our living and breathing.
I would appreciate if you refrained from telling me what I mean. I disagree that "the issue" of religion is ethical. In the wrong context, I have no wish to access it.
BTW Psychology was not invented by Freud, any more than philosophy was invented by Kant. Humans have been exploring and debating their own nature and their place in the universe. Philosophy, psychology, sociology and law, have been with us from the beginning of language sophisticated enough to communicate ideas. Science, technology and wonder, even longer.
So it needs to be narrowed, and this is done apophatically: What is NOT necessary to the definition of ethics? Certainly, ethics needs a context, but this does not make the contextuality part of the essence any more than requiring a brain to think makes a brain a definitional necessity to, say, logic. Something that is part of the essence of something is what makes the thing what it IS. What puts, if you will, the ethicality in ethics? So "involvement or presence of a sentient being" may be necessary but not essential to what naming what ethics in its nature.
For this, one goes to actual ethical cases to find determinative features, and finds in each case, there is caring. No caring, no ethics. Caring is not like an incidental condition, but is what ethics is "about": something cared about, at risk, in play, in competition, in the balance, to be sacrificed, endured, enjoyed, fascinated by, and so on. This is, if you will, the engine that drives ethics, one being IN a world of caring.
I will push ahead to what I think is an important question: while one clearly can have ethical relations with others, and in these relations emerges a whole vocabulary of ethical terms, like responsibility and accountability, guilt, innocence, justice and the plethora of legal terms and thinking, etc., can one have an ethical relation with the world qua world? Why not, one may ask, for just as our relations with others in based on the way others enter into our horizon of interests and aversions, so we find ourselves IN the same kind of intrusive "behavior" of the world, for after all, the world "gives" us disease, hunger and, well, a very long list of physical and psychological vulnerabilities that yield the miseries we are born into.
The point is this: if the world were simply as a scientist describes it to be, that is, an ethcailly neutral place of quantitative descriptions and systems of quantitative pragmatic categories, then there would be no religion for there would be ground for it. But this is not the world. Science cannot quantify ethics (notwithstanding Bentham's hedonic calculator, essentially a quantification calculator") because ethics is a qualitative issue. The world is not reducible to science's quantifications. The world is the source of all value, and because of this, the world presents the very possibility of ethics; therefore, the world IS an ethical "agency". It IS the transcendental source of ethics.
Huh. Interesting take. A few follow-ups, just to clarify any confusion I and perhaps others may have as well:
"Science cannot quantify ethics"
Surely that depends on what one chooses to define ethics as. In a simple definition of what is largely perceived to be right or wrong by a given social majority based on absolute factors such as human suffering, malaise, and distress compared to comfort, pleasure, and contentedness, again, more so or "as the majority of normal functioning humans respond and demonstrate", it most certainly has some form of measurement or quantification. How could it not?
"The world is not reducible to science's quantifications"
So what is "the world" in the absolute most definitive and concrete form of understanding? Surely not the physical planet we reside on but "existence" or the Universe, rather one with sentient beings capable of identifying themselves apart from others and their environment as unique entities that have free will to perform or not perform certain actions? Something like that, no?
What I want to say is, to even reach the precondition of being able to talk definitively about something, be it a physical thing or a conceptual idea, one must in fact, have a solid understanding of the thing in question, or in simpler terms "know what one is talking about". So, while it may not necessarily be :reducible" to the given quantification or standards of a given science, it surely has to be well-defined by concrete definitions and boundaries that enable it to be discussed and declared as "this or that" as opposed to something else. In short, it has to be, perhaps "reducible" is not the ideal term but rather "indisputably definable" in some way that effectively does enable it to be discussed and declared as having quality X or not having quality Y, etc.
"The world is the source of all value"
I think this is an interesting claim for reasons I will attempt to explain. You mention just as logic itself requires a brain but discussing logic itself does not require discussion of the brain itself. Imagine, if you will, a world devoid of all sentient life. Where would ethics fit in? Where would value fit in if there is no one to value or be valued or be ethically treated or mistreated? Some might argue WE as sentient beings, rather consciousness, is the source of all value. Sure we live in a physical world and as such we value physical things required for survival, but does your above statement not have some correlation to your previous example of how discussing logic, which requires a brain, does not require discussing the brain itself?
Example, what if, somehow, right now, the two of us were in a non-physical world with just our consciousness floating around in some metaphysical vacuum with no physicality anywhere, like ghosts or something. I could value your company, I could value your insight, I could value the fact I'm not alone or even simply that I am self-aware and thinking (I think. therefore I am) even if the "world" as it is commonly understood were to vanish, could I not?
What a fascinating thinker you are! I greatly look forward to your reply. :grin:
Simple? Not a chance. BUT: once gotten, one sees that the matter is supremely simple. The complexity is needed to arrive at simplicity.
.
The trouble with this word is that it is held away from our everydayness, and this is due to the way religion treats metaphysics: in a closed space of a cathedral with lots f vertical lines and set apart from everything else (reminds me of Dewey's complaint of art being shoved into museums and thereby removed from the living experience). The entirely of philosophy has tis subject matter in this lamp here on the desk (yes, the same coulds be said of physics). It is there, but only because I see it and perceive it, so what is perception? Perception is never clear of the history that memory intrudes between, if you will, me and the lamp, because I know the lamp through historical familiarity, that is, I am not some feral adult grunting and staring. Knowing is about familiarity, so it is the repetition I "see," the "oh, just that old lamp" and nothing special here. But what about perception? After all, the thing is right there in front of me and you can't say I dont see it, but only see the intrusion of memory telling me how familiar it is. But now it is a question of knowing in the massive context of a culture and a language and an extensive vocabulary of entangled ideas. OUT if this, the full presence of the thing emerges, implicitly in the simplicity of the singular perceptual encounter.
Perhaps you can see where thsi goes: Every time I try to pin down the knowledge claim about the lamp, I find myself retrieving language and associated meanings. What about "that right there" that is NOT language at all? THIS is a metaphysical question, for the object is transcendental, it cannot be "spoken" because only language can be spoken, and that there ain't language. It does take effort to see this, at least, it did for me, but eventually one begins to realize that the objects before the witnessing mind, whether they are lamps and fence posts or feelings or logical equations, or whatever, are never really presented to the conscious mind.
What about the obvioius "aboutness" of the word 'lamp' and that over there? So many ways to go after this, but the absolute annihilator of knowledge connectivity is the impossiblity of explaining how that out there gets in the this interior world of thought and perception.
We live in transcendence. We are this. I think one has to take the time to leave the text and realize that we are in this "place" that is alien to the language that we use to understand things.
Now I understand you a little better.
It is a matter of making ideas clear, and this is hard to do here. Indeterminacy and thrownness, what do these mean? Indeterminateness refers to the lack of settled position, as when we talk about bank tellers and cantaloupes; we know what these are and can talk pretty freely about them without issue in the usual giving and taking of information, insight, experience. But what about when inquiry turns to basic assumptions? The more we do this, the less determinacy we find. Calling a cantaloupe a variety of fruit, after all, begs questions: 'Fruit' is a concept, no? And so what are concepts? Already we have left the comfort zone of ready to hand assumptions, for how many of us entertain such ideas? This can be argued: is a concept a principle of synthetic inclusiveness? Is it a pragmatic way to achieve and end? Perhaps a concept is the very way finitude is defined and delimited. But is it historically structured? Is it possible for thought and its concepts to understand the world as the world? Or, my favorite: how can a concept be understood given that the understanding itself is inherently conceptual? The worst kind of question begging.
There really in no way out of this. When we make the move to this order of thinking about the presuppositions of thinking itself, we are lost in indeterminacy. We are certainly not lost when we talk about genetics or evolution or physics, I mean, these do have their paradigmatic indeterminacies (don't know if you've read Kuhn), but these reach into possiblities that make sense. Basic questions don't have this, and it is here we find metaphysics, for question begging is structural here: language cannot examine itself, I mean, logically structured talk cannot tell us what logic is.
This feeling of happiness right now occurs at an impossible distance from the words I could bring to bear upon. The term 'happiness' does not "touch" this "feeling" in its actuality, and yet, I live and breathe in it. Consider what Buddhists and Hindus do when they meditate seriously. They sever the connection of the experience of being in the world from the language that would possess it, trivialize it, bring it to heel among the common utterances, like "pass the butter, please."
It has been rightly argued that mundane living has lost the astonishment of being here. Rising to this astonishment is rising to our thrownness, that is, to a state of mind in which our assumptions about the world have been silenced, and one is free.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I tried to address this above. Don't know if I succeeded.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I would stop you here. By ethical indeterminacy, I don't mean the inability to finalize judgment on various ethical problems, like whether or not one should return a borrowed ax to its angry owner and the like. I mean something much more fundamental. There is no one there to be confused about. There is no complexity of conflicting obligations. There is only the essential givenness of the world. This is our thrownness, for we have no idea at all as to why, who, purpose or plan or reason once we have left behind the traditions and story telling and rituals. The step out of naivete is only a step into indeterminacy. The trick, and I call it this because it is tricky, for my, anyway, is to understand with real clarity that one's own existence IS existence. I am not a locality of something existing, as a scientist might think, with me here, a volcano over there, my shoes on my feet, all these separate and distinct. I am existence's interiority and all indeterminacy is mine. And yours, to you. Ethics is, if you can stand the locution, what the world does!
Meditation can yield this kind of self realization that one actually IS.
I wonder, what is fear? An unwelcome feeling, no doubt. What is unwelcomeness? Some discomfort, a "bad" feeling. Bad? Where did THIS come from (and it is not a question of causality)?
Assuming this is not a merely rhetorical quesrion, maybe this link (below) will help clarify for you what I mean by human fear of ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear
This is an interesting question. I was going to suggest something along the lines of "fear is a result of memory or a bad experience, whether or not that experience actually happened to you or was simply created in your mind by another or even yourself". However this is not true as an infant can be made afraid by loud noises or startling them or something of that nature. Is that really fear though? Surely not the same depth as the fear a grown man might feel if a letter from the IRS or a policeman shows up at his house, but is it perhaps the same essence ultimately or something completely different? A curious question indeed.
My, are you on a roll today, @Constance. :smile:
Perhaps, linking the two examples, fear is a physiological response to one or more stimuli, either active (say, a loud noise or the sudden, unexpected presence of a possible danger) or passive (a thought or possibility on one's mind that has the potential to become disastrous), that causes a distinct feeling of unease due to the possibility of loss of control or well-being? :chin:
Basically, what you said.
I only meant to say that to understand something, one has to go to its material source, and by material I don't mean some physicality. Rather, the actuality that gave rise to it, and continues to be what it is all about. But if by natural is meant a condition that is not contrived in argument but arises up in the essential givenness of the world, then by all means, natural.
When I talk about religion being prior to culture, I meant logically prior, as a presupposition to religion. A discussion about ethics is just this, for I take religion to be, in its essence, reducible to talk about meta ethics, and meta ethics is what appears when ethics is taken to its basic questions. The institutions of ethics you refer to presuppose a fundamental condition into which we are born, that of value-in-the-world. Think of it like Kant thought of reason. Reason is everywhere, of course, in every thought and every context of engagement, but what is reason qua reason? Here I claim that to ask such a question about religion, asking what religion is qua religion, is a step directly into ethics, for religion is our institutional response to the most basic moral givennes: the deficit and the promise of "the ethical good" and "the ethical bad," as awkward as this sounds, it has to be set apart from the contingent good and bad, as with bad couches and dull knives, say.
I don't know if you care for this kind of thinking, but...
Consider that good knives are sharp knives, one may say. Unless, that is, the knife is for Macbeth, then a sharp knife is a bad knife. Welcome to contingency. But now the ethical bad, as in the prohibition to strangling my neighbor or the like. Strangling someone is terrible in a foundational way, and not to be second guessed by argument or recontextualization. It is an absolute, notwithstanding that it can be contextualized such that one may be obligated to actually strangle someone, in some awful circumstance in which NOT to strangle someone would lead to greater harm. You see the difference? Sharp knives are bad for Macbeth, and in the play the sharpness remains bad altogether. In ethics, the bad of strangulation cannot be undone, even if circumstances favor its being done.
Why is this important to religion? Religion is metaethics, that is, it lies in the analysis of ethics where the absolute is identified. No value qua value can be construed to be other than what it is. This is not to say that value is never caught up in ambiguous entanglements, for just to opposite of this is the case: it is almost always given to us in entangled ambiguities. The argument here is not to say there is such a thing as value. Value is a dimension of our existence, not "a being" of some kind.
So I am saying religion's social nature refers to intersubjective complexities that are inherently pragmatic and imaginative, but this presupposes the deeper analysis of ethics as such. Here we find the true essence of religion.
Ask Wittgenstein how it is with value experiences. There is a reason why he refused to talk about this.
I think there is probably a lot to this. But if you are correct, doesn't this mean that everyone is religious in some way, even the atheist, who also has to grapple with these issues, and in some way yield to the moral insistence you describe? Do you want to modify your concept to exclude atheists and those who identify as irreligious? Or do you want to say that everyone is religious in the sense you mean it, whether they like it or not?
Atheists tend to base their irreligiosity on the grounds that an essential element of religion is a set of beliefs about the world that there is no reason to think are true. But you've explicitly said that's not the feature of religion you are talking about.
I see how you are framing this. Interesting. But I'm not sure what the significance of this is, or where it gets us. No doubt it all depends upon how one views the notion of reality and the possibility of knowledge. Does your account owe anything to Husserl's notion of the transcendental ego?
Speaking of whom.....
Quoting Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
As you know, there are various understandings of transcendental. In Kant it seems to be those factors that make experince possible - part of our cognitive apparatus - space, time, probably maths...
Husserl seems to take a similar view and sees the transcendental as the 'act' of consciousness in shaping, (perhaps creating?) the world.
Wittgenstein seems to take a different approach - essentially, how our understanding of our world is shaped by language. Needless to say, that which is outside of language holds a special status.
It's all very curious to a non-philosopher.
When you consider the transcendental, what frame do you find helpful? It strikes me that your form of idealism (as articulated in your article) has some commonalities with Husserl and phenomenology.
Do you see the Wittgenstein approach as a challenge to a general study of religion?
Thomas Nagel remarks in a footnote to his essay Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament:
Those statements do not confront Wittgenstein's argument to not talk that way.
Death is feared because it represents the radically unknown, the radically unknowable, and this is naturally profoundly unsettling, as the very idea of non-existence may also be.
Add to this that death is associated with the humiliating loss of physical and cognitive powers, as well as being possibly associated with terrible pain. Add to this the loss of loved ones and everything familiar. It is not surprising that people should wish for immortality and an afterlife which is perfect, unlike the present life.
:100:
Yes, that's what I have always assumed.
I guess they are making a case that our understanding of the world is, in some sense, transcendental too - how out there (the world) ends up, in here (mind). But there are assumptions bound up in this to make it work.
What do you think?
That's because you are religiously blind, don't you know? :wink:
With apologists it always comes down to "you must not understand" if you disagree with them and/or present arguments they can't cope with. Also, they argue from the mindset of wanting something to be true and ignoring anything that doesn't confirm their wishes, rather than seeking to discover the truth with an unbiased disposition.
One way of thinking about it is that the transcendent is 'always already the case'. In discovering it, or rather realising it, we are coming to understand something that has always been so (and I think this is connected with Plato's 'unforgetting'). I agree with the relevance of the distinction of 'transcendent' and 'transcendental' noted above, but the latter is in some ways just as difficult to understand - it to is connected with the concept of the 'a priori' which also is a form of 'always already so'.
This is inexorably connected with what is nowadays (usually dismissively) described as mysticism. But then Wittgenstein also said, not far from those other passages I quoted 'There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical'.
However that apophatic (cannot be stated) element of Wittgenstein is not especially helpful, or rather it is easily misinterpreted. Recall, as has been touched on already, that the positivists understood Wittgenstein to support their anti-metphysics, which he never did. He recognised that the domain of value, so to speak, transcends the realm of facts. He also says somewhere 'even if all scientific problems were solved it wouldn't touch the problems of life.' So if you make it the subject of propositional knowledge, then you're not really saying anything. You have to walk the walk. ('Do not tell! Display!, said Oscar Wilde.)
The only way I've been able to frame all of this is to try and zoom out to a perspective encompassing the history of ideas and the dialectics of modernity. As I've often said, I hold to a form of the 'forgotten wisdom' school of thought, that the ancients had insights into a higher understanding that has nowadays been forgotten (e.g. Huston Smith and others). Because of the particular background of Western thought, there is a kind of unstated barrier demarcating what secular philosophy is able to acknowledge. That is the subject of John Vervaeke's lecture series on The Meaning Crisis. But it's also beginning to surface with the re-kindling of interest in Stoicism and ancient philosophy generally (there's a lot of material now on Substack and Medium, for instance.)
Quoting Janus
'Apologists' being anyone who questions [s]naive[/s] scientific realism, right?
No, "apologists" denoting anyone who desperately (and futilely) tries to find intellectual justification for believing what they wish to be so, in spite of the obvious fact that it is unknowable.
If you want to have a faith, just accept the faith and practice it (there's nothing wrong with having a faith and practicing it, and I have never said there is) and stop the futile tail-chasing
Quoting Janus
:sweat: Yes, of course.
Quoting Wayfarer
On the contrary, apologists are anyone who begs questions with mysteries rather than answering (reasoning) with public evidence and sound arguments in order to rationalize (i.e. make merely subjective excuses for) their "ideas" or "beliefs".
Yes, I keep overlooking this.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, I thought this might be the answer. I'm as fond of the ineffable as the next person.
But is the benefit of using this frame? As an individual. I know a case can be made that we have lost something. Humans always seem to have lost something when they look back. But here and now, what do you get from all this?
I tend not to personally suffer from a meaning crisis whatever Vervaeke and Jordan Peterson may assume. If anythign there is too much meaning for me personally. I recognize that dominant cultures are always pretty fucked and monomaniacal, whether they be in the thrall of the Vatican, or in the thrall of contemporary consumerism.
Fair enough. Don't some expression of phenomenology try to break down the mind/body problem with embodied cognition? I have a superficial understanding (which is all I have time for) of this, but I am wondering why I should care. It's just that we always seem to come back to quesions about what is true and how do we know it. Then, invariably, we end up with responses of religion/idealism/postmodernism/dogmatism. Or something like that.
Yes, but those "expressions" come well after Husserl and his immediate followers.
And, more philosophically, whether or not X is undecidable (if so, then epoch?), Y is less unreasonable, or fallacious, than Z and how to determine (and interpret) such distinctions. :chin:
You often ask 'why should I bother with this?' But something keeps drawing you back into these discussions.
I think Its essential that you learn to feel what you cannot know. Coming to think of it, this is a large part of what 'mindfulness meditation' comprises - learning that the verbal or discursive element of your being is only one facet of a much greater whole. That also comes out in artistic performance and art generally. But being aware of it is important - a kind of somatic or bodily awareness, not just on the conceptual level. That's what comes from 'zazen'. Also, for anyone that has done awareness training of the kind done at EST and the like, you're taught that ego resists this awareness, as ego's role is to incorporate everything under its gaze. That is what 'letting go' means in relation to contemplative awareness. (And I *think* this is related to the OP.)
It's also related to the phenomenological epoch?, the 'letting experience be' and seeing it as it is, rather than trying to interpret it. (There's an historical link between the Buddhist 'nirodha' (cessation) and the epoch? of the early sceptics.)
In a different register - much of the hostility that is directed towards religion and/or mysticism on this forum is an unconscious response to the dogmatic authority that presided over it in earlier centuries. I recall reading an excerpt from the founding charter of The Royal Society, which stated in no uncertain terms that 'metaphysik', being the province of 'churchmen', in no way must be considered in the reckonings of the Society. And when you consider the bloody history of that time, the slaughter of the 'religious wars', that was an extremely prudent consideration. Venture a wrong opinion about matters of dogma, and goodness knows what might happen to you.
Its where things resist even identity, ever undetermined, questioning thing itself. I get indeterminacy, and agree, it can be called lack of settled position or just the flux and frictions of being, in our case, human (whatever human means . Always an important recognition of the predicament that is being human.
Quoting Constance
I know what you are saying, but it feels too metaphysical too fast, or epistemological, asking Is it possible for thought and its concepts to understand the world as the world?. We no longer need the content, such as the the essence of religion, to continue the conversation this inquiry might become.
All the color is set aside to behold the coloring itself.
As where you first said this inquiry suspends all concepts of faith, atheism, theodicy, God, first cause, teleology, and so on;
But it feels like we could easily head into a digression away from statements like the world IS religious.. Perfectly good questions but, we now need never talk about religion.
But then again, I think there is a reason a discussion of the indeterminacy of existence for us, bumps into epistemological as well as ethical, radical indeterminacy.
To me, as metaphor, we looked through a window you called the essence of religion for something prior that is real and in the world. What did we find? You said radical ethical indeterminacy that is our existence.
If it was ever possible that we have left the comfort zone of ready to hand assumptions to see the prior, perhaps we can keep what you found here, and keep looking.
The same indeterminacy of our existence could also be said to have given birth to science. (I see this is why Nietzsche could say academic science could lie as much as religion could).
Science and religion are equally concept making, indeterminacy regulators. Its why they always wrestle for the same space with the why the how, the what, the whether.
Its just indeterminate. Our existence.
We fill this indeteminacy with laws.l. They could be rational, scientific laws. Be it ethical or not, or only ethical, or scientific or not, or only scientific, its all still mixed with the indeterminate.
I cant argue what I see in where this is going, but I can describe it.
What I see is that, somehow (and I leave that to epistemology to figure out), and for some reason (and Ill leave that to the poets and prophets), what I see is, like you said existence IS us. We are each, the world. But this also means something. What it means, adds to this world, moves itself (the existence IS me), ahead of the world, in to the world, like being thrown. We throw ourselves into this world.
We participate in our own thrownness. We interrupt ourselves into our existence.
I dont know how, mind you. (I just said mind you twice to serve two difference functions, having two different meanings in the sentences - so indeterminate of me.)
But only then, after by some means being thrown to throw our selves back might we start to look for what this becomes, such as a vision of indeterminacy, be it radical ethical, or rational, or ethical first, or rational with ethical color first etc.
So Ive lost your point again about religion qua religion. Something making use of the word essence about religion.
Or does the overlap between scientific objectification (the rational, yielding speech itself). like ethical objectification (yielding religion) show Im at least standing in the same vicinity as you?
Yup. Robert Sokolowski's "The Phenomenology of the Human Person," is one of my favorites and it "builds a bridge," with Husserl and Aristotle. Nathan Lyon's "Signs in the Dust," is another good one, but it's less phenomenological and works more with semiotics, particularly John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas), Cusa, and Aquinasmaking it also an interesting blend of modern philosophy and some "deep(er) cuts" from a fairly neglected era. Edith Stein would seem to be another, I'm less familiar with her though.
Anything can have some form of quantification. But consider: in defining the nature of ethics, we have to deal with value, and this looks to the infamous "good and "bad" which can certainly quantified, as in, how bad is that sprained ankle? But the nature of the experience of pain itself, this is simply "there" in the "fabric of things." In the pure givenness of the world. What makes this so important is that givenness at this primordial level stands apart from explanatory possiblities, as all qualia do, as a pure phenomenon. If it were a matter of, say, the color red and one were being "appeared to redly" (as they say) then no big deal: being red carries no significance at all outside of contexts where color is given meaning. But the sprained ankle is altogether different: pain is inherently ethical, that is, has a normative ethical stature: It should not exist! And this is not a contextual "should not" as when we say one shouldn't forget one's umbrella on a rainy day, BECAUSE.... You see, the normativity of this "should" is contingent. It requires a context to complete the meaning. But pain, this is stand alone "shouldn't", or, it stands as its own presupposition, its own foundation, for its own prohibition.
The point of this is to show something by my thinking to be nothing short of mystical (agreeing with Wittgenstein): ethics IS its own presupposition, its own metaethical grounding. Ethics is always already metaphysical.
Quoting Outlander
I think simple direct reference to a thing satisfies what you are looking for. There it is, a pain in my ankle. I can quantify this, certainly. But its presence is antecedent to the quantification. I mean, it is first "there" and witnessed. One can say that it is this primordial givenness that precedes anything one can say about anything.
Quoting Outlander
This takes the issue perhaps too far for comfort. A world without our sentience, our consciousness, our existence, cannot be imagined, as the very possibility requires that we leave experience to conceive such a thing. It is not as if there are no other things out there, not me or other than me. That would be absurd because, well, there they are. But these are observed in the apperceptual conditions of one's existence. Outside experience, objects are entirely transcendental. In fact, one can argue that to speak of such a thing is entirely impossible because sense can only be made of experiential possibilities.
If there is no one to be valued? It is an interesting thought. Take falling in love. The significant other, what does s/he give or take in the relation? Certainly, the other is a catalyst, to be sure, to what is latent in the beloved, for nothing really passes between the two. The other does not literally "give" anything, suggesting that one might be able to "walk on air" unaided. Like a Buddhist monk?
Perhaps you can see that I am pursuing a rather odd take of this kind of thing. Fear of death is not primordial because it begs the question: what is wrong with fear? referring to the experience itself. Fear, dread, anxiety, terror, and the rest have a great number of explanatory contexts, as you suggest. But what about nature of the experience itself? Very unpleasant. What is pleasure? This kind of question exposes The nature of religion.
I think this is an insightful statement. Yes, we are always already IN a religious world, whether we are explicitly religious or not. Of course, religion is a term that has a history, a tradition, and considerable connotative baggage, so clearly I am not talking about A religion. I am saying that religion is a lot like art: there was a time when art was everywhere in a society's lived experiences. Art, says Dewey, has its essence IN experience itself. Then came the modern practice of sequestering art, and the museum was born, and art is now a professional's business, and very few of us are ":artists". Something similar has happened with religion, hasn't it? The churches, the clergy, the rituals, the scriptures; I mean, this kind of thing has been going on a long time, of course, but the practice has formalized and specialized and made into an institution something which has its foundation in the structure of consciousness itself.
Atheism is just an opinion about theism, and theism is just bad metaphysics.
And yet when I tell you I think it all comes down to faith and feeling and that nothing discursive can be known via meditation, intuition or enlightenment you disagree and label me a positivist. Now it looks like a double standard or perhaps merely peevishness, I don't know which.
Learning to feel what can't be known is actually a very difficult skill, I believe, and I don't make any claim to have mastered it, but at least I'm aware of it, as something that matters, and something that I know that I don't know. Having an insight into the limitations of discursive knowledge is an insight - I referenced the 'analogy of the divided line' in that respect, as it appears Plato recognises different levels or kinds of knowledge, discursive, and types that are higher than that. What he regarded as higher knowledge, noesis, or insight into the ideas, was very much also a matter of aesthetics, and therefore of feeling (or 'qualia' in that horrible philosophical jargon). But you have told me on multiple occasions that there can be no such thing as higher knowledge, nor a vertical or qualitative dimension of existence, and that anything that is said along those lines must be considered 'matter of faith'. It never seems to occur to you that maybe there is such a thing, and you don't understand it.
There is an historical dimension to all these matters. I think classical metaphysics was grounded in a kind of vision, 'the unitive vision', also dismissed by you as 'faith'. There is something in it that can be known, but it has generally been rejected or occluded or dismissed by the modern conception of knowledge, as I try to explain to Banno, who likewise says it's simply 'hand-waving' (and also that it is something that ought not to be said). I try to support this contention with reference to citations, which you then also tell me 'have it all wrong'.
From my perspective, I've made many sincere efforts to explain my arguments to you, over about ten years, which is often met with a mixture of incomprehension and indignation, along with frequent acusations that I've 'dodged the question' or 'changed the subject'. Last time I took a month out from posting, I seriously considered whether I should respond to your criticisms. I'm still considering it, but if I no longer respond, it's not out of defensiveness, it's out of a feeling you have no idea what I'm trying to convey.
The one thing that comes out of it is that having to explain it over and over again does at least crystallize it for me, even if I feel I'm singing to the deaf.
That is also how we know (feel) our non-dual being and life, and how we know poetry and the arts. All I've ever said about this, over and over, is that in that "knowing" (feeling) nothing determinate or discursive or propositional is known.
And the irony is that all that time you have been claiming that I don't understand your position, whereas now it turns out we've been saying what amounts to the same thing and actually agreeing all along, and it has been you that didn't understand my position.
If I didn't understand what you were saying, it was because it seemed like you were asserting that something discursive or propositional is known in that "feeling" you are speaking about. and because you took umbrage at what I said when I denied that and accused me of being a logical positivist or empiricist.
And now here you are saying the same thing, and still refusing to admit that I understand what you are saying. I must say it's kind of weird! The other irony is that even a good staunch logical positivist or empiricist could agree with this kind of feeling/ knowing, and I believe that is pretty much Wittgenstein's position as well.
Quoting Wayfarer
This just confirms my opinion that you won't give up the idea that you can say what cannot be said, but can only be felt or lived, and thus shown. You often cherry-pick from Wittgenstein: I think it would do you some good, clear up these apparent confusions of yours, to actually read him closely.
For me this quesion goes to the heart of philosophy - what ought we do? I personally see no connection between asking this and any desire to depart from discussions. I ask this question about most things I do as a regular practice. What difference does X make to me or others?
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm not unsympathetic to the thrust of this but how reliable is such felt knowledge? People often imagine they have access to truth when it is feelings they have access to and those feelings are as likely to be bigoted or intolerant as they are to encapsulate Buddhahood. Probably more so the former. Again, I'm not saying this to dismiss the point; it's more about testing its reliability. And by the way, I'd say my atheism is significantly informed by felt knowledge. Reality, whatever it may be, feels sans-deity to me.
On Wittgenstein again: an article by Ray Monk, his biographer, said:
When I read that, I feel perfectly in alignment with it. But it seems very different from the way Wittgenstein is often interpreted, including on this forum.
Fair enough. I like asking questions, they are not necessarily an indication of what I am thinking, or what I might know - more a desire to cover off on a range of domains and understand better what others think.
Cool, thanks for the references. I was wondering what Sokolowski's status might be. I've dipped my toe into some Evan Thompson and Francisco Varela.
Could you teach me how to read minds?
I tend to avoid the term as it can very quickly tend to irresolvable dualisms or obscurantism as you suggest. It might be salvaged as a concept by identifying the transcendant with the subject and the worldly with its actions, in the sense that the sea transcends its waves, or I transcend my walking. The world is the actions of spirit.
@Tom Storm
Because you and I have spent our lives in a world that ignores metaphysics. Such a thing is both the furthest away from "common sense" yet the closest to our existence. When I see my cat on the sofa, I am instantly attuned to the same cat, the same thing daily talked about in all the usual contexts, and in this perspective has nothing new at the basic level because the basic level is never challenged, is it, for the thought of it is nonsense. But the difference lies in the interpretative act of receiving the world. Receiving is not done as if perception is a mirror of nature (to borrow a term). How could anyone think that when the cat is processed in a brain, the outcome is the crystal clear cat itself?
There is the famous analogy in Hinduism (I think it was Adi Shankarya) of the snake and the rope that says when I see the cat in the normal way, it is essentially just an error, as if I mistook a piece of rope for a snake walking down the street. It is the same world, but all along there has been this fundamental mistake at the perceptual level. The snake was in the interpretative event, and the fear followed, and one can imagine summoning the townspeople in search of the deadly thing, and so on. Such is what is called culture, the massive sublimation of original energy. For Freud (and Vera Mont may go after me on this. But I speak loosely here) culture is a grand sublimation of original energy, a kind of fetish --parasitical on the unseen original, this language and the institutions so familiar. I ask this question: does General Motors "exist"? This is meant to be taken seriously. Do marriages and funerals or Yale and Dartmouth "exist"? Or, are they "real"?
Such an odd question, but see how things like this get tossed about so readily in conversations, problem solving, actualities in the world. But really, isn't it just as Shankarya put it, an error? Constructed pragmatically to deal with issues more fundamental like people being bound in love, respected when dead, solving technical problems that invented out of the very language and culture that multiplied things in own grand sublimation of the world?
How about my cat: does she exist? How is the word 'cat' such that when I use it, I am dealing with the real? Or is the term just like General Motors?
True. But ask a more fundamental question: why do we "care"? Yes, it is traumatic, as are many things. But to be traumatized, so strongly affected has a dimension to it that is glossed over in the descriptive accounts of the things that actually do this, and this passes by a very important primordiality of our existence which is at the root of ethics and religion: caring. Of course, caring itself can glossed over, and rightly so as we are busy trying to understand other things, but implcit in these is the interest, elation, joy of wonder, concern, and so on, and this is IN the essence of ethics and therefore religion. You know, no caring, no religion. Caring's existential counterpart, the experience itself of the elation, the sad disappointment, the humiliation you mention above, it is this Wittgenstein could not find "in the world".
Such a strange thing it is, no? the scalding of my finger the other day hurt terribly, and the philosophical question hovered over the event: certainly there are the facts before me on the "grid" of "states of affairs," but this "badness" is altogether elusive to understanding. This is because, the "qualia" of pain is not at all like "being appeared to redly," say. It informs thought about something else, and it is not the vacuity of being a color. It is momentous, and this momentousness issues from "the world" (which is a confusing term given the way Wittgenstein uses it vis a vis others others) and not in a fetishized (as I call it) factuality. I mean, horrible pain is momentous existentially! It is not contingently momentous, as say a stock market crash and all inversted funds perished. Which is what I call a fetish of value: stock markets are entirely contrived institutions, on the grid of sense making, but only because we put them there. The scalding of the finger, not THIS is the impossible world "speaking" our ethics and religion PRIOR to our institutions.
An error in consciousness, it has been said.
But is that really the case? I spent much of my young life associated with the New Age movement as it was called back in the 1980's. Most of my friends were idealsits and Theosophists and Buddhists and Hindus and Jungians and Gnostics and Sufi mystics, etc. Quantum physics was seen as proof of idealism, etc. So metaphysics was very much the flavour of the day. I also grew up with Jung, the archetypes and collective unconscious, so I was not exactly immured in 20th century scientism or common sense.
Quoting Constance
But aren't these questions a bit naff? I don't know about yours, but my cat exists. I know this because if I don't feed him he give me hell. I subscribe somewhat to Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of language as being an arbitrary set of signs and signifiers. General Motors is the collective noun for a company.
Any subject or object can be deconstructed into meaninglessness or incoherence, but so what? Not all questions and investigations are useful. I'm fine with reality (whatever that may be) being a pragmatic or tentative construct that helps us to manage our lives. The problem isn't so much in pointing out putative flaws in our construction of the world. The problem is no one has any useful alternatives.
(or) immanent to encompassed by the seas are its waves
:fire: :up: The next round (or three) is on me, mate.
I'd say we care because (or if) it is our nature to care. There is not some anterior reason that leads us to think we should care. We are instinctively attached to our lives and want to preserve them, just as animals are.
Quoting Constance
I'm not sure what your "this" refers to here. Care is central to everything we do, even for those who don't seem to care about anything much.
Quoting Constance
Caring is not an intrinsic part of the world (although Heidegger would say it is, but he uses "world" to refer to the specific human world of dasein); the point is the world does not care about humanity, no matter how much humanity might care about the world (not much it seems given the state of the environment). Of course, caring, in one form or another, is intrinsic to animal life.
Quoting Constance
I agree, horrible pain is like a prison, and the thought that it might never end makes it all the worse. Some people live with constant pain, though; perhaps we can learn, through necessity, to deal with anything, but it would seem to take practice, and I wouldn't wish that necessity of practice on anyone.
:100: :fire:
Given his "fundamental question", maybe @Constance has not considered (e.g.) Spinoza's conatus.
That's exactly what someone who was teased by their sister as a child would say.
:up: That indeed seems quite likely.
To discover the essence of religion, one has to be torn away from default mundane relations with the world. I mean, the world we experience every day. The metaphysics of it has to be treated not as a thesis, but as an encounter with the world, something we don't do in our culture. Curious to ask if we ever did, particularly in ancient cultures where knowledge assumptions were so few compared to this modern and post modern "disillusionment" so common.
The epistemological problem is the same as the problem in ontology (the idea I am pushing here is that of a value-in-being). These are two sides of the same event. It is not as if the world in question reveals itself "outside" of the epistemic encounter, and indeed, it is the encounter that "makes" the world what it is. Not to say there is nothing out there that is not me, but rather to say that what IS before me is the phenomenon, and nothing else, and to behold the phenomenon is in the beholding the beheld object. It is impossible remove affirmations in ontology from those of epistemology.
So we encounter lamps and desks and chairs, and we also encounter feelings, this whole affectivity of our existence. This latter needs to be understood for what it is apart from the "tranquilized" life of passive assumptions. As Wayfarer said, it seems this move is easier for some, harder for others, but no doubt, it is not just cogitating on a thesis. It is revelatory. The metaphysical move you mention as being a bit too quickly affirmed, is first thought out, but the "movement" (as Kierkegaard put it, though he had trouble with this, he admits) is revelatory, and quite fast...that is, immediate. It is essentially aesthetic (keeping in mind the way Wittgenstein conflated the two, ethics and aesthetics. Both are value-driven. Religion, aesthetics and ethics are all about the same thing).
Quoting Fire Ologist
Or perhaps religious talk has to arise after the most fundamental insight is achieved. Take theodicy, a theological conundrum, but based on the premise that God is the greatest, loosely speaking, and created the world. Now we no longer think like this, as we are up to our eyebrows in faith in evidentially grounded belief. This is the virtue of this phenomenological approach to religion as it frees metaphysics from arbitrary concepts that generate the omni this and omni that and the creator of all things. All of this is dismissed. But we do have this: good and evil, and the metaphysics in which these are revealed, remembering that metaphysics is no longer the suprasensory other world, but is this world, and their "properties" spelled out before us is often vivid and powerful, referring to the burns, abrasions and the rest of the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to, as well as love and beauty and bliss. We know we ar "thrown into" this world. Being thrown is a term referring to what happens when one makes this move out of mundanity and sees there is no foundation beneath one's feet, for the myths are gone. The theology is gone. Gone is everything, when inquiry turns to religion.
Metaphysics is now a responsible term.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Yes. Reason itself cannot be conceived, for that would take reason. Where IS this beginning that is so mysterious? Here is a word from Eugene Fink from his Sixth Meditation:
[i]The preliminariness and indeterminateness of the
indications we gave regarding inquiry back to world-constitution
arose from our wanting to be careful that from the outset we not
encumber or even conceal genuine philosophical comprehension
in the phenomenological sense, viz., constitutive understanding, [u]by
a preset "characterization.[/u][/i]
When one gets to this, well, call it, hallowed ground of first apprehensions, one is nowhere in a very real way. Science has be denuded. Nietzsche puts it like this in Human, all too Human:
[i]The shaper of language was not so modest as to think that he was only giving
things labels; rather, he imagined that he was expressing the highest knowledge of
things with words; and in fact, language is the first stage of scientific effort. Here, too,
it is the belief in found truth from which the mightiest sources of strength have flowed.
Very belatedly (only now) is it dawning on men that [u]in their belief in language they
have propagated a monstrous erro[/u]r.[/i]
I get what he is talking about, though most emphatically deny his naturalistic bottom line. He didn't understand ethics or religion essentially. Our ethics IS ethics. Why? Because of the absoluteness of value. (I can't remember if I talked about this here). I think N was just too constantly ill to know anything else but the will to power and overcoming.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I agree. Science should understand that it is just not to be mistaken for metaphysics, which is what so many do these days.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Christians are find of saying God is love, but take the step prescribed here, and they will see that love is a terribly burdened word, overused and trivialized. They have to do what Heidegger did, which is to replace vocabulary so as to talk about things anew. Language literally makes discovery possible (" the house of being"), yet it also creates the terms of its own obfuscation. Where this is going is to a dropping of terms that privilege clarity of meaning (the analytic school's obsession), in favor of a truly descriptive vocabulary at the basic level. This is phenomenology, what I think will be the final religion.
Quoting Fire Ologist
You sound a bit like Heidegger: We do not live in time. We ARE time. And the basic furniture of the world is not material things in space and time, but events, forward looking. Hence, Being and Time. Our most authentic existence is our freedom, as free as an unmade future.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Religion qua religion, that is religion that is set apart from all that religious culture and theology, which entangles affairs in so many things that have nothing to do with religion, like long shiny robes and choirs of angels and lent and Easter and Passover, and on and on. What happens when one wants to be free of the culture to see what is there that is real beneath it all, like asking a politician what she really stands for apart from all the posturing asking, is there a real person behind this endless rhetorical blather?
Anyway, religion is metaphysics. Period. Metaethics, to be precise, a pursuit of "the good" and "the bad" in an effort to escape mere contingency of all we talk about. Hard to say briefly, but perhaps you have read Stanley Fish's Is There a Test in this Class? Language does not pin to any fixed contexts, so meanings are all variable, depending on what one is talking about. The search or the essence of religion is a search for something that is BOTH noncontingent and Real. Something that has the apodicticity of logic, but issues from existence, not the apriority of the mere form of thought, apriori, as Kant put it.
We find this in the value dimension of our existence. We can talk about this if you like.
But it shows that concepts are not empty things. They are palpable errors. As I see it, when we talk about the world, we are using categories of understanding. These are concepts, so when I see a dog, the particular dog in front of me is known because I have this schematic in my head about dogs in general, the universal that subsumes the particular. Hegel said THIS dominates the understanding, and you can see his point. Language is not about particulars, so seeing anything at all is grasped by the universal. But the universal to particular relation makes the dog a dog, and without it, well, this is impossible to "say". The point would be that when Buddhists and Hindus meditate, the reason why this is so hard to fully realize is because one is not merely shutting up. One is trying to break this powerful bond that creates an understanding of something. This destroys familiarity itself!
The language of particulars and generalities changes depending on whether we are considering types or tokens; for example, relative to a particular dog 'species' is a general term, whereas relative to a particular species, genus is a general term, and so on. There would seem to be nothing universal about it, the terms change their references depending on whether we are thinking in terms of tokens or types.
So, the point is that the central idea is contextuality, not universality, categories based on family resemblances, on recognition of patterns of form and configuration, not on essences.
I think there are two rather divergent themes in play here. First you referenced the rope-snake illusion, attributed to Sankara (although really common currency for all the schools of Indian philosophy). The thrust of that is that we impute attributes to things because of mistaken attachment to them, imputing a value to them they dont really possess, due to avidya/ignorance. That is the error in consciousness in that context. It is comparable in some respects to the Christian original sin, with the caveat that the Indian conception is more cognitive (corruption of the understanding) than volitional (corruption of the will.) In Indian systems of philosophy ( darshana) this condition of avidya/ignorance is primeval, i.e. beginningless in time (whereas in Christianity it is assigned to the mythology of the Fall.) It is that condition of avidya/ignorance from which mok?a (liberation) is to be sought over aeons of life-times.
But when you talk of categories of the understanding, I take that to be a reference to universals. Universals are not much stressed in Vedanta (and denied altogether in formal Buddhist logic, although it is upheld in other schools such as Mimamsa and Nyaya. A useful resource on universals in Western philosophy is an essay by Jacques Maritain.) But I dont see the role of universals as necessarily inimical to awakening in the sense the Buddhists or Hindus understand it.
//please forgive the pedantic tone of the above, its a subject I studied at university//
But, I am arguing, none of this is metaphysics, any more than attending church and listening to sermons about the the resurrection, the ascension, and taking the sacraments. This is talk about metaphysics. I claim something far more interesting and difficult, which is acknowledging that the everyday world really is the setting for metaphysics, metaethics, metavalue. Kant famously drew the line between phenomenon and noumenon. I am saying it is all noumenal.
What is the justification for this? It begins with argument at the basic level. For example: how is knowledge possible? Answer: it is not. Or, what does it mean that the value dimension of our existence is absolute, that is, it cannot be contradicted in its nature? Such questions challenge all assumptions of our existence.
Quoting Tom Storm
Naff? Well, try not to be put off by this too much, and perhaps allow yourself the indulgence of looking past facile judgment. I mean, if you have read Saussure, then you have to follow through on to Derrida, and grasp his notion of the trace. No space to discuss this, but look, no one is saying your cat doesn't exist. It was Saussure who noted that difference is the principle of language, and so when you see your cat, and experience the singularity of it being there, the language that is implicit in the identification never affords this singularity; rather, the cat is received as a "trace" of the many cat related ideas that rise to the occasion that produce the singularity. And so here, one can say taht the analysis of the knowledge relation with the cat reveals that you are not grasping one thing. Language doesn't do this. Language gives one "regions" of possibilities out of which one thought emerges. It is truly a fascinating account, and contributes significantly to understanding the idea here about metaphysics: Metaphysics never was IN the language act that speaks something.
See the above: how is knowledge possible? Well, it isn't. YET, there is no question I see the cat. And so knowledge is simply a fact. Quite the problem to solve. Only one solution I see: The terms of object intimation (the cat) must exceed the idea of locality. It simply cannot be that that cat over there is independent and localized as normal perception tells us.
Actually, Im pretty sure thats what my confrères would have argued. The quotidian is metaphysics. I would have thought metaphysics is unavoidable even if some think their version is real life while the metaphysical foundations of others are flights of fancy.
Hmm, the bigger question right now is why wont my cat eat his usual brand? The metaphysics involved wont reach help us here.
Quoting Constance
Reality is what most of us chase these days instead of gods. We create models that allow us to do things in the world and eventually these models are displaced by new ones. Do we ever arrive at ultimate knowledge?
What does your very interesting model of metaphysics here provide you with? Is it just a speculative approach that deconstructs the status quo, or can you build things with it?
@Constance @Wayfarer
('The Deathless' is a synonym for Nibbana.) Sariputta says "It's not that *I* take it on conviction" - presumably because he has 'known, seen, penetrated, realised and attained it'. Whereas those who have not known, seen, etc, would have to take it on conviction.
So, in this framework, faith has a role, but it's not the deciding factor, which is a hard-won insight (and the requirements of the Buddhist monastic orders are known to be exacting.) It is nearer to a form of gnosticism, in fact there's a Pali/Sanskrit word 'Jñ?na' which is from the common Indo-Eruopean root jn- or gn- associated with 'higher knowledge'. But the overall point is that of a kind of 'saving insight' - in the early Buddhist texts this is stated again and again, in almost every thread, to be insight into the chain of dependent origination which is the causal factor that causes repeated birth in sa?s?ra (whether in this life or in future lives). But faith is still indispensable, as one has to have the conviction that there is a purpose to undertaking the arduous path of discipleship.
So, as for 'whatever is real does not require faith', from the Buddhist perspective, it is quite true, with the caveat that us putthajjana (untrained worldlings) do not comprehend or see what is real as we're basically unprepared and corrupted by attachment to the sensory data.
But then look at advanced scientific knowledge. That also requires extensive training and preparation, fluency in mathematical and statistical techniques, a grasp of theory, and also exposure to very specific kinds of experience that can only be replicated under highly specific conditions. In many regards, lay readers like ourselves have to 'take it on faith' that the hypotheses and observations are valid as we're often not able to validate those in the first person.
Traditional Western philosophy had a similar attitude:
[quote=Pierre Hadot, IEP] For Hadot...the means for the philosophical student to achieve the complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things epitomized by the Sage were a series of spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the students larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things (Philosophy as a Way of Life 84). Hadot acknowledges his use of the term spiritual exercises may create anxieties, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion than typically done. Hadots use of the adjective spiritual (or sometimes existential) indeed aims to capture how these practices, like devotional practices in the religious traditions are aimed at generating and reactivating a constant way of living and perceiving in prokopta, despite the distractions, temptations, and difficulties of life. For this reason, they call upon far more than reason alone. [/quote]
It's not enough to say that any and all of us have an innate insight into or grasp of the nature of reality by default, so to speak. Otherwise what would be the need of philosophy or science or any other kind of training?
Maybe it's Schrodinger's :-)
I have no doubt that this is true. How does one respond to the question , what is caring? as an ontological matter? What is value-in-being? And what is the real standard for talking about things existing? Consider the pale metaphysics of, say, material substance and how this stands vis a vis, oh, the late stages of beubonic plague and the deep suffering it involves: which one is the stronger basis for what exists? Suffering is presence-in-the-world, while material substance altogether lacks presence, yet the latter rules modern ontology. Patently absurd. No, the real belongs to value, greater or lesser, it is the very foundation of meaning.
Quoting Janus
I agree. The point is, what IS it? It has this radically weak ontology in tradition and in popular thought. This is due to, I argue, the rise of technology and the attending dismissal primordial meanings in our culture. God was, to remind, not this absurd first cause, etc. God was redemption and consummation of value in our exdistence.
Quoting Janus
The world has to be first defined. Heidegger did not have an ethics, or, did not discuss ethics, much to the alarm of Levinas, Henry and others. Hence their endless complaining. But for H metaphysics (ask Josh __ about this) is the ontotheological structure of a culture, and this is clearly lacking a metaethics. Like Nietzsche, H didn't understand ethics at all. He wasn't equipped, perhaps. But he did deny, with N, the "suprasensory place" of God, not just God.
But one has to look closely at what the "world" does: The world is the source for value-in-the-world. It "gives" us our afflictions as a possibility for ethics to exist at all., The "preference" for "the good" iin the world is NOT a fabrication, like the various institutions that are so easily assailable. The world "makes" these preferences. This is a point I would emphasize.
But go a step further into Kant, where Hegel got it. The universal is part of the structure of language's logic. I say "look there!" But "there" is where exactly? Because the term is used in any and all contexts of location and itself as a spatial index is just a generality. Yes, of course, there means there, under the table. But language doesn't do this. Context does this, and context dealsj ust with more language that has just this universality in their meaning.
But then, all this is standing on the outside looking in. Why does one read philosophy? Is it to understand all that your confrères were talking about? What Davidson or Quine were talking about? Or is it to understand the world? I think one has to have one's passions really involved in the pursuit of truth, for truth is not simply, as Rorty put it, something propositions have. Truth lies IN the passion itself, otherwise it is just an abstraction. One has to care about one's finitude in the midst of radical indeterminacy, because our existence is essentially ethically and aesthetically founded on caring. We ARE caring, and caring seeks consummation. Such a thing is generally confined to the usual matters, the owning of things and basic enjoyments. But philosophy takes one thoughtfully where religion once could only go.
I suppose in order to see this, one has to be interested in the first place. I mean prior to sitting down with a text, is it the thrill of combative argument that drives one? Is it like reading a novel, a good narrative? Or is one simply insistent on getting as deeply as possible into understanding this impossible world we are thrown into?
I stopped caring about what my confrères were talking about long ago. I find it useful now, but I don't think about philosophy so I can talk about how Nietzsche was taken up by Heidegger, or how Platonism influenced Christianity, and so on. These are just intellectual indulgences.
Something weird going in quantum mechanics. But the weirdest thing I can imagine lies in the simplicity of the epistemic impossibility of there being a cat at all. This is not to say there is no cat, certainly not. It is to say that the HOW of knowing there is a cat is impossible to discover. Epistemology is impossible, unless a new paradigm of discovery is admitted, for causality in a physicalist paradigm is just flat out wrong. The trouble with quantum mechanics, and this is not a technical observation, is that it may be that the only way understand things like quantum entanglement is through the phenomenology of our existence that studies the imposition of the conditions of perceptual possiblity: the "out there" of physics is woefully inadequate. The failure to observe the epistemic connectivity between us and the world is bound up with the failure to see quantum entanglement.
Half dead cats? Adorable.
Not quite there. It is more fundamental than this. The value dimension of our existence is something that cannot be further reduced to more talk about metaphysical tendencies, direction, energy, or "impetus" or anything else. It is entirely irreducible, that pain in my ankle and this amazingly delicious hagen Dasz. Of course, facts are facts entangled and singularity is lost in the richness of the world. But this does not alter the nature of the value-presence, which is most evident in the the strongest and most unambiguous expressions, like having your head in a vice.
There are multiple reasons. One might be to have an encounter with the unfamiliar - to see what's out there and find out what others think. Another might be to find post hoc justification for views arrived at emotionally. The latter seems most common in the discussions I've had with others.
Quoting Constance
Who said anything about caring what others think? I simply remarked that my confrères had held a similar view to yours about metaphysics, so it's not such an unusual position.
Quoting Constance
Your wording seems a complicated way of saying something simple and fairly commonplace - that philosophy has the capacity to lead individuals to deeper contemplation and understanding, surpassing the traditional realm that religion once solely occupied. Perhaps yours is a quest for foundational justification for compassion.
You are speaking of physical pain, the sufferings of the flesh, no? How is that not the suffering that goes with material being?
Quoting Constance Of course there would not be pain without awareness of it. We live to some extent at least, conscious lives. It is very difficult to consciously eliminate intense physical pain from consciousness; we need physical intervention to achieve that. We need analgesics and anesthetics to eliminate pain.
Why do we care? We care because we wish to avoid suffering and experience happiness, joy. We also want our lives to be interesting, and perhaps for some, creative. Above all we wish to be comfortable and confident being ourselves.
Quoting Constance
I'd say "the world" means different things in different contexts or modes. In the empirical mode it means the physical world. In the mode of consciousness, it means all that we are aware of, all that we feel, our sense of self and so on. In the larger emotional or spiritual mode, it means something like a heightened sense of being connected with everything and an uplifting sense of reverence for life itself.
We cannot rationally combine different contexts into a comprehensive "master context" (which would amount to a total lack of context), that could unify all our experience and understanding. That is a folly, a delusive dream, born of intellectual hubris, I would say. It is important to know our limits; we cannot be omniscient.
We can see that myths of omniscience, godhood, grow up around charismatic spiritual figures like Jesus and Gotama, but this only leads to empty dogmatism. The human spirit constantly evolves and we need to find ourselves, become ourselves, in the modern context, not in looking back to the ancients, focusing on and bemoaning what we mistakenly imagine has been lost.
Quoting Constance
For me it seems a step backwards. "Universal" denotes that which applies in all contexts, and I don't believe there is any such thing, Hegel's absolutism was not a step further than Kant.
I see this differently only because I don't see religion as myopically as it's being portrayed here through a very modern religion/state/science separation. That separation isn't inherent, but it's idiosyncratic to modern Western democracy.
You will necessarily consider the government the steward of the rules, science the steward of knowledge, and religion the steward of ethics and meaning if that's the system you've decreed, but that isn't where society began. It's where it happens to be now, but only in some parts of the world.
That is, some turned to religion not only for reasons to do with death, truth, or meaning, but because they wanted to know what to do if their neighbor's ox gored theirs, what sorts of foods were safe to eat, and when they should have celebrations and when they should be solemn. They also wanted to know why the sun rose and fell and why the animals did as they did, and so they came up with all sorts of explanations.
But this conversation isn't about all this. It's about why you folks think people still cling to religion when science and government has prevailed and from there the psychoanalysis follows. It must be, you assume, because the world is scary, uncertain, and otherwise amoral.
Religion is an all encompassing worldview, just as is scientism. It can reach as far into the realms of science as much as science can reach into the realms of religion. The question is where to draw the line, but I do think the quest for meaning is as inherent a human drive as is the quest for knowledge. While science can tell us why the world does as it does, it can't tell how to live in it. That's why I'd suggest religion perseveres in an otherwise scientific world. It simply provides answers science does not.
I would have thought virtually anything can provide us with answers. We have too many of those. Humans will always find a way to derive answers from stories, whether its evolution or Jane Austin. Whether or not this is sound philosophical practice is irrelevant to those who seek and find.
But I suspect when you say answers you are referring to something more? Truth perhaps? Wisdom?
Anyway, having worked in palliative care, often with theists who are dying, by far the most common explanation offered to explain the importance of their faith is that it provides comfort. They claim to be less afraid , not just of death but also in the knowledge that their suffering is not in vain. If comfort or meaning is what youre looking for, itll probably be much harder to find this in science.
Im not convinced any of us really know why we believe certain stories and not others. I suspect the answer is in cultural and psychological factors. We may think we can point to the intellectual superiority of certain frames or the meaning generated by others, but who knows?
Yes! But hold on with that word justification. The process of the affirmation is discursive, but the evidence, in the end, is ontologically revelatory. Ontology is a sticky word, meaning it is, as with all philosophical foundational words, inherently metaphysically indeterminate. When one talks about THIS kind of ontological inquiry, one is already in religious analysis. i would put the case like this: Imagine that the ten commandment were true. It's just a supposition, and so you can't just dismiss because one can so easily. That would miss the point. So let's say its all true, as true as physics, but more so. And what is now simply an assumption, an axiom of existential standing, is a proper premise for justification. In the light of this, how does this change the way one understands the world?
Here the question goes not to the gravitas of its commandments, but to the gravitas of what stands behind them, for something like "honor thy mother and father" is still, in itself, just a bit of ethical normativity. God is now the foundational ontological justification, and by definition, if you will, there is no gainsaying God. It is at least as strong as, say, modus ponens or the principle of identity, in rational coercivity. You know, no choice. Even Dostoyevsky's Underground Man would have to bow low. The difference here is, this apodicticity, or necessity, is existential! How would this change the world? So we drop the ten commandments, and we drop God, for the supposition served its purpose, and now what is left is the, heh, heh, "the power and the glory". I really shouldn't use such a phrase because of its connotative bs, but I'll keep it. Because what I am trying to reveal is, IF this argument for the essence of religion I have been trying to defend, is right, and I am sure it is, then we live in just this kind of world. One does not go to ancient texts for justification. It is "written" in the analysis of our existence.
How so? I say, all we need to do is observe the world's ethical and aesthetic dimension. Look closely, that is, analytically. What is the nature of this dimension? This is the question. It is not a question of the way it is historically taken up in the reification of traditions, because all of this is just a bad attempt, bad metaphysics, since it was not conceived responsibly with an eye exclusively on the what is in-the-world. This here is just good science. Just not empirical science.
We put the plain ontology of "stuff" out of relevance, but we keep the term "material" if you like, simply because it can be used to indicate the actualities in the world, the "material basis" of ethics and religion is excatly to the point. But as a metaphysical thesis that posits the most basic thinking in ontology, material being it is most misleading, for even at best, it is just a functional place holder for general references. At worst, it is entirely vacuous, for one can never witness "material being" since being is not A being. There is no one thing, but is meant as the eternal substratum of all beings. (But it is not as if there is nothing to this nothing. No name dropping here, but this once: the matter of the nothing of metaphysics and its anxiety is covered in a fascinating discussion by Kierkegaard and Heidegger.)
No, I prefer to keep with reality. What is THERE, evident to our sight, and makes the strongest claim to the Real? I'd say a death by a thousand cuts qualifies, or being in love, or Hagen Dasz, a close second.
Quoting Janus
But now you have to take the next analytic step, which is into ontology. I am asking about the ontology of value-in being. It is not so weird as it may sound. Here I am, the observer with my senses and reason in full and clear apprehension, and there is this "presence" emanating from my sprained ankle. One asks, what is this? Of course, if this were an empirical question, one would have context ready to hand for classification, but we are not asking that kind of question. This is a metaphysical question and the classification takes us into far less solid analytical territory, at least at first.
And if this were simply a question of what analytic philosophers call qualia, then it would be a vacuous, for who cares about "being appeared to redly" and the like? Red as a pure phenomenon is unspeakable presence or "givenness". Value, the broad sense of "pathos" in the world. But sprained ankles and the like are not vacuous at all. Indeed, it classifies as THE most salient feature of our existence, and of existence in any context.
It is a perspective that does require a rather unusual intuitve move, I think, I have observed: One has to understand that by dismissing materialism or physicalism, we also dismiss the idea of the metaphysics of locality. It is one thing to say there is a mountain over there, a tree at the base, and I am here, and so on. But one of the most striking features of taking this normal kind of referencing and raising it to the status of metaphysics is this localization is inserted into the question of being. But being is not A being. It is not here and there, but rather here and there are "in" being. The importance of this lies in ontological prioritizing, for science deals with beingS, and this significantly undermines the importance if importance, if you will, for something being important is conceived as a localized affair, and this has led to the absurd analytic view that a thing being important is "there, in that locality called a human being," and therefore of no consequence outside of contexts of, say, anthropology, biology or psychology. The idea here is that this view undermines our existence AS it exists. We are, in the most basic way to put, existence itself, not a localized thing.
Quoting Janus
If all there were, were contextuality of meanings in a finite setting, then I would agree. But this is not the world. Consider that it is not the scientist's hubris that gave us physics. It is the scientific method (or, the hypothetical deductive method of Popper and the pragmatists, if you like) and what does this tell us, I mean, loosely speaking? Observe and think, only here, we have withdrawn from empirical categories because the question is not an empirical one. Nor is it about the analyticity of logic. It is about the analyticity of existence.
What is religion all about? It is about an analytic of existence that gives a foundation for ethics that has the certainty of logical apodicticity. This I would emphasize is what is all about. I should underline it because it is a pretty good way to put it. There.
Quoting Janus
Well, forget about al this. You and I are responsible thinking people, not mindless dogmatists (though I am sure Gautama Siddhartha was on to something very much to the point here). Not at all intersted in ancient thinking, though the ancients themselves are quite interesting.
Quoting Janus
Well, one has to look at the language and how it makes knowledge possible. It is not that Hegel was right in all he said. But somethings make some sense. I have before me the full being of a coffee cup. Yet I know my knowing this is through the general, the historicity of coffee cups, cups in general, drinking vessels and on and on. The apprehension of THIS coffee cup is through this language that understands things, not through any direct apprehension of the object. The only thing that is directly apprehended is value-in-the-world, and this is of course received in language like everythign else, but , if you will, pain and joy "speak" which is why Wittgenstein refused to talk about it. Speaking ruins, vitiates the world of importance-in-things.
We know material being, we live it. So, I don't think it is necessary to witness it, in some way analogous to how one witnesses events, or material beings of the various kinds. We don't know any other kind of being than material being, although of course we can think immaterial being as its dialectical opposite.
I don't deny that the idea of transcendence has moment for we humans; it is an inevitable feature in the movement of thought, just as zero, infinity, and imaginary and irrational numbers are in mathematics. Of course, the indeterminable cannot be determined, but it features prominently as an absence, a mystery, the unknowable, in our thinking. It has apophatic value, in other words.
Quoting Constance
I agree, we live predominantly in our sensations, feelings and emotions, they are what is most vivid, most real, for us; without them life would be as good as nothing.
Quoting Constance
I'd say it is more a phenomenological question than a metaphysical. Well, at least it is if taking "metaphysical" in its traditional sense.
Quoting Constance
Right, there are a limitless number of possible heres and theres, none of them absolute, all of them relative to context.
Quoting Constance
I agree, and that is why I have argued recently in another thread that experience or perception is not "in the head'.
Quoting Constance
Sure, analyticity in the existential or phenomenological, not the logical, sense.
Quoting Constance
I agree with Hegel that all the historical movements of thought are important, but I also believe we cannot go back. I agree with Gadamer that we cannot even be sure what the ancients philosophers meant. This is the problem of anachronism, and to imagine ourselves as returning to think like Plato or Aristotle, is anachronistic. Which is not to say that we cannot find interest there, but we will always interpret that interest as moderns.
Quoting Constance
I disagree here. I think we do directly apprehend objects. Further thinking about that will of course include what you said, though. I see no reason to think that animals don't also apprehend objects, but I see good reason to think that they don't think about it in general terms as we do. We do that because symbolic language allows us to abstract generalities from particular experiences.
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I dont consider empirical science the steward of knowledge at the level of examining the presuppositions of science. Science gets into very serious trouble when it comes to basic questions because it cannot address the simple question as to how knowledge of the world is possible. Its job is not epistemology. Ask a scientist how the world "gets into" a knowledge claim and she will not even know what you are talking about, yet this is fundamental to knowing the world. To be clear: it is not that science has some working paradigm about how knowledge relationships and this will advance based on new observational data; rather, science has no clue at all as to how such a relationship could even possibly work given the scientist's "ontology" of physicalism/materialism.
But of coursr, when it comes to the familiar classificatory work of science and pragmatic efficacy, science is the steward of knowledge.
Government the steward of rules? But prior to this is ethics. Government is right as it reasons ethically, and wrong when it doesn't regardless of the outcome. I refer here to the "good will" of intensions.
Quoting Hanover
I am not here concerned with any analysis of why people turned to religion. More often than not, there simply was no choice, conform or die. The way we are entangled with other people, desires and fears brings in matters that are not that have nothing to do with the essence of religion, and more than political favor for certain research has anything to do with the essence of science. It is not why people believe in a religion, but what is means for something to be religiously significant at all! What is there in the world that makes religion even possible outside of narratives and power plays, etc. Or better, what makes the world a "religious place" in the same way that it is a place of science? You mentioned ethics, and I agree, but this just opens the door for discussion. What about ethics makes it the essence of religion?
Quoting Hanover
No, no. I mean, it is scary and uncertain, obviously, but I am arguing precisely that the world IS a moral place. I am arguing that religion, beneath all those absurd assumptions of faith and dogmatism, the essence of religion is the realist thing one can imagine, and lies deep in our existence. This is the value dimension of our world. Ask, what is real? in the philosophical sense, not in the general sense in which this term is tossed around mindlessly. I argue that there is nothing more real than affectivity or the "pathos" that saturates experience in every interest, abhorrence, love, hate, and so on.
Of course, to see this, one has to put aside science's absurd claims about science's metaphysics called physicalism (and the like).
Quoting Hanover
One has to put aside this kind of categorical thinking. This is metaphysics, but responsible metaphysics, so if it has a name at all, it would be ontotheology, the being of theology that is elucidated through a close look at metaethics. Metaethics, as I am thinking about it here, deals the the notorious "good" and "bad" of ethical matters. Think G E Moore's non natural property, as he tries to explain what the ethical good in essence IS. Contingent goods and bads are easy to understand, as with good knives or bad performances, good news, bad radio reception, and on and on. Ethical goods and bads are very different, for in order to "observe" such a thing, one has to acknowledge something very strange that literally constitutes ethical situations, as in the ethical prohibition against the rack or applying thumb screws. Exhaust the empirical descriptive features of such a thing, and there is the residuum called the "bad" of it. Few take the time to look closely at this: it cannot be seen, yet it is by far THE most salient feature applying the thumb screws has, which is the ethical/aesthetic "bad" of the pain.
Note how one cannot give this further analysis, for pain as such is not a "thing of parts" but is "stand alone what it is," and this makes pain irreducible to anything else, any other explanatory account. It is literally IN the presence of the world, and I would quickly add, MORE SO than anything science can ever come to know, for science's knowledge is essentially quantitative in nature, meaning it processes information through meansuring how qualitative presences can be represented in intensities, degrees, numbers, etc. in quantitative relations. Very complicated, certainly, but, and this is the point: derivative, derived, that is, through discursive reasoning. This is a very rough but accurate way to talk about science's knowledge claims. Take any science, geology, e.g.: ask a question about, say, the orogeny of mountains or plate tectonics or carbon dating, and you will not find anything enlightening about the world cannot be reduced to talk about relative quantitative relations. Qualitatively, the world is there, of course, but the understanding about the world is going to be about relative quantitative relations.
This is why science cannot talk about ethics any more than it can talk about reason qua reason as Kant tried to. Reason, like ethics' value, cannot be observed and quantified. Modus ponens doesn't have a quantitative dimension to it, but this is where the argument gets interesting, because the ethical/aesthetic "good and bad" does, which leads to the most basic part of this analysis: We look here at ethics as Kant looked at reason, trying to isolate the "purity" of value-in-ethics. Kant had to go transcendental because of the apriority of the logic discovered in judgment, and here, we, too, go thsi way. What religion seeks is an account of value-in-the-world that is AS apodictic as logic, but is ABOUT existence. Logic is vacuous, let's face it. It is, as Wittgenstein said, just tautological in nature, so its apodicticity is equally vacuous, meaning, who cares? It only has meaning in contexts of meaningful affairs, like seeing that IF you want to stay dry in the rain THEN you must bring an umbrella. Pure form is only intersting if you TAKE in interest in it. But value: Demonstrate that value qua value is apodictic, like logic, and now you have an extraordinary affirmation of foundational meaning of our existence.
Like proving God exists, but without God and all the churchy fetishes; the depth of meaning is now absolute, and our ethical throwness into the world carries with it the redemptive and consummatory promises inherent in religion.
No. It is very important that one is able to witness something they "know". Otherwise, it is just bad metaphysics. You might as well be talking about God and her omniscience, omnipotence or how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. Metaphysicl materialism is simply an extension of loose talk about things in the world. Material physics is not a metaphysical concept, but refers to observable properties of things. The underlying substratum of all things will never been observed because it is not A being. It IS being. The only responsible way to talk about such a substratum requires the term transcendence, simply because there is nothing to say. This is Wittgenstein's "world" which is mystical.
Quoting Janus
On the other hand, experience is not a numerical indeterminacy. Hagen Dazs is not a numerical indeterminacy, nor sex or love or death by a thousand cuts. This is what religion is all about. Analytic philosophers generally deal with the good and bad of ethics/aesthetics as if the normativity of these terrible and wonderful things are to be dealt with just like one deal with facts of the world. But to do this ignores the nature of the normativity itself, which issues from the pain being "bad" and this is in double inverted commas because we are dealing with a "quality" in the presence of pain that makes the "ought" of a prohibition what it is. This is the ontology of value-in-being.
Usually, oughts are contingently conceived, that is, they are part of a conditional construction, IF...THEN, as in If you want get an A on the exam, THEN you have to study, and so, the ought entirely depends on something else. But in ethics, the ought is stand alone.
Quoting Janus
Brilliant! Nothing at all, and in an important way this tells us that the greatest "wisdom" of philosophy is not going to be found in mere propositional truth or the pragmatics, or rational soundness, or representational alignment of knowledge claims. The answer to the question of life the universe and everything lies with the elucidation or the enlightenment about and realization of value-in-the-world.
Quoting Janus
Metaphysics is only meaningful to the extent it is realized phenomenologically, for phenomena are all that IS. Anything that is posited that is not grounded this way is just bad metaphysics. Kant didn't see this. He thought of metaphysics as hopelessly transcendental in the absolute sense of this term and impossible to talk about. But then, where are the grounds for the discussion about it being beyond discussion? And how is it possible that noumena and phenomena are to be conceived as separate ontologies when the former has no delimitations for to delimit noumena is to draw a line and one cannot draw a line about something utterly transcendental' it would be like separating finitude and infinity, a separation that occurs only in language! A rope or a snake, asks Adi Shankara.
It is language and its pragmatic nature that so strongly inhibits understanding of metaphysics.
Quoting Janus
If you understand this, and I trust that you do, you have realized something very profound about our existence that I won't, following Wittgenstein, trivialize with talk beyond saying that in you are right there with the (serious) Hindus.
Quoting Janus
When dealing with an ontology of language and culture, I agree. But then, there is the taboo ontology that Gadamar or Heidegger will not take seriously because it underscores the notion of the "pure" phenomenon, which Husserl took up so rigorously and was rejected for the impossibility of the claim that the phenomenological reduction could bring one to the absolute presence of the object. There are those, particularly Michel Henry and Jean Luc Marion who continued forward with this radical taboo ontotheology of religious revelation in the objective study of being (of course, all in the long shadow of Heidegger's analysis in Being and Time and latter works. The very term ontotheology is from Kant then Heidegger from the Greek. For more on this see his [what I consider quite difficult] Identity and Difference and his Ontotheological Constitution of Metaphysics. Again, a bit of a struggle for me. For clarity, you could ask JoshS).
