Can the philosophical mysteries be solved at all?
There are several mysteries which seem essential to the philosophical quest; the existence of God, free will and, life after death. These seem to be central to philosophy. Endless books have been written on these subjects. However, no one seems to have come up with any clear answers, and it seems to me that they remain as unsolved mysteries. We all contemplate these aspects of life, but it does seem that there are no definitive answers. Perhaps the whole aspect of mysteries is central to philosophy and what keeps us searching. Are they unfathomable mysteries, beyond human understanding?
Comments (478)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSQwBEL4mfQ
If it's not adequate, please delete.
Explain what you mean by "mysteries".
I, for one, don't find any of them "essential" (though, yes of course, they're perennially recurring topics). When put as questions, I answer antitheism, compatibilism, and nonsense (like 'north of the north pole' or 'before the beginning'), respectively, as consequences of the more prosaic, pragmatic, and indeed "essential" philosophical concern of how over above what I/we think (e.g. dialectical rationality (PNC sans PSR), semantic (discursive) clarity, reflective inquiry/practice (agency), epoché, etc) as a way of life ... rather than a "quest".
Apparently, I suppose, our metaphilosophical conceptions differ.
Churchland 1, Chomsky 0. (Not like old comrade Noam to double-talk out of his ass. :sweat:) Thanks for posting.
None of those are unanswerable. The question of whether god exists is answered, its just people who believe in god and certain types of fence sitters still carry on regardless, attached for whatever reason to the indefensible believer position.
Free will is a bit trickier I’ll grant you but I feel like its mostly a problem of definition of free will. If its defined as something outside deterministic forces, cause and effect but if the definition isnt magical and accounts for deterministic forces then sure, free will exists. As Hitchens used to say, we have free will becuase we have no choice
Lastly, life after death. Like god, this has been asked and answered. No, we have no good reasons to think there is life after death.
There is certainly things beyond human understanding, but none of the things you mentioned are. All understandable, all have fairly clear answers. Whether or not those answers can overcome indoctrinated belief or strong emotional bias is another matter.
God doesn't exist, God is nothing without Satan, together they resemble good and evil 'most-high powers". The most high power in the likeness of God is a shape ordinance that certified and harmonizes all existing things, making sure no-one randomly and forever experiences star-like heat, and so forth. Such as the fact you die if you reach a certain pain threshold. The second most like God is a machine grouping that moderates rank in life, completely obidient to the shape ordinance or 'good'. There is, and has never been God. Creators of simulations exist but they aren't significant in a God like way.
Yes there is life after death unless you're on extinction row for life crimes. Death is an instant transfer to a previous sim state where eternal life can be envisioned easily; this universe is quite unique and distant from the prior simulation. The umbilical cord is quite a drop, from a simple spawning, from out of a light womb.
Sometimes you are free and at others you're not, sometimes you're both free and not free. I didn't have a choice but to press submit to post this, nor did I choose the manner of which I could say the words. I am a mere switch, and run command.
Though these answers are brief, they are accurate to some degree I assure you. The same applies to all rational philosophy. Sometimes you have to base answers on predictions, such as with eggs, I know an animal may hatch but if it's a new egg we've never experienced, I can't prove that. Yet I will side with my guess.
I think yes and this is why philosophy is so interesting. I wish these topics will never been discovered or proven because it is amazing the huge number of authors have written about all of these topics. To be honest I even think that it make us feel fulfilled and happy.
Happy because it is good questioning and debating that is worthy for us.
When you look at the sky in night you feel surprised of how vast is the universe with all the starts and planets. Some would say is Big Bang, Physics, God, or even Aliens. We are free to debate of whatever despite probably we will never be able to answer some questions.
One element I like the most is the Stoneage in UK. When I see it I think: What were the thoughts of the thinkers back in the day and what did they answer?
Well you got your answers:
[Reply="DingoJones;522421"]
Appears it is solved.
Maybe. Apparently. I mean, my understanding of God is such that he must necessarily be easily capable of accounting for the the absence of himself. That, of course, runs afoul of man's desire to keep God stuck to logic, like a mouse to a glue trap. And really, what sort of God could not use logic for shit paper at his every whim, and then toss into the cosmic toilet? So, because we have made a god of logic, we call it a mystery when our god won't answer our questions. But the intuitive and counterintuitive person has long known that something may be, or is indeed true, even if he doesn't "get it."
Quoting Jack Cummins
I love that every answer opens more questions than answers provided: It's God telling us that our march is getting us further from the truth. There is import in the march itself, though, regardless of direction. But if someone decides to march backward, to the beginning, that might provide something enlightening.
I speak of mysteries, but each of us has a different understanding, and for some people such question are solvable and for others they are not. Here the biggest controversies lie in our midst and I don't think that there are any easy answers.
I am not saying that you are wrong, but other people may see everything from an entirely different perspective. Having conversed with so many different viewpoints, I am just trying to make sense of it all.
Of course, I would prefer that we come up with the best rational answers. However, it appears to me that these complex questions come shrouded in a veil of mystique, going back into the distance of philosophical questioning. I would certainly like to break through into greater clarity of thinking. So, I would like to see thinking which strives towards demystifying these ideas, but not about shallow attempts to answer the most perplexing questions.
I agree that 'indoctrinated belied' and 'emotional bias' are important and complex. However, even putting those aside, I am not sure that we can solve all the mysteries.
Just keep going down the rabbit hole. While we should always go forward, as is our inclination, someone should go back and see if we didn't miss a turn somewhere. Heaven forbid we should miss a line of inquiry somewhere along the line.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Yes. Although they seem to present without a whole lot of "coming up with" on our part.
If life has any meaning at all, it is simply showing up and participating. If you are not on the field, and you sit in the stands to watch, well, I guess someone needs to hold them down so they don't float off into space. But all the fun honing takes place on the field. I assume that is why TPF is here. That, and the fact that we like to hear ourselves talk (or see ourselves type, as the case may be).
Edited to add:
"In itself life is insipid, because it is a simple "being there." So, for man, existing becomes a poetic task, like the playwright's or the novelist's: that of inventing a plot for his existence, giving it a character which will make it both suggestive and appealing. ... ... serious examination should lead us to realize how distasteful existence in the universe must be for a creature - man, for example - who finds it essential to divert himself."
Jose Ortega y'Gasset, Meditations on Hunting. [I'm a fan]
I do believe that 'partipating" is important rather than a detached searching. I certainly don't wish to give up asking meaningful questions, perplexed by mystery. We are in this life together and a better understanding seems worthwhile, and it may not even be as mysterious as some people believe.
... by which you mean
• unanswerable questions? (conceptual)
• unsolvable problems? (epistemological)
• inexplicable, incomprehensible, ineffable, beyond the limits of reason? (metaphysical / axiological)
• questions which also call into question those who ask them? (existential)
I notice your edit about the 'distacefulnress' of existence. So, one question is whether we are trying to construct ways of making sense of this, although I would imagine that some of find life more distaceful than others. It is not as if life gives us equal measures of joy and this may play a part in the explanations we find, to make sense of it all. I certainly know that my perspective shifts according to my personal circumstances and degree of happiness.
You are quite right to distinguish conceptual, epistemological, metaphysical and existential aspects of exploration. We probably all juxtapose these uniquely. However, I do believe that there has to be some way of going beyond the subjective dimension. I am not saying that there are clear objective truths, but perhaps there are certain parameters. I don't think that this is new, but our perspective is restricted if it is only about finding a viewpoint which is satisfactory from our psychological point of reference.
Agreed. I think part of y'Gassett's point was not that hunting is a distraction, but, on the contrary, hunting is life. It is those who don't "live" who must find reasons for it. I could go on and on about his arguments about the hunt but, I think the upshot is this: Evolution has provided us with tools that we often turn our back on, to our own detriment, and loss of happiness. While it might be argued that such is part and parcel of evolution too, that doesn't mean the leaving off of what we've "earned" is going to be as enjoyable as immersing ourselves in it.
I think getting dirty is not unlike the arts, and love, and all the other areas of life where we feel "beside ourselves". Just as some writers and poets and performers often feel like they are nothing more than a conduit through which something greater, ineffable, has chosen to move; so to living in grace with the tools given, and using them, is what is meant to be. And that would include difficulty. "The floors're all sagging with boards a suffering from not being used anymore." Waylon Jennings.
Edited to add: As I've opined elsewhere, who is to say that when we feel beside ourselves that is really not ourselves? And our normal state is the aberration, the insanity, the outside or beside?
Yes, I believe that 'getting dirty' in the sense of going beyond the pleasing perspective in trying to find a correct picture of reality may be necessary. It may be that truth is not equatable with a perspective which suits our aesthetics. We may have to take on board the ugly and unfamiliar in our grasp for truth. Of course, many are not prepared to go in this direction. We cannot tell anyone what to think or believe, but analysis may reveal what perspectives are shallow and inadequate for understanding. It probably is about all of us being prepared to go outside of our familiar territories, into the unknown.
I guess me not being a "Jungian" to any degree – I abhor psychotherapy, like psychoanalysis & behaviorism, and any other psychological practice which is not rooted in contemporary brain science or cognitive neuroscience (I've done graduate work in cognitve psychology and respect approaches like CBT immensely) – the notion of "finding a viewpoint which is satisfactory from our psychological point of reference" is anathema to me as specimen of pseudo-philosophy (i.e. "psychologism" as per Husserl).
I do agree that my post may be too vague. But, as far as I can see we are in a Tower of Babel anyway. I can empathise with your dislike of psychotherapy, and do prefer reading philosophy. Really, I don't like being told what to think at all, and prefer to read widely and come to the most informed conclusions, even though I am not sure that there are clear answers. Sometimes, it seems that it is more about dismissing those which have obvious weaknesses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tH3AnYyAI8&t=5010s
As pointed out by others, god doesn't exist, the notion of free will is confused, and when you die, you cease to exist. These mooted philosophical mysteries are not so mysterious.
But to the general question, philosophical "mysteries" are mostly little word games on the edges of the world. They are annoying but for the most part irrelevant.
Interesting answers. Thanks for sharing. :)
:clap:
First, to attempt to prove god's existence is a waste of time for the simple reason that an immaterial being can't be proven in material terms. That would be like trying to prove penises exist with a woman.
Second, free will is real to the extent that there's a difference between giving someone your money when you feel like it and doing the same at gun point.
Third, life after death and again the same issue that was a stumbling block in re proving god rears its ugly head. The immaterial soul, that which allegedly survives death, can't be proven from within a material setting.
I am not sure that your arguments work. Proving that penises exist is so much easier than talking about God, because there is clear evidence. As for free will, the idea of giving money freely or at gun point is too extreme, because most of the real life scenarios would be far more subtle.
I can see your point of view, but I am not sure that the three big philosophy questions can just be neatly swept away, after all the centuries of discussion. I also wonder to what extent it all comes down to word games. My understanding is that philosophy in the twentieth century began to just try to focus on analysis of language. However, I did not think that this meant that was because that was all that there was, as if all the underlying problems had been solved.
It seems, on reflection, what I was attempting wasn't to provide a actual proofs for god, free will, and life after death. What I aimed to do though was suggest some avenues of inquiry and offer plausible reasons as to why some of us are of the view that god, free will, and life after death exist. My intention was not so much to come up with good arguments as it was to explore, examine the conspicuous absence of such in these domains of metaphysics.
G'day!
I don't believe in the immaterial soul, but I can imagine events that might convince me. If some Dr. Frankenstein could light up a corpse with dear grandma's departed soul, then I think it'd be reasonable to postulate some kind of 'non-physical' existence of this soul in between bodies.
Good :point:
I love the 'linguistic turn,' but I suspect it's because I've resolved your 'unsolved mysteries' to my personal satisfaction. Before that resolution, I spent more time with philosophers who obsessed over such issues.
It is said that many of Plato’s most important teachings were never written but only communicated verbally to his inner circle. And that also his writings contain hidden levels of meaning that are only intended for those suitably prepared to understand them.
In the Indian tradition the meaning of ‘Upani?ad’ is ‘sitting up close’. Those teachings were likewise intended for verbal transmission from teacher to student. In those traditions the meaning of ‘lineage’ is very important, signifying the transmission of understanding from teacher to student down through generations.
So I don’t accept that philosophy ‘makes no progress’ or ends with unanswered questions, although I certainly accept that it might point to a wisdom beyond discursive understanding. Realising the limits of knowledge is a central task of philosophy. Unlike in science, where you have a prediction on the one side and a result or observation on the other, here the subject and object of knowledge are the same. Something which our object-oriented culture finds it impossible to understand.
I suppose there's merit in your argument but I'm certain there's a hole in your argument and that too an own goal so to speak. Two words, Akashic records.
See https://www.friesian.com/ for info on the other choice.
I'm secure in my general unbelief, so for me the issue is whether any evidence could make me believe in gods, ghosts, or ghouls. I'd have to 'talk to grandma' or see some other 'miracle.' In the same way, I'd have to see aliens with my own eyes to believe they are here. Mere claims of others would not suffice.
I didn't imply otherwise. Quoting j0e
As much as it's a thorn in our side, it's an inescapable fact that given an observation, there are multiple hypotheses that fit it well. Then, whatever criterion one chooses, one of which is Ockham's razor, the usual thing to do is eliminate the impossible...whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth. My suggestion is that we tread carefully in matters such as god, free will, and life after death if only because so little is known about such metaphysical issues that even blind guessing may offer a better chance of successful truth-finding missions than rigorous logical inferences.
I do agree with your earlier argument about 'conspicuous absences' in metaphysics. It does make one wonder how it all happened that certain ideas were often treated as more real than anything else? It almost seems like the history of philosophy can be seen as a great deflated balloon. And the problem is that we wish for answers and wish for grand meanings.
Some may wish to believe in God and others don't. Ultimately, we choose what to believe. Ultimately, we only have to find answers to these questions which satisfy us, but when the ideas are discussed it becomes more complicated, because there is lack of consensus.
I do agree that insight wisdom is the most essential aspect of philosophical exploration. This probably goes beyond the surface of philosophical discussions. Each person probably has to make the quest in a unique way, and draw upon the ideas of others where it seems fit. Perhaps the usefulness of the joined pursuit should not be about proving points, but about mutual sharing of ideas.
Paraphrasing:
Interviewer: We know only 4% of what can be known
Neil deGrasse Tyson: [laughing] Yes, and I'm happy with that.
Yes, I can be happy knowing so little too, and I do still enjoy sitting and reading philosophy books...
I can't quite place Neil deGrasse Tyson's comments in a specific kind of worldview except that his sentiments on the matter of how much we know, extending perhaps to how much we should know, seems to share similarities with the Biblical tale of Adam, Eve, The snake, and the tree of knowledge. God didn't want us to know certain things and thus his command to Adam and Eve to avoid the tree of knowledge. It's odd that this likeness between Neil deGrasse Tyson's views and the Adam and Eve story doesn't correlate all that well with Tyson's irreligion. Just saying, that's all for me. Have a good day.
To be sure, I don't think that the first and last of your three questions are philosophical. There's a few associated conceptual issues, but they are straight forward.
Free will - the main issue there is as to what it is.
Let’s all join hands and sing Kum-by-a :-)
If free will is the central problem of philosophy it does depend what it means, and it may come down to how we perceive ourselves to be free or not. When we are act and make choices, these are bound up so many causal factors. We are making choices in an external world of causes, and our own consciousness is a result of biological and other factors, so even though we make choices it is hard to say to what extent they are truly free. Saying we have free will or not seems to be more a matter of perception and perspective.
I think that you are right to emphasise the importance of reason. We may not always be completely rational, but, at the same time, it does seem that we need to exercise reason to make sense of life. Otherwise, it would be like being stuck in an endless fog.
On these I guess there'll be loose affiliations of folk who take three main approaches. Some will say the questions have been answered already. Some will argue they are non-questions. And others will claim they will remain forever, like the Trinity itself, a mystery.
I have no reason to think there is a God or life after death. Free will? I don't know. I used to think I was a compatiblist, but I haven't read enough about the issue to get properly across it.
To be honest these questions have never really interested me passionately. I often used to joke that if there is a god it's none of my business.
I am more interested in aesthetics and morality and perhaps the nature of reality - eg, Platonism versus naturalism. Limitations are time, educational background and energy. I am pretty lazy and content enough in my ignorance.
I think these so-called philosophical mysteries represent directions of inquiry and effort. Each of which in itself has meaning and application within the total scope of human life. The question of the existence of God is not solely about determining an answer, but about establishing rapport, creating dialogue, and ultimately creating shared meanings which can then have actual influences in the lives of individuals and thereby an impact on our collective and shared existence (culture). Likewise for all of the other mysteries you cite.
So, in effect, to pursue these questions is to answer them.
well it kinda depends on what hour of the day it is. ;)
That's interesting, since I have the same academic background and slowly have been coming to the conclusion that neuroscience can currently tell us far less about conciousness than we'd like to know. I recall a bit of a splash at a conference years ago reaching me vicariously when someone pointed out in the midst of all the progress being lauded that we still have very little idea how anesthesia works, or even if it works at blocking pain, as opposed to immobilizing the patient and causing amnesia, because our knowledge of the "correlates of conciousness" is still so sparse.
I am willing to bet that modern psychiatric practices will one day seem as hapless as leeching. We don't map moods as they occur in the brain and treat patients with mood disorders through any sort of target approach. We identify drugs that will generally pass the BBB and effect activity at the synapse, attempt to give animals psychiatric conditions, load them up with said drugs, and run statical analyses on their behaviors.
Drugs aren't targeting "moods", they generally saturate the nervous system and are then declared effective or not based on survey and outcome data, without a true casual mechanism identified. Their use is so common that there are active levels of SSRIs in urban water supplies, enough to be a culprit in the developed world's plummeting testosterone levels, which in turn likely is a culprit in some incidence of mood disorders (granted, plastics, birth control pills, and obesity are the main culprits). However, causal links are elusive. I don't want to be misunderstood as anti-medication, I only want to underscore how little we know about how these drugs work as opposed to say, corticosteroids, and how much we use them despite that.
The newest improvement is the ability to correlate your DNA with the efficacy of drugs in similar patients, which is still a long way from a strong casual connection. Which isn't to say that psychiatric medicines can't be effective, but more that the science is clearly in its infancy and this is brutally demonstrated in the extremely harsh side effect profiles that are considered acceptable in anti-psychotics. It's hard to imagine the massive weight gain, disrupted endocrine system, malformed bone development in puberty, and general extreme sedation that these drugs cause being tolerated as side effects for diseases we actually understand well. I would hazard that they are viewed like the lobotomy when truly effective treatments are developed.
I guess I'm even less a behaviorist though, given the problems of replication in psychology. Priming has been torn down since I took social psychology. Implicit bias survives more due to political reasons than actual quality data trying it to useful real world predictions or effect sizes. Hell, the tests don't even meet common standards for predicting the same individuals' scores over several days.
Evolutionary psychology is worse. Here books full of hypotheses replace supported theories. Casual mechanism are a bridge too far.
I find neuroscience simultaneously fascinating and essential to any credible mind-body philosophy, and fairly useless, at least for now, in explaining higher order thought, moods, meaning (as in how semiotics can be understood through neural correlates), or the illnesses people around me suffer. Very much a science that is led by what it can measure, versus what it actually wants to ask.
The value in Jungian analysis, pastoral care, or depth analysis, is that it can speak to mental phenomenon and ideas in their own terms and help people develop their understanding of the meaning of their lives. You can throw philosophy into that boat too. The actual causal mechanisms for improved outcomes is even more murkey here, and will depend on the individual (you won't give an atheist pastoral care). However, in some ways what priests often do on a weekly basis is significantly more targeted than modern psychiatry, because it is interacting directly with pathological ideas and moods.
You "mysterians" may be right in the long run but, IMO, the long run is still very far off as far as studying the human mind-brain is concerned. Very early days yet, especially when you consider it's estimated that after of a few millennia of combined empirical observation, folk psychologizing and esoteric speculation we've learned more than 90% of what is scientifically known about the human brain-CNS in only the last couple of decades. I'm betting against you chicken-little "Lord Kelvins" and the woo-of-the-gaps du jure.
I don't disagree with most of your points. The issue is that:
A. I doubt that neuroscience will produce satisfactory answers to some of these mysteries (e.g. the Hard Problem) in my lifetime. In the grand scheme of things, the answers may be forthcoming soon enough, but on a practical level, they'll likely come too late.
B. People are in need of help now, which again gets to the issue of answers coming too late for pressing practical needs.
C. I believe it's possible that science may be unsuited at the ontological level for answering certain questions about meaning, or providing an answer to the Hard Problem that isn't merely describing neural correlates. That is, science will be unable to formulate an answer to the Hard Problem in the same way it can't provide us with a means of ranking aesthetic value. If Descartes had been correct, and the subjective world was linked to the material solely through the pineal gland, it still wouldn't answer the questions we're really interested in.
Jung's theories on dreams have no support in science and I believe they can be safely discarded when looking through that lens. The symbolic narratives he weaves with them however, have aesthetic value. Reading novels can measurably enhance measures of empathy, but their chief value doesn't lie in that sliver of result that can be measured.
I work in public policy and we're constantly inventing catagories for things, new ontologies for data, new conceptions of processes. These don't correspond to anything material, and indeed the same categories or chart of accounts used to describe the complex actions of one city might be fairly useless for generalizing to others. However, the use of the categorical organizations enables more effective political leadership and beaurocratic action. I have a similar view of psychology as respects individual action and decision-making.
Psychology is the "discourse of the soul," and it should perhaps begin to stick more to that. Neurology is the "discourse of the sinew," and shouldn't be expected to have all the answers.
I do agree that the mysteries which I have spoken about are not just abstract ones, but involve connections. The way we answer them is central to how we live. Without some need for such a pursuit, it may be tempting just to lie in bed all day. We need some underlying motivation and it is probably when we do not have it that life becomes hollow.
A. Most likely.
B. Unfortunately so. But think of the thousands of human generations in need of antibiotics before they had been discovered ...
C. Okay. But I see no grounds to agree with you on 'the ontological insufficiency or inadequacy of science' in principle.
As for neurology with respect to psychology, the latter presupposes substrate mechanisms like the former by which it is manifest. Yeah, a Tour de France cyclist cannot be reduced to the bikes he rides but without a well-tuned, thereby well-understood, machine underneath him at each stage of the race, he's not functioning as a world-class competitive cyclist.
I am definitely not in favour of 'an ideal realm of abstract knowledge.' That would seem to be drudgery and not helpful for living. Really, I am probably fascinated by mystery. If we had all the answers clearly laid out, philosophy would not be fun any longer. Also, what would be left for us to discuss on this site?
God: no
Free Will: no
Life after death: no
Conciousness is illusory, the subjective experience of a number of interrelated biological processes that actually occur with less interaction than we'd think intuitively. There is no central process, no "I" in "I think therefore I am." It's Hume's view of cognition, or even before him, the Buddhists. There is no Atman, there is just the illusion of an I. Sentience is an accident of evolution, and serves no real biological function either. More than that, it is illusory, an "after the fact" projection, the result of disperate systems trying to impose "meaning" on multiple streams of data.
This is supported by the fact that the experience of volition lags the start of movements. We begin to move, then experience the feeling of chosing to move shortly after. If you sever the main links between the hemispheres of the brain, and ask a person to write down their ideal job, each hand writes a different answer and the person is unaware of the discrepancy.
Living with someone with Alzheimer's, it's hard not to sometimes feel that the conciousness of even brilliant people isn't just an illusion projected by unrelated streams of data and feedback loops trying to impose order over behavior, including the internal behavior of thought and monologue.
If this is the case, I believe ethics really is trivial. You can meaningfully talk of ethics without God, but it's nonsense without free will, as is aesthetics. In that sense, the view just outlined does clear up some thorny philosophical issues, no?
What matters to me is what my children and their children and their children's children will experience. Socrates gave his life for a future better than the reality of his day. For me, there is no higher purpose.
B F Skinner thought that consciousness was illusory but if that was true how do we make sense of conscious awareness. What does appear to be more potentially accurate is the Buddhist idea that there is no self, because it does appear to be more of a construct of fleeting consciousness rather than as an actual entity in it's own right. The 'I' of awareness remains but as Ken Wilber, argued more as a witness.
As for the idea that there is no God, no life after death and no free will, it is possible to come up to that conclusion, but, on the other hand, it does not mean that we may never consider other possibilities. While the lack of clear evidence can be seen as perplexing, it does give scope for imaginative possibilities.
I would imagine that the big questions must be becoming increasingly difficult for children, with so much information available, especially on the internet. There is just so much, and I would imagine that parents, who are probably struggling to find beliefs, must have such a hard time showing their children through the maze. I am not sure whether some clear beliefs or the best option. I am sure that it varies so much.
"In Newton this island may boast of having produced the greatest and rarest genius that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species. Cautious in admitting no principles but such as were founded on experiment; but resolute to adopt every such principle, however new or unusual: From modesty, ignorant of his superiority above the rest of mankind; and thence, less careful to accommodate his reasonings to common apprehensions: More anxious to merit than acquire fame: He was from these causes long unknown to the world; but his reputation at last broke out with a lustre, which scarcely any writer, during his own lifetime, had ever before attained.
While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he shewed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain."
[Italics mine]
So, who knows?
We do not directly experience "God" so we can not know God. We can know the manifestation of God, Tao, logos because we experience that. We can know something of the past and the future, and in that way, we are like the gods, and with that comes responsibility for our words and deeds. We are a part of something much bigger than ourselves, and only with knowledge and wisdom can we have good judgment.
I think a common human problem is not recognizing we are part of something bigger than ourselves. On one level we are part of a family. We might be members of a church or some other organization. We are part of a community and then a nation and then the whole of humanity and the earth with all its creatures large and small. What matters is how I impact the larger whole and future generations. My ego really does not matter. My special place in a heaven does not matter. I am part of something much larger. :pray:
Parents do not have the power of social pressure. This is unfortunate when society is becoming amoral and immoral, and everyone is ruled by their feelings, not principles. On the other hand, it is very fortunate when the parents themselves are immoral people, and children chose social values instead of the way of the parents.
The rules for life are not that complicated. It is not difficult for grade schools to teach a set of principles, traditions, and customs that hold civilization together. I think we have gone a little overboard with education for technology and took our civilizations for granted. We need to return to education that advances civilization not just the power of computers and weapons.
Jack!
Indeed, the EOG axiom encompasses well over 75% of all philosophical domains (ethics, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, post-modernism, etc.) for sure. However, it is usually in the cosmological sense, or used as a standard archetype, but not quite as much used in a personal way. God exists though in a humanistic way through the history books, just like any other human accounting as described in history. Accordingly, the historical narrative of Jesus existed, and that person who also had a consciousness, was just as mysterious as consciousness itself.
In this same way, the Christian God existed, and still exists through the phenomena of our consciousness...which contributes to the appeal toward Christianity as a cosmological agent being relatable to all people (human beings). As such, Jesus was known mostly for his thoughts/actions associated with the mystery of Love.
Everything is beyond human understanding because if you understood one thing, you would would understand everything, and if you understood everything, you would immediately go insane.
