The best kind of existence would be one, perhaps, that is suited to each individual tastes/preferences without infringing on other people's tastes/preferences. — schopenhauer1

That is an egological point of view. Not egocentric, necessarily, but the perspective of one individual as dinstinct from another. You're depicting absolutely everything in life as (1) either getting what you want or (2) not. And from that perspective, it is indeed a hopeless situation. As St Mick of Jagger said, you can't always git what you want. But maybe it's the perspective that is wanting, here. Maybe there's a perspective other than the egological.

He would not have liked what Bell contributed to it all. — noAxioms

The discomfort that I feel is associated with the fact that the observed perfect quantum correlations seem to demand something like the "genetic" hypothesis. For me, it is so reasonable to assume that the photons in those experiments carry with them programs, which have been correlated in advance, telling them how to behave. This is so rational that I think that when Einstein saw that, and the others refused to see it, he was the rational man. The other people, although history has justified them, were burying their heads in the sand. I feel that Einstein's intellectual superiority over Bohr, in this instance, was enormous; a vast gulf between the man who saw clearly what was needed, and the obscurantist. So for me, it is a pity that Einstein's idea doesn't work. The reasonable thing just doesn't work. — John Stewart Bell, quoted in Quantum Profiles, by Jeremy Bernstein

---------------------

Teleportation has been demonstrated at least a decade ago — noAxioms

The article I referred to was not about teleportation but about using the principles of entanglement for secure communications.

In their first experiment, the team sent a laser beam into a light-altering crystal on the satellite. The crystal emitted pairs of photons entangled so that their polarization states would be opposite when one was measured. The pairs were split, with photons sent to separate receiving stations in Delingha and Lijiang, 1200 kilometers apart. Both stations are in the mountains of Tibet, reducing the amount of air the fragile photons had to traverse. This week in Science, the team reports simultaneously measuring more than 1000 photon pairs. They found the photons had opposite polarizations far more often than would be expected by chance, thus confirming spooky action over a record distance (though the 2015 test over a shorter distance was more stringent).

All that said, I'm the first to admit that I'll never understand quantum computing.

**There's a thread on this topic, this one should be merged.**

We all have a culturally conditioned sense of what is natural, normal, and so on. WIthin our cultural setting, the 'supernatural' is by definition a kind of forbidden zone - 'naturalism' is the intellectually respectable attitude.

But, philosophically speaking, I think the issue is this. From the perspective of classical philosophical traditions, the accepted view of what is natural or normal is distorted or corrupt. From their perspective, while we think we know what is natural, in reality we do not know. We only have opinions. They might say that what you think of is the real world, is not your real home. You're a stranger in a strange land, who has forgotten where you came from.

(We are talking about the space between us all, and the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion. They don't know, they can't see. Are you one of them?)

Maybe fascination with the idea of the supernatural is part of this. Or maybe, as Augustine said, what we see as miracles are not against nature, but against what we know of nature. But then by the time the scientific revolution came along, western culture was already radically estranged from its philosophical roots. So having abandoned that religious and philosophical framework, what was left is a skeletal outline based on only what can be known and measured by scientific instruments. That delimits and also radically alters the bounds of what we regard as plausible. We're willing to contemplate parallel universes and wormholes but not OBE's.

Anyway, the upshot is, I'm open to the supernatural. Remember it's the Latin equivalent of the Greek 'metaphysics'. If you're not open to it, you reduce yourself to a smart monkey.

Here's a story from 2017 about using entanglement to secure communications:

a team of physicists reports that it sent eerily intertwined quantum particles from a satellite to ground stations separated by 1200 kilometers, smashing the previous world record. The result is a stepping stone to ultrasecure communication networks and, eventually, a space-based quantum internet.

Einstein did not like the quantum model. He still understood physics under the old deterministic model. — Jackson

Einstein clung to the realist view. He absolutely believed that the Universe was just so, independently of anything the observer did. So he could never accept the uncertainty principle was anything other than a lack of knowledge about the object. 'The dependence of what is observed upon the choice of experimental arrangement made Einstein unhappy', wrote John Wheeler. 'It conflicts with the view that the universe exists "out there" independent of all acts of observation'. But Einstein's views on this question have been refuted by subsequent experimental evidence.