I, on the other hand, take this taboo philosophy very seriously. I am sure that philosophy leads one to foundations, and here, even the receptive "meditative thinking" can only be an index to "the world," a pragmatic index, if you will, "opens seeing".
Quoting Janus
But you know how this problem goes: The only ontology that can sustain in what-is-and-can-be-known is hermeneutics. Long and involved. I want to agree with you, but I can't see how acknowledging my cat as my cat can discover the "my cat" in an objective claim so familiar, in the language that is in the apprehension of it being my cat. But I do stand with Michel Henry who takes us through a Cartesian path to affirmation (in his Manifestation of Essence): Descartes made a basic mistake in that the cogito is impossible to conceive apart from the cogitatum. The indubitably of "I think" is nonsense apart from an object, and this is, of course, Husserl's intentionality, which Henry uses as the basis of his thinking. the idea is that when I acknowledge my cat, it is patently ludicrous to imagine nothing is happening here and that which it IS: that is not language.
The trouble is, what one can say is bound up in the structural entanglements of the language (the difference and deference, as Derrida put it) and this makes my knowledge of my cat entirely contingent and contextual.
Only one thing survives this analysis: value-in-being. "Ouch!" and "oo and ah and yum" experiences are not language, BUT they "speak" the "language" of ethics. The bad and good, that is; the non contingent "bad" of the "ouch" of having teeth pulled without anesthetics is a "bad" that issues from the world.
A bit much here. Apologies. Talking about these things tests the limits of talking.
Nothing but time. Get well soon!
And religion is necessarily not that. At its core it is refuge from that. Religion is turning attention away from our imposition thinking, our knowing, including, God forbid, our Philosophies, and returning it to Truth.
That we identify that Truth as God or Spirit is only a reflection of our intuition that it is something utterly other than our imposition thinking, the place we seem to be ineluctably trapped. Though, so calling it ended up naturally getting carried off by the rapids of imposition thinking, and mythology, ritual, law and dogma surfaced.
But at its core seek Truth, all else is talk.
I think Religion is the victim of prejudice. Its like hating hockey if the NHL has serious issues. That core seeking of Truth exists in many if not all religions. And cannot by definition exist in (Western) philosophy.
When religion is authentically practiced by an individual, they express that core. They loosen, if not abandon, attachment to ego, the Subject to which imposition thinking falsely attaches. And often, they spend a lot of time in meditation or deep prayer. In these states, they are either loosening attachment to imposition thinking all together, or at least, focusing on a single imposition thought, leaving much more "space" for the Truth to naturally become the focus of one's organic aware-ing.
The essence of religion is seek truth; and it holds true in its authentic practice.
If so, then why are religions not founded on public impersonal objective truths and are not daily practices (celebrations) of rigorous public error-correction?
After all, the Abrahamic tradition begins with a woman disobeying "the Lord" who forbade her from eating fruit from a "Tree of Knowledge" (truth): Hebrew (JCI) scriptures depict "the original sin" as a woman thinking for herself by "seeking truth". :naughty:
Obeying "the Lord" (and his anointed/appointed pimps) in order to avoid punishment (fear), not "seeking truth", seems to me religion's historically manifest "essence".
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/904100
Well, after prefacing my answer with the admission that I'm no authority, because as I said, individuals can experience the essence of religion in authentic practice.
As for its failings in the public square, as I said, once that core seeking of Truth became identified, say, as God, it got swept away by "imposition thinking."
What you are (seemingly) frustrated with is not religion, at its core, but a bastardized version.
The same can be said of democracy at its core. Somewhere there might be an elected official practicing authentic democracy. The fact that it is not so in the public square is not the fault of democracy.
But the core of religion, is not the denial of death, but its affirmation, along with life: Truth, not imposition thinking (sorry, Constance, or Nietzsche, the term fits).
As for my erroneous assumption about you being frustrated, I guess that's your standard speech. I won't misread it next time.
Isn't everything a magical quest for immortality, when you think about it, really? We (people in general, not necessarily anyone reading) seek to prolong and yes even immortalize ourselves and ideas with medicine, philosophy, networking, friends, relationships, rearing children, science, sure it's of a different flavor but is it not all the same at the end of one's weary day? We wish to become more than we are or were the previous day, this is not anything mystical or bewildering or some sort of hocus pocus from a book, this is the real most unrefined nature of who we are as a species, to become greater and break free from our mortal shackles as most concretely and effectively as can be done. We have done this through intellectual evolution and philosophical intercourse with one another's ideas and identity on a level that truly transcends the physical into the metaphysical or spiritual, through scientific advancement, which all began from a simple "unrealistic" idea in one's mind! It's all the same, friend! I do contend. Religion gives man the blueprint for the impossible to become possible. Through simple faith yes often in a higher power but also indirectly in one's self and potential to continue on, to thrive, to grow, to take challenges and defeat with a smile and hearty laugh, knowing even in one's defeat and yes even death, seeds were left behind, be they physical such as writings, unfinished plans, half-built inventions, or conceptual such as ideas from those who perished hundreds of years ago that we discuss as if their authors were alive this very moment in the same room as us! All actions, even failures, become the most powerful stepping stones for future generations that remain strong, everlasting throughout the ages if we only have the will, the spirit to pioneer and truck on, knowing that while the body may die, the spirit, be it physical as religious texts purport or conceptual as simple observation confirms, truly does live on in others! This I believe is the essence of all great religion!
Nope.
Go away troll.
:up:
Just to be clear, you just said that religion is a return to truth away from knowing and thinking. This is qualifiedly right, I think. But it needs a lot more.
Quoting ENOAH
But here, you may find yourself in agreement with Nietzsche: Perhaps truth is like a woman. Demeaning attitude toward women aside, he is essentially saying the truth conditions set down by logic and proper reasoning do not "speak" the world. The world has none of this rigidity, but is radically Other than this. Kierkegaard said something similar: rationalist philosophers (Hegel) have forgotten that we exist!
So it is not that you are wrong to say this, and I think Nietzsche is right here, too, but that truth needs to be understood very differently from what is generally understood in philosophy and its often steely devotion to logic.
Quoting ENOAH
But I don't think religion's bad reputation among responsible thinking people is at all like hating hockey. The latter is not a thesis about what IS the case, asks you to believe nothing and therefore does not rankle those who are serious about this kind of thing. Religion is not entertainment, though it can be entertaining, distracting, and appear to be entertainment, as we see lately how most of those who go to church are really old people facing death and seeking company, and the entire occasion reduces to church luncheons and conversation.
This "core" is exactly what the OP attempts to discover. Nietzsche didn't understand this at all.
Quoting ENOAH
But this contains the basis for error in religious thinking. When one "authentically practices" religion, have they, as you suggest, become nothing less than meditating Buddhists? If so, then this needs to be further understood: what is it about Buddhism's "enlightenment and liberation" that underscores and manifests this "core" so well? The error I have in mind is the way religion when authentically practiced carries one into the most foolish thinking, and in the attempt to uncover what religoin is in its essence, it is this kind of thing that is most immediately dismissed because most if no all of this religious culture is incidental and misleading people into thinking, say, religion is all about Jesus, the son of God. This kind of thing is off the table here.
Forget about Abraham, Moses and any other historical accidents you can think of. The OP makes as a principal interest of inquiry just this "public impersonal" objectivity. Religions in their general beliefs and practices ARE quite public, public to a fault; but they are not conceived out of proper regard for justification, and this is due to the failure to find any justificatory basis for belief. Faith steps in, and faith takes the foundational indeterminacies religion is grounded in and affirms and insists dogmatically.
But beneath this dogmatic insistence (of whatever kind) there remains this foundational this ethical-epistemological-ontological indeterminacy, and this is, treading carefully along this line, a "solid fact" of our existence. But, it will be argued, all facts are contingent, and religion deals explicitly with metaphysics. This issue is at the heart of discovery, where inquiry BEGINS. Certainly NOT what cultures through the ages have thought rendered categories for.
Without a doubt.
Quoting Astrophel
Yes, my exact position.
Quoting Astrophel
Not necessarily Buddhist meditation, nor Christian prayer. These were raised to point away from the direction of "imposition thinking." Not sure if OP intended the same, but I am coming from the angle that knowledge is superimposed, displacing truth.
Philosophy (also, theology, myth, dogma, ritual) no matter how clever or eloquent, is messing with superimposed knowledge.
"Authentic" practice (whatever that is, if I define it, I bring it into superimposed) I am proposing (which finds its source in religion) allows a (brief) turning away from superimposed knowledge and, presumably a glimpse at Truth.
Needs more, but defining it brings it into superimposed. It must be practiced in order to be accessed.
Yes, death ritually denying, or wishing away, its finality (i.e. anti-anxiety terror management (E. Becker)).
The position that religion and science stand in opposition is part of the scientific community's mythology. Like all mythology, it has its place in establishing certain necessary foundational truths that might not be actually objectively true.
https://jameshannam.com/conflict.htm
Quoting 180 Proof
Are you an essentialist in other philosophical matters or do you reserve this line of thought for the religious discussions? Arguing for a contextualist/usage definition for a term seems obvious, so I don't follow why you abandon the nuance here, but instead throw down a brittle definition that potrays religion in the simplest of ways.
In any event, if you do wish to play the "essence" game and ask what the essence of religion is, you have to look at religion generally and not limit yourself to the Abrahamic ones. However, if you do limit yourself to the Abrahamic ones, you'll doubtfully find the common thread you want because it's not as if Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are essentially the same. I don't think you'd find the religious practice of the Orthodox Jew essentially the same as the fundamentalist Christian. They don't even worship the same god after the final analysis.
You also have to work through your problems with the Hebrew Bible not actually demanding absolute obedience to God, but instead you have to take into consideration the important instances of humans arguing with God and even instances where God changes his mind based upon those arguments. That does occur in the Hebrew Bible.
For your argument to work, you've got to model all religion upon the earliest of stories where God directly interacted with humans, and, even then, you've got to ignore a good number of those interactions to establish an argument contrary to the facts. Not all stories reveal blind adherence to God. And then of course there is the fact that the Abrahamic religions do not hold the Bible as the sole source of authority, so just reading the text and thinking that a verbatim interpretation reveals the theological stance of the religion is not an accurate way of gaining an understanding of the religion.
Now you're talking! Of course, the question remains untouched: what is all the fuss about? Now one has entered phase two of inquiry. Phase one is mundane.
:100:
A case could be made that Christianity, specifically branches like evangelical Christianity, are a bit like "inverse Judaism." I'm inclined to agree that there's no "single essence" save for what another user mentioned earlier -- the search for Truth.
"as soon as you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God..." (3:5)
The serpent entices eve by associating godliness with defiance of god and power rather than strength of character.
"Original idea" is not an idea until Augustine.
Your take is of course reasonable and functional.
Here's a "different" take of the same story.
We start off with freedom.
God says, you are living beings, I created you for living. Eat from the tree of life all you want. Being is living.
But you are also free and intelligent beings. There is the tree of knowledge. Don't eat from it, though you have freedom and curiosity. What do you want with knowing? Being is not knowing.
Knowing is (to stick to the OP term) Quoting Constance. And, not only not where you will find the "essence of religion, but precisely where we lost both the essence of religion, that is, living and our freedom in the process.
Where once we were free to our living, now, we are Slaves to the imposition thinking which makes some of us construct "religion" and others of us despise it.
All the while we are ignoring its essence, living, being, without knowing. The truth.
There is no "freedom" without "knowing" (e.g. the difference between being free and not being free). To be free from ignorance is the capacity to be free for learning, knowing, understanding and then freeing others. I read the biblical creation myth this way: "Adam and Eve" were slaves punished with mortality by The Master for learning that they do not have to be slaves by learning to disobey (i.e. how to free themselves). :fire:
I get your perspective, even that it is accepted widely. But I happen to think difference is exactly where freedom stops. I'm not sure if you would be interested in having me explain further.
Quoting 180 Proof
That's a completely understandable read. I'm not humoring. If I wasn't currently settled where I am, I'd prefer that over the traditional misunderstanding.
I'm not sure if you think I'm promoting "religion" as in the institutions we both seem to reject, or if you are of the mind (which I sincerely respect) that religion is unreasonable no matter what its methods or aims.
But I've seen "evidence" that--though an obvious allegory--the Eden story, as expressed in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, expresses a "truth" which philosophy to my knowledge has forgotten. Possibly blame it on, not Socrates, who warned against knowing, but his disciples Plato then Aristotle who went on knowing like madmen, exposing that we "chose" the construction of our own world, one built upon the knowledge of this and that, difference. Rather than accepting God's world, Nature, Life, living.
We are stuck in becoming, religion gives us access, albeit tiny glimpses, into being.
And I realize the story of Eden is fiction, and this sounds like a literary assessment, at best; or at worst, like new age crap. And I understand the resistance.
But that's what I have settled upon. Religion is not harmful, or even useless. Not in its essence. Not if one recognizes its essence is a return to "Eden," to attention to our organic being in being "itself," aware-ing its feelings, and drives, bonding with its group (I wont even say, "grateful;" that's no less imposition thinking), and not our imposition thinking and the Subject it travels by.
I hope to "god" this doesn't offend you. But there seems an underlying humor? Not your thinking; its delivery. I prefer you don't answer. Regardless, it's growing on me. And I appreciate the Dialectic, even though I do not believe we are necessarily in antithesis.
You define freedom as defiance to God. You are the serpent. :grimace:
Friend, freedom is serving God and bring his ways to fruition. On Earth as it is in Heaven. Ill pray for you. :wink: :pray:
Oh come now. I can assure you @180 Proof is far from the one who masquerades as an angel of Light. Far. :lol:
A bit stubborn, perhaps, we might not see eye to eye, but there's been nary a time I observed him speak with ill-logic or intent!
To rephrase his interpretation, let's frame it under the context of an old-fashioned parent, who has seen all there is to see, and more, and that of a fledgling child. The child questions the outside world, becomes enchanted in its delights and mysteries, wholly unaware of the pitfalls and dangers that he himself is unable to fathom! In the context of magic and lore, talking serpents, and whatnot, surely there are dangers man is not prepared for, despite his ability to convince himself otherwise. To judge a man for his own limitation, nay, to damn him, is what makes one a serpent in my book, I dare contend. :smirk:
This would be a very different kind of truth that has to be set apart from propositional truth, and I don't think the matter is all that easy leave behind, and I say this because there is nothing really that cannot be said. After all, God could actually appear to me, and I could somehow be allowed to experience eternity and the gravitas of divinity, and there would be nothing at all stopping me from telling you about it, PROVIDING you have had the same kind of experience. Language was never about embodying actuality. Rather, it is essentially social, pragmatic, and depends entirely on shared experience.
Also, language is always there in the experience for us. We understand the world through language. Try to imagine a feral adult understanding anything outside of how to swing from a tree. No symbolic life to interpret the world. On the other hand, language becomes a "totality" and this is where your thoughts come in: In fact God has not imparted us with divine knowledge, and so we are left to the possibilities contained within our cultural delimitations and THIS is an imposition of finitude upon the infinite, you could say.
There are, I've read, Tibetan monks who can speak readily about things way outside of common understanding. They are, if you will, scientists, or no different, essentially, from scientists in that they observe and report.
I think a "superimposed knowledge" would be dogmatism, which is accepting without justification.
I don't damn him, but his interpretation, like the serpent's, is power-centric. He sees that God is the one in charge and he doesn't like that. He doesn't like that God sets rules. He defines freedom in opposition to these rules. He wants to put his own mind and his own conception of reality above everything else due to his own boundless faith in his own reasoning and intellectual capacities. Recognizing God's authority would mean recognizing someone smarter than him -- something beyond him, greater than him. It's an ego thing, which is the exact thing the serpent appeals to with Eve eat the apple, defy God, and you will become great like God.
In the Mesopotamian cosmology the god Marduk emerges dominant after prevailing over his fellow Gods through brute force. Hebrew writers deliberately sought to counter such ideas.
Yes, that is not just a prerequisite, but the "hypotheses" informing me suggests that the Truth being sought is necessarily "beyond" logic. That is why "we" have "placed it"/"found its place" outside of conventional philosophy and in, say, "religion."
Quoting Astrophel
And this "need" we have for truth to be objective and verifiable if not empirically then by "shared" experience is only applying the laws of the very framework that the "essence of religion" which I am positing (admittedly, also within that same framework) is a refuge from.
Quoting Astrophel
Agreed. "Understand." But we are Truth (not propositional, but the one nondualistic truth) by being [It] by [being its] doing.
Quoting Astrophel
If you are referring to my use of "imposition thinking" and superimposed, I say to clarify my perspective. There is dogma, that is like law, superimposed twice removed from being. The superimposed I'm thinking is every human mind based experience, perception, emotion, idea, thought, conclusion, belief. These are superimposed on real organic consciousness, aware-ing, by the constructions-then-projections of Mind, displacing real present being with the representations of becoming.
I submit the essence of religion may free one of that, albeit very briefly and requiring repeated efforts. Nonetheless, the glimpses into such Truth may afford a more authentic approach to the representations we are enslaved by.
Note: this is not a judgment against knowing. It has many pros. It is simply a way to consider its actual status. a
And by doing so, by recognizing that Truth is ultimately in being-doing, it may improve how knowing/thinking can function for individuals and perhaps the species. Afterall, human Mind (like our concern about AI today) is a tool that got away from "us".
Exactly. The serpent actually tells the truth in the story. As stories go, it's pretty flimsy one and from it I see no reason why humans should follow anything god says, just because god said it. God in the Old Testament is clearly a superlative asshole. That is, if one were a literalist. If the story is allegorical, then who knows what it is attempting to teach us other than 'obey the powerful'.
I realize the majority of participants in this thread view this as a debate in fiction, but regardless, let's examine the tale a bit closer. The warning was "If ye eat from the Tree, ye will surely die", as opposed to "instantly die". Similar to how if you go outside in subzero temperatures or unarmed in a wilderness of wild animals you will "not die" as in, upon doing so, you will be just fine. But. Given time. You see.
Fast forward to today. Mankind has almost exterminated all life on Earth, multiple times, by sheer accident. So, I don't know. Sounds like it holds water to me. :smirk:
Quoting Outlander
... or as opposed to the truth: "I, the Lord thy God, shall condemn thee to suffer and die. :roll:
Well that's surely harsh, no doubt. But are Man's decrees and punishments not both beyond on par but surpassing in both fastidiousness and cruelty? "Look at me wrong, I'll beat you up", "Take my overpriced new sneakers, I'll kill you", etc, etc. I could go on. We are of no moral ground to talk let alone compare. Absolutely none whatsoever.
I mean, imagine giving something everything they could ever want and more, literally paradise and perfection. No suffering, no harm, and it still not being good enough. It'd be annoying, wouldn't you say? ONE rule. Not ten, not twelve, not the thousands upon thousands of ordinance and code we have today. One. Again, annoying.
Besides, just to stick to the tale, since that's the subject at hand, the "happy ending" per se was "(but) God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son so that Man would not die but have everlasting life". So, bingo bango, order restored. Happy ending. Cue the mariachi band. :up:
(Again, just going by the chronological "factual" order of the story, as that happens to be subject of discussion)
Religion, to me, is about, and rises out of, the irreconcilability of experiencing being whatever I refers to, and the simultaneous existence of the outside world that is perceived as different or other. From this distinction questions arise that cannot be answered leading to suffering. Many religions thus aim to reconcile this difference by denying it. Thus, all is one, experience of self is an illusion etc.
Fear of death is downstream from the realisation of this distinction between I and other.
And just to be clear, this kind of "truth" can be said to be about qualia, the phenomenologically pure color or sound, say. But qualia really doen't carry meaning. One cannot even imagine qualia, really, because the moment one acknowledges it, the quale is IN thought, language, context. Only value-quale "speaks" itself, apart from these. Pain is not analytically contextual even though it is contextualized all the time. A sprained wrist is worse than, has a biological counterpart, a social context, a political context, a history, and on and on. But the pain is stand alone. There is a reason Wittgenstein refued to talk about value. It issues "from the world itself". a very important, the most important feature of our existence. Religion is ALL about this.
Quoting ENOAH
Yes, I conditionally agree. It's just that I think it's important to note that this framework is always already there, even when one is questioning it's limits. It is IN the questioning. To me this brings out the extraordinary nature of the affectivity of the essence of religion. Philosophers want to bring this down to the clarity of thought (positivists) or the disclosure possibilities of language (Heidegger). But few are willing to see that religion essentially IS the world because the world is indeterminate and it is in the ethical indeterminacy of the world, or our being-in-the-world, that insists on meta-redemption and meta-consummation. This may sound confusing, but it's not: Redemption is about being "thrown" into a world of suffering, the negative dimension of ethics; and consummation refers to the positive completion found in the incompleteness of desire.
Long story. Comes from reading Levinas, Husserl, Henry, and others. Phenomenology leads to only one place, which is the impossible (because value is OF the world and cannot be spoken) affirmation in its aesthetic/ethical dimension.
Quoting ENOAH
I think this is right, and not a bad way to put it, for truth, an epistemic term, and being, and ontological term, are two sides of the same thing. You know, you might find the brief discussion about Michel Henry very interesting. You seem to be predisposed to this as am I. On youtube titled Why Study Phenomenology and The Turn to Religion, an interview with Conor Cunningham. Only ten minutes long and one does have to ignore the bible references if this sort of thing is not to your taste. Henry is mostly mostly not a religious writer. He is a phenomenologist and can be difficult (The Manifestation of Essence is a doctoral thesis on Husserl and Descartes). But this interview is very good at exposing how religion is to be understood in light of the pure givenness of our "pathos" in the world. (See henry's "Barbarism" where he is accessible and gives well constructed thought to this elusive theme.)
Quoting ENOAH
Interesting way to put it. One could say this about technology, a tool that got away from us. It took our perspective away from our living reality and gave us an objectification of the self in science's terminology. Nothing but bones and ash, Henry says. It presents the question as to whether this is something lost through the modernist culture that has forgotten, as Kierkegaard put it, that we exist.
Well put! Compared to blasé moderns --- with artificial senses, allowing us to see our "pale blue dot" from a god-like perspective --- ancient humans may have been more in awe of the immeasurable magnitude of the world, compared to the insignificance of the observer. That wonderful awesomeness may have been the inspiration for "Philosophy" (the search for understanding) and Science (attempts to control), and Religion (efforts to placate the sovereignty of Cosmic Powers).
But those early crude limited views left most of reality as a black box mystery. Hence, the emergence of "Superstition" as a means of coping with things beyond comprehension : natural events imagined as divine or demonic activities. Then, eventually, the primitive attempts at understanding and controlling Nature, became formalized into the religious symbols & rites & prayers we know today as "Religion" : a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe ; and our humble place in its superhuman schemes.
Modern Science & Technology have given us almost divine power over Natural forces. And for some, that may be all the "religion" they need. But at the same time, the complexities of Culture present seemingly insuperable obstacles to personal peace & justice. So, the modern role of Religion may be more Ethical than Creedal & Intercessory. Yet, the essence of Religion remains : to serve as a go-between for impotent minuscule Man versus all-powerful magnificent Nature & Culture. :smile:
What do you mean by "pure philosophy" and how does "superstition" follow from it?
Quoting Jussi Tennilä
:up:
I differ with this only in the order of experience/realization: developmentally humans experience death¹, therefore instinctively fear it, long before realizing those who do explicitly that the 'I-world duality is irreconcible (or even irreparable)', which compounds the fear (i.e. suffering) that requires relief and succor in degrees of self-consoling reality-denial (e.g. dreams of / quests for symbolic / magical immortality) aka "religion".
¹After all, death was far more ubiquitious and impactful thousands of generations ago, long before language & culture took hold, and we have always consumed dead things in order to survive.
What questions arise? This is the most important. One faces a world of terrible impositions and joyful engagements, and religious questions arise. I think you are right in saying, as I put it, that there is this "distance" between the thinking, feeling, intuiting person and the world she is thrown into (so to speak). But to speak of it as simply a "difference" doesn't describe what it is that makes the interface with the world religious. Religion deals with the passion, the need, the angst, the dread, the terrors, all which demand redemption (a churchy word I don't really want to use) as well as the love, the happiness, the compassion, the beauty, the dreams all which demand consummation. Metaphysical redemption, that is.
This is a hard sell because, you know, while it IS an argument, and I can argue it with you if you like, one has to be attuned to what can be called threshold experiencing the world. If one is thoroughly IN the world, and here I mean the unquestioned commitment to the culture's values, the getting married, raising a family, the possessions that follow, the devotion to friends, and on and on. then one is not going to understand this very well. They will be, as Heidegger said, living in a tranquilized world of little if any real meditative thought.
I think if one wants to understand religion in its essence, one has tocare about these foundational issues of our ethical and aesthetic (Wittgenstein thought these were the same thing) existence. Being in the world is caring. We are thrown into caring. Suffering in the world is not simply a question in an equation of thought. It is in the second and third degree burns over half ones body after a car accident, or the gangrened extremities of plague.
A good example of the failure to understand. Death is only an issue if one first cares about dying. Death, to be taken seriously, needs to be understood as to what makes it so serious. Thus, caring is primordial. Caring has an existential counterpart, which is that which is cared about and this moves to the nature of encounter itself. These are the actualities of experience, and they are logically PRIOR to "self-consoling reality-denial."
One must deal with presuppositions. This is the telos of philosophy.
And I did fail to give a comment here: So if experience of self is an illusion, what agency is
"experiencing" that spear in my kidney?
I.e. if one is a sentient, self-aware mortal.
Quoting Astrophel
If I am understanding correctly, here is how this kind of "truth" can be said to be about...pure color or sound: because "we" are talking about the sensing (of) the organic (human, but not necessarily) being as it is sensing, presently and in "truth," and "free" of the displacing projections/imposition thinking.
But, and here's where I'm not certain I'm understanding correctly. This "sensing" "presently" "free of displacing projections" is what Kant is staying clear of. His phenomenal is the color or sound already mediated by imposition thinking. Perception; one step removed from sensation. But the kind of truth we're talking about is sensation, pure, direct, but unknowable.
Quoting Astrophel
Yes because "qualia" if that "experience" of direct sensation, is before meaning has been constructed and projected.
The Truth as in essence of religion, is unmediated, not knowable by logic or reasoning. More similar, in human knowledge, to "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" Or, a God who dies a criminal, to save humanity, no less.
Quoting Astrophel
My only comment here is to acknowledge that physical pain is an example of that kind of truth. The "suffering" we primarily experience is purely constructed and projected and calls for something like "the essence of religion" to relieve us from.
However, though the first instant of physical pain provides a glimpse into that same "truth", just like it is in Zazen, or deep contemplative prayer, the truth in much physical pain is quickly bypassed by attention to imposition thinking.
Quoting Astrophel
Totally. For me too. It also creates the absurd irony of either of us discouraging as if we're accomplishing anything outside of the box which is not ready there, but in which we ineluctably look.
Quoting Astrophel
Very nice! Your secondary part is almost soteriological, though I totally understand and agree with the moral/metaphysical concept of a "need" for "redemption". And that is exactly what I was attempting to suggest.
But also, from that. The so called order is the determinate world which has displaced the natural indeterminate reality. To me, the latter has neither ethical nor moral concerns. It (literally) just is that it is-ing, and we are that we are-ing.
Our ethical concerns are that within that "box" we mutually understood, there are established laws relating to order, or "functionality" because that's all the box is about.
And beyond the function of the box, morality relates to that "redemption" you eloquently pointed to because perhaps by nature, perhaps by a divinity, who am I to judge, we intuit that we are in a box and that there is a truth being, and a morality has evolved which suggests that excessive attachment to the box is "evil". This provides, by chance, evolution, intuition, or design, an incentive to seek Truth. Ergo, religion and its essence.
And, ergo:
Quoting Astrophel
The negative/positive dialectic, as you put it: my "incentive to seek truth".
Both expressions of the same essence of religion.
Quoting Astrophel
Thank you, I will.
Quoting Astrophel
This sums up what the entire human condition is, I believe, since the dawn of history/the dawn of human mind.
Quoting Astrophel
I think Kierkegaard made the correct and necessary movement (though there are aspects of Hegel, I prefer) for his time.
I think the movement we are ripe for today is that philosophy has forgotten we are organic beings.
If it interests you, I think it's common sense that people turn to religion to resolve the fear of death, which as you say, and I agree, is rooted in the I/world duality.
But, when you ask these people, and I would assume, in your own mind, how does religion resolve this painful dissonance, the answer is with the promise of immortality.
That, I believe, is an error regarding the essence of religion. If that were the case, and only that, I'd stand with you on this.
However, the essence is to seek the truth that we are not this I/world duality, we are an organic being like any other animal. There is no end of the story I am identifying with and terrified of losing, because there is no story, there is no I. Thriving human which was born and though driven to surviv, thinks not of dying, and simply will die.
It is that understanding and acceptance which alleviates the dissonance by unveiling the truth behind the duality. That is the essence of religion.
I watched the video. Very interesting. I'd like to read his trilogy even as art.
My obviously hasty and prejudiced take is 1. he was aware of the crisis of (Kant ff) phenomenology, 2. He was aware that the resolution could be (may only be) in a turn to religion, 3. But fell in love with the art of it and got carried away, just like all of metaphysics since Plato spoke of the cave and proceeded to bury himself and all of us in it.
Ok, from that perspective, I have no issues. Of course the fear of death at the root of myth and ritual.
Sorry I went off (likely willfully blinded) on my own tangent.
That's all well and good, seems to fill in all the gaps quite nicely and whatnot, but surely you've left out another just as equally profound line of questioning: Purpose.
Put yourself in the shoes of primeval man, or even modern man, a distinction I find to be quite fleeting at times. Why strive? To accumulate, to spread one's genes throughout the biosphere not unlike a common cold germ, experience pleasure and perhaps a bit of profound discovery and enlightenment (somehow), then hit the sack for good and all, knowing inevitably all one's worth and accomplishment will go the way of the morning dew on the grass blades of eternity? Surely there must be more to existence than that? Surely man's place in the universe is more than that of a glorified cold germ? Surely...! It would seem man has yet another unique ability to distinguish himself from the animals: uncanny ability to create purpose when there is none. Something from nothing, the hallmark of the divine. Ideological alchemy in the purest and grandest of ways! That and that alone is reason to believe, in at least the possibility, there is more to existence than can be known or is currently known in the course of man's lifetime. Perhaps? :confused:
The distinction is profound and lasting. Primeval man had no shoes and very little assurance of a tomorrow. His barefoot world was unrecognizably different from the plate-glass and styrofoam world of modern man. His anxieties and aspirations were different. His world-view and dreams were different. His Purpose was to survive and, at a stretch, to keep most of his loved ones alive, but he was not at odds with or alienated from his environment and community. He was never alone or adrift.
All true. Didn't mean to oversimplify, I do have a habit of doing so, not intentionally, mind you. Still, I'd argue much of our core "driving factors" remain the same. Fears, desires, motivations, and whatnot. More refined, tailored to the specific going-ons and happenings of the modern world, existential anxieties and concerns of not seeing a tomorrow all but corralled to the back of one's subconscious, of course. But in essence, much of the same.
Certainly agree with earlier society, those fortunate enough to have such, being more connected with one another out of necessity of proximity to life-sustaining goods and services and other "tight-knit" circumstance contributing to the resiliency and defense of said society's existence, in contrast to the modern world and it's "just text me" or "add me on Facebook" norms of interaction.
I think there is no disagreement here. My calling it a "difference" is simply one level of abstraction removed from "distance" as distance implies difference.
As to what particular questions arise, that is also downstream from the fundamental realisation of the distinction between the self and the other. Which, I suppose, was the original question of this post - what is religion about in its core.
"Purpose" in the context, as I've pointed out previously, seems to me a (sublimated) quest for symbolic/magical immortality (motivated (driven) by the fear of disease dying & death).
:up:
Agreed. In fact, I outlined all those things in the first couple of pages of this thread. Hominids are pattern-seeking and classifying thinkers. All I'm saying is that we moderns process the input through very different filters from our ancestors. One main difference is the enormous weight of historical and cultural baggage we carry, compared to their fresh, uncluttered world-view.
Quoting Outlander
They cemented their bonds with ritual, just as we do. For us, however, the various rituals are isolated - one for family, a different one for the workplace, for the male or female friends, for sporting events and mass entertainments, and that special, set-aside, encapsulated one for worship. For them, drumming and dancing around the fire included all those social and spiritual aspects of their community.
I do think modern people cling to religion, not so much for their spiritual aspirations or solace, but as an antidote the fragmentation of their daily life.
I think you are in the middle of it. If I understand your use of the terms "displacing projections/imposition" you refer to the way language "displaces" non linguistic intuitions. There is a lot that has been said about this. Kant's "intuitions with concepts are blind; concepts without intuitions are empty" remains very strong as a kind of prototype denial that any sense at all can be made of what there is in the world in its bare "givenness". But you heard Colon Conners speak about Henry: we have turned away from life, and gone into the world and become dust and ash, and it is not just Galilean science (from his "Barbarism") but the collective mentality of "right" thinking that we all have that allows us to participate in a culture. The everydayness of mundane existence. Phenomenologists all argue like this, one way or another.
The trick about phenomenology lies with Husserl's reduction, or epoche. He opens his "Ideas" like this:
Pure Phenomenology, to which we are here seeking the way, whose unique position in regard to all other sciences we wish to make clear, and to set forth as the most fundamental region of philosophy, is an essentially new science, which in virtue of its own governing peculiarity lies far removed from our ordinary thinking, and has not until our own day therefore shown an impulse to develop. It calls itself a science of phenomena.
I bring this up only to introduce the "method" of restoring what has been lost in the inflated and unwieldy production of knowledge claims science and culture have produced in the modern age. The epoche asks the philosopher to suspend the most common thinking that we naturally settle into in daily living, and reduce the world to its pure phenomena. This term "pure" is of course at issue here. can one actually have a "pure" perceptual encounter with the world such that what is there is received perceptually as it is. The analytics would add to this "as it is independently of the contribution of the perceiver, and this obviously creates a problem in epistemology, for S know P is nonsense if there is no essential "knowing" relation in place, and if P is entirely outside S, and independent of S, then knowledge is impossible.
So when you talk of "being as it is sensing, presently and in "truth," and "free" of the displacing projections/imposition thinking" you are treading close to post-Husserlian phenomenology, idea that if you put "the ordinary world" on hold, and look closely only at the phenomenological pure presence of what is there actually that the ordinary world presupposes, you discover this dimension of truth that is altogether ignored by science. To make this move is uncanny, for the world is reclaimed by mystery or "unknowing". All this is done with and in the language that first opens world to the understanding. This is the paradox of phenomenology. When I look at my coffee cup like this, it is no longer a coffee cup, nor is it qualia, or anything at all. Its "isness" is stand alone, and this is a quasi-mystical state, but language doesn't flinch: I know it is a coffee cup now, Nothing has changed in this as it remains in the background just as I did when I was doing my taxes or talking to an acquaintance.
A bit windy on that. Sorry.
Quoting ENOAH
I remain uncertain about things not knowable by logic, because after all, logic doesn't really know anything. It is the form of knowing, that is identified in the structure of judgment. Not that there is any such thing as logic outside of the systems of thinking that recognize it. But that aside, you know, one has to be rational to know since knowing is the affirmation, the denial, the conditional, the conjunction and so on. Even when one is being her LEAST rational, there is the foundation of reason that makes this so.
The best way to look at this is to recognize that when one is finally of age, and questions rise up, and one can freely deal with the world and its ponderables, one is already IN a culture of science and daily living, and this culture permeates thoughts and feelings. It is the collective spirit of the times, the era, the zeitgeist, the historical framework. Call this the "totality" referring to the cultural literacy everyone has. This totality (as in Emanuel Levinas' Totality and Infinity. First conceptualized like this by Heidegger, I think). This is the ordinary plain talk, from the idle banter to hard science. THIS is what possesses one such that one cannot understand the "truth" as you have been describing it. One is busy, entangled and fascinated IN the totality.
Quoting ENOAH
You would have to explain this to me, that suffering is constructed. Not that I doubt the adept Buddhist's ability to ignore pain. Thich Quang Duc comes to mind, the Vietnamese monk who set himself ablaze in protest. Unless one is Thich Quang Duc, this about physical pain being quickly bypassed baffles me.
Quoting ENOAH
You sound a lot like a love and peace hippie. This is a good thing, mind you. The hippies may have been a little out to lunch, but they were possessed by something more deeply authentic than, say, the hospital ethicist who deals with matter of bioethics. To talk about compassion, empathy, pathos, caring, conscience, love, as well as "it hurts; it hurts and I know it!" as the Real foundation of ethics, prior to, or more primordial than, principled thinking like Kant's categorical imperative of the principle of utility does not solve complicated entangled ethical dilemmas, but these latter are entirely contrived out of affairs that themselves stand outside of ethics. Robbing a bank to compensate for being thrown into structural poverty and ignorance and this justification standing vis a vis the necessity of the law that prohibits bank robbing---this creates a serious dilemma for justice, and compassion will not resolve this because ethical confusion runs so deep in such a thing. But if compassion had ruled culture to begin with, prohibitive laws like this would be far less necessary.
But keep in mind the OP: Religion has its grounding in something more basic. Go fall in love and observe. Being in love has everything IN love, or, a person in love lives is a world of being in love. Is love reducible to further analysis? Of course, there are neurologists, psychologists, sociologists, and so on who have sometihng to say, but there the question goes to the "pure" phenomenon, the condition itself that is there to be understood. It is a quality of the given world, and science cannot elucidate qualities. It can only talk about quantitative relations, degrees, intensities, causal relations of these, and the like. Now take the ethics of, say, the prohibition of divesting someone of love, which is a prima facie rule: one shouldn't break the heart of another. A defeasible rule, to be sure, for often circumstances are intractable, but note: the prima facie rule is PRIOR to the entanglements, so from whence comes this? It comes from the world itself, for love issues from the world! It is not a principle, but an actuality, not even arguably, the most salient feature of our existence. And moral realism has just been proved. This kind of reasoning applies across the board to any and all ethical cases: find the value that is at stake, at risk, to be won or lost or compromised, etc, and you will find the essence of the ethicality. And value issues form the world (Wittgenstein's Tractatus, e.g.)
Because love is a quality of the, as you put it, "is-ing, and we are that we are-ing" it issues from the world itself, from being. It is as if all ethics had the same metaphysical grounding as those stone tablets written by God on a mountain. Only ethics is Real.
Quoting ENOAH
Spiritual beings, I would say. The word 'spirit' has too much history, I know. Spoils meaning. But our spirituality is really a thing so easily understood. When the question is raised regarding the nature of the self, note that one does not find anything at all that is remotely a thing, all the caring, worrying, thinking, happiness, misery, and on and on and on: there is nothing physicalist in any of this. Then how can one classify this? These qualities are spiritual, this passion for hagen dazs spiritual, this desire to go for a swim, meet friends, etc. spiritual. Objects are what they are, we are what we are. In itself, it says nothing of redemption and consummation and the eternal duration of the spirit. It is a simple observational fact.
I think of Ahab and the whale for this "distance": Note that Ahab did not chase down the whale to get revenge against the mindless brute. It was what was "behind" the whale, and this really does go the the OP. The world's horrors an joys come to us in the usual ways, the lions and tigers and bears, and the falling in love, ice cream, and roller coaster rides. But the most uncanny question of all, entirely ignored, which is, what is all this doing here AT ALL? Ahab struck out at the world that produced leg amputating whales, in an ethical outrage toward the impossible source of his affliction: God. Even if there were no God, there would still be the very justified ethical outrage. The OP is saying God was never there in the first place; this is just a bit of bad metaphysics invented by ancient minds. But the conditions of our existence that PUT God there remain and we stand before Being as such (if you will) with fist clenched toward the world, just like Ahab. And the same goes for the love, bliss, joy, and the rest. Not a fist, but a yearning.
Quoting Constance
Yes. Exactly that. Add, nonlinguistic could just as easily be called pre-linguistic.
Quoting Constance
Without knowing enough yet about Henry, I cannot say I am on board, but with that statement, I am completely.
Quoting Constance
This is intriguingly on point. Both the problem of "pure" and of the epistemological problem of "perceiver" "knower" are addressed by what I thought you were referring to in the OP re "essence of religion ".
1. "Pure" "perception", is not perception at all. It is sensation. And similarly, perception is not pure, it is mediated by imposition construction/projection. Sensation, the direct aware-ing of the human animal, pre-construction, is "pure"
2. And said "pure" sensation cannot be "known". Knowing is of the construction projection. Being the organism sensing is the only access we have to "pure". Hence no epistemological problem.
"What's the point?" Asks the imposition construction projections, "if there is no meaning to the sensation?"
And that's why religion, in its essence, "saves" us, affording us a glimpse into being without the imposition displacing it with knowing.
Quoting Constance
No, you were clear. I do understand the "paradox" and the "problem" of is-ness (I prefer is-ing). But I am currently settled here and am discovering a bounty of parallels
Quoting Constance
Yes, I recognize that in the world of knowing, cause and effect, linear time/narrative form, difference, dialectic, reason, logic, meaning and so on,
necessarily function.
I hold that they do not function in nature, or the world of being. It does not imply dualism. There is only the world of being. Knowing is fleeting and empty.
Quoting Constance
Yes. Exactly. I have found that History is constructed and projected and moves as one Mind. Too much to describe here. The point is, we are truly ensnared in History because my mind is your mind is History.
But religion provides, in essence, a peek into the truth that we are not History.
Quoting Constance
I've taken up enough of your time, and appreciate it. I'd say quickly this. Those desires, Icecream, a walk in the deer park, love even, are "spiritual" because they are constructed (mind).
What is real is not desire but drive, not Icecream and gluttony (trust me, Im a glutton) but hunger and satisfaction; not love but bonding and mutual concern.
Yes, very good! I agree. Whereas Ishmael, i propose, recognizes the same difference/distance but remains a pure spectator, not succumbing to the frustration of existing in a world filled with nonsense and absurdities like leg amputating whales. He remains a mindful, even meditative (like when he stands on top of the mast on lookout and just watches the sea) witness. Maybe that is the teaching that Melville ment to give us. He lived in a very dynamic age with many upheveals and changes occuring. Maybe he meant to show us two ways to react to the absurdity of life.
Yes. And Queequeg, calm, adept, spiritually attuned, unquestioning (unlike Ahab who had been to the university, where he no doubt studied philosophy, just like crazy Hamlet at Wittenberg, where Luther nailed his 95 theses in protest. It is a mentality of protest that thought produces) primitive, who, like Stubb, sits comfortably in who he is. A novel so rich in interpretation.
Melville was very aware of the ethical contradictions of our existence at the basic level. Torn off legs just shouldn't BE. The world wears its ethical normativity on its sleeve, and the prohibition of tearing one another to shreds is in the outrageous pain of it. We see this ethicality everywhere, in the givenness of the world, made ambiguous by distracted thinking (to put it succinctly). Faith in God must occur in the struggle to understand, not in the complacency of dogma , nor in the recklessness of rage. The top of the mast is a place to witness and think. Quite right: "mindful, even meditative."
Yes! If you don't mind me saying.
If there is God.
And, if not, why not faith in truth? That there is a truth which we already are, and in being (that truth), freedom from the distracted thinking, and even the givenness of the world.
Already muddled.
You talk about where you think religion comes from but not about what it is. That would be helpful before discussing where it rises out of. What is doing the rising, exactly?
Religion is amorphous, so its worth stating what you think it means before discussing your ideas about its origins or essence.
For my part, I see little difference between religion and philosophy both ask very universal, difficult, extra-ordinary questions about existence. That being said, your proposition seems a little out of left field.
Then a parting thought. Philosophy has one end, and this is the truth at the most basic level. Truth is an epistemic term, and the reality that is "known" is a matter for ontology, the "what is existence at the most basic level?" kind of thing. I argue that these are really one, and this is a tough thesis to defend out of the context of continental reasoning. It offends common sense to say that when one observes something, the observational act itself is part and parcel of the thing being observed. Anglo American philosophy has forgotten this Kantian legacy.
But anyway, the question then is, what is the most basic level? Here I follow the post Husserlians, like Jean Luc Marion, Michel Henry, Jean Luc Nancy, Emanual Levinas, all French, but they have really driven thought to the actuality of religion through Husserl's reduction. So if you are looking for things to read that do just this, that analyze existence down to its essential (philosophical) ontology, then there is this continental undertaking. Begins with Kant, of course, and his Critique of Pure Reason. Perhaps you already know about this kind of thing. Just taking a moment to recommend all this as a way to finally get, not closure, but "openness" to the world. In a letter written by Maurice Blanchot talking about Levinas' influence, he says, "philosophy was life itself. . .passion renewing itself continually and suddenly in an explosion of new and enigmatic thoughts." Not the stale old arguments, but this extraordinary encounter with the world. One has forgotten that it is an exhilaration, as Emily Dickinson put it, just to be here. The essential message of Kierkegaard's Repetition.
It is not to be treated outside of the manner in which it appears. Of course, things are at first muddled prior to a clarification of terms and their meanigns. The OP is not a dissertation. It is an introduction to a theme. The clarification comes in a discussion about what these terms mean. I said, religion rises out of ethical indeterminacy, so what is this indeterminacy and what is the relation between ethical indeterminacy and religion?
That which is "doing the rising" lies with the analysis of ethics and epistemology/ontology. The latter can wait, but ethics and its value-in-the-world, this is what makes religion what it is. I was talking to Jussi Tenila (above) and I referred to Melville's Ahab and I said, " Melville was very aware of the ethical contradictions of our existence at the basic level. Torn off legs just shouldn't BE." This is not about the ethical normativity found in the contexts of familiar affairs in which there are identifiable parties involved. The prima facie ethical prohibition against assaulting one another is generally determined by the particular case and the terms of justification. But "do no harm" IS a well grounded at the outset, prior to the details. Why? Because it hurts. It hurts, and we know it, a philosopher once put it. Pain itself is that which originally generates the obligation, not this pain or that, and no mention yet made of the element of "taste" and its variability nor the relativity of predilection. Just pain as pain, pain simpliciter.
Quoting Mikie
I did state that it is the radical ethical indeterminacy of our existence. You are having trouble because this doesn't mean much or anything to you, and this likely due to the very idea of metaethics to be unfamiliar. Ask, why does Wittgenstein in the Tractatus refuse to discuss ethics?
Quoting Mikie
I agree with what you say about religion and philosophy, but there are many who would not. All philosophical questions are essentially questions of religion. As I say, a hard sell. One has to go into the argument. It begins, I am claiming, with Ahab, who loses his leg to a whale. The whale is a big stupid animal that simply lashes out and can do no better when provoked, and one's moral outrage really has no object regarding the offending party. Thus Ahab rages against what is "behind" the whale, existence itself that produces whales, and black holes, and fence posts, and everything! This is a big move. There is a name for this everything, which is Being. Being itself. It has no features for it is not A being, so all that can be talked about and predicated about using the copula "is" as in it IS a rainy day and the flower IS red, and so on, is the incidental expression of the Being of the whale, the tiger and the tax audit that puts you in jail.
So the ethical is all about, if not these extreme examples (severed legs are dramatic and it makes the point so well), then what I call value-in-being. One could follow the way Kant treated reason in his discovery of "pure reason" only here we deal with value, or "pure value" which is the good and bad of the aches and pains as well as the thrills and joys of human existence.
This is the way the argument begins.
Very nice
...aside from that, I guess you're viewing the tax audit as, though projected "out of" Being, nonetheless Being. And, why not? You say. Correct?
Assuming I understand you correctly, without giving details, it surprises me. Although, it shouldn't. It appears to be a shared view.
For me, unthinkable though it would seem, the tax audit is a "fiction" as is perceiving the day as rainy, and the flower as red (though in Being it may be raining and the flower is sensed as that color--I will trust that you're following). These are happening and are not some illusion or dream; but unlike being which is necessarily happening, these things, the audit, a flower, red, rainy day, are projections which only happen to hunan mind(s). These are part of the broad interpretation of "imposition thinking" you referenced in the OP in relation to Nietzsche, and I ran with.
My point is that your eloquent placement of Being in Moby-Dick for me, properly captures that it is all Being, Nature, the whale, Ahab, the Ocean, and the wood constructing his ship, as is the movement of these manifestations of Being.
But as for the manifestations of one manifestation of Being, tge human being, and its projections, these are constructed out of fleeting and empty representations stored in the organisms memory. They have created amazing and horrible things with real effect upon Being, but they, in themselves are empty images that come and go in shapes and forms, moved by desire, building meaning in Narrative forms.
These, taxes and the flower, perceived as "flower", are imposition thinking and have "removed" us from the reality we naturally share with tge earth and other creatures.
And because philosophy too is imposition thinking, religion, in essence, is a means to return, if ever so intermittently and briefly, to tge reality of Being. That is, the essence of religion is to awaken from the fiction in pursuit of the truth.
In my mind that "little difference" is this: philosophy (logos) begins with questions we do not (yet) know how to answer and proceeds by reasoning towards more probative questions (re: reflective inquiry as a way of life :fire:) whereas religion (mythos) begins with answers we are "commanded" not to question and proceeds by faith in obeying such unquestioned answers (re: surrender as a way of life :pray:).
It can be that, yeah. But then, so can philosophy and science. Dogmatism can creep in anywhere. The point for me is a broad one: whats called philosophy and religion often overlap in what theyre interested in, what theyre questioning. A set of beliefs with rites and rituals and social gatherings is on average perhaps less flexible and open minded than simply struggling with a question and not yet believing anything firmly, but only by averages (have you been to many philosophy departments? :vomit: ).
I take your point. Mine is an outlier view and so broad as to make the everyday meaning (which is useful) empty. But still there is something to it.
True. However, dogmatism is always anathema to 'reflective inquiry' (or dialectics & contemplating aporias) and usually consistent with follows from 'faith' (or undecidable (e.g. merely subjective, supernatural) beliefs).
I guess you're leaving room for philosophical dogmatism, those who adhere to a strict logic, a functional, yet constructed framework, as a precondition to entertaining the validity of any and all propositions; or, those who discourse and reflect within the framework of a set of hypotheses (Aristotle's, Kant's, etc.) not only confining themselves to within a strict convention of interpretation of same dictated by the authorities, but to the exclusion of entertaining any and all alternatives.
And political dogmatism, those who insist on a position, whether economic or social, not from reasoned analysis, but because it aligns with an ideology and its strict walls, growing thicker and thicker as they close in. (Abortion is a good e.g. both sides).
And scientific dogmatism, those who insist that only what appears to 5 of the human senses can be data for constructing knowledge; ignoring that knowledge is constructed, and the data gathered was not immediate to the senses, but already mediated by mind and re-presented as if direct from the senses.
And there's dogmatism in the arts, and across academics. You could argue that unlike religion, these adherences are reasoned. But maybe there are reasoned thinkers in each of those communities, but they're not the dogma I just referred to.
I'm not even sure dogma is prevalent mostly in religion, though it might cause the most trouble there. That, I would agree.
:ok:
I know what you are saying. You would find in Husserl and Heidegger a way of talking about this that would greatly make the idea more clear and meaningful. When one takes up their "method" of liberating oneself from the language and culture that seems to have a mind of its own, one is headed for some extraordinary exposure to what underlies normal life. It is not really natural at all, I would say. It is entirely unnatural. It is a removal from what is natural as well as from whatever distorting contribution the "tranquilization in unauthentic being of endlessly being busy makes. Heidegger talks like this, but I am taking him a radical step forward: When a person wakes up and looks around and asks questions like, What does it mean to exist? and Why are we born to suffer and die? the degree to which this carries one outside of being-in-a-culture and being conditioned to experience the world in a language, and in social institutions, depends on how well one can turn the tables on this lifetime of education and enculturation. Go all the way, like the Gautama Siddhartha, and one is simply not in this world anymore; yet, nor is one out of it.
You will never find a philosopher 'round these parts speaking well of such a thing, for philosophers are professional academics more interested in arguments then they are interested in the world. Only continental philosophers take this radical move seriously.
Quoting ENOAH
I'm not going to take issue with what you say here. I think along the same lines. Only to add one thing: when you say the essence of religion is to awaken from the fiction in pursuit of the truth, there is a method to doing this. Call it a kind of jnana yoga. It is Husserl's phenomenological reduction. It is not merely a turning away from bad thinking about metaphysics, but a reduction of the world to its essence, you might say. The essential givenness of the world. For me, the habits of thinking have to become undone in order to finally "see the world" in the pure way you take so seriously. Not natural, but the world free of active world-making assumptions. You might find Fink's Sixth Meditation very worthy, in which he says early on:
Having overcome world naivete' we stand now in a new naivete, a transcendental naivete'. It consists in our unfolding and explicating transcendental life only in the presentness [Gegenwärtigkeit] in which it is given us by the reduction, without entering by analysis into the "inner horizon" of this life, into the performances of constitution
Fink makes the radical move. The reduction is a reference to Husserl's Ideas 1, and Husserl was Fink's mentor. All of the French post -Husserlians I read (like Michel Henry, Jean Luc Marion, et al) attempt to follow through on elucidating this new naivete. One will become a mystic if one pursues this: common sense becomes more alien, and something else moves in and takes its place, not to be spoken simply due to a lack of shared experience. Of course, Husserl was no mystic. But the basic principles of phenomenology will, if one is predisposed, replace assumptions with questions, and questions are an "openness" rather than a fixity. This goes to your pursuit of the truth, doesn't it? Truth is openness where there once was rigid affirmation. Heidegger said something close to this. Truth is an unhiddenness of a that occurs in the way language creates meaning, but one has to yield to what is there, give up the attempt to close meaning off from possibilities. Hegel probably inspired this. Gelassenheit, a yielding that opens insight.
Quoting Constance
Quoting Constance
You are--besides that you arrive there ineluctably by a process of fully open, free, and independent reasoning (a Herculean task; all ideas are built like "Bricologe" from all accessible others)--taking this position that this hypothetical "religiously pointed to" liberation transcends both the world mediated by human mind, and the natural (what I am suggesting as ultimately real) world for one of three reasons,
1. That is the position dictated by a "school" to which you subscribe;
2. Although you might reject metaphysical dualism, you are yet "framed" by what I've found to be the dominating narrative in western thought, which is that the "spirit" is the locus of reason and morality etc, while the "flesh" the locus of gluttony and desire; or,
3. You mean to say, "religious" liberation--presumably tied in with the divine, must transcend both mind and body.
Hopefully, 1 and 2 speak for themselves as to why that's not up to me to address.
If it's 3, I would clarify the hypothesis informing my thinking.
It is "possible" that there is an Ultimate Reality beyond the natural universe.
In "my" hypothesis that would mean three "levels" in a "hierarchy" of reality:
Mind("projected" from nature, not real)
Nature ("projected" from "god" real, but not as such)
Ultimate Reality (like, Nirguna Brahman in Advaita Vedanta)
But informed by phenomenology and science to the extent that these extremely useful and progressive tools can help, I can "safely" settle at 1 and 2. But 3, though possible, even arguable, is an unnecessary leap and it is confusing the "essence" of religion, even the root of what's causing some in this thread to lash out against religion.
There is the natural universe. It is here and this body which mind makes me experience as "I" is in it. Why question its reality?
The "why" comes not from truth but from tge "confusion" constructed by mind. It is far too complex to describe here, but simply, because Mind displaces the Body with the Subject, it functions to further create the "illusion" that it must be the seat of reality, thus, the Body, nature, the outside world, only its projections.
When really, the so called outside world, including human bodies, is the universe, and it's mind's projections which are not real but which displaces how tge outside world and our Bodies "look" to mind.
Liberation might involve a "third level" as in Godhead etc. And I do intuit that, but natural being itself is unspeakable enough. Because speakable belongs only to mind. And while we might, we need not take the extra leap as Kierkegaard did, to free ourselves from the "fake" constructions of mind (where, by the way, all suffering occurs because "I" causes attachment).
We--and here is where I'm saying the essence of religion is--need only turn our natural organic body's aware-ing away from the chatter, focus on its organic sensations, drives, movements and feelings, and "see" even if ever so briefly, that the desires of Mind are not Real. Human history is not real. Nature and its being is real.
There may yet be some "ecstacy" in uncovering that nature and its being, too, are not Real but that we are all God. But as I said, trying to speak of natural being is already a paradox since you can only access being by being and not knowing, which is constructed. Speaking from mind about God would be a double paradox. Fiction speaking fiction not only of its hypothetical host, but of its hypothetical host's hypothetical host.
Quoting Constance
I hypothesize that despite their great insights, both the Vedanta logins, and Buddhists remain yet "stuck" in mind. It is inescapable. Turning tables is still the table.
But Zazen "unwittingly" offers something: the idea that if you at least focus on the Body, you may get reprieve from the chattering long enough to have accessed reality; just enough to at least bring that knowledge--albeit, still knowledge--back to the chatter. In that, Zazen captures the essence of religion which has been otherwise lost, and which makes the OP a question of ultimate concern not just here, but to each individual and to humanity.
And yet more and more our ignorance based resentment to religion pushes it away.
Quoting Constance
Like Zazen, H's reduction is a brilliant tool for temporary reprieve. But while I believe Zen did pursue its path with liberation from the constructions in mind, hence employing a bodily tool, H was driven more by thinking he could use language to liberate language from language.
Having said that, don't get me wrong, I fully agree that Husserl is a link in Western philosophy, to understanding these things. Notwithstanding some contradictions, very much Hegel, too.
So I did read all, and there are many things I am aligned with, but now I just want to say that all of the terms in play here as well as in religious contexts everywhere do not present a case that makes what is to basic inquiry clear, and this is what is needed to show that religion has important foundational meaning. What is spirit, metaphysics, morality, the divine, transcendence, the body? These may seem self evident, but if that were true, there would be no issue. The reason I cannot make all of these issues go away is that all of my thinking is grounded in phenomenology, and this is not a popular approach. So when I go into ethics and its metaethics, most in this forum think about this with a very active residual physicalism. This physicalism has to be dropped outright, explcitly, but this cannot be done. One has to "read: their way out of it to get to the impossible simplicity you and I agree about. I think you are right int he things you say, but it has to be brought to an even more penetrating analysis in order to show the world that religion is the THE profound center of our existence, not this or that religion, but religion in its essence. How does one talk about tis outside of the outrageous volumes of Heidegger, Husserl, Kant, Levinas, Henry, and so on? See, these guys are right, not in all things everywhere, but in the basic thesis of phenomenology, and Husserl's epoche is at the center of this. This "reduction" is the objective way to talk about metaphysics, and therefore metaethics and therefore religion, or meta-religion.
I am arguing that the world is inherently religious as it shows itself in everyday living, and this is because everyday living is grounded in ethical indeterminacy. Not Turtles all the way down, but metavalue, and it stops right there. At metavalue, the Right and the Good, the wrong and the Bad, at root, stand as their own presuppositions, that is, they are stand alone in what they are. When you approve of this notion of non propositional truth, I don't think you mean it cannot be propositionally expressed, for anything can, but rather that this truth is an existential absolute, not a logical one, so just like modus ponens, we cannot imagine the contrary being true: one cannot even imagine the existential Good of, say, bliss, love, ecstasy, being Bad, or not being Good in any way, even if something most clearly Good, like MY hagen Dazs experience is put into some comparison of utility (as is found wiht arguments about utilitarianism. See How Bentham tries to quantify values is disparate kinds), not because they are logically opposed, but because the Good's existence as Good is as sound as a logical construction.
Once this is seen as clearly as I think it can be, then it becomes clear that the metavalue Good IS our manifest divinity, entangled as it is in attractions, compulsions, desires, appetites, and on and on, and this permeates one's existence from the petty likes to the deeply profound. What is spirituality? I say it is what is discovered in the revelation of sublime awareness. What is sublime? Now that IS an interesting question. Value of the sublime experience, whatever it is, is not going to be "explained"; It IS the world, and presence qua presence cannot be spoken. It is an order of value and we have terms like holiness, sacredness, that attend the word divinity, and there is the Christian's "God is love" and love is so ethereal, but the quality of these cannot be argued. One simply has to actually BE in love to know.
But the reasoning in this argument shows, I believe, that one encounters divinity even if one is not really attuned to those religious passions. Divinity lies in the universal caring about the world, for caring itself is transcendental, mystical, as Wittgenstein would say.
Quoting Constance
Yes, please. I am an enthusiastic gardener, but I lack the training and the tools. And yes, not this or that--though I don't begrudge their efforts; we get sucked in easily
Quoting Constance
The way I see it, we already talk about it within those volumes; we cannot but.
I believe no idea stands on its own, but emerges as a locus in the history of that idea. Then it gets tucked into the next. Any hypothesis "I" may purport to have, is already Heidegger, Husserl, Kant, Levinas, Henry, and so on's ideas, and the ideas of countless others.
It makes sense to refer to them specifically where it is fitting, but we are already building off of them, and fettering our discretion to explore new directions is acting in bad faith as human thinkers.
Quoting Constance Yes. I completely agree.
Quoting Constance but here, I'm wondering if I misunderstood. I would say, that this truth, not being a logical one, does not imagine, period.
Quoting Constance Again, am I misunderstanding?
I would give neither logical nor Ethical, for that matter, any consideration in regard to this truth. Good is an imposing construct. Logic belongs to it. As does Ethics. But to The Ultimate Truth that we are the being which breathes, not the becoming which thinks, the only "concern" is being. Religion is that sublime mechanism built into the imposing projections, a peek hole into being.
But this and that religion, like us in every endeavor, soon lost sight of that essence. And so we bicker instead of peek.
Quoting Constance
Ok, I didn't misunderstand. Yes, "divinity" is caring; not about the projected becoming of mind and history; but in the being of "God and Its Creation" to put it "religiously." To put it philosophically, it is caring (about) being; or, being caring-being, rather than distracted-being, or becoming.
Quoting Constance
Yes, fear conatus as ineluctable striving to overcome escape from fear (e.g. mortality ... manifest in burying our dead, etc). H. sapiens' (aka "h. religiosus'")¹ first, oldest, perennial escape plan the quest for magical/symbolic "immortality" is what we now call "religion" as such.
I prefer h. ludens¹ ... :death: :flower:
Could caring instead, or also, be the most immanent, most intimate expression of the one who is being religious (or just being)? The place where instead of finding the essence of religion, you find the one being religious. By caring for something, one brings that transcendent thing (the world) into ones immanent care. Still maybe mystical, but a mystery buried inside instead of beyond.
:fire: ... ecstatic immanence.
You're thinking of essence anthropological, fear of death; myth and ritual arising therefrom. And I completely agree with that.
I'm thinking of essence, as in what is its most essential function. You will say, to alleviate the fear of death. But I say, the fear of death has a deeper "root" which is the attachment to the Subject. And religion essentially addresses that. No attachment, no fear.
Anthropologically, the thing was constructed to address death and manifested as myth and ritual; eventually as ecclesiastical institutions.
Psychologically(?) Philosophically(?) the thing was constructed to address the attachment to projections including death.
I'd say that's the essence of religion. You say not. I don't see how the fear of death precedes (temporally, psychologically, in any hierarchy) the attachment causing the fear.
Unless you reject the notion of attachment to the Subject. (?)
Then why not go through it, the issue that is, as it is plainly put: Question that I asked Ludwig V: what if ethics were as apodictic (apriori, universally and necessarily true) as logic? Try to see how very weird this question is for it possesses nearly everything the issue deals with. For now I just leave it to you.
Quoting ENOAH
Now you're talking. But as I see it, one has to withdraw from the arguments, and move into the world (professional philosophers are too busy to do this. I mean, to write a paper, one has to be in the conversation about what others say and have said, comparing, contrasting, aligning ideas. They are good at arguments, but generally not good at "the world," which is the original point. I like to say, I don't read Heidegger to understand Heidegger; I read Heidegger to understand the world. ANd he is VERY helpful in this. Phenomenology is the only to understand the world): You know that perception is an historical construct, even though it occurs without pause. This is evident in that one's own personal history provides that language learning from infancy, yet when we engage with this language, there is exactly this immediacy in the way a knowledge claim is affirmed in and by language. The object is entirely mediated in its apprehension. And, following Heidegger, this language itself, apart from one's personal history, has a history that goes back through the ages and evolves in historical movements (sound like Hegel? Of course). But make that move into the world (this is what Michel Henry argued with passion) and there we are in this "fleshy encounter" of a very direct apprehension that is NOT qualified by the interpretative values of language. Feel the grass, the pinch of the flesh, and engage the senses in "real time" and all arguments in abeyance. Think of Walt Whitman, the 19th century poet of the living experience. He writes:
[i]Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.[/i]
Henry and even Nietzsche likely applauded Whitman (Nietzsche adored Emerson, too). The point is, creeds and schools in abeyance means an unmitigated, unconditioned apprehension of the pure phenomenon that stands before one in vivid presence, and THIS will not be gainsaid by the philosopher's insistence that all perception is interpretative and constituted by language. This leaf of grass pressed between my thumb and finger is simply undeniably THERE in all the energy of a live experience. And the more you allow yourself to engage the world like this, the more you see what metaphysics is really all about: Language implicitly there, attending the qualitative moment, stabilizing existence, and yet, what appears before one, the reduced phenomenon that is most emphatically NOT language. This is where metaphysics is revealed, for in the mundane perception, the "presence" of the world stands entirely "Other" than what the understanding has to "say".
You say the Eastern religio-philosophies have not made the significant move out of the habits of ordinariness, but serious meditation does not have any explicit ideational content. It is precisely a "liberation" from just this, and its telos is not to calm the mind and deal with the world more happily. Its telos is to literally leave the world, and by world I refer to the very historical construct you refer to. You sound a lot like Derrida when you say no idea stands out on its own. Derrida does what meditation does, two "yogas" and Derrida is the ultimate jnana yoga, thought discovering the delimitations of thought and IN this "apophatic" revelation, one has zazen, if you want to talk like this. And all schools are in abeyance.
Quoting ENOAH
You think like this because of this language prohibition when we talk about mysticism. I read once in a preface to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, that monks speak often about their experiences in meditation. One can talk about anything if the talk is simply reporting and describing and quantifying. Liberation in the mystical tradition does not preclude language, but understands that language itself is transcendental, and here consider what Wittgenstein had to say about logic: Logic shows us what it is, but cannot tell us what it is. The same is true for my cat: it appears, and I know this in the contexts of cats and my cat and the knowledge base this is informed by, but this contextually conceived knowing is itself radically indeterminate, that is, belongs to no subsuming context. You understand this, and you understand the idea metaphysics, but to make a further move, one has to leave the text, the thesis, and behold the world and KNOW the world cannot be possessed by language. One is at once possessed and dispossessed by language (that "by" is VERY tricky. After all, as I speak these words, there is an independence of the language, as if the language were doing the dispossessing. The "I" of me is conceived in the language that conceives, is it not. See my point? See how this very language I am deploying NOW as I write about language is somehow entirely independent of ME if the "I" of me is so completely indeterminate. Every time I try to find myself , I encounter the language "doing" looking. "I" am not accessible to language! But then, what is this "I"? This is discovered not by language but by value, in "the religious" dimension of our existence: the metaphysics of "I".
Quoting ENOAH
When one considers the Good, one has to escape the metaphysics of Plato, the idea or form of the good, but when the subject is broached, it is done IN language. This "peaking" you refer to will never escape language in this way, for one is not reduced to a babbling feral adult when one meditates or when one is in meditative thought. Language is the house of Being Heidegger said, and while there is a great deal more to it then what H, the strong intellectual who cared little for ethics and the nature of value talk, meant by this, he was most clearly correct to say that when we have an acknowledgement of the world AT ALL, we have this in language and Time. A simply profound analysis, Being and Time. All the French post-post modern "theological turn" philosopher I read are deeply schooled in Heidegger and Husserl. They don't "bicker" like paper writers saying what Husserl was "really saying". They stand apart from this scholarly arguing, mostly.
On truth: Please note the above on language.
I have to remind myself that language is not intrusive into the endeavor to realize fully what the world IS. Language is what brings one to that peak you talk about. An once there, language is suspended, explicitly, anyway, and one realizes one really doesn't know what language is at all, and Plato comes back to haunt one. And this is registered at the perceptual level, not merely as a thought.
Quoting ENOAH
Just to remind, I think it is very important to steer clear of God the creator and the rest. I want to see the world as it stands there before my gaze, and have none of the explicit interpretative historical ideas rush in to claim it. This is the phenomenology of Husserl, or thereabouts. Husserl didn't understand ethics either.
Of course you are right! No one would ever argue against it, who understands this issue. But you have not taken the analytical step into the question begged, which is what is all the fuss about? This fuss is a structural feature of our existence, this death by a thousand cuts, say, IS the fuss, and to simply ignore it is entirely disingenuous to philosophy, for it is by parsecs THE most salient feature of our existence at the level of basic questions
Though I do sympathize, for the reading is daunting.
And what "structural ... death of a thousand cuts" have I ignored?
In my thoughts, there is no separation of the caring person and the essence of religion. Religion is nothing conceived as some independent objective state of affairs. Just as with value and reason, WE bring religion into existence and it is because of us, these agencies of ethicality, if you will, who care about things and indulge and refrain, loathe and rejoice, love and hate, and on and on, that religion makes any sense at all.
But religion is always treated as if it were no more that the stories it tells and the bad metaphysics of God the creator, and the rest. I am arguing that religion has a demonstrable metaphysics, which is evidenced in the presence of value itself. I am arguing that the vagaries religious expression obscure the real essence of religion: Real metaphysics, the kind of thing philosophers do not talk about because there is nothing discoverable in the talking, and this is because language always already possesses the world.
"The world" is mystical (not Heidegger's world; but then, he does take one to the threshold and gives it thought and analysis, and is VERY helpful for quasi-mystics like me), as is ethics and value, and when I say world I don't mean that "place" science does its business. It is the phenomenological presence of the world, a "purity" discovered in the reflexivity of thought IN the encounter with value experiences, which is all experience because value permeates experience.
The argument here is that caring and its value essence IS religion's essence. One has to look at the Good, a very old philosophical idea; referring to happiness (the summum bonum) and pleasure and all the sundry "attachments" (as the Buddhists put it) and ask, what is the ontology of this Good in this caring? The question goes directly to the CARER. It is all about this agency of aesthetic and ethical possibilities. The "being" of the Good of this bouillabaisse or that love interest. Christians say God is love. The inverse is much better, Love is God. Just drop the agency of God altogether, and stick with the "there" of the world.
How is value the essence of religion and metaphysics? Simple: value is apodictic or apriori or universal and necessary, AS logic. This is the argument is a very small nutshell.
Well, fear of the world is obvious and the need to flee is just crystal clear. But what IS it that one has to flee from that is in and of the world? This has to be analyzed objectively as one would analyze anything; what one seeks must be isolated from the incidentals that surround it.
