Enlightenment and Modern Society
I'm curious what you guys think of this idea: almost everyone in the Western world is essentially enlightened or capable of grasping the core facets of an enlightened mindset due to pervasive infusion of basic science and history into the educational system along with the centrality of technological thinking in broader culture. Nearly everyone has access to resources which train citizens for reasoning analytically at a high enough level that ideological discernments are a cinch and intellectual self-control strong if so desired, with the majority of the population easily seeing through any form of rhetorical b.s. via reflection. But a way has not been found to make this personal capacity for insight workable in traditional institutions, leading to disillusionment in the context of practical decision making, corrupting the modern world's optimism and leading towards exploitative nihilism or reversion to mob mentality in public life. Is this generally accurate?
Comments (59)
...at some point 1200 to 1400 years ago, a scholar said to a student a version of, "Now that we have access to so much science and philosophy, we should consider ourselves to be enlightened."
They weren't...or at least, they were MUCH less enlightened than they supposed.
More than likely, that's where we are, too.
If all the knowledge that could possibly be were a yardstick...we might be at a point one atom onto the stick.
Could be!
I think the problem is not whether Western culture is enlightened. It's not in the terms that the great thinkers of the Enlightenment thought. A thin layer of basic culture, a rhetoric of good ideals and a formal democracy does not mean enlightened minds. Everywhere the holes in this layer allow us to see the modern and ancient superstitions, aggressive selfishness and anti-democratic powers that are the true ferment of our society.
It would be easy to say that all of this is the consequence of domination (classes) and the strong capacities to control minds (junk culture and consumerism). That may be true, but the philosophical problem is: why do these means of control work? Is human nature irremediably stupid and corrupt?
I confess that my optimism for the future is breaking down day by day.
Unless you are the Buddha, philosophical Enlightenment is a process, not a sudden revelation. The light-bulb insight is only the beginning of an ongoing learning procedure, following the light of reason (the mindset). Human culture began its evolution toward enlightenment eons ago, but we haven't yet reached the mountaintop. :smile:
Nearly everyone has access as you say, but not everyone has the leisure, and perhaps innate capacities, to both develop and defend against deluges of propaganda; the rhetorical b.s. as you put it. Nevertheless, where we do see both the access to as well as the time and energy to develop, such as (Nordics, Switzerland, New Zealand) we do see more "enlightened" development of traditional organizations (rehabilitation based justice, free education at all levels, respect for nature) compared with both previous times in those countries as well as other contemporary places.
So, given these counter examples, I would argue that where the access is real and not hypothetical there is essentially the "enlightened society" enlightenment thinkers dreamed of.
A potential counter-thesis to corrupt institutions being due to the failures of commoner individuals to get enlightened, would be that those institutions were already sufficiently corrupt to simply keep the lid on enlightenment by corrupting education (indoctrination and control, rather than as free as feasible discussion and curiosity), depriving people of the energy and means to enlighten themselves outside education, and inundations of propaganda. Of course, the onus falls on those individuals that do happen upon the luxury of enlightenment to fight such corruption, but the situation is not a virtuous cycle as in the fully developed welfare states (where education, lack of corruption and functioning institutions, leads to even more education and even less corruption and even better working institutions).
I have lived in both kinds of places, and although cooperative primary and secondary education, strong tendency of higher education access not reinforcing existing class structures, low corruption and good institutions don't solve everyone's problems, it's a pretty radical difference in terms of social experience, and if we compare this social experience to 18th century Europe, it's clearly a "pretty good go" at enlightened society as was conceived of at the time. If everywhere was organized like Switzerland, our political discussions would be very different; there would still be problems to solve, but it's difficult to even imagine what the difference would be in such a scenario compared with the problems we face as a global society today.
Here I would you you are overestimating the general level of education. Even at the secondary school level, core competencies are deteriorating. For those who do go on to post-secondary education fields are becoming increasingly siloed. I think there is a frightening lack of generalized knowledge. Compared to fifty years ago I would say that people who are educated are less "comprehensively educated" now than then. And yes, this is a major barrier to any kind of enlightenment.
I know, intellectuality in mainstream culture these days is battle rapping with multiple accents. Nothing at all wrong with that, just sayin' everyone should also be allowed to read a book.
I would say Christianity and education for technology cancel out any benefit of the enlightenment because there is not much consciousness of the reasoning of the enlightenment. Before 1958 education supported what you said and Christianity was not the problem it is today. Christianity is a problem because the mythology has serious problems and too many people believe that mythology instead of science. On the other hand....
Education for technology has lead to the research we need for better judgment. If we returned to liberal education and an understanding of what morals have to do with democracy and reason, we could realize a New Age that is better than our past.
Also, I think the economic collapse caused by this pandemic will force rethinking economics and creating a new system of exchange that more justly meets human needs. A breakthrough in energy would also be an incredible advancement for humanity.
