some understanding of the way things reduce to biology is a matter or being educated. — wonderer1

A recognition of the importance of biological conditions and human nature need not involve biological reductionism. — Wayfarer

The issue the Supreme Court focussed on was the consequences of States taking it on themselves to decide who can stand on a Presidential Ballot, which, they said, would lead to 'chaos'. They said it would take a Congressional resolution to determine disqualification. But it should be recalled that after the Jan 6th insurrection, McConnell said:

Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty. Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.

.

He still voted to acquit, saying:

We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.

So he punted it back to the legal system, which has now punted it back to Congress. 'Heads I win, tails you loose'.

But since then, Trump has been found guilty in two significant civil cases and indicted on 91 criminal counts. Of course if Trump had any decency or judgement, laughable though that suggestion is, he would immediately withdraw from the race rather than continue to drag the nation through his quagmire of lies and delusions.

:clap: :ok:

You're familiar with the term 'biological reductionism'? Definition here.
— Wayfarer

No, and I'm not sure how it fits into the discussion. — Philosophim

Because it is what you're appealing to by declaring that humans are 'just another species' and that the differences between humans and other species is no more significant than the differences between species, generally. The definition I linked to was as follows:

Biological reductionism: A theoretical approach that aims to explain all social or cultural phenomena in biological terms, denying them any causal autonomy. Twentieth-century incarnations of biological reductionism have relied to varying degrees on Darwin's theory of evolution and principles of natural selection. Within the human sciences, there have been attempts to explain observed differences in group behaviour—such as performance on intelligence tests, rates of mental illness, intergenerational poverty, male dominance or patriarchy, and propensity for crime—as being biologically determined, by claiming that groups have different biological capacities or evolutionary trajectories. The theories of Social Darwinism, eugenics, and sociobiology often involve biological reductionism. A recognition of the importance of biological conditions and human nature need not involve biological reductionism.

Biden Campaign: 'We Don't Really Care'. They hadn't placed any particular significance on the case in the first place. Good call.

The back-story to all of this is that I used to mount an argument as follows. It was based on distinguishing ontology from science. My argument was that the word 'ontology' was based on the present participle of the Greek verb 'to be' - which is, of course, 'I am'. I said this implied a distinction of the study of 'being' as distinct from science, which is the analysis of what objectively exists. (There's also a resonance with the religious significance of the 'I AM' in both Biblical and Hindu texts.) Anyway, I got severely criticized by a poster (who was also a mod) over this, saying that this was an 'eccentric' definition of the term 'ontology'. This lead to a long debate, one which I think is important, on the distinction between 'beings' and 'things', which I claim is a distinction that is largely lost in modern philosophy. He eventually sent me an essay by a distinguished classics scholar, The Greek Verb 'To Be' and the Problem of Being, Charles Kahn, which I read very carefully. I think it supports my argument, although he never accepted that, and he's since left the Forum. Kahn argues that the use of the Greek verb 'to be' generally conveys the meaning 'what is truly so', as distinct from 'what exists' (see also this comment.)

'Virtue is it's own reward' ~ Another Aristotelian chestnut :cool:

By the way, I love Zizek’s take - ‘quantum physics has caught God with his pants down’:

https://youtube.com/shorts/ywVHFo1na38?si=7Jp75TEU0q5BkLGF

I believe Schrodinger's rhetorical point was to drive home the absurd nature of superposition with a life-size example. Even the proverbial cat wouldn't be both alive and dead, which is only a metaphor for the indeterminate state of the supposed object of measurement. (Read ChatGPT's assessment of this response here.)

'Whenever I hear of Schrodinger's Cat, I reach for my gun' ~ Stephen Hawking

'What did you do to the cat, Erwin? It looks half-dead!' ~ Mrs Schrodinger.

What threshold is this that is unique to human beings? — Philosophim

As I said - language, reason, technology, and so on. H. sapiens is able to interrogate the nature of meaning and being in a way that other species cannot.

We are just another species — Philosophim

You're familiar with the term 'biological reductionism'? Definition here.

‘In Buddhism, we have a case study showing that when groundlessness is embraced and followed through to its ultimate conclusions, the outcome is an unconditional sense of intrinsic goodness that manifests itself in the world as spontaneous compassion.”(Thompson)

But I never understood how assuming a groundless ego leads to spontaneous compassion and benevolence. — Joshs

Buddha nature is inherently blissful. Part of enlightenment (bearing in mind, 'enlightenment' was coined by an English translator for the Buddhist term 'bodhi', which in many contexts is translated as 'wisdom') is realising that, which is why it's salvific. It is a fountainhead of ecstacy.

Phenomenal awareness as transition from one kind of relational unity to another can just as well be malevolent as benevolent. — Joshs

But Buddhism, along with the other sapiential traditions, is about breaking through to a different form of awareness altogether. I don't think you'll find it in phenomenology or existentialism although there may be hints of it at various places. There's some references to it amongst the German idealists (Schopenhauer's 'better consciousness', Fichte's 'higher consciousness'). But it will usually be categorised with religion by many, to their detriment. This is where the insights of non-dualism are especially relevant.

A footnote: in my view, modern Western culture tends to idolise 'the natural' as a symbol of purity. Accordingly, we want to situate humans on the continuum with other animals, as part of nature or a product of nature. Hence also the romanticizing of first-nations people and traditional culture. It is then seen as 'arrogance' to declare that humans are different from other species to which we are purportedly related by evolution. We long for a kind of re-union with nature, which might actually be a sublimated spiritual longing. But in this context, 'nature' has been substituted for 'the unconditioned', an insight into which has been generally lost to modern philosophical discourse.

But you understood the point that the intellectual gap between a bat and a fly is as wide as the intellectual gap of a human and a bat right? The point is that us being a 'different kind' from other animals is simply the same pattern repeated in nature again and again. — Philosophim

That's not the point at issue, though. Obviously there is massive divergences between species, that is not at issue. I am protesting the tendency to overlook or deny what I see as an obvious fact about h. sapiens - language, reason, tool-making, and the implications of all of that. No, we're not 'an alien species', the biological descent of h. sapiens is abundantly obvious, but with the advent of those capacities, we crossed a threshold beyond what can be understood solely through the lens of biological science.

Don't you think plant behaviors could be replicated by fairly simple machines (or a system of pretty simple machines)? — RogueAI

You've heard of John Conway's 'Game of Life?' It was a 1970 program that replicates many of the salient features of evolutionary development by use of a fairly simple algorithm. So such behaviours can be emulated quite easily using software, but actually creating an organic molecule that replicates like living organisms is a very different thing. You can symbollically represent the processes, but actually making them work is another thing.

Look at the gulf between a bat and a fly. — Philosophim

One that neither a bat nor a fly will ever know.

There are humans with enough cognitive impairment that they cannot learn what 'prime' is either. Same with young children until they reach a certain age. Does this mean they aren't conscious Wayfarer? — Philosophim

Everyone, indeed every being, deserves to be treated humanely, but that says nothing about the capability that distinguishes h. Sapiens from other species. I think one of the unfortunate consequences of popular Darwinism is the myth of h. Sapiens being ‘just another species’. There’s a leap - an ontological gulf - between h. Sapiens and other species. We’re of a different kind.

A quote from a text on classical metaphysics about the distinction between living and non-living particulars:

All things, even inanimate ones, must have some form, or they would not be anything at all. But living things have a distinctive and superior kind of form, called ‘soul.’* For a living thing is far more integrated, more one whole, than a non-living thing. The unity, and hence the identity and the being, of a non-living thing is little more than the contiguity of its parts. If a rock, for example, is divided, we simply have two smaller rocks. In a living thing, on the other hand, the members of its body constitute an organic whole, such that each part both conditions and is conditioned by the other parts and the whole.** A living thing is thus one being to a far greater extent than a non-living thing. It evinces a higher degree of unity, of integration, of formal identity, and its soul is this very integration of its parts into one whole. As such the soul is the reality of the living thing, that in virtue of which it is what it is and so is a being: “For the reality is the cause of being to all things, and to live, for living things, is to be, and the soul is the cause and principle of these” (De An. Β.4, 415b13–14). Life in living things, then, is not a character superadded to their mere being. Rather, life is their being, the higher, more intense mode of being proper to living things as distinct from others.