What you seem to be ignoring is just this analysis.
We flee mortality :fire:, or as Buddhists say: impermanence of ourselves, one another & everything else (NB: I prefer 'radical contingency'). IMO, this fleeing is fundamentally (i.e. atavistically) religious.
The OP says nothing about mortality. This has no place here. Now the caring about mortality, this is quite different.
Radical contingency, this is a Sartrean term as I remember. But Roquentin was haunted by the world's "otherness" vis a vis the familiar rational categories. I find this there, at the threshold of the infamous angst of Kierkegaard and later Heidegger. An important move, but not the matter here discussed. Here we look at metaethics and metavalue.
Thus, the failing (obscurity) of the OP.
No doubt he derives it from classical atomism.
Look, it's Wittgenstein's claim about ethics, the world and value in the Tractatus. It is Witt you don't understand. It was so obscure for Witt that he refused to talk about it, yet he admits that it is precisely that which cannot be spoken that is the important part of the work.
But you have to ask why he took that position. You think the OP is obscure, but I am saying the issue is obscure, the OP is clear. But it does take a penetrating analysis. What is it about ethics that Witt said was beyond the pale of what language can say? It is the Good (and of course, the Bad)! What in Culture and value he calls divinity. One has to ask, why would he say this?
It precedes reflections about ethics logically; historically. who cares. This is an apriori argument.
Yeah well, the logical precedent happens to be manifest historically since the topic concerns a concrete, social institution and not a mere abstraction. :roll:
What "argument"? There is no "argument", just speculative observations which are either informed by anthropology, history, psychology, etc or they are not.
Quoting Constance
No we don't because Witty isn't the topic of this thread as per the OP. Folks shift the goal posts when they are confused by the obscurity of what they think they are talking about. As far as I'm concerned, Witty is a non sequitur you've introduced that further obscures the issue.
Quoting Astrophel
I would view logic as apodictic in accordance with its own terms. Perhaps a priori, insofar as I would define a priori: a "truth" settled upon and input foundationally and universally, more or less. But not pre-existent nor always present; like a posteriori and phenomena, mediated (constructed and projected). I would not view logic as universally and necessarily true outside of its own construction. I would not impose our logic upon Nature, for e.g. If/when we [superficially] observe logic in nature, we are superimposing it.
As for ethics, same exact paragraph as above, mutatis mutandis.
I am not diminishing the high function of both logic and ethics for us. I am not following a hypothesis that they are neither ultimately real nor necessary in order to stop applying them. On the contrary, I cherish both, even though I am not expert in either. I am just settling on a position which following various paths collected where "I" happened to be.
To reiterate that current settlement, our mundane experiences are mediated, we, as human animals, have become so attached to them, we are no longer attuned to our real and natural aware-ing, the one we share with the rest of nature in variations. Religion reminds us/allows a glimpse into our present being, and reprieve from the speed and chatter of becoming; and, more so, from attachment to the Subject of that becoming. The latter has virtually displaced our true natures with its movements.
From Upanisads to Analects to Sutras, Gospels, Torah and Prophets, Koran, and I would speculate much more, beyond the mythological, legalistic, and ritualistic, there is the consistent thread: surrender your ego (Mind's constructions/projections) to the Universal (God/Nature). That consistent thread, I say, is the essence.
Quoting Astrophel
Well. That's what I'm saying. And Heidegger must be who I got it from. The so called experience (seems immediate but) is mediated by the language passed on (as it evolves) through history, input into each "unit" of Mind starting in infancy.
Quoting Astrophel What the hell! Yes. I thought Hegel had built that idea, yes. Mind is History. It moves through, not just language qua language, but a multiferous system of signifiers, operating in accordance with its own evolved laws mechanics dynamics. Logic for instance, a "grammar". As is ethics
Quoting Astrophel
Ok, yes. I see your point. Sorry, I got carried off by those parallels. Yes, when I say religion takes us away from "I" and returns us to real being (the body), you are correct. Being feels nature presently; senses before perception floods in with its "fiction".
Quoting Astrophel :clap: :up:
But the point is that it being a concrete social institution is exactly what one has to put aside to understand the essence of religion.
Quoting 180 Proof
No. Read the OP. There are actual claims there. You should read it, understand what it says and say something like, look, here you say this, but this is assailable on grounds X and Y.
Quoting 180 Proof
Don't be naïve. Witty is at the very center of the OP. I can't help you if you don't do this, read the OP with a mind to understanding and without the default dismissal, that is. Just read it.
I have to lean Kantian on this one, but only lean: The apodicticity shouldn't be denied what it is: one cannot, say, even imagine an object being its own cause, to move all by itself, that is. Nor can one imagine logic's tautological principles being any less authoritative than they are. This apriority of the logic of causality is, notwithstanding the contingency of the language that discovers it, itself an absolute. This is saying: no, I really do not know what logic is because, per Wittgenstein, logic is only shown but its nature cannot be known, and: language itself is not apriori. It is as you say historical. But even though I cannot clear the interpretative language dimension of knowing of all doubt (to speak like Descartes), the intuition (whatever that is) is emphatic and and clear as a bell, and it is this coercivity, of logic, not the hermeneutic aporia, that is the absolute. I think to question this collapses into an empty skepticism.
But to call it an absolute is itself bound to interpretative indeterminacy. One simply cannot help this. One CAN doubt anything, true, but to doubt logic as it appears is disingenuous. I would without hazard say, the "intuition" of causality is absolutely inviolable.
Not clear about a posteriori and phenomena. As to nature and logic, I think it important to note that a person is not nature. Nor is it right to argue that that one fits into the natural scheme of things. A person is a self, and a self is a very different kind of being from a tree or a coconut. Our self is a living and breathing, caring, pragmatic, historical temporally structured existence that anticipates a future in a perpetual "not yet".
I know this sounds weird, and I have to say I don't understand it perfectly well, but the more I read the papers on phenomenology, the closer I get. It is best to simply allow oneself to observe and think: there is logic. What IS this? See how it is played out in symbolic logic. The insight the OP and all that follows is trying to show is that this "intuition" of logic is simply inviolable. But because logic is only about the form of thought and not the content, it is only trivially inviolable. Logic QUA logic is vacuous. But now let's look at ethics and we see it is not the form, nor the random opinion, the cultural orientation, the relativity of values, and the like. Here, we move to the essence of ethics/religion, into what all these have to make them what they are. And this requires an analysis of an ethical matter. We find the essence of ethics is value, and so it is with religion. What is value? This has been discussed.
Quoting ENOAH
Which means you would count value as not something as universally and necessarily true outside of its own construction. But what is its construction? With logic, there is the coercivity in the intuition regardless of the aporia of the language, and this has to acknowledged for what it is. But in ethics, it is the pain of this sprained ankle. Now, what IS "its own construction"? Are you saying that the sprain is entirely a localized affair, there in the ankle, and no where else? I suspect this to be the case.
The trouble is, again, that the view here is phenomenological: There are NO physical locality boundaries, and each being IS Being qua Being. You may find this odd, but this really is the implicit physicalism that pervades science and naturlistic thinking. All is metaphysics, I argue. This sprained ankle is as profound as it gets. Why? Because the pain that is physically localized, is phenomenologically without locality, for it is subsumed under Being as such.
Quoting ENOAH
I believe you are saying that that consistent thread is value-in-the-world. Note that all you mention is essentially constituted by ethicality, for there is in all this the essential normativity that aligns with ethics. All of these metaphysical systems "insist" on compliance, like logic insists. The argument lies in the observation that value experiences, the ones celebrated in those religions, like logic, cannot be imagined to be other than what they are. Value in ethics and religion is noncontigent, in other words, and apodictic
Look at it like this, say, as is generally assumed, that the Hindu Brahman, the Buddhist Nirvana, the Christian heaven and so on, are not realizable for the confirmation of religious belief. And all there is in the world that would make for our existence's foundational meaning for one in good intellectual conscience lies in the everydayness of things (which is science. We are all scientists in our everydayness). Pretty much the assumption of modern thinking, and philosophy certainly assumes this to be the case, for the most part. This argument takes this assumption and says the religious, metaphysical affirmation one seeks, is IN the very everydayness itself. It is demonstrable world for atheists, agnostics, logicians like Russell and Frege, in the analytic of living and breathing.
Quoting ENOAH
Slavoj Zizek would agree. And I think this right. By this thinking, when one observes an object, the object and the observation are one! One spiritually evolving divinity. BUT: one has to put history down explicitly, suspend all of those "historically" derived knowledge claims that implicitly and immediately take hold of the object (the emotion, the attitude, the idea) and allow oneself to to understand that the language and its interpretational possibilities is clearly NOT this sprained ankle's misery. To speak about the misery, within all a particular historical framework's "potentiality of possibilities" is radically OTHER than the misery itself. This is Kierkegaard (Concept of Anxiety) and his complaint against Hegel. This is a long issue.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/903982
Quoting Constance
I agree. So it's apodictic. But I still think it is apodictic because the imaginer is already constrained by/conditioned into cause and effect. Ask a relative who shares 98% of our genes if it can so imagine. For the rest of the universe lightning strikes fire ignites is not a Narrative moving in the form of linear time. So our system makes logic apodictic within our system.
Quoting Constance
And I say, Language that constructs it. This is exactly where we diverge. I am not convinced logic is a "whatever" (attribute, principle, truth?) in Nature; only in Mind. But I remain radically open to any convincing out there. In here, I'm admittedly settled.
Quoting Constance
Then you'd say the same of the Self, it is coercive as he'll. Yet I doubt it's occurrence in the universe anywhere outside of the evolution/emergence of mind, as History, structured by Language.
Quoting Constance I agree. And I clarify, logic, its function in human existence (history/mind) is undeniable. I say so what if it is part of the constructed? We must adhere to it to function. Then why deny its universality, pre-language, etc? Because it helps when navigating through the ocean of how things really are, to know you are on a ship. Abandon it? No way. Know what it is. Which again is how religion saves us even from logic. It shows us the ocean from the ship, though we are compelled, or at least best to remain aboard.
Quoting Constance
I agree with every word, and yet here's how I think we still differ. For me our real self, is not a self, reacts to feelings, sensations, drives. Among those drives is bonding, a drive so powerful which at any level of analysis reveals how not individual our organic so called self is. That real self is caring. But as for pragmatic, Historically/Temporally structured, perpetually becoming, you describe; like logic, that "Self" me/I, is just another mechanism constructed by History as a fit way to move that temporal narrative becoming along. It works to have a mechanism within the system of signifiers, to signify the body it is occupying and affecting.
Quoting Constance
Maybe mine is not so far from this.
Quoting Constance
Unless I am misunderstanding the use "Ethics" in some specific way, with Ethics, it is the binary feeling pleasant/not pleasant; there is the coercivity in the intuition regardless of the aporia of the language.
But, let me put it in my terms. At the organic root of ethics, as in all things, is thd binary feeling, or the on not on of bliss. But the construction of ethics is, also like everything else, a dialectical process of competing constructions. The most functional is projected into our world/history.
Quoting Constance
I'd say the pain of the sprained ankle is one "event", immediate, present and organic. The ethics is constructed seemingly
immediately, but nevertheless constructed.
Now you are talking like Heidegger. And Rorty who, in his Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, says it outright: The world is not discovered; it is made. I said earlier that I agree, and I have agreed all along, and I think if you find yourself at this crossroad, you have made an important step toward really understanding our "being here". It is foundationally hermeneutic, or dialectically evolving. I brought up Zizek. He holds in his Hegelian views that our current perspective-in-zeitgeist is like a software program in which one cannot see the mountains in a setting because it is simply not there in the one's and zeros, in the possibilities of the program, so from our pov, there are no mountains and it is absurd to speak as if there are. A wonderful way to talk about the absence of what we cannot even imagine, but is in the currently transcendental possibilities.
But discovery, this must occur within the possibilities of this zeitgeist. Kierkegaard spent a lot of ink on Hegel. Hegel, he says, simply forgot one thing: that we exist! THIS is where Henry comes in and the essence of religion becomes clear, for while I can see how powerful this idea of the hermeneutic delimitations of thought and understanding is, I am IN a world that is in NO way interpretatively distant. But one instantly leaps on this assumption: interpretative distance pervades everything. There is nothing that "survives," as "in itself" for when the mind turns to say what a thing is, there is no thing itself in the saying. The thing itself itself belongs to this finitude of language and culture. But this is well understood, already, and yet there is in the reduction (and one has to look at Husserl's Ideas, or Cartesian Meditations, or The Idea of Phenomenology to see how important this "epoche" is to the neo Husserlians that challenge scope of hermeneutical prohibition) the presence or givenness of the world.
Now one can see why this reduction is used to give religion its meaning that was lost in the modernist critique. Once one sees that the presence of the world CANNOT be "presence" for the moment it is spoken in this context, it is "under erasure" (Derrida) it vanishes in its authority as meaningful language. And this is where we stand in the world as enlightened beings, very aware that our language cannot possess the "givenness" of the world, yet there it stands before one, the world of beingS, the chairs and tables and interests and things and moods and anything that is "said" being now "under erasure".
If this makes sense to you, then you are parsecs ahead of this zeitgeist we live in, as was and is Gautama Siddhartha. It is a matter of understanding in the rarest sense, in the occurrent seeing and being here, that we are not "here" at all.
Quoting ENOAH
No, the "self" is, in the context of talking about selves, entirely grounded in language's contextualities. But in the revelation that follows the "under erasure" above, things becomes manifest that were not before. The self, too, is revealed by language, but it is IN language that the delimitations (above) are "discovered" for one has to admit that anything that steps before one to be understood, is "revealed" to language. BUT, and this is the hard part, there is a counterpart to this revelation that has no name. You see the point here: one cannot be rid of language, for to even try is an attempt in language. And so, it is in language that we "discover" what is not language. Language has already evolved to this radical manifestation of confronting the tout autre of language. Here, history is no longer an interpretative obstruction, nor does it inform understanding.
Quoting ENOAH
The whole point of bringing logic into the discussion is simply provide an unproblematic model for what certainty is. No more than this. The reason I do this is due to the way people, philosophers, treat ethics as something that is as variable as belief systems, as customs and "taste". Nietzsche tore away from this, but his ethics was a purely naturalistic one, a "blood and guts" ethics of the gladiatorial (which he praised). N did not understand ethics due to his abhorrence of metaphysics and he thought Christian world hating other worldly divine judgment and condemnation simply had to go. And he was partially right, but he just didn't understand what ethics was. Ethics is the metaphysics, the metaethics, of this world. This is the claim here.
Quoting ENOAH
And I say you are wise to talk like this. For me (I don't like the condescension of preaching or even advising) the next step is a very strange one. There is no history. There never has been. Give the self a brief analysis: I am now, in the reduced moment, that is, in the nunc stans, the here and now. something of analytic possiblities AS an occurrent phenomenon. I perceive the world around me, and I recall, as I see all that informs me about the world, my education, and this education defines the possibilities of meaning making. I cannot tell you about the the grammatical nuances of Swahili, but I do know about English.
But looking more closely, we see that In the actual event, the past is never discovered (in this analysis); rather, the past is part of an anticipatory dynamic of what could be. Even when one explcitly recalls, the recollection itself is a "not yet" of becoming the next moment. My recollection, in the process itself of recalling, anticipates what will come to be in the next moment of the thought, the utterance, the experience. And the past is analytically absorbed into this singular dynamic of recalling and anticipating. This is what we ARE, constantly on the precipice of an unmade future. It is never settled into some primordial ontology, but never stops being a projection of possibilities into a future. So the past entirely loses it identity AS the past. The most fundamental analysis annihilates common sense time. The present? This is our freedom to choose, but then ALL meanings get lost in this analysis of time.
Consider: a curious question ask, what is the past? One has never witnessed the past; it is always the past IN the present in which it is acknowledged. It is literally impossible to witness the past.
Quoting ENOAH
Why not allow the world to be what it is? There is nothing in the pain of a sprained ankle that is dialectical. One is not comparing nor is the event historical in any way. It has a "thereness" that transcends analysis. This is an important idea. Ethics may be a construct, the the "raw material" if you will of ethics is anything but.
Quoting ENOAH
But then, drop that tag, "but nevertheless constructed." Why is this there? The construction issues from the entanglements of value in play. These are incidental. That I owe the bank money, and in order to maintain the confidence in its institutions a society requires debts to be paid, yet I live in poverty and there has been such an absence of justice in my background, I feel well justified in avoiding this obligation, and so on; all this is dismissed in the reduced analysis, for we want to know what the essence of ethics is, not the many "states of affairs" we find ourselves in.
The pain screams out from the living present. What is IS is worn on its sleeve, so to speak. It is the world "speaking" the ethics of not bringing this into existence.
Quoting Constance
You have a very helpful way of putting thoughts into perspective. I see the truth in the above clearly. That latter part is what I've been calling being not knowing.
Quoting Constance Aha, right
Quoting Constance Yes, yes. The tragedy of the (uniquely) human condition, resolved not by the ideas of, but by the precise practice of tge essence of religion. By, as SK intuited, but I am adjusting, resigning yourself to the infinite impossibility of possessing the real world as a Subject, yet knowing enough that the objective is only a representation and also, can never possess it--and yet taking the leap anyway; for me, the leap into being. It cannot be an intellectual pursuit because that utilizes and constructs knowledge; it must be a leap of silent faith that for that timeless moment you will face being, your organic self, when you land.
Quoting Constance Nice
[/b]uote="Constance;909299"]And so, it is in language that we "discover" what is not language. Language has already evolved to this radical manifestation of confronting the tout autre of language. Here, history is no longer an interpretative obstruction, nor does it inform understanding.[/quote]
I think this may be a point of difference I have with current convention period. The idea behind the treminology being, Language (Mind) cannot be relegated to an emergence, or worse, illusion or fiction, it must maintain its privileged status in this imaginary hierarchy of Truth/Reality (which we adamantly deny but all assume) because, after all it is only by (I sense Heidegger in this but know I am extrapolating) going through that process of becoming which language affords, that we uniquely made in g's image (also implicit) get to know being.
But mind has many built in mechanisms which propagate the illusion tgat its the privileged reality, and that's why it has thrived. One of them is that knowing is the highest aim, that it is an unveiling rather than what it really is, a making-up.
No, thank you very much. I don't want to know being. Many have constructed skyscrapers of that. I want to be being. And genius that Mind is, it has provided a tiny rare and extremely muddled and buried crack--one so muddled and buried that highly intelligent people protest against all of the shit covering it up, thinking they are protesting it; a not only harmless, but clearly beneficent construction.
I'll post and address the rest separately
Quoting Constance
Let's get this one out first. I get the sentiment. We just have to plow through. I'm learning that. Your info is invaluable, if I haven't made that clear.
Quoting Constance
Of course. I agree that should be the approach. Provided no false barriers are created.
Quoting Constance
I agree that such an approach to ethics is a corruption of the "purer" root of relatively, being that ethics have a solid and rigid place in our world, but we can recognize that they are yet an evolving, moving, process of construction and then
projection.
Quoting Constance
YES. This is what I've been wondering in the inverse. Despite history and its fleeting and empty moments, Being is consistently present.
Quoting Constance Yes you are entirely correct. What I meant was the analysis; this takes place instantly; this is the Dialectic. The pain is the only reality, the thereness which transcends dialectic. But as you know, instantly and ineluctably, we are flooding the being-natural-aware-ing-pain-ing with dialectic. "My ankle hurts. Why did I leap for that Frisbee? Should I be on morphine?" Simplified but you get the picture. These re-present the thereness (of) pain-ing with meaning about pain. Not real, real.
Quoting Constance Aha! Right. I'm doing to ethics the very thing I'm defending religion from. Right, the essence.
There is another way of putting it--this essence of religion--and now, having pondered, I see that thinking my focus was beyond ethics, you were right, and I wasn't right enough. The metaphysical is ethical--at least on this focus. Because here is the exact thing I've been "pushing" just worded differently.
The essence of religion Is to pursue, or at least know, the Truth that there is a being, and a species of being, for which you are an agent, a tool, and more so, a fiduciary who must apply the highest good faith in carrying out such a duty. You are not a thing in itself which can exploit that being, though you think you can and in the process construct suffering.
Consider:
On truth: I think there are some questions that have a kind of zazen nature to them, a "sudden enlightenment," and this question is among these: How does anything "out there" in the great externality of the world, get "in here" referring to internal knowledge claims about the out there?
To understand religion in its essence, one has to understand existential indeterminacy. This is an foundational epistemological, and therefore, ontological, problem.
What if it only appears to us as a linear process x-->y, because whatever "happened" to x and to y was immediately post constructed as x-->y and re-presented that way by Mind to "the" aware-ing ans assimilated in that form as "knowledge". But in "actuality" it was always just xy?
Is that not suggestive of causality being an epistemic process and effect?
And only "resolvable" as such. That is, within and limited to the framework of those "studies" and their specific ways of using language to reconstruct already constructed "realities."
These have functions but they do not open up/unveil for discovery any ultimate truths. The latter, which I still hold to be, our organic bodies, their survival, and the organic prosperity of our species and the rest of nature to which we belong.
I followed you all the way up to "But in "actuality" it was always just xy." If your reasoning here is right, and I don't think it is wrong (meaning I do think causality in thought in an interpretative imposition on the world), then how does one get around the "post construction" of anything which is acknowledged at all, even and especially "just xy"? It is a Kantian problem, and the reason why we are forced into a transcendental telos of thought thinking about thought. Thought cannot think about the essence of thought, and talk about "in actuality" because this would take a perspective outside of thought. It COULD be that x and y are in some metaphysical, non relational simultaneity, but to speak like this takes one into the iffy world of speculative metaphysics.
But I am sure you are right about the way our ideas about the world are indeterminate. They are hermeneutical, and open to possibilities. When I see my cat I "see" the structures of my own thought in play, but I am so absorbed by the taking this world "as" (a Heideggerian term) the totality of my thoughts that I never am able to see freely that all of my apprehensions are open and viable for decision making.
But to step back: "xy" also belongs to this totality, I mean, to think of two things not being separated by the usual sequential thinking about causality, still affirms each of the two things PRIOR to this problem. There being something "there" at all is prior to anything one could say about its relations with other things, but then, to talk about its thereness begs the epistemic question, how does "it" get into judgment at all?
I am one for removing my eyes from text and thinking, and allowing an existential issue to "speak" on its own. So here I am, and I look up, and there is the cat, and I know the cat is there. And there is this very intuitive knowing. This is the ground, this direct intimation that escapes Descartes' doubting. Foolish to doubt the "thereness" of the sight and feel of the cat. But now look to the simple mechanics. The cat is there, not me, and I am here, and there MUST be a non magical way to explain how the, if you will, brain thing, "receives" the cat thing.
Causality is taken here to be simply the apodicticity of objects having to be caused to move. What is "really" going on here is precisely the point of the thought experiment of asking how anything "out there" gets "in here".
Quoting Constance
By remaining present. By being. By not being-knowing-and-becoming.
But, yes, we are flooded, our brains, with images of becoming and it is hard, arguably impossible, to escape.
But in the spirit of this particular discussion, though we may be trapped by our condition, if anything provides a window, an opportunity for a glimpse, it is the essence of religion, which I (presumably not alone) am positing as attending, not to the self, and the weaved narratives it appears in; but, rather to being; first, by being its unfettered, unencumbered reality; second, upon returning, as one ineluctably does (instantly), to the self; then, by attending to the welfare of the body, the species, and the nature we share with all others. Not to desire more; not to settle complacently for less. And, not to entertain the inevitable desires of the self, flooding the brain with reasons to go way beyond the welfare of reality (I.e. the body, species, nature).
Quoting Constance
If, never mind Eastern Monism, Parmenides is right, xy happen all at once.
I'm not confidently proposing Parmenides, but the thought that reality (and here's where I traditionally lose you et. al.) happens all at once explains a few things.
Mind evolved everything by its function, many of them conventionally thought of as, if not noumena, noumena-like. Reason and logic, among them; first grammar, all of these still evolving. And difference, hence, dialectic, movement. It constructs and projects more or less in narrative form (nature is); becoming, linear time, causality. All of these not actually separate categories, mixed, built upon, etc.
So xy which are, let me be lazy and say tree falls and landing on a person, kills it. In the event's being when it exists or ceases to exist is irrelevant. It is present being. It is only for our post construction that time becomes relevant, along with its movements, logic to structure the narrative, cause and effect.
In reality, tree--falling--landing--organic dying.
In mind, what killed Plato? A tree fell on him?
Quoting Constance
Very possibly I am not understanding something technical in your question. But it gets into judgement, 1. Because that is what Mind is, a knowing system; meaning is its "aim/product," 2. It happens autonomously. Like vision does to begin with (I.e. pre'consciousness') etc. For a hypothetical human never born into an age of humans with Mind, I.e. History, an apple comes into its line of vision (randomly, or because it is foraging) and it truly sees this aspect of its nature as, whatever, food; and it, whatever, eats it. For Mind, "judgement"--apple, ruit, healthy, red, green, large, ripe, crunch, squirt, sweet, etc etc etc--floods our brain autonomously, just as pre historically, the drive to eat might alone, have flooded the brain of the human organism, and yet, no less autonomously.
Quoting Constance
Yes I agree. When I describe mind as constructions and projections, or even fiction, that is not to say there is not a real and present world going on, and of which we are. But we no longer receive it purely through our senses, it has been heavily seasoned and processed by our imagination .
And why? Why did our imagination evolve to displace our sensations with constructions of its storehouse in memory? In order to thrive. Like any theory of evolution. It's not so much a teleology, as it is a post facto raison d'etre. Because Mind evolved from a bunch of reminders stored in memory to trigger feelings and actions, into a Hollywood sized industry of making stories to do so, it grew to what it is today. It has full control to the extent that nature has bought into its Fiction via tge human animal.
With AI fast on the way, Mind will carry on without the human animal, and perhaps, the essence of religion--i.e. to cherish the body--will become our eschatological, not just metaphysical, and ethical salvation.
Two ways to look at this, and they both belong to something I believe you accept. One deals with the "present". Now, it is not that I entirely deny this as an existential possibility, but it has to be given a broader context. When I am in the present and I witness the world around me (and I think those who are able to do this the best are the, well, call them practitioners of the religio-philosophical methods of the East. It is said that Gautama Siddhartha was the quintessential phenomenologist for a good reason: serious meditation reduces the world to its essential or "pure" phenomena, and brings one into the most direct intimacy with the world. This little description does not reveal the affective dimension of what occurs in this rigorous practice, something missing from Husserl and the rest, but is, I am arguing, the principle part) the agency of the "I" of my encounter with the world, even when matters turn profoundly insightful and deeply felt, is going to be constituted by the interpretative language education that gave me my "presence" out of infancy. The important part of this lies in the question, does this language and the "totality" of my educational grounding which prior to the "sublime experience of presence" determined my thinking, discover "something else" revealed as one approaches the ground zero, if you will, of the famous nunc stans. This something else is metaphysics
Of course, there is this terrible burden of philosophy that interferes with what I believe is the very simple (if difficult to achieve) revelation. But then, it is philosophy that requires us to speak what it is that this is about. Being and becoming have a long history of discussion and analysis, from the Eleatics and Heraclitus through Heidegger. The trouble is, Western philosophy is decidedly not mystical (in fact anglo american philosophy has done everything it could to distance itself from this), on the one hand; yet the world IS decidedly mystical as a world, on the other.
The other deals with time construction of the self. To observe, think, imagine, experience AT ALL, is to be in the becoming of things, for we ARE becoming in our nature. The absolute stillness of "being" is conceived by Plato as the changeless form that this world is an inferior manifestation of. I don't think at all that you have this in mind; I think what you have in mind is an actual event such that one discovers in the flux of one's existence a presence relative to the busy, what Heidegger calls "the they" self, so immersed in the daily goings-on if things, never pulling out and throwing the question of existence into the world, never lifting one's head out of the sand, so to speak. When one does this, one, in a very important way, stills the world. One no longer is concerned about catching buses and planning vacations. THIS kind of becoming is terminated, and the question (the piety of language) asserts itself.
But this does not change the "becoming structure" of experience. We are time, and each moment this "not yet" the stilling of which cannot be imagined. So, there is stilling and there is "stilling". I can still conscious activity, but I cannot still the construction of the moment itself. This would not be the "no self" of the Buddhists; it would be are duction to literal nothingness.
Quoting ENOAH
Brains? The phenomenological view I am suggesting puts the brain among the many things found in experience. It is an inversion of the physicalism that implicitly dominates our thinking. A brain does not generate consciousness and all its thoughts and images; rather, consciousness is primary. Brains and everything else are discovered IN consciousness.
A bring up the question about how things out there get in here inorder to show that the default physicalist view is simply impossible for it makes knowledge impossible, because causality has no epistemic part of its nature. We are not "connected" to the world causally. We are connected in consciousness, in an occult intimacy that only phenomenology can discover. Science will never understand this.
Quoting ENOAH
And I share this enthusiasm for a world cleared of the muddle of entangled living. But terms like unfettered and unencumbered reality are philosophically problematic. Experientially, perhaps not, though this will have its limits, and will be vaguely understood at best, not unlike the term religion, all mountains, so they say, arrive at the same peak, meaning what one believes doesn't matter, for faith itself liberates one from the constraints of everydayness. I am sure there is something to this (even Kierkgaard has been accused of defending silliness), but I stand on the side of clarity AND metaphysics, not just clarity (the positivists who, by denying the term 'metaphysics' has any meaning beyond nonsense, completely trivialize our existence and have now ended up in what has been described as the trash heap of philosophy) nor just metaphysics (e.g., Christian faith; or the vague sense of something more). As I see it, one has to be clear about this mysterious threshold, and this requires a careful dissection of the structure of experience-in-the-world, the average everydayness.
I mean, before we can talk about what is unfettered, we have to know what it is that is doing the fettering. If we are "trapped" then this implies some untrapped condition, and this is not available to one who is IN the "fettered" state. One has to commit what is called an apophatic search: define what is in the world and the way that it obstructs insight. It is not as if what is there on the proverbial other side announces itself in the many contexts of our affairs. It is it absence that is notable, hence the apophatic method.
Quoting ENOAH
I did not make it complicated on purpose. Sorry for the confusion, but I meant it to be taken at face value: there I stand before the apple and I know it is there, and it is not me, and it is over there, and all this falls into place in the plainness of observation, but now the hard part: how is it that my knowing extends to something at all? Not through complex system of relatedness, all of which are essentially causal, because such systems cannot penetrate, if you will, the media of sensory, neural nor external conditions. Consider that the perfect model for epistemic connectivity is a mirror, and so seeing th images delivered by sights are like mirror images of the world. The question asks, How is it even remotely possible for such an image to be "of" the world, given that the intervening condition are the most opaque imaginable. Nothing can be more opaque than a brain. But then even if the brain operated like a mirror, upon inspection of its properties, what is a mirror image is something is most emphatically NOT that thing. Further, in the case of a true mirrored image, the object being mirrored is already known. I see a mirrored image of the Taj Mahal, and look up from the image, and there IS the Taj! In perception, there is no looking up to confirm. The image is itself its own being. One cannot look away from it to discover the Other. All there is or has ever been available to experience is experience.
Even when one observes a brain, one is only observing a phenomenon. My point is to make very clear that the indeterminacy I talk about with respect to the essence of religion is ontologically and epistemically absolute. Therefore, ethically absolute.....save the one thing that survives, which is value. It survives Descartes misconceived cogito, it survives physicalism (just reviewed here with this confusing question), is survives hermeneutics (one is not interpreting that one is in pain or pleasure), it survives comparisons of utility (better to torture one than a thousand; but then, this does not diminish the one in the least) It survives all second guessing.
A kick in the teeth possesses a dimension of wrongness that issues from the world.
Have to go so no time to respond to your last comment. Sorry.
Quoting Constance
Yes!
Quoting Constance
With respect. That expresses a lingering in the very thing that "metaphysical" aware-ing you're implying. That thing--yes, call it language (Human Mind)--from which the sublime presence is, we agree, a "reprieve", but actually, simply, a turning inward, into silence, asks the question, and you, with respect, "let it" (its all autonomous anyway), but "here" in presence, where reality is being (what it is-ing which we call being), there are no questions, no discovery.
The instant "you" discover the "experience" of sublime presence, it has ceased being aware-ing-ed. And organic attention is once again flooded by made up images from memory and reprocessed for "the world" by the imagination; all in lightning speed and incessantly.
I will continue to read your response. I wanted to separate the above because it is essential to my thinking, and as it becomes clearer, so will your critique. I am witness to that very process!
I completely agree. And, actually, philosophy, burdened by logic and reason, and all, is still the best path to unders
Sorry. Maybe I pressed something.
Anyway philosophy is brilliant. It keeps mystics grounded. There are a million charlatans for every Buddha.
Quoting Constance
Yes. I respect that highly. In my untrained way, yet I strive for that. I take risks because I'm unconstrained; it can be fruitful. But I totally wish to stay within the boundaries, or be certain of cause to cross them. And the latter, I would not presume to do alone.
Quoting Constance
Ok. Yes. And yet, that's what I think I mean to say. So, I need to understand the problem. First, this so called unencumbered reality is like everything, the wording is a stab at a target, and I am not a well trained fencer. In itself is implied, its failure. But that can be said of everything, all wording, to obviously varying degrees. But none is immune. But I know you mean beyond that. So does this help. When speaking of reality; not only do I have no business qualifying it with conditions like unencumbered, but I have no business period. What I reiterate is I do not and cannot know reality; I can only know the seasoned version. I can only be reality; which is that (not that "I" already am) that already is.
Quoting Constance
Yes, I totally get that. There might even be a melancholy to it. But that's because Mind moves egotistically. The system "desires" manifestation of its constructions (because the organic infrastructure upon which it drives is structured to fire images to the aware-ing part of the organism for conditioned responses. So "it" that is, experience and the Subject to which it attaches, "want" to extend into the being itself. It's not an illusion it's a process of evolution wherein a thing thrives by growing. So "you" which constructs meaning, knowledge, want to extend that fiction into being itself. But being is being, not knowing. And not just into being, "you" want knowledge to extend beyond being but into an imagined eternity; and so Mind evolves to construct itself in History as spirit. And being a functional construction, it sticks.
Quoting Constance
That is sublime. I'd adjust my own take to it by saying "the world" is just the images constructed by mind and flooding organic consciousness. Plato, afterall, laid that foundation regardless of the given locus in the history of evolving interpretations. No skin off his back.
Quoting Constance
Ok, but the "event" only in the context of the essence of religion, i.e., to save us from our "selves" remind us we are all one, all of us, not even, just humans.
In the rest of "thought", it is in my opinion, though thought of as Philosophy of Mind,
the heart of metaphysics, explains, therefore "negates" epistemology, and, since Ethics is the offspring of the two...etc.
However, the Heideggerian process you described, and, maybe, on a strictly intellectual level, Husserl's bracketing (though I am a novice at both Hs, not for lack of sweat squinting, and tears), is close enough to what I'm proposing. Zazen just happens to be almost bang on, if properly practiced. Soto. Rinzai is probably a close second. I say just happened because I made the connection after witnessing tge hypothesis that Western philosophy built.
I note that, in my opinion, for both Hs as for Zazen, and Koans; the "reward" that sublime experience of presence you called it (it is utterly uncallable, so that feels right, why not) is extremely momentary. It's "hope" or "promise" from a "religious", but I submit, Hs perspective, is to "jolt" you so that you're on to the truth. And, as you instantly and inevitably return to the Narratives, maybe yours will be restructured autonomously to follow a path more functional for the Host organism, and its species and planet.
Quoting Constance
That's right, I agree. Inevitably Mind's autonomous process is still flooding the brain and triggering the body with its constructions.
But this seems to be raised by others as a reason to insist that because they are experienced, and ineluctably our experience, they cannot be any less real than the organism, or at least that they and the organism are one. But they aren't one with the organism, they are images stored in memory and moving by an evolved law which flesh only provides the perfect hardware for. Once the data is input, it has evolved to function. But the data, though existent and functional, is not Real like the flesh is real. And the flesh is the real consciousness; it's organic aware-ing. Even a plant has it when it grows toward the light, or it's roots search for water. But Mind is just data making us feel by projecting stories. The stories are not real. An apple is what it is; not what we perceive when Mind constructs and projects "A is for Apple".
Quoting Constance
It's a physical exercise, but it's easy to stay stuck in Mind with advice like watch your breath, or worse, count them. I believe one must hone in on that breathing is. Not I am or my breaths: just breathing [organism breathing]. There are no fireworks; nor eureka I'm sure. It's more like Kierkegaard's knight of faith. To the world you are still just a clerk, if you have masterfully glimpsed being, by momentarily being. To yourself you remain a clerk, but you now "realize" something "true" outside of the constructed truths.
Quoting Constance
Yes, I agree, if you are saying my reliance upon this object "brain" being what it really is, is a projection of Mind. In which case so is everything I say.
If you're saying the organ brain only exists as a construct projected, and that the thing brain in itself may be vastly different, I accept that possibility, but think it's far more likely our organic senses are not tricking us. There are objects and bodies in the world around us. We could sense them as they are so called in themselves. But Mind floods sensation with images and churns out perception. So now we can't help but see the seasoned version. We aren't outright seeing an alien world, but compared to apes, it's alien enough.
Quoting Constance
I think, psychoanalysis has gotten pretty close. I think science could Crack a lot of the code. And phenomenology, as did Plato, laid a strong foundation. But I think what none of those can do is know what reality is, or truth. They can only construct it, just as I too, am only constructing. Phenomenology, from Kant to Husserl does, I agree, ironically (?) also express this essence of religion; it points to the fact that there is Truth "hidden behind" the knowledge.
Quoting Constance I think this would be true if there were two selves. There is only the organic aware-ing being. There is no knowing, no meaning, nothing but aware-ing the present is-ings. View that aware-ing as unfettered reality; being unencumbered by the projections of becoming. We were so obviously once an animal like that. Our [what I've been calling] brain was fed images to trigger conditioned responses. Now our brain us flood with stories. And tge organism aware-ings the "I" in tge stories as itself. Neither the "I" nor the stories are anything. They're empty nothing. So no one is in the fettered state needing to get out. The body just needs to aware-ing its organic being so that tge stories follow a--ironically just as fictional--path which is more functional to the Body and the species.
A reprieve from explicit thinking. But to encounter at all, the agency of a self is constituted by knowledge assumptions, as when I glance at a cloud and thoughtlessly, passively, know it is a cloud and anticipate what it can do having had many cloud experiences and read cloud texts, technical, poetic, and so forth. But while there are no explicit assumptions, one is not a feral being nor an infant child: the presence is registered in a language context and the significance of this is contextual as well.
Discovery: just as there is no discovery when get in my car and start the engine, or enter a familiar classroom of desks, lectern, white board, and so forth, and familiarity fails to deliver? See below.
The question, the piety of language. Consider what a question is phenomenologically. Hammering away, the head flies off and the hammering ceases. A question emerges as stoppage produces inquiry. It is an "openness". What was there yields now to a brief nothingness before attempts to reestablish hammering. A question as it opens discovery of possible remedy is mundane. Consider that metaphysics begins with a question: something in the continuity of our existence that reaches for a solution and finds nothing, yet the openness remains. It is not a fabrication, as a fantasy might invent. It is existential, not "ontic" but "ontological" (in case you are interested in Heidegger's language). Call this openness eternity (not Heidegger).
This nothing: Eternity in time and space is familiar, and this is not simply quantitative: when one reaches out to these eternities, one is confronted with an existential impossibility that is not reducible to an abstraction, though we are mostly familiar with this kind of reduction and so familiarity, once again, trivializes something pretty amazing. Now think of eternity, not in space or time, but in the existing things around you and see how this familiar intuitive anomaly of perception trailing off into eternity, now throws the world into question, rendering indeterminate not merely space and time, but everything, every breath taken.
I am not disagreeing with you, essentially. My purpose is to close the gap made by language that separates the ordinary world from the esoteric: one does not find the esoteric in the world; rather, one realizes that this world is always already metaphysical and our ordinary language has its final self analytical revelation in the discovery of its own radical indeterminacy, and hence, the world's, as with the brief inquiry in the the nature of what a question is above. Language erected boundaries of discovery, but in doing so made it possible to think at all, made it possible to be an agency that can be aware at all. And all thinking is categorical, and thus what is apprehended is implicitly categorical and when the thought comes to you that there is more, something radically Other, that mysteriously has "presence," THIS is categorical thought at work. To be an agency at all is categorical (and just to be clear, the cow that looks up and sees greener grass elsewhere is non-symbolically, proto-categorically "thinking". How? It is the essential logical conditional structure, if...then.... as she lifts her legs to move to greener grass).
Also, to say there is no past (history), present or future, but rather that these belong to an impossible singularity, does not cancel the way this "singularity" (which is, of course, itself a boundaried word) "works". Everything is now enclosed in a question, and the past is now "the past", under erasure, if you are Derrida. In other wods, the language one deploys in the dismantling of the assumptions that are at work (deconstruction, i.e., language's self analysis) can never be transcended for it constitutes agency, but this in NO way undermines the nature or significance of what is disclosed. Rather, it brings language into the fold of metaphysics.
Language itself is its own indeterminacy as well as the openness itself--the question, the openness TO the wonder of the world.
Quoting ENOAH
Well, I just read and think like you do, but I read different things. But consider that all one has every encountered as the world is phenomena. One knows the world in experience, and it is impossible to imagine what something would be outside of phenomena. Such a construction "outside of phenomena" is literally nonsense, something Wittgenstein famously announced, but just ask the question I asked above for the down and dirty: how does anything out there get in here? How does a tree get into a knowledge claim about the tree? Complete nonsense. Of course you can trace the causal sequences of any sensory connection, but what you cannot do is explain how causal connectivity can be epistemic. This very, very weird inquiry leads only one place: consciousness is LOGICALLY prior to any acknowledgement of the world. Logically because the being of something is logically bound to the perception of that thing, that is, what it IS is an event. And the being that is intimated as an impossible "presence" is an event, too. But I say this only because analysis demands it, for to understand what Being one is already IN Becoming (to use this kind of Platonic talk). What we say is "Being as an absolute" itself cannot escape the world in which it is discovered for this would be ony "bad metaphysics," the kind of metaphysics that exceeds what is there in the world to posit. Being is, after all, a word, conceived in the time matrix of phenomenal being, and to call something Being "outside" of this makes no sense.
But again, this in no way diminishes the nature and importance of what one experiences. It rather wants the explanatory approach to what this is to make sense, and I can see where this leads to trouble: for to take that extraordinary step into the "cloud of unknowing" is to silence the world and its affairs and stand before all things as one stands before an original primordiality. This is not alien to me. But it does not necessitate the reduction of the self to nothing. Quite the contrary: The self is elevated, profoundly reified, and acknowledged as the very source of the divinity objectified by popular religion. None of this is undone. But one's finitude is understood as infinite. This is a way to understand Kierkegaard's knight of faith.
Quoting ENOAH
You see, I agree and disagree throughout this. See what I wrote above. How does one move beyond the fiction that attempts to make a claim into being itself? How does one get out of this "karma" if you will? The answer: a faithful analysis of the phenomenal world one faces. A structural analysis called the phenomenological reduction (epoche).
And if you are the kind of person who at the outset of philosophical inquiry is already, well, say, very spiritual, then perhaps phenomenology is a viable method. I think phenomenology is the only way, frankly, for all of the spiritual practices that lead to deeper understanding are inherently phenomenological. The formal writing is the Western jnana yoga. And it is VERY rigorous as it dismantles the world.
Quoting ENOAH
Plato? Rationalism really does not carry the matter very far. But this is a big issue, for per the above, thought and the world are one! Kant (a rationalist, too) put it like this: sensory intuitions without concepts are blind; concepts without intuition are empty.
Quoting ENOAH
The bracketing is a method, nothing more. It aligns with what Buddhist thinking only if one can see how the pure description of phenomena is exactly what where rigorous meditation takes one. Only when one actually sees this, one steps beyond the intellectual level. It is an apiori argument, moving from the "presence" of apprehending the world and its objects, to what has to be the case given that this is the case. This is something Buddhists really don't do very well. For example, take this from the Prajnaparamita, on the extinction of self:
[i]Sariputra: So, how does a Bodhisattva course as one coursing in perfect wisdom?
Subhuti: One does not course in skandhas, nor in any sign of such skandas, nor in ideas such as 'skandhas are signs', nor in production of skandhas, nor in any stopping or destruction of such, nor in any idea such as 'skandhas are empty', or 'I course', or 'I am a Bodhisattva'. And, this also doesn't occur to this one, 'one coursing thus courses in perfect wisdom and develops it'. One courses but one does not entertain such ideas as 'I course', 'I do not course', 'I course and I do not course', 'I neither course nor do I not course', and the same [four] with 'I will course'. One does not go near any dharma at all as all dharma are unapproachable and unappropriatable. So, a Bodhisattva purely cognizes and is as undifferientiated concentrated insight 'Not grasping at any dharma' by name or appearance, and regardless whether vast, noble, unlimited and steady, not shared by any of the Disciples or Pratyekabuddhas. As one dwells as this concentrated insight, a Bodhisattva quickly realizes full enlightenment which Tathagatas of this time predict for one such as this. But as one dwells in such concentration, one neither reviews nor thinks 'I am collected', 'I will enter concentration', 'I am entering into concentration', 'I have entered into concentration'. All these thoughts or notions in any and all ways do not exist for one such as this.[/i]
One way to express this idea in a very mundane way is to talk about qualia, the way analytic philosophers talk about pure phenomena. Note that when you observe the color red, you certainly CAN acknowledge this color as itself, its simple presence, and when you do this, all conceptualizing is suspended (bracketed), and contexts are ignored, and there is no question at all that you stand before the color red as it is apart from the language that informs you about it being red. Granted, the best you can do is stare, for the moment an idea comes to mind, the purity is violated, but again, the "red" (now in brackets, for the language is suspended) stands as "its own presupposition" so to speak: it needs no justification or explanation. It "explains" itself. Acknowledging this is done in language, of course; I mean, to speak as I do now, I am bringing this qualia INTO context or "skandha" but note: language does not undermine the integrity of the non categorical "red" before me. Skandhas engaged now as I explained do not misrepresent. Misrepresentation only occurs when one makes the mistake of identifying the otherness of the Real with categorical thinking, as we do when we talk about our dogs and cats and subway rides. Talk about these things is rich with skandhas or predication and description and so on.
I'll have to finish later.
[quote="Constance;910735"]The self is elevated, profoundly reified, and acknowledged as the very source of the divinity objectified by popular religion. None of this is undone. But one's finitude is understood as infinite. This is a way to understand Kierkegaard's knight of faith.[/quote]
Quoting Constance
Here, we seem to agree. And I have picked up from you, and with gratitude, will adopt, that, though it is impossible to assimilate being into knowing (becoming), maybe one could at least try to maintain that presence of being by perceiving it in every breath of the ordinary, though it incessantly passes over it.
I like that, but am compelled to see that as (to modify Kierkegaard) a movement in the aesthetic. I mean that, if that's what you mean, and I like it, still, who's kidding who. We are still (as is SK's leaping knight) moving within the realm of the ordinary, becoming.
But still Maybe what that's saying--if you eliminate the Dualism of a spiritual--is that the essence of religion; the religious movement is neither an ethical, nor a "metaphysical" (as in emancipation from Mind's hold on consciousness), but an aesthetic movement. A symbolic reminder that Mind and the phenomenal (I include noumenal) is a motion picture, a dynamic construction/projection, and that we really are is the stillness of being.
Quoting Constance
And there is nowhere a human be-ing that has ever existed, or can exist without it; this mandatory mediation of language?
Quoting Constance provided I understandd the "gap" in the hammering and this correctly, I ask,
Is this openness accessible to any other earthly being, to your knowledge? Or does it require the special human being, a seeming combination of things, one of which no other creature seems to have.
By way of side note:
I cannot help but read in both out text, no matter how artfully delivered by you, and many others, for instance, just speculation built by the available tools and materials both of which neither express nor have any ontological reality like the rest of the natural universe does. But thd constructions and projections of Mind, of History; they're images in memory, and their reality is just a function which happens to trigger feelings in reality; that is, in a human organism. They're code, the very Narratives structuring our experiences, is an empty fleeting function. What is real; what matters, are the feelings and sctions triggered by thd code.
Quoting Constance
I'm proposing the esoteric is within the boundaries of the ordinary; both are constructed. I have the same dispute with phenomena/noumena. The gap which is unbridgeable, leaving us on the "wrong" side, is between the ordinary and Ultimate Reality. The latter, it turns out, is just Nature. Our body being our body. Eating and Breathing. That's real. You want to access Ultimate Reality? Turn for a sec from the ordinary and just be aware-ing organic being. We can't mate, bond, eat, etc. without instantly re-receiving them with our make-then-believe. Is it not obvious what must be real? Why is that--natural being without the intervention of becoming--what is real for every other atom in the universe save and except the ones forming us (which, by the way, came from the other creatures we consume, etc). [Unless you fully accept dualism. The universe has a material and a "spiritual" domain and Mind is the evolved spiritual domain. But I really believe if either view: Mind is an autonomous but empty process which evolved/emerged in an advanced animal with language (the basic structure of Mind) vs Mind is the spiritual realm occupying or animating the material realm; which seems a stretch? It is dualism.
Quoting Constance phenomenology laid some potent Foundations.
All thought is categorical is a law of that autonomous process of construction and projection called Mind. It evolved that way to allow for movement, then growth. Difference, linear time, dialectic, meaning/belief. The Narrative form. Logic, reasoning, Aristotle, Kant, categorical thought. These are not realities but evolutions in an artificial autonomous process advancing and growing as History.
Religion says. Don't get fooled.
Quoting Constance
The singularity and its workings, from my pov, if we are talking Being-Ultimate-Reality (the body/nature), has neither works nor interest in works nor is there any access to knowledge about its works because Mind constructs all of the above. It, Reality, cares not. It Reality, just is-ing.
Quoting Constance
Fascinating how fundamental this question is. Yes. And what I believe religion might provide an admittedly weak and fleeting answer to. We can't access being through the world we have constructed; and being can escape that world because it already always has/does.
The world which we constructed on top of being, the one where, because we are being we don't have to discover being; and yet because we make becoming, we yet make and pursue being out of becoming. Hence, our being is always a representation and not the real and present; which we are; but which we ignore. [Probably what Buddha meant by Avidya/ Ignorance]
Quoting Constance I agree this is SK's, and understand why it may be yours, though we seem only to diverge here. But I see the self as a mechanism which has gone far out of hand; and if I could melt into humanity and lose myself, that I suspect would be the highest, though unattainable, state of reality while in the world.
But the giveness or presence of these constructions still IS presence. This is a pretty big point, I think. Apprehending the extraordinary nature of this world lies not in the denial of these constructions that flood the mind. Such constructions constitute the world in its everydayness. The error is in the interpretation of these constructions, not in there being there at all.
Quoting ENOAH
Tricky and a very good point. The matter goes to the basic description of what lies before you. When you stand and behold the world, it is a structured event. It is not chaos. Without structure it would be the "blooming and buzzing" of an infantile mind. This is what makes truth possible, not what makes truth, truth, but is essential for truth.
But the experience and its content and the gravitas of this world, for this I look to Michel Henry, and beyond, though the Christian bent I can do without. OTOH, Christian metaphysics doesn't have to be tied to churchy narratives.
Quoting ENOAH
I think there is a eureka. This really does go to the OP: Value-in-being designates all that makes something important and it is at the core of religion and ethics. Dreadful things happen, as do wonderful things. But once it is seen that ALL of these common affairs are transcendental, if terribly entangled, then the contingencies fall away, that is, the states of affairs so common and trivializing are suspended in the openness of one's gaze. What happens then is hard to say, for we don't live in a culture that talks about it.
And I am not trying to be argumentative, but something "outside" of constructed truths is hard to imagine. Certainly outside a culture's collective beliefs and practices, and so on, but once one grasps the truth you refer to, it becomes structured, for a person is a structured perceptual agency. Again, this in no way diminishes what it is. God could comes to me, impart his divine wisdom, and I woule be free to talk about it in a very structured way IF my interlocutor also was made aware as I was.
Quoting ENOAH
Actually, no, I am not saying an organ brain only exists as a construct project. The assumption of the question How does anything out there get into knowledge claims? is that we do in fact see what is there, not some representation or mental image. I am sure the brain is actually there as seen. It is not about the impossibility of perception of the world; rather, it is about the possibility. I observe it and it is there, but I cannot say how this is made possible given the standard physicalist model of the world. There is only one rule to this "method" of phenomenology, which is to report about and analyze as faithfully as one can about what stands there, clear as a bell, and this coffee cup is clear as a bell, there in space and time just as science says it is. No one questions this while IN the interpretative mode of scientific and everyday acceptedness. BUT: leave this interpretative pov, and move to phenomenology, then one is in a different world: a completely different interpretative context (ever wonder how a chair can be a chair, an aggregate of wood and synthetic fibers, a vast system of atomic energic stability, a prop in a play, and so on, all in the one chair? How about a weapon as I throw the chair at an intruder? Or a symbol of third world oppression suggested by the Made in Cambodia label? Meaning is contextual, and the more one moves away from narrower contexts, one eventually ends up in philosophy and religion, the final foundational questions.
The question is, what phenomenological interpretative pov all about? One thing it is about it is the complete dismissal of normal science and everydayness. One looks at different things. What is THERE is the phenomenon and its "thereness" is reduced to what you call presence.
Quoting Constance
Hmm. But is it in the constructions? Or is it in the Organism providing both the infrastructure and feedback?
Quoting Constance
Quoting Constance
Yes, the interpretation is another "level" error. You're right, their being there, is not an error. It is what it is. The first "level" error is one of interpretation, but maybe not what you had in mind.
The primary error regarding the constructions is in interpreting them as presence, and real. When they are not. They are becoming and fleeting, there and gone, perpetually. This error may be harmless, but is potentially problematic on several grounds, all of which only directly apply to within the constructions themselves. One primary one is interpreting the Subject for tge actual being it mechanically represents; its stories, for being, for reality. I lost my job only matters within the story. Your body is breathing. Praise "gods".
Quoting Constance
We differ so subtly, yet we each seem planted on the subtly. I would add to that directly preceding, "is essential for understanding truth; understanding, being ultimately, like knowledge, certainty, another word for belief. In otherwords, the constructions make "truth" a possibility within the system of constructing becoming (note: not constructing being, contra existentialists like H and S, being is not constructed, it already always is-ing). The constructions are not essential for truth, which always is-ing. But they are essential for belief.
Quoting Constance
100% and if it is "good" metaphysics, it can easily erase or displace; e.g. God-->nature, etc.
Quoting Constance
No argument here. I'd say impossible to imagine by definition, since imagine (for me) is ineluctably constructions.
So, I say, the only access to reality outside of constructions, is to be, without constructions. It's not a thought thing, it's a doing thing. But I admit, it lasts nanoseconds.
Quoting Constance
I believe it's because you are seeing only the coffee cup for what it is in itself. But quickly, rapidly, Signifiers flood the brain and these code certain feelings which the signifiers in turn hijack with Narratives. That's what phenomenologically you end up seeing. Naturally you do see the coffee cup for what it is. As does an owl or a beaver; anything not affected by human Mind.
On noumena: noumena is not an ontological division but a division in ontology: when we think of noumena we have in mind that indeterminacy found IN phenomena, not some distant and impossible transcendence that cannot be known at all (Kant, and the cause of a great deal of trouble among those who want to keep metaphysics out of serious thinking). All that one may affirm is grounded in the world before us, and the phenomenal IS the noumenal. They are only interpretatively distinct, meaning when one thinks noumenally or transcendentally, one turns toward what one encounters in the world that gives rise to this in the first place.
Psychoanalysis is another construction on the foundational givenness which this discussion seeks. I don't know which you have in mind. Savaj Zizek takes Lacan seriously, and I am reminded of R D Laing's Divided Self that tries to reconceive psychological problems free of the traditional pathological assumptions. But this begs the ethical and religious questions that lie deeper in the phenomenological givenness. Religion is logically prior to psychology, meaning its issues are presupposed by psychology just as they are by physics or biology. The perceptual act itself generates metaphysical questions. The cup on the table possesses the entire range of possible inquiry for the world at the basic level, for all that is the world is derivative epistemically. Epistemology and ontology are the same thing in two words.
This last sentence needs to be taken very seriously. To be is to be perceived. This says nothing about other things beyond the scope of perception not existing. But it does say that what the term 'existing' can possibly mean to us is bound to the conditions that make existence possible.
Plato's metaphysics I have never had use for. And I think rationalism of any kind is going to stand outside of your principle critique of "presence". For Plato, presence in the world as becoming refers us to the talk about being as such as a formal concept. Take a look at what Kierkegaard has to say about this in his Repetition as he champions the "becomingness" of the world as the very source of presence now reconceived as a spontaneous renewal of givenness where freedom Platonic "recollection" is discovered. John Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics is very good on examining this idea.
Truth hidden behind knowledge? I once wrote about conceiving the ancient mind beholding the sun without the knowledge assumptions of modern science which lay instant claim on the epistemic/ontological event. Of course, putting the danger of getting things miserably wrong aside (violent rituals to appease anthropomorphic gods, e.g.), for this is not the point; the point is the existential profundity that is lost on us. Original sin for Kierkegaard is the "habits of the race" which is Christendom and the pageantry and devotion and institution of culture. So bound to the "tranquilization" of the "they" of inauthentic existence, as Heidegger will later put it, one never rises up to even ask basic questions.
Quoting ENOAH
The brain certainly IS the physical center to where thought, emotion and the rest IF one is studying neurobiology. Phenomenology is prior to this. There is no brain. Of course, there is a brain, but look at it like this, if I am studying particle physics, I don't talk about brains, neurons, synaptic density, and the rest. Or if I am talking about a gymnast's skill I don't talk about how the nervous system works. I CAN, but this is not the contextual "region" for it. But, we generally agree that talk about physics is more basic than that about skilled activity, and so closer to ontology, that is, foundational inquiry into being, what IS. Phenomenology observes that there is something more basic than physics, which is the "thing itself" (not Kant's thing in itself): presence or givenness itself. To know a brain is there is to see a brain, and "seeing" is not a brain function. Seeing is the act of consciousness awareness. Consciouness does not produce a brain. It witnesses a brain in a conscious event. The question is, how is this possible?
I agree that a brain floods us with stories, but these are not "empty nothings." The story's aboutness is an empty nothing just as so many finctions are. But phenomenologically, there are meanings in play, an event in experience, thinking and imagining, and these are real. THOUGH, even the concepts that can be in play at all possess this same unreality. Big question.
Understood. Thank you.
Quoting Constance
I understand that statement as applying only because, ultimately, any "ology" is rooted in epistemology, in the sense that we construct all knowledge including ontology.
However, the subject of ontology is falsely applied to/by knowledge, causing the confusion that perception can access the "ontology" of "things," when I believe it cannot. It can only access the [constructed] knowledge.
Quoting Constance
From my pursuit, I have been moved to separate existence and reality. Mickey Mouse exists, but he is a fictional character, ultimately empty of reality. The same, I have settled at, applies to the Mind, the experiences constructed and projected by the Mind, and the Subject of every "sentence," constructed and projected.
Quoting Constance
Thank you!
Quoting Constance
I do not dare dispute that all three, Plato, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger have their role at advancing the puck to the net. The shadows, the inauthentic, the They, are all recognitions of the way our organic aware-ing becomes lost, entangled, enmeshed, in the constructions/projections. However, these thinkers and their concepts, like the thinkers herein and their concepts (myself included, if I can be so bold), are sill no less lost/entangled. At some point the puck can be carried no further and the players must leave the game altogether; not to enter some mystical transcendent reality, but to go home where they really always are in the first place (poor metaphor, but you get my drift).
Plato, SK, H, et al., simply cannot uncover truth because they are still using covers; theirs, perhaps, a bit less opaque, but still, covers.
Quoting Constance
seeing is a brain/bodily/optic faculties function. Perceiving (or, choose your word) is an act of consciousness as in Mind. The organic aware-ing (consciousness) does witness "a brain" in its truth/reality; but promptly Mind displaces that sensation with perception structured by Signifiers.
Quoting Constance
Phenomenologically, yes. Meaning, yes. Meaning is what the constructions/projections have evolved to construct and project. Meaning does not exist in Nature. An animal without language, regardless of its sophistication ( a prehistoric homo sapiens) does not look at something and contemplate its meaning. It looks at something and responds by feelings, drives, and/or action.
For us, "what does it mean" is the perpetual question in the face of every perception. But what it means is simply "informed" by data already input and reformed to suit any given perception.
The meaning is not some reality we uncover. It is ultimately empty nothings.
Another way to encapsulate where I seem to diverge from what I assume to be the limitations of your more well grounded, logically, and thus, conventionally, current belief/settlement. And to tie our discussion back in to the OP.
For me, all of philosophy from aesthetics to metaphysics, is a process of knowing, which is a process of making and believing.
Except ontology qua what ontology purports to pursue, Being. That, if pursued to its end, is not knowing, but being. How does this require any logical assessment? Ontology pursues the nature, ultimately, of being [itself]. How better to pursue being than by turning away from making and believing (including but not limited to all philosophy) and just being?
And here's where the essence of religion resurrects. Being, necessarily not being any "pursuit" let alone a philosophical one, is virtually impossible for an organism whose brain has been generationally and individually conditioned to flooding of autonomously surfacing images, in complex structures and in accordance with evolved laws, which trigger the body, like code, to feel, and act. The catch being, the Body, mesmerized by the form; the Narrative form--Subject and predicate constructing meaning successively and in recursive(?) loops, building swirls of meaning--stops aware-ing it's true nature: nature; and, starts aware-ing "a self" in the swirls of meaning.
Eating to satisfy hunger becomes, sushi, crab cakes, and Icecream; then, I love Icecream; then, I am loved; simplified and rushed, but, I think you see the picture.
Soon enough, I need to be rich, to hell with my neighbor, she's encroaching on my driveway 12 inches. Etc. We have utterly become the they, because everything is the they. Heidegger can try to come up with tricks, sophisticated western versions of Wu-wei or Zazen, but ultimately none of these are actually just being.
Religion at its essence but rarely properly executed, provides only a Crack, a glimpse notwithstanding the impossibility, into being. Because regardless of institutions and their motives, at essence religion demands the sacrifice of ego. That is, abandon Mind.
Maybe there's something to Kant's "sublime" before it is described; that is, before it is "sublime."
You look at a mountain, you feel something instantly because you have aware-ing-ed seein without the intrusion of Mind. That feeling is a big deal. And maybe, and this is depressing, that's exactly what aware-ing being without Mind always feels like. Maybe our superimposed order, functional as it has been for thd prosperity of the species, has, by displacing present aware-ing being, dulled the experience of the sublime which is often the feeling triggered by sensation, but has been displaced by meaning.
And just as any superficial copy is a dull version of the original. . .
Vedanta says Brahman (ultimate reality) is Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.
To speak the word "construction' or "organism" is a construction. This is why post modern philosophy really is the final philosophy: inquiry reaches into its own structure and finds itself looking back, as with questions about the nature of logic, say. Every time inquiry goes as deep as it can go it encounters the language that produces the thought that is inquiry itself. Kant is a called a transcendental idealist for this reason, and positivists got tired of a hundred years of Kant and declared nonsense to metaphysics. Structures of thought itself are not analyzable once thought is reduced to logicality simpliciter and so the existentialist finds herself just staring unproductively at nothing in search for being. I think of the Vietnamese monk Thích Qu?ng ??c who set himself afire. Yet his mind was not absent of the thoughts of protest and judgment up to final moment, that is, he knew what he was doing and why. Most interesting test for the nature of agency, the "who" one is.
There is a fundamental agreement with your thoughts that emerges from this, which is an inescapable transcendentalism. The quasi mystic, like myself, stands in a twilight world, like something out of pseudo Dionysius the Areopogite's Cloud of Unknowing, and I think this is exactly where one should be or Eugene Fink's Sixth Cartesian Meditation in which Fink tries to pin the activity. To observe the generative actuality in the generative moment, seen AS generative in real time: the live consciousness prduced, brought into existence as a flow of experiential-reality which is received in the actual occurrent "acceptedness" of the present, but IN the theoretical mentality that beholds the being-there at all. Hear the way he puts it, referring to the phenomenologist:
[i]......by producing the transcendental onlooker, who as such does not go along with the belief in the world, with the theses on being [Seinsthesen] held by the world-experiencing human I. Rather,
he takes a look at that belief in the world in such a way as to inquire back behind the "world-character" of world-believing life, behind humanness, and thereupon to reduce that life to the transcendental constituting experience of the world that was concealed by the apperception of the human. 9Thus
through the reduction the proper theme of philosophy is revealed: the transcendental constitution of the world[/i]
Really, he is expressing simply what happens when inquiry takes one to this threshold of discovering our foundational indeterminacy which is discovered in the concrete moment of experience production, as when I put forth thoughts to conceive this sentence. I stop, and bring the whole of productive thought to a halt, and turn thought into an indeterminacy by removing the certainty of the affirmation that goes unchallenged in the thinking. But then, this indeterminacy, conceived as indeterminacy is a new thought construction itself, and we achieve what for me is a rather dramtatic impasse as the regression never stops, for thoughts about thoughts are always subject to the same review, the same gainsaying. One will never "leave" this place by, if you will, dropping out of language, for it is in the language structure that is was brought to light. But again, this does nothing to render less significant the interface itself! You see, agency-in-language or language-in-agency in the enlightened awareness does not witdraw from language; it withdraws from a hermeneutical perspective, from, as Fink puts it, the "world-experiencing human I." Houses and trees and General Motors recede into the background, for one now takes up the "impossible" givenness of the world. Impossible? See Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Long story, a bit long, and windy. There is a long extension by Caputo in his Prayers and Tears of Derrida that is complicated, but worth the read.
The case I am trying to make here is, and I know I repeat this, that "language" never leaves perception for us, interpretations come and go, and I put the term "language" now in double inverted commas because, and this is a major point I try to push, language itself is under examination, and it has been revealed that this leads to an infinite regression, but this cannot make language external to enlightenment for enlightenment in this quasi mystical sense is part of the structure of understanding. One cannot be, to recall Mill's old maxim, be both the pig and the philosopher. Enlightenment produced in the experiences of an infantile mind have a very limited sense of agency. For me, there is only one way to find remedy, an obvious way: language itself is transcendental, but not in the historical Hegelian or even Heideggerian sense. This is hard explain, but simply put, language as an interpretative medium is not a "medium" at all, but structed enlightenment itself. Nothing stands outside "noumena" and double inverted commas are everywhere in this context as language reaches into the impossible presence of its own generative possibility.
Quoting ENOAH
Kant opens this door. But plain analysis does, too. That one epistemic failure: How does anything out there get into knowledge claims? This has to be pondered, you know, cup there, brain here....errrr, explain. Once physicalism is undone, THEN the world steps forward. An account of my knowledge of the world needs to close the distance between known and knower. This is a brain-physicality problem, so what does physicality say about this relation? It says there are two separate localities, just as when we talk about physical things, like fence posts and cactuses, one here, one there. But this "thereness" of the fence post is physically distinct from the cactus such that there can be no epistemic crossing, no intimation through the "medium" of physical space of its being-a-cactus, and this is not, at first, a language problem at all. It is purely a problem of the mechanics of physicality, if you will, the causality of relations (what the naturalist Quine calls the bottom line of justification of knowledge claims).
All I can say is that once this becomes a vivid problem, the kind that shows itself as truly important (for we are accustomed to ignoring or never even imagining such questions prior to their being taken up. That is, we are in such a "mode of acceptance" prior to basic questions, that basic questions seem outrageous and absurd) one sees that physicalism and its "localism" has no place at all in foundational thinking. And now, the world is upside down: physical distance is a mode of what is given rather than the givenness being a mode of what is physical. That is, when I say things like The cup is on the table, and make the move to basic questions, the distance between me and the cup is now interpreted as a foundational transcendence, meaning, the cup remains what it is in plain nonanalytical talk, and its being on the table, its being "over there," fits nicely into many contexts of discussion and reference, but move discussion to this other order of thought, philosophy/phenomenology, and the plain spoken "thereness" vanishes, and the intimacy of knowing is primordial. I am not a brain, most clearly. I am thought, feeling, anticipation, memory, and on and on, or rather, to be clear, I witness these as the most intimate and unassailable "objects" of my knowing, and a brain is an object like a tree or a cactus, before me, acknowledged. Does the brain produce consciousness? Of course not. Consciousness encounters a brain in the phenomenological horizon of events. Thinking that the brain does exclusively generate consciousness makes knowledge impossible (per the above). But does this mean that a brain is not causally related to thought, feelings, and the rest? Of course not. It is evidently the case that there is this causal relation, but epistemically causal relations do not define the relation between me and the the known object. Casual influence makes sense, but certainly not causal generativity. If this were the case, to repeat, knowledge would be impossible.
Metaphysical physicalism, or "scientism" as it is pejoratively called, simply fails at the basic level so completely (there is no working paradigm in science that can even approach epistemology) that in order to responsibly draw up a theory, one MUST step into the pure phenomenology of the perceptual event in order even begin.
And so, in response to your "turning away from making and believing" in discussing being, this would entail the physicalist position, the treating of subjective states as independent of the observed. But a phenomenon is inclusive of this because this is the way the world presents itself" the taking up of a lamp AS a lamp, is there IN the lamp event, as are the attitudes, emotions, interest, and concepts. They all "attend" the lamp in the constitution of the lamp in its "thereness". Physicalism and a physicalist being, by comparison, is just an abstraction, a reification of a single feature of the perceptual event, its locality in space. Even if one is not being physicalist about this, the presence of the world's being in the perception of an object is complex. Being is a simple term, another world for presence, if you like, but, and this is what I call the jumping to the chase, the simplicity acknowledged in, well, the quasi mystical apprehension of being-as-such, is OUR being as such. Meaning, we really do exist, and when I say a stone exists, too, I am projecting my being on to the stone at the basic level of apprehending. Simplicity here never does overcome and annihilate complexity, for the complexity, too, is part of our transcendental nature.
Now, I have put the whole matter in deeply troubled waters, no? You and I REALLY ARE in a world and our problems and their entanglements are real. What is NOT real is that which belongs to the interpretative error made as a matter of the habits of the race, as Kierkegaard put it. What is happening before our eyes everyday is happening, no question, but what it IS is a question.
That was a bit excessive.
Quoting Constance
Agreed. But that never stopped anyone (generally).
Quoting Constance
Well put
Quoting Constance
So well said!
Or admits to having no access via [that uniquely human form of] existence, and so, gets on with the business of existence, knowing (unlike postivists) that it's just business.
Quoting Constance
Do you think he maintained focus on knowing, right through to the end; or, did he silence the knowing, the pride that would follow, and the fear which the former arises to overcome. Did he make the ultimate sactifice; one stripped of all construction, loosened from the (safety) net of becoming; a sacrifice of being?