I believe the potential reality of the New Age, a time of peace and high tech, and the end of tyranny. A future so different from our past, those in the New Age will not be able to relate to the past. It is that change in consciousness that truly makes it a New Age.
Additionally, even those who have the access, the leisure, and the innate capacities, still often lack the values that would incline them to pursue it. As I'm sure you well know, there is a pervasive attitude of anti-intellectualism in America, and even among nominal intellectuals, a lot of parochialism by topic area. I.e. you've got masses and masses of people who think learning, studying, and thinking generally aren't worthwhile endeavors, and then even people who say they value those things dismiss large swaths of things they could study and think and learn about as not worthwhile, e.g. the STEM brogrammers who think all social sciences, arts, and humanities, especially philosophy, are worthless nonsense, and conversely some people in those latter fields who think that hard sciences are just arrogant Modern-era religions that find no better truths than any other "ways of knowing".
The incubation of these anti-values is itself of course a systemic thing promoted by those in power who benefit from it, too.
Quoting Athena
I do not know what wonderful country you are talking about that in 1958 had no problems with religion and was liberal in its education system. Where I know the influence of religious intransigence and authoritarian education were two serious problems for a real Enlightenment as much or more than now. What country are you talking about?
I also don't see any foreseeable developments in human behavior due to the pandemic. Neither intellectually nor morally. Quite the opposite: individualism that is indifferent to death o the others is still on the rise and the destruction of the Earth is advancing by leaps and bounds. Social inequalities have also become more evident without anyone lifting a finger to resolve them in the future. What reasons do we have to hope for a rational, communitarian and democratic New Age? I see none.
Interesting fact - the term ‘enlightenment’ was chosen by one of the influential early translators of Buddhist texts as the translation for the Buddhist term ‘bodhi’ - [i]because[/I] of it’s resonance with ‘the European Enlightenment’. But ‘enlightenment’ in the Buddhist sense - bodhi - has nothing to do with European ‘enlightenment values’ which are very much the product of the unique historical circumstances which prevailed in the Europe of the day.
Are you aware of the New Left’s criticism of the Enlightenment under the heading of ‘the dialectics of the enlightenment’? It’s well worth being acquainted with. There’s a useful encyclopaedia entry on it here, particularly the criticism of [url= https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/critical-theory/v-1/sections/critique-of-instrumental-reason]the instrumentalisation of reason.
I don't what planet you are talking about but I do know you over-exaggerated what I said, to make your argument. That distorts what I said.
Nothing I say will give you the ability to see something you do not want to see, but we can wait 10 years and then determine if things have radically changed or not. I do believe the whole world getting behind Black Lives Matter and intolerance of the confederate flag and statues of men who profited from slavery in Britain and the US is a change that many of us had not expected.
I agree with the fact that expectations of what technology can not do us were unrealistic. On the other hand, I also know before the second world war few labors owned their own homes, and few people thought they would ever earn enough to have to pay taxes, and since then the middle class has grown a lot and most people pay taxes. However, the economic crashes we experienced since then have ruined the progress we have made. Before Roosevelt and today, it is the top 1% who own and control most of the land and wealth. On the other hand, there is an amazing awareness of what has happened and the injustice of it. Especially the injustice laws and policies that prevented people of color from gaining the benefits of owning property is something many of us were unaware of.
For the first time in human history we are working with the mentality of abundance, and believe it is possible we can do even better. While more and more people are losing everything because of the pandemic. Awareness of social and economic injustice is spreading like a summer fire. At the very least I expect this pandemic to lead to universal medicine. People fight much harder to keep what the had, they do to get something they never had and didn't expect to have, no matter how hard they worked nor how many hours they worked. The reality people accepted before Roosevelt is no longer an acceptable reality.
I wrote an essay which touched upon what basically amounts to instrumentalization in the medical field, something I have all too much familiarity with. I think a reductionism vaguely related to both mechanistic materialism and the oversimplifications of social contract theory is instrumentalist reason's go to means of clandestine ideological manipulation, and in psychiatry it can be almost malicious by effacing the real experiences of patients with pathologizing labels that amount to delusional rationalizing. If you don't make an appropriate first impression, have adequate social supports, or as in my case major shit goes down, the superficial mechanistic materialist/social contract delusion can creep into place as the parameters of discourse and your actual reality becomes the alleged delusion.
Analysis of brain function by neurology provides much firmer foundation for unveiling certain unintuitive aspects of human cognition, in particular those that manifest as nearly reflexive. This is a more narrowly focused objectivity viewing the psyche primarily in the context of biochemically salient causes and unmistakable behaviors. Unfortunately, neuroscience often fails to acknowledge many of the relative deviancies in human consciousness, restricting its subordinate analysis of qualitative experience to models that are extremely neutral or mainstream culturally. It tends to neglect politically controversial fact-gathering and fall victim to paradigmal fads, often generating or reinforcing prejudices in relation to gender, sexuality, intelligence and sanity among additional domains. Emphasis in psychology shifted from investigating and relieving the sufferings of those with neurosis to talk therapy assistance in coping with ordinary life stressors such as divorces or temporary trauma on the one hand and treating supposed underlying physical causes on the other.
