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ghostlycutterApril 25, 2021 at 18:15#5271870 likes
I think reason is knowledge analysis, it does not pervade creativity.
Think, you analyse your total knowledge, an essence of this analysis rises above the mind, and you make a decision - reasoning.
Science is the method we use to formulate constructs using evidence and experiment. Belief isn't in the realm of science, if it was, we wouldn't be able to formulate constructs. A construct, like a base, is something we can ground ideas on, whereas belief is not solid ground, however fertile it may be. I don't know why religion and science compete- the opposite of science is art.
By reason I suppose I must mean logic, reason itself being the use of it, and the argument the incidental form it takes.
Just yesterday I came across this:
Stanley Rosen:Nihilism is the concept of reason separated from the concept of the good.
Reason for the ancients was not the same as modern reason modeled on mathematics. It was closer to our other uses of the term, such as when we ask for reasons why. Rather than build on grounds, Aristotle for example, begins with what is said, either some popular opinion or what some highly regarded person said.
It's not about reason and good, but about concepts of them - whatever that means. Reason itself a tool
Well, you present a concept of reason. Since we do not have knowledge of the good we must rely on our concept of the good, our views, opinions, discussions, as you say explication, and so on.
Is his reduceable without too much violence to a few sentences that you could provide, that would make the persuasiveness of his demonstrably clear?
What I find interesting is that he sees the modern separation between the concepts of reason and good as being at the root of nihilism. The separation is not intended to be the result of nihilism but rather leads to it. The good does not mean some reified entity, but rather, as Plato and Aristotle stressed, what each of us desire. And so, reason and the pursuit of knowledge are not separate from desire, the desire to know, the desire for wisdom, that is, philosophy.
Reason for the ancients was not the same as modern reason modeled on mathematics.
I think that Aristotle's four causes has to be mentioned in this context, namely, formal, efficient, material and final causes. So in answer to the question, why does [X] exist, accounts can be given on each of those grounds.
Without wanting to drag the thread into an argument about the merits or flaws of Aristotelian metaphysics, there are a couple of major themes that emerge even from cursory consideration of this scheme, a major one being the relationship between 'cause', 'reason' and 'ground'.
Reason may be the faculty which secures judgement, but, I would have thought, causation is at least implicit in the operation of reason. When we ask why something happens, or why some situation has come to be, we're asking, at least in part, what is the cause, or the causal factors, that give rise to it.
It's the connection between cause and reason that introduces a metaphysical dimension. Formal reason, as expressed in the rules of logic, is a concise and well-bounded subject and may be learned and taught without any reference to metaphysics. But in practice, when reason is applied to anything other than formal procedures, then many knotty problems of the real nature of causal relations are introduced.
This can be illustrated by an old saw, the response to the question 'why is the water boiling?' You can say, quite correctly, 'well, it's been put on the stove, and heated to 100 degrees celsius, which is its boiling point'. You can also say 'in preparation for making tea'. The first answer is given in terms of material and efficient causation, the second in terms of final causation - the reason why the water is on the stove. It was put there with a purpose in mind - a telos, in Aristotelian terms, which is extrinsic to the physical explanation of the phenomenon.
I think the tendency in modern logic is to try and restrict consideration of the nature of reason, as far as possible, to material and efficient causation, so as to sidestep and obviate many of the open-ended questions that consideration of final causes leads to ('Why are we here?' being a hackneyed example). They're ruled out of bounds on the basis of being beyond the scope of empirical investigation. Hence the movement towards the 'instrumentalisation of reason' in modern philosophy, for which see this encyclopedia entry.
Basing a metaphysics on substance pure and simple has A causing B as the principle of all metaphysics. But there are other ways of conceiving this as infinite process and finite substance consuming itself in the flux and roll of cyclical reality. Aristotle was concerned to establish the static as all of reality but there is no necessity in believing this or any other metaphysics. Philosophy is not about proof like in mathematics, but continuing life and thoughts in a rational process
Reply to tim wood I think reason (which just is argument) and ground (premises) are the two ingredients (the others are reducible to those). Although reason does come into the question of which premises are the more plausible, obviously.
Aristotle would have popped himself if he was told that a tightened string has more mass than a relaxed one, but yet it's true. Aristotileans have never been good scientists and I would say have never been good philosophers either. There is something wrong with insisting reality being be linear. They are not open to reality being an evolving paradox and want to face life with everything "figured out". Spiritual traditions of the East probably would see this as unwise, taking into account kaons and relaxing thought itself so it can move right again
But surely, every form of reasoning must make use of the term 'because....' - and 'because' means means 'by cause of'. Your first sentence does so: my appeal to the Greek concept of reason is not relevant, because....
So no reasoned argument can be phrased without reference to cause. Any syllogism will contain 'because', any rational argument hinge on 'because' - thereby escaping the bounds within which you want to constrain reason.
I find presiding over all reason. The capacity to use tools to determine knowledge and winnow it from the chaff of unreason.
I also take issue with your description of reason as 'a tool'. Using reason, we can make all kinds of tools - in fact the reason h. sapiens became such an adept tool- and machine- maker is because of the capacity to reason. But to present reason to one tool among many is to deprecate it. It's no more a tool than is language; it's an ability, to make, among other things, tools.
The "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematica" in science is about the unreasonable effectiveness of science in general. That is, if reasonableness is truly reasonable, which it isn't because.The "next step up" can seem very unreasonable
Reply to tim wood Fair enough. The way I see it is that argument is the application of reason (logic), and in order to be a good argument must be valid (conclusions following from premises). I say grounds just are premises, because they are the starting assumptions to which valid reasoning is applied in a valid argument, I don't see belief as being an essential part of knowledge, or if it is, only in a psychological sense, only in the sense that we might be said to possess knowledge.
In any case the substance of the OP is that reason is the engine, and mere belief as any sort of grounds ruinous to its functioning.
We adopt grounds because they seem reasonable to us. This is where belief comes in. Can we count the "seeming reasonable" as an example of valid reasoning from premises to conclusion? I don't think so. If it were so, then it would be nothing but reason; which seems absurd; that's why I say the two ingredients are reason and grounds.
you're not appealing to the Greek concept of reason but instead to a modern sense of cause which you mistakenly "find" in Aristotle.
I'm linking 'cause' to 'reason' in a manner suggested by the 'principle of sufficient reason'.
The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or a cause. The modern formulation of the principle is usually attributed to early Enlightenment philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, although the idea was conceived of and utilized by various philosophers who preceded him, including Anaximander, Parmenides, Archimedes, Plato and Aristotle, Cicero, Avicenna, Thomas Aquinas, and Spinoza.
In any case the substance of the OP is that reason is the engine, and mere belief as any sort of grounds ruinous to its functioning.
Which I suspect contains suppressed premisses, and/or a hidden agenda, namely, to seperate reason from belief, chiefly so as to uphold the purported division between 'reason and faith'.
Valid is as to form, which cares not for content and is perfectly indifferent to it. But no syllogism no matter how valid can prove the moon is made of green cheese. Thus grounds for premises. Point?
Knowledge must consist in valid reasoning from sound grounds if knowledge as JTB holds, and is the model under consideration. How do we know that grounds are sound? Perhaps we never really do, but we are said to possess knowledge if the grounds are sound, we have good reason for holding them, and the reasoning to our conclusions is valid. What more need be said?
Why is reason a ground for the good? Reason can just as easily be used to bad as to good ends. Once you introduce ends then reason alone is not sufficient. What is the end or goal of reason? Reason?
Aristotle had a system in which form is actualized by existence to form essence. But yet form didn't even exist before it had existence! This paradox was fine for students of Aristotle through the ages because their system has the ultimate reason and cause in an infinite being who was the father of the world. Many of us find a supernatural allpowerful bodiless father who watches you like a massive eyeball all the time to be absurd, so we structure reason from within the womb of phenomena and find paradox and whimsy within the world as part of what it is be to in-the-world
Why not start with recognizing and acknowledging faith, mere belief, as what it is, a speculative claim that can ground nothing except speculative argument for speculative conclusions. And these have their uses, but not as a ground for knowledge.
Why not start with recognizing and acknowledging faith, mere belief, as what it is, a speculative claim that can ground nothing except speculative argument for speculative conclusions. And these have their uses, but not as a ground for knowledge.
Speculation is fundamental to the search for knowledge. It goes by the name of hypothesis or theory or intuition or inspiration.
the world of reason being the best of all possible worlds.
So, is it reasonable because it is the best of all possible worlds or is the best of all possible worlds because it is reasonable? Either way, you have not separated reason from the good.
I'm linking 'cause' to 'reason' in a manner suggested by the 'principle of sufficient reason'.
The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or a cause.
— Wayfarer
And this not an argument but a presupposition, and by all accounts in many cases efficacious, But if you wish it to be a fact, demonstrate that it is a fact.
Four ingredients: reason, belief, ground, argument. Others seem species of these four. And each of these its own distinct place and function, beyond the bounds and constraints of which become destructive.
This list omits causal relations, which are surely as fundamental to knowledge as the other terms. So I'm saying that unless you acknowledge the relationship of 'cause' and 'reason', or, alternatively, the connection of cause and effect as constituents of rational judgement, then your proposed inventory of the fundamental constituents of knowledge is incomplete.
Beer may be made from many different ingredients, but beer is barley, for even when other grains are used, barley is included. We may say figuratively, then, that knowledge is our kind of beer, and scarcely can I drink enough of it but the drinking increases my thirst for more. But what the ingredients? Which the barley of our thinking? Four ingredients: reason, belief, ground, argument. Others seem species of these four. And each of these its own distinct place and function, beyond the bounds and constraints of which become destructive.
And it seems, at least from evidence here, that we won't agree on the most important ingredient. But I will argue for reason.
Not a beer drinker, myself. To say that ‘beer is barley’ would then lead to an assumption that my distaste for beer is equivalent to a distaste for barley, but that would be a mistake. I like barley. I’d argue that this probably has something to do with the particular way these ingredients are structured, rather than my distaste for any particular ingredient, no matter how important it seems.
Physicists have to think in lots of novel, unintuitive ways to come up with breakthru ideas. Aristotle thinks unintuitive thinking is by definition wrong thinking and he is at fault there. As for compressed strings, I've routinely heard from physics videos that compression increases mass and that we can measure that, but I don't want to derail your thread
Reason itself a tool, like a 3/8ths-inch wrench, and with the same moral significance, which is to say none. Similarly with "the" good.
Actually, I think your argument maps pretty well against the aformentioned 'critique of instrumental reason':
In ancient philosophy the concept of ‘reason’ was an objective and normative. Reason was held to refer to a structure or order of what ought to be which was inherent in reality itself and which prescribed a certain way of life as objectively rational.
Human beings were thought to have a (subjective) faculty which allowed them to perceive and respond to this objective structure of the world; this faculty could then also be called reason in a derivative sense. Even when ancient philosophers spoke of reason as a human faculty (rather than as a structure of the world), their conception of it was ‘substantive’; humans were thought to be able to use reason to determine which goals or ends of human action were worthy of pursuit.
This is why I brought in the 'four causes' argument, as it retains the notion of final ends being the grounding reason for the nature of things - that things exist for a reason, and not just on account of detecable antecedent causes; which is what was abandoned by modern philosophy under the heading of 'teleology'. It goes on:
Post-Enlightenment, the ‘objective’ conception of reason becomes increasingly implausible. Reason comes to be conceived as essentially a subjective ability to find efficient means to arbitrarily given ends; that is, to whatever ends the agent in question happens to have. The very idea that there could be inherently rational ends is abandoned. Reason becomes subjective, formal and instrumental.
The historical process by which reason is instrumentalized is in some sense inevitable and irreversible. The philosophical position called ‘positivism’ draws from this the conclusion that reason itself should simply be identified with the kind of reason used in natural science, scientific reason being a particularly highly developed form of instrumental reason. The point is to arrive at an exact depiction of reality as it is and of the causal laws that govern events is to allow humans to manipulate the world successfully so as to attain their ends.
For this to be possible, according to positivism, the terms that figure in significant scientific discourse must be clearly defined and their relation to possible confirming or disconfirming perceptual experience must be clearly specified. Reason, the positivists think, can be a guide to life only in a very limited sense. Its role is restricted to discharging three tasks: (1) it can criticize a set of beliefs and ends for failing to satisfy certain minimal principles of logical consistency; (2) it can criticize a given choice of means towards a given end on a variety of possible empirical grounds, such as that the means in question will not actually lead to the envisaged end, or will have undesirable side effects; and it can propose more appropriate means; (3) it can unmask inherently non-cognitive beliefs, for instance value judgments, that are presenting themselves as if they had cognitive content.
There is no "final cause" because the end of the universe hasn't happened. Ends are within the framework of an eternal set of effects with the latter caused by the one before. There is no reason for a rock except in the reason we perceive it with
Small beer was the common drink - in the place of water - for centuries because it did not cause dysentery. Small beer is beer.
Your recipe for beer and your recipe for knowledge suffer the same difficulty: they are too restrictive. In both cases, it's more about the process than the ingredients.
Maybe I'm not understanding the language, or context is omitted, but pretty clearly for the Greeks what ought to be was manifestly not in nature.
It varied between philosophers and schools. Some of them were much nearer to naturalism than others, but platonism did not operate from naturalist presuppositions.
There is no "final cause" because the end of the universe hasn't happened.
The final cause of a match is fire. This is because matches are made so as to light fires, so that is the reason for their existence. A final cause not final as in 'the end of everything' but simply as 'the end towards which something is directed'.
I'm emphasizing that not everyone expresses their inner experience the same. So the ends of one person may seem different from someone else. We don't really know how others experience life. But the material ends in nature do not point to a reason in nature that is discernable. Fatalism has causes without reasons, for example, because those are different concepts
I'm emphasizing that not everyone expresses their inner experience the same.
This is a philosophy forum. The aim is to try and express ideas coherently, and preferably with some connection to the recognised problems of philosophy.
Hey. Just to know, what is it that you have in mind when you speak of naturalism?
Pretty much 'post Enlightenment philosophy'. A strict division between what can be known by the natural sciences and what is deemed not to be thus knowable. Closely intertwined with empiricism, the view that only what can be detected by the senses (and instruments) is to be considered real. The other component is 'positivism'.