The distinction between living and non-living things is therefore not a mere ‘horizontal’ distinction, as if all things are equally beings, of which some are living and others are not. It is rather a ‘vertical’ or hierarchical distinction: a living thing is more a being than a non-living thing, in that it is more integrated, more a whole, more one thing. (p110)

For Aristotle, the hierarchical ordering of the different kinds of beings is based on the extent to which form predominates over matter in each. Non-living things have the lowest degree of form, of unifying selfhood, of activity that proceeds from themselves. Although they have some form, some nature, some behaviors of their own, without which they would be nothing at all, they come closer than all other things to being purely material, purely passive. A living thing, characterized by organic unity and the ability to nourish, maintain, and reproduce itself, is far more one, more active, exhibits a far higher degree of formal identity. A sentient living thing, an animal, exercises not only these life-functions but also consciousness, which, as the capacity to receive forms without matter, is a still higher degree of formality, of immateriality. A human being, in turn, has not only life and sense but the capacity for the wholly immaterial activity of intellection, which has as its content, and thus is one with, purely immaterial ideas. (p117) — Eric D Perl Thinking Being - Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition

*Note that the term translated as 'soul' is the Greek 'psyche', which is, of course, the root of the modern words 'psyche' and 'psychology'. Indeed the passage in which the term occurs could equally use the term 'mind', with the caveat that it obviously would not mean 'conscious' or 'rational' mind. Perhaps ‘capable of intentional action’ might be a way of parsing it.

The point of this passage is to make an ontological distinction between living and non-living particulars, which is a distinction based on different ways or modes of being.

Humans are not some separate and magical species that exists apart from all of nature. — Philosophim

Try teaching the concept 'prime' to your dog. With the advent of language, reason and symbolic thinking, h. sapiens crosses a threshhold which marks it off from the rest of the animal kingdom. I say this is another ontological distinction.

There's a passage in the Upaniṣads - the philosophical texts of the Vedas - about the exact issue of 'the eye that cannot see itself'. The online text is here https://www.swami-krishnananda.org/brhad_00.html . I can't vouch for the quality of the translation although the website is published by a mainstream Hindu organisation and I'm sure it's legitimate.

The passage in question is reproduced below. The context is a dialogue between the sage and a questioner, who is seeking instruction on the nature of the Self, ātman, which is often translated as 'soul', although it's worth noting that the literal meaning of the term is 'I am'. Here the questioner is pressing Yājñavalkya, the guru, for an exact definition. He says:

"You have only told me, this is your inner Self in the same way as people would say, 'this is a cow, this is a horse', etc. That is not a real definition. Merely saying, 'this is that' is not a definition. I want an actual description of what this internal Self is. Please give that description and do not simply say, 'this is that' –

Yājñavalkya says: "You tell me that I have to point out the Self as if it is a cow or a horse. Not possible! It is not an object like a horse or a cow. I cannot say, 'here is the ātman; here is the Self'. It is not possible because you cannot see the seer of seeing. The seer can see that which is other than the Seer, or the act of seeing. An object outside the seer can be beheld by the seer. How can the seer see himself? How is it possible? You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding. That is the ātman."

Nobody can know the ātman inasmuch as the ātman is the Knower of all things. So, no question regarding the ātman can be put, such as "What is the ātman?' 'Show it to me', etc. You cannot show the ātman because the Shower is the ātman; the Experiencer is the ātman; the Seer is the ātman; the Functioner in every respect through the senses or the mind or the intellect is the ātman. As the basic Residue of Reality in every individual is the ātman, how can we go behind It and say, 'This is the ātman?' Therefore, the question is impertinent and inadmissible. The reason is clear. It is the Self. It is not an object-na vijñāter vijñātāraṁ vijānīyāḥ, eṣa ta ātmā sarvāntaraḥ.

"Everything other than the ātman is stupid; it is useless; it is good for nothing; it has no value; it is lifeless. Everything assumes a meaning because of the operation of this ātman in everything. Minus that, nothing has any sense".

Then Uṣasta Cākrāyana, the questioner kept quiet. He understood the point and did not speak further. — Source

I personally have always found the analogy of 'the eye that cannot see itself' very persuasive and even self-evidently true, although having discussed here and also on the dharmawheel (Buddhist) forum, I know that many others don't see it that way. But a point to note is that it has also been adopted by at least some phenomenologists. There's a marvellously erudite French philosopher of science, namely Michel Bitbol, who has a paper in which he explicitly quotes this passage, It Is never known but it is the Knower (.pdf, on academia.edu.) This is related to the 'blind spot of science' argument, the 'blind spot' being the exclusion of the subject from the reckonings of science, but then taking the resulting objectively-defined knowledge as being comprehensive.

A great deal of further material on Vedanta can be found on the website of the Vedanta Society of New York https://www.vedantany.org/ . The head teacher, Swami Sarvapriyananda, is an erudite fellow and frequently engages in debates and dialogues with philosophers and scientists. You can find many of his lectures and talks on youtube here

the Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esoterica — Count Timothy von Icarus

:clap: Thanks for the recommendation, those Cambridge Handbooks are usually :100:

//ps// a goldmine, that book.//

We may dress up our individual egos in drag with Islam or liberalism or existentialism, but in the end we are emotionally driven creatures who make choices based on what (we think) pleases us and how we as individuals interpret ideas. — Tom Storm

Might that sentiment not be more accurate if expressed in the first-person singular? It's very much a projection of the liberal bourgouis consciousness, I think.

I recall when I encountered the teachings of Advaita Vedanta in my youth, much was made about the falsehood of egoic consciousness, and that this is what has to be seen through or overcome - 'cut off at the root', was the expression, which was distinguished from the effort to 'prune' it through some attempt at self-discipline. I was to realise later that the Chinese Communist Party, for example, also deprecates the individual, with generally malign consequences, and that individual freedom is in fact a vitally important principle of liberal culture, and something also often violated in theocratic cultures, such as Iran. (Accordingly, I continue to believe in the sovereignty of the individual, although I also recognise there's a fundamental difference between philosophical self-abnegation and such politically-coerced conformism.)

In any case, the principle of transcending egoic consciousness is fundamental to many faith traditions. It doesn't even have to be particularly religious - it characterises anyone who is selflessly devoted - but that is where it is generally spelled out. 'Not my will, but thine', is a characteristic expression. (Although I have a rather interesting philosophical text, Surviving Death, Mark Johnston, who claims to demonstrate a thoroughly naturalistic (as distinct from supernatural) account of the idea of a 'higher self'.)

That is, as the certainty of calculation. Only because being is understood via the persistent presence of subject and object can modern science and technology, as well as humanism, be thought. What is real is what is consistently present, and the object’s reality is made possible by its being represented by a self-present subject. A=A because, more fundamentally, the ‘I’ equals itself. — Joshs

Makes perfect sense to me. I do see a convergence between Heidegger and elements of non-dualism, although of course there are also many differences.

In the wake of Descartes, God was replaced by the human subject , the consciousness of the ego, as the source of absolute certainty. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right - as I was saying up-thread, the advent of liberal individualism, the individual ego as arbiter of truth.

Not sure why we arrived at nihilism in this discussion — Tom Storm

I admit it was a bit of a flight of ideas on my part. But the gist was that the denial of order in the Universe tends towards nihilism, in the sense that it denies the possibility of causal connections and any intrinsic meaning. That is what made me think of Nietszche and Heidegger, as it was among their central themes.

But does this transcend our cognitive apparatus? I guess as a form of Platonist you would say, 'yes' (eg, maths as found rather rather than invented). — Tom Storm

Kant distinguishes 'transcendental' from the 'transcendent' where the former concerns the conditions of possibility of knowledge itself, such as space and time as forms of sensibility and the categories of the understanding. But they're still 'givens' inasmuch as they are already present as the constituents of the understanding, so in that sense, beyond or not accessible to conscious awareness. They're 'always already the case'. There are connections between Plato and Kant but it's a rather esoteric topic, but I think it's safe to say that Kant was certainly not nihilistic. I don't think he had encountered that chasm yet.