I think what you are saying is essentially true and often gets missed in some circles of philosophical discussion. Personally, I was brought up as a Catholic However, I experienced some narrow forms of Christian ideas . These were ones which were very literalistic and contrary to any kind of genuine exploration, or certainly that was how I felt. However, it is true to say that sometimes philosophy can swing to the opposite direction, in a forceful way. It is easy to end up partaking discussion about the existence of God and end up thinking of some abstract search and lose sight of Jesus, and the whole message of love.
I am not convinced of the logic that to understand one thing would result in knowing everything. If only.. I also think that it is just as easy to go insane from lack of knowledge rather than too much of it. We probably have so much information to process, but that is completely different from understanding.
I agree with what you wrote about needing to feel part of something much larger, and perhaps this is what gets lost when we spend so much time logged onto digital devices. I was even reading today that it may contribute to 'brain fog', and I wonder about this. I don't think that we are designed to spend most of our time on computers and mobile phones.
Precisely! I was too, and subsequently uncovered the dangerous dogmatic and political group think that unfortunately tends to give [a] God (Jesus) a bad name. I always say, religion gives God a bad name :mask:
I predict fundamentalism itself will give way to spiritualism. We are too sophisticated for the worn-out dogmatic brainwashing as found in those kinds of religions. Positive reinforcement, not negative reinforcement, holier than thou judgement, extremism, ad nauseum.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Well said!
I came from a Catholic background which was quite liberal but left many questions unexplained. I explored these, but have come across people who became unwell mentally as a result of certain contradictions. I have a few friends who developed psychotic delusions of a religious nature. I think that philosophy helped me to disentangle knots in my thinking. However, unfortunately some people can be just as dogmatic in philosophical argument as the ones who are dogmatic in fundamentalist religion.
The complexity of understanding is so vast that to be able to understand one thing, you would be able to understand all things. For example...
The simplest of things has been brought into being by an infinite number of events preceding, so in order to understand this particular thing, you would have to understand the infinite number of things that brought it into being and on top of that, understand the infinite number of things that brought the each of the infinite number of those things into being, so on and so forth. This is just for the simplest of things.
Understanding, that "thing" that man wants more than anything else, is so far far beyond our capacity that it is literally incalculable. Of course, the silver lining is that understanding is not necessary (nor even preferable, in my view).
If we did understand what was going on (literally), what would be the point in living?
But the Internet is vital to our evolution. It is not something we should curse but a manifestation of intelligence far beyond anything humanity has ever experienced before.
:lol: Oh my, this is a little complex. If we believe we are part of something much bigger than ourselves, we can see the internet as kind of a voice of God. It is a man-made miracle where all minds can meet. This of course is overwhelming. Somehow we need to become comfortable with "I do not know" and then making judgments about what serves us well and what does not. This pushes our mental limits and I don't know how well we will succeed, but we need to be inclusive of all of humanity and the all the needs of our planet and different life forms. We are as the gods, now how are we going to manage this?
I know that you say that understanding 'is beyond our capacity' and, of course, there are limits but without a certain amount, surely, we would be completely lost. It may be that we strive for too much knowledge, but thinking is central to the human condition. Perhaps we need a certain amount of insight rather than just endless information. I know that I sometimes read and think too much. That is probably where meditation comes in.
Once again, well said. I think in large part, it's called the 'sin of pride' (AKA ego). Which is, exaggerated self worth.
Anyway, I think we solved that problem....NOT!
I am grateful for the internet. I have found discussion on this site so helpful during lockdown. My mother got really annoyed with me when I kept sitting writing answers over Easter. A few months ago, I flooded her bathroom when I was writing a comment, because I left a tap on. The water cascaded through the ceiling and made the light go out downstairs.
As for the idea of God permeating the internet, I first came across the idea from one of my friends who was having a psychotic episode. I remember him crouched down banging his head on the floor, stating. 'God is a computer', and it struck me as an interesting idea. Computers are currently at the heart of the network of communication for us.
I think "completely lost" is not a bad descriptor for the state of our species.
Our understanding is no better than it has ever been. It's just more complex (which is an indication that it is further from the truth).
Thinking is just a system that has to make sense in order for people to buy-in. So, all the parts of the system...mathematics, science, philosophy, literature, etc., do their part to hold-up each other allowing people function socially in this world no different than folks in the past who had their systems, as well.
Although we have a good laugh when we think about how silly our ancestors were in believing all of their non-sense, we take our own system as "The Word Of God," and forget that not so long in the future, our descendants will be laughing at us and our system, as well.
Yes, I think that too many people have inflated egos, and this probably extends to people with a whole variety of beliefs and ideas.
Quite remarkable, universal, and problematic... . Your forgoing can significantly increase one's own sense of existential angst.
Often times, one reaps what one sows. Nothing new under the sun there!
Only if you assert that truth is simple.
It sometimes seems that people in our time act as if we are fortunate to be able to understand so fully, but it is hard to know what knowledge is yet to be uncovered. It is hard to predict, but who knows, what big omissions and gross errors will be found. Perhaps new paradigms of knowledge and science are yet to be discovered, rather just the filling in of detail.
I think that we all face the tension between lack of knowledge or an assumption of knowing so much. Perhaps, the more inflated any of us become, in our sense of possessing great truth and knowiedge, is partly due to the fear of this collapsing and of realising our ignorance. So, it is probably about finding a careful balance.
Part of buying into the system is feeling as you do, like the system is mostly correct (with a little fine-tuning needed going forward). Otherwise, people would be quite insecure believing that the floor upon which they stand is nothing but thin air.
Yes Jack just to be clear I take no exception and am in agreement with you. I've seen many of folk as it were who are very well educated but because of their ego it clouds their abilities in other intrinsic ways. Similarly in that same way within the human condition exists certain intrinsic fears.
In the postmodern spirit, it is certainly worth exploring these fears vis a vis the mysteries surrounding the thesis in your OP. In other words there are those who fear the unknown and/or even fear the exploration of same.
Perhaps that is where subjectivism and objectivism meet...
I don't think the systems of the world are anywhere near perfect at all. In your thread about medical expertise, I simply was suggesting that England would be in a mess if we lost the NHS and the welfare state.
Actually, I frequently feel that the world is collapsing beneath my feet in many ways. I just don't want to be floating in space completely But I am prepared to live with a certain amount of mystery, existential and metaphysically. I believe in taking risks in exploring all kinds of ideas, and in self examination.
I see the mysteries of philosophy as being part of my interest and quest, and do believe that exploration of fear is part of this too. It takes time and energy, but I think that it is worth the effort, reading and thinking about these ideas widely. I have been doing this since adolescence but more so in lockdown, and finding this site has definitely helped, because I used to read my books by myself, and, now, I am able to interact with others about the ideas.
Simple tribalism. It happens in every pursuit, from sport to politics, philosophy to classical music (don't start me on Wagnerians). Human nature doesn't change with the subject of interest. I generally hold that that the more assertive the person is about their argument, the less certain they are in the beliefs.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Have you ever thought that the thirst for knowledge, the chasing of knowledge is just another form of sublimated materialism? A form of obsessive collecting disguised as a virtue - ideas in the place of knick-knacks. I suspect our conceptual trinkets are like status symbols and not much use to us in the end. They are no more likely to bring happiness than a Porsche or Rolex. Human life is as complicated or as simple as you want to make it. There aren't all that many questions we must answer - pride drives us to ask more all the time. Shoving ideas into our minds, like a binge eater raiding a fridge, may simply be just another distraction.
Oh, it's not central to philosophy.
I do collect books, but I do wish to see my reading and thinking being more than just a 'materialistic thirst for knowledge.' I don't think that philosophy counts as that much of a status symbol and most people I know are completely dismissive of my interest, and probably value sport and cars as being far more important. Generally, I have always been inclined towards philosophy and the mysterious. I used to be drawn to these areas in the library when I was at school, more than to the subjects which I was supposed to be studying. I don't know the limits of areas for questioning. I do find that the more time I spend on this forum seems to make me see new angles and subtle variations on the basic ones which I had originally.
I think that free will is a recurrent theme in philosophy, but probably in other related disciplines. In psychology, there is the nature vs nurture debate,which is interrelated, so it is central to philosophy and beyond.
The most powerful status symbols are the ones others don't understand. It makes our virtue even more pronounced. Never underestimate the power of the recondite.
The English NHS is already a mess. Maybe you would be a lot better off.
. No ... because all of them are futile ... they're imaginations from your prejucides, and dirty imagination, friend ...
. The philosopher thinks about things. It is a mind approach. My approach is a no-mind approach. It is just the very opposite of philosophizing. It is not thinking about things, ideas, but seeing with a clarity which comes when you put your mind aside, when you see through silence, not through logic. Seeing is not thinking.
. The sun rises there; if you think about it you miss it, because while you are thinking about it, you are going away from it. In thinking you can move miles away; and thoughts go faster than anything possible. If you are seeing the sunrise then one thing has to be certain, that you are not thinking about it. Only then can you see it.
. Thinking becomes a veil on the eyes. It gives its own color, its own idea to the reality. It does not allow reality to reach you, it imposes itself upon reality; it is a deviation from reality. Hence no philosopher has ever been able to know the truth.
. All the philosophers have been thinking about the truth. But thinking about the truth is an impossibility. Either you know it, or you don't. If you know it, there is no need to think about it. If you don't, then how can you think about it?
. A philosopher thinking about truth is just like a blind man thinking about light. If you have eyes, you don't think about light, you see it. Seeing is a totally different process; it is a byproduct of meditation.
. Hence I would not like my way of life to be ever called a philosophy, because it has nothing to do with philosophy. You can call it philosia. The word ‘philo’ means love; ‘sophy’ means wisdom, knowledge – love for knowledge. In philosia, ‘philo’ means the same love, and ‘sia’ means seeing: love, not for knowledge but for being – not for wisdom, but for experiencing.”
. No ... because all of them are futile ... they're imaginations from your prejucides, and dirty imagination, friend ...
. The philosopher thinks about things. It is a mind approach. My approach is a no-mind approach. It is just the very opposite of philosophizing. It is not thinking about things, ideas, but seeing with a clarity which comes when you put your mind aside, when you see through silence, not through logic. Seeing is not thinking.
. The sun rises there; if you think about it you miss it, because while you are thinking about it, you are going away from it. In thinking you can move miles away; and thoughts go faster than anything possible. If you are seeing the sunrise then one thing has to be certain, that you are not thinking about it. Only then can you see it.
. Thinking becomes a veil on the eyes. It gives its own color, its own idea to the reality. It does not allow reality to reach you, it imposes itself upon reality; it is a deviation from reality. Hence no philosopher has ever been able to know the truth.
. All the philosophers have been thinking about the truth. But thinking about the truth is an impossibility. Either you know it, or you don't. If you know it, there is no need to think about it. If you don't, then how can you think about it?
. A philosopher thinking about truth is just like a blind man thinking about light. If you have eyes, you don't think about light, you see it. Seeing is a totally different process; it is a byproduct of meditation.
. Hence I would not like my way of life to be ever called a philosophy, because it has nothing to do with philosophy. You can call it philosia. The word ‘philo’ means love; ‘sophy’ means wisdom, knowledge – love for knowledge. In philosia, ‘philo’ means the same love, and ‘sia’ means seeing: love, not for knowledge but for being – not for wisdom, but for experiencing.”
If all cases we've partook in, are understood, it helps us to solve future cases.
In theory, we find the mode of all cases, and this knowledge helps us to make stable predictions.
Whether or not a meteor hits the planet tomorrow, the probability the Sun will rise is very high and I can be sure that it will; though you will criticize my sureness, claiming it's illogical, that doesn't matter for we have to be creative at times.
There is no wisdom without creativity, rushed case by case reasoning is not philosophy, it's poor science to say the least.
To conclude, though I am being wise when I'm saying the Sun will rise in the morning, there's nothing inherently wrong with that wisdom, lest a meteor hits the planet and opposed arguments are correct. It's not the lotto, a lot of visible probabilities point to the fact I'm correct. If we're courageous and wise, it becomes clear that any philosophical problem can be solved. Again an egg likely holds a creature which we have no evidence for until it hatches, the prediction that it will hatch into a creature counts. If all predictions count, any philosophical problem can be solved.
And contemplation is where meditation and philosophy meet. Without biting each other like vampires.
Hagg!
No pun intended, but that could not be farther from the truth. How is "thinking about the truth an impossibility" ?
Considering much of philosophy lives in the logic of words, is it not your sense of wonderment that causes you to think about the truth that you currently do not have? It's really a two part question:
1. Why do we care to wonder? (Or what causes us to care & wonder?)
2. If we didn't wonder, what would our quality of life look like?
Thirdly, by you saying " If you don't know it, then how can you think about it" are you not reducing all thought or cognition to some sort of a priori logic?
Bonus question: in the spirit of the OP, is there mystery associated with our own sense of wonderment from our conscious existence? In other words, is wonderment an instinct, and if so, what Darwinian advantages does it have for surviving in the jungle, when instinct is all you really need?
Sorry for all the questions....maybe pick one or two and we'll parse from there... .
Thanks for your post!
I definitely agree that, 'There is no wisdom without creativity'. While I do spend so much time wondering about the mysteries which I identified I would say that I see creativity as essential. When I read authors writing, it is not just the ideas which draw me to it but the artistry of the writing.
So much of current philosophy is about accuracy, based on scientific thinking. I am not saying that is not important but I do believe that what makes certain writers stand out as wisdom does also depend on the creativity of the work, such as the writing of Plato, Camus, or Nietzsche. What they do is create a specific vision or worldview. This draws me towards philosophical and other writing and, inspires me in my contemplation of the mysterious, as well as leading me forward in my own quest for creative expression.
Your comment was very good and I particularly like, 'A philosophy thinking about the truth is like is just like a blind man thinking of the light'.
I spend so much time thinking and frequently beat myself up for not coming up with clearer answers, so it is reassuring to hear your idea that thinking about the truth is an impossibility. I find that every time I find each time l believe that I am gaining some clarity, the picture begins to fragment. I often feel like I am going round in circles and that is probably why I wrote this thread.
. Good you recognize it ... Rarely, a man can put the ego aside for a bit ... But you could, friend, while reading my "answer" ... I'm glad for you ...
. This is the first step for the path of wisdom; for the path of meditation; for the pathless path.
. But it is FULL of pitfalls, and tremendously risky, because in that moment you turn in a rebell; in a creator. That's the reason why man still lives comfortably miserable.
. In that moment, you are a Buddha- " You're in the world, but not of the world".
. But as I said, it's almost impossible ... Those who achieve that state ... are bound to be murdered by society or being marginalized ... Because they 're new ... they cannot fit with the so-called society patterns and prejudices ...
Actually, in the last six months I think that I have probably spent too much time reading and not meditating as much as would be helpful. I am hoping to join a meditation group when I can find one, but I could probably do more by myself while waiting. I remember one thing which I used to find valuable was meditating in the night, when I could not sleep before going to work in the morning.
Its so hard to put the ego aside, because it keeps rearing its ugly head, and niggling away. I do feel that when I have taken an interest in meditation and the inner path I have often felt scorned by others. However, I am more inclined to make friends with people who are into searching, rather than those who just like to go out partying.
I thank you for your couple of posts. It is often easy to get caught up in spending too much time looking for answers through reading and, neglect the searching for wisdom within.
I am not dismissing the importance of your emphasis on searching for answers within, but just wondering about whether meditation is not the best practice for the time of lockdown. The reason why I say that is because I did spend some time meditating last night and found that the effect was that I had really bizarre dreams.
I am not saying that I can make generalisations from that completely. However, it did make me wonder if for those of us who have spent too much time in a solitary world during lockdown, whether it could be the opposite of what we need at the moment. Perhaps, we need at this time to stay anchored and grounded in daily life rather than becoming more withdrawn from it. I know that you suggest the path of wisdom is risky. I am not saying that I will not follow such a path, but proceed with caution because we probably need to keep as balanced as possible.
I also wonder how this relates to others' experiences because life has been anxiety provoking in the last year for many people. I wonder whether meditation is inclined to hinder or help this. However, I am sure that there are many possible differences in this.
In your post, you ask about why we wonder. I believe that it interconnected with being human and the nature of consciousness. It is likely that wondering and the sense of mysteries led to most of the developments in civilisation, not just philosophy and religion, but the emergence of the arts and sciences.
As children we wonder so much, exploring our surroundings and looking up at the stars. I remember being so fascinated by time, and even though I didn't like maths, I was fascinated by Pythagoras's hypotenuse triangle because it seemed like it contained a hidden mystery. I think that a lot of people give up wondering as much once they get to adulthood. Many settle for conventional answers in religion and science, and move onto more tangible goals, but some keep on wondering endlessly, almost as if dreaming.
I am not completely sure why some people wonder more than others. It may be partly about values. The people who are more career oriented, for example, may gravitate more towards external achievements. It may also be that some individuals are less convinced by ideas which they have been taught, so they carry on wondering. It could be that for many people a less thorough exploration satisfies them until, at some point, life circumstances make them question further.
Personally, the reason why I keep wondering is because I feel that most of the explanations I have been told or read don't seem adequate, or fit together. I am sure that many people I know think that the reading and searching for an indefinite period of time is a waste of time, but I don't think that it is. I also see the whole process of wondering as an important aspect of creativity in its own right. If we stopped wondering at all life could become so mundane and hollow. And, as far as your question of the evolutionary value of wondering, I am inclined to think it acts as a general motivational factor in leading people to unique and creative solutions to all kinds of problems.
You are most probably correct to say that contemplation is probably the meeting point between philosophy and meditation. We probably need to be involved with the ideas on an intimate internal way rather than just being able to cite the ideas in the books or Wikipedia. I do believe that contemplation is as important as analysis, because it goes beyond mere logic.
And, you are definitely right to say that we 'need to stop biting each other like vampires' because that goes against the whole point of the exploration and I can't see how this helps those who are biting or the vampires themselves. Perhaps those who become the vamps are the most needy and lost souls.
. Meditation is the key to make you aware about the confusion that is repressed within you.
. It does not create confusion ... Just make you aware how confuse you're and make you aware that you don't know ... It makes you aware that you don't know life ... It makes you aware that you're still an animal ... you did not reach the state wich is beyond mind ... wich is beyond the biological needs ...
. But your so-called politicians and priests don't like people to gain that awareness and they use all the preventions ... and they've been succeeding since 5,000 years ago.
. When you turn into a rebell, into a true human being ... In that circumstances, you're not useful for the society, therefore a Jesus is murdered, a Socrates is poisoned.
. You are pure love; you are pure compassion ... A buddha is pure awareness ... He can see people stumbling in the dark unnecessarily ... creating their own hell ... creating their own nightmares ... and drowning in their created hell ...
. Inevitably, compassion will rise within them... They try to communicate to people that this is your own doing ... That you're not REALLY BLIND!!! ... You just HAVE BEEN TAUGHT TO BECOME BLIND!!!!! ... The society teaches you to become blind ... The society likes blind people because they're never rebels ... they're always ready to obey to stupid politicians ... to obey to stupid priets ...
I do agree really, but just think that, aside from the politicians' biases, we need to go about the quest with a certain amount of balance. However, I am all in favour of understanding the inner world, and I have decided to go outside for a bit, while it's not raining, and start reading, 'A Vision, by W B Yeats. I have been wanting to read it for some time, so I won't procrastinate any longer.
I think that we need to learn from some of the greatest masters of wisdom.
. No ...
. You need to be a light unto yourself ... Books will make you more knowledgeable ...
. A wise being is not knowledgeable ... He is as an innocent child ... Pure ...
. You don't need to decorate scriptures nor to read them ...
. You need to read your book ... your inner book ... YES ... that's the only one worth reading ...
. But there's a tremendous fear ... you might be transformed radically ... so people think that it's better to live confortably miserable ... preserving their golden dreams ...
. Don't be afraid for being ignorant ... be afraid for being knowledgeable ...
So your 'knowledge' is that we shouldn't learn from the knowledge of others. Yet here you are, sharing your knowledge anyway. By your own assertion then, we shouldn't pay any attention to you.
I think that it is a mixture of both reading others thoughts and inner knowledge. As it is, most people don't even read the ideas of the wise ones.
. That's not a knowledge ...
. Just a truth being reflected by me ... Truth is never a knowledge ...
. It is existencial ... It is not your so-called philosophical jargon ...
Oh OK. So your truth is that we shouldn't learn from the [I]truth[/I] of others. Yet here you are, sharing your [i]truth[/I] anyway. By your own assertion then, we shouldn't pay any attention to you.
. You should not pay attention to me ... Normally, the mediocres stay in their beautiful dreams ... wich are the majority ... hence the suffering and the conflict in the world ... so please do not pay attention to me ...
. There's just one truth ... as there's just an universe ... truth is always "uni" ... the ocean tastes the same in every corner ...
I will enjoy my dream, you enjoy your dogmatism.
...Yet you paid attention in English class and refer to a dictionary; how do you know the word me means what you think it means?
Try the word terrorist, terror-wrist. Do you spot the connotation?
Me has meant for several years to me, 'one at the forefront of his chain of memories'.
'Do not pay attention to me', I won't.
I think that you make some extremely good points and your posts are worth reading but the matter is not straightforward. The seeker may sometimes find truths directly, as expressed in the Van Morrison song title, 'No method, No Guru, No Teacher.'
However, I imagine that most people who seek to explore the mysteries of life, some kind of training is important. It is possible to get lost in one's own thoughts or in books. I do believe that the ideas of others provide us with some useful parameters, but we still need to explore these in our own individual consciousness. I don't think that we are meant to be mere reading machines. It involves the whole balance between the direct and indirect ways to knowledge and understanding. This was explored well in the song by The Waterboys, 'The Whole of the Moon.'
. That's good ...
. You must be a scholar ... A knowledgeable ...
. For the blind man, who likes to rationalize intelectually, that's good friend ...
. Please, go on with your jargon ... With your ideologies ... With your prejudices ... Trying to demystify what is intelectually a rose flower ... Trying to demystify the non-demystifiable ... Eyes are not needed ...
. I would like to know ... If you believe in the sun ... ?
. Do it as you've been always doing ... Let your so-called mind talk ...
Agreed. said in another way, if we didn't wonder, there would be no will to critique anything, or anyone. Quite simply, it seems no progress would be made.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Sure. As a typical example, the infamous 'all events must have a cause' axiom (metaphysical axiom) propels science into new discoveries everyday. It drives or moves a theory forward, sometimes into reality.
And so this mystery associated with consciousness (wonder) seems to be the source of much development. Wonder itself, in the context of a free society, must continue to be encouraged, and at least be guided by such virtuous ideals that it would foster or enhance the human condition that we seek to improve... .
The mystery though, as to why we wonder, is still a mystery. Yet without it, we are just...?
We embrace mystery without even knowing it.
Your question does bring me back to a question which came up in my thread on Jung and God, which is whether the whole expression of our consciousness is the actual revelation of mysteries as revealed by 'God'. In that thread, I ended up exploring the whole paradox of belief in God, or the opposite. It certainly involves the question of God's existence, but probably involves so much more, especially the whole nature of consciousness, ranging from our own to the cosmic.
However, I think that when we touch upon this whole realm it so difficult because we are looking at the most complex mystery of all. The mystics have stood in awe, and philosophers have talked themselves into convoluted knots. But, it is indeed so complex, and covers the entire history of philosophy, ranging from the popular texts to the most esoteric .It is probably easier to consider consciousness itself, aside from whether we choose to speak of it as being derived from 'God'.
The underlying source of consciousness seems to me to be mysterious, or awesome, whether we call it God or refer to it in any other terminology. I am just surprised that some people don't see this as a mystery, or mysterious at all.
Of course, people delve into this question, and in doing so have developed a deeper understanding of who we are, what is our place, and where lies the meaning. It is just that this forum ideas are relatively static, and conformist in nature, and by just remaining here, one develops into an extended carbon copy. If you want to develop further, then you cannot be limited by the static assumptions and knowledge within which this forum is cemented in.
If you wish to extend in new directions, just PM me, and I'll give you references. Your mode of of travel and direction has to shift.
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes". [Proust]
It's like this –
meditate[i] : contemplate
mantra : meta
breath : rhythm
silence : melody
cycle : spiral
labyrinth : maze
waterfall : ocean
eclipse : stars
void : horizon[/i]
( ... )
eternity : philosophy
In every tradition, it seems, the mystic seeks to escape from time (re: e.g. moksha) whereas the philosopher, as I understand her, defies – problematizes – what Cioran calls "the fall into time" (via e.g. ek-stasis, or "unselfing") ... in order to escape from eternity (of monotonous subjectivity, or "fate") if, without irony, only for brief, scattered, moments.
You are probably correct to speak of 'subjective monotony' as it is the opposite to the contemplation of the mysterious. In life, there can be gravitational between the extremes. Perhaps the search within philosophy is about seeking to escape from this monotony. How and in what way the mysterious is solved is likely to have on outcome on us. It may be that if the answers arrived at dispelled the mysterious altogether we would feel more trapped in the subjective monotony than ever.
In philosophy I/we refer to horizons rather than "the mysterious"; it's not to be "solved" but to be contemplated while I/we think work create love & suffer ...
He not busy being born....
Which reminds me of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGxjIBEZvx0
You are quite right to query my use of the word 'solved' and, strangely, I don't think that anyone has done so far. I am turning it into the language of detective games. It must stem back to my childhood games and reading of 'The Famous Five' books.
Aside from solving philosophy mysteries, I went out exploring to see what has reopened, and I managed to buy a Peter Gabriel compilation in a record shop. I haven't played it yet, but it may help with contemplation. The whole idea of contemplation is much calmer in tone, whereas solving does seem to arise from anxiety for answers, or existential anguish.
[i]"Look out kid
It's somethin' you did
God knows when
But you're doing it again"[/i]
Amor fati, Bob! :victory:
:
That song just strikes me as one of the best little pieces of rock'n'roll.
Helps folks get to :starstruck: .
:up:
Also (kinda what you already said) the very meanings of God, free will, and so on might be there in the actual influences on our shared existence, like ripples in a pond. (I mean look for meaning in use, in what goes on in the context of our muttering.)
The whole question of shared existence is a very important aspect of knowledge and the way we go about our individual searching. This is where the relativism of our times gets particular complex.
Yesterday, I was chatting to someone who is Muslim and is married to a Christian. He was saying that if they have children, he does not think that it will be difficult to bring them up with this combination of beliefs. As he spoke, I was thinking that if I was brought up such a combination of beliefs I would be rather confused. However, the way in which my friend described the way he saw it was of how it is possible to assemble the parts we find helpful from various belief systems.
After that conversation, I was wondering whether we are in the position of doing that in our current time and to what extent does that work? Does it mean that we choose what we like and reject the rest? Surely, we need to go beyond what we like and dislike. However, even if we go beyond that, it still means that we are building up our ideas from the fragments of a relativist culture. Even I, who was brought up within Catholicism as a child, have to admit that I went on to develop my own ideas, and am still doing so, in this context. I think that the whole way we approach the big questions must be so different from when people spent their lives embracing one shared worldview. Of course, there were probably divergences and some meeting of different beliefs, but not to the extent of the present time. So, even though we are in shared belief systems in certain ways, we are more likely to go solo in our journeying.