If the former, "one" remains "I" even in its noblest sacrifice.
If the latter, one truly is the body being and ceasing to be.
Quoting Constance
A fascinating Western construction for its time.
Quoting Constance
WTF? I'm intrigued. Thanks!
Quoting Constance
You know, that might be a "crack" a glitch in the mechanics where aware-ing might find "it's [organic] self." I've never tried.
But you must agree. Instantly "thoughts" flood the aware-ing, even in its "effort" (which habitually employs thought).
Quoting Constance ah, yes, you do agree.
Quoting Constance
The trick is in the "focus" your organic aware-ing makes. Yes, infinite reduction, you cannot stop. But "you" can aware the silent breathing instant. Get a glimpse of that and see what "you" is.
Quoting Constance
Thank you! Is it nevertheless "true" to Wittgenstein? Does it assess Derrida? Favorably?
Quoting Constance
And I have never ceased to agree.
Then why harp on about being and the essence of religion? At worst, it is a useful ritual. If we can get a glimpse of only being, a nanosecond, to add that to our knowing, albeit, by definition, that experience as knowledge, is no longer that experience, yet, our knowing will be enriched and grounded. Both phenomenology (Kant's and Husserl's) and existentialism (SK's, N's, Heidegger's and Sartre's) are "more" functional with that added tool. At the very least.
Quoting Constance
This comes up consistently. Does this answer, if any necessary premises are accepted, address it? Use rock because cup has the added complexity of being a cultural construct.
In nature without language eyes see rock and brain process it bt sending signals to trigger an appropriate feeling, drive, action, if any. The "conversion" of the rock into the object, "the rock" doesn't take place. So that your question, "how rock there brain here" does not even come up.
In world of human mind, eyes see rock, a conversion into language autonomously takes place, drives feelings actions, are displaced/determined by those constructions. Now eyes "see" "rock
Quoting Constance
Is this necessarily so? Am I misunderstanding "physicality"? Mind makes difference, Mind makes the space between. Physically, it might be simply as I described above. Sensor and object are One in Sensation
Quoting Constance
Yes. You may be absolutely and inevitably right here. Where you have taken us. It may be that--even if my [admittedly fully constructed] depiction happens to be accurate, and Sensor-object-response are all One in being; we--we specifically human beings are irreversibly alienated from that Reality. That, I agree with you, and any resistance on my part is psychological, or, wishful thinking.
Quoting Constance
No maybe about it, from where I'm standing; there are many ways to express it but yes:
1. We humans are real; as real and present as a stone or an elephant.
2. But we are ineluctably in a world of representation; and, "owing to that" we do not aware-ing that present being; but, instead, turn our aware-ing to the Narratives of becoming.
As for our (that is yours, Constance, and mine) dialectic seeming never to arrive at a complete close [BTW, fine by me, and, I sense, by you] here is another beam of light on the point of difference.
I see in the Western philosophers I have read (comparatively, Eugene Fink! for me, not a lot) places where they have erred and others where they have not gone far enough. I'm sure others do. And I do, fully aware of my ignorance. But it happens. I can't help it. As I believe, Mind is an autonomous "thing." The difference between us contextually might be my ignorance. Either it leads me down a provably wrong path, or it permits me to wander away from authorial intention, or both.
So I see Husserl as erring when he correctly hypothesized that the transcendental experience belonged to what we've loosely agreed to call the "language." But then seemingly elevated that experience in what I find to be this shadowy hierarchy of reality inescapable since Kant, but showing up everywhere starting with Plato. Heidegger then repeats this error with his Dasein talk.
For me it is simpler. The elevated reality where humans are concerned, belongs to being [that organic being]. All else is talk.
Husserl's transcendental contradictorily involves the Ego. It is, by definition, not elevated.
I now both anticipate and welcome your reply as to why it is in fact an elevated experience notwithstanding the Subject's place front and center.
Addendum: the ego/I is only self evident (or apodictic) within the "rules of play" giving "life" to the ego, to begin with. It is (I am) not absolutely apodictic.
Addendum: but I recognize Husserl's Transcendental experience might be as far as we go re the essence of religion; and that just being, as I've been promoting, may actually be impossible for us. And, that this is akin to what you're saying. But I'm not certain.
I believe religion is a result of human imagination and the power of our brains.
Firstly to put language and words to such abstracts concepts and make them captivating to others to share that idea is so powerful. And taken for granted for 1000s of yrs.
Then I want to say that these ideas were adopted and used to grant power for the individual and chosen lineage......shamans or pharaohs...being earthly embodiment of these gods....and this type of religion lasted for many 1000s yrs. With whole prosperous civilisations based upon that model.
Yet these models had masses of downtrodden and unworthy. Life there was cheap.
So it is only logical that these masses imagined their own saviours and as they had no earthly resprestative with any power, no wonder more ephemeral saviours were imagined.
And eventually the masses won the war of attrition so the powerful quickly adopted these stories and quickly placed themselves in important positions to speak the good word of the Lord or his representative who was also surrounded in mystery.
And here we are 1000 yrs later still believing our first intelligent mushroom induced fantasies.
Ok, all that might be so.
But what was that fantasy? What was pug into words and captivating? What was the result of human imagination?
Was it commandments? Was it a revelation of truth? Or, what is the essence?
But you likely disagree.
From a purely physical perspective. Ig must be something like you say. Religion manifests because it is fit to do so, in terms of our survival. For example, given the complexity of our brain, it counters a natural drive to die. Or even, it manifests a mysterious intuition we have materially connecting us to Nature as a Whole.
I think it could be best to start by looking at differing cosmological perspectives both now and historically, then extrapolating further back into prehistory.
I think Mircea Eliade did some stellar scholarship on religions and religiosity in general.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6s_O0_6Ehs
According to Islamic doctrine, religion is built into our preprogrammed biological firmware, called "fitrah" in Islam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitra
Humanity is, however, overly flexible.
It is trivially easy to deprave and degenerate humans away from their innate biological firmware. There is a lot of power to be had in doing so.
Therefore, the need eventually arose for religious scripture to appear which contains a copy in human language of the biologically preprogrammed rules that humans should not break and that government should never overrule. That is why during his investiture ceremony the new king was always forced to kneel to religion in order to be crowned. He had to acknowledge the supremacy of God's law.
If there are no tensions or even conflict between the political overlord and religion, then it is not a true religion. The more the political overlord complains about a particular religion, the more it is doing its main job, which is to constrain the political overlord, and therefore the more truthful it is. If religion is never an impediment to the expansion of state power, then it is a false religion.
Dont loose sight of the fact that evolutionary biology is a theory of the origin of species. Its not necessarily a theory of the origin of everything about human nature, although its often assumed to be.
Quoting Tarskian
I looked up that link provided, about fitra. It starts:
But why do you think that maps against biology? Theres nothing in biological theory that seems to correspond with that - its much more a religious idea, perhaps comparable to the Buddha-nature of East Asian Buddhism.
Whenever a behavior is universal throughout history and throughout the world, it can only be biological. Otherwise, there would be or have been numerous societies in the past and/or throughout the world that did not have it. Every society that has ever existed, had a religion.
It always contains two things:
(1) a way of praying to the divine
(2) a set of rules not to break
If it is biological, then it is preprogrammed in one way or another into our biological firmware ("fitrah").
But then again, humanity is very flexible and adaptable. We are often able to overrule our own biological inclinations. Therefore, I believe that people are fundamentally religious but can also easily be trained not to be.
I dont know about that. Language has a biological component, insofar as spoken language requires the unique physiology of h. Sapiens. But I dont know if on that basis you could say that language is biological feature, or that studying it through the perspective biology would be more suitable than through, say, linguistics or anthropology.
Yes, I believe that language is a biological feature that is part of the biologically preprogrammed firmware of humans. Otherwise, there would be humans in history or throughout the world that do not use language.
Quoting Wayfarer
That would be in my opinion unsuitable. For example, every stomach is ultimately built from atoms. That does not mean that you should address a stomach ache by means of theories in nuclear physics. But then again, this does not invalidate the observation that every stomach consists of atoms at some deeper level of observation detail.
It doesnt need to be invalidated. Its simply irrelevant, even if it is the case.
It is irrelevant until it isn't anymore.
The organic-chemistry composition of the stomach is mostly irrelevant but not completely.
The innate inclinations of humanity, its biological firmware, is actually even less irrelevant. A lot of human behavior is determined at the biological level.
The term "fitrah" in Islam refers to all behavior that is innate. So, where else does it come from, if not from our biological firmware?
We are not a completely blank slate:
Humans are, however, incredibly flexible. We are able to override a lot of innate behaviors while animals cannot.
This flexibility is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Humans are beyond any doubt the species that is the most prone to corruption, depravity, and degeneracy.
Do Muslims believe that its biological firmware? Or doesnt it matter whether they believe it?
I use the term "firmware" metaphorically here. It's a bit like the software embedded in specialized devices, such as your phone's camera, but obviously implemented in a completely different technology.
We do not control or even properly understand this technology because we did not design it.
The Quran does not contain its implementation details. If it did, we would probably not understand it anyway.
Because the idea that religion is biologically innate comes from there. It is standard Islamic doctrine.
Every human is even individually unique. By design so.
Not by humans, because that would lead to infinite regress. So, the technology is clearly of non-human origin. The rest is foundationalist belief. In religion, the belief is that the universe and humanity were created by the same creator.
What technology are you referring to? I thought we were discussing biology.
I'm not a scholar, if I'm being presumptuous, accept my apology in advance.
Is it necessarily instilled in us biologically? Or is that a favored interpretation because your's is currently a physicalist view?
Could it have been instilled in each human soul; this innate desire for religion?
I looked at Quran 30:30 and your reference to Fitr, and neither is explicit; but your "nature", given Islamic dualism, I'd lean on religion is built-in desire of the soul. (?)
Biology is a natural technology. We did not design it. We only very partially understand it. Still, it works surprisingly well.
In my opinion, impossible to say. The notion of soul is also part of religion. I personally believe that we have both some form of firmware as well as a soul.
Assuming you don't mean "firmware" literally; sticking to the metaphor, what is the soul? Does it not also code the hardware so that it operated effectively? Is the soul, software? The operating system for the software?
Not so. Technology, derived from the Greek techne, means something made by art, craftsmanship, or human intervention. Biology, on the other hand, pertains to natural processes and organisms that arise without human fabrication (or any fabrication so far as we can tell.) While technology can mimic or be inspired by biological systems (biomimicry), it remains fundamentally different because it is a product of intentional design and manipulation by humans. In contrast, biological systems evolve through natural selection and other processes intrinsic to life itself.
To equate biology with technology is to overlook the essential distinction between naturally occurring phenomena and human-engineered artifacts. Biology operates through mechanisms and principles that are not designed or created by humans, whereas technology is inherently a product of human creativity and engineering. Its important to have conceptual clarity in respect of such fundamental terms.
The soul is what is gone when we die. Its role while we are alive is not clearly determined.
Biological systems are designed according to principles that appear similar to us to a technology, but clearly not of human origin. I use the term biological technology to point out that to an important extent we are similar to technological devices.
I personally believe that it is a non-human technology that embodies particular design principles. The analogy I see it through are technology devices with embedded software, i.e. firmware. There are lots of parallels. It is obviously not exactly the same. However, there are still surprisingly many similarities. An acceptable way to analyze something for which you do not have design documents, is to compare it to things for which you do have them. That is why I view biological devices through the lens of modern computing devices with embedded firmware. For example our own eyes are quite similar to embedded cameras with embedded firmware. It is not a perfect analogy but it is still better than nothing.
Its true that computers provide a metaphor for mental functions. In fact, that was the presiding metaphor for a school of thought in cog sci called functionalism. Functionalism is the view that mental states are defined by their functional roleshow they interact with other mental states, sensory inputs, and behavioral outputsrather than by their internal physical or biological makeup. This perspective is analogous to how a computer operates, where what matters is the function of the software rather than the specific hardware it runs on. (Myself, I run on Idealist OS :-) )
In this case however were considering more than mental functions. That life seems designed is news to nobody, really. it was the basis of the watchmaker argument of Bishop Paley, and the subject of deconstruction in any number of books by Richard Dawkins.
So lets get clear on what you mean by designed. Where do you think your idea fits into that overall set of ideas, or does it not?
I look at biology as a technology that we mostly fail to reverse engineer, if only, because we do not have access to its design documents. In a sense, it is superior to our own technology, because it seems to embed the factory that produces the device inside the device. We can't do that.
Biology as a technology is analogous to Von Neumann universal constructors:
The reality is that in all practical terms we can't do self-replication with our technology. So, biology is simply a superior technology.
Therefore, my analogy that tries to map something that we do understand, the technology of computing devices, to some fragment of biology, is necessarily limited. We simply cannot reverse engineer it. If we could, we obviously would.
The very notion of "design" is tied to our technology. The term may be too simplistic when discussing non-human technology. What exactly does it correspond to in that case? I think we must accept the limitations of what we truly understand, reflected by the technology that we master and the problems that we can solve. If we truly understood biology, we would be able to build biological devices from scratch, which we can't.
Therefore, the term "design" merely reflects the limitations of what we understand. If we truly understood the technology of biology, we would probably dedicate a better term to reflect a particular important document that describes how it truly works.
Rather hubristic, isnt it?
Actually I want to go back to something you said at the beginning - that religion is built into our firmware. When pressed, you said:
Quoting Tarskian
But what if you believe that, because the only explanatory paradigm you accept is the biological? (Presumably because its scientific.) I agree that religious experiences or visions have occurred to h.sapiens throughout history, which is certainly supported by anthropological and archeological evidence. But why should that be biological in origin? Might that be because the only kind of theoretical basis that science accepts for human faculties and abilities is that provided by evolutionary biology?
There obviously many features of h.sapiens that are biological in origin - practically everything about human physiology and anatomy can be understood through the lens of evolutionary biology. But why should a particular kind of experience be regarded as being attributable to biology? Sure, the experience of birth, disease and death are common to all species, therefore biological. But what about the religious experience, in particular, can be understood through that perspective?
I consider evolutionary biology to be largely conjectural. If you truly understand something, then you can build it by yourself from scratch. So, as far as I am concerned, evolutionary biology does not truly understand what they are talking about.
Quoting Wayfarer
Religion is much more modest than evolutionary biology. It even starts by saying that even though we may ourselves be unable to create biological devices/beings from scratch, there is someone else who actually can. This take on the matter sounds much more plausible to me.
Easier to say; but I don't think it possible to go back to business, and just as likely that one was never wholly really there IN the "just business" to begin with. After all, if one is there staring at the abyss of being, what is it that drove one to be there in the first place? It wasn't the curious lines of thought produced by philosophers. It was something there originally that made their thinking compelling.
A thin line between existential enlightenment and schizoid personality, the latter literally meaning divided. The kind of thing I have been emphasizing would be no more than an encouragement of a psychosis by normal standards.
Quoting ENOAH
But did I say it? Yes, and this was a derivative occasion, for was I not just repeating words I have said many, many times before? Derivative in the mundane sense, sure, for nothing in my head is not derived from those I read. But more broadly conceived, derivative in terms of the possibilities already in the language I was educated into. One direction the OP takes us is toward the self, the ontology of the self. This is value-in-being.
Quoting ENOAH
It is a curious question. He was at once there and not there, and certainly he had been "not there" many times. He likely lived in this threshold most of the time. Already dead, you might say, by any non physical standard of living. But read the Abhidhamma: it is a world of extraordinary and unrealized dimensions of experience. I have argued that the notion of "no self" is not taken up very analytically in the East. I will in the future look more deeply into this extraordinary account, very alien to our culture.
Quoting ENOAH
That's Eugene Fink's Sixth Meditation. The first five are found in Husserl's Cartesian Meditations. Quite accessible! Unlike the more technical works.
Quoting ENOAH
Yes, I do agree. But explicitly one can yield to the world, what Heidegger called gelassenheit, his meditative thinking that does not dogmatically seize hold of the world but yields to its possibilities of disclosure. This is, for me and I suspect for you as well, the uncanny sense one has of the world as being, or being-in-the-world as one approaches its margins. Absolutely essential, I argue, for understanding the nature of religion. It is our own finitude that is somehow lost, but lost IN that very finitude: Inquiry beings with the life we face every day, then moves to what is unsaid and ignored. You like Fink. Here is an actual quote:
[i]If, then, the point of breakthrough to transcendental life, the transcendental ego, is described and fully unfolded in the first stage of regressive phenomenology, we have essentially two possibilities for proceeding further. Either we actually get into the concrete disciplines of constitutive investigation, and carry out static and genetic analyses of constitution, or we first of
all develop the full content of being as it is given us by the reduction, we disclose the hidden implications of the ego: co-existent [koexistierend] transcendental intersubjectivity. These two possible ways of proceeding are not at all, however, of equal standing. The methodologically correct procedure is
rather to keep to the first stage of regressive phenom enology and to cover it
in its whole breadth, to complete the initial form of the phenomenological reduction, egological reduction, in the final form, intersubjective reduction. It is only by disclosing transcendental intersubjectivity (even if only in its protomodal form) that constitutive regressive questions, which in every instance
proceed from the construct of acceptedness which is "the phenomenon of the world," achieve the rank that makes possible adequate understanding of the intersubjective world as the correlate of a transcendentally communicating constitution. That is, if we immediately go into constitution within the egological restriction, then on the basis of egological performances we shall never
be able adequately to explain the intersubjective sense of being that constituted objectivity has. [u]There are elements left over in the problematic of egological constitution that do not come clear and which compel us to return to the methodologically first stage of regressive phenom enology and broaden
the contracted field within which regressive inquiry into constitution began
its work.[[/u]/i]
You see, Fink is no mystic. He is a very rigorous intellectual, but his thoughts attempt to find where in the already given world transcendental impositions have their ground. In this passage he prepares the way for a discussion about metaethics by introducing the condition of intersubjectivity. Emanuel Levinas moves deeply into this.
I, as I have said, am a quasi mystic, meaning I do not sit in a cave trying to annihilate the world; but I do take this kind of thing seriously. For the understanding, the reduction is the key to this (see the underlined text above). It subsumes all meditative practices intellectually, which means that while the meditative practice may be the ultimate rigor of discovery, to understand this is to move into phenomenology. All of the "metaphysics" in the ancient Eastern texts are reducible to phenomenology, whether it is in Pali or Sanskrit. How can I say this so emphatically? Because it is so clear. Phenomenology takes one INTO the world and shows us the problematic of this relation.
Of course, these texts are often disdainful of language's attempts to disclose the unspoken, but this is exactly why one has to read Derrida: language is self critical; if there is something profound about our existence, language will discover this. It is IN language it is revealed that the world is metaphysics.
Quoting ENOAH
Yeah, I do time and time again come back to this. I don't want to complicate it. Not one thought. Consider that I am the scientist that is asking the simple question about a relation between two objects, a brain and a fence post. One has to isolate the condition and study it as it appears, and nothing else. Later one can assimilate and object all she likes, but for now, just intelligent observation: how is it possible?
It isn't. There is no epistemic theory that makes the connection. Knowledge according to the physicalist model is impossible. So, this makes one review the working thesis of what a person is, an epistemic agency, that is, me, this self that stands before the world. What do we do when idea flat out fail? We reexamine assumptions, or examine them for the first time, as is mostly the case here.
But first, are you convinced that "physical reality and the causal laws that apodictically determine it" is a failed attempt? One has to first get to this place.
The purpose: to undo the grasp that physicalism has on one's basic thinking. It is a very strong, intuitive hold, encouraged constantly, assumed throughout one's education and a permanent fixture in belief. THIS has to be undone. ANd then, one can look at alternative theories in a different light. (What is a theory: and idea with a predication. "Snow is white" is a theory.)
And all that you say about the world of language and the world of the human mind: put this on hold, if you would. For one cannot speak of the world and drives and feelings, etc., until one can say what the world and the rest are. This takes the matter to the perceptual act itself. The perceptual act is PRIOR to what things in the natural DO.
Quoting ENOAH
The transcendental ego. True, one does have to read his works mto understand the nuances of phenomenology. Keep in mind that he opened a door. Later, philosophers will walk through in greater strides.
Quoting ENOAH
Not sure what you mean by "organic," but I do understand what you are talking about. But I would say this: For me, the world is this grand "ineffable" disclosure of being, and when I am in the intimacy or deep proximity of this experience, the world seems to stand still, and I become aware of the "substratum," if you will, of the horizon of being in the world, the absolute "thereness" that remains undisclosed in day to day affairs. Such an odd way to talk, but there it is. This state is often called ecstatic, meaning one stands "outside" of oneself and the usual assumptions that are always in play.
The "talk" is an attempt to give this experience analysis. Just that. And the literature IS productive here. This "being as such" occurs to the understanding in language. That is, when you ask yourself, what IS this? you are already the mode of disclosure. This simplicity you speak of is a simplicity; this is not being challenged. This is where we leave Heidegger in the dust. But if one wants to clarify the "what is this?" question, and make more clear the vocabulary that one is using every time one tries to think about what it is, then Heidegger is VERY useful. As is Husserl, and especially all the post post modern phenomenologists I read. I don't know that they experience the world quite as I do, in fact, I am sure they both do and they do not, but they help a lot to guide thought through to greater realization.
Look at it like this: I am quite sure the ancient people of the Christian bible were often deeply attuned to the "divinity" within, profound and wondrous. By this I "simply" mean that they experienced the world a bit as I do, free of the burden of presumption and open to the world's original being and free of the endless distractions of science and technology and the claim these make on our identity. But interpretatively they were just awful! Dreadful ideas of primitive thinking that brought about the world's worst horrors. One has to ask, how they could their thinking be so radically missing the mark of what this original divinity (I am calling it) "said"? The answer to this question is that everything we experience is interpretatively received. The "good" as Wittgenstein called it does not wear its interpretation on its sleeve in the entanglements of familiar affairs.
Such is the problem of the "simplicity" of analysis-free living.
Recently watched documentaries about Maya, Aztecs and Inca, it's fascinating how they even though in no contact with the rest of the (religious) world had their own religions.
This suggests religion is essential to people and not rooted in some historical religion.
It suggests that even if religion is completely erased from earth and forgotten, at some point people would come up with new religions.
If we one day reach trans-humanism and sway away from the way of life as we know it and if knowledge is preserved then it's possible for religions to become obsolete.
Otherwise we'll remain homo sapiens and religions won't go away.
Trends show that new religions emerge (ex. new age style religions) and are replacement for those who stopped being part of major religions.
Quoting Constance
I must have confused you. "Business" is what we can't leave. Assuming the hypothetical staring at the abyss of being is even possible (if anything, it's a micro-glimpse, not a stare; an aware-ing, not a vision), it's not so much a returning, as a being smothered (once again).
Quoting Constance
Not just originally, continously. We "pursue" being because we are being.
It's just that we "pursue" being; thereby, ignore that we are.
Quoting Constance
Though the latter may suffer from the misfortune of thinking they are two things. Both are "pathological," if by existential enlightenment, you are referring to the "pursuit" of being, thinking you will access being by such pursuit. It's the same for you and I, if either one of us denied the inherent contradiction/futility in a dialogue which intermittently (to wit: now) pointed out it's own futility.
While schizoid, as you say, or any other pathology recognized as such yields no functional benefits, not so for philosophy, though the latter seems futile. Philosophy, just as it is wilfully blind to the futility of its pursuits, is wilfully blind to its own actual role: to make sense/navigate the meaning making system. To order the Narratives in functional ways.
Philosophy gets us even to the essence of religion, that pursuit of and glimpse into the real truth outside of our Fictions.
Quoting Constance
I think that to be both a valid and worthwhile discussion, but through my lenses that takes place as two discussions. Ontology of the real self would exclude the ego/subject and therefore necessarily all signifiers, including but not limited to all words/thoughts/ideas. So called ontology of the so called Subject self, I, would yield much intriguing discussion, but I would recognize that we are analyzing the laws and mechanics of Mind.
Quoting Constance
With all due humility and modesty, we are applying western analysis to the concept of no-self; not to the level of technical precision you might prefer, but still; despite phenomenology, mahayana is permeat.
Quoting Constance
Hah, like an uncarved block, actionless action. That Heidegger! I have to imagine he knew more than he let on to, delivered it to his world in the most progressed language of the day. But that sounds like wisdom beyond logic.
Quoting Constance
Oh yah. That's perfect!
Ironically, I may be diverging from your position (I hope not) but the first finitude is what we exactly are, and always are, a finite, organic, mortal animal. We create out of that finitude, out of its imagination, a filter which without escape modifies how we perceive the first and real finitude.
Quoting Constance
I don't want to jump to conclusions (need to read Husserl now, and him, within context, understand especially their use of "intersubjectivity") but this seems very compelling (Mind/History).
Quoting Constance
Ok, right. Reduction, as in, can I put it this way, "trace signifiers down to the root in "nature" for the first signifier"?
Quoting Constance
No disagreement here! I totally agree. Just as, and I say this in support of your point, not as a "tit for tat"
Quoting Constance
I totally agree again. I'm no Derrida scholar, but having actually enjoyed reading Grammatology (enjoyed as cf to Hegel or Lacan) same has built Foundations in my mind.
Quoting Constance
Ok. Got it. So hypothetically, though we don't know what other animals see, can the question be asked of other beings? Obviously my dog will see the ball in the air that he lead to catch. Same question applies dog brain here ball mid air, how is it the two meet?
Isn't that a question biology/physics can answer? Leaving the real question how is it object becomes "fence post" in a human mind after science explains the optic system.
Within my current thinking, there is no question the object in the distance exists outside of my Mind and is a real thing in a real world. Any confusion over that, I submit, betrays the absurdity that logic/reasoning, though functional, can sometimes create. It is
Quoting Constance
Worthwhile points. Ignorance is not bliss. Knowing that you cannot know does not mean stop pursuing knowledge.
I'm triggered by the urgency in your tone to read and think about these things, especially my current hypothetical place, in more of a Phenomenological context. See where it leads
Well, you're preaching to the choir. But the OP is about something prior to the qualified nature of the experience. One may experience something so alien to common sense and deeply profound that it requires metaphysics to give an account of it, but to make the claim that the world as it is in all its mundanity itself possesses the basis for religious possibility, this is the idea here; that in the common lies the uncommon metaethical foundation for ethics and religion.
Most who are religious do not give any thought to what Eliade had say and the mystical things they believe in are entirely textual, traditional, cultural, but certainly not personally mystical. This is reserved for "faith" in others who were like this, hence the rise of personality cults and so much bad metaphysics. Faith mostly encourages the divide between this world and another. Here, I want to show that this other world really is this one.
So here is a question that lies at the center of the idea of the OP: what if ethics were apodictic, like logic? This is what you could call an apriori question, looking into the essence of what is there in the world and determining what must be the case given what is the case. Logic reveals apodicticity, or an emphatic or unyielding nature. Entirely intellectually coercive. I claim that ethics has this at its core.
Clearly we need a language to think about language, but to ride a bike or sow a seed, no. Reading Robert Hanna's paper on this very subject, I was reminded of the difficulty of addressing such a question: The cow looks up and sees greener pasture elsewhere, picks hersolf up and moves. Did the cow perform the conditional structure of thought? Obviously not, but there is was, in the pragmatic response, that is, the desire for greener grass, once observed, was satisfied by putting one leg in front of another and so forth. Call it proto-logical or primordial logic. But the difficulty: my assessment of the this protologicality issues from a language and logic that can only interpretatively understand the world, and this is done within logical and sematic delimitations. The cow's cognitive abilities are going to be assessed IN an interpretative bias.
This also applies to language thinking about language: how objective can this be given that the answer is going to be structured in language? This is question begging.
But on the other hand, Hanna gives a pretty good "philosophical" analysis on this matter. He says,
[i]the correct answer to the question inherently depends on what you
mean by thinking. If by thinking you mean discursive thinking, then the answer is yes,
but if by thinking you mean essentially non-conceptual, non-discursive thinking, then the
answer is no[/i]
Of course, this is right. It ALWAYS depends on the flexibility of the words we are using. When you start the car in the morning, are you "thinking" about starting the car, or is it just rote action? But you certainly CAN think about it. I think when a person enters an environment of familiarity, like a classroom or someone's kitchen, there is, implicit in all one sees, the discursive possibility that lies "at the ready," as when one asks me suddenly, doesn't that chef's knife look like what you have at home? I see it, and language is there, "ready to hand". For us, not cows and goats, but for us, there is language everywhere and in everything.
At its foundation, religion has nothing to do with biology or politics and government, or kings. These sit on top, if you will, of a more primordial analysis. One has to see that biology, for example, can have no insight into what is not apparent in the microscope and manifest physical features of an organism. But religion is certainly not about this. It is about ethics. What is ethics? This is the question. Talk about anything else will beg this question. It is singularly an ethical/aesthetic question about an unobservable feature of our existence: The Good. This is where the discussion begins.
What are sound ethics? We take a snapshot of a sane society as well as an inventory of its rules. This is a suitable benchmark for ethical sanity. Benchmarking sane rules when it was still possible is what the scriptures implicitly do.
That is why the scriptures had to be transmitted as soon as possible, in order to front run the degeneracy that would inevitably follow later on. That is also why it is no longer possible to transmit new scriptures. It would simply describe the depravity of our contemporary society and not be suitable as a benchmark. Prophetic times are over.
Thanks to the scriptures we still know what we are supposed to be and how we are supposed to behave. It is a fantastic tool against the manipulative narrative of the ruling mafia. They handsomely benefit from growing depravity. We don't.
But this is not about what to do. It is about a descriptive account: when an ethical issue arises, what is there that makes it ethical? Religion is about the answer to this question. And the answer is value, and i use this term in the way Wittgenstein did when he said about this world, "In it there is no value and if there were, it would be of no value." He doesn't really go into it as I would like, but Moore talked about ethics having to do with a non natural property; so what is this all about?
When we talk about ethics and justified actions, we carry with this an assumption that things matter, and this mattering is the foundation of our ethical and religious lives.The argument here is that analysis shows that value is as apodictic as logic. Value is what ethics is, if you will, made of, and value has an epistemic (and therefore ontological; this can be argued) standing that is unassailable. Situations are endlessly assailable, and this can make value assessment ambiguous, obviously (as with torturing someone to save the lives of thousands, and so on); but value AS SUCH is unassailable. Just like modus ponens, say, or DeMorgan's theorem.
I am on board with this, simple because if we refer to any totality it is the current totality we know. We cannot think beyond and to say 'beyond' is merely an empty statement that is only actually applicable to different known areas of experience. If you get what I mean? Often the terms used are done so in overextension. An heuristic outside of its useful functionality.
Quoting Constance
And mysterious ;) Reality is often more surprising than fiction.
Quoting Constance
I am not entirely clear what you are stating here. Can you be more specific about this hypothetical IF?
If you are asking where ethics/morals come from - with the assumption of some essence - much like Kant asked about what can be known prior to experience, I am not sure how this could be so. In terms of experience I think Husserl is the best landmark to orientate from given what I have found.
Quoting Constance
I personally like to frame our intentionality as a form of questioning. What is 'given' is outside the frame of awareness. I like to frame Apodictic as that which we are not consciously attending to (it is a negative sense of being I guess? Hard to express).
For the record I do not view religion as a mere vehicle for ethics. I think the uses of it (especially in terms
of its prehistorical origins) were more far reaching and inclusive of much of human day-to-day experience.
Note: This topic looks like it is right up my street. I am ready for disappointment though as these kinds of discussions rarely go down the kind of path I was hoping for.
I would enjoy to here what is meant by Religion and Religious here too?
I think it pays to distinguish what we are talking about and it what kind of historical timeframe too. Religion today is taken to mean a whole range of things sometimes and I am more concerned with common aspects that extend and persist rather than focusing in on any one particular instance or interpretation.
A curious notion. What could it mean?
I missed this. I beg to differ: Scriptures are ancient thoughts about a time of very different social entanglements. It simply is not helpful today, and what is found that is helpful is helpful because it works, not because scriptures say it is right.
The ruling mafia? I like that. Scriptures, speaking generally, stand as a remedy that issues form a higher moral authority, one that will not be gainsaid. AND, this is exactly what the OP is all about: Scriptures are historical documents that lay claim to a higher moral authority and bring ALL of our "mafia" tendencies to heel, but it does this dogmatically, and this is no way to believe, meaning belief works according to justification: The case for a higher authority, an absolute authority, has to be argued philosophically. Not religiously, that is, not according anything so instantly assailable.
The trouble is, even philosophy has a hard time seeing what is there in the midst of our existence. All of our in-the-world experiences are inherently ethical because our being-in-the-world is value-saturated. There is caring in every glance and every thought, private, social, technical, rhetorical; and caring is the engine, if you will, that drives ethics. But caring itself is not the analytic bottom line, for it is dyadic: one cares ABOUT something' or monadic: caring and that which the caring is about are one and the same.
This is not meant to be confusing, just analytical. I care about whether is rains today because an outing is planned. But why is an outing important? It's a good time? What is the meaning of "good" in this locution? Fun, enjoyable, pleasurable; but these are just synonyms for good, I mean fun is inherently good.
The point? The argument is not complete in these few lines, but an essential idea is exposed. This has been a brief metaethical discussion that reveals something this "higher moral authority": it is about the Good. The Bad as well, of course. The argument moves forward to show how this analysis moves inevitably toward metaphysics, only, it is not going to be about ignoring justification just to keep us in line and rid us of our mafioso ways. It will be about a clear, justification for metaethical grounding of our ethics.
Well, Christianity is indeed collapsing. Ever more rapidly.
Christianity has indeed turned out to be assailable but certainly not easily or instantly. It took centuries until the French Revolution for its assailants to finally make a dent. The other religions are still doing fine. I think that it has become clear that it is not possible to dislodge them. It is not possible to convince a traditional Jew out of Judaism or a traditional Muslim out of Islam.
We just don't have time to figure out alternative solutions to religion. If you don't have something handy that works right now, and that already has a track history of success, then you are going to be too late to still make a difference. Life moves on. Life is also short. I cannot wait for a solution to fall out of the skies. In fact, it has already fallen out of the sky. So, why not just use it?
Insightful! Everything--even value, thus, ethics--is "hiding" in the metaphysical. But where is the latter "hiding"?
I know not actually hiding.
Maybe within grammar (Nietzsche).
Quoting I like sushi
By "religion" I mean 'official cultus' (i.e. collective ritual telling of ghost stories) that denies symbolically escapes from mortality.
I can get behind that.
But one does leave it the more one brings questions to bear upon the world at the most basic level. It is an inevitability, for belief is not sustainable without justification and it is justification that the question assails. Someone tells me she is a doctor and a mother, and I have no issues with this. But then I read Derrida's Structure, Signs and Play and others and I begin to see that when one speaks, the assumptions in place about the knowledge claims implicit inn being a doctor cannot be verified. This is nothing at first, for such an insight really has no redeeming features; but in time, one realizes that one is living in a kind of dream world. Ask, does General Motors really exist? I can talk about it in many, many ways, but all this amounts to is reified talk and pragmatics. GM is a pragmatic "function" and ontologically vacuous, save its pragmatic ontology. But to understand being a doctor like this, to take the idea apart and look for its basic meanings, once done effectively, it makes, and it SHOULD make, the mundane world itself into a question. It is not turtles all the way down; it is questions all the way "around".
Quoting ENOAH
It does depend on what you mean by "that we are." This is a point of disagreement I have been laboring. You think like an Eleatic Parmenidean. But this is not conceivable. This is simply to say that to "pursue" refers to a basic structure of consciousness itself. Being cannot be extracted from becoming. All one calls being is in subjective time, and when something that IS appears before us, the stillness and the profundity does "appear" and there is an event and the agency of this event is a self, capable of implicitly grounding an experience such that there is someone "there" to experience.
And this is notwithstanding spiritual identity, whatever that is. Consider one of those near death experiencers who often say time stands still when there is no profusion to the brain and they leave their body. They no longer have the sense of their own identity, many relate, in this other world. Perhaps, I say; maybe more than just perhaps. But note, their experiences have a beginning and an end, and events come and go and are recorded in memory, and so forth. Their IS, let's allow, an encounter with Being-as-divinity. The point I would make is that THIS is time. It is senseless to talk about otherwise. Time actually standing still would be an absurdity, like two colors occupying the same space or two velocities at once. Logically, it makes no sense.
Quoting ENOAH
You think of Being as a kind of finality. Perhaps. I argue that to think like this makes being vacuous, literally vacuous. Being requires agency. "No one" there implies no experience at all. The "no self" of the Prajnaparamita is an explicit no self, and has nothing to do with the constituting agency.
The schizoid condition I refer to puts aside the notion of pathology, at least in the familiar sense. It could be called a spiritual pathology, the Kierkegaardian pathology of spirit dialectically subsuming soul and body. This is the introduction of the question that interposes itself between the self and the affirmation. The "no self" intrudes into the, as Fink put it, "construct of acceptedness" we live and breathe in. We are always already existentially schizoid, for the division between acceptedness and the question is implicit in the paradigm of normalcy, just as, as they say, one does not become the Buddha, but rather realizes that one IS this, and has always been this. But without the reflective self, I am arguing, the Buddha vanishes into nothing. Again, to BE requires agency, metaphysical or mundane.
Quoting ENOAH
Yet "mechanics and "Mind" are themselves signifiers. As my prof once told me, you're never going to get that tart to your dessert plate. You cannot work within a field of meaning making and posit something outside this without having access to this "other field"; just as one cannot speak the nature of logic unless one can step outside and into a third pov from which one can observe; and this third pov itself, to be affirmed, requires yet another pov; ad infinitum. To posit something entirely outside of what is possible inside (ignoring the problems of sense making these two notions present) is what bad metaphysics is made of. One has left the phenomenon, the presence-in-the-world, to seek remedy in lands unseen!
Derrida, and this is Caputo's reading, exposes "real" metaphysics by showing how language's analysis puts radical distance between the word and the referent. An impossible distance, for the very reason anticipated by Kierkegaard: reason and "actuality" (in double inverted commas, of course) never cross streams, if you will, of their respective existences, and when this is understood, one finally sees that finitude has always been an imposition of language that really never "touched" the "life of the world" (Henry), and this is, or should be, a massive assault on common sense. BUT: you already know this. What you resist is what I will call the metaphysics of language: language is the structure of finitude itself, among language beings like us (dasein), but it is ALSO the medium of discovery, and agency, and thought, and revelation. Imagine a revelation without language: no backdrop against which the novelty of what is revealed to play against. No interest set against a predelineated set of conceptual values. No one there to receive the experience.
Quoting ENOAH
This is something I rather emphatically argue against: My world is Thic Quan Duc's (sp?). The technical precision you refer to is in no way exclusive of the analytic I willingly apply, any more than it would be exclusive of physics or geology. Why? Because what we have here is not merely a system of logically connected terms. It is an openness unto the "truth" that is, as you are fond of reminding me, not conceptual. I have been disagreeing and agreeing with you the whole time. Yes, the world stands apart from the language identity assigned; no this "standing apart" is not free of language and signifiers, or rather it is and it is not. The whole affair is transcendental when issues like this come up. Everything is under erasure, so we try as best we can with the hermeneutically grounding of meanings. Note how Derrida's thesis itself is under erasure! The very term hermeneutics is under erasure. For me, things are made clear in the truly objective sense, this is the point. Eastern thinking is not so far from phenomenology. It is parsecs from anglo american philosophy, yes, but not phenomenology. These are very close disciplines. Meditation and Husserl's epoche are, I argue, simply the same thing, only meditation is the reduction radically executed. And argue this.
This is why post modern thinking is so notoriously obscure: They theorize in a world that dances around metaphysics, daring not to make a move too far, yet trying to make meaning there, at the threshold of sense making.
Quoting ENOAH
Plainly put, one should read Being and Time. Just read it, then you will see. You will never think the same way again. You will, of course, disagree often, but you will realize that these disagreements are THE disagreements. He articulates the terms of disagreement soooo well.
Sorry, have to go. Ill finish later.
Quoting Constance
Yes, I'm totally with you on everything preceding. It is a "dream world," which happens to be a label constructed by tgat very dream world, and so on. That too, all the way down. No access that way, to ultimate truth. So what to do with it? Abandon? No. No need. It's not in all respects a dysfunctional thing, quite the contrary. What to do? Tend to it. Tend to the business knowing that knowing is incessant "asking".
Quoting Constance
Sorry. Not careful/skilled. It's exactly the point I too think I have been expressing. Of course being cannot be pursued; pursue is the very meat of becoming.
What I mean to say is just that. To know Being is what philosophy ultimately desires. But being cannot be known. It can only be.
The same, unironically, can be said of any organic activity. They can be discussed, represented in ways which justify belief because they serve ancillary functions, but they cannot be known truly for what they are.
I'm saying that about the whole human being. Knowledge is necessarily not truth because our truth is in our organic functioning, period.
We love our imaginations, they have enhanced our prosperity, but they are still just our imaginations.
Even our excitement about metaphysics, phenomenology, existentialism, etc., is just imagination excited about imagination.
Quoting Constance
I think Agent desires agency and has structured that into the laws of reasoning
It is in the same way the Subject has been so structured by grammar, and from that logic, and general reasoning to the extent of common sense. No one would wonder when this body presses these buttons, triggered by autonomous movement of images in this body's image-ing organ, to produce signifiers which surfaced because they "won" the incessant lightening speed dialectical process to project the fittest, that it isn't I doing it.
But I submit, it is not. Do a simple tracing of the Signifier and find what is the natural root of I. If it's anything but the silent, thoughtless, body, unconcerned about protecting its identity because it has none, concerned only with perpetuating life, then it's part of the story, following an evolved--because fit--rule of grammar. It's out of the latter, grammar, that the soul or spirit Narratives arose. We did not create tge Subject to signify the soul.
Quoting Constance
Well, yes. I totally agree with you here. For me, what we have always been is Nature, rudely put by science, matter. Mind despises that. It is not fit for mind's prosperity to project such a construct, so it's outright denied by the melancholy poets/mystics of philosophy, metaphysics. But the silly truth is, I am this biological being. Why not praise God for that? Because we don't want what we already are, Living. We want knowledge.
I agree; maybe you mean this, but my modification might be, meditation is an exercise of the body/epoche an exercise of the mind. H's epoche is arguably as close as one can get without turning away from tge intellect altogether.
It could mean a blend of technology and our body in such a way where we're no longer human in it's true meaning, we might become entirely new species, changed not only in look but also mentally.
And incessant answering. Pull as far away from this as possible, and questions become one question, that of being qua being. But to get here, this is the issue. For interpretation haunts inquiry, and interpretation is built into the temporality of our existence: I see a tree and tree memories rush in to make "seeing a tree" seeing a tree. But, and I refer to a prior post, this temporal structure shows memory to be holistically bound to presence and anticipation. To say "I saw" is itself a saying that will one day be recalled, and the recollection will not be of a "genuine past event" but of a holistic unity and this remains analytically clear ONLY in the positing of transcendence: One simply cannot talk of a condition or state of affairs "out" of the basic structure of subjective time. When you refer to a dream world, I think the best possible analysis ends here, with time. This is fundamental to Kant's Transcendental Deduction in his Critique. This deduction needs to be read over and over just to get the essential idea. I continue to go back to it. You might find an excerpt from the Deduction interesting, just to see how Kant's mind works and how his analytic of time moves along. He says some extraordinary things, full of penetrating insight. Consider that time is one moment occurring after the next and in order for the mind to grasp a whole thought, these moments must be linked together or "synthesized" into a unity. I see a cup, and the seeing it "as" a cup, there must be a unity of these temporal "moments" sequenced one after the other. Consciousness is this unity. In the Synthesis of the Recognition of a Concept, "If we were not conscious that what we think is the same as what we thought a moment before, all reproduction in the series of
representations would be useless." For it would simply be a jumble of unrelated "representations". Something must bind moments together to make them the unity that they are. "Cup" is a temporal unity of a sequence of moments. What is a self? It is the grand sythesizer of all experience: Without consciousness, the manifold of the representation would never, therefore, form a whole, since it would lack that unity which only consciousness can impart to it." This is Kant's rationalism.
Of course, Kant, as he explains all of this, is IN a perspective of finitude. His rigorous apriori arguments are themselves behind a veil of the medium of explanatory language. And this IS the most fascinating idea to me: Go the Kantian route, and "final determinate knowledge," call it, is hidden as a permanent and structural impossibility, for in the unity of the manifold of a consciousness of a cup on the table, there is no "getting behind" the unity itself, because one's own thinking issues from this unity. Hence the "transcendental" dimension of transcendental idealism. On the other hand, and this is the place where you and I step in, while this thinking may be well reasoned, once we understand that the entire analytic itself is transcendental as well, in its foundation, we then pull away sharply, for the epiphany puts the states of affairs of the world completely OTHER than what knowledge claims can produce, and this "otherness" is right before your eyes. We are thrown back to the original phenomenon that gave rise to all this philosophy in the first place. The transcendence that puts "truth" as you referred to it earlier, at an absolute distance from understanding (Kant), now is IN the intuitive grasp of the cup. Now one is the Buddha, that is, if one sees this with complete clarity, and the body of implicit knowledge claims that possess the world in ordinary perception are suspended, and no longer hold sway. This is liberation, and this is where phenomenology takes one, one who is, of course, inclined to be "taken" (thinking of the expression gelassenheit, again. This yielding to the world, away from the "totality" of egoic insistence), and if Buddhism's and Hinduism's very strong spiritual claims are right (as in the Abhidhamma, the Prajnaparamita, the Vedas, and so on), and I think they are qualifiedly right, then the world becomes Nietzsche's worst nightmare: This world itself becomes a reality of the radically Other, other than, that is, the world in "plain" sight.
Yes, a dream world. You sound like a Hindu, but it makes perfect sense in phenomenology. You might find Henry's statement of the basic working ideas useful. The Four Principles of Phenomenology (following Husserl):
Phenomenology rests on four principles which it explicitly claims as its foundations. The firstso much appearance, so much beingis borrowed from the Marburg School. Over against this ambiguous proposition, owing to the double signification of the term appearance, we prefer this strict wording: so much appearing, so much being.1 The second is the principle of principles. Formulated by Husserl himself in §24 of Ideen I, it sets forth intuition or, more precisely, that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition2 and thus for any particularly rational statement. In the third principle, the claim is so vehement that it clothes itself in the allure of an exhortation, even a cry: zu den Sachen selbst![ (To the Thing itself!). The fourth principle was defined considerably later by Jean-Luc Marion in his work Reduction and Givenness, but its importance hits upon the entirety of phenomenological development as a hidden presupposition that is always already at work. It is formulated thus: so much reduction, so much givenness.3
I suspect it will not be a technology of synthetic materials, but organic. AI will master the human genome, and we will live in a brave new world. Only without Aldous Huxley's unfortunate Delta class. All Alphas! But this will lead to a new world of leisure time, and leisure time is freedom, and freedom opens basic questions, and the question of the self will loom large. We will all probably becomes Buddhists.
Interestingly despite the brave new world being banned in the US some scientists are already proposing a solution to genetically modify us to withstand higher temperatures.
Yes. The only question in which the answer transcends Mind.
Quoting Constance
Yes. But you are here. You don't know it. Not for want of brilliant effort, but because it transcends knowing. You are-ing it; that's where you'll find it.
Quoting Constance
Yes. Everything is that. Even the self, where memories of "I" flood in to make seeing me, "seeing me."
Quoting Constance
Thank you. I intend to read Husserl for the first time beyond Anthologies and intros to Heidegger. And reread critique and being and time. Agree?
Quoting Constance
Yes. I think that's exactly what happens--in the process, Mind--a synthesis of successive presents into a constructed unity. Two of the mechanisms having evolved to make that now functional linear, narrative form happen are the Subject (/object duality ie difference) and Time. Yes, constructed. Hence becoming. Being may be in some space/time universe. But being just is-ing, the movement of that time, if any, has no meaning.
Quoting Constance
Right, and Henry. Which I assume is either not a Husserl phenomenologist or has radically modified it?
Being is elusive to the understanding because it is not an object that can receive predication. The copula 'is' is for saying things like The moon is in orbit around the earth, or What is an iguana? Being is ubiquitous in language and every proposition has it, implicitly or explicitly. Say Give me that book! and the 'is' is all over this. Me is the I that IS; the book IS; "give" implies things that 'are' in one way or another.
So Being is given to us in language first. Try to step outside of language to affirm being and you head for nonsense. On the other hand, it is, I hold, wrong to say being cannot be known, just as it is wrong to say metaphysics cannot be known. Note that when you say being cannot be known, you and positing being, so this is either nonsense or it's not. Nonsense because the "nothing" of non predication ( no "X is Y" in the analytic of the proposition) being posited cannot be made sense of, just like "gbischitz": nothing meaningful being said and entirely out of meaningful contexts other than references to letters and sounds.
Essentially what Heidegger and Wittgenstein and many others think. So one is already in hot water with "being cannot be known." What is it that cannot be known?
But if one is like me, Being is quite predicable, for this simply means one can say things about it and there are contexts of meaningful talk. Being is an intuition, I'll call it. And leave it at that. Not just a mathematical abstract terminus, or a set of all things, abstractly conceived. And it can stand much analysis, but if Being is an intuition, this analysis would have to be done. This is Jean Luc Marion and others. Being is a concept and an intuition, and all intuitions are conceptually constructed, that is, one can say, " by this I mean..." and words follow, even if those words become enigmatic and interesting. To me, this is where philosophy does its most interesting work: it "leads" us to hidden possibilities that are disclosed in language AND its non language counterparts, like being in love or spraining your ankle. I could not speak of the essence of religion and talk about how a sprained ankle is front and center of religious meaning without the symbolic connections language makes possible. I could not speak at all of anything with out "that which conceives" and in the case of being, Being is not pulled down to mundanity in this. In fact, it is "pulled up" through the language that makes it what it IS.
Note that language itself is the very Being in question.
I have my doubts here. Heidegger and Husserl parted ways because Heidegger hyper-focused in on hermeneutical form of phenomenology. Husserl was still reaching for the unreachable (and stated as much). The task is endless.
I am saying no to this. The task was ended long ago with the Buddhists and the Hindus, but this jumps to the chase. Heidegger seems to defend the Hegelian "theology" when he says "Metaphysics is the truth of the totality of beings" and the totality of beings is what the historical period says it is. Being is the answer to the question What are beings AS beings? and this refers us to the historical framework.
And right, Husserl was reaching for the unreachable, but then, take the Cartesian/Husserlian position and and put aside the historical analysis: Here I am, not a Cartesian cogitom because a disembodied cogito makes no sense at all, but standing in a world that is "know" in the standing there. A cogito must be ABOUT something. Thought is never "just thought" and this is the Husserlian insight, intentionality.
But THE most important part of this is very simple, Buddhist, even: As I stand and face this tree, it cannot be doubted that I face a being! I can doubt everything about the being because the historical basis of language is contingent, but facing a being possesses in its "thereness" something only a fool would deny. HERE is where hermeneutics reaches its own termination.
I am not keen on religious doctrines posing as a philosophy of consciousness, nor am I inclined to side with mysticism as anything other than a pacifier of sorts (albeit somewhat essential in its role on mental stability).
The path to woo woo is the way. The destination of woo woo is delusion/madness.
Yah, but gbischitz has now been assigned "signifier of nonsense."
But really. Signifier only of the inherent meaninglessness of all signifiers until meaning has been assigned.
Being too shares that origin. Inherently meaningless. That I know is ultimately what you are saying. It is implied that in uttering being, I have already accepted that my utterance is only as good as how far I can throw it; and, I can't ever throw it outside of Mind's reaches.
And yet, I use the tool to point at the moon, knowing it's not the moon, but the finger.
While I understand one must always discriminate, may I ask, what has locked you in so seemingly tight such that you have fettered your discretion to pursue truth openly. Is your strict adherence to reason not prescribed by the very thing adhered to??
:up: :up:
Do you reject religion and mysticism because they do not adhere strictly to reason?
If not that, then why do you reject religious or mystical "contributions" about consciousness outright (which is what you seem to be saying about the former, while relegating the latter to a pacifier, which I read as a useful fiction)?
If so, then why do you think these (religion/mysticism) cannot be sources about consciousness? What is it about reason (assuming that is where you place your trust) that makes it the only path to understanding consciousness?
What if the best way to "access" consciousness is not the understanding but, like hunger and arousal, by "feeling-doing-being"? What if mysticism--admittedly, some hypothetical particular form--provided the methodology for such access? Would you deny it because it takes a path other than reason?
While I'm not denying the usefulness of reason, is it not possible that on some matters, reason can only go so far before it reaches a bridge which reason cannot cross?? guess, I was suggesting--poorly--that there might be "truths" notwithstanding all of the self serving myth, ritual and dogma. It would be an absurd irony if our strict adherence to reason, rather like a dogma, forever barred us from making headway on the very topic which continues to baffle us.
Since we seem to have gone very far with reason--across the universe and down to subparticles--why is it we cannot understand consciousness? Is it possible that the latter requires some alternative methods of pursuit?
Since there is no rational reason for the existence of life itself, the absence of a pacifier may very well turn into a problem. Life can be full of suffering. When the going gets tough, why do you even try to continue? In order to perpetuate something that rationally does not make sense to begin with?
Rationality suggests that the answer is existential nihilism.
Surviving does not make sense while having children is simply cruel.
Without at least some spirituality that manages to transcend the nihilism of rationality, the rationalist cannot compete in the cutthroat environment of biological life. He simply won't find the motivation to do so. Hence, the rationalist needs lots of painkillers and other opioids to sedate his unsatisfied need for a reason to keep going, until he finally decides to put an end to his suffering by overdosing.
Good enough. But why is the most we can credit religion with is its opioid effect; to sedate us in the face of our inevitable suffering.
In its essence, like philosophy, religion is metaphysics first. Its goal is to answer the same big questions. I do not think any one serious about truth, is being "reasonable" by wilfully blinding themselves to the potential light which this essence may shed, in spite of the layers and layers of BS it may be burried under.
And anyway, as for pacifier, the same can be said about philosophical attempts to alleviate human suffering, from will to power, to communism, to transcendental subjectivity, to living in good faith. None of these approaches are apodictic. Not unlike mystical hypotheses, they're genuine attempts at addressing our condition.
Generational survival goes quite fast because life is rather short. We don't have time to figure out if something else is going to work than what worked for our parents. Seriously, if the solution does not work right away, the damage will be done already.
Nowadays, we have entire populations that refuse to have children and that increasingly even prefer to hedonistically overdose on all kinds of poisons. The antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication are not going to manage either, to indeterminately keep them in the rat race of life.
This epidemic of murderous rationality is highly contagious. People are much more likely to succumb if other people in their environment have succumbed already. Nihilism is highly infectious. It is like a virus. That is why social media such as Youtube and Tiktok strictly forbid videos on self-deletion. You can't even use the term. The vocabulary is simply banned.
The only strategy that people have time for, is to absorb whatever spiritual belief that worked for their parents, and then hope for the best. Otherwise, it is probably game over.
So, the approach does not need to be apodictic. It just needs to convince people away from -- in terms of rationality -- the meaninglessness of life. In other words, it does not need to be perfect. It just needs to be good enough.
I'm just saying religion at essence is more
I do not 'reject' them, just view them within their own jurisdiction.
Quoting ENOAH
I do not 'outright' as all experiences have something to contribute to concepts of human consciousness. I just emphasize that one should probably not hold to vague mystical concepts when trying to understand things with any reasonable kind of precision.
Quoting ENOAH
I am a little confused by what you are saying when you say 'reason'. Husserl does this, but he certainly has to use reason to do so (as do we all?).
Blind grappling for naught is just that.
Quoting ENOAH
That makes no sense. If you are in the habit of making no sense that it is of no sense. Obviously?
Quoting ENOAH
I think you are almost certainly using the term 'reason' to mean anything scientific here? Or so it seems? That may be the disjoint.
I think I need to understand the use of 'rational' here too. If you are not being 'rational' then what are you being? Can you say anything worth listening to without articulating it rationally? If you choose aesthetic means to communicate you do so because it is rationally appropriate (if not it fails).
Quoting Tarskian
There is a whole other thread where you can argue that. Not here. Needless to say I disagree and fully understand the AN argumentation.
I am still struggling to figure out 'essence' here. I am intrigued by the origins of religion, would that be relevant here?
In this context, "rational" is the opposite of "spiritual". If we agree that there is no rational reason for the existence of life, rationalism will in this context always lead to existential nihilism. This is fine, until it isn't anymore.
b) You now have the task of stating what 'spiritual' means - other than saying opposed to the 'rational' which I was originally asking for to begin with.
The question does not have a rational answer. That is not a problem for people who have a spiritual answer to the question but it is one for people who are 100% rational.
Since the existence of life is rationally meaningless, rationalism in this field always leads to existential nihilism. Motivation to keep going in spite of the inevitable difficulties will sooner or later start waning. This will eventually have to be medicated with antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication, and an ample supply of opioids and other painkillers. Since there is no rational reason to stay alive in such intolerable circumstances, the final solution is a complete abdication.
There is no hope for the ones who do not "believe" that there is.
No. Framing the line questioning as a reasonable one is faulty. The mistake is believing it is a rational question. It makes rational sense to distinguish between the kinds of question being asked and how they can be answered, whether or not they make any sense and if it requires an answer.
Unlike philosophy being 'metaphysics derived by deductive / dialectical reasoning', religion consists in 'metaphysics expressed through symbolic myths' (e.g. "Platonism of the masses" according to Nietzsche)..
If by "suffering" you mean folly (i.e. ignorance of one's own ignorance, unexamined living, habits of poor reasoning, magical thinking, reality-denials, etc), then I agree with you.
Why does that matter?
Quoting Tarskian
Why assume "rational reason" is applicable to "existence" especially since "existence" (a) cannot be nonexistence and (b) "rational reason" presupposes "existence"?
Quoting Tarskian
This phrase doesn't make sense. "Existential nihilism" is chosen and not entailed, otherwise it wouldn't be nihilistic. "Rationalism", as you say, assumes that reality existence is logical (i.e. inferential, algorithmic, computable) but that logic must be learned (i.e. signals filtered from noise), that the aptitude for reasoning orderliness / regularities ("laws") of nature is intrinsic, or "innate", and competence with reasoning testable modeling ("sciences") of nature is an acquired set of skills. "Existential nihilism" is the choice to reject "rationalism" as a way of life (i.e. existential project) as well as rationality, or logic, as an epistemic method/criterion of judgment, and therefore, not the inevitable consequence of "rationalism". Spinozism, for instance, does not entail "existential nihilism".
There is a scientific answer that should satisfy and will sedate the 100% rationalists, called "oxycontin". When I googled for the term, however, this is what Google showed on top of all search results:
So, the truly scientific answer to the question will instead be provided by the volunteer manning the 988 help desk.
But then again, the volunteer is trained to give spiritual answers instead of rational ones:
So, in my impression, we will just keep running in circles.
They teach these volunteers to give people "hope", while these people want a scientific, rational answer to the meaning of existence!
Since there is no rational reason for the existence of life, existential nihilism is the rational answer.
Furthermore, since there is no valid rational reason to stay alive amidst difficulties and tribulations, there is no rational reason for suicide prevention either. There are only spiritual reasons, but these people reject them, because these reasons are not rational.
There is no rational reason for giving people hope. That is why suicide prevention does not work on 100% rationalists.
It is (rationally) outlandish to believe that things will get better for no reason at all. Hence, in rational terms, "hope" is just bullshit.
There is no salvation for a 100% rationalist.
Why do they even waste their time trying?
Nonsense. If "existential rationalism", then there can be no "rational answers" for an existential nihilist. :roll:
Such as?
(Btw, when you say "spiritual reasons", do you mean 'reasons given by spirits'? :eyes: )
"Salvation" from what?
Look at this:
They spend over $600 millions per year on trying to give "hope", mostly to people who "scientifically" do not believe in hope.
If they believed in hope, they would have it already!
What a waste of money!
What an incorrigible bunch of idiots.
:roll: :sweat:
This overall thread? Not for me to say, I don't object; but I see that as an anthropological pursuit; one shared by at least one excellent representative of same on this thread.
As for our very specific exchange, for what it may be worth, I'll try once more and hopefully briefly. Though, to explain it well, would require pages; and I cannot refer you to a source, the information I'm providing comes from hundreds of sources, if not countless.
By "essence" of religion, what structures my thinking has led me to this: religion is a mechanism by which we might, at least, "recognize" that the ego is secondary; at best, turn away from ego, if only for a glimpse of the being emancipated from a world of constructions; the ego/Subject/I among such constructions.
As an aside which will not be explained for the sake of space here, Husserl went far but at the end remained as confused as the rest of his Western Age and identified the "goal" of his exercise as the (transcendental) Subject. It is not. His method seems sound, but the goal is no different than that of this essence of religion: a glimpse into our (you won't like this) "true consciousness," reduced from all constructions.
Though personally, I follow neither the methodology of Transcendental Phenomenology (which was very recently patiently (re)introduced to me by none other than the OP) nor any institutionalized method. The point nonetheless applies to me. I can benefit from the mechanism of religion applied in accordance with its essence, to discover my true nature(s). One, not real, ultimately immaterial in all senses of the word, a fleeting empty system of images to which my true consciousness, the only real nature, has been "attached." And that attachment is our condition and tge condition of our unique suffering. Religion frees us from the attachment, though we remain.
How do I know religion does this? Where in religion is this essence found? Briefly three examples but one could provide pages, and I'm simplifying and paraphrasing
Jesus--love god with all your might love your neighbor as yourself; that sums up the scriptures--read abandon ego
Vedanta--Moksa is freedom from ego
Zazen--a glimpse into true nature/no mind
Suffering from attachment N and S wrong
Again, generally I agree with you.
But I'm focused on an essence of religion which is a doing of metaphysics, beyond discourse. To do so with a goal in mind. It might be you persuade me that it is not possible to achieve that goal; that the goal for something like Husserl's transcendental phenomenology is not possible. But I don't think it's fair to insist religion in totality (let alone at its essence) is flawed metaphysics just because (and I agree) tge vast majority of its practice has mutated into flawed metaphysics.
The growth in the opioids crisis is exponential:
I think that we could make a mathematical model with input variable the number of people who believe in scientism and as output variable the staggered growth over time of people who rationally decide that there is no good reason for continuing the misery of their own lives.
In fact, the most interesting country to observe and predict would actually be China:
China is in the middle of a financial crisis that far exceeds the 2008 GFC in the West. According to internet rumors, 50% or more of the working-age Beijing population is unemployed now. Hundreds of millions of Chinese cannot pay their debts. The banks may or may not keep foreclosing on them. The problem is that the real estate being repossessed, left and right, is virtually worthless now.
Since the official communist propaganda is that fostering or even just having a bit of hope or similar spiritual values is not a legitimate scientific behavior and therefore just outdated bullshit, and since we can all agree that there is no rational reason for life itself, I am now watching with great interest how things are going to work out over there in "scientifically" atheist China.
Reasonable.
Quoting ENOAH
Not entirely onboard with this. Husserl was aiming to create a 'science of consciousness' that stood apart from empirical science (a new science) as he saw clearly that psychology was not really doing anything of note in terms of qualitive content falling back on empirical data, as it necessarily had to, being framed as a science grounded in objectivity.
Quoting ENOAH
I would look at this as an assumption of there being an 'essence' of religion. What strikes me is that religion (in its beginnings) is assumed to be an object. To echo Satre in regards to the 'nature of an object' what if religion is not an object at all? As in possessing no 'essence'.
I think we do have to be open to a lot of speculative thought here as we only know of religion through our modern lens and from where our modern schematic of religion came (the current Institutionalised edifices). From my own instigations I am convinced that the core of "religion" (or perhaps it is better to say religiosity) preexisted our current views, historic views (literally) and even societal views too. Undoubtedly there are numerous examples of religious rituals and such that expose known methodologies for inducing altered states of consciousness. eg. prayer, trance dancing, repetition, hyper-focused attention, hyperventilation and fasting - all intrinsic to religious passages of rite. Then there is memory and knowledge accumulation that predates written forms of data storage.
I think today the power of religiosity has been reduced to a shadow of its former self.
It is the atheists who will prove the power of religiosity with their suicide rates during the next financial crisis, which is imminent now.
In my opinion, the power of religiosity, theistic or not, is almost surely not being measured in a correct manner. The following is a much better context to measure it:
The power of religiosity will become apparent when the $600 million allocated to this program will fail to yield results in the absence of its users having developed any prior capacity to have hope, which is invariably acquired through religiosity.
Allocating $6 billion instead of $600 million won't make any difference either.
It is just not realistic to attempt to teach these users a crash course on how to harness the power of hope when they completely lack prior exposure. That is simply too late in the game.
In these circumstances, it is in my opinion preferable to just scrap the program, go back to the drawing board, and design something more realistic. Just throwing money at the problem won't help.
Heidegger looks to history and language: There is no truly foundational truth, neither in science nor in traditional religion nor in philosophy. Truth emerges out of historical settings. Not even remotely mystical.
But it does present a serious question: Take an ethical problem, a serious one to make it clear: I am prime facie ethically bound not throw my neighbor into a vat of molten rock. It is not a question of what to do in the face of conflicting circumstances; it is a question of the primordial injunction not to do it. Why not? It hurts; it hurts and I know it. Now we face a different question: what is it about hurting that makes for an ethical prohibition?
Simple as that. Now you face the world not constructed out of language at all. Heidegger still maintains that the understanding of this is still historically and linguistically bound, and he is right, right up until you realize that while language constructs meaning, the essential "givenness" of the world "gives" meaning as well, and this is supposed to be impossible. One is not supposed to be able to observe in-the-world something that produces a meaning independently of the language that is deployed to understanding it. There world is "there" but it dos not "speak".
But being tossed into boiling lava "speaks" in the most certain terms, terms that exceed the authority of language, which is contingent and contextual. It is a certainty that is apodictic, and by this I simply mean it is beyond contradiction, as with the formal logicality of modus ponens. Ethics, at the level of the most basic questions (philosophy's purview) is apodictic. This is the basis for the OP's essence of religion.
This should be clear, at least in the basic claim. Hard to bring Husserl, Heidegger and the competing ideas into this without getting technical. The above does have the beginnings of this technical discussion.
Well, not assigned, but appearing historically and producing signification. Quoting ENOAH
But take one step further: the event in which you know it is a finger and not the moon, then pull away from this to ask about the language that produces this very insight and one is taken to the moment itself. But whatever transpires in that moment can be spoken: it was received in language and by language. Language's references DO NOT POINT. Rather, language is part and parcel of the event itself, which we CALL pointing.
Your objection about an "outside" of mind's reach is itself a "performative contradiction": there is no "outside" in this manner. And by this, there is no inside either. All that occurs is simply there (phenomenology). I would argue that it is the assumption of inside/outside talk that makes the very barrier in question a problem.
Yes
Quoting Constance
Quite possibly, I'm digging up the dirt to clear the way but am jumping right into the very hole I'm digging. A thing always cognizant of, and yet being pushed back to make room for hypothesizing.
But I know, you're saying the "dirt" is part and parcel of the "way." That it neither can, nor need be cleared.
But if that leaves the Subject in tact...
Much to consider. A very interesting thread which you are managing so well. Thanks
Yes, I am saying in order to understand the essence of religion, one has to look to the essence of ethics. Religion is an "ethical" matter one has between one and the world, though one is free to quibble about applying the terms.
The term essence just refers to what a thing is free of the entanglements of its instantiations. Think about what Kant did with reason (whether you are a Kantian or not is besides the question): you look a judgment in the world or about something in the world, and ask about the structure of the judgment itself, a judgment qua judgment kind of inquiry. He discovers apriority in judgments about the world and asks how is this possible? Apriority is supposed to be a property of logic, not things in the world.
Here, I ask, what is ethics? and also discover apriority. But ethics is NOT vacuous logical form. It's essence is value, that is, entanglements in the world that deal with pain and pleasure and this is really a dimension of everything: the very event of this trivial occasion to write is saturated with value. Pull me away and I care that I am being pulled away. A glance at the time is implicit interest and meanings subtlety in play.
This is where the proverbial question of the meaning of life has its answer at the basic level of inquiry. It lies in the apriority or apodicticity or indubitability of the nature of value, and hence ethics/aesthetics, itself.
Quoting Constance
You discover judgement before ethics? Sorry, the more I look closely at what you have written the less it makes sense.
Quoting Constance
Well, I do believe we can use moral/ethic mostly synonymously but in this instance I would have to argue against this as ethics is about analysis of moral positions, and thus is more about the reasoning behind a moral stance than being anything like a means of valuing (other than by unearthing faulty logic and reasoning).
If am I more charitable then, okay, we may call moral positions a means of persuasion to personal will active within a given social framing. Clearly religious moral are part and parcel of something like views in Christianity that we are all familiar enough with.
If your conclusion is something like stating everything is valued ... so what? What kind of value are we talking about? Moral values? What is prudent?
Ethics is not a vacuous logical form because it is dealing with morals. Furthermore, the medium of language in which we deal with them is irreducible in terms of pure logical forms. Ethics applies logic, as best it can, to infinite terms (rather than something like finite numbers).
Obviously there are parts to your thinking you do not fully know how to state or even understand. What parts do you have a clearer means of expressing? Perhaps start there? Otherwise it feels pretty much like I am playing a guessing game unfortunately.
Thanks for trying to clarify though :)
Quoting I like sushi
And the analysis of ethics is the analysis that is about the analysis of moral positions. This is metaethics, and religion is about just this metaethical analysis.
It's not about Kant and the apriority found in judgment. Kant's deduction was an attempt to discover the apriority in judgments about the world. The idea here is the attempt to find apriority in ethics. Here the similarity ends. One could talk like Kant does, though: Take a judgment about ethics, not about reason and logic, and give analysis. What is there that makes ethics what it is? This is logically prior to, that is, it presupposes, as you say, persuasion and social framing and prudence and anything one has to say about how ethics plays out in actual situations. This is, again, logically prior to all of this. It is a question of ontology: the question of the being of ethics, a question that is begged in all subsequent thinking about how to think about ethics.
One is now a scientist, if you will: observe an ethical matter and identify its properties. There are issues of entanglement that are unique to each case, but these presuppose the essence of ethics. One has to look specifically for this essence in inquiry. Kant's emphasis on duty, for example, steers us directly away from the very feature of the world that all ethical affairs deal with. This is, and Wittgenstein uses this term and it seems to work very well, value, the value dimension of our world. Ask, why does Witt insist both that the divine is "the good" and ethics/aesthetics is beyond analysis? See his Lecture on Ethics and the Tractatus (and with Philosophical investigations, Witt still holds firmly to the finitude of language, but never second guesses his earlier views on ethics). Also see his Culture and Value. He talks like this because "the good" is not an empirical or analytical concept. It is not among "states of affairs."
The OP introduces the idea that ethics is, in its foundational analytic, impossible. It is a transcendental term, and Wittgenstein knew this. How? Ask: What IS ethics? Not anything beyond the simplicity of the apriori "observation". This is to ask, What is the good and the bad in ethics? It is a metaethical question.
