More Sophisticated, Philosophical Accounts of God
A rambling OP. I'm interested in conversations about more sophisticated and philosophical accounts of theism. I suppose this might take us back to classical theism, as opposed to a more contemporary theological personalism (a tendentious distinction some may find helpful). Brian Davies (a Thomist) writes to this in great detail.
It's often argued that atheists focus their critiques on simplistic or caricatured versions of God, especially the kind found in certain forms of American Protestantism, with its mawkish literalism and culture-war pontifications, often aligned with Trump. These "cartoon gods" seem all too easy to dismiss. The famous low hanging fruit.
In contrast, more nuanced conceptions of God, such as Paul Tillichs idea of God as the "Ground of Being" or David Bentley Harts articulation of God as Being itself - represent attempts to have this conversation in metaphysical terms rather than anthropomorphic ones.
When God is described as the Ground of Being, this typically means that God is the fundamental reality or underlying source from which all things emerge. God is not seen as a being within the universe, but rather as the condition for existence itself. The implications of such a view are interesting.
An early church father like Gregory of Nyssa, who inclined towards Neoplatonism, might argue that God is infinite, transcendent, and unknowable, with an emphasis on Gods absolute simplicity and unfathomable nature. This would seem to suggest that human limitations will always be an ongoing problem for any believer, not to mention the difficulty of ever being certain about God.
Such accounts seem to head towards the mystical and the murky realm of ineffability. No doubt this idea of god's infinite, unknowable and divine essence could be said to overlap with other religious traditions such as Advaita Vedanta.
Whether or not these accounts are ultimately persuasive, they at least ask different questions than those usually debated in popular discourse.
Where I think this becomes particularly interesting is that questions like the problem of evil take on a different character. If God is not a being among beings but Being itself, then the moral structure of reality flows from the nature of God, who is goodness itself, rather than from some being telling us how we should live. What does this mean for the problem of suffering?
Hart's account of God is interesting to me and comes from a vast tradition we tend to ignore in the secular community. What does it really mean when he writes:
[quote]God is not only the ultimate reality that the intellect and the will seek but is also the primordial reality with which all of us are always engaged in every moment of existence and consciousness, apart from which we have no experience of anything whatsoever. Or, to borrow the language of Augustine, God is not only superior summo meobeyond my utmost heightsbut also interior intimo meomore inward to me than my inmost depths.
- David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss
It's often argued that atheists focus their critiques on simplistic or caricatured versions of God, especially the kind found in certain forms of American Protestantism, with its mawkish literalism and culture-war pontifications, often aligned with Trump. These "cartoon gods" seem all too easy to dismiss. The famous low hanging fruit.
In contrast, more nuanced conceptions of God, such as Paul Tillichs idea of God as the "Ground of Being" or David Bentley Harts articulation of God as Being itself - represent attempts to have this conversation in metaphysical terms rather than anthropomorphic ones.
When God is described as the Ground of Being, this typically means that God is the fundamental reality or underlying source from which all things emerge. God is not seen as a being within the universe, but rather as the condition for existence itself. The implications of such a view are interesting.
An early church father like Gregory of Nyssa, who inclined towards Neoplatonism, might argue that God is infinite, transcendent, and unknowable, with an emphasis on Gods absolute simplicity and unfathomable nature. This would seem to suggest that human limitations will always be an ongoing problem for any believer, not to mention the difficulty of ever being certain about God.
Such accounts seem to head towards the mystical and the murky realm of ineffability. No doubt this idea of god's infinite, unknowable and divine essence could be said to overlap with other religious traditions such as Advaita Vedanta.
Whether or not these accounts are ultimately persuasive, they at least ask different questions than those usually debated in popular discourse.
Where I think this becomes particularly interesting is that questions like the problem of evil take on a different character. If God is not a being among beings but Being itself, then the moral structure of reality flows from the nature of God, who is goodness itself, rather than from some being telling us how we should live. What does this mean for the problem of suffering?
Hart's account of God is interesting to me and comes from a vast tradition we tend to ignore in the secular community. What does it really mean when he writes:
[quote]God is not only the ultimate reality that the intellect and the will seek but is also the primordial reality with which all of us are always engaged in every moment of existence and consciousness, apart from which we have no experience of anything whatsoever. Or, to borrow the language of Augustine, God is not only superior summo meobeyond my utmost heightsbut also interior intimo meomore inward to me than my inmost depths.
- David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss
Comments (514)
The gob (ground of being) has no alternative/opposite, for 'nothing' cannot have being or even be meant, for 'it' has no it.
There is no option for gob not to be, so it doesn't need a 'condition'. If one puts a 'condition' on it, then a further 'Condition' must be put on the 'condition', etc., in an infinite regress.
Besides, what is Eternal can't have a 'come from' or design put into it.
The biggest myth-take in the whole world when referencing the word 'God' is thinking that a lesser something, like human life and mind, has to have a Greater Life and mind behind it, the same infinite regress as always, also known as begging the question. Rather, we see the greater becoming from the lesser.
Yes, I think this is probably accurate. I'd be interested how others see this.
Abstracting god away from being a conscious being, and into something like "being itself" are... fine, I guess, but they have nothing to do with what Atheists think. When an atheist says "I don't believe in god", they're not saying "I don't believe in Being itself." It's so far removed from what everyone's talking about that bringing it up in a context where atheism is relevant is a complete red herring, an unwelcome equivocation.
I doubt that, I'm an atheist, and this is an area of interest for me. Many atheists I know have wrestled with the ideas of Jung, Tillich or Robert Sokolowski and getting more comprehensive and philosophical notions of what is meant by the idea of God seems important. When someone says they don't believe in God, the reasonable next question is: "What do you mean by God?"
I have a good friend who is a Catholic priest. He agrees with Christopher Hitchens on most matters of religion, but he's not an atheist. He just thinks that the cartoonish depictions of God offered by literalists are refutable and dumb.
and the answer is never "being itself"
Perhaps not immediately. But Ive certainly heard these discussions over the past 30 years, and they sometimes do explore this concept. But even if they didnt, perhaps they should, and thats another aspect of my point: is it the case that atheism should evolve its thinking about the notion of God beyond the cartoon versions?
What would be the reason? What would that evolution look like?
The development happens when someone quotes Tillich, Hart, Gregory of Nyssa, or some Thomist, and the atheist may find themselves recognising that belief in God could be more complex than Richard Dawkins would have us think
Are you an atheist?
Yeah, and so changing the definition to "being itself" is... not what's meant. That's my point. Atheists are sure what they mean, and they're sure they don't mean that.
That's why it's a red herring, a useless equivocation.
Does your disbelief in Zombies need to evolve? Does it need to evolve into disbelief in Being Itself?
How about ghosts, or ghouls?
If someone says "i'm an atheist", and by that they mean "I don't believe in odin or zeus or ra or krishna or yahweh, or anything like those guys", then why does that disbelief need to "evolve", but disbelief in zombies doesn't?
Quoting flannel jesus
Well, since you've brought this up, my disbelief in zombies could change if there were a more compelling narrative and reasoning that convincingly explained how they might exist. If I'd only ever understood zombies as part of comic book fiction, but then encountered a serious scientific case for their possibility, I might come to believe that zombies could, in fact, exist.
Similarly, I might come to accept the idea of ghosts if they were understood as something other than the spirits of deceased people. For example, what if what we perceive as ghosts are actually echoes or residual events from the past, repeating in a way that some people are able to sense due to time anomalies or unusual conditions?
But they're still atheists in the normal sense. In the sense that pertains to zeus and odin. They're only not atheists when you define god in such a loosey-goosey way that it could mean just about anything.
And if you redefine zombie to mean "a fruit that grows from the branch of a tree", well, hell, I believe in zombies too in that case! But why would I do that? Why would I redefine zombie in that way?
I don't see the point in redefining god to "being itself", when there's already a perfectly cromulent phrase for that, and that phrase is simply "being itself". I just don't see the point.
That's fine. Thanks for stopping by.
To me, it seems like if you want to talk about being itself, you could always use the phrase "being itself", and you could leave god meaning "a being like odin or ..."
The idea of a more sophisticated theology is not "loosey-goosey." It has deep roots, going back to the early Church Fathers who wrote extensively about the nature of God. The literalist accounts of God that have emerged in modernity are more likely the "loosey-goosey" ones. There is a deeper, richer tradition of theism explored in writings that span centuries and continue to this day. We need someone who is deeply read in this material to contribute to this discussion.
Quoting flannel jesus
Because this is how God has traditionally been understood in classical theism. It's not an evolution; it's a return to earlier thinkers like Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor.
The idea of Being needs to be set aside from that of being. Bentley Hart writes:
Here is a taste of that these ideas look like when gently elaborated.
https://firstthings.com/god-gods-and-fairies/
Do you have evidence for that?
So that means, if someone says "I believe in God", that would by synonymous with saying "I believe existence exists"?
Your thread topic seems a worthy area of discussion. I come from the perspective of having been raised as a strong believer in God, which I questioned so much. My current position is more of a non-dualist, seeing theism and atheism as deficient and that doesn't mean agnosticism necessarily.
I do have some sympathy with Tillich's idea of 'ground of Being' and see it as compatible with Eastern metaphysics, especially Buddhism. There is so much black and white, definitive attempts to answer the issue of God in a clear cut way,. In particular, atheists often attack the most crude arguments for theism as opposed to being open to more in depth analysis. Tillich's idea of God as 'ground of being' has more depth than anthromorphism, because it goes beyond the idea of God as a Being as disembodied. His thinking may also be compatible with the thinking of Schopenhauer and Spinoza. It goes beyond the neat boxes of labelling as theist/ atheism of tick box culture.
No. You need some familiarity with the literature to understand the concepts. Bear in mind this is not my area of expertise. The arguments are nuanced. The point of my OP is to get input from folk who are across this literature.
For Maximus the Confessor (a church father writing in the 7th century), being is foundational: it starts with God, and everything that exists participates in God's Being. But God is also beyond being in a way we cant fully comprehend. Hence my OP around mysticism and the lack of certainty.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Indeed.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Could be. In the writings of some of the early Church Fathers, the notion that we are participating in the Being of God and that all we know ultimately owes its existence to God reminds me of a type of idealism, wherein God is more like cosmic consciousness or a great mind from which we are all expressions.
The idea of cosmic consciousness is also compatible with Taoism. It was during Christendom, that a firm definitive idea of believers vs non-believers grew, with an emphasis on outlawing heretics. Then, this definitive division was stepped into by science, especially the debate between materialism and idealism. Those who see beyond these, whether they call themselves atheists, theists, or whatever, may have a more expansive approach to the questions of 'truth'.
Given that the overwhelming majority of the religious worship "the most crude" forms of theism, we atheists (or, in my case, antitheists) don't bother wasting our efforts on arguing against a "God" so devoid of distinctions by this "in-depth analysis" that no one (including theologians and philosophers) persecutes or kills or martyrs themselves in the name of ... "the ground of being".
Quoting Tom Storm
Well, I don't believe in magic, and what I mean by magic is "God" (i.e. whatever is impossible magic=god "makes" possible :sparkle:).
Quoting Tom Storm
Maybe, but not a return to earlier believers ... who are still the vast majority of God-worshippers (e.g. Abrahamic theists who believe in "miracles", etc). After all, nobody prays to "being itself" what would be the point of that?
You have to go back a millennia or more before the derivative logos of "God" to the ancient Hebrews, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, etc (just in the West) for the existential mythos of "God". The Church Fathers were apologists-come-lately even in the recorded history (of histories) theist religion.
For one, that evil is a privation, an absence. It is the slide towards multiplicity and materiality (i.e., mere potency, God being pure actuality). For instance, this metaphysics undergirds Dante's image of Satan as completely impotent, frozen in ice, forever flailing his legs at the "center of the cosmos" in vain. At the climax of the Commedia, Dante the Pilgrim's understanding will undergo a radical inversion as he realizes that the Mind of God that is "out beyond" the last Heaven (the "furthest out") is actually a dimensionless point with no location that "contains" the material cosmos, and that the material cosmos is nothing more than created being reflecting the light of this point. The image is like a candle diffusing light into mist, with darkness at the edges. The darkest area with any light at all, the area furthest from the point, is Hell.
In this image, the sin is the Augustinian "curvatus in se," a curving inward on the self and towards finite goods, which is a failure to fully reflect the divine light, which all things reflect to varying degrees to the degree they are at all. To be ruled over by the passions and appetites' drive towards finite things is to be oriented away from God, towards finite things, and ultimately towards nothing, since they are nothing of themselves.
This is an old idea though, you can see it in Socrates's admonition that the Athenians should chastise his sons if they act poorly, so they they will not "think themselves something when they are truly nothing" (St. Paul makes a similar point in Ephesians).
I don't know if that will clear much up. My description is probably only going to be so helpful because the area you are asking about is incredibly broad, since in the "classical metaphysical" tradition all of ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, physics, and even the philosophy of history hang together quite tightly, while the Doctrine of Transcendentals and the Analogia Entis run throughout them. It'd be like trying to explain the whole of "Continental Philosophy" in a post, although the classical tradition does have a good deal more unity (but also spans 2,000+ years).
One book I like here is Robert M. Wallace's Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present. It's pretty accessible and I feel like starting with Plato is easier because he is more focused simply on how the Good is what makes man psychologically one and "like God." The book does get into the weeds with Hegel and a recap of contemporary thinkers, but those sections are skippable. But then it's Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics where the relationship between the Good and Unity (the way in which anything is 'one' and this 'is' at all) gets extended out to the entire cosmos of beings (plural). And the Metaphysics also has the initial consideration of Truth as a transcendental.
I have not found a good accessible book on this next move in the development unfortunately, but I do think Wallace captures something of the idea. David Bentley Hart's "Ye Are Gods" recounts some of the phenomenological arguments for the Good as the only possible target of all rational thought. The problem is that he is litigating theological ideas and assumes you already know the Transcendentals well, and I don't think it is very accessible. D.C. Schindler's Love and the Postmodern Predicament is one of the more accessible works, but he's a bit polemical in it vis-á-vis the issues he finds in contemporary thought and I think this will be an insurmountable distraction for many audiences unfortunately.
Neither Hart nor Tillich are working with new ideas. What they are expressing has been Christian orthodoxy for pretty much all of (well-recorded) Church history. It's the official theology of the Catholic and Orthodox churches, encompassing a pretty large majority of all current and historical Christians (and many Protestants hold to this tradition to).
It is, for instance, what you will find if you open the works of pretty much any theologically minded Church Father or Scholastic: St. Augustine, St. Bonaventure, St. Maximos, St. Thomas Aquinas, either of the Gregorys, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Gregory Palamas, etc.
It even shows up in materials for the catechumenate, although often to a far lesser degree because it's difficult to understand and also unnecessary to fully understand. Indeed, on the Orthodox view, one can only understand it properly through the life of praktikos and asceticism.
I hardly see how it can be some sort of "trick of equivocation" for traditional Christians to insist on 2,000 years of theological precedent laying out what they believe in response to atheist criticisms of "Christianity." And this seems particularly true because a good deal of these concepts also apply to considerations of the "golden age" of Islamic thought, and any fair consideration of Stoicism and Neoplatonism, which have not been immune from atheist critiques. Assertions that the real "God of Abraham" has to leave behind orthodox theology in the largest, oldest churches, as well as the Patristics, the Scholastics, the mystics, etc. just seems to me like demands that "Christians take ownership of the strawman we have constructed for them."
It also seems wholly unnecessary. Surely one can make positive apologetic arguments for athiesm without having to claim to engage with (and vanquish) the vast edifice of pre-modern theistic thought, just as surely one can offer social/political criticism of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism without having to argue if the Analogia Entis makes sense.
But there is also a weird standard here of "Christianity must be judged by the defense given of it by any random church-goer." I suppose this perhaps comes out of a certain sort of Protestant theology as well (one athiesm has inherited), and the idea of the "buffered self" who simply applies reason to commonly accessible "sense data" (as opposed to notions of "wisdom"). Yet I would hardly think this standard should be applied generally, and so would question if it is fair as applied to the faithful.
Does Nietzsche's philosophy stand or fall based on the description the average Nietzsche fan on the internet would produce for it? Given my experiences, this would be grossly unfair to Nietzsche. Nor would I expect the average person who embraces any given interpretation of quantum mechanics to necessarily understand it very well. It's a bit like making the assumption that every US citizen has become a Constitutional law expert by osmosis and is prepared to give an interpretation and defense of the Constitution and relevant jurisprudence. Or it is like demanding that your random hooligan in a black bloc be able to explain communism or anarchismMarx and Proudhonor any supporter of the Democratic party be able to articulate a cogent policy defense of Obamacare?
I certainly see problematic aspects of theism, especially the whole emphasis on 'sin', including original sin and sexuality. I come from a background of being troubled by fundamentalist Christians preaching to me.
As for the idea of 'magic' and metaphysics that is a little different. As you and probably others on the forum are aware, I navigated a lot of my angst over religion, not by atheism or theism but by the writing of Carl Jung. Some have criticised Jung for being an atheist and others, for him being too sympathetic with the idea of 'God'. The problem which I see with Jung is something ambiguity between an emphasis on the 'supernatural' and 'nature'.
Of course, Jung's ideas were developed in the last century when the dialogue between science, religion and science were in need of so much reconciliation. This may be what is happening and still needed in 21st Century thinking. One book which I found to be important was Lyall Watson's 'Supernature', which was written in the 20th Century, because it looks at the concept of the supernatural, demystying it. The supernatural, and magic, is often seen as being separate from nature. This may be the problem and that magic is about patterns and connections, and there being more to sensory (or extrasensory) perception than Cartesian-Newtonian thinkers have acknowledged.
I'm not convinced that "being itself" is the complete idea of god in these conceptions. I believe it's PART of how God is conceived, but it must have additional stuff to it, in order for god to be the god of the bible. God is being itself, AND did this or that in history (including incarnating himself / his son at a human), AND has future plans on what he will do.
So just defining god as being itself probably isn't the whole truth for these people, just a (very important) part of the truth. He is being itself, AND a whole bunch of other things (some of which more closely resemble the naive view of gods)
As an example, Aquinas clearly thought Jesus was truly divine, and not just a man or just a myth. So if God is defined simply as "being itself", then what the fuck is Jesus? A human being, and "being itself" at the same time? There's clearly got to be a whole lot more to God than just being itself, in order to account for many of the important literal truths that Aquinas believes in. When he says he believes in the Christian god, he's clearly not just saying "I believe in being itself", he's saying a whole lot more than that.
As a point of reference, Philip Goff moved from atheism to theistic personalism rather than classical theism because he thinks the problem of evil excludes classical theism (link). I think he's fairly ignorant of both theological traditions, but that sort of move is not uncommon nowadays. In fact a good portion of theistic personalism seems to be a response to critiques of (classical) theism. While theistic personalism is more readily given to caricature, there is an open debate as to whether it is inferior with respect to, say, the problem of evil.
Indeed, you are correct. St. Thomas' theology is no more wholly summed up by "God is being itself," than is the case for Aristotle ("pure act"), Plotinus, St. Maximos, or Al Farabi. Even those with the strictest commitment to apophatic theology and the Via Negativa go further than this, since this would be not to say much of anything (I think we can agree here). "God is the ground of being" is not meant to be an exhaustive theology, and certainly not a definition.
Those of an apophatic bent might put it differently though. To paraphrase Dionysius the Areopagite: to say "God is" is false. And to say "God is not" is false. But it is more incorrect to say "God is not."
A key difference in this sort of "classical" theology is whether or not thinkers thought an analogy of proper proportion existed between God and creatures, such that analogous predication vis-á-vis the Divine was possible. Likewise the question of if God is only known through God's energies, never His essence.
But aside from the fruits of discursive reason and "natural theology" there is the issue of revelation and illumination, but also the ascetical and spiritual life as a means of "knowing by becoming." Growth in virtue is growth towards "becoming like God." Virtue is ultimately love, and so it is conformity to God who "is love" (I John). Knowledge is attained through contemplation, through union, and this is a reflexive knowledge that cannot be shared directly though discursive means since the knowing is the being.
Plato says something not entirely dissimilar about the limits of discourse in Letter VII.
I find this sort of discussion frustrating for some of the reasons I think you are getting at here. To me, there are two types of relevant question. First - does it make metaphysical sense, can it be useful, to see the universe as having human characteristics - a personality, a purpose, goals. Second - is it factually true that there is a conscious, aware, powerful entity who, perhaps, created and has control of the world. To the first question I would answer a strong "yes." To the second I would give a shrug.
Quoting Tom Storm
I think the approach you're describing is just a way of addressing my first, metaphysical, question while ignoring my second, factual, one. Which is ok with me. In Taoism, the Tao is not usually thought of as an anthropomorphic god but as an ineffable, impersonal, nonliving ground of being. Really, no kind of god at all. Verse 4 of the Tao Te Ching is one of my favorites. This Stephen Mitchell's translation.
So, there is the Tao, the one, undivided, which manifests as the 10,000 things, the multiplicity of the world we live in, one of which is god.
Yes, that's pretty much what I thought, based on my rudimentary reading.
All I'm really trying to do here is generate more interesting discussions about God.
Quoting Leontiskos
Very interesting and I can see how this could make sense to someone.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, and I am interested in how these accounts might shape people's thinking.
Quoting T Clark
I tend to find that any set of ideas is going to be useful to someone (even if not to me). But the question is always could you not swap one set of useful ideas for a set even more useful?
Yes. Very nicely put. And funny.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
In understand completely. It's a big subject. I'm not really trying to clear anything up personally, I am more interested in promoting nuanced discussion of the notion of God - a more philosophical account, let's say.
I come from a Baptist background. We were taught that the Bible is allegory and literalists are problematic creatures who reduce the notion of God to a petulant authoritarian. I guess we were taught that literalism was a disenchanted view of scripture. God remains ineffable.
Is Neoplatonism central to this notion of God as Being itself? The world emanates from The One.
It may be worth looking into Bernardo Kastrup's study of Jung. He sees Jung as an early form of analytic idealism. The Book is Decoding Jung's Metaphysics
Here's a taste:
This ought be the central point. The way to avoid the "mystical and the murky" is to remain silent about what cannot be said.
But that won't happen.
Afaik, "sin and sexuality" belong particularly to Abrahamic forms of theism and not to most others like Mesoamerican, Aboriginal, Greco-Roman, Aegyptian, Celtic, Norse & Hindu traditions. As a concept, or category, of god/s, across all religious traditions theism seems to me to consist of only three claims:
(1) a deity is the/an absolute mystery,
(2) a deity is the/a creator of the whole of existence;
(3) a deity is the/a providential intervener (i.e. cause of impossible changes) in the universe-nature-world-creatures.
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting Jack Cummins
As superstitions gave way to theodicy and astrology gave way to astronomy and alchemy gave way to chemistry and teleology gave way to mechanics & natural selection, magic was rationalized (i.e. domesticated, deflated) into parapsychology (or pataphysics) especially in the 19th & 20th centuries. Remember, Jack, Newton was an alchemist and Descartes postulated occult or miraculous interactions between different physical (body) and spiritual (mind) substances. Until recent centuries, magic had always been considered much more than just "perception" (such as miracles, curses, blessings, transmutations, shapechanging, exorcism, necromancy, oracles-divination, fetishes amulets & talismans, etc :sparkle: :pray:).
.
A "ground of being" is a deistic god (an indifferent creator), not a theistic god (a god of religion) worth either worshipping or worrying about. While I don't think it's truly justifiable to believe such a god exists, it also seems irrelevant if it does.
:smirk:
Although its details are not easy to explain via the soundbites of forum posts (and I have no current interest in presenting them), one possible example of such "God is Being itself" outlook will be the following:
The Neoplatonist notion of "the One", aka "the Good" will be pure being itself of infinite, limitless, quality and magnitude that is divinely simple (devoid of any parts) and beyond both existence and nonexistence - this being a priority monism wherein the fundamental essence that underlies everything in the universe can also be conceptualized as God, this, for example, due to being a) of itself unmovable (i.e., a forever fixed, determinate, aspect of existence at large) and b) that which moves all that exists (this when understanding all that exists to be in significant part teleological and, hence, partly determined by final causes). Although open to various interpretations, this worldview then generally holds that the infinite (i.e., in no way limited or finite) pure being which is the One is the fixed and ultimate final cause of all existents, i.e. the unmoved mover of all existents to use Aristotelian terms (which as ultimate telos is thereby always contemporaneous with existence at large for as long as existence has been).
Of possible importance, the One then cannot be a deity - even when the One is expressed as being God - for a deity can only hold some existential finitude as a psyche, minimally, a limit of being by which it as deity is other than, say, an ameba's mind, a tree's life, or a human being in total (which as human might obey or otherwise listen to the deity's decrees as other than him/herself - a deity who in turn holds awareness of the human as other). The One is then at direct odds with any notion of an omni-creator deity - that said, with most nowadays understanding the latter to be what is addressed by the term "God" and having little to no comprehension of the former.
Thank you!
Quoting Tom Storm
As I just described the big picture aspect of things, though I don't limit myself to Neoplatonic thought, yes, the notions resonate with me - the Good thus generally understood being what grounds my understanding of non-relativistic ethics. Although there are portions or Plotinus' writings which, in addressing the details of his own metaphysical understandings, I remember not resonating with me all that much. Its been a while since I've read him, though.
This reminds me of Spinoza's natura naturans, Schopenhauer's World As Will, (Hindu) Brahman or the Dao even though, in a more pragmatic sense, I prefer Democritus-Epicurus-Lucretius' swirling atomic void.
It's influential, but the direction of influence goes in both ways. Often, it's assumed that the influence largely goes in the direction of Neoplatonism -> Christianity (-> Islam). Sometimes this is assumed because Platonism/paganism is older than Christianity, more often because this is the order of influence in the biography of the most influential "Christian Platonist," Saint Augustine.
Plotinus scholarship has really come around on this though. Plotinus grew up on a hot bed of Jewish, orthodox Christian, and gnostic Christian Platonism, and these intersected with pagan learning in Alexandria, with converts going both ways. He was a younger contemporary of Origen and Clement (although he would have been a teen when Clement died), and there is a recorded exchange of ideas between the groups. Plotinus has his own arguments against the Christians and against gnosticism in particular, but he borrows a lot from them. For instance, the whole solution of emanation and the structure of the hypostases seems to show up earlier in more recently discovered gnostic texts.
Nor was the "gnostic" always particularly divorced from the "orthodox" in Christianity at this point, some elements of it simply became orthodox theology, some outgrowths became the bizarre (at least to us ) alternative Genesis narratives of the Sethians (something embraced by a minority of "gnostics" it would appear). This "middle Platonism" set the stage for Plotinus and his students.
Yet the influence is obviously strong in the other direction, particularly through Augustine and we might suppose through Dionysius the Areopagite (although we don't know his exact sources and who he was). Plotinus was particularly helpful for Christianity (and Islam and Judaism) in resolving some crucial issues in Aristotle vis-á-vis the Divine Will and "potency" in God, not as "capacity to be moved/changed," but instead instead as "power" (the common translation here).
So take this influential passage from Aristotle's Metaphysics (XII):
Yet how is such a "being" thinking and simple? Doesn't "knowing" and "knower" imply duality? And how can God be free if It only does what is good (the Timaeus has already gotten at "why is God good?" but had left "God" as less than fully God and the Good.)
These issues are what Plotinus will help Christians with and his additions will be developed through lots of thinkers until Aquinas hits on the idea of power as perfect self-communication (which is already shaping up in St. Maximus).
And because Porphyry's introduction to Aristotle's Categories also had tremendous influence and staying power, Neoplatonism also had a lot of influence on more foundational approaches in philosophy.
I think it would be fair to say that this has not been the common reception of Neoplatonism across history. Augustine, the Cappadocians, etc., found a lot to use there, so too for the Muslim philosophers. Neoplatonism has been taught as part of "natural theology" throughout most of the history of Christianity, and the scholastics flocked to it when it returned again in other forms through the Theology of Aristotle, Book of Causes, etc. And this interchange existed even when the two schools were coexisting in the same cities and engaged in active dialogue.
David Bentley Hart, mentioned at the outset of this thread, is an Eastern Orthodox Christian and often refers to himself as an "unreformed Neoplatonist" when poking fun at post-Kantian metaphysics for instance. Hence the common terms "Christian/Jewish/Muslim Neoplatonism."
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Do you rate Hart as a theological thinker? When he writes of God:
How should one understand this? It certainly has a whiff of Neoplatonism. But also aligns with Hinduism. In Advaita Vedanta, Brahman is described as Nirguna (without attributes) and beyond all categories, including being and non-being. Brahman is also seen as the inexhaustible source or ground of all contingent existence.
The union of knower and known is also a strong motif in all of those traditions. That is the meaning of the unio mystica is it not?
I think Hart is pretty great, although I think he sometimes writes at a level that is probably going to be overly abstruse for general audiences, which is fine for some contexts, but he does so in books he publishes for general audiences. And I think this sometimes leads to him getting carried away in the flow of what might be "consensus" in his subfield, but which can hardly been taken for granted for more general audiences, which ends up having the effect that his arguments fail to anticipate likely objections. I haven't read his book addressing New Athiesm, so I'm not sure how much this tendency applies when he is presumably addressing a wider audience.
He also seems to mostly write in the context of some sort of conflict (e.g. against infernalism and for universalism, against the nature/supernature distinction, against New Atheism, etc.), which is too bad because he sometimes has very cogent descriptions of the classical tradition nestled in these arguments, but they're always as asides, and this means his projects lack the strong positive formulations of someone like von Balthasar, or Ferdinand Ulrich.
There are similarities for sure. I sometimes think "Platonism" and "Neoplatonism" are unhelpful labels, even though I still find myself using them. Often, they get used for things that are only in Plato in embryonic form, or obliquely, and which are then not unique to, or even originating in the proper "Neoplatonists."
You can see some of the similarities and the implications in a passage like (about high scholasticism):
Indeed, that's partly Plotinus's response. Also that the empiricist conception of knowledge actually makes knowing anything impossible, and is perhaps not even coherent. The knowledge that is most properly called so is always a sort of self-knowledge. Lloyd Gerson's article on "Neoplatonic epistemology : knowledge, truth and intellection" is pretty good here.
Yes, from the perspective of eternity (like e.g. Brahmanism), as I understand his thought:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/#GodNatu
or more succinctly ...
(2021)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/528116
(2021)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/578506
This is a great discussion. Even our arch-atheist @180 Proof Is playing nice.
I of course acknowledge the hybridization of the One and the omni-creator deity in the course of history - such that the omni-creator deity takes on the characteristics of the One. Omni-benevolence being one such characteristic when it is addressed in relatively very abstract manners - which can be simplified into the dictum of "God is Love".
Are you however disagreeing with the thesis that the characteristics by which the One is defined - e.g. that of perfectly infinite pure being (hence, devoid of any and all finitudes) - are logically incommensurate with the characteristics of any deity - which, as deity, necessitates some finitude(s) in at least so far as being a psyche/mind distinct from other co-occurring psyches/minds?
Well, I guess there are two questions here: compatibility and historical influence. "God is love" (1 John 4:8) predates Plotinus by a good deal and likely influenced his thought. It is not something that grows out of Neoplatonism, although it is perhaps an understanding sharing common roots in the Alexandrian intellectual milieu (e.g. Philo).
The self-subsistent ontological ground of being, being itself, in some ways is more reflective of the "I AM" than the Platonic demiurge who must create from pre-existing materials as well.
I'm not sure. I'd disagree if the idea is somehow that what the transcendent transcends is somehow absent from the transcendent itself, e.g. if God is incapable of what man is capable of. Or as Plotnius says, if we suggest that what is best in the Nous is somehow absent from the One, or something that the One is incapable of, this would be "absurd." There can be no actuality coming from anywhere else.
I don't think they're logically incommensurate though, or at least they haven't been seen as such. In Dante's Paradiso for instance, the blessed can all read Dante's thoughts before he speaks because they can "read" them in the fullness of the Divine Mind. The angels and celestial intelligences need no independent memory because all knowledge is contained in Light they are turned to. There is no separation here, the Celestial Rose at the climax of the Commedia is "in" the Empyrean, in the fullness of the Divine Mind (but in no way exhaustive of it). See the quote above by Moevs.
There is also the idea of the creature as mirroring the divine in precisely the way it extends beyond its nature (becoming self-determining). "A thing made by a consummate artist radiates a certain gratuitousness, not in the sense of being arbitrary, but in the sense of being unconstrained, and this freedom coincides with an evident necessity." That is, God's power empowers, creatures are the authors of themselves to the extent they also transcend their finitude. Hence, "at the first beginning of [the] world, we must therefore postulate not so much a power that exercises its force, as an infinite goodness that communicates itself to the world: Love is the deepest spring of all causality. (From Schindler, Retrieving Freedom).
I don't think the above contradicts the earlier view, but is rather a thinking out of what it means for what is not-God.
:up:
:smirk:
If the One were to in fact be real - by this or any other name - then it is by no means impossible, but rather quite plausible, that others than Plotinus experienced what in Ancient Greek was termed henosis - and if JC was a real person, then I can find no reason to deny that he too experienced henosis in his own right. This long before Plotinus came around (for Plotinus would not have invented the reality of the one). But this addresses extreme proximity, if not unity, with the One as completely infinite being devoid of any dualistic ego (with "dualistic ego" being denoted as holding any kind of duality between I-ness and other) - this rather than being extreme proximity or else unity with an omni-creator deity. Though, of course, interpretations can vary galore.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
As I previously mentioned in passing, while I endorse the reality of "the Good", I don't much find good reason to subscribe to Plotinus' description of the Emanations - the Nous / Demiurge included. For starters, there is no cogent reason for the emanations to emanate from the One in the first place - other than ad hoc attempts to give best explanation for what in fact exists. All the same, it is the One from which the emanations emanate (even if non-temporally so), and it is the One rather than its emanations which serves as the ultimate and fixed final cause of all existents.
When one addresses the One as God - i.e. as the ultimate reality/actuality - one does not (or at least ought not) then address the Nous / Demiurge as the ultimate reality/actuality which is therefore termed God. The latter would be contrary to what the One specifies.
Even when the Nous / Demiurge is deemed inseparable from the One for as long as existence exists, this Nous / Demiurge is not of itself a deity. It is not a psyche/mind distinct from all other psyches/minds - this as an omni-creator deity conception of God has it - but is instead, in many a sense, the raw thought from which all of us are constituted and, thereby, of which all of us are a fragmented aspect of. It is an inherent aspect of us, rather than being some other mind/psyche in relation to our own.
We might not find agreement on this, but I do find the One (to emphasize, this rather than its emanations) to be logically contrary to any notion of an omni-creator deity:
As just one example, the One is in and of itself the Good - to which all deities will themselves be subject to, this were deities to occur. Whereas the omni-creator deity is not (it is instead fully amoral - such that no matter what it decides it will not be subject to judgments of whether the decision is good or bad) but instead is that from whose might/power as deity the notion of the good takes form for all of us separate psyches/minds that are of this omni-creator deity's creation. In the first, right makes might (such as when speaking truth to power), this at least in some spiritual sense if not in the corporeal here and now - whereas in the second, quite blatantly, might makes right. These two perspectives then being logically contradictory in respect to each other.
As a less pertinent example, via the One it can be validly affirmed that, despite our many differences as individuals, "we are all one" - this in a priority monism sense. Whereas via the omni-creator deity - which, for one cultural example, sends us via his judgment either into eternal Heaven or eternal Hell after our corporeal death - there is no valid means of so appraising that "we are all one" (if for no other reason, for we all are not one with the omni-creator deity himself - this in many circles being blasphemy)
...But some people think the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus rests on the assumption that God is one and the same as Nature understood as a mass of corporeal matter. This is a complete mistake.
Spinoza, from letter (73) to Henry Oldenburg
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, he is a prodigious scholar and "superbrain" so I can imagine it must be challenging for him to write for the general reader.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
:up:
That's a great overview.
I'm also curious: if God is Being itself, what are the implications for divine action? A God who acts throughout history would seem unlikely in that case. I'm assuming that God cant or doesnt act like a being in this world, but instead provides the conditions that make action possible. But what exactly does that look like, beyond the obvious?
Some reflections on those passages:
Which we ourselves are - tat tvam asi, thou art that in the lexicon of Vedanta. The source of all suffering is the not seeing of this identity due to attachment to the ephemeral pleasures and pains of existence.
Which is why the conception of the mind-independent object, an object that is real in its own right, is pernicious.
Appears as us, not to us, but again, we cant see it (mindful of Eckharts caveat, God is your being, but you are not his.)
Hence creation ex nihilo is happening at every moment, not once and for all at the temporal beginning. This is Jean Gebsers ever-present origin. Hence also the way of negation of apophaticism - that what is real is never a this or a that - there is a fountainhead of creation, symbolised in the cornucopia of Greek mythology.
Buddhist principle of ??nyat? in a nutshell.
The Cartesian picture, by contrast, was a chimera, an ungainly and extrinsic alliance of antinomies. And reason abhors a dualism. Moreover, the sciences in their modern form aspire to universal explanation, ideally by way of the most comprehensive and parsimonious principles possible. So it was inevitable that what began as an imperfect method for studying concrete particulars would soon metastasize into a metaphysics of the whole of reality. The manifest image was soon demoted to sheer illusion, and the mind that perceived it to an emergent product of the real (which is to say, mindless) causal order.[/quote]
It seems to me that "faith" in such an abstract, impersonal deity doesn't serve a religious function or even makes sense (despite theology/theodicy).
A lot of mystics were focused upon what they should do upon the grounds they found themselves to stand upon. The rejection of magical techniques in many cases was a rule to not sneak around and do stuff behind people's backs. Hillel's "Do not do to others what you would not have done to yourself" does not speculate upon what is possible if one chooses to act in that way.
I look at the degrees of "effability" from a Walt Whitman point of view:
.
Quoting David Bentley Hart, The Illusionist
This quote is very important and insightful. I think it expresses an intuition or a longing that motivates most if not all philosophy. So I don't think we should be so rigid about what is "pre-modern" and "modern," especially if modern is understood as "everything since Descartes." Just as a for-instance: What is Frege's philosophy, if not an attempt to demonstrate this very thing, the mysterious "third realm" of thought that underlies all logic and science? Whenever we ask how it can be that reality/appearance, object/subject, are not separate, we're trying to understand the unity of thinking and being. Most "modern" philosophers take that question seriously. It may be that Descartes, in raising the question in the way he does, gave the impression that res extensa and res cogitans were eternally separate in nature, and to that extent I guess that is a chimerical picture, but I don't think it characterizes most philosophy since. Or, at most, it's the starting point from which, being dissatisfied with it, we try to improve and clarify our understanding.
Er, no. Did you even read Hart's article? Reading it would remedy much of the confusion in your post, as well as the confusion on TPF. The very fact that Frege has to "demonstrate a mysterious third realm," or that we "ask how object/subject are not separate," is itself evidence that reality is not being seen as akin to intellect.
's quote is crucially important to understanding an older, more robust idea of God, and it is also important in understanding a general modern shift into nominalism et al. I can't imagine that anyone familiar with both sides would attempt to blur the pre-modern/modern distinction that Hart is highlighting.
Whereas I think the division is abundantly obvious, as illustrated for example in Taylor's Secular Age.
That Hart quote, in case you didn't follow the link, was in his review of Daniel Dennett's last book, From Bacteria to Bach and Back. Dennett illustrates everything that Hart and Dennett's other critics think is wrong with materialist philosophy, but Dennett's example is useful as he states his case in the most unambiguous of terms ('The excited materialism of American society abounds in Dennett's usefully uninhibited pages', wrote Leon Weiseltier.) And his is a vivid example of the 'simplistic or caricatured versions' that the OP references. Another example is provided in a review of Dawkin's 'The God Delusion':
[quote=Terry Eagleton]Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or existent: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects.[/quote]
@Count Timothy von Icarus has given good reasons for this state of affairs in his first response.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Tillich, who was mentioned in the OP, was of the view that to 'say that God exists is to deny Him', which seems paradoxical in the extreme. But I think he's right, and this deep misunderstanding is the outcome of particular movements in the history of Western thought. It's a huge topic, but suffice to say I believe that the whole issue hinges around objectification, and a simplistic conception of the nature of existence. For the objective mindset, only what is 'out there somewhere' is real. Only what can be encountered by the senses (or the instruments that amplify them) can be considered real. This is the philosophy of 'the subject who forgets himself', to use Schopenhauer's expression. And the change required to see that is more than conceptual in nature.
Well, it's not of great importance. As I say, I realize others get more out of this kind of classification than I do; just a matter of taste, no doubt. The issues, in contrast, are very alive and interesting to me. Most of my favorite philosophers are modern, in your sense, and they all seem to care very much about disputing the "out-there-somewhere-ness" of the objective mindset, as I do myself.
The academic philosophers and scholars are not always representative of culture at large. The changes I'm referring to are more like tectonic shifts. I've learned a lot since joining this forum, including the role and importance of phenomenologists, who are of course well aware of those tectonic shifts.
For that matter, why do you think Thomas Nagel, whom you and I both know, says in the first paragraph of 'Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament' that 'Analytic philosophy as a historical movement has not done much to provide an alternative to the consolations of religion. This is sometimes made a cause for reproach, and it has led to unfavorable comparisons with the continental tradition of the twentieth century, which did not shirk that task. I believe this is one of the reasons why continental philosophy has been better received by the general public: it is at least trying to provide nourishment for the soul, the job by which philosophy is supposed to earn its keep.' He also acknowledges in a footnote 'The religious temperament is not common among analytic philosophers, but it is not absent. A number of prominent analytic philosophers are protestant, catholic, or jewish, and others, such as Wittgenstein and Rawls, clearly had a religious attitude to life without adhering to a particular religion. But I believe nothing of the kind is present in the makeup of Russell, Moore, Ryle, Austin, Carnap, Quine, Davidson, Strawson, or most of the current professoriate.'
I think Nagel in particular is well aware of what I'm calling those tectonic shifts.
Quoting J
Positivism and materialism are exemplars of influential forces in current culture. Dennett and his ilk say the quiet part out loud, that if materialism is true then humans are essentially robotic. Cassirer was a neo-Kantian, a completely different kind of thinker. Schopenhauer and the German idealists representative of a grand tradition in philosophy - despite Schopenhauers hatred of ecclesiastical religion, he was also a critic of materialism.
Why would it imply that God cannot act (a sort of impotency?) or would not act? I am not sure the idea of God as Being suggests any particular historical "act" on God's part, but nor would it seem to preclude one. Some of the comments in this thread seem to suggest that if "God is being itself," then God is impotent vis-á-vis creatures, insensate, irrational, etc., instead of possessing the fullness of knowledge, the fullness of rationalityas Dionysius the Areopagite says, being super-rational, super-essential, etc. Boethius famous account of the "God of the Philosophers" has a role for Providence, it just specifies no particular Providential revelation. Indeed, it need not, because, for Boethius (at least in this text) [I]everything[/I] is Providential. And as St. Augustine says, the daily rising of the sun is no less miraculous than the temporary parting of the Red Sea. The former is perhaps more miraculous, a more splendid theophany, we have just become inured to it.
The Timaeus has been influential in the long history of seeing God as necessarily benevolent. Consider the goal of "being like God." To be wrathful, aside from being an "imperfection," would also be to have one's behavior determined by another. To be even merely indifferent to another would still be to be defined and delimited by what one is not, and so to be less than fully transcendent, and so to be less than fully "like God." Only in the positive identification of the self in the other is this transcendence achieved. And so it is, analogously, for God. God is not the finite creature, but "within everything but contained in nothing" (Augustine). Indifference implies an absence however.
The indifferent God has other problems too. If God is indifferent, then why is the creature here at all? If it is truly "for no reason at all," then God is irrational as a cause. We speak analogically of course, but this seems like a God that produces the universe as we might sneeze, less "thought thinking itself" and "will willing itself," more thoughtless, inchoate action.
Thus, Pagan conceptions of God tended to include beneficence, but in a way that washed out any concern for particularity, and so for history, or for the world of sensible particulars. These might be accounted for as illusion, less than fully real. Whereas the Abrahamic conception tended towards a God who loved creatures even in their particularity and "even when we were still sinners" (Romans 5:8-9). This in turn tended to lead to a much larger role for the passions and appetites (once properly oriented toward the Good, True, and Beautiful themselves, towards God), and so also even for the individuality of embodiment. However, the goal of "becoming like onto God," is the same as in the Pagan philosophers, but the notion of what this means has been expanded.
In the Christian tradition, theosis and deification need not imply a sort of "absorption," nor a total loss of particularity. Dante showcases individuals and world history right up to the climax of the Paradiso for instance. Instead, what is required is a transcending of finitude in love (eros leading up, agape cascading downwards onto other creatures), a "moving beyond finitutde from fininitude," as much as the creature is capable of.
Hence, the process of exitus et reditus ends not in a sort of "reabsorption" and silence, but in the deification of all creation (creation as incarnation, e.g. St. Maximus), with man becoming adopted sons and daughters in a family whose firstborn is the Incarnation, the fullness of the Divine dwelling within the finitude of flesh, born to a human woman, true Theotokos (Mother of God). And this historical "breaking in" then becomes the model for history until the "end of the ages," with man assuming the role of the Blessed Virgin, giving birth to Christ in the immanent world in thought and deed, and "birthing" Christ's mystical body, which is the Church (and which is also the bride of Christ). Creation, in which history occurs, is then not a "subsistent, separate entity" that God sets in motion and then "tweaks with miracles here and there," but is instead fundamentally sacramental (mysterious), an outward sign of inner/upward meaning, a finite ladder by which one ascends, e.g.:
12. The creatures of this sensible world signify the invisible things of God [Rom. 1:20], partly because God is of all creation the origin, exemplar, and end, and because every effect is the sign of its cause, the exemplification of the exemplar, and the way to the end to which it leads; partly from its proper representation; partly from prophetic prefiguration; partly from angelic operation; partly from further ordination. For every creature is by nature a sort of picture and likeness of that eternal wisdom, but especially that which in the book of Scripture is elevated by the spirit of prophecy to the prefiguration of spiritual things.
St. Bonaventure - Itinerarium Mentis in Deum. Chapter 2.12
This narrative is a dramatic expansion, yet it is not generally seen as a rejection of what is similar in parallel forms of thought that developed alongside it in the Pagan tradition (or in other regions of the world).
Actually, the narrative expansion and Logos theology helps clear up some difficulty left in Aristotle re the way finite things can be wholly intelligible in-themselves (it doesn't seem they can be).
There is obviously continuity between the modern and pre-modern in many aspects. But there is definitely an extremely large gap as well. I don't think Hume or Kant, let alone Wittgenstein and Quine, the key concerns and presuppositions that drive their thinking, would be (at least initially) at all coherent to earlier thinkers. Just for example, it takes and extremely different "metaphysics of appearances" and of "intelligibility" to make Kant's noumenal/phenomenal dualism a coherent concern. St. Thomas takes up the very question of "do we know things or just the phantasms they produce in us," but the problem is easily resolved by him, not because he is a "dogmatist," as the later charge would go, but because he has very different starting assumptions.
The very fact that Kant's critique could be wielded (fairly to Kant or not) as a blanket dismissal of the classical metaphysical tradition as "mere dogmatism" to this day shows the chasm. Likewise, that empiricist epistemic presuppositions that undercut older understandings of understanding (noesis/intellectus) are taken as so sacrosanct that they can lead to survey texts and historical reviews largely just glossing over earlier understandings as embarrassing fantasies, shows the shift has been, in at least some areas "tectonic." The denial of any "first philosophy" and the defacto replacement of metaphysics in this role with, first epistemology, and then philosophy of language, also is emblematic of the degree of the transition.
Modern thought has its genesis in the Reformation, a period in which theology dominated philosophy and science more than in any other epoch, so we shouldn't be surprised to find the origin of many shifts in theology. For instance, the move to exclude "natures" as previously conceived, and thus to shift towards a scientific picture of "laws" and discrete, subsistent substance (as substratum) acting according to laws, has its origins in a rejection of natures on account of the fact that they imply a role for human virtue in human perfection, which was seen as being in conflict with salvation by "faith alone," or "total depravity."
C.S. Lewis has a pretty good quote on part of this shift:
But this is hardly an ancillary concern. Hume's entire argument against causality rests on presupposing the understanding of cause dominant in his era, one grounded in this "law" framework. Yet this argument played a major role in Kant's motivations for the critical philosophy. Likewise, the noumenal/phenomenal distinction rests on certain assumptions about the relationship between things and their appearances, between their being and their acts, assumptions that were radically reformulated due to the same theological concern with natures (and renewed anxiety over the Euthyphro Dilemma and Divine Sovereignty). That's just one example. It's hard to even imagine a Hume or a Kant without the deflation of reason and the emergence of Charles Taylor's "buffered self" as well for instance.
As a suggestion, you might want to then address the previously made arguments of these numbskulls or else shmucks head on, rather than talk behind their backs without giving any mention. (Here presuming this numbskull shmuck was I.)
-------
As to the quoted issue of impotency:
Where the priority-monism based ground-of-being as the Good to be a non-deity unmoved-mover of everything that is (this as I previously expressed here and here in this thread) it would be the exact opposite of impotent. It would, instead, be that which in one way or another endows potency to all agencies that occur, be these agencies deemed good or bad very much including the agency of deities (or else of all celestial beings, e.g. archangels and lesser angels), were the latter to occur.
While it is true that such non-deity unmoved-mover could make a deity of superlative power (else agency) utterly superfluous to metaphysical considerations regarding reality at large indeed, not necessitating the occurrence of any so called celestial beings whatsoever it does not by any means then deny the possibility of the existence of such (and if they do in fact occur, prayers to such celestial beings will then have their effects). Instead, such an understanding of the a non-deity unmoved-mover of all that exists as the Good will entail that, were celestial beings to occur, all these will be inescapably subject to this same non-deity unmoved-mover which goes by the term the Good such that, in considering those celestial beings that are far closer to the Good than any of us are, they gain their power from their very proximity to this same unmoved-mover of all that exists which is of itself not a deity.
To sum: the Good as the non-deity unmoved-mover of all that is can by no means be rationally concluded impotent but, instead, can then only be the source of all potency which occurs among agenciesfor it is then that which in one way or another moves all these free-will endowed agencies, without exception (e.g., via such agencies affinities toward the Good or else their fear and resultant aversions in respect to it).
-------
As to the quoted issue of the Good thus understood being "insensate, irrational, etc.":
By its very definitions, the Good / the One, while not being a deity, would be the non-temporal juncture wherein a) no duality whatsoever between the subject of understanding and the object of its understanding will remain and b) it will be (as it has always been) qualitatively infinite (limitless) and, hence, devoid of any quantity in so being divinely simple. This thereby entailing an infinite understanding which is of itself infinite and nondualistic awareness, one which is the source of all rationalizations but which supersedes any and all duality involved in reasoning.
And, as to its reason for being, the Good / the One as actuality here becomes the sole brute fact there is, in so being being the only a-rational reality there is. (With arational being beyond that which can be either rational or irrational, thereby in no way being of itself irrational.)
And, again, the Good thus understood cannot in any way be a deity, if for no other reason because a deity entails an occurring I-ness and that which is not this I-ness, thereby entailing a necessary duality, of which the Good is utterly devoid of.
By no means, the supposition that being "the ground of being" makes God irrelevant or impotent or both (or somehow absolutely nothing like "God") was made by many posters in this thread. I wasn't even thinking of anything you mentioned.
Yup. And that's the understanding we see of the celesial hierarchies in general, e.g. in Dionysius the Areopagite, each angel bestowing power upon the one beneath it, while facing up to those above it (with the Seraphim and Cherubim being the closest to the Divine "in" the primum mobile, beyond the fixed stars in the cosmology of the time). And it has the helpful benefit of tracking with the intermediary role of angels in divine action in the Scriptures, although Orthodox theology tends to hold that the major theophanies involve the pre-incarnate "fleshless Logos."
Right, thus even merely angelic knowledge is all intellectus, not discursive ratio. A big project of the Enneads is explaining divine simplicity and divine freedom given the dualism in human knowing and action. E.g.:
But God isn't a brute fact in Plotinus or the Christian and Islamic "Neo-Platonists." We might say that in God essence and existence are unified (to borrow the later terminology). God isn't irrational, as you note, but as Dionysius says, super-rational and super-essential. I wouldn't call this arational though, and at any rate God is not a "brute fact" in the sense the term is often employed today, although the term is fitting if it only implies "not referred to anything else."