That does seem to be the way of the times we live in. It's easy to take for granted, but it was a revolutionary idea.
[quote=Tom Jefferson]
The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subjects to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
https://wmpeople.wm.edu/asset/index/cvance/sartre
I'm not saying Sartre is 100% right, but it's like Jefferson taken to the next level. It's not just or essentially a loss of God but also a loss of trust in the 'adults' who run the world. The child sees that the world is not run wisely. Like Lords of the Flies when a warship rescues the kids. The 'grownups' are playing the same mad game on a larger scale. The line about 'responsible for all men' indicates a healthy seriousness. We set examples for others. We want community, to live according to principles with others, however difficult it is to find and establish them.
Maybe it's like a town in the middle of a forest. We all are expected to go into the forest (our private lives) and experiment. But the town, where we all have to live with one another, is subject to rules.
You ask me if I know Sartre. Strangely, I just began reading 'Being and Nothingness' this week. I am finding it hard work really. The one quote which seems to stand out for me so far is,
'Kierkergaard describing anguish in the face of what lacks characterises it as anguish in the face of freedom. But Heidegger, whom we know to have been greatly influenced by Kierkergaard considers anguish instead as the apprehension of nothingness.'
Personally, I think that the idea of nothingness is the worst possibility when contemplating the mysterious.
IMO, it's a personal issue whether they are swept away or not. Take the God issue. For some people, including me, this is settled. Doesn't mean I can convince others they have nothing to worry about on this score. I can give reasons, but that's all. Same with free will, which was only briefly but once sincerely an issue for me as I was losing my faith of God, to some degree because I couldn't make sense of free will in the context of eternal judgment and the problem of evil, etc., but also because I was exposed to the wider world and books from that world. Life after death fits in here too. I guess I let go of all of them at the same time. It happens slowly, but there's a point where one is conscious of it, one is emotionally beyond former worries.
I can vaguely imagine events that could change this view, but they'd have to be extreme. I would need to be visited by an angel & flown to Heaven or something.
FWIW, I think linguistic philosophy isn't purely negative. It allowed me, anyway, to see language in a new way, but that means seeing 'mind' in a new way, seeing our profound connection, that the idea of us as lonely ghosts in the machine is fundamentally flawed. In short, I am a 'we' first and an 'I' second. Or that's where I ended up. Might even sound mystical, and maybe some 'mystics' were misunderstood linguistic philosophers. That's only 50% joke.
Yeah, it's a slog. I've never read every page. But I have a paperback that includes the chapter Existential Psychoanalysis, and there are some great passages in that. Have you looked at Nausea? Probably a more pleasant intro. I'd recommend just jumping around in Being and Nothingness. Or personally I hate reading anything that bores me. I trust my guts.
Is it the nothingness of death without an afterlife that messes with you? Or the idea of the emptiness of all things ? (Vanity, all is vanity...)?
[quote=Nausea]
For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad of tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves.... I would like to hold them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stopping one, there would only remain in my hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions.
[/quote]
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre
I think that whether progress has been made in the progress of ideas. There is so little consensus in shared ideas and so much fragmentation. Some can make sense of it, but I think that many people are overwhelmed and drift more in the direction of light entertainment rather than asking deeper questions.
I am reading an ebook of 'Being and Nothingness' and it would probably be easier in a paper copy. I remember looking at the book in a library and thinking that it looked boring, but I am finding reading it to be a kind of meditative experience. But, I am taking the book slowly.
I think really one of the worst forms of nothingness I would see is if there is no life after death. I do think that this life is worth focusing upon, but it just seems that for some people that there is so much pain and suffering. If that is all there is, that seems so sad. However, I also see the possibility of extinction of humanity as an even worse form of nothingness, far worse than the thought of my own death.
I love that you mention the second death of the species as a greater terror. I have thought about that too. My secular version of partial immorality is that each generation replaces the last. We all participate in a grand conversation. Our selves are mostly inherited fragments of this conversion in new bodies, but each generation adds a little something and something is perhaps forgotten.
[quote = link]
Unlike sense experience, thought is essentially communicable. Thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual. It is the activity of spirit, to which Hegel famously referred in the Phenomenology as “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’” (Hegel [1807] 1977: 110). Pure spirit is nothing but this thinking activity, in which the individual thinker participates without himself (or herself) being the principal thinking agent. That thoughts present themselves to the consciousness of individual thinking subjects in temporal succession is due, not to the nature of thought itself, but to the nature of individuality, and to the fact that individual thinking subjects, while able to participate in the life of spirit, do not cease in doing so to exist as corporeally distinct entities who remain part of nature, and are thus not pure spirit.
A biological species is both identical with and distinct from the individual organisms that make it up. The species has no existence apart form these individual organisms, and yet the perpetuation of the species involves the perpetual generation and destruction of the particular individuals of which it is composed. Similarly, Spirit has no existence apart from the existence of individual self-conscious persons in whom Spirit becomes conscious of itself (i.e., constitutes itself as Spirit). Just as the life of a biological species only appears in the generation and destruction of individual organisms, so the life of Spirit involves the generation and destruction of these individual persons. Viewed in this light, the death of the individual is necessitated by the life of infinite Spirit.
...
Arguing thus, Feuerbach urged his readers to acknowledge and accept the irreversibility of their individual mortality so that in doing so they might come to an awareness of the immortality of their species-essence, and thus to knowledge of their true self, which is not the individual person with whom they were accustomed to identify themselves. They would then be in a position to recognize that, while “the shell of death is hard, its kernel is sweet” (GTU 205/20), and that the true belief in immortality is
a belief in the infinity of Spirit and in the everlasting youth of humanity, in the inexhaustible love and creative power of Spirit, in its eternally unfolding itself into new individuals out of the womb of its plenitude and granting new beings for the glorification, enjoyment, and contemplation of itself. (GTU 357/137)
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/
I agree with Feuerbach, so that the second death is more troubling than the typical first death. I really don't know why the second death doesn't bother me more. It should, but it doesn't. I think age is a big factor.
We might say the same about the various interpretations of quantum physics. Yet, the fact that there are various interpretations with no clear consensus (yet) does not indicate a lack of progress. Surely, lack of progress would mean the absence of ideas.
Thanks for the link to Feuerbach. I will try to have a read of some of his ideas.
Yes, I am sure that you are right that there is a lot of progress. It may be that we just need more synthetic understanding rather than simply more new ideas in the future.
I have never imagined that there was a life after death. Nothingness has never held any terrors for me. I think resolving this issues is usually about the should and oughts we have churning around inside us.
Quoting j0e
Nice. I think similarly.
I'm glad to hear it. Please say more if you feel like it, here or on the Blue Book thread. I don't like the image of linguistic philosophers as spoilsports, tho some of them can be. Wittgenstein is psychedelic even. I'd count Derrida and Rorty also in this camp. Rorty ended up reminding me of the Tao...liquefying the world, you might say.
I would imagine that you probably never believed in life after death because you weren't brought up in a religious background. I was taught to believe in heaven and hell as concrete truths, just like the alphabet or times tables. The possibility of going to hell is probably more scary than no life after death. Of course, the whole idea of hell was probably used in history in a very negative way, to frighten people.
However, I think that the idea of life after death has been one which has prevailed in history, within religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism. My understanding is that the Buddha was uncertain. One interesting area is not just whether it exists but what form it would take, with the possibility of reincarnation being so different to an eternity in heaven or hell. Also, within Christianity there does appear to be a discrepancy between whether after death one waits until a resurrection at the end of the world, or whether one exists as an immortal soul.
I first began reading on all the diverse views when I was set an essay at college, 'Is there life after death?' I continued reading and do find it a fascinating area within religious thinking. But, of course, we can find ourselves in heaven and hell in this life rather than this one. In particular, I think that Aldous Huxley's 'The Doors of Perception/ Heaven and Hell' is particularly interesting because it shows the whole dimension of entering into these states. His writing is based on his use of Mescalin, but these states have also been accessed by religious practices, such as meditation and fasting. Also, Huxley's view draws upon the perspective of Bergson in seeing the brain as filtering down of consciousness. This is different to the way most neuroscientists see consciousness, but I do think that it does provide an interesting alternative view.
That's very enticing. I am not well read in this area. But the centrality of language can not be understated. I have worked for many years in the area of addictions and mental illness. In work with people it is often the words that are used, the stories that people carry about themselves that prevent recovery. Change the wording, the belief changes, the life changes. People can have 'magical' transformations when the language about their lives and problems is re-written. But I don't want to suggest that this is simple and that it always works.
Not true. I had church and a Christian education until I was 17. Even before I could read, stories of the afterlife held no interest. Nevertheless I consider the parable of the good Samaritan the most significant lesson in my life and Christianity's lasting legacy in the West.
Quoting Jack Cummins
A number of middle class people I have known used this book as a justification for substance misuse. I don't blame Huxley. I personally found the book dull. Personal taste.
That's fair enough, and I do agree that the about the parable of good the Samaritan being central. Just imagine a group of philosophers standing debating consciousness and ignoring the person lying down suffering on the floor beside them.
I do agree that some people have used Huxley's book to justify substances. I am surprised that you found it dull. I read it while I was at school and was so taken aback by it that I just couldn't stop talking about, and I am still doing it here.
I like the posts about music. It has been instrumental in my own journey. Exploring the dimensions of el corazón :)
Language is a mystery. I don't really like the sound of my own language. It's too coarse, it sounds like ducks or geese. That's the greatest thing about written language. Nobody will notice.
I read somewhere that grammar & grimoire and spell & spelling share the same etymology. If that's the case then philosophers are like sorcerers. We shape our realities through our writings.
We are all blessings in an ocean of love
I do agree that language is mysterious because it captures so much shared meaning. Sound is important too, and conveys so much beyond words, as in music. It is also interesting that we all like such different music. My favourite band of all time is probably U2 and I am aware that so many people can't bear them.
One thing I also find is that depending on how we are feeling can make the music sound different. I remember once when I had flu, all I wanted to listen to was pop, and it was if my ears were different physically. I can't relate to classical music, but I think that is probably more because I was not brought up with it. Most of us don't like the sound of our own voices, and they sound different in our heads to when they are recorded. However, the thing which also struck me as so mysterious as a child was how music is captured in grooves.
Of course, there are physical laws involved but the transmission of communication, especially in invisible forms seem to have a certain element of mystery. That is not because we cannot explain it, but the very fact that it is possible at all. It seems amazing that things work as they do so well and, as someone reminded me a couple of days ago we should not forget the basic principle of love, in the whole process of life.
I just noticed your comment, 'Wittgenstein is psychedelic'. Taking the word psychedelic in it's true meaning, as simply mind expanding, I think that you have just recommend him to me, because, at this stage I have barely read his work at all.
I'm trying to get a 'Blue Book' thread going. There are some great quotes there that might inspire you, and I'd enjoy hearing your reactions to them. 'Mind expanding' is what I had in mind.
:lol: For sure Wittgenstein is that, it's part of his style. Heidegger can be one too, and others.
Quoting Jack Cummins
:clap:
That's the right way to think about these things I think. All of it, at bottom, is utterly mysterious. Of course as applied to the world, then no, nothing is mysterious: the world is as it is and not some other way. If the world were another way, it would still be the world, and not, by-itself mysterious.
But for us as human beings almost any question we ask, we can rightly ask "but why this way?" We have to conclude this is as far as we can say it just is. But it's still totally baffling.
:up:
Right, and you make a good point. Language is huge, but it doesn't substitute for everything.
I will have a look at your Blue book thread. It is simply that I usually only participate in threads of books I have read already. I know that you include a link, so I may look at it, but I have 8 books which I am reading at the same time already. I want to read Wittgenstein, probably 'On Certainty', to expand my not probably at the same time as the ones which I am reading as my mind would probably explode, or implode.
:sparkle: :smirk:
Quoting Jack Cummins
What about the "nothingness" that preceded your thingyness? I can't imagine "no life before birth" troubles you. "Reincarnation", you say? Well then "life after death" follows, so no "nothingness" just amnesia (i.e. new body, new brain, new memories-to-be-formed); not so bad if you can believe in such fairytales. I can't get past the semantic gabberwocky of north of the north pole whenever I hear the mantra "life after death" ...
I agree with you, Jack, about human extinction; ineluctable nothingness – the radical contingency of the species, its fossils & histories, and our bloodied parade of civilizations – an echo of sighs & moans, laughter & screams fading even now and forever into oblivion. Music is made of silence, which merely interrupts with sudden soundscapes, each piece (i.e. an ephemeral world) ending like raindrops in the ocean. It's terrible knowing, feeling bone deep, that everything and everyone we ever knew and loved – and that we never knew or will never know who also knew and loved or will know and will love – will one day very soon in the cosmic scheme of things be utterly forgotten as if all of it, all of us, had never existed.
[quote=Ozymandias]I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said – “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
[b]My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair![/b]
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."[/quote]
(Emphasis is mine.)
And knowing this, how can this recurring nothingness have not already happened in the sense of being a priori – the very structure of our minds, that is, what enables us to think at all? Think what? Think the 'before there were any thinkers and after all thinkers are gone' ...
Think what? Absence (e.g. Democritean void). It's the blindspot that enables vision. Silence that inspires – calls for – music. Space that allows touch and motion. Oblivion – extinction (i.e. contingency) – that drives thinking to 'think no-more-thinking'. I forget who quipped Man built civilization in order to distract himself from the abyss; thus: 'we are for now, ergo we think' here & now – this is all there ever is.
We are – this entire world (or galaxy) is – just one candle out of countless trillions of other candles a-flicker in this boundless void, barely illuminating oblivion, which, perhaps, before winking-out at last, we may light another wick with all that we ever were.
update 4.19.21 pm – Yeah, isn't it pity?
Quoting j0e
:up: Yes, Witty transformed my thinking too, along with the help of Buber & Levinas among others. I've always wanted to read a 'phenomenology of, or expressed in, the 2nd person (You)' and not being a phenomenologist I can't bear to write the study I've still not read. Why is this relevant? Because I intuit the 2nd person (you – plural & singular simultaneously) as the aufheben of 1st person plural/singular (we/I (us)) and 3rd person (s/he, it (them)) – self & non-self / more-than-self (other) – at once a fundamentally ethical address and metaphysical stance. 2nd person makes explicit as well as problematizes inclusive commons (what I call 'agency') of natality, empathy, language, discourse-dialogue-dialectics, intellect, knowledge, etc.
Intensities of sublimation! The other (you) is/are a frontier, horizon, Beyond? from/of monotonous subjectivity? Striving toward (and as?) the more-than-self other? Do unknown unknowns fit here somewhere? We might be 'thrusting against the limits of language' but I like it.
Quoting 180 Proof
I can't remember exactly which thinker to credit most. It all slowly came into focus, that I was a 'we' first and an 'I' second. I imagine that this sounds wacky or mystical when I view it as the result of critical thinking, of smashing certain inherited errors. There's no dance without the dancers, but there are no dancers without the dance. Language is (part of) the dance. The dancers come & go, preserving the dance, which is also like a flame that leaps from melting candle to melting candle. As you say, it's also ethical, and even critical thinking is essentially ethical (a 'gentle(wom)an's agreement, a respect for the autonomy and intelligence of the other, of the other in one's self even.)
Quoting 180 Proof
O what music! Somehow it's even more beautiful that way.
I feel you're coming at this in the right way. But you seem stuck in scholasticism.
You say " Endless books have been written on these subjects. However, no one seems to have come up with any clear answers, and it seems to me that they remain as unsolved mysteries".
The problems are not unsolved, but to find answers you would need to adventure beyond the university curriculum. I cannot write an essay here but if you explore the idea of neutral; metaphysical theory you'll find it solves all philosophical problems. The reason it is not taught is that it is mysticism. Here there are no 'problems of philosophy'.
If the professors studied and taught the whole of philosophy then we would not be speaking of unsolvable problems.
Trouble is that in my experience the topic is too difficult for a public forum. .
Can you provide a name/book title associated with this?
I agree that this is an extremely difficult topic for a public forum, and it does seem that so many of the topics are, but we live in extraordinary times, with most sectors of interaction being closed. This is the first public forum I have ever used and I have experienced diverse discussions people from all over the world. In many ways this has been more liberating than the studies which I did which were with most people on courses coming from similar backgrounds and little life experience.
I definitely don't wish to be 'stuck in scholasticism'. I love reading, but I don't believe that all the answers can be found in books at all. I am not sure that there is such a thing as neutral metaphysical theory. I try to get a certain point of balance but we all have inevitable biases. You say that you can't write an essay here, and I appreciate you feeling that way. However, if you write a little one on the thread, I will most certainly read it and write a comment in reply, but, of course, I can see that you may have reservations about doing so.
I definitely used to wonder about life before birth, as much as life after death. That was because one of my earliest memories was of being in a cot and of a sudden awakening, such as before this life, rather than waking up from sleep. But, maybe it was my imagination playing tricks on me in early childhood.
Perhaps, I keep an too much of an open mind, rather than being committed to any one viewpoint. I do think that I need to read some phenomenology and Wittgenstein because they seem to have such potential insights. But, sometimes, the more I read, the harder it becomes to find my own voice. I know that I am often criticised for reading too much, but it seems to be such a complex balance, juxtaposing personal ideas with those of others, especially the significant writers.
I am interested in what you have to say here about your experience, of the Eureka moment. That is because even though I am interested in your thread about esotericism, it seems a bit vague and abstract. I struggle to search for answers in esoteric thought and philosophy, but it all seems shrouded in mystery. However, I am in favour of demystification, to try to find ways of making the unknown more knowable.
If only we could find one book which would give us the answers...
Do you mean my realizing that the 'I' is primarily a 'we' ? As I see it, quite a few philosophers talk about this. I consider the realization the result of intense critical thinking. So it's not esoteric, since the dialectical ladder is out there for anyone to climb. It was no single book. I'm trying to sketch the spiderweb in the Blue Book thread, link the writers.
For me the dialectical path led through the most isolated thinkers. Because I was fascinated by Stirner, for example, I read Marx's critique of him in The German Ideology, which demystifies the ego-ghost.
You speak of distinguishing between the I and the we, but, perhaps many people remain isolated in the form of the 'I', feeling cut off from a sense of belonging, and pursue the questions of existence more as remote, isolated individuals.
Right. They feel isolated for various reasons (perhaps they would benefit from more friends or lovers or a better relationship with family, when possible) and also for ideological reasons. The 'ghost in the machine' idea can look like the tough-minded opposite of a weak-minded sentimentality that speaks of our profound connection. This connects to a cult of individuality that has its good side but also its absurdities. The big emotional change that's happened for me over the years is something letting go of the snowflake fantasy and realizing that what's good in me is the same thing that's good in other people. The world will be OK without me. This particular face and name are not that important and not that interesting (they matter in my personal life but not to the Conversation.)
One gets bored with the idiosyncratic self-stuff and genuinely wants to move toward what we have in common, the good stuff, as found in good philosophy, literature, music, etc. The thing to overcome (here comes the folk-psychology with a dash of Freud) is 'his majesty the baby' who wants to own the conversation, own philosophy-science-religion. Stirner wrote about the 'sacred' which is kind of X that represents that fantasy lever that individuals use to authorize their royal infantilism.
Going back a moment,I remember really fearing the first death, my own little death, because I was egoistic and thought I was loaded with unique potential. Of course in some way we all are loaded with a unique potential, but the species is not so fragile to really depend on this or that individual. IMO, half of the work in studying philosophy is emotional, a matter of the heart that becoming ready to let go of self-flattering illusions that are simultaneously self-isolating (the bitterness of an unsatisfied greed for recognition of one's 'genius' or esoteric truth that 'can't be put into words.')
As far as I can see there is a whole tension between being an individual and belonging. We live in a world where many are excluded and isolated even when they would long to be part of a larger group. We live in a very fragmented world, in which people are often seen as numbers, and are compelled rather than choose to find meaning on an individual level.
Of course, I am sure that this is so variable, but many are not embedded within communities as much as in earlier historical epochs. In this way, they are more likely to not supported in cultural systems of belief.
Very true. Our pluralistic, individualistic age is tough. In some ways we are encouraged to obsess over ourselves, market ourselves. It's the bleak background of those beautiful moments where we actually connect. I experience the dead writers I've mentioned as friends. IMO, anyone who passionately reads the good stuff is a deeply social being, as I was, even when I hadn't yet found my place in the world (not that one is ever done doing this, but one can feel more at home than before, and one can be playful and at ease more often but never always.)
I stared a thread on this issue. IMO, we have the different (fuzzy) categories for a reason. It's not just mysticism that solves the problems of philosophy. Pain pills work too. So does a religious creed. But to be a philosopher is roughly to approach things 'rationally,' which is to take a certain ideal for granted.
:up:
The 'totality' seems to be beyond explanation, since explanation links this to that. But there's nothing outside the Everything that we can link it to. The 'system' hovers over an abyss.
I do agree that some of the most beautiful moments 'are when we actually connect' with others, and, it is probably these make life bearable. I also agree that some of the dead writers can be 'good friends' and it is probably on this level that we turn to read the great philosophers and other writers of the past. A few dead singers, such as Hendrix and John Lennon also offer some wisdom and friendship, as we face unknown answers, too.
Hendrix and Lennon are great mentions. Some of the best times (the opposite of alienated and lonely times) I've had with other human beings involved listening to or making music. Do you like Bob Dylan ? He's a great synthesis of concept and sound, a critic of the world who also has a transcendent sense of humor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hr3Stnk8_k
Books on this topic are rare and usually difficult. My own is in the editing stage
Immediately relevant are Nagarjuna's Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way., Bradley's Appearance and Reality and George Spencer Brown's Laws of Form...
These authors dispose of all theories except one. Then it's just a question of researching the one that remains. Regrettably I know of no book that does this in a simple and concise way. I'm trying to finish one, but meanwhile...
...You might like to read a couple of essays I have on Bernardo';s blog. Both are on the same page. One is about the marketing of philosophy, the other about Nagarjuna and his solution for metaphysics. Both are on the same page here https://www.bernardokastrup.com/search?updated-max=2018-03-03T18:46:00%2B01:00&max-results=7&start=55&by-date=false
They are not comprehensive but they explain my comments above. Good luck. The area between mysticism and metaphysics is not well explored in the literature of either, so it's every man/women for him/herself. . . .
. '
, ,
I think that Bob Dylan is a wonderful artist. He is perhaps a better writer than a singer. My own funny experience was liking him while I was at school and hardly anyone knowing who he was because he was from an earlier era. I had his name scrawled across my school bag and someone in a different year group thought that was my name. But, I would say that albums like 'Blood on the Tracks', some of the earlier ones, as well as, 'Shot of Love, and, 'Oh Mercy, I see as outstanding, and they are like worldviews in their own right.
Hi Jack
What you say makes sense but it explains what I meant about scholasticism. You say that you're not sure there is such a thing as a neutral theory, yet this is the formal foundation of the Perennial philosophy. This is the insanity of our education system. The only metaphysical theory that works is not taught in out universities or even understood. This leads the rest of us to assume metaophysics is impossible. In fact a solution is right under our noses. .
Here is a brief outline.
A theory that awards reality positive properties such that is is this as opposed to that is positive or extreme. All positive or extreme metaphysical theories fail in logic. This result is demonstrable and well-established and it is why scholastic philosophers cannot make sense of metaphysics. They reject a neutral theory because it is mysticism. This is what I meant by 'stuck in scholasticism'. .
If we do not reject mysticism but study the whole of philosophy then we have a theory that works and an answer for all metaphysical questions. These answers are irrefutable.
There is a complete agreement between metaphysicians as to the logical indefensibility of positive theories, and as there is only one alternative it is quite easy to prove that this is the only theory worth studying. Yet for the scholastics it is the only one they refuse to study. This leads to the daft idea that metaphysics is incomprehensible and Kant is the best we will ever do. In fact it's just a failure of scholarship.
For the mystical metaphysician Kant is a beginner. In academia he is a rare genius. It's a funny old world. A neutral theory underlies Bernardo;s non-dual Idealism and gives it a philosophical justification.
From your comments here I'd predict you're easily able to exceed the understanding of Kant. He identified the problem but we have to go elsewhere for a solution. If he had had the internet I'll bet he would have had no trouble finding it. .
I'm happy to say more but will wait for any questions.
. .
PS. I just noticed you're a fan of Huxley's Perennial Philosophy. In metaphysics this philosophy depends on a neutral metaphysical theory for which Reality is a Unity and Consciousness and Reality are the same phenomenon. This states that all positive fundamental theories are absurd because they are false. Nobody has ever presented a better explanation or even one that works. .
. . .
I am just popping out now, but will read what you have written later, and look at your blogs and write a response to you later.
Hi Joe
I am not a fan of fuzzy categories. I feel you are not giving mysticism its due since pain pills and religious beliefs are obviously not a solution for anything. When I say 'solution' I mean a rational and reasonable solution that can be explained to others and that does, in fact, solve the problems. I would certainly agree that we should approach things rationally, and it is my complaint against academics that they rarely do this. Rather, on ideological grounds they choose not to study the only fundamental theory that works, or, at least, the only one they cannot prove does not work. .This is not rational behaviour but plain stupidity. . .
That could be the case. Or it could be that we simply don't have the capacity to peer into nature any further. Explanations only go so far before we are forced to conclude that "that's just the way things are". But why are they this way? Who knows?
:)
Well I think it disappoints just about any philosopher to discover/decide that language isn't what they thought it was, that it doesn't play as nice as they hoped it would.
Quoting FrancisRay
But to me that sounds like old-fashioned philosophy. I encourage you to share your solutions. Quoting FrancisRay
That's a bold statement. But make your case, please.
I guess my argument was from the 'grammar' of the word explanation. If 'explanation' is understood to mean linking one thing to another, different thing that explains it, the reality-as-a-hole has no thing that can serve this purpose. We can speculate that reality-as-a-whole is a failed concept, like the set of all sets.
Or, as you say, we can think of our presumed cognitive limits, given our finite brains and the finite time we've had to think as a species.
Elsewhere you have hinted that insights about reality come from the nondualist philosophies. It is my understanding that the nondualist paths, in general, emphasize that reason (logos) is misleading and that true insights about reality are gleaned only through meditation (direct experience with 'Truth', as opposed to experience mediated through logos). Do you suppose that the enlightenment of the West (grounded in reason) is compatible with the enlightenment of the East (grounded in experience of pure awareness - or at least non-rational enquiry) are reconcilable? Is that the aim of perrenial philosophy? Edit: I suppose not, considering that perennial philosophy is a comparative study of mysticism and usually doesn't take western philosophical perspectives into account.
:fire:
I've actually come to love his strange voice. Very cool that you were rocking his name on your bag! He was already a classic when I was young. When I was in 7th grade it was Guns & Roses and Metallica on kids' shirts. I love Blood but also Desire and then the early albums right after he went electric.
:up:
Yes, that sounds about right."Reality as a whole" in not a coherent concept in that, it's not clear what aspects should be denied the status of "reality" or what such an account would amount too, there's way too many things to consider.