The "sense" of it lies in the simplicity of discovery. Put a lighted match under your finger and observe. Now ask the ontological question. Religion is ALL about this.
I wrote "This is logically prior to, that is, it presupposes," and should have written "...is presupposed by..."
Surely you can see why I have problems untangling the meaning/position you are trying to convey here?
Quoting Constance
Morality and the interplay of reason to distinguish poorly constructed views/arguments (using logic in language). Then there is also the stance that ethics is generally referring to the application of moral principles to society at large - as a means of analysis.
If you will, Moral Laws are morality and Ethics is the investigation into the application of these laws and judgement of them using reason. Meat Ethics is more or less the questioning of the existence of Morals (validity) and the (mis-)use of concepts therein when partaking in this kind of discussion (ie. mistaking what is prudent for what is based on moral beliefs).
Quoting Constance
Ah! So we are looking at the essence of morality then rather than ethics (as I outlined it)? The 'being' of morality rather than ethics? I will need confirmation here.
Quoting Constance
I would have to say we are then looking for the root of judgement rather than ethics, as ethics is a judgement as is prudence. Morality is not intrinsic to value. Valuse can emerge in areas that have no prominent claim to ethics or morality.
Quoting Constance
I think I am beginning to see what you might be talking about now. I will see if I can articulate this in latter conclusion ...
Quoting Constance
It is to ask about practical use of rather than an emotional judgement of 'right or wrong' flavoured values.
Quoting Constance
I cannot even begin to see where/how/if you are trying to insert religion into the scheme, or what you actually mean by religion if you are essentially stating it is synonymous with 'ethics'/'moral laws' (which I still need clarity on also.
Conclusion
I saw an instance where you referred to 'good' in a non-moral/ethical sense. This is certainly a pure value. We can value something as being 'better' or 'worse' by our intentions and direction. If I am thirsty then moving towards water is 'better' but certainly not Moral or Ethical.
The Morals and Ethics proceeds from human interactions in the truest sense that we use the terms Morals and Ethics. At a proposed deeper level the Moral/Ethic begins in the individual. The question is then HOW can Morals/Ethics emerge from an individual in relation to societal interactions? There are obviously some quite basic and intuitive answers to this question that all lead back to the 'better' that stands outside of Morals and Ethics (as presented above with thirst - the prudent).
Note: I am pretty sure I am not hitting the mark here with what you are trying to articulate but hopefully it will allow us to get closer?
Thank you for taking the time to respond :)
Part of common sense is knowing when there is no rational answer.
Is it really that difficult and elusive? We live together as community and this means holding values. It's impossible not to. Ethics emerges from the resulting conversation just as surely as poo comes from eating. We couldn't avoid the subject of morality even if we wanted to and the only magic or transcendence inherent in such moral conversations (that I can see) is there if we confuse morality with mysticism. :wink:
Yes, but there is a secondary process ("entropy") that sabotages the main process ("preservation of energy").
The ruling mafia can successfully increase its power by lifting the constraints imposed by the main process that seeks to define justice. Therefore, there will always be a continuous process in the direction of degeneracy and depravity ("entropy"). This second process will increasingly seek to justify injustices.
This phenomenon is truly universal.
When the creating power decreed that everything in existence has the right to seek to perpetuate its own existence, the original nothing started pleading for justice.
What about me?
I was here before the universe started expanding. Can I also seek to keep existing?
The answer is "yes". There shall be no exception to the law. In order for you to reappear, the entire universe must disappear again. Hence, I hereby confirm your right to attack and destroy the entire universe and everything that it contains, including all its living creatures.
Entropy and energy are well-defined physical terms. They have nothing to do with the thread or what Tom Storm is talking about. Hence he not understanding.
You describe a process that tries to achieve a result without describing the inevitable process that will seek to undo its results.
It's like when people describe the process of how a wind turbine generates electricity. That is only half the story. The other half is more interesting. It is about the process that will inevitably seek to let the wind turbine go up in flames.
There is always a second process that seeks to undo the first, main process.
All I am saying is people will have views and talk about 'oughts' and 'ought nots' as a by-product of human community life. The kind of processes or dynamic which might follow are not in scope - I'm simply describing the original impulse.
I just wanted to point out why the results of that societal conversation will tend to be poor and increasingly corrupt.
Ok. I was just waiting to point out that morality probably has mundane origins.
I don't think the societal conversation has been increasingly poor or corrupt. But this might be down to the values one holds or how unhappy one is.
With wind turbines, the secondary process of corruption is very visible.
With societal morality, it is not necessarily visible. A corrupt morality is still a morality. How do you even see the difference? If a morality is corrupt, how can we detect it?
It is probably enough to argue that this is the new morality and that is necessarily excellent because it is new and therefore constitutes progress.
A wind turbine is not morality, the analogy would seem problematic. But I get the point.
Morality is a social conversation. What is or isn't corrupt will be part of that conversation. Not that 'corrupt' is a word which resonates with me in that context. I don't believe there is such a thing as perfect morality.
But your broader question is how do we know if morality is sound or helpful? Perhaps we don't. But I would say a moral system that executes gay people is worse than one which grants them equal rights. If this point requires debate, then I suggest a forum for haters to explore this further.
I don't believe we have access to absolute truth or perfection and that these are abstract human notions. The best we can do is minimise harm and suffering and promote the well-being of all conscious creatures. Which has been the trajectory of moral development over time. But obviously not everywhere.
I believe that the trajectory of moral development is increasing corruption, for the exactly same deep underlying reason why the trajectory of a wind turbine is increasing corruption. There is no process that does not have a secondary process of corruption attached to it.
You see, an "improvement" to morality will never get enough political support unless there is a powerful constituency that will benefit from it, usually, to the detriment of everyone else. Therefore, I believe that morality never gets better. It always gets worse.
Therefore, the older the morality, the more likely that it is sustainable on the long run. This is also what the Lindy effect predicts:
If morality is corrupt, it has the capacity to destroy society. If it has been around for long enough, it won't. Otherwise, it would have done that already. That is one reason why something that may look like a new morality tends to be the repackaging of an existing morality. For example, the morality that you can find in the books of Moses, at the beginning of the Bible, is the repackaging of something that was around long before Moses. That is the only safe way to do it.
I was trying to accommodate what you said here, " but in this instance I would have to argue against this as ethics is about analysis of moral positions." The awkwardness of this really has no bearing on the intelligibility of the idea. The issue is generally conceived as metaethical not metamoral.
Quoting I like sushi
Morality begs the same question: what is morality? It is of course an interplay of reason, but then what isn't an interplay of reason? All things have this underpinning of reason and justification, ready at the glance. So we have to think, surely; metaethics asks us to think about the nature of ethics.
Quoting I like sushi
Sure. But take the matter another step: When the term is used at all, what is there in a case that makes it ethical? A "meta" question.
Quoting I like sushi
See the above. But t is a distinction without a difference, for both terms beg the same question. Some call my position moral realism, yet the ontological question refers us to metaethics. See John Mackie's book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, in which he specifically addresses the issue brought up here, though not as I am defending it, and there are lots of others.
Quoting I like sushi
No, for Wittgenstein judgment is about all those "facts" on the logical grid (Tractatus and Lecture on Ethics). Prudence presupposes value: why be prudent at all? Morality presupposes value: Remove the value a thing has, it the ethical dimension of the thing vanishes. Simple as that. All ethical situations reduce to this analysis. The many conflicted problems of our ethical lives have to do with facts that in themselves have no ethical dimension. You want to steal meds from the pharmacy needed for a loved one's illness, but you haven't the money because you were born into poverty, and so on. But being born into poverty, the pharmacy having the meds you need, the law that could put you in jail, and all the rest are facts, just as the moon reflects the light of the sun is a fact, and no more than this (unless you want to give this analysis as well). There is nothing ethical about the fact of moonlight. It can be put into circumstances that make it part of an ethical equation: all one has to do is care about it.
Quoting I like sushi
No doubt the practical use goes to dealing with the world, and the point is to do things right. The Greek arete comes to mind; and of course, the principle of utility. But this presupposes the more fundamental analysis: what is ethics? Ethics as such, the essence of ethics, that is, that, if it were removed from a situation, the ethicality itself would be removed. This is value.
Quoting I like sushi
What is value? It goes back to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, which is open for discussion, but one has to give value a proper analysis, and this takes analysis to palpable events in the world, like putting someone in thumbscrews or stealing their dessert. Why are these prime facie wrong? Because one likes dessert and hates thumbscrews, obviously. No liking or disliking, to put it generally, no ethics. But what is liking? This is what I will call truly primordial: it is "among" the facts of the world, but it is not a fact. The good of ethics (and the bad) is not contingent, as Witt said. It is not like a good knife, say, contingent because one can explain it. Ethical goodness is very different. Explaining suffering is just a tautological exercise. It is what it is, or, it stands as its own presupposition, an absolute. It is, like logic, apodictic. Kant found apodicticity (apriority) in logic, I find it in value. The latter is far, far more significant.
Of course, there is the fascinating post modern complaint that even logic is cast in language, and language is contingent, historical (Heidegger), and even the term 'apodictic' is given to us as part of this. Apodicticity really is a term under erasure because it has no language counterpart. This is a tough issue, so I won't go there unless you want to. But the idea here is that even if logic cannot say what logic is, that is, as Witt said, it "shows" itself, but no further. But I do not let this to second guess modus ponens which is intuitively absolute. Nor can one second guess the "bad" of the pain of scorching of live flesh (masochists notwithstanding. Such an issue does not enter into the matter at hand). It would be just as "impossible" to deny the badness of such a thing as it would be to deny modus ponens.
Value as such is not relative or interpretatively derived. It is "the world". Not IN the world. Ethics is IN the world. Metaethics is about the world as world. Our existence is the world. We are IN a world, as well, and we ARE the world. This is something that has to be understood.
This, I am guessing, is unfamiliar language to you. This is due to anglo american philosophy's divorce from metaphysics. It might as well divorce itself from the world itself, which is exactly what it has done. A failed attempt.
Religion: If ethics is discovered to be an existential absolute, in its essence, as I am claiming, then the world is a very different "place". Our familiar ethical entanglements are now matters of far deeper significance. This deeper significance is what religions strive to affirm dogmatically. Here, it is demonstrably done, I claim, after all is said.
Quoting I like sushi
Same here. All of the above is argumentative and confrontational. And quite right, by my thinking. It does take a certain openness and pulling away from standard assumptions. It is an ontological argument, a "what IS it? at the most basic level of assumptions argument.
I agree and disagree. Realizing that the pain "as such" of this sprained ankle is in no way at all a discursive event, in no way derivative through logical avenues of inference, is itself rational judgment. On the one hand, nothing escapes this rationality. the moment one brings the matter up at all, one is already IN a rationally structured environment, and the very idea of something being not having an answer is "conceived" rationally. Even the term 'rationality' is interpretatively embedded.
But that sprained ankle and its pain: clear as a bell this is stands "outside" of what reason does. So it is like all things: language and its reason saturate experience WHEN a thing is brought before judgment. But prior to this, it "stands in the waiting" as when someone asks you about the sprain.
The OP is about this sprain and its pain and the ontology of this pain.
If questions about the epistemic, ontological and ethical foundations of our existence didn't exist, then I would completely agree. But they are there, right in our midst. Ask the timeless question, how does anything "out there" get into a knowledge claim? So simple and accessible. Just look at the lamp on your desk and ask, how is my knowledge of this lamp even possible? You are not in some abstruse and abstract argument. You are IN the world of eating and pooing, just asking a simple question.
It is difficult to see "through" habits of thought and familiarity. The whole world is like this epistemic problem. The world is a "meta" problem, just sitting there staring back at you.
Only if you insist.
I'm not pretending that I have answers to old epistemological questions. I'm not even sure that they matter. But it's not hard to see how morality is pragmatic consequence of experience. Why confuse this with questions about how my knowledge of a lamp works? If we don't know the answer to this (and I suspect there are many healthy explanations already: scientific and philosophical) it would be a shame for an appeal to ignorance to lead us into accepting transcendence as the only explanation.
I suspect our world-views are too far apart. There are lots of undemonstrated claims here.
What is corrupt morality? Can you provide an example?
The Bible borrows lots of stories, not just morality. If would help if you could demonstrate this process working over the past 1000 years, say, in order to illustrate this corruptive process in action?
For instance, I would maintain that the UN Declaration of Human Rights outlines a superior and more sophisticated set of moral principles than the Ten Commandments - of which only 6 pertain to morality and 2 or 3 of those are dubious at best.
Moral redemption doesn't require religion, and religion may or may not provide it. The essense of religion is simply binding a community in shared values, narratives, etc.
Well, just to follow through briefly, there is no answer to epistemic crisis. Not a matter of ignorance. Ignorance implies that there is something that can be known, and one just doesn't know it. Not the case here. There is NO way for knowledge claims to penetrate through the "distance" between objects and knowing. Healthy explanations? Neither healthy nor unhealthy. There simply isn't one.
Epistemology's radical indeterminacy is part of a general indeterminacy of all of our thinking in the world, and one is not going to really understand religion until one cuts loose from "common sense".
But you're right, talk about knowledge issues in philosophy is not immediately to the point; so to the point: You said, "We live together as community and this means holding values." The matter at hand is not about values with an 's'. It is about value, a philosophical inquiry into what it means to value something at all. So before talk about the "resulting conversation" about what to do given that we live in a world filled with values (family values? Cultural values? Workplace values? Child rearing values? Etc.?) there is the unaddressed question about the nature of valuing. Philosophy wants to know.
I won't bore you with a thesis. Just this: If I asked about the nature of logic, what would you say? Logic is there, and it has structure made visible in symbolic logic, the bare bones, if you will, of ordinary talk and thought. Weird thing about symbolic logic: pure formal truths come out of it. One big tautology, the entire system. And each propositional structure is apriori, that is, necessary and universal. So, "beneath" our conversations about this and that, there is this discovery of structure.
Value then: abstract from ordinary situations to discover what value IS, just as is done with symbolic logic. Is there anything "behind" the many occasions of valuing this and that to be discovered? Yes. It is the ethical good and bad. Nothing is all of existence more odd. Value and the good and bad of valuing is entirely sui generis. You are invited at this point to consider G E Moore's way of addressing this: What does it mean for something to be "good"? Not a good couch or a good deal on a car, but good AS SUCH. And bad: what is the bad of a sprained ankle? Yes, we get sprains and have to deal with them, but what does it mean for something to hurt? Moore called it a non natural property. Why non natural?
For this, I leave to you to consider, if you are interested. But I will say this: Facts of the world, natural facts like the atomic weight of helium of the weathering processes that made the Grand Canyon are VERY different from value "facts". Wittgenstein would not call value facts, facts all all. See his Lecture on Ethics (online and very accessible). It is because value cannot be observed at all!
This is the beginning to understanding the nature of religion.
But I am curious - what use do you derive from this:
Quoting Constance
If the situation is hopeless (as Casals said) we must take the next step.
Quoting Constance
We can make even the simplest things complicated and impossible. It's one of the great human gifts.
I need not have a full account of 'good' or 'bad'. We can understand them in quotidian contexts without needing to contrive a thesis on the subjects. We already do and it works reasonably well. Abstractions like 'good' or even 'truth' vary with the context. In most usage, I don't need to have a full account of such terms to make robust use of them. That's all I am saying. And if the epistemic crisis is as thick a fog as you suggest, then better to say home.
I can live with that.
Quoting Constance
What kind of area would you say you are talking in? Is Moral Realism appropriate? Such categorising may be messy but it is useful to understand the general gist of where you are coming from.
Quoting Constance
Of course, we judge through values. Ethical judgement is one value judgement of many. The same would be left if we removed what is prudent. My question would then be does judgement about what is prudent come before the judgement about what is ethical. If so, we can then say that what is prudent is the 'essence of ethics' right?
So a scheme of Value < Judgement < Prudence < Ethics < Religion ... not that I believe all Religion is is its relation to ethics in its original formation.
Quoting Constance
No liking, no ethics? Mmm ... I guess so. But that is basically like none of one category of judgement means no ethics. Nothing is surprising there. One would still make other kinds of judgements.
The 'essence of value' is emotion. I think there is something to the whole "boo!" and "hurrah!" of emotivism in regards to moral judgements. Drinking water when you are thirsty is 'good' (beneficial/targeted), while stealing water from someone else is 'not good' ("boo!").
Quoting Constance
Probably better to leave that alone for now :D I have been more than aware of the problems surrounding the application of the pure logic heuristic to language.
Quoting Constance
If my hand is burning it is not an ethical issue. If someone sets my hand of fire then it is "Boo!"
Quoting Constance
This is so obvious me to I am puzzled why you even have to point it out. I am not entirely sure why there is a fixation on ethics though as you could name other judgements OR just say Judgement instead. Is there something I missed in your meaning?
Quoting Constance
Not really. I have read Husserl quite a bit and Heidegger.
Quoting Constance
You can probably tell by now that I think you missed some significant steps in your reduction. Ethics is layers above what matters. Ethics comes through other value judgements (it is not THE value judgement, if that is at all what you were hinting at), and value judgement is embedded in emotion ... now we do hit a rather hard problem because what emotion is is also a matter of sedimentation.
I came to Husserl via studying the Cognitive Neurosciences, and I am rather inclined to use what I have learned there as a check on what is feasible. I do not really see that Emotion is something that can exist separate from Logic. I have been of the broad opinion for some time that they are effectively two sides of the same coin, each necessitating a kernel of the other to exist.
Much like Kant espoused with his Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their unison can knowledge arise., I am inclined to say Reason without emotion is empty, emotions without contexts are blind. Logic can intuit nothing, the emotions can think nothing. Only through their unison can value arise.
Academics, religious apologists, and don't forget philosophers. Isn't this a philosophy forum??
Hmmm, What use is it to ask basic questions of our existence? Curious question. I bit like asking what the point is to ice skating, going round and round in circles. One is either engaged or one isn't. Hard to argue against indifference. Questions like Why are we born to suffer and die? have to be meaningful at the outset for understanding religion.
Part of the response to this question certainly lies in the need to be attuned to basic questions. Kant through Derrida and beyond. Anglo American philosophy is what you get if you ask a logician philosophical questions. An abstraction. Only in continental philosophy does one discover the hidden questions that have always been there but have been pushed out of place by science and technology. See Heidegger's Question Concerning Technology. See Husserl's Cartesian Meditations. See Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety. See........
Look, you are what you read.
Quoting Tom Storm
It is only a fog because it is in the language of these philosophers that the clarity of these issues can be revealed. It is the same fog one has about physics prior to taking any physics classes at all If you are on the outside looking in, it will all seem like bullshit.
Isn't the point of philosophy to examine the hell out of basic assumptions and our glib answers? Isn't it the case that some of the most obvious questions may well be pointless? Is it not also the case that sometimes the pragmatic response to philosophical questions is better than theoretical dead ends or infinities?
How do you know that the transcendent significance you identify is not merely something we/you put there?
Quoting Constance
Not just basic questions. Specific questions which you have already stated are impossible to answer.
Quoting Constance
Whoa there, partner, you are rushing ahead. Did I ask about why we are born and suffer? No. Did I say I wasn't engaged? No. I'm simply expressing a different view to yours. Does it follow from this that I am therefore against all of philosophy? :wink:
Rorty again:
I'm just trying to cut to the chase. Is there any merit in lingering in the mist and miasma of transcendence when we have practical responces we can actually use? You don't have to agree with me, but that's my take on this philosophical conundrum.
So back to my question -
Quoting Tom Storm
If there is no answer then what's next?
If you begin from a position of categorizing, with an intent to bring ethics to heel is a coherent system of thought, then you will be missing the essential idea. Certainly not to take issue with sound thinking, but soundness is about the world, and philosophy taken to its metaphysical threshold has to yield to questions of meaning that are powerful, yet take the matter where understanding has to let go of categorical thinking: One has to witness the world first, is the point, and witnessing cluttered with assumptions that impose clarity that issues from standards that are not fitting to what is witnessed and this leads to nothing but bad thinking. You've read Husserl, so you know he intended his phenomenology to be like a science. He has the most trouble because he cannot liberate the pure phenomenon, his foundation for science, from the nexus of intentionality. I mean, there is nothing "pure" about a phenomenon that is received and constructed in language.
But see philosophers like Michel Henry and Jean Luc Marion: Husserl has to be understood in the blatant, palpable living experience. One simply does not sanely deny, say, the agony of suffering. This is where categorical thinking must yield to a world that has nothing categorical about it.
The general gist lies in first questions, ones that issue from the world. The question Why are we born to suffer and die? is one of these.
Quoting I like sushi
One should prima facie be prudent, given that prudence can on occasion be counter productive. Why? Cut to the chase: being prudent generally maximizes utility. And what good is this? Well, utility, happiness and well being, and it avoids unhappiness, not to put too fine a point on it. There it is. The bottom line, for we have now reached "the world". Why be ethical? It is the same reduction. And by world, it is not important to distinguish between scientific metaphysics, some kind of physicalism or naturalism, and phenomenology. The prima facie ethical injunction against torturing our neighbors finds its essential ethicality regardless.
A scheme? Too messy? Think, again, of Husserl and his claim about the absolute primordiality of the pure phenomenon. He meant this to give science and everydayness a true foundation, but the "messiness" of meaning made this untenable. Ethics is messy, too, entangled in the "states of affairs" of the world. But when we look at vivid examples of ethical normativity, like the prohibition against murder by a thousand cuts, we see something decidedly not messy at all: intense pain. The moral authority of intense pain: this has the kind of authority Husserl was looking for, and it is both epistemic and ethically grounding, for intense pain isitself entirely noncategorical, and yet, it is "originary" and every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition. (Ideas I) Husserl was shooting for closing the epistemic distance between agency and the transcendent object, and this is debatable (one has to go through Heidegger's complaint the he was trying to "walk on water"); but intense pain, is there really any epistemic distance between me and my pain? No, I am arguing. Calling it pain, and describing what causes it, and explaining it, these constitute "distance". And what about the authority this invests into the ethical injunction against handing this out to others? It is an absolute. Not discursively determined and not derivative of anything more basically justificatory. It is not IN the world; it IS the world.
How is this possible? How can a moral injunction find its grounding outside of language? This is the question. It is the kind of thing religion is "essentially" about.
Quoting I like sushi
Liking is not a category until one talks about it. The pleasure of this Hagen Dazs as such is not a categorical "discussion". Value, the general term borrowed from Wittgenstein's Tractatus, which is part of the basic thinking here, does not belong to the mere "facts" of the world.
Quoting I like sushi
No, I am saying. The essence of value is not emotion. The essence of emotion is value. Value is the foundational phenomenal ontology. Quenching thirst is good. Stealing water can be good, can be bad, and there is an indeterminacy of the affair that is lost in entanglements of the case at hand. But this has nothing to do with the thesis here. Here, it is not the utility being weighed, nor some inviolable sense of duty. All of this kind of thing is off the table. I ask a particle physicist what the world IS, what constitutes the world and I will get an account of energic transformations and a lot of technical talk, mostly, if not exclusively, quantitative, but the physics issues, at root, from observation about the behavior witnessed, what the world DOES if you will. My point is simple: Quench your thirst, and observe. Reduce the event to the aesthetic/valuative/ethical essence --- phenomenological reduction, suspending the science and the many assumptions always already in place in the "totality" that makes for the potentiality of possibilities (Heidegger's dasein). There is the residuum, which is "the good" of the quenching. This good, I am arguing, is the essence of ethics and religion. Wittgenstein agrees, indirectly, in the Tractatus.
Quoting I like sushi
And this is directly to the point. If your hand is burning, it IS an ethical issue. All that makes an issue ethical is the some value-at-risk or in-play. All that is required is a value-agency, a person, for example. Boo! is a deflationary attempt to trivialize the world by reducing its affairs to manageable concepts. It is the great sin, if you will, of analytic philosophy.
Quoting I like sushi
It is not about judgment. Being six inches off the ground in love is not making a judgment. Nor is Hagen Dazs (for me, anyway) and nor is having your kidney vivisected without anesthetic. The idea here is that ethics qua ethics is not grounded in judgment. It is grounded in the world, and that would be Wittgenstein's world, not Heidegger's. Heidegger's world is grounded in hermeneutical finitude, onto theologically defined (historically, that is). The world, Witt wrote, is mystical. This is was not received well by Russell and positivists, and Witt told them to take a hike. The good is what I call divinity, he writes in Culture and Value. He understood this.
I think most think as you do, that it is too obvious to say, just as when I ask how things in the world get "into" knowledge claims, they generally scratch their heads. What is missed is that one's experience IS the world. Events are IN the world, and these are hermeneutically indeterminate, but qualities, the being appeared to redly quale, say, ARE the world. The trouble with qualia is that minus the contextuality of talking about it, there is nothing "said". And Dennett was right about this ( I seem to recall); but value qualia is a very different notion. Pain "speaks". It speaks the defeasable injunction NOT to do something. This prohibition issues first from the world, the qualitative actualities that our existence encounters.
Quoting I like sushi
It is not a matter of ethics. It is one of metaethics, the nature of ethics. And hence, the nature of religion.
Quoting I like sushi
To be clear, emotion, logic, affectivity, reason, pragmatics, and so on, these are analytic terms. Value does not exist. It is a dimension of our existence discovered in the "openness" made by language (gelassenheit). Emotion is not separable from logic because the analysis that produces categorical thought is an analytical imposition. You know, there is no "logic".
Sticky wicket. And as to two sides of the same coin, for me, that is epistemology and ontology. To be is to be known. A cat is not a cat until I bring catness to the cat. Only one thing I can think of that stands as its own presupposition, and that is value-in-the-world: The good cannot itself be bad any more than modus ponens can be a contradiction.
Quoting I like sushi
I quite agree. Reason without emotion is an abstraction. One can think about reason independently, of course, just as we think about knitting without thinking about the molecular structure of the material. But knitting and physics are taking the world "as" these. The world sustains many interpretative values at once about the "same thing" (though this same thing is transcendental and under erasure, as Derrida put it). The question is, is there anything that can be acknowledged as truly primordial, as God is for many? This is value, though I do not expect to be agreed with on this. Value as such is absolute.
But the step further to which I have found History has brought us, is that all appearance (phenomenal) is fleeting, including the ego; not present, not that which we can be certain of as ontologically ultimately real, not that place upon which we hang our hats, but just another appearance, only seemingly special because of its consistency etc. (Brief read of Being and Time shows a deeper complexity...but just of deeper reconstruction kf the structures of mind; appearance reconstructing appearance; not an understanding of the simple truth. Yes, everything I write or think is the same. And you, etc.)
What Husserl was really after, and reached very far, far enough to get us here, was the being of this organism which we identify in the world of appearance as human (let alone, as image of God), and thus far our ignorance (arrogance?) has blinded us from the simple truth. The being of this organism is this organism being. Not in the appearances cast by the images, specially evolved and structured, in its memory, forming a system called Mind, tapped directly into the animal's feelings, senses, drives, movements.
But there is no escaping appearance. I am not a believer of any religious dogma, but, this attachment to the images appearing in our inner imaging sense is our original sin. We are banished from Nature and destined to construct and project knowledge--good and evil, this and that.
From Husserl, and through Freud, and, Derrida, etc, etc,(I'm not going to list the thousands of thinkers) we can leap away from attachment to all appearance, even from I, my so called self; and through philosopy--not the essence of religion with its precarious myth and ritual--and at least "knowingly" carry on the business of the phenomenal (and noumenal; both Mind), at least cognizant of "really" (whatever that means in a world without "meaning") being an animal being, even if obstructed from being aware-ing of it in its presence.
This makes ethics essentially a meaningless term if it can mean anything. I cannot agree nor see the point in pretending to do this.
Either way, if you happen to write an in-depth paper about this I would interested enough to read it.
Thanks again for your time
One has to know how to judge what pointlessness is. You seem to take a lack of definitive answers to things as evidence that they have been exhaustively examined and deemed pointless. But this is not where arguments lead. They rather show us that all along we really didn't know what the questions were. We thought we did, but we were in that world of glibness and bad assumptions and idle talk and banter. Why not read Heidegger's Being and Time to find out? You know, he breaks radically with tradition, and so one can read him with a sense of an entirely different approach. Husserl is like this as well. See how he begins his Cartesian Meditations:
[i]Philosophy wisdom (sagesse) is the philosophizer's quite personal affair. It must
arise as his wisdom, as his self-acquired knowledge tending
toward universality, a knowledge for which he can answer from
the beginning, and at each step, by virtue of his own absolute
insights. If I have decided to live with this as my aim the
decision that alone can start me on the course of a
philosophical development [u]I have thereby chosen to begin in absolute
poverty, with an absolute lack of knowledge[/u]. Beginning thus,
obviously one of the first things I ought to do is reflect on how
I might find a method for going on, a method that promises to
lead to genuine knowing.[/i]
You will NEVER find an analytic philosopher talking like this.
Husserl will find a great deal of resistance, but, as he says, it is a "personal affair" of the reader. One is taken to a world of inquiry and one has to go there to be rid of the "tranquilized" existence of "idle talk" (Heidegger, Being In As Such). Heidegger sounds just like someone you could relate to. Two, three months study and you would start to see what it is really like to be free of "glib answers."
Quoting Tom Storm
Exactly what I am talking about. It is argued, that is how. One has to read the arguments, and they are thick and difficult. Kant dominated philosophy for a hundred years, and still does, indirectly. This is for a very good reason. One has to read The Critique of Pure Reason. It'll drive you a bit insane, but in the end, you will be a very different thinking person.
Quoting Tom Storm
Impossible without drastically modifying common sense, that is. It is not the answers that matternearly so much as it is the questions; the world does not wear its philosophical insights on its sleeve. Rather, insight is constructed out of the language of engagement, like everything else. One engages through inquiry, and discovers a new world of "openness" which is one's existence: freedom is our essence (Heidegger). A question IS freedom. If you find this puzzling, it can be argued if you are interested.
What is religion? It is the response to the foundational indeterminacy of our existence, above all, ethical indeterminacy. This is not merely a proposition being either true of false. It is a revelation about one's existence. This is the answer to your Why bother? question. This argument about the essence of religion, if followed through, reveals that in the midst in our living affairs, there is the gravitas of religion, without the churchy fetishes and bad metaphysics. Consider what religion does: it takes this embodied finitude that issues from, as Heidegger put it, the "potentiality of possibilities" of our inherited language and culture, and attempts place human signification in an absolute setting in an effort to resolve the matter of our joys and sufferings: The joys are now consummated; and the sufferings redeemed. This can be, again, argued. See the OP: there is an absolute discovered in the analysis of our everydayness. One is already IN an absolute setting!
Quoting Tom Storm
I had read, " We have more than enough to work with in order to talk meaningfully about morality. Leave transcendence to the academics and the religious apologists" to mean you had no interest in basic questions. Oh well.
Quoting Tom Storm
Heh, heh, philosophy....useful?? One has to think of it in Husserl's terms above: It is a personal engagement into the questions of one's own (and others') existence. This openness I speak of (derivative, of course, of those I read. And they derived from and of what they read), this indeterminacy, is US. I try to make this clear to myself constantly: me and my world of rising early in the morning, making breakfast, and the calling, the talking, the cares and interests rising and falling during the day, and so on: THIS is a life, a human existence. Physics cannot discuss this, and if it tries it commits the absolute worst "sin" to the integrity of what we are. Take this Heideggerian "dasein" and put it under the analytic microscope, and now you have an ontology. Taking my trash to the corner for pick up is now an ontological event, not a physical incident. Remember, I often say, ALL one has ever witnessed in the world is phenomena. Impossible to witness anything else, for a phenomenon is "to be wittnessed."
Anyway, of course, I understand this immediate rejection of "transcendental" talk. But transcendence is always already there in the world, and all of those practical matters rest with this openness of our existence. The only issue is whether one takes an interest. You know, starry night, one looks up at the night sky (aka, the inside of one's cranium), and wonders. Wondering deeply enough, one discovers religion. One wonders thoughtfully enough, one moves to Kierkegaard. Then Kierkegaard opens the door to one's self.
Quoting Tom Storm
See the above.
And thanks for yours, for reading. One parting thought, though. Can't be helped:
Thrown into a setting of wretched suffering then death. If this were a given a social setting, then it would be "to arms" against it. We would be outraged and heartbroken and would seek remedy and justice. You know, innocent child kidnapped and "things done" to the child: the very idea makes us shudder with disgust. Such is suffering, and we all are "thrown" into it. And yet, when the phenomenon is lifted out of its context of familiarity, as is done when analysis discovers "responsibility and accountability" empty into indeterminacy at the basic level, this moral dimension does not simply vanish. And it is not just the outrage, the "boo" factor: It is what the outrage is about: The suffering itself.
Anyway, I will shut up. Thanks again.
If the whole affair were not entirely set against radical indeterminacy, then I would agree. Caring in a truly finite setting only has a finitude of redress, a foundation that could be spoken and laid out clearly as one would talk about the nature of a bank teller or fence post: just look in the dictionary and there it is. But the "binding a community in shared values, narratives, etc." begs more basic questions: what is a value? Why bother to bind? What are these narratives there for? Look in a dictionary, and you find more questions just like these. This is because all of our affairs lack a final vocabulary, as Rorty put it, and this "lack" is not simple definitional; it is existential. I mean, ask why we bind, and you may follow Hobbes or Rouseau in some social contract theory, and this justified social binding, the question of why bother in the first place looms large. It is for protection, greater security against threats, in short, it has greater utility than not binding. So what are threats about and why the need for security, and so on? You see, ALL such matters reduce to the ethical structure of our existence: we are "built" to care, and caring refers us directly to what is IN existence to care about: the joys, pleasures, the wretched suffering and terrors.
I think this clear enough. Analysis always goes to the most basic questions. Here we have arrived at the most basic analysis of religion, what it essentially is, and this is a littl difficult: it is not about fear, simply. Think of Ahab from Moby Dick. He is not pursuing in hateful revenge a whale that took his leg. He wants what is "behind" the4 whale. The Being that was there prior to whale and leg that gave forth the reality of the horrors of flesh being torn and shredded. It is the reality that is our world. The plague must have been lovely; and being consumed alive by fire speaks for itself. But this fills the world, saturates it, thinking of the tonnage of suffering our current existence emerged from. Same is true for love, happiness, pleasure, and so on. This is the value dimension of our existence.
Value: what IS it? This is THE question of religion. What is the good and the bad of ethics? There is a way to address this, but it takes analysis.
That's not really what I am saying. That was me reframing your point about the epistemic hopelessness before us. Which I take to be the similar Rorty's view that everything we believe is essentially a product of contingency - of culture and shared linguistic practice. The point is to move on and get things done.
Quoting Constance
Sure. That's pretty much what I say too. It's a post-Kantian world. But the point remains; what is next?
Quoting Constance
Heidegger's unpacking of our mistakes and assumptions since Plato and all the advanced theorising about being that this entailed, didn't prevent him from getting involved with the ultimate in glib answers, Nazism. So even Heidegger had to step away from theory and his remarkable, nascent post-moderism - what hope for the rest of us?
Quoting Constance
This sounds more like an aesthetic response.
You're right that I don't take much of an interest in transcendence. As a reluctant post-modernist (by culture) I don't think it is possible to arrive at any conclusions about reality - just tentative theories and speculations. Most of which are cheap.
Quoting Constance
Hmmm. You sound like a romantic. The point of philosophy is how much I as an individual need to engage with it, not whether it is good for the world or whether Heidegger or Kant were revolutionary thinkers. These are very different matters. I am primarily interested in what I need from philosophy.
I doubt most people who read Heidegger understand him or gain a useful reading of him. Even academics seem to struggle. I think this is material for formal study, not for someone like me who doesn't read philosophy or have time.
Quoting Constance
I don't think you have really answered this question.
Enjoyed the chat. :up:
Quoting Tom Storm
Same here.:ok:
Wait a minute. You are reading Husserl? And not Wiki'ing him? This is earth shattering! I'll get back to you, soon. A bit busy now.
Edit:
Can I just share this thought having emerged from Cartesian...so far. I'm not half done. It's short but I'm an extremely patient reader. Impatient writer. Says something about my own loud mouth ego.
Anyway, take a year to reply, but so you know where I'm wandering...
Here's the thought:
H's TransEgo is not a return to organic aware-ing or conscious living (I think, though expressed in different terms, that's what he thinks he's providing a method to reach), but rather, TransEgo is an experience mediated by mind. Why? Because ego--no matter how polished up-- is still assumed the experiencer. Organic aware-ing has no agent. It is aware-ing. Not I am aware-ing; and not I am aware-ing in the third person. Rather, real organic consciousness or being is the activity of present aware-ing. Not, some imagined agent doing the aware-ing.
What he says in his earlier works he moves away from in later works. His views are progressed and refined so taking something like Ideas as a comprehensive representation of his thoughts can be extremely misleading (and in some cases flat out wrong).
Crisis was the last thing he wrote but he died because its completion.
He is one of the few cases where I would say you need to read overviews of others who have done the scholarly work because it is a lifetime's work to study everything he did with any rigor. I myself have read overviews of Ideas, have read Crisis with rigor, and got halfway through Logical Investigations sometime ago (so need to restart that when I get a chance).
I do believe Heidegger did a good job of explicating some of what Husserl was pointing at, but in general feel quite strongly that he went off in the wrong direction (likely due to the differences they had in background - one logical and science based, the other more historic and religious). That is just my opinion though. I am also suspicious that Heidegger partly lifted the vast majority of his ideas from Husserl (there is apparently evidence of this from Husserl's unpublished work predating Being & Time) and doubled down on this given the good chance that Husserl's work would be effectively wiped from history due to the political climate. It may appear that Husserl adopts some terminology from Heidegger in Crisis but (as I mentioned) there is some evidence that the opposite may well be the case for some of the terminological jargon used by Heidegger.
In short, Heidegger leaned hard into the linguistic turn and Husserl warned about this language focus as potentially misguiding the phenomenological cause (as a science of consciousness). Husserl was very much against psychologism as was Heidegger ... somewhere though there was a quite severe disconnect between their views and Heidegger (as obtuse as he was) did a far better job of expressing his in a more tangible manner most of the time.
How about first on my own, allow myself to explore parallels that might be buried by both the author and his disciples/critics, deliberately or neglegently, then see what the experts say, and, read again?
Don't misread me. I recognize the futility of embarking down the wrong path. That's probably what you're warning against. And of claiming to speak for Husserl without having a clue. I don't say this enough because it will sound inauthentic, but under my breath almost every utterance is prefaced with, "I stand to be corrected, but...". It's just easier and faster to text as if you know. Doesn't that apply to everyone in varying degrees?
In fairness to conventional logic, for me, that Gettier problem doesn't necessarily sway me. If a misreading of Husserl, nonetheless advances me to a reasonably justified belief, a temporary settlement in what is going to be a perpetual pursuit anyway, it's not the end of the world.
Thank you. I appreciate the information and do recognize that you are correct and I am being reckless.
That is ALWAYS my approach. It does take considerably more effort though. Meaning at least read something firsthand they have done before approaching them through secondary sources.
Nietzsche is a good example of exactly how much you can get out of self-study. I was reading Beyond Good and Evil then quickly realised I needed to read The Genealogy of Morals and then Birth of Tragedy ... then I realised I needed to read Aristotle's poetics. Only then could I fully grasp Beyond Good and Evil because I had a better understanding of where his ideas developed from and followed the direct line of thinking back to its origins.
I very much doubt I would have gained a better understand by reading secondary sources on Beyond Good and Evil.
A fence post has identifiable qualities that define it as a fence post. Some qualities are essential for something to function as a fence post. A post must be rigid enough to support a fence, for example. Other qualities are not essential.
For a religion to function it must provide meaning, which it supplies with grand narratives, shared values, moral codes, etc etc. The binding is desirable and meaningful. Transcendence, on the other hand, is not essential, and transcendence does not require religion.
Not only do you and I agree. But I remembered that Husserl prescribes same. Duh. What is a phenomenological (Husserlian) approach to Husserl, if not one which starts from scratch?
"I have thereby chosen to begin in absolute
poverty, with an absolute lack of knowledge." ---Husserl's intro to Cartesian Mediatations
Yes, religion is an institution like anything else, and it has it's utility. But one can say this of ANY institution. GM makes automobiles and UPS delivers packages. These bind, have narratives, rules, as well. The question is, what is this institution religion all about?
Husserl would ask you not to use the term "organic aware-ing" simply because something being organic refers us to the naturalism that one has to suspend in the reduction. The hardest part of phenomenology is making the "qualitative movement" of Kierkegaard's away from naturalistic thinking. The transcendental ego goes back to Kant and his transcendental unity of apperception. Heidegger is only partly aligned with this: The ontology of dasein is structurally "me" and mine": See Hubert Dreyfus' Being in the World, where he writes (and I will give you the long paragraph since you have real interest) under the heading Consciousness is not a Conscious Subject:
[i]Since, as Heidegger holds, getting the right approach is crucial, we
must stop here to get the right approach to Dasein. "Dasein" in
colloquial German can mean "everyday human existence," and so
Heidegger uses the term to refer to human being. But we are not
to think of Dasein as a conscious subject. Many interpreters make
just this mistake. They see Heidegger as an "existential
phenomenologist," which means to them an edifying elaboration
of Husserl. The most famous version of this mistake is Sartre's
brilliant but misguided reformulation of Being and Time into a
theory of consciousness in Being and Nothingness. Other
interpreters have followed the same line. Dagfinn F0llesdal,
one of the best interpreters of Husserl,
justifies his Husserlian reading ofBeingand
Time by pointing out that while Heidegger was working on the
book, he wrote Husserl: "The constituting subject is not nothing,
hence it is something and has being .... The inquiry into the mode
of being of the constituting subject is not to be evaded. "4[u]Heidegger,
however, warns explicitly against thinking ofDasein as a Husserlian
meaning-giving transcendental subject:[/u] "One of our first tasks will
be to prove that ifwe posit an 'I' or subject as that which is primarily
given, we shall completely miss the phenomenal content ofDasein"
(72) [46].[/i]
Sartre makes a similar complaint in his famous Transcendence of the Ego, though he was defending something very different and Cartesian. Heidegger did not think a singular "primordial" ontology was possible, and this is a big part of his thinking: ontology is "equiprimoridal" meaning at the basic level of analysis, consciousness as Being qua being never shows up. Onology is about the being of beings, and this simply takes us to an examination the most basic framework of discussion, not a soul, something which would lie outside of where the reduction is able to go. Consciousness is not a phenomenon, I think puts it simply. But me and mine, these do show up as a structural; features of experience: this lamp I witness belongs to MY dasein, not yours or the postman's. There is a paper on this that Dreyfus goes after, by John Huageland, "Heidegger on Being a Person" which I have and Haugeland tries to make dasein into an institutional entity, a public gathering of collective thinking, giving no heed to the "egoic center" of experience. Haugeland draws on Heidegger's notion of das man, the world of general affairs we ARE when we speak and interact in the usual ways. His ontology asks us to rise above this "tranquilized" state of acceptance without question, but he is adamant about the original integrity of this "the they". We ARE this institutional interface in the world, and General Motors and ham and eggs for breakfast is part of the conditions of our "being there" and thus IN a constitutive analysis of our existence. I think of Hirsch's concept of cultural literacy, which conservatives love so much as it curtails cultural acceptance down to a finite body of identity features that belong to us-as-a-culture or a race, is what Heidegger had in mind when he described human dasein, and Haugeland was right about this. (One can see here why Heidegger actually had high hopes, initially, for the Nazis and the "volkism" that was circulating at that time throughout Germany. Does Being and Time promote national socialism? Yes, in a way, I think.)
But take Husserl's reduction more seriously, I say, down to the wire where language ceases to be in control at all in the job of encompassing what lies before one as a perceiving agency. Heidegger drops the transcendent ego, and replaces it with hermeneutics (the equiprimordiality of ontology), but has he not bypassed the critical move that "affirms" thereness of what is there? This is Michel Henry's point: While Heidegger is right acknowledge that we are "always already" IN a world prior to analytic thinking, a world of "environments" of equipment or utility, that is, of just dealing---this is Heidegger's pragmatism, that ontology lies in this "irreducible" world of non analytic working things out; he is wrong in that he fails to attend to precisely where the reduction takes us: to this "Being" that is not being at all, that is, not belonging to the interpretative language event. To see this critical moment of interface, if you will, talked about at length in Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety, when one steps away from language's "taking as" structure, and, like Walt Wittman, feels the leaves of grass intimately and palpably, one sees the "other" of the world. This other that is radically and impossibly "there". Why impossible? Because it is OUT of Heidegger's being entirely. The scent of a flower is not a problem solved (a pragmatically conceived context of dealing with things) nor a cultural institution nor hermeneutically derived. Terribly difficult to argue this because it is not observable, this being-beyond-being. (I can see Wittgenstein wagging a finger of disapproval: Beyond?)
This is why I say analytic philosophers are good at understanding arguments, but just bad at understanding the world. They refuse to plunge into the life of the world, if you will. The world is a living affair, saturated with meaning that has to be encountered as it is, and this is really what the OP is about: taking the reduction down to where the world itself "speaks" the very nature of ethicality. What IS the normativity of all ethics grounded in in the final most basic "primordiality"? Principles? Feelings? Attitudes? All of these beg the value question.
GM and UPS can brand themselves in various ways, whatever it takes to capture a segment of the market. Religion is all about branding too, just at a grand scale and backed with ultimate authority. It promises salvation but it only needs to deliver meaning.
We don't seem to be going anywhere.
Quoting Constance
Understood. My observation is that, while thinking that the phenomenological reduction ought, also, to bracket Nature, H did not take the phenomenological reduction far enough. It is all "modes" of Mind, including the ego, and all "modes" of the ego, including a so called transcendental ego, which ought to be bracketed so that the practitioner arrives finally at the aware-ing body, not as yet another "mode" of human being for the ego to contemplate or experience, but at being: just being.
Whether or not that aforementioned interpretation of H is even possible to execute is an open question. But I do think, notwithstanding H's language, that such being is what he was truly after. Like everyone from Plato to Descaryes, to Heidegger, he stopped just short of transcending Mind, because of attachment to ego.
Quoting Constance
Isn't SK's infinite resignation, ultimately acceptance that ego and its attachments are not the ulrimate; that ego has no means of grasping the ultimate; and, his leap and teleological suspensions, like N, H, H and S to follow, prescribed methods to "transcend" that ultimately incapable ego, for [a more authentic way of] being [one with God (for SK) or Truth (TE for H1, Dasein for H2, Good faith for S)? Yes, I am over generalizing their processes and methods. But even if unwittingly, they are all recognizing human perception is mediated, desire constructed; we need a means to return to unmediated sensation and organic drives?
Quoting Constance. Right. Because a conscious subject is still Mind and its mistaken being, the ego. But real being is not. Yet, H2 goes on to describe some complex construction more burdened by ego and its constructions than what preceded him. This I submi
Quoting Constance And so H2 recognized the "problem" H1 encounters when he imbues the ego with a residual reality after shaving off most of its Fiction by way of the brilliant Transcendental Phenomenology. H2 acts as if he hasn't done the same. But as long as Dasein has "qualities" we can "know" it is "away from" Truth and Reality.
Quoting Constance
I should be reiterating this incessantly, but especially now. I did read Being and Time, once, slowly. A wealth of tools it added to my mind's locus in History. But I am so far from being able to understand him, that I should just re-read and reserve comment.
However, Heidegger's seems an excellent "ology" of how [the constructions and projections of] Mind and its autonomous processes function. And that both on the local level of individual minds (psychology) and universal mind, history or culture (sociology). Yes, he is more ontological in approach but he's right, a primordial ontology cannot be made, because, being pri.ordial, it pre-exists both maker and making. So his is a restructuring for the purposes of projection into the world, of the deepest structures of Signifiers and their dynamics and there function. But they are still signifiers about signifiers. Good as it is.
Quoting Constance
Where language ceases, and yet he clings to a very feature of language, the Subject, then purports it to be outside of language. I say he really means the aware-ing our body has of its sensations, drives, bonding, and movements, and tge feelings associated with each unbound by language. That being is necessarily no ego, no lingering objects, no relationship thereto qua objects; transcendental or otherwise.
I am grateful that you already forgive my misuse of terms which is beyond the understandably (pedantic?) orthodox approach, and even places you at potential ridicule for being open. So I apologize for persistently responding not with total agreement but rather agreement with modifications. Believe me, I am being highly moved by your input. I hope that provides some gratification for your honorable efforts.
Please feel free to move on, although I welcome your further input.
Quoting praxis
I think it is going splendidly. An argument is a conversation. So religion promises salvation. But I am curious, salvation from what? Do people think they need to be "saved" from something?
We want to be saved from our suffering, don't we?
In the 30s (of CM) H recognizes that precondition for perceiving objects is data input. I had to learn what an apple is. Now I see a "apple" unified as perception in one ego. Good.
But what he didnt carry far enough is that therefore any intellectual exercise whose aim it is to grasp the bare truth, cannot, because it involves the mind, which is already preconditioning the process.
I think without Mind in the human form, the necessary relationship that the human animal has with say, an apple, to unify it and or separate it for that animal as food, is the pre-existent condition which allows us to visually sense, in the real world, as a real "thing" that fruit, and to eat it (rather than experience it as a blob of atoms say, or an undifferentiated oneness with the observer).
Both the body and the apple are real, sensor and sensed, but that I even need to explain and understand it that way, and all of the endless concommitant Narratives that flow out of that, from biology, to gravity, to botany, nutrition, Adam, Shakespeare, and Johnny Appleseed, are all layers of constructed representations of that real, unspeakable sensation.
It is similar for the body as an object sensed (what we call ourselves). What it really is is its drives sensations bonds feelings movements, but that I even need to explain and understand it that way, and all of the endless concommitant Narratives that flow out of that, like, desire, emotions, neuroses, and now, an ego to unify and structure those as belonging to the body, yet they are all just layers of constructed representations of that real, unspeakable body being.
See Nozick's thought experiment involving The Experience Machine.
It was created as an argument against hedonism but does reveal enough to show the importance of experiencing reality (with its suffering) over pleasurable experiences that are disconnected from reality.
Quoting praxis
Sure. But then the whole matter turns on suffering and the ethical/aesthetic dimension of our existence. This is in the OP. GM solves fairly straight forward problems, hires a legion of engineers and product designers, and so on. But religion reaches into metaphysics because the relief sought here is not IN our existence; it IS our existence. You are right, of course, about the narratives and rituals that bind people together, but, as with GM, there is this underlying condition, a need, that is being addressed that itself is NOT part of the pragmatic apparatus that responds to this, but is PRIOR to this. For GM it is a practical matter entirely. For religion it is existential, and this requires inquiry to move into an existential analysis, not merely a practical one.
So then, what is the existential analysis of suffering? Suffering, pleasure, misery and happiness and all of the entangled nuances of our ethical and aesthetic affairs fall under the general category of value. Religion's essence then is determined by what we can say about value-in-being, or the "pure reduced phenomenon" of value, which simply means we are not looking at the many contingencies that complicate instantiations of value that occur all the time. Value is going to be an apriori analysis into the universality and apodicticity of value-in-the world.
Thus far, does this make sense to you?
Im sure youve noticed that religions tend to be dogmatic and not very open to analysis. Its dogmatic for essentially the same reason that GM is dogmatic in its branding.
The whole point here is to give analysis to that which popular religions are dogmatic about. To look beneath all those churchy fetishes. What is a fetish? It is a practice, and object, anything, really, that is parasitic on an original source of value, and they can completely dominate to the point where the original gets lost in the entanglement. What is religion beneath all of that all of that historical contrivance and bad metaphysics? Something truly primordial, like logic is primordial to thought.
If religion is bad metaphysics and such, then isnt it a step away from what you claim is the primordial beneath it?
Is the essence of a car the materials its composed of or the function is serves, namely locomotion.
You say "... the essence of religion was...". Is it no longer the essence, or was realizing the whole not religion before? In any case, religion isn't needed to realize the whole, and it's not essential for religion to facilitate realizing the whole. I would argue that religion is anti-enlightenment in nature because enlightenment leads to independence. Moral development leads to independence so that is also opposed to the essence of religion.
Quoting praxis
Well, you're not going to like this answer, but the question about the essence of something doesn't belong to anglo american analytic philosophy, something most here associate with (whether they know it or not). Rather, it is a concern of continental philosophy which deals with metaphysics, and the whole affair of philosophy's place in the world is very differently determined. So, having prepared you, Since religion IS metaphysics, the thematic interests are limited. But take the car you mention: many ways you can look at this, that is, many contexts that can be the frame of talk about the "essence" of a car. Is it merely locomotion? Or entertainment? Or purely practical? Perhaps what a car IS refers to its mechanical working parts. Perhaps a context of human evolution, a car among the most contemporary expressions of survival and reproduction; or the way a car is an extension of the body's own working parts (like Marshall McLuhan put it). One can go on all day, I suppose. But the essence of a car is so bound to our cultural, scientific entanglements in the world, it is hard to abstract from these to something truly primordial about a car being what it is. It is "equiprimoridal" in its essence. It is an odd sounding word, but I think the idea rather clear. All of our cultural institutions are like this. What is the essence of, say, marriage? Or science? A library? A restaurant? Anything you can name sustains multiple candidates.
What would it be like for something to have its essence in a singular primordiality? I am arguing that religion is like this. This is the primordiality of value. One really should read a bit from Wittgenstein's Tractatus to see where this argument has its basis (though, God forbid HE discuss it. Witt wanted nothing to do with the way philosophy mangled and distorted something so important). Ethics deals with the GOOD, and alas, the BAD, in capital letters to steer clear from the contingent good and bad, like a good chair or bad gps reception.
What IS the metaethical "good and bad"? It is far stranger than people know, for attention is not on the entanglements of the world. ONLY the pure phenomenon. What does this mean? Why did Wittgenstein call the good divinity? And not to be found in the "states of affairs" of the world? Most have there eyes closed to this question. It is a metaethical question, this primordiality, this that "stands as its own presupposition."
Like epistemology, one has to, well, stare at this problem to understand it, what Heidegger called meditative thinking. It's peculiar nature lies in it NOT being discursively constructed. One is asked to literally stand before the world and describe what is "there". That's phenomenology.
I dont recall much about it but years ago I read something to the effect that the death of religion is due to the categorization of value. Your one candidate became many.
Unintentionally.
Quoting praxis
How then? If we are even thinking of approximately the same thing, not regarding the "whole" so much, but in what we mean by "realizing"? Since you appear to dismiss the moral approach to realizing the whole (and I agree). And you dismiss the religious approach (with which I also agree) and seem to couple it with the "essence of religion" in your dismissal; then how? By reason? By something Cartesian-like? Im interested in your idea, but even if you didnt mean reason, may as well address it.
How can reason, a product and instrument of, and necessitated by, the "emergence" of difference, take you beyond difference? Reason trades in difference; the essence we are after is a "return" to a natural wholeness.
You're right that religion can't help; it's worse than the best philosophical methods, but the essence of religion is, to my current belief, exactly that. It's the final necessary turn away from all particulars, even reason, and a return (not transcendance) to natural reality (for the conventionally religious, a return to God or God's creation; for me a return to organic nature).
Reason keeps the being attuned to the becomings; because reason is no less constructed and projected. It is only by humbly (only because it requires/involves disregarding the subject) returning to being that we can realize our wholeness undisplaced by the veil of the multiform particulars.
Quoting praxis
I'm not sure enlightenment leads to independence. How? While I await, I'll mention, I think it's almost the opposite. Attachment to ego and other differences creates a strong incentive to treat one's body as the one and only end. While realization that reality is in the living being and not the ego and its desires; that the latter are not activities on behalf of the body, but rather, a desire for attention, for the Subject to be heard by and influence others, then although the subjects voice can never be silenced, it's narrative will shift naturally to the organism and the species. The cacophony of "me" will be curbed and that is the essence of religion.
Philosophy cannot as effectively silence the ego. Descartes provides an example; Husserl too; and probably Heidegger. And these were the ones whose aim it was to get down to the most real unconstructed version of a human being.
This I think is where disclosure of being becomes radical and impossible, the impossible is what you have in mind, and I don't mean this in a critical way, but in a way that reveals the true nature of the problem. Heidegger is always there wagging a finger of disapproval: even in your most profound intimation of being freed by the method of bracketing, and one understands freedom and being outside the totality language and culture, one cannot reduce agency to that of an infant or a feral adult: what might they be able to "think" of their "being" intimations. Frankly, they would not only not think about them, but they would not have such intimations. Even Thic Quan Duc's masterful freedom from physicality, REQUIRES language to manifest this freedom in the understanding. Every possibility of experience for a person (dasein), because it is an experience, is going to have to go through Heidegger's thoughts about this: We are never free from language in understanding something. Rather, language MAKES freedom possible because words are inherently open. Bracketing occurs within the broader scheme of language possibilities, and philosophy itself is a discursive disclosure of the world. It always comes back to this: as outside of the meaning possibilities as an insight might seem to be, it occurs not only within a context of thought, but is made possible by the context of thought.
I am only disagreeing with the idea that the no holds barred reduction cannot and should not be conceived as free of language. One IS language. Does this mean that we thereby confine disclosure to the Totality of finite culture and its language possiblities? Of course not, firstly because language is intrinsically open. But it really DOES depend on the thinker/experiencer: Some stand in this openness, like Heidegger, and really have no, well, "intimations of immortality" at all. Others have such intimations. But certain things cannot be ignored and are there for all to see, and one is that whatever intuitions one has about the world, it occurs in the understanding as thought. Thought meets the world and in this itself.
Quoting ENOAH
I never though Kierkegaard really understood ethics because he was, as everyone during his time, preoccupied by Hegel's rationalism. To really understand K one would have to deeply into Hegel, something I have put off for a long time. K clearly held ethics in contempt, as if ethics were simply the rules we lay down. Metaethics for him is exemplified by Abraham's willingness to kill Isaac, faith so implicit and absolute, it is like breathing. But it is a commandment from God that supersedes all other "commandments" of categorical ethics. Why does K not see that the "commandment" of normal ethics itself possesses the divine commandment? This is one way to state the central idea of the OP.
But on the other hand, remember that infinite resignation is not a description of the knight of faith. To understand K on this is not easy, for me, anyway. I have most difficutly with the absurd. See his account to the lad who in love and the love is hopeless. The absurd is to believe in it anyway. Now, this is not meant as a way to live life in ordinary affairs. It is meant to be a way to explain Abraham: It is insane, or absurd, to believe that Isaac will be spared, and yet, in K's reading, Abraham believes this implicitly! And so it is with God and faith: The idea of a perfectly redemptive God is absurd (just like the lad believing he has a chance with the princess), yet the knight of faith has no question at all. She maintains a normal life, but "inwardly" there is absolute faith.
K puts the matter to faith. I put the matter to "observation" and philosophy: once the reduction takes us down to the existential core of ethics, the "pure" phenomenon (and to remind, there really is no such thing as this. It is discovered by the understanding in the reduction) acknowledged in the burn, the broken bone, the joy and the pleasure, and so on, we find an element of the absolute (see Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics. It's online).
It is what it is because it is an absolute. Value propositions qua value possess the same apodicticity of logic: universality and certainty. Value-in-the-world is as coercive as logical form itself. Logic, of course, is empty, an existential nullity. I mean, even if there were actually something in the world called logic, it would tell us nothing beyond the tautological nature of itself. But value is IN existence, and thus our everyday ethics, the ordinary matters of keeping promises and not acting horribly to others, and all the talk about utility and deontological duty, embodies a dimension of existence that is apodictic.
This is exactly what God in its essence IS.
To say that value is an absolute, and that its IN existence, that its exactly what God in its essence IS, is completely meaningless to me. If it has meaning I dont see why you couldnt express that meaning.
Then Heidegger is not far from the hypothesis I currently believe, because I do not disagree.
I'm just suggesting that Husserl admit that our inability to bring agency, or the Agent, into Reality or Being doesn't mean we arbitrarily designate the furthest edge of agency, as Being. Thats exactly the problem.
If the Agent as TransEgo is the "purest" form of human being why can't the Agent experience "itself" without "intimations"? Why? Because there is no Agent; there is only intimations. And, not beyond, but behind or before those intimations, there is Real Being, no attributes nor expressions, just the present participle pure and simple.
H is describing a process of the laws and dynamics of Mind. He is mistaking the grammatically necessary subject as a central being with will and authority; that which experiences. But really, there is no
such Agent.
That is why this discussion is relevant to the subject matter at hand. As far as H in his transcendental phenomenological reduction gets is the end of philosophy and the beginning of the need for some other mechanism to surpass intimations in order to get at this real being pure and simple. H knows it cannot be done (here, the ultimate infinite resignation). At least stop there, or intuit, as SK did, that the so-called transcendental leap (but it's not, it's a return to earth) is a "religious" movement; and neither ethical nor logical.
Quoting Constance
That we humans must "understand" something in order for it to be the Truth, is not something I accept. I'm not sure about Thic Quan Duc, but I would think, the hypothetical Zen master who hypothetically succeeds at executing what I'm suggesting to be the essence of religion, (that is, has a "glimpse" into being unadulterated by becoming) does not admit to any ability to manifest that experience in language. But on contrary, admits that it is necessarily not manifested. Projection is what takes the human experience out of "eternity" of presence and into the "not real" world of history or time.
Quoting Constance
Are you sure words aren't the opposite? They are the limiting adjunct we superimpose upon that which is inherently open. That's the whole problem. That's why phenomenology to begin with.
Thought constructs the world and in the process displaces any real being with the grammar of a self.
Quoting Constance
Because "ethics"--as SK used that tool--signified the universal conventions made by humans over time. The so called human ethics of a matter are inapplicable to the Ultimate Truth. I agree with you that Ethics is ultimately metaphysics, but both ethics and metaphysics are conditional truths applying and understood within the world of constructions and projections. So called God, or ultimate reality, can not be subjected to the logic of words, nor can It be understood. It must be accessed by be-ing not by knowing. TPR is still a process of knowing.
Quoting Constance
I agree that's how SK presented his intuition--but as for H, I extrapolate on SK here and suggest that what he really meant was that access to the Ultimate (for him, Christ) is by suspending this notion of reason, logic, justified belief because the ultimate is in something utterly other than that.
Make real. Realizing that youre awake, for example.
For the rest, maybe its enough to say that I make a distinction between religion and spirituality. You and Constance dont seem to make that distinction. I think religion can begin with spirituality, but it can also be entirely contrived.
Judging from your post Id say that youre spiritual but not religious.
I am aware. I don't think it is dialectically unachievable. It just takes the right leading questions and a willingness to follow through.
Question: there are facts of the world, mere facts, like those found in everydayness and science. It is a fact that baseball is a game and that moths are attracted to light, and on and on. An infinite number. Putting aside the many issues about facts, how they align with the world, the nature of the knowledge relationship between a fact knowing agency and that which facts are "about" and so on, and bringing attention solely to "value facts," the kind of thing Wittgenstein insisted there was no such thing as (putting aside his complaint and allowing facts to include the value that attends the "mere" factuality. I think his definition of a fact in the Tractatus is arbitrarily narrow). All facts are value facts, simply because a fact is apprehended in a value constituting system, perception; but this we put aside as well. Later but not now, for the value facts I want to look closely at are those facts that exhibit the strongest presence of the value, simply to make the case poignant and clear.
So the first step is to recognize that value facts are qualitatively distinct from, call them, natural facts or plain facts or "states of affairs". An explicit value fact would be something expressed in the proposition, "This sprained ankle is killing me," or " I'm in love," or, "This Hagen Dazs is so good!" The first question is this: what is the difference between natural facts (as Husserl called them) and value facts?
Fair enough. However, to clarify, I think that I have arrived at most of my hypotheses following the reasoning of thinkers both east and west, and not following any devotion, etc. Nor are such hypotheses dualistic. In fact, I would reject a "soul" "spirit" and the "spiritual."
But I understand your point, and that you may already have contemplated that, using "spiritual" as perhaps the "religious studies" version of metaphysics.
The former is supposed to be free of ethical principles, values, or goals.
I know what you mean but the term doesn't bother me. I guess that I think of it as simply resolving existential crisis. Philosophy, science, religion, and other disciplines can all help, in my experience.
Agreed
A principle in normative ethics is contrasted with ordinary pragmatic normativity, as with where one should turn the faucet knob clockwise for the water to flow, and the like. Someone like Dewey might take issue with this, but this really is not the point. All normativity is pragmatic. Anyway, pragmatics is contingent on what needs to be done, but ethics has a noncontingent property, which is what this idea is about. And if it's a matter of contingency, the factual content can be exhaustively accounted for in the mere facts that are there. The "fact" is, my shoe is untied. Examine the evidence empirically, do an analysis of the apriority of the proposition's structure if you like, even deconstruct the terms in play (attend to the "differance" in the meaning generative interdependence of words), and in the end this fact will have been exhaustively analyzed. Literally nothing left to say. This is Wittgenstein's "state of affairs," finite, delimited and exhaustible. There certainly will be more to say in some future and unseen context of meanings; perhaps physic's string theory will be a more elaborate and well founded idea, or the Higgs boson particle will be found to have other properties. Kuhn's paradigms of scientific revolutions will continue to be challenged, but in these challenges, what will ensue is yet another delimited finitude of meaning. This is the point: there is nothing "absolute" to be discovered in a "state of affairs". (If you read any Heidegger, this is his "totality" that defines the "potentiality of possibilities" in a given culture).
But what could something "absolute" even mean? The best we can imagine lies with logic and apodicticity. Modus ponens will not be contradicted. This is formal requirement and it cannot even be imagined to do so. One CAN make claims about the historicity of language settings and say, after all, 'logic' is just a term that belongs to a language and language itself is contingent, and the "truth" language produces is "made" not discovered, (see Rorty's Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, e.g.); but the intuition (another word) "behind" the logical insistence, this is absolute. Like trying to imagine an object moving itself, impossible.
Regarding value, here is a question: what do you think about the idea of ethics having the same apodicticity as logic?
Everyone may agree that one plus one equals two but in ethics, for whatever reason, people's values don't always align.
The most curious thing I can think of. Where Husserl, and everyone for that matter, goes wrong, and this lies with ethics: even Heidegger with is Being as Care: there is this paper on Heidegger and "the ethics of care" which spells out pretty well how he really doesn't have the dimension of ethicality in his thesis. Care is all me and mine, and being with others (mitsein) the same. All thing fall with the domain of ME, and this ME is not transcendental, not Husserl's transego; it is just the description of the structure of the ontology of dasein. It goes back to Kant's transcendental unity of apperception, which, long, long story short, says see how all that I acknowledge AT ALL belongs to an egoic center. The particulars fall way in Kant's "reduction" basic logical forms, but there is IN the analysis of this structure, the structure of me and mine. This scent of flowers from the hallway is MY scent, and no one else's, and the same goes for the thoughts in my head, the feelings I have, and so on. The whole enterprise is MY world.
When you deny agency, you are not acknowledging this basic feature of our existence. This is not to say there IS a transego at all. It is simply that IN the horizon of observable phenomena, one discovers this identity of all that is there. There is this paper by Haugeland mentioned by the Heidegger scholar Hubert Dreyfus, I may have mentioned before, that tries to make dasein into an institutional entity only. See Dreyfus' Being in the World for his refutation.
Why do I disagree with you? This is a central question, for the entire idea here rests solely on the "phenomenon" of value-in-the-world. It is an argument:
The question is, what if ethics were as apodictic as logic? Clearly, logic is absolutely coercive to the understanding, but it is also only vacuously coercive. Who cares if logical form insists? It carries no authority about anything, only itself. But what is it about logic that is absolute? No one can say, and we can only obey, for one cannot get "behind" the intuition of logic. It stands as its own authority. It is both absolutely coercive and stands as its own authority. Is ethics like this?
Yes, very much. Without going into the rigor of a formal argument, just look at the basics. First, ethics has as its core, real pain and pleasure, not to put too find a point on it, and this is pervasive in our existence, making everything we experience a ethical possibility; why just stealing my time, say, has ethical consequences. Time is valuable simply because the experiential content of unit of time is inherently valuative in human experience. From the vaguely interested to extreme sports, and from mild boredom to having your liver vivisected without anesthetic, there is this "real time" good and bad in play, lost, like logic gets lost, in the matters one is attending to---but this is a reduction down to a discovery of what is structural and unnoticed in everydayness. Keep in mind that value-as-such does not exist, nor does logic, nor does it not exist. These are analytic terms about our existence, an imposition on the entangled givenness of the world. They do, however, reveal a dimension of our existence. The problem is that both logic and value is understood in the contingencies of language and, as Heidegger rightly said, language is a historical system of understanding, hermeneutical, that is, interpretative in nature, so when we go after anything, we are always already IN a language context.
But this is where things get truly interesting. I cannot claim that logic is an absolute because the very term absolute is bound up in the merely contextual possibilities a language can provide. But there is this very real insistence of knowing an object cannot move itself, say, and while I have to suspend the acknowledged system of symbolic logic (and Kant's categories. The world of tautologies and contradictions), this insistence is not itself of this system, that is, it is not a discursively grounded "truth" that things cannot move themselves (though it is through discursivity that we discover it). So we are witnessing something "impossible" in the logically coercive "intuition". Logic is mystical, as is value. Logic says nothing about the world, where value says a great deal. It says that all of our ethical and aesthetic affairs issue from Being as a single primordiality. In the world's entanglements with "states of affairs" this primordiality goes unseen, even by Heidegger.
But all of this rests with this primordial simplicity: Put a lighted match under your finger and observe. Ask, ontologically, what IS this? Nothing of this event is more salient than the ethical bad or the existential bad of the experience. Most philosophical arguments want to toy with the language of ethical judgments we make (see John Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Obviously, I both disagree and agree with this notion. Language "invents" the means of construing the world, but ethics finds its authority in something PRIOR to discovery.
But this analysis is not about judgments people make and where they disagree. It is about the existential ground of ethics. A metaethical argument: what IS the Good? What IS the bad? of value in experience? This is what makes ethics possible and our differences have no bearing on this. We are hardwired closely the same, but softwired often very differently. I love a rainy night, another hates such things, so the case in which I am deprived of experiencing one makes for a greater ethicality than would apply to this other. But the question here is, what does it mean to "love" something AT ALL? To feel good. or miserable, pleasure or pain, etc.
But how? I think H² aimed for pure being, but, to put it plainly, couldn't detach the ego. Makes perfect sense, reason, like it's particular, logic, and its universal, the rest of grammar, necessarily includes subject and predicate. Even in the first modern phenomenological reduction, there it necessarily was, I think. No your body doesn't think; your mind constructs extremely fitting signifier structures, and projects them. Descartes remained in the projection; aimed for the body, but, just as is being done here, fell short.
Why do we all fall short? Any intellectual effort is necessarily short of Truth. Intellectual pursuits are projected constructions. From what I have gathered, I can detail the mechanics less complexly than Dasein and all of its--though H2 may deny it--categories. But we're all just making and believing what fits various malleable criteria, triggers.