But to me, "brute fact" suggests "for no reason," or "random." This would also seem to me imply that the Good's willing of itself is in some sense arbitrary. Plotinus responds precisely this concern:
I'm not really sure what "I-ness" is supposed to mean here, or why a "deity" is defined by it. To refer to my earlier point, these notions have long been theological orthodoxy in the traditional churches, but have not been seen as precluding that God is God. God is impassible, eternal, immutable, not a being, simple, unlimited, etc. and this is precisely why God is God.
A lot of Pagan responses to this have been preserved, since they helped develop doctrine and provoked important responses. But the critique was generally not that the Incarnation was impossible (although I'm sure this objection must exist somewhere), but rather that it was unfitting, demeaning, etc.
Alright. Got it. Slightly embarrassingly, my bad presumption, then.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Hmm, I call the Good arational because it is the only actuality for which there is no sufficient reason - thereby being the only one actuality which is of itself beyond any reason, thereby being neither rational nor irrational. Being of itself is in this sense alone absurd - but by no means random or meaningless - for there is no reason for being's being. Yet it is, occurs, all the same; and, as the Good, Being is the ground of all existence and existents, the latter alone being subject to the principle of sufficient reason and, thereby, not being absurdist (but again, this only in the extremely restricted sense of absurdism just specified).
All this might just be a different perspective regarding the same inexplicable ontic actuality which I term the Good and which can just as cogently be termed God
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, this latter being in keeping with the meaning I intended to express by the term, "brute fact" in the sense of: "a thing that [here, a concept whose referent ...] is undeniably the case, but which is impervious to reasoned explication".
As to why it is so, this would be a very, very long shpeal on my part - and I'm here assuming we're both taking "the Good's being an actual ontic facet of all which can be in any way considered real" for granted (in so far as the Good is that ultimate reality upon which all others are dependent).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm of course here engaging in philosophical discourse, attempting to be as rational as I can be about the matter at hand, but am not addressing traditions of interpretation.
I-ness is a term whose referent is difficult to demarcate, and can thus be demarcated in different ways. I find notions such as that generally adopted by Kant, Husserl, and William James to be of great benefit to this issue: To use Jamess terminology: where ego equates to I-ness, there is a pure ego, which is the subject of the experienced self, and then there is the empirical ego, which is that full scope of I-ness or self experienced by the pure ego. In presuming you are familiar with this basic notion, Ill here skip the details and justifications.
The Good, then, will consist of an infinite pure ego devoid of any duality wherein the subject of experience - pivotally, the subject of understanding - of itself becomes that which is understood and thereby known (this, maybe obviously, in non-spatiotemporal manners, these of themselves requiring some measure of duality).
A deity, on the other hand (be it a supposed omni-creator deity which would by entailment be singular or else a deity of pagan polytheistic understanding which would by entailment then not be omni-anything, this irrespective of its powers) entails a pure ego embedded in an empirical ego (be the latter either utterly non-corporeal or otherwise - for the deity knows itself to be other than X, Y, and Z, this then being the pure ego's knowledge of its empirical ego) which, as such, is furthermore other in respect to, for example, those who pray or else worship it: For the deity to in any way answer a prayer, there must logically be some form of duality between a) the deity, b) the prayer it becomes aware of (the prayer being other than the deity), and c) the response which the deity gives (the deity-generated effect as response again being other than the deity's subjectivity (i.e., empirical-ego-embedded pure-ego) itself).
Hence, a deitys occurrence entails some form of duality between the deity as I-ness (as an empirical-ego-embedded pure-ego) and that which is not this I-ness (e.g. the communication of which the deity becomes aware and this communications source both of which are then other than the deity itself).
A footnote: the philosophical term is 'ipseity'. I saw that in the sayings of the Advaita sage Ramana Maharishi, that he would frequently draw attention to the bibical God's proclamation of His identity "I AM THAT I AM" (Ex 3:14). This, he equated with the Self as the ultimate (or only) reality.
Sure, but I wanted to be as easy to understand as possible; and ipseity of itself tmk does not address the easy to overlook dichotomy between the a) pure/transcendental ego which is the knower of self and b) the empirical ego which is the self thus known.
Quoting Wayfarer
Here again, though, it would only be the self as pure/transcendental ego rather than the self as the empirical ego which could be cogently understood as the "ultimate (or only) reality". El, then, would be aligned and proximate to the pure form of this ultimate reality, such as via henosis, but - by virtue of proclaiming something to someone other - could not be this ultimate reality, i.e. the Good, itself, for the Good is utterly nondualistic and devoid of any finitude (etc.) in all respects.
And, then, one could potentially interpret the pure/transcendental ego as being in keeping with no-self (this in the complete absence of an empirical ego - as the Good necessitates by virtue of being nondualistic in any manner), this as per Buddhist doctrine in relation to the issue of self.
ps. Thereby resulting in the interpretation of the Good being an utterly and literally selfless state of infinite being - one which the relative selflessness of human beings better approximates in comparison to relatively selfish human beings.
Were they not Christians? Why not just return to Spinoza? I think his theology is more sophisticated than any Christian theology, including ideas such as identifying God with "being itself".
I'll say this as an agnostic in relation to the reality of the Trinity, but here is an example of how the aforementioned could be rationally accounted for within Christian contexts, here treating the issue of the Trinity more from a comparative religions view point wherein the Good is presumed to be real, this rather then relying on dogma or any particular authority:
Instead of assuming that the Father is an omni-creator Lord which walks the earth (logically contrary to be omnipresence), which is upset by the doings of the serpent, Eve, and Adom (logically contrary to omniscience and omnipotence), and who thereby curses them all and the generations that will follow with animosity and suffering (logically contrary to omnibenevolence), assume that the Father is Elohim, the We of Genisis I, which is commonly understood as a plurality of beings all unified here assume unified in their affinity and proximity to the Good (which could under certain interpretations be understood as the ineffable G-d). (Granted, in so assuming, the Lord of Gensis II onwards is then potentially be a being which formerly partook of Elohim but then presumed himself to be the entirety of, or else the superlative pinnacle of, divinity this then being contrary to alignment toward the Good. Here echoing certain Gnostic interpretations wherein JC is conceived as an embodiment of the serpents spirit which, as such, attempted to bring knowledge of right (i.e., the Good) and wrong to all, this being contra the Gnostic Demiurges wants.)
So the Father is here presumed to be the unified plurality of celestial beings which addresses itself in Genesis I as We, the same which says let there be light (presumably, awareness of the Good) in a time of darkness.
Next presume JC to be in some spiritual sense unified with Elohim, this in terms of understanding, knowledge, awareness at large such as could occur given henosis.
Next presume the Holy Spirit to be rather than some who knows what thing or ghost something at least akin to what C.S. Peirce termed Agapism: the universal process of agape via which universal evolution works, here, ultimately, toward a universal realization of the Good.
Then, given these presumptions, there is plenty of possibility for a logically sound Trinity to occur wherein Elohim, JC, and the Holy Spirit, though sperate in their own right, unify into the same deity, the same identity of I-ness which addresses itself as We. However unfathomable such a deity might be, it as deity would yet remain extremely aligned and proximate to the Good (more Abrahamically, to G-d), the latter being a non-deity. And this rather than being the Good (else G-d) itself. The trinity will yet be endowed with some dualism, such as being other than that which is wrong (in an Abrahamic sense, call such Satan), or else in terms of hearing and responding to prayers. Whereas the Good (G-d) that to which the Trintiy is the unfathomably proximate - will yet be perfectly nondualistic in all respects.
-----
Again, Im agnostic about the Trinitys reality. And I am not myself a Christian, in that I acknowledge truths in many another religion out there. Traditional interpretations, dogmas, and notions of heresy aside, I so far find that this understanding of the trinity when allowing for the ontic occurrence of celestial beings becomes fully cogent in manners devoid of all logical contradictions.
And, due to the wide ranging potential audience of this forum, Ill add to the aforementioned another honest opinion: there is no reason or need to believe in celestial beings of any kind in order to uphold the ontic reality of the Good one could just as well be a naturalistic pantheist and do so, as just one example to this effect.
Congratulations. You are the first person to use "cromulent" on The Philosophy Forum.
I think the standard Patristic response here would be to object to the literal reading of Scripture. "The spirit[ual] reading gives life, the flesh[ly] profits nothing" (John 6:63). This would be to make the mistake of the disciples who turned away because they were disturbed when Jesus told them they must eat of his flesh and drink of his blood.
As St. Gregory of Nyssa puts it in the life of Moses re God "walking" or possessing a body:
Or as he says more generally:
Saint Gregory is fairly representative on this sort of issue. St. Paul, for his part, refers to the story of Hagar and Sarah as "allegory" in the Epistle to the Galatians, and there is no prima facie reason for us to dismiss taking him at his word here, since his interpretive style is rarely literal. Still, if we look to the Patristics as an example of ancient exegesis, they don't tend to so much dismiss the literal/historical meanings (except where they lead to absurdity) as find them unimportant, since the historical events unfolding in the cosmos are all ultimately signs whose true relevance lies in the intelligible and anagogic.
There are certainly differences with the Neo-Platonic view though. For instance there was a move by some Arian thinkers to conceptualize the Logos as akin to the Nous, and arguments against the Logos being the same as the Divine, since it contains multiplicity. But the counter is that what appears as multiplicity to us is simple unity in the Divine, which could be consistent with something like:
[I]
The One is not, as it were, unconscious, rather all things belong to it and are in it and with it, it is completely self-discerning, life is in it and all things are in it, and its intellection of itself is itself and exists by a kind of self-consciousness in eternal rest and in an intellection different from the intellection of the Intellect.[/I]
Otherwise there would be the question of how what is absent from the First Principle is present elsewhere, or how truths might obtain that are outside the scope of the First Principle.
I hadn't really been thinking about the Trinity itself though. That's a much more fraught issue. Obviously there were lots of objections to that, and from Islamic and Jewish thinkers as well, since "one essence, three hypostases," is hardly obvious in its implications.
In case it wasn't obvious, I'm in agreement with this. Still, interpolations of all sorts have been made galore, and some of these become dogma at expense of others being then deemed heretical. Aside from which, it is relatively typical for most to treat scripture as God's word, however interpreted, rather than the words of fallible humans, some of which were bound to be more aligned with the Good than others - such that the others here addressed might have been less than honest with themselves in terms of what is and is not known.
At any rate, my last post was an attempt to exemplify the implications of the previously given post. Such that the Good being utterly nondualistic and finite-less understanding, hence awareness, which serves as ground for all existence and existents cannot logically be any deity - this irrespective of the nature of the deity addressed - but which nevertheless teleologically moves the deity(ies) specified (this were deities to be in any way existent or else occurring) via either their free will guided affinities toward the Good or their free will guided aversions to it (e.g., by deeming the Good a falsehood, thereby being a false promise, thereby being an incorrect and hence wrong appraisal of what is real which, as such, can only result in both short and long-term suffering - this as can be exemplified in the conviction that love always leads to suffering or else in laughter at love, peace, and understanding).
In short, though, my last post attempted to exemplify that the Good as God cannot be a deity (but, instead, can only be that to which deities we can label "good" are teleologically aligned to - this much in the same way that relatively selfless or non-self-centered humans are more teleologically aligned to the Good than relatively selfish humans are).
All this being in keeping with your description of the One / the Good as:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
And this as an ultimate telos rather than a deity (that for example sees and judges what we do as other) which, as such, is the only end that is not a means to any other - and which, as ultimate telos, thereby both awaits and at all times accompanies. And in this roundabout respect can then be stated to be omnibenevolent without any hypocrisy.
:pray:
Philosophical accounts of theism are not necessarily more sophisticated, so I'd start by pushing back at that built in bias.
Theism that concentrates on logical consistency, empirical support, and scientific compatibility speak to a philosophical bent, and the suggestion inherent in that bent is that theism is an avenue for knowledge in the same sense as is philosophy. That is, to suggest that theism that aims to be philosophical is superior to theism that doesn't, is to implicitely reject theism in its own right.
I'd suggest a theistic approach is adopted to provide a way for living and finding meaning in your life. That can be done for pragmatic reasons or it might be something you accept unconditionally just as part of your upbringing, but at some level if theism works (as in it provides you a sense of fulfillment, purpose, or meaning) and you're better off for it, that would be a basis.
I don't wish to derail the thread unless you think this an interesting question, but I'd point to the Athens/Jerusalem distinction that asks to what extent reason (the Athens approach) should play in theological discussions versus duty and adherence (the Jerusalem approach). https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/three-ways-to-think-about-athens-and-jerusalem/?srsltid=AfmBOorqrJX2y74rwaP7bYPQ26fp4Klo9da7l4JyTBPAoWPegYB9cqWn
Concerning the Nagel quote, it sounds spot on to me, concerning analytic vs. continental, and of course I respect Nagel's views enormously. But I don't think we should reduce this question to "who's got a religious temperament." That longing for something to replace the religious consolations may be an important marker of those philosophers who aren't satisfied to be "modern" (using that word as I think you do), but it's not the whole story. For me, any philosopher who is unwilling to accept the apparent consequences of physicalism or reductionism, who wants an account of subjectivity that is at least as compelling as our beliefs about objectivity, should be considered part of a long tradition. For every Mill, there is a Schopenhauer. For every Carnap, there is a Cassirer. Point is, chronological analysis seems quite unimportant to me in this story. But as I've said before, I know others find more to ponder here than I do.
There is an interesting history there. There is the absolute unity in Dionysus' "Darkness Above the Light," and later conceptions would tend to play up unity even more, as in the German Dominican mysticism of the later High Middle Ages (e.g. Eckhart). And this unity would sometimes even seem to become "prior" to the Trinity in later German thinkers, e.g. Boehme. This is the "Unground," although it is sometimes associated with the Father and can risk a sort of Arianism (but not necessarily, since even orthodoxy speaks of the eternal "begetting of the Son" and "procession of the Spirit").
Other's elevate the Trinity or take a via media.
Or there is the view in Ferdinand Ulrich of being itself being fundamentally "gift."
I am personally partial to a view that comes out of Saint Augustine's triadic dialectical analysis in De Trinitate where he identifies triads in the mind and in the nature of being itself. For there to be any meaning, any life at all, there must be a triadic, semiotic element of:
Ground/Object/Father
Sign Vehicle/Logos/Son
Interpretant/Spirit
Or Lover/Beloved/Love (Peirce's association of Thirdness with hypostatic abstraction works well with the Augustine analogy here).
The sign/meaning relation is not a composition. It is not composed of these parts, but is rather a union with moments. It is a nuptial union between interpretant and object, accomplished in the logos, but irreducible. Thus, the movement from pregnant silence to "anything at all" involve the triadic moments.
There are parallels between Augustine and Hegel here as well (I've always been an admirer of Big Heg).
Whether or not the Trinity violates simplicity is another question, but theologians have tended to affirm both the Trinity and absolute simplicity. The reason the God-man Jesus Christ can have a finite ipseity as Incarnation is because he is "fully man and fully God," "two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us" (as the Chalcedonian Formula puts it).
As I've previously mentioned, I'm agnostic about the Trinity - not being a Christian myself, although I admire JC a great deal in multiple ways. That said, I very much like your perspectives regarding the topic.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
In the ambiguities of the English language - which I find work wonders for poetical expressions and compositions - I often enough indulge in the double sense of the term "the present". Such that to live in the present becomes in part understood as to live in the gift. This quote reminds me of this.
This raises the question: If not "duty and adherence" to that which is accordant with "reason" (which ought not be confused with a strict adherence to today's formal logics), then "duty and adherence" in respect to what?
I maintain hopefully not a "duty and adherence" to that which is thereby utterly unreasonable in all respects.
Basically, I don't find "reason" and "duty and adherence" to be in any way antagonistic but, instead, to require each other - and this rather intimately - within the context of theological discussions. This if any semblance of theological truth is to be approached.
Then, of course, there's the issue of traditions in respect to theological issues. And, in this regard, who's to deny the presence of truth in the following - be one an atheist, a theist, or something other:
As to the first question as to how one would not make the two compatible, would be someone who accepted a very strict divine command theory, where textual support or reference to oral tradition is analyzed for the rule one is to follow.
That tends to be the approach of orthodox Judaism, as an example. That's not to say that efforts haven't been made to locate the logic behind the divine commandment. My best example would be of Maimonides (born in 1135), where he infused Aristotilian thought into Judaic thought, trying to locate the logic behind each of the commandments (in his Mishneh Torah and in Guide for the Perplexed). While his logic is looked upon as important in some way, it is rejected as the basis behind the rule. It is simply his best assessment. I'll also clarify (just for the sake of accuracy) that certain Jews (Sephardic) take his logic as more significant than others (Ashkenazic).
So, why don't I murder? From the Athens persepective, because it would destroy society, it would put us all in fear, etc. That is, there are plenty of logical reasons we shouldn't murder.
From the Jerusalem perspective, Exodus 20:13 is why I don't murder.
If one takes the Jerusalem view from a non-theistic perspective and they reject the Athens view, then they would interpret tradition looking for guidance, with an acceptance that antiquity offers guidance just as the result of its historical effectiveness. That is, it is possible to be rule oriented and someone who looks to tradition for answers and who interprets the rules passed down through the generations and still be atheistic. That person would not be Hellenistic in perspective, but would more aligned with the Jerusalem approach, despite their complete lack of faith in God.
While this last suggestion might seem odd, it does to some degree describe the Judaic view, where faith in the existence of God is really not all that important from a daily living or eternal reward perspective. What is important is knowing the rule, studying the rule and following the rule. Faith, under this system, is in the righteousness of the rule, not in the existence of God himself. But always most important in not what you beleive and why you believe, but what you do.
I quite like the official Roman Catholic response, although sometimes Catholic theologians don't seem to always respect it:
Or the contrasting Eastern position, which tends to stress asceticism and "knowing by becoming" a bit more heavily:
https://www.patristicfaith.com/senior-contributors/an-orthodox-theory-of-knowledge-apophaticism-asceticism-and-humility/
https://www.academia.edu/45384040/An_Orthodox_Theory_of_Knowledge_The_Epistemological_and_Apologetic_Methods_of_the_Church_Fathers
[/quote]
I of course grant a good portion of what you say. Yet to my knowledge there are many variants of Judaism, with Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform branches being only very general examples of these. And if we for further example go back into antiquity, prior to the Maccabean Revolt, there were great sums of Hellenized Jews in Judeia.
Quoting Hanover
Slightly bringing this back into the purview of the general notion of the Good / the One: Kabbalah teachings, including those of the tree of life, are pivoted upon the Ein Sof - which holds the very same attributes as the Good (as previously discussed in this thread). This says it better than I can:
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_Sof
This then being - or at least gives all indication of being - the very same ontic reality interpreted via different filters of culture and reasoning.
I know it can get complex, but this reference for example illustrates that the Kabbalah and Orthodox Judaism are by no means two separate belief systems. Nor does the Kabbalah seem to in any way be a fringe system of beliefs in respect to Judaism at large, including when considering Orthodox Judaism.
Here, then, there appears to be a good amount of theological reasoning involved in relation to the nature of God and reality to total - and this in respect to Orthodox Judaism.
It so far feels like you are unfairly pigeonholing most of what Judaism consists of.
Quoting Hanover
This is very easy to say, but exceedingly difficult to in any way comprehend. Should one understand that "duty and adherence" to "the righteousness of the rule" is done for no reason, motive, whatsoever? Unless what one addresses are automata - rather than sentient people - this can only be utter nonsense. And if there is some motive for so doing, this motive has nothing to do with "the [s]existence[/s] reality of God" playing an important role in "a daily living or eternal [s]reward[/s] benefit perspective"??? What other plausible reason could there be for "the righteousness of the rule"?
I think I did hint at possible reasons, which would be historical effectiveness or simply it being the only tradition you know. And to be fair, that is likely why you do most of what you do. Norms are learned and accepted from within the culture you live. We can say we don't steal for all sorts of logical reasons and we can also cite to certain laws, but the reason we don't steal is the same reason you knock on doors, you wear a tie to work, you drive on the right side of the road, you call your elders sir, and so forth.
So why on earth would someone explore deeply into their tradition of inherited norms to determine how to best act? It would arise from a respect of tradition and a recognition of the successes such a tradition has previously yielded.
From Fiddler on the Roof:
[i]Tradition, tradition! Tradition!
Tradition, tradition! Tradition!
Who, day and night, must scramble for a living,
Feed a wife and children, say his daily prayers?
And who has the right, as master of the house,
To have the final word at home?
The Papa, the Papa! Tradition.
The Papa, the Papa! Tradition.
Who must know the way to make a proper home,
A quiet home, a kosher home?
Who must raise the family and run the home,
So Papa's free to read the holy books?
The Mama, the Mama! Tradition!
The Mama, the Mama! Tradition!
At three, I started Hebrew school. At ten, I learned a trade.
I hear they've picked a bride for me. I hope she's pretty.
The son, the son! Tradition!
The son, the son! Tradition!
And who does Mama teach to mend and tend and fix,
Preparing me to marry whoever Papa picks?
The daughter, the daughter! Tradition!
The daughter, the daughter! Tradition![/i]
I've acknowledged the importance of tradition previously via the Crane quote.
But this then can raise the question of whether - for one example currently pertinent to the ethics of the US populace - such a thing as Christian Nationalism's desire to hold onto its Christian traditions ethically outweighs the very teachings of Jesus Christ himself - the latter, more often than not, stand in direct contradiction to the ethos of the former. A Christianity that holds no respect for what its official founder honored and desired ... sounds exceedingly vacuous - as something that JC's spirit might itself be utterly antagonistic to and angry about - at least to me.
And then you have various other traditions from all over the world, Judaic, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Inuit, and so on; none of which can cohabitate peacefully were each tradition to vie for a power over all others, this so as to remain in no way altered by any other, believing itself the sacred pinnacle around which all of life and sacredness and morality revolves.
Via examples such as these I then uphold that: Yes, tradition of course has its importance, but it ought not be the be-all and end-all to ethics and ethical conduct, very much including in relation to the so called "righteousness of rules".
To use previously addressed concepts and terminology: tradition does not of itself equate to that which is the Good - also addressed as "God" by some - and tradition, irrespective of what it might be, can only be good when it is aligned with the latter.
Sure. I understand that some people might hold a view like this. I am asking for the more philosophical and the more sophisticated versions to see what people think and why. Given (and this is my experience) that most critical discussion of theism tend to involve Christian or Muslim literalism.
Quoting Hanover
I guess whether one would agree or disagree with this would depend upon the theist or school.
From my perspective, a theism founded in philosophical thinking may be superior to a theism rooted in biblical literalism because it allows the concept of God to engage with the depth and complexity of human experience, rather than reducing it to a fixed narrative or comic book account. Literalism tends to confine the divine to specific events, texts, and cultural assumptions, often locking faith into outdated cosmologies or morality. Philosophical theism, by contrast, might be held to invite a continual process of reflection, integration, and reinterpretation, allowing the idea of God to evolve alongside our evolving understanding of reality. It doesnt dismiss scripture, but reads it through a broader lens, seeing it as one expression of a deeper metaphysical truth rather than the only one. In this way, God is no longer just a figure in a narrative, but the deeper source from which meaning and existence arise.
Or something like this.
The question of reason is an interesting one. I dont think I was necessarily thinking of reason as a marker of sophistication, though I can see why many people would. My sense of a more sophisticated theism might actually align more closely with phenomenological or mystical traditions - ones that arent strictly rooted in reasoning, but instead emphasize depth of experience, intuition, and presence.
But you've made me think a bit differently about this, so thanks.
Could be.
Very crudely Spinoza seems to argue (and I have no deep reading of his work) that God is infinite substance: In Ethics, Spinoza seems to argue that there is only one substance in the universe, and that is God. Everything else (you, me, trees, ideas) is a mode or expression of that substance.
He also maintains that God is impersonal who doesnt think, plan, love, or intervene in the world. "It" doesnt make choices or have a will. It's more like a set of necessary laws or the structure of being itself.
I'm not sure what this gives us - god as immanence - what is a human to do with such an account? Any thoughts?
The story is that of the modern world.
When I enrolled in Comparative Religion, the first class was taken by the Assoc Prof of that Department. It was a kaleidoscopic exploration of what I later came to understand was the history of ideas. That sounds a casual sort of phrase, but its a recognised sub-discipline, often associated with comparative religion. Its founding text was The Great Chain of Being, Arthur O Lovejoy ( 1936 - Defining the concepts of plenitude, continuity, and graduation, the author demonstrates how a single idea can influence centuries of Western thought.) Turgid reading and hardly made any headway with it when I bought it about 5 years back, but the underlying point remains - Lovejoys is a study of the various permutations of the traditional hierarchical ontology of the West over the course of centuries. I think thats where I developed an interest in this kind of analysis. It has some similarities with philosophical hermeneutics and, I suppose, the Hegelian concept of the historical development of consciousness. But thats the prism through which Im looking at the question in posts of that kind.
This is a little risky on TPF, but I'll go ahead and say that my main reason for standing a bit aloof from the historical-analysis perspective is that I associate it with various pessimistic (and moralistic) accounts of the decline of Western civilization, which I disagree with. ("We gave up the Greeks and we gave up Catholicism and now we're fucked!"). I see the opposite: intellectual and moral progress (often up-and-down, of course), astounding flourishing of the arts, to say nothing of the incomparably higher quality of life and education now available to the average denizen of Western civilization. (And denied, shamefully, to all those millions who are still "below average."). But this is a vast and controversial topic. All I can say is, if I were offered a Rawlsian "original position" lottery, and asked to pick a time and place to be incarnated over the past 3,000 years, while not knowing my sex, ethnicity, amount of economic power, physical health, education, et al., the choice would be obvious to me: right here, right now ("here" being understood as any European country with universal health care and good public libraries :smile: ).
I could just as well ask what the account of 'god as transcendence' gives us. At least god as immanence is more comprehensible. According to some accounts Einstein agreed with Spinoza's view in seeing god as the laws of nature.
What does 'god as the ground of being' give us? Is that god different than Spinoza's? If so, how? For that matter what does any account of anything that cannot be seen, heard, felt, touched etc., give us?
It seems to me the only motivation for believing in god is the wish to be cared for. The wish of the child.
I agree with you. The purportedly historical account that says we have "lost something" without ever being able to say what it is that we have lost (apart from the capacity for believing that what our wishful imaginations tell us must be true, and of course there are a great many who have not lost that at all). Is the world as understood by science really less enchanting than the ancient myths? Not to me. Which is not to say the ancient myths have no literary value. The Odyssey is still a great read.
I just think it reads so much better as only one subject. This is where the translation of ouisia (being) in Aristotle has had such profound consequences (per the recent thread on that topic). Substance is very easily understood as matter-energy, absent all reference to the subject. Im sure that, in association with Spinozas reputation as a founder of secular culture, is why he provides a kind of half-way house for naturalists who eschew any form of the supernatural :yikes: whilst maintaining a link with the Grand Tradition.
[quote=Some Blog] The problem, as Spinoza goes on to diagnose, is that people normally desire perishable things which can be reduced to these three headings: riches, honour, and sensual pleasure (idem: para.3&9). As these things are perishable, they cannot afford lasting happiness; in fact, they worsen our existential situation, since their acquisition more often than not requires compromising behaviour and their consumptions makes us even more dependent on perishable goods. But love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind with joy alone, unmixed with any sadness. (Idem: para.10) Thus, in his mature masterpiece, the Ethics, Spinoza finds lasting happiness only in the intellectual love of God, which is the mystical, non-dual vision of the single [s]Substance[/s] Subject underlying everything and everyone. The non-dual nature of this vision is clearly announced by Spinoza when he says that [t]he minds intellectual love of God is the very love of God by which God loves himself (Ethics, Part 5, Prop. 36). Since, for Spinoza, God is the Whole that includes everything, it also includes your love for God, and thus God can be said to love Itself through you.
Quoting J
Of course! Something else Im well aware of. Im not of the view that modernity is a moral cesspit on the road to self destruction - although its not a difficult case to make - but that modernity, for all of its marvellous progress, has a shadow side. Furthermore that as secular culture no longer has any reference point to the transcendent, this has considerable downstream consequences, if there is such a realm.
(Spoiler alert - The final episode of the recently-aired White Lotus has young Piper Ratliff, an idealist young adult from wealthy family, drawn to Buddhism, who announces she wants to spend a whole year at a Thai monastery/training centre. Her mother wisely tells her to try it out for a few days first, after which she tearfully confesses that she couldnt live without aircon and decent food. Totally resonated with me.)
But the times are changing. I think the typical modernist materialism has past its peak, science itself is becoming much more holistic. But, you know, Western civilisation is really on a knife edge and could well bring about its own demise.
For me it seems more aesthetic or about meaning making - the wish for life to be significant - as a bulwark against the tragedy of living. But no doubt it is differnt things for differnt folk.
Quoting Janus
Yes, why even use the word God?
But no doubt some will argue that the word of disenchanted rationalism and modernity has allowed us to retreat into crude things like money in place of spiritual riches.
I went on a similar journey a while ago and came to strikingly similar conclusions. In fact, I grew up contending with colloquial arguments for theism--especially from stereotypical Protestantism--as I found none of them convincing; I then explored some of the more prominent figures in the mainstream debates in theology (such as the new atheists, william lane craig, etc.) and found them likewise unconvincing; and then, eventually, I came across Ed Feser's "Aristotelian Proof" and it was bizarrely different than any other argument I had heard. I didn't find it convincing, but I started reading on Acquinas, Aristotle, Augustine, Plato, and the like on classical theism and found the argumentation for and metaphysics of God vastly different than mainstream theology. In short, I ended up convincing myself, somewhere along that journey, of the classic theism tradition.
Yes, indeed it does: it becomes interesting (I would say) for all topics in theology. God is the ipsem ens subsistens, the actus purus, divinely simple, an intelligence, a will, the ultimate cause of everything's active existence, etc.; and it follows that:
1. God's willing a thing as real is identical to Him thinking of it as real.
2. God qua intelligence and qua pure actuality cannot think of a thing as real other than relative to its perfect form.
3. God, then, cannot will a thing into existence in a manner where it is not in correspondence with its good.
4. So God must be all good willed.
So why is there badness in the world then?
Because:
1. Creation always entails a hierarchy of value of goods.
2. When that creation is willed in a perfect manner (viz., the good of each thing is willed in accordance with its perfect form respectively) and given #1, this allows for the possibility of privations.
3. Those privations are not willed by God: they are the absence of good.
This is also why Acquinas rightly points out that the euthyphro dilemma is a false dilemma: God is perfectly good, He then must be perfect at what He is, and He then must be perfect at being an intelligence, and so He wills what is good exactly because He is perfectly good. His goodness is out of necessity---not by choice.
Quoting Tom Storm
Surely the ideas themselves have their own beauty. Why would we need to believe they are literally true to enjoy that beauty? To claim that would be to claim there is no beauty or meaning in fiction.
How can life be more significant than it already is? It would only seem so if we believed there is more of it, and a much better life to boot that lasts forever. That is the essence of Buddhism, Hinduism and the Abrahamic religions. If someone is able to believe such things, then I have no argument with that, but better that they keep to their beliefs and do not reveal their doubts by wishing to convert others for moral support. That shows weakness of conviction.
Also living is not wholly a tragedy in my view. On balance I would say there is more joy and interest than misery and boredom.
In any case what does 'god as ground of being' offer for the seeker of consolation? Does the ground of being care about us, or the animals or any life? To think so would seem to be a gross anthro-projection.
There are parts of religion I admiremindfulness, stillness, equanimity, acceptance, love, compassionyou don't need all the superstitious stuff for those. In fact, I think it only gets in the way by confusing the issue.
Quoting Tom Storm
They might argue that and in my view they would be wrong. The world of consumer culture is disenchanted to be sure. But the world of science is anything but disenchanted. And we still have all the old worlds of music, poetry, literature, painting, architecture, the crafts, the natural world. We lack nothing the ancients had except their superstition. And when I say we lack their superstition I do not mean to refer to the multitude. That said, I would say the multitude are far less miserable today than they were in ancient times.
I think the point is that life can alwasy be imbued with more meaning based on change subject to one's experience - changes in thinking, in belief, in situation. For instance, having children might enhance the significance. For some God makes life more bearable, meaningful, attractive. But I suspect this only works if you think God is real, not if you think it is merely a charming fiction.
Quoting Janus
Sure. I think where you sit on this depends on what you go through and how your experince makes you feel.
Quoting Janus
Me too. I even appreciate the little I understand of mysticism and spirituality.
Quoting Janus
This may well be correct.
I think we both agree that if you're looking for vulgar, shallow displays of status and materialism; gaudy expressions of soulless wealth - you'll find no shortage of examples in religion, spiritual traditions, and cults alike. Even the ostentatious wealth of the Vatican shows us how Mammon and spiritual traditions are not necessarily incompatible.
Amen. Totalitarianism, mechanization, and, as you discuss so well, the tendency to treat humans as sophisticated bits of matter with "needs" and "goals" that must be arbitrary.
Quoting Tom Storm
Sure, and as I said I have no argument with people's faithsprovide they don't think it is more than that. When that happens, they start expecting others to agree with them. History is full of examples. I also think that people who need such beliefs to give their lives meaning lack imagination.
Quoting Tom Storm
Certainly! And it might also be a matter of neurotransmitters in some cases.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yep. I also appreciate the poetry and imagination of some mysticism and spirituality. I also think think that life, even just existence. is, ultimately, a mystery.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes, much in religion is also materialistic and consumerist. The Catholics insofar as they yield obeisance to Mammon, do not follow the teachings of Jesus, which makes them hypocrites in my view.
Quoting J
I agree that totalitarianism is bad per se, but is mechanization bad as such? Are humans not material beings with needs and goals, some of which are arbitrary and others pretty much necessary (and by necessary I don't mean the need for consolation, I count that as one of the "arbitrary needs")?
Must we gild the lily?
I've been reading this thread since there was only one page, but I've never quite known what to say. This line stood out, and I have to ask: why?
Me not believing in God is a fact of social praxis (and one I could be wrong about, though I have a hard time seeing how), and it's predicated on me not quite understanding what a God is supposed to be. I've grown up among a mix of Catholics (roughly 70%) and protestants (roughly 30 %), during a time when the ecumene was very popular. I've heard a lot of the arguments. They all went over my head. The disconnect seems far more primal:
Quoting Tom Storm
How, though? On the God TV, I either get the cartoon, or I get static. The cartoon may be silly, but it's got the advantage that we both, the theist and me, can understand it. And on account of that I know (and I believe them) that that's not what they believe. What *do* they believe instead? At that point all I can do is shrug.
Stuff like "God is being itself," might help people who have developed a concept of God past the cartoon to understand things. For me? So what is "being itself" is a big enough problem in itself - without relating it to God (a concept I mostly relate to religious praxis, but is utterly alien to my daily life). It feels like there's quite some reification going on, but I'm unsure, and even if I were to assume I have point, I'd be unsure what on the dual end of "God <-> being" is there to be reified.
For instance, I feel the same way about concepts like "love" or "justice". I don't use these words, I don't fully grasp their scope, but if it came up I could investigate what I think is being reified here: feelings, patterns of action... etc. In contrast, the word "God" seems to be entirely superfluous wherever it shows up in discussions about, say, "being". We're not on the same page, the theist and I. It's more a lack of topic on my part than a disagreement. I don't argue from the cartoon God, but if you'd ask me what sort of God I don't believe in the cartoon God is all that I can offer. The rest just makes my head spin - and as a result remains utterly irrelevant to my day-to-day conduct.
You may notice that avoided making myself a poster-book atheist in the above post, resorting to phrasings like "the theist and I", rather than "the theist, and I, the atheist" or some such. Now I am an atheist. And I might have used such phrasings in another post (probably have on these boards?). The reason I'm not doing it on here is that I feel this muddies the waters. I think there are very real (and generalisable) differences between atheists like me, who grew up among believers but never really solidified as a believer himself, and atheists who started out as believers and changed their mind. The latter must have had some sort of sense of what "God" is supposed to be, and they probably retain some sort of memory of that (though re-interpretation according to current life-situations can make "fair" recall difficult).
An example: when Dawkin's God Illusion was new I picked it up in a bookshop and randomly read a chapter. I think it was about the ill influence of religion, and Dawkins used as an example the treatment of the indiginous population of Australia by the settlers. I was reading this, and my first thoght was: but wasn't this more about civilisation? Sure, religion plays a big part here, and sure missionaries would have played a big part, but... My second thought was to close the book and put it back on the shelf. I'd only later learn what a big deal the book was. Now, here you'll see what I paid attention to regarding the topic: I didn't emphasise religion - I looked at a broader context. Do I disagree with Dawkins? No idea. My disinterest didn't stem from what he was saying; I just felt this was too tendentiously argued. Too much shallow rhetoric, beyond the validity of any point here. But me not focussing on religion is compatible with my day-to-day context: I'm living in highly secular country; I have little interest in God as a topic (when I try to understand what God is, I try to get along with theists - the topic itself is of no interest to me).
Then there's my motivational structure: all the big questions that come up - the meaning of life, life after death, free will etc. - none of that means much to me. They're not "big questions" to me; more like intellectual diversions, somewhat akin to crossword puzzles. Any answers to those questions feel inconsequential. I locate the disjunct between theists and me (and other athiests probably) here. So I don't think I need to figure out what "God" is to be an atheist. Not caring is enough. There are theists who can't seem to imagine what "not caring" feels like, sometimes to the point of denying that I don't care (because clearly that's impossible). That polemic-laden apologist who thinks I don't want to believe in God because that allows me to sin (unlike other atheists, I don't think that's pure rhetoric; it makes sense for them to think this), or the benevolent Catholic who thinks I'm in my (prolonged) doubting phase.
My intuition is that the God concept is meaningless by design. It's a hermeneutic buffer zone that inherits meaning from the bordering areas and allows for a game of constant goal-post shifting. That's the impression I get when I read those more sophisticated takes. They feel plausible for a while, until I realise that my mind went astray and I forgot to think of "God". But I don't take that intuition seriously enough to want to explore this line of thinking, much less actually argue it. I'm literally a Godless person; beyond the cartoon God there is nothing I can talk about.
In a distant galaxy, a long, long time ago, I was drawn into the mysterious realm of internet forums by reading a review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, by an acerbic, leftist cultural critic named Terry Eagleton. Eagleton published an hilariously scathing review, Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching - from which I quote below. He says that Dawkins, too, seems to have a very hazy idea of who or what God might be:
(published around 2006, which explains the cultural references.)
Another review, this time of a book by David Bentley Hart, 'The Experience of God'. Hart is mentioned in the original post:
Hart's definition - and it's a word that should be treated with extreme caution in this matter - is that God is 'the one infinite source of all that is: eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, uncreated, uncaused, perfectly transcendent of all things and for that very reason absolutely immanent to all things.'
Rather hard to make a cartoon out of, I agree.
If someone tells me they believe in the God of Moses, the burning bush, and the ark with all the animals, that's a very different conception compared to someone who talks about the God of classical theism. The former, most priests and vicars don't believe in.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Dawnstorm
I dont doubt you. But theres a long and complex tradition of writing behind classical theism - a view of God as immutable, impassible, and necessary - that spans centuries. Theres much to engage with if youre immersed in the tradition. That said, I totally understand if you or others have no interest in it. Im simply interested in what others believe and why. This thread isnt so much an attempt by me to articulate a more complex view of God, but rather to hear from others for whom this matters.
Now this interests me and it is central to what I have been saying. Different conceptions of God carry with them fundamentally different meanings, implications, and theological commitments.
Yes. I was thinking of mechanization as an improper model for understanding how humans -- and other forms of life -- coexist with each other. Otherwise, it has its uses. Technology, as you say, is neither good nor bad.
OK, but I think we need to pose C. S. Lewis's question: Is it conscious? Or perhaps Hart meant this to be obvious by including "omniscient".
The two aren't unrelated though, right? Hume has been extremely influential, particularly in Anglo-American thought and the broader culture. The "is-ought gap" is something of a popular dogma, and I would guess that moral anti-realism has a pretty large market share of all college educated younger adults. Of course, Hume relies on modern assumptions, most notably a "deflation of reason" whereby he can claim that reason, the intellect, or the "rational part of the soul" possess none of its own desires, but is instead merely a calculating tool that helps to correlate pain and pleasure with different sensations and then helps us predict the best ways to act to achieve certain ends judged as good on these grounds.
Actually, there is an argument here that I think is quite good that such a view makes truly rational and free agency impossible. Every end can only be judged good relative to some other finite end, and there is ultimately no way to choose between different potential "ultimate" or even "benchmark" ends in a rational manner (no one, "truly best" standard).
Likewise, there is no love of goodness and truth for their own sakes (i.e., the desires of the "rational soul" that allow us to transcend current desire and belief in the old model). Hence, every end must be ordered to some other end, in a sort of infinite regress. Yet, "justification must stop somewhere" and when it does it will bottom out in a standard that is chosen not because it is known as "truly best," but instead through inchoate impulse and instinct. David Bentley Hart writes about this a lot from the phenomenological side, but I don't think he makes the most cogent presentation of it. This is also an issue for epistemic as well as ethical pragmatism.
Of course, the advocate of the Humean or "pragmatic" views might just shrug and say it is what it is. If reason is just a calculator, we shouldn't expect for an sort of ultimate ordering of teloi. Whether this affects happiness and people under the sway of such view's capacity to "live a good life," or "be good people," is another question. However, at the very least, the phenomenon of a "crisis of meaning" seems to cause many people very real mental anguish (and to motivate self-centered hedonism in at least some cases). I think Charles Taylor is correct in saying that this particular sort of crisis is distinctly modern; I have never seen it in older works of fiction, whereas it is almost the definitive issue in much literature from the 19th century onwards.
E.g., some forms of Confucian thought that
But part of the calculus here is that the peasants laboring under the medieval nobility, or the tenant farmers who lived contemporaneously with Jane Austen's landed gentry are considered "part of that elite's society," whereas, through a sort of neat accounting trick, we have decided that the slaves mining metals for Westerner's phones, the child laborer who sewed their clothes in a sweltering Dhaka factory, or the migrant workers who picked their food out in the fields, are each not "part of the Westerner's society." Hence, we might think that are least some of the claims about "radical improvements for even the poorest" play too much off the accidents of national borders, and the way in which globalization has simply allowed the West to export most of its lower classes safely to the other side of national borders. Afterall, more people live as slaves today than in any prior epoch, and a great deal more in conditions that might be fairly deemed "wage slavery." Likewise, anyone who prioritizes animal well-being to any significant degree can hardly look at modern agriculture as much more than "hell on Earth."
That is, I think there is a certain distinct weakness to "veil of ignorance" when employed in the context of globalization and late-stage capitalism. There might also be a significant problem of time preference. Currently, it is not clear what the final toll of the ecological disasters wrought by modern liberalism will be. There is good reason to think that they might be extreme though, since the nations that are most geographically and politically vulnerable to climate change are also those set to continue to experience exponential population growth this century. Given whose consumption drives climate change, this looming catastrophe might be considered another case of "exporting misery."
Anyhow, more to the point on "backwards looking" ideologies that focus on things like "virtue," etc., I will just point out that these might be justified in liberalisms own consumption-focused empirical terms. The Amish are a fine example, in that they live in a developed country and yet eschew three centuries of technological innovation. They also have a great deal of serious problems, for instance, only educating their children to 8th grade, a fairly repressive culture, etc. It's not anything you'd want to replicate. Yet they manage to become wealthier than their neighbors, building larger net worth in spite of having vastly larger families. Likewise, they have a longer healthspan despite avoiding modern medicine. At one point they had an adult lifespan almost twice that of the surrounding population. They also perform better on a number of other metrics considered important by the welfare economist.
It's not that hard to see at least some of the reasons for this, which tie into their culture. But it's at least a challenge to liberalism that avoiding its consumption driven lifestyle and ethos, or its balkanization, might enough to overcome the economic disadvantages of giving up automobiles, electricity, the internet, secondary education, modern medicine, etc.
Why is it risky? You're going on about it all the time.
But note that it is fallacious to draw intellectual conclusions from a state of desire. "I associate P with pessimism; I oppose pessimism, therefore I assert ~P." That's emotional reasoning 101.
More precisely, someone draws a distinction between the pre-modern and the modern, and you anticipate an argument about decline. Opposing the presumed thesis of decline, you assert that there is no real distinction between the pre-modern and the modern (because if there is no distinction then there can be no decline). "I don't think there is a decline, therefore there is no real difference between the pre-modern and the modern," is an invalid argument. It is also a form of sophistry, given the fact that you are asserting a truth ("There is no significant distinction") only to achieve an end you desire, without having rational grounds for that assertion. It is wishful thinking. We have to try to get that horse in front of the cart if we want to do philosophy.
A valid point. Still, if the Rawlsian lottery were extended to the entire Earth, I'd still pick the year 2025. I think I'd have by far the best shot at a decent life. Remember, odds are I'd be born a woman. Up till, generously, 100 years ago, that would have been a kind of chattel slavery, with death in childbirth all too likely.
I remember reading this article. It sounded plausible, but since I don't actually know what sort of picture of God Dawkins portrays (the parts I read concerned religion), I couldn't actually judge it. I remember Eagleton from his works about literary criticism. Was a good read.
Quoting Tom Storm
Ah, gotcha. I didn't think of it like that. It's true that I don't believe in cartoon God either, but seeing as nobody around me does, that's not really what my atheism dismisses. I guess what I primarily stand apart from is the Roman Catholic God (with a pinch of evangelism thrown in). I didn't know Biblical literalism was such a big deal in America until I came online. It was quite a surprise.
Quoting Tom Storm
That's actually me, too; otherwise I wouldn't be in these sort of threads at all. But it's a second-hand interest: I'm interested in believers, not God. I guess there's a derived intellectual curiosity that does make me interested in God, too, but not in a practically relevant way.
I sort of have misgivings about this: as if I'm putting myself above others and play arm-chair psychiatrist. I don't think that's quite it, but I do worry from time to time. In any case, even if I do, it's a two-way road: I look back at myself, too.
For example:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That, for example, is very true. There are threads on this site about this. It's something I have trouble understanding, something I'm curious about, but it's also something I'd be sort of afraid to ask about when it's acute: when people worry, they don't really want to be... specimen? And in any case I feel there's a gulf here that's very hard to bridge with language, as words can't activate meaning that's not there. You just sort of blunder about until something clicks.
Not it. That is what the (regrettably gender-specific) He is intended to convey.
Quoting Tom Storm
I wonder if the quest for (or fantasy of) interstellar travel is a sublimated longing for Heaven.
Quoting J
Presumably being born into middle-class society in the developed world would have some bearing on that. Being born into Gaza might be a different matter.
Fine. I used "it" to avoid gender also, but it sounds like this definition of God is intended to describe a conscious being -- a person, for lack of a better term.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, but the lottery doesn't allow that kind of choice. We're supposed to calculate the overall odds of winding up in a life-enhancing situation, given everything we know about planetary conditions everywhere. And even so, I think I have better shot in 2025 than at any other time.
Theistic personalism is another fraught topic in theology, as I understand it. It is different from classical theism, in that it views deity in somewhat humanist or anthropomorphic terms. Hart and Feser both defend classical theism, whereas evangelicals (Craig and others) tend more towards personalism. My feeing is that deity is personal only insofar as not being not an it or an impersonal force or mere principle
Consider this passage from D T Suzukis (rather theosophical) interpretation of the Buddhist dharmakaya (the body of the law) which whilst not theistic preserves the sense Im describing.
It might interest you to know of a pubic figure whos come to prominence in this regard in the last five years or so. That is John Vervaeke, who is professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at University of Toronto. He has a YouTube lecture series comprising 52 units on the topic of The Meaning Crisis. Review here.
This is demonstrably false. (I suspect you were misled by the mobile version having search in two different menus.)
Either you had never run across the word here before or had forgotten that you had; then ? perhaps ? you checked your memory using a faulty procedure.
Either your experience of the forum was idiosyncratic, or you misunderstood and mischaracterized that experience yourself, and then ? whichever was the case ? you projected your understanding of your experience onto the forum as such, and everyone's experience of it.
But I'm sure that's completely irrelevant to the thread topic ...
That's my view as well, but I still want to add "conscious" because this force has to have, at the very least, the same capacities I do. The Suzuki passage captures this very well: "a willing and knowing being, one that is will and intelligence, thought and action. . . . an inexhaustible fountainhead of love and compassion."
If more personalism is wanted, there are many spiritual paths that emphasize a relationship with an avatar or bodhisattva, Christianity being the most familiar example.
I don't think we know enough to come to definitive conclusions about an alleged "crisis of meaning." We also didn't really see working class literature emerge until the 19th century. The fact that old certainties had been crumbling in modernity - including things like slavery, rigid class structures, the roles of womenmeant that people often felt unmoored. And technological change never stopped coming. So it's hardly surprising that people have often felt anxious about their purpose and future. Some of this may well have come from the decline of Christianity's hold on culture. But Id say that a crisis of meaning comes less from the collapse of belief, and more from too many choices, too much change, and from having leisure time and disposable income to explore identity.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
My take on this. Humans have always had a tendency to retreat into crass materialism - even in times when there was "certainty" about nation, religion, and social order. It's not something unique to modernity. The difference is that in earlier eras, access to material indulgence was largely confined to the aristocracy and the institutional church. The class system restricted who could participate in that kind of worldly excess. Now that those old structures have weakened, and consumerism has become democratised, it just appears more widespread. But the impulse itself isnt new - its just more visible.
I think we not only have every right but perhaps even a responsibility to try to understand where others are coming from. This isn't the same as psychiatry, which tends to focus on diagnosis, disorders and treatment. What we're talking about is differentit's about trying to understand other's perspective as charitably and clearly as possible. We can try to "steelman" peoples positions on issues like Trump, God, or race - to present their views in the strongest, most coherent form and genuinely try to grasp how they see the truth. Even if we ultimately disagree, that kind of effort is probably essential for serious conversation. And it's true that this is not an exact artform, one can get things wrong. That's life.
I agree with the idea that organisms, at least complex organisms, such as us and the so-called "higher animals' cannot be understood comprehensively in reductive mechanistic terms. The reductive models have their uses in understanding animals, including humans, but they have their limitations.
It's worth noting the relation between the terms 'sophisticated' and 'sophistry'; to sophisticate may be to make sophistical, if the elaboration does not reflect a well-founded and understood increase in complexity.
So the problems of modernity would stem from the collapse of older institutions a century ago and a surfeit of income and lesiure, not from any positive constructions within modernity itself?
I just have a hard time buying it. Not least because, for all prior epochs for which we have better hindsight, such "subtraction narratives" don't pass the smell test. It's not just that old structures pass away; positive constructions arise to take their place. I don't know why this should be any different for the 20th and 21st centuries.
However, IMHO the common tendency for apologists of "modern secular liberalism" to see it as "just what happens when superstition and calcified oppression are washed away and the progress of science and technology hum along," (e.g. Pinker or Harris are fine examples) is itself definitive of a certain sort of myopia affecting liberalism. It's an outlook that justifies itself with a certain sort of inevitably (e.g. Fukuyama's particular understanding of the "End of History"). Fukuyama is a good example because he presciently identified a major fault line that looks libel to tear liberalism apart in the US and Europe, the revolt of the "Last Men." Yet somehow he missed that this could possibly pose an existential threat, let alone countenancing that it is symptom of something seriously deficient in the underlying liberal ethos. Afterall, how could anything be systematically wrong with "life with oppressive structures removed and scientific progress set lose?" All efforts to diagnoses modern pathologies need to "come from outside" if that's the case.
Plus, "suicide rates are surging because oppression is being lifted and people have too much freedom and income," doesn't feel quite right. Even if I agree that they might be tied together in some compelling way, there is something definitely missing from that equation. The antecedent only implies the consequent given other, equally important qualifications, e.g. "too much choice," is only paralyzing when one is not equipped to deal with it. Ceteris paribus, an end to oppressive institutions should foster greater solidarity, as it certainly appears to have in past epochs. It certainly doesn't seem to have done so in later 20th century contexts however (e.g. the Korean 4B Movement is decidedly not what I think Hegelian feminists were thinking of in terms of mutual recognition).
I'm not saying that, there's more to it and one might go on for many thousands of words, but I am not a theorist and my thoughts, like most of us, are not worth more than a few paragraphs. But I do beleive this is important. I think increasing freedom and choice have probably been catastrophic when combined with marketing and constant social change. Our ability for sense making is consistently thwarted. Stability isn't merely about god and transcendence, it is about employment, identity and the capacity to live in a predictable world.