Sorry to hear that your parents hated such music as U2. My mother regards, 'With or Without You' and, 'I Still Haven't Found What I am Looking For' as two of her favourite songs. I love most of U2's albums, possibly favouring the earlier ones, such as 'War' and 'The Unforgettable Fire'. Recently, I have started to really like, 'Pop'. But, one which I once played and found so essential during a time when I was feeling really depressed was 'Achtung Baby', especially the lyrics. But, I do think that Bono has such a wonderful voice.
I like so many bands,and I see the 'The Whole of the Moon', by the Waterboys as being an anthem for philosophical searching. I believe that it was really about Prince.
I still go to record shops like when I was a teenager, seeking new music. I am just sad that so many of the music shops have shut down because I used to spend so many time browsing on them and I think searching for music on the internet is just not the same at all.
I do agree that we only have the 'capacity to peer into nature' so far. But if we were able to understand it all it would be like having the mind of a god. I think that the reason why it is so hard to go so far is that so much of life is invisible. We understand certain laws and I do think that the reason so much is unknown is due to the invisible aspects of reality.
Sure, that's a problem too.
But like you implied, aiming at having something like "the mind of God" is extremely unlikely. I think we should be grateful we've discovered so much as it is. A "humble" species coming along and understanding a portion of the universe is a big deal.
We'll surely discover more, but our understanding of newer aspects of physics for example, might be quite straining. The physics we already have is difficult enough as is.
Same here, there's only one store left in the neighbouring town. They seem to have a 'Dale Carnegie' cause they are surviving covid really well. You can listen to new releases and they have some free posters.
I don't buy that much anymore but I keep whatever I have in the CD-tower in my bedroom. Sentiment, you know.
I actually only have two greatest hits compilations + aforementioned album. But I can imagine it getting you through depression. I've many good memories linked to their songs. Wonderful you and your mom can relate in such a way.
Whole of the Moon. I heard it for the first time in Australia. When I came back I immediately looked it up.
It used to make me so emotional. I guess I'm more okay with the content of the song now. I'm realizing the lyrics are worth investigating more though.
It's great talking about this.
I had a look at the blog you referred to and the arguments you suggested. I have to admit that I have only read Kant superficially. I have read some of Huxley's books, and have a copy of 'The Perennial Philosophy', but haven't read it. So, perhaps, I need to be more rather than less of a scholar. It is interesting that you seem to think that the perennial philosophy is the one which really works. If I may manage to read Huxley's book later this week, after I finish some of the other books which I am reading currently.
:up:
I agree that it mostly fails as a concept. That being the case, maybe a 'total' explanation also fails as a concept?
You say that 'reality' fails as a concept. I can see that it is abstract, but are you dismissing the the term at all. I can see that explanations for many aspects of it are complex. However, I do think that the idea of reality works to encompass our experience and basis of knowledge.
I think it fails as a concept too. I don't know what such a thing would even amount to in practice.
I'm just suggesting that the concept of the 'totality' (all of the reality) is problematic. I'm not saying that we can't or shouldn't use it but that perhaps in a certain argument that its misleading.
In general I don't think words have much useful meaning independent of context. Metaphorically words are like the notes that only become music when strung together in a human situation.
Quoting Jack Cummins
:up:
I agree. We can use 'reality' is many useful and illuminating ways. Recall that the point was raised in a particular context, namely the limits of explanation. Does it make sense to explain everything? For instance, if we say that God created the world and therefore explains the world, then the world is not everything and does not include God. To explain everything is to explain God and world. In other words, why God? More can and has been said on this. What are explanations? What do we mean by why? What do we mean by everything?
I don't think you have to be a scholar, as long as one is a practitioner. But for a philosophical understanding of Huxley it would be vital to study non-dualism and a neutral metaphysical theory. Since Huxley was writing much has changed and these days one can find non-duality teachers all over youtube. It's a fascinating area of study, and the most important of all, so good luck.
"Elsewhere you have hinted that insights about reality come from the nondualist philosophies. It is my understanding that the nondualist paths, in general, emphasize that reason (logos) is misleading and that true insights about reality are gleaned only through meditation (direct experience with 'Truth', as opposed to experience mediated through logos)".
There are some subtle issues here. Reason is not misleading but, as you say, it cannot reveal truth. What is can do is reveal where truth may be found, and it reveals that it may be found in meditation and through the practices of Yoga. It is often thought that logic is misleading, but if you read the Buddhist sage Nagarjuna you'll see this is not the case. He uses it it to prove the Middle Way doctrine of the Buddha. It is just that logic has to be employed much more carefully than it usually is in Western philosophy.. . . . .
"Do you suppose that the enlightenment of the West (grounded in reason) is compatible with the enlightenment of the East (grounded in experience of pure awareness - or at least non-rational enquiry) are reconcilable?"
Absolutely. Their compatibility is demonstrable. But there's no such thing as 'enlightenment of the West' (or East). It's the same enlightenment in all possible universes. The discoveries of the mystics are in full agreement with reason and analysis. Their doctrine is the only one that works in logic. This is what Nagarjuna proves. It is actually fairly obvious, since academic thinkers are agreed that all the others don't work. It;s just that they don't usually study the one that does. . . . . .
"I suppose not, considering that perennial philosophy is a comparative study of mysticism and usually doesn't take western philosophical perspectives into account."
The perennial philosophy is a philosophy, not a comparative survey. It has no use for the persectives of other philosophies. The mystics rejects the western perspective on philosophy and this is why it is so much simpler and unproblematic. The (stereotypical) western perspective is dualism, and this is not defensible in logic. Metaphysics endorses only one theory.
If the universe is reasonable then it follows that logic and experience will lead us to the same truth, and mysticism discovers that both do in fact lead to the same truth, Thus the Buddha advises us, if we are doubtful, to give his teachings a lot of thought.
if you look around you;ll see that everybody who rejects the non-dual doctrine of the Perennial philosophy cannot understand metaphysics. This is because all other theories don't work. Either the Unity of All is a fact as the enlightened ones tell us, or metaphysics is incomprehensible. There is no third option and this is demonstrable in logic
Hence the low view of metaphysics in the West, where it remains incomprehensible. . . . .
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. . . . .
I actually find it so much easier to read than watch discussions on television or on YouTube. The one thing which I would query is that you say things have changed so much since Huxley, and presumably you mean that it is our understanding of 'reality' which is changing. I do agree that dualism is being rejected gradually. However, there is so much of a tendency towards reductive materialism. One perspective which I find useful is the systems view of Fritjof Capra. Rather than seeing mind and body he sees them as interconnected , with mind being imminent in nature.
Good old youtube. For nonduality teachers on YT I'd recommend Mooji, Sadhguru, Rupert Spira and Osho, but there are many more.
I'm not sure the general understanding is improving, but since Huxley non-dualism has come out of the closet and mysticism is much better explained.these days.
As for mind and matter, Sadhguru's favourite advice for newbies is to spend time telling oneself 'I am not the body. I am not the mind'. What we are would be what connects and produces body and mind. . . .
The solution is to endorse a neutral metaphysical position, which is the formal philosophcial justification for the Perennial philosophy and non-dualism. if you intend to look into this I'll suggest some book titles. .
I hardly need to do much to justify the proposal that philosophers should study the whole of philosophy, and not just the bit they prefer. If they could falsify or refute the view |I;m expressing then fair enough, but they cannot and don't even bother to try. I have no respect for philosophers who live in an internet age but cannot even be bothered to acquaint themselves with the philosophy of the mystics, at least well enough to explain what's wrong with it. I see it as an academic scandal and a betrayal of the public's trust. I don't even think that to call this stupidity is a bold statement.
But I would concede it may cause trouble on internet forums.:)n
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I definitely agree in embracing the reflection of not being mind or body, entirely. I have read some writing of Osho. I am in agreement about studying the whole of philosophy, rather just exploring aspects which we prefer. With regard to your comment that many people do not bother with the ideas they the mystics in this age, what I think is happening is that people are starting to look at ideas on a more superficial level.
However, as you say, certain truths, which you describe as being mystic, if discussed fully on a forum may cause a scandal because they are dismissed so often. I really prefer the idea of esoteric to mystic, and there is a thread on the esoteric. However, that is mainly aimed at the idea of there being an inner circle ,rather than a discussion about the truth of ideas as such, which are the mysteries. It may be that discussion, of esoteric knowledge is too complex for forum discussion, because it lacks intimate connections between individuals.
Your question of what is everything is interesting. There is so much which we cannot explain. We have many grand theories and systems thinking, which tries to find ways of providing structures or frameworks. However, it does seem that our scope of understanding is limited. It may be a mixture of looking for explanations through the sciences, rational understanding, and searching for wisdom within oneself.
Some of the esoteric writers came up with answers, but as you realise their claims to exclusive truths were open to question. Nevertheless, some of the most esoteric writers, such as Rudolf Steiner, were seeking to explore the search, or attempt, to understand everything, insofar as that is possible for a human being. I am aware that is probably more in the area of spirituality, which is so unique and to each person.
Some might argue that the term, spiritual, is a cop out but, it does appear to me that it represents the boundary where we move into the subjective experience of truth. Philosophy, as a discipline, is more able to consideration to the more objective aspects of truth. However, individuals argue about this and, most are also wishing to find the ultimate truths on an objective level, so it is a complex web.
I do wonder whether it's exactly ultimate truths that we're seeking or rather a role for ourselves in this mess of a world. Who should I be? How should I be? A person might decide that certain questions are either not answerable or not after all the questions that matter to them. The goal for me is to be often (as often as is ethical/decent) in a state of creative play. A big part of this play, I must admit, is clarifying a vision of existence, trying to find grand truths, however fuzzy, and finding better and better words for them. A good analogy is worth paragraphs of abstractions.
I think that you make a good point, because, in most instances, we are not just looking for abstract truths, but ones which serve a purpose in helping us to understand our lives, and help us in the messiness of this. That is probably where those who see it from a religious perspective, or some kind of spiritual vision, usually believe that we can find some way of seeing and becoming part of the flow of the universe.
It may be that the extent to which we perceive ourselves as having such a connection is part of the reason why some people prefer a spiritual viewpoint, while others do not. However, whatever way, life can be extremely difficult, aside from looking for answers about ultimate truths. But, it seems likely to me that an essential aspect of any mystical viewpoint is connected to it having some kind of "healing' aspect, even though this may remain as subjective. Perhaps the subjective, personal healing element makes it easier to express their ideas in poetry sometimes, rather than as in the more abstract, rational form of philosophical arguments.
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I completely agree. I think the only thing that's generally resented or feared about mysticism is its perceived tendency to invade others' 'spiritual'-intellectual process with a certain arrogance. For me rationality is fundamentally ethical. It's an attitude toward others that manifests itself in embracing one's own fallibility, making a case for bold claims, listening to objections and adjusting one's fallible position in the light of such objections, and so on. I don't think we can perfectly articulate what it means to be rational (or good or ...). We do our best, and it's a big part of the Conversation.
If a mystic or student of mystics is satisfied or comforted by certain statements, they won't be interfered with in a free society. It's only when they bring their claims to market and impose them as truths-for-all that they'll encounter resistance.
Here's a blend of Popper/Kojeve that might be helpful. The primary act is the generation of a theory-myth. Imagine a pre-rational tradition where people simply bring a variety of such myths to market so that others may adopt them, because humans typically want their myths to become your myths to satisfy a desire for spiritual recognition. Now imagine the birth of a 'rational' tradition where it's not simply a matter of choosing myths according to which one feels best but rather of discussing them, locating contradictions and ambiguities, editing them, and combining them. In this light the rational tradition is dynamic, open-ended and conversational, whereas the mystical tradition is static & oracular (the Sage is understood to be complete, infallible, in direct possession of 'It.') One the beautiful ideas in Hegel (maybe the beautiful idea) is that all individual, mortal philosophers participate in a larger Conversation which is the self-consciousness of the species. They pick up the conversation, move it forward, and die as mortals must. But their lives are sanctified or lit up by participation in something greater than them. 'Know thyself' until 'nothing human is alien to me,' with the implication being that the self which is known is the universal or shared self.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Exactly. Even 'rational' philosophy depends on metaphors and analogies, so it's a matter of degree and style. I read Sartre as a prose-poet who finds words for strange aspects of experience. He uses terms like 'being' and 'nothingness' but this 'white mythology' is still poetic inasmuch as it articulates 'how it is' or how it feels to be (a certain kind of) human.
Quoting Jack Cummins
[quote=link]
In a 1927 letter to Sigmund Freud, Romain Rolland coined the phrase "oceanic feeling" to refer to "a sensation of ‘eternity’", a feeling of "being one with the external world as a whole", inspired by the example of Ramakrishna, among other mystics.[1][2] According to Rolland, this feeling is the source of all the religious energy that permeates in various religious systems, and one may justifiably call oneself religious on the basis of this oceanic feeling alone, even if one renounces every belief and every illusion.[3]
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_feeling
Some thinkers have simply made this feeling the essence. I've had some peak experiences that involved the generation/appreciation of metaphor/myth (along the lines of Christian mysticism) but, as much as the metaphor adds to & expresses the experience, the feeling is the main thing.
Perhaps music is the best language for the mystic (perhaps great musicians are 'mystics.')
I think that it is a major problem when people try to impose their views on anyone else, whether it is a mystic vision, or any other. It is unfortunate that people get so carried away with their way of seeing that they think that it is applicable to everyone else.
I agree that music and the other arts do involve entering into states of consciousness resembling the mystics. Even here, we have a problem with people disagreeing about the right way of seeing. I can't relate to classical music and I know that some of the rock/metal that I listen to is not compatible with others' view. We are hearing or tuning into different experiences of 'reality'. However, I don't write or perform music, although I use music to inspire me when I make visual art.
I definitely agree that Sartre is poetic. I discovered that when I began reading 'Being and Nothingness' recently. Perhaps this is because his writings are coming from a deeper level of experience. But, I am sure that not everyone can relate to prose, so it probably comes down to some common language, or some shared experience of a particular angle of perception.
Yes. I guess that's the central problem. Politically, decisions must be made. So we vote. Almost no one gets exactly what they want, but it's better than despotism. One huge issue that we have to decide is the boundary of the private sphere. Even what's yours and mine to decide personally is a matter that must be decided publicly. Issues like abortion and gun control are edge cases, in the US at least.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Right, and I think these are 'inner circles' in their way. There are classical music snobs and obscure punk rock music snobs and so on. So much of life in relatively affluent societies is about cultivating an image through what we consume, including the 'higher' things like music, art, and novels. IMO, lots of our angst involves this freedom we're condemned to. Instagram, for instance, is a torrent of envy-generating self-advertisement (a this-worldly Hell is created from images of a this-worldly false Heaven.)
I like John Berger's ideas on art, who has interpreted the neglected majority of oil paintings as expensive selfies. It's the exceptions to portraits of the rich and their abundance (or exceptional examples of even just this) that get celebrated as high art.
[quote=Berger]
Publicity is effective precisely because it feeds upon the real. Clothes, food, cars, cosmetics, baths, sunshine are real things to be enjoyed in themselves. Publicity begins by working on a natural appetite for pleasure. But it cannot offer the real object of pleasure and there is no convincing substitute for a pleasure in that pleasure's own terms. The more convincingly publicity conveys the pleasure of bathing in a warm, distant sea, the more the spectator-buyer will become aware that he is hundreds of miles away from that sea and the more remote the chance of bathing in it will seem to him. This is why publicity can never really afford to be about the product or opportunity it is proposing to the buyer who is not yet enjoying it. Publicity is never a celebration of a pleasure-in-itself. Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then makes him envious of himself as he might be. Yet what makes this self-which-he-might-be enviable? The envy of others. Publicity is about social relations, not objects. Its promise is not of pleasure, but of happiness : happiness as judged from the outside by others. The happiness of being envied is glamour.
Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest - if you do, you will become less enviable.
... ...
The bogus religiosity which now surrounds original works of art, and which is ultimately dependent upon their market value, has become the substitute for what paintings lost when the camera made them reproducible.
[/quote]
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2507145-ways-of-seeing
Berger focuses on paintings and modern advertisement photography, but clearly other cultural artifacts are caught up in this game. For intellectual types it's books, famous intellectuals, the 'right' intellectuals. This kind of critique of consumerism and vanity goes at least as far back as the Epicureans, who I understand to be escaping (among other things) this sad-manic hustle.
[quote=Epicurus]
Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.
[/quote]
The latter first and foremost. "Ultimate truths" are useless if they do not orient us to "a role for ourselves" in the grand scheme of things (i.e. "this mess of a world").
Quoting j0e
Beautiful, but I suspect you've read too much 'Laozi' or 'N?g?rjuna' (even possibly Spinoza) into that old Swabian neo-platonist.
Quoting j0e
To map the territory 1:1? No. Not if that map (i.e. that explanation of 'everything') is to be useful as a map (i.e. an explanation for anything).
"Why" ... which, of course, is question-begging (or infinitely regressive).
In my understanding, 'explanations' are models, or precise accounts, of how, under specifiable necessary and sufficient conditions, a particular state-of-affairs (A) transforms – can be caused by some agency to transform – into a particular state-of-affairs (B). The better, more useful and fecund explanations, are effable, falsifiable and defeasible.
"Why" pertains only to 'intentional agency' e.g. Why did you eat the soap? When asked Why do the stars twinkle on a clear night? one can only answer by translating the question as How do the stars twinkle on a clear night? because stars are not (recognizably) intentional agents, that is, they do not answer questions.
The colloquial term denotes anything at all (without exception) ... but does not posit "the All", which makes about as much sense "all the numbers".
Thank you, and guilty (almost) as charged. I confess that I've updated (fixed) Hegel here with the help of later thinkers. I know Spinoza so far only through Durant who adores him. I have spent some time with Laozi. Feuerbach & Kojeve shaped my repair of Hegel, and I must confess that Rorty (whom I don't think you like) was a big influence.
Quoting 180 Proof
I agree, though I do make allowances for 'large' metaphors. The world is 'the Vale of Soul-Making' or that sort of thing.
Quoting 180 Proof
That's an excellent definition. Perhaps you'll agree though that many itch for something More, without being able perhaps to explicate this 'more' (and which turns out to be just a role to play in 'this mess we're in.'
Quoting 180 Proof
That sounds like a sharper, cleaner way to use the word, but perhaps you'll agree that everyday usage is sloppier than that (which I'm not celebrating or defending.)
Quoting 180 Proof
:up:
Indeed. I accidentally started down the metaphysical path while trying to make sense of what I had been told as a child (Catholicism, Pentecostalism). I couldn't. So I let it go.
Quoting 180 Proof
Agreed, allowing for large metaphor talk & the notion of 'The World.'
I mentioned feeling being made central to religion for some thinkers without a concrete reference.
I dug up one in case you are interested.
[quote = link]
Schleiermacher has a large measure of sympathy with the skeptics about religion whom he means to answer. But, at least in his early period, his sympathy with them also goes much deeper than this. In On Religion he is skeptical about the ideas of God and human immortality altogether, arguing that the former is merely optional (to be included in one’s religion or not depending on the nature of one’s imagination), and that the latter is downright unacceptable. Moreover, he diagnoses the modern prevalence of such religious ideas in terms of the deadening influence that is exerted by modern bourgeois society and state-interference on religion. He reconciles this rather startling concession to the skeptics with his ultimate goal of defending religion by claiming that such ideas are inessential to religion. This stance strikingly anticipates such later radical religious positions as Fritz Mauthner’s “godless mysticism”.
...
...for Schleiermacher religion is founded neither on theoretical knowledge nor on morality. According to On Religion, it is instead based on an intuition or feeling of the universe: “Religion’s essence is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling. It wishes to intuit the universe”
...
He recognizes a potentially endless multiplicity of valid religions, and strongly advocates religious toleration.
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schleiermacher/#PhilReli_1
Yes. Absurdists (e.g. Zapffe & Camus) point out that our 'minds' demand more of the world than the world offers us, and that either claiming to have found or denying that there is more leads to same absurdity: living as if we know what we cannot know. If there is more, all well and good, but no one knows this more for sure, here and now, and yet we must thrive together only on what we can know here and now. Or else succumb to the absurd (i.e. philosophical suicide e.g. 'otherworldly superstitions' or 'decadent/terroristic nihilism'). Like decadent bourgeois Rorty, you sussed-out correctly, j0e, whom I can't stand.
[quote=Emil Cioran, Cahiers 1957-1972]Beckett wrote to me about my book Démiurge, "In your ruins I find shelter."[/quote]
:death: :flower:
I don't think it's a problem talking about mysticsim. but it may be a problem talking about the dire state of the philosohy department.
You have a point about the difficulty of communicating the mystic philosophy when it is not with an individual. For this reason I don't delve very far into the teachings and practices but just stick to the metaphysics, since this is immediately accessible to anyone with an interest.
My point is always much the same. It is to point out that philosophy is incomprehensible and interminable in the absence of a knowledge of the non-dual doctrine, This is the experience of all philosophers everywhere.
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Thanks, I plan to read more in the direction of non dualist philosophies, because it does seem to me that it may be a useful way forward in thinking.
Great! You are now a mystical philosopher. Within a week or two you'll know more about mysticism than most professional philosophers. . .
:up:
Quoting 180 Proof
Just curious, but is there anything you like in him? And what do you loathe? I can guess to some degree from "decadent bourgeois," but more detail would be appreciated.
:fire:
I think they've probably been solved. We just lack a method to publicly force agreement unlike science. I know people still keep denying scientific findings way beyond what is reasonable doubt, but by and large there is such a thing as reasonably settled science.
Surely, it would be rather futile to try to 'force' agreement. I think that it goes beyond people trying to deny scientific findings, but how we interpret the facts and make sense of them. Also, it does seem to me, that even though we may seek information and general frameworks for thinking, that we need to think through the ideas for ourselves individually.
The scientific method forces agreement without trying. Philosophy does not have a method that can do that, except perhaps in very tightly defined logical contexts.
I can see that science is forceful in the way in which it provides evidence which cannot be ignored. However, there are probably biases, especially in what gets researched in the first place and it may be that it is possible to create evidence for certain ends. I have read some accounts how evidence is often manufactured by certain pharmaceutical companies, for their own benefits. So, while science is believed as knowledge, it is not value free or completely objective.
For example, in a scientific perspective the earth goes around the sun but in everyday experience it's the other way around. Metaphysical reality is different. By definition, we can't know what it is because neither ordinary experience nor science provides us with the necessary knowledge.
This is why many philosophical or metaphysical systems recommend certain techniques such as meditation as an aid to raising our consciousness to higher levels of experience that go beyond normal experience and thought-processes. Unless and until we've reached those higher levels of experience, all we can do is speculate or philosophize. Perhaps something within us prompts us to do so. Some would say it's a fundamental desire to return to something higher that is also our original source.
There are probably overlaps between the questions raised in this thread and the one that was started on metaphysics today, mainly the whole questions surrounding consciousness. I do believe that perspective is so important and people view it so differently. For example, most neuroscientists see the experience of consciousness so differently from that of the mystics. However, there are convergence, such as those of the new physicists and mystics.
It probably depends on our basic perspective as to how we change our consciousness. In particular, the neuroscientists may prefer to use chemicals, such as tablets to aid people to relax, whereas those who see it from a more mystic angle may look towards mindfulness meditation, or other forms of meditation. It probably also depends on what we find helpful, and how we perceive what works for us probably influences the particular metaphysical conclusions which we come to. However, it definitely seems that some people gravitate more towards the search for the higher states of consciousness.
The phrase “philosophical mysteries” implies things that we don’t know. The very fact that we are discussing this (or posing the question) presupposes a desire to find out.
Is this desire “mere curiosity” and if yes what is the exact definition of it? On the other hand, could it be that this curiosity is really the natural desire of consciousness, individual or collective, to know more about itself? If yes, then this would operate on a metaphysical level that is outside the scope of the mind - which is a limited form of consciousness.
This is why over the centuries – and we must remember that philosophy used to be a practical, not just theoretical endeavour – philosophers, especially those thought to have practical experience of the realities described or pointed at in philosophical theory, recommended a “suspension” of the mind, of everyday consciousness, in order to allow the supramental consciousness to experience itself as it is, without the distortions and limitations imposed on it by the mind. See Plotinus (Enneads) and others.
So, it would seem that a mind that has been “suspended” in supramental states of consciousness would be unable to communicate that experience to either itself or other minds. This is why mystics tend to use symbolic language and describe mystic experience in terms of “light”, “bliss”, “love”, etc. that can only vaguely hint at the actual experience without describing it. Even normal experience must be experienced to be fully understood or “lived” and this applies even more to metaphysical experience.
It is easy to see why this can lead to scepticism and cause some to doubt the authenticity of mystical experience. At the same time, however, the mystics’ persistent insistence on their experience being real, in fact, more real than anything else we might experience, suggests that it does actually exist. The difficulty is that it cannot be “known” by the mind as a result of which it is not capable of being expressed in words in the same way a sensory perception, emotion or feeling, cannot be transmitted from one person to another (like a physical object might be) but must be experienced in person.
I can remember one peak experience in particular (on drugs , yes, with the closest friends I could have hoped for) and it was terror that turned into a flood of love with the help of myths. I am happy calling it (the 'mystical' higher experience) intense feeling at its core. I felt a torrent of love after accepting the terror of death and forgiving it, finding my 'immortal' self in others, in friends, the species. But it was 'just' feelings and myths to steer and manifest that feeling in [s]another[/s] a medium.
I'm just one guy, of course, but my sense is that 'knowledge' might be a misleading metaphor. Or at least 'higher mind' seems too mentalistic and conceptual to me. More like higher state of heart? But one that can't be owned. It's too simple. The words have all been said. The difference, seems to me, is the feeling that lights those words up.
Well, that's correct. It isn't something that can be described in words, it must be experienced. And it is experienced when the mind is "suspended" or still, in the same way we cannot see the bottom of a lake unless the water is clear and still.
Plotinus has a beautiful passage where he says that you must not chase after it but "wait quietly" for it to happen in the same way the eye awaits the rising of the sun over the horizon or from the ocean and gives itself to the eye to see.
For this very reason, stillness of mind has been recommended by all mystical traditions. In contrast, there is a tendency nowadays to use language and thought processes that are too intellectual and abstract and instead of leading anywhere, they actually lead us further and further from the truth.
Simplicity and stillness are the key to it. As also observed by the Church Fathers, the part of us that experiences it is not the mind but our heart and we experience or "see" it with the "eye of the heart"
That may be the case for some 'mystical' experiences, and I'm familiar with that view, but personally my experiences (two of the brightest) were like the clearing away of a storm. Terror and/or angst followed by a 'forgiveness of God.' I mean a forgiveness of reality as a whole & the enjoyment of it all as a grand music, where the ugly things are a necessary dissonance.
I'm open to the idea of lots of different kinds of peak experiences. Why assume all 'mystics' were expressing the same thing? Might just be a family resemblance?
To me that just means (in a good way) myth and poetry taken as myth and poetry, that gestures unpretentiously at 'just feeling' and not 'knowledge' that's neither flesh nor fowl.
Your "clearing away of a storm" is the same thing. It all depends on your state of mind, emotional and intellectual, that can be totally different from person to person.
