When I say "things gravitate towards a preferable reality," I'm referring to the interpretation of "reality" that makes us feel most comfortable. Such preferences can change, and we can gravitate towards different comfortable realities depending on how our beliefs evolve. — Christoffer

Now the point is that gravitating towards what is comfortable is not necessarily gravitating toward what is good. But people can be trained through good moral education to gravitate toward what is good and this is equally a "bias". In other words, biases can be good too. The issue though is that such training requires effort, and it is a special type of effort. It's the effort of the teacher, which is made for the good of the student, the effort we make to train our children. This effort doesn't bring any good to the one who makes the effort, it brings good to the one who receives the training.

So, we can allow our children to gravitate toward what is "comfortable", or we can make the effort to train them to gravitate toward what is good. In the sense that each is a tendency to "gravitate toward", they are both types of biases.

The reality we find most comfortable is one in which we have clear and comfortable interpretations, regardless of their validity. Such bias often arises from the anxiety of the unknown. We tend to eagerly embrace a narrative of reality that offers us the most comfortable existence. — Christoffer

I do not see how this is at all possible. Since our biases arise from our training, what we have been taught, they cannot at all be related to the unknown. Our biases are deeply seated in our knowledge, and anxiety toward the unknown is something completely different from bias.

And you even describe bias as providing a form of comfort, so how could this possibly arise from anxiety of the unknown? If there is anxiety of the unknown there is no comfort, and vise versa. Bias is related to the known, and if it exists as a sort of comfort, then it is a type of self-confidence in one's own knowledge which excludes one from such anxiety toward the unknown. But just like I explained above, bias does not necessarily direct one toward comfort, biases may direct us toward making an effort, which is clearly not a comfort. If the person is trained to have great respect for the unknown, and this would involve a certain amount of anxiety toward the unknown, then this sort of bias could certainly be good, as motivation toward scientific endeavours and such things which would help us obtain knowledge.

Point being, philosophy has still been about countering biases regardless of which time it was in, it's precisely why people like Thomas Aquinas are well known, due to his careful reasoning and keeping Greek philosophical traditions alive based on Augustines previous work. — Christoffer

So I think you have this completely wrong. Philosophy is not about countering biases. Biases are inevitable as a fundamental aspect of human existence. Philosophy is concerned with distinguishing good biases from bad, such that the good can be cultured. And, it may be argued that other disciplines like science and religion deal with culturing biases. Whether such biases are bad or good is a judgement for philosophy to make.

Impossible. Can't be done. The term covers such a diverse range of cultural phenomena, that it has no single meaning. There are those who say that the word itself is an impediment. But one thing it's not, is a compendium of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles proposing a testable hypothesis. — Wayfarer

Ok, then let's take a step back here. It may be that I experience you misinterpreting what I'm saying due to us not agreeing on clearer definitions.

What I use the term "religion" for in this context is primarily in claims about reality, i.e in religious beliefs that have no supported claims either in facts or any logical framework. I'm not talking about the use of religious teachings that have been used for thousands of years for moral explorations, phenomenological explorations and existential meditations on the human condition etc. These parts are more linked to what I referred to as the important aspects of religion that society needs to be careful not to eradicate when dismantling institutional religions. There are extremely important parts in religious texts throughout history that are just as important as any continental philosophy exploring the human condition using more poetic representations of such explorations.

Where I draw the line, however, is when specifics are boiled down to something similar to factual claims. If someone speaks of "soul" and actually means some ethereal part of the divine that's trapped in our flesh, and uses this as a factual premise in their arguments, that is an unsupported claim. It's this type of claim that I refer to as biased. It is a bias towards the preconceived belief of the soul as something actual, something part of physical reality or supernatural reality that in itself hasn't been supported either. It's arguments that functions on these biases that philosophy consequently dismantled, if not in the time they were formed (due to historically inadequate methods of actually knowing how the world worked), then in historical times after when more factual understandings emerged.

Are you familar with Plato's dialogues? Socrates, as you're well aware, was sentenced to death for atheism, but the Phaedo, the dialogue taking place in the hours leading up to his execution, is one of the main sources for the defense of the immortality of the soul. Is that a religious dialogue, or is it not, by your lights? — Wayfarer

It is not a religious dialogue because the method of inquiry tried to use factual premises. However, it is a partly religious dialogue in light of what we know today.

What I mean by this is that the problems with asking this about Phaedo is that it excludes what each historical time concluded being facts about the world. In the Ancient Greek things like Empedocles and Apeiron were considered the same as we view electrons or the Higgs field. So just as we conduct philosophy today and rely on science as a source of factual premises when formulating arguments, so too did they in the same manner. This means that the context in which they draw empirical understanding through their dialogue, were based on facts that we know today aren't facts. Their understanding of the soul is therefor different to how we view the soul today, where, if we try to use factual knowledge, we might form arguments around neuroscience, mind upload technologies etc.

This is very important when we analyze historical philosophical texts. We need to understand the difference between a philosophical discussion that relied on factual premies based on what each historical time had as a factual foundation, and those that relied on religious beliefs. They are two different things. The former can survive and change throughout history based on recontextualisation when new discoveries in science adds to the factual foundation that society is built upon. We can take Phaedo and recontextualize the dialogue into a modern framework, discarding or changing aspects of it based on up to date scientific understandings but keep the dialogue's foundation. An argument that has bias towards a religious belief is however locked into that framework. It never gets past the belief, regardless of newly discovered factual foundations.

Phaedo is also not concluding anything, it is a dialogue that at its best forms concepts of duality that we still use today. The concepts that were formed by it has little to do with any support for the soul or the immortality of the soul, but instead were concepts that created a new framework to explore new ideas in. This is something that differs from what I mean by religiously biased arguments which focus on making religious conclusions rather than explore in the form of expanding perspectives.

Are you familiar with the early Buddhists texts and the account of the awakening of the Buddha? What 'wild assumptions' do you think are conveyed in those texts? For that matter, what issue are they addressing? — Wayfarer

In light of what I wrote on Phaedo, you can deconstruct that in a similar manner. What are religious conclusions and what are conceptual explorations in pursuit of further perspectives?

The key is still that bias locks your perspective into a rigid and non-moving framework. It's this that philosophy constantly dismantles.

I'll go with the approach articulated by scholar and historian of philosophy, Pierre Hadot. — Wayfarer

This:

This cultivation required, specifically, that students learn to combat their passions and the illusory evaluative beliefs instilled by their passions, habits, and upbringing. .... — IEP

Is basically what I'm talking about. This is fighting bias. This is philosophy. And I think the misunderstanding you make about what I have written is due to misinterpreting (or maybe because I've been unclear), the difference between a formed conclusion and conceptual exploration. Much of what Hadot is talking about refers to a meditation for the purpose of dismantling biases, towards habits, passions and... religion. This is the difference between religious arguments, religious beliefs, religious thinking and... philosophy.

What i think is unfortunate is that we use terminology that is closely linked and somewhat owned by religious beliefs and religious institutions. Spiritualism, meditation etc. This confuse people into mixing everything together, rather than look at the practical implications of expansion of the mind, meditation and ritualistic behaviors to focus thought and reasoning. Neither of these have anything to do with religion in their function, because neither of them require religious belief.