The term ‘positivism’ was coined in the 1830s by the French philosopher Auguste Comte, to distinguish the empirical and natural sciences from religious and metaphysical accounts of the world. Comte saw a progression in the development of society from the ‘theological’ to the ‘scientific’ phase, in which data derived from empirical experience, and logical and mathematical treatments of such data, provide the exclusive source of all authentic knowledge. Even though Comte’s influence has waned in the intervening centuries, his conception of the evolution of society from theological to scientific - a model which might be called ‘historical positivism’ - has remained an important component of the modern outlook.
Pretty much 'post Enlightenment philosophy'. A strict division between what can be known by the natural sciences and what is deemed not to be thus knowable. Closely intertwined with empiricism, the view that only what can be detected by the senses (and instruments) is to be considered real. The other component is 'positivism'.
Ah, gatcha. Thanks.
As thus stated, this leaves out a lot of stuff concerning the mental. Unless one takes the mental to be fundamental in interpreting sense data...
Reply to Manuel Of course. Hence, one of my favourite boilerplate quotations.
Cartesian anxiety refers to the notion that, since René Descartes posited his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other".
Richard J. Bernstein coined the term in his 1983 book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis.
Then there's a lot of stuff to argue about. But I don't think arguing with people who agree with Dennett or Churchland(s) to be fruitful in any way. Other things, sure, but not eliminitavism.
We cannot fully separate ourselves from the world, it's not possible. We can retreat from view to an extent, but in the end it comes back to the cash value we make of the stuff we interpret, not a "view from nowhere."
But, this is philosophy. If 3 people agree, there's a problem. Heck, if one person agrees with himself on everything, that's probably bad too. :razz:
There is no way to prove purpose in Nature fom science so if natural explanations work for someone then you can't reasonably talk of "reasons" for Nature with him. I believe in Kant and Hegel's philosophies, which are very intricate or at least specific. I understand how science makes sense of the universe on it's own terms and i work with philosophy on top of that foundation. This dialectic reveals subjective truth and is the best psychology ive come across (regular psychology books i dont really get).
But trying to force "cause" and "reason for something" into a single idea is a sophistry and that's why I pointed this out
I don't think arguing with people who agree with Dennett or Churchland(s) to be fruitful in any way.
I can't help but take the bait sometimes. Mainly because I'm incredulous that they are taken seriously.
But to try and get back to the OP - I see it as an attempt to ground epistemology in something other than 'mere belief'. It recognises the difficulty of doing that. There's a polemic against clinging to beliefs as an impediment to knowledge which is fair. Then the appeal to reason as 'presiding over all' - which is also fair, but somewhat undermined by the later claim that reason is 'itself a tool, like a 3/8ths-inch wrench, and with the same moral significance, which is to say none.' That seems to contradict the premisses of the OP, as I stated here. But that is not the fault of the person who wrote the OP - it's the zeigeist, the spirit of the times. Because, as I tried to show, the original conception of 'reason' was far more encompassing than it's modern use as 'an instrument'. It encompassed 'reason' in the grand sweep of things, 'the reason things exist', anchored against a metaphysic which saw reason as something that animated the Universe. A metaphysic which has since been found wanting, and rejected - but not replaced. Hence, 'the Cartesian anxiety'. It's a deep problem, not something to make light of.
Closely intertwined with empiricism, the view that only what can be detected by the senses (and instruments) is to be considered real. The other component is 'positivism'.
That is one view. But I prefer a version of naturalism/physicalism that says this is all we know for now. It's not making proclamations about what is real (yes, I know, some are dogmatic) just what we we can reliable talk about.
Reply to Tom Storm That is the definition of empiricism, it's not 'one view'. One can have views of the implications of empiricism, but the principles are pretty non-negotiable.
I am rather persauded by Jacques Maritain's criticisms of it, however.
The tragedy of the great Empiricist philosophers came from the fact that not only did they deny the prime intellectual intuitions on which metaphysical knowledge depends, but they were actually lacking in these intuitions. They did not see (through the intellect's power of vision) when it came to the supra-empirical horizon of Being and essence brought out at the level of metaphysical intelligibility. And they did not know that they saw through the intellect's power of vision when it came to the scientific handling of the world of experience. Thus they indeed endeavored in a sincere and earnest fashion to build a comprehensive system giving account of all the human riches inherent in Western culture; no one was more generously attached to these human riches than a John Stuart Mill for instance: but they only succeeded in building cathedrals in paper and worlds in the air.
The modern man does not even feel such tragedy. Unaware of his own intellect's spiritual activity, which he cannot do without, but which he has repressed in his unconscious, he gladly enjoys a mental behavior in which human reason limits itself to the most clever and intelligent use and penetration of the animal field of sense-experience.
Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, ....should be able to lead us to afirm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us.
This longing for unchanging, certain knowledge seems to me to be associated with religion and old-fashioned metaphysics ('rationalized' religion). As I understand them, the scientific spirit and more recent philosophy understand our knowledge to be provisional & constantly evolving.
Where's the Cartesian anxiety in this?
[quote=link]
In rejecting representationalism and the essentialism that it implies, Dewey abandons the Cartesian-inspired spectator account of knowledge, which radically separates the knowing subject from the object being studied. No longer considering that objectivity a result of a detachment from the material under study but rather as an ongoing interaction with that which is at hand, Dewey elevates practice over theory; better said, he puts theory in service to practice. From Rorty’s perspective, while Dewey had a great insight, he ought to have taken the next step and rejected scientism—the claim that scientific method allows humanity to gain a privileged insight into the structural processes of nature. His failure to reject the alleged epistemologically privileged stance is one main reason Rorty must re-imagine Dewey. Nevertheless, Dewey’s elevation of practice continues the movement away from the pre-Darwinian attachment to the belief in a non-human source of purpose and the immutability of natural kinds toward a contingent “world,” where humans define and redefine their social and material environments. It is within a social practice or a “language-game” that specific marks and sounds come to designate commonly accepted meanings. And, as Rorty states in “Feminism and Pragmatism,” (1995) no set of marks or sounds (memes) can ever bring cognitive clarity about the way the world is or the way we as humans are. Instead, memes compete with one another in an evolutionary struggle over cultural space, just as genes compete for survival in the natural environment. Unguided by an immanent or transcendent teleology, the memes’ replication is determined by their usefulness within a given social group. And it is through their utility for the continued existence and prospering of a social group that the group’s memes—like their genes—are carried forward and flourish. They establish their niche in the socio-ecological system.
[/quote]
https://iep.utm.edu/rorty/#SH3a
I think 'Cartesian anxiety' only works against an unworthy enemy and even doubles back to some degree. It's as if (static) religious thought and scientistic thought are two brothers fighting over the same inheritance, while 'dynamic' philosophers abandon that inheritance.
The Greek view of nature was as a world of imprecision, for which no science is possible.
So, do you see why I characterise your approach as broadly positivist? Don't take that as an ad hominem, it's a description of a philosophical attitude or approach.
Maritain was a modern student of Aquinas whom more than all Catholics worshipped the sun. Aquinas relentlessly talked about natural light and color, and in his most famous portrait he wears a symbol of the sun God. When Popes took the place of Roman Emporers in the West they brought Roman sun worship with them.
Classic empiricism is indeed crude by today's standards (well demolished even by secular thinkers.) But it's as if you are criticizing a brand new Tesla by talking about a Model T.
I made a specific point about Aristotle: that "cause" and "reason" are not *necessarily* related. I thought it was connected to what you were saying, but you don't seem to ever say anything specific, so I'll go read and do something else tonight
That it was lit. That the chemical compounds which comprise dynamite explode when lit.
— Wayfarer
Well, that's clear. What does that mean? We can be informal in description, and thereby imprecise, but what good is that? What I'm driving at is nothing original with me: If you insist on cause, then it is presumably separate from event, but if the cause is being lit, and it explodes when lit, then cause and effect are one, and if being lit isn't the cause, then what is? And that seems a problem for this sense of cause and effect.
I think you're referring here to David Hume's sceptical criticism of inductive reasoning. To which I can only offer Kant's 'answer to Hume' as a rejoinder - that the necessary connection of cause and effect is a presupposition for the possibility of knowledge.
This longing for unchanging, certain knowledge seems to me to be associated with religion and old-fashioned metaphysics ('rationalized' religion). As I understand them, the scientific spirit and more recent philosophy understand our knowledge to be constantly evolving.
Associated with metaphysics proper. Go back to the Parmenides, as I am currently doing, and reconsider what the object of that quest was - the attainment of certain knowledge of the real. The knowledge of the empirical world - the world which modern naturalism views as the only real realm - is not equated with true knowledge, because the objects within it constantly arise and pass away and are ephemeral. We're chasing shadows on the wall.
Classic empiricism is indeed crude by today's standards.
Maritain wrote in the 1920's and 30's, not 1700. I'm not highly conversant with him, and don't intend to become so. But the substance of his criticism rings true with me.
Personal note: I suppose I ought to lay something out here which is that I hold Christian Platonism in high regard. Had I been taught that subject properly earlier in life, or had I encountered it under different circumstances, I might self-identify as something more than a 'cultural Christian' (and Buddhist convert). Be that as it may, (neo)Thomism contains a strain of traditional metaphysics, the philosophia perennis, that I believe holds up perfectly well in today's cultural milieu. Of course, nearly all of its exponents are Catholic, and I am not Catholic nor likely to become so. However I am obliged to admit that I'd be a Catholic a long time before I was an atheist. (Fortunately, I don't have to be either :-) )
Maritain was a modern student of Aquinas whom more than all Catholics worshipped the sun.
I don't share your animus towards Catholic culture. I might, had I been brought up in it, and had it beaten into me with a cane. As it was, I discovered it through the study of the history of ideas and philosophy, so I approached it rather differently to one who has had it thrust on them.
And my view of yours, that I'm glad to be corrected on if I'm mistaken, is that you believe in the extra-mental reality of non-material things.
Correct, with the caveat that they're not 'things'. That the tendency to portray it in terms of 'things' arises from the genetic naturalism of modern culture, which orientates itself with respect to things.
And the difficulty is that your view, that I call mere belief, being at best a claim, if allowed in argument, leads to conclusions with respect to the existence of things for which no evidence is possible.
I agree with the arguments of natural theology: that the sensory domain points to something beyond itself. And as one argument for that, I cite the tendency in modern cosmology and physics to posit multiple universes and parallel worlds; that nature seems to 'overflow its bounds', so to speak. The atom was supposedly simple; yet the largest and most expensive apparatus in history has been unable to determine its true nature. Maybe it's because it doesn't have a true nature, that it lacks intrinsic reality, that the reality it possesses is imputed to it. That we really are chasing shadows on a wall.
And that segways into (Buddhist) idealism, the insight into the 'mind-made world'.
That is the definition of empiricism, it's not 'one view'. One can have views of the implications of empiricism, but the principles are pretty non-negotiable.
I hear you but I'm not sure we often encounter people who hold to such a rigid form of empiricism.
Reply to Tom Storm It's not so much that it's rigid, but that it's the assumed background of many other beliefs. On this forum, and others, I have always argued against materialism (obviously!) but I find many of those whom I think hold that view, don't actually know that they hold it! Which often makes debate pointless, because having to explain to them what they actually believe before you tell them what's wrong with it is like explaining a joke.
The knowledge of the empirical world ... is not equated with true knowledge, because the objects within it constantly arise and pass away and are ephemeral.
On what corroborable grounds have you (Eleatics, Platonists & woo-ologists) determined "objects ... constantly arise and pass away and are ephemeral" do not constitute "true knowledge"?
Reply to Tom Storm :up: In my own terms, following on what you wrote and contra Wayfarer's anti-modern polemical definition: naturalism, since antiquity, denotes describing or explaining some aspect of nature only in terms of (an)other aspect(s) of nature. Questions like 'Is nature all that is real?' or 'Are supernaturalia real?' are speculations which are simply outside of naturalism's remit. Chinese daojia and Greek atomism, as examples, have always had this naturalistic approach, or stance, in common. A naturalist can be agnostic about 'the supernatural', methodologically not relying on it to build explanatory models, though, of course, many have become dogmatic to the point of scientism perhaps as a vestigial (institutionalized?) overreaction to Scholasticism, Romanticism and the Counter-Enlightenment.
The Greek view of nature was as a world of imprecision, for which no science is possible. That's why ideals and mathematics, but no natural science in any modern sense
Which often makes debate pointless, because having to explain to them what they actually believe before you tell them what's wrong with it is like explaining a joke.
In my own terms, following on what you wrote and contra Wayfarer's anti-modern polemical definition: naturalism, since antiquity, denotes describing or explaining some aspect of nature only in terms of (an)other aspect(s) of nature.
And what the ancients saw, was that man is different to other things 'in nature' because man alone can ask the question as to what it means, what it is, and so on. That opened the door to the insight into the ground or first cause in order to ameliorate ('salve') the existential angst that accompanies the unique predicament of being an animal that can contemplate its own demise. So modern naturalism is an attempt to flee that (often subliminal) awareness which is preserved in the various spiritual and philosophical traditions which are designated by yourself as 'woo'. :wink: But at least I hope after 10 years (or more) of head-banging on this idea, we can now at least agree to disagree.
Maybe I'm not understanding the language, or context is omitted, but pretty clearly for the Greeks what ought to be was manifestly not in nature.
For the Greeks nature had a telos or end or purpose. This was based on the observed order of the universe. It was not random but ordered and purposeful. The ability of the intelligence of man to understand the intelligible order led to the idea that the order itself was intelligent. Intelligence works toward some end or purpose, and so, nature must have some end or purpose. I am not defending that idea, just trying to explain it.
And what the ancients saw, was that man is different to other things 'in nature' because man alone can ask the question as to what it means, what it is, and so on.
And, as with very much else about nature, many ancients who believed that man was "different" had no idea what they were talking about – what some of them "saw" was just mistaken and self-flattering (i.e. inconsistently they assumed some "appearances" were true or real while for (religious reasons) denied others) – and those like e.g. Laozi and Epicurus "saw" humans, more or less, as wholly natural beings.
We can agree to disagree, Wayf, we've done it before, but I see no reason we can't continue to criticize and object to each others' errors where we see fit to do so respectively even without directly addressing one another. The 'naturalism / supernaturalism (i.e. materialist / idealist) dialectic' goes on with & without us, no?
what the object of that quest was - the attainment of certain knowledge of the real.
I think this project is haunted by an inescapable ambiguity, as argued for by an army of philosophers who I think have made a strong case. Is this a not 'a closer walk with God'?' I like applying thy incarnation myth/metaphor to the march of humanist thought. 'Atheistic' humanism incorporates the incarnation myth, lives it. We're already 'God,' as much as I think we can have, as much as I think we need, down here, tho (felix culpa) not in a finished state, not dead.