The legend of Joseph of Cupertino.

Joseph of Copertino (Italian: Giuseppe da Copertino; 17 June 1603 – 18 September 1663) was an Italian Conventual Franciscan friar who is honored as a Christian mystic and saint. He was said to have been remarkably unclever, but prone to miraculous levitation....He applied to the Conventual Franciscan friars, but was rejected due to his lack of education. He then pleaded with them to serve in their stables. After several years of working there, he had so impressed the friars with the devotion and simplicity of his life that he was admitted to their Order, destined to become a Catholic priest...

He was ordained a priest on 28 March 1628. He was then sent to the convent of Santa Maria della Grotella, just outside Cupertino, where he spent the next 15 years.

After this point, the occasions of ecstasy in Joseph's life began to multiply. It was claimed that he began to levitate while participating at the Mass or joining the community for the Divine Office, thereby gaining a widespread reputation of holiness among the people of the region and beyond. He was deemed disruptive by his religious superiors and church authorities, however, and eventually was confined to a small cell, forbidden from joining in any public gathering of the community.

As the phenomenon of flying or levitation was widely believed to be connected with witchcraft, Joseph was denounced to the Inquisition. — Wikipedia

It seems secular authorities aren't the only ones dismissive of 'the supernatural' (although in the end Joseph was beatified.)

Another anecdote about levitation.

Anscombe and Geach relate a story according to which Aquinas once came upon “a holy nun who used to be levitated in ecstasy.” His reaction was to comment on how very large her feet were. “This made her come out of her ecstasy in indignation at his rudeness, whereupon he gently advised her to seek greater humility.” — Edward Feser: Aquinas (A Beginner's Guide)

The irreducable complexity of DNA argument is not a theory either; because an inability to explain how DNA formed is not evidence of ID, anymore than it's evidence for the alien lunchbox supposition; which is rather the point! — karl stone

I think it's a valid argument about the limitations of naturalism even if not the existence of God. There seems to be an almost universal assumption that as the Enlightenment freed us from belief in God, then it's reasonable to presume that life sprang into existence through something very much like a spontaneous chemical reaction. But that hardly seems a reasoned belief, either, even though it also seems to carry portentious philosophical ramifications.

One of the more interesting ideas is 'fine tuning' of physical constants, but that runs into the anthropic principle - namely, if the universe weren't just so, we wouldn't be here to notice that it's just so. So again, that's not evidence. — karl stone

It's a very glib way of dispatching a highly complex and technical line of argument. In fact, so-called 'fine tuning' doesn't 'run into' the anthropic principle - it is a paraphrase of that principle, first articulated in 1973 and subsequently the subject of a lot of literature. That dismissal trivialises the issue, which is this: as noted above, it is widely accepted that, in the absence of an act of intentional creation, life arose as a consequence of chance - the so-called 'million monkeys' effect. But the anthropic principle shows rather that the causal chain that makes the emergence of life possible didn't simply begin on a warm pond on the early planet earth, but that it stretches back to the formation and dissolution of earlier stars, back to the mysteriously happy apparent coincidence of carbon resonance, and ultimately back to the small number of fundamental constants which allowed stars and matter to form from the inchoate chaos of the early cosmos.

suppose life on earth began because an alien dropped a cheese sandwich. — karl stone

Suppose life on earth began because of primitive amino acids and other proto-genetic material arrived on a comet. That hypothesis is called 'panspermia'. It's damned hard to prove but it has its proponents.

Intelligent Design is an hypothesis; a supposition for which there's no evidence. That doesn't mean Intelligent Design is an invalid hypothesis; just that there's no evidence that supports or refutes it. — karl stone

I don't personally accept intelligent design, but it's completely mistaken to say it has 'no evidence'. There are people who support the hypothesis with pretty elaborately-argued books. There's a line of argument called the argument from biological information. You may say that it's incorrect, the evidence doesn't support the theory, but you can't say there's no evidence.

I misunderstood you, but it’s a rather tortuous analogy, let’s leave it.