I don't know why you make the point whether Heidegger was 'theistic', as if I were suggesting that he was, or defending 'theism'. Heidegger's point, like Nietszche's, is not by any stretch to defend religion, but to point out that in its absence, and the collapse of the traditional source of value, we are faced with the prospect of a meaningless cosmos into which we are thrown by chance, and for no real reason, other than the reasons we ourselves can manufacture. All existentialists deal with that question one way or another, although some are theistic and others are not. I don't think Heidegger was theistic although I have read that his philosophical preoccupations were very much shaped by his early theological concerns (he originally studied divinity). Anyway, as I say, a bit of a flight of ideas on my part.

Grammar varies with languages and one culture's grammar looks like chaos to another's. — Tom Storm

Chomsky says not, that there's an underlying 'universal grammar'.

Isn't that how nihilism shows up in life? I asked my friendly AI helper about Heidegger's view of nihilism, and received the following response:

One of Heidegger's key contributions to the discussion of nihilism is found in his interpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche's proclamation of the "death of God" and the ensuing crisis of values in Western culture. Heidegger interprets Nietzsche's declaration not just as a theological statement but as a metaphysical one, indicating the culmination of Western metaphysics and its inability to provide a grounding for values or meaning. This crisis, according to Heidegger, leads to nihilism, understood as the devaluation of the highest values, and signals a fundamental emptiness or lack of meaning in the modern world.

In his lectures, such as those compiled in "Nietzsche, Volumes I and II," Heidegger explores Nietzsche's thought and its implications for the problem of nihilism. He critiques the Western metaphysical tradition for leading humanity into a state of forgetfulness regarding the question of Being, which he sees as the root cause of nihilism. For Heidegger, overcoming nihilism involves a re-engagement with the question of Being and a move away from the metaphysical conception of truth and values.

Furthermore, in "The Question Concerning Technology" and other essays, Heidegger discusses the role of technology in shaping modern human existence and its contribution to the nihilistic condition. He argues that the essence of technology as a mode of enframing reveals a world where everything is seen as a resource to be exploited, further distancing humanity from a meaningful engagement with Being.

I put it that this raises the question of what a 'meaningful engagement of Being' amounts to. I said we've become distanced from Being because of the illusion of otherness or separation, the sense that we are standing apart from or outside our experience-of-the-world, which in turn is based on the conceptual framework that we view it through:

Your reflection touches on a profound aspect of Martin Heidegger's philosophy, particularly his critique of the modern age and the technological mindset that, according to him, leads to a form of existential alienation. Heidegger's entire project, starting with "Being and Time" (1927), is an attempt to reawaken the question of Being, which he believed had been neglected since the time of the ancient Greeks. This neglect, in his view, leads to a form of nihilism because it results in a world where things are valued only for their utility, what he calls "the enframing" (Gestell). (e.g. valuing reason only for of its adaptive utility, what use it provides ~ wf.)

Heidegger's engagement with nihilism isn't always direct but can be inferred from his critique of the history of Western metaphysics, which he saw as progressively obscuring our relationship to Being. According to Heidegger, this alienation is not just a matter of mistaken thought but is deeply embedded in the way we interact with the world and each other, particularly through technology, which turns everything, including humans, into resources to be exploited. This condition exacerbates the sense of otherness or separation you mentioned, where we come to view ourselves, others, and the world around us as objects among objects, rather than being integrally connected to the world.

A "meaningful engagement with Being," for Heidegger, involves a fundamental shift in our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world. It requires moving away from a conceptual framework that emphasizes separation, utility, and objectification, towards a more original experience of Being. This involves what he calls "thinking," a kind of contemplation that is different from the calculative thinking that dominates the modern world. It's a thinking that dwells on the mystery of Being, that appreciates things in their presence (what he terms "presencing") rather than just their utility.

This shift also entails a different way of relating to the world and others, characterized by what Heidegger calls "care" (Sorge) and "being-with" (Mitsein). Instead of seeing ourselves as isolated subjects confronting an external world, Heidegger encourages us to recognize our fundamental interconnectedness with the world and others (this is where aspects of Heidegger have been compared to the Buddhist principle of dependent origination ~ wf). This recognition can help overcome the alienation and nihilism of the modern condition by fostering a sense of belonging and responsibility for the world.

Your observation about the illusion of otherness ties directly into this Heideggerian critique. The challenge, as Heidegger sees it, is to overcome this illusion not by denying the reality of our individual experiences, but by recognizing that these experiences are always already situated within a world that we share with others. This involves a more profound engagement with the question of Being, one that acknowledges our fundamental interconnectedness and the ways in which our understanding of ourselves and the world is shaped by this interconnectedness. — ChatGPT

Chaos and entropy seem even more readily apparent from my perspective. — Tom Storm

We have order even in language:

entropy Chaos even from apparent readily and my more perspective seem.

Hence:

I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar. — Nietszche

With respect to the range of reason, surely one of the factors that underpinned traditional philosophy was the conviction that the Cosmos was itself rational in some foundational sense.
— Wayfarer

Why do you think we should regard the cosmos as knowable, let alone rational in any sense? — Tom Storm

Cosmos means 'ordered whole'. That was the vision of the Universe before the scientific revolution. We discussed it before, I mentioned this:

This scientific and philosophical revolution - it is indeed impossible to separate the philosophical from the purely scientific aspects of this process: they are interdependent and closely linked together - can be described roughly as bringing forth the destruction of the Cosmos, that is, the dissappearance from philosophically and scientifically valid concepts, the conception of the world as a finite, closed and hierarchically ordered whole (a whole in which the hierarchy of value determined the hierarchy and structure of being, rising from the dark, heavy and imperfect earth to the higher and higher perfection of the stars and heavenly spheres), and its replacement by an indefinite and even infinite universe which is bound toether by the identity of its fundamental components and laws, and in which all those components are placed on the same level of being. This, in turn, implies the discarding by scientific thought of all considerations based upon value-concepts, such as perfection, harmony, meaning and aim, and finally the utter devalorisation of being, the divorce of the world of value from the world of facts. — Alexander Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe

That is the background to the predicament of modernity. How to deal with that, while still keeping fully apprised of the empirical facts, is the principle burden of philosophy today in my view.

Which aspect of being an observer allows us to see the world and the order or reason in it objectively? — Tom Storm

Isn't the whole concept of scientific or natural law built on the assumption of there being a natural order? I mean, the whole basis of our technologically-ordered culture is predicated on the reliability of scientific predictions. Look at these systems we're using in conducting this conversation, they work quite astonishingly well. How can that not be seen as 'an order'?

Where I see the problem for modern culture is that it is uncomfortable with fact that this order is not something that science explains or accounts for. The nature of the order is a different matter to the fact of there being an order. And 'laws' sound suspiciously anthropomorphic or theistic - 'no laws without a lawgiver', said Nancy Cartwright. It's similar to the argument over the nature of mathematical objects and Platonic realism - they're metaphysical questions, and we don't much like metaphysical questions.

I'm intrigued that you are willing to accept the rather infamous 'blind spot in science' - the role of the observer as foundational in constructing reality - yet simultaneously regard the idea that order and reason (which we apprehend because we observe or infer them) transcend our observational constructivism. — Tom Storm

I don't see any conflict between the 'blind spot' argument and the fact of order. The point of 'the blind spot of science' argument is that we mistake objective knowledge for a kind of transcendent 'God's eye view' of what is real, as if it were true in the absence of any observer whatever - scientism, in a nutshell. Speaking of which, this is from an interview with one of the three authors of the Blind Spot article:

That article came from a...project I’ve been working on with my longtime collaborator Marcelo Gleiser, who is a high-energy physicist, and Evan Thompson, who is a philosopher of cognitive science as well as a Buddhist scholar. We all love science, and Evan actually does science as well as being a philosopher. What we’re trying to point to is that there’s a whole set of philosophies, metaphysics literally, that people claim are science, when in fact they’re just philosophies, and they have nothing to do with science. It’s much like the interpretations of quantum mechanics we were talking about. Things like reductionism, things like materialism, those are metaphysical biases, which somehow people claim for science: “Science shows us that blankety blankety blank.” Actually, no, science doesn’t show that. And, in particular, the role of the Observer… well, it’s not even the Observer, it’s the role of experience.