Why did Einstein take daily walks? His habits were ritualistic behaviors that focused his mind. One of the most scientific thinkers in history utilized a framework of rituals, expanded his mind through Gedankenexperiment. Neither of this is religious or belief systems, but mental tools.

My gallery analogy is a form of Gedankenexperiment-type method. Aimed at detaching yourself from your ideas and biases. Aimed at combating the passions and the illusory evaluative beliefs instilled by their passions, habits and upbringing.

The philosophical issue with modern science, in particular, is that it leaves no place for man as subject. Science relies on the fundamental techniques of objectification and quantification, and can only ever deal with man as object. It is embedded in a worldview that isn't aware that it's a worldview, but thinks of itself as being 'the way things are'. And there's no self-awareness in that. — Wayfarer

And I have not lumped together science and philosophy, I have held them separated. What I am trying to show is that philosophy functions as a form of guided meditation that requires you to act against bias when forming conclusions. In that sense it is more similar to science than religious belief as religious belief is essentially biased to the religion that is believed. You cannot form rational conclusions in religious arguments since they are bound to a specific pre-existing belief. Philosophy, even in ancient practices, aimed at mentally remove biases, even religious ones, in order to explore everything. This is why real philosophy survives time, while religious claims does not. And this is why there can be real philosophy in religious texts, at the same time as other parts of the same texts can be religious hogwash.

The challenge for the philosopher or any explorer of thought, is therefor to distinguish hogwash from the profound. Metaphor from the actual. Pure belief from the rational, bias from an open mind.

Positivism, again. — Wayfarer

So no, it's not positivism, as you can read above, it is acknowledging historical context, and through that, understand what is and what isn't philosophy. That exploration isn't the same as conclusions and that claims requires an understanding of their historical context as well as what the aim of the claim is.

One problem is that you have labeled me a positivist, so you are now biased towards that label. You read what I write in that context and you will mentally discard what is problematic for the conclusion that I am a positivist. But I guarantee you that I'm not, I'm just more based in the historical context we live in at the moment, in which there are so many scientific explanations for so many things that it becomes irrational to do philosophical arguments without that context being a part of it. That does not mean positivism, it means that I, just like with Phaedo, structure my philosophy based on the history I live in and what factual foundation there is at this time. I explore in this context and form my anti-bias out of it. If someone claims something as a deductive conclusion based on arguments formed in historical times that had factually incorrect understanding of the world and universe, then it doesn't matter if that conclusion has an internal logic that were accepted at the time, it is still incorrect and biased towards that understanding, especially if it's formed through religious belief. If it's however not concluding anything, but opening the door to exploration of a topic, then it's still philosophy, even if it has problematic factual ideas.

The bottom line is that context matter and bias is connected to conclusions. Philosophy fights bias, in order to meditate our thoughts towards better understanding and conclusions that form stepping stones for further exploration. Bias is a quicksand that people get stuck in and drown if they're not careful, and its philosophy's primary function to act against it and has been long before philosophers knew of the concept of bias.

Now the point is that gravitating towards what is comfortable is not necessarily gravitating toward what is good. But people can be trained through good moral education to gravitate toward what is good and this is equally a "bias". In other words, biases can be good too. The issue though is that such training requires effort, and it is a special type of effort. It's the effort of the teacher, which is made for the good of the student, the effort we make to train our children. This effort doesn't bring any good to the one who makes the effort, it brings good to the one who receives the training. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course, but then again, what is good? How can you guarantee that the good that your moral education teaches people actually creates a good bias? What if your moral education isn't forming the good that you thought it would and people are now having a bias that is instead morally questionable?

To say this requires you to already have a bias towards what you believe is good and we are again back in the realm of belief and bias towards such beliefs.

Isn't it then better to have a neutral system of anti-bias so that good is always evaluated by not having a pre-existing belief bias?

I do not see how this is at all possible. Since our biases arise from our training, what we have been taught, they cannot at all be related to the unknown. Our biases are deeply seated in our knowledge, and anxiety toward the unknown is something completely different from bias. — Metaphysician Undercover

Our biases is us favoring certain knowledge over other. We favor those things out of our emotions, our craving for comfort. The comfortable "truth" is the one we defend and form our world-view on. This means we evaluate new knowledge not by their own merits, but by how they relate to the knowledge we favor, that we are comfortable with.

Therefore, detachment from bias makes us better at evaluating the knowledge we have and the knowledge we are confronted with.

And you even describe bias as providing a form of comfort, so how could this possibly arise from anxiety of the unknown? If there is anxiety of the unknown there is no comfort, and vise versa. Bias is related to the known, and if it exists as a sort of comfort, then it is a type of self-confidence in one's own knowledge which excludes one from such anxiety toward the unknown. But just like I explained above, bias does not necessarily direct one toward comfort, biases may direct us toward making an effort, which is clearly not a comfort. If the person is trained to have great respect for the unknown, and this would involve a certain amount of anxiety toward the unknown, then this sort of bias could certainly be good, as motivation toward scientific endeavours and such things which would help us obtain knowledge. — Metaphysician Undercover

The anxiety of the unknown is the anxiety towards the opposite of the knowledge that is comfortable. A comfortable "truth" is preferable to an uncomfortable horror of nothing. We don't embrace not knowing or non-knowledge as comfortable. So we are desperate to form knowledge, form some explanation. Even if that knowledge is wrong we don't care, it is the only answer we find comfortable in face of the opposite.

Comparably, there's another approach to this in eastern philosophy and that is to embrace the nothing, to apply a positive emotion to it. Rather than falling into bias, it trains you to accept the idea of not knowing as a positive state of mind. However, this is only good for the well-being of the self and does not function well in a progressive society that functions on developing mankind forward. The choice is for people to choose either path.

Bias is an error in perfect understanding. It blocks holistic perspectives and closes the mind to new ones.

You cannot conclude there to be good biases without first concluding an answer to what a good bias really is. And to form such an answer requires you to explore a moral realm without bias, since you would otherwise just apply your own bias of what you believe is good before concluding and applying it as a collective bias that others should follow.

So how would the teacher reach an objectively good bias?

So I think you have this completely wrong. Philosophy is not about countering biases. Biases are inevitable as a fundamental aspect of human existence. Philosophy is concerned with distinguishing good biases from bad, such that the good can be cultured. And, it may be argued that other disciplines like science and religion deal with culturing biases. Whether such biases are bad or good is a judgement for philosophy to make. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, how can you distinguish good biases from bad if you don't form arguments in a mental space where biases do not exist? How can you deconstruct something if it is essential to the human existence? That would imply that all of philosophy is circular reasoning, one bias following the next ad infinitum.

And yes, it is part of the human condition to have biases, it's part of our human psyche, which is why acting against it, understand it and understanding its behavior has been the single greatest method for human advancement. We cannot question the status quo without acting against our biases, without detachment from them.