You can’t kill a classroom full of schoolchildren with chewing tobacco, although the subtlety of the argument might elude you.

It's a truly vicious circle - more guns breeding more fear, spuring more guns. And the NRA circles, feeding off the corpses like the vultures they are.

The police and the armed forces are equipped with a wide range of guns. Who's done a study on how many lives an armed officer or soldier has saved? — Agent Smith

One I did read some years back, completely busted the myth of the 'good guy with a gun' that the wretched NRA frequently talks up. Their propaganda is, if more citizens own guns, then they're more likely to be able to shoot/disable/kill the psychotic mass-murderers before they can inflict havoc.

I can't remember all the detail, but the study showed that the number of 'righteous shootings' by armed citizens in the prevention of a crime was (I think) in the single or very low double digits for a given year - maybe 10 or 12 - compared to tens of thousands of suicides, murders, and accidents causing death using guns.

The hopelessness comes from the fact that, even if by some total fluke the US drastically tightened gun sales, there are already more guns than citizens in the US (121:100) :angry: I really do think it's a lost cause. Politicians will gnash their teeth, 'thoughts and prayers' will be offered, but then it will be business as usual until next time - which is never far away.

the US should ask the other countries to the left which seem to have it all figured out. — Mr Bee

What happened in the aftermath of the Port Arthur Massacre in Tasmania, 1996, is often referenced by gun control advocates in the USA. The then-Prime Minister of Australia, announced a gun amnesty and immediate tightening of gun possession and licensing laws (see story).

Tim Fischer was leader of the National Party and Howard’s deputy prime minister in the Coalition government, charged with persuading sceptical country voters to support, or at least accept, reforms. “Port Arthur was our Sandy Hook,” he said. “Port Arthur we acted on. The USA is not prepared to act on their tragedies.”

But the Australian electorate is a very different beast to the American. There's no constitutional right to bear arms, and there's no history of gunslingers and gun glorification that the US has. We're also a more compliant society, generally - witness the very large uptake of mask-wearing and vaccination against COVID in Austriala, while defiance of same became a cause célèbre amongst US libertarians.

Overall, I think many Americans have a highly distorted idea of the meaning of freedom and civil liberty, and one that is very dangerous.

Occurences of mass shootings, USA, Y 2000 - present



Rest assured, the perpertrator of the next atrocity is already stocking up, practicing with video games, and getting ready to act. It's a pathology deeply embedded in the American psyche.

'The shooting came days before the National Rifle Association annual convention was set to begin in Houston. [Governor Greg] Abbott and both of Texas’ US senators were among elected Republican officials scheduled to speak speaker at a leadership forum sponsored by the NRA’s lobbying arm this Friday.

Abbott has campaigned on gun rights.

In 2015, he wrote on Twitter that he was “embarrassed” that Texas had fallen behind California in gun sales. “Let’s pick up the pace Texans,” he wrote.'

I think these technological innovations should also shape new philosophical directions. — Andrew4Handel

They are. I'm into this book at the moment https://siliconthebook.com/

Mind you, the author of this book doesn't see reality as 'illogical and weird' (although certainly mysterious), but he's dismissive of old-school mechanistic materialism. This conviction arose from two sources, one the attempt to develop AI systems (a byproduct of which is https://www.synaptics.com/) and also from an unexpected spiritual awakening which occurred to him in his fifties.

It's a classic in the rapidly-growing genre of 'Californian metaphysics'. :wink:

This is why I disagree with the definition of faith as "believe in spite of the evidence", because that definition only speaks to a certain conception of what constitutes evidence; a conception which has its own unevidenced presuppositions underpinning it. — Janus

:100: :clap:

If you mean, you have no idea of what a Buddha really knows, then I would certainly agree. Which brings up the question, why raise an OP about this topic? As I have tried to explain previously, Nāgārjuna's philosophy is not simply a matter for syllogistic logic. His concern is soteriological. (Feel free to google that word.)

https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/monkeypox-possibly-spread-in-europe-at-large-dance-parties/6586045.html

Personally, I would avoid events of this kind.