The psyche itself was downplayed in favor of physiological and biochemical interventions, with counseling becoming a normative influence to more or less snap patients out of it into typical behavior or superficially mitigate their troubled minds, and everything extraordinarily difficult assigned to medicine. Diagnostic categories steadily multiplied, with psychology becoming a rather careless, experimental social engineering project as opposed to an empirical pursuit for enriching theory and truth, more about defining what is or is not wrong with patients in bulk than developing better accounts of what is going on in particular minds, though the field still has a sizable remainder of something to contribute.
With both good and bad outcomes, many individuals rely on the mental health field, if only to lend relatively rare mental traits or traumatic experiential backgrounds a legitimized social niche so these patients can be in good standing and participate culturally, working, forming relationships, generally having resources to combat adriftedness and discrimination. Physically reductionistic theorizing has been revealing and its applications to treatment consistently improve, but is also constricting or even dangerous when its materialistic approximations prove broadly invasive to or dismissive of cultural construction and unfathomed depth of the psyche, an ongoing struggle for balance within the institution of healthcare.
The danger is always that healthy reasoning will veer into the domain of socially destructive rationalizing, and I think this is obviously rampant in most cultural settings, a possibility for harm which instrumentalist positivism chronically neglects, exploits or even foments. It seems that humans sometimes have this weird compulsion to displace the interpretation of what is happening to them into fallacy, and these delusional rationalizations can achieve almost total memetic and psychological conquest in the absence of critical theory of the kind that the humanities concern themselves with. Its almost like the European Enlightenment became an ideological delusion to shield unmitigated power-seeking, based in an outlook on human nature that is good as an idealistic starting point but horrific as a disingenuous constraint on discourse, and our species is essentially in the process of reacting to Enlightenment ideals as if a psychosocial allergy (undoubtedly in consort with many additional factors).
That's one possible interpretation, it could certainly be argued against.
So back to the ‘enlightenment mindset’ - this is underpinned by some very broad and often not articulated assumptions along these lines, chief amongst which is that reason itself is the product of an essentially undirected and mindless process. The faculty of reason is subjectivised, understood in terms of the neural goings on of individual minds. And this turns out not to be so ‘enlightened’ after all.
[quote=Horkheimer, The Eclipse of Reason] In popular Darwinism, the good is the well-adapted, and the value of that to which the organism adapts itself is unquestioned or is measured only in terms of further adaptation. However, being well adapted to one’s surroundings is tantamount to being capable of coping successfully with them, of mastering the forces that beset one. Thus the theoretical denial of the spirit’s antagonism to nature–even as implied in the doctrine of interrelation between the various forms of organic life, including man–frequently amounts in practice to subscribing to the principle of man’s continuous and thoroughgoing domination of nature. Regarding reason as a natural organ does not divest it of the trend to domination or invest it with greater potentialities for reconciliation. On the contrary, the abdication of the spirit in popular Darwinism entails the rejection of any elements of the mind that transcend the function of adaptation and consequently are not instruments of self-preservation. Reason disavows its own primacy and professes to be a mere servant of natural selection. On the surface, this new empirical reason seems more humble toward nature than the reason of the metaphysical tradition. Actually, however, it is arrogant, practical mind riding roughshod over the ‘useless spiritual,’ and dismissing any view of nature in which the latter is taken to be more than a stimulus to human activity. The effects of this view are not confined to modern philosophy.[/quote]
We can wait ten years to see, if you like. In the meantime, I think "the whole world" is a bold statement.There have been bigger movements against racism in the past ("I have a dream", you know) that ended up in superficial changes of a situation that remains basically the same. Racism is a system of discrimination and violence against a race. Social discrimination continues. And violence against black men (and other discriminated races) has been passed on to the police from the branches of trees. And pandemics strikes according to skin color.
As you know, progress is one of the key ideas of the Enlightenment. Progress in the material and in the moral. But it's a difficult concept to measure. Steven Pinker published an acclaimed book on the subject that is the most subtly biased I've read in recent times. His indicators were geared to score in only one direction.
I believe that the evolution of morality, for example, cannot be measured because traditional state violence has disappeared from the map... while it has been replaced by new forms of violence against people. For example, current states are less violent in the display of violence in justice, but more violent in the spread of everyday micro-violence. In a sense, it can be said that the practice is directed towards externalizing violence.That is to say, to make violence be exercised among the subjects of sovereignty, while the latter is limited to controlling the rules of the game. Is that progress? For Pinker it is. It seems to me to be a myopic point of view.