Because, as I tried to show, the original conception of 'reason' was far more encompassing than it's modern use as 'an instrument'. It encompassed 'reason' in the grand sweep of things, 'the reason things exist', anchored against a metaphysic which saw reason as something that animated the Universe.
Sounds something like the idea of "the great chain of Being." Such a view may make reason stronger than in it really is, in the sense that we, as human beings, are probably the only creature that use reasons to make sense of the world. I think we use it intermittently.
Then there's something to be said about intuition too when it comes to epistemology. But that's quite hard to speak about sensibly. But we use it all the time.
We can agree to disagree, Wayf, we've done it before, but I see no reason we both cannot continue to criticize and object to each others' errors where we see fit to do so
Sure. But an assertion is not reasoned argument. Neither are claims that the ancients must have it wrong on account of their being ancient. There is a very obvious empirical difference between humans and other animals, which was no less clear in ancient Athens than it is in the modern world: humans are born into a state of self-awareness. They 'bear the burden of selfhood.' They are the 'rational animal' and rationality is a difference that makes a difference. Think of the origin of the Greek philosophical tradition - the breakthrough into being able to discern 'the reason for things', the universal order. It must have been intoxicating. With it comes the hope for something beyond this perishable frame. It's not hard to envisage for those who see an order 'written in the stars'.
Socrates was sentenced to death for atheism. But Socrates was not atheist as we know it, he says in Phaedo he is assured of the immortality of the soul. Was he right? I can't say that I know. I'm one of the characters in the dialogues standing on the sidelines with doubts and questions, but I'm not going to dismiss it.
The ability of the intelligence of man to understand the intelligible order led to the idea that the order itself was intelligent. Intelligence works toward some end or purpose, and so, nature must have some end or purpose. I am not defending that idea, just trying to explain it.
what the object of that quest was - the attainment of certain knowledge of the real.
— Wayfarer
I think this project is haunted by an inescapable ambiguity, as argued for by an army of philosophers who I think have made a strong case.
Yes, but look at the OP. It is concerned with fundamental epistemology, what it means 'to know'. It's a heavy topic! The OP is admirably modest in acknowledging that it only ventures an 'unsatisfactory and partial' answer. Well and good and all credit where due. But, I'm saying, with respect to the subject of the thread, the origin was with Greek philosophy, and specifically the Parmenides, and that those were the terms in which the question of 'the nature of knowledge' was framed - the quest for sure knowledge of the real; the Greek equivalent of the Sanskrit 'Vidya', which carries existential implications that mere 'knowledge' does not.
Parmenides and Plato set the bar very high for what constitutes knowledge. In the Theatetus, many of the proferred answers to the question of knowledge - justified true belief, and so on - end in aporia, un-answered questions, puzzlement and hesitation. Have those problems been solved since? Is it the case that 2,500 intervening years have yielded great progress in addressing those doubts? Very difficult questions, and I'm not going to rush in with an answer. But I think the idea that 'modern science' has, or even can, address, let alone 'solve', those questions, is misplaced. Which is no slight on science. Consider what is involved - they are not questions for science. They are questions we have to grapple with 'alone with the alone'.
(I got that expensive textbook I mentioned - Nature Loves to Hide, Shimon Malin, philosophical commentary on quantum physics. So far, so good - he is wishing to situate the Bohr Einstein debate against the background of Western philosophy with specific reference to Alfred North Whitehead and the Platonist tradition. Not far into it yet but am going to give it a lot of attention. Highly congenial and definitely a legitimate author, not a quantum charlatan.)
Sounds something like the idea of "the great chain of Being."
I think the loss of that idea was the loss of something significant. Put it another way: there are degrees of reality, such that what is more real, is also more worthy of being known. It jars with modern philosophy. That's because the idea of 'degrees of reality' was lost from medieval times. It is still retained in 17th C philosophy:
In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist. At least part of what dictates a being’s reality, according to these philosophers, is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the more real it is.
Here you can trace the idea of 'the unconditioned', where 'the unconditioned' is 'the source of being' (the To Hen of Plotinus) which emanates or cascades 'downward' to the phenomenal realm; what is 'nearer to it' is more real; hence 'intellect' is more real than the corporeal. That intuition is what has been jettisoned in the transition to modernity, where the idea of 'degrees of being' has been abandoned.
Put it another way: there are degrees of reality, such that what is more real, is also more worthy of being known. It jars with modern philosophy. That's because the idea of 'degrees of reality' was lost from medieval times.
Yes. I read a metaphysical project by one philosopher recently who speaks in similar terms. But she speaks about it in relation to fiction, not among different objects or things in the world. It makes sense to speak of having more or less reasons for believing in something and it would appear that having less assumptions when considering something might be an indication of its impact to you.
In this sense, It makes more sense to me think of different aspects of reality as opposed to saying something is more real than some other thing.
Having said this, I would agree that consciousness is the thing with which we are most acquainted with and thus must be the most "concretely" realized aspect of nature. Beyond that, it's less clear to me to speak about some thing being "more real" than another, with the exception of the mentioned example of fiction.
But I think the idea that 'modern science' has, or even can, address, let alone 'solve', those questions, is misplaced. Which is no slight on science. Consider what is involved - they are not questions for science. They are questions we have to grapple with 'alone with the alone'.
I think (roughly) that only scientism thinks science can replace philosophy, and that philosophy has made genuine progress, at the cost perhaps of mystical charge in Parmenides' fragments.
I do see a problem in alone with the alone. Language is fundamentally social. 'Knowledge' has something like a continuum of appropriate uses which are generally out of the control of any individual. Subcultures can of course extend or change usage so that 'knowledge' is something like a metaphor for an ineffable 'insight.' But even here the word has a use. Members can discuss what 'knowledge' is/means and how to figure out who has it. As I see it, the truly alone person is beyond language, beyond argument, beyond epistemology --and not really a person anymore but either a superhuman or an animal (beast or god.)
the Greek equivalent of the Sanskrit 'Vidya', which carries existential implications that mere 'knowledge' does not.
You may underestimate how well that is understood. For some the problem is the obvious religious 'charge' here, not because religion is universally dis-valued but rather because of the perceived likelihood of bias. One might even imagine rationality as a negotiation between clashing spiritualities. On my view, the generation of myths for coping is spontaneous. I do not use 'myths' pejoratively here. They are to philosophy what models are to science (they are fundamental metaphors that control, often tacitly, the approach to less fundamental myths/metaphors.) For instance, we had/have the myth of the given (Sellars). We had/have the myth/metaphor of cognition as a mirror of nature, or as a lens through which 'raw' reality passes before it gets to us. Let's not forget that story about the ghost in the machine either.
The issue is their 'reasonable' collision and whether or not a consensus is even sought.
I think (roughly) that only scientism thinks science can replace philosophy, and that philosophy has made genuine progress, at the cost perhaps of mystical charge in Parmenides' fragments.
Well, yeah. I used to talk to a Buddhist who thought the 'four elements' physics was the real deal, 'ancient knowledge'. That's not me. I believe in science, progress, liberal democracy, and the rest. I'm vaccinated against COVID and thankful for it. But a miserable modern citizen's woes are not that different from a miserable ancient Greek citizen's woes, in some fundamental way, even if the circumstances are unarguably vastly different. As for the Alone with the Alone, that was a reference to Plotinus - a shorthand way of trying to communicate the idea that regardless of your circumstances, be at peace with the world. And that is elusive. As for 'knowledge' - what I meant was that the OP is concerned with justification and validation. Plainly, again, we have considerably greater knowledge than the ancients did. But the OP makes this a charge against them - that with their philosophy 'no science is possible'. So we have to sacrifice their wisdom for our progress, so to speak. I'm taking issue with that. We know a lot of things, and many of them very reliable - how to vaccinate against covid, being one, which is an amazing feat - but the connotation of 'vidya', truly seeing, knowing the real, is not encompassed by that.
a shorthand way of trying to communicate the idea that regardless of your circumstances, be at peace with the world. And that is elusive.
While I suspect that tranquility can never be completely independent of circumstances (food poisoning, torture, and so on), I very much respect it as an ideal to strive toward. For those in good health and not in immediate danger, it's perhaps envy, resentment, and dread that especially threaten such tranquility. I remember some great passages in Plotinus, so I dig some up here.
[quote=Plotinus]
The soul that beholds beauty becomes beautiful.
We are not separated from spirit, we are in it.
God is not external to anyone, but is present with all things, though they are ignorant that He is so.
Life is the flight of the alone to the alone.
[/quote]
I can (creatively mis-)read this in terms of the incarnation theme I mentioned earlier. If 'God' is a still-developing being who articulates himself thru and only thru and in mortals, then 'His' medium or mother is materiality, our flesh, of course, but especially the breath of the sign, as opposed to the 'ideality' of its form, not substance. For this enformed breath is the medium of our (God's) self- knowledge and self-enlargement. The flight from the Alone to the Alone is (in this reading) the journey from 'God' back to 'God,' from implicit membership in a divinized, liberated human community to explicit membership. This journey would occur historically (for the culture/species as a whole) and individually (as a person lets go the attachments/alienations that obscure this participation.) This is how I read the denial of our separation. 'Alone' works for 'God' because it's only the whole of reality that's not dependent: 'the finite has no genuine being.' You can probably smell the Hegel in this. I actually found a quote that I put in the Saussure thread. Plotinus discusses meaningful sound, the (ideal) form (not substance) that makes air significant. I think we are both interested in 'form' and the realm of the intelligible or significant. For me we already 'swim' in it, 'are' it, and simply make it more explicit through linguistics, philosophy, music (thinking vocals especially), and so on. We strive so that we can see beauty and so be beautiful (noble, tranquil), beyond resentment-envy-dread --as often and as intensely as we can manage such a delicate operation.
Neither are claims that the ancients must have it wrong on account of their being ancient.
I never asserted or implied "the ancients must have it wrong on account of their being ancient". Please stop asserting your strawmen, Wayf.
There is a very obvious empirical difference between humans and other animals, which was no less clear in ancient Athens than it is in the modern world: humans are born into a state of self-awareness. They 'bear the burden of selfhood.' They are the 'rational animal' and rationality is a difference that makes a difference.
Those are anthropocentric evaluations, no doubt, self-serving and biased in our favor and against – separating us in part or wholly from – the rest of the natural order. Cultural anthropology has documented this cognitive phenomenon for centuries 'recorded' in many indigenous trditions and literate cultures outside of – far older than 5-6 century BCE Grrece – in most places around the globe. The Greeks were not unique in this blinkered speciest view.
Think of the origin of the Greek philosophical tradition - the breakthrough into being able to discern 'the reason for things', the universal order. It must have been intoxicating. With it comes the hope for something beyond this perishable frame. It's not hard to envisage for those who see an order 'written in the stars'.
Rationalized religion had replaced mythopoetic religion. I'm sure throwing-up in their own mouths all of the perennial Mysteries they knew was so "intoxicating" that they had to scribble it all down ... even though most of their learned scrolls were assessed to be more valuable to posterity as fuel to start cooking fires than as revelatory scripts.
Socrates was sentenced to death for atheism. But Socrates was not atheist as we know it, he says in Phaedo he is assured of the immortality of the soul. Was he right? I can't say that I know. I'm one of the characters in the dialogues standing on the sidelines with doubts and questions, but I'm not going to dismiss it.
And neither will I. (Remember, Wayf, I'm also an Epicurean ... and, as a Spinozist, I'm quite grateful for all I've been able to learn from Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus, Heraclitus, Democritus, Dionysus of Sinope, Seneca, Epictetus, Lucretius et al, so don't misread my critiques as 'Anti-Ancient Modernism').
Those are anthropocentric evaluations, no doubt, self-serving and biased in our favor and against – separating us in part or wholly from – the rest of the natural order.
Humans speak, create civilisations, make tools. That is not 'anthropomorphism', it's a simple fact. Even your much-vaunted 'scientific objectivity' is grounded in the perspective that only a human mind can bring to the Universe, as has been made abundantly clear by quantum physics. Maybe we're not freakish consequences of a random process, but the means by which the Universe arrives at self-knowledge. Maybe that's among the intuitions the ancestors arrived at.
Reply to WayfarerSpecial pleading in favor of mystifying (cryptic) intuitions, in effect, contra the mediocrity principle, natural selection, cognitive neuroscience, etc. Gotcha, Wayf. :ok: :sweat:
Ah, the distinctive smell of Hegel! How can one ignore it?
I've probably come to late to this thread and may have nothing to add--I've only just smelled the Hegel--but would say, if I understand you correctly, that it also seems similar in some respects to ancient Stoicism (which has no smell), if by "breath" you mean something similar to the Stoic pneuma. But for them the deity was immanent, pneuma being a very fine kind of material, representing the generative and intelligent aspect of Nature. I've always found an immanent deity more acceptable than a transcendent one, but that may not be what you intend.
pneuma being a very fine kind of material, representing the generative and intelligent aspect of Nature.
Basically I was describing humanism in terms of the incarnation myth. Metaphorically we are 'God' in the process of getting himself born. Or, 'we' (an idealwe) are universal rationality making itself explicit to itself as such. I don't think of some otherworldly substance, & for me incarnation gestures toward the move from transcendence-as-alienation toward immanence-as-homecoming. I like the feel of the stoics. I think their close (humanist cosmopolitans?) .I am lately fired up about Saussure's emphasis that the social fact (Durkheim) of language (AKA geist) involves 'form not substance.' He sees thoughtstuff and soundstuff as two 'postulated' continua that are 'sliced up' simultaneously by systems of semantically interdependent signs. 'Transcendence' is the impossible idea of concept without soundbody. 'Immanence' is recognizing what was thought to be transcendent as a 'form' that cannot be isolated from its 'flesh' (the breath or the ink in which we signal.)
While the remainder believe we're fundamentally animals, and we ought not to concern ourselves with whatever can't be picked up, touched, smelled, etc. No possibility of error there.
You said Socrates wasn't an atheist because he believed in immortality. Yet you like Buddhism? Western religious people don't really understand was atheism means from what I can tell
I have been perusing a rather good article on Schopenhauer's philosophy of religion, from which this nugget:
no one who is religious attains to philosophy; he does not need it. No one who really philosophises is religious; he walks without leading-strings, perilously but free.