As is obvious, 1, 2 and 3, 4, together is basically the law of the excluded middle (LEM). What is the importance of LEM to Buddhism? — Agent Smith

The Buddha’s knowledge surpasses logic. However, that doesn’t invalidate logic.

Flux of what is (akin to a wave or a process) vs. permanency of what is (akin to a particle or an entity) - and, to my mind, taking into account that we and our mental faculties are intrinsic aspects of nature, this imo results in a kind of flux/permanency duality intrinsic to nature at large. — javra

Pretty deep analysis! (I've just started reading Afrikan Spir's PDF, which I downloaded from archive.org, very well-formatted with bookmarks intact. Spir seemed to have been a beautiful person, born into minor nobility he gave all of his estate to his serfs and sadly died young, having not looked after his health. And I noticed his hometown was, very sadly, that Ukrainian city of Kharkiv which has been the site of numerous Russian atrocities in the media currently. His book actually reads quite easily, if you have a bit of background in Kant and the German idealists generally. I intend to persist with it.)

I’ve probably rambled, and I get that all this might be overly opinionated. — javra

Not at all, I think you're on exactly the right track. Another idealist (actually, panpsychist) philosopher I've been reading is Federico Faggin, whose book Silicon is about his successful career - inventor of the first microprocessor - and his later in life awakening, which is very much concerned with the underlying substance (in the philosophical, not everyday, sense) as the source of reality.

All of this 'age of aquarius' stuff really is happening, you know. :wink:

When a Buddhist says "nyet" to a proposition p, s/he means not p, but then stops short of affirming ~p. — Agent Smith

The verse below is taken verbatim from one of the early Buddhist texts, and is often said to be the origin for Nāgārjuna's Madhyamika (MIddle-way) school. In it the Buddha declines to answer a direct question with either 'yes' or 'no'.

Then the wanderer Vacchagotta went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, exchanged courteous greetings with him. After an exchange of friendly greetings & courtesies, he sat to one side. As he was sitting there he asked the Blessed One: "Now then, Venerable Gotama, is there a self?"

When this was said, the Blessed One was silent.

"Then is there no self?"

A second time, the Blessed One was silent.

Then Vacchagotta the wanderer got up from his seat and left.

Then, not long after Vacchagotta the wanderer had left, Ven. Ananda said to the Blessed One, "Why, lord, did the Blessed One not answer when asked a question by Vacchagotta the wanderer?"

"Ananda, if I — being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is a self — were to answer that there is a self, that would be conforming with those brahmans & contemplatives who are exponents of eternalism [the view that there is an eternal, unchanging soul]. If I — being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is no self — were to answer that there is no self, that would be conforming with those brahmans & contemplatives who are exponents of annihilationism [the view that death is the annihilation of consciousness]. If I — being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is a self — were to answer that there is a self, would that be in keeping with the arising of knowledge that all phenomena are not-self?"

"No, lord."

"And if I — being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is no self — were to answer that there is no self, the bewildered Vacchagotta would become even more bewildered: 'Does the self I used to have now not exist?'" — Ananda Sutta

It should be noted, 'the wanderer Vachagotta' is the figure who often poses philosophical questions of which this is one instance. See also this index of questions which likewise are met with the customary 'noble silence'.

Armed with only a small band of volunteers and a Queensland war chest considerably south of $20,000, the Legalise Cannabis Australia party – headquartered at Nimbin’s Hemp Embassy – is not without hope of a spectacular Senate upset.

The upstart micro-party is seeking to snatch the sixth and final Queensland vacancy from right-wing warrior Pauline Hanson, whose One Nation party (PHON) has bled votes in its traditional Queensland heartland and suffered an upper-house swing against it of 2.5 percentage points.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/queensland/a-pleasant-surprise-the-niche-party-challenging-pauline-hanson-in-qld-20220523-p5anop.html

:pray:

A Wikipedia entry on Catuṣkoṭi (which is the method in question) in Buddhist philosophy is here.