Think about a society formed by some "good biases" that has been decided by philosophers. How does that society progress? If the good biases is the foundation of all knowledge and praxis in that society, how can people in that society expand their knowledge further and change? Isn't it exactly through thinking beyond biases that philosophers explore concepts further, evaluate previous ones and expand our understanding? This is what I'm talking about, biases locks people down, locks their thinking into a rigid system. And philosophy has always been about exploring concepts beyond the currently knowable, beyond the biases that exist.

What I use the term "religion" for in this context is primarily in claims about reality, i.e in religious beliefs that have no supported claims either in facts or any logical framework. — Christoffer

Do you mean not subject to empirical validation, according to the standards of science?

The problem I have is that you're casting your net too wide when you denegrate anything that can be described as 'religious' in those terms. If you said 'fundamentalist' or 'dogmatic', then I might agree.

Are you familiar with the early Buddhists texts and the account of the awakening of the Buddha? What 'wild assumptions' do you think are conveyed in those texts? For that matter, what issue are they addressing?
— Wayfarer

In light of what I wrote on Phaedo, you can deconstruct that in a similar manner. What are religious conclusions and what are conceptual explorations in pursuit of further perspectives? — Christoffer

A meaningful description of the teachings of Buddhism would not be feasible in a forum post such as this without many pages of text. Suffice to say that the aims of the Buddhist teaching are conceived in terms of liberation from the ongoing cycle of death and rebirth (saṃsāra) and realisation of the state of Nirvāṇa. The account of the Buddha's awakening, based on the oral tradition, preserves the record of this as the Buddha is said to have realised it. The realisation of this state is something that subsequent generations of Buddhists are understood to have re-traced and re-capitulated (which is why, for example, the term 'Buddha' is not limited to one individual, but designates a class of being.)

Buddhist cultures have incorporated traditional cosmological models, which are clearly empirically unsupportable in light of current science. But then, the Dalai Lama has acknowledged that "If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.” However he's also said “What science finds to be nonexistent we should all accept as nonexistent, but what science merely does not find is a completely different matter.”

So no, it's not positivism, as you can read above, it is acknowledging historical context, and through that, understand what is and what isn't philosophy. — Christoffer

Positivism was coined by the French scientist and philosopher, August Comte, who founded the disciplines we now refer to as the social sciences. He theorised that culture evolved through three stages, the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive, the final stage being the scientific, or positive, stage. So Comte's idea of positivism was historical, and you're assuming a similar framework. This is not 'bias' on my part, it is an empirical judgement based on the evidence.

You cannot form rational conclusions in religious arguments since they are bound to a specific pre-existing belief. Philosophy, even in ancient practices, aimed at mentally remove biases, even religious ones, in order to explore everything. This is why real philosophy survives time, while religious claims does not. — Christoffer

If you examine Platonist philosophy, it clearly comprises many elements which are more closely related to what we would now understand as religion than science. As Hadot says, and you agree, this involves critical reflection and self-awareness, and the other disciplines mentioned in that passage, but Hadot also says that this conception of philosophy as a way of life has been deprecated in modern times:

According to Hadot, one became an ancient Platonist, Aristotelian, or Stoic in a manner more comparable to the twenty-first century understanding of religious conversion, rather than the way an undergraduate or graduate student chooses to accept and promote, for example, the theoretical perspectives of Nietzsche, Badiou, Davidson, or Quine.... Hadot acknowledges his use of the term “spiritual exercises” may create anxieties, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion than typically done. Hadot’s use of the adjective “spiritual” (or sometimes “existential”) indeed aims to capture how these practices, like devotional practices in the religious traditions, are aimed at generating and reactivating a constant way of living and perceiving in prokopta, despite the distractions, temptations, and difficulties of life. For this reason, they call upon far more than “reason alone.”

You're a careful thinker and writer, and while I appreciate that, I think you're casting your net too wide. There are elements (I won't call them ideas) within religious culture that are indispensable to the human condition even acknowledging that whatever about them has been shown to be false by scientific methods ought to be revised or discarded.

At back of this debate are conceptions of reality. Does reality comprise physical objects determined by physical laws (that is, scientific materialism/physicalism)? Alternatives include various schools of idealism, dualism, panpsychism, and phenomenology - none of which are necessarily religious in nature. It is possible to argue the case without reference to religion, although rejection of physicalism might often suggest philosophical views that seem close to religion - too close for comfort, for a lot of people.

Of course, but then again, what is good? How can you guarantee that the good that your moral education teaches people actually creates a good bias? What if your moral education isn't forming the good that you thought it would and people are now having a bias that is instead morally questionable? — Christoffer

Yes, this is exactly the issue, how are we to determine good biases from bad. You were talking as if all biases are bad, but now you appear to accept that some might be good. So, on what bases are we going to distinguish good biases from bad biases?

Isn't it then better to have a neutral system of anti-bias so that good is always evaluated by not having a pre-existing belief bias? — Christoffer

No, like I explained, biases are a natural and essential part of being human. Therefore it is impossible to be bias-free, and any attempt at "not having a pre-existing belief bias" would be a completely unrealistic attempt due to that impossibility. Such an attempt would just turn into a matter of gravitating toward keeping the biases which one is comfortable with, and eliminating the others, because it is impossible to not have any bias. Then we end up still having biases and no principles for distinguishing which biases we ought to have and ought not have.

Our biases is us favoring certain knowledge over other. We favor those things out of our emotions, our craving for comfort. The comfortable "truth" is the one we defend and form our world-view on. This means we evaluate new knowledge not by their own merits, but by how they relate to the knowledge we favor, that we are comfortable with.

Therefore, detachment from bias makes us better at evaluating the knowledge we have and the knowledge we are confronted with. — Christoffer

Your proposed "detachment from bias" is unrealistic, impossible for a human being to achieve, analogous to a mind separated from its body. It is not the human condition, nor is it a possible condition for a human being, so forget about it, and move along to something more realistic.

Bias is an error in perfect understanding. — Christoffer

Do you accept as true, the proposition that "perfect understanding" is impossible for human beings to obtain. If so, then you ought to recognize that your goal of being bias-free is not a reasonable goal for a human being. This conclusion necessitates a completely different approach to biases. Instead of attempting to reject all biases as fundamentally unwanted, we need to accept that it is impossible to reject all biases, therefore we need some principles by which we can decide which to reject. Do you see that these "principles" cannot themselves be biases, but more of a versatile, or universal method for assessing biases.

You cannot conclude there to be good biases without first concluding an answer to what a good bias really is. And to form such an answer requires you to explore a moral realm without bias, since you would otherwise just apply your own bias of what you believe is good before concluding and applying it as a collective bias that others should follow. — Christoffer

This is not true. My demonstration that there are good biases came from your assumption that there are bad biases. So from your premise, that we ought to rid ourselves of biases, because they are bad, I demonstrated that if there are bad biases there is necessarily also good biases. So the conclusion is derived from your premise of bad biases, and there is no need for me to show what a good bias is..

Furthermore, all that is required to further this process, is a definition of what constitutes "good". Once we have that, we can judge biases as to whether or not they are consistent with, or have that quality. "Good" would be defined in such a way as to be a principle, to serve as a method for judging biases, without itself being a bias.