I'm inclined to agree with that. Looking at my own case, I rejected religion (i.e. confirmation) but sought enlightenment (mainly through Eastern religions). But as life went on, that search also seemed to evoke religious kinds of sentiments. However, my judgement tells me, those are what Eastern teachings call samskara, ingrained habits of thought or conditioned reponses. Also that I subconsciously attach Christian tropes to Eastern symbols. I recognise that they are flaws on my part.
However, that said, I reject atheist philosophy (as a philosophy, not as a personal conviction. which is completely a matter for each individual). Schopenhauer is said to be atheist, but his atheism is modulated by the recognition that religion is necessary:
Religion is the metaphysics of the people, which by all means they must keep … Just as there is popular poetry, popular wisdom in proverbs, so too there must be popular metaphysics; for mankind requires most certainly an interpretation of life, and it must be in keeping with its power of comprehension.
And also by his belief that religions, generally - not just Christianity - represent philosophically profound truths in an allegorical way.
In accordance with his approach, it's possible that I too would be considered atheist by many believers. In any case, reading this paper on Schopenhauer has made me more aware of some defects in my own understanding, which I have to beware of.
I am not aware of anyone who thinks as this suggests - unless it's you.
It was a comment on the above exchange:
There is a very obvious empirical difference between humans and other animals, which was no less clear in ancient Athens than it is in the modern world: humans are born into a state of self-awareness. They 'bear the burden of selfhood.'
Those are anthropocentric evaluations, no doubt, self-serving and biased in our favor and against – separating us in part or wholly from – the rest of the natural order. ....The Greeks were not unique in this blinkered speciest view.
So, I'm 'speciest'. (I'd rather be spiciest, but I'll settle.)
Yet you like Buddhism? Western religious people don't really understand was atheism means from what I can tell
Buddhism is not theistic in the Western sense, but it's not atheist in the modern sense. In the Buddha's day there were philosophers called carvaka who were strict materialists, just like today's. The Buddha rejects materialism because it implies that there is no continuity of karma, that at death, there are no consequences of actions in life. Anyway there's a thread on Buddhism, this conversation ought to move to there.
"We have met him and he is us!" So it's not incarnation so much as a matter of being and becoming.
You mention becoming. Becoming what? What is the goal? Is it to become the being what we (implicitly) already are? I think talk about 'God' was talk about us all along. For context, I've been an atheist so long that I don't get the heebie geebies when handling the Christian tradition (not meant to suggest that you do.) An issue that interest me is the 'religious' charge of the concept of rationality itself, which functions as a sort of 'Holy Spirit' that is ideally universally accept as that which determines the real (whether and how it is real.) The philosopher is one for whom only the rational is real, and who would transform the real into that which is rational.
[quote=Feuerbach]
Taken as an intelligible (geistig) or an abstract being, that is, regarded neither as human nor as sensuous, but rather as one that is an object for and accessible only to reason or intelligence, God qua God is nothing but the essence of reason itself. But, basing themselves rather on imagination, ordinary theology and Theism regard him as an independent being existing separately from reason. Under these circumstances, it is an inner, a sacred necessity that the essence of reason as distinguished from reason itself be at last identified with it and the divine being thus be apprehended, realized, as the essence of reason. It is on this necessity that the great historical significance of speculative philosophy rests.The proof of the proposition that the divine essence is the essence of reason or intelligence lies in the fact that the determinations or qualities of God, in so far as they are rational or intelligible and not determinations of sensuousness or imagination, are, in fact, qualities of reason.
“God is the infinite being or the being without any limitations whatsoever.” But what cannot be a limit or boundary on God can also not be a limit or boundary on reason. If, for example, God is elevated above all limitations of sensuousness, so, too, is reason. He who cannot conceive of any entity except as sensuous, that is, he whose reason is limited by sensuousness, can only have a God who is limited by sensuousness. Reason, which conceives God as an infinite being, conceives, in point of fact, its own infinity in God. What is divine to reason is also truly rational to it, or in other words, it is a being that perfectly corresponds to and satisfies it. That, however, in which a being finds satisfaction, is nothing but the being in which it encounters itself as its own object.He who finds satisfaction in a philosopher is himself of a philosophical nature. That he is of this nature is precisely what he and others encounter in this satisfaction.
[/quote]
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/future/future0.htm
And while primitive thinking may have understandably personified God, then forgetting they made Him, transferring the error to us, there seems little justification for any reasonablemodern one of us to persist in the error.
Personally I agree that primitive notions of God should be abandoned by 'reasonable' people. You also mention modern. This is the historical becoming element, which acknowledges the march of reason, or its descent from the non-human into contingency and flesh. It's a sin against the 'holy spirit' of rationality to be stuck at a previous phase of the incarnation (how I'd fit in w/ the above.)
It's a delicate operation tho to tease out exactly what this or that individual means by 'God.' For me it's one of the great words in English, to be handled with caution but not simply thrown away (else the return of the repressed, etc.) I'm for the continual reinterpretation of what often only seems to be the rearview, inasmuch as it seems relevant. (The future has primacy for us, and talk of the past is really talk about the future, just as talk about gods is really talk about us.)
My point was that how religious people think materialism must be like is kinda a myth. Materialists and religious people usually experience life the same. They just don't *like*how each other verbalize their "beliefs"
And also by his belief that religions, generally - not just Christianity - represent philosophically profound truths in an allegorical way.
This is something he shares with his hated Hegel. As I read them, myths are a 'lower' intensity but still significant form of an insight that philosophers can and perhaps ought to enjoy in the nudity of the concept.
On the 'we're just animals' them, I think S takes an intermediate position. 'Yeah, we're animals, but we have concepts/language.'
[quote=Schop]
The only essential distinction between the human race and animals, which from time immemorial has been attributed to a special cognitive faculty peculiar to mankind, called Reason, is based upon the fact that man owns a class of representations which is not shared by any animal. These are conceptions, therefore abstract, as opposed to intuitive, representations, from which they are nevertheless derived.
[/quote]
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50966/50966-h/50966-h.htm
Schopenhauer argues that philosophy and religion have the same fundamental aim: to satisfy “man’s need for metaphysics,” which is a “strong and ineradicable” instinct to seek explanations for existence that arises from “the knowledge of death, and therewith the consideration of the suffering and misery of life” (WWR I 161).
what the ancients saw, was that man is different to other things 'in nature' because man alone can ask the question as to what it means, what it is, and so on.
it continues:
Every system of metaphysics is a response to this realization of one’s finitude, and the function of those systems is to respond to that realization by letting individuals know their place in the universe, the purpose of their existence, and how they ought to act. All other philosophical principles (most importantly, ethics) follow from one’s metaphysical system.
Materialists and religious people usually experience life the same.
I sincerely doubt that. Consider Durkheim's concept of 'anomie', that individuals suffer from a loss of the sense of their place in the world or meaning in the Cosmos. Weber's 'disenchanted universe'. the sense of alienation that results from it. It's obviously a hard question to empirically examine, but the sense of being part of the order of nature, surely must provide a greater sense of security than the belief that life is a fluke and humans are accidents. But, I don't want to use 'materialists' as a pejorative regarding people - it's a tendency in culture, not a personal fault.
Yes, but he criticizes Hegel and Schelling for accepting the 'optimistic' view of Christianity while pretending to be philosophers. He says Schelling ripped off Jacob Boehme without acknowledgement and without really understanding Boehme's mystical realisations. This essay says he anticipates Heidegger's criticisms of 'ontotheology'. (The essay also says that he says Kant's 'phenomena' and Advaita Hinduism's 'maya' mean exactly the same.)
(Gotta bail, have a hotel booked with dear one, promissed her I'd lay off talking to my invisible friends for the duration, back in a couple of days.)
Yes, but he criticizes Hegel and Schelling for accepting the 'optimistic' view of Christianity
I actually wrote about that via David Strauss in another thread. Humanists optimized Christianity, made it worldly and optimistic, fused it with the Enlightenment. This is in Kojeve too. Christianity is 'realized' in a free society, no more masters and slaves, no more otherworldly slavish-escapist ideologies. (I don't endorse Kojeve fully, but he's fascinating as a certain extreme.)
What a beautiful question! I answer, to become the God that we think that God ought to be.
I agree, and great post in general. The 'divine' virtues are human virtues. It's no accident, I think, that we could only care about a God (view him as other than a tyrant ) to the degree that this 'God' manifests virtues that we already understand and respond to. Hence 'father' metaphors.
I think about the stoics (maybe because of some forgotten line) in terms of trying to carve themselves into a statue of virtue, trying to 'incarnate' the noble, the magnanimous, the serene. In the same way I think 'imitation of Christ' is an attempt to impose a form on dying flesh, a way of life that forgives so as to transcend resentment and selfishness.
But I try, and many people try, and in the trying is progress. And if that's the Godhead of a man or a woman, to have done their best even in the face of the worlds difficulties, then that's not a bad goal and would be quite a lot for anyone to achieve.
I agree. I think we can only try but never perfectly or finally succeed, hence the centrality of forgiveness in any free community. I see rationality as a somewhat open & creative enterprise. We bring ideas to one another and try to achieve consensus, but we can't help in doing stepping on one another's toes (preferences, biases, illusions.) Of course sometimes we'll fail because we are greedy or lazy or cowardly. So we forgive as we hope to be forgiven, a specialization of 'do unto others as you'd be done to.'
[quote=Blake]
The worship of God is: Honouring his gifts in other [s]men[/s] humans, each according to his genius, and loving the greatest [s]men[/s] humans best: those who envy or calumniate great [s]men[/s] humans hate God; for there is no other God.
[/quote]
Schopenhauer argues that philosophy and religion have the same fundamental aim: to satisfy “man’s need for metaphysics,” which is a “strong and ineradicable” instinct to seek explanations for existence that arises from “the knowledge of death, and therewith the consideration of the suffering and misery of life”
In Feuerbach's first book, which ruined his gig in academia when it was insufficiently-anonymously published, he rails against the personal immortality taught by the theology of his times.
[quote=link]
During one brief decade, Sydney Hook writes, the whole of German philosophy and culture stood within Feuerbach’s shadow, "If Hegel was the anointed king of German thought in the period from 1820 to 1840, then Feuerbach was the philosophical arch-rebel from the time of the publication of his Das Wesen des Christenthums to the eve of the revolution of 1848" (Hook 1950, 220). At a time when Hegel was seemingly marching down the history in all glory, Feuerbach caught him in his nakedness by pointing out the unreal nature of his theory. Hegel’s mistake lies in his tendency to treat "abstract predicates—reason, thought, consciousness, and being—as entities." (Harvey 1987, 317) In the Hegelian system, nature exists "only as the alienation of the absolute Idea, as it were a degradation of the Idea." (Engels 1903, 52) For Feuerbach, Hegel’s system was standing on its head; it must be inverted in order to get the simple truth, namely all the predicates are only predicates of existing individual human beings. "[Feuerbach] placed materialism on the throne again without any circumlocution. Nature exists independently of all philosophies." (Engels 1903, 53)
Rather than saying that the Absolute Spirit achieves self-realization by actualizing itself in the finite world, Feuerbach argued that the human spirit obtains self-knowledge by objectifying itself in the idea of God. "Religion is not, as Hegel thought, the revelation of the Infinite in the finite; rather, it is the self-discovery by the finite of its own infinite nature. God is the form in which the human spirit first discovers its own essential nature." (Harvey 1995, 27)
Here's a passage from F's first book (not much is online, but I have the paperback and it's a fascinating, young-man's work, sort of Feuerbach's TLP, him at his most almost-mystical.
[quote=F]
Accordingly, once all that is truly actual, universal, substantial, once all Spirit, soul, and essence have disappeared from real life, nature, and world history, once everything has been massacred, has been dissolved into its parts, has been rendered without being, without unity, without Spirit, without soul, then, upon the ruins of the broken world, the individual raises the banner of the prophet and stations the abominable sacred watchman of the belief in his immortality and in the pledge of the hereafter. Standing on the ruins of the present life, in which he sees nothingness, all at once there awaken in the individual the feeling and consciousness of his own inner nothingness; and in the feeling of this double nothingness there flow from him, as from a Scipio on the ruins of Carthage, the compassionate teardrops and soap bubbles of the world of the future. Over the gap that lies between the present life as it really is and his perception and representation of it, over the pores and gaps in his own soul, the individual erects the fools’ bridge of the future life. After he has allowed to wither the fruit trees, the roses and lilies of the present world, after he has sickled away grass, cabbage, and corn and has transformed the whole world into a desiccated field of stubble, there finally springs up, in the empty feeling of his futility and the impotent consciousness of his vanity, as the weak semblance and faint illusion of the living, fresh time when flowers bloom, the nondescript, pale red, faded autumn crocus of immortality. Because nothing exists in the subject but the truthless subject itself, and because nothing exists outside of the subject but the temporal and the transitory, the finite, nothing but that which is false and unreal in the real world, it stands to reason that for the subject the real world is an unreal, future, otherworldly world. For the hereafter is nothing but the mistaken, misconceived, and misinterpreted real world. The subject knows only the shadow, the superficial external appearance of the real world, because he is only shallow and hollow in himself. He mistakes the shadow of the world for the world itself; and his idea of the really true world must be only a shadow, the illusion and fantastical dream of the future world.
[/quote]
https://materialreligions.blogspot.com/2015/01/thoughts-on-death-and-immortality.html
Fitche, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer all held the same philosophy after you put unnecessary details away. They are materialists and turn their mind to idealist psychology and *will* over the brute reality, although they could not deny that their life was purely biological. It is good to insist on a soul and all the idealist stuff is fascinating in its own way. The only trust idealists thinkers are people like Berkeley who came from a truly religious perspective. I imagine Hegel was happier than materialista who were more blunt ( "honest") who rejected him as con act. If you like, you could say he had more faith.
Lastly, Kant was a little different. He seemed to have a mind like Descartes but more into logic than math and incapable of finding a logic to believe in the way Descartes did.
Fitche, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer all held the same philosophy after you put unnecessary details away.
Those details are also known as their philosophies. I think I'll trust Schop when he implies a significant difference.
[quote=Schopenhauer]
Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who thus joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to achieve the intellectual corruption of a whole generation.
[/quote]
http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-flat-headed-insipid-nauseating.html
FWIW, I think Schop is a great stylist but too hard on Hegel, envious as he was for similar recognition (weep and you weep alone.)
Adding to what Wayf mentioned (H's optimism versus S's pessimism), there's also their treatment of time and history. For Hegel, history matters, is going somewhere bigger & better. For Schop, not so much. He thinks it's enough to have read Herodotus, cuz things just repeat.