Some may experience it as a "clearing away of a storm", others as the "stilling of waves" on the surface of a body of water. Just because we experience it one way or the other doesn't mean we must dismiss other people's experience.
Again depending on the state of mind you are starting with, a sensation of "fear" can also be present. This may be explained by the mind being overpowered and thrown out of its habitual "comfort zone" but as you say it is temporary and is followed by an experience of tremendous peace and happiness that can move us to tears.
I think you are talking from the assumption that there's just one state-of-heart (or whatever) that all the mystics use myths to express, provide ladders to. Perhaps that's so. I don't know. I haven't studied Plotinus closely but I was moved by some passages in him. I did think of him as an intense introvert, a guy inside his own imagination, lost in the ecstasy of what he found there. It might be the childhood Christian background talking, but for me forgiveness was central, of life (one time) and of death (a different time.)
The metaphysical worldview of Platonists like Plotinus, for example, is concentric and hierarchical. Everything emanates from the "centre" of the cosmic circle or sphere and returns by ascending back to it. Hence the terminology of "heart". The "heart" (innermost self) of man is identical to the "heart" of God. Hence Christian and Platonic mystics use similar language.
If there was no essential identity between the two, there could be no "return" or "reunion".
There is a triadic cycle of abiding-procession-return, ???? mone, ??????? proodos, ????????? epistrophe.
Simply put, the Universal Intelligence abides in itself, proceeds out of itself in creation and reverts back into itself. Or interiorisation of consciousness.
But these are just intellectual or theoretical concepts. What matters is practice, practice in every day life, in the way we look on the world, in the way we interact with fellow humans and nature, in the way we express ourselves, in the way we think, feel and speak, and in the way we practice meditation or contemplation.
Nice. Thanks for sharing. The 'heart of man is the heart of God.' That sounds like the incarnation myth and like my experience and the goal in general. To have God's heart. As Feuerbach might remind us, God is composed from human virtues. The divine predicates are ours as much as 'His' (who's just an idea, a symbol, a picture.)
Quoting Apollodorus
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Quoting Apollodorus
Sounds like Hegel. I can relate to it.
Quoting Apollodorus
:up:
Yeah, and I'd say concepts are something like dried-up metaphors. The vivid image is downplayed but it's a poem.
I do believe that Plotinus is an important writer and I downloaded one of his works recently. The idea is a cosmic circle is important, and of the heart. That is because sometimes philosophy becomes too much time an intellectual pursuit, detached from life.
I like your idea of concepts as 'dried up metaphors', although it would probably offend some. I do think that some are people, including philosophers, are inclined to miss seeing that they are only constructed models, which are only representations of 'truth'.
Exactly.
Arabian culture in the Middle Ages didn't have a very developed system of philosophy, hence they borrowed it from the Greeks along with its name "falsafa". Ibn Rushd (Averroes), after studying Greek philosophy, said "everything has been perfectly examined by the ancient masters, all we need to do is to go back to their books".
Even the Church Fathers took much from the Platonists - quite apart from the fact that many had started off as Platonic philosophers or had studied philosophy as part of standard higher education in the Roman Empire.
We need to rediscover their attitude of humility, of readiness to learn from the ancients instead of desperately trying to reinvent the wheel. Humans haven't changed that much over the centuries. Deep down we are the same, speak the same language and have the same experience of life and of ourselves.
I disagree with OP when s/he says the central questions of philosophy remain constant. And I also think the questions he mentions are left-overs of a bygone era; it was an era void of the scientific certainty of our current times. This is why God, existence, free will were all thrown into relief.
At the moment our moral leaders (media, education system) are debating contemporary sexy issues such as democracy and climate change like headless chickens.
Those trained in analytical philosophy should get their heads out of the clouds and apply rigour to these hugely important issues.
:up:
Lakoff's Metaphors We Live By makes a strong case for how embodied and metaphorical our thinking is. There's also this guy: Hof
Thanks for the link to the article by Hofstadter . I will read it tomorrow because I have just been so tired today.
Quoting Banno
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Glad you enjoyed. Hof is great. I got absorbed in his I am a Strange Loop & just like his style.
I also enjoyed the Loop thesis as a myth, tho I think it got something right about personality and is rich with insights and poetic invention.
I read the article and found it interesting, especially the discussion about poetry. What I thought was particularly interesting was the whole complexity of how concepts and images come together in thought processes. Certainly, I am aware that on a daily basis images, mainly visual ones and sounds are at the core of my stream of consciousness.
Poetry taps into the dimension of images and it seems probable that this is a key aspect of memory, including the development of earliest memory, alongside the development of language abilities in childhood. I also believe that songs probably have the same evocative power.
I ran some music groups with older adults who were in hospital with a variety of mental health issues, including dementia. It seemed to me that by playing the songs which they were familiar with from earlier stages of their life has such a stimulating effect on them. It is likely that was due to the way in which images, interconnected with long term memories are interconnected with
the nature of cognitive processes.
We can not have empirical information about God because we do directly experience God.
Some people have died and their hearts have been restarted bringing them back to life, and their stories of their deaths share things in common, but this appears to be more about how brains work than an empirical experience of death. However, we can gather empirical information about dying, so we might come up with empirical information supporting the possibility of life after death. Studying how John Edwards communicates with the deceased provides some convincing arguments that he does actually communicate with the deceased.
On free will, that is a tough one. I think a decision to shoplift or not is a matter of free will, and people have changed their behavior as a result of deciding to do so. However, shoplifting is associated with youthful "catch me if you can" behavior that is common for youth, as opposed to intentional human behavior that one knows is wrong. And shoplifting is associated with grief. That is, we tend to have compulsive behaviors when we are children before our judgment and self-control are developed or when our emotions are strong. This means there is empirical evidence that we can lack self-control in our youth or when emotionally disturb and we should not draw a firm line between having free will or not.
Also, our consciousness is open and we are all imprinted differently depending on our time in history. We can not control the greater forces of our time in history. Therefore it can be argued we lack self-determination and are subject to our time in history.
Most interesting. I do not mean to be argumentive but the notion of conscious, and our inability to have the consciousness of the past, intrigues me. Do you suppose that was always so for Christians or is it contingent on knowing the Platonists' worldview? Because the Bible was written by Greeks, some of that world view is in the Bible, but people were illiterate and I do not think awareness of the Platonists" world view would be possible for the people of Europe at the time of Rome, nor after Roman fell, until the Reasaunce and printing books spread Aristotle's and Plato's ideas and enabled people to read the Bible for themselves. I think for them, superstition was basic to their Christian worldview, not the Greek philosophy.
Like when we speak of Christianity in the past, that consciousness might be limited to fear of God and fear of Satan and demons and faith in religious icons, burning candles, prayers, and other such religious rituals, but be totally different from Greek influenced consciousness and present-day Christian consciousness.
I think that your point that 'our consciousness is open and we are all imprinted differently depending on our time in history' is important. I am not just going back to relativism, but about our perception of reality and , as we grasp for objectivity in exploring our consciousness and beyond. Some become mystics, and it is hard to know where to draw the line in interpretation, as we confront the ideas expressed in the various metaphors and models.
The Church Fathers were indeed aware of Greek philosophy in general and of Platonism in particular as this was the dominant philosophical system especially in the eastern parts of the empire. The Apostle Paul, though a Jew, spoke Greek and was able to discuss philosophy with the Greek philosophers of Athens, as the Bible tells.
And, as a matter of fact, the early Church leaders were often educated, upper-class citizens who had the ability and the means to organize congregations and provide venues for meetings, etc.
Ordinary, or uneducated, Christians were a different matter. They didn't need philosophy to understand the higher teachings of Christianity as faith in Christ and his word was enough for them. However, even uneducated mystics may have chosen to learn from the educated ones if they desired to communicate their experience or discuss it in a more refined language.
Unfortunately, we don't know much about them, we tend to hear more about prominent Christians, church leaders, martyrs, etc.
In any case, silent prayer in solitude or making a "temple of God within one's heart", all of which amounts to concentration and interiorization of consciousness both in Platonism and Christianity, would have been understood by all, irrespective of intellectual or spiritual ability.
In other words, there were different levels of religious experience just as in Graeco-Roman religion. While the majority were happy with rituals, singing hymns, participating in religious festivals, etc. a minority would have looked for something else, such as philosophy.
I am just starting to read Plotinus and I do agree that Plato and Aristotle were essential. So many of the metaphysical questions are very hard to answer. Really, one writer who I find extremely helpful is Rudolf Steiner, but I think that he is a writer who is probably not considered to be of much importance within mainstream philosophy, and probably by most people who use this site. However, I find his writings, and those of Ken Wilber to be wider in scope, in contrast to those which are reductionist.
I don't know about Aquinas but Christian philosophy certainly borrowed much from Greek philosophy.
Some - like Athena, above - seem to think that knowledge of Greek philosophy only became available to Europe "during the Renaissance". In reality, philosophical texts were preserved in the eastern parts of the Roman Empire ("Byzantium") into the Middle Ages. That's how they came to be translated into Arabic and then transmitted to Western Europe via Latin translations. But the Greeks knew them throughout this time. It was Greeks like George Gemistos Platon ("the second Plato") that inspired the reintroduction of Platonism into Italy in the 1400s.
I think that the availability of knowledge and its transmission is complex, because some of it was the preserve of certain authorities, especially the church or various churches. So, while knowledge may have been preserved, whether it was available to wider circles until much later times is questionable.
So, it is a mystery as to whether the philosophical mysteries are even solvable.
But let's imagine that they are actually unsolvable. What would be the implications? Would that mean philosophy is a waste of time? Should we give up on philosophy and do something else? Is philosophy to be regarded as some kind of primitive, but fatally flawed, way of making sense of the world (as David Stove suggested)?
These are questions that have been bothering me for a while. If I could drop philosophy would but I keep scratching that itch.
I think that it is not simply a matter of whether we can solve the mysteries, but to what extent? I think that it is inevitable that we wonder about the existence of God, and whether there is life after death and, probably most human beings have asked the questions. It could be that some people just grow up in a secular context and don't see the relevance, of course.
Generally, I believe that the metaphysical questions of philosophy are about finding explanations and giving us a framework to for finding meaning, and that both aspects are important. Some reductionist philosophies may provide explanations but don't give any basis for mythic structures. Of course, it may be that people can create their own, but that can be difficult. In contrast, some religious or mystic philosophies can be seen as more romantic, and inadequate for providing causal explanations. So, it is an art of juggling this to come up with systems of thinking which work for us individually.
As you can imagine from my various threads and posts, I dwell on these matters a lot, whereas many don't agonise in quite the way which I do. But, I most certainly would not give up exploring or suggest that anyone should not bother trying to look at the questions, just because they are difficult. I would go as far as to say that it is this searching which is central to my own values, and if I stopped thinking about such issues, I would probably not have a reason to get out of bed each day.
I don't know if my answer is of any help to you, but, personally, I wouldn't give it up? What are you going to replace it with?
You say that 'knowledge was never intended for the masses', but the way I see is that we have so much information available. It can be overwhelming, but it does give us scope. It is hard to know what the consequences will be, and perhaps this will be asked in retrospect historically, if humanity survives...
I just think that the information age makes it so easy to gather so much potential knowledge but there is so much it is like a philosophy supermarket. We can gather and hoard it on our devices, but, perhaps may be in danger of consuming it, like junk food, without gaining any underlying wisdom. I think that this may be the challenge before us, as we can access Wikipedia on our phones and share links so easily. However, it can also be extremely exciting...
,
I am sure that it is possible to imagine that the universe can be any shape at all. As for myself, I frequently wake up in the morning, dreaming that I have been reading and writing posts on this site, which don't exist. Life is becoming more and more surreal...
"Questionable" to whom?
At the beginning of the Christian era, Alexander’s City, Alexandria, had become the Western world’s chief centre of learning, with a world-famous library holding thousands of manuscripts and state-funded international scholars. Early Church Fathers like Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Dionysus the Great had studied philosophy there and became leaders of the influential Catechetical School of Alexandria which trained theologians and priests and whose curriculum included all the major Greek philosophers.
From Alexandria, Greek philosophy was later introduced at the Imperial University of Constantinople, the new capital of the Roman Empire, and became part of the curriculum of Byzantine higher education until the 15th century when The City as the Greeks called it, was taken by the Turks.
Of course, the higher forms of Platonism have always been available to a few initiates only. Hence the "unwritten teachings" (agrapha dogmata) of Plato, Plotinus and others. But that doesn't mean that the original texts themselves weren't available.
Surrealists believed the dream state actually gets you closer to the nature of reality.
They analyze the cosmic background radiation to try to see if the universe is flat or curved. It appears to be flat, but it may be that the curve is so vast that we just haven't detected it. Yet.
The times of the Early Church were extremely interesting, and probably very heated because there was the whole over what was seen as Gnostic. My understanding was that even though Gnostic thinking was open to opposition there is some indication that Origen himself was Gnostic. However, I believe that the whole era of the Early Christian Church were full of controversy, especially the way in which earlier ideas were integrated with Christian ideas, particularly those developed by Paul's tradition. But, it does seem that Augustine and Aquinas incorporated Plato and Aristotle.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Correct. Greek philosophy was the most developed and respected philosophical system at the time and had been for centuries. Everybody was influenced by it, including Philo of Alexandria. That's why early iconographic representations of Jesus and St Paul show them dressed in a philosopher's robe and holding a book, exactly as Greek and Roman philosophers were. Even Buddha got a Greek philosopher's robe in Indian statues.
I am not sure about cosmic radiation, but I am inclined to the surrealist emphasis on dreams. The Buddhists spoke of our usual waking reality as being 'maya', or illusion. That may be more of a metaphorical truth, but it is an interesting approach.
The whole world of philosophy described in the Greek world, teachings of Jesus and Buddha is so different to that of our times, especially the holy book. I think that in these traditions there was some kind of emphasis on there being mysteries. There were attempts to answer them but probably in a less definitive way. I am not saying that we should wish to go back, because I am sure that we have many advantages, but I do think that, in our current time, it has become too much of an emphasis on theories, as opposed to wisdom.
How do you differentiate "having theories" from "having wisdom"? Describe your conception of each and why you believe the latter is "opposed" by "emphasis" on the former.
For me, "to have theories" means using the best explanations for how 'a state-of-affairs or phenomenon (A) transforms into another state-of-affairs or phenomenon' (B) whereas "to have wisdom" means (something like) (in general) understanding of and (in particular) self-mastery over unwise (foolish), or maladaptive, judgments, conduct & relationships. These seem to my mind complementary, not opposed – not mutually exclusive, no matter which is more emphasized.
I do not see an absolute distinction between theory or wisdom, and I think that your distinction between that your suggestion of wisdom as including mastery is useful for thinking of this. My suggestion about 'having theories' as not including wisdom is connected to the way in which such information does not really offer any underlying sense of values. It is not that I am wishing to say that philosophy should give a set of morals. In fact, I would say that even though Nietzsche opposed conventional morality, he offered a world view, even if some may not have liked it.
So, when I speak of a lack of wisdom, I am talking about some of the postmodern writers specifically and how it does not give any underlying source for inspiration. There is deconstruction and nothing arising in the collapse. Of course, we may turn to the arts, and I think that for many arts and literature have filled a void which has arisen within philosophy. In some ways, philosophy is becoming more like an offshoot of science, but I am not sure that is completely true because there are probably so many people who are developing ideas. However, there is so much information on the internet, but I am not sure that just finding the bare information is going to provide a basis for values and mastery. Perhaps, we need less rather than more, or it may be that we need to select carefully and pursue ideas more intimately. But, I think this is difficult in the information age.
Remember: Henri Bergson, Bertrand Russell, Albert Camus & Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, were awarded Nobel Prizes for Literature and yet as far I can tell not a single p0m0 sophist who has been acknowledged this way as purveyor of 'aesthetic values'. I'm not convinced, Jack, that the majority of "educated" folks in your country or my own care one wit for wisdom, or even fine arts culture, and matriculating so many generations of good little Pavlovian consumers the best of the West academies, on both sides of the pond, have unfortunately of late adopted as their curricular motto (or mission statement): Clientem semper recta sunt, to which their tenured hacks conform quite effortlessly. Of course, with caveat emptor nowhere to be found in the syllabi or course catalogues (hardcopy or webpage). Satisfied swine, indeed. :mask:
It's sunrise here, Jack. Before my morning walk I'm going to have a listen so that I can grind through the rest this day without frothing at the mouth so much from all "the boredom and pain" ...
:fire:
I plan to read Bergson and many others. I have read some Russell. I am trying to find more time to catch up with my reading, so that I can talk through my ideas on the basis of knowledge. Coping with all the negatives: boredom, suffering etc is hard. I do find this site helpful. I struggle with stress more than boredom. I am trying to find a job and my mum is not very well. When I visit my mum she gets so cross when I am busy writing answers on this site on my phone. However, if life was too easy we probably would not end up searching for philosophies to make sense of it all.
Interesting statement. Surely those who see everything as animated and those who are materialistic believing things are only matter, have very different consciousnesses. I would love to think as the "ice man" thought, closely tied to nature and very aware of his environment. I have been reading how the Greeks and Hebrews were aware of their physical being but at first, were not self-reflective and judgmental as we are today. It seems these people had not separated their minds from the bodies.
Science is not possible until there is a vocabulary for classifying everything.
Today we live more in our heads than our bodies because we have so many words. Imagine having a very, very small vocabulary without words such as "concept", "psychology", "extraterrestrial". What if we had no word for "spirit" or "god" of "demons". Without words for the supernatural, there would be nothing to believe except the raw world and our own feelings.
Thanks, I have never been list orientated but I may need one for reading because I leap from book to book. I sometimes have too many books on the go at once. I have not had CBT, but do find reading the techniques helpful, because it does seem as if it is like philosophy technique on a practical and personal basis. Anyway, I will log off, as I was planning to try and stay off this site today, but as you can imagine seeing that someone had created a thread on Jung drew me in...
Your statement about, 'those who see everything as animated and those who are are believing that things are only matter, have very different consciousness' is profound, because it encompasses questions of consciousness, ranging from dualism and panpsychism. Perhaps, it would even be worth you starting your own thread, because this one may be on its last legs now, because newer ones are being created daily.
However, what I think is especially interesting in your statement is how the views are bound up with consciousness itself. I do believe that in many metaphysical discussions the actual role of consciousness, and its role in perception, is ignored in its distinct role, in the generation of our ideas about reality. It possibly goes more into the scope of phenomenology rather than metaphysics. Of course, all these fields overlap, in an extremely complex way.
I am certainly not trying to suggest that you should try to answer it, or create a thread, but I hope that I have at least drawn out your question for potential further consideration by you, or others, rather than letting it got lost and buried amongst the buried aspects and threads on the site.
I agree. But as we can see from the way people can be emotionally manipulated and mobilized for political purposes such as in rallies and mass demonstrations, perhaps the "raw world and our own feelings" is still very much with us, only perhaps hidden under a veneer of "civilization" and "progress".
'Today we live in our heads rather than in our bodies because we have so many words' you said and I can recall having a supervisor when I was on a student placement who told me that I seemed to him as if I was living only in my head. He also told me that I was 'full of words'.
I was lying in bed last night thinking how I had answered 10 pages of replies on this thread and how if some new person on this thread began reading, they may feel let down, thinking that I had not really said much at all. Even though we have words and we string them together as the best we can, they do not necessarily form into answers to the mysteries. I think language goes a long time but we are still only left with models and metaphors.
Obviously, some develop fully fledged systems of thought but even these are open to being challenged by opposing ones. Perhaps, I think too much and should just contemplate more. The mystics come up with the best answers which they can and probably don't keep thinking and thinking. Could it be one possible problem inherent in philosophy, that it is possible to spend a whole life going round in circles, thinking?
If you have read my previous post to you, you may be wondering why I mentioned panpsychism, and I can explain that came from reading a book a couple of days ago, 'Ancient Wisdom' by Annie Besant, which suggested that all inanimate matter have some rudimentary consciousness. I am not sure if that is true, but it did get me wondering about it.
I am definitely wishing to explore more of the ideas of some of the more ancient thinkers because I do think that they were able to get in touch with truths on a more intuitive level than we who so caught up in rational thinking may be able to. I am not wishing to throw rationality aside but do think that Western philosophy has become too dominated by it. Jung spoke of the importance of integrating reason, feeling, sensation and intuition as means of knowing. I do believe that the way in which philosophers of this century and the last one have become so 'in their heads' may be why many people are looking outside philosophy more, to texts, such as 'The Tao de Ching'.
It may be that it is because Lao Tzu and the Greek philosophers were able to use words in a deeper way, rather than just providing rational arguments. In our own times, for many, the arts, especially literature, may offer deeper insights than possible within philosophy. Of course, I am not just wishing to dismiss philosophy, but just think that we need to widen our imagination rather than narrow it down too much.
I am interested to know in what way you think that the 'raw world and our feelings' are hidden amidst an emphasis on progress and civilisation. I am inclined to believe we are sometimes in a bit of a wasteland as a culture, with a lot of fragmentation of thinking behind the scenes, in the aftermath of postmodernism and scientific reductionism. Do you think that many are struggling with finding deeper meaning, or are you suggesting something else?
There is a lot of anger and frustration in the current climate of the pandemic and its material and psychological impact. As shown in one of my other posts, there is some evidence that this is being exploited by political groups and even foreign powers.
More generally, the decline of religion has created a spiritual vacuum that many attempt to fill by turning to activism for all sorts of causes that only serves to polarize and fragmentize society, exacerbating the underlying problems that remain unaddressed.
So, yes, a return to "saner" times, or at least some form of refocusing and reorienting ourselves seems strongly advisable. And this is where the study of Platonic philosophy, for example, may be useful. Particularly helpful would be for philosophy to be presented in a concise, easily understandable form and balanced by some form of practical application. Practice and theory or, in Christian terms ora et labora, "prayer and work".
To answer a question that wasn't addressed to me: yes absolutely. It seems to me that nihilism is the defining character of postmodern Western society. This existential meaninglessness is directly linked to the current dominance of science as an epistemological mode and the notion that science has undermined beliefs about reality, beliefs which (true or false) provided an ultimate meaning. A return to saner times would be the overcoming of nihilism.
Correct. Science itself seems to have no definite "truth", just provisional theories that can be replaced with new ones any time.
Not only that, but scientific perspectives are often useless in the context of everyday life.
For example, in the scientific view the earth goes around the sun, but in everyday experience it is the sun that goes around the earth.
As another example, science has it that the human body consists of small particles of energy, or, in medical terms, of blood, bones, muscle and other tissues. But this is not how we look at ourselves and our fellow humans in daily life.
I could go on and on but this is why a less scientific, more "human" view of things is necessary in order to halt the accelerating trend toward dehumanizing society and culture.
[quote=Ray Brassier]Nihilism is not a pathological exacerbation of subjectivism, which annuls the world and reduces reality to a correlate of the absolute ego, but on the contrary, the unavoidable corollary of the realist conviction that there is a mind-independent reality, which, despite the presumptions of human narcissism, is indifferent to our existence and oblivious to the ‘values’ and ‘meanings’ which we would drape over it in order to make it more hospitable. Nature is not our or anyone’s ‘home’, nor a particularly beneficent progenitor. Philosophers would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. Philosophy should be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity. Thinking has interests which do not coincide with those of living; indeed, they can and have been pitted against the latter.
*
Nietzsche saw that ultimately the problem of nihilism is the problem of what to do with time: Why keep investing in the future when there is no longer any transcendental guarantor, a positive end of time as ultimate reconciliation or redemption, ensuring a pay-off for this investment? Nietzsche's solution - his attempted overcoming of nihilism - consists in affirming the senselessness of becoming as such - all becoming, without reservation or discrimination.[/quote]
(Emphasis is mine.)
:death: :flower:
:yawn:
That was just an alliterative flourish? 180 Proof painful poet.
Quoting 180 Proof
Do you imagine that any other being on this Earth has made sense of the world, has formed a terrain of meaning, identical to the one which you are continually constructing? No one else has your particular historicity, associations, insights, experiences, etc. Your ultimate meaning is absolutely unique, in your terms "merely subjective", regardless of how much data you have drawn from the réservoir of objectivity. The final product (which may be comprised of subjective and objective parts) is a tapestry you alone have weaved, it is your final interpretation of existence which is subjective and unique. This is your meaning-making. Your personal blue pill.
:lol:
:up:
I love it. Very much down Schopenhauer's alley, which has looked quite rational to me, if not sometimes a tad too pessimistic, but on a correct path by my lights.
But I don't understand why, for those that do believe, faith is not an escape. I'm not religious, if I were and I really thought there was life after now, that could be a relief of sorts.
The facts indicate that there's not an iota of evidence for this. Which is true. But with faith, evidence doesn't matter. So "meaning making" for a religious person might be framed in the context of "reward after death" or "fear of damnation after death."
Facts don't indicate what exactly? Facts cannot indicate anything outside the material realm, since facts are empirically observable phenomenon. For this reason, it doesn't seem correct to expect facts to provide indications about aspects of reality beyond the material realm and then make assertions about the other (spiritual) aspects of reality based on the lack of... facts.
Btw I am not religious, nowhere in these past few posts did I mention faith, damnation or an eternal afterlife.
I didn't have you in mind for my comment, I was just reacting to 180's comment.
I don't understand what "beyond the material" means. Until someone can tell me why the mental or consciousness cannot be material (physical) too, I don't follow the argument.
I'm only sticking to my experience, I cannot speak for anyone else of course. The closest think that comes to mind concerning say, that state after death is the period before birth. If I remember to my earliest conscious memory and try to go "backward", I find that "nothing" seems to best capture such a state.
This is the only appeal I can make to some reality outside of me.
I think that 'beyond the material' usually means that the world is not simply physical. I think that most people believe that the mind and body are connected. On one hand, you have reductive materialism, such as the behaviourist BF Skinner, who saw consciousness as an illusion. This is in contrast to idealists, such as Berkeley, who saw mind as the main reality. This dispute has a central one throughout philosophy, and it all comes down to the question of to what extent can consciousness be simply reduced to the brain and nervous system?
I think that fear of death is at the centre of meaning making. However, I think that human psychology is complex, and we may think that all our meanings stand the test of rationality. It may be easier for someone to hold a nihilist position if their daily life is full of joy than for someone who is extremely unhappy. Of course, there are many who do, on the basis of their perceptions of reality adhere to a nihilist viewpoint. It may be that they are brave, in being able to face despair, and death, without any grand ideas.
Personally, I struggle when, at times, I have drifted into the territory of nihilism. So, I usually find alternative ways of seeing. It even seems to me that if I am feeling low and downcast, the nihilist view seems to make some sense, but when I become more cheerful, I begin to think differently. However, as I have said before, the idea of my own death, even if it is the end, seems far less fearful than any prospective end to humanity. I think that is because I am aware of my own weaknesses and limitations. In contrast, the potential of the human race, in general, seems boundless.
What you say is true given a certain account of philosophy. One could make a distinction between "materialism" and "idealism" up until around the time Newton discovered "action at a distance".