Again, how can you distinguish good biases from bad if you don't form arguments in a mental space where biases do not exist? How can you deconstruct something if it is essential to the human existence? That would imply that all of philosophy is circular reasoning, one bias following the next ad infinitum. — Christoffer

All that is required is to have a process for judging biases which is separate from the biases, a process being an activity, whereas a bias is a static belief. The process therefore cannot itself be a bias. This is why science is based in a method, "method" signifying a process.

And yes, it is part of the human condition to have biases, it's part of our human psyche, which is why acting against it, understand it and understanding its behavior has been the single greatest method for human advancement. We cannot question the status quo without acting against our biases, without detachment from them. — Christoffer

It appears like you have the idea here, when you talk about a "method". But it is not a matter of acting "against" biases, as you state. Nor is it a detachment from bias, as this is impossible. It is simply a way of acting which recognizes the reality of biases and the need to cope with them. To deny them, or pretend a detachment is self-deception.

Where I draw the line, however, is when specifics are boiled down to something similar to factual claims. If someone speaks of "soul" and actually means some ethereal part of the divine that's trapped in our flesh, and uses this as a factual premise in their arguments, that is an unsupported claim. It's this type of claim that I refer to as biased. It is a bias towards the preconceived belief of the soul as something actual, something part of physical reality or supernatural reality that in itself hasn't been supported either. It's arguments that functions on these biases that philosophy consequently dismantled, if not in the time they were formed (due to historically inadequate methods of actually knowing how the world worked), then in historical times after when more factual understandings emerged. — Christoffer

Let me take what you say here about the "soul" ad make an analogy. The concept of "soul" is a very difficult and complex subject in philosophy. It requires great study to understand the soul, Plato's "Phaedo" is a good start. But then there is Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and many others. So when a learned philosopher makes a claim about "the soul as something actual", I would assume that this philosopher has some understanding about that matter. That philosopher probably even understands that Aristotle defines the soul as actual, and explains the logical reasoning why the soul must be defined as "actual". Therefore we cannot say that such a claim is "unsupported".

But you could call that a bias if you like. Then however, when a learned physicist refers to a photon as something actual, we should assume that the definitions produced from observations of the photoelectric effect which incline the physicists to speak of a photon as an actual thing, constitute a bias in the very same way.

Philosophy is for questioning unquestionable answers.

Much of what Hadot is talking about refers to a meditation for the purpose of dismantling biases, towards habits, passions and... religion. This is the difference between religious arguments, religious beliefs, religious thinking and... philosophy. — Christoffer

:fire:

If you think about all philosophical topics and arguments, they're all trying to do one thing, remove bias and fallacies from an argument in order to arrive at a conclusion that can be agreed upon. — Christoffer

:100:

The proposal you're suggesting is really like [ ... ] Spock, the Vulcan, possessed an enormous IQ and encylopedic knowledge, from a terrestrial point of view, but was often caught out by what we would now describe as his lack of EQ ... — Wayfarer

So do you consider Spinoza with his counter-biased more geometrico, for instance, a "positivist"? The author of the monumental (though suppressed for centuries) Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, which had inaugurated modern biblical criticism and strongly suggested that all "revealed faiths" and "transcendent beliefs or ideals" are mere superstitions (i.e. dogmatic fairytales & fables) – by your lights, Wayf, is he just confusing metaphysics with "scientism"?

Btw, I think "Mr. Spock" was more a Stoic-caricature in the 1960s than the Spinozist he seemed to be portrayed as by the 1990s.

So do you consider Spinoza with his counter-biased more geometrico, for instance, a "positivist"? — 180 Proof

The post I was commenting on had no discernable resemblance to Spinoza, nor any mention of him. And I said way back I reviewed the video and agree with his comments about questioning religion, but questioning religion does not amount to the declaration that 'all religion is false' (which incidentally is not something I think Spinoza would have agreed with.)

He doesn't "say" that; rather, as I've pointed out, Spinoza considers all "revealed faiths" and "transcendent beliefs or ideals" to be mere superstitions and, I'll add, that for him the only 'true religion' is Reason (à la logos) – the devotional object of which, so to speak, being the (infinitely & eternally immanent) natura naturans. As for "resemblance", Wayfarer, in the context of my post I alluded to what @Christoffer had said about philosophy and religion, which resembles Spinoza's approach, and asked you whether you'd object to Spinoza the way you have objected to Christoffer for being, as you have claimed, "a positivist".

Spinoza’s work would have been considered by positivism as metaphysics which it plainly was.

@Christoffer - do you have any views on Spinoza’s philosophy?

In light of you using the term like an epithet, do you think Spinoza is also a "positivist"?

We don't embrace not knowing or non-knowledge as comfortable. — Christoffer

Perhaps you’re right, but that in itself is a bias, re: embracing a mere comfort, albeit in the negative.

“… Here, therefore, is a case where no answer is the only proper answer. For a question regarding the constitution of a something which cannot be cogitated by any determined predicate, being completely beyond the sphere of objects and experience, is perfectly null and void..…”
————

…..how can you distinguish good biases from bad if you don't form arguments in a mental space where biases do not exist? — Christoffer

Biases are themselves arguments, properly referred to as conclusions of aesthetic judgements, formed nonetheless in a mental space, a non-cognitive mental space. It is thereby self-contradictory to suppose a bias-free mental space, when it is in a mental space where all biases reside. It follows that the determination of good or bad relative to an aesthetic judgement, itself merely a judgement contingent on the first, still presupposes the mental space in which it occurs.

All that being given, it is then the case the object of the judgment, and the object of the bias which follows from the judgement, may not even relate to each other. In the former is found a objective conviction with respect to the conclusion of a judgement, in the latter is found a subjective persuasion regarding the validity of the conclusion, i.e., “I know this is correct, but I don’t like it”.

The real problem manifests in instances where the conviction is not so much met with opposing persuasion, but with outright rejection, i.e., “I know this is right but I am not going to accept it”, and this may be referred to as pathological stupidity.

Assuming sufficient rationality, while there are mental spaces in which there are no biases, the good/bad relation of standing biases are not determinable in them. Which stands to reason, insofar as to judge a relative quality makes explicit the necessity for maintaining a consistency in that which is being judged, by that which is judging. In other words, to judge the good or bad of a bias makes necessary being in the very arena…..in this case the mental space…..where good/bad and the bias itself, are relatable to each other. Which, ironically enough, reduces to the judgement of good/bad with respect to biases, is itself a bias.

How can you deconstruct something if it is essential to the human existence? That would imply that all of philosophy is circular reasoning, one bias following the next ad infinitum. — Christoffer

With the exception to “human existence”, which is necessary for, but utterly irrelevant with respect to, circular reasoning, it is the case philosophy in the form of pure metaphysics is circular, iff it is not held to a logically regulatory critique. One bias will naturally follow from its antecedent conditions, and because….

“….education may furnish, and, as it were, engraft upon a limited understanding rules borrowed from other minds, yet the power of employing these rules correctly must belong to the pupil himself; and no rule which we can prescribe to him with this purpose is, in the absence or deficiency of this gift of nature, secure from misuse….”