German idealists are different in some respects from each other, but there is a reason the four greats of that tradition are of one school in the eyes of academia. They pounded their tables in rhythm as they forced themselves to view the bland world of matter in novel ways
Buddhism is not theistic in the Western sense, but it's not atheist in the modern sense. In the Buddha's day there were philosophers called carvaka who were strict materialists, just like today's. The Buddha rejects materialism because it implies that there is no continuity of karma, that at death, there are no consequences of actions in life. Anyway there's a thread on Buddhism, this conversation ought to move to there.
For what it's worth, folly or not, I've always interprered "karma" as habit-action, "death" in Buddha"s sense here as (the inevitable fall into deep) sleep and "reincarnation" as waking-up from sleep (i.e. another new day to try again to cultivate right / better habits by performing right / better (while refraining from wrong / worse) actions —> today'sdukkha are the "consequences" of yesterday'skarma (re: each Buddhist's daily experience of "the wheel of rebirth"... "samsara-nirvana")) so that, therefore, Buddhist practice can, in this way I think reasonably (pragmatically), be interpreted as consistent, or compatible, with Carvaka (i.e. 'atoms-in-void') materialism. I suspect that "the Buddha rejects materialism" was just his followers' apologetics appended much later to the Buddhist canon just like St. Paul's propagandistic "Letters" centuries after they were "written" were used by the Bishops at Nicea to (filter-out and) repurpose the "Gospels".
Also, like Buddhism, ancient atomists like Epicurus were neither theists nor atheists in the contemporary sense. (He) taught that in so far as there were any "gods" they too were made up of atoms and void, but in perfect atomic configurations, and therefore extremely far away from – in their perfect "bliss" oblivious of – imperfect atomic configurations such as "mortals" and "the cosmos" (re: the Tetrapharmakos).
. 'Transcendence' is the impossible idea of concept without soundbody. 'Immanence' is recognizing what was thought to be transcendent as a 'form' that cannot be isolated from its 'flesh' (the breath or the ink in which we signal.)
I'd have to do some reading to be certain of what you mean, but would agree that the concept of "transcendence"--of something apart from the universe, like a transcendent God--is unreasonable if not impossible. We're part of the universe and incapable of even imagining something beyond it. When we purport to do so, we're saying that there's something outside the universe which is like something we've encountered in the universe, but better or greater in some sense. What we are, know, do, think, imagine and communicate are all "confined" in the universe.
I suspect that "the Buddha rejects materialism" was just his followers' apologetics appended much later to the Buddhist canon just like St. Paul's propagandistic "Letters" centuries after they were "written" were used by the Bishops at Nicea to (filter-out and) repurpose the "Gospels".
There is a character called Prince Payasi in the earliy texts, who was indeed a textbook materialists. One of the anecdotes relates how he would seal prisoners in a large jar and weigh it before and after they died to see if the supposed departure of the soul could be weighed. (It couldn't.)
On the broader topic, Buddhists reject atomism, on the grounds that if a particle was divisionless, then it would have no sides, because sides are parts. And if it didn't have any sides then it couldn;t come into contact with anything. (That's from memory, I'm hazy on the detail.)
Buddhist 'atomism' was characterised by the belief in momentary elements of experience (another meaning of 'dharma') which arise and pass away in imperceptibly short periods of time. But they never agree with the concept of an enduring material point-particles on dogmatic grounds. There has been quite a bit of discussion between the Dalai Lama and physicists on philosophy of physics (e,g, here.)
Numbers go out of existence when no one is thinking of them. Either you are affirming pure Platonism or what you say makes no sense. Truth is not a substance "out there" but instead the proper formation of a soul that emerges from biology
I find presiding over all reason. The capacity to use tools to determine knowledge and winnow it from the chaff of unreason.
Quite honestly I find this utter nonsense. After reading the somewhat incoherent text, and providing no references, I'm not really sure you know what you're talkin about. Can you explain the nature of reason? (This will be one question of many.)
My goodness it's as if you don't understand philosophy at all? Don't take this the wrong way but that's incoherent gibberish. I'll ask you for the third time:
Explain the nature of human reason?
I have other questions too, with your thesis, but for now please answer the question.
I mean reason to be the application of logic to various things in various ways as appropriate to those things and ways, to the end of understanding them. The particular application being just the argument itself. I hold reason to preside because at the most fundamental level the details of understanding should make sense. And if sense cannot be made of them, then it is hard to see how they're reasonable.
The world, of course, from time to time shows us phenomena the facts of which seem neither sensible nor reasonable. But so far that has been just a challenge to adjust/refine the understanding itself to make it again reasonable. And where for the moment that seems impossible, then reason dictates we say we do not know.
If by logic you mean bivalent logic then you run into problem with its application to the world since the world does not divide neatly into either/or determinations.
by logic you mean bivalent logic then you run into problem with its application to the world since the world does not divide neatly into either/or determinations.
:up:
Yet another problem with mr. Wood's thesis:
What is the nature of human belief systems?
This is the second time I've asked you Reply to tim wood please answer the question.
The overwhelming evidence shows that most "human belief systems" are a jambalaya of (irreflective) cognitive biases, in/formal fallacies & placeholder narratives. (Yours for example!)
The “stop baiting” warning should carry over here.
Would it set a record, that the same group of children are responsible for the closing of two separate threads, at practically the same time, and for the same reason?
The overwhelming evidence shows that most "human belief systems" are a jambalaya of (irreflective) cognitive biases, in/formal fallacies & placeholder narratives.
Good point 180! We're patient, we'll wait for mr. Wood to reply
I mean reason to be the application of logic to various things in various ways as appropriate to those things and ways, to the end of understanding them. The particular application being just the argument itself. I hold reason to preside because at the most fundamental level the details of understanding should make sense. And if sense cannot be made of them, then it is hard to see how they're reasonable.
The world, of course, from time to time shows us phenomena the facts of which seem neither sensible nor reasonable. But so far that has been just a challenge to adjust/refine the understanding itself to make it again reasonable. And where for the moment that seems impossible, then reason dictates we say we do not know.
I don't know about you, but it seemed a bit like gibberish. For one, he didn't speak to the nature of human reason relative to the relationships of human belief systems.
Did you understand what he said?
Or maybe he can elucidate some. We're patient, I'll keep asking him Reply to tim wood
For one, he didn't speak to the nature of human reason relative to the relationships of human belief systems.
It would seem to me that the employment of reason under his definition would be the application of logic to the "relationship of human belief systems", whatever you mean that to be.
And mere belief that which is merely claimed. Unsupportable and unprovable, in some cases the unprovability being an essential feature. Religion an obvious source but also experience, practice, common sense, collected community wisdom: all these used not as ground but to underpin argument by claiming to stand as proofs of premises: all these, then, great impersonators of reason. For if they were objects of reason, then they would be provable, thus no longer mere beliefs.
Mr Wood,
I did some digging, and went back to your thesis and found the foregoing. Frankly, your suppositions seem weak and unsupported. You seem to be making what some of us call in logic as an either-or argument. Nonetheless, perhaps you have the answer to these concerns, but it may be simply difficult for you to articulate. Hence, let's start with these questions, then go from there:
1. What are "objects of reason"?
2. What makes things-in-themselves "provable"?
j0e:"Religion is not, as Hegel thought, the revelation of the Infinite in the finite; rather, it is the self-discovery by the finite of its own infinite nature"
Well that depends on how one experiences the infinite. I don't think you can force it to happen through reading or yoga. It might be like Hegel says, a receiving of something that feels foreign. Hegel believed in "God" in this sense, but it's something that happens through self-discovery nonetheless
The nature of belief systems, to return to your question as asked, is that they are exemplary fictions useful, if at all, for guidance. And I add that, being fictive, it's best to take some care in the use and consumption thereof, because in their nature as grounds for anything real, they are really toxic. In this sense, belief perhaps - maybe - as medicine. But too often a kind of psychotropic drug.
Mr. Wood,
This only leads to more confusion, because you seem to be saying in your thesis that beliefs are grounded in reality, yet you haven't even defined what reality is... . Now you're saying reality is comprised of 'fictions'. Can you explain how these 'fictions' of reality interacts with one's belief system? To help you, I will re-state the concerns:
"I did some digging, and went back to your thesis and found the foregoing. Frankly, your suppositions seem weak and unsupported. You seem to be making what some of us call in logic as an either-or argument. Nonetheless, perhaps you have the answer to these concerns, but it may be simply difficult for you to articulate. Hence, let's start with these questions, then go from there:"
[b]1. What are "objects of reason"?
2. What makes things-in-themselves "provable"?[/b]
There are many more questions, but let's parse these first. Sorry to put you on the spot, but your thesis does not seem cogent or even well thought out. Perhaps, as you say in your metaphor, "that knowledge is our kind of beer"; I'm not sure we want to be drinking your kind of beer :joke:
Comments (160)
Think, you analyse your total knowledge, an essence of this analysis rises above the mind, and you make a decision - reasoning.
Science is the method we use to formulate constructs using evidence and experiment. Belief isn't in the realm of science, if it was, we wouldn't be able to formulate constructs. A construct, like a base, is something we can ground ideas on, whereas belief is not solid ground, however fertile it may be. I don't know why religion and science compete- the opposite of science is art.
Thanks for explicating what should be axiomatic on a philosophy forum. :cool:
Just yesterday I came across this:
Reason for the ancients was not the same as modern reason modeled on mathematics. It was closer to our other uses of the term, such as when we ask for reasons why. Rather than build on grounds, Aristotle for example, begins with what is said, either some popular opinion or what some highly regarded person said.
They are, but the point Rosen is making is that knowledge requires both, and, in addition, poesis.
Well, you present a concept of reason. Since we do not have knowledge of the good we must rely on our concept of the good, our views, opinions, discussions, as you say explication, and so on.
Quoting tim wood
Tools can be put to both good and bad use. If reason is a tool then it can be put to good or bad use, hence moral significance.
What I find interesting is that he sees the modern separation between the concepts of reason and good as being at the root of nihilism. The separation is not intended to be the result of nihilism but rather leads to it. The good does not mean some reified entity, but rather, as Plato and Aristotle stressed, what each of us desire. And so, reason and the pursuit of knowledge are not separate from desire, the desire to know, the desire for wisdom, that is, philosophy.
I think that Aristotle's four causes has to be mentioned in this context, namely, formal, efficient, material and final causes. So in answer to the question, why does [X] exist, accounts can be given on each of those grounds.
Without wanting to drag the thread into an argument about the merits or flaws of Aristotelian metaphysics, there are a couple of major themes that emerge even from cursory consideration of this scheme, a major one being the relationship between 'cause', 'reason' and 'ground'.
Reason may be the faculty which secures judgement, but, I would have thought, causation is at least implicit in the operation of reason. When we ask why something happens, or why some situation has come to be, we're asking, at least in part, what is the cause, or the causal factors, that give rise to it.
It's the connection between cause and reason that introduces a metaphysical dimension. Formal reason, as expressed in the rules of logic, is a concise and well-bounded subject and may be learned and taught without any reference to metaphysics. But in practice, when reason is applied to anything other than formal procedures, then many knotty problems of the real nature of causal relations are introduced.
This can be illustrated by an old saw, the response to the question 'why is the water boiling?' You can say, quite correctly, 'well, it's been put on the stove, and heated to 100 degrees celsius, which is its boiling point'. You can also say 'in preparation for making tea'. The first answer is given in terms of material and efficient causation, the second in terms of final causation - the reason why the water is on the stove. It was put there with a purpose in mind - a telos, in Aristotelian terms, which is extrinsic to the physical explanation of the phenomenon.
I think the tendency in modern logic is to try and restrict consideration of the nature of reason, as far as possible, to material and efficient causation, so as to sidestep and obviate many of the open-ended questions that consideration of final causes leads to ('Why are we here?' being a hackneyed example). They're ruled out of bounds on the basis of being beyond the scope of empirical investigation. Hence the movement towards the 'instrumentalisation of reason' in modern philosophy, for which see this encyclopedia entry.
Basing a metaphysics on substance pure and simple has A causing B as the principle of all metaphysics. But there are other ways of conceiving this as infinite process and finite substance consuming itself in the flux and roll of cyclical reality. Aristotle was concerned to establish the static as all of reality but there is no necessity in believing this or any other metaphysics. Philosophy is not about proof like in mathematics, but continuing life and thoughts in a rational process
But surely, every form of reasoning must make use of the term 'because....' - and 'because' means means 'by cause of'. Your first sentence does so: my appeal to the Greek concept of reason is not relevant, because....
So no reasoned argument can be phrased without reference to cause. Any syllogism will contain 'because', any rational argument hinge on 'because' - thereby escaping the bounds within which you want to constrain reason.
Quoting tim wood
I also take issue with your description of reason as 'a tool'. Using reason, we can make all kinds of tools - in fact the reason h. sapiens became such an adept tool- and machine- maker is because of the capacity to reason. But to present reason to one tool among many is to deprecate it. It's no more a tool than is language; it's an ability, to make, among other things, tools.
We adopt grounds because they seem reasonable to us. This is where belief comes in. Can we count the "seeming reasonable" as an example of valid reasoning from premises to conclusion? I don't think so. If it were so, then it would be nothing but reason; which seems absurd; that's why I say the two ingredients are reason and grounds.
I'm linking 'cause' to 'reason' in a manner suggested by the 'principle of sufficient reason'.
Quoting tim wood
Which I suspect contains suppressed premisses, and/or a hidden agenda, namely, to seperate reason from belief, chiefly so as to uphold the purported division between 'reason and faith'.
There are gluten-fee beers. They do not contain barley.
Do you know how to ride a bike? How do reason, belief, ground, and argument fit here?
But more importantly, you left out one rather important bit: truth.
Can you know stuff that is not true?
Edit: and in case you are tempted by a True Scotsman, here is a Scottish gluten free beer.
Knowledge must consist in valid reasoning from sound grounds if knowledge as JTB holds, and is the model under consideration. How do we know that grounds are sound? Perhaps we never really do, but we are said to possess knowledge if the grounds are sound, we have good reason for holding them, and the reasoning to our conclusions is valid. What more need be said?
It depends on what use you put them to.
Quoting tim wood
Why is reason a ground for the good? Reason can just as easily be used to bad as to good ends. Once you introduce ends then reason alone is not sufficient. What is the end or goal of reason? Reason?
:up:
Speculation is fundamental to the search for knowledge. It goes by the name of hypothesis or theory or intuition or inspiration.