Materialism in those times meant mechanistic materialism: in terms of thinking of "bodies" as more or less complex machines such as clocks. It is our intuitive way of understanding the world. Newton believed in mechanistic materialism, but he had to give it up:
''It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact,... [this] is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.
[Italics mine]
For some reason which is quite obscure, later philosophers, like Gilbert Ryle ridiculed "the ghost in the machine", but he was mistaken. What was exorcised was the machine, not the ghost. Some materialists today try to do away with mind, but the matter they are trying to eliminate is not the matter that exist. The matter that exists includes consciousness.
So if we're going to use the word "physical", we apply it to everything that exists. It would be bizarre to say that the brain is physical but not the mind.
If this is unconvincing, you can use the term "nonphysical" for everything. The thing is we cannot make sensible metaphysical distinctions between mind and matter or between physical or non-physical.
Sorry for the length, I get carried away and it's hard to be concise without sounding like an alien.
Your long entry is good. When you think of the brain and the mind as you describe, it seems like the brain is a transmitter. I am not saying that you are wrong. I am in favour of simply trying not mystify consciousness. It is probably that we are so aware of our own stream of consciousness. Perhaps it is our own egotistical attachment to the idea of a 'self', and, I believe, that the Buddhists challenge the idea of there being a self, as an independent entity.
The idea of a separation between body and mind has been at the heart of the conundrum about life after death. In particular, within Christianity, some people have thought that the soul was immortal, whereas others have thought that would life would not take place until a resurrection at the end of the world. So, really, the mind/body problem was a dispute which was central within Christianity.
Alongside this, there was the whole question of whether there is an invisible realm. Some people have believed in spirits, angels and devils. I know people who claim to have seen ghosts. So, generally there is a longstanding history of people being fascinated by the possibility of a nonmaterial dimension, which has appeared shrouded in mystery.
Sure. Consciousness is extremely strange. However, I think we risk forgetting that back in the 17th century, there was a different "hard problem". As Chomsky points out:
"History also suggests caution [in thinking about consciousness being the "hard problem"]. In early modern science, the nature of motion was the "hard problem." "Springing or Elastic Motions" is the "hard rock in Philosophy," Sir William Petty observed... The ''hard problem" was that bodies that seem to our senses to be at rest are in a "violent" state, with "a strong endeavor to fly off or recede from one another," in Robert Boyle's words" [Bold letters mine]
We never understood gravity in the way Newton or Locke or Hume would've liked - in an intuitive manner. We're still stuck not understanding it, but we've gotten used to it so it no longer seems puzzling.
Quoting Jack Cummins
This makes sense. The only problem I see is that if we already don't understand the physical (consciousness, gravity and much more) why postulate something "nonphysical"? We are already stuck not understanding something. So saying "spiritual realm" imples we know what the physical includes.
There is a striving to know, as Hegel terms it, the Absolute that many of us have, that we try to satisfy with philosophy. It's exactly the sort of thing that the sciences can't give us.
Now can, should, philosophy meet this need? As Hegel follows up, "philosophy should beware of being edifying."
To paraphrase Will Durant, the sciences strive to break down the clockwork or reality and organize the pieces. Philosophy strives to give us a glimpse of the whole. I think the interest in esoterica and mysteries is part of that (innate?) striving. Science doesn't give us the view of the whole we want, the immediacy, because it isn't concerned with that aspect of knowledge.
Fuck yes! Can't repeat this enough. Thank you. :100: :clap:
The "faith is just people trying to get over their fear of death," trope never made sense to me in light of Calvinism. How could an idea of God that creates and assigns the vast majority conciousnesses to eternal suffering be comforting? Death is just the beginning of your woes, and even if you might escape the torments of Hell, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it yourself.
That's more nightmare fuel than anything else.
Definitely Calvin's perspective is important, and when I questioned my religious beliefs it was with a view to how religious teachings can be used for political means. The fear of hell can function on that level and Marx pointed to the role religion plays in maintaining oppression. However, as you suggest, Hegel pointed to the need to know the 'Absolute', so these need to be juggled in our thinking and exploration.
:cool:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sure. I have in mind those people who don't believe in hell. I don't know why they would not. But postulating heaven after this life, must be a consolation.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I was reading a bit on Samuel Johnson, the guy who thought he refuted Berkeley by kicking a stone. He seemed to be quite the witty character, very smart too.
He was afraid of death, not because it meant life here is over, but because he feared he wasn't good enough to go to heaven and feared eternal torment.
It's been mentioned before, but, that was some very cruel crap to have instilled on people. It's hard(er) to imagine now, but to think one is going to burn forever, is horrifying.
I think it is probably explained in Calvinism that if you have faith and show it or are willing to have it, then you are one of the called ones, some of whom God then chooses for salvation. Most, according to this doctrine, are not called in the first place. It's basically a clever psychological trick to get people to believe.
At their deepest core, traditional Catholicism and Protestantism are not much different than Calvinism.
For Thomas Aquinas, for example, it is better to be in hell than not to be at all. To think like this solves a lot.
In general, I suppose that the Christian religion and Islamic religion are an expression of the denial of the absolute death of the individual. It is still more comfortable for them to believe in immortality even in the face of a hell. Because hell can possibly be avoided if you have faith.
It is interesting that true religious believers are not afraid of death as annihilation (that seems to be completely outlandish and far-fetched for them), although evolutionarily and culturally it must have started that way. At the example of the "death fear" of the animals this can be shown.
It is interesting that Aquinas thought that it would be better to be in hell than not exist at all. I think that I would prefer not to exist. I remember when I was growing up that someone suggested that hell would actually be about not existing at all. It was the first time that I ever considered the possibility of nothingness, and it struck me as a better option, although I was not entirely sure.
However, the whole idea of fear of death is so central to the ideas which we develop about it. The Egyptians had complex beliefs and rituals surrounding death. They saw it about journeying towards otherworlds, and it does seem that most religious thinking goes back to the Egyptians.
So much of culture itself is based around death, and the ceremonial rights. Perhaps the search longevity in Western culture is connected to a widespread loss of belief in an afterlife. Even within the time of the pandemic, the underlying belief behind the surface is about the need to fight death, with death being viewed as the enemy. I wonder how different this would have been in the last century when people were laying down their lives for their country. That was more in the context of a more widespread culture of Christianity. Even within Islam, as far as I understand, there is a belief that the terrorists, who get killed themselves in the attacks which they carry out, go straight to heaven. So, the views people have about death have profound implications for the way people live.
I agree with you. My non-existence before my conception was certainly not bad as such, but an eternal state of absolute agony seems really bad to me. Even Socrates in the Apology speaks of death as absolute annihilation in a positive way:
"If at death the person becomes unconscious, it will be like a very deep, dreamless sleep. And who does not enjoy that? In that case “death must be a marvelous gain”—the best rest and relaxation anyone has ever had (Apology 40c)." (Ehrman, Bart D. - Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife)
Quoting Jack Cummins
Perhaps this someone was a Seventh Day Adventist, who believe in annihilationism, which was most likely inherent in original Christianity:
"Toward the very end of the Old Testament period, some Jewish thinkers came to believe this future “resurrection” would apply not to the fortunes of the nation but to individuals. If God was just, surely he could not allow the suffering of the righteous to go unrequited. There would be a future day of judgment, when God would literally bring his people, each of them, back to life. This would be a resurrection of the dead: those who had sided with God would be returned to their bodies to live forevermore. Jesus of Nazareth inherited this view and forcefully proclaimed it. Those who did God’s will would be rewarded at the end, raised from the dead to live forever in a glorious kingdom here on earth. Those opposed to God would be punished by being annihilated out of existence. For Jesus this was to happen very soon." (Ehrman, Bart D. - Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife)
I think like Schopenhauer. Whoever was created from nothing without being asked should have the right to return to nothingness:
"A God creates a being from nothing, assigns him prohibitions and commandments, and because these are not followed he is now tormented throughout all eternity with every conceivable torture, for which purpose he then indivisibly binds body and soul (City of God [by Augustine], Book 13, ch. 2; ch. 11 at the end and 24 at the end), so that the torture of this being could never destroy him by disintegration and thereby allow him to escape it, but instead he lives forever in eternal pain – this wretched fellow made out of nothing, who at least has a right to his original nothingness, his last retreat, which cannot be so bad in any case and should after all be safeguarded for him by rights as his inherited property. I at least cannot do otherwise than to sympathize with him. –" (Schopenhauer on religion)
The opinion of Aquinas and his successors, the Thomists is also criticized:
"For instance, I think that traditional Thomists are entirely sincere when they argue that God could not have forborne to create souls he had predestined to eternal torment, and certainly could never now allow them peacefully to lapse again into nonexistence, on the grounds that it would constitute a kind of parsimony or jealousy on his part to withhold the gift of being—a gift he possesses in infinite plenitude—from anyone. For the Thomist, being is the first good, higher than any other, inasmuch as God himself is subsistent Being, and so, even for a soul in hell, nonexistence would be a greater evil than perpetual agony. Of course, this is ridiculous; but it helps fill in one of the gaps in the tale. A gift that is at once wholly irresistible and a source of unrelieved suffering on the part of its recipient is not a gift at all, even in the most tenuously analogous sense; and, speaking for myself, I cannot see how existence as such is truly a divine gift if it has been entirely severed from free and rational participation in the goodness of things. Being itself is the Good itself, no doubt. But, for creatures who exist only by finite participation in the gift of existence, only well-being is being-as-gift in a true and meaningful sense; mere bare existence is nothing but a brute fact, and often a rather squalid one at that, and to mistake it for an ultimate value is to venerate an idol (call it the sin of “hyparxeolatry,” the worship of subsistence in and of itself, of the sort that misers and thieves and those who would never give their lives for others commit every day)." (Hart, David Bentley - That All Shall Be Saved)
Quoting Jack Cummins
Maybe the ancient Egyptians with their immortality mania messed it all up.
Quoting Jack Cummins
According to Islam, everyone goes to hell first. Muhammad will be an advocate for Muslims at the divine judgment so that they might be brought from hell to paradise.
Before Islam, there were many Arab poets who wrote about death and the ephemeral nature of life. Mohammad wanted to put an end to this and declare it as an erroneous belief.
Wow, I really like your observation! Our raw, animal instincts will always be part of us and this is what makes education for self-control and understanding what self-control and obeying the law has to do with liberty so important. I have a big problem with Christianity denying we have evolved from animals because that leads to education for technology without education for citizenship, and supernatural notions, instead of understanding human nature. I think many bad decisions follow rejecting the science of evolution.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Yeah, culture, no doubt, began with burying the dead – all the speculative import that that took initially and manifest subsequently in funerary rites (much as civilization also probably began with eating cooked foods ... & fermentation).
Perhaps.
With words, we can imagine things that were totally not imaginable before we became so technologically advanced. Our homes are full of magic! We have brought starlight into our homes and magically make hot and cold water come out of the wall. We have small boxes that make music and larger boxes that have people in them. We have very strong wizards do we not? :lol: I hope I have shown how our thinking has changed how we see the world and our place in it.
As for all things having a degree of consciousness, Chardin a Catholic priest said, God, is asleep in rocks and minerals, waking in plants and animals, to know self in man. Everything is part of the whole and all are interconnected. When we learn quantum physics we can think of all this differently than when we have no notion of quantum physics. What is that energy in all manifested matter?
Burying our dead may be an emotional reaction we share with animals, and may not rely on culture, nor thoughts of an afterlife that are purely imagination. We may have come to hoping death is followed by life, as we have new life in spring, and the idea that for health reasons, we need to dispose of bodies, but it does not appear to be essential to the act of burying our dead.
Quoting wikipedia
Quoting emancipate
You have worded those thoughts very well.
I didn't know that Telhard de Chardin saw categorised life in that way, but it seems similar to the theosophists. My own feeling is that I sometimes feel that objects around me seem alive, especially when my books and CDs fall over in my room. However, I wonder to see extent it is that our consciousness affects the objects, as if we are having an interaction with the energy fields. I definitely think we are within complex fields of energy, and Einstein stressed the participant observer role in experiments, so it would seem likely to me that the underlying principle extends to life in general.
I do think it the anthropology of religion, is an extremely interesting area. Apart from the question of ideas prior to God, or gods and goddesses, so much of religion is of a ritualistic nature, and the ancestors were probably revered more than in our own.
However, funeral rites do still play an interesting role around the notion of death. Yet, I guess some of this is connected more to personal sense of loss and our own bereavement. We probably have less rituals, although whenever I am using sanitizer in public places, I feel that it is like the new Holy water, which people cleanse their hands on entering or leaving church. Perhaps, secular rituals replace religious ones in some ways.
I see what you mean, but we mustn't be too harsh on Christianity. The Church banned animal sacrifices and blood sports. Besides, it could have been worse, just think of Islamic State or Communist Russia. Science has advantages and disadvantages and without the support of a more traditional faith society turns to all kinds of weird cults invented by fraudsters and commercial interests.
I think it is also interesting to think about the denial of instincts and the bodily side of existence in our current time. As far as I can see part of the Christian approach to life was that of seeing humanity as supreme over animals and nature. Christianity may have banned animal sports, and it has offered a picture of human beings as top of the hierarchy.
It seems likely that this approach has been carried through into the scientific worldview, and developed of technology. This has given rise to the exploitation of nature and the ecological crisis we now face, with climate change. As it is, many do not believe in God, or any supernatural power. Humanity, in many ways, stands before a godless abyss, struggling to know what to do next, in order to survive...
God doesn't have to be a person. In Platonism, and to some extent in Christianity, God is the (impersonal) principle of truth, goodness, beauty, order and justice. When we stop believing in something higher than ourselves we end up with slogans like "love your sweat" (and possibly other substances starting with "s") which is where our raw, animal instincts come into play (we don't love anything more than wallowing in them) and we divide our lives between the gym and the rally and become pawns on the chessboard of political and commercial interests while imagining that we're "empowered" and that we "rule the world". Psychological manipulation is very easy for those who are experts at it and when you have nothing higher to believe in than your own sweat and righteous anger, you can fall pray to it before you even know it.
This forum does not seem to use links so I am reluctant to do so, but you mentioned Einstein and the participant-observer role with a question about how our consciousness affects reality and so think we need to think in quantum physic terms when contemplating reality.
I just watched an awesome program about what can happen when we speak to our hearts and listen to our hearts. When we live in our heads, what we think reality is can be pretty dark. More animal desire and fear than the love and freedom we can experience when connecting with our hearts. We might think of the heart consciousness as a spiritual force and see in many spiritual traditions, including Christianity, the rituals people practice to connect with this force. A few days ago I watched a program about Evangelical Christians and they were obviously connected with the spiritual force and there is no way we are going to convince the people who experience this that there is not a God and a reality that is different from the reality we create in our heads, of desires and fears.
Yes, desires and fears are fundamental to human psychology. They can take hold of our mind and obscure our heart. Both love (or infatuation) and hatred can make us blind. Even worse when they are used by others to manipulate, control and enslave us. This is why various traditions from Greek philosophy to Christianity have recommended methods of controlling desires and fears by developing virtues (?????, arete) such as temperance and courage. Once desires and fears have been brought under control, the eye of the heart opens and sees the higher realities and beauties of spirit. To use Plato's parable, once well-trained, the horses of the soul's chariot pull us upward and we ascend to the higher realms instead of constantly being pulled down to earth.
Okay believing in evolution and being spiritual can go together. I love the subject of morality built on sound reasoning! I am perhaps even fanatical about it because violating nature and bad judgment can lead to bad things.
I am gaining an understanding of how Christianity plays an important role in human rights but it can do as much harm as it does good. Like a medicine that can cure us, but also kill us. The faith is like faith in a lucky rabbit's foot. The false belief can get desired results. But what if we realize the truth as it is realized in all religions, philosophy, and science! What if we put right reasoning first?
:love: I love you. You are using the language that turns my heart on, virtues and arte.
Once desires and fears have been brought under control, the eye of the heart opens and sees the higher realities and beauties of spirit. Yes, I think this should be our goal and I am so pleased you are aware of the way to do that.
There was a time when I thought of developing a church but I didn't have enough sermons to give for weekly services. :lol: But those of us who think as you do have none of the benefits of belonging to a church. We don't have the fellowship, the constant reassurance that of belonging and shared values and perspective on reality. We don't have one book, with one easy to share explanation of life. On the other hand, this thinking goes naturally with caring about global warming and preserving life on this planet and is becoming a popular movement.
I so believe in our human good and our ability to overcome evil, but uniting like-minded people is a challenge. Democracy is our best bet but education for technology does not prepare us for democracy.
Imagine if all the churches put their bibles on a backroom shelf and focused on teaching math and preparing people for a technological society. How long would Christianity be in the service of God? That is what we have done to our democracies. We stopped preparing the young for democracy, taking our cultures for liberty for granted, and leaving moral training to the church. This is the beast destroying our world and human potential. Some even gleefully speak of when computers run our lives and lack faith in humanity. What can we do to get us back on track with democracy?
Your link idea looked interesting, but I am not sure if you typed it in properly, because I was not able to access it on my phone. Anyway, thanks for your many contributions to the thread.
As to the church, I don’t really attend except for necessities like weddings and funerals.
What can we do to get us back on track with democracy? Good question. My answer would be with a parable from the Bible (Matthew 13:25-40) about the enemy who sowed tares or weeds among the wheat while the farmer slept. Ignorance is a form of sleep that prevents us from identifying the enemy, seeing through his plans and taking steps to stop him. People need to wake up and stay wide awake, aware and alert at all times and encourage others to do the same.
The first thing to wake up to, from a Christian point of view, is the fact that the Church has been hijacked and taken over by political and financial groups who are using it as an instrument of subversion. We need to build a new Church, a Church of the people, a Church of true believers.
But I feel @Jack Cummins is getting a bit impatient with us and would (rightly) like to reclaim his thread, so maybe we can discuss this elsewhere.
I am not getting impatient with your discussions at all. You have made good contributions. I created the thread with the aim of opening up any possible conversations which may arise. I am just extremely pleased that the thread is still going and it is the second longest one I have created so far, and I think that there is probably more mystery to be discussed. Really, I see my question as going back to the whole tradition of Greek mystery schools.
. Yes ... there are unfathomable mysteries, beyond human understanding ...
. Life is a mystery ... it cannot be approached through the mind ... Why?
. Because Life is not an academic question to be solved ...
. Life is beyond mind ... As you're beyond mind ...
. Mind is utilitarian not existentialist ...
. And Life is existentialist ...
I do agree that academic understanding of life does not really approach the experience of mysteries fully. However, I do think that reading the ideas of some who had certain insights is useful as some kind of training, because there is a danger of struggling, and feeling perplexed, alone.
I would recommend "The Golden Chain" by A. Uzdavinys if you haven't read it already. It traces Greek philosophy to its earliest beginnings.
Thanks for recommending the book. I will look out for it.
Jack is a super person who encourages discussion. However, we have gone off-topic and I don't like that, but, but... you asked how to make democracy strong and what you said of virtues and arte is essential to the people having power and using it well. That is not much of a mystery but it is a major theme in all philosophies East or West. I guess we can turn it into a mystery by questioning if there is life after death and if how we create ourselves in this life affects what happens to us when we die.
I have read the ancient Greek notion is, we are reincarnated and each time we have forgotten our past lives but we can be triggered to remember what we have learned in previous lives. This was important to their democracy because they wanted to come back to a better place, not a destroyed place. Doing things that glorified their city-state, was feather their own nest. I do live with a sense that I need to create myself as a better person, and hopefully do some good that will make everyone's lives better now and in the future.
The recent focus on consciousness is most exciting.
I think that you have quoted me as @Apollodorus. I don't mind, so I just hope that he doesn't. Generally, I go along with what I believe the Buddha thought, with lack of certainty about reincarnation. I would much rather the possibility of some deeper aspect of myself returning for future lives, and I just keep an open mind. More lives than one seems to offer more scope than just one for the development of consciousness.
I went through a time when I really wondered a lot about reincarnation, but I am not sure that it is possible to know for sure at all. As it is, I agree with your focus on how 'to create myself as a better person.' That is not to say that I don't think reincarnation is an interesting question, in the wider one of life after death. At least, it would not leave us floating around as entities, without bodies.
That pretty much encapsulates what philosophy is about.
As for reincarnation, and I think this also touches on @Jack Cummins' observation, it was a theory that operated on more than just one level. One of the aims of Greek philosophy was to expand man's consciousness, or "open the eye of the heart", to higher realities. Thinking of reincarnation, even as a theoretical possibility, served the purpose of expanding human consciousness in the same way astronomy (which was also an important element in philosophy) focused the mind on the heavenly world above. In other words, reincarnation served a very important psychological and spiritual purpose. Accomplished philosophers were no ordinary men, they were qualified and experienced spiritual masters and guides who knew what their were doing, hence the paramount importance of the master-disciple relationship. This can sometimes be difficult to appreciate for modern man who either has no access to a qualified teacher or who, following the default approach of materialistic, consumer-orientated society, thinks he can construct his own philosophy or spiritual "ladder to heaven" from bits of materials gleaned from the Internet or from books. This is not to discourage individual effort. As they say, when the disciple is ready the teacher, in whatever form or shape including life itself, appears. But it remains that there is a qualitative difference between learning by yourself and learning under a teacher or in a group which means that misinterpretation or misunderstanding of original sources or teachings can happen rather more easily than we think.
I believe that you are making an important point when speaking of the way in which there is a danger in becoming confused about certain topics, including life after death and reincarnation, without the guidance of a teacher. I do engage in such topic discussions on this forum, but it can be difficult in some ways because we are remote from one another and do not know each other. However, it is probably better than us reading and thinking about our ideas completely alone, in isolation.
Correct. Humans are social creatures. They learn from each other and learning or study groups do assist in this process. The thing is that people often join such groups for their own reasons, e.g. to socialize or kill time. Others may put too much energy into defending their own positions or promoting their egos, often without realizing, of course. But philosophy forums are good enough places to start as long as we don't forget why we're here. In Platonism, as in other traditions, memory plays a central role on many levels. It is important to understand that life, including learning, takes place on different planes of existence or levels of experience simultaneously, only one or two of which we are normally aware of, and even that incompletely. I find that keeping this at the back of our mind as it were, can open up unexpected avenues of perception and experience.
Generally, I find discussing ideas on this forum, but I am trying to be a bit reserved and cautious about how much I talk about certain ideas, like reincarnation. I have probably shared more in certain threads than I should have done, and I ended up feeling stressed out with some responses I received. I am just saying that because you are new to the forum, and there are some people who can become fairly hostile. Obviously, it is entirely up to you how much you share. At the moment, I am trying to be a bit more cautious than usual.
I like deep discussions and trying to think of some new threads which don't involve aspects of religion. I do enjoy discussion religious ideas so much, but at the moment, there are so many heated religious arguments going on in some threads. I have been using the forum for about 8 or 9 months and it goes in phases. People come and go, so I hope that you stick around. If I get into threads where it becomes tense, I prefer to keep a low profile. I feel that I learn through interacting and hearing various views, and what is good is that it is from people from all across the world. It is my first forum, and I will probably try to continue to use until a new avenue appears. I do agree that learning often takes place on many levels, and I think that I am in this life with fairly heavy karma...It is probably this that keeps me moving forward with the mysteries of life.
I am probably happier to discuss ideas like reincarnation or extrasensory perception on this thread rather than the one on reincarnation. That is because this is an older thread, so it is quieter and when talking about such ideas I am just trying to vocalise them with a few readers, rather than have to prove that I am right.
You said that so beautifully I could cry. I recently said something close to that to my daughter, telling her how sorry I am that I could not give our family the benefits of a church because Christianity just isn't my path. I don't think she fully understood what I was saying, the importance of that group of which you speak.
As I understand philosophy and democracy they go together. The group mind being far superior to individual efforts to understand right thinking and right action. This forum is the closest I can get to the intellectual stimulation I desire. It would be so wonderful if we could gather to share a meal and have a symposium.
Interesting notion floating around without bodies. Does not sound good at all. However, being one with God might mean without an ego that necessitates separation from God, but instead being part of one consciousness. As the Egyptian notion of the spiritual trinity. Our body dies with death, and our heart is judged and may or may not enter the good life, and no matter what, the third part of our trinity returns to the source. Our 3-dimensional reality being an illusion of separation.
That's a nice summary of what people often believe about humanity. Is there an abyss? I think only for people with a certain cast of mind. The abyss doesn't have to be godless. There is also the god abyss. Christ knows a lot of theists live tortured lives not knowing what god wants from them, being mocked by silence and emptiness and sometimes being kept awake at night with visions of hell fire, etc.
My own experience is that many secular people live calm, rational lives, with few concerns about metaphysics and epistemology and still manage to live deeply and thoughtfully, rarely being too concerned by questions of transcendent meaning.
Yes, but as political creatures, in a democracy, it is important to decide what is the right thought (truth) and the right action. Our abyss is an economic collapse such as Germany experienced before Hitler seized power and totalitarianism or socialism killing our democracy with liberty. That would be hell on earth and our only defense is right reasoning and right action.
Incidentally Hitler was begat by one of the most well read, most cultured, philosophically literate societies on earth. Just saying...
To orient ourselves; existentially, ethically, aesthetically, we need to embrace theism (in the broadest sense) or let it go. There cannot be a definitive yes or no answer to the question of the existence of God; because, inter alia, there seems to be no definitive definition of God.
As to free will, I think that it must be presupposed if you think it is necessary to believe people are praiseworthy or blameworthy for their actions. And I think it must be presupposed in the full libertarian sense, otherwise it cannot provide rational justification for praise and blame. (Note: reward and punishment are not the same as praise and blame).
Life after death is something that cannot ever be empirically tested, because any such purported life would not be life within the empirical realm (unless like Lazarus, someone returned from death; but then you could never know for sure whether the person had really died or merely appeared to be dead).
Those who look to science will of course say these questions are already answered, but their presupposition is that science is best equipped to offer answers to such questions. All views have there share of baseless presuppositions.
Here's an example: say neuroscience comes up with a theory of consciousness that is widely accepted as true. You might then think the so-called 'Hard Problem' had been definitively solved/ resolved/ dissolved, but whatever explanatory mechanisms could be proposed in such a theory, how could we ever know they are the whole story. They might seem adequate to some minds, but that would say more about those minds than it would about the exhaustivity of the theory.
My motto is to forever keep an open mind. At present I am not a theist; which means that I don't accept divine command theory in ethics. I also don't believe in any form of afterlife, but I don't deny it either; I remain agnostic; which means I live my life, and consider my actions, in terms of what I can hope to assess; their likely effects in this life, not in some unknown or merely imagined afterlife.
As to free will, I believe I am free, because I experience myself (within obvious limits) as being so, and I see insufficient reasons from science to believe otherwise.
Experience is tricky. You don't know what direction your thoughts will take 10 mins from now, and you didn't choose to have the thoughts you had 10 mins previously. Infact, if someone asked you to think of a book, any book, there is no experience of choice. Rather, from the pov of experience, the book titles that appear in your conscious awareness seem arbitrary (of course, once you have a few titles in mind you are apparently free to select one, but it's not clear how free that 'choice' is, if at all).
You have a good motto.