….. judgement is a peculiar gift, which does not and cannot require instruction but only exercise, biases are often as easily overcome as they are established.

A few thoughts, from a more limited perspective.

Do you mean not subject to empirical validation, according to the standards of science?

The problem I have is that you're casting your net too wide when you denegrate anything that can be described as 'religious' in those terms. If you said 'fundamentalist' or 'dogmatic', then I might agree. — Wayfarer

Maybe fundamentalist and dogmatic are good descriptions if it summarizes the arguments as being ignorant of valid objections to them. I.e they dismiss reworking the argument based on valid criticism.

It doesn't need to be of empirical scientific validation, but at least logical and hold together without unsupported claims as foundational premises. Writing out poetics and fantasy within an argument is all good and well as long as they aren't functioning as being logical sources for the conclusion's validity.

I really dislike reading pure logic in philosophy, I like the writer to have some skills in painting their idea with some colors, it's just that the internal logic of the argument needs to have some consistency that isn't just within the mind of the writer (i.e biased to that internal belief).

And then there need to be a clarity in what an argument is doing. Is it asking questions, exploring a concept, or is it making a statement, a conclusion. I think many confuse a claim/conclusion with exploration and starts to make conclusions without actual support in the text (in an exploratory text) or make a poetic and exploratory text when they should bind together clear premises for a conclusion (making it muddy, looking at you Hegel!).

Then it is also vital what type of philosophy you are writing about. If we're doing moral philosophy, then the logic has to connect to human behavior and psychology, which can be messy and factual claims can be tricky with the whole ought/is problem. But if we are discussing philosophy that relate to facts about the world, such as physics and cosmology, then there's no point in making claims that have little to no roots in what has actually been scientifically measured and tested. Ignoring that is pure bias towards the beliefs of the writer.

So, we can go into pages of details in this epistemological overview of philosophy, but the guiding principles is that the more scientifically factual a claim, the more empirical it needs to be and the more phenomenological or focused on the human experience, the more exploratory it should be. But regardless of that, bias has a negative play. Even in the most exploratory writings there has to exist some internal logic that can be somewhat universalized and not just function within the beliefs and mind of the writer.

Suffice to say that the aims of the Buddhist teaching are conceived in terms of liberation from the ongoing cycle of death and rebirth (saṃsāra) and realisation of the state of Nirvāṇa. The account of the Buddha's awakening, based on the oral tradition, preserves the record of this as the Buddha is said to have realised it. The realisation of this state is something that subsequent generations of Buddhists are understood to have re-traced and re-capitulated (which is why, for example, the term 'Buddha' is not limited to one individual, but designates a class of being.)

Buddhist cultures have incorporated traditional cosmological models, which are clearly empirically unsupportable in light of current science. But then, the Dalai Lama has acknowledged that "If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.” However he's also said “What science finds to be nonexistent we should all accept as nonexistent, but what science merely does not find is a completely different matter.” — Wayfarer

That type of anti-bias is in the realm of philosophy. It recognizes that empirical evidence demands a change to arguments and ideas, which is how philosophy should progress through history. The important part, however, is to distinguish a conclusion/claim of truth based on exploratory reasoning and one based on deductive logic. I'm objecting against making any conclusion or claim that only has exploratory writing underneath, since there are no actual premises in such arguments to support any actual claim.

The first part related to the cycle of death and rebirth is exploratory arguments that cannot conclude with actual claims of death and rebirth in the traditional sense of reincarnation. But they are exploratory in the way they link to ideas about cycles, in nature, in thinking, in history etc. Such ideas does not have truth-claims, but are observable explorations of holistic concepts about the life, death and the universe (and people like Schopenhauer took inspiration from). As long as we view them as exploratory, just like with Phaedo, they are profoundly important as concepts and frameworks of exploration. We could also stretch them to agnostic dialogues about actual reincarnation, but the important part is to be careful not to slip into making truth claims that functions on pure belief alone.

There are elements (I won't call them ideas) within religious culture that are indispensable to the human condition even acknowledging that whatever about them has been shown to be false by scientific methods ought to be revised or discarded. — Wayfarer

I agree, which is why I focus on philosophical claims either changing or are reworked based on new discoveries and understanding in science, or understanding concepts as explorations in thought that doesn't claim truths.

It's when religious truth claims and conclusions are made based purely on the belief biased to that religion that it stops being philosophy and becomes biased delusion. It's when the filter of religious bias or any bias exists as a closed door for further exploration, making someone stand their ground purely based on their belief, or that they become confused as to what is a truth claim and what is exploration in their reasoning.

At back of this debate are conceptions of reality. Does reality comprise physical objects determined by physical laws (that is, scientific materialism/physicalism)? Alternatives include various schools of idealism, dualism, panpsychism, and phenomenology - none of which are necessarily religious in nature. It is possible to argue the case without reference to religion, although rejection of physicalism might often suggest philosophical views that seem close to religion - too close for comfort, for a lot of people. — Wayfarer

In this I have to agree that the line I draw around the definition of philosophy and its purpose becomes more leaned towards certain schools than others. While I think all have exploratory functions and importance for the ability to reach depth in any subject, some schools of thought sometimes goes too far into "anything goes" and in my opinion that just blows up any ability to agree upon any definition of philosophy or for anyone to be able to reach any foundation of knowledge for existence itself. Arguments like the "brain in the vat", for example, while interesting, has become a go to claim that just dismisses the entire fields of neuroscience and psychology whenever someone tries to make philosophical claims based on that scientific foundation.

If there aren't any foundational agreements about how we approach reality (like accepting verified scientific results), then it simply becomes "anything goes". And of course knowing the difference between truth claims and exploration. We can explore ideas about the mind that are wildly speculative and perhaps even spiritual, as long as no one claims truths that have no foundation in verified science about the mind.

It is within confusing this difference between conclusions and exploration that I think most fail in philosophy. Both in writing and in reading.

Yes, this is exactly the issue, how are we to determine good biases from bad. You were talking as if all biases are bad, but now you appear to accept that some might be good. So, on what bases are we going to distinguish good biases from bad biases? — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I'm asking in a larger critical context. Because there's a faulty logic in claiming there to be good biases and bad biases when such claims are values that essentially requires a detachment from bias in the first place in order to reach a claim of what is good or bad.

Which means that the argument fails by its own logic and becomes circular reasoning. You claim there to be good and bad biases, but to reach those values you need to be unbiased and in doing so you are doing what I'm talking about, unbiased reasoning.

Bias is neutral, there are no good or bad values. In human reasoning and cognition it is merely a description of how the we gravitate towards something based on our emotions or paths of least resistance in our thought processes. Basically because it's part of how our minds work. Our minds seek patterns and summarize reality without rationality, much more than actually understanding a detailed and holistic view that is objective or detached from our cognition. To do that we need to apply a method that we follow and train ourselves to process what we learn and experience in a more careful way.

