I wonder if anyone here has read or knows of A General Theory of Magic, by Marcel Mauss, French sociologist?

The jacket blurb is

First written by Marcel Mauss and Henri Humbert in 1902, A General Theory of Magic gained a wide new readership when republished by Mauss in 1950. As a study of magic in 'primitive' societies and its survival today in our thoughts and social actions, it represents what Claude Lévi-Strauss called, in an introduction to that edition, the astonishing modernity of the mind of one of the century's greatest thinkers. The book offers a fascinating snapshot of magic throughout various cultures as well as deep sociological and religious insights still very much relevant today. At a period when art, magic and science appear to be crossing paths once again, A General Theory of Magic presents itself as a classic for our times.

(I noted with amusement one of the reader reviews in Amazon was 'I bought this book to learn magic tricks and there are none in there! It's a rip-off'.)

I read that as a parable about the development of self-consciousness and language. Animal awareness is innocent in the sense that it has no sense of self and no idea that things could be any different to what they are. With the advent of self-consciousness, language, possessions, the fear of death, human consciousness moves to a novel plane of existence, able to make its own judgements and decide on its own courses of action.

the Buddha seemed to be a practical empiricist instead of a theoretical metaphysicist — Gnomon

But nothing like empiricism as generally understood. Buddhism is maybe more like what William James had in mind with 'radical empiricism'. James believed that reality is not just a collection of objects and events that exist independently of human perception, but rather a constantly evolving process that is shaped by our experiences. The entire domain of experience, whether subjective or objective, constitute the understanding of being. He argued that we should approach our experiences with an open mind and a willingness to learn rather than dogmas, religious, philosophical or scientific.

The point about Kant's antinomies is their grounding in his observation that we ask questions we can't know the answers to, as a consequence of our ability to reason. That's the sense in which they're comparable to the Buddha's 'unanswered questions'. You can waste a lot of time wondering, but the reality of existence is a pressing matter and not captured by speculative wondering. Not that it's something that I myself don't do.

Needs its own thread. — Banno

There is one.

Hoffman
— Gnomon
Yeah. I'm reading that. Not so impressed. — Banno

Digression, but the question I have for Hoffman is, if everything you think is a result of evolutionary adaptation, doesn't that include his theory of evolutionary adaptation?

A couple of things to bear in mind. One is the popular notion that order simply emerges spontaneously from chaos. This seems to be the conclusion favoured by many naturalists, on account of them having ruled a higher intelligence out of the reckoning. The idea of evolution then somehow becomes a complete explanatory metaphor for the whole universe, beginning with the Big Bang: things just evolve.

The problems with that are various. First, it is now understood that the universe emerges from the Big Bang because there are very specific fundamental parameters which, had they been even slightly different, would not have resulted in the formation of any order whatever (see Just Six Numbers, Martin Rees). Second, science itself does not explain the order of nature. It explores the order of nature, to great effect and benefit (although benefit is not the only consequence). But as to why there is an order in the first place, science is mute, as it’s a different kind of question to the questions posed by naturalism and which are sought in the order of nature. Naturalism, in that sense, assumes an order of nature. To think that it explains that order, is comparable to the belief that the rooster explains the sunrise.

Grist to the mill.

Not that I find it the least cause for joy. More for dissappointment.

Realist is counterfactual definiteness, existence in absence of measurement. — noAxioms

Just for the sake of clarity:

In physics, counter-factual definiteness is a concept related to the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. It refers to the idea that physical systems have definite properties, even if they are not measured or observed.

According to counter-factual definiteness, if a measurement had been made on a quantum system, it would have had a definite outcome, even if that outcome was not actually observed. In other words, the properties of a system exist independently of any measurements or observations made on it. — ChatGPT

Existence due to measurement is not that. — noAxioms

So, you're still 'realist', but you are outsourcing measurement to everything that exists:

The relationship has absolutely nothing to do with one part of the relation being something living or perceiving or having any sensory apparatus. — noAxioms

So, 'measurement', for you, occupies the place that 'God' does, for Berkeley, i.e. it keeps everything in existence when not being observed, as Berkeley's God keeps everything in existence even while not being perceived.

Something the readers of this thread might enjoy (and apologies to Dfpolis for gatecrashing) - an excellent review from Edward Feser on a contemporary Platonist philosopher, Jerrold Katz.