The verb “to be” is something that science doesn’t really know how to deal with. What has happened is that scientists have often ignored it and tried to pretend that it doesn’t exist. They’ve sort of defined it away, and that’s actually fine for some problems—doing that has actually allowed science to make a whole lot of progress. For instance, if you’re just talking about balls on a pool table, fine: you can totally get the Observer out of it. But there is a whole class of problems that are at the very root of some of our deepest questions, like the nature of consciousness, the nature of time, and the nature of the universe as a whole, where doing that [taking the Observer out] limits you in terms of explanations, and it’s really bound us up in a lot of ways. And it has really important consequences, both for science, our ability to explain things, but also for the culture that emerges out of science.

In order to remove the Observer you have to treat the world as dead, you know? One of the things that for me is really important is to move away from like words like “the Observer” and focus on experience. Because part of the problem with experience is that it’s so close to us that we don’t even see it. And it’s only in contemplative practice that you really have to deal with it. — Adam Frank

But even that will rub a lot of people up the wrong way - 'oh, he's talking about Zen Buddhism, that's a religion, religion is dogmatic, he must be dogmatic.' Well, no. That's another cultural construct. Tangled web.

I think there is a deep, unsettled conflict between humanism and naturalism in modern philosophy, and it lies at the heart of the inability to move past the appearance/reality dichotomy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:100: Maybe because we mistake quantifiable regularities for reality itself.

With respect to the range of reason, surely one of the factors that underpinned traditional philosophy was the conviction that the Cosmos was itself rational in some foundational sense. I found a crib on the book being discussed in the OP (Plato's Critique of Impure Reason):

Chapter 2—“With Good Reason”: “the highest good is both good in itself and good in its effects. Our thesis is that this twofold characterization of the good as both absolute (good in itself) and relative (good for us) represents the interpretive key that unlocks the significance of the philosophical drama and prepares for the climax at the central part of the dialogue. To say that the good causes truth means that it establishes being in its nonrelativity, but also that it makes that nonrelativity accessible to the soul. The good, in other words, separates being from appearance, but it also bridges that separation, and thus makes truth and knowledge possible.”

Chapter 2 opens up a deep inquiry into the relationship between the relative (appearance) and the absolute (truth). Platonic goodness is shown to be both good in its appearances and good in truth. This paradoxical nature of the good harkens to its transcendent value. Although it may be tempting to conceive of the relative as diametrically opposed to the absolute, an argument is made that the absolute necessarily encompasses the relative, and therefore Platonic goodness is more of a transcendence through rather than a transcendence of the relative.

The point I'm trying to make about the transition to modernity, is the general rejection of there being reason in any sense aside from it being an evolved human capacity. Historically, this is because of the way that Platonism had become absorbed into Christian theology (in the form of Christian Platonism), which meams that it has largely been rejected by, or is as seen as in conflict with, naturalism (the 'conflict thesis'). And naturalism presumes no such cosmic reason or 'logos'. This is where the 'all-encompassing relativism' that the OP mentions comes from.

Nowadays AI would quite easily pass this test, if not now, so in the foreseeable future. Does this mean, that modern-day computers actually are able to think like human beings? Or even, that they have consciousness like we have? — Pez

I put the question to chatGPT, which responded:

The Turing Test, devised by Alan Turing in 1950, is a measure of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from that of a human. Turing proposed that if a human evaluator could not consistently tell the machine apart from a human based on their responses to questions, the machine could be considered to have passed the test. The focus is on the imitation of the external behavior of intelligent beings, not on the internal thought processes.

Modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems, including chatbots and language models, have become increasingly sophisticated, making it more challenging to distinguish their outputs from human responses in certain contexts. However, passing the Turing Test does not necessarily mean that computers are able to think like human beings. Here's why:

1. **Imitation vs. Understanding**: AI can mimic the patterns of human conversation and generate responses that seem human-like, but this does not imply understanding or consciousness. The AI does not possess self-awareness, emotions, or genuine understanding of the content it processes; it operates through algorithms and data.

2. **Narrow AI vs. General AI**: Most modern AIs are examples of narrow AI, designed to perform specific tasks, such as language translation, playing a game, or making recommendations. They are not capable of general intelligence, which would involve understanding and reasoning across a broad range of domains with human-like adaptability.

3. **Lack of Consciousness**: Consciousness and subjective experience are fundamental aspects of human thought. Current AI lacks consciousness and the ability to experience the world subjectively. The process of thought, as humans experience it, involves not just responding to stimuli or questions but also emotions, motivations, and a continuous stream of internal dialogue and reflection.

4. **Different Processing Mechanisms**: Human brains and computers operate in fundamentally different ways. Human thought is the product of biological processes, evolved over millions of years, involving complex interactions among neurons and various brain regions. AI, on the other hand, processes information through algorithms and computational methods that do not replicate the biological processes of human thought.

While AI can simulate certain aspects of human thinking and may pass the Turing Test, it does so without the underlying consciousness, emotions, and genuine understanding that characterize human thought. The development of AI that truly thinks and understands like a human being would require not just advancements in computational techniques but also a deeper understanding of consciousness and human cognition, which remains a significant scientific and philosophical challenge. — ChatGPT

I'm favourable towards Vervaeke but a bit wary of Peterson. He's hated by the left. And he's expressed support for Trump, which is a fatal turnoff in my books. I think many would benefit from knowing about Vervaeke's Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, although overall there's a bit too much Vervaeke on Youtube now.

Further, in contrast to the presumptuous self-limitation of reason within modernity, Schindler avers that reason is ecstatic, that it is “always out beyond itself” and “always already with the whole.” The result of this ek-stasis is that reason is already intimately related to beings through the intelligibility of the whole; thus, reason is catholic.

I've just noticed that, re-reading the thread. I've been pondering this question, in respect of my readings of classical philosophy and the reverence for reason, modulated by Kant.

My tentative conclusion is that reason is not in principle 'ek-static' in the sense indicated in this quotation. I think that 'reason points beyond itself' - as Kant says, it has an ineluctable tendency to ask questions that it can't answer (hence the antinomies of reason.) Reason is not the be-all and end-all. In neo-Platonism, the 'unitive vision' is described thus:

For Plotinus, man "is in some sense divine, and the object of the philosophic life is to understand this divinity and restore its proper relationship with the divine All and, in that All, to come to union with its transcendent source, the One or Good" (Cambridge, 222). Plotinus's philosophy is difficult to elucidate, precisely because what it seeks to elucidate is a manner of thinking that precedes what one terms discursive thought. Discursive thought is the sort of thinking we do most often in a philosophical discussion or debate, when we seek to follow a series of premises and intermediate conclusions to a final conclusion. In such a thinking, our minds move from one point to the next, as if each point only can be true after we have known the truth of the point preceding it. The final point is true, only because we have already built up one by one a series of points preceding it logically that are also true. In the same way, the meaning of the sentence I am now speaking only builds itself up by the addition of each word, until coming to its conclusion it makes a certain sense built of the words from which it is constituted. Because discurive thinking is within ordinary time, it is not capable of thinking all its points or saying all its words in the very same moment.

But Plotinus wishes to speak of a thinking that is not discursive but intuitive, i.e. that it is knowing and what it is knowing are immediately evident to it. There is no gap then between thinking and what is thought--they come together in the same moment, which is no longer a moment among other consecutive moments, one following upon the other. Rather, the moment in which such a thinking takes place is immediately present and without difference from any other moment, i.e. its thought is no longer chronological but eternal. To even use names, words, to think about such a thinking is already to implicate oneself in a time of separated and consecutive moments (i.e. chronological) and to have already forgotten what it is one wishes to think, namely thinking and what is thought intuitively together. — Class Notes on Plotinus

Hence, reason 'pointing beyond itself', to the 'trans-rational' (which is, importantly, not simply irrational.) This is the basis of the frequent comparisons of Plotinus with e.g. Shankara and non-dualism. But all of that tends to be rejected under the catch-all of 'it's religion'.