I think the OP suffers from lack of context. The 'meta-question' to ask is, why did Nāgārjuna deploy this method? The answer to that question revolves around the cultural context of Nāgārjuna's writings. He came along about half a millenium after the Buddha, after there had been considerable codification of the Buddha's teachings through the scholastic form known as 'abhidharma'. There had also been long debates with the Brahmin opponents of the Buddha, Vedanta and Sankya among others.

The madyhamika emerged as a dialectic in the true philosophical sense - a debate concerning first principles between two apparently conflicting perspectives. The protagonists were on the Buddhist side the abhidharmikas and on the other side, the Vedic schools such as Vedanta and Sankya (a dualist school which is often compared to Cartesian dualism).

Another point about Nāgārjuna is that his writing is exceedingly terse. The articles in the famous Madhyamikakarika which carried this logical reasoning are often translated into single sentences or other gnomic remarks. This has given rise to a plethora of interpretations and not a little confusion over the centuries. The article contains some explanation of that.

So that's some of the background required to really make sense of Nāgārjuna's logic. Reduced to symbolic form, it may not be especially meaningful, especially considering that Nāgārjuna's aim was first and foremost soteriological (i.e. concerned with attaining Nirvana).

My argument is that the main objection against The Supernatural has been implausibility but that modern technology and modern scientific discoveries make previously implausible things look as plausible as the new world picture. Things can go through walls which are apparently mainly made up of empty space. — Andrew4Handel

'“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” ~ Arthur C Clarke.

I suspect that there's an element of genuine magic involved in much of the technology that exploits the mysterious properties of quantum physics, such as non-locality (which is nowadays used for secure communications technologies) and for quantum computers. It's magical insofar as, while the formulae of quantum mechanics can be used to great effect and almost unbelievable levels of precision, nobody really understands what it means. So it seems to me that with the discovery of quantum mechanics the previously well-defined boundary between the two domains became a lot more permeable, as can be evidenced by the search for books on 'quantum consciousness'.

As far as 'plausibility' is concerned, in a more general sense, the issue is more one of having a suitable epistemic framework within which to judge whether an idea is plausible or not. Post-Enlightenment, it is generally simply assumed that this framework is provided by science as distinct from metaphysics or religion, the testimony of which is set aside as a starting point. Then you have the situation where any attempt to argue for a metaphysic has to meet the requirements of peer-reviewed science, or else it is dismissed as anecdotal, hearsay or myth. Essentially the requirement is that beliefs ought to be plausibly supported by what can be categorised as scientific evidence, starting from an historically-conditioned view of the boundaries of science.

Yes, but given that it is a principle held dear by physicalism, and that it's a closed system, then the point of it is that it allows for nothing other than the physical.

Interesting RNA story. When can they can replicate that with only the elements from the periodic table, then they'll really be on to something.

That which is (A) is not and cannot be that which it is not (not-A). This being a more long-winded way of saying that “each given is identical with itself”, or “A = A”. Which is what the law of identity stipulates to be an innate and determinate aspect of our awareness and, derivatively, of how we think. Hence being deemed "a law of thought" - since it is deemed to govern all thought without exception. — javra

For Spir the principle of identity is not only the fundamental law of knowledge, it is also an ontological principle, expression of the unconditioned essence of reality (Realität=Identität mit sich), which is opposed to the empirical reality (Wirklichkeit), which in turn is evolution (Geschehen). The principle of identity displays the essence of reality: only that which is identical to itself is real, the empirical world is ever-changing, therefore it is not real. Thus the empirical world has an illusory character, because phenomena are ever-changing, and empirical reality is unknowable. — Afrikan Spir, Ontology

(I've found a well-formatted translation of his major work, which I'm going to try and get around to studying.)

If you mean, a human infant kept in an isolation tank will never learn English, then, sure. But that's not really the point. Expose any sentient being other than a human to experience, and they're not going to learn to speak, notwithstanding your 'logical dog'. :-)

One of the assumptions that is made by methodological naturalism is that nothing "supernatural" will happen during the time in which an experiment is conducted. — Paulm12

That is similar to the much-vaunted 'principle of causal closure', which is that every event has a physical cause. But that is where the observer effect in physics has put a cat well and truly among the pidgeons, as it attributes to the act of observation a fundamental role in the experimental outcome. That is the sense in which consciousness enters physics - not as mysterious substance, but as the act of observation, which always entails an observer. And the observer is always separate to what is being observed.