Hardly surprising that people differ on what the problem is and what the solutions might be. Id say Vervaekes meaning crisis, for instance, is a bit vague, and we could also attribute most of the symptoms he describes to capitalism and socio-political changes, like industrialization, secularization, and globalizationrather than cognitive evolution, which seems to be his go to to. But Vervaeke is just another guy on the speaker circuit, making a living by identifying a problem and offering solutions and I sometimes wonder about his affiliation with a certain Jordan B Peterson, who is also (when framed less kindly) in the business of identifying problems, capitalising on insecurity and selling "cures" to modernity.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Liberalism has always had the potential to become a victim of its own impulse to dismantle institutions and expand the definition of citizenship - especially in the context of capitalism. Conservatism, of course, has its own problems, which tend to run in the opposite direction. But this kind of discussion is inherently messy; it deals in values and inferences that are rooted in disagreement.
On a personal note - after many years studying Buddhism and attempting to practice meditation along Buddhist lines, I started attending Japanese Pure Land services in around 2019, as it was about the only Buddhist practice centre in my neighbourhood. It was part of Hongwanji, which is in the Jodo Shinsu lineage. The priest was a very gracious Japanese minister who would don his ceremonial attire to conduct the services which he conducted in both Japanese and English. I learned from this that Pure Land deprecates any effort at practicing meditation. Its not, they say, that such practices are not efficacious, but that theyre difficult to master; they are part of the way of sages which is recognised by Jodo Shinshu but regarded as the preserve of the elite. Only one in a million will be able to bring them to fruition (which certainly matched my experience). The ordinary foolish being is bombu (and I myself far more bombu than bodhisattva.) The basis of Jodo Shinshu is recitation of the name of Amidha Buddha (albeit in the context of a considerable amount of liturgical Japanese chanting and a highly formalised iconography.) The principle is that Amida Buddha - Amida being the Buddha of limitless light - vows to save all beings who believe and recite His name. (a-mida means not measurable, where a is the negative particle and mida is measure, so literally immeasurable.)
The similarities with devotional Christianity have often been commented on, but the underlying doxology is of course completely different as Pure Land is a part of Mah?y?na Buddhism and is thoroughly Buddhist in orientation. But it introduced a dilemma for me, as I found the figure of Amida more remote than well, the religious tradition I was brought up with. When we toured Europe in 2022 we saw a great deal of devotional and symbolic art and architecture, and I cant help but feel an affinity with it; I have Christian Platonist archetypes, although I dont know if Im ready for a return to the Church. (I do try from time to time.)
From time to time a visiting Pure Land minister from Canberra would come and give a talk, and I found his persona and teaching highly congenial. But I dont think Im really at home in that school.
Quoting Tom Storm
His 52 one-hour lectures do, however, define it with a pretty high degree of depth and precision.
That's interesting, thanks. I read the article; most of it felt familiar (the worldview part, for example, sounds straight out of phenomenological sociology - and then the name drop: Peter L. Berger, yep). I'll need to get to the videos, but it's a tad daunting. We'll see when I get to it.
From the article alone it sounds like "society will find a way," coupled with an awareness that academics participate in society.
Quoting Tom Storm
Heh, I'm certainly not worried about trying to understand others. It's assymetry inherent in simply not having a concept that's fundamental to others that worries me: trying to understand can easily go astray in the sense of "they believe this because" theories I might hold unconsciously. Things that sound ridiculous to me aren't ridiculous to others; but it's hard to cut out the ridicule, if you know what I mean. If it were just clear-cut this-is-nuts moments of breakdown, it would be easier to deal with. But it's more insidious.
I remember someone online saying something like "atheists often don't have no strong father figures". This happens to be true for me. My inner response to that was something like "so you folks want the universe to take care of you?" There's a sense of sparring, here, that overlays the understanding. I'm well aware that I can't overgeneralise like that, but there's this sense of condescension here that I have to be very vigilant against. (Does this make any sense?)
Not trying to understand others. Trying to understand where they are coming from. It's less ambitious.
Quoting Dawnstorm
We are all ridiculous to someone.
Quoting Dawnstorm
Yes, this kind of point-scoring is what happens when we bypass attempting to understand and simply project our values onto others.
Thank you for this. I believe many of us have had similar experiences and journeys. It points up something important -- the choice of a specific spiritual path may have less to do with an exclusive truth than with a constellation of images and associations that unlock the deepest parts of ourselves. And that will be different for everyone.
Just to be clear: I'm using "spiritual path" very broadly, but not so broadly as to include, say, ethnic cleansing. The word "spiritual" has to carry with it certain presumptions about values. But not necessarily about God or gods.
Is it not more like a one hour lecture repeated 52 times? I probably should have said nebulous. And perhaps I should have watched more than the 15 hours I've seen. It comes off as tendentious. But I'm sure that people who already share his values like it. I understand he is an atheist, is that right?
It seemed to me that he is saying we should trust our experiences of the numinous, not in that they give us any actual knowledge about anything, but in that they can be personally transformational, they can change the way we feel about life.
I quite liked his distinctions between kinds of knowledge, much along the lines of what I've been banging on about for years.
:up:
Quoting Janus
I suspect that this would appeal to some people, but many would struggle to make this work. If the numinous is not tied to the transcendent, but is essentially an emotional reaction, then I suppose it's tantamount to enjoying music or a painting. But at least with art, there is a tangible artifact that serves as the source of the experience. Bathing in one's subjective sense of the numinous might also be somewhat indulgent and narcissistic. You may be more receptive to this, how do you see it working?
Perhaps, but you could consider Schiller's view where the moral and appetitive are aligned in the aesthetic and our actions are over-determined in desire and duty. On the view, the aesthetic and "spiritual" is precisely what helps us overcome egoism.
A lot of new "spiritual but not religious" stuff strikes me as somewhat akin to Romantic philosophy in a lot of ways, with the stress of the numinous, the deeper nature beyond mechanism and disenchantment, etc. But like any good modern ethos, it also has to sell itself in disenchanted terms, hence the peer reviewed studies on the benefits of mindfulness and meditation, the economic indicators referenced in appeals to "cultural Christianity," and of course sticking within the limits of bourgeoisie metaphysics such that "everyone can be right" about their own experience and synchretism.
I get the appeal. What I find bizarre is some of the Christian alignment with this sort of thing (or Muslim, or Buddhist, although the last is less surprising because Western Buddhism is itself often already stripped down for contemporary audiences). From the standpoint of Christian doctrine, a Jungian analysis in of the Pentateuch that does not invoke the name of Christ and the revelation of Christ in Scripture, is perhaps interesting, but hardly helpful for the "Lost." Nor is "cultural Christianity" much of a step in the right direction. Far from it, it's to lean on the clay leg of human pride; if anything it is better that people be brought low that they might rise higher.
I think this is actually the sort of critique liberalism is easily aware of. It moves "too fast," and "change needs to be managed." You know, "the people aren't ready," or "the system isn't ready for advances in technology." And so there is self-reflection in liberal terms about the threat of expanding wealth inequality under AI, or cultural tensions derailing the benefits of replacement migration, etc.
What I think it tends to have myopia about is the way it does positively indoctrinate, it does punish people for slipping outside its value norms, it does push ideologies that actually challenge it out of the public sphere by force, and it does manage to enforce many of the same systems of oppression it claims to have dismantled, and in some cases manages to make them worse (e.g. the "exporting of misery" referenced earlier).
I think this tends to get missed precisely because liberalism is seen as "the natural place where you end up if you dismantle what was bad in the old world." It's worth noting though that monarchy and noble privileged was also once seen as "natural." It was the natural place you ended up if you advanced beyond mere anarchy. If liberalism is "natural" in this way, then the problems of liberalism are "natural" and endemic, not attributable to liberalism itself.
So, for example, people focus on the option of "escape valves" and "exiting the system." But it's worth pointing out that the Russian Tsars tolerated anarchist communes and fringe religious communities. There mere existence of toleration of some low levels of dissent, pushed to the borders, isn't good counter evidence to the totalitarian tendencies in modernity anymore than it was in imperial Russia.
That's not what I'm saying. My point is that liberalism is fundamentally driven by dissatisfaction, with an underlying tendency toward dismantling existing structures, seeking to overturn privilege. This forensic mode of deconstruction perhaps becomes so reflexive and self-perpetuating that it ultimately turns inward, subjecting liberalism itself to the same critical scrutiny it once directed outward, gradually hollowing out its own foundations in the process.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But is this correct? What is the contemporary evidence that the aesthetic and the spiritual overcome egoism?
You're absolutely right from the standpoint of Christian doctrine. But what about outside of doctrine; could cultural Christianity (the default setting of the West, we might say) still be useful? And isnt it also true that many people who think in terms of Christian doctrine and saving the lost can still be bigoted and even morally compromised? It seems like neither the secular nor the religious path is any guarantee of quality, right?
Yes - I don't think proponents of cultural Christianity ("Christianists," on one rendering), claim to be expounding Christian doctrine per se. There has been a pretty interesting discussion of this topic since Paul Kingsnorth's lecture, "Against Christian Civilization" (paper version).
I don't see the numinous as excluding the darkness and the suffering and the tragedy of living and dying. It doesn't overcome the mystery, and it has nothing to do with the transcendent. We are cast upon the shores of life like flotsam. The shores of life, the shores of death, they are the same shores. The ocean out of which we came is right there, but we don't know its depths. What is there, which we can only superficially understand, is irrelevant to the numinous dimension of living and to the mystery of dying.
How could the numinous be "tied to the transcendent' when the transcendent can be nothing to us? The meaning of our lives is found in feeling, not in thinking. How could anything be meaningful except insofar as it feels meaningful? We are washed up on the shores of life and death with nothing to lose. We learn to gain and then we find ourselves having something to lose. So we begin to dream of salvation, of liberation. We think they must be transcendent, but how can there be liberation of salvation in nothing?
Salvation, liberation, freedom are dreams of perfection. This world is not perfect, so they cannot be found here we think. So, in the face of the nothing which is the transcendental we look back to ancient wisdom, imagining that something has been lostthere was a Golden Age, an age of Perfect Intellect, of perfectible thought and understanding. This is pure fantasy. Even for the elites there was no such thingthey were condemned to live and die just like the masses.
We think that there is a darkness in modernity. Well, of course there isthere is a darkness in everything. Without the darkness there would be no light. The only salvation, liberation, freedom is to be found in acceptance of our condition. We cannot be free of suffering, but we can be free of the attachment to our suffering in acceptance of it.
This is a disposition, and dispositions are matters of feeling not of thinking. Or at least they are not matters of Pure Thoughtwe must think with our feelings and feel with our thoughts. It is that immanence, that acceptance of absolute mystery, and the embracing of limitation. Which is the numinous. There is a reason that the greatest beauty in literature and the other arts is to be found in tragedy.
It is not merely "bathing in one's sense of the numinous"we are always already drowning in it. It is the vacuous distractions afforded by dreams of transcendence that leave us blind to the terrible. the beautiful, truth of our most intimate companionthe numinous.
Good to know. I don't think I have a sense of the numinous, so I can only go with what I hear from others. My experince of this word is mainly confined to New Age groups I was a member of decades ago and Christianity - which I grew up in. I also studied Jung at university in the 1980's and I have a range of vestigial traces of that frame in my head whenever I hear this word "numinous"
Quoting Janus
I'm not particularly partial to the light-and-dark dichotomy. I tend to see everything as shades of grey. But, I understand the symbolism.
.
Quoting Janus
Yes, we seem particularly keen on golden era nostalgia, don't we?
Some points that struck me: the sense of 'loosing oneself' or loosing one's identity - self abnegation as the opposite of any kind of self-indulgence. Falling into a state of rapture and wonder at the order of the Cosmos'. The 'shutting out' of the 'objective'.
Bucke records that C.M.C's sister also wrote to him:
This leaves me wondering what the numinous, which you apparently don't find yourself having a sense of. means to you. It must mean something, have some associations, or you would not be able to say that you don't think you have a sense of it. You would instead say that you don't even know what the word 'numinous' means. (Funnily when I thought I had written the word 'numinous' I had hit the 'h' at the beginning of the word instead of the 'n' and the spell prompt suggested 'humongous'). Do you have a sense of the humongous?
For years, also decades ago, I was a member of the Gurdjieff Foundation. Perhaps back then I associated the word numinous with the Mysteries, with the fantasy that we can come to know the Ultimate Truth, that anyone could come to know such a thing. that there could be, that there are those who Know.
Now I simply associate the word with the very real fact that, although we may know many facts about the world, the existence of the world and of ourselves is nonetheless absolutely mysterious. That the only absolute truth to be known is that there are questions that can never be answered. That the only possible liberation is to accept this fundamental ignorance down to the very depths of ourselves. I think this is a truth which is hard to deny.
Quoting Tom Storm
You don't see the light and the dark sides of life? That leaves me wondering how you enjoy the arts and literature. What about nature? It is overwhelmingly beautiful, isn't it? But also overwhelmingly violent, and ultimately dangerous? For me to see only shades of grey would be to be distracted from these realities.
Quoting Tom Storm
We do. And for me it is like the difference between reading escapist works of fantasy and works that reflect the realities of human life. (Of course, not all works of fantasy do not reflect the realities of human lifethey might instead be allegorical, so I have in mind here the most puerile works).
As with anything it's a matter of degreethese kinds of experiences are on a spectrum of intensity, and of subtlety and nuance. The other point is that attachment to ego i also seems obviously to be on a spectrum within the human raceand I think it's fairly reasonable to think that the less attached to ego one is, the more relaxed, and the more relaxed the more open to just these kinds of feelings.
Peace, brother... :wink:
Sounds like Leibniz or Spinoza too. Or maybe Malebranch, or Hegels absolute, or Berkley. Or Aristotles prime mover, or the Platonic good or Plotinus the One.
Personally I find most philosophers conceptions of God are hollow shells that barely outline any type of entity; or they are anthropomorphic wishful thinking, slapping a face and personality on something that did not ask for it, like being or the one or necessity.
My sense is, if its a question of God, it is a question of personhood, as there is no larger more encompassing thing in the universe besides the person (as far as as I have experienced thus far). The person contains all else in his ability to know. Therefore, for me, anything I might find that I would call God has to be able to talk with me in order for me to know it as God. Otherwise it might be just thunder, or the ground of being, or something else I could make lower than a person.
And if we seek God in the empirical reality of other persons, then it becomes a question of truth and love. These are where I find God - in another persons truthful testimony of what they love. God emerges there.
Whenever you find God, you find God was already there. But you also find something new you didnt expect as well. With God, there is always more than you expected.
The mystical traditions are better at speaking this way without sounding religious, but they dont sound scientific either.
Quoting Tom Storm
Meister Eckhart prayed to God to be rid of God. Looking at several of the posts here, I see little evidence of being rid of God. Even Nietzsche was full of God in his busy explicit mocking denials. So forget about God, the tiresome concept filled with the long history of busy imaginations, even sincere thinkers like Augustine, and ask, what is the world such that God ever came into conversation at all? Thereby reducing God to its essential elements that cannot be gainsaid. God is a metaphysical concept, so the matter turns to this metaphysics, and since the idea is to "start anew" from a position of radical ignorance (putting aside all the theology and excesses of thinking of God as Eckhart would have us do), what is there in the world that makes metaphysics a meaningful term, and one that responds to a finite deficit that insists on being filled? Insists not as a thesis wanting speculative closure, but an existential (referring simply to our existence) closure.
No. And yes. What do you mean by anxiety? See, this is where things go stupidly fuzzy. And if one is dead set on not reading anything written in Germany or France during the early to mid twentieth century, things will stay that way.
What makes you think fuzzy is a bad place? I don't read much philosophy, regardless of the country. But if you're advocating for continental philsophy over analytic, sure. I have no issues with this.
Not to be a nooge, but how do you know if you have issues or not with continental philosophy if you "don't read much philosophy"?
I'm not a philosopher, and I don't have anxieties or burning questions about truth or reality. Metaphysics doesn't particularly capture my imagination. I'm content. I've read enough (and about) Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, not to mention some Evan Thompson and Dan Zahavi, to have a sense of the discourse. But I'm mainly here to understand what others believe and why. Hence my interest in more sophisticated accounts of theism.
The more sophisticated accounts of theism ask questions that have nothing to do with theism. Here is a question I think is foundational for religion: Why are we born to suffer and die? Not meant to be an analytic challenge, but an existential one. One pulls away from theology and philosophy altogether, and asks from a radically simple mentality, "to begin in absolute poverty, with an absolute lack of knowledge" as Husserl put it.
God-like powers without personhood*1 is what we call Nature, Universe, Cosmos . Traditional polytheistic notions of gods --- (Zeus {weather} ; Ceres {grain} ; Persephone {seasons} ; Bacchus {wine, orchards} --- gave unique personalities to sub-components of Nature-in-general. Viewed as the impersonal physical universe though, Nature doesn't do anything in particular, but everything in general. So, it's the specialized aspects of Nature that seem more personal and intentional : as when lightening strikes your house.
That may be why the image of a mercurial divine king on a heavenly throne makes more sense to common people than the timeless-spaceless-personless notion of strict Monotheism, and the abstract everything everywhere concept of Cosmos*2. But for rational philosophers, a broader non-specific definition may seem more plausible. That's why I think A.N. Whitehead's PanEnDeistic God may be an appropriate update of Plato's universal Cosmos*3. :smile:
*1. Five requirements for Personhood :
Next, The Cognitive Criteria of Personhood was created by Mary Anne Warren in 1973, where she lists the five requirements for a person to exist. The criteria includes consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, ability to communicate and self-awareness.
https://www.focusonthefamily.com/pro-life/personhood-explained/
*2. Cosmos :
Ancient Greek: ??????, romanized: kósmos) is an alternative name for the universe or its nature or order. Usage of the word cosmos implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos
Note --- Plato described the creation of our world allegorically, as the emergence of a pocket of organized space-time-energy-law (cosmos) within a larger expanse of random-but-potential nothingness (chaos). This was a functional, instead of personal, kind of Creator. As a logic-worshiping philosopher, Plato may have preferred that simple rational abstract practical definition over the crazy quarrelsome pantheon of Greek gods.
*3. Whitehead's God :
Although he uses a theistic term for the creator of our evolving world, I think his concept of God is not religious, but philosophical. Whiteheads associate Charles Hartshorne? labeled his theology as : PanEnDeism?. This deity is not imagined on a throne judging the creation, but everywhere, including in the material world, participating in the on-going process of Creation.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page46.html
Whitehead's God is not omnipotent (other entities have their own inherent power and independence).
Whitehead's God is not omniscient (the future is open and undetermined).
Whiteheads God is omnipresent (immanent within nature).
Many describe Whiteheads conception as panentheism (God is both completely immanent within the world and also transcendent of the world in certain respects)..
For Whitehead God works through the process of nature not by supernatural means (this is not supernatural theism).
For Whitehead (and Hartshorne for that matter) God has both a primordial (unchanging nature) and a consequential (taking in and responding to the events of the world). This vision of God is referred to bipolar.
God is the fellow traveler and sufferer of the world. God is persuasive and not coercive. God offers possibilities for creative advance but does not force outcomes. God is the poet of the world.
I personally like Whiteheads conception but no linguistic or verbal description can adequately capture the God.
My position hasnt been laid out so far as I can see in the thread. Although the apophatic approach has been mentioned in passing. But philosophers dont seem to be all that interested in this sort of position.
The first point I would make is that we dont know, but not just that we dont know, but how could we know? and if we did know, what would we know? Because it may be something that we are incapable of knowing, or understanding. There may not be anything to know and if there is why would it necessarily conform with what we regard as rational, or plausible.
Furthermore, we are sort of assuming that we are in a world that makes rational, or logical sense. Follows the laws of nature for example. How do we know this? When it comes to what it is thats going on in which we find ourselves here in this world we inhabit. Or that anything to do with our origins does too.
I could go on and in greater depth, but you probably know now where Im coming from.
Another approach is to realise that all this talk in this thread is just chitta chatta in our heads. A discourse framed and hosted by a certain kind of organism which has developed an organ (the brain) which works quite well in solving problems to do with survival of the organism. We are rather like(an analogy I like to use) an ant walking across a mobile phone that happens to be placed across his trail. The ant has no idea what he is walking across, other than its shape and surface texture. It certainly has no idea, if it is even capable of having ideas, what that phone represents in terms of the evolution of animate objects.
And yet, a bold ant might stand there and claim I am the pinnacle of evolution, I know everything about how the world works. Speaking in ant of course and confined within the limits of that language.
Are we like this ant, who just happens to be standing on a mobile phone? Proclaiming in our own little language that we understand everything, how we got here, why we are here etc etc.
Perhaps the best thing we can say about God, or referring to God, is the one about which nothing can be said.
I personally don't know that the world makes sense, but I accept that humans have some pragmatic relationship that allows us to get certain things done.
Quoting Punshhh
A nice image.
Quoting Punshhh
Are there many serious people who would make such a claim? The main conceit of science seems to be the idea that the world is understandable, which is a metaphysical position.
Quoting Punshhh
A legitimate answer. But given what you've said about our ant-like limitations, one could also argue (using this frame) that God is our own creation; a comforting teddy bear to help us face the unknown.
One of my favorite books by Tillich is Dynamics of Faith which is a really good read and not too long, he writes:
"The mysterious character of the holy produces an ambiguity in mans ways of experiencing it. The holy can appear as creative and as destructive...One can call this ambiguity divine-demonic, whereby the divine is characterized by the victory of the creative over the destructive possibility of the holy, and the demonic is characterized by the victory of the destructive over the creative possibility of the holy."
A couple of crucial things here that make the picture a bit more complex than saying God is just being itself. First of all, Tillich is situating the divine / God within a broader category that he calls "the Holy". He is drawing here on ideas from the book, The Idea of the Holy, by Rudolf Otto. The category of the Holy, might in our contemporary language be better translated as "sacredness" or "numinosity". We could think of it as a phenomenological dimension of Transcendence-Immanence.
What I like about the passage above is Tillich's insistence that The Holy does not only contain what we think of as God or the divine, but also what we think of as the demonic or supermundane Evil. Religious faith, in Tillich's view, is not so much a belief in some specific story about God, such as the Bible or the Bhagavad Gita but rather the common attitude that is found in all such sacred narratives about the divine. Namely, that despite the dual divine-demonic nature of the dimension of Transcendence-Imminence, there is nevertheless a deeper truth, or ultimate metaphysical priority in the positive life-affirming side of this duality.
This conception of religious faith, gives us a philosophy of religion, and a philosophy of the nature of God, that is more attuned to the experiences of mystics and prophets, rather than the belief systems of the average religious person. We should remember that almost all religions claim to be based in the revelations provided by God to some mystic or prophet. So even if the attitude towards God and faith that Tillich is describing is one shared by a comparative minority of religious believers, it is nevertheless at the root of the nature of religion itself. So I think from a philosophical point of view it is crucial to try to understand this.
Most men want something greater than themselves to look up to and worship.
But they must be able to touch the divine here on earth
They have found nothing to replace religion
Hence the relics, the sacred spaces, the rituals, sacred paintings and music.
A god that is beyond comprehension, beyond knowing, beyond words or thought is also beyond worship except for philosophers and mystics, a very distinct minority.
Yes, somethings dont make sense, although most things do. We know that the sun will rise tomorrow and that when we sit down to lunch, we will eat it rather than it eat us. But when it comes to discussing things beyond the world we know, we cant make these assumptions. This limits what we can say considerably.
Well there probably arent many people who overtly make such a claim and philosophers are quite open minded about this. But there is an implicit assumption in human nature that the world we know and those who have investigated and thought about it in depth are right. This also manifests in a deeper way, in that we are blind to the other, the other that is beyond our known world. This is understandable, as this is all we know, but it puts us in the position where we have to account for any implicit bias that this leaves us with.
Yes, I was coming to that, God is entirely our own invention*, but actually this doesnt bring us any closer to an understanding. Because God is used in our culture to discuss, or provide explanation of our origin. So the question remains. By what means did we arrive in this world we find ourselves in?
Perhaps one could dismiss the whole question as pointless, because the answer could be anything, just take your pick. It could be the Flying Spaghetti Monster who delivered us. Or a big bang, or something mundane and inconceivable to us. We are just here, rather than not here. But this brings me back to the issue I brought up. We really dont know and yet there could well be some kind of agency, or being responsible for our arrival. Or there really might not be. Both possibilities result in really deep questions about what is really going on here. Questions that put everything we know aside and leave us profoundly blind to reality, the reality of this issue.
*I am well aware of people who have been contacted, or communed in some way with God, or divine beings. So they perhaps have a claim to some knowledge of God. But I am putting this to one side for now, as it may become a distraction from my point.
Unlike Spinoza, Whitehead concluded that some Cause outside of our evolving spacetime Cosmos was necessary for a complete philosophical worldview. Surprisingly, he came to that conclusion before astronomers found evidence of an ex nihilo beginning to spacetime reality. Likewise, eons ago, Plato rationally inferred that a creation myth (Cosmos from Chaos) was necessary for his philosophical system, that ranked static*1 unchanging eternity above the dynamic ups & downs of mundane reality. Yet, all of these fleshless intellectual god-models may still not appeal to the non-philosophical mind.
So, Whitehead may have felt that some human-like attributes (personhood) would make his god-model more acceptable : "fellow traveler", "sufferer" , "persuasive", "poet", etc. Although I agree that such personal features make the invisible intangible deity more accessible to the imagination, I still find it hard to picture his otherwise ghostly God as an allegorical father in heaven. In any case, an immanent participating deity feels better than a theological formless featureless apophatic*2 God that can only be described in terms of what it's not (e.g. Infinite : no spacetime definition). However, I don't take any of these metaphors literally.
Hard-core Materialists can't accept the notion of ex nihilo (something from nothing) world creation , so they envision a tower-of-turtles reality, where one evolving world stands on the back of another material world. But my worldview is based on causal Information, not malleable matter. So, I can accept Plato's notion of a formless, self-existent, ineffable, First Cause or omni-potential Chaos*1. That's closer to a mathematical concept than a material myth. :smile:
*1. What is the fundamental state of Statistics?
Statistics and spacetime, while seemingly disparate, have a surprisingly intricate relationship in modern physics. Statistics, in its core, deals with the probability distribution of data, while spacetime, as described by general relativity, is a dynamical, curved 4-dimensional structure where gravity is a manifestation of spacetime curvature. The intersection arises in the realm of quantum gravity and the statistical nature of spacetime itself, particularly in models involving quantum black holes.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=statistics+vs+spacetime
Note --- Most practicing statisticians think of their field only in terms of given data. But theoretically, the unspecified state of mathematical potential, containing all possible data, is necessarily infinite & unbounded. Plato's Chaos is essentially a Statistical black hole containing infinite possibilites.
*2. Apophatic theology :
Augustinian Negative theology, attempts to understand God by stating what He is not rather than what He is. It's a theological approach that acknowledges the limitations of human language and reason in fully grasping the divine nature. The point of apophatic theology is to move beyond conceptual understanding and towards a more mystical or intuitive experience of God, recognizing that true understanding is often found in what cannot be expressed.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=apophatic
Note --- As you said, "no linguistic or verbal description" can adequately define a transcendent God.
The world as it appears to us is obviously understandable. That is not so much a conceit of science as a fact of human life and science. When it comes to the understanding of the world based on observations in physics and chemistry (and forgetting about unanswerable questions such as, for example, why the elements combine invariantly in the ways they do as formulated as the Periodic Table) does it really seem plausible that all that could somehow turn out to be wrong?
Scientific theories may turn out to be wrong, but observations? Take evolution?it seems unarguable that evolution has occurred, so it would seem that what might be revisable are only the particular details?descriptions and explanations of the processes of evolution.
People often say that the history of science shows that all our current scientific theories will most likely turn out to be wrong. Counter to that, it is a well-accepted fact that past events are not a good guide to future events, from which it follows that that is an underdetermined conjecture.
I wonder whether anyone can come up with a good example of a past understanding which has been completely overturned. The idea of a flat earth that is the centre of the cosmos would seem to be the paradigm example, but that view was based on inadequate capacity for observation, and was later corrected by more sophisticated observations, which were themselves enabled by technological advances based on science.
Well, I dont understand it, so theres that. :razz: Logical fallacies aside, I suppose my intuition is that we understand some things. Weve learned to make things work; weve developed remarkably effective models, tools, and narratives to account for what we observe. But does that amount to genuine understanding?
Quoting Janus
I hear you. There are still many unanswered questions that Im unsure how certain we can really be about what we call scientific knowledge. We dont know precisely what consciousness is, why there is something rather than nothing, or what the ultimate nature of reality is. We also dont fully understand how life first began, or what dark matter and dark energy actually are. Science has achieved a lot, but it still leaves many of the deepest questions unresolved. That makes me cautious about treating scientific knowledge as the final word on reality.
When we say that the world is understandable, we should ask what kind of understanding we mean. Predictive success in mathematics and the physical sciences is impressive, but is it sufficient? Does it capture the essence of reality, or merely model some patterns?
We claim to understand the physical world, yet it's unclear whether we truly grasp the nature of physicalism itself. The concept is often assumed rather than examined. Likewise, our self-understanding seems limited. We remain confused about consciousness, morality, even how meaning works. These sorts of quesions seem central to any claim of understanding reality.
I'm making a modest claim that events make sense to us?that they are intelligible within the general frame of causation. What more could we expect? The question as to why things are the way they appear seems to be either a scientific question to be investigated under the scientific rubric of causes and conditions or else unanswerable, unless you count flights of imaginative intuition answers. And even in the latter case such answers can be in turn questioned as to why the conditions they paint are the way they are.
Quoting Tom Storm
I think there are far more answered questions in science than unanswered ones. And expecting science to answer "ultimate" questions seems to be unreasonable. There are no definitive answers to such questions, and it even appears likely that there could be no definitive answers to such questions. Maybe such questions are the result of "language on holiday".
As to so-called "dark matter" and "dark energy" science may be able to say what they are at some time in the future, who knows? Or the theoretical need for them may be dissolved.
Science would seem to be the only game in town when it comes to understanding how things work. "The final word on reality" may simply be a malformed, misplaced idea.
*if one collapses time and space, they literally are sitting by our side, or in the same point as ourselves.
Yes, and I think science's inability to answer these will have many of us reaching for our gods and our Platonic forms until the end of time... (or thereabouts).
Quoting Punshhh
I think much of this comes down to temperament. I've never really found myself wondering why there is something rather than nothing, or even why were here. To me, those questions feel like they are from the land of cliché. Its not that I have any answers. Its just that the questions themselves have never struck me as urgent or necessary. I'm not sure what you mean by 'ascended beings', they're not part of the framework I know.
In the quote I gave from Tillich he doesn't say anything about God being beyond comprehension or beyond knowing. And if you read the larger context of that quote in the book, you won't find much of that type of apophatic theology. I'm not saying he doesn't make gestures in that direction, but I guess I'm trying to say that there is a more concrete and experientially grounded side to Tillich's philosophy.
In other words, there is a positive phenomenology to the experience of the divine, as well as the demonic within the larger phenomenology of the Holy. There is a stark philosophical difference between this perspective, which we might call a theology of the numinous, and the apophatic theology which says God is fundamentally beyond any direct experience or intellectual understanding.
When it comes to worship, by grounding theology in the Holy, there is also a basis for understanding worship and ritual as outward or material expression of the experience of the Holy. In the same way that a physical painting is an outer expression of the artist's aesthetic vision or sensibility or style, the religious worship service is a outer expression of historical encounter with the divine in the the Holy. It may be true that the average participant in the religion doesn't have an intense direct experience on par with the mystic or the prophet, but they can still participate in the sacred encounter indirectly via the outer ritual and worship practices.
Yes, I agree. It depends on the person, although I would point out that we are on a site frequented by deep thinkers, who often look into these issues, although more in the direction of metaphysics.
Au contraire, I am very much interested in these things. Although annoyingly people say things like why do you have to ask these questions, is there something missing in your life. Or something to that effect.
I very rarely meet anyone who is actually prepared to give it some thought.
Actually, I know no more than you, which is the logical conclusion of my position. But this is not to negate the role of the apophatic route, or the realisation that if one were to know, nothing would change. So what is the difference between one, who does know and one who doesnt? A bit of a zen posture. I can say more than one might expect about the subject from this position.
I reference this as all the major religions have such beings and infer that you personally can become one of these beings by practicing the religion. It would be remiss of me to leave them out.
Very nice writing, I don't disagree really. I have no problem with the mystics or the philosopher's, just acknowledging that if there is a God, it can not be captured by language or description only by experience of as the holy, the sacred, the numinous. Rituals and religious practices are experiences which are supposed to bring us closer to the sacred.
At lot of religious philosophy which requires trying to develop language to discuss such matters focuses on the nature of god and gods relationship to the world.
immanence vs transcendence
omnipotence which raises problems with presence of evil
omniscience which raises problems with free will and agency
omnipresence is the spiritual world separate from the material world or is this world infused with spirit
A lot of traditional theology portrays God as eternal changeless, immutable, impassive, perfection
How does such a God relate to a changing world and human concerns.
God is often portrayed in anthropomorphic terms. the ultimate being the assertion of Jesus as God in the flesh. "If horses had a religion, god would be a horse"
I am not sure how Tillich addresses these types of questions especially as a Christian.
The reason I like Whitehead and the process theology approach in general is because these questions are addressed, albeit not in the traditional way.
For Whitehead, God's primary nature is creativity, experience.
Most process theologians see God as the ordering, creative principal in the world.
Nature, the universe is infused with the creative animating spirit (as with many native religions).
The general term is panentheism ( the world is in God, but God is more than just the world) giving both immanence and transcendence.
Creation is not ex nihilo but God imposes order on the formless void, the deep, the primordial chaos.
Creation is not an accomplished feat but an ongoing process. Creation is hard work and is accomplished through nature and natural process not by supernatural intervention.
God does have a primordial changeless nature (think Plato's forms or Whiteheads eternal objects) but also has a consequential nature which takes in and responds to the activity of the world.
The dipolar conception of the divine essence.
Whitehead tries to use language to describe the divine nature but such terms are metaphorical or allegorical not literal descriptions.
I think Victor Frankel is right, man seeks meaning and purpose. Some find it in other pursuits but many find it in religion. I personally have a religious inclination but the traditional theologies are just not compatible with the rest of my understanding about how the world works.
The earth is not the center of the universe, Man is not the crown of creation. God apparently has many concerns and purposes other than human happiness or salvation. Whitehead says "God is not a petty moralist".
Unfortunately our traditional religions and many of their doctrines give the individuals familiar with science cognitive dissonance. Adherence to traditional religion is weakening in all the countries with advanced systems of technology and education. If religion (which I think is useful, even necessary to some extent) wishes to survive it needs to change and adapt to our modern worldview and understanding. In that respect I find process theology a promising approach for discussion.
.
.
What do you think is the best reason for trying to understand this?
Quoting prothero
I think it's fair to say that humans are sense-making creatures, we interpret everything we see, often incorrectly or through a messy web of interwoven preconceptions and biases. But the fact that we seek meaning and purpose doesn't necessarily indicate that we're on the right track, or that this is even what we ought to be doing. Possibly not needing to make sense of things may be a more sophisticated impulse.
It has often struck me that a tendency toward spirituality or theism is more like a preference, you either have it or you dont, a bit like a sexual orientation. You can't help what you're drawn to. The theist is pulled toward the idea of God; the atheist sees no explanatory power or use for it. The more sophisticated the individual, the more sophisticated their theology or their atheism.
That is where I find myself. I have a strong background in science and biology. I know about cosmologic time frames, mass extinctions, global catastrophes, famine, pestilence, disease, the holocaust etc. I still cannot bring myself to believe it is all an accidental, purposeless, mindless creation the result of mere time and chance. I think there is something larger at work although traditional religion does not seem to provide an answer for me but certain philosophical conceptions do seem attractive to me.
This post seems to highlight the various ways of "understanding" the world : a> Science, in terms of objective matter, and b> Theology, in terms of unknowable divinity, and c> Secular Philosophy, in terms of direct human experience. Science has a Blind Spot*1 in that it knows the world by means of Mind, but cannot know the subjective tool objectively. That limitation of objectivity may be why ancient Philosophy began to turn the rational microscope toward the viewer : a crude "selfie" so to speak*2. Later, Medieval Theology*3 began to use philosophical methods to look behind the Self, in order to know the Mind of God.
But eventually, that attempt at double introspection became so effete that it's theories were comprehensible only by faith. So, the Enlightenment rebellion banned subjective Faith in favor of supposedly objective Empiricism. Yet, when hard evidence for mental phenomena (direct experience) proved unobtainable and indescribable in material terms, Modern Philosophy began to again use self-aware Reason to rationalize itself.
Unfortunately, as Hume noted, Reason can be the slave of the passions. Which is why Philosophical understanding requires a dispassionate perspective --- allowing mind to rise above body --- and a language based, as far as possible, on first principles instead of blind faith & selfish desires. Such self-knowledge & self-discipline may not amount to genuine or divine understanding, but it should make the material & mental world more understandable to our subjective experience. First know thyself, then put God under the microscope of reason. :smile:
*1. Blind Spot of Science :
[i]But this image of science is deeply flawed. In our urge for knowledge and control, weve created avision of science as a series of discoveries about how reality is in itself, a Gods-eye view of nature.
Such an approach not only distorts the truth, but creates a false sense of distance between ourselves and the world. That divide arises from what we call the Blind Spot, which science itself cannot see. In the Blind Spot sits experience : the sheer presence and immediacy of lived perception[/i]
https://aeon.co/essays/the-blind-spot-of-science-is-the-neglect-of-lived-experience
*2. Plato's psychology, particularly his Theory of the Soul, explored the nature of the human mind and its relationship to the body. He proposed a tripartite model of the soul, dividing it into reason (logistikon), spirit (thymoeides), and appetite (epithymetikon), which represent different aspects of human nature and often conflict with each other. Plato believed that a harmonious society and individual life required reason to rule over spirit and appetite.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=plato+psychology
*3. Nick Spenser, theologian :
this essay, once it has done some necessary explanation, looks instead at one particular aspect of quantum theory, on which Ball touches frequently, and which I think is of real interest and relevance to theology: namely the business of using language to describe things that cant really be described.
https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2018/09/14/quantum-theology
I think a lot of people share this intuition. I personally dont and I dont encounter any transcendent meaning in life or the universe as I understand it. What I do see is humans telling stories - stories that offer solace, meaning, and guidance for how to live.
To me, the idea that life is accidental or mindless isnt necessary either. It doesnt have to be a choice between God and Meaninglessness or theism versus nihilism. Theres perhaps a middle ground: a world where meaning is made, not given.
Yes, I think thats a fairly well-worn framework. The contrast, if not a kind of competition, between a hoary enchanted world and the Enlightenment is currently in vogue, and even a cursory glance at popular podcasts and books reveals a widespread appetite for anti-modernism in various forms, from Jordan Peterson to John Vervaeke.
Definitely, people can create their own meaning in their work, their relationships trying to make the world a better place or to contribute something lasting art, literature, music, etc. It is just that although the religious impulse is not universal, it is still strong, and religion still plays a major role in peoples lives and thus in politics and society. Eradicating religion does not seem possible, hard to think of a culture without some form of religion, so encouraging better forms of religion seems a worthwhile endeavor.
It is hard to understand western history, music, art, literature or architecture without understanding the religious impulse that lay behind much of it. Likewise for other cultures. So being familiar with the worlds religions is essential to understanding the societies we live in.
True. But equally, it's hard to understand Western history, music, art, and architecture without understanding slavery, autocracy, colonization, religious violence, patriarchy, and economic exploitation. The historic underpinnings of our culture don't have to be virtuous to be of significance. But I agree with you that comparative religion (that antediluvian term) is a vital part of anyone's education. :up:
An unknowable divinity would seem to be useless to us. I don't believe religious folk are looking for an unknowable divinity?that would indeed be a performative contradiction. It seems to me the only place God is to be found is within. What 'God' means in this context is totally ambiguous?it depends on the person as to what 'God' means to them.
I find this passage from the introduction to Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology Volume 1 quite apt:
[i]Attempts to elaborate a theology as an empirical-inductive or a meta physical deductive "science," or as a combination of both, have given ample evidence that no such an attempt can succeed. In every assumedly scientific theology there is a point where individual experience, traditional valuation, and personal commitment must decide the issue.
This point, often hidden to the authors of such theologies, is obvious to those who look at them with other experiences and other commitments. If an inductive approach is employed, one must ask in what direction the writer looks for his material. And if the answer is that he looks in every direction and toward every experience, one must ask what characteristic of reality or experience is the empirical basis of his theology. Whatever the answer may be, an a priori of experience and valuation is implied.
The same is true of a deductive approach, as developed in classical idealism. The ultimate principles in idealist theology are rational expressions of an ultimate concern; like all metaphysical ultimates, they are religious ultimates at the same time. A theology derived from them is determined
by the hidden theology implied in them. In both the empirical and the metaphysical approaches, as well as in the much more numerous cases of their mixture, it can be observed that the a priori which directs the induction and the deduction is a type of mystical experience. Whether it is "being-itself" (Scholastics) or the "universal substance" (Spinoza), whether it is "beyond subjectivity and objectivity" (James) or the "identity of spirit and nature" (Schelling), whether it is "universe" (Schleiermacher) or "cosmic whole" (Hocking), whether it is "value creating process" (Whitehead) or "progressive integration" (Wieman), whether it is "absolute spirit" (Hegel) or "cosmic person" (Brightman)-each of these concepts is based on an immediate experience of something ultimate in value and being of which one can become intuitively aware.
Idealism and naturalism differ very little in their starting point when they develop theological concepts. Both are dependent on a point of identity between the experiencing subject and the ultimate which appears in religious experience or in the experience of the world as "religious." The theological concepts of both idealists and naturalists are rooted in a "mystical a priori," an awareness of something that transcends the cleavage between subject and object. And if in the course of a "scientific" procedure this a priori is discovered, its discovery is possible only because it was present from the very beginning.
This is the circle which no religious philosopher can escape. And it is by no means a vicious one. Every understanding of spiritual things (Geisteswissenschaft) is circular.[/i]
It does seem odd that a god understood as a nonspecific intuition, let's say, could be presented as a meaningful relationship with the divine/ultimate concern. By definition, there is no relationship. I'd be interested in seeing someone try to crystallize what this looks like in practice. Whenever I read Tillich or others, the reasoning seems diffuse and it's difficult for me to get any traction on it.
I read The Courage to Be about 40 years ago and i remember getting something out of it. As you probably know I am an atheist (in the soft sense of lacking belief in God as traditionally understood; i.e. the 3 Omni divinity). Anyway with all the theological discussion lately I thought I'd return to Tillich to see if I can glean any new understanding.
I'm just beginning on the project, so I can't say anything much as yet, except to say that it seems Tillich thinks of God as being inextricably bound up with mystical and religious human experience. I'm not sure if he thinks any definitive claim about the nature of God can be justified on the basis of human reports of religious and mystical experiences. I mean how would we know whether it was not rather an aspect of the nature of the human that is being revealed in such experiences?
I would say that is true in the east as well, so it is hard to understand humanity absent God.
The way I see it, my contradictory individual existence is as improbable as Gods.
I also see that my existence brings with it, Gods existence.
God wasnt a construction that came after man; God and man have been connected from the very start.
Separately from all of that, we dont belong simply to this life. Life needs no words or knowledge. This life needs nothing of this conversation, yet this conversation has dominated our lives since the dawn of human history.
We live in some other world than the earth lives in.
We are absurd, thinking, as if we could sit apart from the world, maintain our dignified intellects and yet reconnect with the world through our knowledge, as if we are high king and ruler and judge of all the physical universe and all of its wisdom - and then, as rational knowers of things, we think we could know God.
Its all so implausible. We cut ourselves off from things in order to say I over here know that thing over there that I just cut myself off of. What was once intimately unified, I divide in order to say how I know it intimately. Absurd.
Yet, because of that absurdity, God becoming a man to tell us how to deal with this, and dying on a cross to save us - because that story cannot possibly make sense, it makes sense to me that such would be God in this universe of absurdities and impossibilities. So I am Catholic. It makes sense that we would have to eat Gods flesh if we are to live with God in spirit, eternally, despite our own deaths. It makes sense that God, like gravity and energy, makes no sense and is ultimately indescribable, as he is unavoidable.
We cannot see God unless and until he reveals himself, but at the same time, if we really look at ourselves and our world, God begins to appear as if he was always everywhere. In every human history and every thunderstorm and supernova.
And what about love? Absurd.
Love, that all consuming limitless source of action among humans; we kill for love, we die for love; we want to preserve those we love, and yet we want to consume and possess those we love. Love makes no sense, yet it is the source of greatest meaning for us. Love is desire and ecstatic fulfillment at once, and maybe never . This is where to seek God. In the love you have for another.
Quoting Tom Storm
This middle ground is something I dont fully agree with, or maybe never understood. It seems to me that meaning has to involve participation in something shared with at least one other person, and if you are alone on an island, than shared at least with God. If I make my meaning all by myself, and no one agrees or shares my meaning, I, personally, would not find this meaningful to me, and cannot see how this could be meaningful for anyone. Without God and everyone I know, my meaning seems never to come to be.
I was not always a believer in God. But when I thought there was no God, I thought everything I said and all that everyone ever said, and so all that could be thought, was like everything else - a whisper that remains ultimately unheard, misunderstood, empty, and as meaningful as the difference between two grains of sand. If the ultimate answer to the question who cares? is only me, and I know that I am going to die, than my care is not meaning, it is simply another meaningless moment.
We can make meaning for ourselves - live a meaningful life anyway, despite our utter isolation from true understanding of things and other people. But we can also mean nothing just as well. And so, since meaning and no-meaning must be equal options, I just cannot bring myself to call either meaningful. Nietzsche was just wrong. Life as art is still pointless and unfulfilling. Meaning becomes another lie to justify some lonely need to tell lies. This isnt meaningful.
Regardless, it is just as arbitrary to believe in God, as it is to see the human condition as the experience of meaninglessness. It is even more arbitrary perhaps to believe in Jesus or Allah or Vishnu or Yaweh. I do agree that having faith is receiving a gift.
Words alone do not convince one to believe. The right words at the right time from the right source - maybe then one opens the gift of faith and finally finds God. Something like that is what happened to me.
I also believe many atheists have more faith than they like to admit (or else they would not speak of God at all). Just as most theists have more doubt than they like to admit.
We will never evolve past discussions of God and religion. There has been relatively zero progress in human history since before we wrote our thoughts down. Thousands of years with the same awe in the face of the abyss between us and the world. Thought itself, self-relfection, was the biggest progression so far. Maybe next was our word for God. And the word for is. The apes do not have God, nor do they say is or I am. We are no longer only like the apes. We are also like God. God is that who is always further in front of us, towards whom we are striving to become, never just behind us. But God is there too, and our history will always remind us, even if we could somehow forget to wonder about God, like we could forget to wonder about the chasm between ourselves and that which we think we know.
I hope I have contributed something to an interesting thread.
The simple answer is that one knows God via the body, rather than the mind. Rather like the way a plant knows soil through the roots. The flower, or fruit of the plant has no conception of the soil that was vital for it to grow.
During my mis-spent youth, I blundered into a menial job at Sydneys Mater Misericordiae hospital as causality wardsman. (I say blundered because I had approached the dole office in hope of receiving unemployment benefits and was instead sent to work there - a salutary lesson.) A Catholic teaching hospital, it was staffed in part by fully-costumed Catholic nuns in their wimples and polished black work shoes. The Matron was the formidable Sister Mary, a stern superior, overseeing a busy emergency department, where you never know what the next ambulance would disgorge.
One mornings ambulance was an aged couple in a very poor state. Apparently the lady had been sitting near a radiator, when a gust blew a sheet of paper onto it, catching fire. She was wearing a rayon nightie which immediately exploded into flames. Her husband, still in his dressing gown, had burns to his hands and neck from trying to extinguish the flames. She was immediately sent to theatres in a very grave condition, he stayed in the Ward while his burns were being treated by casualty staff. The old fellow was in a state of profound distress, needless to say. After some time, word came back from theatres - the poor old dear had not made it (Im guessing the shock killed her.) The old fellow just dissolved into sobs. And Sister Mary put her arms around him, held him and (Im sure) wept with him. And that, I felt, was how it would look in practice.
For me, this both was and wasnt a conversion experience. It made me very aware of that Catholic sense of healing mission - Mater Misericordiae means Mother of Mercy, and its an historical fact that the Church was deeply involved in the formation of the whole idea of hospitals. I also became very much aware of the serenity and selflessness of many of those sisters, it was practically palpable. It didnt draw me to the institution of Catholicism (I had been born into a post-Christian Anglican family but am estranged from some major doctrinal aspects of Christianity.) But it did instill in me a deep respect. Decades later, someone very near and dear to me underwent major cancer surgery at that Hospital, and that same feeling was still there.
I've known a lot of those sisters and priests through my work and watched them closely. I'll have to mull this over, since I don't immediately recognize it as the answer to my question. Nicely written, by the way a concentrated little jewel of description.
Quoting Punshhh
I'm not sure I understand this either. What does 'know by the body' mean? You feel it rather than think it?
Quoting Fire Ologist
I susepct most atheists rarely talk about God. The ones who do are likely also to be activists who see religion as the enemy of reason and human progress (I don't share this view myself).
Quoting Fire Ologist
I have a stronger sense of meaning in the world when I'm alone than when I'm with others. I think the lack of distraction helps. We're all different.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Is it arbitrary? Isn't it, in the end, unsurprising when someone either believes or doesnt? After all, most people follow their culture or families into faith or secularism. Here in Australia, the subject of God rarely comes up - atheism seems to be the default setting. In other countries, God comes up at every dinner...
Quoting Fire Ologist
For me, meaning seems to be evanescent and contingent, something we create and nurture in the moment, which, rather than being empty, gives it a unique kind of beauty and urgency.
I was attending a Puja ceremony at an ashram I was staying at. I knew the Guru well, not a close friend, but we had a nice banter going on and I had become a favourite of his for a few days. Much to the consternation of some of the monks.
To set the scene, there were a number of Asian naturalised Hindu worshippers there who would come at the weekend, on a Sunday. So for them it wasnt a deep New Age type feeling as it was for me. For her it may have been a lot like going to your local Church of England, or Catholic mass, or the like, as you do every Sunday.
During the ceremony, at the height of the fervour I watched the guru who was only a few feet away turn and see a little old Asian lady, who was there for the weekend ceremony. Effortlessly and in an instant he moved from the intensity of the ceremony to greet her and bent over to exchange a smile and hold her hand. I was struck by how kind this was and could somehow see the depth of grace and humility in his behaviour. At that very moment, he turned suddenly to me before I could turn away and in that fraction of a second his glance was so intense, fiery and I had a sense of exchanging a glance with something bright like a star, light years away. Then he turned back to her, and pressed his hand more firmly into hers and then turned away and returned to the worship. I felt as though I had seen a ghost, although not scared, or shocked as if I had seen a ghost. But surprised and trying to process what had just happened.
What stayed with me was the depth of humility and kindness which I had witnessed. Which I would not in a million years have expected to see while there. Everything else that happened didnt affect me so much as that sort of thing happened all the time in that place.
We in our western society and with all the scientific knowledge we now have, seem to have reached the view that we are minds and that our body doesnt know anything, with out the mind processing the nerve impulses and so on. Or that a mind is required to [I]know [/I] something and that it is somehow the mind that knows it.
But in reality we are an organism with a body, hormones, nerve endings etc. these things go on about their business regardless of what the mind is doing, thinking about, a lot of the time. Also animals which dont do much thinking and have little in the way of knowledge are the same. They know things without a mind doing the knowing.
Also there is a deeper level to this described in the word communion. Where beings have knowing between them by being together, either in a group, or in prayer.
It's very interesting, isn't it, that a meeting with the Guru is called 'darshan', meaning 'auspicious vision'. It is exactly that sense which can be conveyed by a glance or a single word. It's the all-important sense of actual presence. And also that all of the principle schools of Hindu philosophy are called 'darshana'.
Thankyou Tom :pray:
Thanks for this it has focussed my mind a little and reminded me about the specific experiences of participating in puja.
I like this definition;
In Hinduism, darshan is a significant aspect of temple rituals and devotion. It involves viewing the deity's image (murti) in the temple's inner sanctum (garbhagriha).
We had a life size murti of kali carved in black granite in the inner sanctum.