[I]Subtly[/i] biased? I'd hate to read anything of his that was not subtle then. Perhaps he wrote a piece entitled "Everything is absolutely fine, please don't take away my stuff... hey look at the primitive fuzzy-wuzzies they were much worse than us...so nothing to see here, move along, everything's fine". Did I miss that one?
My understanding of the rest of the world's interest in what happens in the US is based on news from other countries that I did not have in the 60's. So maybe the rest of the world was reacting as strongly to Martin Luther King and the whole civil rights movement, as it is reacting to our racism today, but we were just less informed than we are today? However, I doubt that. I think what is happening today is different. Except the US was pressed to end segregation because of the communist reaction to it. The USSR could use our racism to convince other countries that our democracy was not that good and what the USSR had to offer was better. But people in Britain were not tearing down statues of men who profited from slavery and Africa was not questioning the good of western civilization as it is now. Or if Africa was questioning the good or evil of western imperialism, it didn't matter because the whole of Africa was too weak to have any political significance.
But all those considerations may have nothing to do with this thread because the enlightenment is like Christianity or any other religion. It must be taught or it does not become a part of our consciousness. The democracy of the US transmitted a culture through liberal education. That culture was based on literacy in Greek and Roman classics and a focus on preparing everyone for independent thinking, and that ended with the passing of the 1958 National Defense Education Act. Since then German philosophers replaced the Greek and Roman philosophers, and training for independent thinking has been replaced with "group think".
The US has experienced dramatic culture change since it began educating for a technological society with unknown values. The new culture is no longer based on the Greek and Roman classics that gave us the enlightenment.
Exactly how does wisdom develop in a society focused on technology but not wisdom?
The term "Age of Enlightenment" is usually applied by historians to an era in 17th & 18th centuries, that was sparked by the re-discovery of Greek Rationalism, and spread by the new technology of the printing press. Its early stages were marked by a formalization of the empirical scientific method, and later by the emergence of Individualism & Humanism, as a philosophical reaction to the intellectual suffocation imposed by the Collectivism and Spiritualism of the dominant Christian Church of the Dark Ages.
But a "New Age of Enlightenment" emerged in the 19th & 20th centuries as a reaction to the dominance of Modern Scientism and Secularism. The New Age movement was a return to Collectivism (communes) and Spiritualism (Buddhism, Hinduism, Theosophy). It also expressed a distaste for Rationalism & Empiricism & Objectivism & Modernism. Unfortunately, like the return of Christ, the prophesied Age of Aquarius (peace & love) never occurred, and many old hippies became pot-smoking suburbanites.
These different interpretations of "Enlightenment" seem to be recurring examples of Hegel's historical Dialectic, in which a once dominant worldview is challenged, and sometimes replaced, by a new opposing paradigm. Yet eventually, some of the key ideas of the previous "enlightenment" are retained in the subsequent "synthetic" worldview. Many people now claim to be "spiritual but not religious", and even "back to nature" types have made accommodations for the technological fruits of Modern Science. So, you could say that the world of human culture is progressing by erratic (zig-zag) stages of enlightenment toward a more flourishing and moral future.
However, at this moment in time, there is a new burgeoning movement called the "Enlightenment Project", which is a counter-attack on the anti-Science and anti-Reason worldviews, not so much of old hippies, but of old Republicans. And so it goes, on & on. Enlightenment is not a specific age or sudden inspiration, but the evolving learning process of humanity. :smile:
Enlightenment : education or awareness that brings change; consciousness raising
Hegel's Dialectic : Thesis >>> Antithesis >>> Synthesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic
Historical Progression : see Age of the Sage link
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/history/hegel_philosophy_history.html
Dark Side of Enlightenment : https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dark-side-of-the-enlightenment-1523050206
I'll break up this little shindig and say that I've come to think the solution lies in an analysis of the past, giving objectivity a cogent historical dimension. I think this is what can disrupt the toxic inclination of instrumentalist culture to neglect its influence upon human nature. The deconstructionists were probably pioneers in this regard, but the analyticity of it all got diluted by wishywashy extreme relativism arising from unphilosophical science, as in history from my distinct personal perspective as a b.s. elective, unintegrated with an accounting of technical causality. Some great books about the history of science have come out recently that describe its social context, and that I think is the best approach, factually showing the motivational dynamics associated with modern knowledge's development and how actualizing responsible humanism and paradigmal consciousness-raising can be, a kind of positivistic cultural narrative.
It was a way of talking so as not to be rude.
European racism has different roots and problems than North American racism. There are notable differences between traditional Polish racism (anti-Semitic) and Spanish racism (anti-Roma). Today it is a new racism that is a product of immigration. It is especially directed against North Africans and people from Asia Minor. It has religious and cultural connotations that are not found in North American racism. (Although it is also strong against Romanians and other Balkan peoples with bad press).