But the alternative of stubbornly asserting one's own right to decide what matters based on nothing other than personal choice is surely a version of the inimical individualism you've been writing about. As usual, we're looking for reasonable middle grounds for compromise . . . — J

A middle way, perhaps. At issue, though, is the substance of wisdom, of what wisdom constitutes, how to discern it. I contend that post-Enlightenment philosophies tend, on the whole, to occlude that question, often because of their antagonism to religious ideas, which has already been noted several times in this thread. Not that I'm evangalising any particular religion in saying that. But I think classical philosophy has a religious side - where it differs from religion per se, is the insistence on subjecting religious ideas to reason. But pre-modern philosophy generally was open to the religious, it was a part of their Weltanschauung in a way it can't be for us.

The issue is that the definition of reason itself, per Adorno and Habermas, has changed in post-Enlightenment philosophy. To throw that into relief, consider the mainstream consensus of the essentially meaningless nature of the Universe. On the one hand, from a purely scientific point of view, it makes complete sense, as we're looking at it from a completely objective point of view. Science consciously excludes anything subjective in its reckonings. But when this becomes a belief about the 'the way things really are' that it opens up the chasm of nihislim. Because we don't actually live in the scientific universe, we dwell in the human condition. In the absence of a sense of the sacred, there is no pole star towards which we orient ourselves. Hence, again, awakening from the meaning crisis.

Isn't there an vigorous, important strain of thought in the West that tries to find meaning and value in various forms of community, intersubjectivity, etc.? — J

Well, yeah, but my intuition is, that there's still something missing. Hence that link I threw in at the last minute - it was an OP on the dialogue between then Cardinal Ratzinger and Jürgen Habermas, at the time when the Habermas sought to re-engage in the dialogue between religious and secular philosophy.

What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments. “Postmetaphysical thinking,” Habermas contends, “cannot cope on its own with the defeatism concerning reason which we encounter today both in the postmodern radicalization of the ‘dialectic of the Enlightenment’ and in the naturalism founded on a naïve faith in science.”

There are resonances with another philosopher of similar ilk, Theodor Adorno:

Adorno’s moral philosophy is similarly concerned with the effects of ‘enlightenment’ upon both the prospects of individuals leading a ‘morally good life’ and philosophers’ ability to identify what such a life may consist of. Adorno argues that the instrumentalization of reason has fundamentally undermined both. He argues that social life in modern societies no longer coheres around a set of widely espoused moral truths and that modern societies lack a moral basis. What has replaced morality as the integrating ‘cement’ of social life are instrumental reasoning and the exposure of everyone to the capitalist market. According to Adorno, modern, capitalist societies are fundamentally nihilistic, in character; opportunities for leading a morally good life and even philosophically identifying and defending the requisite conditions of a morally good life have been abandoned to instrumental reasoning and capitalism. Within a nihilistic world, moral beliefs and moral reasoning are held to have no ultimately rational authority: moral claims are conceived of as, at best, inherently subjective statements, expressing not an objective property of the world, but the individual’s own prejudices. Morality is presented as thereby lacking any objective, public basis. The espousal of specific moral beliefs is thus understood as an instrument for the assertion of one’s own, partial interests: morality has been subsumed by instrumental reasoning. Adorno attempts to critically analyse this condition. He is not a nihilist, but a critic of nihilism. — IEP

no single individual can assert what is valuable or not; reasoned, fallible consensus is required. — J

Inter-subjective agreement is essential when it comes to scientific hypotheses, but it's not realistic when it comes to one's own existence, unless you're part of a collective. So, paradoxically, in response to that, I will say that the individual conscience is supreme, that there are situations where you and you alone are required to make a call based on nothing other than your convictions. Sure, you might get it wrong, but that is part of the deal. Maybe that's why faith is required.

also see https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/does-reason-know-what-it-is-missing/

In liberal political theory, the individual conscience is the sole arbiter of value.
— Wayfarer

Hmm, I'm wondering who you have in mind here. — J

What I'm referring to is the centrality of individualism to liberalism and modernity, and the individual as the sole arbiter of value in Enlightenment philosophy. I would have thought that an uncontroversial claim. The underlying point is that with the rejection of the transcendent, we are inhabitants of Max Weber's 'disenchanted world'.

In the pre-modern vision of things, the cosmos had been seen as an inherently purposive structure of diverse but integrally inseparable rational relations — for instance, the Aristotelian aitia, which are conventionally translated as “causes,” but which are nothing like the uniform material “causes” of the mechanistic philosophy. And so the natural order was seen as a reality already akin to intellect. Hence the mind, rather than an anomalous tenant of an alien universe, was instead the most concentrated and luminous expression of nature’s deepest essence. This is why it could pass with such wanton liberty through the “veil of Isis” and ever deeper into nature’s inner mysteries.

The Cartesian picture, by contrast, was a chimera, an ungainly and extrinsic alliance of antinomies. And reason abhors a dualism. Moreover, the sciences in their modern form aspire to universal explanation, ideally by way of the most comprehensive and parsimonious principles possible. So it was inevitable that what began as an imperfect method for studying concrete particulars would soon metastasize into a metaphysics of the whole of reality. The manifest image was soon demoted to sheer illusion, and the mind that perceived it to an emergent product of the real (which is to say, mindless) causal order. — David Bentley Hart, The Illusionist

How is one's conscience formed? — J

Isn't the Christian doctrine that 'Our conscience is a part of our God-given internal faculties, a critical inner awareness that bears witness to the norms and values we recognize'? I can see a line from Aristotle's 'nous' and Augustine's doctrine of 'divine illumination' to that conception. The point being, again, that severing the link between individual conscience and the larger sense of reason as an animating factor of the universe leaves the individual marooned in a meaningless universe, a stranger in a strange land.

The antipathy towards religion on this forum crosses a line at some point, impeding philosophical discourse. — Leontiskos

'Don't mention the war. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.' ~ Basil Fawlty, Fawlty Towers, Series 1, Episode 6, 'The Germans'.

nothing in Schindler's framing really seems to point towards political conservatism or necessarily just Roman Catholicism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

My view is that Aquinas also is an exponent of the philosophia perennis, that he preserved and carried forward the insights of Platonist philosophy, integrated with Christian theology. The decline of scholastic realism and the ascendancy of nominalism and theological voluntarism was a major watershed in the history of ideas in Western culture.

All of those names you mention are arguably part of that broader stream, Thomas Merton in particular, as an early inter-faith pioneer.

Robert Wallace (at Cornell, a secular land-grant college) hits on some extremely similar themes but doesn't seem to identify with organized religion at all. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I encountered Robert Wallace through a back-page OP in Philosophy Now, Hegel's God. I found it quite congenial, but then, he's tending towards mystical interpretation of Hegel and the 'philosophia perennis', which is basically my home turf.

It seems to me that a major part of what’s going on in the world of “religion” and “spirituality,” in our time, is a sorting out of the issue of what is genuinely transcendent. Much conventional religion seems to be stuck in the habit of conceiving of God as a separate being, despite the fact that when it’s carefully examined, such a being would be finite and thus wouldn’t really transcend the world at all. — Robert Wallace

Vitally important point. That is the same issue behind John Vervaeke's Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. That Western culture has thrown the baby of spiritual awakening out with the bathwater of ecclesiastical dogmatism.

Is religious faith special in that what is believed is taught systematically to many and reinforced versus faith an individual can have based on their own observations of how things tend to play out? — TiredThinker

The point of religious faith is that is concerned with salvation (in Semitic religions) or liberation (mokṣa or Nirvāṇa) in Eastern religions. (They're very difficult to compare.)