Yes. Since I don't find the Judeo-Christian Bible or Islamic Koran plausible as the revealed word of God, I've been forced to create my own mythical story to establish the meaning of my own worthless life. It's intended to be a "middle ground", based on information & insights from Objective Science, Subjective Religions, and Rational Philosophy. My myth does not have a happy ending in transcendent Heaven, yet it does conclude that the evolution of Life & Mind from a mysterious Big Bang was not "accidental", but in some sense intentional*1. You could say that it's my own version of a "More Sophisticated, Philosophical Account of God". :smile:
*1. [i]The idea that "life was not accidental" suggests that existence is not purely random or chaotic, but rather guided by a purpose or meaning, even if that purpose is not explicitly defined. This belief can be seen in various philosophical, religious, and personal contexts. . . .
The idea that "life is not accidental" can also be interpreted as a belief in the principle of cause and effect, where events are interconnected and influenced by preceding circumstances.
[/i] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=life+was+not+accidental
Note --- Cause & Effect is not totally random or inconsequentially accidental, but reliably predictable. That's the assumption Science is based on.
Perhaps, unless the deity is knowable by reason rather than revelation*1. That's what's called the "God of the Philosophers". For example, Spinoza imagined his God, not as transcendent, but immanent, serving as the very stuff of reality (substance ; being), which is otherwise inexplicable*2. And Whitehead describes his God as a "value creating process"*3. Which has evolved the human mind, as the only value-evaluating (usefulness) process in the world. :nerd:
*1. Whether it is "being-itself" (Scholastics) or the "universal substance" (Spinoza), whether it is "beyond subjectivity and objectivity" (James) or the "identity of spirit and nature" (Schelling), whether it is "universe" (Schleiermacher) or "cosmic whole" (Hocking), whether it is "value creating process" (Whitehead) or "progressive integration" (Wieman), whether it is "absolute spirit" (Hegel) or "cosmic person" (Brightman)-each of these concepts is based on an immediate experience of something ultimate in value and being of which one can become intuitively aware.
___Excerpt from your Tillich passage
*2. The Big Bang theory assumed, axiomatically, that Energy & Regulations preexisted the bang. And from that cosmic Energy, all the matter in the world evolved. So, the God of Cosmology is essentially Cause & Laws.
*3. In Whitehead's philosophy, the process of creating value involves the "subject-superject" concept, where every event is both experiencing and aiming for a future state. This "subjective aim" drives the experience towards its ultimate satisfaction and realization, which is intrinsically valuable. Value, for Whitehead, is not an external attribute but rather the intrinsic reality of an event and its enjoyment.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=whitehead++value+creating+process
Human beings are endlessly creative.
Quoting Gnomon
Random thought: It's interesting how often Christian apologists seek to contrast "accidental' life from divinely planned life.
The idea of life being accidental seems to be a stumbling block for many who struggle to emotionally accept that life might not have an inherent human centric purpose. Many people fear and even loathe the idea of a purposeless universe. But its important to distinguish this from notions like randomness or accident. The absence of inherent purpose doesnt necessarily imply arbitrariness; it simply means that meaning is not built into the fabric of reality, but must be created by conscious beings. This distinction often gets lost in emotional reactions to, shall we call them 'naturalistic' worldviews.
A scientific account doesnt describe life as an accident in any meaningful sense. It simply explains that life arose through natural processes. To call it an accident is to impose a value-laden metaphor onto a description that is, at its core, neutral.
I think it's indubitably true that the apparent conflict between the idea of grand design, on the one hand, and the meme of fortuitous origins, on the other, is a major cultural fault-lineno matter where one stands on the spectrum of views.
Consider the famous 'foundation statement' by Richard Dawkins:
I certainly dont want to defend Dawkins Intelligent Design opponents. But manymyself includedhave observed that Dawkins makes a kind of category error here. The God whose existence he sets out to refute is framed as a superhuman technician, a cosmic engineer meticulously assembling wings, flagella, and other biological contraptions. But this is far removed from the God of classical theism, who is not a being within the order of things at all, but the necessary ground of being itself. Creation, in this tradition, is not the manual assembly of parts, but the ongoing act of sustaining the whole of existence (per the Ever-Present Origin of Jean Gebser.)
But the thing is, as soon as the most rudimentary organisms begin to form, something else appears with them: the rudimentary emergence of meaning. How so? Because the very hallmark of an organism is that it maintains itself in distinction from its environment. It enacts a boundarynot merely spatial, but functional and existential. It resists entropy, resists the universal drift toward dissolution, by preserving internal order and homeostasis. In doing so, it expresses negentropy: it is for itself, in a basic but decisive sense. This is the first flicker of seitythe incipient sense of a self. Not yet a mind, not yet a subject in the rich psychological sense, but already more than mere matter. Already something that matters to itself.
So even if it's true, as some argue, that meaning is created by conscious beings, we ought to recognize that this act of creation is not simply a matter of conscious intention. It arises from a much deeper orientationone that begins, however humbly, with life itself. That, I think, is the current framework for the debate.
But meaning may not arise from any deep metaphysical structure, rather from the ordinary, improvisational practices that help us stay oriented in a world we cant help but attempt to interpret. In that light, its apparent importance may have less to do with ultimate truth or a foundational 'cosmic consciousness' and more to do with pragmatic survival. Why woudl making meaning not be like another sense?
Indeed. There is good work showing how biology is fuelled by meaning - rather than sterile abstract information or matter. There is no reason to suppose meaning is purely a semantic phenomenon.
Yes, but many people interpret the inherent randomness, indeterminacy, & uncertainty of quantum physics as a series of blundering accidents ; hence no divine intention or pre-destination. But there's another way to interpret the stochastic nature of Nature : it allows opportunities for novelty to emerge*1 from evolution, and the final outcome (the sum) is negotiable, un-decided until the the process is complete.
Evolution is not just a blindly meandering process*2, it's a progressive process. Not necessarily in the sense of Orthogenesis, but in terms of increasing complexity & novelty. The most obvious sign of creativity is the emergence of Life & Mind from a hypothetical primordial soup of meta-physical quarks & gluons. And the minds of those living creatures have introduced Purpose into the world. For some myth believers, their "higher" purpose is not just basic survival long enough to reproduce, but to thrive in a second chance at life.
Therefore, something is going on here that smacks of Teleology*3. That doesn't imply creation by divine fiat, for the purpose of producing sycophantic slaves of faith. But it does provide food for philosophical thought. A deterministic (cause & effect) universe would move quickly & directly to some predestined end : as in Genesis. Yet a lawful, but stochastic universe would erratically evolve by trial & error : Darwinian evolution*2. And the ultimate state of such a world would be unpredictable. So, purposeful people would have opportunities to pursue their own personal goals in their allotted lifetime. :smile:
*1.Emergence theory, in a nutshell, explains how complex systems can exhibit behaviors and properties that are not present in their individual components. It suggests that these emergent phenomena arise from the interactions and relationships between the parts, rather than being simply a result of their individual characteristics. Essentially, the "whole" is greater than the sum of its parts.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=emergence+theory
*2. While the statement "evolution is blind" is often used to describe the process of natural selection, it's not entirely accurate. While mutations are random, the selection process itself is guided by environmental pressures and the interactions of organisms with their environment. This means that evolution is not entirely blind but rather a complex process involving both random variation and directed selection.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=evolution+not+blind
*3. In Whitehead's philosophy, teleology, the idea of things having a purpose or end goal, is not about pre-ordained destiny, but about the dynamic and open-ended process of becoming. He viewed reality as a constant flux of actual entities (occasions of experience) that are continuously engaging with each other and co-creating new possibilities. This means that while there's a sense of ongoing creation and potential, there's no fixed endpoint or predetermined path for entities to follow.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=whitehead+teleology
OK. But I interpreted "useless" to mean having no function or value. And "solace or salvation" seems to be the ultimate value for believers. So, the function of Faith is to get us to where our treasure is laid-up*1.
However, if this world of moth & rust & thieves is all we have to look forward to, then investing in "pie-in-the-sky" heaven would be a "white elephant" of no practical value. :smile:
*1. Value & Treasure :
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
___ Matthew 6:19-21
Well that's your conclusion, not mine.
If pushed, and speaking from a human perspective, you might say the world appears designed and calibrated for dysfunction and suffering: children with cancer, mass starvation, natural disasters, a clusterfuck of disease and disorder wherever you look. Not to mention the defective psychology of humans. But I don't believe this theory either. Things may appear a certain way to us because we want to believe. We are sense-making creatures compelled to find or impose an overarching narrative on everything.
We dont realise the importance of cellular life for the ground of our sense of being and consciousness. After all we are a colony of cells. As you say this is crucial for the emergence of life, living beings. Animals and plants, (even fungi). While they dont yet have a mind, they do know things, they do have knowledge, how ever simple.
Indeed. Part of me believes that the animal is in a superior position to the human. They have what they need. They require no gadgets, no psychotherapies, no fictional narratives through which to interpret their existence. They act, they live, and that is enough. In contrast, we are burdened by self-consciousness- forever constructing and deconstructing meaning, seeking justification, and struggling to feel at home in the world and often being dreadful to all an sundry while we go about it.
FWIW, I'd suggest that you cut-back on your intake of Headline News. William Randall Hearst, magnate of the nation's largest media company, insightfully observed about the criteria for news publishing : "if it bleeds, it leads". Another version is "bad news sells". News outlets may have professional scruples about objectivity, but the bottom line says that the news industry is basically mass-market gossip and broadcast rumours. The function of Modern news networks is to collect information about "dysfunction and suffering: children with cancer, mass starvation, natural disasters, a clusterfuck of disease and disorder" from around the world, and funnel it into your eyes & ears.
Even a high-tone philosophy forum like TPF, contributes its share of bad news in the form of criticism of sinful human nature and design flaws of Nature. But look around you with your own eyes & ears and make note of the last time you personally witnessed --- from your own "human perspective", not the media perspective --- "dysfunction and suffering: children with cancer, mass starvation, natural disasters, a clusterfuck of disease and disorder". You might even find some not-so-bad news on Good News Network, The Optimist Daily, and DailyGood. But these outlets are financially marginal because good news is boring. Our survival-scanning minds seem to be tuned to look for the exceptions to the common routine, because that's where threats are most likely to come from.
Our modern cultures are far safer from the ancient threats of tooth & claw, but now imperiled mostly by imaginary evils brought into your habitat by the Pandora's Box of high-tech news media. Maybe we all need a Pollyanna Umbrella defense-mechanism from pollution of the mind. :wink:
PS___ Catholics are taught from infancy about Original Sin. But my anti-catholic Protestant upbringing did not interpret the Bible from that inherently pessimistic perspective. We were taught about Free Choice, not Predestination for Hell. Did that blind me to Satan's schemes?
PPS___ If you live in Gaza or Ukraine, a bit of pessimism about man's inhumanity to man is justifiable. But, if you live in shopping center Suburbia, lighten-up! :joke:
"Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power." ___ William James : noted for promoting a philosophy of Pragmatism
"I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains." ___ Anne Frank : died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched". ___ Helen Keller : deaf & blind from birth
You may not have intended it this way, but that comes across as both dismissive and tangential. Im not generally a consumer of news, and this perspective is shaped by direct experience. My professional work brings me into daily contact with refugees, asylum seekers, survivors of abuse and trauma, former prisoners, the homeless, and those who are sick or dying. My father was in a Nazi camp during WW2 and some of my mother's family and friends starved to death in the Dutch hunger winter of 1944. My views are not based on some tabloid journalism of confected horror. I could take a cue from your tone and say back to you - why not get out into the real world and look around?
That said, I raised the point as a plausible interpretation of a world that appears deliberately built to produce suffering. I don't actually hold this view myself, but it's a useful counterpoint to those who see evidence of divine design in nature.
Quoting Gnomon
How is this relevant to my point? I'm said on here several times that I think this is the best time to be alive.
I'm sorry if it came across that way. But I was indirectly agreeing with your conclusion : "I think this is the best time to be alive". I even added a second PS, that may apply, if you get your bad news first hand. In my retirement gig, I now get to experience some of the "real world" in the urban ghettos of Chocolate City, as contrasted with Vanilla Suburb. Not to mention the napalming of Vietnam.
But you seemed to imply that my somewhat positive worldview is based on Faith instead of Facts*1. Yet I rejected the "overarching narrative" of my childhood and constructed a philosophical worldview of my own from scratch. If I "wanted to believe" a fairy tale, my native religion had a happy ending to look forward to. But my current view does not predict anything for me, beyond this not-so-good-not-so-bad lifetime.
My personal worldview happens to agree with A.N. Whitehead about the Teleological trend in evolution. Which seems to align with your "best time" quote above. Yet, my "real world" has both Good & Bad features. But, like Anne Frank, I choose not to dwell on the downside. :smile:
*1. Excerpt from your post above : "Things may appear a certain way to us because we want to believe. We are sense-making creatures compelled to find or impose an overarching narrative on everything."
No problem. We're just threshing things out.
Quoting Gnomon
Fair enough.
Quoting Gnomon
No. We all see what we want to see. The point of philosophy, as I see it, is to notice what we've overlooked. But how do we get there? That's rhetorical: no need for an answer.
For Whitehead, I think the divine aim is creativity, higher degrees of complexity, awareness and experience. Whitehead plainly states his view that "God is not a petty moralist" clearly indicating that our human moral concerns may not be relevant to the underlying divine principle. The divine works through nature and natural processes such as evolution. The divine presents the possibility for actualization and satisfaction for each occasion of experience (actual occasion or event) but the divine acts through persuasion not coercion. So the world advances and retreats the divine lure is discarded due to the agency power of all "true actualities" . There is creation and destruction but the overall path seems to be higher levels of complexity, intensity of experience and creative advance. Perhaps artists, musicians and writers are closer to the divine than priests and preachers.
Yes, very much so. One can see human evolution as a devolution in many ways. All this meditation, prayer, self development that religious, or spiritual people strive to master is merely to regain that purity of animals and plants that we have lost. Even within human experience there is a devolution. I once met an old guy while sitting in a forest, he just walked up to me and asked where I was going. During the conversation he (after having mentioned that he was an architect) said that the highest achievement of humanity was the capital order, the classical Greek architecture which has become the standard for most architecture since. That it has been downhill from there.
We mustnt dismiss our over active brains though, they have given us the opportunity to develop civilisation, scientific knowledge and technology. And all things being well, we will get over our self destructive nature (eventually) and take our role of custodians of the biosphere of our planet. Demonstrating that intelligent life can coexist and live alongside a rich ecosystem.
Alongside the more sinister role being adopted by our media in recent times. Of spreading populist lies and disinformation. Spreading the propaganda devised by megalomaniac oligarch press barons, to divide and rule, to turn man against man to keep the socialists away. To erode democracy and the rule of law, to oppress the poor reducing their ability to fight back, etc etc.
I agree. So, here's my rhetorical response to "how do we get there?" :
Humans are inclined to accept new information that fits neatly into the current worldview of their social group, whether religious or political or scientific. Such naive tribal certainty tends to result in social conflict between neighboring faith communities. That's why Philosophy, especially Skepticism, was designed to dig into belief systems below the superficial stuff, down to the fundamentals. For Aristotle, perhaps the most fundamental force in the world is the First Cause that set us on the course we now see more clearly, due to the filled-in details of scientific cosmology.
For my own personal worldview, one "overlooked" force in both physics and metaphysics is Information. Which my thesis heretically labels as EnFormAction (Energy + Laws ; Causation + Direction). Physical science has only recently recognized the connection between Active Energy and Meaningful Information*1. My philosophical thesis follows this creative relationship from Big Bang to Atomic Bomb, and Singularity to Single-Mindedness. Yet, I discovered later that A.N. Whitehead had already described this innovative Process in his seminal book, Process and Reality. There, he refers to the First & Final Cause as "God", in a functional philosophical sense, not as a faithful religious belief.
His computer-like Process is not a fait-accompli miracle, but a slowly-evolving trial & error search pattern for some ultimate outcome, apparently defined only in terms of properties & qualia & values, that we can't express in conventional words & numbers. Materialistic Philosophy deliberately overlooks creativity in Nature, due to its historical implications of divine intervention into physical processes. But in my thesis, and Whitehead's, the creativity is built into the program from the beginning. As you said, "we see what we want to see" --- what conforms to our prior belief system. And Materialism is a metaphysical belief system, that guides the believer's eyes toward confirming or contradicting information. It's a good guide for analytical Chemistry, but not for Quantum Physics, or mental Philosophy. :nerd:
*1. How is information related to energy in physics? :
Energy is the relationship between information regimes. That is, energy is manifested, at any level, between structures, processes and systems of information in all of its forms, and all entities in this universe is composed of information.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/22084/how-is-information-related-to-energy-in-physics
Quoting Tom Storm
I'm sorry that's the "narrative" you impose on the world, "from a human perspective". But it "overlooks" a lot of good stuff that gets left out of the lurid tabloid news, and post-apocalyptic dystopian movies. In a competition for who feels the pain of the world most deeply, I would lose by default. That's because I wear a pain-coat called myopic Stoicism*2, which focuses attention on what is within my arm's length, and lets anything beyond that fade into the painless background. :wink:
*2. Happiness : A powerful Stoic quote is "You have power over your mind not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." This quote, attributed to Marcus Aurelius, emphasizes that while we cannot control external circumstances, we can control our reactions to them, which ultimately determines our happiness and strength. This quote highlights the importance of focusing on what is within our control, which is our thoughts and actions, rather than dwelling on things we cannot change.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=stoic+quotes
So ironically, we first had the utmost sophisticated account of God before we had the version which is easier to rail against as a naturalist.
The only form I can think of which might be more sophisticated is the thought of the mystics and their extreme forays into the abstruse and their stronger emphasis on the via negativa and apophatic theology ala the Divine Nothingness of Jon Scotus Eriugena.
"Divine Aim" is a controversial concept in modern philosophy. But, if you combine physical Cosmology with biological Evolution, it's obvious that the universe started with almost nothing but cosmic Potential, and gradually created Matter (the neatly organized table of elements) from raw amorphous Energy (power to cause change) and Natural Laws (limitations on change), then complexified each stage (suprasystems) of evolution, until Awareness & Experience emerged in the most recent step toward some unpredictable "higher degree" of organization.
So, what was the Big Bang shot-in-the-dark aiming at? As you suggested, complexity & consciousness seem to be on the increase --- at least on the only planet we can observe directly. Yet, some focus their criticism on the pruning effects of natural selection on the fractal branches of creation, including mass extinctions of organisms, and the prophesied anthropogenic Apocalypse. Nevertheless, the "overall path" seems to be an upward curve tending toward some ultimate Omega Point {image below}. Personally, I wouldn't call that ultimate goal the "Cosmic Christ", but the general implication seems to be in the ballpark.
I would also hesitate to predict the transition to a "new state of existence" or "technological transcendence" as postulated by Ray Kurzweil in The Singularity Is Near". So, I'm content to accept the non-specific notion of an "aim" or Final Cause guiding the path of evolution. I'll let others prophesy about the details of that a> Ultimate End or b> New Beginning or c> Heat Death. But, I can accept Aristotle's inference that a First & Final Cause (G*D??) is necessary for us to make sense of what's going on. :smile:
*1. "Upward evolution" can refer to two concepts: a general direction of increasing complexity and sophistication in biological or social systems, or a specific type of evolutionary process where systems grow through the development of successive suprasystems, according to Brill. In the former, it's often associated with the idea that evolution has led to increased complexity and sophistication over time. In the latter, it's a specific process where systems develop by adding layers of organization above existing structures.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=upward+evolution
*2. The "Omega Point" is a concept, originating in the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, that describes a future state of the universe where all things are drawn towards a final point of unification and maximum complexity. It's often compared to the Christian Logos, or Christ, who draws all things into himself. The Omega Point is considered a point of spiritual or cosmic significance, potentially marking the end of evolution or a transition to a new state of existence.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=omega+point
I agree. But I suspect that those who describe Cosmic Evolution as "accidental" do intend to imply a negative value opposed to the notion of intentional divine creation. Randomness is indeed a necessary function of physical & biological evolution. But so is Natural Selection, which implies a positive goal-oriented value. Darwin used future-focused human breeders as examples of selecting plants & animals for desirable qualities in next generations. Those YinYang dual functions work together to produce novel forms, and to test them for conformance to specified values of suitability for human purposes : Fitness. The mechanism of Progressive Evolution appeared, even to Darwin, as-if "designed" to create new generations with higher levels of Fitness (a value-laden metaphor). "To Evolve" simply means to develop in cycles & gradations ; but the term can be assigned either positive & negative values, depending on the worldview of the speaker.
For example, on this forum, some posters respond to "God" questions with scathing negativity. And their low opinion of "the creation" is expressed by denigrating the supposed pinnacle of divine creativity : god-fearing upright apes. Moreover, their devaluation of humanity is expressed in harsh god-like judgements : as when Adam & Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden for daring to dabble in Morality (knowledge of Good & Evil). For example, pastor Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", described those moralizing apes, created in the image of God, as "loathesome insects"*1. Ironically some Atheists & Antinatalists ask sarcastically, "is this --- barely moral homo sapiens --- the best that creation or natural evolution can offer?"
Personally, my "value-laden metaphors" would tend to be more positive, since the progression of Evolution did not stop with ape morality. And the burden of justice for post-industrial-age apes has shifted to the artificial Cultures & civil laws that have evolved beyond Material chemical complexity into the realm of Mental standards of civilization. Which some of us still violate to this day. :smile:
*1. "O sinner! The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked."
https://gracequotes.org/quote/o-sinner-the-god-that-holds-you-over-the-pit-of-hell-much-as-one-holds-a-spider-or-some-loathsome-insect-over-the-fire-abhors-you-and-is-dreadfully-provoked-his-wrath-towards-you-burns-like-fir/
A Tolkienesque 'theodicy' (re: mission of the Istari). :sparkle:
Quoting Bodhy
For me, an even more "sophisticated" conception is the natura naturans of Spinoza's unmanifest substance (i.e. Deus, sive natura) that is consistent imho has strong affinities with both sub specie aeternitatis acosmism and sub specie durationis pandeism (à la Eriugena).
No, I don't imply that, since I don't know whether you have a positive worldview or not. To me, it seems like you're working terribly hard to overcome a wounding experience in a fundamentalist religion. I'm not sure I would call that positive. Perhaps it's a determined effort to find somewhere safe?
Ha! :grin:
That's the exact opposite of my childhood religious experience. The Johnathan Edwards quote in my last post was an expression of extreme Calvinism. He focused on our "fallen" nature, as compared to the perfection of God. Hence he imagined that God would be so offended by the sinfulness of creatures created in his own image, that the Creator would gladly exterminate them in the waste-basket of eternal hell-fire. So, if I had been exposed to such a religion, I might indeed be psychically wounded.
By contrast, my small independent church was locally governed by untrained elders, not indoctrinated priests or pastors. So there was no institutional creed, and we were encouraged to freely interpret the Bible, using god-given reason. My little church was Fundamentalist (Arminianism) only in the sense that it believed and taught that the Bible, not the Pope-led Roman institution, was the sole authority on God's intention for the creation.
Ironically, as I began to exercise that rational freedom, I learned that the New Testament was actually Imperial Catholic propaganda, and not the revealed Word of God. So, I gradually evolved away from my youthful bible-based belief system. Yet as I learned more about secular Science, I realized that some kind of First Cause (pre-big-bang) or G*D was logically necessary to make sense of our contingent world, evolving toward some unknown Destination.
My philosophical & scientific self-education continued over the rest of my life, without any formal training, except for basic courses in the four subdivisions of Science. My only philosophical course in college was Logic, which was a math requirement. Since I retired though, this forum has been my philosophical Academy & Lyceum. So, my personal worldview has been tested by plenty of opposing opinions.
Although I am aware of the incomplete evolution of Nature, and the faults & failings of nascent human Culture, my worldview is generally positive. I sometimes refer to it as "Pragmatic Idealism". My knowledge of the mundane practical aspect of Reality comes from physical Science --- including materialistic Chemistry, and semi-material Quantum Physics. But the impractical theoretical knowledge of immaterial Ideality*1 stems from my self-education in Philosophy. So, my "safe place" is in my own mind.
Did Plato & Aristotle have a "positive" worldview? Obviously, Plato's imaginary Ideal realm was a metaphor to strive toward, not an ivory-tower imaginary Utopia. Likewise, my worldview is similar to Whitehead's open-ended "Process" toward some tantalizing ultimate unknown goal. It's also similar to Plato's 2500 year old philosophy of Eudaimonia*2, except that his notion of a Soul, separate from the body, is interpreted in terms of modern Information theory : it's all information, all the way down. If that doesn't make sense to you, you're welcome to peruse the Enformationism website & blog*3. :nerd:
*1. Ideality :
[i]In Platos theory of Forms, he argues that non-physical forms (or ideas) represent the most accurate or perfect reality. Those Forms are not physical things, but merely definitions or recipes of possible things. What we call Reality consists of a few actualized potentials drawn from a realm of infinite possibilities.
A. Materialists deny the existence of such immaterial ideals, but recent developments in Quantum theory have forced them to accept the concept of virtual particles in a mathematical field, that are not real, but only potential, until their unreal state is collapsed into reality by a measurement or observation. To measure is to extract meaning into a mind. [Measure, from L. Mensura, to know; from mens-, mind]
B. Some modern idealists find that scenario to be intriguingly similar to Platos notion that ideal Forms can be realized, i.e. meaning extracted, by knowing minds. For the purposes of this blog, Ideality refers to an infinite pool of potential (equivalent to a quantum field), of which physical Reality is a small part. A formal name for that fertile field is G*D.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
*2. Plato's worldview :
[i]while sometimes seen as idealistic, contains several elements that can be interpreted as positive and contribute to a hopeful outlook on life and society. Here are some key aspects:
# Pursuit of the Good and Happiness (Eudaimonia):
Plato, like Aristotle, emphasized the concept of eudaimonia, which translates to "happiness" or "flourishing". He believed that true happiness results from the virtuous pursuit of one's potential and living in accordance with reason and moral virtue. The four cardinal virtues wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice are seen as essential for a happy life.
# Emphasis on Reason and Knowledge:
Plato highly valued reason as the guiding principle for a balanced and virtuous life, believing it should govern emotions and desires. He saw ignorance as the root of unethical behavior and stressed the importance of knowledge. His famous quote, "the unexamined life is not worth living," underscores the value of critical self-examination and philosophical inquiry.
# Belief in a Higher Reality and the Forms:
Plato's Theory of Forms proposes a higher, perfect, and unchanging reality beyond the physical world, which can offer a sense of hope and meaning. The Forms, including the Form of the Good, are considered the ultimate source of existence and knowledge, providing a basis for objective truth and moral standards.
# Vision of a Just Society:
In The Republic, Plato explored the concept of justice and the structure of an ideal state that promotes the well-being of its citizens. He believed that justice is achieved when individuals fulfill their proper roles, leading to a harmonious society.
# Positive View of Death:
Through Socrates, Plato presented a positive belief in death, viewing it as a potential liberation of the soul from the body. This perspective encourages courage in facing the unknown and highlights the eternal nature of the soul.
In summary, Plato's positive worldview includes the pursuit of a virtuous and happy life through reason and knowledge, the existence of a higher reality providing a foundation for truth and morality, the vision of a just society, and a courageous acceptance of death. These ideas continue to influence philosophical discussions on ethics and the meaning of existence.[/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=plato+positive+worldview
*3. BothAnd Blog https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page50.html
https://bothandblog7.enformationism.info/page37.html
Maybe, but certainly not physically necessary for modeling the universe (i.e. physus) and its development (re: cosmogeny).
Also, how does "some unknown Destination" in any way "make sense" of a spacetime that, based on the best current scientific cosmology, is more likely to be unbounded without beginning or ending like a sphere, torus, klein bottle, möbius loop, fractal series or any of countless nonlinear geometries than not unbounded (given such scientific speculations as e.g. Penrose's Conformal Cyclical Cosmology or Hartle-Hawkin's No Boundary Proposal or Rovelli's Relational Quantum Mechanics)? :chin:
I agree the universe (seems) ontologically contingent but that in no way entails that it had a "beginning" or will "end", only that it is always possible for it to change develop including in unpredictable and incomprehensible ways.
Occult teleology (i.e woo-of-the-gaps).
And this tell us (explains) what exactly? :roll:
I'm glad to hear it. :up:
Thanks. Now that we have established that my philosophical worldview is not a religious search for a "safe place" in heaven, let's consider what it actually is. And what it does not entail.
Because of his history of harshly deprecating ideas that don't fit his personal (immanent) worldview --- seen from inside our directly knowable bubble world --- I don't reply to 's saracastic, supercillious & science-based diatribes against the philosophical concept of Transcendence. Therefore, since you are more reasonable, I will instead direct my response to you.
First, this is a philosophical forum, not a science symposium. So his assertion that it's not "physically necessary" to postulate a pre-bang Cause, in order to scientifically model our space-time universe, is beside the point of this thread about a complete philosophical account of the Creator God concept. Such a philosophical model must explain the source of Energy & Laws that produced the event originally described as-if an explosion of nothing into something*1.
He admits that our universe had a Big Bang beginning, hence is "ontologically contingent". But then asserts that " in no way entails that it had a 'beginning' or will 'end' ". Yet professional cosmologists have reached that very entailment*2. Note that "cold & empty" (heat death) is a return to the presumed original state of nothingness before the the hot & dense bang. What do you think? Is our universe Static & Eternal, or Dynamic & Destined to end?
Then, he declares that it's "more likely to be unbounded without beginning or ending". That may be true, but the description fits the image of a bubble of space-time expanding from the initial Singularity out into the nothingness of Eternity. We are inside the bubble and can't get out. So, in that sense we are bounded by the limits of physical Reality. Yet. our spooky minds can imagine a view from outside our physical prison. {image below}
How would you characterize his characterization of A.N. Whitehead's Progressive Process worldview :
"Occult teleology (i.e woo-of-the-gaps)". Does that sound like a rational philosophical argument to you? :smile:
*1. Yes, the Big Bang theory is the most widely accepted scientific explanation for the beginning of space-time. It proposes that the universe originated from a single, extremely dense point that rapidly expanded and evolved into the cosmos we observe today.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=is+the+most+generally+accepted+scientific+hypothesis+for+the+beginning+of+space-time+is+the+Big+Bang+theory
*2. While the Big Bang theory suggests a beginning, it also proposes that the universe is expanding and accelerating, potentially leading to a Big Freeze, where it becomes cold and empty.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=does+the+universe+have+a+beginning+and+an+end
*3. "[i]In Einstein's book about relativity, he says that his theory predicts that the shape of the universe would be finite but unbounded. . . .
Extending the idea to 4D spacetime in an intuitive way is difficult, but one could think of a finite, unbounded Universe as one in which, if you travel long enough in the same direction in spacetime, you come back to where you began, rather than reaching the 'edge of the Universe'.[/i]"
Note --- Bounded : You can't get out of this world alive.
YOU ARE INSIDE THE BUBBLE UNIVERSE.
Only a transcendent entity gets this view from outside space-time
Poor Gnomon, so scared of big bad Reason. :smirk:
No. Youre jumping the gun. A safe place just means whatever gives you comfort. I wouldnt have thought heaven was a candidate here, why would you? I notice that youre still seem to be riffing off the religion of your youth, which for whatever reason fails to support you in your sense making. Thats understandable and many do likewise. But thats not my path, so given we dont share suppositions, and the fact that Im not a physicist or scientist, I dont generally get into speculative cosmology.
I apologize if I misinterpreted your "safe place". But a synonym is "Haven", an analog of "Heaven".
I am intentionally trying to avoid "riffing off the religion of your youth". So, I don't know how you got that impression. The "religion" of my old age is Philosophy, which doesn't offer a "safe place" in the afterlife, but Ataraxia & Eudaimonia in the here & now. The religion of my youth is "not my path", so what is your path, if not Physics and Material Science?
My retirement hobby is primarily "speculative cosmology", especially the open question of "what caused the spaceless-timeless Singularity*1 to go Bang? Perhaps due to childhood religious "wounding" 's scientific reasoning stops at that boundary of physical reality. But my philosophical reasoning is not limited to the interior of the Bubble of Reality, and can go on to explore transcendent Ideality*2. Does that notion offend your Immanentist sensibilities, as it does for 180? Does Quantum Physics contradict your Materialist worldview? Let me know if the italicized beliefs do not apply to you.
What was your motivation for posting this topic : "I'm interested in conversations about more sophisticated and philosophical accounts of theism"? I don't know exactly what you mean by "more sophisticated", but my amateur philosophical thesis is a unique, non-religious "account" not of Theism, but of Deism*3*4. Is that sophisticated enough for you? :smile:
*1. What is a singularity? :
[i]A singularity is a point in spacetime where the laws of physics, as we currently understand them, break down. It's a region of infinite density and curvature.
In the context of the Big Bang, it refers to the initial state of the universe, a point of infinite density and temperature from which the universe expanded.[/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=big+bang+singularity+mathematical
Note --- An infinite state has no place for space or time. But then Mathematical Logic is not restricted to space-occupying Matter, or change-causing Time. So, it can in theory be applied to reasoning beyond the beginning, into such philosophical notions as First Cause.
*2. Ideality :
[i]In Platos theory of Forms, he argues that non-physical forms (or ideas) represent the most accurate or perfect reality. Those Forms are not physical things, but merely definitions or recipes of possible things. What we call Reality consists of a few actualized potentials drawn from a realm of infinite possibilities.
# Materialists deny the existence of such immaterial ideals, but recent developments in Quantum theory have forced them to accept the concept of virtual particles in a mathematical field, that are not real, but only potential, until their unreal state is collapsed into reality by a measurement or observation. To measure is to extract meaning into a mind. [Measure, from L. Mensura, to know; from mens-, mind]
# Some modern idealists find that scenario to be intriguingly similar to Platos notion that ideal Forms can be realized, i.e. meaning extracted, by knowing minds. For the purposes of this blog, Ideality refers to an infinite pool of potential (equivalent to a quantum field), of which physical Reality is a small part. A formal name for that fertile field is G*D.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
*3. Deism :
An Enlightenment era response to the Roman Catholic version of Theism, in which the supernatural deity interacts and intervenes with humans via visions & miracles, and rules his people through a human dictator. Deists rejected most of the supernatural stuff, but retained an essential role for a First Cause creator, who must be respected as the quintessence of our world, but not worshipped like a tyrant. The point of Deism is not to seek salvation, but merely understanding.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page12.html
*4. Deist :
Deism can be described as a rational, science-based worldview with pragmatic reasons for believing in a non-traditional non-anthro-morphic deity, rather than a faith-based belief system relying on the imaginative official myths of a minor ancient culture. So a Deist does not live by faith, but by reason. However, on topics where science is still uncertain (see Qualia), Deists feel free to use their reasoning powers to develop plausible beliefs that lie outside the current paradigm.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page12.html
More pathetic projection. :roll:
That the universe (i.e. timespece) "began" is no more certain or determined than "the edge" of the Earth. Again, bad physics > pseudo-philosophy (> woo) e.g. "creationism" disguised as programmer-of-the-gaps metafoolery. :sparkle:
This from the OP
Quoting Tom Storm
Your next statement and its formulation (like an apologist) is a reason I guessed you are riffing off the beliefs of your youth. You can't resist bagging materialists at most opportunities when there are so few, if any, on this site.
Quoting Gnomon
I am not a materialist. I find idealism intriguing. I have no expertise in quantum physics and I know most physicists remain committed to physicalism - what do they know that you and I don't? I couldn't say and it's not my area.
You must not post on the same topics that I do. Ask Wayfarer and Count Timothy von Icarus about their encounters with many Materialists, Atheists, and Empiricists of various stripes. As you might expect, they make paradoxical physical & scientific arguments about metaphysical & philosophical questions, such as this one : about the "nature" & being of a non-physical immaterial god. If it's physical & natural, it ain't a god, it's an idol.
Most of the threads I post on start-out high-minded, but eventually descend into "bagging" Idealists & Theists. So, I spend a lot of time defending my non-religious Philosophical concepts from accusations & characterizations of religious Creeds, scientific Ignorance, and plain Stupidity. I never attack, but I do make counter-arguments, that may seem like an attack on cherished beliefs. Fortunately, a few posters do attempt to make positive philosophical arguments, instead of negative us-vs-them political attacks like 180. :cool:
Quoting Tom Storm
If you are not a materialist or a scientist, do you use any alternative term to describe your metaphysical worldview*1. I reluctantly use terms like Deist, which is confused with religion, but try to avoid Idealist, because it just sounds silly & impractical.
Personally, I am not a Chemist, but If I was I would be "committed" to Materialism. Likewise, a professional Physicist should be committed to Physicalism. Back when I was a practicing Architect/Engineer, I was an Empiricist & Theorist, dealing with both material structures and immaterial concepts. But as an amateur Philosopher, my commitment is to Idealism, in the sense of the Science of Ideas.
For all practical purposes, I could be labeled a Materialist or Physicalist, because I live in a world of Matter & Energy. But for theoretical explorations on a philosophy forum, I am an Idealist, because I live in a world of Ideas, and this is a forum for exchanging ideas, not things. But if I lived in the Paleozoic Age, I would be an animal, because there would be no ideas to engage in. :wink:
*1. A metaphysical worldview, often called a metaphysics, is a philosophical system that explores the fundamental nature of reality, encompassing questions about existence, reality, and the world beyond the physical. It delves into what things are, how they exist, and the nature of reality itself. Metaphysics seeks to understand the underlying principles and structures of the universe, including whether it's purely physical or if there are non-physical entities like minds or souls.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=metaphysical+worldview
Of course not. :roll:
Quoting Tom Storm
Like Spinoza, neither am I.
No. I guess I'm a kind of simple-minded pragmatist. I do not have any commitments to capital T truth and consider our grasp of reality to be a contingent product of culture and language.
There are no antirealists in foxholes.[/quote]
Yes, I think it was Simon Blackburn who said that the moment a philosopher of any stripe leaves his house, he's committed to realism. Pragmatically that's the world we know, whatever there might beyond human understanding. Personally, I have a limited capacity or interest in speculations - you have a much more intense curiosity and deeper reading than me.
[quote=John Vervaeke]A lot of what you think is natural to you just part of how your mind works is actually culturally internalized. It has been generated historically and you have internalized it culturally[/quote]
Yet the real context in which we're having these discussions is also subject to the enormously disrupting changes that have occured in modern culture since the 17th century, where long-accepted understandings of the nature of the world have been completely and radically altered. 'Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold'.
If that is the case, why are you posting on a Philosophy Forum? Did you expect responses to your OP to be lists of hard Facts? What is Philosophy, if not "speculations" beyond the range of our physical senses, into the invisible realm of Ideas, Concepts, and Opinions?
Pragmatism*1 is a good policy for routine mundane activities. But when faced with novel situations or questions beyond here & now, that policy may fail to get practical results. If you want to see some arguments against Pragmatism*2 --- e.g. superficiality & lack of empathy --- click on the link below. :nerd:
Quoting Tom Storm
What do you find "intriguing" about Idealism? Does it complement or challenge your commitment to Pragmatism & Physicalism? Or does it provide a larger context for your mundane worldview? Is your pet dog "committed to physicalism"? Doggy Ideal : food in bowl good. What does he/she know that you don't?
Until the 20th century, Science was grounded in deterministic Newtonian physics, random Darwinian biology, and spyglass Cosmology. But statistical Quantum Physics, variable Genetic Biology, and creation-event Cosmology have opened-up a whole new world for scientific & philosophical exploration. None of those professions are "my area", but I probably know more about them than the average layman. I feel that I need to know something about the foundations of the Real world, in order to rationally discuss lofty notions about the Ideal cosmos.
Personally, I find all of those technical fields "intriguing". But for us to draw valid philosophical conclusions from such narrow-scope sciences, it's necessary to learn some nuts & bolts about how the world works from those new perspectives. On this forum, some basic familiarity with Quantum Reality should be your "area", if you are going to discuss modern & non-traditional notions of God, and why our contingent world exists. :halo:
Quoting Wayfarer
Physicalism, Materialism, Naturalism are philosophical worldviews that have been "culturally internalized" since the 17th century revolution in science. For most of us, they seem natural & normal, and unquestionable. But philosophers feel free to question everything. :smile:
*1. Pragmatism and idealism represent contrasting philosophical approaches. Pragmatism emphasizes practicality and the consequences of actions, focusing on what works in the real world. Idealism, on the other hand, prioritizes ideas, vision, and the potential of what should be.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=pragmatism+vs+idealism
*2. [i]Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that emphasizes the practical consequences of ideas and beliefs, evaluating their "truth" based on their effectiveness in solving problems and achieving desired outcomes
While it has influenced various fields like law, education, and social science, it also faces significant criticisms. Here are some of the main arguments against pragmatism:[/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=why+pragmatism+is+bad
:sweat: Oh please ...
[quote=Carlo Rovelli, Hegoland, pp. 159-60]
It is with sadness that every so often I spend a few hours on the internet, reading or listening to the mountain of stupidities dressed up with the word 'quantum'. Quantum medicine; holistic quantum theories of every kind, mental quantum spiritualism and so on, and on, in an almost unbelievable parade of quantum nonsense.[/quote]
The assumptions about God generally involve concepts like omnipotence and omniscience, along with eternal changeless perfection. To many any conception of God that does not accept these as divine attributes is not talking about the God of religion and philosophy. These assumptions are precisely what are called into question in process theology. Charles Hartshorne wrote an aptly named short book titled "Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes" and Whitehead explicitly rejects these as divine attributes instead focusing on creativity, novelty, experience and creative advance as divine attributes.
Yes, modern worldviews involving cosmology, evolution and physics tell us the theology derived from the notion of the earth as the center of the universe, man as the crown of creation and a divine particularly concerned with human moral behavior are all errors which should prompt us to reconsider our notions about what attributes the divine may or may not have. It requires a different conception and a different language from that inherited from the "philosophical theology of ages past".
You are difficult to have a discussion with because you seem to keep turning it into battles you think youre having with people, instead of actually reading what Im saying. None of the points you raise apply to my position.
As you probably know, philosophy covers a wide range of activities, some more speculative and requiring specialized expertise than others. Speculations about QM fall into this category, demanding a high level of technical knowledge. So does a good reading of Heidegger, for instance. Other subjects, like morality, value, aesthetics, and meaning, are more suited to open, discursive exploration.
Quoting Gnomon
Im trying to read this charitably. Is condescension something you tend to fall back on when challenged? What exactly were you trying to express here?
One of the process theologians I really like was John B. Cobb. His book Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism was highly impactful for me. (Coming to think of it, I met him once, at the home of Charles Birch, in the early 1990's.)
Anyway - the point of my comment was that too often, people are speaking from their inherited cultural notions of what is God, truth, reality, and so on, terms which have been constructed in a particular context, and that context, the background against which the terms are being used, has now changed massively. Whitehead and Hartshorne were engaged in that kind of re-evaluation or re-interpretation. The series I mentioned was a set of 52 lectures by Canadian professor of cognitive science, John Vervaeke, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis (more info). He's doing something similar, albeit on a rather larger scale than pure philosophy.
Hence the importance of understanding such themes and ideas in their historical context. The unfolding of geist, in Hegelian terms.
You are misunderstanding what I said apparently. I said that an unknowable divinity offers no solace or salvation. A personal divinity who reveals itself through revelation is not an unknowable divinity, and is able to promise salvation and thus offer solace.
All that said, it comes down to what one believes. If one truly believes there is a divinity but that the divinity is unknowable, then it would seem to follow logically that one would not expect salvation and feel solace. (In a way it is a performative contradiction even to believe in an unknowable divinity because there could be nothing to determine such a belief except perhaps wishful thinking. But then why wish for an unknowable divinity who can be of no help to us?).
If one believes in the Abrahamic God one cannot say one believes in an unknowable divinity, because the bible is purportedly a work of revelation, and a God who reveals himself cannot count as an unknowable divinity.
A big commitment that 52 hours of lectures, I will look for a summary but thanks
I am not sure supernatural intervention, divine revelation and the authority of sacred scripture is really a more sophisticated or philosophical conception of the divine even if a common one. :smile:
Anyway this is somewhat tangential to the point I had been making which had more to do with motivation than justification.
Or if (we) believe in it, why also need 'divinity' to (seem) real?
For many, the divine (deity seems a little anthropomorphic) reveals itself not by supernatural means but through the self organizing processes of nature (pantheism or panentheism depending on particulars).
The seeming striving against entropy, chaos, the void, the deep for novelty, organization, complexity, experience and creative advance.
The motivation for religion and many other human activities would seem to the search for meaning (Victor Frankel) for some larger purpose or significance. Religion is not the only solution but culturally and historically it seems to be an important significant one. Religion does not have to consist of supernatural intervention, special revelation sacred scripture or the personification of good and evil although it often does.
The opening post requested more sophisticated and philosophical conceptions of God. The term "God" is strongly associated with the big O's, with personification of deity, which sacred scripture, miracles and supernatural interventions, with an afterlife and final judgement (the triumph of good over evil and divine justice and judgement). These do not seem the most sophisticated or philosophical views about the divine, the sacred, the holy the numinous.
Which seems to raise the question what is "real".
We seem to believe in a lot of things which are not empirically demonstrable (love, truth, beauty, goodness). It is in such beliefs (or faith) that we find meaning?
Again, I have to apologize for asking questions that upset you. I'm just trying to understand what you mean, behind what you say : the implications. 180proof does indeed make philosophical dialog into a "battle" between opposing worldviews. {see PS below} But, I'm actually interested in your perspective on the God question. That's why I ask "why" questions. If you don't like to label your personal philosophy with conventional terms, a longer, detailed post might suffice to present a "philosophical defense"*1 of a specific position. So far, I haven't been able to get a fix on your "position".
However, if you don't like to get litigious on historically contentious topics, it would be better to not issue a challenge to converse in Metaphysical terms*2. Perhaps following the example of legalistic Judaism, the medieval Catholic Scholastics used "sophisticated" metaphysical arguments --- some of them polemical & pugnacious*3. The problem with Metaphysics on this forum is that, for many posters, scientifically validated physical evidence is much more persuasive. That's why my worldview includes both, but like Whitehead's Process Philosophy, focuses mainly on making the rational First Cause (God postulate) acceptable to modern thinkers in a science dominated world.
Historically, the "God" question has both pro & con Metaphysical arguments*4. Do you find any of them convincing? :smile:
PS___ I suspect that the "battles" you find in my posts, are actually my indirect responses to 180proof's parallel posts. These physical/metaphysical*5 skirmishes have been going on for years. Yet, because he seldom engages in philosophical arguments, but polemical attacks instead, I long ago ceased replying directly to him. So I must beg your pardon for using your thread to make my counterpoints.
*1. A philosophical defense, similar to a legal defense, presents an argument without necessarily making a positive case for a particular conclusion. Instead, it aims to address criticisms or objections raised against a philosophical position, providing justification and clarification.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=philosophy+defense
*2. "In contrast, more nuanced conceptions of God, such as Paul Tillichs idea of God as the "Ground of Being" or David Bentley Harts articulation of God as Being itself - represent attempts to have this conversation in metaphysical terms rather than anthropomorphic ones." ___Tom Storm, original post
*3. Scholastic Disputes :
[i]There was no single Scholastic doctrine; each of the Scholastics developed a distinct philosophy, which was often in disagreement with the systems of fellow teachers. . . . .
Masters also held disputations in which the affirmative and negative sides of a question were thoroughly argued by students and teacher before the latter resolved the problem.[/i]
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Scholasticism/Enduring-features
*4.Metaphysical arguments against God often explore philosophical inconsistencies or logical paradoxes inherent in the concept of God, challenging the idea of a perfect, omnipotent, and benevolent being. These arguments focus on the properties attributed to God, such as omniscience, omnipotence, and perfect goodness, and how these seemingly contradict the existence of evil, suffering, and apparent divine hiddenness.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=metaphysical+arguments+against+god
*5. metaphysics was the science that studied being as such or the first causes of things or things that do not change.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/
Note --- 180proof's worldview is based on Spinoza's notion of an Immanent God. Hence, no essential Being, no First Cause, and nothing that does not Change. And no need for Metaphysical arguments. Do you find Spinoza's common-sense approach to metaphysical topics acceptable?
Just as toddlers "find meaning" in (naming, talking to) stuffed animals magical thinking.
Quoting Gnomon
Your questions don't "upset" anyone, sir, they are often just vacuous questions or even ludicrously uninformed, and yet condescending (i.e. defensive). You're just not a serious and conspicuously lack intellectual integrity. I challenge you (like this) when I'm bored, Gnomon, knowing you're too insecure to respond directly to challenge me in kind, and so I can keep attention on your woo-of-the-gaps clowning (e.g. hiding behing poor old Whitehead's skirts). You don't "upset" anyone here on TPF (get over yourself!), I suspect many of us on here are even mildly amused by your uninformed bloviating. :smirk:
Fwiw (not that you'll intelligibly respond), I'm quite partial to both Epicurean and Spinozist "metaphysical arguments" FOR "God". I'm also "convinced" by arguments AGAINST "God" by such contemporary philosophers as Rebecca Goldstein, Victor Stenger, André Comte-Sponville, Theodore Drange, Michael Martin, Kai Nielsen & J.L. Schellenberg to name a few.
I understand that you might think a lot of religion is "magical thinking". I wondered if you felt the same about concepts like truth, justice, beauty, etc)? I hope not.
Well, of course, that depends on the contexts in which, or how, (any) concepts are used.
Mea culpa. Due to my personal bias, I did not interpret Faith in Revelation as a viable means of knowing the "unknown god" (Acts 17:23). As you say though, millions of people throughout history and around the world have found such indirect revelation (via human "witnesses" & interpreters)*1 to offer salvation & solace.
In my experience, I have found the primary Revelation (Bible)*2 of Christianity to be a record of Imperial Rome's need to create a unifying alternative to its divisive babble of multicultural polytheistic religions, and the watered-down official religion of the Pantheon. Obviously, placing the burden on Faith instead of Works (and Reason) has worked beyond the dreams of "visionary" Constantine*3, the Trump of his day, to Make Rome Great Again. I hope you will pardon my unofficial notion of "knowable". :wink:
PS___ In my personal worldview, the direct revelation of G*D is the self-organizing world itself. Unfortunately, the only solace offered is something like Stoic Eudaimonia.
*1. While it's true that Christianity encompasses a vast number of denominations and sects, estimating a precise number is difficult. Estimates range from 200 in the U.S. to a staggering 45,000 or more globally. These numbers highlight the diverse range of beliefs and practices within the Christian faith
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=thousands+of+christian+religions
Note --- One revelation, thousands of interpretations & implementations.
*2. The official Latin Bible of the Roman Catholic Church is the Vulgate, which was affirmed by the Council of Trent (1545-1563).
Note --- There was no "official" revelation until the Council of Nicea in 325AD. Even 1500 years later, scholars were still re-interpreting the "revelation".
*3. The first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity was Constantine the Great. After a vision before the Battle of Milvian Bridge, he declared his support for Christianity in 312 CE and gradually transitioned the religion from a persecuted minority to a favored religion within the Roman Empire. This led to the Edict of Milan in 313 CE, which granted religious tolerance and allowed Christians to practice their faith openly. Constantine's conversion and subsequent policies marked a significant turning point for Christianity and its eventual establishment as the official religion of the Roman Empire.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=roman+emperor+christianity
That is exactly the kind of natural Revelation that turned me away from Atheism toward Deism. The "self organizing processes" of Nature are what led A.N. Whitehead to write his magnum opus of Process and Reality. I was somewhat surprised to learn that someone of his intellectual stature had reached the same conclusion as had, not from religious revelations but from pragmatic godless scientific exploration of natural processes. How could a self-organizing system emerge from a random Bang in the dark? That "striving against entropy" is what Schrodinger called "Negentropy" (free energy) and what I call "Enformy"*1 (causal en-form-action). :smile:
*1. Enformy :
[i]In the Enformationism theory, Enformy is a hypothetical, holistic, metaphysical, natural trend or force, that counteracts Entropy & Randomness to produce complexity & progress. [ see post 63 for graph ]
#. I'm not aware of any "supernatural force" in the world. But my Enformationism theory postulates that there is a meta-physical force behind Time's Arrow and the positive progress of evolution. Just as Entropy is sometimes referred to as a "force" causing energy to dissipate (negative effect), Enformy is the antithesis, which causes energy to agglomerate (additive effect).