Again, H might have realized but fell short due to his locus in History, that the only access to being is by a non intellectual path, one involving the being, the Body, not in pursuit of being, but having returned its aware-ing to its being. Philosophy needs to have the courage to admit a more functional truth, even if it proposes a practice which is virtually impossible. But it cannot. So we turn to religion. . .
Quoting Constance
Apodictic only applies within the field in which both ethics and logic sprouted. Both are "apodictic" in varying degrees. First, you use "coercive/insist" I like that. Both, when, following a dialectic, present(v) to the aware-ing being in ready-to-project form, autonomously trigger a feeling which in turn triggers a further dialectic, and so on. I know I'm vague. I'll illustrate.
To simplify. In logic, take a statement like, "I do not exist." It triggers a habitually well tread path to whatever that bodily feeling for so called rejection is; and the next structure presents a temporary settlement which resolves the so called contradiction. Bad e.g.? So be it, hopefully you see where I'm going. Logic readily triggers feelings for immediate belief [i.e. in what the particular rule of ligic presents]. I'm not saying we're brainwashed. I'm saying there are settlements which are so functional, they lay potent triggers.
In ethics, the dialectics are much broader, the paths not so well tread to the specific feelings to settle at belief. "Don't exaggerate your gas expense on your taxes" triggers certain feelings (so called uneasy for e.g., but we cannot label them) which trigger a broader and vague range of potential settlements, leaving an opening for a slowed down and projected dialectic. "Don't kill your partner" a much more clear path to the feeling which promptly and narrowly settles the dialectic. Like a rule of logic.
You can go ahead and link them philosophically if that fits. E.g. that ethics is logical even. I don't know.
Through the evolution of these structures, logic, and ethics, they generally function in these ways. That's as far as I can say. When projected; our bodies readily respond.
Apodictic need not be something sourced in some pre-Historic Reality or Truth; it could just be a function of Mind going about its business in potent ways. In nature there would be no concern about existence nor I. And there would be nearly no moment where one would kill one's partner.
There must be an agent for human existence, yes, because Mind has evolved the Narrative form as most prosperous, and so predicates must have subjects. But what is really taking place is that well practiced code is triggering our Being to feel in ways which trigger action, or choice, emotion, or ideas; all just more code. No longer is the human animal aware-ing the drive only to mate, bond with and preserve partner, never-mind the odd growl; it is triggered by thoughts of justice, passion, revenge. No longer is the being aware-ing living; it is triggered by ideas of a self, a special place moving in existence, rather than just existing; and obsessions ensue.
But. Yes. Ethics is like Logic that way. Both can have immediate and positive effects upon feelings and actions. If that's apodictic.
Quoting Constance
It should be, "pain-ing."
But images structured for just such a purpose flood the aware-ing and displays ontological pain-ing with, and I won't even illustrate with the obvious few, but there may be hundreds triggering feelings, coloring the pain-ing with the making known of experience.
We cannot prevent our assessments from slipping into how things should be. We cannot avoid that our assessments are posed on a quasi-universality space. Society, language, culture, writing, technology, multiculturalism make our problems project beyond a singularity. "I am a slave to my own words" means that what I say is not said by me, but also by the other, and moreover, it may be said by everyone. We say how one should act in general, because it is impossible to say how one should act for myself alone and for no one else ever.
The essence of religion consists in giving a face and a will to the universalizing influence that is exerted upon us and upon which we are deployed. It is the law with a face and a will. Hence that face and will can become anthropomorphic (God). The question is why do we give a divine face and will to the unfolding of the law? The essence of religion, it seems to me, lies in the answer to the question of why we give face, will and divinity to the quasi-universalizing (it would be better to say Exteriorizing) unfolding of our valuations.
Or...why do we anthropomorphize the essence of religion? The essence not being in the face, but in the faceless [and nameless/and indefinable] which "precedes" the face we give.
But religion would be our reaction to the deployment and imposing force of the law which constitutes us as theoreticians or followers of the law. We, consequently, in some cases, act religiously. However, such an unfolding cannot itself be religious insofar as it is the condition of possibility of religion itself.
There is too much in this to take on. You know Heidegger was arguably the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, and his views are comprehensive. I can only give sketchy ideas where hundreds of pages are written. Heidegger explicitly rejects "pure being" as a descriptive term for dasein, human existence, that is. He doesn't use terms familiar terms like ego or consiousness (the German equivalent). H wants to start a new discussion with new terms in play, mostly Greek ones, going back to Parmenides, Heraclitus, Aristotle, and Plato, because, like Nietzsche, among other things, the intervening thought he thought distorted philosophy. Purity is replaced by "equiprimordiality". The purest you can possibly get is hermeneutics, which is the opposite of purity: The most basic things one can say about our existence is complicated, not simple and pure. Descartes was simple and pure with his cogito: a thinking substance here, and res extensa there. This is the kind of thing Heidegger argued against very early on in Being and Time. For both Husserl and Heidegger, the reduction takes one to the foundation of thought and Being. Husserl thought it took one to single primordiality, pure phenomena. For Heidegger, and he is qualifiedly right about this, this is a fool's errand.
So he does not share you idea of Truth. There is no such thing as this impossible finality. The world is foundationally open and indeterminate. Truth is made, not discovered, Rorty says, partly influenced by Heidegger (mostly Dewey), philosophy, as you put it, has "the courage to admit a more functional truth." Pragmatists hold the same (Peirce, James, Dewey; though Peirce goes a bit too far with his "long run inquiry"). A very strong position most can't get behind. My position is he right, and the only exception in Being-in-the-world is value-in-the-world. Not that what we say about value by calling it "the Good" itself "speaks" what it is. Rather, in value experiences, value speaks "through" knowledge claims from sources unseen, and its "language" is ethics. This is, I say, exactly what religion attempts to do in its essence.
I do get confused on some of your positions. See, I want to agree with "Any intellectual effort is necessarily short of Truth" but the line between what an intellectual effort is saying and what this "truth" is needs to be made clear. There are complications. Is truth propositional truth? Or is there a dimension of "truth" that is non propositional, and I think you agree with the latter. But again, see where this goes: You "agree" with the latter? You mean a proposition that states the latter? And when you "think" about your position, the understanding you have certainly can be of something that is not language, like being burned or put to the rack, but the what is it? question, well, language is all over this! Language tells us X is not language. The only way to make this work is to think of language, not in propositional "distance" from the world, but part of that which language is not.
Quoting ENOAH
Okay, but there are no varying degrees of apodicticity. This is the nature of an "absolute". When you mention a "feeling" I am intrigued. See what Pierce says here:
Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid......The irritation of doubt causes a struggle to attain a state of belief. I shall term this struggle inquiry,
See how he recasts cognitive statements in terms of feelings and struggles, something more basic in the analysis. Language to Peirce has been conceived in this Cartesian tradition of res cogitans, a thinking subject and this is just wrong. His analysis is pragmatic, a "doing" such that doubt spurs one toward belief, a stasis of comfort and settledness, a cessation of struggle. Heidegger is similar in his "ready to hand" mode of dasein's being.
Anyway, I wonder if this is what you have in mind when you talk about the "field in which both ethics and logic sprouted." Pragmatics. I think this is right, myself, but the view here goes further than this, deeper into the presuppositions
Quoting ENOAH
And by this apodicticity of logic is like Peirce's Fixation of Belief, above; this "temporary settlement which resolves the so called contradiction." This wants to demystify language, and certainty is just a feeling of fixity that is, perhaps, hard wired, but no more. There are no eternal truths for Peirce, though he does not hesitate to say, if irrationality actually "works" for someone, he really has no ground for arguing the point, for after all, there simply is NO foundational Truth. What is true is what works!
But I'll stop you where you say "bad, e.g.?" It is not feelings of belief, nor the rote meanings in things, nor the settled functions that we respond with. It is the qualitative presence of the pain of having your kidney speared. The world "does" this and it is impossible to interpret what is bad about it out of what it is.
Quoting ENOAH
Ethical problem solving is not the issue here. Metaethics is. A rule of ethics is an embedded phenomenon. But ask, what makes an ethical rule what it is? It "ethicality" issues from where, at the most basic level? It is not the feeling that something is wrong or right, nor is it about belief, though one does believe. It is not an epistemic issue about how beliefs are fixed. It is the simplest of all inquiries into the "pure" phenomenological presence of what makes something "bad" in the ethical/aesthetic sense (Witt conflates the two).
Quoting ENOAH
The idea is simpler than you suggest. A person loves Ravel, and goes to a concert and experiences aesthetic bliss. The question here is, what does this value-fact of the bliss experience yield to analysis? Just this. The prescribing Ravel, the belief that Ravel should be as a rule listened to by others, and so forth, all presuppose this most basic analysis.
This is the way it has to be to approach something like the essence of religion and ethics. There is no claim the ethics is logical. The matter turns of apodicticity, not logical apodicticity, but that which is AS coercive as logic. What is it for something to be apodictic? It is such that one cannot even imagine something that is apodictically true, to be false. Like imagining an object moving itself. The Good of bliss is tautological, and one cannot even imagine bliss nothing being good. It is impossible.
The argument of the OP turns on just this. Note that logic's apodicticity is vacuous; while value is just the opposite of this: value is the essence of something being important at all.
Quoting ENOAH
It doesn't matter how the body responds. All that matters is the apriori analysis of a value event. Only this.
Quoting ENOAH
Evolution is off the table, as is any science that may have an opinion. Evolution simply presupposes the existence of value. this is about the apriori analysis of value. The mating, the bonding and the anthropology all are off the table. One has to approach value as Kant approached logic and reason: it lies here and now in midst of the analytic, ahistorical, aempirical, qualitatively contained in what is there before your waking eyes and what has to be the case given what is there. Nothing else. Heidegger's historicity is suspended.
Quoting ENOAH
Far simpler than this. Put a lighted match to your finger and observe like a good "scientist". What do you witness? Wittgenstein saw that there was something there too profound to be taken up into the deflationary ways of philosophy.
I'll review what you wrote for my own edification and will try to resist the seemingly irresistible.
Interesting. Maybe that's how [far] I'm taking "essence." Mabe you're suggesting the condition of possibility precedes the essence? I'll leave it to you if you wish to elaborate.
.
Quoting Constance
Exactly. I acknowledge that jungle gym we have to traverse. Here, in this human world, expressions of (among other things) truth must involve, somewhere in the history of its expression, "a proposition that states the latter."
That's why I'm saying that while I recognize,
1. The brilliance and complexity of Husserl and Heidegger, and
2. My incapacity to even scratch the surface of their comprehension,
Yet,
they are not elucidating on any ultimate Truth about so called Eternity, or how the Universe/Reality/Godhead (if you wish), function, but only on how the human mind constructs and projects.
The former, is utterly not propositional, not knowledge in any form. It can only be accessed by the being in its being: thought is a distraction. Mind has displaced truth with make-belief.
I'm not suggesting these ideas are what Heidegger or Husserl are saying. I'm not saying that what I am saying is immune from the same critique. What I'm saying is, no one can say them.
As cringe as it may sound, especially here, and I didnt plan to arrive here, but some Zen Koans have it seemingly right. Not a direct quote, modified for us:
Novice: "Master, what is the Ultimate Truth?"
Answer:
[Implied preface but unspoken: "don't even ask the question; asking already prohibits truth]
"When hungry, I eat. When tired, I rest."
Or even better, putting it in its proper form, "hungering/eating; tiring/resting," (see, "drawing water/chopping wood"). That is for humans, ultimate truth: not what in its many forms, just is-ing. But we're in love with ourselves; and not without reason. So we cannot abandon the thinker or it's thoughts. I'm just making the observation.
And I think the observation is only not helpful if we insist that truth is not in the human be-ing ["its organic is-ing]."
More to clarify:
Quoting Constance
Not sure re "pragmatics" but I generally relate to the Pierce quote. Anyway, why for me apodictic does appear in degrees, and what I mean by "sprouted same field," is also related to my referencing organic feeling. While laws of logic seem apodictic, you'll note some Moral Laws also come close (which is your objection, "comes close" is thus not apodictic). Think of both as ultimately a belief (I believe it absurd or un-do-able to believe "I am a married bachelor"/ I believe it "absurd" un-do-able to believe "I'm going to kill my only child"). Neither actually has anything to do with a pre-existing attribute/state/law/tendency/desire of any all encompassing reality governing the universe or my body. Both are paths stored in memory as "language" to trigger functionally fitting responses. These triggers are so well entrenched in the feedback loop from language to feelings, that they promptly "release" whatever organic feeling it is which inspires a powerful confidence in the animal which would cause it to without hesitation act. Powerful trigger in the form of language is apodictic. Most people would also "with the fervor of apodiction" never eat shit. It is the same mechanism but not so obviously organic, buried in signifiers.
Quoting Constance
Yes! And irrationality does work for some. Those suffering delusions (obviously, doesnt work for the rest of Mind but its "working" for that mind and we need not get intonthe reasons*); those inspired by a teleology requiring the suspension of rationality (e.g. a parent acts against reason to lift a car off a trapped child; romantic love; an individual is willing to temporarily suspend even reason in pursuit truth etc). Our minds with well tread paths to the Subject, reject any ideas--like such radical relativity--but a Phenomenological Reduction might reveal that "if it works" is what is at the root of every belief held by every mind.
*arriving at "it works" and triggering belief, follows a dialectic which ways things to degrees like, an individual minds locus in history, its intersecting with others, input thus far, habituations, convention, past trauma, special inclinations, logic, reason, efficiency, teleology, bonds with others etc etc etc
Quoting Constance
This sounds like something I need to understand better. If you don't mind clarifying when you can.
Quoting Constance
Same as above. I mean, what makes a stab in the kidney "bad"?
1. The Truth is, it is neither. It is pain.
2. It's "bad" because we have constructed well tread paths triggering that feeling which in turn triggers "bad"; sad paths arising in relation to Signifiers like,
a) pain
b) stabbing
c) injuring the kidney
d) being injured
e) being at risk of death
f) etc...
Am I far from where you are going? This one has puzzled me.
In a very serious way, everything around us is already anthropomorphized, but to see this, one might have to go through Kant. But the basic idea is that when I perceive anything, that which is perceived is an event and a synthesis. Seeing a tree is to "see" my perceptual contribution to the event of seeing the tree. A tree IS the thought, feelings, intuitions, and so on as well as "that over there". Epistemology and ontology come together, two sides, if you will, of the same thing.
I have no idea what something is outside of this synthetic being I witness, and it is just bad metaphysics to even think such a thing. "The world is mystical," wrote Wittgenstein in the Tractatus. But whether it is "states of affairs" or language games, clearly metaphysics like this is foolish.
So here we are, in a world saturated with "the human," always already anthropomorphized when we catch a bus or study geological.
I do continue to disagree with this.
To get to Universe/Reality/Godhead, you have to work through phenomenology. There is a letter to someone, can't remember who, in which Husserl relates that many of his students found in phenomenology a sound basis for religious understanding. Surprised him a bit. The way I see it is this: I don't read Heidegger to understand Heidegger, nor Husserl to understand Husserl. Rather, I read them to understand the world. But they are only as helpful as I am eager to understand. A person has to be REALLY eager to read this philosophy. One has to be already looking rather emphatically for Universe/Reality/Godhead to discover how phenomenology can facilitate discovery; or, one has be just be really interested in existential puzzles. Rorty straddled the fence and came up with very helpful thoughts for me. But he had no core religious interests. Dropped philosophy altogether at the end, taught literature, convinced there was nothing more to say in philosophy. But this was because he was through and through an academic, and had no, well, intimations of anything else. When he said there are no truths beyond propositional truths (truth is something a proposition has, and there are no propositions out there in the trees and rocks) he was following Dewey's naturalism.
Husserl does talk about the universe, reality, not so much the godhead. I talk about this kind of thing, though the talk is "threshold" talk. The reduction takes people like me to the threshold of finitude. The reduction facilitates this, inspires it, clarifies it, gives vague but strong curiosity a contextual setting for thoughts to make sense. Kant helps and Heidegger helps massively, and so does Dionysius the Areopogite and Meister Eckhart. And Derrida, and ALL of them. This is mystical phenomenology, where no self respecting anglo american philosopher will step foot.
Truth: I defend one truth, really, which is that what is sought here is not truth. One seeks the Good. We are not trying to discover what IS qua IS; this is patently absurd and it gives us his "equirpimordaility". for Heidegger, an historical ontology of structural features clear to inquiry. But, I argue, there really is a primordial singularity, and this is value, the Good, what the entire universe/reality/godhead is "about". What is the the Good? This is existential, by which I mean one has to look away from discursivity, and toward existence. Stop thinking, in other words. Husserl's epoche, all the way down the rabbit hole, leads no where but here, the cessation of thought in order for the world to "speak" at the basic level.
Of course, this is close to what you have been saying, but you do continue to say "thought is a distraction" and I can't abide by this. It is a distraction if you are trying experience something that is itself expressly not thinking. If you are trying to learn how to ride a bike, you don't talk your way through this. But once done, and you get it, the understanding is there, and always has been there. Try to imagine what it would be like to know how to ride a bike, but when asked to explain, absolutely nothing came to mind. What, no feet applying pressure to pedals in a circular thrust connected to a series of gears, etc.? Yes, a child might find herself like this, but a child has very limited understanding. A child may have God attending every moment of life as an infinite grounding of meaning, but the child will understand nothing. Language does this. Thought does this. Affective cognition; this is what we are, and the two are one. The Good, or God, is not itself the thought of the Good, but through thought one acknowledges and understands. Through thought, thought recognizes its own finitude. What is thought really? This question is transcendental. You were impressed by the Fink passage. earlier. He is saying the the entire ground of world acceptance is open and the epoche allows us to stand in the openness of the world.
I do suspect you harbor still a deep physicalist ontology, as we all do. This has to be, well, cured. Kant is the cure. He is not, certainly, right about everything. But if you have the curiosity that will sustain through several hundred pages of rather dense thinking, then you will come out the other end a very changed philosopher.
Quoting ENOAH
Yes and no. To say "no one can say them" tells us first that the not being able to say is already said in the utterance itself. One can say X cannot be said, but for this to make sense, X has to be brought into a context of saying. Nothing but paradox. X can be said, but is not in the saying itself, what is said. Same goes for my cat. X is always already in need of a context to disambiguate. This in no way intrudes or undoes what it IS, but it raises the issue of where and how thought allows this to happen. For Husserl, and post Husserlians like Henry, the proof is in the pudding. Once the world is divested of all language has to say in all of its reigning mundanity, the world beneath, the hidden primordiality of the world becomes more evident. The reduction takes one INTO the world and reveals the things that are suppressed by familiarity. And one can see the foundational religiosity that modernity has preplaced.
Quoting ENOAH
Consider what happens when you try to imagine an object moving itself. This is buried in signifiers? What is meant by buried? Does it mean that there is an indeterminacy of the "trace" in talking about anything? But this is addressed: the trace is the interpretative value that inhibits any sort of direct apprehension of things in the world. But now, take the lighted match and apply it to your finger. Are you thereby distanced from the terrible pain because the language that stabilizes your understanding of what is occurring cannot be shown to be correspondingly linked to it? The notion is absurd. Clearly, the world is this overwhelmingly vivid and its existence cannot be doubted for a moment at this level of inquiry. What can be doubted is the interpretation of the world, and so the pain you experience: What is it? is an interpretative issue, save one thing, and this is the OP. Now consider an object self moving: it is impossible. Surely we can talk about certainty and the feeling of moving toward doubt and how the need for fixity asserts itself, but you find yourself in Hume's world, where Kant points out that there is difference between the mere concatenation of two events that happen with such frequency that they are mistaken for an embedded law, and events that happen by necessity.
One way to go is Quine's in his Two Dogmas paper: He doesn't argue against necessity, but against analyticity: two terms that differ have different senses (the morning star and the evening star) even though they may have the same object. I'd have to read it again. But it is an interesting point, and perhaps in line with your thoughts. And if there is an impact on the thesis of the OP, it would be a favorable one, for religion has its essence in metaethics and metaaesthetics, and these are powered by value-in-the-world. Value's apodicticity is IN existence, not form, and the existence of suffering and delight is even less effected by considerations of language and trace. That punch to kidney is far more actual and indubitable in its consequences than the principle of negation. Not more; it is absolute. There is no more or less here.
Quoting ENOAH
I couldn't agree more. Same goes for Husserl. There is one exception, which is posited several times above. It has to be kept in mind that we are dealing with phenomena, not the familiar world. In the phenomenal world, planets do not revolve around the sun nor does UPS deliver boxes. All of this is suspended. The phenomenal world is an extraordinary "place" and Kant is a good way to look into it at first. It is a very odd world, and if you have a kind of well passion to find out about what can be said about existence and the godhead, then you will be taking a step into a kind of no man's land. A far greater intimacy with the world than most can even imagine.
Quoting ENOAH
It is just that there is no analysis to something truly primordial (Heidegger aside). That pain CANNOT be refuted or argued about or divested of its essence, which in our hermeneutical setting we call bad. The pain can made ambiguous in familiar ways (torturing someone into telling you where the bomb is located, and the like) and it can be strangely transmuted in weird associations, like masochistic fetishes, but that just changes what is clearly pain ul to what is now complexly painful, and this is the world. Not what this is about. If there are no transmuting conditions that would compromise the pain's being bad, then...... Not hard to imagine, screaming children in burning cars and the like are exemplary. The fact that you can reconstrue pain says nothing about its nature. This is the point.
Quoting ENOAH
Exactly! Do an exhaustive analysis of the factual contents of the kidney-in-pain event. Compare to a non-value fact, like the earth having more mass than a river rock or the DNA molecule having genetic material. Any non value fact is presumably exhaustible by an empirical analysis. Even an apriori analysis, if you like. But what happens with the analysis of the kidney? You will find, and this is why Wittgenstein refused to talk about it, something "else". You are invited to question this, but this is not well received in modern philosophy. Just because it is massively mysterious. What is the Good? The love, the happiness and bliss and pleasures, and the horrors and terrible suffering; what IS this dimension of our existence?
Quoting ENOAH
One has to disengage explanations. This is what the reduction is all about. Look as if one were a scientist looking for objectivity in one's observation. Do you find the "non natural" property, as G E Moore put it (Principia)?
If you are looking for the godhead, than ask that fateful question, only take it very seriously: how does anything out there get into a knowledge claim? Not that it does not get into a knoweledge claim, for clearly it does. But how is this possible? It is crazy to go after this, but once you see that the epistemic relation between you and the lamp on your desk is epistemically impossible in all the familiar models, you have to then go to some other model. Phenomenology only can see this.
I think your inquiry about religion itself captures the essence of religion.
Religion is how we fill the symbolic space. The symbolic space is a product of how we think. Any object of thought can have multiple levels of symbolic meaning. "Surface" meaning, and any number of deeper meanings "behind" this. A tree isn't just a tree: it is a source of food or building materials. Beyond this, it might symbolize ecology, a stand-in for the beneficient features of life itself. And it might mean God's benevolence, or timeless persistence. All these symbolic meanings are bestowed upon the tree, none are inherent to the actual tree.
Religion is how this symbolic space is colonized in different cultural arenas. It apparently cannot be left empty, it has to be filled in one way or another. Everything has meaning in religion, because religions fully fill the symbolic space.
So your question, what is the true meaning of religion, is itself an expression of the basic religious impulse to fill the symbolic space. In this case, the space behind "religion".
And this is why science is a competitor to religion. Not because the mechanistic accounts of how things work differ. But because it offers a parallel, and empirically grounded, vision of what explaining the meaning of things looks like. The tree isn't just the tree we see. It is the vast scientific story that explains it.
Fair point. I'm not sure that I've ready philosophy in the spirit of "love [ing it] with all of my heart soul and might." There might be something to that; but the "arrival" will have to reach beyond the reaches if reason if it is to be ultimate.
Quoting Constance
Clearly, this is where we seem to have always agreed. Same as my point above.
Quoting Constance
God help us
Quoting Constance
I see. I haven't been clear enough about tge relative absurdity of seeking what is unattainable to the Seeker. I say a solution is drop the Seeker and look at being (for a second). You seem to say drop the seeking, and focus the seekers attention on what is good. I agree, but consider yours to be the next step. This is how I see tge metaphysical as necessarily preceding the ethical. Step one: know you are not the projections; albeit inextricably entangled. Step two: focus on making the projections good (as in morally/as in without tge ego)
Quoting Constance
I'm too unclear. Yes. Of course thought is unavoidable and the necessary pre-step in my aforesaid steps one and two. I assume that because I participate, it is obvious that I recognize one cannot avoid this pre-step. I accept H and H executed admirable presteps.
Quoting Constance
This and only this, I think is where we may diverge. Yes, child "understands" nothing without language. But since all judgement, including those flowing out of that fact exist only in language, "language" adjudges understanding to have ontological(?) epistemelogical(?) metaphysical(?)--Truth--priority over what that hypothetical child receives from so called God. It's not "meaning" another species of "language". And yes, I cannot identify or label for you what that receipt from God is without language. Duh (not you, all of us). I can only receive it. My theory (already ultimately false as I repeat it) is that the Child receives Life from God. But because (completely hypothetical) Adam chose knowledge over life, we are always in need of redemption--not because God withdrew Its Gift--but because our fixation on wanting to understand it, obstructing us from just being it.
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Quoting Constance
I completely do. But not because of a strictly realist or empirical word view. Rather, because once one considers that humans experience "unnaturally" through its evolved system of construction-then-projections, it is reasonable to assume that every re-presentation of tgat system falls short of Reality. Outside of Mind which, by examining history, has propped itself up as the means to eternal truth, while simultaneously recognizing itself as only a mediator, the only thing left to trust is that the Natural Universe is real. And of course, I am left to paradoxically trust that and understand it in Mind's terms.
So, highest goal for a philosopher: be human.
Quoting Constance
You are a wealth of, I repeat, reliable information.
Quoting Constance
Maybe I'm "wishing" phenomenology was aiming at [my conception of "Organic"] being but its "purpose" has always been just epistemological. It offers a philosophically reasoned methodology (not unlike empiricism) for understanding the only reality it is even capable of admitting.
Superficially, science can indeed appear to fill the symbolic space.
That is why scientism exists as an ideology, i.e. a pseudo-religion. In times of rapid scientific progress, it is even quite popular.
However, it only works for people who do not understand science, so that it remains mysterious.
As soon as you somewhat understand the limitations of science, as soon as you understand that it cannot explain what you had hoped that it would, it stops being useful as a religion.
As the unfilled void reappears with a vengeance -- it always does -- the existence of life will appear to be meaningless. The lack of spirituality will push the unbeliever in his struggle down the path of absurdism. We were not built to live without spirituality. That is why spirituality is so universal across the globe and throughout history.
On the other hand, the science that discusses a tree is not just filling space, not just a lot of empty fictional narrative. Religion, too, taken seriously, is not this. Of course, there is a great deal of fiction in the "grand narratives" of metaphysics, but just as, say, when the tree is put into a more rigorous context of discussion, its more frivolous narratives are dropped, so with religion, we seek to drop the frivolous and discover what it is "really" about.
It can ALL be called a story, certainly. Geology is a story about the earth, astronomy one about the stars, and so forth. But a view like this divests the engagement of any objective verisimilitude at all. But then, as Kierkegaard said about bible stories, fictions no more fictional than modern claims of discovery. This is what happens when you either, as Kierkegaard put it, think of thought and reality as a collision of entirely unlike natures, or, like Heidegger, think all truth is an historical construct. Truth is made, not discovered, said Rorty.
I actually think all of this is right, or close to being right. Fascinating idea, really. Reading Paul Ricoeur, I find the idea that we mostly live a narrative compelling, and if you want to talk about it, fine. But for the matter here concerning religion: For this argument, the claim is one can stand outside narrative. Doing this, one no longer stands among the familiar notions that clutter living, the everydayness, the "idle talk" (Heidegger), and the mindless "narrative" of one's affairs that mostly defines who we are. Long story on this, but again, religion: Stand apart from the familiar naivite of daily events, and witness the phenomena that lies "beneath" such things. Now you can observe the presuppositional grounding of the world, phenomena. What one finds here is not narrative, but stark presence, even obscenely vivid and real beyond ordinary apprehensions. This is "life" says Michel Henry (his own use of the term).
I argue that one can discover the nature of religion here, in the nature of human affectivity. Affectivity is the existential value Wittgenstein was talking about when he said "The Good? this is what I call divinity."
I lean to saying yes to this. But "spirituality" is in need of a proper "deconstruction" and by this I only mean that when you start looking into the term and its possibilities, you discover more clearly where the issues lie. Spirituality is an intellectual and existential struggle, or, it should be. When one pulls one's head out of the sand and asks the big questions that inspired the ancient stories, the difficulty lies in "the void" as you put it, the indeterminacy of all our affairs. What actually happens when you confront this? For most, very little. meaning one either retreats beneath sand of old stories and rituals or one just rejects the sense of the confrontation, like Wittgenstein. But note, he was by no means an atheist. He placed Kierkegaard in the highest regard, but argued that this cannot be argued or spoken of because there is nothing in the grid of states of affairs that is "value". Positivists are bad Wittgensteinians because they took nonsense to mean without meaning, which is just the opposite of what he was about. For Witt, value meaning in ethics and aesthetics was TOO important to be trivialized by philosophers .Anyway, very few take the third alternative, which is to try to understand religion at its foundation. An analysis of spirituality, if you will. Two questions: what is value? and what is knowledge/ontology (same thing, I argue)?
This is what is being attempted here.
In my opinion, rationality is a tool and spirituality is another one. If your only tool is a hammer, then the entire world will start looking like a nail.
We know very well that rationality cannot deal with the question about the meaning of life. It would be the same as asking a computer why he exists. Humans can answer that question. The computer cannot, at least not rationally. The computer would have to ask us, because only humans know the answer to that question.
Concerning the meaning of life, we would only be able to rationally answer the question, if we had created it. So, since we didn't, we can try to ask the one who did. That is not a rational endeavor but a spiritual one.
Quoting Constance
I think that I agree with Witggenstein on this matter. There is no confrontation. Spirituality is the solution for a problem that rationality cannot solve.
Anybody trying to determine rationally if God exists or not, is wasting his time. The correct question is: Does faith in God give you spiritual satisfaction? If yes, then you are one of the lucky ones, blessed with the ability to stave off the absurdity of meaninglessness. If not, then you are unlucky because you will almost surely fail to find a satisfying alternative.
I don't want to give an all too easy answer that "everything is just a narrative" and science and religion are"just empty fictions filling space". My point is that cognitive architecture comes first, not some inescapable reality standing outside all narrative.
The cognitive architecture I think drives the religious impulse is the one that allows a hunter gatherer to observe a dragonfly and see:
* The phenomenal impression of the insect, it's appearance and motion through space.
*The apprehension that these phenomenon are not chaotic, but they belong to an organized entity of the category "dragonfly", and more broadly "insect".
* The larger irrelevance of this entity to the current task of hunting a deer.
*The larger still relevance of the early appearance of the dragonfly, possibly presaging an early summer.
At least four levels of meaning, all attached to the same phenomenon, all held by the same brain. But this one-to-many relationship between appearance and meaning begs the question:: is that it? Or is there a deeper meaning beyond all these? What is the meaning of all these meanings?
Religion arises to fulfill the spiritual need, the need to fill in all these "higher", "deeper" meanings whose existence is like a shadow cast by our own cognitive machinery. If it doesn't provide all the answers, it at least provides a framework within which answers can be found. Having such a framework seems to be a deep human need, without which we suffer, as @Tarskian points out.
The ultimate purpose (reduction) of the mechanisms of art and metaphor is not that they deliver meaning. They deliver their purpose deliberately off the track, in "language" which doesn't say what it means. That's their first ultimate purpose, because by doing so their message is "you're focusing on the wrong thing," it's not what our expression means, it's what it does to your body, triggering feelings, which, if it's excellent art, hopefully, are to vague to recycle into words or emotions, leaving the effect of the metaphor "purely" organic. Why? Because that's what is Real.
Same goes for the essence of religion. Both it and art point aware-ing away from the expression, and rather, in the direction of what is real: the feeling living organism.
Well, if ever you get the impulse put to heart and soul forward, be aware that anglo american thinking is very different from the metaphysics of continental philosophy. The former enjoy puzzles, little more. Clever about arguments, but regarding the world, they, as Kierkegaard said of Hegel, simply have forgotten that they actually exist.
Quoting ENOAH
Dropping the seeker. Explicit seeking, yes. But the question is not about what is encountered only. It is about what has to be the case given what is encountered. An extrapolation.
But first, what is actually witnessed. The following I think you will agree with. Suffering is, again, poignant and makes the case most visible. So I am now in my phenomenological analytic, and not that of biology, medicine, chemistry, and the rest of the "natural" sciences. Such a position is unique, even sui generis, for to observe phenomena qua phenomena, one has to engage in the method of the reduction. Like I said, it is a bit of a no man's land, a radical forgetting, if you will. Imagine what is was like for the ancient mind to behold the sun with such a dearth of presuppositions about the world that it was possible to think it a God. Put aside the modern prejudice that comes with its "grand narrative" of knowing; you've heard this term before, no doubt. It is Lyotard's referring to the postmodern collapse of metaphysics. Science, too, is a grand narrative, more obfuscating and intrusive than the church ever was in its explicit denial of metaphysics. We are all trained k through 12 and beyond in this. This entire education has to be ignored. This is why I think the Buddhists are very advanced phenomenologists, for all they do is sit quietly, but not "doing nothing". Rather, they are annihilating the world's knowledge structure, and this is just what the reduction does, if allowed to do so.
So what is actually witnessed as the "pure" phenomenon really does need a liberation from everydayness. Can one observe the sun (errr, without burning a retina) or a tree altogether without habit and familiarity at all? See Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety where he investigates Christianity's original sin. "Habit" of the race, he calls this impediment of culture and he condemns the displacement of faith by all of the many institutions that had become so privileged. Free of the tedious recollection, beholding it only in repetition. A Kierkegaardian book on this called Repetition: to participate in the world not as the way it is possessed by prior knowledge, but as it is first done, first encountered, free of this. The idea in Repetition is an attempt to explain just this above, to receive the world not as a backward looking event, allowing memory to dominate and determine, but as a first encounter, in each encounter, a first, forward looking with the anticipation free of encumbering presuppositions. This is phenomenology's mystical perspective (notwithstanding Heidegger, who nevertheless gives this kind of thing a wealth of conceptual facilitation), this uncanny discovery of the now, in which one looks around, and is lost as the habits of perception do not spontaneously seize the moment.
Now we can think of suffering. Its "thereness" released from interpretation. What is witnessed is now without identity save its own, but note the event is proximal in some way. It is not over there, but "here"; but where is here? The here is me, and the concept of mine pins the suffering to me. When the attempt is made to severe suffering altogether from proximity, there is a misrepresentation of what is witnessed. Recall the old Cartesian cogito and Henry (and Husserl's) complaint. What is there is witnessed to be there, and, as I have argued, the more the object is loosened from the relation, and becomes disembodied "thereness" it drifts into nothingness. Can suffering exist without agency? Without anyone experiencing the suffering? This I take to have a negative answer.
But it IS a very, very good question, I think. That such an idea is impossible (I am affirming) has serious implications. It is not like the quale red, say. Agency and "being appeared to redly" does not have nearly thislogical insistence (or the logic of the intuition of agency and suffering being inseparable). Can the color red appear sans agency? Hmmm. If there is no value in the experience of the "being appeared to redly" (thought this is just an abstraction) that is, if there is no caring, no vital intimacy or even interest, boredom, then we could very well dismiss Husserl's Transego. But value; this is altogether different. One might call it an argument for the soul, the "seeker" who is the non seeking existing agency that is the center of affectivity.
Quoting ENOAH
They are giants. Worth reading if you just want to see if you can keep up. With Heidegger, it is Being and Time in one hand and Greek terms he uses to rethink philosophy in the other.
Quoting ENOAH
There is a lot in this. Putting aside Adam, I do see the idea. All I can say is that language itself is just as alien and impossible to pin. It opens possiblities. The uncanniness of the world is revealed as what is not language, but this is done in the openness of language. More on this if you like.
.....isn't taken seriously by those who have never read it. To those who have read it, it is taken very seriously. But Wikipedia is not reading.
I would not confine language and all the mediatedness in which we are involved as a simple medium that divides two poles so easily: man and the world. My view is that the medium is more than what can be confined in a cogito, in a self, or in man. Language for example is not a mere medium for thought but a possibility of it which reveals to us -perhaps even better- the very nature of thought itself, or rather, something essential to thought which does not allow itself to be secluded in thought and which slips into language as a necessary possibility of thought.
For example, if we take an affirmation such as "I am" supposed for thought, it never presents itself in a pure singularity but in a repetition (Kant said that the I accompanies all our representations) in which its meaning implies the possibility of repetition. Thus the "I am", or the "I think", makes sense on condition of my own absence and disappearance. Hence man can speak of the I am as something that even makes sense in language, in writing, etc. According to this, if thought did not "begin" as repetition, it would not be possible to write "I am" in a book and for another person to understand it when reading it.
Perhaps this is what Husserl was referring to when he spoke of the original intersubjectivity at the level of the cogito. But do we see the passage from one to the other? So language is not an accident of thought, nor something that is simply recruited into a cogito, it becomes a necessary possibility of intersubjectivity. And why not beyond? All this indicates that there is an element of exteriority in our interiority. Derrida said that the outside is the inside. Ultimately I agree with him: the separation between subjectivity and the world cannot be maintained so clearly. Not if it is analyzed from the point of view of the whole framework of exteriorization that implants us in the world and does not allow for a radical gap as has been thought since Descartes.
Religion is at the heart of this matter. Our evaluations from the origin contemplate its repetition (something that is valid for other men). The divinity that man thinks is perhaps an act of recognition of the exteriority of our valuations. In the sense that my evaluations escape from me (just like the I am of which we spoke above). The error of religion in general is perhaps not to consider that repetition and exteriority escape subjectivity. Thus, we still make the presentation of our evaluations too subjective. The divinity, as will, thinking being, etc., is the cogito trying to reappropriate that which exceeds it.
It's like Soto and Rinzai. Two schools both already having gotten caught up in the finger pointing. One, like yours, I presume, says the method is the philosophy; the other thinks of ways to transcend language with language.
At the end of the day, you know they are both the same thing, same as science, minds constructing functional models out of representations.
So, and I'm really asking, what if they're different?
I have read much. I don't take it seriously. Neither do the vast, vast majority of academics and students I've interacted with through Philosophy education.
Weirdly, this response is the kind of outlandish, comedic set of assumptions that has most trained philosophers rejecting continental philosophy as fart-sniffing. I tend to agree.
Pretending you understand Heidegger is not exactly a good thing.
It seems plain to me Continental philosophy had, and carries a relatively specific agenda among its number regardless of consistency or coherence. Haabermas may be the best of them, because he's had to contend with the accurate retrospectives on his predecessors.
Philosophy 'proper' lets say, without wanting to be too condescending, does not. Philosophers carry them, but not the arena. Continental philosophy is explicitly deconstructionist, for instance.
However I'd think you'd encourage rather than disparage others from arriving at their own view having undertaken that same process.
As I say, I can tell you have studied tge matter, but as a courtesy, your presentation sends the (unintended) message that you are at best being political at worst an indoctrinated evangelist for a movement.
I am no academic, true. But I can't believe philosophy should be a movement.
Quoting ENOAH
This sounds suspiciously like an authoritarian government pretending to be kind. Philosophy is not a movement, but Continental philosophy is. I have been quite clear that this is the distinction that I see as relevant.
In my mind, the question remains, why not just present the so called anglo american view?
But I too became argumentative. So yes. Sorry
The idea here is that when you when you talk about the meaning of life and basic questions, you have to look to the most basic understanding of what is there before you, just as a scientist might say about what science does, though keeping in mind that a scientist is never free of the presuppositions of her field and the "purity" of observation is nothing pure at all, but, to think like Kuhn, is packed with the paradigmatic assumptions of "normal" science. (See Karl Popper, not that I read much of him, but the essential idea of the hypothetical deductive method rings true with the pragmatists, and I think they are often right.). Since philosophy is a "regressive" discipline, meaning it moves back to the most basic questions assumed in popular thinking, it becomes a search for foundational ways to talk about the world. So how does one do this?
The scientific method comes to mind, which is the hypothetical deductive method, which says, simply put, that when you approach the object of your inquiry, you are always already IN an interpretative setting. This is what it means to ask a question at all. One is not free and open to receive what is there, but is equipped with ideas already in place, in search, if you will, for an anomaly.
Religion, too, has its paradigms in etiological stories and metaphysical narratives, but these are not scientifically conceived at all. This is where the interest in an objective account begins. One has to put aside a lot, most, probably, because religion through the ages has occluded the responsible thinking concealed in the actual metaphysics of our existence. Rationality not being able to "deal" with the meaning of life is simply an assumption grounded in badly conceived religious epistemology, the impossible "distance" between me and ultimate issues, treating the absolute as a land far, far away. This has to be, well, at least put aside so that one can take the time to be free to understand what really is in-the-world at the basic level.
Science (above) is burdened by its own paradigms and popular religion is burdened by bad metaphysics. But religion IS metaphysics, so how can one proceed in analysis? Close down knowledge claims altogether so one is no longer possessed by science and popular religion and what is revealed? It is the world of presuppositions ignored by science. Knowledge of rock strata and shifting star spectrums presupposes the basic epistemology of receiving the world in a knowledge claim at all. If this epistemic relation is not defined, the ALL of science's claims have to be reconstrued at the basic level. Simply put, the astronomer tells me the chemical composition of Jupiter's great eye, but the philosopher asks, how is it that the very presence of Jupiter is even possible in this knowledge claim?
See, this is where science ends. It has no epistemology, just assumptions. It is not reason that falls short, but simply the unquestioned assumptions! Epistemology/ontology (same thing) is one of the cornerstones of religion's essence for it reveals, objectively and not in the "absurdity of faith" as Kierkegaard put it, but clear for all to see, the foundational indeterminacy of our existence.
But by far religion's essence lies with value. The indeterminacy of value experiences, meaning the question, What is value? is open. Again, reason does not fail one. The givenness of what is there, rather, is not fully reasoned through, and when reason faces the "place" where paradigms "run out" it is fully within reason that this occurs.
More on value if you like.
I would agree that it is a waste of time ONLY if one has not asked about the nature of God in the first place. What sense is there in talking about God if you haven't at all understood what the term means?
The same goes for spirituality.
What is God apart from the atheist's strawman arguments of a bearded old man in a cloud? One has to first observe the world and find the basis for the metaphysics that makes God a meaningful idea at all. The dismissal of reasonable talk is careless. You are right to side with Wittgenstein's passion to preserve the dignity of divinity. But wrong, I argue, to think one cannot bring clarity to what we mean by this term.
Free of all the omni's, free of the anthropomorphic assumption of God the creator (especially the Thomist view of creation ex nihilo. Truly the worst metaphysics imaginable to posit something literally unimaginable). These are entirely superfluous and groundless, and Occam's Razor, again, I argue, cuts them loose from thought.
God in really grounded in two essential indeterminacies of our existence. One is consummation and the other redemption. These are very discussable.
Not first, but, as Heidegger put it, equiprimordially. He simply is agreeing with you, saying the moment something is apprehended at all, it is always already IN a context of thinking, and since thinking is complicated, a thing that crosses one's mind is complicated. A "feast of thought" he calls it, the working through an idea.
But one has to ask, when the thumb screws are applied, is this really equiprimordially received? Is it discursively concluded? Of course not. In fact, it is given most purely, this vivid pain. The What is it? question is going to have to include the recognition that the knowledge of this pain is very different from that of, say, a bank teller: a bank teller interfaces with bank customers dealing with their money matters. What is money? Money is a name for the medium used in the exchange of goods. What are goods? In this context, things bought and sold, and so on. Easy. Now value/ethics: What is ethics? a term that designates issues of good and bad behavior. What is good? Two kinds of good/bad: Contingent goods are things like good shoes and good weather. Absolute good/bad refers to things like thumb screws and falling in love. Value qua value. What is this?
Now we have reached religion's essence, so I argue. It is open for discussion. Pain IS outside all narrative, yet it is conceived inside a narrative. One has to look into the nature of a narrative to understand this. It is a language construct, so what is language? Language possesses the possibility for truth as alethea, in which truth is conceived as "openness". ALL of our words are open, that is indeterminate.
Yes, but all of these "most trained" philosophers are trained in analytic philosophy. Those who have actually read serious philosophy see this kind of thing as a waste of time, a trivializing of philosophical questions. It is primarily due to a lack of French, German and Greek and a realization that to study continental philosophy one has to have studied these language, at least somewhat, as well. Americans are the absolute worst: the best way to avoid this language prerequisite is simply to deny the thematic content that requires it. Now they have slipped into an intense and well stated vacuum of inquiry.
Fart-sniffing? This is rather juvenile. Anything interesting to say?
I think the essence of religion is belief in something beyond yourself and what you can see. A simple idea I know but it has always served me well. Good post.
As to language revealing to us the nature of thought, there is that problem that language cannot tell us what language essentially is because to say what it is presupposes language. Wittgenstein said this about logic. It would require a perspective removed from language, but this too would find its analysis question begging and would also require yet another pov, ad infinitum.
But on the other hand, language is inherently open. It confines or limits content in no way, even regarding its own nature, meaning when I ask what language is I get answers, as with symbolic logic and semiotics, but ask what these are and there are more answers, but these, too, are questions deferring to others, and so on (Hermeneutics). But there is in all, when one tires of running through a dictionary, this a truly basic question ALSO conceived in language, and this is the question of existence itself which inquires about everything's being. One can now say language has discovered its own existence! The question is now the true "piety of thought." To stop everything and notice that inquiry leads one to self revelation goes to the point you make about language revealing its own nature. Analytic philosophers tend to close shop at this point. This is what happens when you put questions of our existence in the hands of logicians! You might as well ask a mathematician to get such clueless understanding.
Yes, I do have an ax to grind with the empty spinning of wheels in analytic philosophy.
Quoting JuanZu
This is why the whole matter has to be reconceived, just as you say. The universal cannot grasp the singularity, but only itself, and this is undone by Derrida who argues it does not even do this, and one feels a kind of thud as one hits the bottom of the rabbit hole. The question ends there, for it has turned on itself as one's curiosity faces a world, perhaps for the first time, as an uncanny presence. Important to see, I am saying, that once in this "no man's land" it is thought that got you there. Thought is the way "in" as well as the way "out" (in and out, two particles of language. But why should language be set apart from the very uncanniness it brings one to? There is an epiphany in this: ALL is indeterminate, or transcendental, if you like.
This I argue is the foundation of religion.
Quoting JuanZu
Does Husserl span the distance with the nexus of intentionality between thought/knowledge and object? Thereby establishing an epistemic intimacy with and in eidetic essences? What a question, I struggle with this. Note that I am not a professional philosopher and I read and write posts for interest's sake. Anyway, it is THE struggle to have. There is my cat, lamp, a tree, and here am I, and I know they are there. How? As it stands, the cat is transcendental, an "over there" that is entirely other than me. You mention language to be a "necessary possibility of intersubjectivity" but while language brings this to light, I mean the whole affair is "thought" to a conclusion or an insight, but then, the terms of actual engagement is something other than this. There is Kierkegaard's "collision" with actuality, and the realization that, as you mention with Derrida, all lines drawn are lines of contextuality, not actuality, and such lines are an imposition, and actuality is only JUST "coming into view," there on the cusp or in the residua of the "trace" (that leads us to water but cannot make us drink, so to speak) that is both there and not there. Under erasure as written.
As to the "original intersubjectivity" and Descartes's cogito, Descartes provides the basis for method of phenomenologizing, the phenomenological reduction, which looks to the intimacy of apprehending, and finds that the pure phenomenon is absolutely intimately bound to the consciousness that beholds it. Consciousness is always "of" its object and the Cartesian cogito is just an abstraction from the actual interface. Descartes pinned the real on res cogitans, but this makes no sense, some disembodied thinking thing; thinking is NEVER disembodied. And since the object (broadly construed) is part of the essence of consciousness, unlike Descartes' Deus ex Machina, the object becomes indubitable as well. Thus, the event is indubitable, but it is not science's object at all. It is the phenomenon that is absolute. I think this is where you come in. The phenomenon has no parts. The sun does not emit light nor do planets revolve around it. Nor do dogs bark, or even make a sound. The world of phenomena is a very strange place, no inside or outside for all contexts are suspended. It is the world presupposed by the familiar, entirely ignored by science. It takes the reduction to discover this "world".
I argue that once one has gotten to this point, religion becomes much more clear. For we generally live in a body of assumptions that do not survive the reduction the reduction: a kind of apophatic approach, a "neti neti" as they say in the East: not this, not this.... (See John Caputo's Prayers and Tears of Jacque Derrida).
Quoting JuanZu
This sounds very Hegelian, and I would respond, in a qualified way, recalling Kierkegaard's response where he says Hegel has forgotten that we exist (something I would apply to the entire field of analytic philosophy). Subjectivity is more than the error of universality in the "sense" of one's "I". Jab a knife under my ribs and the pain is exclusively me and mine. It is not a cogito at all that experiences this. The transcendental ego, I argue, IS existence, made evident by the actual singularity of experience.
Divinity? I follow Witt from his Value and Culture: divinity is what I call the Good (or the inverse. It matters not).
I take this in the affirmative. I simply ask, what IS it that is beyond oneself? Turns out to be a fascinating question in phenomenology.
"We use language to talk about language". In this sense, language becomes the space of essentiality. It is what Heidegger pointed out when naming language as "the house of being". That is why I point out this exteriorization of language, even of language on itself. We give ourselves in language, not so much by language but by the transcendentality of language that is even at the level of the cogito. And I would go further, to the level of perception and sensibility: memory. When you say that pain is something mine and mine alone, you are already carrying out a re-appropriation: there is no pain without duration. So the repetition already takes place even at the level of sensibility. That is why we can remember a pain, because its meaning as pain transcends it and makes it possible (as duration or repetition). It is almost like the movement of a language, full of signs and signs of signs. Pain is also a sign.
Quoting Constance
The thing is that it is not universalization in the strict sense. It is transcendence, and singularity begins with transcendence (as has been said above about pain qua singularity) and signification. Hence we can establish an ethics about pain because if it were so absolutely singular it would be impossible to remember, or even to be aware of it. Religion, according to my reasoning, is a case of reappropriation of the field of transcendentality. It is something that still establishes universal maxims that must be followed by humans. God according to tradition is a cogito, but his condition of possibility (transcendence) exceeds the cogito.
The space of essentiality if you think like Heidegger. Husserl was an absolutist who thought that there is a true actuality in the eidetic presence, a "pure" phenomenon and Heidegger thought he was trying to walk on water. For me, I think callinglanguage the house of being can only made sense if you take being to be an ontological analytic, such that meaning at the level of basic questions lies in the combinatory possibilities of what can be said in the "potentialities" of what lies in a finite culture (Kierkegaard called this the "sin' of the race). See Heidegger's lecture on ontotheology and his " Destruktion of the metaphysical tradition." In the old Christian or Cartesian or Platonic sense of metaphysics there is this substantival view being, like Descartes' cogito, a thinking substance, this substratum of perceived affairs that underlies all (for us, res cogitans, for the world, res extensa). For Heidegger, this is simply out the window, making all that IS reduced to what language can construe something to BE.
Husserl is obviously not a substantivalist. But he does, to use Heidegger's language, defend the idea of a singular primordial Being discovered in the reduction. What is before me, my cat, is not a cat at the basic level. It IS pure presence. I mention all of this just to get here: I think Husserl is right! And Heidegger wrong on this single point. Heidegger is probably to most helpful philosopher I have ever read because, for one thing, he helped me articulate why I think Husserl is right. Being and Time gave rise to an entire culture of philosophical responses, among them are the post Heideggerian neo Husserlians, whom I read.
I believe you are right about the way language constitutes the Being of what can be said. But not the Being of what cannot be said. When language is deployed to speak the world it encounters the impossible, that is, what is "exterior to itself. A toothache's ache is not a thesis. I put most emphasis on the value dimension of our existence which is so emphatically underscored in the existential declaration of what it is. This I hold to be evident beyond question: screaming agony, say, as the most poignant example, is NOT an interpretative phenomenon in the purity of its presence. Heidegger is notoriously not an ethicist, and I think the reason he was able to reduce religion to ontotheology (see his THE ONTO-THEO-LOGICAL CONSTITUTION OF METAPHYSICS) is because he could not see this monumental point. There is no constituting interpretative language for value qua value (the essence of ethics and religion). Of course, when I speak of the pain, I am committed to the content of my time, culture and language, but value experience, when cleared of entanglements, is absolute. "The Good," I often mention Wittgenstein as saying, "is what I call divinity." This from a philosopher who took Occams' Razor to the radical exclusion of all metaphysics. He is not Heidegger, but they certainly align in their insistence that nothing may be said about the unspeakable. Heidegger speaks "around" the unspeakable in the section Care as the Being of Dasein, which is a fascinating discussion. But I part ways with him here, using the terms you raise: The exteriority of metaethics is "pure" metaphysics, not his ontotheology. Ethics is absolute at the level of basic questions.
Quoting JuanZu
If you confine the world's apprehension to the delimitations of language, then you will end up in Heidegger's thesis. But here, I invite you to take Husserl seriously, that is, Michel Henry, a post Husserlian (along with Levinas, Marion, Nancy, et al): terminate thought and allow yourself to participate in the vivid sensation of being here. The trouble with Heidegger is that he, while running a very different course of arguing, finds himself sharing the same end game as analytic philosophers, which is the attempt to address the living experience of our dasein in terms of language and its "potentiality of possibilities." This essentially is a reduction to dust, says Michel Henry (Barbarism). But the epoche of Husserl leads us out of this and into an affirmation that cannot be affirmed in the contingencies of language. Hermeneutics throws a broad blanket of contingency over all meaning. Yet when the reduction (epoche) is taken all the way to the direct interface with the world, contingencies dissolve yielding to revelation, seeing that we actually exist, as Kierkegaard put it.
I cannot see that pain being an absolute would make it impossible to remember. This is true of, say, in the way I am able to acknowledge an environment of equipment, as Heidegger put it: I walk into a classroom, familiar with all I see, and these are ready to hand, the desks, the lectern, and the rest. And each moment is a recollection/anticipation unity, and all is, as Husserl put it, predelineated in time. To know is to always already know PRIOR to encounter, and this is "desevered" (see his section on "Space") when encountering classrooms, etc. But pain as such is not recalled IN the painful moment. The knowledge desevered when reviewing what happened, how intense it was, how familiar and in what ways, all of this IS an experience of interpretative nature, true; but while IN the pain, one is not recalling pain, one is not desevering pain to recall what it is. Its BEING, I want to remind Heidegger, is stark evidence of the actuality that lies "outside" language.
Here, I do not care if I am caught in the middle of interpretative necessity (after all, saying something is outside language is itself an occasion pf language) which have no limit in subsuming phenomena, and the "purity" of the pain. The screaming pain of this sprained ankle IS absolutely authoritative, and this sense of absolute IS aligned with the traditional sense of ontology, which Heidegger wants to ignore.
As to universal maxims being followed by humans, we take no issue with this. But the analytic of ethics/aesthetics (Wittgenstein says they are the same thing, and I agree) reveals a transcendental Reality that has nothing to do with the Kantian/Heideggerian ontotheology.
And God is, I argue, certainly NOT a cogito. This is a rationalistic perversion invented by logicians.
Quoting Constance
I claim that there is indeed a process of interpretation. As I said, suffering does not occur in the absolute singularity that you claim. And this is demonstrated in the exercise of the recognition of pain. What is the link between pain and memory? If pain were not part of a process of signification, we could not even say that memory, insofar as it has as its object of memory, is somehow related to pain. In this sense, what is it that memory brings out of pain? Meaning. Pain cannot be thought of without its inscription in a process of signification being already given at the very moment of its existence. That would be to make pain something absolute, but so absolute (absence of relation) that neither thought (nor memory) could relate to it.
This even occurs at the level of presence that you point out: Husserl's understanding of temporality. It is not convenient here to recall Husserl's analyses of temporality. Husserl refers us to a differentiated structure of the moment in which something presents itself to the cogito, and this moment is related to the traces that are retained (retention, protention) in this moment (such as the moment of pain). Thus the aforementioned presence of the experience is inscribed in a chain of signification. That to which I have constantly referred. It is not an absolute, and its meaning is not given from itself. Language, therefore, is not a mere accident that survives the experience, but a possibility that is given by essence insofar as the experience is imbricated and inscribed in the signification.
I claim that this transcendent reality of which you speak when you speak of pain belongs to what Heidegger calls Western ontotheology. And this is so insofar as you have referred to the absolute, to purity, and to authority about something like pain. That reference to purity, to the absolute, and to the presence of pain is the classical element of the unconditioned and that whose meaning and being is given from itself. But how do we make this compatible with ethics? Such an absolute makes impossible the recognition necessary for empathy and understanding of the pain of others. More ethical than "I suffer" is "the other suffers". And the suffering of the other is not my experience! Ethics at this point must challenge and transcend the value of presence and experience, just as memory and language do, and just as the process of signification in which pain is inscribed invites us to think.
A curious position to take indeed. Even if I were to grant that the experience of pain was memory contingent, this would not, nor can anything, undo or diminish the manifestation of the pain qua pain. I don't at all think what you are saying is right about how pain becomes manifest AS pain, for, on the one hand, it is like the temporal forward looking occasion of encountering my cat, an occasion which possesses the habit of familiarity, hence recollection, in the recognition, making recognition possible. This is Heidegger's "taking something AS" in dasein's possibilities. I take "that there" AS a cat and when he says the whole world of possible objects is like this, I think he is right, but only to the extent that what appears is reducible to a reduction to "taking as," the nature of hermeneutics.
While it is true that pain is contextually defined in different ways: in this context it is an opportunity to show strength of endurance, in another there is a Hippocratic oath taken to see pain as a pathology, and so on. THIS is what is meant by hermeneutical taking something as: "regions" of possibility are "desevered" when one enters a doctor's office or someone's kitchen (see his section on Space in B&T). But for this to hold, and hold disingenuously, one would have to observe that the pain witnessed in the palm of your hand as you hold a lighted match beneath it, is entirely contextually constituted.
Look I mean, you can SAY this is the case, but such a thing would be patently absurd.
Quoting JuanZu
Husserl's is not a Cartesian cogito. It is a transcendental ego that stands in an intentional relationship with its object, and these relationships are not simply knowledge relationships, but include liking, disliking, anticipating, dreading, and so forth. But no matter. Note that that which is inscribed in a chain of signification is merely an "adumbration" of the experience. I recall that I sprained my ankle, but that recollection does not relive the pain of the sprain. The pain itself is transcendentally occurrent, meaning it issues from a "now" that is not discovered in the retention.
Quoting JuanZu
Yes. Though, along with Nietzsche, most of this tradition is declared off the table. One has to be very careful approaching this, and Derrida comes to mind, along with the so called "French theological turn" of Michel Henry, Levinas and others. Husserl's reduction is an apophatic method of disclosure. Heidegger later (Discourse on Thinking) softens a bit, referring to gelassenheit, meditative thinking that is a kind of yielding to a world to discover it, but here one can still construe this to be no more than allowing the Totality of language and culture to play out without the imposition of presumed knowing. Our words are, after all, "open" interpretatively.
But yes, I am saying that value-in-Being is just as you say, but value as such is utterly transcendental, and the word is contextually bound.
Quoting JuanZu
This is confusing to me. Levinas said the opposite. One's own suffering translates into a knowledge of suffering that there is a metaethical grounding to one's compassion. The Other's suffering has always been understood empathetically, which places the nature of understanding always with the self. Transcending one's self begins with self knowledge: I see another suffering, and "it hurts; it hurts and I know it." This is the foundation of empathy.
This seems the foundation for Schopenhauers notion of compassion and thus the foundation of his ethics:
https://iep.utm.edu/schopenh/#:~:text=The%20dictum%20of%20morality%20is,thus%20does%20not%20affect%20us.
I take this to be VERY important questioning:
The attainment of a goal or desire, Schopenhauer continues, results in satisfaction, whereas the frustration of such attainment results in suffering. Since existence is marked by want or deficiency, and since satisfaction of this want is unsustainable, existence is characterized by suffering.
Frustration is not what results in suffering, nor is want or deficiency. There, of course, are examples of suffering, but suffering itself "stands as its own presupposition," requiring no wordy accounting, and again, not that wordy accountings are wrong, they just miss the point: The bad experience (not a bad couch or a having a bad day) finds what makes it bad in the pureness of badness itself. One is inclined to take issue with this "ontology of the bad"? I can see why (but some of those who take strongest issue with this are so happily inclined to talk about something like material substance independent of the agency's perceptual contribution, and idea of the absolute worst kind of metaphysics; after all, such a thing has never even been witnessed, nor is it witnessable), for the "good" and the "bad" of ethics is occluded by contrived philosophical issues.
I am saying, if you want to know what the basis is for the injunction not to bludgeon your neighbor with a hammer, the basis for the laws against doing this, all one has to do is bludgeon oneself, and the authority of the injunction not to do it rests solely with what it feels like to be bludgeoned. It is not a deficit nor the frustration of being bludgeoned (whatever that is), but the "presence" of this value-in-the-world we call bad. Likely due to Schopenhauer's exposure to Buddhism which, as you likely know, puts the onus on the idea of attachments, but this too begs the same question: what is wrong with attachments? Such inquiry always comes down to the foundational pure phenomenon of value.
..."these are.." not what I wrote. I never proof read. Bad habit.
Quoting Constance
Keep in mind that Husserls apophantic method discloses certainty in the structural features of intentional synthesis, grounded in the synthetic structure of consciousness. It is not designed to disclose certainty in the specific content of what appears to consciousness. On the contrary, every particular content given in consciousness ( such as a sensation of pain) is contingent and relative.
Quoting Constance
For Heidegger, the transcendence of Being refers to the fact that the subject is out beyond itself in being in the world. It understands itself by coming back to itself from its future. When we take something as something, we are projectively understanding from out of this future.
When Derrida says there is nothing outside the text, he means nothing outside context. Context for him is not a frame that encloses a meaning within it, but a displacing , transcending futurity that is imminent to the structure of understanding something as something, a break within the heart of what would otherwise be constituted as intrinsically pure value , sense, meaning, ipseity.
And I agree with that. But I consider that pain must be seen as part of a significant whole. In this sense pain is not only the sensation but the memory, the value, its interpretation, its representation, and so on. This, I believe, reveals to us an element of absence (non-presence, Husserlian non-evidence) in its ethical consideration. Hence, I cannot give primacy to my pain with respect to the pain of the other person. The value of presence and of the evidence of experience in phenomenology is surpassed by the value of absence in order to be able to pose the ethics of pain.
Quoting Constance
I agree that Husserl's transcendental Ego is not exactly the same as the Cartesian Cogito. However the epokhe saves an Ego. Husserl's analyses of the temporality of that Ego in my opinion are irrefutable. The temporality according to which this Ego is given refers to the constituent absence of the Ego since pain is also given as duration, moments that are more intense than others, sometimes it passes, and sometimes it returns. It is impossible to detach pain from the temporality composed of "here and now" and therefore with the relationship with other "here and now" that are not present. Is this not the experience of the other? Another person who has experiences in relation to me is another "here and now" that I do not perceive. The pain of another person is given in a here and now that I do not perceive and is not an experience of mine.
Quoting Constance
That is why I am not "Levinasanian". The condition for there to be a pain or suffering of another person is that the value of the experience, the presence and the present of that experience is to be transcended by an absence. In this case the experience of the other that I do not perceive and that is given to me as absent. But in the end this absence is constitutive, even of the ethical consideration of myself and of the inscription of pain in a process of signification. The process of signification is like language: it functions with signs. And it is characteristic of a sign to function in different contexts. In this case pain is a sign, it can have existence in me or in another person, different organisms, different contexts, transcending the value of presence "here and now". It is the most common story of meaning: When we read a book we relive what a person thought in the "here and now" and captured it in ink (or in some data), but that "here and now" is completely absent at the moment when I read the book written by another person: I am another "here and now" also absent for the writer. But the meaning of the book "survives" transcends the experience and the evidence (Husserl's evidence) of both the reader and the writer.
Quoting Constance
So, Schopenhauer has a theory of Will whereby it operates in the negative. That is to say, for him, satisfaction is the freedom from pain, not the attainment of a good. He has a deprivationalist view whereby, wants and needs are the given, and satisfaction is simply a temporary stasis that is achieved when goals are achieved/consumed/partaken in. The suffering is that we are dissatisfied, and thus his quote:
The bolded part is the major metaphysical point for him. For his definition of suffering (what I call "inherent" suffering versus "contingent/situational suffering"), is there is a dissatisfaction at the core of animal being. The dissatisfaction is akin to an "incomplete" state. This is what he is deeming as "suffering". And this conception I again demarcate as "inherent" or even "Eastern" definitions of suffering, which elevates it to a metaphysics, one of incompleteness as its definition. The mainstream version of suffering is more akin to what you may describe. It is the hedonistic harms we face based on biology, circumstances, and contingency, that play out in everyday life.
But I was referring specifically to the apophatic nature of the reduction. Michel Henry argues how this negative "method" takes philosophy to the purity of engagement and he means it takes one to an undeniable simplicity. As does Caputo.
But regarding his endless references to absolute consciousness, it seems clear that Husserl was talking like a foundationalist. On the other hand, there is this paper by Bence Peter Marosan, Levels of the Absolute in Husserl which argues along the lines you mention. I tend toward Henry, Marion, et al.
Quoting Joshs
Right. I surely can't speak for everyone, but for me, the hardest thing about reading Heidegger is that through his long discussions, everything is derivative of time, that is, has its most primordial discussion in time. Human dasein is time.
Quoting Joshs
The fault lies in the analysis that would compromise the singularity of valuing which is most vividly revealed in intense examples. "Pure" value lies outside understanding as something, notwithstanding that it is discovered
Nothing outside the text: certainly not enclosed meanings, any more than a context itself can be truly closed. But "displacing, transcending futurity," this I haven't encountered on Derrida. I'll have to look see.
That is a wild, unsubstantiated and almost certainly dead-wrong assumption. Most philosophers are not continental philosophers. Most philosophers are well aware of continental philosophy and it's short-comings. It's pretty rich taking the "everyone is wrong but my club" line.
There is a reason you're getting 'juvenile' responses. They aren't juvenile. They are on point, and perhaps have an effect on your ego as you seem quite committed to a school quite readily dismissed by tthose really working on life's problems. Tinkering with language is all Continental's have left to give us.
Quoting Constance
The level of irony you're on is impressive. Go forth and waste your time...
Quoting Constance
The simplicity Henry is after seems to depend on belief in a pure self-affecting ipseity. Zahavi is sympathetic to this stance, as he also argues that there can be no meaning without subjectivity and there can be no ground for subjectivity without an I which comes back to itself as identically the same in its self-affection. As he says:
This is where Henry departs from Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, who all insist on the ecstatic nature of self-awareness.
Hmmm I would say maybe anything we cant know?
Self itself.
Beyond is whatever evolution gets to in the future; quantum fields are the root before in the past.
But it is not about the ethics of pain, nor is it about the significant whole. This is not an argument about ethics any more than Kant's Critique is about logic and logically solving cognitive puzzles. It is an apriori argument: What is there in an ethical matter such that in order to be ethical at all, this is an essential part to it being what it is. This is value, a structural feature of our existence, always already in our existence (Heidegger's care comes to mind, but he had little interest in ethics. Curious).What is value? "The good"? One thing is clear, remove value from the world, and ethics simply vanishes. It doesn't vanish incidentally, as when one removes the umbrella from above one's head, protection from the rain vanishes; it vanishes essentially: ethics becomes an impossibility.
Quoting JuanZu
Very much appreciate this passage here, "The temporality according to which this Ego is given refers to the constituent absence of the Ego since pain is also given as duration." Would you tell me where this comes from in the "Phenomenology of the internal consciousness of time"? I have it here but I can't find it.
You have to ask the question, where does the reduction really take one? "What IS it? It is the Cartesian method of doubt that understands one thing Descartes did not: A disembodied cogito makes no sense at all, and really is no more than an abstraction from actuality, which is a fully endowed experience. The reduction takes one the presuppositional foundation of experience, and so the world of familiar nomenclature falls away, yielding to the pure phenomena that stands before one. Husserl laid the basics outm but it is with the neoHusserlians like Michel Henry, I am arguing, that the reduction finds its true center: So much appearing, so much being. The issue of evidence simply loses it meaning here. I can take issue with anything that is constituted theoretically. Even if the world of meaningful utterances is essentially pragmatic, and theoretical accounts "come after" this foundation of pragmatic "knowledge" one is still a theoretical setting simply saying this. This, I take it, is what the problem of evidence is essentially about. What is being defended here is the notion that language in its "openness" discovers existential actuality, and this discovery is inherently valuative. What would dasein be without care? It would be a dictionary-self, altogether exhausted analytically by what language can say and the "potentiality of possibilities" found therein.
As to agency and experiencing the entire affective dimension of existence, I hold that the affectivity of discovered "in the world" cannot exist without it. Affectivity cannot exist without agency, or, it is absurd to imagine suffering disentangled from the one who suffers. Just as it is absurd to imagine an analysis of time contradicting the primordiality of suffering, simply because suffering as a pure phenomenon stands outside of analysis. Heidegger said he did not believe in a single primordiality. I am arguing he was wrong about this: value in the world is this. Consider Jean Luc Marion on this: the reduction is utterly primordial as it yields/discovers primordiality itself. Thus, "the Kantian insistence that there are pure ideas in play in the analytic is dismissed because there is no analysis in this disclosure. One stands before givenness and all discursivity is in abeyance. This is not an argument. It is a revelation."
Quoting JuanZu
The absence is constitutive OF the process of signification. The claim here is that his temporally conceived process of signification belongs to an analytic that is committed to "things themselves" and the nonderivative of their presence. The reduction takes inquiry closer and closer to this and the disclosure becomes more foundational. It is supposed to do this, not wander around in speculation. When you find yourself radically at odds, not with the familiar word and its assumptions, but with this second order of phenomenological awareness, you know something is very wrong your thinking. Consider for that moment as you stand before, say, a black plague victim and all the horrors, you proceed to explain that agency itself is negated by a proper analysis of the temporal construct of engagement, and so suffering is analytically without agency... so all is well.
Frankly, I don't think you think like this. I think you are testing the thesis. I have no problem with this. I'll read more deeply into Husserl's Time, see if I can give you a more technical response.
Fascinating. I trust he is being truthful, and there is only one way to explain his position: He truly did not understand happiness, love, music; of course, music of great bravado is the exception, as is love in the broadest sense, as in the love of boxing or extreme sports, and happiness can be about just about anything. But something profound and positively important, I mean, he could no more understand this than a quadriplegic could understand the joys of gymnastics. Feeling genuinely good as a general sense of well being, was simply absent from his existence. (Note the striking difference between Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein: the latter, very passionate, threw himself on the war's front just to face death, and thoughts of Beethoven and Brahms were the ground for his infamous statements about nonsense: not wanting philosophical nonsense to undo the depth of experience.) This was very likely true about Nietzsche, who suffered all of his life and spend his time, free or otherwise, actually being an ubermensch in his day to day affairs.