In the context of ecclesiastical Christianity, the central role of faith is on account of the role of Jesus Christ as Saviour. 'Faith in Jesus' is the sole criterion for salvation in those religions. Faith is the actual means of salvation.

There are very different conceptions in Eastern religions, not to mention in gnostic religions and other religious forms. For instance early Buddhism is oriented around self-reliance, 'by oneself one is purified, by oneself one is defiled'. But that is against the background of the Eastern concept of Saṃsāra, the eternal wheel of death and re-birth, meaning that the journey to eventual Nirvāṇa might occupy many lifetimes. Christianity doesn't endorse anything like that (some of the Gnostic sects such as Cathars do, but they are designated as heretical.)

Hindu faiths are likewise set against the background of acceptance of saṃsāra. So in both Buddhist and Hindu religions, faith is significant, but it has a rather different meaning than in Christianity. The 'saving grace', at least in the early Buddhist texts, is liberating insight, actual understanding of the mechanism which causes repeated rebirth. Similarly for Vedanta, which is the philosophical school of Hinduism. They both rely on the cultivation of insight, which is distinguished from faith, because it comprises wisdom (Jñāna).

That said, it is understood that at the outset, the aspirant will not possess that insight, and so must have faith that it is realisable. Faith in Buddhism is 'sradha', meaning 'to place one's heart upon'. It is more like faith in the efficacy of the Buddhist path. (Although the largest east Asian Buddhist school is Pure Land, which requires faith in the saving grace of Amida Buddha, and in that respect, is rather like Christian faith, although of course the belief system is completely different.)

Furthermore, in Christian Mysticism there are many parallels with the wisdom schools of Eastern traditions.

Another point is, that in Eastern faiths, for example, there is recognition that there are many different kinds of individuals with differing levels of adaptation and personality types, requiring different kinds of religious or spiritual models. See for instance Swami Vivekananda's Four Types of Yoga and also the 84,000 Dharma Doors of Buddhism. Western conceptions of this issue are very much a product of Western cultural history, which is very different to Eastern.

I've acquired a copy of Eric D Perl: Thinking Being - Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition, to which I was alerted in one of John Vervaeke's lectures. Perl traces the origin of classical metaphysics from its origin with Parmenides, and then follows its development through Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Aquinas. (Be aware it's expensive and out of print in hardcopy but there are .pdfs floating around.)

The first of the quoted passages is about the distinction between living and non-living, which was subject of discussion earlier in this thread. Here is a passage on the ontological distinction between beings and things:

This identification of soul as form and 'whatness' in a living thing implies continuity as well as profound difference between living and non-living things. All things, even inanimate ones, must have some form, or they would not be anything at all. But living things have a distinctive and superior kind of form, called ‘soul.’ For a living thing is far more integrated, more one whole, than a non-living thing. The unity, and hence the identity and the being, of a non-living thing is little more than the contiguity of its parts. If a rock, for example, is divided, we simply have two smaller rocks. In a living thing, on the other hand, the members of its body constitute an organic whole, such that each part both conditions and is conditioned by the other parts and the whole. A living thing is thus one being to a far greater extent than a non-living thing. It evinces a higher degree of unity, of integration, of formal identity, and its soul is this very integration of its parts into one whole. As such the soul is the reality of the living thing, that in virtue of which it is what it is and so is a being: “For the reality is the cause of being to all things, and to live, for living things, is to be, and the soul is the cause and principle of these” (De An. Β.4, 415b13–14). Life in living things, then, is not a character superadded to their mere being. Rather, life is their being, the higher, more intense mode of being proper to living things as distinct from others.

The distinction between living and non-living things is therefore not a mere ‘horizontal’ distinction, as if all things are equally beings, of which some are living and others are not. It is rather a ‘vertical’ or hierarchical distinction: a living thing is more a being than a non-living thing, in that it is more integrated, more a whole, more one thing. (p110)

For Aristotle, the hierarchical ordering of the different kinds of beings is based on the extent to which form predominates over matter in each. Non-living things have the lowest degree of form, of unifying selfhood, of activity that proceeds from themselves. Although they have some form, some nature, some behaviors of their own, without which they would be nothing at all, they come closer than all other things to being purely material, purely passive. A living thing, characterized by organic unity and the ability to nourish, maintain, and reproduce itself, is far more one, more active, exhibits a far higher degree of formal identity. A sentient living thing, an animal, exercises not only these life-functions but also consciousness, which, as the capacity to receive forms without matter, is a still higher degree of formality, of immateriality. A human being, in turn, has not only life and sense but the capacity for the wholly immaterial activity of intellection, which has as its content, and thus is one with, purely immaterial ideas. (p117) — Eric D Perl Thinking Being - Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition

This 'vertical distinction' is generally absent in modern culture, which was the point I was pressing in making the distinction between beings and things in the first place. That is an ontological distinction which I say is lost to materialism and much of modern culture as a matter of definition. (The question arises whether it is inherently at odds with liberalism.)

In the context of Platonism it was a matter of course that intellect (nous) is higher than matter, which was to become the basis of the scala naturae, the great chain of being. This provides the qualitative or vertical dimension. Matter as such is at the lowest level - in the absence of form or idea, is next to nothing. A material particular can only be said to be insofar as it has a form, and the form is not something material, but is 'impressed' upon matter 'as a seal upon wax' in Aristotle's imagery.

But neither is soul or idea an immaterial thing or the oxymoronic 'immaterial substance' of post-Cartesian philosophy. In the chapter on Plato, Perl articulates the origin of 'eidos' as being 'the look' or 'the what-it-is-ness' of a particular being. The form is emphatically not another kind of thing, it is not an 'inhabitant' of a supposed 'ethereal Platonic realm' which is the way that it is almost universally misinterpreted. I suggest this misapprehension dominates because of the cultural impact of empiricism, that only things exist, things which exist in time and space. Seeing through that requires a different kind of seeing, and that 'seeing' is the subject of metaphysics (again, largely extinct outside of Catholic philosophy in today's culture, as one of the last preserves of metaphysics).

Here Perl demonstrates the falsehood of the usual way of thinking about the forms:

Is there such a thing as health? Of course there is. Can you see it? Of course not. This does not mean that the forms are occult entities floating ‘somewhere else’ in ‘another world,’ a ‘Platonic heaven.’ It simply says that the intelligible identities which are the reality, the whatness, of things are not themselves physical things to be perceived by the senses, but must be grasped by thought. If, taking any of these examples—say, justice, health, or strength—we ask, “How big is it? What color is it? How much does it weigh?” we are obviously asking the wrong kind of question. Forms are ideas, not in the sense of concepts or abstractions, but in that they are realities apprehended by thought rather than by sense. They are thus ‘separate’ in that they are not additional members of the world of sensible things, but are known by a different mode of awareness. But this does not mean that they are ‘located elsewhere,’ or that they are not, as Plato says, the very intelligible contents, the truth and reality of sensible things.

It is in this sense, too, that Plato’s references to the forms as ‘patterns’ or ‘paradigms’, of which instances are ‘images,’ must be understood. All too often, ‘paradigm’ is taken to mean ‘model to be copied.’ The following has been offered as an example of this meaning of παράδειγμα (parádeigma) in classical Greek: “[T]he architect of a temple requiring, say, twenty-four Corinthian capitals would have one made to his own specifications, then instruct his masons to produce twenty-three more just like it.” Such a model is itself one of the instances: when we have the original and the twenty-three copies, we have twenty-four capitals of the same kind. It is the interpretation of forms as paradigms in this sense that leads to the ‘third man argument’ by regarding the form as another instance and the remaining instances as ‘copies’ of the form. This interpretation of Plato’s ‘paradigmatism’ reflects a pictorial imagination of the forms as, so to speak, higher-order sensibles located in ‘another world,’ rather than as the very intelligible identities, the whatnesses, of sensible things.