But none of that stops physics from happening. — noAxioms

Physics is a human undertaking. Who is doing the measuring is just as much part of it as the object of measurement. The mistake is to believe that physics describes a universe as if there were no humans. All measures are made by humans. All that's happened throughout all this is that quantum physics has now made that obvious.

I gave up at ‘there’s a unique form for every particular’.

How is it that God is not culpable? — Banno

In what possible world is there no suffering? Where children emerge wholly formed and not subject to the hazards of infancy? Where there is no predation and no creature ever suffers and dies? Where there are no diseases and nobody suffers injury from falls of accidents?

There's a view that I call 'the hotel manager theodicy'. 'Hey, people are suffering! There's disasters and diseases! Who's in charge here!' It's based on the anthropomorphic image of God as a kind of director or CEO - a hotel manager, and not a good one. But I don't recall in any of the mythologies of the major religions any assurance that the world ought to be like this, that it ought to be free of suffering or imperfection. If there is a reason for suffering, it must be something other than that.

A rock measures the moon as much as I do, and so the moon exists to the rock. — noAxioms

Inanimate objects don't measure anything. And measurement is a conscious process. The 'moon exists to the rock' is a meaningless statement.

'Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxies—but all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation. This is the way the early universe was before the emergence of life—and the way the present universe is outside the view of any observer' ~ Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order.

So - the observer creates the reality. This is not a figurative expression or a thought-experiment. It is actually happening moment-by-moment.

Speaking of magic, John Michael Greer has a series of posts on disenchantment, the current edition being The Destiny of Disenchantment, discussing Owen Barfield, Ken Wilber and Jean Gebser, and what 'post-disenchantment' might consist of.

:100: This is similar to John Hick’s argument in Evil and the God of Love. Can’t find any fault with it.

I think this is a confused argument.

What strikes me first of all is that good and evil are manifest in experience from one’s earliest memories, in the form of pleasure and pain, or joy and sorrow, and the many other pairs of contraries that occur to any being who is born and grows up.

So a natural person will not have any indication of the existence of anything answering to the name of ‘God’, outside what he or she might be told by his/her parents. I suppose you could argue that a particular person might claim have an intuitive knowledge of God, but that doesn't amount to an argument for the existence of God.

To try and reframe the point in terms that might be intelligible to theology, the 'made-up quality' would correspond to a contingent or accidental fact of existence. A color, or some other quality, might be 'made up' or devised by someone. But I very much doubt that the category of 'goodness' would fall under that description. As already said, every human, maybe every sentient being, would have some sense of what is good and what isn't.

Beyond that, I can barely see the point of this OP, so I will leave it to others to interpret.

Does the experience of the tea-drinker just suddenly cease? Does the tea drinker not actually have any experience of it? Is there more than one identity of the friend, one hot and one cold, or are somehow both states experienced by the same friend, but only one remembered? How would you reply to something like that? — noAxioms

I don't understand the point you're trying to illustrate. Nothing on the macroscopic level really exists in anything like the mathematical superposition of states that describe subatomic particles. It seems a version of the 'Schrodinger's cat' idea.

It pains me to have to use human language to express that, but I’m not talking about the language, the expression, the concept, the fact that the tree happens to be my very distant cousin, or whatever. I’m talking about the tree. — noAxioms

But you've already said:

I don’t suggest things ‘are real’ in any objective sense. — noAxioms

Yet in another place, you say

The far side of the moon is still there when nobody looks at it since looking at it isn’t what makes it there. — noAxioms

And also that:

If I say the moon exists, I mean that I've measured it, which doesn't involve looking or any other conscious function. — noAxioms

So, what do you mean, really? Because it seems to me, despite your claims to the contrary, that your view is realist, i.e. that trees, the moon, the proverbial table or proverbial apple, are all quite real, independently of anyone's knowledge or experience of them. Isn't that the point at issue?

Nihilism is basically 'nothing matters' - which is close in meaning to 'nothing is real' or 'it doesn't make any difference what you do'. It doesn't have to be dramatic or colorful. It could be a shrug, a 'whatever', a 'so what?'

For me, nihilism is the idea that there is no objective meaning, and that meaning is asserted by sentient beings such as humans. — Judaka

That's more relativism than nihilism. Nihilism would be closer to: the meaning you assert is meaningless. Relativism is essentially egological - not egocentric, but arising from the perspective that the individual ego and/or their cultural identity is the only arbiter and source of meaning.