Even aside from that, however, as first Kant, and later Husserl, understood, the observing mind is not itself among the objects of naturalism. As Husserl put it, 'Consciousness is not a thing among things, it is the horizon that contains everything.' Of course all the resident materialists will freak out when you say something like that but that's because they can't understand what it means.

However I also think if intelligent design explains certain aspects of reality better than purely naturalistic accounts, regardless if it makes reliable predictions or not, then it should be taken seriously. — Paulm12

It's true that science doesn't explain metaphysical principles. For that matter, science isn't even in the business of explaining scientific laws! Most scientistic types are convinced that science is somehow responsible for scientific principles, which is like a rooster taking credit for the sunrise.

Questions such as how do scientific laws arise, what is the origin of life, is there intentionality in the Universe, are not scientifically resolvable. Popper's criterion of falsifiability was intended to delineate scientific propositions by saying that they must in principle be falsifiable by further discovery. If they can accomodate everything, then they're not empirical hypotheses, and if they're not empirical hypotheses then they're not scientific, in modern terms.

The very simple point at the back of this is that 'naturalism assumes nature'. In other words, naturalism is not a metaphysic, concerned with the first and grounding principles of being. It works from a perspective of the intelligent subject in a domain of objects, ascertaining causal relationships and trying to uncover grounding regularities and principles. But understanding why science is not metaphysics is itself an exercise in metaphysics, not a scientific one. (See The Metaphysical Muddle of Lawrence Krauss, Neil Ormerod.)

So, is the claim that we have that idea from the moment of birth? — Janus

Epistemic priority is not necessarily temporal priority. It's not as if human infants are born with the ability to reason, but they clearly born with the capacity to acquire that ability very quickly. Meaning it is an innate ability, which torpedoes the basic dogma of empiricists. You can see that the slave-boy of the Meno prefigures this idea, even if by a rather blunt polemical example.

The whole point of the synthetic a priori is to show that 'there are indeed objects of cognition whose form arises from the a priori llaws of the mind and the forms of intuition, independently of all empirical experience' (Ian Hunter). It is the only possible route to knowledge of the unconditioned as all experiential knowledge must by definition be contingent (contingent on experience, which is itself contingent).

What Kant seeks is a literal cognitive shift, a different way of seeing, understanding and being.

Kant was on the cusp of modernity. He correctly diagnosed the plight of modernity, which culminates in the "illusion of otherness" and the Cartesian anxiety:

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 Bernstein

The associated form of mentality is ego consciousness, the separated self in a society of others, each in their own private world of feelings and thoughts. It is the default for liberal individualism, the way any of us here are inclined to be. Meaning and purpose is subjective, in an objective realm devoid of inherent meaning or intentionality. But overcoming that anxiety requires more than just thinking, it takes a cognitive shift, a different way of being. This is what Kant's philosophy is intended to impart:

The decisive distinguishing feature of Western philosophical spirituality is that it does not regard the truth as something to which the subject has access by right, universally, simply by virtue of the kind of cognitive being that the human subject is. Rather, it views the truth as something to which the subject may accede only through some act of inner self-transformation, some act of attending to the self with a view to determining its present incapacity, thence to transform it into the kind of self that is spiritually qualified to accede to a truth that is by definition not open to the unqualified subject. — Ian Hunter, Philosophy and Spirituality in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

‘ 40 of the 76 Senate seats are being decided at this election.’ Hadn’t realized that. Oh well.

Can’t see Robert’s name on the AEC list of QLD candidates….

Is he? How disappointing. Thought he’d gone.

Drat. Looks like Pauline Hanson will scrape in (conditional on her getting past COVID) in the last place on the QLD Senate Ticket. But at least the imbecilic Malcolm Roberts is gone, and she hasn't, to my knowledge, picked up any further seats, so she'll be the Lone Whinger. It's a role that will suit her.