But forms cannot be paradigms in this sense. Just as the intelligible ‘look’ that is common to many things of the same kind, a form, as we have seen, is not an additional thing of that kind. Likewise, it makes no sense to say that a body, a physical, sensible thing, is a copy, in the sense of a replica or duplicate, of an intelligible idea. Indeed, Plato expressly distinguishes between a copy and an image: “Would there be two things, that is, Cratylus and an image of Cratylus, if some God copied not only your color and shape, as painters do, but also … all the things you have—if he set such other things beside you? Would such then be Cratylus and an image of Cratylus, or two Cratyluses?—Two Cratyluses, it seems to me, Socrates.” He then remarks, “Do you not perceive how far images fall short of having the same features [τὰ αὐτὰ, tá aftá] as the things of which they are images?” (Crat. 432b5–c6, d1–3). An image, in Plato’s terms, then, is not another thing of the same kind as the paradigm, having characteristics in common with it. But παράδειγμα/parádeigma need not mean ‘model’ in this sense. It can also mean ‘plan,’ ‘design,’ ‘pattern,’ and it is in this sense that Plato refers to the forms as paradigms. To take the same example, the architect, instead of giving the masons a model capital and instructing them to produce twenty-three more, could give them instead a plan, a diagram, or even simply a set of specifications, and instruct them to produce twenty-four ‘such capitals.’ In this case the paradigm is the pattern, the design, the set of specifications, which is not itself a capital at all. The true paradigm, indeed, is the architect’s idea, of which the written diagram or specifications are merely a symbolic representation. — Eric D Perl Thinking Being, p31 ff

Perl has considerably more to say on the subject, detailing how Plato modifies Parmenides' uncompromising duality between being and non-being to argue that particulars are beings insofar as they have form - otherwise they would be nothing at all. So particulars are 'in between' being and non-being, not truly real, as are forms, but neither simply non-existent. Particulars are real insofar as they 'participlate in' or instantiate forms or ideas:

If we reflect on the notion of ‘appearance,’ it ceases to be obvious that there is no middle road, no intermediate between being and non-being. An appearance of a thing—for example, a reflection, as an appearance of that which is reflected—is not the thing itself, nor is it another thing, additional to the thing itself. When Socrates stands before a mirror, making a reflection, the reflection is neither a second Socrates nor another, additional person: there remains only one Socrates, one man. But neither is the reflection, what is seen in the mirror, simply nothing, and to see it is not to see nothing at all, or to suffer a hallucination. Appearance is not the same as illusion. It is coherent, in accord with ordinary usage, and in a significant sense true, to say, “I see Socrates in the mirror,” while realizing at the same time that I am not looking at Socrates himself at all. To see the reflection is both to see Socrates, as he appears here, and not to see Socrates, ‘himself by himself.’ Thus what is seen in seeing the reflection or appearance, both is and is not the real thing. And this is precisely how Plato characterizes the ‘in between’ status of the sensible, as that which is opined rather than intellectually known: “We said earlier, then, if something should appear [φανείη] such that it at once is and is not, this would be such as to lie in between that which purely is and that which altogether is not, and neither knowledge nor ignorance would be concerned with it, but that which we say is in between ignorance and knowledge” (Rep. 478d5–9). We should note the characteristically Platonic pun: that which appears, or as we might say ‘turns up,’ in between being and non-being, is, precisely, appearance itself. Sensible instances, therefore, as the multiple, differentiated appearances, given to sense, of the unitary forms that are apprehended by intellect, are neither reality ‘itself by itself,’ the intelligible, nor simply nothing, but ‘in between.’ — ibid

Given that, the idea of the 'separateness' of the realm of forms from the material realm is pointing to different levels of understanding, again, not to an 'ethereal Platonic realm':

Knowledge and opinion, then, as distinct modes of awareness, are not directed toward two different sets of ‘objects,’ of which one is completely real and the other, incomprehensibly, less than completely real and yet not nothing. Rather, they are higher and lower ways in which reality may be apprehended. Opinion, the mode of apprehension correlated to appearance as distinct from reality ‘itself by itself,’ thus lies in between knowledge and ignorance. Here again, unlike Parmenides, Plato carefully distinguishes between ignorance, a total failure to apprehend reality at all, and opinion, an apprehension of reality as it appears and hence an imperfect apprehension of reality. The distinction between knowledge and opinion, therefore, unlike that between knowledge and ignorance, is not a simple opposition, but is rather a distinction between the perfect and therefore paradigmatic apprehension of reality, and a less perfect apprehension of reality. Opinion is thus analogous to seeing reality in a mirror, rather than to not seeing it at all, and sensible things, as what is given to this mode of apprehension, are analogous to reflections, neither reality itself nor simply nothing. ....

....If the levels of reality are levels of presentation and apprehension, then the many ‘ascents’ in the dialogues, the images of ‘going to’ the forms or true being, express not a passage from one ‘world,’ one set of objects, to another, but rather, as Plato repeatedly indicates, the ascent of the soul, a psychic, cognitive ascent, from one mode of apprehension to another, and hence not from one reality to a different reality, but from appearance to reality. — ibid

The concept of a vertical distinction between living and non-living things, and among living things themselves, conflicts with contemporary cultural and philosophical perspectives, particularly those grounded in natural science and liberalism. Naturalism, with its emphasis on physical processes as the fundamental reality, will usually reject such metaphysical distinctions. It tends to flatten the Aristotelian hierarchy into a horizontal plane where differences among entities are seen in terms of varying arrangements of matter rather than different degrees or kinds of being. It's also in conflict with liberalism. Liberalism, particularly in its political and social manifestations, emphasizes individual freedom, equality, and the separation of church and state (or the sacred and profane, more generally). This framework generally relegates questions of metaphysics, spirituality, and religion to the private sphere, treating them as matters of personal belief rather than public concern or objective truth. The liberal public square is thus shaped by a commitment to pluralism and secularism, which can obscure or sideline vertical distinctions of being that imply a universal order or hierarchy, especially those rooted in religious or metaphysical philosophy.

Ref: Eric D Perl: Thinking Being - Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition

I honestly have no clue who he is outside of having had the book recommended to me. — Count Timothy von Icarus

D. C. Schindler is professor of metaphysics and anthropology at the John Paul II Institute, Washington, DC. He is the author of eleven books, including Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty (Notre Dame Press, 2017).

A Catholic intellectual. It seems to me that many of the prominent advocates of Platonism and traditional philosophy generally are Catholic. This is something I wrestle with, as I'm not Catholic, rather more a lapsed Anglican. But the metaphysics of 'the Good' seems to me to imply a real qualitative dimension, a true good or summum bonum. That will fit naturally with belief in God but rather uneasily with cosmopolitan secularism, I would have thought.

students embrace a sort of all encompassing relativism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I suggest that is because in liberal political theory, the individual conscience is the sole arbiter of value. There is no higher authority in any moral sense. Respect for reason is often associated with the oppressive value structures of colonialism and cultural eurocentrism, deference to 'dead white males'.

We have been arguing about Gerson's thesis since I got here. Much of that dispute involves how to read that difference in Plato's language. In view of these years of wrangling over texts and their meaning, do you see the opposition to Gerson's thesis as only a part of this one?:

"In all humility, I think this accounts for a lot of the resistance that advocacy of philosophical idealism provokes. Moderns don't want the world to be like that." — Paine

In Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy, Lloyd Gerson argues that Platonism and naturalism are basically incommensurable. On this forum, naturalism is ascendant. (This is a rather good online lecture and summary of Gerson's book. I'm also finding Eric Perl's book, mentioned above, very informative, although I doubt anyone here will like it.)

Incidentally, I've announced elsewhere I'm signing out for February to concentrate on other projects, so bye for now.

As a brief justification, this because no human can be omniscient,
— javra — Fooloso4

A doctrinal note - a Buddha is not (just) human, nor a God, nor a Demi-god (‘yaksa’). Buddha means ‘awakened’,

Noted and updated.

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper--namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself. I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.

My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed. — Thomas Nagel

Tell me this is not a factor in these discussions. :lol:

As you're an affeciando of ChatGPT, I've done likewise with respect to the question at hand, as follows:

User: I've made the claim that a distinction can be made between an empirical theory and a metaphysical stance. That could be illustrated with reference to Karl Popper's criterion of 'falsifiability', could it not?