I'd question the relevance of 'objectivity' in this context. The point about the sense of meaning that anchored traditional worldviews was not so much 'objective' as 'transcendent', because it was said to make a difference, not only in this life, but in the life hereafter. In the absence of any hereafter, then the only kind of transcendence that makes sense is living on in your works and progeny. Which is not nothing, but also not quite the same.

One of the books that comes to mind in this respect is Victor Frankl's Mankind's Search for Meaning. It was a classic in the post-war years and sold millions of copies. It drew on his experiences in the Nazi death camps and his observation that those possessed of a sense of meaning invariably did better than those without. He became a famous psychotherapist in New York after the war. devising what he called Logotherapy, a form of psychotherapy that is focused the ability to endure hardship and suffering through a search for purpose.

I personally feel having a sense of meaning and/or purpose is an essential pre-requisite for a happy existence, the absence of it easily gives rise to ennui or a sense of futility.

I don’t know where to start with him. — invicta

I agree that tackling Aristotle is daunting (and my knowledge of him is fragmentary). The standard encyclopedia sources are the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP). A translator by the name of Joe Sachs authored some of those articles and is also translator of a well-regarded edition of Aristotle's Metaphysics. His IEP article is here https://iep.utm.edu/aristotle-metaphysics/ and the homepage of his translation here https://www.greenlion.com/books/Metaphysics.html . Another well-regarded edition is his Nichomachean Ethics.

I studied Protestant Work Ethic as an undergrad, it was unbelievably dense but it opened up the field of sociology of religion - Durkheim, Peter Berger and others. It looks at the social role of religion rather than through the prism of belief itself.

(There's a current academic who has criticized the 'disenchantment' thesis - Jason Josephen-Storm - a review here - review also mentions the Frankfurt School.)

I've just read your OP properly, I had skipped over it before (hadn't noticed the link to Weber). The thought that springs to my mind is the G K Chesterton quote, 'When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.' I see a lot of that in today's world. Take for example the proliferation of science fiction about multiverses, multiple realities and the like - Inception, Matrix, Tenet. Many of them express, to me, a gnawing doubt about the nature of reality which is being projected through popular media. And everywhere a powerful longing for identity, but refracted now through the infinite mirrored hallways of social media. There's a deep sense that nobody knows what is real anymore. Not even scientists, with their mad dreams of multiple universes. Makes it easy to believe in anything. Life is like a movie, but unfortunately with real blood.

I think we can get to some secular version of the sacred. — Jamal

Did you ever encounter Habermas' dialogues with Cardinal Ratzinger? I've never read the books but I've read a few articles about them - see Does Reason Know what it is Missing?, NY Times.

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.”

I only meant 'bogus' in that it's not a bona fide quote. Einstein has many great philosophical quotes, and I'd have like that to be one of them, but it's not. But as I said, I fully accept the sentiment!

Skipping over a couple of hundred years of disenchantment, it occurs to me to ask: are people today enchanted by magic spells? — Jamal

You know, 'disenchantment' has it's own Wikipedia entry.

In social science, disenchantment (German: Entzauberung) is the cultural rationalization and devaluation of religion apparent in modern society. The term was borrowed from Friedrich Schiller by Max Weber to describe the character of a modernized, bureaucratic, secularized Western society. In Western society, according to Weber, scientific understanding is more highly valued than belief, and processes are oriented toward rational goals, as opposed to traditional society, in which "the world remains a great enchanted garden". — Wikipedia, Disenchantment

The article goes onto mention the Frankfurt School, which we've discussed recently.

There's a bogus, but profound, Einstein quote, 'either everything is a miracle, or nothing is'. I think there has to be an element of that feeling in life, otherwise, as Neitszche also glumly predicted, nihilism engulfs everything.

Spirituality our new saviour is now up for sale for £15.99 a month or a one off payment of £666 — invicta

There have been many multi-million dollar lawsuits over yoga terminology and acoutrements in the USA, with corporations copyrighting Sanskrit terms and then suing others who tried to use them.

But then, as Rumi said, 'there would be no fool's gold if there were no gold'.

Here's the current installment from the excellent Matt O'Dowd of PBS Spacetime on the reality of space and time (hey he's been working up to this title for a long while!) It is queued to a passage about Leibniz' view that space (and by implication time) are grounded, in some sense, in subjective perception rather than a truly mind-independent reality. Starts with 'Leibniz had another controversial idea...'