European anti-racist movement, which has existed for a long time, is not the same as the North American one. For example, to a semi-slaved worker in the fields of Almeria, the problem of police violence seems secondary and she does not see that her struggle can be the same. She doesn't care much about the fact that statues of slave traders are being knocked down.
The Black Lives Matter movement has been a mere media product in Europe that has brought about a flash on other forms of racism and will not have much impact on the real battle being waged by European anti-racist organizations. Incidentally, I am sorry to be pessimistic, but these organizations are not at their best at present. Neither with BLM nor without BLM. We should examine why this is the case.
If I mention it, it is because you mentioned it as an indicator of progress towards the enlightenment. For the reasons I just explained, it is not.
With Heidegger's permission, the problem of the essence of technology is nothing mysterious. To begin with, one must distinguish various phases in the problem of technology. There is not just one technological thought, but several types of technological thought. The problem lies in the technocratic ideology of modernity, especially in the last two centuries. And the problem is that there is no generalized technological thinking, but thinking oriented towards technological consumerism, which is based on an idolatry of the machine. It is not that we use machines, which has always happened throughout human history, with Heidegger's permission, but that we get high on machines. The less we understand them, the more we love them, which is the opposite point of view to the enlightened sapere aude.
Another use of technology is certainly possible. But not in this model of society.
I suggest a review of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove
(Note: I am mentioning Heidegger because I am reading his famous article on technology, which I find particularly flawed.)
Yes. A dreadful little piece of romantic fluff.
Yes. I'm currently reading Robert Wright's latest book, Why Buddhism Is True, in which he gives a secular psychological analysis of the Eastern version of Awakening from our illusions. The primary difference seems to be that Buddhist "enlightenment" was directed inwardly, toward understanding & control of the subjective self (e.g. Psychology), while the European "enlightenment" was focused outwardly, toward knowledge & control of the objective natural world (e.g. Physics). Eventually though, the West began to apply its objective methods to the subjective Mind in the so-called "soft-sciences". Wright's book suggests a blend of eastern & western approaches to shining light in the darkness (e.g. Neuroscience & Meditation).
Apparently, the OP was referring to the European secular revolution, as was Steven Pinker in his book, Enlightenment Now! Pinker's book was provoked primarily by the religious & political Right, which tend to denigrate the authority of secular Science. Such concerns are in the air these days. There is another Enlightened Worldview Project, asking "Can science bring peace to our world and to our lives?" Humanity-in-general seems to be dependent upon, and loathe to live without, our comforting illusions of attainable absolute Truth. But, is Scientism also based on an illusion of omniscience? Are our current "historical circumstances" begging for a Revival of Inner & Outer Enlightenment?? :cool:
Enlightened Worldview Project : "This leads us to the realization that inner peace (that we seek within our own consciousness) and outer peace (that we seek with the outside world) are deeply interdependent".
https://medium.com/@brandon_29259
Scientism : excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques. --Wiki
Yes. Another of the many books I know about. I liked this review. I myself am really rather a secular Buddhist, except I regard sa?s?ra - the eternal caravan of birth and death - as a reality, which puts me out of the bounds of secularism.
Quoting Gnomon
What was translated as 'enlightenment' was the term 'bodhi' - one of those many Buddhist terms (Nirv??a, dharma, sa?s?ra, dukka) for which there is no direct translation, but I think 'wisdom' is quite a good equivalent. Provided, that is, that it includes the experiential dimension of compassion, and is not taken as a drily instrumental faculty.
As for 'inner' - I think what Buddhism teaches is 'the limits of knowledge' as a mode of understanding. I mean, modern man regards only that which can be described in his 'net of knowledge' - scientia - as worthy of consideration. This is strangely anthropocentric, however, in the sense that it makes 'man the measure of all things', once again - whilst at the same time, relegating man to the role of simply another species.
Edward Conze, scholar of Buddhism, has this to say:
:clap:
Nicely said. However, don't you think the mentality of abundance has made a big difference! I mean a really big difference! In Oregon, no one will starve to death because any low income person can get food stamps and we now talk about people feeling entitled. I really think that is different from how people thought before the economic achievements following the second world war. No one would have ever thought to give every adult $1200 to spend and support the economy 80 years ago. In our past, people starved to death, and not until Roosevelt did the federal government begin to take responsibility for something like that. We are experiencing a very different reality and I will stand on the idea that is a New Age and we are just beginning to adjust to the ability to feed everyone, educate everyone, provide medical care for everyone. Whoops the US is behind on the medical care, but we are getting closer to a new reality. A really, really new reality.
Why of course that racism is natural and nothing has changed in a thousand years, except today when a police office kneels a man's neck, the whole world can watch it happening as it happens and if people are bombed in another country we know about it. This is nothing new compared to the beginning of the 21 century right? Technology hasn't changed our lives that much, right? I mean we can compare today with 1900 and see we are not at all in a new age.