So, is it reasonable because it is the best of all possible worlds or is the best of all possible worlds because it is reasonable? Either way, you have not separated reason from the good.
Quoting tim wood
One can go from speculation to discovery without having to first build a foundation.
Referring back to your OP, you proposed:
Quoting tim wood
This list omits causal relations, which are surely as fundamental to knowledge as the other terms. So I'm saying that unless you acknowledge the relationship of 'cause' and 'reason', or, alternatively, the connection of cause and effect as constituents of rational judgement, then your proposed inventory of the fundamental constituents of knowledge is incomplete.
Not a beer drinker, myself. To say that ‘beer is barley’ would then lead to an assumption that my distaste for beer is equivalent to a distaste for barley, but that would be a mistake. I like barley. I’d argue that this probably has something to do with the particular way these ingredients are structured, rather than my distaste for any particular ingredient, no matter how important it seems.
Physicists have to think in lots of novel, unintuitive ways to come up with breakthru ideas. Aristotle thinks unintuitive thinking is by definition wrong thinking and he is at fault there. As for compressed strings, I've routinely heard from physics videos that compression increases mass and that we can measure that, but I don't want to derail your thread
The cause of the universe is the infinite series of physical effects. That might not have a relationship to a reason for the universe
This is waffle. The subject has a pedigree in philosophy, it has bounds, and terms of argument. This kind of statement falls outside them.
No, the Aristotelian error is thinking of cause and reason in the same line of thought
Actually, I think your argument maps pretty well against the aformentioned 'critique of instrumental reason':
This is why I brought in the 'four causes' argument, as it retains the notion of final ends being the grounding reason for the nature of things - that things exist for a reason, and not just on account of detecable antecedent causes; which is what was abandoned by modern philosophy under the heading of 'teleology'. It goes on:
This is what I believe you have referred to previously as 'the common coin of existence'. It goes on:
Adapted from here.
I'm saying that life doesn't has to be seen as predetermined by a Final Causality that permeates everything. You don't seem to disagree
I got the reference but my point was that scientists who study Aristotle do worse in science than those who purposely reject it
As do I, the exceptions being accident or pure reflex.
Small beer was the common drink - in the place of water - for centuries because it did not cause dysentery. Small beer is beer.
Your recipe for beer and your recipe for knowledge suffer the same difficulty: they are too restrictive. In both cases, it's more about the process than the ingredients.
And as a result you include too little in your definition.
That it was lit. That the chemical compounds which comprise dynamite explode when lit.
Quoting tim wood
It varied between philosophers and schools. Some of them were much nearer to naturalism than others, but platonism did not operate from naturalist presuppositions.
Quoting Gregory
The final cause of a match is fire. This is because matches are made so as to light fires, so that is the reason for their existence. A final cause not final as in 'the end of everything' but simply as 'the end towards which something is directed'.
I'm emphasizing that not everyone expresses their inner experience the same. So the ends of one person may seem different from someone else. We don't really know how others experience life. But the material ends in nature do not point to a reason in nature that is discernable. Fatalism has causes without reasons, for example, because those are different concepts
This is a philosophy forum. The aim is to try and express ideas coherently, and preferably with some connection to the recognised problems of philosophy.
Hey. Just to know, what is it that you have in mind when you speak of naturalism?
The ends of life are interior but you mention Aristotle who put ends in everything and who is always incoherent.
Pretty much 'post Enlightenment philosophy'. A strict division between what can be known by the natural sciences and what is deemed not to be thus knowable. Closely intertwined with empiricism, the view that only what can be detected by the senses (and instruments) is to be considered real. The other component is 'positivism'.
Ah, gatcha. Thanks.
As thus stated, this leaves out a lot of stuff concerning the mental. Unless one takes the mental to be fundamental in interpreting sense data...
Richard J. Bernstein coined the term in his 1983 book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis.
This place is full of it. ;-)
Then there's a lot of stuff to argue about. But I don't think arguing with people who agree with Dennett or Churchland(s) to be fruitful in any way. Other things, sure, but not eliminitavism.
We cannot fully separate ourselves from the world, it's not possible. We can retreat from view to an extent, but in the end it comes back to the cash value we make of the stuff we interpret, not a "view from nowhere."
But, this is philosophy. If 3 people agree, there's a problem. Heck, if one person agrees with himself on everything, that's probably bad too. :razz:
But trying to force "cause" and "reason for something" into a single idea is a sophistry and that's why I pointed this out
I can't help but take the bait sometimes. Mainly because I'm incredulous that they are taken seriously.
But to try and get back to the OP - I see it as an attempt to ground epistemology in something other than 'mere belief'. It recognises the difficulty of doing that. There's a polemic against clinging to beliefs as an impediment to knowledge which is fair. Then the appeal to reason as 'presiding over all' - which is also fair, but somewhat undermined by the later claim that reason is 'itself a tool, like a 3/8ths-inch wrench, and with the same moral significance, which is to say none.' That seems to contradict the premisses of the OP, as I stated here. But that is not the fault of the person who wrote the OP - it's the zeigeist, the spirit of the times. Because, as I tried to show, the original conception of 'reason' was far more encompassing than it's modern use as 'an instrument'. It encompassed 'reason' in the grand sweep of things, 'the reason things exist', anchored against a metaphysic which saw reason as something that animated the Universe. A metaphysic which has since been found wanting, and rejected - but not replaced. Hence, 'the Cartesian anxiety'. It's a deep problem, not something to make light of.
That is one view. But I prefer a version of naturalism/physicalism that says this is all we know for now. It's not making proclamations about what is real (yes, I know, some are dogmatic) just what we we can reliable talk about.
I am rather persauded by Jacques Maritain's criticisms of it, however.
This longing for unchanging, certain knowledge seems to me to be associated with religion and old-fashioned metaphysics ('rationalized' religion). As I understand them, the scientific spirit and more recent philosophy understand our knowledge to be provisional & constantly evolving.
Where's the Cartesian anxiety in this?
[quote=link]
In rejecting representationalism and the essentialism that it implies, Dewey abandons the Cartesian-inspired spectator account of knowledge, which radically separates the knowing subject from the object being studied. No longer considering that objectivity a result of a detachment from the material under study but rather as an ongoing interaction with that which is at hand, Dewey elevates practice over theory; better said, he puts theory in service to practice. From Rorty’s perspective, while Dewey had a great insight, he ought to have taken the next step and rejected scientism—the claim that scientific method allows humanity to gain a privileged insight into the structural processes of nature. His failure to reject the alleged epistemologically privileged stance is one main reason Rorty must re-imagine Dewey. Nevertheless, Dewey’s elevation of practice continues the movement away from the pre-Darwinian attachment to the belief in a non-human source of purpose and the immutability of natural kinds toward a contingent “world,” where humans define and redefine their social and material environments. It is within a social practice or a “language-game” that specific marks and sounds come to designate commonly accepted meanings. And, as Rorty states in “Feminism and Pragmatism,” (1995) no set of marks or sounds (memes) can ever bring cognitive clarity about the way the world is or the way we as humans are. Instead, memes compete with one another in an evolutionary struggle over cultural space, just as genes compete for survival in the natural environment. Unguided by an immanent or transcendent teleology, the memes’ replication is determined by their usefulness within a given social group. And it is through their utility for the continued existence and prospering of a social group that the group’s memes—like their genes—are carried forward and flourish. They establish their niche in the socio-ecological system.
[/quote]
https://iep.utm.edu/rorty/#SH3a
I think 'Cartesian anxiety' only works against an unworthy enemy and even doubles back to some degree. It's as if (static) religious thought and scientistic thought are two brothers fighting over the same inheritance, while 'dynamic' philosophers abandon that inheritance.
So, do you see why I characterise your approach as broadly positivist? Don't take that as an ad hominem, it's a description of a philosophical attitude or approach.
Classic empiricism is indeed crude by today's standards (well demolished even by secular thinkers.) But it's as if you are criticizing a brand new Tesla by talking about a Model T.
I made a specific point about Aristotle: that "cause" and "reason" are not *necessarily* related. I thought it was connected to what you were saying, but you don't seem to ever say anything specific, so I'll go read and do something else tonight
I think you're referring here to David Hume's sceptical criticism of inductive reasoning. To which I can only offer Kant's 'answer to Hume' as a rejoinder - that the necessary connection of cause and effect is a presupposition for the possibility of knowledge.
Quoting j0e
Associated with metaphysics proper. Go back to the Parmenides, as I am currently doing, and reconsider what the object of that quest was - the attainment of certain knowledge of the real. The knowledge of the empirical world - the world which modern naturalism views as the only real realm - is not equated with true knowledge, because the objects within it constantly arise and pass away and are ephemeral. We're chasing shadows on the wall.
Quoting j0e
Maritain wrote in the 1920's and 30's, not 1700. I'm not highly conversant with him, and don't intend to become so. But the substance of his criticism rings true with me.
Personal note: I suppose I ought to lay something out here which is that I hold Christian Platonism in high regard. Had I been taught that subject properly earlier in life, or had I encountered it under different circumstances, I might self-identify as something more than a 'cultural Christian' (and Buddhist convert). Be that as it may, (neo)Thomism contains a strain of traditional metaphysics, the philosophia perennis, that I believe holds up perfectly well in today's cultural milieu. Of course, nearly all of its exponents are Catholic, and I am not Catholic nor likely to become so. However I am obliged to admit that I'd be a Catholic a long time before I was an atheist. (Fortunately, I don't have to be either :-) )
Quoting Gregory
I don't share your animus towards Catholic culture. I might, had I been brought up in it, and had it beaten into me with a cane. As it was, I discovered it through the study of the history of ideas and philosophy, so I approached it rather differently to one who has had it thrust on them.
Quoting tim wood
Correct, with the caveat that they're not 'things'. That the tendency to portray it in terms of 'things' arises from the genetic naturalism of modern culture, which orientates itself with respect to things.
Quoting tim wood
I agree with the arguments of natural theology: that the sensory domain points to something beyond itself. And as one argument for that, I cite the tendency in modern cosmology and physics to posit multiple universes and parallel worlds; that nature seems to 'overflow its bounds', so to speak. The atom was supposedly simple; yet the largest and most expensive apparatus in history has been unable to determine its true nature. Maybe it's because it doesn't have a true nature, that it lacks intrinsic reality, that the reality it possesses is imputed to it. That we really are chasing shadows on a wall.
And that segways into (Buddhist) idealism, the insight into the 'mind-made world'.
I hear you but I'm not sure we often encounter people who hold to such a rigid form of empiricism.
On what corroborable grounds have you (Eleatics, Platonists & woo-ologists) determined "objects ... constantly arise and pass away and are ephemeral" do not constitute "true knowledge"?
Yeah :point:
:up: In my own terms, following on what you wrote and contra Wayfarer's anti-modern polemical definition: naturalism, since antiquity, denotes describing or explaining some aspect of nature only in terms of (an)other aspect(s) of nature. Questions like 'Is nature all that is real?' or 'Are supernaturalia real?' are speculations which are simply outside of naturalism's remit. Chinese daojia and Greek atomism, as examples, have always had this naturalistic approach, or stance, in common. A naturalist can be agnostic about 'the supernatural', methodologically not relying on it to build explanatory models, though, of course, many have become dogmatic to the point of scientism perhaps as a vestigial (institutionalized?) overreaction to Scholasticism, Romanticism and the Counter-Enlightenment.
Quoting tim wood
:100:
That's a pretty good line.
And what the ancients saw, was that man is different to other things 'in nature' because man alone can ask the question as to what it means, what it is, and so on. That opened the door to the insight into the ground or first cause in order to ameliorate ('salve') the existential angst that accompanies the unique predicament of being an animal that can contemplate its own demise. So modern naturalism is an attempt to flee that (often subliminal) awareness which is preserved in the various spiritual and philosophical traditions which are designated by yourself as 'woo'. :wink: But at least I hope after 10 years (or more) of head-banging on this idea, we can now at least agree to disagree.
Quoting Wayfarer
It is reasonable also to say that the need to remove an obstacle to make way for a road was a cause. An answer to the question why was called a cause.
Quoting tim wood
For the Greeks nature had a telos or end or purpose. This was based on the observed order of the universe. It was not random but ordered and purposeful. The ability of the intelligence of man to understand the intelligible order led to the idea that the order itself was intelligent. Intelligence works toward some end or purpose, and so, nature must have some end or purpose. I am not defending that idea, just trying to explain it.
And, as with very much else about nature, many ancients who believed that man was "different" had no idea what they were talking about – what some of them "saw" was just mistaken and self-flattering (i.e. inconsistently they assumed some "appearances" were true or real while for (religious reasons) denied others) – and those like e.g. Laozi and Epicurus "saw" humans, more or less, as wholly natural beings.
We can agree to disagree, Wayf, we've done it before, but I see no reason we can't continue to criticize and object to each others' errors where we see fit to do so respectively even without directly addressing one another. The 'naturalism / supernaturalism (i.e. materialist / idealist) dialectic' goes on with & without us, no?
:fire:
I think this project is haunted by an inescapable ambiguity, as argued for by an army of philosophers who I think have made a strong case. Is this a not 'a closer walk with God'?' I like applying thy incarnation myth/metaphor to the march of humanist thought. 'Atheistic' humanism incorporates the incarnation myth, lives it. We're already 'God,' as much as I think we can have, as much as I think we need, down here, tho (felix culpa) not in a finished state, not dead.
:up:
I just get bored. Sometimes I get mad, but there's more to the world than brain-talk.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sounds something like the idea of "the great chain of Being." Such a view may make reason stronger than in it really is, in the sense that we, as human beings, are probably the only creature that use reasons to make sense of the world. I think we use it intermittently.
Then there's something to be said about intuition too when it comes to epistemology. But that's quite hard to speak about sensibly. But we use it all the time.
Quoting 180 Proof
Sure. But an assertion is not reasoned argument. Neither are claims that the ancients must have it wrong on account of their being ancient. There is a very obvious empirical difference between humans and other animals, which was no less clear in ancient Athens than it is in the modern world: humans are born into a state of self-awareness. They 'bear the burden of selfhood.' They are the 'rational animal' and rationality is a difference that makes a difference. Think of the origin of the Greek philosophical tradition - the breakthrough into being able to discern 'the reason for things', the universal order. It must have been intoxicating. With it comes the hope for something beyond this perishable frame. It's not hard to envisage for those who see an order 'written in the stars'.
Socrates was sentenced to death for atheism. But Socrates was not atheist as we know it, he says in Phaedo he is assured of the immortality of the soul. Was he right? I can't say that I know. I'm one of the characters in the dialogues standing on the sidelines with doubts and questions, but I'm not going to dismiss it.