A strange irony. Likely that some of the greatest composers are among the least able to aesthetically acknowledge music. Explains Schoenberg and Webern.
It is a question of endowment. That is, why philosophical questions remain unanswerable. We "answer" from what we know, and we "know" very different things as we are made of, if you will, different things.
Look at it like Rorty did, and he was a qualified naturalist: See out there among the trees, there are no propositions. And here, at my end, there are no trees. What does a knowledge claim do, LEAP over there for content? No. Correspondence theory falls apart almost instantly because one can never get out of the knowledge we have of trees to the things over there. To affirm such a thing would require some third medium through which connectivity is established; but then, this third medium itself would need its own nexus of epistemic connectivity; ad infintitum.
I should quickly add that it is not being argued that knowledge claim never reach their object. Quite the opposite: they clearly do. When I see a tree, it is out there, I am here, it is not me, etc. All registered with acceptance. The question is, how is this possible? This is where we have to turn to phenomenology. What we "see" is an event, a me-seeing-tree event. What else?
Interesting!
I don't remember the context in which this was said.
Before you get to quantum physics, you have to ask more basic questions, those of philosophy. What is knowledge? What is language? What is aesthetics and ethics? To affirm quantum physics or evolution is, of course, not questioned at all. It's just that there are quesitons that underlie science's assumptions that have their own analyses.
Noticed I overstepped with this: "The issue of evidence simply loses it meaning here." Should say it is here that the problematic begins. To say being is uncovered, and this does carry the weight of foundational being and not simply a construct, in radical proximity of appearance refers to something uncovered that is not derivative. But the discussion this opens is not settled.
So actually, he is one of the most notable philosophers of music, raising it to some of the highest levels of his metaphysical system/sotieology. That is to say, in his view, if the problem of suffering is our "Will", then, one way for a brief respite from it is aesthetic contemplation. The artistic genius and to a lesser extent, the observer, they are seeing the very Ideas themselves (pace Plato but not exactly), through their aesthetic lens. Whereas images and other mediums are more stationary, representing the ideas, music solely, has represents the Wills very flowing nature, being even more abstracted from the already abstract nature of art and aesthetics. See here:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schopenhauer-aesthetics/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer%27s_aesthetics
Given that we are granting evolution occurred, (I presume you mean biological evolution) I'm not seeing much reason to privelege philosophical consideration especially. There is a large and growing amount of scientific investigation into matters of great relevance to epistemology, language, aesthetics, and ethics. Can you make a case for why the philosophy to which you are referring is more important to understand than the growing body of scientific understanding?
What I have said before is also said of value. How could pain be thought of in a being like us, exempt from its valuation? It is not possible insofar as we are beings who react to suffering and pain according to positive and negative valuations, but in the response (be it by judgment or action) the sign already functions. How could the response not be related to pain and suffering? how could it not have effects on our constitution? Pain and suffering transcends to the extent that it is sign and resonates through our being. Its effects transcend its first moment, they are located in the memory, in the judgment, in the representation, in the response. Here pain and suffering is not the simple cause that can be distinguished from its effects, pain and suffering is its effects beyond the abstraction of a first and absolute moment.
Quoting Constance
You find it in Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal time, when he speaks of the three phases that constitute the temporality of consciousness: Retention, perception and protention. This temporality is presented in the epokhé, in which the difference of the "nows" constitutes the living present. But it is necessary to note the difference of the "nows", and how a present-now is immediately past, and gives way to a future-now. In both cases the absence is related and constitutes the living present. In our case, the living present of pain and suffering.
Quoting Constance
It is the opposite. When you act in the face of another person's pain, that pain is not present to you. I claim that helping there is an act that transcends the central element of phenomenology (perception and evidence in the living present). You do not have the evidence that the other is suffering (the phenomenological evidence), but you still help the other person. This is what our act of compassion and empathy consists of: The evidence that I am an other for another. The evidence that I am not the only one and that non-presence is so "originary" is something that occurs in my most "isolated and solitary" moment in the reduction of reductions, in the transcendental reduction. It is necessary to be sufficiently other to help and assist in pain and suffering. One must embrace the possible absence of pain and suffering (the pain and suffering of the other is absent in me).
I wonder what you think about Schopenhauer's ethics? I don't think I will read The World as Representation just because I don't have the time and I'm reading other things. But looking here and there, I come to conclude that he doesn't understand ethics. Misery more existentially emphatic than bliss? He fails to see that our preference for the good over the bad, founded on the good as an absolute good and the bad an absolute bad. Our preferences are entangled in wants and needs as Schopenhauer says they are, but a further examination of the nature of a want or need reveals a ground of presuppositional significance he didn't see.
Apodictically good is different from contingently good, the latter being a good couch or a good knife, the former, good itself. As with apodictic logicality, the latter cannot be anything other than what it is. Just as modus ponens will not be contradicted, so the good of being in love and the bad of having your kidney speared cannot be other than what they are. This is the point in the OP.
You know Schopenhauer better than I. Perhaps you can see a way out of this?
It is a long story. If science does not and cannot explain knowledge AT ALL, then all of its knowledge claims rest within the claims as claims only. This is just the way it is throughout analytical thinking, isn't it? A person tells me moonlight is reflected sunlight, and I ask what the sun is, and not only is there no answer, but the very possibility of an answer is problematic, then the proposition that moonlight is reflected sunlight light becomes very thrown into doubt while the search for what a "sun" could possiblity be moves forward.
Okay, so we know what the sun is. But consider: A scientist tells me moonlight is reflected sunlight, and I ask, how do you know anything about anything? Not just suns and moons, but anything at all. The scientist brushes this off, but note: she has no answer. I mean, in the language of the science she is so familiar with, there simply IS no answer to this.
This is why philosophical thinking is "privileged": It is thinking about the forgotten indeterminacies of our existence. No one questions science when it does its job. But scientific metaphysics, materialism or physicalism and the variations thereof, fail almost instantly at the mention.
Of course, you can say such indeterminacies are of no consequence. First, the consequence is, up front, not the point. The point is all knowledge claims rest on indeterminacies. This has to be made clear. Second, to see whether there is significance to this kind of inquiry, one has to realize that this indeterminacy: it's you. And me and everyone else. Philosophy takes one away from objective certainties (or, it should) of science, and into the extraordinary world of the self. After all, a perception of the world is not a mirror image. The observer is part and parcel of the event that produces the facts of the world.
I read somewhere that quantum physics is trying to make a similar claim. But this has been around since Kant.
Science discovers, expresses, and duly tests stubborn patterns observable in the physical universe.
The resulting output of scientific activity are scientific statements, i.e. abstract language objects.
There are no abstract language objects visible or otherwise observable in physical reality.
Hence, the output of science is not a legitimate input for science. Consequently, science cannot talk about itself. Its method cannot handle that.
Philosophy can do that. Sufficiently powerful self-referential mathematics can often also do that. Science, however, cannot do that. It is not powerful enough to that end.
I think you fail to grasp Schopenhauer. Good is not positive because it is temporary. Much like Heraclitus, he sees the flux of existence and sees this as proof that satisfaction is unstable and unattainable. Want is the hallmark of lack. Something we dont have now. We would not lack for anything if we were whole and not unstable. Instead our very existence as individual beings is inherently intertwined with lacking.
Good and bad in the hedonistic sense..being embarrassed feels bad. Winning a game feels good, is not quite what hes getting at.
I do see what he is getting at. It is not that he says what he says I take issue with. It is what he says. He fails to see the nature of value in ethics and aesthetics. This is a metaethical claim that the ethical and aesthetic matters we all encounter have an actual metaphysical foundation. Kant's deduction from the evidence found in the analysis of the structure of judgment justified the positing of pure forms of reason. You certainly can argue about this, but the point is about method: He made a logical move from what is "seen" to what is unseen. An extrapolation. Here this is done with value.
I am saying that Schopenhauer, based on what I have read, does not see this. First, if you are going to take misery seriously, as he apparently does, then you have to take the entire range of value matters just as seriously. One seeks to escape pain, but why? The logic of pain possesses the logic of relief, and relief is "good" feeling, without question. But simply in terms of the face value of good and bad experiences, these dimensions of value are clear and "equiprimordial" (using Heidegger's term), from thumb screws to Hagen Dazs: the bad and good of ethics has its existential grounding here and nowhere else, an entire horizon of actual possibilities.
Second, I am arguing that this field of equiprimordiality of value (good and bad ontologically on the same order of significance) possesses the "impossible" dimension of an absolute. Simply put, ask, What would it mean for an ethical matter to have the same apodicticity found in logic? It would be a metaphysical revelation. I am saying value and its ethics and aesthetics (Wittgenstein says they are the same and I agree) stand as an evidential basis for an existential apodicticity.
Only religion has been allowed to think like this, and its thinking has been so cluttered with fictional narratives and churchy fetishes (I like to call them) that this has obfuscated the true nature of religion, which lies in the metavalue affirmation of the good and bad.
Thanks for the response.
This is a pretty good illustration of my point about myopic philosophizing without being scientifically informed. I'll bow out now.
Myopic philosophizing? Without being scientifically informed?? What are you talking about?
Untiringly, the answer I have found, the body, a real organic being, not unlike many other animals, is beyond oneself. But not beyond, where we are looking; turns out, it's what never went anywhere. It's "oneself" which is "beyond" a factor only in the make-believe; but it necessarily pretends to be out there and within.
First, it is not positive and negative valuations nor what can be "thought of" that ceases upon thought at the outset. This is where you have your issue: you think Husserl's analysis of time has privilege over the actualities most poignantly there, in our midst. In this you are mistaken. Certainly we are trying to think about pain and time, but the question will always need to yield according to phenomenological priority, and the way we think must follow upon the way the world is phenomenologically appears, or is "given". Jean Luc Marion's "Reduction and Givenness" posits a fourth principle of phenomenology: so much reduction, so much givenness. Time is an analytic; pain is not. Time is ontologically equiprimordial, which simply means it begs questions that are implicit in the concept; pain is ontologically primordial: reduced to its essential presence, it has NO analytic.
See the OP: the effort to discover the essence of religion takes us away from the discursive Kantian transcendental move of "what has to be the case given what is the case," into pure immanence.
Quoting JuanZu
But this is a disingenuous argument as it blatantly ignores the nature of what lies before one. Affective consciousness is logically prior to the talk about the three phases of time. The latter is discursive, while affective consciousness is foundational. Keep in mind, we are well aware of the problems of concerning making ideas clear, but then, this is the problematic of affirming in metaphysics, the affirmation of what stands outside of language IN the inside of language. In language, we discover that we exist (in the pre Heideggerian sense of existence. The kind of thing Nietzsche decried so emphatically), and the valuative dimension of this existence is is exterior of language.
I have said earlier that it really does rest on where the epoche takes one, and I mean, if you follow the principle of exclusion, you realize that you are practicing the method of apophatic theology. And all that is left, the residuum of the reduction, is something that cannot be reduced, for it stands as its own presupposition. This is value-in-the-world.
Quoting JuanZu
The problem of this reasoning lies with your "absence". The originary evidence is yours, and it is unmitigated and nondiscursive. The evidence for the ethical obligation is discursive, argues Levinas, but I think the matter has to be taken to the pure givenness of pathos. Pathos is discovered IN the appearing, and pathos itself is primordial and stands as a presuppositionaless evidential basis for ethics. Conversation is entangled, mediated, derivative. Pathos is direct regard for the Other that has an ontological status of an absolute.
Put time's analysis aside: There before one is the Other's wretched condition laid our before one. Of course, the argument that the Other is a moral priority, and the discussion of something that is NOT primordial to us weighs in for judgment, taking the Other's existence in third person references. This discussion constructs a dialog, putting fact against fact, comparing priorities, and so forth. I argue that the reduction removes this discursive matter from our sight, in order to discover the pure empathic response (noting that this is absent in some: the real cause of our political troubles).
Of course, pure empathy does not give one an answer in an entangled world. Nor does logic give us all the reasons for doing and justifying. Empathy is primordial. This is the point. To "feel for" the misery of others is not an argument, but reflects the foundational unity of ethical agencies.
I am a little puzzled. Perhaps elaborate, if you would.
I've been following your discussion since we "broke" and generally agree with your position/depiction, with only this exception (below).
It is clear to me that because I agree with you, I have assumed that I have made my understanding clear, but I have not.
Here it is--skipping all of the "stages" where I agree--starting at the phenomenological reduction to hypothetically arrive at the so called transcendental ego. Where (you/we) ask, what is beyond that self: Quoting Constance
I say that the being we are all after (whether wittingly or not), the being beyond the trans-ego (and there has to be one since the trans-ego is the final reduction but is nevertheless a reduction--implying it is the final remnant of that being reduced) is the organic natural body in its aware-ing unobstructed/Unmediated by language. Even the trans-ego Iis knowable, hence requires language, the medium of knowing.
The natural aware-ing body is aware of the language, ego, etc., but does not "move/act/function" in that medium/world. It is experienced unmediated, directly.
I realize you think it impossible. But I respectfully disagree. And it seems, that I'd the only disagreement I have with your otherwise extremely well managed discussion.
In other words, the essence of religion is a tormenter getting off on testing his creations and punishing them for their misdeeds. Gnosticism in that sense, if not taken seriously, would have been a proper satire.
:smirk: @Wayfarer
Have you traced the "manifestations" "back" far enough?
Maybe the "essence" is that personal attachment to deeds and their fruits will ultimately cause suffering, submission/faith in the way of things (many variations to expressing that) will not.
Because--and the essence of religion emerged to express this--natural occurences cause pain; but suffering and torment arise from the imposition of an ego on to these; an ego to which suffering can attach.
Well sure. But as I agree with this, I also have been trying present the idea that the analytic language used to describe how this works has to be more broadly conceived. Language is not prohibitive for the experience "unmediated" and direct. It in fact makes it possible. This is not to your liking, but one has to authentically conceive of the way one can know anything at all. One has to rethink altogether the nature of language. It is not an external artificial imposition, but an imposition that emerges from within the core of experience itself. One cannot speak the nature of language, and it is just as "unmediated" as anything else. But most importantly, language qua language does not interfere. It makes the openness of the unmediated possible. Heidegger has to notion of geworfenheit, or "thrownness," as when you are there minding your own business, when the lecture on Hegel or Kant you attended leaps to mind for no reason at all and it dawns on you that your/our existence really is a powerful mystery underneath all the ready-made knowledge claims. Now you enter into a radically different mode of existence, which is reflective or meditative thinking. Here you encounter the unmediated.
Far better than Kant or Hegel would be the Abbhidamma. "The East" as a theo-philosophical achievement begins where neoHusserlians (the French theologians like Jean Luc Marion and Levinas) leave off, so guarded they are against claims of mystical overreach, that they could never make that mind boggling move to become a sadhu! To actually walk away from everything and retreat into
I have been pushing two ideas to talk about religion, and both are simple, the kind of thing analaytic philosophy despises. The first is that knowledge is impossible without radically redefining consciousness away from standard assumptions about the primacy of physicalism. I cannot make you see this. One simply has to beat this matter into submission: The brain is in no way at all a mirror of nature and causality has nothing epistemic about it. All I can do is put this on the table. It is entirely up to you to go over this again and again until it becomes obvious, because it is simply obvious. It is the second most fascinating thing about our existence, and it sits there clear as a bell. More than quantum physics can ever be--listen to, read about, quantum physics and you find physicists just puzzled, embarrassed, stymied, clueless; well, this is nothing compared to the consequences of this foundational epistemic problematic.
So what do analytic epistemologists talk about? They ignore it. Because the issue is so simple, there is nothing to talk about unless one turns to idealism, and they most emphatically will not do this because of what is now two hundred years of Kantian philosophy, turned "continental" phenomenology, and an analytic complexity so demanding and counterintuitive they have just had it. They want science, as Russell said, to be the guiding light, and hang the fundamental stupidity the whole thing rests on. See this wonderful book by Robert Hanna: THE FATE OF ANALYSIS Analytic Philosophy From Frege To The Ash Heap of History. In the terms you use, analytic philosophy puts an end to the idea of a world" experienced unmediated, directly."
Anyway, this ax that I have to grind with this failing institution called analytic philosophy concerning epistemology is razor sharp, a regular Occam's razor that cuts out an entire century of mostly pointless anglo american philosophy. The second idea: I said epistemology is the second most fascinating thing. The most fascinating deals with value, and I have labored this to death. It as well is painfully simple. What is the nature of an ethical injunction not to do something? No value, no ethics. So what is value? Just observe the spear in your kidney or the happy nostalgia of childhood. This is the unmediated world you refer to. Thus: the essence of ethics is discovered not in the endless analytic of ethical language (analytic philosophers' cleverness lies here. A great book that illustrates this is John Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong), but in the world! This IS the thesis of the OP. The essence of religion lies in the unmediated givenness of value-in-the-world. Value comes to us, says Wittgenstein, in a way, from another world. It has no place in this one, this world of states of affairs. There is a wonderful lecture on Wittgenstein on Youtube titled "Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Great War and the Unsayable" you would be interested in.
The trouble I have with this is the metaphysics. You take a narrative, or allude to several narratives, and say things that only toy with the theme of religion. Imagine a geologist or an astronomer taking this perspective! Unthinkable.
But what if you were a scientist committed to observation? All narratives fall away, and this includes those that have interesting things to say like Taoism and Hinduism. These presuppose the most basic questions about religion, those about foundational ontology: the What is it? question of ethics. This is the metaethical question of the good and the bad, the should and the shouldn't, the right and the wrong, that must be approached descriptively. One looks at the world clinically, if you will, at the stark presence of what lies before the waking eye (whether there really is a "stark presence" is of course a real issue, but not here, or, not yet, at least). What is the analysis of an ethical matter? Analysis takes things apart and examines, so we need to take ethics apart, so to speak. E.g., we know S knows where the bomb is located that will bring horror to thousands. May we torture S to find out? Here we stop. Putting aside the arguments of utility contra deontology, why is this an issue at all??? This is the analytic question we begin with: the ontology of ethics.
Here we discover what Wittgenstein referred to as value. I mean, it is not because he used this word, but because the word is simply the proper classification of things in the world that are ethical. All ethical matter hinge on this essential presence: the caring about things and the ouches and yums of their actuality of experience. A geologist may observe the crystal structure of quartz; for religion we look at the se actualities of experience. We look to caring and that which is IN the direct observation of caring. What we discover is the nature of ethical/aesthetic good and bad. This is the foundation of religion.
I dont see how you link
Quoting Constance
With religion.
Youd have to actually include something pertaining to religion to complete that linkage. Ethics is not religion. Ethics tied to a deity or cosmic supernatural principle is, for example. But I would argue that ethics tied to the supernatural entity isnt religion per se, but the relation of the supernatural to the world, and ethics is usually entailed in that with religious worldviews.
One has to understand ethics as Wittgenstein did in the Tractatus. See also the Lecture on Ethics and his Culture and Value. Apparently this is hard to see, as is made clear by all of the Wittgenstein fans at this forum, who entirely fail to understand this basic point: ethics and value are transcendental. See what he says:
[i]The sense of the world must lie out
side the world. In the world everything
is as it is, and everything happens as i
does happen: in it no value existsand if
it did exist, it would have no value
If there is any value that does have
value, it must lie outside the whole sphere
of what happens and is the case. For all
that happens and is the case is accidental
What makes it non-accidental cannot
lie within the world, since if it did it would
itself be accidental
It must lie outside the world
So too it is impossible for there to be
propositions of ethics.
Propositions can express nothing that
is higher.
It is clear that ethics cannot be put
into words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the
same.)[/i]
You can take issue with a lot that is here, especially about his definition of a proposition, but this about value and ethics is something he did not abandon later on. His point is really about the ethical good and bad, what Moore called "non natural properties": A simply matter, really, but painfully hard for those hell bent on discursive clarity. They don't like spooky "intuitions" but then, when you experience some or other caring and its concomitant good or bad, you can see clear as a bell that this is not simply a state of affairs, as Witt put is. It is a fact that the flame scorching my skin hurts like the devil, but what one cannot "see" is that it is bad, bad, that is, in the ethical sense and not in the contingent sense of a bad sofa or a bad day for golf. This bad: direct and unmediated presence, this is what Wittgenstein says one cannot be put into words. "Sense" he says above, lies outside the world (states of affairs)and all sense is value intrinsic.
You can see why Witt's positivist friends could never understand what he was talking about. He was a deeply religious philosopher as he realized that this dimension of value in our existence is utterly transcendental and yet permeated our existence. It is not about an afterlife, or some divine plan or punishment. It is there IN the fabric of what we are.
So put it in more mundane terms: religion has two aspects, redemptive (a word full of religious connotative meaning which I despise) and consummatory; and these align with, respectively, the ethical or as I call it, the primordial, bad and the good. The former is the suffering of existence, the four horsemen of the apocalypse come to mind, but then, such a thing is a distraction. Better to bring vividly to mind the actual feeling of starving or stricken by plague. Ironic that this, the most salient feature of our existence, is shunned by professional philosophers. Schopenhauer, you know better than I, certainly DID understand this. What he appears not to understand (and I welcome being disabused) is that the wretchedness of our existence is inherently redemptive! That is the "logic" if you will, of suffering requires apriori, redemption. THIS is a tough premise to embrace. I will get no sympathy from anyone in this forum, for it is an "intuitive" matter. One simply has to look to the most wretched of wretched affairs, and realize as stand alone "non natural properties" they demand redemption.
I will get even less sympathy for the idea that the good (what Witt called divinity) is inherently consummatory. Tougher, yet. It cannot be argued, just as Witt would never brings such explanatory indignity to his beloved Beethoven or Brahms. Or being in love. Such things reach out beyond themselves to some unfathomable height that is deeply profound. Again, one does not argue such a thing. Like, say, a lighted match placed under your finger: one observes and acknowledges its nature. With such observations, one has entered into the primodiality of religion.
Isn't the problem here that later Witt had a different approach and framed morality in the context of language games? My understanding is that latter Wittgenstein holds that morality is not transcendent but is rather a product of contingent human practices. But I am no Witt expert. I think @Joshs might come closest.
Quoting Constance
I believe Norman Malcom's book Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View provides a nice exposition on his view of religion. In the introduction, Malcolm presents a quote from Wittgenstein that had puzzled him thought-out his life. Wittgenstein said to a former student, "I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view." Malcolm then proceeded to present an interpretation of what it could mean to say that there is, not strictly a religious point of view, but something analogous to a religious point of view, in Wittgenstein's later philosophical thought.
The four analogies are as follows:
1. The first analogy involve the notion of explanation. Basically, explanation comes to an end, and what needs to be accepted is the language game or form of life itself. As Malcolm says, "Religious practice are part of the natural history of mankind and are no more explicable that are other feature of this natural history."
2. The second analogy is the Wittgenstein's feeling of the "wondered at the existence of the world" or "the experience of seeing the world as a miracle." This was similar to his views of language games, for example, "Let yourself be struck by the existence of such a thing as our language game of: confessing the motive of my action (PI, p. 224).
3. The third analogy, Malcolm says the following of Wittgenstein's view of "religious emotion, thinking, practice, are an expression of the conviction that something is basically wrong with human beings. From Wittgenstein's Culture and Value, "The Christian religion is only for one who needs infinite help, therefore only for one who feels an infinite need. The whole planet cannot be in greater anguish than a single soul. The Christian faith - as I view it- is the refuge in this ultimate anguish. To whom it is given in this anguish to open his heart, instead of contracting it, accepts the means of salvation in his heart." Malcom see the similarity in Wittgenstein later approach to philosophy when he says "A main cause of philosophical disease - one-sided diet: one nourishes one's thinking with only one kind of example. (PI 593)."
4. Fourth, Wittgenstein did not see any value in intellectual proofs of God's existence or theological formulations in general. For Wittgenstein, religion was about changing one life, amending one ways, and helping others. Faith without works is dead as St James would say. Malcolm sees the same kind of thinking when Wittgenstein says "it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language game (OC 204.)"
Based on Malcolm's reading, I am not so sure if Wittgenstein would go so far in claiming anything transcendental. He did not believe we needed to explain religion with anything transcendental; that the world was a wonder and a miracle itself; that we need to look at ourselves in mirror and change our lives and help others, and not submit to the temptation to overly intellectualize religion.
But I would agree with you that for him it does permeate our lives and is woven in the very fabric of reality. As he says in Culture and Value:
"Life can educate one to a belief in God. And experiences too are what bring this about; but I don't mean visions and other forms of sense experience which show us the 'existence of this being', but e.g. suffering of various sorts. These neither show us God in the way a sense impression shows us an object, nor do they give rise to conjectures about him. Experiences, thoughts, - life can force this concept on us."
Yes, Wittgenstein expresses a feeling that I have also always had.
Rationality is a tool. Spirituality is another tool. They were never meant to be indiscriminately mixed.
If you want rational answers to spiritual questions, you are doing either of both wrong. Probably even both.
Quoting Constance
I agree but by disecting this. 1. Yes language does make "experience" possible. Because "experience" is a construction and projection of language. Being on the other hand happens in the present and there is nothing for experience to attach to, and 2. This is now to my liking. What is not to my liking is to think experience, or thinking for that matter, can exist before "language" broadly speaking, emerged.
Quoting Constance
That this happens is a demonstration that experience has no central experiencer (in the way we think) but is rather, an autonomous process of structures of language constructing and projecting.
Where the real "experiencer" kicks in is, the process uses its flesh as infrastructure, and as an actor in nature. Buried, displaced by all that philosophy holds dear in metaphysics and epistemology, analytical and liberal, is the real being doing its nature.
Quoting Constance
To clarify, the emphasis i place on the organic sounds like traditional physicalism. I understand. But it is qualified by three things
1. Mind though not ultimately real, is not of the physical--there is a qualified dualism.
2. The physical I refer to is not the one science or current physicalist philosophers do. Both are constructing their theories in language. I necessarily admit tge real body is unspeakable and unknowable. Anything I say is hypotheses.
3. Even more unknowable is any notion of a divine including that nature is divine, though I may remain passionately open to it, and ascribe it to a natural drive which has been displaced by religion, like bonding has been displaced by kinship, patriarchy, romance, Eros, parenting, etc
[quote="Constance;921849"]there is nothing to talk about unless one turns to idealism, and they most emphatically will not do this because of what is now two hundred years of Kantian philosophy, turned "continental" phenomenology, and an analytic complexity so demanding and counterintuitive they have just had it. They want science, as Russell said, to be the guiding light,[/quote]
And I share your grief. But offer a middle path between physicalism and idealism; qualified idealism. The so called ideal, embarrassingly turns out not to be the privileged reality. But it is a masterpiece nonetheless. Mind is what philosophers should study, it does operate in accordance with laws etc. But it is not "ontologically" anything. It is images coding the real body.
Quoting Constance
It is "valuable" to speak of and understand value. But where I respectfully diverge, is that value too, even qua "value" and not just its application, is no universal ppre-Mind "thing" in the universe, but a mechanism constructed by and projected by Mind.
Quoting Constance
I will watch that, thank you!
John Cottingham on Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Religion (pdf, 11 pages).
You are quite right that I will disabuse you here :). That is to say, within Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, especially Book 4, he discusses at length how one can seek redemption from suffering. For him, it was the life of the ascetic (akin to Buddhist hermitic monk) who denies his will-to-live. There is a soteriology, even if only the "saintly" can achieve, in Schopenhauer. It is intriguing, yet I don't buy it, so your accusations of Schop's non-existent soteriology is extremely off base, though it is more properly aimed at me ;). @Wayfarer and I have had many posts back-and-forth where we debate Schopenhauer's soteriology. That is to say, he embraces it (even if he probably has suggested improvements), where I see it as a metaphysical pipedream. That is to say, I admire Schop's unflinching analysis of the nature of striving, and the inherent suffering of dissatisfaction, but his solution (which is extremely REDEMPTIVE), I don't buy, unfortunately for us all.
Also, to not be ignored is Schopenhauer's "redemption-through-compassion". That is to say, asceticism is for the truly saintly, whereas access to compassion is available to more people, even though, this too is hard for many character-types to attain. Schopenhauer had a lowly view of the average human in terms of their ability to transcend the suffering. He thought only certain character-types as saintly enough to bypass our usual self-interest mode. And indeed, empirically, it is a classic case of "How do we know if we really do anything out of good will and not just tell ourselves this?" For those who truly have the capacity for selfless compassion/altruism/empathy, he thinks temporarily (not more permanently like the enlightened ascetic sage though), they can "deny the Will".
There are two Wittgensteins: The one found as a kind of demigod for analytic philosophy because he drew a line, and as I have read, this line remains in place throughout his thinking, between the sayable, whether it be described as a logical layout of states of affairs vis a vis the world or language games, and the unsayabled, the the latter was by far the most important. You know, he once confessed a desire to becoming a priest.
Joshs' thoughts are always welcome.
Quoting AmadeusD
Out of all the people to choose from in continental philosophy you choose Habermas? That mindset at least agrees with countries dominated by analytic philosophy being so socially degenerate. Analytic philosophy is irrelevant outside of its birthplace. By that metric it has less credence than Confucianism. And by another metric, Confucianism has given us something, analytics have done nothing.
Quoting AmadeusD
That is exactly what you are doing.
Quoting AmadeusD
Jesus Christ. It is projection over more layers of projection. It is almost like a circus of dishonesty.
At least two. I have read the Monk biography.
Quoting Constance
So did Stalin.
(The latter actually made it to the seminary but was booted out)
I have Wittgenstein and the Metaphysics of Grace by Terrance W Klein which gives a similar account.
So Wittgenstein was, call it deeply spiritual (fair to say about a person who all but memorized Tolstoy's Gospel in Brief, adored Kierkegaard, in fact, the latter's "dark nights of inwardness" is something Wittgenstein's suicidal personality related to) and had contempt for philosophy that tried to impose itself on this sacred dimension of our existence, which is why there is precious little coming from him about religion. "The whole project of philosophical theology, he once remarked, struck him as indecent (Drury, 1984, p. 90)." I am trying to show that something can be said, and it is not the violation of belief doubt brings, which is so easy, but rather, an affirmation. If ethics is about, as he says in Lecture on Ethics, an absolute, then lets take a look at what an "unspeakable" absolute is and speak about it.
What if ethics and aesthetics were apodictic in nature? Like logic, universal and necessary? This is what Wittgenstein is suggesting. The good is what I call divinity, he writes in Value and Culture.
Then what of the "the bad"? The OP puts this idea to the test. Wittgenstein is a moral absolutist or a moral realist. This can be discussed in an examination of the essence of religion.
THIS is what the OP is about. There are things you that belong to opinion and things that are certain, putting aside the aporia that questions can heap upon a statement like this can bring up. What if ethics were grounded in the same apodicticity found in logic? Then opinion would yield to certainty.
Religion makes this claim about ethics when it talks about God. Here, we eliminate such fictions, and abide by only what is in the world and the presence of what is before inquiry. An apriori analysis of ethics shows, I argue, and fortunately for us all, that the redemptive and consummatory features of religion actually issue from existence itself with the apodicticity equal to that of logic. That is, one cannot even imagine the bad being good and the good being bad, taken as pure expressions: the meta-good and the meta-bad.
There is an ancient tradition of aphophaticism in Christianity, the acknowledgement of the deficiencies of speech and reason to reach out to the divine. But that tradition was still sacramental and sacerdotal, much was embodied in and conveyed by the liturgy, the rites and rituals, even the architecture. All of which was driven by the awareness of the imperfection of ordinary human nature, a.k.a. the fallen state. Only an exceptionally perceptive reader might be able to glean that from reading Wittgenstein.
Heh, heh, why Tom Storm, what are you suggesting? That Wittgenstein's spirituality was just as stuipidly conceived and corruptible by power...as Joseph Stalin??
I was simply making the throwaway point that contemplating the priesthood does not in itself mean much.
Yes, I gathered as much. The priesthood is an institution, transcendence in the context of religion is the foundational indeterminacy of our existence. To contemplate the former is just mundane as I see it. A love of those churchy fetishes or some Freudian or Humean retreat from reality. The latter is an entirely different. This latter is Wittgenstein. Russell called him a mystic.
The priesthood is an institution, not the religion?
One's sees the same in Quine: "theres mystery at the bottom of every question ultimately." When the priority is science and clarity at the level of basic questions, one finds Quine's indeterminacy staring back at you, and there is the abiding Kantian making way for faith through a kind of apophatic method of seeing where thought has its limitations. I have always had contempt for this kind of thinking, and I don't think Wittgenstein is right to dismiss ethics and value from meaningful philosophy, which I think addresses your thoughts. Analytic philosophers, at least in Quine's time, really did have that "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem" style of Fideism, and Witt has been said to be just like this. Here is a passage from Wittgensteins Philosophy of Religion by John Cottingham:
.....for fides, like its Greek counterpart pistis, always connotes a stronger
volitional component than simple assent some further element of trust and
commitment. As one moves towards extreme forms of fideism, such as that of Søren
Kierkegaard, the volitional element becomes stronger. Faith does not need proof,
asserted Kierkegaard, indeed it must regard proof as its enemy (Kierkegaard 1941
[1846], p. 31).. And in a famous passage he observed: Christianity is spirit, spirit is
inwardness, inwardness is subjectivity, subjectivity is essential passion."
He adored Kierkegaard. A family of suicides, Wittgenstein himself living on the edge. The more you objectify something, the more it loses its primordiality and philosophy kills religious primordiality if one takes it like Simon Critchley does where he says, philosophy begins in disappointment! BUT: what is disappointment? It is the question. The question, the "piety of thought: Intrudes into this primordiality and undoes the beliefs that are there, but only to bring one back with a more ponderous and justified interpretative pov. This is what Witt didn't see, both he and Kierkegaard. Certainly philosophy can cheapen the meaning of religion, but religion stays interpretatively naive without it. And interpretation is what allows us to make progress in understanding, an apophatic process delivering the bare givenness of the world, the latter being the positive foundation of religion (contra the indeterminacy, which is the entirely negative).
Quoting Wayfarer
Well, it depends on what you are reading, He doesn't talk like a religious person at all in his serious writing (recall Kierkegaard's serious writing is a lot like this), but in the implications of wht he says, and in the letters and conversations and various other places, he makes it clear (again, the copy of Tolstoy's Gospel in Brief that he nearly memorized comes to mind) that he was a spiritual person, indeed, but philosophy just should mind its own business in this. As he says in Culture and Value, the good is what he calls divinity. I believe he tags this with, "that about sums it up." He won't talk about it, but I have read a few papers on his religious thinking, and that is as far as I will go, because I am far less interested in getting Wittgenstein right than I am in understanding the world and our existence. Wittgenstein I find very helpful in this.
A religious institution. What is an institution? Something instituted as an integral part of a culture. A formal way to say, regarding religious tradition, that ancient minds, most sincerely, made it up.
I have here a book, Wittgenstein and the Metaphysic of Grace by Terrance W Klein. I'll get back to you if I discover an insight into how his thinking accommodates or yields to or condemns religious practices and belief.
Ancient minds didn't contrive transcendence, right?
Thank you. Myself, less so, although I'm always very interested in what you and the other contributors have to say on it.
Transcendence? How about let's start with the epistemic relation I have with this cat at my feet. Tell me how it is I know that there is a cat there in the same way, say, a scientist knows Saturn's rings are made of ice and dust.
There may have been other means of detection before probes were sent to Saturn, I don't know. In any case, the cat at your feet and the ice rings of Saturn are both known to the human mind in the form of sensory patterns. These patterns match our internal model of cat and ice rings. How is this relevant?
Transcendence: that cat or any thing you might imagine is a transcendental object unless you can tell me how it is that that, whatever it is, gets into an actual knowledge claim. Sensory patterns? You mean my cat is sensory patterns?
I have to say your position is a bit of a mystery. It seems you have a particular disdain for science, or dare I say jealousy of its status in modern life. Yet you are a bit annoyed of Wittgenstein's rather egalitarian attitude that religious needs no rationale foundation from philosophy or science, that it can stand on its own to freely be engaged in what matter a group of human so choose.
I think you know what I mean. Can we skip the tedious part and get to your point?
Errr, not really. Tell you what, jump to the chase, skipping all the tedious parts, and just tell me how a knowledge claim is possible, then I can make the point. But note one important condition: there is nothing epistemic about causality. I mean, nothing at all. So if you are going to go through a process of external events, saying portions of the electromagnetic spectrum are absorbed by an object while others are reflected and these enter the eye, through the lens then to the optic nerve, and so on, and the like, just forget it. Such an explanation is lost the moment it begins.
This is not to say we do not perceive the world. Not at all. We obviously do. But by all familiar accounts, this is impossible.
One has to think about this; its simplicity is astounding. Keeps me up at night, really.
I am a bit annoyed when lines like this are drawn. Things you cannot say and things you can. The finitude of science and everydayness, and the impossibility of metaphysics. Knowledge and faith.
One has to be aware than when we speak of the world, our categories are an imposition and the best we can do at the outset is describe it such that this imposition is reduced and the world is seen most primordially (a term lifted from Heidegger and Edith Stein to talk about something at the most basic level of identity). Wittgenstein's work draws lines at this level. As I see it, ethics and religion are metaphysically available for exposition. One has to look closely at ethics (and aesthetics) and ask, what are ethical injunctions "made of"? It is a phenomenological reductive look at the anatomy of an ethical problem.
It is not the egalitarianism that bothers me at all. It is that all religion popularly conceived moves one into a world of fantasy and bad metaphysics. It is (speaking here with a healthy respect for Eastern religio-philosophical "methods" and thinking) possible to make real progress in understanding the "meta-world" we actually live in.
Not disdain for science. Disdain for scientific metaphysics: talk about material substance, naturalism or physicalism, as if these were primordial concepts.
Here, I see some agreement with scientific metaphysics, in particular on how this is manifested in the debate of determinism and freedom. That said, in your very first post you said:
"My thinking is this: Religion rises out of the radical ethical indeterminacy of our existence. This simply means that we are thrown into a world of ethical issues that, in the most basic analysis, are not resolvable. Yet they insist on resolution with the same apodicticity as logical coercivity. Meaning, just as one cannot but agree with something like modus ponens or the principle of identity in terms of the pure logicality of their intuitive insistence, so one cannot resist the moral insistence of moral redemption."
This smells of the odor of "determinism" from my humble nose. How does "freedom" and "logical coercively" exist where I can continue to feel human and not like the Mac I am typing on.
If I may step back into meta mode for a moment, I would like to point out that in the OP you promise to provide metaphysical satisfaction to the world, and despite my sincere attempts to feel this satisfaction I keep ending up in a thicket of obfuscating weeds and a Mick Jagger tune playing in my head.
It appears to be an empty promise.
I can't think you're doing ought but trolling, If you aren't - i'll just leave you to it. Habermaas is placed as I've described.
Quoting Lionino
Err, no. But do go on...
Quoting Lionino
Ah, i see, just being you. No worries bud :) I don't understand you either.
The "I think therefore I am," (Decartes) and the subsequent theories about the conditions and limitations on that "I," (Kant to Husserl and beyond) are both functional today, provided the "I" is the Subject of the sentences, and not the Body being.
Religion's "essence" without the obstruction of myth and ritual; is "twofold":
It is to call out the former, the "I" for what it is--not sinful; that came from myth and ritual, but Fictional, useful, but Fictional.
And its essence is to "reawaken" consciousness, the real body, to its real being, which cannot be known, as in the former; but yet, can be.
Truth is in present being; not in the I's comings and goings
"appears". In fairness, acknowledging the role Mick Jagger would have played on your perception during the moment you felt that way; if you step back, you'll see there are countless appearances you could've made. Why'd you project that one?
Id like to answer that. To go directly to the point however, I think it would be most productive for you to say whether or not youve felt the promised satisfaction. Without checking, I think youve engaged the subject more than anyone else.
And, anyway, the secondary function of my question was to illustrate one of the points too of the OP, as I read it. To wit: the what and the why of "perception" followed by action (including choice/belief) is of ultimate concern to "philosophy." And for the OP (entirely my reading) it can be understood philosophically; such understanding both derived from and flowing back into ethics or action/incl belief/choice. That drive and understanding are the essence of religion. For myself, uniquely, the essence of religion is to trigger us even beyond that drive to know and to act from knowledge. For me it is to awaken us to being and not knowing (the latter being ultimately empty of reality).
You seem to essentially be saying that the essence of religion is philosophy. I must be misreading this, yes?
Now, asking if knowledge claims are possible is not a lot of obfuscating weeds. And Mick Jagger is confusing.
A long story short, ask, what does it mean for something to be apodictic? It means the kind of certainty such that it is impossible to be gainsaid. Logic is like this. Value is like this, too: Unlike logic, the "proof" of ethics' apodicticity lies in the actuality, not in the formal and vacuous structure of judgment. Put your hand beneath an open flame and observe. Now, anything can be made the object of a verbal dispute, but the purity of the ethical "bad" that stands as the existential injunction not to bring this into the world constitutes the purity of the injunction itself. In other words, we are not measuring utility nor are we looking at the "good will" driven by duty. Rather, the suffering is a "stand alone" basis for the ethics that would center around such a thing. Like logic and its modus ponens, we are "shown" and are coerced into acceptance that one "should not" bring this into the world, and this will not be gainsaid! This latter is the key, the nature of apodicticity, that it is impossible to deny or argue such a thing. One can argue about the language that gives the injunction conversation and understanding, but the injunction itself is absolute.
Absolutes in dealing with ethics is something reserved for God and faith, generally. But religion is, at its core, just this: the metaethical insistence on the redemption of suffering and the consummation of happiness. Since ethics is at the basic level, apodictically insistent, we are coerced into accepting this redemptive and consummatory feature of our existence. A but like saying, apophatically reduce something like the bible, down to its essence, and you find the only residual religious content here, in the simple analytic of ethics.
Anybody who is not a morally absent robot becomes upset by such hypocritic hurling.
Continental philosophy playing with language? Analytic philosophy has done nothing but play with English and conclude "Well, our creole is so semantically deformed and confused that there are no philosophical problems, it is just linguistic!". Then, shortly after some "enlightened" agents possibly bilingual figured out that words are not just strings of letters that go in sentences but actually refer to things in the world that we can think about, we have ended up in the same old problems of the modern period but instead framed through goofy thought experiments written in that same Marvel-tier "formal informal" writing style.
And it cannot even be called analytic philosophy because that is related to the Germans Frege and Carnap, that is just "cultural appropriation". I don't know what it is that the wannabe-linguists have been doing in those universities, but it might as well be grammar alas, folks over there have not learned that that word is not synymous with 'syntax', maybe that is an opportunity for another 'enlightenment'.
Every game is played with at least two players.
PS: the modern period ended 230 years ago, there is no such thing as "pre-modern", that is a stupid phrase.
Not really about freedom, but about a value ontology, or value-in-being. The nature of religion tells us nothing about freedom and determinism, for the analysis of ethics is not concerned with whether one is free to do what one should; this is a practical matter, one that has accountability written in the law of the land in order to make it appear that responsibility is real. Rather, the question is, what IS ethics in its nature? Yes, this creates an account of the origin of responsibility, obligation, guilt, and so forth, what it is that makes an ethical obligation meaningful, but to say one is obligated to do something begs the more basic question asked here, which deals with an analysis of what makes an ethical issue tick, so to speak. What makes something ethical at all?
Religion essentially is about this metaethical question dealing with the nature of ethics, as it is an expression of the indeterminacy of the good and bad of our affairs that demands closure or completeness. consider the rather mundane but nevertheness, profound question, Why are we born to suffer and die? It is a question that takes inquiry face to face with suffering: what is this? I claim it is an absolute. Wittgenstein knew this. He just refused to talk about it because he thought language and philosophical analysis had no place here. I beg to differ. We can talk about this in rigorous argument.
What I am saying is the essence of religion is to provide a glimpse/reminder/path "without" or "away" from all constructions of human mind. This necessarily includes philosophy as such a construction, notwithstanding its claims to access some universals purported to be independent of human construction. Such a path cannot be sustained with mind, and therefore cannot be the ambit of philosophy. It can only be accessed by a turning away from mind and awakening to being. Like the OP, I hypothesize this is unsustainable; but nevertheless, that is the essence of religion, awakening, no matter how infinitesimally, to Reality without the ego/subject. EDIT: and without the Subject necessarily means without the medium in which the subject exists, Mind (and philosophy also necessarily exists in tgat medium, so no, religion is not essentially philosophy, but rather, a thing by and concerning the body, and not the mind)
Two among maybe endless qualifiers/terms
1. That is not to say philosophy
has no function; nor that it cannot serve at least along side of religion's essential function.
2. Conversely, Religion is ultimately no less a construction than philosophy. Including the manner in which I pretend to speak for it. Its essence cannot be spoken. It can only be/do.
Hence, I am hypothesizing about the "essence," and to that word, I hypothesize loosely that such essence is either derived from a natural organic awareness or drive, such as, the natural awareness that the organic being is other than the constructions of mind; or it is an early mechanism evolved in mind itself, to preserve a reminder/link to, the reality of our organic natures, having evolved because it served a function which was/remains fitting.
Observe how well it cauterizes a wound, proving its value, expressing its goodness.
Religion is a human construction, or as Constance described it, an institution. Its squarely of mind, in other words. Mind is what you say must be turned away from. This suggests that religion may actually be anti-awakening. This tracks because religions, even the ones that are supposedly all about awakening, are so bad at fostering awakening.
Chiropractic care comes to mind. Its against a chiropractors interests to cure a patient because theyd lose a returning customer and that would compromise their livelihood.
I agree completely, and with your chiropractor analogy.
Respectfully, agreeing with both* points quoted here does not nullify my points above, if that's your point.
*they are subtle distinct.
1. "construction" the essence** of religion might be a mechanism having evolved in mind to "remind" us that the evolving system of constructions is an other than our real natures. Why would such a mechanism evolve (become constructed) in/by mind? Because it served a function which allowed for its repetition such that it becomes conditioned. An e.g. of such function? Bodies feel the bliss of turning natural Aware-ing back upon its own being. How is this "religion"? Because Mind has brought us out of reality, we have chosen the proverbial tree of knowledge and forsaken life; and, with the former comes a knower, and thus ignorance, attachment, suffering. In being, the body, there is only variations and degrees of pleasure and pain, never lingering, always present.
**primitive purpose, why it arose, what it is before it is "corrupted" Or, as opposed to "religions" the institutions below.
2. "Institution" everything from its essence, it's mythical first projection, becomes corrupted. Why do we act like religion is special? Is Democracy to blame for the current cynicism infecting western democracies? F the institutions when they fail. Don't discard the essence.
As an old prof used to tell me, you're not going to get that tart to your dessert plate. Hard to argue this because it has this uncanny quality in the meditation on trying to release value from agency. To me, it is a fascinating intuition. I simply cannot even imagine suffering (or bliss or some simple pleasure or irritation. The magnitude of the value experience is the the issue, but the most intense are the most vivid and telling) apart from agency. This is what, to use a term I use repeatedly, picked up from Edith Stein, Husserl and Heidegger, primordial: It is apriori true that suffering cannot exist apart from agency.
As I see it, philosophy's job is criticism at the basic level, so of course one can ask why, find no explanatory basis and then proceed to deny this. I CAN argue this position, I believe, but the strongest justification for this apriori claim lies in this intuitive affirmation. What is not being discussed here is the language construct, the Kantian transcendental unity of apperception as he calls it, that sythesizes the world into general terms. This is the "I" that has its stamp on each thing perceived, and while this is right, I think, and wherever my attention goes, it encounters the me and mine of what is witnessed, the me and mine here, and this is critical, is, entirely unlike Kant, existential, palpable, the very core of meaningful engagement.
If I were to argue the case, it would in the direction of affirming the local nature of an experience and hence the horizon of value events, showing that it is not a disembodied object, floating among the debris of the journeywork of stars. Next, the matter would turn to the quality of what is in play and how it presents entirely novel relationships with the world. And so on.
But just to give emphasis: the argument would inevitably find the inextricable bond between agent and value. Value issues from us; we bring it into the world.
This kind of thinking is inevitable. One has to make the move from the way contingencies create multiple contexts of engagement. When we observe suffering in our regular affairs, this is what we witness. The argument is here apriori: Just as we see logic played out in such affairs, and abstract from these to conceive of the purity of symbolic logic (or Kant/Aristotle categories), so here we abstract from all of the contextual variations in which we find the good, bad, should, shouldn't, right, wrong of ethics, and inquire about the nature of what is in what is observed.
I completely understand the challenge. I even accept that the point may be inescapably moot because we cannot get the tart onto the plate. However, that we lack the capacity or tools to locate the reality while in the shoes of the agent, does not mean the reality does not exist. Another explanation is that the agent only exists in its world of construction, and has no access to reality. Maybe the goal isn't to get the tart onto the plate but to start chewing, trusting that the tart is already in our mouths.
Who is willing my heart to beat?
The fact that we, following Aristotle, ascribe that particular event of the Body to an autonomic process, gladly accepting that there is no agent there; but refuse to categorize mind as an autonomic process without an agent simply because therein is produced the so-called agent, does not mean our ascriptions and categorizations are even most functional, let alone capital T Truth.
Exactly. Entirely agree. You think I go too far in abstracting from the contextual because I abstract from the abstracter in the end; I think you do not go far enough because you leave the abstracter in place; you do so because the result is absurd otherwise. A compromise? At least admit the abstracter is a necessary fiction, because ultimately the abstractions are done in its name and for its sake.
But its not in the least bit a contingency. Pain is good. Pain, like pleasure, moves life to homeostasis.
Because it moves life to homeostasis? This is the very meaning of contingency here: Pain is good IN the context of moving life to homeostasis. Remove the contextual contributions to meaning making, then all you have is the pain, the pain as such. pain simplciter, pain that stands as its own presupposition, therefore presupposing nothing for its existence.
Homeostasis? What "good" is this? It encourages survival and reproduction? What good is this? Eventually, after you've put enough of questions like this forward, you find that you are chasing language around. You have to make that fateful move out of language and into actuality. There is the pain now free of contextual presumption. What IS this? This is the question. It does not issue from established thinking about evolution, biochemistry, or anything at all. It is about something that issues from the givenness of the world, "outside" of language (yet, concurrent with language, in us).
Abstractor? But consider that it is just the opposite in the case above: It is not the abstraction of thought and the imposition of an interpretative identity called an ego or a transcendental ego. The basis of the idea presented here is not the abstract idea of a self. When you observe a value event (the very substance of ethical concern) you observe something altogether "tout autre" from what language can do (keeping in mind that all along as I defend the notion that there is nothing abstract about language, I have been trying make clear that when we turn to something "tout autre" like this, we are committed to a language setting that makes this possible. I have been saying that when we encounter anything, it is affirmed in language, notwithstanding it being entirely OTHER than language. This is the paradox of deconstruction.
These conversations about deconstruction and theology are very weird, but it is Derrida that takes the argument to this very place I have been trying to hammer out: me and my language standing before a world that is not language, telling me this is a tree and that is a computer, but entirely mute when these are delivered from their explicit knowledge claim (recall Kierkegaard's riposte to Hegel's rationalism: Hegel has simply forgotten that we exist!. This is essentially what his infamous absurdity turns on). I use the term tout autre because Derrida does, and this wholly other is, I am confident, what you have in mind, here and there, in your thinking.
Language is NOT abstract. Rather, abstraction is conceived IN language. And it depends on what one means by the term. Often it is meant to refer to something that is just an idea, and ideas are not like furniture or fence posts. Here, it is intended that ideas do not exist. You insist that the self argued about here is like this, a fiction conceived in nonreal ideas, and there is a lot about this I agree with (you might say I "half" agree with this) but it is not the language that is unreal, but the ideas conceived IN language that are in error. If I say the moon is made of cream cheese, I am wrong.
Just to repeat the essential point: I do not argue an abstract transcendental ego. I argue that caring and its value dimension, because it is entirely other than language (perhaps joined at the hip, as Heidegger would have it) affirms the transego's "existence" exactly because it lies outside of language.
Just to add: This turn from the "comings and goings" to "present being" is not a turn away from language. One has to incorporate language into the revelation of presence to be on meaningful ground. This turn is away from prereflective engagement, prior to the question of being that throws everything off course. The matter of ontology only rises up if the ontology of everyday affairs is thrown into question. The question abides throughout, for the question is the very openness you stand in as you stand before "presence". Apophatic philosophy is the philosophy of negation, negating, that is, the autonomy or free flow of conscious matters, and stopping them quite vigorously, if you are a serious Buddhist. But that "space" that opens up to the Buddhist is the same space of the epoche's deconstructive movement toward the impossible affirmation, that is, your "presence"; as John Caputo puts it, "The voice of negative theologyone of them, for it has severalis deeply, resoundingly affirmative. Oui, oui."
Neither good nor bad, or both good and bad. I don't think it matters which way it's conceptually considered.
I don't know what you are getting at here. You are discussing redemption, and then this looks to be about the notion of "inherent good and bad" or so it seems.
This and your subsequent reply, are opening doors to new ways of thinking of this. Or, to be more precise, you are addressing the same issues having focused in more precisely. I need to re-read. For all I know, you have addressed my concerns.
However, prima facie, this comes to mind.
1. Yes, obviously I agree that in common sense, or in conventional thinking, it is not the language but the ideas which are in error; however,
2. Are we not trying to "transcend" /Reduce /abstract from common sense and convention? Is your point not failing to see (assuming Saussure is making a reliable point--I have never fully contemplated it) that language, is one mechanism: Sign is Signifier and Signified? Even if I were to say the moon is made of minerals; I might be factually and functionally "correct," but ultimately I have used a representational tool to construct another representational tool, and so on without end. Does this not suggest that signs, though they function to construct useful "truths," are necessarily empty and devoid of ultimate truth? And is not the Subject just such a sign for the Body? If I were to say, "I am I," that might be functional, but is it True? Isn't it unavoidable that ultimately what is this I purporting to be I; and what is this I it is purporting to be. We are compelled to find the unrepresented truth not in representation. Language is, and I say, only is, representation; reality is in the acting/being/doing/feeling/sensing cleared of all language. Impossible for humans? Maybe? But reaching conclusions only because they are functional, i.e. possible and free of absurdity, just proves my concern; that is, that all of our so called truths, including myself, are simply functional tools.
ADDED: I understand and appreciate your recent focus on value (I did see its seeds in the beginning of the OP but note how you have developed it). It is perhaps a "high end" fictional assessment of the human condition, higher than leaving value completely out of it; but it is ultimately fictional too. At some point, to arrive "where" the essence of religion arose to lead us, those high ideas need too, to be abandoned or set aside at least.
It is about putting conceptual considerations aside. This is the point. Suffering as such is not a concept.
Like putting aside the concepts of good and bad, right?
Quoting ENOAH
To discard the essence of religion (meaningful connection with a community) would lead to a very lonely and unhappy life, in my opinion.
Quoting praxis P.S., for me, for what it is worth: right.
Disillusionment with a religious institution is often experienced as nihilism, for instance. That may not always be the case and its probably only a temporary condition. We are all saturated in meaning, after all.
I think you have it. Redemption is a fairy tale, as is consummation of faith, unless there is an absolute decree making it so. What would this be? Traditionally, God. But what is God once the traditions and bad metaphysics are removed? I am arguing that the surviving metaphysical residua of a God reduction down its essence is metaethics. Metaethics, in the continental sense (not the analytic vacuity) refers to "the good" and "the bad" and we all know how these are played out in the metaphysical Christian fiction, but this reduces to, simply, the good and the bad as absolutes. Now, what is an absolute? If something is apodictic, it is an absolute, is the claim. Can't even imagine, say, an object moving itself, as its own cause. This is not logically possible. One can argue about the apodicticity of logic, and I am willing to do so if you like, but for now the idea here hinges on this: in logic we have apodictic truth (again, Derrida aside. But then, you will find Derrida's position VERY interesting here, though). If this apodicticity were a feature of ethics, then ethics would be just like God's decree. After all, what is the basis for the absolute authority of God? In popular religion, it is pure dogmatics, but what does the dogmatic position say? It says one cannot even imagine a greater authority that could gainsay God. The greatest possible being is Anselm's idea. I.e., apodicticity. Cannot be gainsaid on pain of a contradiction. I am arguing that the good and the bad cannot be gainsaid, just like logic.
So, your question about redemption: What is redeemed? Suffering. What is the necessity of the redemption of suffering that makes it apriorii necessary, like logic? The apodicticity of "the bad". In logic we have the conditional form, the affirmation, the negation, the disjunction and so on. There are rules to their concatenation, expressed in symbolic logic. In ethics there are two "rules" which have to do with the good and the bad. There is here NO toleration for evil. One has to observe this "logic of ethics" which is primordial just as one observes the logic of modus ponens. The "form" of ethics, if you will, is the good and the bad. Just as a contradiction in logic formally upends an argument (the reductio ad absurdum), so in the "argument" of our ethical lives is upended by evil.
Which is a way to say, the evil must be redeemed by necessity.
Keep in mind here the simplicity of this. Logic itself is simple in its basic rules (Kant's categories). But for ethics, we are NOT directed toward an argument and logical form. We are directed toward the world, existence, the real. This has always been the jurisdiction of God: an absolute grounding of our ethics. But God, divested of the usual anthropomorphic features and all the absurd narratives, reduced to its essence, remains, as does the authority it possesses.
On order to take metaethics seriously, one has to look, not to the concept, the understanding's counterpart to the living actuality, but to just this actuality. The proof for this lies in the pudding: putting one's hand of a pot of boiling water, for example: NOW you know the REAL ground for the moral prohibition against doing this to others.
There's an expression encountered from time to time in perennialist circles, 'the good that has no opposite'. It is distinguished from the our conventional sense of what is good, which is defined in opposition to, and so in association with, the bad. The 'good that has no opposite' is a true good beyond the opposites. That is what must be discerned. The 'doctrine of evil' that flows from that is 'evil as privation of the Good', which is associated with Augustine, but similes of which can be found in Advaita. This is that evil has no real existence, it is real in the sense that shadows and holes are real, as an absence or lack of knowing the true good. Redemption consists in coming to awareness of the true good, which is concealed or obscured by ignorance (in Advaita) or the original sin (in Augustine.)
Sounds fitting from where I'm looking.
Theres a host of concepts involved in the moral prohibition against doing this [putting someones hand in a pot of boiling water] to others that is far removed from the experience of that pain. I must not be following rightly.
Yes. The REAL ground is living bodies feel real pain. At that real level however, no one thinks of sticking a hand in boiling water because at that level no one thinks. Thinking and the moral prohibitions emerge out of these organic feelings, are effected by them; but there is no (ontological? metaphysical?) relationship. Pain feeling a certain way for triggering certain behavior is nothing like Morality. The trace relationship between REAL pain and any and all moral prohibitions is long long gone; so long gone that there is an unbridgeable gap between the REAL "reason" (I.e. REAL pain) and all of the multitudes of constructed ones.
This is a non sequitur for the ages. I did warn about this - continental philosophy is rhetoric only. That's why teenage boys are still finding Satre interesting. We all go through a death on the way adulthood - pretending these self-involved, preening narratives are somehow extrapolable is a serious mistake, and probably a good portion of why this type of 'philosophy' is both derided readily, and defending vehemently. But this is like defending Christianity because it pulled you thruogh your divorce. Arbitrary.
Quoting ENOAH
There isn't even a moral relationship. It's just a confirmation of the intuition that one probably shouldn't boil one's hand. That isn't moral.
Yes, I agree. We superimpose morality, "long after" the fact.
I think we have so immersed ourselves in our constructions, obviously we can no longer simply depend upon our instincts to trigger functional behaviour. So we construct more, by way of morality, and so on and so on, to displace out instincts, drives, sensations, etc. as the triggers for human behaviour.
ADDENDUM: And, I think I am capable of not sticking my neighbor's hand in boiling water, yes, because I know how it feels, but because there is no intuition driving me to harm my neighbor, not because of a moral imperative.
Accomplished Buddhists report that the sense of well being we have in the familiar world is actually, even at its best, spoiled by concerns and anxieties unseen (Freud said the same thing but that is another story). So this conventional sense is conceived out of a false limitation placed on what the good can be since our existence is corrupted by an anxiety that runs through everything. Consider that nirvana is not really a knowledge claim (enlightenment), but a value claim (liberation). Philosophers in the west are stuck on epistemic truth, but our existence is about "value truth,' that is at the heart of knowing. A discovery that can certainly be propositionally expressed, but this is incidental, and this is a difficult claim because agency is so bound to language. Truth as propositional soundness begs the question, what is the world that aligns with propositions? Things never go anywhere like this. Truth as revelation? Well, what is revealed? This brings inquiry back to the starting place.
Why is there something rather than nothing? Because "something" is driven toward an absolute aesthetic affirmation.
Quoting Wayfarer
The only way I can confirm such an idea evil is a privation would be to ignore the direct evidence of suffering. But is this reasonable? I do think it right that ordinary lived life is a privation of certain possibilities, among which are positively extraordinary and important in ways impossible to assimilate into familiar assumptions. In a sublime affirmation, there is an understanding of what is real that is outside of the familiar altogether, and this could be the justification for an ontological claim of evil having no real existence. I mean, if Thich quang dong (the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who self immolated) was simply not available for the pain his body was reporting, and he was "elsewhere" and this elsewhere was entirely without painful possibilities, I don't see any room for denying this. But to move from this to a thesis that pain doesn't exist would have to be inclusive of the existence of pain prior to "not being available" and this seems patently false.
But try understand that ALL of this "host of concepts" presuppose something that is not a concept at all. This is a reference to existence, not a category of existence. Were nothing at all to happen when one immersed a hand into boiling water, then the entire ethical conceptual possibility would simply evaporate. The entire explanatory analytic of "the good" would simply have no meaning at all unless the move is made to this that is outside the explanation.
The concepts in play in a discussion of the concept good withdraw entirely from this existential dimension, simply because there is nothing to say (as Wittgenstein was keen to point out) here. To speak at all one is referred to the many ways the good can be intelligently, if superficially, analyzed as a concept of ambiguous meanings and contexts. I refer you to RM Hare's discussion of functional words where he notes how a term like good finds it meaning to refer to very different things, like good knives or good tennis players. One could say good refers to efficiency, but then efficiency refers us back to the efficient for what? question, and a vast relativism steps in throwing the whole matter regarding the good into usage, or Wittgenstein's "family resemblances". There are many more ways to talk about this, but they all seek to talk, and this is the real issue. Philosophy gets bored with simplicity, especially the entire edifice of anglo american philosophy which is founded on boredom. Which is why Moore''s non natural property has been so disparaged: it is like saying the good is like the color yellow: a mere observable property, not non naturally observable.
The idea defended in the OP is both MOST boring and MOST fascinating. For an tried and true intellectual, hell bent on filling space with dialectic, it's the former. But if one is interested in the world and not just the way words work, then the latter. The former is an attempt to turn philosophy into a meaning game. This is what you get when you hand matters over to a logician (like Russell). Completely vacuous. But fun to puzzle about.
Please take notice, AmadeusD, That after reading your post, twice, I find nothing at all that is responsive to the idea you quote. Do read this thing you wrote, and ask: Did you address, or even mention, the claim made in the quote to target for criticism? What does Sartre have to do with it? Self involved, preening narratives?? These are just words thrown.
You do sound like someone who posts on social media a lot. Ah America, the vast land of the mostly unread!
Are you claiming that the good exists in the world separate from minds (words and concepts)?
Yes.
Where?
Let's work through this:
1. I am in no way surprised;
2. Quoting AmadeusD - you said literally nothing of substance. I doubt you could tease apart what you meant from all this. It appears whenever challenged, you just blurt out more vaguely-philosophy-sounding lines probably taken from other's texts. It's nonsensical (the quote i responded to). So, I have responded to it directly;
3. Quoting Constance - find it extremely unlikely you can't see what Satre has to do with a criticism of Continental philosophy - that would be bizarre, given your reliance on it but ignore if you want;
4. Quoting AmadeusD - this is the form of the majority of Continental Philosophy, on my view - again, a direct response to the obvious nonsense you've written - it is self-obsessive and devoid of any openness or willingness to be discussed. Granted, I've been dismissive - you haven't attempted to defend yourself philosophically, so it's quite easy to do so;
5. This is my 'social media'. I would avoid ridiculous ad hominems like this, particularly when you are dead wrong;
6. I am neither American, nor live in America. Once again, do not make ad hominem assertions when you are A. on the lower end of clarity, and B. clearly wrong (my bio would have stopped you from this one).
Please avoid devolving into comments about me rather than my comments. I have stuck to commentary on your comments. I'll do so again:
Quoting Constance
This is risibly incoherent, and means nothing. As noted, rhetoric is hte language of the Continentals. You've used that form, and it's glaringly devoid of any substance. Let's look at a couple of other passages from yourself:
Quoting Constance
Quoting Constance
Quoting Constance
These are assertions with no logical, or practical support in your comments. Your conception of "evil" is such that it is a self-evident truth. This is.. to put it mildly... ignorant to 2000 years of thinking on the subject.
And this line about 'God' is pure nonsense. It makes absolutely no sense other than to say that when you, personally, think about God and choose not to imagine a Human embodiment, you get the same Character as would any other conception of God (the omin's, the dictatorial ethical norm etc...). This is bizarre, to say the least, and philosophically, I would say, embarrassing.
The bolded (and surrounding quote) is akin to a random word generator given the prompt "use some big words". This one doesn't even make grammatical sense. And while i accept there may be a typo, the lack of coherence in the majority of your comments leads me to believe that is not the case..
Not sure I understand the question. A place? How about the delight my cat felt as it tortured its mouse last night?
I'm trying to understand how "the good" is fundamentally different than words and concepts. I can't see how "the good" isn't conceptual in nature.
Hard to respond nicely. The bottom line is this: you really don't demonstrate any knowledge of the issues. Yet you have opinions. This is a very bad situation.
No offense intended to Americans, really. Just pretentious people and the hobgoblins of their little minds...... unless, that is, you actually have something to say about metaethics.
I see you have chosen to do nothing but slide further into ad hominem(and this time, it's outright racist). I am, again, not surprised. Please don't be surprised when you're treated the way you behave. It seems you're not even reading the comments you're responding to...
Quoting AmadeusD
Just say something interesting, AmadeusD.
I don't think that's correct, the honorific name 'Buddha' means 'one who knows'. And according to Buddhist dogma, what is known is 'the cause of suffering, the end of suffering and the path to the end of suffering'. To be enlightened is to be liberated from the morass of suffering that is entailed in sa?s?ric existence. I'm not saying you should believe it, but that is what Buddhists themselves would say. In Platonic terms, there's definitely a 'noetic' element to Nirv??a, insight into a truth.
Quoting Constance
I agree it seems a preposterous notion, but I believe there's a sense in all the cosmic religions that existence is inherently imperfect and bound to entail suffering. In Christianity, that is represented in the Fall and the original sin. In Buddhism, it is represented by beginningless ignorance in which living beings are ensnared. The first link in the chain of dependent origination in Buddhism is ignorance. Liberation from ignorance is also liberation from being reborn due to karma (although in Mah?y?na doctrine, enlightened beings may be voluntarily born out of compassion.)
Alongside the 'doctrine of evil as privation' there's also the kind of theodicy explained by John Hick in his Evil and the God of Love. Hick argues that suffering plays a crucial role in the development of moral and spiritual virtues. According to Hick, humans are not created as perfect beings but rather as morally immature creatures with the potential to grow into morally and spiritually mature individuals. Suffering and challenges are necessary conditions for this growth, as they provide opportunities for individuals to develop virtues such as courage, compassion, and patience. Hick also says that for love and goodness to be genuine, they must be freely chosen. Suffering is a consequence of the freedom that God grants humans. This freedom allows for the possibility of both good and evil actions. Without the possibility of suffering, free will would be meaningless, and humans would be automatons, incapable of genuine love and moral choice.
The reason this all seems alien to modern culture, is that today's culture tends to normalise the human condition, by putting the individual self at the fulcrum. But then, that's the essence of a secular age, the only redresses being political, social and technological.
This isn't a 'me' problem, Constance.
It is an interesting issue. I think it comes down to agency, not so much the knowledge claim about value. To be in a profound meditative state is not to be talking about being in a profound meditative state. The latter is a social event, the former is not. The same could be said about spraining my ankle or being in love.
So what IS the most salient feature of Buddhism, Hinduism, or simply meditation going very well? This goes to liberation and enlightenment. But enlightenment about what? Is it a discursive process that leads to a conclusion-- inherently discursive just as waking in the morning and "knowing" everythign around me has this discursivity abiding throughout: ask me what anything is at this moment, and you find logical structures and implicit understanding everywhere, linked in logical implications. There is a lamp, and lamps do not belong outside in the garden, and if you saw your lamp outside in the garden you would be very curious. And so on. In other words, just to be IN a language environment, anywhere at all, that is, you have this "noetic" dimension implicitly in play such that simple perception turns on demand into a logically structured knowledge claim. I want to say that when meditation goes very well, say, if you are called to explain your experience, you can, even though this is a difficult thing to talk about. You could reach for metaphors, talk about intensities, familiar experiences, emotions, how one thing yields to another, another vanishes altogether, the process of advancing, and so on. This descriptive conversation is the noetic element you speak of, and I agree with the honorific name, the one who knows.
But this kind of analysis also belongs to anything at all. It is a matter of what the Buddha knows. This is the enlightenment. My way of understanding this lies with seeing my lamp out in the garden where it doesn't belong at all. The lamp is suddenly off the grid of anticipated events, and I have a question (the piety of thought!), but with lamps, I retreat into the familiar: WHO put it there? Am I seeing this right? Perhaps a practical joke? Or someone needed light during the night in the garden? All very mundane, and soon the question will be closed. But enlightenment, this is very different, isn't it? One stands in an openness of a termination of anticipated possibilities, and all the question remains OPEN. One is now no longer possessed by rote and practiced affairs that run their course, and in this language, the machine that generates ready to hand responses to questions, is explicitly dismissed. I call meditation the open question that stays open.
So what does the Buddha know? It is a non standard knowledge claim. Consider: I sit and stare at this lamp, but deliver the event from interpretative imposition altogether, I mean, I shut up and shut down anything that would claim it. THIS, I want to emphasize, is a most extraordinary experience, but I can't really speak for others. For me, the lamp undergoes an uncanny transformation as the particularity recedes, but it is not the universal (Platonic) that is discovered with some enhanced clarity, for this universal was, it can be argued, exactly the problem: Mundane affairs are "about" universals, and their inherent knowledge claims never really "touch" the palpable existence before one. So the universal and the particular race through our understanding joined at the hip, so to speak, in simple perceptual encounters, and this is what "taking the world "as" is about (though there is a lot more to say on this). Anyway, it is not the universal that is discovered in this uncanny transformation, nor is it the "real" object before me. Neither of these. It is, to borrow from some very interesting French post modern philosophers, the radical other, the "tout autre": unspeakable "presence" of the givenness of the world. Buddhists and Hindus strive to live in this "place," putting aside all of the historical and analytical metaphysics, something I very much try to do. The only authority lies with the sublime apprehension itself. Thought and its language is pragmatic as it is an inherent part of the method of discovery, AND, and this goes to my original concern, thought and language constitute a dimension of agency that cannot be brushed aside. The lamp, the object before me, loses its identity as it yields to the openness of meditation (the question. Or am I wrong to talk like this? Interesting, this idea of the openness of the question and the openness of meditation are the same), and the meditator also loses her identity as all implicit knowledge claims fade, yet what of the historical self, the person one is. What is it that displaces this personal history that is behind the "I" of my meditative perceptual self?