#. Of course, neither of those phenomena is a physical Force, or a direct Cause, in the usual sense. But the term "force" is applied to such holistic causes as a metaphor drawn from our experience with physics.
#. "Entropy" and "Enformy" are scientific/technical terms that are equivalent to the religious/moralistic terms "Evil" and "Good". So, while those forces are completely natural, the ultimate source of the power behind them may be super-natural, in the sense that the First Cause logically existed before the Big Bang.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
I.e. yinyang of the eternal Dao
Quoting Gnomon
Is that what really happened, sir? How do you (we) scientifically know this?
First (not wanting to sound pedantic) 'divinity' comes from the Indic root 'deva', God or gods or divine beings. I think divinity can be distinguished from 'the holy' insofar as (for example) the Buddhist idea of the holy is not based on or derived from Devas (although Devas are part of the Buddhist religious imagination, they play only an ancillary role.) The same could also be said of other non-theistic spiritualities (dare I say, including Spinoza's? In Ethics V, Spinoza describes the kind of intuitive knowledge or insight as bringing about the minds intellectual love of God (amor Dei intellectualis), which could be compared, in a very general way, with the fruit of gnosis or jñ?na, in that it is not propositional belief but direct realization.)
That aside, the key point about specifically religious knowledge or insight (gnosis, jñ?na, etc) is that the attainment of insight requires a certain mental maturity and ethical stability. That is why there is such emphasis on morality, discipline, renunciation, and so on, in religious orders. The theory is, because the mind is ordinarily attached to and distracted by so many wants (and wounds) then it is impossible for it to become aware of any reality outside itself. Hence the customary requirement for self-abnegation which is common to both theistic faiths and to non-theistic religious disciplines. Hence also the need for concentration, not in the sense of a momentary focus of attention, but an atunement of the mind with the object of insight through disciplined meditation, liturgy and practice.
So belief or faith is required for the aspirant, because in the absence of the insight which is the actual fruition of that discipline, one only has the faith that it is, in fact, a real possibility. In this Buddhist sutta, the disciple Sariputta says that 'Those who have not known, seen, penetrated, realized, or attained it by means of discernment would have to take it on conviction' that nibbana ('gaining a footing in the deathless') is real - whereas those (such as himself) who have 'seen, known, penetrated' etc, would not have to take it on conviction, rather, they would know it directly.
//ps realised after Id written this that it sidesteps the topic posed in the OP, which is specifically theistic, but I hope the more general point stands//
Quite, and a good way of seeing this is that there is no difference between the aspirant before realisation and after realisation.
Or the sum of knowledge before and after the realisation is the same.
There is no[I]thing[/I] different between she who knows and she who doesnt. Because the new knowledge that the knower now knows is the identical knowledge as before. But seen in a different light.
The early Buddhist texts differentiate levels of understanding - stream-winners from non-returners and from the putajjhana (uneducated persons.) Mah?y?na makes it even more elaborate with the Ten Bhumis. None of which actually negates the point youre making. First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain. That koan is also about stages of the understanding. From the ultimate point of view, theres nothing to attain but that is a very difficult understanding to attain.
The way I see it sometimes is that we need faith up until the point we merge with what it is that provided the natural world(sorry for the garbled language, Im trying not to use words with baggage). Beyond which we offer faith back in the other direction to the brave people following on behind us.
Theres something of a communion about it.
I have an amusing anecdote. Way back in my undergraduate days I was looking for books in the uni library. I noticed one particular volume seem to have slipped behind all the others and fished it out. To my surprise, it had no borrowing slip on it (usually pasted in to the front to be stamped with the return-by date). I took it to the front desk to borrow it. It wasnt even on the register! The librarian quickly amended the records and made an entry for it, and also pasted the borrowing slip into it and I took it home.
The name of that book: The Unknowable, Simon Frank (a Russian Orthodox philosopher.) But I loved the irony of having found it, completely unknown even to the library I found it in (although I admit, I never made a lot of headway with it, as it is a very arcane text. )
But the aphorism on the dedication page always stayed with me: The Unattainable is Attained through Non-Attainment (I think from Nicholas of Cusa).
I haven't read anything by Vervaeke, but I Googled and found this summary of his worldview*1. His notion to "untangle the sacred from the supernatural" makes sense to me. Although my personal worldview has a role for a Transcendent First Cause or Tao, that is necessarily pre-natural, I don't see any reason to worship such an abstract concept. My G*D concept is basically Spinoza's deus sive natura with accomodations for 21st century cosmology and 5th century BC philosophy.
The definition of his Essentialism*2 in terms of an eternal essence seems to be an update of Plato's Ideal Forms. This also is amenable to my worldview, which prefers to avoid referring to the Primal Essence as "God", due to the term's historical religious contamination by association with human tyrants. But Metaphysical Essentialism --- if it implies a transcendent source of Qualia --- might also clash with the OP's wish for a return to a "classical metaphysical" Theism --- if "classical" refers to Catholic Scholasticism, which definitely "entangled" sacred taboos with supernatural sovereignty. :smile:
*1. Vervaeke uses the terms metaphysical essentialism to refer to this attitude. He argues that if we want to solve our meaning crisis, we must untangle the sacred from the supernatural. We have to come up with a way of re-articulating our worldview in which we can get back that sense of deep connectedness.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=+John+Vervaeke
*2. Metaphysical essentialism is a philosophical concept that proposes that things possess an inherent, unchanging essence that defines their identity and determines their properties. This essence is considered necessary and sufficient for an entity to be what it is. In essence, metaphysical essentialism argues that things have a fundamental nature that remains constant, regardless of their accidental properties or changes.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=metaphysical+essentialism%E2%80%9D
Okay, but then you contradict your "Transcendent" claim with this Anti-Transcendent (i.e. pure immanence) claim:
Actually reading Spinoza's work itself rather than just skimming a wiki article might help you to stop repeating more nonsense like this, sir.
"What do you find intriguing" is a serious question to determine where you are coming from. "To provide a larger context" is just one possible response. The "doggy ideal" of food in the bowl is an example of basic Physicalism, unencumbered by abstract ideas. "What does he know" is just a repeat of a question in your OP.
The questions quoted were intended to be sincere philosophical inquiries to elicit a better understanding of your worldview. Which is still opaque to me. The OP seems to imply a wish to return to a "classical theism", but leaves it open for interpretation of what that refers to*1. You denied being a Materialist, and offered that you are intrigued by Idealism. But to what extent? Idealism can be critiqued as wishful thinking, inappropriate for living in the Real world. Or applauded as an example of going beyond the obvious to a more subtle understanding of mundane reality.
Sophisticated language can sometimes use esoteric words, and "tendentious distinctions" that obscure their meaning for us simple-minded folk. For example, you referenced Hart's "ultimate reality", but that's just as abstract & obscure as "ground of being". Then you asked "what does it mean?" Amen! I have used that enigmatic term myself, but followed up with more functional descriptions of the role of God in the real world.
As you said, "Such accounts seem to head towards the mystical and the murky realm of ineffability". That's why I am trying to discover what kind of "account" you would find more convincing to modern philosophers. A viable answer to that query is important to me. And was one motivation for my creating a down-to-earth god-model that is more descriptive & meaningful than "ground of being". My philosophical god-concept serves not as the transcendent over-lord for our devolved Garden of Eden, but as the essence of Matter & Energy, and the immanent cause of every event in physical evolution.
You said that Hart's "account of God comes from a vast tradition". How would you describe that tradition : Orthodox Christianity?*1. If so, that would help me to grasp what you mean by "more sophisticated philosophical accounts". Does that tradition seem radical compared to "more contemporary theological personalism"? If so, I misinterpreted the thread title, and will have little to offer on the topic.
My questions are not intended to be disrespectful, but to be probing. I suppose I'm poking around in spots that are sore from past experience on this forum. :smile:
*1. David Bentley Hart is an Eastern Orthodox scholar of religion and a philosopher, writer, and cultural commentator.
https://www.christiancentury.org/article/interviews/what-we-think-we-know-about-god
Clearly, what Im asking for is a survey of different, more philosophical accounts of theism to contrast with the literalist versions put forward by many apologists.
Why am I interested? Who knows? Im curious about what people believe and why.
Quoting Gnomon
Read him. I was taken by the accounts of God provided by the patristics - esp Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor, particularly on the logos and the earlier redemption tradition. Not to mention the universalist position. My early reading was influenced by mystical traditions, figures like Ouspensky and Gurdjieff. Which was tempered somewhat by the mystical pragmatist J Krishnamurti. Hart seems to be is disliked by many (conservative) Christians because of his alignment with progressive politics and his interpretations of Christianity which support less authoritarian accounts of theism. He can certainly be an arrogant shit, but he's smart as a whip and from what I can gather, a Neoplatonist.
Quoting prothero
Right?seeing nature itself as divine?a purely immanent divinity. It is divine on account of its magnificence and its overwhelmingly complex beauty?that I can certainly relate to. I wonder must there be thought to be a telos, in order to satisfy the sense of the sublime, though? Or is an imagined telos merely an anthropomorphic, indeed anthropocentric, projection?
Quoting Gnomon
I'm not saying that revelation is a viable means of knowing God, I was merely pointing out that if it is believed to be a viable means of knowing God, then it follows that God cannot consistently be said to be unknowable.
I've always thought so: intentional agents make goals and the only intentional agents known to us are ourselves, mere humans. Am I missing something?
@Gnomon
It is all rather remarkable though.
The religiously inclined will see telos. They do include numerous educated, intelligent and rational people so dismissing them all "as engaging in magical thinking and childish fantasy" may be a little dismissive.
Dont forget the dolphins, etc..
"Imagined Telos"*1 and "Projection" make the notion of a direction to evolution sound like wishful thinking. But a more positive way to label that idea is Interpretation or Inference. For example, cosmologists have interpreted the stellar red-shift to mean that the universe is expanding in all physical directions. Physicists have also interpreted physical Entropy as an inevitable result of the second law of thermodynamics. But they also imagined our experience of a flow from past to future as an Arrow of Time*2 : a Telos.
On the other hand, Whitehead's notion of Purposeful Cosmic Telos*3 is both an inference from evidence of the Arrow of Time, and a causal interpretation in terms of the original impulse that set the universe on this course into the unknown. So where are we going, and why?
Scientists tend to not ask Why? questions. But philosophers have always wanted to know Why the world is in the dynamic directional state of, not only expansion, but of qualitative evolution, from near nothing to Life, Mind, and Culture (as a supplement to Nature). As a product of the human (not animal) Mind, Teleology is indeed anthropomorphic and anthropocentric. But is the Telos a projection onto, or an inference from the observable cosmos? :smile:
*1. "Imagined telos" refers to a concept in philosophy and art where individuals or communities envision and create a future purpose or goal. This future purpose is not necessarily based on established facts or historical patterns, but rather on imagination and hope for a better state of affairs.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=imagined+telos
*2. The arrow of time refers to the directional nature of time, the phenomenon that time flows from past to future. This is a central concept in physics and philosophy, with the second law of thermodynamics playing a key role in explaining it. While the fundamental laws of physics don't inherently favor a direction of time, the increasing entropy of isolated systems (as described by the second law) creates the observable arrow of time, making it clear that time moves forward rather than backward.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=arrow+of+time
*3. In Whitehead's process philosophy, teleology refers to the idea that everything in the universe is moving towards a specific end or purpose. Whitehead believes that reality is fundamentally a dynamic process of becoming, and that all entities, including humans, are striving towards some form of fulfillment or "telos". This telos is not a pre-determined destiny, but rather a constantly evolving goal that is shaped by the ongoing creative process of the universe.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=whitehead+teleology
Scientists interrogate nature and nature is not an intentional agent that conceives or answers to why questions. Rather they ask more general how questions from which they infer causal explanations and not intentions or purposes. The premodern approach of putting 'why questions' to nature had produced alchemy, not chemistry; astrology, not astromony; geocentricity, not heliocentricity; humors & demonic possession, not germ-theory of disease; Aristotlean teleology of motion, not Galilean-Newtonian-Einsteinian equivalence principle; etc for millennia. Across all modern sciences substantive, methodological and technical progress has accelerated exponentially due in large part to scientists overcoming their innate magical thinking and not wasting time asking inanimate objects and systems "why" they do what they do.
This is a function of reflecting examining their own thinking on personal sensations, perceptions, beliefs and what the philosopher assumes she knows. Philosophy begins (and ends) with the philosopher interrogating herself, so asking "why" is often appropriate, even inescapable; and in this way pointed out above philosophical speculation (i.e. "Why, self?" is categorically different from scientific theorizing (i.e "How, nature?")
You're welcome, Gnomon. :smirk:
I assume that by "literalist" you mean those who accept the Christian bible as the revealed word of God. But, I've seen very few bible-thumpers on this forum. So most of the god-models that are discussed seem to be some variation on what Blaise Pascal derisively called the "god of the philosophers"*1. That was probably a reference to his contemporary Baruch Spinoza, and his Pantheistic equation of God with Nature. Spinoza denied the validity of the Jewish scriptures, supposedly revealed by God via human prophets. So his substantial & immanent god-model was derived by human reasoning, which for "literalists" was trivial compared to the omniscience of God.
The exemplars of nuance you mentioned in the OP, Tillich & Hart, are Theologians with some commitment to religious doctrine. Have you found any secular non-religious Philosophers who fit your definition of a nuanced notion of God? C.S. Pierce, A.N. Whitehead, Kurt Gödel, for example. :smile:
*1. The "God of the Philosophers" refers to the concept of God as understood through philosophical reasoning and natural theology, rather than through revelation or religious tradition. This God is often described as an impersonal, abstract force or a maximally great being, rather than a personal, active God as found in religious texts like the Bible.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=god+of+the+philosophers
Of course there's no such "equation" ... :roll:
Quoting 180 Proof
S is an acosmist (Maimon, Hegel) and not a pantheist (or pan-en-theist or pan-en-deist) or philosophical materialist. Anyway, to wit:
[quote=Spinoza, from letter (73) to Henry Oldenburg]... But some people think the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus rests on the assumption that God is one and the same as Nature understood as a mass of corporeal matter. This is a complete mistake.[/quote]
(Emphasis is mine.)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/993976 :yawn:
Perhaps you assume that this site is only for talking to itself. In life, I meet many atheists who renounce a cartoon God and the literalists. Jordan Peterson (of whom I am not a fan) puts it like this: "Atheists don't understand the God they reject." I used to hear this from religious friends too. So this thread is partly to assist me to gain a survey of accounts of God that might be richer and more interesting, particularly when I talk to doctrinaire atheists in the 'real world' who think they have mastered the subject. But more generally, I am interested in what people believe and why.
Quoting Gnomon
I'm more interested in conversations than wrestling with heavy texts. I'm not much of a consumer of philosophy works. Pierce is notoriously difficult to read, so I'll give him a miss. If someone wants to lay out Whitehead's God in this thread, I'll be interested. Whitehead seems to think God has limitations to their power; the omnis do not apply. He argues that God is a kind of apex of the good, and the necessary foundation of our metaphysics. It seems like the traditional account (e.g.,we need God to explain reason and order) but tempered to match modernity.
Do you have a robust reading of Whitehead or Godel's theisms?
Yeah, well, I keep encountering theists who don't understand the God they accept, that is, do not propose a cogent, self-consistent 'God-concept' they can talk about (i.e. defend) intelligibly without equivocating and special pleading. It's the theist's 'God-nonsense' what she (or her tradition) says about God I reject.
Interesting, I see an alignment here with the ideology of the Theosophical society and other attempts in the 19th century to bring Eastern philosophy to the West. Which then spurned the various new age movements, the interest in yoga, and Buddhism. And yet Western philosophy has struggled with these ideas and doesnt seem able to adopt them, or integrate them.
It seems to be impenetrable to the Aristotlean way of thinking, which is centred around the perception and experience of the human brain. Its like the human intellect is reified and everything else must be explained through the prism of this intellect, or dismissed in some way.
In the US, the typical, non-philosophical, believer seems to feel the need for a sympathetic person to pray to : Jesus and/or Mary. And Jesus' absentee father-god is sort of a shadowy background figure. Do you think abstract & impersonal Philosophical god-models are "richer and more interesting", or is it intimately personal Mystical models that interest you? Personally, I found anglo-catholic Evelyn Underhill's 1911 book, Mysticism*1, very interesting, because its sophisticated, yet spiritual, portrayal of God was so different from my own literal-biblical childhood Jehovah. But, such direct mystical experience of God is not accessible to those who tend to be more Rational than Emotional. The God of Mystics is not my kind of God.
If you prefer sophisticated & intellectual god-models though, Baruch Spinoza*2 developed a revolutionary worldview for his 17th century milieu. But its very strangeness compared to our normal experience of the world, makes it a poor foundation for a religion of the people. It combines a variety of philosophical elements into a system that has been known by various names, depending on the interpreter : Idealism*3, Pantheism, Acosmism*4, etc. Do you find his Post-Judaism God more amenable than that of the Christian literalists? I think of Whitehead's*5 theology as a 20th century update of Spinoza's 17th century god-model, but even his paradigm needs a bit of scientific updating for the 21st century. Which I have attempted to do in my own quantum & information science-based god-model. Definitely not mystical or ecstatic or literal. :smile:
PS___ Obviously, these god-models are not revelations from God, but imaginations of God. And they may be rudimentary Scientific observations of Nature, but mostly of Human nature. Some of Spinoza's ideas are compatible with my own. But I don't consider him my guru.
*1. Evelyn Underhill, a prominent writer on Christian mysticism, viewed God as the ultimate reality and the object of the mystical journey. She emphasized the presence of God in all aspects of life, even the seemingly ordinary, and stressed the importance of both contemplation and action in seeking union with God.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=evelyn+underhill+god
Note --- Click on the link for more info.
*2. Spinoza :
Spinoza is often interpreted as an acosmist, meaning he denies the independent existence of the world (cosmos) apart from God. While not denying the existence of finite things, he views them as manifestations or modes of a single, infinite substance, which is God. This interpretation, particularly by thinkers like Hegel, suggests that Spinoza's system prioritizes the unity of God over the perceived diversity of the world, leading to an acosmic view.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=acosmist+spinoza
*3. Spinoza Idealism :
While Baruch Spinoza is not a straightforward idealist in the traditional sense, his philosophy does incorporate elements that resonate with idealism, particularly in his concept of God and the relationship between mind and body. Spinoza's view, often described as objective idealism, sees God as the underlying substance of all reality, with thought and extension (matter) being two of God's infinite attributes. This differs from subjective idealism, which posits that reality is fundamentally mental.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=spinoza+idealism
*4. An "acosmist" is someone who believes in or adheres to the philosophical doctrine of acosmism. Acosmism, in turn, is the view that the finite world, or the world of our everyday experience, does not have true or independent reality, and that only God or the infinite is truly real. Essentially, it posits that the world we perceive is an illusion or a manifestation of the divine, not a separate, independent entity.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=acosmist
*5. Alfred North Whitehead and Baruch Spinoza are both important figures in Western philosophy, but they have distinct approaches to metaphysics. Whitehead's philosophy emphasizes process and becoming, while Spinoza's is rooted in substance and a more static view of reality. Both, however, are considered important figures in the history of metaphysics and have influenced each other's work.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=whitehead+spinoza
Quoting Tom Storm
Since I am an untrained amateur philosopher, you may not consider these blog posts a "robust reading". But they may serve as a brief capsule of his Philosophy and his Theology. :smile:
Evolutionary Process and Cosmic Reality
Whitehead also defined his natural + super-natural lawmaker-deity in terms that are more scientific and philosophical than religious?. For example : non-temporal = eternal ; primordial - consequent = both creator & creation ; potential = pre-big-bang world-creating power ; anti-entropic = what I call Enformy?.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page43.html
The Point of Process Philosophy
Although he uses a theistic term for the creator of our evolving world, I think his concept of God is not religious, but philosophical. Whiteheads associate Charles Hartshorne? labeled his theology as : PanEnDeism?. This deity is not imagined on a throne judging the creation, but everywhere, including in the material world, participating in the process of Creation.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page44.html
'Animism' (ancestralism ... or daoism) seems the oldest, and really the only, "religion of the people" that's ever worked for any people. It seems to me all of the cultic-variations (i.e. "fallen" bastards) which have followed, including the vast majority of explicitly 'philosophical belief-systems' (e.g. idealisms, transcendencisms), have been, in one way or another, servants of empire (aka "civilization": missionary, scarcities-consecrating, zerosum-dominance hierarchies).
Non-literal, abstract, impersonal gods, like mystical / ecstatic practices, are just latter-day attempts at slipping out of the 'mind forg'd manacles' of the literal God of priests, preachers, imams, rabbis, gurus ... sovereigns (i.e. "Big Others") and returning as Gnostics envision? to an animist milieu or condition 'the source' (however, only as (genuinely free) individuals, not as "the people").
@Tom Storm @Wayfarer @prothero @Janus
IMO, the philosophical accounts do not point to a God of religion. There may very well be a ground of being, but the big question is: does it exhibit intentionality? If not, then it points to a natural ground of being, not a god.
Is there a good reason to believe the ground of being acts intentionally? IMO, the only reason one might think so, is that teleology requires it - so the question becomes: is there good reason to believe teleology? I haven't seen one.
Do you think reason is a useful means of evaluating conceptions of God? I'm aware of its historical use in Natural Theology to 'demonstrate' the divine, but I wonder how far that can be taken. Everyone is convinced their use of reasoning is unassailable. Particularly the Thomists and their Preambula Fidei.
Quoting Relativist
I wonder how useful a ground of being is to us as a concept and what it can mean, other than nebulous notions of foundational guarantee for truth, goodness and beauty.
The issue of purpose and intentionality, and its supposed absence from the world, is part and parcel of the scientific and Copernican revolution, grounded as it was in Galileos division of the mind and world into the two domains of primary measurable physical attributes, and secondary mental or qualitative attributes. This meant also the elimination of the relics of Aristotelian physics, with its natural places and inherent tendencies, in favour of a world in which everything could be accounted for by material causation.
What is overlooked in all this, is the sense in which the Galilean-Newtonian view is a useful abstraction, within which life itself now appears as an anomaly, an oddity, something which has to be explained in terms which have already intrinsically excluded it. Thats the plight of modern materialism in a nutshell.
Quoting Tom Storm
Reduced to the conceptual, it has very limited usefulness. The realisation of such a ground is ecstatic, outside the conceptual or discursive intellect.
Theres shamanism, which is one of the very ancient roots of what was to become religion. So too yogic practices of mystical absorption. Buddhism and Jainism grew out of the sramana movement in ancient India, which comprised heterodox (i.e. non-Vedic) ascetics who renounced society and lived in the forests (literally forest-dwellers.) And by what criterion would you judge that these had, or hadnt, worked? All of the Indian religion, Vedic and other, were oriented around mok?a, liberation from the eternal cycle of birth and death. If you dont recognise that there is such a state, then of course the entire edifice will be, for you, a fiction, which seems to be how you regard it.
And outside of my experince.
100%
Part of the problem here is that we dont have the conceptual language to imagine (visualise) such things. Once you do, its quite easy to do so. The various traditions teach this knowledge, each in their particular narrative. Although they all amount to pretty much the same thing, with different characters, means and purpose.
What they are teaching is an ability to conceptualise a divinity in the world, the world we inhabit. So that we can develop an ability to see it in action around us a develop deep love and reverence for it in our every day lives, as we perform our daily life activities. The idea being that over time we will exhibit some of the divinity in our lives and society. This role is played in Hinduism by the guru, for example.
Yes. I don't see why it wouldn't be useful.
Although I expect that with the rate of development in IT and AI, it will become possible to do this through technology, in the next generation, or two.
I should add, as we are in a Christian society that monastic life does enable monks to achieve this understanding, although, I have no experience of this personally.
Yes, I have seen this as well, (I was involved for a decade during the 1990s). Traditionally (prior to the New Age movement) people would have a calling, which would mean that they became involved for a deeper seated reason than most churchgoers. The same with New Age, many people became drawn in to the movement who didnt have a calling, or because friends and colleagues introduced them on a more social level.
Furthermore I am of the opinion that people only go beyond the initial impulse, or experience because they have an innate predisposition for that way of life. Myself being an example, I was seeking this out from a young age, by the time I was 12, I was studying two or three types of divination and reading anything I could lay my hands on that was philosophical, or theological.
Regarding the direction of a guru, the way I see it is that the guru is a conduit and is not necessarily conscious of what they are doing in terms of [I]guiding[/I] the pupil. Rather, that it is as much something in the pupil drawing out from the teacher what they need to learn. I am coming to this from the perspective that people who are following this course are only partly aware and in charge of what is going on. That it is a more esoteric (putting the baggage of that phrase to one side) process and the pupil and teacher are developing on an underlying unconscious, or soul( baggage accepted) level and may be unaware of what is going on. Also that there are people living ordinary lives going through these processes entirely unaware of it and may have no interest at all in anything religious, or spiritual.
FWIW, what you describe here is quite consistent with deep learning occuring in the neural networks of our brains. So, based on neuroscience, there is good reason to think we are all unintentionally going through it. Of course, it might be beneficial to realize that deep learning is prone to "hallucinations".
Sure, we can evaluate and compare different conceptions of God, but I'm sketical this can lead to actual knowledge of God.
Thomism has pros and cons. In its favor: it's a fairly complete, coherent metaphysical theory. I've read a couple of Ed Feser's books on the topic, and he seems to have embraced Thomism because he sees it as a framework for answering all the important metaphysical questions. That said, it's still an untestable, unfalsifiable hypothesis. If one believes in God, it may be satisfying because of its competeness.
Quoting Tom Storm
I'm thinking strictly of an ontological bottom layer of physical reality, and (possibly) something deeper than the physical. I suppose one could choose to use the foundation to account for minds and beauty.
Yes and yes. But what is going through it referring to?
I was alluding to your statement:
Quoting Punshhh
A process of subconsiously occuring deep learning.
Yes, I agree with that. Although what I was getting at is a growth, or development in the being, so there may be some kind of learning in a biological sense. But more of a flowering process, or metamorphosis. Something deeper than physical biology, perhaps, more on the level of a soul, or atman (baggage accepted).
So the being goes through the process as a result of this deeper transformation. The mind, (including the subconscious), or intellect is playing no more than a supportive role.
What's a better alternative, and how exactly is it better?
If there is actual teleology in the world, how do you account for it? AFAIK, it entails prior intent; Intent entails a a being with the capacity to formulate and act upon intent. Whether we call this a "God", a trascendental oversoul, or anything else, it strikes me as a rather extreme assumption to think that such a being just happens to exist uncaused. By contrast, the gradual development of beings, somewhere in an old. vast universe, with the capacity for intentional behavior, but considerably more limited powers to act, seems considerably more plausible. As you often note, there are explanatory gaps to this materialist view, but the alternative appear to me to have even more explanatory gaps.
But God might be one of these beings, with powers which seem unlimited from our tiny perspective.
The way I addressed the question of teleology was in the context of the emergence of the Galilean-Newtonian-Cartesian worldview (a.k.a. 'the scientific revolution'). It is here that the notion of telos or purpose was rejected in favour of mechanistic model, the understanding that the totality of the universe can be understood solely in terms of matter (since Einstein 'matter-energy') acting in accordance with natural laws over aeons of time. This is what gives rise to all phenomena, undirected by anything like a higher intelligence or divine intellect.
Background - teleology at the time of the scientific revolution had been intertwined with concepts from Aristotelian physics, such as 'natural place', and, in turn, with the Ptolmaic geocentric cosmology. This was superseded by Galileo and Newton's modern understanding of physics in terms of mass, velocity, intertia etc. So teleology was rejected, along with Aristotelian notions of final and formal causation (which also has major implications.) And that medieval conception of causation was bound up with the early modern conception of a 'divine architect' and 'ideas in the mind of God'.
Whereas, the way you phrase the question falls into what I see as a false dichotomy: either accepting the naturalist, mechanistic account or holding to a creationist or 'intelligent design' cosmology. This is precisely the predicament that the cultural dynamics of Western culture engineered for itself. (Karen Armstrong's 2009 book The Case for God lays this out very clearly.)
Quoting Relativist
I would suggest looking at telos differently, rather than in terms of a Grand Design presided over by a cosmic architect/engineer (which seems to me like God created in the image of man).
Recall that I said that physics begins with abstraction: this is the key point. Galileo's physics starts with the division of primary and secondary qualities, the primary qualities being those that can be both expressed and measured in mathematical terms, the fundamental ground of mathematical physics, which has grown so astoundingly since Galileo's day. How things appear to us, by contrast, is relegated to the 'secondary qualities' which are intrinsically subjective in nature. (Notice this is a re-statement of the ancient philosophical quandry of 'reality and appearance'.)
But what does that leave out? Already, intentionality and purpose have been excluded from the reckoning, as one of the grounding assumptions of the model. Physicalism' insists that in reality there are no purposes or intentionality - these are relegated to the personal or subjective domain. Whereas, in actuality, all of us, as human beings, and every single organism, are animated or driven by purposeful and intentional actions. The idea that the universe is 'devoid of meaning' is, therefore, a judgement: even the scientist studying the motions of planets has some aim in mind, if only just to understand. So this is the false dichotomy I'm refering to.
Consider the following, from philosopher of biology, Steve Talbott:
[quote=Steve Talbott, What Do Organisms Mean?;https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/what-do-organisms-mean] The physicist wants laws that are as universal as possible, true of all situations and therefore unable to tell us much about any particular situation laws, in other words, that are true regardless of meaning and context. So far as a physical law is concerned, once we know it, every subsequent observation merely demonstrates something we already knew: the law will yet again be obeyed. This requires a severe abstraction from the presentational richness of the phenomenal world, which presents us at every moment with something new. Such abstraction shows up in the strong urge toward the mathematization of physical laws.
Nothing ever goes wrong with the physical laws that were operative in the system, but any given causal relation can always be sabotaged by a contextual change.
In biology a changing context does not interfere with some causal truth we are trying to see; contextual transformation is itself the truth we are after. Or, you could say: in the organism as a maker of meaning, interfering is the whole point! The ongoing construction and evolution of a context, with its continually modulated causal relationships, is what the biologist is trying to recognize and do justice to. Every creature lives by virtue of the dynamic, pattern-shifting play of a governing context, which extends into an open-ended environment. The organism gives expression, at every level of its being, to the unbounded because of reason, the tapestry of meaning...[/quote]
So that is at least the direction in which an answer should be sought. Notice that it doesn't deny the efficacy of physical laws and physical causation, but recognises the inherent limitations of those principles when applied to a broader context, that being actual existence.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't see that the dichitomy I described is a false one. Even after reading your post, and a good bit of the Talbot article, I could see nothing that implies this to be false. Rather, you and Talbot seem to be arguing for using "teleology" as an epistemological paradigm for describing living things and their interactions. Sure, I see the utility for better understanding biological systems. But this wouldn't negate what I said, in terms of a metaphysical teleology.
Am I misunderstanding ?
I appreciate your thoughtful response. You're right to say that there's a distinction between using teleology as an epistemological paradigmi.e., as a way of understanding living systemsand asserting it as a metaphysical principle embedded in the structure of reality. But I think that very distinction deserves closer scrutiny.
The heart of the issue is this: Can we adequately account for living systemsand by extension, consciousness and agencywithout appeal to any notion of purpose, directionality, or normativity? Or put differently: Is it plausible to treat teleological concepts as mere heuristics or metaphors, while denying their ontological basis?
When Talbott (and others like Thompson, Varela, Deacon, and Jonas) emphasize the meaningfulness, normativity, and goal-directedness inherent in organisms, they're not merely saying "this is a useful model." They're pointing out that organisms actually behave in ways that cannot be made intelligible in purely mechanistic terms. As soon as you describe a cell as regulating its internal state, or an animal as foraging, you're already invoking purpose-laden languagelanguage that tracks something real in the nature of life.
So when you say my post didn't show your dichotomy to be false, I would say: the dichotomy between materialism and creationism is false precisely because there is a third option: namely, that telos is a real feature of life, but not in the anthropomorphic sense of an external designer with a blueprint. Instead, it emerges as a kind of immanent normativitya principle of self-organization and purposiveness intrinsic to living systems themselves.
I've been reading Hans Jonas 'Phenomenology of Biology'. Jonas argues that life is the phenomenon that gives rise to value and meaningnot because it was pre-ordained by a deity, but because the very act of being alive entails a concern for continued existence, a directedness toward goals (however basic), and an interpretive relationship with the environment. That's not "epistemological teleology" in the narrow senseits a recognition that teleological structures are built into the logic of life itself.
And once we admit thateven provisionallythen perhaps the modern exclusion of telos (and with it, qualities like value, intention, or meaning) from our ontology is not just a simplifying abstraction, but a serious (even catastrophic) omission.
And as Hans Jonas powerfully argues, since the ascent of mechanistic materialism, life and consciousness have become anomaliesfeatures of reality that no longer fit within the explanatory framework that modern science inherited from Galileo and Newton. The success of mechanistic models in physics came at the cost of excluding precisely those qualities that constitute living, experiencing beings: purposiveness, value, and meaning. Materialism has to treat these as secondary effects or emergent illusions, but never as basic features of reality.
To return to your point: I agree that "intent" in the conscious human sense requires a subject capable of forming and acting on reasons. But perhaps that's an evolved expression of something more basic: the kind of intrinsic normativity that characterizes even the simplest organisms. That doesnt entail an uncaused divine beingit entails rethinking what kind of ontology is required to make sense of life itself.
Intelligibility means making sense of things, so it still seems to be (just) an epistemological paradigm.
Quoting Wayfarer
My questions:
Why assume an ontological basis for the epistemological paradigm?
How do you account for it without a "God" (a being who acts with intent)?
Quoting Wayfarer
But it's "real" only in the sense of it being an accurate description of phenomena in terms we can understand given our capacities and limitations.
Should intelligibility be assumed? Surely the world isn't necessarily intelligible.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's catastrophic only if it's false. Teleonomy accounts for much of the perceived teleology. What I haven't seen is a justification for believing there is ontological teleology. It seems a guess, just like physicalism is a guess - but physicalism strays very little from the known. You deny it entails a God, but it seems to entail something nearly as far-fetched.
Because we are the phenomenon. We're not observing from a point outside lifewe are living, embodied beings whose actions, thoughts, and values are suffused with purpose and normativity. Thats not just how we talk about life; its how we live it.
As already argued, physicalism arises from a methodological abstraction, intended for modeling inert matter (something it does very well!) It achieves explanatory power by systematically bracketing out qualities like meaning, value, and purpose. But this comes at a cost: these are not incidental features of lifethey are constitutive of it. So when physicalism tries to "explain" life, it ends up trying to reconstruct the very things it had to exclude to get started. Thats the core of Jonas' argument: life and consciousness are not anomalies to be explained awaytheyre clues to what physicalist ontology has left out.
Quoting Relativist
Start with the modest but radical move of taking the phenomena of life seriously, not as illusions or surface features, but as real indications of the nature of reality. The burden of proof doesn't rest solely with those who insist that life exhibits intrinsic purposiveness. The burden also falls on those who deny itespecially when their models cant account for meaning, agency, or value except by explaining them away.
Quoting Relativist
Scienceand philosophyboth presuppose that the world is intelligible. Even raising the question of whether it should be assumes a rational order that allows the question to be posed in the first place. So rather than doubting intelligibility, the more pressing issue is: what kind of ontology can account for the fact that intelligibility is possible at all?
If physicalism treats intelligibility as an accidental byproduct of blind processes, then it risks undermining the rational basis of its own claims. This concern is related to what some have called the argument from reason (C.S. Lewis) or the evolutionary argument against naturalism (Alvin Plantinga): namely, that if our minds are solely the product of non-rational forces, we have little reason to trust their capacity for reasonincluding our belief in physicalism itself.
Quoting Relativist
Understanding the nature of intentor Gods will, if you likeis one of the most vexed questions in both theology and philosophy. Literalist religious frameworks often interpret history as a kind of script written in advance, culminating in divine intervention and final judgment. Thats not what Im suggesting.
But its also not the only way to approach the idea of cosmic purpose or intelligence.
I lean toward what might be called a naturalistic philosophy of religionif that isnt too paradoxical. A good example is Thomas Nagels Mind and Cosmos (and Nagel, notably, doesn't write as a theist). He speculates that each of our lives is a part of the cosmic process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming self-aware. Thats not a doctrine, but a philosophical gesture toward an alternative visionone in which mind and value are not intrusions into a meaningless cosmos, but intrinsic to its unfolding.
Yes, its vague when stated like thatbut vagueness here may be appropriate considering the scale and subtlety of the question. What matters is that it opens a conceptual space between mechanistic materialism and supernatural intervention. It suggests that intentionality and consciousness may be expressions of something deeper in the fabric of reality, not inexplicable anomalies.
Not necessarily. Let me explain it by describing a cosmogony in which the ground of being for an individual being is the [I]body [/I]of a greater being and the body of that individual is the ground of being for a lesser being.
Just look at a human, it is a colony of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of cells. For each cell that human may be perceived as the ground of being. Likewise the being of the planet, or the biosphere, or Gaia, is the ground of being for the human. And by extension, for Gaia the galaxy is the ground of being. This has to be seen through the prism of an idealism where the Individual being on this scale, or hierarchy experiences a world commensurate with their position, or level of development in the hierarchy. That for a human the experience of the cell, or Gaia is inconceivable, because it is an entirely different set of circumstances, which are only intelligible to the being on that level in the hierarchy.
In this cosmogony the human world of physics and science is not everything that is, it is only a description of the experience on our level of the hierarchy. On the other levels, it would be inconceivable because they experience an entirely different set of circumstances.
This is the opposite of what is meant by a metaphysical ground. See this. A complex object is grounded in its composition, not the reverse.
So this indicates to me that a ground of being is the very source and foundation of all existence.(wiki)
Or the role played by a god (in an Abrahamic religion), ie created everything, creating the ground on which we walk. Not a metaphysical ground.
The post you linked to here seemed to be discussing things about infinite regression.
Im only using ground in the terms you used it in the post I replied to.
:up: :up:
Quoting Punshhh
The Bible doesn't depict its God in this way, but modern Christian philosophers accept the "ground of being" of philosophy, because there is just one God (Yahweh).
Quoting Punshhh
Right. There's either an infinite regression of ever-smaller parts/of causes/ of explanations - or there is a foundation of all these - the ultimate ground.
Quoting Punshhh
Then you misunderstood something I said.
We are one phenomenon. The other 99.99999999...% of the universe needs to fit into the ontology.
Quoting Wayfarer
Chemistry brackets out quantum field theory. Meteorology brackets out fluid dynamics. Functional entities interact with their functional environments. The fact that the study of science is divided into disciplines doesn't imply reductionism is false, so I don't consider your point to be at all problematic.
Quoting Wayfarer
Explained away? Explanatory gaps are...gaps. Indeed, they are rationalized, but that isn't explaining them away. The gap isn't a "clue" to anything other than possibilities. You can plug in some explanation - even immaterial ones, and you can't be proven wrong, but I'm skeptical you can justify embracing anything specific - there's no basis to exclude anything.
Quoting Wayfarer
"Burden of proof" applies to efforts to sway opinion. The only objective "burden" is to justify one's beliefs. There' a lot of room for people with contrary justified beliefs to disagree,
I believe materialism is justified on the basis that it provides the best explation for all the uncontroversial facts of the world. Best in terms of answering more questions, and in terms of parsimony. Parsimony is a good reason to deny what is superfluous.
Accounting for meaning, agency, and value isn't that problematic, other than the complexity of a reductive account. Qualia are more problematic, but because they are causally efficacious, the only real issue with them is the nature of their presentation to the mind. I acknowlege this as an explanatory gap.
Quoting Wayfarer
I strongly disagree. Plantinga's argument is fatally flawed. In order to survive, every organism needs a functionally accurate perception of its environment to successfully interact with it. Primitive rationality is exhibited when animals adapt there hunting behavior when necessary, doing things that work instead of those that don't. The evolution of abstract reasoning would have been an evolutionary dead end leading to extinction, if it worsened our ability to interact with the environment.
Quoting Wayfarer
Vagueness is an explanatory gap. The conceptual space you allude to is extremely wide - and it therefore suggests that no one conceptual guess is better than another, so no specific choice can be justified.
Materialism's narrower explanatory gap could similarly be treated as a conceptual space into which one could insert some more limited immaterial elements, if one is inclined. Similarly, nothing specific can be justified. So I'm fine with the narrow gap materialism provides.
[Quote]It suggests that intentionality and consciousness may be expressions of something deeper in the fabric of reality, not inexplicable anomalies.[/quote] It's a gap, and it opens up a large space of possibilities. Something "deeper" is possible. Something in addition is also possible. How do you justify any specific assumption in the possibility space? I'm suspicious of jumping to egocentric/anthropocentric conclusions, whereas it sounds like you consider this a virtue.
The discussion is about the phenomenon of life, and about how physicalism omits some of its fundamental characteristics. Reductionism may be effective and useful in many scientific disciplines, but that doesnt ameloriate its shortcomings when applied to philosophy. The explanatory gap and the problem of consciousness both refer to that shortcoming.
Quoting Relativist
It is justifiable in respect of material phenomena over which science demonstrates considerable mastery. But this discussion has been what it leaves out - what happens when the methods of science are applied to questions of philosophy.
King James Bible.
It looks like a ground of being to me.
(from your post that I responded to)
Im not aware of people claiming the God is uncaused. They say God is eternal.
(From your post that I responded to)
But in such a vast universe the gradual development of eternal beings* who can create grounds of being may be just as likely.
(From your last reply to me)
There is no escape from infinite regression, this is a peculiarity of human thought, there is no [I]plausible[/I] likelihood that infinity can be considered external to the human mind. So this whole preoccupation with infinity is a human preoccupation around this peculiarity. Its turtles all the way down remember.
ultimate ground (isnt this what the book of Genesis describes above) seems like wishful thinking aswell. It seems more plausible that there are no ultimate grounds out there, only relatively ultimate grounds. That this also recedes into eternity, seems much more [I]plausible[/I] to me.
Also where you say plausible, presumably this is plausible to our limited minds which are designed to operate in this physical world we find ourselves in. So there is a kind of implicit bias there.
* by eternal, I am not suggesting any infinities, just a state or position outside or within, our observable reality, or something inconceivable to us.
:up: :up:
Telos doe not necessarily mean that a specific particular form or species was Intended. If the mechanism is nature and the process is evolution or cosmology, the sole purpose or goal might be creativity, diversity, novelty. It may have the same appeal as when we all watched the ants in our ant farm create pathways or colonies, or the AI art exhibit at the MOMA after being fed images of human art creates its own continuously unique new forms. (reminiscent of a few twilight zone episodes).
Darwin ""There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
Physical mathematics are not reality they are idealizations, approximations, abstractions, no satellite will over find its target or place without being able to make in course corrections because reality is just too complex. This is the fallacy of misplaced concreteness mistaking our working theories for reality).
It seem very unfortunate that the colors we perceive, the sounds we hear, the thoughts we think and the experiences that we have should be considered less real than our measurements on electrons, and other external abstractions. We are part of nature, our perceptions are part of nature. Dividing the world into primary qualities (supposedly real) and secondary qualities (supposedly mere physic imaginative additions to reality) is the "artificial bifurcation of nature" a fundamental flaw in both scientific and philosophical thought.
[quote=Erwin Schrodinger, Nature and the Greeks]I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.[/quote]
Although there are those who take them deadly seriously.
That criticism betrays a misunderstanding of the argument from reason. Obviously organisms must respond adaptively to their environment in order to survive. But thats a long way from showing that evolution accounts for rationality of the kind required for abstract thought and language or theoretical science. Evolution selects for adaptive advantage, and plenty of species have been successfully adapted for millions of years without any ability to reason.
The behavior of crocodiles, cockroaches, and even mammals reflect functional intelligencewhat works pragmaticallybut thats not the same as rational insight, which is the ability to perceive and evaluate logical relations among ideas.
More to the point, if we reduce reason to adaptive successif its just what works in evolutionary termsthen we undermine the normative authority of reason itself. After all, reason doesnt just describe what we doit tells us what we ought to believe, based on validity, coherence, and evidence. But if reason is just a tool of survival, why trust it in matters beyond basic survival? Why trust it to tell us the truth about consciousness, the universe, or even evolution itself?
As far as ethics is concerned:
[quote=Richard Polt, Anything but Human]I have no beef with entomology or evolution, but I refuse to admit that they teach me much about ethics. Consider the fact that human action ranges to the extremes. People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children. So whatever tendencies we may have inherited leave ample room for variation; our choices will determine which end of the spectrum we approach. This is where ethical discourse comes in not in explaining how were built, but in deliberating on our own future acts. Should I cheat on this test? Should I give this stranger a ride? Knowing how my selfish and altruistic feelings evolved doesnt help me decide at all. Most, though not all, moral codes advise me to cultivate altruism. But since the human race has evolved to be capable of a wide range of both selfish and altruistic behavior, there is no reason to say that altruism is superior to selfishness in any biological sense.[/quote]
And as for reason:
[quote=Thomas Nagel, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion]The only form that genuine reasoning can take consists in seeing the validity of the arguments, in virtue of what they say. As soon as one tries to step outside of such thoughts, one loses contact with their true content. And one cannot be outside and inside them at the same time: If one thinks in logic, one cannot simultaneously regard those thoughts as mere psychological dispositions, however caused or however biologically grounded. If one decides that some of one's psychological dispositions are, as a contingent matter of fact, reliable methods of reaching the truth (as one may with perception, for example), then in doing so one must rely on other thoughts that one actually thinks, without regarding them as mere dispositions. One cannot embed all one's reasoning in a psychological theory, including the reasonings that have led to that psychological theory. The epistemological buck must stop somewhere. By this I mean not that there must be some premises that are forever unrevisable but, rather, that in any process of reasoning or argument there must be some thoughts that one simply thinks from the inside--rather than thinking of them as biologically programmed dispositions.[/quote]
That is why the veracity of reason presupposes a deeper concordance between mind and world than can be understood solely in terms of adaptive fitness. Neo-darwinian biology is many things, but an epistemology, it ain't.
If there isnt one already, we probably need a whole thread just on the status of reason. The argument made by Nagel seems to treat reason as something almost magical, something that exists outside of nature and therefore can't be a product of the natural world and its processes. But wouldnt you have to demonstrate that logic and mathematics are not natural, constrained, and context-bound systems? Isn't it the view of phenomenology that reasoning is grounded in the structures of experience, in how the world appears to us through perception, intention, and context? This is highly specialised and beyond the expertise of most of us.
Quoting Wayfarer
All very interesting and well described. I notice you wrote "risks undermining" not "undermines" why isn't it a slam dunk? I thought it was your thesis that meaning can only exist if there is some form of guarantee for all meaning - a transcendent source. You often seem to maintain that there needs to be a higher-order purpose for any kind of purpose at all to be possible? But I may have this wrong.
The fact that we can ask questions or construct models doesn't guarantee that the world is inherently intelligible in the absolute sense. Our frameworks of understanding might simply reflect the cognitive and pragmatic structures weve evolved, not the deep structure of reality itself. Intelligibility might be a projection of mind rather than a property of being. So the salient question is not what ontology makes intelligibility possible, but whether our sense of intelligibility is anything more than an anthropocentric artifact. Can this even be answered?
This probably brings us to domains like mathematics, where some argue its famous uncanny effectiveness demonstrates a deeper connection to reality. But whether this points to a transcendent order or simply reflects the structures we project onto the world remains an open question. I also doubt we can answer this question right now.
And reason? Is it a conduit to something beyond the human, a reflection of objective order, or merely a contingent adaptation, evolved to navigate the constraints of our particular reality, and perhaps of only provisional use? Isnt it the view of phenomenology that reasoning is grounded in the structures of lived experience, how the world shows up for us through perception, intention, and context? Its a complex perspective and likely beyond the grasp of most of us without specialised training.
I dont have the answers to any of this, but I remain a kind of doubting Thomas. I find it difficult to see why meaning must be grounded in necessity or guaranteed by something absolute. Could it be that humans are unrealistically impressed by reason, treating it as the highest or even only valid form of understanding? But reason is just one tool among many, and has limited use. It struggles with emotions, ambiguity, and subjective experiences. It's clear that no logical argument can fully capture grief, happiness, aesthetic appreciation, or empathy. I wonder if we overestimate its power, forgetting that perhaps it evolved for survival, not for solving metaphysical puzzles or guaranteeing truth.
I have previously started threads on this very topic. There's a constellation of arguments referred to as the argument from reason. There are several versions. One is associated with C S Lewis, elaborated by Victor Reppert. Another is Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism. The passage from Nagel is from his essay Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion which we've discussed previously.
Very briefly, the argument from reason states that reason is the capacity to grasp ground and consequent relations - because of this, then that must be the case. The argument is that the nature of causation in this context is different from the material causation upon which naturalism is grounded.
So, yes, I think there's a good argument that reason is not a product of the kinds of naturalistic causation that science generally assumes. Indeed, Darwin himself hinted at perplexity over this fact, writing 'With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.' My view is that when h.sapiens gained the capacity to perceive causal relationships, which was bound up with the evolution of language, abstract thought, and the understanding of symbols, our intelligence realised horizons of being that were not perceptible to our simian forbears. It is only that capacity which can be properly said to perceive truly.
So - magical? Well, I think not, but something even greater in some respects. I think when the ancients discovered the power of reason they discovered an intoxicating power which we have since begun to take for granted. This is very much the topic of the excellent TPF essay Dante and the Deflation of Reason.
Quoting Tom Storm
Phenomenology is not empiricism. While it begins with lived experience, it doesnt reduce reason to perceptual inputs or behavioral adaptations. Especially in Husserls later work, phenomenology becomes explicitly transcendental, concerned with the a priori structures of subjectivitythose conditions that make intentionality, perception, and reasoning possible in the first place.
So yes, perception, intention, and context are crucialbut they dont explain the faculty of reason. They are, rather, the field in which reason operates, and which reason must itself interrogate. What phenomenology uncovers is that reason is not merely derived from experience; it's already operative in how experience is constituted (which is what 'transcendental' meant for both Kant and Husserl.)
Quoting Tom Storm
I wouldnt say meaning requires a guarantee in the strong sensethat seems too ambitious. But if reason genuinely grants insight into truths that hold necessarily, or in all possible worlds (as traditional logic and metaphysics have claimed), then that would seem to indicate a level of cognition that is categorically distinct from the reflexive or instrumental intelligence of non-rational animals (or technicians ;-) ).
Isnt this precisely why the classical tradition held reason to be the distinguishing feature of human nature? Not because humans are smarter in an evolutionary sense, but because were capable of grasping truth as such, not just what works.
I realize this sounds unfashionable to modern earsperhaps even reactionary. As John Vervaeke wryly observed, "what unites all of postmodernism is hatred of Plato. But Platos point still stands: if we can know what is true, just, or good in itself, then our rational capacities open onto something more than contingent adaptationthey reveal a dimension of meaning that is not merely made, but discovered.
Quoting Tom Storm
Far be it from a philosopher to defend the soveriegnty of reason :yikes:
:up: :up:
Idealists tend to put the cart before the horse forgetting, as you say, or denying (E. Becker) that 'truth' presupposes (pre-cognitive pragmatics, or the enactive context, of) 'survival' ... to which reason at minimum is adapted (i.e. embodied = instantiated).
Google "Kalam Cosmological Argument" - a "first cause" argument for God. Yes, they universally believe God is eternal: existing at all times, past and future.
Quoting Punshhh
You're wrong. An infinite series of causes is avoided by assuming a first cause. An infinite series of layers of reality is avoided by assuming a bottom layer. These are what metaphysical foundationalism is all about.
Quoting Punshhh
That's a personal choice. But here's the issue: an infinite series exists without explanation: each individual cause is explained by a prior cause, but the series as a whole is unexplained.
Quoting Punshhh
Our limited minds are the only minds we know exist, and we are utilizing these minds to speculate and judge the nature of existence. Is there more than this physical world? It's possible, but there's no way to know. So we speculate and apply reason. Different people accept different answers. No one can be proven right or wrong.
Quoting Wayfarer
Questioning the limitations of reason seems a legitimate function of philosophy. Kant seemed to think so. Poststructuralist thinkers also engage in this kind of critique. I know they arent everyone's bag, but they are philosophers nonetheless. Is doing this a performative contradiction? Not necessarily. Examining reasons limits through reason itself is a kind of reflexive inquiry, not a total rejection.