Quoting Fooloso4
:up:
Quoting j0e
Yes, but look at the OP. It is concerned with fundamental epistemology, what it means 'to know'. It's a heavy topic! The OP is admirably modest in acknowledging that it only ventures an 'unsatisfactory and partial' answer. Well and good and all credit where due. But, I'm saying, with respect to the subject of the thread, the origin was with Greek philosophy, and specifically the Parmenides, and that those were the terms in which the question of 'the nature of knowledge' was framed - the quest for sure knowledge of the real; the Greek equivalent of the Sanskrit 'Vidya', which carries existential implications that mere 'knowledge' does not.
Parmenides and Plato set the bar very high for what constitutes knowledge. In the Theatetus, many of the proferred answers to the question of knowledge - justified true belief, and so on - end in aporia, un-answered questions, puzzlement and hesitation. Have those problems been solved since? Is it the case that 2,500 intervening years have yielded great progress in addressing those doubts? Very difficult questions, and I'm not going to rush in with an answer. But I think the idea that 'modern science' has, or even can, address, let alone 'solve', those questions, is misplaced. Which is no slight on science. Consider what is involved - they are not questions for science. They are questions we have to grapple with 'alone with the alone'.
(I got that expensive textbook I mentioned - Nature Loves to Hide, Shimon Malin, philosophical commentary on quantum physics. So far, so good - he is wishing to situate the Bohr Einstein debate against the background of Western philosophy with specific reference to Alfred North Whitehead and the Platonist tradition. Not far into it yet but am going to give it a lot of attention. Highly congenial and definitely a legitimate author, not a quantum charlatan.)
Quoting Manuel
I think the loss of that idea was the loss of something significant. Put it another way: there are degrees of reality, such that what is more real, is also more worthy of being known. It jars with modern philosophy. That's because the idea of 'degrees of reality' was lost from medieval times. It is still retained in 17th C philosophy:
Here you can trace the idea of 'the unconditioned', where 'the unconditioned' is 'the source of being' (the To Hen of Plotinus) which emanates or cascades 'downward' to the phenomenal realm; what is 'nearer to it' is more real; hence 'intellect' is more real than the corporeal. That intuition is what has been jettisoned in the transition to modernity, where the idea of 'degrees of being' has been abandoned.
Yes. I read a metaphysical project by one philosopher recently who speaks in similar terms. But she speaks about it in relation to fiction, not among different objects or things in the world. It makes sense to speak of having more or less reasons for believing in something and it would appear that having less assumptions when considering something might be an indication of its impact to you.
In this sense, It makes more sense to me think of different aspects of reality as opposed to saying something is more real than some other thing.
Having said this, I would agree that consciousness is the thing with which we are most acquainted with and thus must be the most "concretely" realized aspect of nature. Beyond that, it's less clear to me to speak about some thing being "more real" than another, with the exception of the mentioned example of fiction.
I think (roughly) that only scientism thinks science can replace philosophy, and that philosophy has made genuine progress, at the cost perhaps of mystical charge in Parmenides' fragments.
I do see a problem in alone with the alone. Language is fundamentally social. 'Knowledge' has something like a continuum of appropriate uses which are generally out of the control of any individual. Subcultures can of course extend or change usage so that 'knowledge' is something like a metaphor for an ineffable 'insight.' But even here the word has a use. Members can discuss what 'knowledge' is/means and how to figure out who has it. As I see it, the truly alone person is beyond language, beyond argument, beyond epistemology --and not really a person anymore but either a superhuman or an animal (beast or god.)
Quoting Wayfarer
You may underestimate how well that is understood. For some the problem is the obvious religious 'charge' here, not because religion is universally dis-valued but rather because of the perceived likelihood of bias. One might even imagine rationality as a negotiation between clashing spiritualities. On my view, the generation of myths for coping is spontaneous. I do not use 'myths' pejoratively here. They are to philosophy what models are to science (they are fundamental metaphors that control, often tacitly, the approach to less fundamental myths/metaphors.) For instance, we had/have the myth of the given (Sellars). We had/have the myth/metaphor of cognition as a mirror of nature, or as a lens through which 'raw' reality passes before it gets to us. Let's not forget that story about the ghost in the machine either.
The issue is their 'reasonable' collision and whether or not a consensus is even sought.
:up:
Well, yeah. I used to talk to a Buddhist who thought the 'four elements' physics was the real deal, 'ancient knowledge'. That's not me. I believe in science, progress, liberal democracy, and the rest. I'm vaccinated against COVID and thankful for it. But a miserable modern citizen's woes are not that different from a miserable ancient Greek citizen's woes, in some fundamental way, even if the circumstances are unarguably vastly different. As for the Alone with the Alone, that was a reference to Plotinus - a shorthand way of trying to communicate the idea that regardless of your circumstances, be at peace with the world. And that is elusive. As for 'knowledge' - what I meant was that the OP is concerned with justification and validation. Plainly, again, we have considerably greater knowledge than the ancients did. But the OP makes this a charge against them - that with their philosophy 'no science is possible'. So we have to sacrifice their wisdom for our progress, so to speak. I'm taking issue with that. We know a lot of things, and many of them very reliable - how to vaccinate against covid, being one, which is an amazing feat - but the connotation of 'vidya', truly seeing, knowing the real, is not encompassed by that.
While I suspect that tranquility can never be completely independent of circumstances (food poisoning, torture, and so on), I very much respect it as an ideal to strive toward. For those in good health and not in immediate danger, it's perhaps envy, resentment, and dread that especially threaten such tranquility. I remember some great passages in Plotinus, so I dig some up here.
[quote=Plotinus]
The soul that beholds beauty becomes beautiful.
We are not separated from spirit, we are in it.
God is not external to anyone, but is present with all things, though they are ignorant that He is so.
Life is the flight of the alone to the alone.
[/quote]
I can (creatively mis-)read this in terms of the incarnation theme I mentioned earlier. If 'God' is a still-developing being who articulates himself thru and only thru and in mortals, then 'His' medium or mother is materiality, our flesh, of course, but especially the breath of the sign, as opposed to the 'ideality' of its form, not substance. For this enformed breath is the medium of our (God's) self- knowledge and self-enlargement. The flight from the Alone to the Alone is (in this reading) the journey from 'God' back to 'God,' from implicit membership in a divinized, liberated human community to explicit membership. This journey would occur historically (for the culture/species as a whole) and individually (as a person lets go the attachments/alienations that obscure this participation.) This is how I read the denial of our separation. 'Alone' works for 'God' because it's only the whole of reality that's not dependent: 'the finite has no genuine being.' You can probably smell the Hegel in this. I actually found a quote that I put in the Saussure thread. Plotinus discusses meaningful sound, the (ideal) form (not substance) that makes air significant. I think we are both interested in 'form' and the realm of the intelligible or significant. For me we already 'swim' in it, 'are' it, and simply make it more explicit through linguistics, philosophy, music (thinking vocals especially), and so on. We strive so that we can see beauty and so be beautiful (noble, tranquil), beyond resentment-envy-dread --as often and as intensely as we can manage such a delicate operation.
We agree again. So stop making them.
I never asserted or implied "the ancients must have it wrong on account of their being ancient". Please stop asserting your strawmen, Wayf.
Those are anthropocentric evaluations, no doubt, self-serving and biased in our favor and against – separating us in part or wholly from – the rest of the natural order. Cultural anthropology has documented this cognitive phenomenon for centuries 'recorded' in many indigenous trditions and literate cultures outside of – far older than 5-6 century BCE Grrece – in most places around the globe. The Greeks were not unique in this blinkered speciest view.
Rationalized religion had replaced mythopoetic religion. I'm sure throwing-up in their own mouths all of the perennial Mysteries they knew was so "intoxicating" that they had to scribble it all down ... even though most of their learned scrolls were assessed to be more valuable to posterity as fuel to start cooking fires than as revelatory scripts.
And neither will I. (Remember, Wayf, I'm also an Epicurean ... and, as a Spinozist, I'm quite grateful for all I've been able to learn from Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus, Heraclitus, Democritus, Dionysus of Sinope, Seneca, Epictetus, Lucretius et al, so don't misread my critiques as 'Anti-Ancient Modernism').
Oh. I took that as the implication of:
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
Humans speak, create civilisations, make tools. That is not 'anthropomorphism', it's a simple fact. Even your much-vaunted 'scientific objectivity' is grounded in the perspective that only a human mind can bring to the Universe, as has been made abundantly clear by quantum physics. Maybe we're not freakish consequences of a random process, but the means by which the Universe arrives at self-knowledge. Maybe that's among the intuitions the ancestors arrived at.
Ah, the distinctive smell of Hegel! How can one ignore it?
I've probably come to late to this thread and may have nothing to add--I've only just smelled the Hegel--but would say, if I understand you correctly, that it also seems similar in some respects to ancient Stoicism (which has no smell), if by "breath" you mean something similar to the Stoic pneuma. But for them the deity was immanent, pneuma being a very fine kind of material, representing the generative and intelligent aspect of Nature. I've always found an immanent deity more acceptable than a transcendent one, but that may not be what you intend.
Basically I was describing humanism in terms of the incarnation myth. Metaphorically we are 'God' in the process of getting himself born. Or, 'we' (an ideal we) are universal rationality making itself explicit to itself as such. I don't think of some otherworldly substance, & for me incarnation gestures toward the move from transcendence-as-alienation toward immanence-as-homecoming. I like the feel of the stoics. I think their close (humanist cosmopolitans?) .I am lately fired up about Saussure's emphasis that the social fact (Durkheim) of language (AKA geist) involves 'form not substance.' He sees thoughtstuff and soundstuff as two 'postulated' continua that are 'sliced up' simultaneously by systems of semantically interdependent signs. 'Transcendence' is the impossible idea of concept without soundbody. 'Immanence' is recognizing what was thought to be transcendent as a 'form' that cannot be isolated from its 'flesh' (the breath or the ink in which we signal.)
You said Socrates wasn't an atheist because he believed in immortality. Yet you like Buddhism? Western religious people don't really understand was atheism means from what I can tell
I'm inclined to agree with that. Looking at my own case, I rejected religion (i.e. confirmation) but sought enlightenment (mainly through Eastern religions). But as life went on, that search also seemed to evoke religious kinds of sentiments. However, my judgement tells me, those are what Eastern teachings call samskara, ingrained habits of thought or conditioned reponses. Also that I subconsciously attach Christian tropes to Eastern symbols. I recognise that they are flaws on my part.
However, that said, I reject atheist philosophy (as a philosophy, not as a personal conviction. which is completely a matter for each individual). Schopenhauer is said to be atheist, but his atheism is modulated by the recognition that religion is necessary:
And also by his belief that religions, generally - not just Christianity - represent philosophically profound truths in an allegorical way.
In accordance with his approach, it's possible that I too would be considered atheist by many believers. In any case, reading this paper on Schopenhauer has made me more aware of some defects in my own understanding, which I have to beware of.
Quoting tim wood
It was a comment on the above exchange:
Quoting 180 Proof
So, I'm 'speciest'. (I'd rather be spiciest, but I'll settle.)
Quoting Gregory
Buddhism is not theistic in the Western sense, but it's not atheist in the modern sense. In the Buddha's day there were philosophers called carvaka who were strict materialists, just like today's. The Buddha rejects materialism because it implies that there is no continuity of karma, that at death, there are no consequences of actions in life. Anyway there's a thread on Buddhism, this conversation ought to move to there.
That's exactly how I see it, agreeing with Feuerbach that God is a projection of human virtues.
Quoting tim wood
You mention becoming. Becoming what? What is the goal? Is it to become the being what we (implicitly) already are? I think talk about 'God' was talk about us all along. For context, I've been an atheist so long that I don't get the heebie geebies when handling the Christian tradition (not meant to suggest that you do.) An issue that interest me is the 'religious' charge of the concept of rationality itself, which functions as a sort of 'Holy Spirit' that is ideally universally accept as that which determines the real (whether and how it is real.) The philosopher is one for whom only the rational is real, and who would transform the real into that which is rational.
[quote=Feuerbach]
Taken as an intelligible (geistig) or an abstract being, that is, regarded neither as human nor as sensuous, but rather as one that is an object for and accessible only to reason or intelligence, God qua God is nothing but the essence of reason itself. But, basing themselves rather on imagination, ordinary theology and Theism regard him as an independent being existing separately from reason. Under these circumstances, it is an inner, a sacred necessity that the essence of reason as distinguished from reason itself be at last identified with it and the divine being thus be apprehended, realized, as the essence of reason. It is on this necessity that the great historical significance of speculative philosophy rests.The proof of the proposition that the divine essence is the essence of reason or intelligence lies in the fact that the determinations or qualities of God, in so far as they are rational or intelligible and not determinations of sensuousness or imagination, are, in fact, qualities of reason.
“God is the infinite being or the being without any limitations whatsoever.” But what cannot be a limit or boundary on God can also not be a limit or boundary on reason. If, for example, God is elevated above all limitations of sensuousness, so, too, is reason. He who cannot conceive of any entity except as sensuous, that is, he whose reason is limited by sensuousness, can only have a God who is limited by sensuousness. Reason, which conceives God as an infinite being, conceives, in point of fact, its own infinity in God. What is divine to reason is also truly rational to it, or in other words, it is a being that perfectly corresponds to and satisfies it. That, however, in which a being finds satisfaction, is nothing but the being in which it encounters itself as its own object.He who finds satisfaction in a philosopher is himself of a philosophical nature. That he is of this nature is precisely what he and others encounter in this satisfaction.
[/quote]
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/future/future0.htm
Quoting tim wood
Personally I agree that primitive notions of God should be abandoned by 'reasonable' people. You also mention modern. This is the historical becoming element, which acknowledges the march of reason, or its descent from the non-human into contingency and flesh. It's a sin against the 'holy spirit' of rationality to be stuck at a previous phase of the incarnation (how I'd fit in w/ the above.)
It's a delicate operation tho to tease out exactly what this or that individual means by 'God.' For me it's one of the great words in English, to be handled with caution but not simply thrown away (else the return of the repressed, etc.) I'm for the continual reinterpretation of what often only seems to be the rearview, inasmuch as it seems relevant. (The future has primacy for us, and talk of the past is really talk about the future, just as talk about gods is really talk about us.)