Leibniz felt that whatever it is that's out there that behaves like space only gains the subjective feeling of depth, breadth, height, and distance when our brains try to organise objects that are separated by an altogether more abstract property. — Matt O'Dowd

Although I would comment that it's not that it's abstract, simply that, because it is a fundamental constituent of conscious awareness, it's not something we can be aware of. It is, as Kant would later say, a pre-condition of conscious experience.

Is Universal Mind merely another name for God? — Art48

as T Clark mentions, there are similar ideas found in many forms of Eastern philosophy and religion. I think the underlying problem is that modern culture, of which you and I and everyone here are a part, is firmly grounded in individualism. It is, in philosophical language, egological - not the same as ego-centric, but 'tending to a perspective anchored in the perspective of the individual self'. Whereas Vedanta and Buddhism are not egological, but transcendental - they are grounded in meditative stillness and insight into the levels of consciousness (of which for example the chakras are the symbolic forms, as Jung would say). Hence the mythology of the 'higher self' or 'true nature' which is something that must be discovered by the aspirant, generally under the guidance of a teacher.

These movements are, of course, also part of modern culture nowadays, in the form of the multifarious spiritual teachings and schools that have appeared to fill this gap in the Western mindset. In fact, perhaps that's what you're actually appealing to, consciously or otherwise.

You're welcome. Those books were staples of my reading in the 1970's.

That kind of “non-sense” is what physicist Sabine Hossenfelder sarcastically calls “Existential Physics”. — Gnomon

Pondering what is 'before the beginning' is just the kind of question that Buddhism designates as unanswerable, of which in some versions, there are ten:

1. The world is eternal.
2. The world is not eternal.
3. The world is (spatially) infinite.
4. The world is not (spatially) infinite.
5. The being imbued with a life force [i.e. 'soul'] is identical with the body.
6. The being imbued with a life force is not identical with the body.
7. The Tathagata [i.e. the Buddha] exists after death.
8. The Tathagata does not exist after death.
9. The Tathagata both exists and does not exist after death.
10. The Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist after death.

Scholar T R V Murti notes in his 1955 book, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, that there are considerable similarities between this list and Kant's antinomies of reason, particularly the first four. (The book contains many comparisions of Buddhist philosophy and Kant, for which it is nowadays mainly criticized.) The Buddhist attitude towards such imponderables is expressed by the 'simile of the poisoned arrow', in which a wanderer is shot by a poisoned arrow, but rather than seeking to have it removed, wants to know who fired it, what it was made of, etc, and consequently dies as a result. The Buddha's teaching is to 'remove the arrow', i.e. overcome the cankers and cravings, rather than think about unanswerable questions such as these.

(This is frequently interpreted to say that Buddhism is 'anti-metaphysical', but that is only partially true, as Buddhism is certainly not positivist or naturalist in the modern sense, although consideration of that would take us far afield.)

Closer to home, there's another way of framing the whole problem of 'before the beginning'. I think, perhaps, the idea of trying to envisage God as being a literal first cause in a series of events is itself problematical, as it is in a way reductive. It's part of the 'God as supreme engineer' metaphor. But I don't know if a first cause is conceptually equivalent to the 'ground of being' in philosophical theology. It is more like the hypothesis that LaPlace had no need of. Karen Armstrong's 2009 book, The Case for God, laments that this tendency of early modern science to hypothesis God as standing behind science, as one of the causes of the decline of faith in God. Her view is that the basis of religious cosmologies resides in a fundamenal cognitive shift on the part of the believer, not in a theory of everything (review.)

One further remark - George Lemaître himself was a Catholic priest, but he never invoked his cosmological theories as any kind of argument for God. In fact by the 1950's, Pope Pius XII had started to mention Big Bang theory as a kind of affirmation of 'creation ex nihilo' - something which embarrased Lemaître, as he believed that his scientific work was a separate matter to his faith, and who prevailed upon the Pope's science adviser to, you know, cool it. Which the Pope did! He henceforth refrained from making such a connection in his speeches. A salutary lesson, I would have thought.

If you are interested in the Greek, the passage I quoted is here. — Paine

I can't read Greek. Sophisticated readers (such as yourself) will understand the use of the word 'substance' in philosophy as being different to normal usage, but it jars every time I read it. My point (and it's a pet peeve) is that the use of the word 'substance' to translate 'ousia' tends to skew the meaning of many of these passages, indeed the entire milieu. As Joe Sachs says, 'substance' is 'a word designed by the anti-Aristotelian Augustine to mean a low and empty sort of being [which] turns up in our translations of the word whose meaning Aristotle took to be the highest and fullest sense of being....' . The ealier reference to 'divine substance' is an example. I'm not sure what other word in the modern lexicon would do the job but perhaps 'principle' might.