Quoting 180 Proof
Oh, that's nicely put. I find this very intriguing
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure, but reason might be derived from experience through a particularly structured cognitive apparatus which has limitations. Isnt that a point Kant makes? Im no Kantian, but doesnt Kant discuss transcendental illusions (systematic errors built into our reasoning) and emphasise that humans face clear limits in how reason can be used? His writing is dull beyond measure and impossible for me to follow properly.
A classic example is found in some religious thinking, that God is the first cause or a necessary being. Kant sees this as a mistake built into the way human reason works. Our reason naturally looks for ultimate answers, but it goes too far when it treats these ideas as if they were things we could actually know. Since we only gain knowledge through experience, and God is beyond all possible experience, we can't claim to know such things through reason alone.
Kant lists a series of such flaws in reasoning, which seem to be built into the structure of how we think.
Theres a short and interesting article on transcendental illusion here:
https://assets.cambridge.org/97805210/39727/excerpt/9780521039727_excerpt.pdf
I wasn't trying show that evolution necessarily accounts for rationality, I was identifying the glaring flaw in Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN). ,
[I]
"The EAAN argues that the combined belief in both evolutionary theory and naturalism is epistemically self-defeating. The argument for this is that if both evolution and naturalism are true, then the probability of having reliable cognitive faculties is low, which then destroys any reason to believe in evolution or naturalism in the first place, as the cognitive faculties one used to deduce evolution or naturalism as logically valid are no longer reliable."[/i]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism
This is what I see as an enormous problem in your position. It depends on uncritically accepting the existence of magic (or "something even greater"). I've seen no justification for this other than arguments from authority (the ancients had this view) and arguments from ignorance (physicalism's explanatory gap). You will disagree with this characterization, so I ask that you (if you choose to respond) that you explain your justification, for whatever it is that you believe, in positive terms- without reference to what philosophers have said.
Yes, Im familiar with the argument.
Putting the use of infinity to one side for a moment. A God which is eternal, existing at all times, past and future, is in no way infinite. As I said I am treating eternal as very [I]big[/I] so to speak, but not infinite. But rather as beyond a horizon, beyond which it is indistinguishable from the infinite.
Thanks for the link, Ill have a deeper look.
Although, I would suggest that saying Im wrong is a bit hasty. I am suggesting that infinity only exists as a concept, a concept in the mind of humans. Applying that to reality (external to that mind) is a bit tenuous.
Yes, I know, but I dont see us explaining it using philosophy (logic), but rather that entertaining it is rather like looking at one of those Escher paintings of stairs going up and joining themselves lower down due to a trick of perspective. I know it may have uses in logic and maths, but when applied to existence it just throws up absurdities.
I agree that no one can be proven right or wrong. But as to the question of is there more than this physical world. I would think it highly unlikely that there isnt. Simply because in the grand scheme of things, we are insignificant and our newly found powers of reason have only worked with what we have found in front of us when we each came to be in this world. It would be rather grandiose for us to conclude that this that we see before us is all there is.
Is "existing at all times" consistent with your view? This would preclude a caused object from existing eternally.
Quoting Punshhh
This statement was wrong: "There is no escape from infinite regression". I provided the escape- an epistemic reason a person might reject an infinite regress. You apparently aren't persuaded by this, and that's fine - because the "escape" is not a proof of impossibility.
Quoting Punshhh
I agree, but it is a useful concept.
Quoting Punshhh
I agree there is likely to be more to reality than we can possibly observe or infer through physics. However, it seems to me that we can't justify believing in anything specific that is beyond that which is accessible - other than the fact you stated.
No this not my view. My view is open ended, that we are trying to address things which cant necessarily be understood by our brand of rationality, or that can be demonstrated, conceptually, or in principle from the limited knowledge pool of human knowledge. So when I say eternity, I mean beyond the horizon of our knowledge, or what we can say about it.
I dont know enough about foundationalism to reply. But I find the escape to be accepting an apparent paradox. That there is an uncaused, or ultimate ground. That uncaused is unexplainable, just like an infinite regression is unexplainable.
I dont see a need to justify hypothetical scenarios, but I am interested in them. As much as a means of breaking free of the shackles of rational thought on the issue. Or as a means of contrasting, or shining a light on how our knowledge is blind to things about our existence. I dont think belief is useful here because its an issue of hypotheticals, in the knowledge that none of it is verifiable (outside personal experience).
I enjoyed reading this post, it laid out some of my thinking in a clear way. I agree about the limitations of human thought. For me meaning, or guaranteed by something absolute etc are not important. Likewise my, or our ability to understand these different questions about our lives. Rather, I am concerned with way, of life, way of living and philosophy and mysticism enables this to be refined. Also that there is an opportunity that the mind can be opened to the complexities in nature and our historical heritage of philosophy and mysticism. Which can be brought into the present of life. So as to develop a wisdom in the present. Also an openness to any divine or teleological possibility, action, or grounding.
:fire:
Youre right to bring up Kants emphasis on the limits of reasonand his account of transcendental illusion is precisely where he acknowledges that reason has a built-in tendency to overreach. It poses questionsabout God, freedom, the soulthat it cant answer with the tools of empirical or discursive knowledge. But, as you say, these are not silly questions. They arise from the very structure of rationality itself.
Kants famous dictum is that "percepts without concepts are blind, concepts without percepts are empty"meaning that experience needs conceptual form, and concepts need experiential grounding. But what this leaves outor perhaps leaves implicitis whether there are other forms of knowing that don't fit neatly into that structure.
Some of Kants critics (like Hegel, Schleiermacher, and later thinkers like Maritain or even Vervaeke today) have argued that Kants model closes off the possibility of what you might call higher insight or participatory knowledgeknowledge that arises not from external observation or deduction, but from engagement, transformation, or direct acquaintance. (See this reference on John Vervaekes distinction between propositional, procedural, perspectival, and participatory knowing.)
So when Kant says that God is beyond all possible experience, thats true within the bounds of his system. But thats also the crux of the critique: what if those bounds are too narrow? What if there are legitimate forms of insight that dont conform to his propositional model? Mystical traditions, contemplative practices, and certain strands of idealist or existentialist philosophy have all tried to develop alternatives to that constraint. Which is not to reject Kant but to broaden the context in which his questions are considered.
In that sense, the question isnt just what can we know? but what counts as knowing? And thats still very much a live question.
Quoting Relativist
What you identified as the 'fatal flaw' was this:
Quoting Relativist
My criticism of this is that it misconstrues the nature of reason in a typically reductionist way. It treats reason as on a par with adaptive behaviorthe ability to respond flexibly to environmental cues. But as I pointed out, many organisms manage this just fine without any capacity for abstract reasoning. Cockroaches and crocodiles are paradigms of evolutionary success, they've survived for hundreds of milions of years, and yet we dont credit them with logic, mathematics, or philosophical reflection.
What Plantinga argues is not that evolution couldnt produce minds, but that if all mental lifeincluding reasonis understood solely in terms of material and efficient causes, then weve undermined the very basis on which we make rational inferences. Logical relations are not physical events; they are intelligible structures, the relations between ideas. If belief is just the result of brain chemistry shaped by fitness, not by the ability to grasp truth, then the rational basis of naturalism loses its warrant. This is how physicalism is self-undermining (which is a consequence of having excluded the subject who brings reason to the picture, in the first place.)
Quoting Relativist
You realize this was a reference to reason? I'm saying that ability to reason resides in the capacity to see the relationships between ideas which is basic to language and rationality. And considering what h.sapiens has been able to achieve by virtue of reason and language - that is something that I am saying is even greater than magic.
And I will always reference what previous philosophers have said. This is a philosophy forum, and such citations are perfectly appropriate in the context.
That is not Plantinga's EAAN. Plantinga argues that evolution selects for behavior, not reliable belief. The Wikipedia article I linked to summarizes it, or you could read this paper by Plantinga.
Quoting Wayfarer Why are you so reluctant to state what you actually believe? The only thing that's clear is that you believe materialism is false. Please describe what you DO believe. Reference philosophers to explain your position, if necesary - but please describe your position- even if it's open ended (e.g everything except materialisn is a life possibility)
which is as I said.
Although I will add,. I'm not arguing in support of Plantinga's religious conclusions, only the more general point about the non-physical basis for rational inference.
Quoting Relativist
I've spelled it out in depth and detail. To recap: physics is based on a useful abstraction, which has yielded enormous physical powers, but at the expense of excluding fundamental aspects of human existence.
Quite, a world of philosophical zombies could have played the role acted out by humanity. And yet a cockroach and a crocodile have more self awareness, or sentience, than a philosophical zombie.
Even if this 'claim' is true of course there's no evidence for it so what? Physics explains many fundamental aspects of the physical world and not (yet) others; "human existence" is tangentally something else entirely outside modern physics' remit. Why do you persist on blaming physics for not doing something that physicists don't use it for? Re: materialism You're (still) shadowboxing with a burning strawman, Wayf.
Are you familiar with D M Armstrong? His book Materialist Philosophy of Mind presents the kind of philosophical materialism that Im criticizing. And Relativist cites Armstrong as an exemplary philosopher. Armstrong was Head of Dept where I studied philosophy. So no straw man arguments here.
Yes, decades ago.
What, pray tell, would constitute evidence for this argument?
Let me tell y'all about my god (who's still around, by the way).
I go with the theory that once upon a time, nothing existed. Then all of a sudden, something came into existence. Whatever entity caused the creation of existence is my god. Since nothing existed, my god had to use itself for materials/energies to create with, so I am literally a part of my god. If you go with the Big Bang theory, a few hundred million years after the universe started, at the end of the hot plasma phase, the first OG atom, hydrogen, was created. Those hydrogen atoms are still in existence since they don't die. Those billions of years old hydrogen atoms are within our bodies today. We are physically linked to our universe's origin.
Your "god" sounds a lot like Aristotle's First Cause/Prime Mover, which was a logical necessity, not an emotional source of succor & sanction. In other words, it's the "god of the philosophers", not the God of theologians. Although you mentioned physical evidence, your "entity" is also not a Nature God aiming lightening bolts at evil-doers.
Instead, your Creation Causer sounds more like A.N. Whitehead's PanEnTheistic principle*1, both immanent and transcendent. That's also how I view my own god-model, which I like to describe functionally as a Programmer*2. Since I don't have any reliable direct or prophetic revelations of this philosophical Principle, or any "higher insight" & "participatory knowledge", all I know about this logical necessity is that something like it is logically necessary to understand how we, and our world, evolved from mathematical Big Bang Singularity to biological Nature-as-we-know-it, and to human Culture that is on the verge of becoming interplanetary, and to little ole me & you.
Is any of this interpolation close to your god-model? :smile:
*1. Whitehead's God :
Although he uses a theistic term for the creator of our evolving world, I think his concept of God is not religious, but philosophical. Whiteheads associate Charles Hartshorne? labeled his theology as : PanEnDeism?. This deity is not imagined on a throne judging the creation, but everywhere, including in the material world, participating in the on-going process of Creation.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page46.html
*2. G*D :
[i]An ambiguous spelling of the common name for a supernatural deity. The Enformationism thesis is based upon an unprovable axiom that our world is an idea in the mind of G*D. This eternal deity is not imagined in a physical human body, but in a meta-physical mathematical form, equivalent to LOGOS. Other names : ALL, BEING, Creator, Enformer, MIND, Nature, Reason, Source, Programmer. The eternal Whole of which all temporal things are a part is not to be feared or worshiped, but appreciated like Nature.
I refer to the logically necessary and philosophically essential First & Final Cause as G*D, rather than merely "X" the Unknown, partly out of respect. Thats because the ancients were not stupid, to infer purposeful agencies, but merely shooting in the dark. We now understand the "How" of Nature much better, but not the "Why". That inscrutable agent of Entention is what I mean by G*D.
[ see post 64 ] [ see Programmer God at sidebar ][/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html
This is in time; 'Nothing' has no properties at all; 'it' can't even be meant.
I'm not sure if you are being serious or satirical, but I'll assume you are serious. I'm curious what this God means to you?
Nonsense. "Nothing" necessarily cannot "exist".
Quoting Gnomon
... except, sir, you don't seem to grasp that "logical necessity", as you say, does not scientifically have anything to do with dynamics in or the development of the physical world.
The BBT is a model of physical processes; (the) "mathematical" is merely abstract and, therefore, cannot "evolve".
:up:
Quoting Wayfarer
No, it isn't. You said this is what Plantinga was saying: "if all mental lifeincluding reasonis understood solely in terms of material and efficient causes, then weve undermined the very basis on which we make rational inferences."
My objection to HIS ARGUMENT stands.
Quoting Wayfarer
Then explain what you meant by this:
Quoting Wayfarer
Life seems anomolous to me, because it's a very rare, and miniscule part of the universe. What facts am I overlooking?
Elaborate on these "clues". What conclusions do you think I should draw from this? How should it influence my philosophical analysis? Does this somehow entail teleology? The problem (IMO) is that it's a negative fact (what consciousness is NOT), rather than a positive fact that has broader relevance.
What I'm suspicious of is using it as an excuse to embrace some spirituality paradigm. I'm fine with other people doing that, for whatever benefits it gives them, but I see no relevance to me.
The fact that youre alive would be a good start. Youre demonstrating the very point at issue: the sense in which physicalism excludes the subject, for whom the physical is real. As I said at the very beginning of this exchange: physicalism relies on an abstraction. It then becomes so embedded in that worldview that it cant see anything outside it, which is precisely the blind spot of physicalism.
[quote=Alvin Plantinga]The ultimate source of our cognitive faculties is natural selection, and natural selection is interested (so to speak) only in adaptive behavior, not in true belief. A given belief, therefore, will have a certain causal role to play in the production of adaptive behavior; but whether it is true or false is irrelevant from this perspective. So the naturalist who accepts evolutionary theory has a defeater for the proposition that our cognitive faculties are reliable.[/quote]
Which I paraphrased as follows:
Quoting Wayfarer
On review, I agree it was not an accurate paraphrase. It would have been better expressed as follows: If our cognitive faculties are ultimately the product of unguided natural selection, which only accounts for behaviors that promote survival and reproduction, then we have no good reason to trust that our beliefs, including the belief in naturalism itself, are actually true.
In either case, your original criticism of Plantingas argument, that it was fatally flawed because it didnt allow for how important adaptive behaviour is to survival, still missed the point. He is arguing that evolutionary biology may account for how animals adapt and survive, but that this in itself does not provide grounds for us to believe that an argument is true, when, according to those criteria, it might simply be adaptive.
Why is that a requirement? What a strange thing to demand of a scientific theory. Why do we have to sit around and wait for for an origin story to life before we can believe that an argument is true?
Two questions:
1. Are you making the claim that naturalism undermines reason per se? Because that does not seem to be Plantingas claim in the paper.
2. Do you reject foundationalism and subscribe to Plantingas epistemology of properly basic beliefs and defeaters? It is an important part of his argument.
Poor man, he's over 90 and here you are picking him up and discarding him like a human shield.
Physicalism is indeed embedded in my worldview. What truths does this blind me to? The only obvious implication is that there may be some non-physical aspects of reality. It provides no clue as to what they may be - what truths it leads me to ignore.
As I explained, I embrace physicalism because (AFAIK) it's the best general answer to the nature of reality. I don't have some undying faith in it, and I know it has its limitations. But I treat it pragmatically as the premise when analyzing everything in the world, and this includes consideration of mental activity. Even if I grant that there are aspects of the mind that are intractable to a materialist paradigm, I see no means of applying this information to any philosophical analysis - because, as I said, it's just a negative fact - and doesn't give me any useful information that I should consider. It just tells me that a materialist analysis doesn't necessarily give a correct answer, but provides no clue to a better answer.
I agree. Idealism, antirealism, immaterialism ... quantum woo-woo, etc are much poorer alternatives. :up:
:smirk:
As others have so helpfully pointed out, "nothing" cannot or does not exist. That's why the concept of Zero took so long to catch-on with mathematicians*1. The relevant point here is that No-Thing means no physical existence, hence no usefulness for Science or Mechanics. But the meta-physical concept of Nothingness*2 is useful for philosophical purposes.
Those who challenge your god-concept are imagining the Deity as a physical material substantial entity. In that sense it makes sense to ask "who created your God?" But Aristotle defined his notion of Substance, as not the material thing, but the immaterial Essence or Form of the thing. And Plato defined his Forms*3 as eternal & self-existent. Hence, essential & fundamental, not objective or optional.
So, in the interest of clarity, perhaps you could explain that the God of Philosophers is not an Idol of gold-plated wood or flesh-covered bones, but a meta-physical concept, similar to Infinity (?), which also does not exist in the real physical world. If such a God is woo-woo nonsense, then so is Zero & Infinity. Unfortunately, an impotent Nothingness could not create a universe from scratch. So you'd have to add the concept of Potential*4, which also does not exist physically, until Actualized. :smile:
*1. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea :
Even though zero is a fundamental idea for the modern science, initially the notion of a complete absence got a largely negative, sometimes hostile, treatment by the Western world and Greco-Roman philosophy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero:_The_Biography_of_a_Dangerous_Idea
*2. Metaphysical Nothingness :
[i]Since metaphysics is the study of what exists, one might expect metaphysicians to have little to say about the limit case in which nothing exists. . . . .
Lets begin with a question that Martin Heidegger famously characterized as the most fundamental issue of philosophy. . . . .
1. Why is there something rather than nothing?[/i]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/
*3. Essential Form :
Plato's theory of Forms posits that the Forms are self-existent and independent of the physical world or individual minds
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=plato+form+self+existent
*4. Potential is Unreal :
The statement "potential does not exist" is a philosophical point, not a scientific one. In physics, potential is a measurable quantity related to stored energy or the ability of a system to do work. In other contexts, potential refers to unrealized abilities or possibilities. While "potential" in the sense of a future reality may not be physically present, the capacity for that future to exist is often acknowledged as real.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=potential+does+not+exist
Note --- A creator God is real & measurable, only if the creation is physical & material. According to Cosmologists, there was a beginning point in Time, when our material universe did not exist. But the Energy & Laws that cause & govern our world, necessarily pre-existed the beginning of physical evolution. That's what Aristotle called First & Final Cause (Ability & Purpose). God is the "capacity" for cosmic creation.
.
:up: Same here. In my book this "excuse" amounts to appeal to ignorance (i.e. woo-of-the-gaps).
Quoting Gnomon
Well, not only doesn't that follow (category error), but all three concepts are mere abstractions; what makes any of them "woo woo nonsense" is attributing causal physical properties to any of them like "creator" "mover" ... "programmer". :eyes:
Come on.
If you remove the word believe from that sentence and replace it with the word consider the word excuse loses its relevance.
Why consider any specific spiritual account? I can acknowledge it's possible, but the possibilities are endless, so what's the point?
It's like considering what other forms of life that may exist elsewhere in the the universe, choosing one specific, hypothetical form and then drawing conclusions about the nature of aliens. Indeed, it's possible that there exist Tralfamadorians, who communicate through tap-dancing and farts, but a bare possibility like this has no practical significance to me.
IOW, something more than mere possibility is needed to make it worth giving any serious consideration to.
Yes and the Flying Spaghetti Monster might have spewed out atoms in the Big Bang. But thats not my preference either.
There are two parts to this;
Firstly, its unlikely that the human mind with its bias, I mentioned earlier and the limitations suggested by Wayfarer*, would be likely to come up with serious possibilities. We really are [I]blind [/I] in this regard.
Secondly, philosophy has already addressed this in Idealism for example. So [I]rational [/I] possibilities have been explored there.
Furthermore there are cosmogonies which have stood the test of time. These can be found at the heart of various religions. While their stories vary, parallels can be drawn between them. In these traditions the truth or reality about religion, or existence was shown to people in revelation. This is the only way to go beyond our inherent blindness (mentioned in italics above). This knowledge informs the philosophy of the school. Normally someone considering these alternatives spends years studying the philosophy of and experiencing the practice of one, or more of these schools. Until they develop a body and breadth of knowledge. So they become fluent in the milieu, rather like a philosopher becomes fluent in the milieu of philosophical thought.
* He is arguing that evolutionary biology may account for how animals adapt and survive, but that this in itself does not provide grounds for us to believe that an argument is true, when, according to those criteria, it might simply be adaptive.
Well it does have a meaning in mathematics, as an endless sequence of numbers, or unbounded set. But this is not encompassing any endless, or infinite quantity, it is only a symbol representing an open ended sequence.
But thats as far as it goes for rationality. When one tries to apply it to anything else, the logical conclusion becomes illogical. I could give examples, but I think we are all familiar with what that looks like.
I agree. Using nothing as a concept to denote no thing in the state of existing, creates the existence of "state", which can be no thing or some thing. I'm just using existence as a label (perhaps confusingly) as part of my depictions of concepts about the existence of "things" or not the existence of "things".
My god means to me that I should see myself in everyone, and accept that all I see in others is also inside of me. My god means to me that I should accept responsibility for everything being exactly as it is, as it is a part of me whether I've been active or passive in its creation.
180woowoo anachronistically & erroneously confuses my metaphorical programmer G*D, with the religious God of Abraham, Isaac, Joseph & Jesus. Since the Hebrews envisioned their tribal god as a king-like humanoid entity, living above the heavens (Shamayim) imagined as a crystal dome (firmament), yet immanent within the complete world system. {image ?} 180 denigrates "mere abstractions" , but some abstractions are more useful than others*1. You may be more open to discussing meta-physical philosophical metaphors than 180 is.
The Judeo-Christian intervening immanent "God" is indeed a different logical & philosophical category from my God of the philosophers : similar to Spinoza's immanent deus sive natura. Except that modern cosmology forces us to deal with the necessity of a transcendent Cause to explain the Big Bang. For example, mathematicians have found the metaphysical transcendent notions of Zero & Infinity useful for their logical explorations. Another logical, but irrational notion is the number PI. It's labeled as "transcendent" because it does not exist on the number line. And it is "irrational" because it cannot be computed as a ratio of other numbers. Does that metaphysical logic sound like "woo woo" to you?
Since secular cosmology has concluded that our world is not self-existent --- as Spinoza assumed --- would you agree that "how & why it came into existence" is a reasonable philosophical question? And any answer we posit will be an unproven conjecture, not a verifiable fact ; an abstract concept, not a material object. The humanoid Hebrew God is indeed a different philosophical category from Zero & Infinity, pure abstract Logical structures. But to me, G*D is also a "mere abstraction", but like Zero a useful concept for inquiring philosophers. Not a tyrant in the sky for us mortals to cower before, but a reasonable answer to the question of world origins.
180's accusation of "attributing causal properties to mere abstractions" missed the point of the Zero & Infinity analogy. As usual, he interprets a metaphor literally. The Causation I "attribute" to the pre-Bang {image ?} Source of Cause & Laws (energy & limits) is not a physical property, but merely the burst of Potential that powered the Big Bang from No-Thing to the "endless forms most beautiful"*2 of Darwin's world. Some cosmologists --- ignoring the first & second laws of thermodynamics --- like to imagine that Energy itself is eternal. But only in its timeless Potential state of statistical Probability is causal Energy safe from energy-devouring Entropy.
But even that common scientific term for causal capability is a meta-physical concept of transforming abstract Potential (voltage) into concrete Actual (current). And a cosmological Programmer is one who has the ability to setup a world system with the capability of performing an assigned task, a purpose. Apparently 180 doesn't see any purpose to an evolving world that began with nothing (zero) but Potential (infinity) and has produced inquiring Minds that explore the mystery of Being. :smile:
*1.Yes, the concept of infinity is very useful, particularly in mathematics and physics, despite being an abstract idea. It's used to describe things that are unbounded or limitless, and it helps simplify calculations and model complex phenomena.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=is+infinity+useful
*2. "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." ___Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species"
? ANACHRONISTIC WORLDVIEWS
? BEFORE THE BANG
On the contrary, as I've stated in many other posts, the purported BB (@ negative 13.81 billion years) is the earliest moment modern science can measure in the inflationary-entropic development of spacetime and (our) "inquiring Minds" are evolved ephemerae who are atavistically motivated to confabulate various self-comforting, narrative denials of the reality that "inquiring Minds" are only ephemerae (à la Buddha's anicca, Democritus' atomic swirl, Spinoza's finite modes ...)
As far as I can tell, there is no "mystery of being", just a near-universal, stubborn fear of nonbeing; thus, (cosmic/existential) "purpose" begins with resisting the fear (re: E. Becker, PW Zapffe ... Epicurus).
Lastly, 'nothing comes from nothing' (i.e. no-thing includes no "Potential (infinity)") :smirk:
Do you not find it mysterious how non-being eventually turned into being? I think thats one of the biggest philosophical mysteries there is. A universe that had previously had not contained sentience is able to produce enquiring minds that question their existence and their place in the universe.
From a scientific and technical point of view for the universe to develop life and sentience within it is nothing short of a marvel.
This in my view is highly likely to be because theres a higher form of sentience which is eternal and its no chance or remote probability that we developed sentience within our cosmos without those parameters (i.e. intelligence). I believe that this intelligence preceded our emergence as sentience species and predates us by factor of infinity.
If there was, no such prior being then our emerging sentience would be even more marvellous and mysterious.
No, it doesn't.
Quoting Gnomon
Cosmology has not concluded our world is dependent on anything. However, cosmologists are working on theory that explains the big bang, in terms of what the prior state was.
No I don't. What are (some) Intelligible grounds to believe that 'nonbeing became being'?
Quoting Relativist
:up:
1. Bite the bullet that there has never been 'nothing' (ignoring the blatant contradiction in terms there lol. I didn't invent them!); or
2. Bite the bullet that if there is "something" and "nothing" is implied, we should expect it to obtain (or, the opposite of obtain lol).
This is fully intelligible, and gives us pause as to why there's something. If there is something, when was there nothing? Previously in time is hte only available inference it seems.
I too, find the questions boring, though.
What I find mysterious is that anyone would think that there was a prior state of non-being / nonexistence.
What exists today is a consequence of what existed before. Either there is an infinite series of begettings, or there was an initial state of affairs.
I see no such implication. Walk me through it, and do so without treating existence as a property.
None of the takes trying to avoid the inference of non-existence actually work.
It's pretty hard to walk something through something which is inferential.
Something infers nothing. Yes? Yes.
Being infers non-being. Yes? There are things which aren't, outside of the list of things which are. So, Yes.
Now, can we access them? NO! lol. That is probably why people want to make statements such as yours and Banno's. There is nothing to say, other than to observe the inference. The idea that there has "always been" is just as disconcerting (and unsupported, in the sense outlined above) as that "something always was". Even the use of temporal terms infers something other than the claim.
I've no idea what this means, or what "that" refers to. Besides, "implies" doesn't do the work of causes ...
Quoting Relativist
:up: :up:
Non-sequitur. If it was initiated, then it wasn't the initial state of affairs.
Either there was an initial state of affairs, or there's an infinite series of causes.
Quoting AmadeusD
What does this mean? A state of affairs entails existence. A state of affairs consisting of non-existence is a self-contradictory term.
Quoting AmadeusD
Only semantically. We can refer to things that are in or out, but existence = what IS, not what isn't. We can talk about the infinitely many hypothetical things that aren't in, but these absences are not ontological.
[Quote]Now, can we access them? NO! lol. That is probably why people want to make statements such as yours and Banno's. There is nothing to say, other than to observe the inference. [/quotep
The inference is semantic, not ontological. We're discussing ontology- what exists, and what can be inferred to exist. When we say unicorns don't exist, "unicorn" refers only to a concept- a mental object. It doesn't refer to anything ontological (other than the mental object).
[Quote]The idea that there has "always been" is just as disconcerting (and unsupported, in the sense outlined above) as that "something always was". Even the use of temporal terms infers something other than the claim.[/quote]
I don't understand what you consider disconcerting. We can entertain possibilities. Either the past is finite, or it is infinite. There's no in-between. Each has implications that we can consider. An infinite past implies an infinite chain of causes. Is that actually possible? Some people think so, but it seems to imply that infinitely many, finite duration. time periods have been traversed. That's impossible. Consider the future: we traverse it one day at a time; evey new day will be a finite number of days from today- there is no point at which infinity is reached. Future infinity just implies an unending process. Contrast this with the past: the past is completed. This implies an infinity of time periods has been completed. This seems impossible, but I'm not arguing I'm right, I'm just highlighting the possibilities and also explaining why I believe the pastvis finite.
Any conception of a finite past implies an initial state. An initial state cannot have been caused, because that would imply a prior cause.
If a God exists, an initial state of affairs could consist of an uncaused God (and nothing else) - who subsequently created the universe. If no gods exist, there would still be an initial state - something with the potential to subsequently develop one or more universes.
You sound confident about the independence of our world from any uncaused First Cause. Do you believe that measurable space-time is a continuum extending beyond the initial conditions*1 of the mathematical model known as the Big Bang? Is that confidence (faith?) based on knowledge or presumption?
Speaking of knowledge, what is the "exact nature" of that prior state, and what is the evidence for it? Is our universe "dependent" on a non-local infinite mathematical concept, which is not a "physical reality"*2? Since the Big Bang Singularity is defined as an infinite point where the "laws of nature break down", how could we follow the methods of Science beyond that point? Do you know of a scientific explanation for the "improbable smoothness" and "low entropy" of the initial state*3? Would you agree that the First Law of Thermodynamics implies that the Bang began with an unexplained input of Energy from that mysterious timeless prior state? Can you accept that the Multiverse conjecture is a myth, not a scientific fact?
Would you agree that Cosmologists like Sean Carroll*3, when faced with speculating into a state where laws of nature break down, are doing Philosophy instead of Science? Have those cosmologists solved the "puzzle" of the hypothetical "prior state" with facts that us amateur philosophers don't know, or are they just guessing, and shooting in the dark? :smile:
*1. Before the Big Bang, the prevailing theory suggests a state of initial singularity, a point of extremely high density and temperature. This singularity is not a physical location, but rather a state where all of space and time as we know them were compressed into an infinitely small point. While the Big Bang theory describes the expansion of the universe from this initial state, the exact nature of what existed "before" remains a subject of ongoing scientific exploration and debate.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=big+bang+prior+state
*2. The Big Bang singularity is a mathematical concept representing the state of the universe at the very beginning of time, according to general relativity. It's a point of infinite density and temperature where the known laws of physics, as described by general relativity, break down. It's important to understand that this singularity is a feature of the mathematical model, not necessarily a physical reality.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=big+bang+singularity+mathematical
*3. [i]The universe materialized literally out of nothing, at a tiny but finite size, and expanded thereafter. There were no moments before the moment of smallest size because there was no before. Likewise, there was no creation of the universe, since that concept implies action in time. . . .
The improbable smoothness of the observable universe, in turn, points toward unusually tidy conditions near the Big Bang. We dont understand why. But the order and smoothness, known to physicists as a state of low entropy, is a clue. I strongly believe that the low entropy of the early universe is a puzzle that the wider cosmology community doesnt take nearly as seriously as they should, Carroll told me. Misunderstandings like that offer opportunities for making new breakthroughs.[/i]
___Interview with cosmologist Sean Carroll
https://harpers.org/archive/2016/01/what-came-before-the-big-bang/
Note --- Carroll's notion of creation in time deliberately ignores the traditional creation ex nihilo, since it does not fit with his materialistic worldview. And yet, he slipped-up with the "literally out of nothing" description.
:up:
TBD (by physics, not metaphysics)..
e.g. Black holes, cosmic inflation (i.e. accelerated expansion), quantum uncertainty (re: vacuum energy), Pauli Exclusion Principle ...
Not yet.
I prefer the informed, educated guesswork of cosmologists to almost all non-scientists' 'speculative wankery' (e.g. "unmoved mover" "first cause" "creator-programmer") à la woo-of-the-gaps. :mask:
Then you misunderstand. "The world" is the entirety of reality, which would include the supernatural, if it exists. If there exists a supernatural, then it might possibly have caused the natural world, but the broader landscape exists uncaused and without dependencies.
Now suppose there is no supernatural. The same logic applies: it would exist uncaused and without dependency. In either case, the world (the totality of reality) exists without cause or dependency.
Quoting Gnomon
We don't know it's exact nature, but it seems to me there's no reason to think it is supernatural, because there is no evidence of a supernatural existing.
Quoting Gnomon
The origin of the energy is unknown, although some cosmologists have speculated. What I object to is jumping to conclusions - as you seem to have done.
The multiverse hypothesis is not a myth. It's a mathematical inference of an assortment of scientific hypotheses. Nevertheless, it's certainly not settled science, and I would never insist it is necessarily true.
Quoting Gnomon
That's often true, but there is also scientific work in progress to develop new theory. At this stage, I'm fine with treating all pre-big bang musings as metaphysical.
Quoting Gnomon
The "singularity" has never been considered a literal state of affairs. It just refers to the mathematical consequence of General Relativity as we calculate the density of the universe retrospectively, closer and closer to a radius of 0 (for the visible universe). The consensus of cosmologists is this mathematical singularity implies that General Realtivity isn't applicable, and that instead a quantum gravity theory is needed to understand the dynamics dominate below some density- but this goes beyond established physics.
Quoting Gnomon
No, that's logically impossible. Nothingness cannot beget somethingness. Nothingness is not even a logically possible state of affairs. If God created the universe, it could have been from a PHYSICAL nothingness, but not an absolute nothingness - because God himself is something. But this is pure speculation, one that assumes there exists a supernatural.
Quoting Gnomon
He has also discussed what is meant by nothingness - and noted that there are ambiguities. Laurence Krauss wrote a book about "something from nothing", but he took the existence of quantum fields for granted- so he wasn't considering an absolute nothingness. The author of the article you linked to seems to be unaware of the nuances. Sean Carroll does. In this article, he describes his view:
[I]"It seems natural to ask why the universe exists at all. [B]Modern physics suggests that the universe can exist all by itself as a self-contained system, without anything external to create or sustain it. [/b]But there might not be an absolute answer to why it exists. I argue that any attempt to account for the existence of something rather than nothing must ultimately bottom out in a set of brute facts; the universe simply is, without ultimate cause or explanation."[/i]
Err nope, but I also dealt with this as a language problem later in my post. Lets see what happens...
Quoting Relativist
Are causes not states of affairs? Or can causes be pried from 'states'? If there was an 'initial' state of affairs, than that already implies something before initiation. As above, this is simply not a credible thing to posit lol.
Quoting 180 Proof
I am in no way surprised.
Quoting Relativist
I didn't posit there was one. I posited that initiation implies something prior. That 'something' is obviously capable of be no-thing (again, language problem addressed later - we are literally unable to talk about 'no-thing' other than by inference).
Quoting Relativist
Yep. And non-existence = nothing. Doesn't change the implication/inference of 'something' to 'nothing'.
I should be quite clear: I am not trying to posit that this is reasoning which would give us a good warrant to think that there ever wasn't anything. I am giving the reasoning which gives us pause to think that 'everything always was' which is just as absurd (in a general sense) as there being no-thing at no-time.
Haha, no. We're discussing whether "nothing" could have ever obtained. And it could have. This, again, explains why neither you nor 180 are saying anything that seems to be relevant to me and my point here. If that's the discussion you've been having, then all is clarified lol.
Quoting Relativist
Oh, ok, so you share my position. Cool. What a mess... (not your fault or anything, just observing).
That statement depends on how you define "reality". Your comments seem to indicate that your "reality" excludes anything beyond the scope or our physical senses. Which are tuned to detect material substances. But philosophers are tuned into immaterial things like Other Minds. And we can infer that our interlocutors on this forum have rational minds (including AI ???), even though we can't see touch or taste them directly. The super-natural problem is similar : we infer other minds by analogy with our own inner experience. And reasoning is not a physical sense, but what philosophers think of as a meta-physical process of connecting dots. Which raises another question of definition ad infinitum. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Long story short, the theoretical pre-big-bang First Cause that you would call "supernatural", is in my own speculative worldview, analogous to the Physical Energy and Metaphysical Mind that we experience in the Real world. I won't attempt to respond to your other assertions, because they all hinge on the same old dichotomy of worldviews*1, such as Materialism vs Idealism. For what it's worth, my personal worldview is not so black & white exclusive, but includes both Matter & Mind, and both immanent Nature & whatever transcendent force lit the fuse of the Big Bang nature machine. :smile:
*1. A dichotomy of worldviews refers to the tendency to divide perspectives, ideas, or values into two opposing categories. This can manifest in various contexts, such as the classic good vs. evil, or in more nuanced ways like the human/environment dichotomy. Understanding these contrasting viewpoints is crucial for navigating complex issues and fostering better communication and understanding.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=dichotomy+of+worldviews
This is just speculation, all we know is that we dont know and any speculation we do indulge in will be tainted by anthropomorphism. Where the anthropomorphism refers to the the human mind and its contents. Also that the answers we seek may be inconceivable to the human mind, or unintelligible.
I no longer respond directly to 's sneering Gnomon-directed diatribes on this forum, over the last ten years or so. Therefore, I will address these comments to someone who seems to be more open to two-way philosophical dialogue. I will stipulate here that he may be much more intelligent & informed than me, but that haughty position allows him to make mike-drop supercilious denunciations of what he deems inferior reasoning. I'm sure he's a nice person though, if you agree with his worldview. And I agree with the immanent half of his Weltanshauung. And these analogies are intended to be illustrative, not demeaning.
Re Transcendence :
Dialoging with 180 is like discussing with your dog how & why his bowl is sometimes full, and sometimes empty. Like the dog, 180's highly evolved physical senses can detect the food, but can't reason about inferential questions : it just is or it ain't. The communication problem is that 180 has an extensive vocabulary with which to express his disdain for deduction, from circumstantial evidence, how & why an event --- e.g. full bowl or universe --- came to be, if it was not witnessed.
180's prosecutorial technique, in the courtroom of this forum, is to break-down the detective's holistic reasoning & inferences & hunches into isolated facts that don't add-up : speculation! ; inadmissible! ; irrelevant! The human's sense of smell is inferior to that of the dog*1, but his sense of reason*2 is superior ; especially deduction from circumstantial evidence*3. 180's 17th century worldview is based on watertight logic, except in the light of 20th century Relativity*4 and Uncertainty Principle. 180's jury is instructed to focus on the disconnected facts, and ignore the dot-connecting reasoning.
Obviously, or inferentially, 180 is skillfully defending his Matter-Immanent-only worldview by using all the tricks of courtroom drama. In my humble opinion though, on this forum, you should be able to view the evidence from a Philosophical worldview that goes beyond the limits of scientific investigation, but not of logical reasoning. :smile:
PS___ I will now go stick my head in a fox hole, to protect me from the return blast of icy logic.
*1. While dogs demonstrate impressive cognitive abilities, particularly in practical reasoning and inferential reasoning, human reasoning is significantly more complex. Humans excel at abstract thought, integrating diverse knowledge, and engaging in various forms of reasoning like deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning. Dogs, on the other hand, are more attuned to the present and rely heavily on sensory information and past experiences to solve problems.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=dog+reason+vs+human+reasoning
Note --- I'm not calling 180 a "dog", but merely illustrating the difference between practical Materialistic & theoretical Idealistic reasoning.
*2. "Sense of reason" refers to the capacity for logical thought and sound judgment, enabling individuals to understand, analyze, and make decisions based on evidence and logic. It involves the ability to draw inferences, solve problems, and form conclusions through a process of reasoning.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=sense+of+reason
Note --- Unlike Science, Philosophy seldom has hard evidence to support its conclusions. So they are always debatable. But on a public forum, the dialog should be respectful of a variety of opinions. Are canine examples admissible?
*3.Circumstantial evidence is indirect evidence that suggests a fact in issue but doesn't directly prove it. It requires the fact-finder to draw inferences to connect the evidence to the fact in question. In essence, it's evidence that implies something happened or is true without directly proving it.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=circumstantial+evidence
Note --- The suggested "fact" in question is a transcendental prior state to the Big Bang. Which opens to door to further reasoning on the ancient God question.
*4. Einstein's theory of relativity, encompassing both special and general relativity, significantly impacted philosophical thought by challenging fundamental assumptions about space, time, gravity, and the nature of reality itself. It questioned classical Newtonian physics' concepts of absolute space and time, introducing the idea of a spacetime continuum where space and time are interwoven and relative to the observer's motion. This shift in perspective influenced philosophical discussions on causality, determinism, and the nature of scientific knowledge.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=einstein+relativity+philosophy
Note --- The Big Bang theory presented us with a hiatus in the spacetime continuum. Must we fill that knowledge-gap with more spacetime, or entertain the possibility of Infinity-Eternity?
Absolute nothingness is conceivable and it is logically possible, but it is metaphysically impossible in a world in which things exist.
Quoting AmadeusD
IMO, time initiated FROM the initial state of affairs. So that state of affairs had the potential to do so, and it is the cause of time/change. But it's not at all clear what time IS, so deeper analysis is on shaky grounds. Anyway, that's my position, and I can't make sense of you claim that "no-thing" could have caused anything.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, IMO, causes are states of affairs. Also: everything that exists is a thing = a particular with properties= a state of affairs. So the notion that "no-thing" could be a cause makes no sense to me. But you must mean something else.
Quoting AmadeusDMaybe. I believe there's a better reason to think the past is finite than infinite, but lots of smart people disagree with me.
This is bizarre. If no-things is logically possible, then that's the end of that. Our world wouldn't have been involved and I don't posit (and I don't take others) to posit that it is.
Quoting Relativist
That's fine, probably closer to my view on Time. As to the comment on my position - that isn't my position. The point is that if ever there was no-thing (noting the problem using "was" here) and then some-thing, that's all we need. There is no claim to causality in that, at all. It's an open question of 'how', or whatever.
Quoting Relativist
Not really. I just don't mean anything by that. Which is the required position to talk about no-thingness. There is no way no-thing could cause something. That's actually where the mystery lies in considering this issue. If I have intimated (or even outright said) that there's some causation required, I resile and admit that was wrong (and dumb). It is not my position.
Quoting Relativist
I agree with that (both parts). I just like entertaining shit I don't believe more than most.
@Gnomon I'll have to get to this later - sorry you've fallen out so badly with 180. He and I just don't get along, not a huge deal I don't think.
I agree with you and really these smart people arent all that smart, because the infinite past thing is just a way of putting off the inevitable. We dont know how something could have come from nothing, or how something endures for infinite time and space. So we are left with nothing to say.
No. I am referring to everything that exists, including a supernatural (if one exists), or anything else that might exist - including minds, even if they are immaterial things.
Quoting Gnomon
Your speculation seems a mere hypothetical possibility. Why take it seriously?
If it is true, how does it impact you? Do you use this hypothesis to explain other things?
Suppose cosmologists develop a testable theory that accounts for the conditions at the big bang? Would you abandon your hypothesis, or revise it?
My view: it's possible that mental activity involves something nonphysical. It's clearly not entirely nonphysical because mental capabilities are impacted by trauma and disease. If there is something immaterial, I see no use for the information because it explains nothing else about the world. I'm open to criticism and suggestions
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
We agree there could be no causal relation, but I further argue that it is incoherent to consider a world (the entirety of reality) to include a "nothingness". IOW: there is no logically possible world that includes both nothingness and an existing thing. The presence of an existing thing entails somethingness. Maybe that's what you mean here:
Quoting AmadeusD
But I can't make sense of this:
Quoting AmadeusD
This seems to treat no-thing as a thing, a reification. Conceptually, no-thing is an absence of things. It's not even an empty container, because a container is a thing. If there is some-thing, then nothingness does not obtain.
Quoting AmadeusD
I don't consider it a mystery, because of the entailments I discussed. Rather, it's easy to lose one's way when discussing the concept of nothingness. Because we have a name for it, it's tempting to treat it as a thing; this error leads to apparrent contradictions.
This is not speculation, it's inference that there is an ontological foundation to reality. The alternative is an unexplainable infinite series of causes and an infinite series of composition.
It's not much different from the Leibniz cosmological argument - which concludes the ontological foundation is something that exists necessarily. Carroll doesn't accept anything as existing necessarily (although I do).
Of course, metaphysical foundationalism is not necessarily true. But it seems to me that there's more reason to believe this than not.
Regarding intelligibility: I agree the actual ontological foundation may be unintelligible - but that has no bearing on the logic that concludes simply that there IS a foundation. (If we deny logic, this undercuts reason - making it self-defeating.)
Why take a hypothetical possibility (HP) seriously? Hmmm. There is a hypothetical possibility that US & Iran will soon be engaged in a nuclear war, and Armageddon is immanent. Personally, I don't worry about possibilities that I can't control. But some people get paid to take such prospects seriously, and others do it like touching a sore place.
However, your question sounds like it's coming from a pragmatic scientific perspective. In which case HP is nothing to waste time & effort on. Unless you are Elon Musk, who spends billions of bucks in order to make the hypothetical possibility of earthlings living on Mars an actuality. Is that HP practical or a motivating fantasy?
In any case, impractical philosophers have been taking preternatural possibilities seriously for centuries. But why? What is the payoff? Science is about manipulating the real physical world for animal values of : food, safety, sex, etc. But Philosophy is focused on the immaterial values at the top of the possibility pyramid. {image below} Philosophy is primarily directed inwardly toward cultivation of the human mind. Your pet dog may be dreaming of chasing a hypothetical rabbit, but you may have higher aspirations.
How does a holistic worldview --- including Nature & Culture & all Possibilities --- "impact" me, personally? It doesn't promise personal salvation or superpowers, if that's what you mean. Instead, it allows me to metaphorically "become one with the world". Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, said about Curiosity that "all men by nature desire to know". But only a few adventurous men are motivated to go beyond the known world, into the scary unexplored country beyond the bounds (bourn) of the familiar space-time world : "The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns". ___William Shakespeare.
The "impact" of such internal experiences is what some call "Spiritual", because it affects the metaphorical Heart, not the material body. How does posting on a philosophy forum impact you? Apparently some get an ego boost from showing Spiritual or Transcendental people the error of their curious ways. Others engage in philosophical speculation, not for material gain, but for spiritual or intellectual development & fulfillment. :smile:
Notice @Gnomon did not answer ...
Yes, I believe this is dealt with by my noting hte problem of using something like 'was' about literally no-things. That is a language problem, but I am very much hoping that can be set aside based on the elucidations you seems to grok fairly well immediately above this. I disown treating 'no-thing' as an object other than an object of conceptual thought. It is a blank thought, though.
Quoting Relativist
I agree but (noting the problem with a temporal assessment here - language problem again) they would not 'come together' as it were. At the 'time' that there was no-thing, our world did not obtain. That's the mystery - hypothetically - in the theoretical transition from nothing to something. The mere state of some-thing does give us the state of no-thing to consider, and that's roughly where I leave it. Again, I just have fun with these things - similar to de Grass Tyson saying "once you're in a black hole, go wild. We don't know what's going on" about Interstellar's later scenes.
Quoting Relativist
Yes, i agree, but I do not think this is a fault of the thinker, and more a fault of the facts. 'No-thing' can't be held to be an object other than one of conversation/thought (as above). But in that, also as above, the mystery obtains (to me).
Thank you for your thoughtful reply, but my question is a bit different. My question, "why take a hypothetical possibility seriously?" was intended to ascertain how you justify believing it as more than a mere possibility. In particular: do you actually believe this to be the case? If so, there must be some justification for the belief. Even if you don't actually believe it, you do seem to give it a level of credibility sufficiently high that you'd bring it up - so you must see something that makes it stand out from the rest.
Related to this: you seem to be treating the current state of scientific knowledge regarding the origin of the big bang as a jumping off point to your hypothesis about causally efficacious mind. How is this not an argument from ignorance? As mentioned, there are various cosmological hypotheses - these are among the possibilities that you are setting aside in favor of you mind-hypothesis.
Regarding the sentiments you shared in your thoughtful post, I share some semblance of this "feeling at one" with the universe, but in my case, I get it by honing my overall world-view. I've embraced physicalism for 10-15 years, because it's consistent with everything we know, with one possible exception: the nature of mind. The question I'm trying to sort out is: what impact does this alleged immateriality of mind have on my overall world view? It doesn't seem to undermine anything, except for the simple (possible) fact that there exists something immaterial. This is why I'm peppering you with questions - I'm not trying to argue you're wrong, I'm just look for things that I ought to take into account.
I would say that logical inferences about the unknown, or the fundamentally inaccessible are speculative. However it is preferable to the infinite series and composition, which throw up illogical inconsistencies. To this extent, I agree with you. I would add a third category here though. That the reality of the origin of what is, is beyond our capacity to understand. It may even be beyond the reach of logic.
But we must consider that logic may not be able represent the origin in a meaningful way. Or that we cant rely on it. This is not to deny logic, but rather to accept its limitations. Likewise the limitations of humanitys abilities to work things out, or to understand things.
There are other things to consider, apart from our limitations, that the reality might be counterintuitive, it may be totally orthogonal to what we know about the world. It might be inside out, or running backwards in time, or spanning time. It might be identical to what we know, or imminent, but that we are blind to it. Also there are transcendent issues, but I wont go into them here.
Basically what Im saying is that we really dont know anything, this is not to say we are unable know it. It might be [I]veiled [/I] from us.
I agree 100%. All we can do is to try and peek back layers of the onion, but sooner or later we'll get to a point beyond which there can be empirical verification, and this would limit our ability to explore even deeper. We may already be there, in some areas.
Thanks for the thoughtful re-question.
Due to the multiple lines of evidence from science & philosophy, I do think Causation did not originate in the Big Bang, but was expressed in the bang. No, I don't actually "believe" in this pre-bang Potential, in the sense of religious Faith. But I do think it's highly Probable. Which is the best we can say about events from 14b years ago.
If you are really interested in the lines of evidence, they are described in my 2010 thesis*1 and subsequent blog*2, when I was just beginning to take Philosophy seriously. The key indicators are found in Quantum physics and Information theory. But more recently I've read two books that attempt to discover how & why we humans emerged from an explosion in emptiness, then evolved to our current position at the top of the food chain. If that line of thought is of no interest, I can leave it at that.
But, if you are not afraid to ask "why?" questions that might philosophically transcend Reality, here's two recent samples of such forays into the unknown. Oxford biologist Tim Coulson wrote The Science of Why We Exist (2024) : a history of the universe from the Big Bang to Consciousness. He covered a lot of "how?" mechanics leading up to Life & Consciousness, but he did not actually address the "why?" (purpose) of the title.
On the other hand, Stockholm University biologist Carl John Callemann, phd, wrote The New Theory of Origins (2022) : Explaining Consciousness, the Big Bang, fine-tuning, dark matter, the evolution of Life and human history. In addition to the mechanical material stuff, he did directly address the philosophical "why?" of the origin of Life & Consciousness, by peering into the darkness beyond the BB. The ultimate Purpose remains murky, but it was a good try.
The Coulson book would be amenable to 180proof, in that it remained within the methodology of modern science, and within the bounds of material reality. But the Calleman book was more broadly philosophical, and took some liberties with orthodox science, and ancient myths --- what 180poo-poo would call "woo-woo". But, IMHO, Calleman's unorthodox method came much closer to answering the "why?" questions. Any questions? :smile:
*1. Enformationism : It's not something to believe, but something to think
https://enformationism.info/enformationism.info/
*2. The Enformation Hypothesis
https://bothandblog3.enformationism.info/page23.html
If I might step in here. Recall the OP:
Quoting Tom Storm
The anthropic principle can be relevant herenot to assert design in a simplistic sense, but to draw attention to the profound structural coherence underlying the cosmos. As Martin Rees pointed out in Just Six Numbers, a handful of fundamental physical constantseach of which cannot be varied without unravelling the entire fabricdetermine the very possibility of matter, stars, chemistry, and life. These arent merely coincidental either; they function as master constraints that shape the entire cosmic order.
The question is not only why these values are what they are, but why any such finely balanced set of parameters is possible at all. This invites reflection on whether such constraints point to mathematical necessity, or even to truths that are in some sense a prioritrue not because of empirical verification, but because they are necessary for any form of complex, knowable reality.
From this perspective, the universes intelligibility is not a happy accident, but might be grounded in something like what classical metaphysics calls the Logosthe rational structure underlying being. This isnt God of the gaps reasoning, but an invitation to consider whether reason itself has a groundand whether that ground might be ontologically prior to the contingent facts of the physical universe.
This isnt a falsifiable hypothesis in the Popperian sense, but thats not a flawits simply because we are operating in the domain of metaphysics, not empirical science. The claim here isnt that science is wrong, but that it may presuppose metaphysical conditions (like intelligibility, order, and lawlike regularity) that it cannot itself explain (nor needs to!) Metaphysics begins where empirical method reaches its limits.