No, like I explained, biases are a natural and essential part of being human. Therefore it is impossible to be bias-free, and any attempt at "not having a pre-existing belief bias" would be a completely unrealistic attempt due to that impossibility. Such an attempt would just turn into a matter of gravitating toward keeping the biases which one is comfortable with, and eliminating the others, because it is impossible to not have any bias. Then we end up still having biases and no principles for distinguishing which biases we ought to have and ought not have. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, biases are natural, but they are not good or bad as you claim since such values are arbitrary. And if we are talking about knowledge biases, yes, everyone has biases and therefor it is the purpose of unbiased methods of reasoning to improve our ability to reach conclusions and truths that are objective or broad rather than the subjective truths of our stupid minds. Without methods like this we are simply just spitting out opinions that cannot be foundations for concepts that function in a broader context and society, they just become like any twitter thread: a long line of irrelevant noise biased towards each individual subject's beliefs.

I think you are mixing together praxis with bias. Philosophy focuses on unbiased reasoning in order to sometimes reach a praxis that we use in society. That doesn't mean "good bias" or "bad bias", it simply means that something like Kant's categorical imperatives are concepts that he argued for without biases to any beliefs and then we implement them as principles and praxis for how to figure out effective and functioning laws.

Your proposed "detachment from bias" is unrealistic, impossible for a human being to achieve, analogous to a mind separated from its body. It is not the human condition, nor is it a possible condition for a human being, so forget about it, and move along to something more realistic. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not. It is, as I've been saying, a core tenet of philosophy.

Do you accept as true, the proposition that "perfect understanding" is impossible for human beings to obtain. If so, then you ought to recognize that your goal of being bias-free is not a reasonable goal for a human being. This conclusion necessitates a completely different approach to biases. Instead of attempting to reject all biases as fundamentally unwanted, we need to accept that it is impossible to reject all biases, therefore we need some principles by which we can decide which to reject. Do you see that these "principles" cannot themselves be biases, but more of a versatile, or universal method for assessing biases. — Metaphysician Undercover

The goal of philosophy is to reduce bias in reasoning and arguments. Without doing so, you are not doing philosophy, you are just telling loose opinions and that is not philosophy, that is just normal talk.

Explain what this universal method of assessing biases is, because so far you are just saying that we need to arrive at good and bad biases, but what exactly is the process you propose? How do we arrive at such conclusions? How do you reach them? If you say that we cannot do anything without bias, then how do we reach an understanding of what are good and bad biases? It's just circular.

This is not true. My demonstration that there are good biases came from your assumption that there are bad biases. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I'm saying that biases are neutral forms of gravitation towards certain things and in doing without knowledge of doing so, it breaks any ability to form objective or universal reasoning that functions as broader understanding or universal truths for the many. It's the process of arguing with bias that is bad, not that there are bad biases. That is a faulty understanding of what bias is as a natural phenomena in human cognition and how it relates to unbiased reasoning.

The rest of your reasoning then becomes faulty because you interpret bias wrong in the first place.

Bias is a natural and neutral manipulation of the ability to reason outside of your own beliefs. Without mitigating it through unbiased reasoning methods, you fail to universalize your arguments to function as broader truths or claims.

Furthermore, all that is required to further this process, is a definition of what constitutes "good". Once we have that, we can judge biases as to whether or not they are consistent with, or have that quality. "Good" would be defined in such a way as to be a principle, to serve as a method for judging biases, without itself being a bias. — Metaphysician Undercover

How do you arrive at good? You just claim us to arrive at that without explaining how we arrive at that? It's basically like saying, "once we have the concept of good acts, we can then form principles of morality that we can follow", and then argue about some ideals that still requires the "good" to be defined. You still don't seem to see that this argument is faulty, that it is a circular argument in which you describe a system that relies on axioms that needs to be argued for and proven absolute, before you propose how to use them. You are only describing how to use them... whenever we arrive at having such axioms.

All that is required is to have a process for judging biases which is separate from the biases, a process being an activity, whereas a bias is a static belief. The process therefore cannot itself be a bias. This is why science is based in a method, "method" signifying a process. — Metaphysician Undercover

So... you are basically describing philosophy and critical thinking for arriving to a place in which you can judge biases? So, basically what my definition of philosophy is and the entire point of philosophy? To be able to do unbiased reasoning.

I think you have entangled yourself further into this circular reasoning.

It appears like you have the idea here, when you talk about a "method". But it is not a matter of acting "against" biases, as you state. Nor is it a detachment from bias, as this is impossible. It is simply a way of acting which recognizes the reality of biases and the need to cope with them. To deny them, or pretend a detachment is self-deception. — Metaphysician Undercover

But, it is not, because the methods are common practice in philosophy. It's how we structure deduction, induction, analogies, metaphors etc. They're based on a systematic framework for thinking and arriving at conclusions that challenge our biases so that we can think past them.

The problem is that you believe that because of the natural state of biases in our cognition, we are unable to work past them through methods and instead need to surrender and incorporate bias into our methods.

You still need to use unbiased methods and critical thinking in order to arrive at a value system for what is good or bad biases. So the main objection becomes, why should we not use such unbiased methods as a primary method for everything we try to figure out, seen as they are neutral and more universalized and doesn't rely on reasoning that is manipulated by biases?

Let me take what you say here about the "soul" ad make an analogy. The concept of "soul" is a very difficult and complex subject in philosophy. It requires great study to understand the soul, Plato's "Phaedo" is a good start. But then there is Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and many others. So when a learned philosopher makes a claim about "the soul as something actual", I would assume that this philosopher has some understanding about that matter. That philosopher probably even understands that Aristotle defines the soul as actual, and explains the logical reasoning why the soul must be defined as "actual". Therefore we cannot say that such a claim is "unsupported". — Metaphysician Undercover

Prove the soul's existence. That is the problem. How is any of what Phaedo describes supported other than through Ancient Greek's factual concepts of reality which were based on undeveloped methods of science? Concepts that are proven false with empirical evidence today.

That a learned philosopher's claim should be considered true because that philosopher has some arbitrary understanding of it, is basically appeal to authority.

"Soul" can be used as metaphor, we can use it as exploratory concepts, just like reincarnation, the cycle of life and death can be discussed as frameworks of broader subjects. But if you are to arrive at a supported claim of an actual existence of a soul, you definitely need to have deductive logic and even more so actual empirical evidence since this is a claim about reality. As I've described, these things change throughout history, but we are at a time in history where science is an empirical field of such accuracy that the demand on philosophy when making conclusions like "the human soul is real" requires a lot more than an "appeal to authority".

Today, Phaedo is not even close to a sound argument. The entire dialogue relies on false assumptions about physics and the universe. It relies on that time's understanding of reality, but that today is nothing more than pure belief.

The problem is that people today take the historical relevance of Phaedo as evidence for it being true in its conclusions. It is through what I describe as the confusion people have today on how to approach much of old and ancient philosophy as exploratory rather than deductive. The claims that are made have faulty logic when updating them today, so they should only be used as exploratory concepts used for metaphorical exploration of the idea about a soul.