My point was that how religious people think materialism must be like is kinda a myth. Materialists and religious people usually experience life the same. They just don't *like*how each other verbalize their "beliefs"
This is something he shares with his hated Hegel. As I read them, myths are a 'lower' intensity but still significant form of an insight that philosophers can and perhaps ought to enjoy in the nudity of the concept.
On the 'we're just animals' them, I think S takes an intermediate position. 'Yeah, we're animals, but we have concepts/language.'
[quote=Schop]
The only essential distinction between the human race and animals, which from time immemorial has been attributed to a special cognitive faculty peculiar to mankind, called Reason, is based upon the fact that man owns a class of representations which is not shared by any animal. These are conceptions, therefore abstract, as opposed to intuitive, representations, from which they are nevertheless derived.
[/quote]
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50966/50966-h/50966-h.htm
Which is what I meant when I said:
Quoting Wayfarer
it continues:
Quoting Gregory
I sincerely doubt that. Consider Durkheim's concept of 'anomie', that individuals suffer from a loss of the sense of their place in the world or meaning in the Cosmos. Weber's 'disenchanted universe'. the sense of alienation that results from it. It's obviously a hard question to empirically examine, but the sense of being part of the order of nature, surely must provide a greater sense of security than the belief that life is a fluke and humans are accidents. But, I don't want to use 'materialists' as a pejorative regarding people - it's a tendency in culture, not a personal fault.
Quoting j0e
Yes, but he criticizes Hegel and Schelling for accepting the 'optimistic' view of Christianity while pretending to be philosophers. He says Schelling ripped off Jacob Boehme without acknowledgement and without really understanding Boehme's mystical realisations. This essay says he anticipates Heidegger's criticisms of 'ontotheology'. (The essay also says that he says Kant's 'phenomena' and Advaita Hinduism's 'maya' mean exactly the same.)
(Gotta bail, have a hotel booked with dear one, promissed her I'd lay off talking to my invisible friends for the duration, back in a couple of days.)
I actually wrote about that via David Strauss in another thread. Humanists optimized Christianity, made it worldly and optimistic, fused it with the Enlightenment. This is in Kojeve too. Christianity is 'realized' in a free society, no more masters and slaves, no more otherworldly slavish-escapist ideologies. (I don't endorse Kojeve fully, but he's fascinating as a certain extreme.)
I'm a materialist and I feel exactly like when I was a Catholic
I agree, and great post in general. The 'divine' virtues are human virtues. It's no accident, I think, that we could only care about a God (view him as other than a tyrant ) to the degree that this 'God' manifests virtues that we already understand and respond to. Hence 'father' metaphors.
I think about the stoics (maybe because of some forgotten line) in terms of trying to carve themselves into a statue of virtue, trying to 'incarnate' the noble, the magnanimous, the serene. In the same way I think 'imitation of Christ' is an attempt to impose a form on dying flesh, a way of life that forgives so as to transcend resentment and selfishness.
Quoting tim wood
I agree. I think we can only try but never perfectly or finally succeed, hence the centrality of forgiveness in any free community. I see rationality as a somewhat open & creative enterprise. We bring ideas to one another and try to achieve consensus, but we can't help in doing stepping on one another's toes (preferences, biases, illusions.) Of course sometimes we'll fail because we are greedy or lazy or cowardly. So we forgive as we hope to be forgiven, a specialization of 'do unto others as you'd be done to.'
[quote=Blake]
The worship of God is: Honouring his gifts in other [s]men[/s] humans, each according to his genius, and loving the greatest [s]men[/s] humans best: those who envy or calumniate great [s]men[/s] humans hate God; for there is no other God.
[/quote]
In Feuerbach's first book, which ruined his gig in academia when it was insufficiently-anonymously published, he rails against the personal immortality taught by the theology of his times.
[quote=link]
During one brief decade, Sydney Hook writes, the whole of German philosophy and culture stood within Feuerbach’s shadow, "If Hegel was the anointed king of German thought in the period from 1820 to 1840, then Feuerbach was the philosophical arch-rebel from the time of the publication of his Das Wesen des Christenthums to the eve of the revolution of 1848" (Hook 1950, 220). At a time when Hegel was seemingly marching down the history in all glory, Feuerbach caught him in his nakedness by pointing out the unreal nature of his theory. Hegel’s mistake lies in his tendency to treat "abstract predicates—reason, thought, consciousness, and being—as entities." (Harvey 1987, 317) In the Hegelian system, nature exists "only as the alienation of the absolute Idea, as it were a degradation of the Idea." (Engels 1903, 52) For Feuerbach, Hegel’s system was standing on its head; it must be inverted in order to get the simple truth, namely all the predicates are only predicates of existing individual human beings. "[Feuerbach] placed materialism on the throne again without any circumlocution. Nature exists independently of all philosophies." (Engels 1903, 53)
Rather than saying that the Absolute Spirit achieves self-realization by actualizing itself in the finite world, Feuerbach argued that the human spirit obtains self-knowledge by objectifying itself in the idea of God. "Religion is not, as Hegel thought, the revelation of the Infinite in the finite; rather, it is the self-discovery by the finite of its own infinite nature. God is the form in which the human spirit first discovers its own essential nature." (Harvey 1995, 27)
[/quote]
http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/bce/feuerbach.htm
Here's a passage from F's first book (not much is online, but I have the paperback and it's a fascinating, young-man's work, sort of Feuerbach's TLP, him at his most almost-mystical.
[quote=F]
Accordingly, once all that is truly actual, universal, substantial, once all Spirit, soul, and essence have disappeared from real life, nature, and world history, once everything has been massacred, has been dissolved into its parts, has been rendered without being, without unity, without Spirit, without soul, then, upon the ruins of the broken world, the individual raises the banner of the prophet and stations the abominable sacred watchman of the belief in his immortality and in the pledge of the hereafter. Standing on the ruins of the present life, in which he sees nothingness, all at once there awaken in the individual the feeling and consciousness of his own inner nothingness; and in the feeling of this double nothingness there flow from him, as from a Scipio on the ruins of Carthage, the compassionate teardrops and soap bubbles of the world of the future. Over the gap that lies between the present life as it really is and his perception and representation of it, over the pores and gaps in his own soul, the individual erects the fools’ bridge of the future life. After he has allowed to wither the fruit trees, the roses and lilies of the present world, after he has sickled away grass, cabbage, and corn and has transformed the whole world into a desiccated field of stubble, there finally springs up, in the empty feeling of his futility and the impotent consciousness of his vanity, as the weak semblance and faint illusion of the living, fresh time when flowers bloom, the nondescript, pale red, faded autumn crocus of immortality. Because nothing exists in the subject but the truthless subject itself, and because nothing exists outside of the subject but the temporal and the transitory, the finite, nothing but that which is false and unreal in the real world, it stands to reason that for the subject the real world is an unreal, future, otherworldly world. For the hereafter is nothing but the mistaken, misconceived, and misinterpreted real world. The subject knows only the shadow, the superficial external appearance of the real world, because he is only shallow and hollow in himself. He mistakes the shadow of the world for the world itself; and his idea of the really true world must be only a shadow, the illusion and fantastical dream of the future world.
[/quote]
https://materialreligions.blogspot.com/2015/01/thoughts-on-death-and-immortality.html
Lastly, Kant was a little different. He seemed to have a mind like Descartes but more into logic than math and incapable of finding a logic to believe in the way Descartes did.
Those details are also known as their philosophies. I think I'll trust Schop when he implies a significant difference.
[quote=Schopenhauer]
Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who thus joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to achieve the intellectual corruption of a whole generation.
[/quote]
http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-flat-headed-insipid-nauseating.html
FWIW, I think Schop is a great stylist but too hard on Hegel, envious as he was for similar recognition (weep and you weep alone.)
Adding to what Wayf mentioned (H's optimism versus S's pessimism), there's also their treatment of time and history. For Hegel, history matters, is going somewhere bigger & better. For Schop, not so much. He thinks it's enough to have read Herodotus, cuz things just repeat.
German idealists are different in some respects from each other, but there is a reason the four greats of that tradition are of one school in the eyes of academia. They pounded their tables in rhythm as they forced themselves to view the bland world of matter in novel ways
Quoting Wayfarer
For what it's worth, folly or not, I've always interprered "karma" as habit-action, "death" in Buddha"s sense here as (the inevitable fall into deep) sleep and "reincarnation" as waking-up from sleep (i.e. another new day to try again to cultivate right / better habits by performing right / better (while refraining from wrong / worse) actions —> today's dukkha are the "consequences" of yesterday's karma (re: each Buddhist's daily experience of "the wheel of rebirth"... "samsara-nirvana")) so that, therefore, Buddhist practice can, in this way I think reasonably (pragmatically), be interpreted as consistent, or compatible, with Carvaka (i.e. 'atoms-in-void') materialism. I suspect that "the Buddha rejects materialism" was just his followers' apologetics appended much later to the Buddhist canon just like St. Paul's propagandistic "Letters" centuries after they were "written" were used by the Bishops at Nicea to (filter-out and) repurpose the "Gospels".
Also, like Buddhism, ancient atomists like Epicurus were neither theists nor atheists in the contemporary sense. (He) taught that in so far as there were any "gods" they too were made up of atoms and void, but in perfect atomic configurations, and therefore extremely far away from – in their perfect "bliss" oblivious of – imperfect atomic configurations such as "mortals" and "the cosmos" (re: the Tetrapharmakos).
I'd have to do some reading to be certain of what you mean, but would agree that the concept of "transcendence"--of something apart from the universe, like a transcendent God--is unreasonable if not impossible. We're part of the universe and incapable of even imagining something beyond it. When we purport to do so, we're saying that there's something outside the universe which is like something we've encountered in the universe, but better or greater in some sense. What we are, know, do, think, imagine and communicate are all "confined" in the universe.
There is a character called Prince Payasi in the earliy texts, who was indeed a textbook materialists. One of the anecdotes relates how he would seal prisoners in a large jar and weigh it before and after they died to see if the supposed departure of the soul could be weighed. (It couldn't.)
On the broader topic, Buddhists reject atomism, on the grounds that if a particle was divisionless, then it would have no sides, because sides are parts. And if it didn't have any sides then it couldn;t come into contact with anything. (That's from memory, I'm hazy on the detail.)
Buddhist 'atomism' was characterised by the belief in momentary elements of experience (another meaning of 'dharma') which arise and pass away in imperceptibly short periods of time. But they never agree with the concept of an enduring material point-particles on dogmatic grounds. There has been quite a bit of discussion between the Dalai Lama and physicists on philosophy of physics (e,g, here.)
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Ordinary numbers are transcendent, because they don't come into or go out of existence. ;-)
Numbers go out of existence when no one is thinking of them. Either you are affirming pure Platonism or what you say makes no sense. Truth is not a substance "out there" but instead the proper formation of a soul that emerges from biology
Quite honestly I find this utter nonsense. After reading the somewhat incoherent text, and providing no references, I'm not really sure you know what you're talkin about. Can you explain the nature of reason? (This will be one question of many.)
Second time, please answer the question.
Tim woods go to argument is "you don't understand words"
You are a fine writer but don't or can't draw conclusions. Having a phobia about conclusions doesn't mean you are best at understanding words.
My goodness it's as if you don't understand philosophy at all? Don't take this the wrong way but that's incoherent gibberish. I'll ask you for the third time:
Explain the nature of human reason?
I have other questions too, with your thesis, but for now please answer the question.
:100: :fire:
Quoting 3017amen
:rofl:
:point: ; or see quote with emphases above, 3017.
This is a philosophy site mr. Wood. I will ask you for the 4th time:
What is the nature of human reason?
How offer you an olive branch:
What is the nature of human belief systems?
Perhaps that will come easier to you.
If by logic you mean bivalent logic then you run into problem with its application to the world since the world does not divide neatly into either/or determinations.
:up:
Yet another problem with mr. Wood's thesis:
What is the nature of human belief systems?
This is the second time I've asked you please answer the question.
The overwhelming evidence shows that most "human belief systems" are a jambalaya of (irreflective) cognitive biases, in/formal fallacies & placeholder narratives. (Yours for example!)
Would it set a record, that the same group of children are responsible for the closing of two separate threads, at practically the same time, and for the same reason?
(Sigh)
Good point 180! We're patient, we'll wait for mr. Wood to reply
Just what is it about his definition of reason that you are unable to comprehend? He did give one, you know. It was this:
Quoting tim wood
Hey Cic!
I don't know about you, but it seemed a bit like gibberish. For one, he didn't speak to the nature of human reason relative to the relationships of human belief systems.
Did you understand what he said?
Or maybe he can elucidate some. We're patient, I'll keep asking him
It would seem to me that the employment of reason under his definition would be the application of logic to the "relationship of human belief systems", whatever you mean that to be.
Great point, because I did not notice an explanation in his thesis.
What is the nature of human belief systems?
This is the third time I've asked you please answer the question.
Mr Wood,
I did some digging, and went back to your thesis and found the foregoing. Frankly, your suppositions seem weak and unsupported. You seem to be making what some of us call in logic as an either-or argument. Nonetheless, perhaps you have the answer to these concerns, but it may be simply difficult for you to articulate. Hence, let's start with these questions, then go from there:
1. What are "objects of reason"?
2. What makes things-in-themselves "provable"?
Well that depends on how one experiences the infinite. I don't think you can force it to happen through reading or yoga. It might be like Hegel says, a receiving of something that feels foreign. Hegel believed in "God" in this sense, but it's something that happens through self-discovery nonetheless
Mr. Wood,
This only leads to more confusion, because you seem to be saying in your thesis that beliefs are grounded in reality, yet you haven't even defined what reality is... . Now you're saying reality is comprised of 'fictions'. Can you explain how these 'fictions' of reality interacts with one's belief system? To help you, I will re-state the concerns:
"I did some digging, and went back to your thesis and found the foregoing. Frankly, your suppositions seem weak and unsupported. You seem to be making what some of us call in logic as an either-or argument. Nonetheless, perhaps you have the answer to these concerns, but it may be simply difficult for you to articulate. Hence, let's start with these questions, then go from there:"
[b]1. What are "objects of reason"?
2. What makes things-in-themselves "provable"?[/b]
There are many more questions, but let's parse these first. Sorry to put you on the spot, but your thesis does not seem cogent or even well thought out. Perhaps, as you say in your metaphor, "that knowledge is our kind of beer"; I'm not sure we want to be drinking your kind of beer :joke:
1. What are "objects of reason"?
2. What makes things-in-themselves "provable"?
Third time asking, please answer these questions.
What are you afraid of Mr. Wood?