Whether or not one believes, I think it's at least worth recognizing that this line of thought is logically valid and not reducible to mere God of the gaps reasoning. Recognising, too, that in philosophical terms, the Christian mythos revolves around the idea that the soul or essential being has a familial relationship with the intelligence that animates the Cosmos, and that, therefore, the very ability to discern these truths is owed to that heritage.
Quoting Relativist
If there's a possibility that oneself is something other than physical, then there is also a possibility that it is not subject to the same fate as everything physical - which is change and decay. When you die, the physical body returns to the elements by either internment or cremation. Is there anything else to it?
I believe there is, but I don't want to believe it on purely dogmatic grounds, either. My intuition is based on several grounds. One is my intuitive sense of having lived prior to this birth, which of course I realise doesn't constitute any kind of evidence. (However, the cases of children with past-life memories does, per this case study.)
Beyond that, what Im left with are fear and hope. The hope is that we are more than our bodies. The fear is that, if we are, that doesnt necessarily guarantee a comforting outcome. The eschatological traditions warn us that post-mortem destiny might be varied and not always (n fact, mostly not) pleasant.
What Im increasingly convinced of, though, is that secular philosophyat least in its mainstream formshas tended to dismiss these possibilities not because it has disproven them, but largely due to inherited cultural and methodological commitments. Its not that metaphysical naturalism has decisively answered the question of the soul; rather, it often refuses to ask it, or declares it un-askable.
As we've discussed many times, I believe there are unassailable philosophical arguments against materialism, grounded in the fact that ideas are real but immaterial, and that, therefore, our ability to grasp ideas indicates something fundamental about the nature of the psyche - an argument which is as old as philosophy itself, and one which I believe still holds good.
Its not that the material world is unrealits that it cannot be the whole story. The reality of meaning, truth, and value all point beyond what materialism can contain, no matter how sophisticated its models.
Such as the 'not real' (e.g. ideals, fictions, impossible worlds ...)
Quoting Wayfarer
Who has ever claimed that it is? Cite a single non-idealist philosopher who says 'the material world is the whole story'.
Besides, IME it tells us inhabitants of the material world more of "the whole story" than tales about any 'immaterial world'. :sparkle: :eyes:
Questions of why and purpose are inaccessible to us because they involve the purposes of who, or what brought the world into being. It might only be possible to understand, or map those purposes from the perspective of that agency (this also applies if the agency is unconscious). We are mere specs of dust in comparison.
Mysticism got there a while back. They realised that mental enquiry alone is blind, there are natural veils in our and the worlds make up, which prevent progress in that direction. That if progress is to be made it requires other avenues of inquiry, to bypass, or see around those veils.
There are three avenues I have found, intuition, nature and way of life. Of course mind is present, but not in control.
Please note that I didn't say he definitively & finally answered the "why?" question of a purpose to the universe. "Questions of why and purpose" are indeed "inaccessible" to empirical science. But this is a theoretical philosophy forum, where such inquiries into Being & Consciousness should be admissible : yes/no?
In a local personal context : have you ever observed the behavior of a person, and asked "why?". Of course, we cannot objectively know another subjective mind, but we can reasonable infer a motive. If so, you were doing philosophy. And you might be able to confirm your suspicion of purpose by asking the oddly behaving "agency". Obviously, we can't interrogate the Causal Agent of our own existence. But we can introspect our inner awareness, and imagine "what it would be like" to have the power & potential to create a world from scratch.
Apparently, your observation of our Universe gives you the impression of blind random purposeless groping in the dark. But Charles Darwin had a grander "view of life"*1, implying that Natural evolution, like Artificial selection of plants & animals, was motivated by a future goal or purpose. And his theory postulated two principle mechanisms : random Mutation & non-random Selection. You have good company in viewing the world as bleak & meaningless : along with Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, Kierkegaard, and Russian Nihilists. Ironically, the first four made concessions to personal meaning.
However, my impression of our Cosmos --- based in part on Modern Cosmology, Quantum Physics, and Information Theory --- is of a complex self-assembling system, that is motivated by a world-creating impulse (BB) of Cause & Laws. From such a simple yet powerful beginning, awesome complexity & beauty have evolved --- despite unfit mutations subject to de-selection. And that observation of gradual improvement implies, to more sanguine thinkers, some kind of long range Purpose, implemented in an ongoing Process, not in a six day Genesis fait accompli. I could post a list of my "company" of secular thinkers who reached a more positive & progressive understanding. But for brevity, I'll only mention the one I'm most familiar with : A.N. Whitehead*2.
Doesn't the gradual evolution of Life & Consciousness from an instantaneous explosion of space-time --- from whatever came before --- make you curious about the Why of your own life & mind in a material world? :smile:
*1. "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed [by the Creator*] into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
* Darwin added the phrase "by the Creator" from the 1860 second edition onwards, so that the ultimate sentence begins . . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species
*2. Evolutionary Process and Cosmic Reality :
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page43.html
This depends on the unjustified assumption that we actually have the capacity to see around those veils, and it places unwarranted trust in one's intuitions.
However we are limited to what we can know in our world. This can also be extrapolated to some universal truths. But we cant know the extent to which this knowledge applies to realities beyond our world. It could be a pale, or partial, representation of the reality beyond. As such we can do no more than speculate on what there is.
I am aware that there are ways, as you say, to work out what nature is up to and the direction it is going in. With the caveat that it may be only a partial picture and we dont know what is missing from the picture. It could be something which entirely transforms it, or acts as a key to unlock realities hidden from us.
I'm conceding there may be some non-physical aspect of mind, because of the explanatory gap that materialism has regarding consciousness. For purposes of this discussion, I'll treat that as a fact. My question continues to be: what does this fact plausibly entail, or at least strongly suggest? It's true that an afterlife entails some sort of immaterial existence, but it's fallaciously affirming the consequent to conclude that the presence of immateriality implies or suggests an afterlife.
The anthropic principle identifies the trivial fact that rational beings would necessarily find themselves in a world that is conducive to their existence. The "structural coherence" in the universe is most simply explained by the existence of laws of nature. The alleged "fine-tuning" is nothing more than an acknowledgement that our existence would have been improbable (a priori).
"Fine tuning arguments" depend on the unstated (egocentric) assumption that life is a design objective, rather than an improbable consequence of the way the world happens to be.
Quoting Wayfarer
Wishful thinking is a poor guide to truth. It also seems to me this overlooks what we DO know from science: the "mind's" dependency on the physical. Memories are lost due to disease, aging, and trauma. Personality can even be altered from trauma and disease- such that one's preferences, tastes, and even addictions can change. This constitutes stronger evidence of a physical dependency than the indirect inference of immateriality inferred from an explanatory gap around the nature of consciousness. Memories and personality are essential to who we are (IMO). So what, if some immaterial kernal of me lives on, if it lacks my memories, and my passions.
I put zero stock in religious traditions. The promise of an afterlife is emotionally compelling, but it's fundamentally wishful thinking.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's not "God of the Gaps", per se, but it seems much like conspiracy theory reasoning. These develop through a corrupted "Inference to Best Explanation" (IBE). IBE is a rational basis for justifying beliefs, but only if it's applied correctly: considering all relevant evidence (conspiracy theorists only consider the evidence consistent with their "inference") and entertaining alternatives. The evidence that mind has a strong physical dependency is strong, and this flies in the face of a relevant afterlife. The explanatory gap in a materialist account of mind can be filled with something considerably simpler than intelligent design and heaven.
I have used a practical example of Mind Over Matter before : the Panama Canal*1 was a dream of shippers for nearly three centuries before it had any physical "impact" on shipping. Early Spanish maps showed a bird's eye view of how narrow the isthmus is. And the conceptual implications for a shortcut to transport goods & gold --- two days of calm water vs two months around the hazardous Cape Horn --- were obvious, but immaterial, and "deemed impossible".
In practice, it took several failed attempts, and several decades of dreaming, and many human deaths to make that "impossible dream" a Reality. Nature might have eroded the isthmus over millennia, or it might not. But human Culture (and dynamite) did the job, by literally "undermining" Nature, and physically moving mountains. Can you agree that this is an example of the causal power of Mind in the Material world?
Moreover, modern human Culture --- with all its faults & failures --- is an ongoing example of mind-power motivating human potential. In material brains, processing immaterial (functional) minds, collective culture currently dreams of humans flying, like wingless birds with tails on fire, to the Moon and Mars. Are these shiny ships propelled by fire or by fantasy, or both? Do these pragmatic examples of Causal Conceptual Power (practical magic?) have any "impact" on your overall worldview? :smile:
*1. The initial concept for the Panama Canal arose from the desire to create a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, eliminating the long and perilous voyage around South America. This idea, sparked by Vasco Núñez de Balboa's discovery of the Isthmus of Panama, led to early Spanish surveys in the 16th century, but the project was deemed impossible due to the terrain and engineering limitations. Later, the French attempted a sea-level canal in the late 19th century, but faced immense challenges with disease and landslides, ultimately leading to their failure. The American-led effort, which ultimately succeeded, involved a lock-based system to navigate the elevation changes across the isthmus.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=panama+canal+original+concept
You seem to have smuggled in the word assumption there.
How can it be deemed unjustified if we dont know if there are ways to go around, or unlock the veils, or not. Or what, or where the veils are? Surely there is justification to enquire, whilst under the realisation that we have reached the limit of empirical enquiry.
Likewise with your word unwarranted, I havent said anything about intuition, other than that it is used in some way. We use our intuition all the time, already, indeed it helps us sometimes when working with logic and likely plays an important role in understanding philosophy, for example.
All Im describing is a different way of working things out than using reason alone. There is a system of calculating things about the world and the self from the use of intuition, interaction with nature and following an appropriate way of life. Where these three means are used together and in sequence to work things out. To arrive at an understanding without arriving there via rational thought. This and other means have been practiced for millennia from a time before there was much in the way of academic learning.
No. I acknowledge everything you said about the impact of mind on the world, but it's independent of the (meta)physical nature of mind. The world we interact with (through human action and interaction) is best understood through things like social sciences, and not through quantum field theory. This is true even if reductive physicalism is 100% correct. The possibility of mind having some immaterial aspects also doesn't seem to have any bearing - it's still just a different sort of reduction.
Afterlife is a term with strong religious overtones, and perhaps it muddies the waters. My point is more modest: as you acknowledge, the so-called explanatory gapthe inability of physicalism to account for subjective consciousnesssuggests that a purely physical description of the human is incomplete.
Physicalism generally presumes the causal closure of the physicalthat all causes and effects occur within the physical domain. But if that assumption is undermined, then other domains of explanation become conceptually possible. That doesnt prove dualism, or an afterlife, or any religious doctrinebut it opens space for something beyond the materialist frame.
This quote from biologist Richard Lewontin in a book review spells it out.
So, the materialist commitment is not demanded by science itself, but by a philosophical stance about what counts as an acceptable explanation. The key sentence: "We cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." Whether or not one believes in a deity, that phrase betrays the anxiety that if materialism is not all-encompassing, then the coherence of the whole system is threatened.
So were not dealing with a dispassionate assessment of evidence, but with a boundary-defining metaphysical commitment.
Quoting Relativist
The attribution of the anthropic principle to a selection effect ("We find the universe fine-tuned because only in a fine-tuned universe could we find ourselves") is logically valid but explanatorily inert - it says nothing but only reaffirms the taken-for-granted nature of existence.
And, of course, for naturalism, existence is taken for granted. It is granted! Naturalism, I like to say, 'assumes nature'. So any line of questioning which interogates that sentiment is dismissed, whereas, in philosophy, it is an opening to a deeper sense of questioning.
The deeper philosophical issue behind the anthropic principle is not just whether our existence is improbable, but whether the existence of a rationally structured, life-permitting cosmos admits of any explanation at all, or whether we must simply accept it as a brute factwhat some, following Monod, would call chance.
In his book Chance and Necessity, Jacques Monod draws the contrast explicitly: chance is what happens in the absence of reason. It is, in effect, the denial that there is anything intelligible to be found behind or beneath the statistical patterns. In this view, the fact that the universe permits life, consciousness, and rational reflection is not something to be explainedbut something that simply happened, and could easily not have.
But this is not a neutral position. It's a philosophical commitmentan affirmation of unintelligibility as the last word. And it stands in deep tension with the most basic assumption of both science and philosophy: that the world is in some sense rational, that its patterns are not only observable but meaningful. Thats what Einstein was gesturing at in his famous remark: The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.
So the real question isnt just whether life is improbable, but whether the emergence of beings capable of asking such questions is itself part of an intelligible orderor whether, as Monod would have it, we are the products of blind chance and cosmic indifference.
I dont think thats a scientific question. I think thats the philosophical heart of the matter. So, and perhaps ironically, we find ourselves in a position where naturalism must accept that the universe is, at bottom, irrationalthat reason is something we impose or invent for pragmatic survival, but that it has no intrinsic connection to the order of things. On this view, reason isnt a window into the real, but a useful illusionevolutions trick to keep the organism alive. And yet, its this very reason were asked to trust when making that judgment.
Rational belief is justified belief- i.e.having reasons to believe some proposition is true. "X is possible" is not a justification to believe X rather than ~X. Possibilities are endless.
Warrant=justification.
I'm fine with using intuition to develop and justify belief, but it IS subjective. I don't have any problem with anyone following their own intuitions. I also follow mine. I also ask myself: why do I believe this? Intuition plays a role, but IMO we should also be self-critical.
I apologize if I sound like I'm criticizing you or anyone else. I'm actually just exercising some self-criticism to understand if there is something that I should be taking into account that I have been overlooking? Hearing different point of views is interesting.
I dont work with beliefs, I dont hold any other than those that are required to live a life. When it comes to questions of existence, I hold none. This also pertains to denying any beliefs, I dont deny any either. This might sound radical, but it isnt, its realistic. Because as I have already pointed out, we really have no idea, not a clue, what is out there. Gnomon seems to conclude that this is a barren denialism, or something. It isnt, its is to be open minded.
So in a sense I am standing at the door of the unknown along with the Metaphysicians who have reached the extent of what they can deduced using logical inferences.
So what do we do now? How do we make progress?
Perhaps it is a pursuit like the pursuit of an artist, to make progress. An artist exercises intuition and a creative flair to improve their work. It is a journey, with events and experiences along the way. But crucially, the artist is moving forward without relying on rational thought alone. It is in the mix, but not controlling events, or progress. There is an interplay between thought, intuition, happenstance and the creation of artistic content. The artist may refer to pieces made previously, to find inspiration, a feedback loop. Also there may be means a bit like calculus, quadratic equations. Like shimmying up a chimney with one foot being intuition, the other foot, a way of life and the hands interaction with nature.
No worries, My skin is like elephant hide.
Sure, but that doesn't give epistemic license to fill the gap arbitrarily or with wishful thinking.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, but it's a wide space of possibility. As I previously said, we've only (at best) established a negative fact.
Quoting Wayfarer
I can only give my personal reaction. We've only "established" (too strong, but it will do) that there is some immaterial aspect of mind. I see no relevant entailments - propositions that I should accept because of it. Perhaps it would be relevant to a nihilist.
Remember my hurricane analogy? We don't examine and predict their activities based on quantum field theory. Similarly, we shouldn't examine human behavior or aesthetics in terms of reductive physicalism - even if reductive physicalism is true. So if it's false, with respect to "the mind" - it has no bearing on how I view things. It's just a metaphysical technicality.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's a falsification of invalid reasoning. The question ostensibly answered by this invalid reasoning reflects a contrivance, not a conundrum requiring explanation.
Quoting Wayfarer
Even religious scientists employ methodological naturalism in their investigations. There is no alternative that bears practical fruit. Consider the work of "creation science" ' which makes virtually no contribution to our understanding of the world. It's mission is to rationalize empirical data to dogma. If you agree that methodological naturalism is the appropriate paradigm for the advance of science, where should the negative fact enter into my metaphysical musings?
How should I revise my personal views on the (meta)nature of mind? Alternatives to physicalism also have explanatory gaps (e.g. the mind-body interaction problem of dualism).
Quoting Wayfarer
IMO, that's an unwarranted assumption. We can makes sense of the portions of reality we perceive and infer. That is not necessarily the whole of reality. I also argue that quantum mechanics isn't wholly intelligible. Rather, we grasp at it. Consider interpretations: every one of them is possible- what are we to do with that fact? I'm not a proponent of the Many-Worlds interpretation, but it's possibly true- and if so, it has significant metaphysical implications- more specific implications than the negative fact we're discussing.
Quoting Wayfarer
There's a fundamental problem with the thesis that our minds should be considered the product of design: it depends on the premise that there exists an uncaused mind that can do designs. That's a considerably more drastic assumption than the gradual, chance development of rational beings over billions of years in a vast universe.
Quoting Wayfarer
I disagree. "Rational" applies to minds, not to the world at large. We apply our rationality in attempting to understand the world. Intelligibility may be what you're alluding to. There may be uinintelligibility underneath the layers we can understand, but that possibility needn't deter us from striving to understand what we can. We can never know the stuff that's beyond our ability to measure and theorize; we can't even know anything IS beyond these abilities. Here's where I apply parsimony and pragmatism: there's no epistemic basis to assume such things exist, so it's more parsimonious to assume it does not, and the (mere) possibility has no pragmatic significance.
Yes. That's what exploring philosophers do : use our limited senses to learn what is within our reach, and then reach-out to "speculate" on what might exist outside our little valley, on the other side of the mountain. In other words : to expand our perspective. Universal Truths are not observations, but interpretations. :smile:
Quantum Field Theory is just one of the mind-expanding technologies that opens doors for novel philosophical & scientific exploration. Of course, an open door could invite dangerous strangers into your worldview. That's why a skeptical screen helps to filter-out the fake & false, while admitting new possibilities.
Some posters on this forum feel safer with the certainty of 17th century physics, and shy away from 20th century quantum physics*1. Both are "frameworks" for conceiving the real world. Newton's world was solid & stable & factual, safely outside the human mind : a closed door. But the Quantum realm is indeterminate & unpredictable & subject to interpretation. Even spookier is that quantum observations are somewhat dependent on the observer : opening a door of perception*2 into the personal domain of the human mind.
If you define "Mind" as "Brain", you can ignore any uncanny immaterial or metaphysical*4 implications. But, if you define "Mind"*3 as awareness & intellect & experience (feeling), you will be hard-pressed to find any "material aspects" that you can put your finger on. The choice is yours : open door & risk (exploration), or closed door & security (stay at home). :smile:
*1. Newtonian physics and quantum physics are two different frameworks for describing the universe, with Newtonian physics focusing on the motion of macroscopic objects and quantum physics delving into the behavior of matter at the atomic and subatomic level. Newtonian physics is deterministic, meaning that given the initial conditions of a system, its future state can be precisely predicted. Quantum physics, on the other hand, is probabilistic, meaning it can only predict the likelihood of different outcomes.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=quantum+physics+vs+newtonian+physics
*2. The famous quote, "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite," comes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. It was later used as the epigraph for Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception, which details his experiences with the drug mescaline.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=doors+of+perception+quote
Note --- The sub-atomic world described by quantum physicists seems more like a psychedelic drug trip than the mundane reality of Newtonian physics. How can we tell what's real, and what's ideal? Remember, all we know about Reality is our images & experiences in the mind. Can we trust our own perceptions?
[i]*3. Define Mind :
the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.[/i]
___Oxford dictionary
*4. Notes on Meta-Physics :
[i]# Physics is the science of material Things & Forces. Things are Objects (nouns) ; Forces are Causes (motivators)
# Metaphysics is the science of immaterial Non-Things such as Ideas, Concepts, Processes, & Universals. Non-things are Agents (subjects), Actions (verbs), or Categories (adverbs, adjectives).
# Selves are meta-physical agents, in the sense that they are more than a collection of physical parts (integrated whole system). They are not Spiritual, in the sense of ghosts without bodies. At death, a Self dissipates even as the parts remain.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html
PS___ I've noticed in several of the posts on this thread, negative assessments of Intuition & Imagination : the very talents that give humans a competitive edge over animals, who are able to see only what is within range of their senses. Eagles can see farther than men ; Dogs can follow scents that are insensible to their masters. But it's the ability to see what's not there, and to predict the future, that make men the masters over less endowed animals.
Of course, Intuition & Imagination & Wishful Thinking can lead us astray. But we do it anyway. Because the intellectual payoff outweighs the risks. And that ability to see over the horizon is what gives Scientists & Philosophers a leg-up on those who (metaphorically) stay safely at home, where food & shelter are guaranteed. And there's no need for discernment, curiosity, or ambition. ;)
To label philosophical spirituality as wishful thinking is to close off inquiry too quickly. These arent arbitrary insertions into an explanatory gaptheyre attempts to interpret the nature of that gap itself. The history of philosophy is filled with thinkers grappling rigorously with the limits of physical explanationnot because they didnt understand science, but because they recognized that experience, meaning, and subjectivity resist reduction.
So if there's something wishful here, it's perhaps the wish that the scientific method could explain everything, when it was never designed to do that.
Quoting Relativist
Methodological naturalism isnt metaphysical naturalism, which is the attempt to apply the methods of science to the questions of philosophy. That is basically all that Chalmers facing up to the problem of consciousness is saying: that the physical sciences must by design exclude a fundamental dimension of existence - the nature of being.
Quoting Relativist
You're quite right that dualism has its own explanatory gapsespecially regarding mind-body interaction. But physicalism's own explanatory impasse around consciousness, intentionality, and meaning suggests that we shouldn't treat it as the default view merely because it's scientifically adjacent.
As for how to revise your views: simply remain open. You don't have to adopt dualism to explore non-physicalist possibilities. There are entire traditionsphenomenology, idealism, panpsychism, even non-dualist metaphysics from Eastern thoughtthat approach mind as primary or irreducible, without falling into obscurantism or dualism.
None of these views are without their own puzzles, but they start from a different intuition: that experience isn't something that emerges from matter, but rather something intrinsic to realityor at least not alien to it. Even just entertaining that possibility might open new questions that physicalism can't easily ask.
Following that thread has lead me to the view that the sense of separateness, of otherness to the world, which characterises so much of modern thought, is really a form of consciousness. Thomas Nagel, in particular, puts the case in his 2012 book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. In a précis of his book, he says
*This is plainly a reference to the same issue that David Chalmers describes in his Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, which also mentions Nagel's oft-quoted 1974 paper What is it like to be a Bat?
Well, to start with, I think any philosophy that declares a fortiori that the world is irrational effectively undermines itself. If reality is, at bottom, unintelligible, then all attempts at understandingincluding scientific attemptsare undermined from the outset. That doesnt mean we can grasp everything, but it does mean that the act of inquiry assumes a basic trust in the rational structure of reality.
As for quantum theory, it may well be telling us something not just about particles, but about the limits of a purely material ontology. That matter should turn out to be elusive and probabilistic rather than solid and mechanistic would not have surprised a Platonist (indeed Werner Heisenberg was a lifelong Platonist). There are many competing interpretations, of course, but several do allow for idealist or participatory readings, where observation plays an essential role. In my essay on the subject, I defend QBism (quantum baynsianism) in which the subjective act of observation is fundamental.
Quoting Wayfarer
I did not suggest closing off inquiry. Rather, I value truth-seeking, and truth-seeking requires objectivity. Wishful thinking about an afterlife is seductive, not an objective path to truth.
Quoting Wayfarer
I chose my words carefully, and am highlighting the fact that the "problem of consciousness" only entails the negative fact: consciousness is not entirely physical. I have repeatedly pointed out that that this negative fact explains nothing. It opens up possibilities, but possibility is cheap.
Quoting Wayfarer
Why ISN'T it the appropriate default view for me? Physicalism is consistent with much of mental activity and it explains a lot. You repeatedly point out (and I have accepted) that it can't be the whole truth, but you haven't proposed what more complete truth I ought to embrace. Pointing to the wide space of possibilities, that is entailed by the negative fact, is neither informative nor useful to me. You said "remain open". I am open to differences of opinion. I won't argue "you're wrong because it's contrary to physicalist dogma". I'm not trying to convince anyone to change their view, I'm just trying to decide whether or not I should change mine. Highlighting the negative fact, and the space of possibilities it opens, doesn't give me a reason to change my view of treating a physicalist account (of anything) as the appropriate default for a reductive account. I remind you, this is not some act of faith - it is just the framework I base my philosophical analyses on, and I don't apply it to human behavior or aesthetics.
I have never denied that. Hurricanes.
Quoting Wayfarer
I disagree, and that's because it is not the WORLD that is rational (or not), it is people.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's not telling us anything other than that there's a set of possibilities, none of which would be inconsistent with materialism (by definition).
And I have repeatedly pointed out that in this explanatory gap dwells the very self that is seeking to understand. And that deferring every question to science only perpetuates the ignoring of that. And when I do point it out, you deflect some more by framing it as a speculative question. When in reality the real question of philosophy is know thyself
Nothing further to add.
If Consciousness was entirely physical*1, there would be no need for Philosophy*2. But even scientific Physics is not entirely physical*3, in the sense of tangible, material, or concrete. Newtonian physics was presumed to be about "things" perceived through the senses. Until he was forced by mathematical reasoning to posit a strange invisible force that acts at a distance*4, and can only be detected by it's effects on matter. Ironically, his belief in the biblical God should have prepared him to accept such magical powers.
Centuries later, Einstein re-defined Newton's mathematical Gravity as the abstract geometry of space-time. And Quantum Physics extended the abstraction of the material world with its notions of statistical existence (probabilistic particles), and with mathematical definitions of abstract Fields*3 underlying the material world. Yet, such abstract ideas*5 have eroded our former confidence (uncertainty principle) in the substantial materiality of the natural world.
As I learned about the emerging abstraction of Physics, I began to see that the Causal Forces that act in the material world are more Mental than Material. For example, we now define Energy, not as a material object or substance, but as the Potential, or Ability, or Capacity to cause material change. We measure Energy, not by what it is, but by what it does : its effects, not its substance. I could go on, but these examples should suffice to illustrate that modern Science has encountered aspects of reality that are "not entirely physical", and can only be analyzed mathematically (mentally ; rationally ; theoretically ; philosophically).
Therefore, the need to treat Consciousness, not as a "negative fact", but as more like an invisible Force, or causal Energy, or space-time Field, should come as no surprise. I won't go further in this post. But my thesis & blog treat Consciousness and Life as philosophical subjects, not scientific objects of study. :nerd:
*1. Physical :
relating to things perceived through the senses as opposed to the mind; tangible or concrete.
___ Oxford Dictionary
Meta-Physical : conceived via mental reasoning instead of the physical senses.
*2. The idea that consciousness is not entirely physical, often called non-physicalism or dualism, is a viewpoint that suggests consciousness is separate from or irreducible to physical matter and processes. This perspective is supported by arguments such as the "explanatory gap" (the difficulty in explaining subjective experience from physical descriptions) and the qualia argument (the unique, subjective nature of conscious experience)
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=consciousness+is+not+entirely+physical
*3. In quantum field theory, the quantum field is considered fundamental and not composed of anything physical ; rather, it's the foundation upon which particles and forces emerge. It's often described as an immaterial realm of energy, light, and information, existing as frequency, and giving rise to what we perceive as matter
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=quantum+field+immaterial
*4. Newton's theory of gravity describes a force that acts at a distance, meaning objects exert a gravitational pull on each other without needing to be in contact. This concept, where gravity acts instantaneously across vast distances, troubled Newton himself, as he considered it a philosophical "absurdity". Despite his reservations, his mathematical formulation of gravity accurately predicted planetary motion and other phenomena, leading him to accept it as a working model.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=newton+gravity+action+at+a+distance
*5. What does it mean to be abstract? :
having no reference to material objects or specific examples; not concrete.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/abstract
But "the self" is a mystery before we consider its grounding and a mystery even after we acknowledge there's something immaterial.
Quoting Wayfarer
Embracing physicalism as an ontological ground* does not entail deferring all questions to science. Your objection would be apt for Stephen Hawking, not for me.
* even if that ground includes some unknown immaterial aspect.
That would only be true if we had perfect and complete knowledge of how to reduce everything to fundamental physics, and the capacity to compute human behavior on this basis.
Quoting Gnomon
Modern physicalism has no problen dealing with the things you refer to as "not entirely physical". For example, energy is a property that things have. Properties are not objects, per say, but they are aspects of the way physical things are.
Quoting Gnomon
The negative fact I referred to is "not (entirely) physical." I simply disagree with jumping to any conclusion based solely on this negative fact. Negative facts only entail possibilities - a wealth of them. If you wish to create some hypothetical framework, that's your business, but I won't find it compelling without some justification for giving it some credibility.
That is exactly what David Armstrong and Daniel Dennett do. Where do you differ from them on that score?
Another point Ive noticed: that you label a very wide range of philosophies speculative. Youre inclined to say that, even if physicalism is incomplete, anything other than physicalism is speculative, simply 'an excuse' to engage in 'wishful thinking'. But isn't it possible that this might be because youre not willing to entertain any philosophy other than physicalism? That it's a convenient way not to have to engage with anything other than physicalism - label it speculative'? And how is that not also 'wishful thinking'?
As for the 'unknown immaterial ground' - what if that 'unknown immaterial ground' is simply thought itself? I know what David Armstrong's answer to that would be: thoughts are brain-states, configurations of neurochemicals, in line with his view that everything about the mind can be explained in terms of physics and chemistry:
[quote=The Nature of Mind, D M Armstrong]What does modern science have to say about the nature of man? There are, of course, all sorts of disagreements and divergencies in the views of individual scientists. But I think it is true to say that one view is steadily gaining ground, so that it bids fair to become established scientific doctrine. This is the view that we can give a complete account of man in purely physico-chemical terms.[/quote]
(Notice also the claim to authority inherent in it becoming 'established scientific doctrine'. The triumphal flourish: 'It's true, because science says it is!')
So, what is the matter with the claim that thoughts are brain-states? Consider Edmund Husserl's criticism of naturalism:
[quote=Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, p143]In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sensethis would be a subjective idealism, itself a consequence of a certain naturalising tendency whereby consciousness is cause and the world its effectbut rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousnesss foundational, disclosive role. For this reason, all natural science is naive about its point of departure, for Husserl (PRS 85; Hua XXV 13). Since consciousness is presupposed in all science and knowledge, then the proper approach to the study of consciousness itself must be a transcendental oneone which, in Kantian terms, focuses on the conditions for the possibility of knowledge...[/quote]
This is not speculative but analytic: naturalism and physicalism ignore the foundational, disclosive role of consciousness at the basis of scientific theorising. Even to develop a theory of how the brain generates or forms or causes the content of thought relies on those conscious actions. And you can't see those activities from the outside - you will never see a true proposition in the data of neuroscience, only images that the expert will need to interpret, in order to judge.
Would you describe Husserl as a secular philosopher who avoided metaphysical and spiritual claims altogether, or as someone who bracketed such matters without affirming or denying them?
Theres also a strong Platonic or idealist undercurrent in Husserls later thoughthis notion of eidetic reduction suggests that essences are real and perceptible to intuition, and not merely empirical generalizations. So while he doesn't affirm metaphysical or spiritual doctrines, his work provides a space for them.
In the context of the discussion with @Relativist, I'm trying to avoid arguing on the basis of 'the spiritual', as that is seen as being the natural opponent of 'the physical'. But that, again, is the shadow of Cartesian dualism, the very divisions of mind and matter, spiritual and physical, that Husserl is careful to avoid, and that I wish to avoid also.
Yes, this would seem to be the case... although maybe it's others who, rather eagerly, seek to fill this space.
I wounder what @Joshs would observe here.
Quoting Wayfarer
Nice term. He's not doing metaphysics as such, but commenting on the space where they may take place.
This is so because "consciousness" (qualia, intention, feeling, or other folk-percepts), in contrast to observation, on occasion might be a consequence but is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition (or operational requirement) of "scientific theorizing". And given the absence of a testable explanatory model of "consciousness", your criticism is empty.
Quoting Wayfarer
Not a "question of philosophy" but a Delphic reminder of practical living that one needs to understand one's limitations (in order to avoid hubris)
Quoting Wayfarer
Hobbes' "whole story " is epistemic (re: he's (mostly) a scientific materialist as per his De Corpore (chap. 6)), not metaphysical; rejection of Cartesian dualism (or immaterialism) =/= "the whole story" but, instead, it is how Hobbes finds a part of "the story" that includes constitutes-informs its scientific reading.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes/#4
... as opposed to "governed by" (e.g.)
:sparkle: astrological forces :pray: ... Rejection of Cartesian dualism (or immaterialism) =/= "the whole story".
Again, an epistemic paradigm rather than an ontological deduction. All d'Holbach is saying, it seems to me, is that whatever else (e.g. im-material) might be going on, we do not observe anything other than this nomological state of affairs. For him it is not "the whole story" but simply, pragmatically, materialism (of the 18th century) was the only self-consistent and testable "story" worth telling at the time.
Whether of not there are "spiritual phenomena" is irrelevant to Dr. Büchner who is NOT a metaphysical "the whole story" materialist but a scientific materialist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_B%C3%BCchner
more context:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy
Invoking Occam's Razor, Smart's physicalism amounts to an explicit rejection of Cartesian dualism; for him physicalist explanations are not "the whole story" but suffice for understanding the physical world and its constituents such as functioning human brains. Btw, Smart's explicit metaphysics concerns perdurantism rather than ("reality is nothing but matter") materialism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdurantism
Rejection of Cartesian dualism (or immaterialism) =/= "the whole story". Despite academic labels or publication titles, Armstrong is a physicalist-functionalist (and more broadly a scientific realist); in the context of his work on "mind", as I understand it, the use of "material" (re: materialism) is synonymous with embodied. AFAIK, Armstrong's "the whole story" metaphysics consists in 'only instantiated Platonic universals exist' (like e.g. laws of nature, embodied minds, truthmakers, etc).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Malet_Armstrong#Philosophy
Rejection of Cartesian dualism (or immaterialism) =/= "the whole story". Their eliminatism is an epistemology (i.e. scientific materialism), not a (nothing but matter) metaphysics.
A pragmatic form of the Churchlands' eliminativism epistemic (i.e. scientific), not a (nothing but matter) metaphysics.
Well, Wayf, the illusions (i.e. things not as they appear to be) do exist ... Read Rosenberg's book: it's a scientistic polemic (almost a parody) and not a well-argued thesis. :smirk:
Quoting Gnomon
[quote=Relativist]... explains nothing. It opens up possibilities, but possibility is cheap.[/quote]
IME, philosophy that does not address (i.e. make explicit or clarify) how things are and instead (unsoundly) asserts how things might (or ought to) be "... explains nothing ... is cheap".
You're not seeing the point. The passage is not a 'theory about consciousness'. Read it again:
How can they not be dependent on conscious acts? They all rely on reasoning, rational inference, calculation and judgement.
As to why this can't be understood from 'within the natural outlook', this is because consciousness (or simply 'the mind') never appears as an object for the natural sciences: 'Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place.' It is more accurate to say that the world appears in the mind, than that the mind appears in the world.
So, you agree that incomplete empirical Physics*1 leaves something to be desired, that theoretical Philosophy can explore : perhaps a Theory of Everything? Theories are not about Actualities, but about Possibilities. Yes? :smile:
*1. Yes, physics is generally considered incomplete. Current theories, like the Standard Model, have limitations and don't fully explain phenomena like gravity at the quantum level, dark matter, and dark energy. Furthermore, even with a complete theory of everything, complexity in emergent systems like the human brain would still pose significant challenges
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=is+physics+incomplete
Quoting Relativist
Yes. But Properties are known by inference, not by observation. And Qualities cannot be dissected into fundamental atoms. Science is based on sensory observation, followed by philosophical Deduction, Induction & Abduction. When scientists study immaterial "aspects" of nature, they are doing philosophy. Yes? :smile:
Quoting Relativist
Bertrand Russell "argued that negative facts are necessary to explain why true negative propositions are true"*2. But you seem to be wary of exploring unverified "possibilities" and hypotheses. Is that because you can't put a statistical Probability under a microscope, to study its structure? Are you fearful of Uncertainty? Were Einstein's ground-breaking theoretical discoveries based on hard facts, or on anomalies that puzzled expert scientists? Was the bending of light by gravity a known fact, or a mere hypothetical possibility? Do you prefer observational Science to theoretical Philosophy, because of the superiority of verified Fact over possible Explanation?
Do you assume, just because my worldview is different from yours, that I am "just making sh*t up". Obviously, you haven't looked at the scientific "justification" --- primarily Quantum Physics & Information Theory --- that I present "for giving it some credibility". I don't quote scripture to account for my unorthodox worldview. I almost exclusively quote credible credentialed scientists. And I give links, so you can satisfy yourself that they should know what they are talking about.
So in my thesis, I "jumped to a conclusion" based, not on "negative facts", but on scientific anomalies, that open the door for philosophical explanation. And my conclusions are always tentative, subject to new evidence. That's why, as an amateur, I post on this forum, dedicated to criticism of speculations & conjectures. :cool:
*2. The existence and nature of negative facts have been debated in philosophy. Some philosophers, like Russell, have argued that negative facts are necessary to explain why true negative propositions are true.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=negative+fact
PS___ You didn't say which "negative fact" I was using as a quicksand ground from which to "jump to a {unwarranted??} conclusion". So, my comments here are generalized. If you want a more warranted reply, you need to specify the unverified Possibility that I leaped from to a Conclusion you don't agree with. In the OP, the conclusion was "God" as the "ultimate reality", and the "grounds" were philosophical arguments, not scientific possibilities.
Quoting Tom Storm
Im not sure how much of a space Husserl provides for metaphysical and spiritual doctrines. He is very clear that what one uncovers at the end of a long chain of eidetic reductions is the irreducible essence of the living present. There is no room here to insert a spiritual content since the only content of the living present is its structure as pure self-affection. Not the presence to self of a feeling or knowing substance, not an ethical vector but idealization in its barest form, as the immediacy of the voice that hears itself in the exact same moment of its speaking. Any particular substantive sense we attempt to assign to what is within the living present will always be a higher order constituted product, merely subjectively relative and i. need of bracketing and reduction, with no metaphysical justification in itself. This runs counter to the aims of religious forms of phenomenology.
Where did Armstrong say that all questions should be deferred to science? He was a reductionist, and believed that all substance and function was reducible to physics (physical substance and laws), but I don't think he ever suggested the human condition is best analyzed from the bottom up.
Irrespective of what Armstrong or Dennett believed, I believe bottom-up analysis is a practical (if not actual) impossibility- even if reductive physicalism is true. Rather, functional-level analysis is appropriate. Most of the science of Chemistry is practiced at a functional level of chemical bonds between atoms - rather than at the (exceedingly complex) level of quantum mechanics. Biology is best analyzed at the level of functioning organisms. In general, functional truths can be established without needing to consider how, or if, it reduces to quarks.
Similarly, everything about the human condition is best analyzed and contemplated at the "functional" level (an unfortunately cold term for beauty, love, hate, good, evil, wishes, hopes, dreams, fears...). So while we could debate whether or not these things are reducible to quantum field theory, it rarely matters - because we all agree these aspects of humanity are real and worthy of in-depth analysis.
Quoting Wayfarer
Philosophy necessarily begins with speculation, but a speculation presented to another person is only a bare possibility if there's no additional reason (a justification) to accept it (*edit: I discuss "bare possibility" in my reply to Gnomon, which is below this one). This is a point I've brought up repeatedly: why accept one possibility over another? Re: wishful thinking- it's is a form of bias- not a good reason to accept a possibility, so I'm inclined to dismiss this as a justification to raise a possibility above the status of being "bare".
I try to be consistent with my epistemology. So I consider what's wrong with conspiracy theories: they start with a biased speculation (one that is possible), and then interpret facts on that basis, and treat those interpretations as supporting evidence. Contrary evidence is ignored or rationalized. It is a corrupted version of inference to the best explanation. This is bad epistemology in any context.
In this light, I have argued tha physicalism is a proper inference to the best explanation. 1) it's consistent with all uncontroversial facts of the world; 2) it is parsimonious- it depends on the fewest assumptions. I've brought this up several times- and (contrary to your charge) expressed a willingness to entertain other possibilities. You haven't identified one. You've merely pointed to the negative fact (the explanatory gap in physicalist theory of mind), which does no more than entail a wide space of possibilities. I've said this repeatedly, but you haven't appreciated the significance, which is that possibility alone is useless.
Quoting Wayfarer
Why should I believe that? Why do you believe this to be more than a bare possibility? Thinking is a process - a process that humans engage in. Referring to a "thought" as an object seems like treating a "run" (the process of running) as an object. There's no run unless there's a runner, and there's no thought unless there's a thinker. This is what seems to be the case, so explain how your alternative makes sense.
Quoting Wayfarer
Facts established by science have strong epistemological support. It BEGINS as a speculation- an inference to best explanation (in the opinion of the formulator) of empirical evidence. But then It has been subjected to verification testing, sometimes falsified and revised. So why shouldn't more credence be given to established science than (say) the untestable speculation that thoughts are objects? I don't see any reason for your negativity on his (conditional) comment. It might make more sense to be skeptical of his optimistic forecast that this will occur.
Quoting Wayfarer
Physicalism doesn't START with the role of consciousness, but it doesn't ignore it. It accounts for consciousness, even if imperfectly.
[Quote]In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all
...[/quote]
Nothing in the quote constitutes an explanation of what conscious acts are. Asserting consciousness is foundational explains nothing. Rather, it's an assertion that its existence is brute fact
[Quote] Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place.[/quote]
I'll rephrase this to: consciousness is precisely the reason why we would perceive a world, and why we perceive it as we do. If that's what he meant, it's tautologically true - because our perceptions, our rationality and our capacity to understand are aspects of our consciousness.
[I]"the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness...."[/i] The world itself is unaffected by our knowledge of it. Knowledge entails meaning; the capacity for knowledge is an aspect of our consciousness.
[I]The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness...[/i]because conceiving is something that conscious minds DO, and that's all it is.
[I]consciousnesss foundational, disclosive role...[/i] foundational to knowledge not to reality itself.
[I]Since consciousness is presupposed in all science and knowledge, then the proper approach to the study of consciousness itself must be a transcendental one[/i]
The case has been made that consciousness is foundational to knowledge, but that doesn't seem paticularly inciteful for the reasons I described.
It seems that Husserl's theory takes consciousness for granted, just as physicalism does. He suggests that consciousness is unanalyzable - a brute fact. That's not explaining anything. Physicalism (in conjunction with neuroscience) attempts to analyze consciousness and explain it. You focus on the gap in that explanation, while implying Husserl's theory is a worthy competitor (or perhaps you think it superior) in spite of it explaining nothing. Rather, it raises even more questions that it can't answer.
This is where I suspected metaphysics would end up (not having read it sufficiently myself). Rather like the mystic, standing beside the door of the unknown. Unable to proceed any further, hence the appeal (from the mystic) for guidance from the other side of that door. Where is the equivalent appeal from the Metaphysician, I wonder? To AI perhaps.
As I read that back, I read Hal, of 2001 A Space Odyssey, rather than AI. A fitting metaphor, I think.
Quoting Relativist
Wayfarer is trying to give a taste of Husserls view of the relation between consciousness and the physical. Given that the OP topic isnt about Husserl, this isnt the place to flesh out what Husserl meant by consciousness, but I can assure you he doesnt simply take it for granted. He wrote thousands of pages explicating what it is, what it does and why it is fundamental to the understanding of concepts like the natural and the physical.
Yes he did, but I agree with David Armstrong, that they are superfluous and unparsimonious. The world consists of the things that exist. The truthmaker for a negative proposition is the set of all actual existents. The absence of unicorns from that set is the truthmaker of "unicorns don't exist".
Quoting Gnomon
I'm not at all wary of exploring possibilities, and I don't require they be verified (proven). Justification doesn't imply proof. Most of our body of beliefs consist of uncertain facts, and we may have varying levels of certainty. I'm primarily distinguishing propositions that are bare possibilities.
Philosophers often distinguish between different degrees of possibility. A bare possibility sits at the bottom of this hierarchy - it's possible in the most minimal sense, without being plausible, probable, or well-supported. If we applied a numerical probability, it would be infinitesimal.
Example: It's possible the sun will go nova overnight, but I don't take that possibility seriously- so, for all intents and purposes, I'm certain the sun will be there tomorrow, although I acknowledge it's possible in a minimalist sense.
So when, there's a large space of mutually exclusive possibilities, none of which has an iota of support, they are all just bare possibilities. That's what seems to be the case with the negative fact* I'm discussing.
With regard to science: scientists don't explore bare possibilities. They have some reason for exploring some particular possibility - and that means it's more than a bare possibility.
Quoting Gnomon
I haven't made that assumption. Rather, I've asked for the justification so I can consider it. The whole point of my discussion with you and @Wayfarer is to hear some justification for treating some specific possibilities (entailed by physicalism's explanatory gap*) as more than a bare possibility. I've been given nothing - and that may be because I haven't been clear on what I'm asking for. I hope I've cleared that up.
______
* Quoting Gnomon
The negative fact that is the topic is: physicalism does not fully account for the nature of consciousness.
OK. But do you have a Positive Fact that "_____ does fully account for the nature of consciousness". A Materialist worldview might fill-in the blank with something like "Atomic Theory", or Aristotle's "hyle", instead of "morph", as Positive Facts. Yet, in what sense are these theories or views Factual? Are they proven or verified, or are the only open-ended Possibilities?
Do you consider yourself to be a Physicalist*1 or Monistic Materialist, with no immaterial subjective thoughts? If so, then you may view Chalmers' "hard problem"*2 as "superfluous and unparsimonious". What kind of matter are those beliefs, views, attitudes made of? Do you have a theory, or mechanism, to account for how Matter became Conscious, after 14B years of random accidents? :smile:
*1. Physicalism, the view that everything is fundamentally physical, struggles to fully explain consciousness because it struggles to account for the subjective, qualitative experience of consciousness, often referred to as qualia or phenomenal consciousness. While physicalism can describe the physical structures and processes of the brain, it doesn't fully explain how these give rise to the subjective feeling of what it's like to see, hear, or feel pain.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=+physicalism+does+not+fully+account+for+the+nature+of+consciousness.
*2. The "hard problem of consciousness" refers to the challenge of explaining how subjective, qualitative experiences ("what it's like" to have a feeling) arise from physical processes in the brain. It contrasts with "easy problems" of consciousness, which are about explaining cognitive functions and behaviors like attention, memory, and language processing. Essentially, the hard problem asks why and how physical processes give rise to subjective, qualitative experiences like feeling pain or seeing the color red.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=hard+problem
Note --- I am aware that I experience the world from a personal perspective. But I can only infer, rationally, that you have a similar awareness of the non-self world. And It's easy to assert that, given eons of time, random roiling of atoms could possibly develop feelings & sensations. But the hard part, the science part, is to describe "how" that happened. And the philosophy part is to explain "why" consciousness might emerge from a evolutionary process that coasted along for 99% of Time with no signs of Consciousness until the last .001%.
Quoting Relativist
Until you brought it up, I was not familiar with the term "Negative Fact"*1. But the definition below sounds absurd to me. And I don't know anybody who bases a philosophical conclusion on nothing but the Absence*2 of that thing. Maybe their Immaterial Presence explanation*3 just doesn't make sense to your Matter-based Bias. Ideas & Concepts may be absent from Material Reality, but for humans, they are present in Mental Ideality. So, the negative term is useful only for denigrating the very talent that distinguishes humans from animals : reasoning from possibility to probability. That's our way of predicting the future.
To say that "possibility is cheap" disparages the basic assumption of this forum, and of Philosophy in general : that possibility is fertile ground for rational exploration. By the way : you may be familiar only with traditional Dualistic*4 explanations for Consciousness. But my thesis is Monistic. :smile:
*1. In logic and philosophy, the concept of a "negative fact" refers to the possibility of a fact existing due to the absence of something.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=negative+fact+possibility
*2. What Is The Power of Absence?
Terrence Deacon's 2011 book, goes into great detail to create a plausible hypothesis for solving the mystery of how living organisms suddenly emerged on Earth, after billions of years of spatial expansion & material aggregation had managed to build only simple inorganic chemical systems that strictly obeyed the zero-sum 2nd law of Thermodynamics.
https://bothandblog3.enformationism.info/page33.html
*3. Some people argue that consciousness is not entirely physical, or that it is not simply reducible to physical processes in the brain. This perspective is often associated with philosophical positions like Dualism, which proposes that the mind and body are separate entities, or with specific arguments like the Knowledge Argument, which suggests that knowing all the physical facts about consciousness doesn't fully capture the subjective experience of it.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=the+negative+fact%3A+consciousness+is+not+entirely+physical.
*4. Dualism; Duality :
Descartes Dualism argued that the real world was composed of two substances : physical spatial Body and metaphysical non-spatial Soul. But modern Science is based on Materialistic Monism. Now Quantum science has theorized that the foundation of reality is non-spatial non-local fields of potential energy, that seem more like Soul than Body. So the Enformationism worldview is both monistic and dualistic. The single substance of our world is metaphysical EnFormAction, which is equivalent to all-pervading fields of energy. But all things we know with our physical senses are bodies, that are atomistic in the sense that they can be added & divided.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page12.html
Fully account? Certainly not, but I have an account that (AFAIK) accounts for more than the alternatives. I'll describe why I accept this as the closest available approximation of the matter.
I take it as a premise that the external world exists and that we have a functionally accurate perception of it (I justify this as being a a properly basic belief: it's innate, and plausibly a consequence of the evolutionary processes that produced us.This is my epistemic foundation).
Science has developed a large body of knowledge about the external world, through quality epistemic process (hypothesis-testing-falsification-revision). The success of physics, in particular, provides good reason to believe that the observable universe is natural and operates in strict accordance with laws of nature. The question remains: does it account for the mind? At the onset of the investigation, I expect that it should - because we're part of the universe, and there's no evidence of anything else existing that is nonphysical or exempt from laws of nature. Exploring further, we know that mental behavior is dependent on the physical: a healthy brain is needed to operate optimally; trauma, disease, hormones, and drugs affect mental activity. Measureable brain activity has been documented to be associated with a variety of mental activities. These facts establish (at minimum) a strong role for the physical brain in mental processes, and this increases my confidence that my going-in assumption is correct.
Guided by introspection, we investigate further - consider aspects of our minds that (at first glance) seem incompatible with matter/laws of nature. Physicalist theory proposes models that account for the functional and behavioral aspects of mind (beliefs,learning, dispositions, the will, perceptions, "mental" causation...). These models don't prove physicalism, but they show that physicalism is logically possible; by failing to falsify physicalism - my going-in assumption that "the mind" is another part of the physical world, albeit with a special complexity.
And yet, there is an explanatory gap: the "hard problem of consciousness" - the nature of the inner, subjective experience. I'm not sure that this falsifies physicalist theory of mind, but it does cast suspicion. And therefore I'm exploring alternatives - but the alternatives still need to account for the very obvious dependencies on the physical I mentioned. It seems to be that this could most simply be accomplished by supplementing a physicalist account with something more (e.g. some sort of ontological emergence). But no one seems to be going in that direction. Rather, they're suggesting starting from scratch - treating the mind (or thoughts) as something fundamental and (it seems) unexplained.
Quoting Gnomon
Physicalism provides a very good reason to think we have similar "inner-lives": we have a similar physical construction.
Quoting Gnomon
Life itself seems to be low probability - if it were easy, then those biologists engaged in abiogenesis research would have succeeded long ago. But the universe is old, and vast (there's no upper bound on how big the universe actually is). Can life exist without some degree of consciousness? Maybe not. An amoeba becomes "aware" (in a sense) of the presence of nearby nutrients that it proceeds to approach and consume. This process is explainable in terms of receptors on the surface of an amoeba cell. Multicellular organisms would need to replace the unicellular process in order to survive and I would guess this is the evolutionary track that leads to animal consciousness.
Let me clarify. Let's define fact as: a true proposition. The issue I was alluding to was: what's the truthmaker for the fact? I'm assuming truthmaker theory of truth: a truthmaker is some component of the world that corresponds to the proposition. So I misled by saying there are no negative facts (it depends on whether one has an ontology of facts, or an ontology of things). There are negative facts (propositions), but not negative THINGS.
If one accepts truthmaker theory (as I do), then one is committed to truthmakers that actually exist in the world - something ontological. What things exist in the world that constitute a truthmaker for "unicorns don't exist."? Answer: the set of things that DO exist, a set that lacks unicorns.
Quoting Gnomon It shouldn't. It's a phrase that I borrowed from Christian Apologist William Lane Craig, although others also use the phrase (google "possibility is cheap"). It's just a succinct way of saying that bare possibilities (as I previously defined) are too numerous to give any credence to - so something more is needed, as I described.