A good example of this is Ghost in the Shell, in which the soul is called a ghost and through that the philosophical concept handles the digitalization of the self as a separate entity from the original body. You can use Phaedo when exploring these ideas, but the conclusions it propose are not factual or supported as deductive claims about the soul.

But you could call that a bias if you like. Then however, when a learned physicist refers to a photon as something actual, we should assume that the definitions produced from observations of the photoelectric effect which incline the physicists to speak of a photon as an actual thing, constitute a bias in the very same way. — Metaphysician Undercover

A photon is a real thing. It is measurable as both a wave and a particle in experiments like the wave function collapse in the double slit experiment. We also have inventions and technology that utilizes photons as well as all electronics that use things like electrons. It is not a bias to "believe a photon to be a real thing", it is an empirical truth that would otherwise make the computer you write on to be running on pure belief, which I doubt.

Perhaps you’re right, but that in itself is a bias, re: embracing a mere comfort, albeit in the negative.

“… Here, therefore, is a case where no answer is the only proper answer. For a question regarding the constitution of a something which cannot be cogitated by any determined predicate, being completely beyond the sphere of objects and experience, is perfectly null and void..…”
———— — Mww

Still, we don't embrace it, the unknown is uncomfortable and emotions is of great importance to the self-programming of our thinking. Which, leads to us seeking out the comfortable ideas that can explain it, even when unexplainable. In essence, we become religious and biased to that religion if we let that fear program us into certain concepts just because they remove that fear and comfort us.

I have never met a single entity that does not fear the unknown. We can be intrigued and curious about the unknown, but it is at the very core of human fear and fear is one of the strongest emotions we have, emotions that program our natural thinking process.

Biases are themselves arguments, properly referred to as conclusions of aesthetic judgements, formed nonetheless in a mental space, a non-cognitive mental space. It is thereby self-contradictory to suppose a bias-free mental space, when it is in a mental space where all biases reside. It follows that the determination of good or bad relative to an aesthetic judgement, itself merely a judgement contingent on the first, still presupposes the mental space in which it occurs. — Mww

That is a good description of biases. But I wouldn't call biases arguments themselves. The process of our mind concluding an aesthetic judgment is as you say a bias, but it is not an argument, it is more related to an emotional response or judgement out of emotions. Just like when I experience art I do not form an argument on why I like it, it is an emotional response that forms a preference.

So yes, we can argue that nothing is unbiased in our normal thinking, but that's not really what I am proposing or describing. I'm writing about methods to avoid bias. Methods to primarily structure your argumentative thinking and thought process so that you become aware of your biases and force yourself to turn the arguments premises or concept around and view everything from another perspective. As principles of a praxis in reasoning so that you do not let your biases shape and form your conclusion.

In the analogy of the gallery, I tried to describe this difference by describing the state of being unaware of your biases when forming an argument as like being a statue in which your identity and your opinions/arguments are one and the same. You cannot view your own neck, you cannot move or look around, you cannot form a holistic view or get closer to other statues. If you instead detach yourself and imagine yourself as an individual who explores ideas and concepts as separate objects that can be studied at a distance, you can force yourself to detach yourself from the emotions that manipulate your reasoning and in so doing, be able to see your biases standing there as their own statues while reviewing all sides of them together with all sides of the statue that forms the argument and concept you are trying to create.

It's a form of stoic approach to reasoning, not just through stepping back from emotion, but stepping back from existing purely as a subjective being, in order to detach yourself from living inside the argument yourself and be able to instead view it from a distance and all perspectives. The better at this a person is, the better they are at knowing themselves and their biases. They can argue for something and understand what aesthetic judgement they instinctively have because they essentially approach their own ideas as if they were proposed by another person.

….. judgement is a peculiar gift, which does not and cannot require instruction but only exercise, biases are often as easily overcome as they are established. — Mww

And judgement is sharpened and fine-tuned and becomes more automatic the more a method of detachement is exercised.

Essentially, as we aren't robots, anyone's initial reaction is emotional. We reject or embrace. The novice falls into either camp through their biases without knowing or understanding how or why. The scholar, on the other hand, understands the concepts of biases and emotions, understands how they function, understands the definitions and concepts of reasoning. But they let all of that knowledge exist in the same internal place, without a defined form, existing inside them without boundaries between them as a single entity. The scholar is almost like Mary in the black and white room, they understand all the details but doesn't know them as there are no separation between them. Then there is the master, who have trained their mind to function in a detached and distant perspective from their emotional identity. They won't reject or embrace anything before a concept has been studied in relation to other concepts. They only acknowledge that something is in fact a concept and idea, never attempting to apply critical thinking to it without it first being detached from themselves and their identity and emotions. Intuitively understands how incoming information is affected by biases and that aesthetic judgement is not the same as critical thinking.

The master is essentially a duality of a person, living with two internal sides; one as the automatic identity, like the unconscious mind moving through time, while the other is the conscious mind, studying. One is emotional, judging, reacting, biased and acting on instinct. The other one is standing back and observing the first and all information that it consumes, it observes how the bias creates judgements, how emotions drive actions, but it accepts this as separate from studying the information. Over time, the second one forms the foundation of the first one by objectively studying the information it consumes and how it reacts as part of pure understanding.

The concept is to split yourself and live with one part that is emotional, biased and automatic, while the other is an invention that you force being an observer and researcher of the first. By letting these two sides internally argue you essentially reach clarity about your own shortcomings and biases. Just knowing about the concepts that limit our ability to form logical conclusions or understand something on a deeper level isn't enough to effectively have a functional internal reasoning, we essentially need to function as two different people who are locked in an eternal argument.

Since the best way to spot our own biases and shortcomings in reasoning is to discuss with another person who evaluate our ideas, we can use this as a mental method and thought process in order to function better in reasoning as an individual, even if it requires to always live in this split form and always internally argue between the two internal sides.

Christoffer - do you have any views on Spinoza’s philosophy? — Wayfarer

I'd argue that I favor Spinoza's rationalism far more than positivism. I would even argue that even if positivists are closely related to science, even in science we have theoretical physics which can arrive at objective discoveries through math without actual observations, which positivists require. Positivists become blocked by their own methods while in science the theoretical and deductive can guide where to look, test and observe in order to verify. So I'd say, that even from a purely scientific perspective, Spinoza's rationalist approach has more practical use and function than positivism.

Which, leads to us seeking out the comfortable ideas that can explain it, even when unexplainable. — Christoffer

Wouldn’t that be bias in its conventional sense? Or perhaps, if not conventional, then psychological? Being the red-headed stepchild of metaphysics, rational psychology is a poor substitute for critical reason a priori, but at the same time, the implementation of the one presupposes the misuse in the minor but the utter neglect in the major, of the other. I should rather think the value immeasurably greater in recognizing the rules for critical thought, than the mere occasions for the exceptions to them.

“…. For, as the world has never been, and, no doubt, never will be without a system of metaphysics of one kind or another, it is the highest and weightiest concern of philosophy to render it powerless for harm, by closing up the sources of error….”