ChatGPT: Yes, your claim can indeed be illustrated by referring to Karl Popper's criterion of 'falsifiability'. Popper introduced the concept of falsifiability as a demarcation criterion to distinguish between what he considered to be scientific theories and non-scientific theories, including metaphysical stances.

Empirical Theory
An empirical theory, in the context of Popper's philosophy, is one that is testable and falsifiable through observation or experiment. For Popper, the hallmark of scientific theories is their openness to being proven wrong by empirical evidence. A theory is empirical if it makes predictions that can be tested and potentially refuted by observation or experimentation. The possibility of falsification is crucial; it means that a theory can be tested against the real world and discarded if it does not hold up. This does not mean the theory is true but that it has yet to be proven false, maintaining a provisional status.

Metaphysical Stance
On the other hand, a metaphysical stance refers to a position or theory that addresses questions beyond the physical realm, often dealing with the fundamental nature of reality, existence, or the universe that are not subject to empirical testing or falsification in the same way as scientific theories. These stances or theories are not necessarily concerned with empirical evidence and cannot be tested through empirical means. As such, they do not meet Popper's criterion of falsifiability.

User Right! But 'physicalism', the metaphysical claim that 'everything is ultimately physical', would *not* be an empirical theory, according to this criterion, would it?

ChatGPT: Indeed, 'physicalism'—the metaphysical claim that everything is ultimately physical in nature—would not qualify as an empirical theory according to Karl Popper's criterion of falsifiability. Popper's criterion suggests that for a theory to be considered scientific, it must be testable and falsifiable; that is, it must be possible in principle to refute it through observation or experiment.

Physicalism, as a metaphysical stance, posits a broad claim about the nature of reality that is not directly amenable to empirical testing or falsification. It makes a general assertion about what exists or what everything is made of, rather than proposing specific, testable hypotheses about the physical world. While physicalist views may be compatible with empirical sciences and can inspire scientific research, the claim itself—'everything is ultimately physical'—does not offer a way to be proven false through empirical means. It operates more as a foundational assumption or a lens through which one interprets empirical data rather than an empirical theory in its own right.

Thus, according to Popper's criteria, physicalism would be categorized outside the realm of empirical science and instead within the domain of metaphysics. This distinction highlights the difference between what can be empirically tested and what constitutes a broader philosophical or conceptual framework for understanding the nature of reality.

Is Socrates referring to his own mind or the human mind of Mind. I might say universal Mind. — Fooloso4

I am, as I mentioned, reading a recent book Thinking Being: Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition by Eric Perl (which is out of print and impossible to get, except that a kindly soul has posted a PDF of it.)

From which, in a discussion of the 'separateness' of the forms, and the idea of levels of being, we read:

The strongly visual imagery and the references to a “place” may incline us to read this as a voyage to ‘another world.’ But Socrates has already warned us that he is telling not “what the soul actually is” but rather “what it is like” (246a5) and later expressly refers to this story as a “mythic hymn” (265c1). The “place above the sky” is not in fact a place, since what is ‘there’ has no shape or color, is not bodily at all. Rather, the flight is a mythic representation of the psychic, cognitive attainment of an intellectual apprehension of the intelligible identities, ‘themselves by themselves,’ that inform and are displayed by, or appear in, sensible things. The forms are metaphorically represented in spatial terms as ‘outside’ the entire cosmos in that they are not themselves sensible things, not additional members of the sensible world.

I'm still only part-way through this book, but it's making a lot of things clear to me. (I learned about it in one of John Vervaeke's video lectures.)

The problem is, how can we assess it (mystical claims)? — Fooloso4

As I understand it, it requires both aptitude and application. If you look into the various mystical religious movements - sufism, Zen, Vedanta, Christian Mysticism - you will find there is extensive literature, a recognised lineage of teachers, in short a framework within which these disciplines are transmitted and made meaningful.

Such stories are weak evidence for anything real corresponding to them. Should we accept that there are Olympian or Egyptian gods? — Fooloso4

Especially if you're predisposed against them. But this is what hermenuetics is - intepretation of ancient texts, (often but not always religious in origin). Also consider 'mythos' as indicative of stages in the development of consciousness e.g. Julian Jayne's Bicameral Mind, in which the mind once operated in a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys—a bicameral mind, the breakdown of which gave rise to what we now think of as 'consciousness'. Richard M Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness is another model.

I assume you do not accept every claim about things you do not know. — Fooloso4

Of course not. In none of this am I putting myself forward as an exemplar or possessor of esoteric knowledge. But I've studied comparative religion, Mircea Eliade, William James, Evelyn Underhill, and I don't believe it's all moonshine. Whereas, seems to me vital for a lot of people to believe it must be. It's what Max Weber calls the great disenchantment.

Which brings me to:

I think all of our readings are by default modern. We cannot escape being modern. It is our cave. — Fooloso4

Socrates says that the free prisoner would think that the world outside the cave was superior to the world he experienced in the cave and attempt to share this with the prisoners remaining in the cave attempting to bring them onto the journey he had just endured; "he would bless himself for the change, and pity [the other prisoners]" and would want to bring his fellow cave dwellers out of the cave and into the sunlight (516c).

The returning prisoner, whose eyes have become accustomed to the sunlight, would be blind when he re-entered the cave, just as he was when he was first exposed to the sun (516e). The prisoners who had remained, according to the dialogue, would infer from the returning man's blindness that the journey out of the cave had harmed him and that they should not undertake a similar journey. Socrates concludes that the prisoners, if they were able, would therefore reach out and kill anyone who attempted to drag them out of the cave (517a).

In all humility, I think this accounts for a lot of the outrage resistance that advocacy of philosophical idealism provokes. Moderns don't want the world to be like that.

Absolute bullshit. I provide ample citations, links to SEP articles with definitions, copious arguments. If there's anyone with blinkers on, it's you. :rage:

a lot of time spent in these sorts of dicussions has taught me — wonderer1

It's taught me that you have little insight into or knowledge of the subject matter of this forum.

Russell's universals unlike Forms are not causes. — Fooloso4

In Platonist philosophy, forms are causal only in the sense of serving as models or archetypes. For example, the reason any particular beautiful thing is beautiful is because it participates in, or imitates, the Form of Beauty. In this sense, the Forms impart things with their essence and make them intelligible to human minds. But they're not causal in the material sense, they're rather more like what would become the 'formal cause' in Aristotle (and I don't know if that has a counterpart in modern thought). Russell's comments, and the others quoted, are illustrative of universals in the Aristotelian sense and are relevant to the argument that the faculty of mind which grasps the forms is different in kind to the sensory faculties, a difference which is downplayed or lost in empiricism (per Maritain). Those passages I quoted all converge on the fact that the forms or ideas are not abstract entities in some non-existent ethereal realm, but are rather the principles of intelligibility in particular beings.

If someone claims to have mathematical knowledge it can be demonstrated. Can the same be said of someone who claims to have mystical knowledge? — Fooloso4

As mystical insight is experiential and first-person, the criteria for assessing it are different to those of mathematics and science, which are objective and known in the third person. But there is an abundant cross-cultural literature describing it, not that I expect many here to be interested in it.

They claim to know something we do not. You seem inclined to believe them. I am not. — Fooloso4

But then, you're making ignorance the yardstick for how their claims are to be judged. Why should we accept that interpretation, which calls into doubt many other interpretations?

First please demonstrate why idealism implies anti-realism in the first place.
— Wayfarer
I never claimed or implied "idealism implies anti-realism — 180 Proof

The clear implication of this post:

So, again, please demonstrate how, as you claim, 'the established facts of evolution and cosmology are "equally compatible" with idealism (i.e. antirealism) as they are with physicalism'. — 180 Proof

But please don't go to any trouble to re-explain it, besides, it belongs in the other thread on 'arguments for physicalism'.

Apropos of which, a splendid Medium publication solely dedicated to just such abstruse considerations

https://www.cantorsparadise.com/