:up:
Quoting Relativist
:fire: Outstanding clarity! even woo-addled idealists like @Gnomon and @Wayfarer should be able to grasp this and (if they're intellectually honest) reconsider their 'disembodied mind' dogma.
So, you are aware that your "premise" is a Faith instead of a Fact? Most people, including Scientists, intuitively take for granted that their senses render an accurate model of the external world. But ask them to explain how that material reality-to-mind-model process works, and the story gets murky. Yet, philosophers tend to over-think it, and ask how we could verify (justify) that commonsense Belief as a Positive Fact*1.
From 17th century to 20th century, your Real World certainty (faith) would have been seemed justifiable. But since Quantum Physics undermined the sub-atomic foundation of Newton's Physics, Uncertainty has become the watch-word for scientists. Please notice that this response makes no reference to gods, or scriptures, or feelings . . . . just to the modern scientific worldview. :smile:
*1. The central problem in the epistemology of perception is that of explaining how perception could give us knowledge or justified belief about an external world, about things outside of ourselves. This problem has traditionally been viewed in terms of a skeptical argument that purports to show that such knowledge and justification are impossible.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-episprob/
*2. Quantum epistemology explores the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics, particularly concerning knowledge, reality, and the limits of what can be known. It grapples with the strange and counterintuitive aspects of quantum theory, like superposition and entanglement, and their impact on our understanding of the physical world and how we can know it
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=quantum+epistemology
*3. [i]The shift from Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics brought notable differences in understanding the universe :
# Determinism versus Indeterminism : Newtonian physics proposed a deterministic universe where future behavior could be predicted with certainty if initial conditions were known. Quantum mechanics introduced indeterminism, suggesting that not all outcomes can be predicted with certainty, with particles existing in states of probability.
# Uncertainty Principle : Unlike classical mechanics, where properties like position and momentum could be measured simultaneously with high precision, the Uncertainty Principle in quantum mechanics sets a fundamental limit on how precisely certain pairs of properties can be simultaneously known. Increasing the precision of measuring one property reduces the precision of measuring its paired property.
# Nature of Reality : Classical physics assumed an objective reality independent of observation, whereas quantum mechanics suggests that observation and measurement can influence the properties of a system. Some interpretations propose that properties may not exist until measured.
# The Uncertainty Principle has philosophical implications, challenging the notion of absolute knowledge and predictability and prompting discussions about reality and causality.[/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=philosophy+newton+certainty+quantum+uncertainty
No, it's not faith by my definition. It's a properly basic belief*. It's basic, because it's innate- not derived, and not taught. It's properly basic if the world that produced us would tend to produce this belief, which is the case if we are the product of evolutionary forces. It is rational to maintain belief that has not been epistemologically defeated. The bare possibility that the belief is false does not defeat the belief.
This is why I question the rationality of belirving idealism to be true- it seems to depend on denying innate belief solely on the basis that it is possibly false.
Contrast this with faith: it entails a learned belief, not an innate belief, and the tendency is to maintain the belief even if rationality defeaters are presented.
______________
* A "properly basic belief" is a belief that is rational to hold without needing to be inferred from other beliefs or supported by arguments or evidence. It is a foundational concept in epistemology. They serve as a bedrock for other beliefs. They are justified by the circumstances that cause them. Examples: basic perceptual beliefs ("I see a tree in front of me" Memory beliefs ("I ate corn flakes for breakfast this morning")
Quoting GnomonYou have misunderstood if you think I feel certain about physicalism, or about anything else. I have discussed degrees of "certainty" - this could alternatively be labelled "degree of confidence" or "epistemic probability".
Quoting Gnomon
Watchword? Not sure what you mean by that. There's simply a degree of uncertainty in the outcome of any quantum collapse, but it still entails probabilistic determinism. I don't assume the current so-called laws of physics (Newtonian, or otherwise) are necessarily actual, ontological laws of nature - they are current best guess.
Quoting Gnomon
That's a pretty extreme interpretation of QM, based on the Copenhagen interpretation - treating observation as some special interaction. The modern view is that a measurement is just an entaglement between a classical system (or object) and a quantum system. Personally, Idon't see much reason to think minds have some magical impact on quantum systems.
I havent offered anything more in response to yourself because I wasnt sure what you were asking for. Now that you have asked it, I can respond.
I wouldnt offer an ontological emergence, in the sense that consciousness (as observed in higher order mammals) emerges from complexity of computation in the brains of animals, or the complexity of nervous systems, or other biological systems. Although I would offer the idea that a rudimentary consciousness emerges from cellular biology, which is the ground for the higher order consciousness we are addressing. As such this consciousness is present in all cellular and multi cellular organisms.
But I do offer an emergence of a unit of complex being, which equates with what is generally referred to as a soul (baggage accepted).
Strictly speaking the physical world could have evolved higher order mammals without this unit, which are not conscious(we dont know the precise role played by consciousness in the life of higher order mammals and if it is a necessary condition). They could all be entirely unconscious and the world would be identical to the world we live in.
So we have an emergent part of a being which has no physical requirement. But in our ignorance of the truth of reality, we cannot independently observe it, or analyse any necessary role it plays. Any analysis of the physical world doesnt require it, or identify it.
We are left blind to the reality in the absence of any greater explanation of the reality we find ourselves in.
I appreciate that your hypothesis is modest, and doesn't thoroughly undermine a general naturalistic world-view. You seem to specifically address physicalism's explanatory gap.
Quoting Punshhh
You allude to the question of Zombies - beings who behave as we do (by outward appearances) but do not have the mental experiences we have. I want to explore this further by starting a new thread on the topic. By analyzing how we differ from Zombies, it focuses attention on the most problematic feature of physicalism.
Sorry, if my word-choice seemed to put you in an irrational category. Since you used the term "belief", I simply substituted another term, "faith"*1, with the same basic meaning, to give you pause to see a different perspective. Trust in your own senses is intuitive and pragmatic. But philosophy is about the mental models of reality that we artificially construct from incoming sensory data. Our personal worldviews (belief systems) are resistant to "defeat" by epistemological arguments.
I wasn't accusing you of promoting a religious Faith. I too, believe that my physical senses give me reliable information about the material world. But, as an amateur philosopher, I am also interested in the immaterial aspects of reality*2 : Ideas, Feelings, Reason, Self Concept, Mathematical Truths, etc. I also "believe" that humans are the "product of evolutionary forces". But we may differ on the exact nature of those forces. For example, based on cutting-edge science, I equate physical Energy with mental Information. If that notion intrigues or appalls you, I can provide scientific reasons for accepting that equation as a philosophically useful concept (in a separate thread, of course). :smile:
*1. While often used interchangeably, belief and faith have distinct meanings. Belief is an acceptance that something is true, often based on evidence or reasoning. Faith, on the other hand, is a deeper, often more active trust and reliance, often in the face of uncertainty or lack of proof. Essentially, belief can be a mental acceptance, while faith involves action and commitment based on that belief.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=belief+vs+faith
*2. Immaterial aspects of reality refer to things that exist but are not made of physical matter. Examples include thoughts, emotions, concepts like justice or beauty, and even mathematical truths. These aspects are not constrained by physical laws and can be intangible and non-physical.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=immaterial+aspects+of+reality+examples
Quoting Relativist
Compared to the Determinism of Newtonian physics, the Stochastic (random ; probabilistic ; indeterminate) nature of sub-atomic physics has made Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle a note of caution about making factual assertions of Reality and our interpretations of the world. :nerd:
Quantum philosophical uncertainty refers to the philosophical interpretations and implications of the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle, which states that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot be known with perfect accuracy simultaneously. This principle, formulated by Werner Heisenberg, has sparked debate about the nature of reality, determinism, and free will.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=quantum+philosophical+uncertainty
Fair enough. I'm inclined to avoid using the term when discussing epistemology, because it means different things to different people. I prefer to use the general term, "belief", along with additional description. But I'm not in charge of the dictionary.
Personally, I haven't read any of Tillich or Hart*1, but I have constructed a non-anthro-morphic god-model that may have some features in common with their religion-biased explanation of Being. However, my Ontology*2 is based on 21st century scientific concepts, not on ancient theological reasoning. And it is the G*D of philosophers, not Theologians. Yet, if you can convince people to worship a featureless abstraction (pure Potential), maybe you can start your own religion. :joke:
*1. David Bentley Harts articulation of God as Being itself :
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=David+Bentley+Hart%E2%80%99s+articulation+of+God+as+Being+itself+
# the ultimate reality upon which everything contingent depends.
Note --- Since god postulations inherently go beyond knowable temporal Reality, I prefer to "articulate" Ontology in terms of timeless Ideality : the metaphysical soil & substance of Philosophy.
# God as the Source of Existence: Hart argues that finite, contingent things (like the objects in our world) do not possess the cause of their existence within themselves.
Note --- The Big Bang theory implies that the universe had a beginning, hence is not eternal, and must be contingent on some prior State of Being : What Plato called First Cause. Lacking empirical evidence, all we can say about that world-creating impulse is to outline its logically necessary properties and powers.
# Beyond a "Creator God": Hart distances himself from a simplistic view of God as merely a "demiurge" or a maker who tinkers with the universe from the outside. Instead, he emphasizes that God is present in all things as the very act of their existence, the uncaused ground by which finite actuality and potentiality are created and sustained. This Creative Potential necessarily transformed some of its latent energy into the stuff of reality.
Note --- In my Information-based thesis*2, there is a "workman" who "tinkers" with the world from the inside : physicists call that invisible causal entity : Energy. But my label for that Agent of Change is EnFormAction : the power to transform Matter. (Or more properly, abstract Mass, which we perceive as Matter in many forms). Einstein's E=MC^2 equates causal Energy with inertial Mass and the cosmic speed limit of Light. You could even say that Matter-Mass is condensed god-stuff (creative power).
# Being as Actuality Itself: God is not just something actual, but actuality itself.
Note --- Pure Actuality is static & immutable. But I prefer to view our material Reality & conditional Actuality as actualized Potential. Hence, a creator G*D is infinite Potential for change, and the created World is Actualized possibility. Another way to put it is : G*D is both Immanent & Transcendent.
"In philosophical and theological contexts, the concept of God as pure actuality (actus purus) refers to the idea that God is entirely actual and lacks any potentiality or capacity for change."
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=God+is+entirely+actual+and+lacks+any+potentiality+or+capacity+for+change
*2. In information science, an ontology is a structured way to represent knowledge about a specific domain, defining concepts, relationships, and properties to organize and share information effectively. It's like a map of a subject area, showing how different elements connect and relate to each other, making it easier to understand, manage, and use data.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ontology+%28information+science%29
I.e. a distinction without a difference. Why bother? No testable predictions are derived from this "model" so it's not scienrific. No questions go unbegged either by your "god" so it's not coherently philosophical.
Rather an ontological hybrid of Epicurus' void and Spinoza's substance, I think, is consistent with modern physics speculation e.g. Penrose's conformal cyclical cosmology (that accounts for "before the big bang" and eliminates "eternal inflation") or Hartle-Hawking's No Boundary hypothesis (that eliminates "the big bang singularity") though the jury is still out, the "origin" of the universe is explanable, if only in principle, by the non-transcendent, self-organizing of nature itself without any ad hoc, transcendent "pure Potential"-of-the-gaps (i.e. "Meta-Physical" appeal to scientific ignorance). From Laozi to Spinoza to modern fundamental physics, the more parsimonious speculation is nature alone sans Aristotlean/Whiteheadian 'teleology' suffices.
:point: Bad philosophy > bad science > woo :sparkle:
Does the notion of God as ground of Being have any "practical use" in your world? Does it "open up" a new path for philosophical dialog? What do you find interesting about their theological "work"? Their approach seems to be based on the Ontological Argument*1, that goes back to Anselm's definition of God as self-evident to rational thinkers : if God is Being itself, then disbelief would be denial of Existence..
On the other hand, Sartre defined "being itself" as the material world devoid of consciousness, excluding humans. Which would define the "ground of being" as physical reality apart from any human interest such as Life, Consciousness or Choice. So, Existentialism*2 seems to shut-down the subject of ideal God vs material Reality, not open it up.
Have you found any of the arguments presented in this thread to be "interesting" or "practical"? :smile:
*1. Common arguments for the existence of God include the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the ontological argument, the moral argument, and the argument from religious experience. These arguments explore different facets of existence, from the origins of the universe to human morality and personal encounters with the divine, to suggest God's existence.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=common+arguments+for+god
*2. In existential philosophy, particularly in the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, "being itself" (or "being-in-itself," en-soi) refers to the mode of existence of inanimate objects and the fundamental, non-conscious reality of all things. It is characterized by a fullness of being, a self-contained and unreflective existence, lacking consciousness, self-awareness, and the capacity for choice or transcendence.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=being+itself
In his disdainful reply above, 180proof dismissed metaphysical god concepts as a "distinction without a difference". When I referred to Aristotle's non-anthro-morphic metaphysical concept of First Cause as "Infinite Potential", 180 sneered : "so it's not scienrific. . . . . it's not coherently philosophical". Yet you seem to be open to Metaphysical reasoning.
As usual, 180 argues against idealism & deism with kick the rock reasoning : his no testable predictions is equivalent to I refute it thus*1. Like Sam Johnson, he missed the point of Berkeley's Idealism : not denial of material reality, but acknowledgment of the filter of individual interpretation (conception) of personal perception. Perhaps he thinks the distinction between Perception (pain) and Conception (rock hurts toe) is immaterial, hence meaningless, and unscientific, and "not coherently philosophical".
Do you think there is a valid philosophical distinction between Percepts and Concepts, between Physics and Metaphysics? :smile:
*1. Physical Percepts vs Metaphysical Concepts :
[i]Samuel Johnson famously refuted Bishop Berkeley's philosophical idealism by kicking a stone, declaring "I refute it thus!". This act, meant to demonstrate the existence of material reality, is often seen as a simplistic response to Berkeley's complex philosophical arguments according to Wikipedia. Berkeley's philosophy, known as immaterialism, argued that objects only exist as perceptions in the mind, not as independent material entities. Johnson's action, however, highlighted the perceived solidity of the rock and the pain of kicking it, suggesting that these were undeniable material experiences.
Critics point out that Berkeley never denied the reality of sensory experiences like pain or the solidity of objects. Berkeley's point was that these perceptions are all that we can know, and there's no need to posit a separate material substance.[/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=johnson+kick+the+rock
Note --- Obviously, humans do indeed imagine & assume that material objects can cause pain. That makes sense, from a materialistic worldview. Ironically, the cause of pain for Johnson was his own intention & action.
Try again: read slowly (without moving your lips) ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/998557
Either Laozi's Dao or Democritus-Epicurus' Void seem to me more cogent concepts of 'fundamental power to be(come)' than the Scholastics' (generic) "ground of being" insofar as they make explicit the dynamics (dialectics) of seeking balance / moderation in daily life. Also, the Hindi concept of Brahman and school of Advaita Vedanta ("Tat Tvam Asi") as a nondualistic way of life seems far less abstract and remote (i.e. non-immanent) than "ground of being".
That seems sound, based on the smattering I know about it. The 'Ground of Being' strikes me as an amorphous and unhelpful model, but perhaps it makes more sense to students of Tillich.
Yes, disbelief is a denial of existence, perhaps put more crudely than someone like David Bentley Hart might phrase it. He would see it as the performative contradiction of atheism. But this only holds if you accept his reasoning and model to begin with. A presuppositionalist would argue that God is the necessary precondition for us to even have a conversation, so in debating God's existence, you're actually proving it. Not convincing to me, but a delightful argument nonetheless.
I'm interested in models of God from the perspective of a curious person, not because I'm looking for answers. In fact, Id say the same about other philosophical topics like truth or morality. Im interested in what others think and why and see what I may have missed.
Quoting Gnomon
Yes, they are distinct but related areas that influence and inform each other.
Quoting Gnomon
I have found many observations interesting (not sure what you mean by arguments) like this one which summarises the foundational nature of my OP:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Members have said many interesting things as I've read along and even some of the disagreements have been intriguing. One response that stood out to me was this:
Quoting Hanover
That's worth thinking about. I'm often drawn to the idea that a faith shouldn't need to rely on extravagant curlicues of reasoning and scholarship, nor on blind obedience to dogma. For the 'average' person, the real question seems to be: what is God for? How do they enter the idea, not as a conclusion from abstract proofs, or a fear-based response, but as something lived, felt, or needed? Is there a third way? The apophatic approach does spring to mind, but even here a certain level of sophistication and capacity for abstracts seems to be required.
This is interesting, my next question is what are we for?
For people like me the second question leads one to ask the first.
Some people just seem to want to know the answer to these questions, so in a sense God is an answer. Perhaps this urge, or need to find out whats going on, why we are here, what we are doing(in the grander scheme of things) is part of being human. Either this urge is because there is a spiritual dimension and we preparing to return to it. Or there isnt and it is just some evolutionary trait that happened and were inadvertently indulging in some kind of wishful thinking, or coping mechanism.
Is this all just a happenstance coming together of random circumstances. Or is there something else going on?
I suspect people have been asking this for a very long time.
Sounds like a long word for Faith prior to Evidence. If you accept that blind faith is a good thing, then you will be hooked into whatever belief system you are currently engaged in. I suppose it's a clever argument for appealing to non-philosophers. But I don't see why you call it "delightful". :smile:
Quoting Tom Storm
I was hoping for a more informative response. What is the pertinent difference between those pairs, in view of the "rambling OP", about "cartoon gods" and "mawkish literalism"? :cool:
Quoting Tom Storm
It seems that the "foundational nature" of your OP shows a preference for medieval Catholic Scholastic rationalistic arguments*1 over modern empirical Atheist vs Theist debates or observations. For example, "Apophatic" arguments for God, may sound erudite, but they only seem reasonable if you accept their premise that God is wholly other (unknowable, ineffable, supernatural) to the real natural world, and its imperfect (fallen) humans. But more critical philosophers may see it as a ruse*2 to trick the gullible into fooling themselves into accepting the Catholic definition of God (e.g. Unity & Trinity). :nerd:
*1. Philosophical Argument vs Faith-based Observations :
In philosophy, an argument is a structured set of statements (premises) intended to support a conclusion. It's not simply a disagreement or a quarrel, but a reasoned attempt to justify a belief or claim. Arguments in philosophy are typically categorized as deductive or inductive, and understanding their structure and validity is crucial for philosophical inquiry
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=philosophical+arguments
*2. Ruse : Use negative abstract reasoning to disqualify positive empirical reasoning.
Well, its delightful when you consider that atheists often claim reason helps us reject theism, and here is a theistic argument flipping this around and suggesting that the atheists use of reason is itself evidence for God. Many also go on to invoke the evolutionary argument against naturalism as the next step hoping to demonstrate that reason is only reliable if guaranteed by a deity. I think this is a fun argument and some philosophers take it seriously, e.g., Edward Feser, Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne.
Quoting Gnomon
I'm not a philosopher or metaphysician, so I don't have much to say on those subjects. What exactly are you asking? Are you asking how measurable, empirical physics differs from speculative metaphysics? Or how abstractions compare to experience?
The difference between a cartoon god and a philosophical God is evident in the conduct such beliefs often inspire. You're more likely to be jailed for homosexuality, or not to take action on climate change, etc, in the literalist world. So the matter has some significance.
I get the irony of both sides of the God Argument claiming human Reason as their agent to prove or disprove the existence of our modern invisible intangible "shy" God, who no longer works major miracles to prove His power to rationalizing skeptics. Since both sides have the same armament, that's why Atheism vs Theism disputation has been a Mexican Standoff for centuries. But in a practical popularity sense, it's still no contest.
However, the average religious believer probably does not know or care about abstruse Scholastic reasoning. Their Faith is in the heart, not the head. And atheistic reasoning against the God postulate probably sounds like nit-picky criticism of what's obvious to them : that the world is under cosmic control, whether you call it Fate or Faith. Their modern miracle is a 2000 year old book of revealed Truth. In the New Testament epistle of James 2:18, "You and I have faith; I have works. Show me your faith without works, and I shall show you my faith by my works. The typical believer behaves as-if God is real, and feels no compunction to prove that feeling by erudite reasoning.
Yet, those of us who post on philosophy forums, are aware that Faith without Reason is commonplace among simple-minded credulous people. Hence, the thousands of practical "faiths" throughout the world : from 4000 year old Hinduism to 20 year old Church of the Highlands*1. So, we autodidact wisdom-seekers search for a truish belief system, whose factish contents work-together to structurally support a flimsy over-arching film of Faith. Unfortunately, for some of us, the insubstantial immaterial rational evidence does not add-up to a real God --- only to an imaginary deity in a godless world.
However, for others more technically inclined, empirical Science has concluded that Reality itself, on the foundational quantum level, is only as substantial as the statistical mathematics used to describe it. For example, Quantum Mechanics is explicitly non-mechanical, and the material objects being processed are themselves essentially subjective*2 : believe it or not. Hence, score one for the God team. And the beat goes on . . . . . :joke:
*1. "By 2018, Church of the Highlands was listed as the tenth largest megachurch in the United States, according to CBS News"
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=highlands+church+history
*2.In the realm of quantum mechanics, the notion of objectivity is challenged. Some interpretations suggest that facts in the quantum world can be subjective, meaning that different observers might experience different realities. This arises from the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, where objects can exist in multiple states simultaneously (superposition) until observed. Upon observation, the superposition collapses, and the object assumes a definite state
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=quantum+objects+subjective
Well, no, I think its rather more than that. In the end, any debate about God isnt simply theism versus atheism. Its about what we hold to be true. Arguments for or against God are really arguments about what counts as a valid claim to truth. And heres the thing: how can we ground our knowledge at all? How can we make any truth claim if our words are arbitrary and if evolution has shaped us for survival, not for discovering truth? Thats what many think is behind this debate: whether we can reliably say anything unless there is some objective grounding for our language and reasoning. Where do the laws of logic fit into this? Are they inviolable features of reality, or just contingent products of the human cognitive apparatus something more like what Kant might have suggested?
Quoting Gnomon
Firstly, should we even care what the average believer thinks? And secondly, is that view accurate? I dont think faith is something found in the heart in some deep, private sense. I see it as a contingent product of culture and language. Most people arrive at faith through socialisation and the intersubjective agreements held by the community they grow up in. Faith is in the culture.
Quoting Gnomon
That sounds very Richard Dawkins to me. There's a huge thread on faith here that suggests many other ways this can be understood.
Quoting Gnomon
I have no expertise in QM but the idea of objectivity is not something I think holds up particularly well at the best of times. My own intuition holds that humans do not get to truth or reality (these are god substitutes for the current era).
I think God-arguments in philosophy are "really" about what is the real.
Afaik, foundherentism works ...
I never do.
:up: :up:
The OP topic sounds like a reference to intellectual debates between two opposite standpoints : Theism (God is) vs Atheism (no god). Did you intend to make this thread more complex (sophisticated?), by including various shades of opinions on "shin-barking" reality vs Ultimate Reality?. Do you want to change the focus from God to Truth?
Non-philosophers seem to "ground" their knowledge in trusted authorities on the topic : Priests, Theologians, Preachers, etc. But philosophically-inclined thinkers seem to be more trusting of their own personal powers of reason. So, they "ground" their knowledge in formal rational exploration : Epistemology (theories to support beliefs). And that seems to be where the OP is pointing. But such threads typically wander away from the original topic. :smile:
I think the thread has shown a diverse range of responses to the OP, so Im pleased. But these things tend to take on a life of their own, as you've suggested. I don't place too much weight on any particular sentence or paragraph, its all just a big casserole of ideas built around a hero ingredient. I'm not looking for this to go anywhere in particular. It's a conversation.
Quoting Gnomon
I'm not sure about that. Philosophically inclined thinkers seem to rely upon the work of others: heavy hitters in the subject (Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Husserl, etc) . And they are focused on pre-existing models as understood through scholarship - formal and modal logic, phenomenology, pragmatism, post-structuralism, etc. It's a fairly small cohort.
I havent found that this thread is pointing in any particular direction, but it has highlighted a key theme: a conversation about what counts as a coherent or useful idea of God. Which is why the following (although ostensibly about Kant's position) is a good summary.
Quoting @Wayfarer
Very much so, do you know about 95% of my philosophy and what I spend my time thinking about, I cant write on this forum. Because its a different language from what is discussed here. At best it gets pigeon holed as some kind of panpsychism, or mysticism. And yet I cant go to a spiritual, or mystical based forum to discuss it there because they are places full of people with very little critical rigour in their philosophies, or ideologies. Most of it is out and out woo. I expect you know what I am referring to as you spent time involved in the New Age movement.
I have three, or four friends and family members who I can debate with on these issues and Im happy to carry on in isolation apart from that. But there doesnt seem to be a community where this is discussed with any kind of intellectual rigour.
I know that there are spiritual based organisations and communities within the schools of thought, such as Buddhism, Yoga, Theosophy etc. But I dont want to become involved in any of these movements at this point. Ive been there and done that.
Yes, thats an interesting point. If you take this material seriously, its not easy to find people who are disciplined or rigorous about it. Its been a long time since I was involved in any real way. The closest I can get to what youre saying is that my fullest experience of the world is entirely intuitive and I can't always access words to explain why I choose certain paths.
Quoting Punshhh
I hear you. Do you mind if I ask, what does it feel like to hold the beliefs you have? Is there reassurance, or a profound sense of meaning? Or is it ineffable?
I dont really hold beliefs any more, (apart from beliefs relating to living a life in the world), because they are intellectually derived, rather, I see them as an obstacle. Faith is different, because it isnt entirely intellectually derived. For me faith plays a role similar to humility, piety(a piety largely absent religious meaning) and a sense of communion (not religious).
Yes, theres reassurance, a sense of meaning and knowing and an ineffable part, which is what is contemplated beyond what we know in this world. An ability to maintain these things in the face of incoming conditioning and problematic situations with friends and family etc and defuse them.
I suppose the main benefit, is a sense of peace, contentment, happiness etc. While nurturing a sense of wonder and a childlike humility.
(I spent many years engaged in self development, rooting out conditioning, trauma and indoctrination. Alongside meditation, contemplation and rebuilding my personality etc. along with developing a personal spiritual philosophy and mystical practice.)
Since you opened the door to alternative concepts of God, I'll mention a chapter in the book --- by James B. Glattfelder (physicist turned quantitative analyst) --- I'm currently reading, subtitled : What a modern-day synthesis of science and philosophy teaches us about the emergence of information, consciousness and meaning. The chapter title is : Don't Be Silly, and the general topic is Consciousness. But a sub-theme is Panpsychism, which seems to the a modern substitute for traditional God-models among some non-religious scientists and philosophers. The author quotes a newspaper headline : "Why can't the world's greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness?"
I won't go into the specific "sophisticated" arguments, but I'll list a few of the great minds. Arguing on the "pro" side of Panpsychism are David Chalmers, Philip Goff, Galen Strawson, Bernardo Kastrup, and David Bently Hart. On the "con" side, arguing against Panpsychism, are Daniel Dennett, Patricia Churchland, and Peter Vickers. Regarding the debate between Vickers and Kastrup, the author says "both thinkers seem to find it hard to grasp what exactly the other is really saying". So, the key barrier to communication seems to be "systemic and structural cognitive biases" in the form of Realistic vs Idealistic worldviews & belief systems.
In a previous book --- after noting that he has been accused of being motivated by religious beliefs --- Glattfelder says : "I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it". And one aspect of that "world structure" seems to be what some thinkers call Panpsychism : "Panpsychism is a philosophical theory that proposes consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality". Hence, no need to posit a traditional transcendent God to explain the emergence of metaphysical human consciousness in a physical world, that appears to be 99.99% non-conscious matter. :smile:
I think "a conversation about God" presupposes some idea of the real which usually is neglected and remains vague (or confused).
Quoting Gnomon
You might find my contrarian view useful from a 2022 thread Question regarding panpsychism ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/891939
Im familiar with the work of most of those writers. Kastrup is the most engaging in person and on his blog though his books are a bit dense and convoluted for my taste. Dennett, the Churchlands (when Pat's husband was still alive), and Vickers are all bêtes noires of the higher-consciousness crowd, often reviled as materialist muppets who miss the obvious. Hart's account of Dennett is particularly brutal. I can't claim expertise in the area, but I find it interesting that Graham Oppy, a philosophically sophisticated atheist whom Hart respects, considers himself an identity theorist when it comes to the mind. Oppy claims to have resolved some of the mistakes made in earlier versions of that account. But this is for elsewhere.
Quoting Gnomon
Sure, but Im not asking for explanations of the world or reality. Im asking how people defend and describe more philosophical accounts of God.
Glattfelder is a form of idealist who combines information with consciousness as the fabric of reality. Its all very interesting, but it belongs in the idealism thread. As it happens, Im not even sure I would count Kastrups Mind-at-Large as a God surrogate, although one might sneak it in as borderline. The issue is that Kastrup (like most idealists) needs some kind of intervening cosmic force to unify his various strands and ideas borrowed from Jung and Schopenhauer. He comes up with this cosmic mind idea as an alternative to Schop's will. For Kastrup, the Great Mind is instinctive and not metacognitive, so many of the attributes of God are missing. But I guess it qualifies as 'the ground of being' given we are all dissociated alters springing from this primal stream of consciousness which is all there is.
I can certainly see how this works. What percentage of Americans do you think are sincere God believers? It's pretty low here in Australia and most Aussies are embarrassed about religious conversations.
That sounds like a useful position to be in. Thanks.
I'd be surprised if it isn't more than 50% ....
Pretty much sums it up. Might as well throw a few flat earthers in there, to get the debate going
From the OP reference to Classical Theism*1, I assumed that you wanted to revisit Catholic Scholasticism from the 12th to 16th centuries CE --- before pragmatic Science began to encroach on church authority for "explanations of the world or reality". But, as a non-catholic, I have little knowledge or interest in those biblical theological accounts of God. Hence, I focused on more relevant modern explanations of the metaphysical ground of physical reality.
However, there was another "classical" era of non-biblical God-philosophy, when the Greek philosophers --- 5th to 6th centuries BCE --- argued in favor of functional & non-anthro-morphic notions of deity. And most modern accounts of God/Reality/Mind --- Idealism, Panpsychism, etc. --- are merely ancient notions, up-dated to include scientific support for metaphysical god/mind concepts.
But modern defenses of the God-postulate can't compete against materialistic scientific concepts of reality by using only "sophisticated" idealistic "philosophical accounts". Today, even religious defenders feel it's necessary to address the Post-Quantum worldview in order to seem knowledgeable & believable. Otherwise, even pre-Newton idealistic God arguments appear to be just more "mystical or esoteric woo"*2.
I'm sorry to have wasted your time with my own more up-to-date interests. :smile:
*1. Excerpt from OP :
"I'm interested in conversations about more sophisticated and philosophical accounts of theism. I suppose this might take us back to classical theism, as opposed to a more contemporary theological personalism."
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15883/more-sophisticated-philosophical-accounts-of-god/p1
*2. But surely, today, idealism seems like a bit of a silly idea. Considering that we understand the material basis of reality, proposing an ontological relevance for consciousness appears like mystical or esoteric woo and certainly not a serious concept to entertain. Moreover, we suspect that the brain creates consciousness. Remarkably, however, idealism is experiencing a renaissance in science and philosophy. How can this be possible? ___ James B Glattfelder
https://medium.com/@jnode/idealism-a-consciousness-only-view-of-reality-c062fcd05091
No need to apologize, it's expected on forums that people can only respond based on their own experiences or level of understanding, so mismatches in responses are common. That's part of the charm.
Quoting Gnomon
I'm not a Catholic either. But I did say this in the OP -
Quoting Tom Storm
I expected more references to Hinduism and Buddhism, but maybe these only appeal to a select group of older people, relics of the syncretic era (like me).
Quoting Gnomon
I think this is fair. It's sometimes not so much about up-to-date science, but rather focusing on gaps in science and the purported inconsistencies in traditional physicalist accounts, which, naturally, open the door to more speculative metaphysics. That's certainly how the indomitable and prolific Mr Kastrup does it.
But in asking the question about more philosophical accounts of God, I guess I was primarily asking if this is fundamentally a matter of contrasting theistic personalism with apophatic theology/mysticism?
Ive found that people on this site are guarded about what they think about such a disputed issue. Or perhaps its that once they have read philosophy beyond a certain point, they only ever talk, or see things in accepted philosophical terms, or only use those terms. Like a straight jacket on accepted modes of thought, academia.
Whereas I come from the opposite direction, the apophatic approach. Where I am concerned with unlearning these things, negating intellectual contamination. Putting the mind in a box to one side and contemplating the issue through different means*. So I have a kind of straight jacket in that I cant easily insert my thinking into these accepted philosophical terms.
We are left in a Mexican stand off.
So what to do, do I now have to become fluent in philosophy so that I can become the interpreter. Or do philosophers need to learn the more apophatic mysticism in the other direction to become the interpreter?
Fortunately Wayfarer has put in some of the hard yards in addressing this divide and provides valuable context in discussions. Although I see that he often finds himself under attic from the more physicalist elements of the forum.
There shouldnt be this divide, especially in a world which is becoming increasingly divided.
*I know it seems counter intuitive to claim to negate thought, while relying on it. To put mind to one side, while continuing to use it. But this kind of approach is common in mystical practice. In the beginning it is more a case of cancelling out conditioning, such as the idea that God is an old man with a long white beard sitting on a throne. Then at a deeper level cancelling out the egocentric thoughts driven by human desire, self importance, envy, greed, selfishness etc. To reach a point of coming to terms with yourself, learning to collaborate, to work together. Followed by a deeper point, or crisis where one reaches an accommodation with your divine self, to collaborate with an idealised version of yourself. To become a conduit for the will of the divine.
There is a whole system and philosophy based around this approach. Which was brought to the West by Madame Blavatsky in the 19th century and became the Theosophical society. Unfortunately for a myriad of reasons she and other members of the Theosophical society became mired in controversy and were ostracised and mocked extensively, even now on this forum.
As per Schopenhauer, how can any one/thing not always already be "a conduit for the will ..."?
I wasn't familiar with those technical terms, so I Googled Theistic Personalism*1. And that is definitely not anything like my own god-model, which is not Classic Theism, but more like Modern Deism : World Creator whose only miracle is the creation itself. Also, Apophatic Theology*2 seems most like abstruse medieval Scholasticism, which is of little interest to me. If God is totally ineffable, why would we waste time debating on this effing forum? One critique of such esoteric argumentation proposed a controversial but nonsensical question about nano-scale fairy-like angels*3. Both Theism and Mysticism view their God as a ghostly sovereign-in-the-sky commanding blind faith and obedient submission to the mysterious will & wishes of an invisible potentate, who loves you unconditionally. But that ain't for me.
On the other hand, my interest in God-models is more pragmatic & scientific, and similar to the causal & functional forces of Plato & Aristotle. For example, Big Bang cosmology and Quantum mechanics raised philosophical questions about Cosmic Origins and Mind/Matter relations. The classical Greeks postulated non-humanoid forces labelled as First Cause and Prime Mover. They also theorized, in metaphorical terms, on the relationship between Soul/Mind and Body/Matter (hyle/morph). So, their god-models were more philosophical & hypothetical than fearsome sky-lords to be worshiped in fear & trembling.
Apparently, those non-theological god-models are not what you were asking about in the OP. FWIW though, my own scientifically-sophisticated G*D-model has it's own technical term : PanEnDeism*4. :halo:
*1. Classical theism and theistic personalism are two distinct views on the nature of God, with theistic personalism emphasizing God's personal attributes and classical theism focusing on God's transcendence and aseity. Classical theism portrays God as the ultimate reality, the uncaused cause, and the source of all being, while theistic personalism views God as a person, albeit one with infinite perfections.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=theistic+personalism
*2. Apophatic theology, also known as negative theology, is a way of understanding and approaching God by emphasizing what God is not, rather than what God is. It's closely linked to mysticism, particularly in Christian traditions, and stems from the belief that God's essence is ultimately unknowable and ineffable, exceeding human comprehension and language.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=apophatic+theology%2Fmysticism
*3. How many angels could dance on the head of a pin : The phrase was originally used in a theological context by 17th-century Protestants to mock medieval scholastics such as Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas. Whether medieval scholastics really discussed the topic is, however, a matter of debate. The suggestion is possibly an early modern invention that was intended to discredit scholastic philosophy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_the_head_of_a_pin%3F
*4.Panendeism, a relatively new theological term, combines aspects of pantheism and deism. It proposes that God is both immanent within the universe (like pantheism) and transcendent beyond it (like deism), but that God also becomes the universe itself while remaining greater than it. Essentially, it suggests that the universe is a part, but not the whole, of God.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Panendeism%2C+a+relatively+new+term%2C
No one here "debates" ... "God". It's just that many folks spout fallacious apologia of their preferred, effable woo (e.g. "God", "First Cause", "Intelligent Designer" ... "Programmer / Enformer", etc) which we must call-out as, at best, unwarranted (i.e. incoherent). Expressed doubt critique is not "debate"; besides, I've found that woo-of-the-gapsters (like you, Gnomon & ... e.g. @Wayfarer) are too chickensh*t to actually debate (about) their "God"-idea and would rather "waste time" preaching question-begging "mysteries" to us rather than defeasibly reasoning with us.
[quote=The Nature of Mind, p1]What does modern science have to say about the nature of man? There are, of course, all sorts of disagreements and divergencies in the views of individual scientists. But I think it is true to say that one view is steadily gaining ground, so that it bids fair to become established scientific doctrine. This is the view that we can give a complete account of man in purely physico-chemical terms.[/quote]
Doesn't leave a lot of room for equivocation.
I think you'll find that the God of mystics doesn't conform to such a stereotype at all, which, for many, is precisely the attraction. Take the God of Thomas Merton, a 20th century Catholic mystic: his God defies categorization and theology and is more a presence to be encountered in silence than a figure to be obeyed or even defined.
Quoting Gnomon
That's the standard question posed by critics (ususally materialists) of this account: at the very least, a dignified Wittgensteinian silence, is often recommended. The ineffable is, of course, to those who believe, experienced through mystical insight and contemplation, so it's not something readily put into words. But there's plenty of respectable literature on the subject.
That's not the way I read it. In the next paragraph, he writes:
[I]"For me, then, and for many philosophers who think like me, the moral is clear. We must try to work out an account of the nature of mind which is compatible with the view that man is nothing but a physico-chemical mechanism.
"And... I shall be concerned to do just this: to sketch (in barest outline) what may be called a Materialist or Physical account of the mind."[/i]
So he's not deferring to science to answer the question of what the "nature" of mind is- he's drawing the conclusion as a philosopher. And his account merely aims to show that mental activity is consistent with physicalism (a philosophical hypothesis).
By my reading, the "complete account of man" is strictly a defense of the hypothesis that everything about men is reducible to "physico-chemical mechanism". In his book, "A Materialist Theory on Mind" he even hedges on reductionism.
But all of his work is based on the presumption that science is the definitive source of knowledge for what the mind might be. It's a philosophy based on solely on science, rightly criticized as 'scientism' ' the belief that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to understand the world and gain knowledge'.
His scope is limited to outlining the "nature of man". He's not denying some use for the philosophical/religious/artistic/moral aspects of man- his only (indirect) criticism is the accurate observation that the resulting controversies will remain perpetually unsettled. So, indeed, one cannot claim to achieve knowledge in that way.
But the point stands. He starts his book Materialist Philosophy of Mind with the assertion that man is an object, which is wrong on so many levels that its not even worth discussing.
Yes. I'm aware that Mysticism has always been on the periphery of official Catholicism. But if mystics want to remain on good terms with officialdom, they must at least pay lip service to stereotyped Catholic doctrine & creeds.
All I know of mysticism comes not from personal ecstatic experiences, but from reading Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism (1911) from cover to cover. She seems to view mysticism as a practical form of philosophy, instead of a religion in itself. From that perspective, it seems closer to Tantric Buddhism than to Catholicism.
Mystics through the centuries have felt that they could communicate directly to God or Jesus or Saints without going through the political authority of the pope. So, their free-thinking & behaving sometimes got them in trouble with the church hierarchy*1. Protestant mystics, such as Pentecostals & Charismatics are already divorced from the Pope, and some may consider themselves non-creedal. But as Christians, they still have some basic (sterotyped) beliefs that form the core of their religious practice. Since I am neither Catholic nor Mystic, my view of those beliefs & practices is Objective instead of Subjective. :smile:
*1. Individualist Mystics vs collective Church :
Mystics, individuals who seek a direct, personal experience of the divine, have often faced opposition and persecution from established religious institutions, including the Christian Church. This tension arises because mystics' direct access to God can be seen as a challenge to the authority and hierarchical structures of the Church.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=mystics+oppressed+by+church
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes. That may be why you seldom find Mystics posting on philosophy forums. Of course, a few mystics --- e.g. Meister Eckhart --- have attempted to translate their sublime experiences into mundane words. Unfortunately, as I have often noted on this forum, the English language is essentially Materialistic. So, the translations from abstract to concrete (metaphors, parables) are subject to variable interpretations. Ironically, some of my own posts that touch on immaterial or transcendent concepts are treated with sarcasm as mystical woo-woo. So, I can sympathize with mystics, even though I can't empathize with their sublime experiences. :cool:
I am happy to attempt this, but it may not bear fruit. Who knows?
*as Tom Storm says, the God of mysticism is not that described in religious teachings. It may not be an overarching demiurge, it may be something more mundane, or something else unexpected. The important thing is that it is accessed through the self, the being of the self. Not externally, although, this is not to mean it cant be known, witnessed, or experienced, externally. But that if this were to happen it would be an external [to the self] intervention.
I am aware of how Mysticism is supposed to work. But I am not a mystic, by religious training, or by natural inclination, and I've never taken Psychedelic drugs, or Entheogens. So, I am not qualified to discuss mystical experiences on this forum.
I am however, able to imagine things that are not material objects, such as abstract concepts, laws of logic, mathematical principles, moral values, and a hypothetical transcendental First Cause of our contingent reality. But, even for theoretical philosophical purposes, I prefer to stay safely on the side of common sensory experience, instead of unusual extra-sensory percepts, whether directly or indirectly known.
I find that almost all Western languages are based on concrete experiences, so discussing knowledge & notions that are "more real" than physical reality tend to bog-down quickly. And I have been accused of propagating woo-woo nonsense when I attempt to discuss the possibility of a transcendent god-like entity that I have never experienced in any way, shape, or form.
Have you ever engaged in an Ayahuasca retreat, where many people can have similar experiences, and then discuss their Jaguar exploits in the spirit world with others who will understand what you are talking about? :smile:
:100:
Quoting Relativist
:up:
No, although I did have a few similar exploits in my youth, I dont seek out people so as to discuss the finer detail of the issue, simply because they are as rare as hens teeth. Taking strong hallucinogenics isnt a mystical experience, although it does free the self from some, or many of the constraints of an ordinary life, temporarily. However the person taking them is experiencing something akin to a rollercoaster ride. With no idea, or understanding of whats happening. The guides administering the drugs, know little more than them, and are there to help them ride the waves, peaks and troughs of the experience.
I see the use of drugs in this as a way of helping people to begin to free themselves from their conditioning and give them an understanding of the extent of the conditioning. But after that initial experience the drugs are a hindrance and best left alone. They are destructive to the health of body and mind and can cause atrophy in the parts of of the being specifically required to make further progress.
This is interesting in that it might help to explain what is involved by contrasting what Im describing with the experience of someone taking one of these hallucinogenic drugs. Some mystical experiences are like the drugged state, such as the experience of a higher being, or presence (fitting the preferred, spiritual teaching). Or a feeling of being outside of the body, or feelings of peace, silence, or visioning profound knowledge, or experiences. I think these are equivalent to the hallucinogenic experiences and are part of the process of freeing parts of the being from their conditioning and mental straight jacket. Rather like the opening of a flower from the tough outer casing of a bud.
However the difference being is that the person is usually following an established spiritual philosophy and ideology through which the experience can be both articulated intellectually and viewed and experienced as part of a social and cultural process of spiritual enlightenment, within a school. Surrounded by students and masters of different levels of development. This context is crucial because it provides fertile ground for a person to [I]grow[/I] into knowledge and understanding and become one of the more advanced students sitting alongside them. This entire process is holistic and aspects of it cant easily, or successfully be removed from it. Although I think one can beyond a certain point leave this setting and continue outside the school and in the world. Having already mastered, or developed the required skills to continue moving forward.
:100: It's the essence of culture.
Quite. This involves direct oral communication and communication embibed by communion between people. Enabling understanding and knowledge not reliant or defined by intellectual discourse and prescription. But rather alongside it, with teaching involving experience and practice which has no intellectual content.
Partly due to my austere non-mystical fundamentalist Christian religious up-bringing, and partly due to my rational pragmatic personality, I have never had any spiritual experiences, and I've never been drunk or high. Even my attempts at meditation were empty of special or sublime content. I also have no drugs to "expand" my mind, or social group or guru to "guide" my development.
However, my rational, science-based, philosophical explorations point to the possibility of some impersonal, non-miraculous, god-like power in the universe, similar to some forms of Idealism. This is not a personal experience, but merely an abstract statistical concept. So, much of this talk about "profound" experiences is outside of my first-hand range of knowledge.
Therefore, while I'm open to discussing "spiritual" notions, it's essentially a foreign language to me. I engage in philosophical threads like this, not from religious or spiritual motivations, but merely from intellectual curiosity. Hence, my personal philosophical worldview, Enformationism, seems alien to both materialists and spiritualists. And elicits mostly shrugs of incomprehension, or of ad hominem abuse on this forum. :cool:
Enformationism :
[i]As a scientific paradigm, the thesis of Enformationism is intended to be an update to the obsolete 19th century paradigm of Materialism. Since the recent advent of Quantum Physics, the materiality of reality has been watered down. Now we know that matter is a form of energy, and that energy is a form of Information.
As a religious philosophy, the creative power of Enformationism is envisioned as a more realistic version of the antiquated religious notions of Spiritualism. Since our world had a beginning, it's hard to deny the concept of creation. So, an infinite deity is proposed to serve as both the energetic Enformer and the malleable substance of the enformed world.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
Hasty generalization fallacy (re: "creation") derived from your poor physics (re: "beginning").
Appeal to ignorance (i.e. "infinite deity"-of-the-gaps) AND THEREFORE a non-explanatory infinite regress.
Quoting Gnomon
Yes, and that depends on what you mean by "understand". :fire:
I have no issue with Enformationism. It sounds like a useful theory and compatible with my way of seeing things. G*D being the crux of the issue, is unknown and unknowable*.
While I have an apophatic approach, I also leave wide open what a creator would entail, free from any preconceived ideas.
*while I agree that G*D, or the truths of our predicament are unknown, or unknowable. This does not mean that these things cannot be known, but only that they remain entirely unknown at this point. We dont know if this information can, or cannot be known by humanity. So I remain open to the idea that this information could be provided at any time. Like a God imminent to us.
Since my First Cause, Prime Mover, G*D is imagined as both transcendent and immanent, the only rmanifestation of G*D is the living Cosmos itself. Hence, empirical Science & theoretical Philosophy are our primary means of reading the revelation. Of course, those who "experience" G*D may prefer their holistic direct & personal knowledge over the piecemeal inferences & conjectures of the rational sciences. Unfortunately, I seem to be innately god-blind compared to the emotional & mystical sciences.
I can understand why some frustrated philosophers might turn to negative inferences when positive observations seem futile. For example, the Hindu notion of Brahman*1 is also unknowable by our mundane senses. But they seem to view the god/man relationship as a continuity, with the human soul as a "chip off the old block"*2, so to speak. And that metaphor may also apply to my own notion of a transcendent Mind who has transformed, for unknown reasons, abstract Potential into concrete Actual : our physical world. :smile:
*1. [i]In Hindu philosophy, Brahman is often described as unknowable in the sense that it transcends human comprehension and cannot be fully grasped by the mind or described through language. While Brahman is considered the ultimate reality and the source of all existence, it is not an object that can be perceived or defined. . . .
The Upanishads use the phrase "neti neti" (not this, not this) to describe Brahman, emphasizing that it can only be understood by negating what it is not. [/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=brahman+unknowable
*2. "Chip off the old block" is an idiom used to describe someone who closely resembles their parent, either in character or appearance.
In mysticism it is accepted that one is god-blind(although some worship a subjective image, which they feel they know), but also acknowledged that ones self is god, as, as you say the living cosmos is the manifestation of god. So one plays a game with oneself, reaffirming that one does know god, because one is god, so how could one not know it? Perhaps one is wearing blinkers, which one needs to take off. In a sense mysticism is how to do this.
Yes, I subscribe to the Hindu cosmogony, not literally, but in spirit.
In the Judeo-Christian-Muslim traditions, God is wholly other*1 (Holy), so to equate oneself with God would be blasphemy. Therefore, Christian Mystics have always been viewed as outside the mainstream of Catholic doctrine. And, those who strive to remain on good terms with enforcers of orthodoxy, could never imagine themselves as a manifestation of God (Atman or son of God), or would hide it if they had such experiences.
Since my childhood religion was anti-catholic, I was never in the mainstream of monotheism, so didn't have to worry about being a heretic. Besides, I've never experienced the indwelling presence of God. Consequently, my philosophical notion of the human Soul/Self*3 as an instance of G*D substance (more like causal Energy than ghostly Spirit) is merely an intellectual knowing, with little or no emotional feeling. :nerd:
*1. "Wholly other" is a theological term, most notably used by Karl Barth, to describe God's radical transcendence and difference from all created things. It emphasizes God's complete otherness, beyond human comprehension and experience. This concept aims to safeguard God's transcendence against pantheistic views that might equate God with the universe or human experience.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=wholey+other
*2. Several Christian mystics have faced accusations of blasphemy, often stemming from their unique spiritual experiences and interpretations of Christian doctrine. Meister Eckhart, a 14th-century German mystic, was investigated for heresy, though he was never formally declared a heretic,
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=christian+mystics+accused+of+blasphemy
[i]*3. Self/Soul :
The brain can create the image of a fictional person (the Self) to represent its own perspective in dealings with other things and persons.
# This imaginary Me is a low-resolution construct abstracted from the complex web of inter-relationships that actually form the human body, brain, mind, DNA, and social networks in the context of a vast universe.
# In the Enformationism worldview, only G*D could know yourself objectively in complete detail as the mathematical definition of You. That Algorithmic/Logical formula is equivalent to your Self/Soul.
# Because of the fanciful & magical connotations of the traditional definition for "Soul" (e.g. ghosts), Enformationism prefers the more practical term "Self".[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page18.html
i.e. Y = "not-X + X" :eyes: :roll:
Quoting Gnomon
Fwiw, we have this in common (although I do (often) feel embody what Schopenhauer calls "der Wille"). :smirk:
Its a contemplation technique, based on the idea that everything being an expression of God, and by implication is God, in essence. As to whether the person is God, or to what extent, that is not known. So when I think in this way, Im not concluding that I am God, in that I can create things. But rather that somewhere in the self there is a connection to God, a conduit. But in order to channel that God the person would have reached the exhalted state of transfiguration like Jesus for example. So while I know I am a long way off any such stage of development, I consider that I am part of God and can allow myself to feel the comfort and communion of that realisation.
Such contemplation techniques allow one to free oneself from conditioning and enable one to mould ones thought processes and ideas to those more condusive to spiritual development.
Yes, thats fine, intellectual knowing is what were all here for (on this forum).
On the assumption that it is the next stage in the development, or growth of the person*.
There are numerous reasons for this, there is lots of literature on the life lead by people who have a faith, the path of service, to chose the righteous path etc.
Also, there is the issue of making ones contribution towards the harmony and success of humanity. For example, imagine if everyone had followed the advice of Jesus two thousand years ago and continued to for generations. We would presumably be living a better life by now.
*For me this process is part of endeavouring to live my best life. On the assumption that if one is following divine guidance, or direction, one is living a slightly better life than if one had not.
Specify which "advice" you're referring to on the whole I think Jesus' teachings were not very coherent and always morally right. Also, imo, many peoples in many places before were "living a better life" than Jesus' contemporaries (e.g. hunter gatherers ... Daoists, Confucians, Epicureans, Kynics, Stoics, etc).
Im not a biblical scholar, so Im only using it as an example of how religious ideology can modify ones behaviour to benefit society. The other examples you gave include something equivalent an ethical code which improved the group experience in their societies. Whether Jesus was morally right, is not relevant. Because on the whole his teachings were constructive with regard to these ethical codes.