You made an excellent point. I am really blown away by how differently history is being presented today compared to 60 years ago. Now, this has to lead to a new age precisely for the reason you say. This is such a dramatic change in consciousness, if nothing else changed, the new way of presenting history would lead to a New Age.
A public boarding channel keeps telling us knowledge of African American history is knowledge of America's history. What?! To say our history is about those who were slaves or those who came from Irland and those who were pioneers or those who labored in the mines and put their lives on the line to get better wages and working conditions is shocking to those of us who grew up HIS-STORY.
This change in consciousness is a long time coming. I remember my father explaining to me, the top person is the one who is given the credit for what is done, and my little child mind struggling with that concept and a strong sense of injustice. I was thinking when it takes 50 people to achieve something all of them should be acknowledged for what was achieved. Until recently I thought I was the only one thinking like that. I am very excited about that is now how we are telling history as the effort of everyone. That thinking goes with Social Security, food stamps, everyone getting $1200 to support the economy. Today's reality is a new age but I think some have not lived long enough to be aware of dramatic changes.
And those who appear to be arguing against the notion of a New Age seem to me too young to remember when life was different. And that is another huge change! Never in the history of man have so many people lived so long and with the technology of the internet been able to do so much as today's living fossils of history. We change so much as we age and that there are so many of us old fossils still living and voting and communicating is a strong changing force.
Item [2] was indeed a common belief prior to the European "enlightenment". and during the following centuries, until the advent of Darwinism. But, I suspect that most scientists in the 21st century would not subscribe to that human-centric belief. Some even entertain the notion that flesh & blood humans will be superseded by more highly-evolved mechanical & digital ubermensch. Yet, as illustrated in the movie, The Matrix, those ego-less super-intelligent machines may still view themselves as the pinnacle of evolution. Personally, I won't even try to predict the future of non-human-nature.
Item [3] is still the opinion of most scientists, since "spiritual and magical" forces are completely subjective, and not amenable to empirical verification. Like gods & ghosts, they are "true" to the extent that you believe in them. :cool:
The New Age you refer to seems to be what we now call "Market Socialism". :smile:
Market Socialism : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism
This is a bit of a mess. I don't think the alternative to scientism is perennial philosophy. I don't think the Enlightened philosophes were thinking about the mysticism of perennial philosophy.
It seems to me that to confuse enlightenment with spiritualistic irrationalism is to confuse things. Although the Enlightenment was a movement that allowed many variations, there were things that were common. Especially the defense of reason against superstition and irrationalism.
I think that mixing philosophy with religion, even if you say it's secular (?), is very anti-enlightenment. Even when the Elightened spoke of God it was the God of Reason, the God of philosophes (see Rousseau).
In my opinion.
Notice your presuppositions here. They are exactly those of 'Enlightenment rationalism'. Which is not surprising, as it remains the de facto philosophy of secular culture.
Quoting Gnomon
They might say that, but by holding everything to the standards of 'what can be proven by science' they're still operating under anthopocentrism, albeit a concealed form of it. Why? Because the 'scientific thinker' believes that the scientific picture is completely devoid of the subject, or subjectivity, that it is a picture of what is 'truly there' independent of any perceiver. This is the dogma of the 'mind-independent' nature of reality according to scientific realism. But this is precisely what has been thrown into doubt by the 'observer problem' in quantum physics. It is the main philosophical basis of the debates between Bohr and Einstein. So scientific realism claims to reveal a 'view from nowhere', that is, an understanding from which all traces of subjectivity have been purged, but this looses sight of the role of the mind in organising perception through observation and deduction.
This seems quite wrong to me. All views are human views. The salient distinction is between those views which are subjectively and passionately (i.e. wanting to believe such and such) motivated and those which are inter-subjectively and dispassionately motivated.
Science attempts to understand the world as it is perceived inter-subjectively free of any bias or faith-based beliefs. This is not anthropocentrism, quite the opposite, unless you take the word to refer to any and every human perspective, in which case the term would be trivial, and hence redundant.
in mind - referring to Steve Pinker, who is an articulate and well-intentioned advocate of scientism.
And besides, it is indubitably the case that the debate between Bohr and Einstein was precisely about the concept of 'mind-independent realism'. Einstein was a staunch scientific realist, he was convinced that the real world was just so, regardless of any act of observation on the scientist's part. That is why he asked the rhetorical question 'does the moon continue to exist when nobody's looking at it?' His answer was, of course it does, stop being silly! But Heisenberg, for one, would say things like “What we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning." That is what Einstein couldn't abide.
And that is why I argue that 'modernity' extends from the publication of Newton's pricipia, to the publication of Einstein's theory of relativity. That marks the end of 'modernism' and the beginning of 'post-modernism', which is where we are now, like it or not.
Edit: Oh, I see you have written some more now...