These premises clearly give the conclusion that there is in nature some bodily substance other than the formations we know, prior to them all and more divine than they.

What 'bodily substance' he talking about? Endocrines?

'Substance' introduces the problem of reification - turning an idea into a thing.

I ran the question 'what is reification in philosophy' by the chatbot and it said:

The problem of reification in philosophy refers to the tendency to treat abstract concepts or mental constructs as if they were concrete objects with independent existence. It involves treating something that is abstract or conceptual as if it were a physical thing that exists independently of our thoughts or language.

Whereas I think intelligible objects are at once, only graspable by nous (mind) but at the same time, they're not mental constructs :rage:

If the potential of existence of rational beings is extinguished, would the potential of mathematics vanish as well? — jgill

No. My belief is that while the truths of reason can only be grasped by the mind, they're not the product of the mind. Hence Bertrand Russell: 'Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts.'

There's a deep issue here, which I keep running up against in these debates. I'm not well-read in philosophy and metaphysics and, at this stage in life, I'll acknowledge I'm unlikely ever to be, but I intuitively sense some really vital issue in all of this (running up and down the beach, waving arms and appearing to shout).

No, again it’s that ‘substance’ is a misleading translation of ‘ousia’, (as per Joe Sachs’ comment earlier in the thread). It’s not that ‘ouisua’ suggest a material thing, but that ‘substance’ does. If in the quotation we’re considering, the term used for ‘ouisua’ was ‘being’ or ‘principle’ I think it would convey the meaning much more effectively.

It’s the use of the word ‘substance’ especially when said to ‘immaterial substance’ . That’s what I say is oxymoronic. But then, ‘substance’ is not the word that Aristotle would have used. (Actually wasn’t it in this context where the word ‘dunamis’ was used?)

Further, accordingly, these substances must be without matter — Metaphysics, 1071b12–22, translated by C.D.C Reeve

There’s that oxymoronic term again.

If humanity were to vanish and the potential of rational beings extinguished, so would go the potentials of mathematics - or not? — jgill

Any rational sentient beings would presumably make some of the same discoveries. That’s the meaning of ‘true in all possible worlds.’

The Muslims invented it but Old Nick sure knows how to bend it to his ends.

‘God created the integers. All else is the work of man.’ Leopold Kronicker.

I had rather thought if the phrase used ‘principle’ instead of ‘substance’ it might remain defensible.

I thought it might have a metaphysical interpretation but perhaps not.

Thereby providing justification for all those who say that Aristotle should be relegated to history with the geocentric universe and the crystalline spheres.

These premises clearly give the conclusion that there is in nature some bodily substance other than the formations we know, prior to them all and more divine than they. (269a 30)
— Fooloso4

A bodily substance is not immaterial. — Dfpolis

Wouldn’t the claim of the existence of such a bodily substance be an empirical claim? If it’s a substance, then either it can be detected by scientific means, or it can be declared a false hypothesis.

I don’t see how that follows, sorry. — noAxioms

That’s quite alright. Thanks for your feedback.

Gee you have an interesting reading list! On mine is a book I might have mentioned previously, Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why this Insight Transforms Physics, by Charles Pinter. That book condensed many of my ideas about the foundational role of the mind. It’s more about neurological modelling than philosophy as such but it has profound philosophical implications, I feel. (It went a bit under the radar, because Pinter is a maths emeritus, not a philosopher, and I don't think it got much notice in academia, but I thought it an important book.)

The axioms define the numbers, just as, in a universe with different constants, an electron would not be an electron and would behave differently. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You’re familiar with books such as ‘Just Six Numbers’ by Martin Rees? (Achingly dull read, I found.) It's about the fundamental physical constraints which must exist at a foundational level if the universe is even going to form matter. So I don't know if it's feasible that there could be an alternative, there's something about necessity woven into the fabric of the cosmos, seems to me. These ratios and values have to be a certain way, otherwise stars would not form.

As for information - I think the difference we have is roughly like the difference between pan- and biosemiosis. Pansemiosis proposes that all things, living and non-living, possess a form of semiotic or sign-making capacity, that everything in the universe, including animals, plants, rocks, and even inanimate objects, can be interpreted in terms of signs. Biosemiosis limits the scope of semiotics to living processes. It's an area of disagreement, but the latter seems more feasible to me.