Long story short, I think this is where liberation finds its meaning. One always already is the Buddha, it is said. But this is NOT a noetic acknowledgement. It is tout autre.
Quoting Wayfarer
I want to agree, and I do, but only in a qualified way because I am predisposed to doubt grand ideas that tell me what is really going on, for these exceed to limits of defensible thinking. But yes, it is not an unreasonable speculation to say, as Dewey put it, without problems to solve, we would never grow. The question would never occur. Why this is the case is impossible to say, like asking why about screaming children in burning cars.
Now you have me confused. Put it this way: If we lived in a world in which no one cared about anything, is ethics possible?
When I asked if you were "claiming that the good exists in the world separate from minds (words and concepts)" you said yes. To me, that is an exceptional claim. I would like to know why you believe this.
If "the good" (can we say goodness?) exists separate from minds (words and concepts) then where does it exist?
To try to clarify, I offer the example of the moon. If I ask you where the moon exists you might simply point to it, if I were in a position to see your finger. It's not quite that simple though, right? You require an internal model of the world and the moon in order to point your finger at it. If that model didn't exist then you couldn't locate the moon. You would have no concept of 'moon' to begin with. Without an internal model that included the sky, earth, moon, etc. I don't know what you would see if you were looking towards the moon. The existence of the moon is dependent on our internal model of the world that we continually develop throughout life. Is goodness also dependent on our internal model of the world, even though unlike the moon we can't point to it with our index finger? Pain and pleasure are transmitted to the central nervous system in the same manner as all our senses. Where does pleasure exist? Point to where it feels good.
First, everything is a concept for us. One could argue that this is true for ducks and goats, but it would be a matter of defining what we mean by concept. I think it is arguable that once a goat spends some time on the farm, anticipatory features of the goat's epistemic relation with its environment would emerge, and while this is not symbolic conceptualizing, it could be a proto-conceptualizing, having an internal time structure that conforms to ours, and concepts are inherently temporal: When I observe the moon, as you say, I come into the perceptual event with a "predelineated" ability to encounter the moon as the moon, and not as a star or a cloud. Memory structures the occasion structures the concept, as does anticipation, for the moment the memory emerges, the perceptual identity of a particular environment fills an unmade future. And this is a stream of consciousness, as James put it. A unity of past and future, only analytically divided.
But what about the present? By many's thinking, such a thing is simply not possible, that is, some magic presence (Derrida's "metaphysics of presence," as if standing before an object, language could reach beyond itself and align with what is not in the "trace" of language) that announces itself, and I think this really is right: there is nothing beyond the text, meaning, to behold and understand is to be IN a contextual environment.
This, I take to be your position, or close to it. It has been argued that qualia, the presence that has an independence from the interpretative function of language, is immune to this temporal critique. Most reject this.
What is being argued here, however, is that there really is one thing that is immune, and this is a qualified immunity: value-in-being. Value qualia, is a good term. Value qualia refers to something that is not in any way or form, language. Tout autre. Think about the qualia of the color, that is, the being-appeared-to redly. We know this is not a language perception, this red-qua-red, and no one will gainsay this. But there is nothing IN the red-qua-red that "speaks," so to speak. It nature remains entirely alien to language, yet the understanding can only think of red conceptually. The concept exhausts the meaning.
Value qualia is very different. Think of Wittgenstein's insistence that value is transcendental. He means that in the scorched flesh, the sublimity of love, etc., meaning actually issues from the non linguistic end of the qualia! What is the difference between a fact, a state of affairs, and a "value fact"? There is a distance between the two that is, well, impossible. Love "speaks" the good. It speaks the bad: the hand in boiling water (just do it and observe, like a good scientist). Value facts (call them) issue forth the voice of reality! Wittgenstein knew this. That horrible pain carries the moral authority of a God.
False. Plenty are colour realists and believe the colour red exists outside the qualia Red. We are having this exact discussion elsewhere.
It would help if you didn't erroneously decide that Continental Philosophy is worthwhile, and Analytical not, if you're going to take up analytical discussions. The Continentals have nothing but disdain for taking thinking seriously.
State your case.
Not true, the color red speaks, and says different things depending on the form of life it appears in. In an orchard red says ripe. In the temperature of objects red say hot. In the language of color, red is experienced as generally warm compared to a cool color like blue.
What if I asked what hot is?
We both know its meaning. Can you perhaps rephrase the question?
Welcome to deconstruction. We both know that heat is measured in molecular agitation, say, and if a then ask, what is agitation? we know this refers to excited movement, then ask what is excited? we think of a lack of calm or perhaps excessive energy, or a relatively diminished or deficit state of animation, depending on what the standard is. Animation? Sounds a lot like agitation. Not exactly, but these are synonymous.
Here you can see, I think, where this issue goes: this conversation could go on forever, though there will be repetitions and restatements that are equivalent to repetition. One will ever discover news ways to say the same thing, and never get to that actuality, whatever it is that is outside language that language is supposed to be about. Most of what we talk about, does it really exist? Does General Motors exist? Does a system of thought exist? Not in the sense that a cup or a saucer exists. These only exist in the agreements between constructed meaning. But then, what about the meaning of the cup and the saucer? It is an empirical presence, a cup, but the constructed meaning that allows us to say General Motors exists is also the kind of thing that makes this "cup" exist. That is, we gather thought around that over there on the table, and can talk about it freely and meaningfully, but the "existence" of this gathered thought is entirely outside the existence of the thing. This is the collision Kierkegaard talks about in his Concept of Anxiety, between Hegel's conceptual realism and the palpable world.
Heat? There is a reason why I tried at the outset to make the epistemological point about our knowledge relation with the world. Also a reason why a temporal analysis in this issue is so important. There is a very strong argument that our mundane world is, at the level of basic assumptions, utterly metaphysical. After all, what really is metaphysics if not what is there, and not fiction, yet will not yield to the understanding's attempt to say what it is.
It is hot in this room, but what does that mean? It can only have meaning if the terms used have meaning, yet each term defers to other terms for this determination. This is one response to the question, how does anything out there get into a knowledge claim? Two answers. One is, it doesn't. The other is, "out there" is a nonsense term in this context. They are both right.
What has this to do with religion? Religion is the foundational indeterminacy of our existence, and in this, ethics is underscored. Once one puts down all of the familiar, rote and facile ways to think about ethics, one sees that all that talk about cups and saucers above applies most profoundly to ethics.
Please explain this line as if I was a first-year ethics student.
Trace relationship? But there "is" no trace relationship, for such things are under erasure. What deconstruction does is deliver the purity of the world out of the grip of assumptions, at least, this is what it CAN do, for the reduction itself, the movement toward transcendence, is not simply an apophatic exercise, any more than meditation is this. Deconstruction and religion are method and manifestation, respectively. The former parallels The East's neti neti, which is simply a liberation from interpretative norms that generally define the world for a person. The latter is a change in the way the world is perceived in a default perceptual disposition. In other words, if one in earnest questions the world at the basic level of assumptions, those assumptions fall away simply by the weight of their own contingency. We live in a world of contingencies, or accidents, as the old language has it. Language is mostly this, save for the transcendental function of language: its openness. The question, as I frequently say, is the piety of thought (borrowed from Heidegger's Origin of the Work of Art). Look away from arguments and behold the world, and then proceed with the reductive, apophatic method of "discovery" (I think you said you've read Rorty's Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. In this book, Rorty states up front that truth is made, not discovered. He had zero interest in the "where it takes one" of deconstructive thinking. I am sure this is because for Rorty, there is no where to be taken. See the footnote on p 123 where he argues with Caputo about the latter's claim about "the silence from which all language springs." This really is close to the Positivist Otto Neurath's response to Wittgenstein's "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" which was to say, yes, one must be silent, but not about anything! This silence is where Derrida takes us. You may find yourself on Rorty's side of this coin, but then, this would take a long interpretative excursion into Derrida that cannot be done here. All I can say is this: I have as a default predisposition toward the world, a "spiritual" bent, however, any standard religious term like "spiritual" is to be defined in the openness of the foundational indeterminacy of our existence. When I think spirituality, I first think of Heidegger's massive phenomenological exposition of our existence. But he was no transcendental spiritualist, but was entirely bound up in the finitude of language possibilities. He and I are intuitively antithetical in this matter.
I do note that you insist on the term "organic" as a kind of bottom line to thinking about our existence. I can't really address this, for it is a kind of "scientism" by which I mean it is a borrowing from empirical science's descriptive terms to think philosophically. But science is not philosophy. I argue that phenomenology is the nature of philosophy. Everything else is the "philosophy of" as in the philosophy of animal husbandry or one's philosophy of raising children. Phenomenology is where inquiry goes when the most basic questions are asked, and this is philosophy proper, you could say.
"Feeling pain is nothing like morality"? Well, this has to be unpacked. No one I know hs ever made such a claim that it IS morality as we deal and speak about moral issues. Of course, these are entangled affairs. I only argue that IN these affairs, when reduced to the ethical essence, that is, what makes them ethical, is found something apodictic. This is found "behind" the obvious variability of ethical cases, as a constant and irreducible. Here, we do not toy with terms as analytic philosophers do so well.
Please explain this line to me like I am a first year phenomenology student.
1. Make a qualified Cartesian move. One is not affirming the cogito as the ground for all possible affirmations. In fact, Descartes made a fundamentally bad move: there is no thinking unless there is thinking about something. So the indubitability of the cogito extends to the world of objects.
2. Think of the world as an event. Is perception a mirror of the world? One has to look very hard at this idea. When you see something, and do the basic science of what this is about, it is not even remotely possible that this in my head (and this is a physicalist's science, the kind of thing we are educated to understand) reaches out to apprehend that tree out there. I make this point frequently, simply because whenever I make it, I am greeted with doubt and disdain, something I find so absurd that it defies credulity. Epistemology is impossible with this physicalist model, for as Quine and the naturalists hold, this model's bottom line is causality, and there is nothing epistemic about causality.
4. This here has to be read and pondered, not simply read. When we observe the world and its objects, whether they be things, emotions, ideas, and so forth, that observation is part of the constitution of what is witnessed. This is a very old idea. It sounds like idealism, and it is, in part, and by this admission I simply reaffirm that perception is not a mirror image of the world. Show me the mirror. In fact, I simply cannot even imagine anything more opaque than a brain. But on the other hand, an honest account of what stands before me reveals the ordinary perceptual conditions of things being outside of myself, apart from me, at a distance over there, is not something that can be dismissed, Why? Because the whole point is to understand the world, and the the world is simply given to us with these divisions and differences.
So all this critical thought that undermines a physicalist's epistemology certainly does not violate the field of perception as it is given to us. It simply tells us that we need to think very differently about our selves as perceiving agents in a world. This opens the door to an entirely different approach to explaining what things are, ontology, and how we know them, epistemology, for we now have to look to the relation between ourselves and the world to understand the "what it is" that is there. This is the phenomenological approach. E.g, you see a brain and witness a patient undergoing a fully conscious surgical procedure so the scalpel does not remove important tissue. The probe touches a
5. So now in answer to your question: When inquiry turns towards the self that "partly" constructs the event of engaging with the world and generates a knowledge relation, things turn up that were entirely unseen. This is Heidegger's analysis of dasein, but beyond, into the paradox that occurs when language turns to an analysis of itself. If my faculties, call them, actually constitute the relation of a knowledge event, then what is the most visible feature if this? Language. I look at my cat, and all sorts of knowledge claims are implicit, "claims" not explicit in the looking, but are there, stabilizing the event, creating a general familiarity, and this stabilizing feature is time, and time's phenomenological analysis reveals issues about the present in the past-future dynamic of theevent of perceiving.
Long story short, the present SHOULD NOT exist, is one way to put this. Every time I look up and take on the world in this way or that, I am informed by "the potentiality of possiblities" that my enculturated self carries with it into various environments, as when I walk into someone's kitchen and already know everything about knives, sinks, cabinets, etc. THIS is what constitutes the knowing of the world, this potentiality of possibilities that spontaneously rises to identify the world! So the present is altogether lost, that is, the metaphysical present is lost, the intimation from the world as to what it is outside of the temporality that claims a thing in the simplest apprehension. This presence of the world is the foundation of our existence and that of all things, and yet the perceiving of this presence is impossible. One would have to literally stand outside of experience an announce what is witnessed! Yet there it is, in full color and intensity, and this goes to ethics and value. See Wittgenstein's Tractatus for the inspired insight that ethics and aesthetics is transcendental. Why does he say this? Because they reveal something in the events of the events of our lives that is outside of the knowledge grid of our existence. IT is there, the value-in-the-world, in the good and bad experiences we have, yet the good and bad has no real appearance as other thing do. Moore called the good a non natural property.
This is the foundational indeterminacy of our existence. It begins with the epistemic problem, and moves to ontology of all things (keeping in mind that ontology is now very much about the agency that knows), especially the good and the bad of ethics, and discovers that impossible presence of the world (the world is mystical, says Witt), and finds an abiding openness in the examination the phenomenal events.
Rather, religion is the foundational determinacy of our existence, and in this, ethics is prescribed.
Yes, religion as a determination is a body of what I lately like to call a bundle of churchy fetishes. A fetish is, after all, something that has a derivative existence, drawing on something more basic and singular. Like sex. Walk into a church and the feel of quiet stillness, the subtle and somber twilight of stained glass, then the rituals, the symbols and the group prayer, and so on. This is a mirror image of a mind in reverence, of meditative affirmation. And yes, the whole point is to lay out a determinacy, it could be said. Something that fills the metaphysical emptiness with positive assertions.
But otoh, religion as a reduced phenomenon is the confrontation we have with a world that is utterly transcendental, and its value-in-the-world puts to inquiry an extraordinary question. One has to understand this to understand the nature of religion just as one has to understand Wittgenstein did VERY well. What drove him to face death during the war? Or nearly memorize Tolstoy little bible book? The Tractatus is really about just this impossible dimension of our existence, the what cannot be said but only shown. He was wrong about this in the Tractatus, closer to being right in the Investigations, which made language into something fluid and open; but right about the importance of it. It is the importance of what it means for something to be important at all. This is the issue: how is it possible for anything at all to be important? The determinative body of a religious icons and affects, etc., begs this question as inquiry whittles down to basic assumptions. It finds indeterminacy where consummation and redemption should be. This, of course, is arguable.
Hmm, It feels like you have explained this as if you're talking to a fellow-Continental who already takes most of these premises (and the pedastal-ing of language above reality). If that is not the case, I apologise as some of this will seem dismissive (but that would make sense if the above is true!)
In that case, I would hazard a suggestion that it's possible your grasp on these things is less clear than you feel it is - being unable to clarify it for another. Please also note that the types of responses I am likely to pen here are not new. These ideas have been around a lot time, and people much, much smarter, better read, and better-spoken that I have made similar points. Rejecting these kinds of approaches is not new, and I am not in bad company doing so. I would appreciate some charity here. I will try my best to reply as I go through with reference, as best as I can keep it, to your actual writing here.
Quoting Constance
This doesn't bode well. You've opened what should be a fairly clear unpacking of a single phrase with a lot of theorizing (much of which appears to be linguistically muddled?) As an example, I asked you to explain an esoteric and apparently nonsensical line. You have returned the underlined. Which requires the same treatment i've asked for. I have bolded words you can swap out for something simpler, assuming you understand the concepts well enough to do so. As a result of however you've decided to answer this, it is completely opaque as to what I've asked you explain. Onward..
Quoting Constance
I am sorry to say, but this entire paragraph comes through illogical, baseless and essentially just an assertion using words wrong (i will quote one passage at the end of this chunk to treat). "the basic science of what this is about" is a total misnomer, and leapfrogs several un-settled philosophical problems by hand-waving away the idea that the mind cannot apprehend objects in the world. This is clearly a jump-to-conclusion, because your preferred position requires it. I think you would need to be committed to a form of absolute idealism for that particular problem to obtain and be an obstacle in the science of perception.
Quoting Constance
This, ironically, embodies precisely the language games that result in intractable problems in philosophy. No, it is not "not even remotely possible" that "this in my head"(what are you even referring to here? Are you going homonculus? That'll need explaining) reaches out to apprehend X object. That is the nature of consciousness whether or not we understand how, that clearly is what is happening (unless you're Dennett and deny qualia). Even if we're in a simulation, that is what the consciousness code is doing - picking out items rom the environment for internal reflection, whether accurate or not (though, if we get into Noumena, we're fucked lmao).
Quoting Constance
Yes, this is empirically true. Not a philosophical point.
Quoting Constance
Thats a ridiculous position that seems designed to make people laugh at you. I am sorry for that, but that's how it comes across. It's click-bait for philosophers.
Quoting Constance
What? You seem to be using less clear and far more complex ideas to try to explain what was relatively simply, but unclear idea. I'm lost on how you're thinking here has worked...
Quoting Constance
The 'whole' point of what? If that is the 'whole point' of something, I have to say you're making it extremely difficult to even begin to get onto a reasonable train of thought about it. It seems like your premise is just "this shit is hard, to lets throw some big words into vaguely coherent sentences lifted from thinkers I admire aesthetically". Again, I apologise - that's what comes across. Not "How i read you". I really am trying to glean things from your writing - I appreciate the time an effort. I guess one problem is nothing you've said is new to me. It's slightly more 'garbled' versions of the writers you're aping - Witty, Heidegger, Schop etc..
Quoting Constance
I would disagree that's what it is (though, i realise it is intended, and acts, as a critique).
Quoting Constance
Again, you would need to explain this to me like i'm five, with no words above a .20c benchmark, tbh. As it's written, this is a non sequitur that I have to ignore to get through the para.
Quoting Constance
I realise you didn't finish this though, so charitably, this is three things that don't cohere into a point, though I can see a few ways they could.
Quoting Constance
This is the case on the physicalist's understanding of perception also. Several obvious examples like shadow perception (real shadows, not internal ones).
Quoting Constance
As best I can tell, this is not a grammatically coherent question. Your 'faculties' are repped by what? "the relation of a knowledge event"... What? "a knowledge event" is? "relation of" that is??
You need to boil these things down about eight levels lower than you're currently talking about them to explain them to a five year old. I would reiterate not using constant expensive words, and using plain language instead. It feels like you're lifting half-understood phrases from those writers and then attempting to elaborate, and so losing whatever meager point was there to begin with as it is.
Quoting Constance
This is the exact kind of meaningless word salad that I've been dismissive of. This does not explain anything at all other than to illustrate that perhaps you have trouble assimilating your thoughts when looking at your cat. There are claims on claims on claims on claims on claims that you seem to think are clear to others. They are not. I have asked for hte simplest possible version of these points (apologies if the "like i'm five" meme didn't land that way for you - that was what I wanted).
Quoting Constance
Seems a rather extreme non sequitur - might be the result of you barely touching what needed to be explained to me.
Quoting Constance
Wheres the heads, where's the tails? It's just circular word games. I can even understand exactly what's being gotten at here, and still note that its circular, only carries weight in and of itself, linguistically. It does nothing in terms of clarifying any other claims. Again, this may be a failure of simplicity on your part, making it very hard to connect this to earlier points.
Quoting Constance
This is utter garbage, sorry. There is literally nothing that be done with this line that isn't pulling it apart.
Quoting Constance
Non sequitur. Reference to book that is horribly written, and worse-conceived (on my view) - and is in my bag right now. Just to be clear, I know where these things come from. The original was bad - I was hoping a clarification would ensure, but it seems you're just using reference to explain your references. Odd.
Quoting Constance
Once again, not sufficiently clear or simple. I also thing they don't do a thing close to what Witty suggests. But that's another disagreement..
Quoting Constance
Suffice to say I am less clear now as to what you're referring to.
Quoting Constance
And this is exactly why his writings are confused, psychobabble. He doesn't understand much, and proceeds from there. "mystical" is a placeholder for "I don't get it". Hegel has this same problem.
Look, AmadeusD. I read your post top to bottom, and I understand your position. My fault for misleading you, for sometimes I make the mistake of thinking that everyone, if they would just attend to the ideas and their simplicity, should understand the basic thinking here. But this is wrong. You cannot walk through a door that you don't even know exists, and phenomenology is just this kind of door for you. All of this will forever seem nonsense to you...unless, that is, you read Being and Time, The Critique of Pure Reason, Derrida's Margins. and on and on.
So the best of luck to you.
I have read two/three of those books. I have called your bluff on Tractatus, and I have treated your writing with dedicated time, patience and thorough analysis. If your only response is an appeal to the texts I have already read, with a view that I must not have read them if I do not agree with you is honestly pathetic. That is a clear indication you do not understand what you are talking about and do not respect the discursive process.
You clearly have a bent, and one you are unable to look beyond. I say you are trapped in a room. The door is waiting for you to walk through it. Perhaps reading some analytical philosophy will help (i am joking).
Go well.
You have not made a single reference to anything in any text at all. And I am sorry you wasted your money on a vacuous education in a field that has all but been abandoned. Here is a book I recommend:
"The Fate of Analysis: Analytic Philosophy From Frege To The Ash-Heap of History" by Robert Hanna
You seem to be ignorant to the entire world of philosophy. And a dick.
https://againstprofphil.org/author/z/
https://academic-sexual-misconduct-database.org/person/robert-hanna
This is the company you're keeping. Reflect.
Quoting Constance
Yes. I'm good with that. I only refer to trace relationship as a courtesy, the final convenient fiction, imagined as "taking place" just as human existence leaves being and engages time, just as mind's perception displaces sensation with signifiers of the latter, and we lose our point of return. There is no trace because the gap between mind and being is untraceable. We cannot be being through the mediation of time; even the ego is of time and has no place in a True reduction beyond mind.
Quoting Constance
Very nice. The latter, corruptible. If the former is sound, that shouldn't matter. Because method is the essence.
Quoting Constance
I get it entirely. But with respect, I am not using Organic from the perspective of a scientist and in my humble opinion, while I should employ the right terminology as best I can etc., in this case, being an unconventional viewpoint, there is no "better" word to describe the human qua being, than organic. And I sense the word is slightly offensive because of the implications for spirit which we have been so conditioned to favor. My rejection of spirit is not scientific, on the contrary, it is profoundly "religious" in the way you have been in my opinion properly referring.
The question a religion poses is whether you have faith in its *ultimate* authority.
Not necessarily, if you don't mind the weigh-in. It appears that way in religion's manifestation as institutions, I agree. Even so called atheistic/agnostic ones like Buddhism where the "authority" might be the Four Truths etc.
But in "essence" the question a religion poses is whether you prioritize the truth/reality/ultimate as the ego, or an Other.
You might say I just re-worded your point; that my "an Other" is your "Authority." But there is a significant difference. The "problem" religion emerged to "correct" is not so much a need to submit to some godly authority as it is a need to surrender our misguided love affair with our so called self.
A religion is an institution or ideology.
Sure. Or a mechanism humanity developed--is still developing--to address a real problem. In my databank, it appears that religion addresses the problem of human suffering. Hence, liberation, salvation, atonement. Religion's answer: know that your ego is nothing. There is a Reality that is/does without your ego. And that's your salvation from sufdering. Out of this ever evolving mechanism came countless manifestations--your institutions and ideologies.
Can't we say the sake about most if not all uniquely human developments: we make shit up to address real problems. Romance/Matrimony etc addresses mating--it doesn't mean mating, the essence, is not Real. Philosophy, not far from Religion, just as pompous about its method, addresses the aware-ing that the shit we make up isn't real; no one has yet succeeded, nor will they, at this, the "institutional/ideological" level, that doesn't mean the aware-ing that it is made up is not Real.
The essence of religion addresses a real human problem. I personally don't care how people want to express it or even mess it up. I can focus on the essence. Which I'm sure you are capable of too; conventional thinking can be a block. And, this is what behind all of the complex and compelling constructions the OP has generated, the protestations as much as the engagements, the OP is getting at--at least from my perception. The essence of religion is actually an attempt to address "Philosophy's" Biggest problem: Reality.
Might I remind you of your juvenile intrusion into this thread?:
Weirdly, this response is the kind of outlandish, comedic set of assumptions that has most trained philosophers rejecting continental philosophy as fart-sniffing.
There is no argument here, no mention of anything remotely related to the OP, not even a single thoughtful construction. Just pure insult (Did you not mention later that I was committing a non sequitur? After this blunder of sequence??) yet your pour you off hand opinions freely into the cup. You got no more than your deserve, you inelegant ass.
I have provided several hundred words of analysis of your writing. You have addressed absolutely none of it - you've preened, ignored, and now devolved into pure ad hominem. That has nothing at all to do with me and my comportment. You are behaving like an angry 14 year old who has had their playstation taken away.
Quoting Constance
Because you did. You did it constantly, and it gets called what it is. This isn't insulting in any way. It is a comment on your (terrible) writing style. If you cannot handle having your incoherence called out, perhaps don't write confused, incoherent posts on a philosophy forum inviting comment?
Quoting Constance
Is it possible you are just not being honest? Not only possible - clearly true.
Quoting Constance
You are now just being a dick. If this is how you respond to analyses of your bad writing, well... All i can do is laugh. You had the chance to engage with some ideas (thoroughly connected to your own writing, in direct response to it). You, instead, shied away from doing any thinking and just started insulting me. I've made some off hand comments about Continental philosophy and your writing being bad. If you identify so strongly with either thing you take them as personal insults, triggering your emotional outbursts, please get some help.
Religions have all sorts of answers to all sorts of questions. It is rather presumptuous of you to try speaking for all religions.
Quoting ENOAH
Out of religion came countless religions??? That doesnt make any sense.
Quoting praxis
It appears you linger at the "institutional" notion of religion. I (presumably...or presumptiously) / this is discussing the vaguely* singular "essence" out of which the institutions emerged. I am not sure we can surpass this difference and reach any mutual understanding.
I'm fine. If I too was discussing religions, as you seem to be, I would likely agree with your points ("all sorts of answers" etc).
Quoting praxis
Ditto my response above.
*I use "vaguely" singular because at the level of essence, quantity is not relevant. However, I would think that a reasonable objection might be, there is no singular essence to religion. If that is what you are saying, ok. But I would ask, what makes you proclaim, as you seem to (admittedly, free of the word "essence") that the essence of religions is faith in a given ultimate authority?
Quoting praxis
To used Constances simile, youre saying that its like I linger at the fetish notion of sex. The thing is that anything can be fetishized and sex doesnt necessarily lead to fetishes. Sex can be fully realized without fetishes, indeed more fully realized I might argue.
Its as though you and Constance insist that sex is a fetish. It is not.
I did not notice that simile. But, at the risk of further alienating you, I agree with Constance. There is mating. Presumably, a seconds long process. There is sex, a human construction and projection displacing it. I don't know about C., but I'm not judging sex when I make that observation. I'm recognizing that "even" a matrimonial based exchange between a so called man and a so-called woman, even limited to a so called missionary style, even if it's drive is human bonding and procreation, cannot but be a construction and projection of what I am calling mating.
I cannot provide a detailed argument here; just as I cannot provide one for why I think at its essence religion is the recognition of the emptiness of ego.
If you disagree, great (unfacetiously). You may be right, and I certainly may be wrong
You seem to be suggesting that humans are inherently corrupt or inescapably fetishizing everything. I can agree with this because it means that the essence of religion is fetishism.
As for religion is fetishism--the way we have discussed it most recently, sure. Even the essence is a "fetish" constructed, like love making, to address a real drive.
Its not my term, its Constances term. As Ive said from the beginning, I think the essence of religion is binding. If you look at the etymology, its in the very name: Latin religare to bind.
Anyway, to be clear, you admit that your adulation of egolessness is like a fetish?
Well, words are never successful at precisely capturing truth. "adulation" not sure, observation (insofar as observation can even be relied upon) of the reality of egolessness, ...like a fetish? Hmm, that's tricky, and helpful to point out again (I have admited this "problem" several times in my efforts to gain a better understanding). Ego is like a fetish, in that we ascribe a truth to it that is not real (in nature). So, yes, so too my "adulation" of egolessness. And your "hidden" point is significant. Ultimately, everything I say or do regarding this topic is a "fetish" in the sense that I am ascribing a truth to a constructed fiction. But, just as in the case of sex (I cannot imagine mating in the way I described), I am bound to participate in the fetishized version.
That is why I have been suggesting that I cannot know egolessness; I cannot define it; doing so requires the ego. I need not do anything to be the real organic being that I am without "I". Because I already am that being. I am simply pointing to that truth; and, I think religion, at its essence, also points to that truth.
I am flowing on a synthetic river, seeing the real land on both sides of me. I am not saying I can get off the river. I just think it is functional knowing that. Religion(s) does not resolve the problem, it simply reminds us of the problem. Out of that "knowledge" we can flow more functionally. (Sorry for the metaphor. I hope it captures the gist.
Its functional in its binding effect with those who also believe as you do, believe in the duality of real lands and phony rivers. You feel kinship with those who see the world as you do, dont you?
No, but likely because I do not belong to any community of such believers. I suppose, if you told me you understood and agreed with my (let's be clear:) hypothesis, I might feel something akin to kinship. I'm not sure.
I cant agree because, if Ive been following your reason rightly, your duality (real land/phony water) expresses a fetish. Wouldnt you feel kinship with anyone who shared your fetish? It need not be a community.
I want to "cooperate" and agree that I would feel such a kinship, but I truly do not know. Likely because kinship, though functional at the institutional level of religions is irrelevant to my understanding of the essence.
I agree with you that binding/community is a manifestation of religions as they developed, but not necessarily its essence.
Also, I think you'll agree that etymology, the latin root, though helpful, is not a conclusive way of understanding the essence.
I would feel something positive from agreement from others, but I am not sure if kinship is the root of that feeling. Maybe it is, bonding being a real organic drive for humans.
But then, so can the same be said of politics, philosophy, sports, etc etc etc. we seek agreement because of the pleasant feeling triggered by our drive to bond with others of our species.
Look, I reiterate, maybe you are right and bonding is the essence of religion, but in the sense that bonding is also the essence of law, society, the family etc etc.
You are definitely raising some very helpful points (for me to consider). I hope you are benefiting, as much as I am.
Exactly.
Religious kinship is magnitudes deeper because it assumes shared core values.
Im afraid that kinship is inherently tribal in nature, and thats why religions are so tribal in nature.
I could stop there and feel the pleasure of our bond.. .
But the essence. .
Anyway, like I said, I appreciate and note the importance of your perspective (that sounds like lip service but I mean it. Ultimately, how could I know?)
I cannot see how that could be true. Religion does not tell us what good, evil, right, and wrong are. Does it?
You haven't. There would be evidence in your thoughts and there is none. I really did read all of your long post and found nothing, absolutely nothing of a working intellect. A lot of insults but nothing even remotely about anything these philosophers had to say.
Sorry my pretentious friend, but you are just a troll who doesn't know what he is talking about.
But when you say untraceable, I find room for issue. It is a simple thing, yet troubling. It goes again to agency. Whatever is outside of the states of affairs of possible discourse, is revealed to "someone" that is not merely a construct. It is impossible for there to be disclosure without "real" agency. This I take to be axiomatic. And this goes double for value intense experience. Frankly, I had never really seen this clearly until now. The question is, is it possible for an idea or an experience or a disclosure of any kind to be both what it is, yet occurring to "no one" ? Not about occurring in some locality, which is trivially true (Locality?), but experience of any kind requires it to be an experience to, or of someone. There is no such thing as an unmoored experience.
Consider also: A babe in arms has no constructed agency, no historical self, neither personal nor cultural, yet her suffering and delight must have agency. Dogs and cats, pigs and goats alike. What makes an animal a moral agency? The capacity to suffer and have delight
This does not make the "untraceable" less than what it "is". Strange how this works: Being is not an abstraction, nor is it derived from anything. One has to stick to how if is disclosed, not simply that it is disclosed.
Quoting ENOAH
That is an interesting thing to say. The soundness of deconstruction must refer to the method. To me, it is the logical completion of Husserl's epoche, which is what the contemporary French phenomenologists like Henry say. One brackets and brackets until language confronts itself, the final frontier, one could say, and what remains is to cease thinking altogether, the final emancipation from the constraints of language; not unlike the Buddhist, no? Takes practice, but this is likely philosophy's telos. Deconstruction takes one to annihilation of our existence, the encultured agency of meanings. This is the only "soundness" that survives the method, but to return to the above, this cannot be the end of agency itself. Such a thing is not conceivable.
Quoting ENOAH
Spirit is a term loaded. I prefer "tout autre".It is, after all, only negatively conceived, though it depends on the individual as to what actually survives the phenomenological reduction, which I think deconstruction to be the end game of.
Still a bit mystified by "organic," though.
To try simply, borrowing (not necessarily endorsing) an Abrahamic metaphor, so called "God" cares only about the living(ness) of "his" "creation" i.e., organic; and not the becoming, knowledge, that "he" actually warned humans against. Out of the latter, we invented a universe of our own, unreal, and not "precious" to "God." Now, yes, I am being "poetic" and do not necessarily hold to "God," and "precious." My point is, we have been clinging to knowledge at the direct expense of living. Living is not in our constructions, but in our being. The whole false spirit/body duality, is a direct result of that clinging.
Quoting Constance
Is this the "tree falls in a forest" conundrum? I say it makes a sound. To humans only, the question matters, because of the illusion of separation between sound and perceiver/object and subject/cause and effect. EDIT: experience, by the way, I hold to be restricted to humans. So that is why "there is no such thing as an unmoored experience;" there is no real such thing as "experience" period.
Quoting Constance
Perfect illustration, the babe has no self based experience; no agency. Not mother feeds me; rather, just feeding.
Well, it tries to. But the point here is that when we are trying to understand something in the world, we look to a description of how that thing appears. So we "observe" religion much as we would, say, the law, or geology or anything we want to understand. I am saying religion is what we encounter when ethics meets metaphysics. So what is ethics and what is metaphysics? In ethics, there turns up something apodictic, which is really not the way philosophers prefer to think about ethics, because apodicticity is irreducible. I.e., nothing to talk about.
So what to do now? What if ethics were apodictic? I am claiming it is.
To my knowledge, no religion describes good, evil, right, and wrong. It just gives a set of commands: what we ought to do (considered as good) and what we ought not to do (considered as evil).
Quoting Constance
There are two problems here even if we accept that ethics is apodictic: (1) Which religion is the correct one? and (2) What is the reason for religion being the only reliable source when it comes to ethics?
(1) is important since there are conflicts in many religions and even there are conflicts within a single religion. (2) What if someone comes up with an apodictic idea regarding ethics such as each human has all rights when it comes to his or her life but she or he does not have any right when it comes to the life of others unless both individuals agree on terms and conditions?
I imagine not just the Abrahamic, but Western philosophy too, had always entertained an intuition about this--that what happens in Human Consciousness, is not Real. Although, Mind itself having evolved "an interest" in its own survival and
growth, developed mechanisms which block the obvious, that Reality is the living organism, and out of this, emerges the attachment western philosophy cannot shake, the reification of itself, presented to us as Spirit, and its necessary dualism. The intuition is expressed earlier than Plato, but with him the attachment to mind, and corresponding demeaning of the flesh, begins to structure the future. Kant I think knew it, that reality was a thing not knowable by mind, but actually inaccessible to it. But he understandably did the ethical thing and steered clear. Focusing instead on the best way he could present Mind as Constructed, experience as just projections of that, for his time, and given his locus in time. Then the thing unfolds. It is not Scientistism, nor Empiricism, nor physicalism, which prompts me to view reality as organic. It is, I genuinely, ironically, believe. The comical is I shouldn't even attempt to prove it. Proving it is not it. But so called we, actually are. But alas, lije everyone else, I am no less attached to the reified Mind. That makes me necessarily speak.
Mind being make-believe (construct-project), by the way, is not good or bad, mind is both. That's just how it evolved after trial and error, most efficiently. In order to perpetuate construction and projection, it evolved difference, causing a reason for construction and projection, time, narrative or linear form of experience, cause and effect, logic, grammar, subject, me. This is a significant thing for metaphysics to go on dreaming about forever. Why does it have to be real?
But religions are about a dogmatic authority, and so the analytic of good and bad has no place. As for a description, this is what observation does. So what is there to observe? Just the arbitrary command (which may be a good idea or not. The point is that the determination about its goodness or badness is not based on justification and merit).
What I intend here is to think about ethics as a phenomenon: take any ethical matter and ask, what makes for its ethicality? The essence of ethics. Ask about the essence of common ideas and you get definitional content that is contingent, that is, whatever is said defers to other content. Ask what a teacher is, say, and other words come flooding in about teachers, what they do, the qualities they have, and ask about what these are and more definitional qualities ensue; and this simply never ends. Contingency yields no necessities, just dependencies. No language is stand alone.
Quoting MoK
One cannot "come up with" an apodictic idea. If you were to look into the nature of logic, everywhere you look you would find apodicticity (or apriority, or necessity). One big tautology. I am saying the same is true for ethics (and hence, religion). The analogy goes like this: Logic is not about the many logical problem solving affairs we engage in, for these are entangled with things that have nothing to do with logic, referring to all the complications of our intertwined lives. Logic in itself is about the apriori principles of reasoning. Ethics stands in the world in a similar way. The ethics of my obligation to pay a debt or refrain from harming others, and so forth, is not about the facts of the cases. A fact just sits there: The soup is 35 degrees F. But put this in an ethical setting, as with my promise to someone to heat the soup well above one hundred degrees, and this fact is now ethically in play. The details are variable (it could have been a stew, or the desire to make it cooler, not warmer, and so on), but no detail has an ethical dimension to it.
So what is this apodicticity of ethical matters about? Value. Ask, what is it for something to be apodictic? It is for that thing's contradiction to be impossible to imagine, as with causality, say: one cannot imagine an object self-moving. Value refers us to the world, not reason, and specifically to the value in play, as with the satisfaction hot soup brings or the peace that comes with the confidence that promises will be kept. Ethics is ALWAYS about some value in play. No value in play, and ethics simply vanishes.
So finally, what is it about value as such that is apodictic? One must look to the world, for here lies value; it is IN the pains and delights of our existence. Long story short lies in an example: The injunction not bury a knife's blade into one's neighbor's back rests entirely with the horrible pain this brings. One may want to talk about principles of ethics, but these just beg the the question. Pain cannot be second guessed. Pain is apodictically "bad".
Of course, the statement here is not complete.
You are now:
1. Mind reading;
2. Insulting;
3. Refusing to engage;
4. Doubling-down on your incredibly intense failure to be a functional interlocutor.
You are now simply lying to get past the points brought up to you. You haven't engaged a single work, and have (in three consecutive posts) fallen back on pure ad hominem. You are either incredibly dishonest, or incapable of understanding what you pretend to. Either way, go well.
This story (myth) is not "salvation" because, in fact, one's "suffering" (i.e. frustrations, fears, pains, losses, traumas, dysfunctions) ceases only with one's death. The world's oldest confidence game ritually over-promises and under-delivers: false hope. Besides, most historical religions preach that every person has an 'eternal soul' imo, there isn't any notion that's more of an ego-fetish than this.
:up:
First, I understand your position, and there are approaches to religion where I would agree with you. Outside of what each of us thinks of as "essence" of religion, I likely have no dispute with any claim that religions per se and in practice are rarely liberating from suffering, if ever.
Second, and this is most important, I reiterate that my expressions are entirely hypothetical, and would likely fail even the test of logic. (especially falsifiability).
Then why?
Fair question. My responses below may address that.
Quoting 180 Proof
Yes. We can't escape the enumerated examples of suffering until death. Salvation is a term borrowed from "religion" and is of course misleading. My admittedly overzealous assertion for what it's worth is that religion--loosely, focus on/concern with the transcendent (I can easily adjust that "definition")--as opposed to religions and their various failed manifestations; can provide "the right attitude" (though "right" implies orthodoxy and that's not what I mean) to bear the suffering, by "enlightening" us to the transient nature of that thing which is most desperate to escape it. That is, by pointing to an ultimate reality beyond the suffering.
Yes. I already see the ways in which you can properly dispute this. However, 1. Space and time; 2. The very nature of what I'm suggesting has its proper place in doing something and necessarily not in discourse.
Quoting 180 Proof
I completely agree with you. That is where both religion, and, with respect, much philosophy, east and west, has gone astray. That is the exact point. Fetishization of the Subject, causes our awareness to focus on that illusion as a thing which suffers and ought not to. I'm wondering whether (like so many things which history corrupts) the essence of religion (to remind/warn against etc. this fetishizing of the ego) has been "lost."
In any event, I'm clearly having difficulty expressing that clearly. I'm not fixated on an idea which I alter to meet with criticism. Believe me that I get your criticism, but am only responding because it appears the point I am trying to make is misunderstood.
Yes, religions are not successful at dealing with suffering; but not because there is utterly no valid function. Rather, because the valid function--to de-fetishize and de-mythologize the ego--has been lost.
I am not prepared to do an exegesis of scriptures, or to review theologians here. But if it helps (and at the obvious risk of further confusing) here are a couple of the sources for my intuition/perhaps bold hypothesis that religion is essentially "designed" to put the ego in its place: Christianity's essence "love your neighbor as yourself, love God with all your might." Islam is by name, submission (to god). In the eastern religions, Hinduism /Buddhism, this emphasis on "liberation" from ego is even patently obvious. Atman is Brahman/ there is no self. Yes, all of the aforementioned have bastardized this proposed essence.
Any way, for what that was worth. Maybe I'm completely out to lunch. But I haven't been persuaded otherwise. Like I said, not from any aversion to being so persuaded.
What is your religion and why did you choose it?
Quoting Constance
Not to a masochist.
There is a lot in this. I won't wag a critical finger in your direction, but I should ask questions. For example, Does the Bible have any prima facie authority at all on matters of philosophy? What does creation have to do with it and what is the connection between creation and the idea of the organic? Is the old Testament really talking about a biological category? God does not fit comfortably into a discussion of basic questions because it generates its own questions, which is a sign of bad metaphysics; questions about God's greatness and the omni-this-and-that are grounded in the very thing you are trying to avoid, which is the excesses of knowledge claims which need to be eliminated in order to see the matter clearly. This is what Husserl's reduction does, or can do, though one does not have to agree with everything he says. This is why phenomenology really is the "science" of phenomenology: it studies the apriori structure of perception and its content as open, because the reduction is open: it takes inquiry closer to what is presupposed by everydayness.
As to that false spirit/body duality, I find this objectionable in the way this is taken historically, which is as an ontological duality (something Heidegger strongly objected to. Ontology for him is
equiprimorial" meaning not about some singularity of existence, like Descartes' res cogitans or res extensa). But this is not to say there are no differences in the way the world shows itself. Certainly, if you think, as Husserl did, that an object is constituted by the contribution made by perception, then the question goes to the perceiver, as with Kant and cognition. But just a rationalist. Rational primordiality certainly does not describe the world (for one thing, it does not have Derrida available to deconstruct it. Ask, what is reason? and deconstruction takes you to the countless contexts in which it is found. It is "scattered" if you will. Hermeneutics can do this, Derrida shows (see Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics. Caputo is a post modern....errrr, hard to say what he is. He is a post modern philosopher of affirmation) that is, remove a meaning from its "place" in some absolute hierarchy of the way the world is. I am reading, or trying to read, Derrida's latter work (Incidentally, I have thousands of pdf files. You are welcome to them all if you can tell me a way they can be sent that costs nothing to me and does not involve handing out my email address. Huge files. Many gbs) and clearly, one has to be able to have a sense of irony to grasp this (Rorty names his book Contingency, Irony and Solidarity --in which there is an entire chapter on Derrida): irony is a principle feature of language in its ability to generate difference), for he is being deliberately ironic, because he is trying to make the impossible point about the "trace" being a generative feature of language, while actually speaking (writing)! Which is why, like Wittgenstein, the whole conversation is under erasure. Witt is really saying something very close to Derrida
But I was trying to say that duality certainly does have its place as long as ontology is not about something like Descartes' had in mind. Though this is slippery, for in phenomenology, what you could call categorical ontology is certainly okay. I mean, we can talk about differences among phenomena, and group these as science might talk taxonomically about things, but when the Occam's razor of the reduction bracketing cuts deeper and deeper until one is left facing "being as such" then where justified true belief have its place? This is really what is behind my objection to your defense of the unsayble and unthinkable and this extends to the early Wittgenstein: obviously we can think what cannot be thought! For without thought we are as infants.
Knowledge at the expense of direct living: Slippery again: My quarrel with popular religion is that since it possesses a great lack of justification for its beliefs, it is arbitrary, and being arbitrary and authoritative is a very bad combination. Philosophy is essentially religious in that it is the objective analysis of our world at the basic level of inquiry and this leads to acknowledging foundational indeterminacy which is the essence of religion. All roads lead to this foundational discussion.
Quoting ENOAH
No, it is not about what we mean by sound. It is about whether one can make sense of an experience of, say, terrible pain without agency. I think this is an important question. I say a "disembodied" pain is impossible, and to speak of such a thing shows only a possibility of words, i.e., one can SAY this, sure. But it is not unlike talking about causes and effects: one cannot imagine a causeless effect. Can't explain this, but it is just primoridially true, if you like (Edith Stein uses this term a lot). So with a pain, or pleasure of some kind, this is impossible without agency of some kind. Who knows, perhaps atman is the Brahman and you and I are one, making agency this grand eternal singularity. Could be.
A thing which suffers? Nobody argues this. Heidegger interpreted Descartes to make the point that dasein is not what he called a mode of desein's being called "presence at hand" but this isn't where the interesting phenomenology takes the issue. Post modern thinking on the theological side of all this takes one to transcendence. On this lies at the end of the ontological question of agency. Put it like this: Kant was all in on this absurd metaphysical affirmation based on the transcendence discovered in the analysis of judgment. You go deep enough into questioning the structure of actual thought and judgment and you discover apodicticity beyond the reach of experience. Such is where transcendence takes one for Kant--to an utterly vacuous world of absolute existence that has no ground at all in lived experience.
Kant is to metaphysics what Hobbes is to political philosophy in that he opened a door that he himself could not pass through. The Critique had to be critiqued! Michel Henry and his ilk (recall that you liked this thinker earlier) come along and say, look, if you are looking for something absolute about our existence, you are simply mad to bring all attention to a complete abstraction of and from, well, our existence. The critique of the critique is simple: you want something that abides through all logically possible objection (like Descartes' doubt that inspired Husserl's reduction), just (my example) put you hand in boiling water or over a lighted match. Ask now, what IS that? This question is not ever even touched by analytic philosophy (take a quick look at the metaethical nihilism that runs through the thinking among those posting here. Ask this question of them and they will either not respond or ignore what you ask move elsewhere. Imagine THE most salient feature of our existence and a philosophy that is entirely afraid to even approach it.
At any rate, if you think about the self, human dasein, as a thing, you are deep in scientific reductive territory.
I am of the school that says if something hasn't been through the analytic grinder, then it is not worthy of belief. I no more take religion in any popular sense seriously at all. Such a thing is no longer a a living possibility.
If a masochist likes X, then X isn't pain to the masochist. I take this as both analytically true as well as experientially.
Its overpromising and underdelivering is itself for into metaphysics, i.e., beyond verification and falsification.
Christian metaphysics is not at all egoic, but precisely the opposite: it is in the denial of the ego and its personality and attachments (fetish or otherwise. Freud thought that the entire structure of a culture was something of a fetish of sublimated libido). Kierkegaard called this hereditary sin.
If you re looking for what is essentially religious about our existence, it begins with the OP. Why waste time on the silliness of historical popular religion? These self implode right at the outset of inquiry.
Well, that is quite the opposite of what you stated regarding religion. To you: "But religions are about a dogmatic authority, and so the analytic of good and bad has no place.".
Quoting Constance
Do you believe in God? If yes which kind of God It is?
Quoting Constance
I am a masochist myself so I can tell you that is the pain that I like.
No. What is defended and discussed here is an analytic of religion, not religion as it is taken up in regular affairs. Read the OP.
God is a term that issues from the basic religious situation. It belongs to a basket of terms that create issues rather than resolve them. Say God is the greatest possible being, then I will give a hundred ways to entangle this into an entirely contrived issue generating concept. Wittgenstein was right: leave such things alone for, putting is simply, lack of grounding in the world. In other words, the world shows itself to us and our job in philosophy is to say what is there at the most basic level.
But you don't give the idea its due: take someone's masochism regards beatings as somehow delightful. The pain of the beatings is no longer, therefore bad, or another way to go would be to say that what is bad in the pain is entangled with something that makes if good (a fetish's very definition) and familiarity makes for a settled matter, psychologically. On this point I don't care about the variability of the way we experience the world. All that matters is the value in play when value is entangled (it almost always is). It can be clear as a bell, as when the flame is put beneath the palm of my hand--hard to fetishize this one. Not impossible, but then...well, I hard to even imagine. I can imagine Thích Qu?ng ??c did; he was the Buddhist monk who set himself ablaze in protest. But this is a different matter as he had trained himself to ignore the pain, not enjoy it. But the source of enjoyment is just not at issue. What is at issue is the nature of pain when one is feeling pain. Just that. You have a fetish such that burns and beatings are a good time, then I do not classify your beatings as painful, but delightful.
I wrote this piece of nonsense:" Its overpromising and underdelivering is itself for into metaphysics, i.e., beyond verification and falsification." Should have written this: overpromising and underdelivering is itself metaphysics, that is, beyond verification and falsification.
:roll:
Well, ime, metaphysics making sense in the most general way of the whole of reality is conceptual (i.e. presuppositional > descriptive), not theoretical (i.e. propositoonal > explanatory). Besides, metaphysics does not entail the 'false hopes' which are the basis and motivators of religion.
All Christian sects preach that every person has an "eternal soul" (i.e. "I AM" = EGO sum (re: "imago dei")) that will be either "saved" or "damned", no? Iirc from my Jesuitical education, each follower of Christ seeks only the "eternal salvation" of his "eternal soul" ... in the world to come". Augustinian / Kierkeegardian subjectivity (i.e. "leap of faith") metaphysically screams "ME ME ME". :pray: :eyes:
Humans' denial of death via myths / symbols of 'immortality' (e.g. scapegoating, redemption / propitiation sacrifice, martyrdom, "teleological suspension of the ethical", etc) as I've pointed out on this thread ...
(page 1)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/904100
(re: religion more broadly from another thread)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/676697
Ok, my apology. I read your OP a couple of times and now I know what you are arguing about. To me, the essence of religion is not about ethics at all but about spiritual and mystical experiences. Although there are religions with a set of commands, what we ought to do and what we ought not to do, but to my understanding there is no religion that provides reasons why an act, good or evil, is right or wrong. Therefore, religion is not about ethics.
Quoting Constance
I don't think that philosophy can resolve the problems regarding spirituality hence religion. You either have spiritual experience or not. You cannot tell whether a spiritual experience is an illusion created by the brain or it is real (by real I mean that there are spiritual agents in charge of causing the experience).
Quoting Constance
Glad to see that you agree that the pain is not bad for all agents.
It certainly does depend on what is meant by metaphysics. Here I refer to metaphysics in the way of "bad metaphysics" which rises out of groundless speculation, I mean, literally speculation that has no ground, as with talk about the nature of God often goes, following through on a supposition that is itself its own presupposition. God is a definitional concept that is the genesis of a great deal of bad metaphysics simply because it is NOT its own presupposition, but is a contingent and constructed concept, something "of parts" that defers to other concepts for its meaning. At any rate, when you talk about overpromising and underdelivering, you implicitly say that delivering and promising make sense in this context. Making sense requires justification, so where does the justification come from? Unless one is able to show that such a thing is demonstrable in the "observable" (belongs in double inverted commas for a good reason) world, either directly or through apriori argument, one will have to resort to what can be neither observed nor inferred from what is observed. The very definition of bad metaphysics.
As to false hopes: one needs to go into this: false hopes about what? Religion does not deal in contingent matters, so it is not about false hopes of any particular (read accidental) issue, the particulars of any of a multitude of ethical problems one can have. So the hope in quiestion here has is analytically reduced something more fundamental, which is discovered IN the very structure of our existence. This is value.
Quoting 180 Proof
Yeah, I know, and it is a fair point to make. But then, it is the "world denied" that made Nietzsche so incensed. If one reads Kierkegaard, especially in The Concept of Anxiety, Sickness Unto Death and, well, everywhere, really, he comes down very hard on the affections we have for this world; indeed, it is his Attack on Christendom that plays this out in concerns about the fallen state of "Christendom" which to him is just the very embodiment of sin. Buddhism and Hinduism are very explicit about this: the world is suffering, an illusion (maya) and we must be delivered from our affections bound therein. These affection are, literally, the indulgences of the ego.
Quoting 180 Proof
Yes, you pointed it out, but you haven't argued through the OP. So many argue a case about religion as if religion were no more than the sum of bad metaphysics. This is a straw person argument, instantly assailable. It doesn't address religion in its essence. Most of what you cite above are ideas that that are badly defined or have no place in a foundational analysis at all.
"Life after death.". "Resurrection." "Past lives." "Reincarnation." "Release from the Wheel of Rebirth." Etc
Your accusation of "bad metaphysics" is clearly a projection and non sequitur.
Seems the modus operandi. I cannot fault, though, as it's likely I've come across like this most of the time to you also(and that's ignoring our actual disagreements lol. I just have ideas that are going to be sometimes bad).
Oh. Really? Explain.
Quoting Constance No. It has no authority. It was brought up as an historical document to illustrate the human intuition regarding the conflict between Mind(knowing) and Body(being).
Quoting Constance I agree. Pain requires nerves. That organism with nerves is the agent of the pain. But the suffering we construct to displace pain, is all in the constructing and projecting of the Mind without agency.
Quoting Constance That may be.
Quoting Constance I do not. I think about the self and human so called dasein (I'm not sure why that concept is treated as a given) as NO THING
I'm a Christian. Am I therefore religious? The very question is meaningless. Why? Because 'religious' has not been defined in a concrete, understandable, verifiable manner. It's just a convenient word. A label that seems to suggest something, but it doesn't really say anything at all. Thus, much of what's put forth as answers concerning 'religion' partake of a similar ambiguity, an exercise in futile rhetoric simply for the sake of rhetoric. What's problematic here is that language is highly abstract; a construct of human intelligence that began with pictorial representations with particular meanings, but as this abstract form of representing reality grew ever more refined, ever more able to describe our world of experience, it became equally infused with all the potential to enter into endless conflicts and misunderstandings. That's why I assume my default position. I demand clarity whenever anyone dares mention the word religion. If clarity is not given, then confusion is the ruling Monarch of the day, and I find myself walking through the dark halls of that Monarch where i always find just what I expect. Confusion and meaninglessness and not only confusion and meaninglessness but the championing of confusion and meaninglessness.
Much of what goes by the name religion, for instance, in Christian circles, I find deplorable. Yet, here we see religion if so defined, yet I shy away from being associated in any way with so much of what passes as religion. I would rather be an atheist than a theist of the kind who preaches eternal damnation for finite beings who were never asked if they wished to be born. This Catholic dogma, popularized in so many offshoots of that supposed religion, I find truly demonic. Biut I'm caught in we might say, a duplcity. Am I guilty of advocating such a demonic dogma simply by reason of association? No. I believe I can very adequately justify myself as far as 'my religion' is concerned, empirically, and rationally and morally. But to whom should I ever care to justify myself? I haven't yet been brought before the thrown of the anti-christ to bare my sole and pledge my allegiance. When I do, it will be to Christ, and no other. Is that what it means to be relligious? Perhaps. But human reason and justification are issues for philosophical debate as much as anything else and people often seek by nature a very strong position, like demanding (as so popular in the arena of politics) a definite Yes or No answer. Are you religious? Yes or no, pick one or the other. So, yes. But I might add: and so are you, for I'm not the only one who can be imputed with what can be called a system of belief. I'm not the only one to whom guilt must be assigned. If you think otherwise I will defend myself by stating that you are religious also, for whatever it is you believe, that can be taken as your god. For this reason it's written in scripture that you shall have no other gods before Me.
If one contends that they are not religious, I object and claim that you are denying the state of your own reality; for were you not religious then you would be as a virgin, unstained by any association with another, that you have withstood rape and have not come to any conclusions of any kind--that you not only have no false gods before you but you reject also the one true God; and remain as an innocent babe--someone deserving of no condemnation for there is nothing in you deserving of judgment. This is why I assume my default position: what exactly do you mean by religion? Define it, or remain silent, else you enter a world of perhaps potentially meaningful dialogue, but much more likely, only meaninglessness masquerading as wisdom.
Are you serious about this?
Yes I'm serious about this. Souds illogical, unless you read the entire reply, that asks for clarification of the term 'religion' or 'religious'. Using the term is easy. Defining it is an altogether different matter, and not easily accomplished.
Quoting Ray Liikanen
Apparently, you've not read this thread from the beginning. A little more than semantic quibbles is going on here. Besides, definitions are not "verifiable" (unless they are tautologies). :roll:
I did read your whole post.
Okay, assuming that youre actually serious, you seem to believe that being religious means thinking, believing, and concluding whatever is in accordance with your religion.
That is certainly part of it (though not to the extreme you claim) and why religion tends to be very dogmatic. You must think theres more to it though, right?
Quoting MoK
But of course religion "provides reasons why an act, good or evil, is right or wrong." Religion tells us that God is moral foundation of such "reasons".
But I would respond to the idea of religion being about spiritual and mystical experiences. Not that it is not about these, but that mysticism itself does not stand apart from our ordinary affairs: what is mystical lies with understanding that ordinary affairs themselves are entirely indeterminate at the basic level of assumptions, which undermines all knowledge claims, something altogether ignored as we are so absorbed in the usual matters. Just to say, that one should keep such the "mystical" within the bounds of what is IN the world vis a vis our existence, in order to keep the very idea available. If you read mystics like Meister Eckhart or pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite you find intimations that never really leave the perceptual event, but rather ackowledge something always already IN what is observed normally. A long discussion in this.
Why do I claim religion is all about ethics? You saw the point in the OP: Religion is metaphysics, specifically metaethics. Metaethics is inquiry about the essence of ethics, as is the question, what IS the good? It is a question for ontology, for the good and the bad in ethics, prior to discussions about the should's and shouldn'ts, rights and wrongs, refer to the actual affairs in the world that make ethics even possible. The basic idea lies here: what if ethics possessed in its essence something as apodictic as logic? I claim it does. Beneath the entanglements of our ethical lives, there is something that makes these matters' ethicality even possible. This is value, a category identified in Wittgenstein's Tractatus which he says is unspeakable, as it is IN the world and not merely in states of affairs. (It helps to read this brief if enigmatic book.)
Again, what if ethics possessed at its core something apodictic? If so, religious issues would be instantly resolved! No, I'm serious.
Quoting MoK
I take pain and pleasure to be bad and good analytically. If one is enjoying X, then, heh, heh, one isn't in pain. Period. If something is standardly called pain, but is nonstandardly received as pleasure, I ask, why should standards hold up against reality? And I keep in mind that so much that we call painful or distasteful are conditioned pov's. I remember finding cigarette smoking so awful it made me sick. Then I was addicted for 16 years. The lack of objectivity in the goods and bads of the world was never due to their not being anything objective about the good or the bad. It was always about the variance in was brought the good and the bad into existence. Flames scorching living flesh? Hmmm, like I said, this one is tough to imagine being enjoyable. But who cares. It really isn't the point. If one is miserable then one is miserable.
Oh. Thanks for clearing that up.
Quoting Ray Liikanen
This sounds like Kierkegaard in his Concept of Anxiety. See what he says:
Innocence is ignorance. In innocence the human being is not characterized as spirit but is psychically characterized in immediate unity with its natural condition. Spirit is dreaming in the human being. This view fully accords with that of the Bible which, by denying that the human being in its innocence has knowledge of the difference between good and evil,* condemns all Catholicisms fantasies concerning [Adams] merit.15 In this state there is peace and repose, but at the same time there is something else, something that is not dissension and strife, for there is nothing against which to strive. What, then, is it? Nothing. But what effect does nothing have? It begets anxiety. This is the profound secret of innocence, that at the same time it is anxiety. Dreaming, spirit projects its own actuality, yet this actuality is nothing, but innocence always sees this nothing outside itself. Anxiety is an attribute of the dreaming spirit and belongs as such to psychology. Awake, the difference between myself and my other [mit Andet]16 is posited; sleeping, it is suspended; dreaming, it is a nothing hinted at. Spirits actuality appears constantly as a form that tempts its possibility but disappears as soon as it reaches out for it, and is a nothing that can only bring unease. More it cannot do as long as it merely appears.
Of course, he has his own way of treating these terms, but pretty much, when you talk about an innocent babe deserving of no condemnation, you are aligned with the simple but profound insight that if a person never looks up, so to speak, from the stream of psychological events in her head, and never takes on the burden of the anxiety this imposes, a person cannot be guilty, but nor can a person make any progress toward .....God, or better, call it liberation and enlightenment (from the East. I find their metaphysics more explicit and useful than the vagaries of "faith"). Two things Jesus said that always ring true: forgive them for they know not what they do, and God, have you forsaken me? True not because they agree with the Bible, but because the Bible agrees with them. We are forsaken in this finitude of suffering (and delights, let's not forget. the OP is about this as well), and we are absolutely clueless as to why.
But then, there ARE clues. This is a theo-philosophical matter.
A favorite pastime especially today in politics (witness the backbitting back and forth between Democrats and Repulbicans) is this infantile labelling of the opponent. We never learn, seems to be an inherent thing in the human mind.
"Why have you forsaken me?" He became sin for us. Our transgressions, all of them, died with him on the cross; God the Father, turns His face away from evil (sin).
Arent you negating everything else these infantile labelers might be?
No, no; that's not what I mean by disembodied. This is the phenomenologist's world and all bets are off re. physicality and its many sciences. The fact that nerves deliver signals to the brain belongs to a region of thinking that presupposes phenomenology, as all sciences do. Many ways to approach this but imagine Derrida is right, and he is, I say, and language is something that never can be even conceived as ontologically/epistemologically associated with the intended object of trees and clouds and nerve fibers and so on. Language you could say stands disembodied from the world of these nameless actualities. In everyday dealings, we treat them as one, you know, pass the salt and the bus being late, things like this make no discernment ontologically, and the epistemology is bound up with normal affairs.
Prior to the science there is the "immediate" givenness of the world. Here we see suffering and delight in their reduced givenness, which has no causal explanations linked to it. It is a stand alone giveness, this pain, that bliss. We think of them in the usual contexts when we are in them, as when I take a sip from this cup. But pull away from engagement and ontology makes its appearance, via the question. Derrida's trace is supposed to bring us to this very strange precipice where our encultured resources are suspended (the final suspension) and we face a "pure" world, your world, free of the distortions of language, andI have always agreed with you; and disagreed. I think this intimation of pure being you talk about is a very meaningful part of what it is to stand on this precipice. But I take issue with your (and Heidegger's) turn away from subjectivity (agency). Two things are behind this: One is the requirement that human dasein (meaning just our existence of thought, relations, feelings, "comportment," and what we generally refer to as experience) is a language construct (the house of Being), and the other hs to do with agency and value, what I mean when I talk about a disembodied agency: agency is experience, and experience is always a subjective (agential) and centered phenomenon. One cannot talk about experience belonging to no one, or about a pain that belongs to no one any more than one can talk about gravity without mass, say. the pain of this sprained ankle cannot be "hanging around," if you will, in space somewhere. The same with having a thought or a feeling. These issue from experience and cannot be conceived apart from it.
Quoting ENOAH
Yes, quite right.
Well, if they say so. But that does not make God a moral foundation. The reason for that is the very diverse range of religions with different teachings. Most religions give teachings that contradict the teachings of others. There are even contradictions within a single religion. Not all religions are the same and all of them could not be possibly true. So even if accept the premise that God is the moral foundation then we still face a problem: Which religion is true?
What transgressions? Not to say that we are all so perfect, but the issue goes to responsibility: the behavior, the thought,these can be transgressive, meaning they bring into the world an alienation from our true nature which is a "spark" of the divine (without putting too fine a point on it), toward all of the cultural affairs that draw us away from this. Original sin, K held, was, for us (not Adam, whose situation is quite different, though it has to be kept in mind that K was not giving credence to a myth. He uses this myth to explain "original sin" which is, by all accounts, just weird and senseless. He criticizes Luther's generally held position that we, somehow have committed the most egregious offense to God imaginable, and so on) the sin of the "race" which means it is the historical generation of a very bloated and distracting culture, filled with what you could call worldly fetishes: the institutions, the personality identities, the endless "idle talk" and in general the bringing the eternal down to be absorbed into the finite in those churchy settings, thereby losing original religious insight which is subjective and not public at all.
But though one can find fault with this alienation, the transgression lies with the condition, and are not "ours" because we were merely thrown into a world into which this occurs. I think this is important to understand, because Christianity seems fixated on the individual's accountability in the usual sense of being accountable, as with the many rules of society; but to take this model and apply it to religious sin is absurd, for the context in which responsibility rise up are metaphysical.
If you approach religion like that, you will find no solution to the question at all. Ask, why doesn't science have this problem? It is the consistency of results: put nitroglycerin in the same experimental context, the results will be the same. If you treat religion like a culture, like you seem to be doing, then all you get is cultural differences, but if you look for the essence of religion to see if there is something just as unwavering, and you look "through" the narratives, the churchy fetishes, the bad metaphysics, and so forth, to what survives after all of these contingencies are suspended, and you find the metaethical indeterminacy of our existence. This is what religion is all about.
Very long story short: a determinate ethics is simple to understand. We see it in our laws, rules, principles, explicit or implicit, and so on. The ethical normativity of our existence. Indeterminacy is what we run into when we ask for basic rationality on which these are founded: why pay taxes? Because we need money to run a society. What is the point of that? See contract theory: it's better than the state of nature; much better, because people are safer from harm. What is wrong with harm? Errrr, What do you mean? This is an indeterminacy that runs through all of our affairs, hidden beneath the veneer of conversation. The prima facie moral call not to cause harm really has NO justification beyond it being stand alone bad, which is weird for anyone who likes explanations.
But take those ethical complaints that intrinsically deal with harm, and there you are stricken with plague or burning to death in a car somewhere, and there are no laws to protect you, no authority to redress the wrongs, that is, the intrinsic wrong of it being there AT ALL. Take the broad context of our ethical issues in the world, and see that ultimately, no redress is forthcoming at the foundational level! THIS is where religion has its essence, why, that is, societies "came up with" religion, and why religion is in all cultures. We are all "thrown into" a world of unredeemed suffering and unconsummated desire. This is the essence of religion: to bring these to their completion.
True that Christian religions, of whatever stripe (I belong to none of them), but I claim to be a Christian; focus on our accountability--it's ubiquitious. My understanding of transgression is simply a violation of the 10 directives (commandments, is an inferior or less accurate interpretation of the Hebrew text); as state in the New Testament there's the line: "not the hearers of the law but the doers of the law will be justified." However, I agree, how could I not, that we were thrown into this world. None of us signed a contract offering us life, we were not informed, not given a choice, so what responsibility should we bare for a life that we did not ask for. And, if such a contract had been presented, if I could foresee all that life had to offer, I would have vehemently rejected it, especiallly given that death ensues, and so proves the contract fraudulent, and worthless. There is a out here however. Christ paid the penalty of death demanded from a failure to perfectly adhere to every single aspect of those 10 directives; and it is God's grace, not anything I do of my own will, that spares me from condemnation. This is the essence of what it means to be a Christian and it's explained repeatedly by Paul in his letters. I myself will always measure up as coming up short where accountability is concerned because of my condition. There's more to all this however.
If you approach religion like that, you will find no solution to the question at all. Ask, why doesn't science have this problem? Well, it does, but we don't notice because variances are these historical events that happen within a world that is assumed to be stable because of the way science is able to quantify consistently. You've seen one DNA molecule, you've seen them all, and every time you see it, it's the same. Science has changed over the centuries because new models arise our of enhanced ways of perceiving the world that bring about unseen ways to quantify. But results in each historical paradigmatic setting (Kuhn) are always consistent. No consistency, no science.
Finding what is consistent in religion makes a move from all of the religious culture, to an exclusion of all of this (all the sermons and symbols and singing) to find what is there essentially, not unlike the way science excludes the messiness of our affairs to do just this (Kant did this with reason); you cannot do astronomy if you're thinking about astrology! The next part of this argument deals with value and ethics. Religion has its foundation in the pure valuative dimension of our normal everydayness. This can be discussed if you are interested.
You are perhaps a qualified Heideggerian. NOT that he thinks language occludes our real being, he is not like this at all, but he does argue that subjectivity is a concept that needs to be removed from the analysis of our existence. I am listening to Herbert Dreyfus lecture on youtube, "Hubert Dreyfus - Heidegger's Being and Time (Part 1)" and at 26:30 or so you will find things like Marilu Ponty's "empty heads turned toward the world" in the rejection, the radical rejection, of subjectivity. Sometimes things are put just so and make the point so poignantly. I, of course, disagree. I think when you get to that rarified "space" of a phenomenologically reduced world and thought is free of the clutter or habituated assumptions, THERE you discover the transcendental self. Husserl was too bound to the analysis of experience. But the real telos of the reduction takes one beyond this. But keeping with what analysis shows: so there you are, an empty head turned toward the world, but the center of this is the illumination and the ecstasy (nirvana). Heidegger and Marilu Ponty were too much fixated on description and analysis that they could never simply put this down, as the Buddhist does. It is unthinkable for someone like Heidegger NOT to think, in other words. This is why Husserl could not move forward: too much the philosopher.
Yes, I know. The problem is if there is one God then why are religions so diverse and inconsistent?
Quoting Constance
Yes, science is consistent, religions are not.
Quoting Constance
There are many reasons why people believe in religion, such as fear of death, fear of punishment, the promised rewards, and the like. Why do religions survive? Because of the mentioned reasons. Because people do not realize the conflict between religions and the conflict within a single religion.
Quoting Constance
We have a common conscience and we can establish a stable society based on that. Moreover, harming others is a very common concept within different religions, like stoning to death, cutting hands or fingers, and killing those who do not believe in God.
The strange thing I have found myself saying, here again, I totally agree. I'm just saying, as it appears from this last post is at least vaguely in line with what others have said that that so called transcendental self is not the I conventional brought to mind as ourself; it is utterly not that I. It is necessarily "transcendent" as in utterly other. And unless we want to adopt a tri-ism, that utterly other can't be the spirit, must be the conscious body