I don't take Einstein to be claiming that the moon is, in itself and exhaustively, just how it appears to us. I take him to be saying that what appears to us as the moon, exists regardless of its appearing but, I think he would agree, obviously does not in that sense exist as an appearance, because to say that would be incoherent. Have you a quote from Einstein that shows that he couldn't abide the idea that perception is a collaborative process?
I doubt he would be so lacking in intellectual subtlety; after all he read Kant when he was 13 if I remember right.
You're dodging @Janus's question. The point was made that enlightenment principles are simply presented as a 'better' way of dealing with the shared assumptions about the external world. It's a better way of engaging in cooperative enterprises by arriving at a kind of 'averaged out', or unbiased perception we can then share and use to build bridges, improve medicine, hopefully reduce wars (over different religious outlooks)...
Every time anything like this is mentioned, you try to paint enlightenment thinkers a dull naive realists who just haven't read enough, when hardly any are actually like that. We're well aware of the role the mind plays in perception, well aware of the role culture and upbringing play in biasing our understanding of the world. We're trying to find 'the least biased' version so we can better cooperate. So your interventions are blunt. You don't present a better alternative, just whine about some straw-man version of the one we have.
So what if the moon is determined by our subjective minds? What are we going to do about that? Try to find the best, most reliable inter-subjective model for it so we can predict tides and produce green-energy from it, or throw our hands up and say "well if it's all subjective we might as well just ask the archbishop to pray for greener energy"?
No, not true. I vastly appreciate Enlightenment values, living in a pluralist culture, technological progress and democracy. The only reason you think I'm talking about straw men is because you don't understand what I'm talking about. Conversely, I think I have a pretty accurate grasp of your overall view. I think you're highly educated scientifically, and indeed I agree with a lot of what you say in respect of managing or dealing with many kinds of issues.
But this is a philosophy forum, and my critique is a philosophical one.
It surprised me you took such a dim view of Steven Pinker, I thought his 'Enlightenment Now' would be right up your street. Perhaps you could enlighten us as to your criticisms of him?
Seems in contrast with...
Quoting Wayfarer
Perhaps your straw man versions of what you think I think are not quite so robust as you'd like to believe? Perhaps this is...
Quoting Wayfarer
It depends what you mean by positivism. I've written quite extensively about model-dependent realism, which (if you take positivism to be naively realist) is in direct opposition to it. If, however, you take positivism to simply be the assertion that there is something unique about the fact that we act as if we share a world of sensory perceptions where we do not with other beliefs, then yes I agree that this special feature makes information gained from sensory perceptions of a completely different kind, such that it is universalisable.
I don't believe in an external 'truth' at all. I do believe in an external world, but it's state is hidden from us as we can only detect it's effects on our senses. So we make inferences about it's state from those. I do think that there being an external world which we share is the best explanation for the similarity and effectiveness of the models we build. There is no such similarity nor effectiveness in models of non-physical beliefs and so no good reason to assume their source is a shared external one. This makes questions about the universal 'truth' of such propositions pointless. We have no reason to believe in an external shared source in the first place, and so we have no good reason to investigate it's state.
As for definitions of positivism, the web definition is:
As a rule of thumb or heuristic, I think it’s a reasonable definition.
I think of it in terms of ‘the attitude of science applied to the problems of philosophy’. Positivism harks back to Auguste Comte who as you know founded the modern conception of the social sciences, and is still one of the dominant currents of thought in the secular west, in my view. It is predominantly practical or outward looking in orientation.
My own philosophy, as you have probably discerned, tends more towards the idealist side of the ledger, or maybe the kind described as ‘spiritual if not religious’. One of the useful passages I often quote is from a blog post about Josiah Royce, an American philosopher from the so-called Golden Age of American Philosophy (younger contemporary of Pierce and William James):
Plainly that is not something that can be proven, or at least not according to the standards of empirical science. But on the other hand, those of this persuasion see modern culture and empiricism as being founded on a kind of ‘consensus reality’ which is very much a product of the historical circumstances which gave rise to the European Enlightenment and today’s technocratic culture. As I said, though, I am appreciative of many aspects of modern culture, but I feel my task, as it were, is to use the freedom that it brings to discover that kind of higher life. But as the quote says, to those for whom it means nothing, there is nothing to discuss.
If you know, does any aspect of Buddhism continue further down that road to also teach the limits of understanding?
Science is practiced by Humans, so it is naturally Anthropocentric. And it is practiced by Subjects, so it is inherently subjective. But the Scientific Method is motivated by the ideal goal of Objective Truth. Would you prefer that "scientific thinkers" adopt the perspective of Crows or Bonobos or Aliens? Is there a viable alternative to the imperfect objectivity of self-critical Science --- such as divine revelation? Perhaps meditation practices could improve on biased worldviews by offering a "view from nowhere"?