When you say "it's not clear" I interpret that to mean there is no proof, or there is no empirical evidence. I would agree with that. But it is also not clear that choices are not free either, so as I said, I see no good reason to deny the present feeling of freedom.
The fact that we cannot explain or model freedom conceptually does not bother me; in fact that is exactly what I would expect.
Quoting emancipate
Thanks :cool:
They do indeed. But the main concern in Platonic philosophy is justice or righteousness. The ideal government or political system is one guided by the principle of righteousness. Hence Plato's suggestion that countries should be ruled by philosopher-kings.
By the way, the notion of "floating around without bodies" is not a Platonic one. In Platonism the soul after death or between incarnations is endowed with a subtle, non-material or "astral" body. The soul also inhabits this astral body in the dream state or out-of-body experiences.
I don’t actually frequent online forums much, for the simple reason that I haven’t got the time. I only came across this one while I was working with my colleagues on a project about Greek philosophy and its transmission from Plato into modern times. Incidentally, this in itself makes a fascinating subject. It is generally assumed in Western Europe that Greek philosophical texts were somehow “lost” to Europe and were reintroduced through Latin translations from Arabic. But if you said this to an educated Greek, he would smile at your ignorance. The assumption is largely true of Western Europe which was overrun by Germanic tribes but the Eastern part of the Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) with its capital at Constantinople lasted until 1453 (about a thousand years) and all the original texts were preserved in Greek (Christian) libraries, universities and even monasteries. Meantime, there were Greek or Greek-speaking philosophers in Alexandria (Egypt) and other parts of the Middle East and when Muslim Arabs conquered the region in the 600s, Greek philosophy passed on to the Arab world.
The Arabs didn’t have the manpower or experience to run the administration, so they largely left the Byzantine administration in place, with Greek-speaking non-Arabs in charge of the conquered territories. For example, St John of Damascus’ father, Sergius ibn Mansur, was one of the many Byzantine Christian officials in Syria retained in the new Muslim Umayyad administration. Under Muslim rule, St John himself was able to write a book in Greek, The Fount of Knowledge, in which he refuted the teachings of Islam (makes interesting reading, by the way).
Greek civilisation, even under Christianity, was unsurpassed at the time. Constantinople, “the New Rome”, was unmatched and the Muslim Arabs dreamed of making it the capital of the Muslim world. In particular, the Arabs had a keen interest in Greek philosophy. Centres of Greek philosophy had already been established in Persia and Christian Armenia had libraries with Greek philosophical texts. In the 700s, following the Arab conquests, the Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur built a learning centre (“House of Wisdom”) at Baghdad and ordered the translation of Greek philosophical works, gathered from the Byzantines, into Arabic. This is known as the “Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement” but translations were also made into Syriac and Persian so that, incredible though this may sound, the whole of the Middle East was re-Hellenized under Muslim rule. It was at this time that Islamic mysticism a.k.a. Sufism made its appearance under the influence of Platonic currents from Alexandria, Baghdad, Harran and other places. The Persian scholar al-Biruni even believed that the word “Sufi” was derived from Greek sophia, “wisdom”. This may not have been entirely true of the word, but it certainly applied to the tradition.
And so, Platonic philosophers and mystics carried on the tradition, sometimes disguised as Christians in Greece and elsewhere in the Christian world, as Muslims or “Sufis” in the Arab-Persian World and even as far as India where many had already established themselves in the early centuries of the Christian Era.
Transmission of the Greek Classics – Wikipedia
Graeco-Arabic translation movement - Wikipedia
Christian Platonists and Christian Neoplatonists
What you are reading here is something that the vast majority of people, even those with higher education, know nothing about (except some with knowledge of Byzantine studies and related fields). The same happens with philosophy and spirituality in general. Very little is known, much less is understood, and less still is put into practice and experienced. On the other hand, the saying “seek and you shall find” applies above all to the spiritual path. Half of the time, while you’re looking for something, you may find something else that is of even greater value. The main thing is to keep an open mind and believe in the impossible at all times. And don’t let anyone tell you that reincarnation is a myth.
BTW, Marxists.org and Gnosis.org have a great collection of English texts that are free and in editable/copyable forms. Really nice.
Good quote. I've always considered old Georg an obscurant, occulting, charlatan (must be my Schopenhauerian / Feuerbachian bias pace Žižek et al) even moreso than his great-grand bastard Heidi.
:rofl:
:100:
Your post is interesting and I have just looked at your links, as there does indeed appear to be so much knowledge to be tapped into. In recent weeks, I am thinking that the Platonic mystics are of extreme importance. I try to read as widely as possible, but I have downloaded some books on on Greek ideas, and I am trying to find the time to read them. Thanks for your contributions to the discussion, and with regard to certain ideas being dismissed as mythical on this site, I try not to think as freely as possible.
I am not really wishing to suggest that theists have a superior knowledge or more peaceful life. Really, I was writing of the godless abyss more as a metaphorical truth, probably based on my own experiences of thinking outside of the religious background from which I was socialised. Ultimately, I try to be open, and non judgemental of anyone's ideas, and I keep an ongoing open understanding of any new ideas which I encounter.
I think Hegel needs to be taken in the right historical context. His "statism" was a reaction to the French Revolution that promoted individualism which many saw as leading to anarchy and chaos. The Germans were different from the French, they preferred stability, law and order to the unbridled idealism and individualism of the French. Plus, they had no choice. In a world system of conflicting imperial interests, they needed an ordered, successful and strong economy and the state and military to promote and defend that.
Germany was a world leader in science, technology, education and the arts. It wasn't just the Americans who borrowed from the Germans. But I'm not sure "German philosophy" is the real problem in America. Don't forget that Marxism was another Darwinist "German philosophy" that believed in a new type of man to replace the old. I think the problem is that multinational corporations and financial groups have infiltrated and taken over the political system which now runs more and more according to their interests and less and less according to the interests of the people. People can see that after decades of "progress" not much has changed. Even Clinton and Obama with their "Change" and "Yes We Can" slogans left quite a lot unchanged. People are beginning to distrust politicians in general and turn to any populist figure for solutions. Unfortunately, that will never really work unless and until the root causes of it all are addressed.
Generally, I agree with your answer, because I am in favour of keeping an open forum. I am not absolutely sure about theism, because it does seem important for me still.
I grew up believing in God, and questioned the basis of my Catholic beliefs. I was extremely religious as a teenager, and really questioned it all after encounters with fundamentalists. Their extreme ideas seemed to point to the knots inherent in Christian thinking.
Now, amidst philosophy discussion, I am really unsure how the question of God. I am not sure that life is fully described by the most common philosophies of our time, especially materialistic determinism, and even neuroscience. I am not convinced that life is full of random events, which makes me wonder about God, but I just think that the understanding of God within theism may be a bit restrictive. So, I would not say that I describe myself as agnostic, because even that seems too much of a boxed in label. I am more in search of thinking beyond the categories, and wonder if the conception of God, which the theists described, needs updating.
Sure. I was just trying to open up the subject a bit more.
I really did have a tutor who thought that life after death might consist in us living eternally as disencarnate entities. However, the whole topic of bodies in afterlife is one which makes me laugh because my mum has always considered spoken of concern about what kind of bodies people would have after the resurrection, whether they would be glamorous and, whether the elderly would be given back their youth. Also, when I went to an evangelical church, I can remember people talking about what meals they would have after the resurrection. But, really, I think if you read the Bible, especially Paul, he is speaking more about spiritual bodies, rather than earthly ones.
Thanks for the links to the websites. I had a look at them this afternoon and they are very interesting. I am just finding so much to read that my head will explode eventually, with broken pieces of mysteries falling everywhere. I am thinking that Hermetic ideas are something I wish to analyse, because they do seem to have played such a central role in many developments of systems of ideas.
I'm sorry if you thought I was attacking you, Athena. That was not my intention. What I should have said was that those ideas seem to me to depict a worse scenario than the one I see. But really my broader point was that theorized or disciplined philosophical study have no necessary connection to good citizenship. It might improve it, it might make it worse, that is an open question.
Well, to approach the issue Hegel is getting at from an entirely different angle, there is Bacon:
That is, there is a real sense in which an encompassing view of reality, the kind we'd really like to have, at the same time needs to pull out to such a scope that it can become almost numinous, mystical.
Of course, there is always the risk of deluding yourself into thinking you're viewing things at a grand scope, when you're really just recycling superstitions.
If you're looking for a psychological take on alchemy that is a bit more accessible (still definitely not super accessible) there is Jung's Psychology and Alchemy.
Despite being a kind of a con, Aliestier Crowley's Magick Without Tears has a pretty good intro to the occult of the early 20th century, the fodder that fed Years and many artists. The problem is that said occultism is very much a mix of superstition, and frankly, bullshit, denuded of the religious elements of the Gnostics and Kabbalahists. However, that said, it isn't totally impenetrable the way the Zohar is, and is interesting at least as a historical curiosity.
I have read Jung's ideas on alchemy, as he is about my favourite writer. That was how I first came across the idea of alchemy in the first place, so I have always seen it as a symbolic process more than in any other way. Generally, I approach most esoteric ideas from that angle, but that doesn't mean dismissing them, because the symbolic is the language of the psyche.
I love the historical view of things because so much is a reaction to something else. Considering your concerns you might want to know what bureaucratic order has to do with reality.
The Military-Industrial Complex or New World Order may have begun as a need for national defense but lacking awareness of it and trying to change things has the US in serious need of psychoanalysis. Forget all the emotionally disturbing stuff that goes with Hitler and WWII, and just focus on the organization of power. There is no way the US federal government could do all things it is doing today without adopting Prussian military bureaucracy applied to citizens. I don't care if it is Republicans in power or Democrats, they are both driving the same car (Military Industrial Complex).
Aldous Huxley said- "-In the past, personal and political liberty depended to a considerable extent upon government inefficiency. The spirit of tyranny was always more than willing, but its organizational and material equipment were generally weak. Progressive science and technology have changed all this completely."
Frank Gervasi praised Hoover for the organization of government that gave it huge powers it never had before, in the book "Big Government". Roosevelt called in Hover to reorganize the government to accomplish what Roosevelt was able to accomplish during the Great Depression. Our government today could not be working with industry to get vaccines out, and send checks to everyone, and plan a major infrastructure restructuring without the bureaucratic order set by Hoover and Roosevelt and developed by Eisenhower. Socialism versus capitalism :lol: Gee people can argue about that but they are clueless when it comes to understanding the government organization that makes socialism possible and that we already have it. That happened long ago during the Great Depression.
Some books, warning of the dangers of giving government these new powers, were written and then when we went to war :gasp: the marriage between Industry and Government really alarmed the people who paid attention to the importance of organization. The Military-Industrial complex is not just about war. It is about our government's relationship with industry and a transfer of power from citizens to the government.
In 1830 Tocqueville warned Christian democracies would become despots that control the minute details of our lives, leaving us nothing to do. We are as children given a bucket full of water and paintbrushes to help paint the house when the adults are actually doing the painting, not the children. The philosophies that relate to our personal liberty and power, are coloring books we give the children to keep them out of the way unless we understand the organization of political and economic power.
I have seen some pretty ugly people and the idea that in heaven they might look in the mirror and see an attractive person, and others were attracted to them as they never experienced in their previous lifetime, they could not possibly be who they are, but obviously would be someone else. That would be a real head trip.
Except as I imagine reincarnation, we would have to forget our previous lives or instead of having a new life, we would be living the old one. I do not want to spend eternity in the life I have had. I work at forgetting my past. I would like reincarnation best if I had a totally new life each time. It would be nice to keep the knowledge I have intentionally gained but not the memories of this personality.
One reason I have worked so hard to gain knowledge is what if I do end up at that big dining table in the sky and I am seated next to the great people of history. It would be so embarrassing to be ignorant of them and their achievements and the history of their time. Seriously that thought really bothers me.
Sorry about that misunderstanding. It was something you said to someone else that I thought was a personal attack and now I am embarrassed about making an issue of something that I probably should have ignored. However, you surprise me by saying "that theorized or disciplined philosophical study have no necessary connection to good citizenship" :gasp:
I must totally misunderstand what you said because there is an important difference between being a Frenchman or a German when these two countries were fighting each other and it is philosophical notions that make people so different. The US prepared with education in Greek and Roman classics or dropping that and preparing the young with Geman philosophy, is a totally different culture! Christianity without literacy in Greek and Roman classics is not the same as Christianity with German philosophy.
Democracy without arte and preparation for being a generalist has serious problems. Philosophy can lead to a despot or against such.
In my mind what you said is not a correct understanding of what is so.
Correct. The big bankers and industrialists already had strong influence on the government and its economic and foreign policies for which purpose they established organizations like the Federal Reserve, Bankers Trust, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and many others. Then they used WW2 and the military-industrial complex to literally take over a government that was completely dependent on them. The Rockefellers and their associates who were replacing the Morgans were particularly good at that.
So, basically, power was transferred from the people to government and from government to the military-industrial complex and the cabal of bankers and industrialists behind it. Democracy in America, as in most of the world, is just a show to fool the masses. And people like Bill Clinton, Obama, Biden, all know it too well. No career politician can possibly not know that which means that they are complicit in it. So, you can think for yourself what kind of world we live in and what sort of future awaits us unless we wake up and smell the coffee. Unfortunately, the epidemic, environmentalism, BLM and other such movements only serve to deflect attention, energy, intelligence, and time from what's going on. And you can't say anything because you get shouted down before you even open your mouth. We might as well be in China or North Korea.
Interesting you don't include Reagan, Bush and Bush. Also when people are talking about a 'cabal of bankers' this is often coded anti-semitism. Where are you headed?
I only mentioned those that are regarded by the left as "heroes" and "saviors" which of course they aren't. If you think otherwise, that's fine by me.
Not sure many leftists would consider them heroes. Reminds me of the famous quote by Gore Vidal. There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.
You partly understand me. What you have described are cultural differences, which are a mix of nationalism, propaganda and, yes, some of this is philosophically derived, sure. I didn't say ideas weren't important. I was simply referring to academic or the serious study of philosophy, which most people don't do and still manage to be good people. A simple observation of no particular worth.
Well, I'm not American. I called them "cabal" because that's the normal word for them in English. And if the Rockefellers and the Morgans are "Semites" then I apologize profusely. But they're still a cabal or "Property Party" if you prefer. Main thing is they don't represent the people unless you object to that as well.
I am not objecting, I am clarifying. Sometimes people like to spray around the Protocols to the Elders of Zion type stuff, which is all about a cabal of bankers and how society is controlled by a vast conspiracy. These ideas are very old and multipurpose and take a range of forms.
As to representing the people - politics sometimes manages to do this but generally by accident.
Clarifying what exactly? You come up with that stuff yourself and then blame it on me? What next?
What "defensiveness"? You call people "anti-semites" for no reason and then accuse them of being "defensive"?
You agree with me that a cabal or "Property Party" has taken over and that power has been taken away from the people. So why are you trying to prevent people from speaking up by calling them "anti-semites"? How does that serve the interests of democracy and freedom? Just wondering.
Evidence for your defensiveness right here. You used an anti-Semitic trope 'cabal of bankers' and I asked for clarification. Your response is that you are being called anti-Semitic. You will remember I asked you - 'Where are you headed?" This is not calling you an anti-Semite. It is clarifying your position. If you are not suggesting a world conspiracy of Jewish bankers and industrialists then that's great. Happy to hear it and we can move on.
Quoting Apollodorus
And please stop using such weak attacks as a defense. I am not trying to stop you or anyone from posing questions and presenting ideas. If your ideas are so brittle that my attempt at clarifications are spun by you as an attempt to try to 'prevent' you or anyone from engaging in a discussion, that's on you, Bud.
I have no problem with people calling out aspects of our political system as dysfunctional and corrupt. Clearly it is. But the devil is in the detail.
You're doing quite a bit of projecting there aren't you? Since when are the Rockefellers, the Morgans, the Clintons, Obama and Biden "Jews"???
And it isn't a "defense" at all. I'm just answering the points you're making or trying to make.
Why do you feel the need of "clarifying my position" then? My position is that financial and industrial interests have too much influence on government and the people too little. You seem to agree with me but at the same time disagree, so which is it?
Here's the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) definition for you:
cabal a. A secret or private intrigue of a sinister character formed by a small body of persons; ‘something less than conspiracy’ (Johnson).
1663 J. Heath Flagellum He was no sooner rid of the danger of this but he was puzzled with Lambert's cabal.
1702 Clarendon's Hist. Rebellion I. v. 439 The King..asked him, whether he were engaged in any Cabal concerning the Army?
1707 J. Freind Acct. Earl of Peterborow's Conduct in Spain 171 The contrivances and cabals of others have too often prevail'd.
1824 W. Irving Tales of Traveller II. 30 There were cabals breaking out in the company.
1874 G. Bancroft Hist. U.S. X. xvii. 349 The cabal against Washington found supporters exclusively in the north ....
So, it's not even a conspiracy! But according to you it is one all the same ...
And the Wikipedia Article - Cabal
It goes back hundreds of years with no connotation of "anti-semitism" whatsoever. So, maybe it's you who is "defensive" for no reason, not me?
Smokin' one out, huh?
More like smoking yourself out from what I see ....
Or, maybe Taliban?
“Cabal of climate sceptics to descend on UK parliament” - Guardian
“In us we trust: the powerful cabal pulling political strings over NSW stadiums” – Guardian
”Cabal buys rest of Del Monte” – Independent
“Londoner's Diary: Corbyn’s cabal has no need for libraries” – Evening Standard
“The cabal of the commandos” - Jerusalem Post
[b]I do realize that uneducated Taliban Fascists and Boko Haram Nazis (and Stalinists) think differently from normal people but that isn't my fault.
The big question is, where has the "American Democracy and Freedom Of Speech" gone? Could it be that it's just a myth?
[/b]
Yeah, talking about yourself, I presume.
What exactly did I say to offend you for you to start attacking me???
What attack? I was just having a peaceful and polite concurrence with @Tom Storm.
I said "presume". But I forgot the Taliban don't speak English.
Whatever have you been discussing? The mystery deepens. When I was awake in the night, looking at my phone, I kept seeing this thread flashing up and thought that the keys to the universe had been found...But, at least the thread has not lost consciousness just yet.
That remains to be seen. It looks like some may have lost it after all.
Sometimes when I look at this site it seems like an organic being with a consciousness, threads fizzling and fading, and others being born.
Look who's talking! Fake Democracy, Fake Freedom of Speech, Fake Forum.
No wonder you're being taken over by Mexico and China. lol
Yeah, but don't forget the moles, the termites and the tapeworms. And the Stalinist Taliban.
And seeing that it's your thread, what did I say that was "offensive" to anyone?
I am not sure because people can get really sensitive, especially around politics. I have been struggling with getting into bits of discussion on various threads in the night when I couldn't sleep. When I did sleep I dreamt that someone was creating endless threads, almost taking over the site, and the moderators were trying to delete them and the whole site crashed. But, I didn't sleep much, so I am not good today...
Your idea that you may end up in heaven meeting important thinkers is interesting and one which I never thought about even in my most religious moments. But, yes, it would seem embarrassing to say to Plato that you never got round to meeting them. The writer I would probably like to meet with is William Blake. But, the other question is if we were in a life after death would all the philosophical questions be revealed.
I think that I would rather come back in another human body, but if people really believe in reincarnation they ought to think about working to ensure that humanity survives, or else they won't be able to come back at all, at least in this cycle of existence.
lol Sounds like a right nightmare then. Maybe there is some truth in dreams after all. Let's hope your dream or nightmare doesn't turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy ...
Well most of my dreams don't come true so hopefully that dream won't come true. However, I do think that in some cases the more we dwell on possibilities we are in danger of creating self fulfilling prophecies. However, even when my worst fears do come true it is usually in a slightly different way from what I have imagined might happen. Generally, I feel that life can be hard to predict in an exact way.
The interesting thing is that some people seem to have an uncanny ability to more or less predict the course of their own lives from a fairly early age. Maybe they're more in tune with a wider reality and the role they can and/or are "destined" to play in it?
In contrast, others seem to bear what might be termed - for lack of a better phrase - the burden of a "heavy karma".
When properly understood, most certainly. But, as I said before, people are often attracted to more "exotic" traditions and tend to overlook the treasures buried in their own back yard, so to speak.
I am afraid that I am in the category of not being able to predict my life. I find that life seems to come in waves, but I think that this is my life of heavy duty karma. I feel that I have a lot to learn, but, certainly, I am convinced that there are no coincidences.
But there is a possibility that America is heading that way. If it happened in China where people went from worshiping the emperor to worshiping Mao Zedong overnight then it can happen anywhere. Pulling down statues and cancelling history can perfectly well end in cancelling culture and cancelling freedom. It looks to me that a lot of people are going along with that and I don't see what will stop it unless as you say, we go back to educating people in the established culture. But that won't happen if the education system is controlled by people whose main goal in life is to cancel Western culture as soon as possible.
Exactly. For me the thought goes like this- There is life on other planets and that life depends on that planet, even the souls who have passed. Now if their planet dies, are they extinguished, or as a group of souls can they wander through space until they find another planet that will support their lives? I don't do well in science forums because my reading is not limited to science and my imagination is beyond science. In philosophy, we are not limited to saying something is so or not, but we can imagine and question if such a thing could be possible and if so what would that be like.
Okay, I agree that fortunately, we all tend to be good people. I think that is because like other animals we are social animals and we learn from each other and social pressure shapes us. And we also share cultural notions of what it means to be a good man and a good woman. The changes in our notions of how a government should function is blowing me away. I never thought the federal government should be held responsible for child care so mothers can work outside the home. In the past marriage was about family duties, and by law members of the family had to take care of each other. By law, in my state, women could not hold jobs unless they can take care of the family and do the job.
Families sent their young children to work in factories until there were laws preventing this. The parents took what the children earned and used that money as they saw fit, but wives who worked could keep what they earned. The government did not help anyone pay rent, or subsidize their need for food. Marriage was very important because it was very difficult for single parents to meet the needs of their children. It was never just a matter of law that made people care for each other and their children. Society expected proper behavior and social pressure usually got people to conform until we get to very cities where social pressure becomes less effective as we are strangers to each other.
Exactly! However, I do not think there is a goal to cancel Western culture. I think the purpose of education is defined by military and economic needs and the values set by the military and bankers are not family values.
When the US mobilized for the first world war, industry argued to close schools, saying the war caused a labor shortage and that they were not getting their money's worth because even after a young person was educated they still had to train them for the job. Teachers argued schools that made the young good citizens were also good for making them patriotic citizens and that education must replace the educated people who would be killed in the war, and indeed public education was used to mobilize the US for WWI and WWII.
And as national defense needs change so does education. As employers had to train new employees for the rapidly changing technology, so would any military branch have to train people. We were in a crisis as our young did not learn what was needed for the developing technology and we needed to train typists, record keepers, mechanics, etc as fast as possible! :gasp: Vocational training was added to education at this time, and as everyone knows the military technology of the second world war, specifically air warfare and the atom bomb, radically changed education again.
There is also the radical bureaucratic changes that changed education and culture. Military order needs people to obey authority. Prussian military-bureaucratic order applied to citizens brought an end to preparing everyone to be industrial and civic leaders. We tore down our national heroes who were examples of strong individuals who stepped into leadership positions, long before tearing down statues. With this change is a nanny government, subsidizing us for rent and food and medical care and now trying to change this dependency on government by insisting industry pay everyone higher wages. I think that is a mistake, but subsidizing workers is also a serious problem. And an economic system that has destroyed traditional family values is also a problem. While those educated for technology are as dependent as people in third world countries on industry to provide them jobs, because they are not educated for leadership.
Lastly, our industry is modeled after England's autocratic model and that leads to autocratic values, not democratic ones.
I think that's a pretty accurate analysis there. However, it isn't just the military industry. The military industry depends on the corporate groups that control natural resources and raw materials such as oil and steel, starting with Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, etc.
It was these corporate interests and their allies from the banking and financial sector, that started taking over culture and education by funding cultural and educational institutions through their foundations and endowments. Among the groups funded by the Rockefellers was the London-based Fabian Society whose members became highly influential in education, culture and politics on both sides of the Atlantic from the early 1900s, i.e. long before WWI.
The Fabians were the original initiators of the nanny-state concept as a method of gradual implementation of socialism. They worked on it before and during WWII and implemented it straight after the war when the Labour Party which the Fabians had founded came to power.
How these corporate groups operated in close collaboration with the Fabians on both sides of the Atlantic has been described in detail by historians in
Fabian Freeway: High Road to Socialism in the U S A by R. Martin
and
The Anglo-American Establishment by C. Quigley
Martin focuses on the Fabians and Quigley on Anglo-American corporations. If you haven't read them already, I would highly recommend them.
I am glad that someone else on the forum wonders about the what ifs rather just what is. Generally, I think that a lot of people I know in life don't have much patience with the what ifs. I love the imagination and the arts which is all about that. I think that is probably because my mum used to act in plays, so she encouraged me to imagine all kinds of things when I was playing as a child. She also used to like writing, and she used to write song lyrics and someone used to put tunes to them and sing them, along with a guitar for her, and record them on cassettes. Generally, I see creativity as an essential aspect of life and philosophical thinking.
The second book is more agreeable so far. I have no problem with information about an elite group of people meeting. The Imperial Federation doesn't look like a bad thing to me yet.
Quoting wikipedia
Perhaps we need a separate thread for this discussion. Figuring out the best form of government and best economic organization might be a mystery but probably not the kind of mystery that this thread is about. However, the subject is interesting.
Well, it is a critical study. However, the point about Fabianism is that it seeks to implement socialism by stealth. This is clear from the Fabians' own statements. The method is called "permeation" in Fabian writings and it refers to putting Fabian socialist ideas into people's minds without letting them know that those ideas are socialist. It's a technical term in Fabian Socialist theory that you need to be familiar with in order to understand what the author is saying. I thought you were aware of it already.
Fabianism/socialist movement - Britannica
But I suppose we could start a separate thread on this. I'll look into it.
I thought we could start with the Fabians' book The Open Conspiracy and the political ideas suggested in it.
So, any further discussion of the mysteries of philosophy is welcome here, because I don't think that they have really been solved yet. As this thread is long, and people, especially new forubm members, may not wish to go back to the beginning, the three central mysteries which I pointed to were the existence of God, free will and life after death. In discussions of them, one theme which emerged was that of trying to understand and explain the nature of consciousness.
Correct. Athena and I thought the political conversation we were having should be continued on a separate thread without this in any way affecting Jack's thread. My apologies should this have caused any misunderstanding.
It is fine. I think that you are going to be busy because you still have your reincarnation thread going. At times I have 2 or even 3 on the go but it can take up a lot of time replying to comments, and it sometimes means that I don't have time to pay much attention to others' threads. I may not get involved in the one you are starting. I am a bit wary of getting too involved on political thread discussions on the site and it is partly the site is online for the public. You are anonymous, but I even have my photo showing. I could have chosen a username, but I chose not to, so I am just aware that what I say is available for anyone to read.
But, if you have any spare moments after your own threads you are more than welcome in the discussion of the mysteries. I can't believe that this thread is still going because it must have been going for about a month.