From that, you can see the Buddhist influence on his thinking even if he's not a Buddhist.

actually not a very good collection of Mullah Nasriddin stories, but I’ve heard some great ones over the years.

Roquentin, who is searching of the meaning of existence, cannot find anything because any meaningful connection he experiences is of him. He is assaulted by Nausea in finding all the things he expects to be meaningful are not. In removing what he put with existence as it appears to him, he finds an empty world. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Sartre's notion of the absurd springs from what to his view was a revelation of existence, a revelation of "the absolute" - a deeper contact with reality - in some sense linked to the mystical quest for enlightenment - at times also formulated as "the absolute." — ZzzoneiroCosm

I take it as basically a form of nihilism. In the distant past, it was supposed by philosophers that everything possessed an essential nature, which originated with the ‘participation in the Ideas’ of Platonic or Aristotelian thought. With the abandonment of classical philosophy and theism, the world is then seen as empty of any intrinsic nature or meaning, save what the observer chooses to see in it. So the reference to ‘the absolute’ is ironic, because in Sartre’s view, this is precisely what doesn’t exist, or holds no significance or reality; the quest for enlightenment must always end in disappointment, because there is none to be had.

At least that’s how I read it.

I'm immediately turned off any post mentioning "subject", "subjectivity", or "objectivity". Too much baggage. — Banno

Accordingly I’ll do you the courtesy of not answering your question.

Aristotle uses the word "subject" only in the context of grammar. — Jackson

He also says that one of the major themes of the metaphysics is the analysis of the different meanings of the verb ‘to be’.

Yes, I agree that 'what it is like-ness' is a very awkward and indirect expression. I think a much more succinct word for what he is trying to describe is simply 'being'. That comes out especially clearly in David Chalmer's related essay, Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness, which is mainly about the problem of describing the subjective nature of experience, that experiences are always 'had' by a subject. But the subject is never something amenable to objective description or analysis, for the very good reason that it's not an object.

No, that's not it. Check this out.

In his book "Wholeness and Implicate Order" he gives us a glimpse in his fascinating holographic universe. — Hillary

I got that book when it came out. I also got Krishnamurti's book with the Bohm dialogues when it came out. I'm dubious about his hidden-variables theory, but let's not get into that - it's a guaranteed de-railer.

I for example find that in a different possible world where the prevailing cultural view is that of idealism, the empirical sciences would still be indispensable for optimally appraising the truth of that which is universally observable by - and which universally affects - all in principle if not also in practic — javra

:100: I often say, the distinction that has to be made is between methodological naturalism, and metaphysical naturalism. Methodological naturalism is the prudent restriction of hypotheses to include only that which can be observed or validated/falsified empirically. But it easily spills over into metaphysical naturalism when it then declares that whatever can't be observed is not real or cannot be considered.

It's more a matter of history and the circumstances of The Enlightenment. Some years back when I was first posting, there was a site with an excerpt from the charter of The Royal Society, the first-ever purely scientific society. One of the articles was to avoid 'metaphysikal disputation' which was seen to be the province of Religion. And religious disputes, in that culture, were often extremely violent and politically charged.

Likewise, Galileo torpedoed scholastic physics - as had to be done, because it was archaic and not even remotely informed by observation. But with that, went much else besides, including Aristotle's final and formal causes. That is where the taboo on teleological explanations goes back to. Everything was to be explicable in terms of the paradigm of the emerging new physics (which is now 'classical' or Newtonian physics.) Ideas of purpose were abandoned, and intentionality relegated to the subjective domain of the observing mind.

I think that strictly speaking that style of old-school materialism belongs to the modern period, as distinct from post-modernity. (I bracket the modern period between Newton and Einstein.) As soon as quantum mechanics was discovered the classical paradigm of separate bodies in space obeying rigidly deterministic laws started to fall into question. That's why many of the first-generation of modern physicists - Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schrodinger in particular - were philosophically deep thinkers who explored Greek and Indian philosophical ideas. They were fishing for a metaphysic (for which, see Tao of Physics.) But the influence of that form of materialism remains deeply embedded in today's culture, albeit implicit a lot of the time. It seems highly influential in the writings of the so-called 'new atheists'.