Do you know of some arrogant scientists who claim to be "devoid of subjectivity"? The detrimental effects of subjective bias on scientific theories prompted Karl Popper to turn the focus from "proof" of concept to "falsifiability". Since, unlike religious "truths", scientific "facts must be corroborated by skeptical experts before being accepted as provisional true, errant subjectivity is supposed to be cancelled-out by the critical objectivity of peers. Of course, some prejudices, such as Atheism, may be common among practicing scientists, but that merely rules-out unfalsifiable miracles. Do you know of some Alternative Science that is devoid of subjective bias, or the perspective of human perception ?
The Buddha offered his own method of gaining useful knowledge : i.e. subjective Self-Knowledge. But the post-enlightenment Scientific Method was primarily concerned with objective knowledge of the outside world. A combination of the two might allow us to construct a worldview with reliable knowledge of both inside and outside "truths". That is, in fact, the idealistic goal of the Enformationism thesis, and the BothAnd philosophy.
Scientific Objectivity : The ideal of objectivity has been criticized repeatedly in philosophy of science, questioning both its value and its attainability. . . . The prospects for a science providing a non-perspectival “view from nowhere” or for proceeding in a way uninformed by human goals and values are fairly slim, . . .
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-objectivity/
BothAnd : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page2.html
Not personally! And no, it's not something that is usually spelled out - it's more of an implicit assumption. And there's a lot of truth in it - but only up to a point. It's seeing that point, or understanding that dividing line, which is the hard part.
Quoting Gnomon
I think the classical idea of the virtue of detachment can be found in both science and other areas of philosophy. However the way it became interpreted in science in the modern period relegates much of what is otherwise philosophically significant to the role of the subjective.
[quote= Erwin Schrodinger]I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.[/quote]
Except for when we do.
Yes. It's like Implicit Racism, subconscious biases are common among humans-in-general, not just scientists. That's the point of our various attempts at consciousness raising over the centuries since the Enlightenment revealed some of our explicit biases.
Quoting Wayfarer
Many scientists are not concerned with what is "philosophically significant", because their job is to dissect the world into easily comprehensible, mathematically rigorous, and objectively factual chunks. "Alternative" scientists (pseudo-scientists) tend to accept more holistic evidence (e.g. subjective, anecdotal; common beliefs) from which to draw inferences. That may be acceptable to philosophical Theologists, but not to pragmatic Psychologists. :smile:
Implicit Racism : . . . includes unconscious biases, expectations, or tendencies that exist within an individual, regardless of ill-will or any self-aware prejudices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aversive_racism
I thank the Lord (nature) that I grew out of this state of self-obsession that is referred to as the "religious disposition". I was raised in a secular family, but I fell into "seeking for enlightenment" thanks to psychedelics and other experiences and neuroses.
As the old Zen saying goes (roughly paraphrased): "Before I became a seeker mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers, when I became a seeker mountains were no longer mountains and rivers were no longer rivers, when I came to see that there was nothing to seek mountains were again mountains and rivers were again rivers".
I would be really uncomfortable comparing the scientific slant of modern thinking to ‘racism’. Not least because, unlike racism, the scientific mindset has provided innumerable benefits for mankind.
The bottom line is simply that methodological naturalism is a perfectly sound methodological principle, but when it becomes a metaphysical stance it becomes problematical.
Also there are many mainstream, orthodox, well-respected scientists who hold non-materialist views.
Quoting Janus
It is a Zen Koan, spoken by a monk, and thereafter becoming part of the monastic curriculum. It reflects a revolution in consciousness, not the casual disregard of anything religious.
(I have been long interested in Zen, but I also came to realise that it’s a very demanding and austere discipline, and that I don’t necessarily have the personal attributes to successfully pursue it. For this reason, I’ve lately been attending a Pure Land service.)
What assumptions? I am simply describing the position of enlightened philosophers.
It's another thing if you want us to discuss them.
Yes. It was their "implicit prejudice" against non-empirical Metaphysics, not Race, that I was implicitly referring to. For quantitative empirical scientists, it's a useful stance. But for qualitative theoretical scientists & philosophers, those unstated beliefs may be obstacles to their search for fair & balanced truth.
Everybody has "presumptions" that serve as shorthand values to allow for quicker judgments of true/false & good/bad questions. Only when they analyze their own sub-conscious feelings do they realize that they their belief systems have been unfairly slanted toward certain classes of Epistemology, Ontology & Humanity. That's one reason for my late-in-life hobby of philosophy : to clean-up some misunderstandings that have affected my reasoning in the past. :halo:
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. – William James.
//ps// I would hate to be thought of as ‘anti-science’. The chief manifestations of ‘anti-science’ are anti-climate-science and anti-vaccination (along with the other grab-bags of conspiracy theory nonsense.) All that is complete rubbish, and science is absolutely essential for medicines, vaccines, climate mitigation, new energy sources, and countless other vital functions without which the planet will not survive. Just don’t want that point to get lost.//