Thank you for restating the mysteries, and yes, the separation is about not taking your thread off-topic as we kept moving in a political direction and I felt bad about that.
I want to go back to your earlier statement Quoting Jack Cummins
Immediately Einstien comes to mind and his thought experiment about riding on a beam of light. I am thrilled that you encourage thought experimenting as the people of science seem to be as far off course as the church of old became when it made itself the authority on what people can talk about and what they can not talk about or think about. I am sure the empirical scientists mean well, and the formula for scientific thinking has merit, but when our thinking becomes too rigid, it limits our understanding of truth.
Einstein expanded our knowledge of reality with his thought experiments and I am sure that applying such thought experiments to the mysteries can also extend our knowledge of the unknown. One of my very old books on logic explains we can intuitively know things but need to test those ideas with the scientific method before moving a thought from an interesting thought category to empirical fact. And isn't this the work of philosophy? Creative thinking is essential to expanding our consciousness. One of the biggest mysteries is what is math? Why can knowledge of pi, and other mathematical tricks, reveal so much information? I have a math professor's lectures and he can talk for 4 hours about knots and how math makes the unseen known, such as knots in DNA. It is mind-boggling and people are arguing if math is real or a human invention.
I've got the feeling you might be right there. And possibly one or two other threads, too. But we all do what we can ....
Really, I thought that you were better off having the discussion a little more discreetly on this thread as a it is quiter. I think that the topic you have started is so controversial. I am not saying that it is not worth starting, but sometimes it can all become so heated, when politics, race and gender threads are started. I did start one on prejudice, but I took a different approach to the usual political one, because I approached it from the point of how can we overcome our own prejudices. But, of course, it did get into the wider question of overcoming prejudice, but I managed to steer it away from too much politics. I also had one on totalitarianism but that was more my based on my own fears.
I still have this one on the go and the one I started about reading, but I am going to try to avoid starting any more for about a month. I went back and counted and I have written about 40 threads in 8 months. So, I am going to try to have a little break because on some days I have about 20 comments to reply to. However, I love creating threads, so I can't promise to wait a month. But, I partly want to wait because I think that there are overlaps in my threads, so I wish to stand back, reflect and come up with something really new, but it is difficult because I am the same person with the same ideas on any thread I create. But, I do still think that the mysteries need more discussion...
I am afraid I have difficulty understanding Maths. I was doing okay at school until I had a particular teacher whose approach I could not grasp, and I got behind. I am sure that when people get into the philosophy behind Maths it is interesting, but there is only so much we can explore.
I do read on quantum physics and I do read about biochemistry, because it was relevant to psychiatric nursing, but I probably won't explore Maths. However, I was aware of how the doctors I worked with come from a studying the sciences and I do think it gives a certain knowledge base. Some of them took an interest in the arts too but this was variable. I generally explore philosophy, psychology, art, literature, psychology, sociology, anthropology and comparative religion, so I have a lot to read. Generally, though, I feel that one discipline alone is a bit too narrow for trying to understand 'truth.'
Agreed. But what good is a forum if you can't discuss controversial topics? We can't pretend that certain issues don't exist. And on this forum, in particular, it looks like even the most non-controversial of discussions can very fast turn (or be turned) into something else.
I think that it is interesting to discuss the controversial issues, but sometimes it seems like full scale war. I wish to explore certain amounts of controversy, but not to get too stressed out, because I have experienced so much stress in life anyway. I struggle with sleeping, and if I am glance at my phone in the night, I expect that I will see your thread popping up all night. However, my latest thread has been popping up quite a lot, so I may see that too. Anyway, I think that this is the last post for today, so goodnight.
I have noticed that you are referring to English politics, so are you based in England too?
That did make me laugh, imagining your phone flashing up in the night while its owner is struggling to gather his philosophical thoughts or go to sleep. I always switch mine off unless I'm expecting an important call. Otherwise people tend to abuse your friendship and try to force you into the role of agony aunt and turn you into a convenient extension of their personal life ....
But just the other night I had this dream about a pigeon that came back to me and next morning I got a parcel in the post of stuff I had ordered online ages ago. You did mention dreams earlier, mine tend to be of this "coded" type, sometimes more direct and obvious than other times but always connected with events taking place within the next few days. It is as if your subconscious is communicating to you in a language that you can learn quite easily if you make the effort. Some of my friends and acquaintances have that sort of dreams, too, and we have long discussions about it. Obviously, this is only explicable by positing the ability of human consciousness to operate not only independently of the physical body but also independently of time and space which is quite extraordinary really. Over time, this and other experiences (even more powerful and real than dreams) have convinced me than there must be some truth in reincarnation. This is what I mean when I say "reliable accounts" of paranormal experience.
I am a poor sleeper and often look at this site in the night when I can't sleep and even write replies. I used to have a lot of friends phone at about midnight but I try to avoid that because it just makes going to sleep harder, but I have lost touch with a lot of friends during lockdown. I have found life in England to be awful, but that was partly because I lost my job and had to move twice. We are starting to ease our way out of lockdown and I am looking for work again, but it is hard to know what will happen next. The biggest danger is if lockdown measures ease too quickly and the we get a third wave. I don't know how people would cope, because I think that so many people have become debilitated.
Dreams and premonitions were probably what got me wondering about the mysteries of existence in the first place. That was because in my final couple of years I kept having premonitions of people dying and the people died shortly after. This included my headmaster and several people I used to see around but did not know. I went with a friend to my local priest asking for explanations but, of course, he did not know. At one point I even started to worry that the deaths were my fault. Fortunately, I read Jung's autobiography at that time and read of his premonitions and his theory of synchronicity. I have had some similar experiences as an adult, but not recently. But I did have premonitions about 2 friends I knew committing suicide a couple of days a short while before they killed themselves. I just wish that I had been able to stop their deaths.
But, my own experience of premonitions has definitely stopped me from believing in some of the most common materialistic philosophies. I think that I might have become an atheist otherwise. I am not conventionally religious and only go to church with a friend occasionally, but I definitely believe that there is some source underlying our physical existence. I certainly don't believe that consciousness is an illusion. However, I think that some Christian ideas of God are rather narrow, and I see both Christ and the Buddha, as well as other 'masters' as having access to truths which most people are not aware of in daily experience.
I used to experience stuff like that a lot more than I do now. I went through a phase when I bought books about clairvoyance. Such as Edgar Cayce's books and Ruth Montgomery. Of course, quantum physical thinking is a must. It can be argued that our perception of time is just an illusion and that seems to make sense if what we dream seems to come true the next day.
But then what fun would life be? My mind jumps to the Hindu god waking up, and reality as we know it disappears like a dream, only to start all over again when he goes back to sleep.
For me, quantum physics throws us into questioning all of reality as we understand it. It is all energy but we think of all of it as matter. That is mind-boggling to me.
That is for sure and is especially so for older people who are slipping into dementia and dying. My job as a Senior Companion is on shut down, but the residential retirement housing and nursing homes are opening up. They have vaccinated everyone willing to be vaccinated and Senior Companions were required to be vaccinated. Our president is telling us we are a low-level risk. But my county we are in a high-risk level and I can not visit my people. Two of my clients are rapidly going downhill! Physically and mentally the elderly are in higher risks because of isolation than they are in risk because of the virus. This is eating me up. I feel so helpless against what the isolation is doing to them. I have never seen people decline so fast!
It is mind blowing for me too. Maybe the fun after will be that human being ensured that there is nothing after death could learn new ways to discover happiness and how should persuade it. But maybe it's the opposite a total chaos in human physicism. I don't know either. But indeed I agree that quantum actually indicates that everything energy. And I have a sense that this universal energy that connect everything might be connected in human soul and all the things we have inside us and we can't describe it with words or see it but we are still sure there are there! Anyway It might be all wrong it's just what I sense
I am so thrilled to have DVDs of John Edwards communications with the deceased, much as he did in his TV show "Crossing Over". It is impossible for me to believe he is not connecting with those who crossed over.
There are several life-after-death books and this one, "Dead Men Talking" looks particularly interesting to me, because it questions religious leaders' ability to manage this time in history, and I have heard other stories like the ones described here. Like does the religious community have all the information of spiritual truth?
I also believe some people who have crossed over have communicated through me. My deceased mother warned me of a life-changing event and that things would come out okay. A friend's dead child used me to give his mother a message. A dead friend gave me messages with a bird and the electricity in an elevator both messages came in the same time frame on my way to my apartment. Another came from a friend's husband and it could not have been anything other than a message from him to her because only she could decode the message and I had no idea why I was thinking "red" and "bucket". I just knew I had to ask her if those words made any sense to her and I was shocked when she said there was a red bucket used for trash in his room. So much like John Edwards' readings, where he has a thought but does not know the significance of that thought until the person he is doing this with decodes the meaning.
Putting your experience of the difficulties arising from the pandemic, various ones of my own and other people, I wonder how to understand on a deeper level, what we are going through. Do you think it is all a learning experience from the universe and any underlying source, or force? At times, it does seem that we are being stretched almost beyond breaking point. Sometimes, I wonder if the pandemic is a lesson for humanity as a whole. Also, I do think that it is possible that our individual experiences are lessons to develop us. I am sure many on the forum would see what I am saying as absolute rubbish, but I probably dare say it here because this thread had faded but reanimated again today.
Laugh, you may be losing sleep because of this forum but I am not getting necessary daytime stuff done, like the laundry, washing my hair, and other such mundane things.
There is always something to learn and I am pretty excited about all the things we have to learn from the pandemic. For darn sure the world is looking very little as what happens in South America and Africa can impact us immediately. I have heard talk of the US government taking over the research
and development of vaccines? Actually, we have political TV ads warning of the danger of our government taking over medical research. It is a bull shit, political ad playing on our ignorance and fear. The fact is
Quoting Jeffrey A. Bluestone, David Beier, and Laurie H. Glimcher
The argument is for greater federal funding and that does not threaten us as the political ad suggests. The ad would have us believe the drug companies must make huge profits or we will lose the research work they do. Our right and left political battling does not improve our judgment of such matters.
India needed our help yesterday and when it comes to the struggle for world power this really matters because the location of India and the size of its population really matters. This is not something to leave up to private drug company interest. If the US wants to maintain a position of world leadership it must act as a leader to protect all people. Not only is this favorable to being a world leader but the virus keeps mutating and coming back to hit every country including the US. The virus does not respect borders or economic status. We must manage this pandemic and prepare for the next one and this demands thinking globally and only government can operate on that scale.
It seems like all social issues are demanding our attention right now. The inequality of income and education is surely demanding our attention. Far too many families are without internet access and computers for homeschooling. And in today's world computer experience is essential to most jobs. However, when we put children online, we then begin hearing of the suicides because of cyberbullying and we learn our children are not safe at home, but illegal drug dealers have gained easy access to our children. We need to update our morality to deal with the new threats technology has presented and the pandemic has brought this to our attention.
And then we may have never met if it had been for the pandemic giving you a lot of time to fill and for sure we are better off for knowing you and your perspective.
I am inclined to think that everything happens for a purpose. We would have never interacted and I do see my experience of using the forum as a very important part of my life. In the last couple of weeks there has been a lot of people really attacking one another in various threads and I just hope that lessens. Today, there seem to be a couple of new members, including the person who you engaged with on this thread today, and that may dissipate the tensions.
As far as the world issues, especially the crisis in India, I think that it shows how the world is interconnected. Sometimes, especially when we are have got used to isolating it is easy to become insular. We are becoming so accustomed to doing things online and the people who don't have access must feel really left out.
That’s a very good observation. I have noticed huge changes in people’s behaviour since last year. You can actually see the psychological impact on most people and many have obvious mental and emotional issues. Some get involved in political activism to vent their frustration and anger but in general nothing is done about it and it doesn’t look good.
Quoting Jack Cummins
That is the big tragedy of the Christian Church. Priests and vicars have lost the ability to lead and guide. Sermons these days are like an advertising campaign for charity organisations and the Church itself has become a virtual extension of Oxfam. People listen out of politeness, others try to extract something spiritual or more practical but in vain. It’s embarrassing and sad. I wish Christians could learn from Muslims and Hindus and stand up for their traditional beliefs instead of apologising for them. I think a new Church is urgently needed if Christianity is to be saved.
Quoting Jack Cummins
The Church is struggling to keep its hold on the masses and forgets its spiritual message in the process. The Eastern (Orthodox) Church still preserves strong links to its spiritual heritage and with a bit of luck you can still find priests and monks who are in touch with the Hellenistic tradition that once inspired the Church Fathers. But I suppose other denominations also have some interesting figures among their clergy though not necessarily your local priest.
Quoting Jack Cummins
My mother and some of my friends think the epidemic, the weather, and everything is a “sign from above”. Maybe the Universe is trying to warn us, to get us to wake up to what we are doing to nature, to humanity and to ourselves before it’s too late? I tend to think so. A big awakening is needed.
I doubt that everything happens for a purpose but we can find meaning in anything. :lol: When we reach old age and our bodies break down, there does not seem to be a good purpose for that, bringing us to thoughts of life after death, because it makes no sense for our short lives to be completely meaningless. To believe our lives are no better than the fleas on a dog's back and the world would be better off without us, is a terrible thought. We must create a sense of meaning and purpose.
The crisis in Palestine is very upsetting to me and I no more see the Israelites as doing the will of God, than I see the warring anywhere else in the world as the will of God. However, I have a book about war that explains it is a necessary way to keep populations down and so is Covid. It is like protecting the wolf population to keep other species in balance, so they do not destroy the ecosystem. It is not something a god wills, but it is what has evolved and just happens to keep everything in balance.
I hardly think destroying our planet is the will of a god and I love the common aboriginal people's belief that we are supposed to take care of this planet, as opposed to the capitalist belief that we are supposed to exploit the planet and kill anyone or anything that gets in our way. Our problem is recognizing right from wrong and I like to believe science is helping us do that.
Philosophy is not to draw conclusions but to deepen understanding, which is why philosophical mysteries are never solved its like an endless digging of origin.
Even if you think you reached a conclusion there is so much more to think about.
This thread is starting its sixteenth page and the mysteries have not been solved yet. If they could be, I am sure that the leading philosophers would have come up with the answers, but I do believe that we probably all need to make our own unique quests. It does seem that we often have to acknowledge that we remain trapped in Plato's cave.
What does a story about cultural bias have to do with being unable to solve something that is intented to be an unending discovery?
Cultural bias does fit into the picture, in relation to our beliefs. For example, I was raised as a Catholic, and even though I have questioned these ideas a lot, I am aware that such ideas do still affect the way I am inclined to think about many aspects of philosophy.
Which is why a philosophical dicipline of unbias is needed.
Overcomming bias is like a habit or addiction that requires an awareness, will and time.
Thats not to say culture itself needs to be removed but the bias that influences your culture itself.
It is this awareness you can use to get out of the cave.
Kinda brings a whole new meaning to the term "Think outside the box" xD
I think that I am more at that point now and this thread was created about 6 weeks ago, but it has not fizzled out completely. My latest thread, especially the posts written this afternoon are a fairer reflection of my current thoughts on metaphysics.
Fair enough. :P
It does seem that certain experiences seem to be too harsh to make much sense of as a learning curve of experience. Actually, there have been times when I have found people suggesting that certain experiences should be seen in that way as being a bit too much. But, however we interpret our experiences, it does seem that there is a lot of suffering. Also, it does appear that some have more to endure than others. I think that the worst thing is when people have difficult experiences repeatedly, with hardly any break.
Also, we are taken aback by lockdowns etc, so I don't know how most of us would cope with situations like in Palestine. I don't think that I would cope very well. As it is, I wake up wondering what emails I will find, and I often get thrown off course by little stresses, which I build up in my mind.
:lol: I just got reported to the authorities as a possible suicide case and 3 people in uniforms showed up to be sure I am okay. As I perceive society today we are overly dependent on technology. We seem to be trying to resolve every problem with technology instead of thinking human beings are the best for solving and preventing human problems. We are living in a world today where we don't aspire to be as angels but what to be like computers and believe we will all be better off when computers are ruling over us. I simply said I would rather be dead than dependent on such a technological machine/society.
The US once found fault in Germany for being a mechanical society and then we adopted German philosophy, bureaucracy, and education. Add our technology to that and we are a super technological machine/society, more like the Borg than the democracy we once defended. The point I intended to make is I rather die than depend on the Borg. That was perceived as a frightening personal problem rather than a social problem. Who wants to go to heaven and be part of a supercomputer instead of an angel? I think my words are failing to express my meaning? As long as I have my independence I am fine, but I do not want to depend on a society that thinks technology is superior to humans or even that technology can serve our humanness as well as, or better than, humans. Dealing with a computerized program is not at all like dealing with a human.
I hope that you are okay! I do feel completely demoralised by many aspects of life in our current world. It does seem to be becoming rather technocratic. I have been working on a couple of new threads and the one which I feel may be related to what you are saying is,' What are we? What Does It Mean To Be Human'. It is a thread which begins with Gaugin, who did his painting, 'Where Do We Come From? What Are We, Where Are We Going'? when he was feeling suicidal. Your views would be very welcome on that thread. If you read it some of it may appear as being a bit disjointed, because I had two ideas for threads and tried to use these to make one, and I have edited my title a few times.
I will add there is a difference between being suicidal and being perceived as suicidal. I once got seen as a risk by the transport police. I had got on the wrong bus, landed up in the country, and found a train station. I was hoping to get a train but they had finished, so I sat on a bench, thinking that I would stay out and, then, go straight to what work the next day. But, I think that the police thought I was about to throw myself under a train and I ended up being taken to A& E and having to wait to be assessed the next day. Of course, I never got to work the next day at all. Looking back, the funniest thing, although it was not funny at the time, was explaining it to a manager on the phone, especially as I remembered the name of the station as Radcastle rather than Hackbrige, and my manager told me that there was no such place. I think that she thought I was really round the bend.
Anyway, I am going out shortly, but I will probably log in to the forum at some point in a cafe. I am taking advantage of being able to go to such places, in case any further lockdowns are on the way. Anyway, please take care and hope that are able to express your ideas in my threads or any other ones.
Quoting Tiberiusmoon
That is a brilliant statement. Especially in our later years, we are more prone to having a sense of deeper meanings, whereas when we are young our minds are more attuned to the accumulation of facts. I like an old book on logic that sits on my shelves that nicely explains we should never be too sure of what we think we know. That book was written before we were so technologically correct.
Wow, I would say that cultural bias makes a huge difference. Right now advanced nations are biased for technological correctness. Christianity without illiteracy in Greek and Roman classics is not the same as Christianity was before we became technically correct. And technological correctness has to lead to reactionary politics and Trump being a US president and increased violence as we are polarized instead of being less sure of what we think we know. A society that desires the perfection of computers that replace humans, is not exactly the liberty and justice of our past.
Strangely, I have always been far more attuned to reflection than facts. I always had far more difficulty with rote learning than speculation. I think that may because I was an only child, so I was spent more time alone than most children. I also didn't like sports, so spent a lot of time reading, drawing and listening to rock music, by the time I was about 10.
I think that we are becoming far ' too technologically correct', as I think we discussed on the thread you created. But, I think that it has a particular bearing on philosophy. People are becoming so accustomed to Wikipedia, and other sources. I sometimes think a lot of people almost treat Wikipedia like the best living philosopher in the world, knowing all the answers instantly. I also believe that the public can edit, it to include latest information. I use it as a basis for an overview of a topic, but that doing one's own research is better. If everyone relies on Wiki as the guide, there is a danger that people will begin to think too much alike, and there will be less creative and genuine thinking.
In a thread started by Apollodorus, I realized communism turns everyone into a commodity and destroys human values. Marx and Engels find fault with a woman doing for others without being "paid" for what she does. Her pay is love, not money. Her pay is making people happy and helping them succeed in life, and being appreciated and socially valued.
Capitalism may or may not do the same thing. You express concern for our human uniqueness and that is essential to valuing human beings. Help me out here.
You ask about our mysteries and perhaps the greatest mystery is the human mind and consciousness. I think communism and capitalism are thinking of people as commodities that add to or take away from the national economy. That is not exactly a human value, because our human value is our uniqueness and our relationships and our sense of well-being if have a mansion or only the clothes on our backs.
China kind of got frozen in time because of a cultural bias for tradition. I think Christianity and Islam can both hold people in the past. That is being a conservative.
Capitalism and communism seem to hold people as commodities that either contribute to the national economy or deduct from it. The young and the old have no value but the young can be made valuable with education, while the old are just a drain on society.
Women who stay home to care for the family, and our elders, once had value but I don't think that is true today. Especially the old are outdated and worthless.
I attended a few talks on Marxism as a student, but have never found the Marxist position to be very interesting as a philosophy in its own right. I think that Marx did make some useful points, mainly about politics. These have been used in all kinds of ways and angles, and I think that politics would have gone in a completely different direction without Marx, just as Freud had such an enormous influence upon culture.
However, I think, ultimately, he did think in terms of commodities. In this sense, he deflated imaginative possibilities. I think the mysteries of philosophy are not really about coming up with any definitive answers, or questions about metaphysics, but about not ruling out the scope of imagination.
In reading the different philosophers, I have been amazed by the questions they have asked. Perhaps the most important thing is discovering how to ask good questions. Not all of the philosophers asked good questions.
For example, Marx had a hard time supporting himself, so his focus is on commodities. Weber asked better questions and tells us more about human nature and the nature of leadership. And to me, absent in philosophy, is the voice of women coming from the perspective of caregiving.
It is extremely important and hard, I do not to ask the right questions, because they form the basic framework for thinking. We are so lucky to have a forum which allows us to ask questions. At times, the questions which we ask are likely to involve repetition. But, I do think that all the new and subtle variations open up slightly different angles for thinking.
Of course, it is hit and miss and sometimes involves asking stupid or the wrong ones. What I find it that I often ask one question and just get a few replies, but on a few occasions, the basis of the replies give me scope for asking another question, which often seems to make sense to more people. So, it does involve experimentation and improvisation. I also believe in taking risks and asking awkward questions, and asking the ones which many may wish to sidestep or avoid completely.
Your reply also makes me think of questions about time and infinity. It seems to me you have said there are infinite questions and answers.
Regarding the question of whether computers ask questions I do have one thing which really puzzles me. If I have my music on and I am holding my phone, the name of the music artist or group I am listening and the song title come up on my phone. This happens even if it is track on a fairly obscure album. I really don't know how that works, and what artificial intelligence is behind this process.
The question as to whether there are infinite questions is a good one. I think that many recurrent themes in exploration, and it is more about slight variations. However, I suppose we are able to ask questions about specific matters, like certain theoretical ideas, comparisons and developments.
I used to wonder more about time and infinity more than I do now, because I feel that as concepts they are so interrelated with other aspects of life and reality. But, time is mysterious. Generally, people seem to feel that time is speeding in their subjective experience. During the last year I often feel as if it is slowed down, but that is probably due to lockdown and because I had to move twice. Also, I only joined this forum last year, but I feel as though it has been about five years. I think that this is because I have felt that it has lead me to do so much thinking. What is your experience of time?
Really? Exactly?
Quoting Athena
Why not? I don't recall there being a moratorium on wandering.
Quoting Athena
Are you sure?
Quoting Athena
Have you ever thought why?
I am having one of those days when I am struggling to get my act together, so I didn't follow the gist of your argument. Perhaps, you could spell out the way in which Einstein was relevant, or what point he made?
Perhaps the struggles we have are an important part of our experiences. If we don't know pain, how can we know joy? It may be interconnected and that our struggles and confusion are an essential aspect of life experience.
I have read some of Hall's books such as Beyond Culture and our concept of time is cultural. Telling native people a dam must be completed by September may have no meaning to them. Say the dam must be completed before the rains come, makes perfect sense. In some cultures, it may seem presumptuous to agree to meet next week at 2 o'clock because what happens is dependent on nature or the will of a god, so the correct way to think of meeting at 2 o'clock is " if god is willing".
Furthermore, time is intangible but we treat it as though it is tangible. If it is 3 o'clock right now, depends on where you are. That is not so because nature makes it so, but it is so because we have agreed on time zones and the 12 hour clock.
But now the 12-hour clock! Where on your body do you have the number 12? Can you find the number 3? What do these numbers have to do with 60 and pi? Now there are some real mysteries! The facts may not seem mystical at all, but for me, they are totally and literally awesome! I would say the language of god is math.
I was agreeing with Jack. If our souls depend on the planet we live on, when it dies so do our souls. Now, this may not be true because our souls may not exist, and if they do, they may not depend on the planet living.
/quote/ can they wander
I do not know. I just know if our souls do depend on our planet, they would die with the planet.
The whole argument is built on conjecture and is abstract without empirical information. The argument depends on the notion that we have souls and they are dependent on the planet.
Am I sure we all tend to be good people? That argument is based on the fact we are social animals. Social animals depend on each other for survival, and that means it is important to be valued by the group because if we not valued by the group our chance of survival is not very good, so it innate to us to figure out the rules for being valued. Humans think about what they think, so they have a conscience, but all social animals have an internal system of feelings of ease or uneasiness that tend to determine their relationship with others.
Because Einstien said imagination is important and he did thought experiments to figure out his theories. As far as we know, animals do not have imaginations, and imaging what could be is unique to humans. However, it seems dogs do have dreams and that is a form of imagination. Hum, :chin: oh dear, is there a distinct line to be drawn between imagining "what if" as humans do and dreaming?
I think that maths does have a lot to explain about the nature of time, in terms of the figures. But, I think that there is also symbolism of numbers, which I think is interesting. As far as I know 7 is the number of perfection, and 6 as the number 12 as well, with the idea of 13 being considered as imperfection. At one point, numerology, the mystery of numbers was taken seriously, but I think now it is considered to be a rather outdated 'occult' practice. But, on the subject of time, I have thought about time zones recently, mainly as a result of using this site, because I am aware that certain people come on at certain times, and it is because our own days and nights vary so much.
I am interested in the subject of dreams and have thought about creating a thread on dreams. The only reason why I haven't done it is because it is sometimes hard to formulate ideas which make them work as philosophy issues, but I may be tempted to take the risk...
The universe, at least the solar system we live in, does seem to be mathematically constructed.
As for our bodies, there are 3 finger bones, segments, or knuckles to each of our fingers.
When we finger-count by touching each finger segment with the tip of our right thumb (e.g., starting with the tip of the little finger) we obtain a total of 12.
Then we count 5 sets of 12 on the 5 fingers of our left hand, obtaining a total of 60. The numeral system of the Mesopotamians was sexagesimal (base 60).
There are 12 months (new or full moons) in a year, 12 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, etc.
There are also 12 constellations (1 for every month) which multiplied by 30 days yields 360 degrees into which the circular vault of heaven and by extension, any circle, is divided.
13 represented the intercalary month of 5 days added to the 360 (12 x 30) days of the 12-month year.
It all goes back to finger-counting and Egyptian and Sumerian astronomy and time-keeping. Astronomy was related to religion and later philosophy. Hence the importance of astronomy and math to Greek philosophy which aimed to look at the universe as a divinely ordered reality which, on the face of it, it probably is.
The Universal History Of Numbers - Internet Archive