But you are right, in that all-too-many do invoke comfort at the expense of reason.
———-

I have never met a single entity that does not fear the unknown. — Christoffer

That may be true, and you would fare none the worse for it. But you’re forced to admit the possibility of those that do not hold such fear. Makes sense, doesn’t it, that if there is no knowledge, empirical knowledge that is, of something, then how can it be known as sufficient to cause fear? With so much being unknown, just seems quite wasteful to fear it all, so why bother deciding which is worth fearing and which isn’t, when all of it is equally unknown?

Besides, if it be granted knowledge is experience, then to fear the unknown is to fear an experience never had. I’ve been both remorseful and quite happy regarding experiences I’ve never had, but I’d categorically deny being afraid of them.
———-

Then there is the master, who have trained their mind to function in a detached and distant perspective from their emotional identity. — Christoffer

It’s much simpler than that. To understand the impossibility if such detachment in the first place, is to recognize a different set of conditions which determines the mental space in use for any given circumstance.

I get what you’re aiming for, but I submit there is no escape from oneself. There is, not the detachment from, but only the relaxing of, one mental space in order to favor the other, and the space being called upon is determined by the certainty required.

I’ll admit though, that this kind of rationality makes explicit the intrinsic duality of human nature. If one doesn’t accede to such duality, then he’s welcome to philosophize under conditions where it isn’t necessarily the case.

Anyway, carry on.

That's a tough question. Religion does attempt to explain the transcendent, and that is where religious inquiry tends to focus today, but historically religion also tried to explain nature and metaphysics in the way that science and philosophy do today. "What exists and why? How was the world created and where is it going? How was first person experience created and how does it end, or does it end at all?"

There is a mix of all the subdisciplines in metaphysics, ontology, causation (e.g., as a result of the Divine Will), substance/essence, etc.

Religion also seeks to explain and enumerate ethics. Philosophy of mind often gets into the mix (e.g., Neoplatonism and the World-Soul - Soul relationship). Epistemology also ends up intertwined with religion, but not quite to the same degree. Same for aesthetics.

Organized religion also sometimes fulfills roles more often fulfilled by the state these days.

This makes religion tough to categorize. It is fluid, filling holes left by the absence of other institutions. It is also ubiquitous, existing in all human societies. At the highest level, I would say it is the organizing principle for human societies. Religion defines "what life is about." Religion creates meaning and purpose.

Other disciplines can fulfill some of these roles. The state can try to fill them with nationalism, science can fulfill questions about what the world is, philosophy can fill most (all?) of these roles. I think it's noteworthy though that when these other disciplines try to fulfill these roles they tend to become more "religious-like," i.e., more all encompassing, more dogmatic, more defensive about criticism, etc.

What is reason? What is rationality? Who defines the laws of reason and is the authority of that reason? Is it us humans or is it something else? It would seem weird that we are the authority of reason, unless we are actually forms of the laws of reason itself, we are its manifestations such that we are equivalent to that authority of reason.
Now, philosophy is critical and subversive, but one must realize that after all things are destroyed by philosophy, then it only has one thing left to destroy, that is itself. What will happen when philosophy becomes the new religion and must kill itself?

One way of flipping things around is to notice that the heuristics of philosophy, the cutlery, might be considered as ritual. That seems the thrust of Jamal's critique: that in invoking tools one is reducing philosophy to a religion. — Banno

That's certainly an interesting flip-around, but I don't think it's the thrust of my critique. I think I was just saying that alongside the development of the cutlery there is also its biased application in criticizing prevailing beliefs (though also at the same time its biased application to shore up those beliefs), and that reducing philosophy to cutlery is to miss out on one of the things that makes it good. I tried to support this with the observation that philosophy cannot be neutral anyway.

To take your notion seriously in the light of what I've just said, we might say that philosophy as ritual merely reflects prevailing beliefs, such as religious beliefs, and thereby stands as yet another theology.

Philosophy as a neutral toolbox also suspiciously parallels the thesis that in the modern and especially the industrial era, reason became instrumental, with no thought to ends. If there is such a parallel, I don't think it's a coincidence.

What I think is this is an excellent, coherent and articulate analysis and summary of the role of philosophy to humanity. It clearly has a rightful place in tying together all human disciplines, and steadying them, moderating their dominance over one another, and thus danger to one another. Philosophy does this by being innately flexible and applicable.

The "art of thought" can approach any field of study.
As nothing can be mastered without thought other than pure ignorance. — Benj96

Thanks Benj. Your view is shared by several people in this discussion. I think, though, that I wanted to emphasize something else: not just philosophy's innate flexibility but its innate subversiveness. Plainly it's flexible, applicable to anything, and one can use the tools of philosophy not only to question religion but to support it. However, I'm saying two things. First, even to philosophize in support of religion (or other prevailing beliefs and institutions) is to bring it into question, which makes philosophy innately subversive. Second, to do this knowingly, that is, in a biased fashion to criticize prevailing beliefs, is more in line with this innate subversiveness and thereby more philosophical (or is at least better philosophy).

It doesn't need to be of empirical scientific validation, but at least logical and hold together without unsupported claims as foundational premises. — Christoffer

What are foundational premisses? You will know that foundationalism in physics is a contested issue, due to the many conundrums and imponderables thrown up by quantum mechanics. Foundationalism in mathematics was likewise called into question by Godel. Rudolf Carnap said 'In science there are no 'depths'; there is surface everywhere.' The tendency in 20th century philosophy has been to avoid foundational claims altogether which are typically regarded as the province of metaphysics and idealist philosophy.

It is commonplace to disregard all religious texts as dogma from the start. But in the Western philosophical tradition, much of what was great in pre-modern philosophy had been absorbed (or appopriated) by theology, and so has been rejected because of this association. And I would contend that these are the sources of foundational insights, at the origin of metaphysics.

Then there is the master.... — Christoffer

I agree with your stress on detachment, which is also prized in philosophical spirituality:

The mind of him who stands detached is of such nobility that whatever he sees is true and whatever he desires he obtains and whatever he commands must be obeyed. And this you must know for sure: when the free mind is quite detached, it constrains God to itself and if it were able to stand formless and free of all accidentals, it would assume God’s proper nature … The man who stands thus in utter detachment is rapt into eternity in such a way that nothing transient can move him … — Meister Eckhart

However, scientific objectivity does not do justice to this idea, as within it there is no room for the subject of experience.

It's when religious truth claims and conclusions are made based purely on the belief biased to that religion that it stops being philosophy and becomes biased delusion. — Christoffer

I agree. This is where the cultural dynamics of Christianity come into play. Religious studies scholar Karen Armstrong says:

The extraordinary and eccentric emphasis on "belief" in Christianity today is an accident of history that has distorted our understanding of religious truth. We call religious people "believers", as though acceptance of a set of doctrines was their principal activity, and before undertaking the religious life many feel obliged to satisfy themselves about the metaphysical claims of the church, which cannot be proven rationally since they lie beyond the reach of empirical sense data.

Most other traditions prize practice above creedal orthodoxy: Buddhists, Hindus, Confucians, Jews and Muslims would say religion is something you do, and that you cannot understand the truths of faith unless you are committed to a transformative way of life that takes you beyond the prism of selfishness. — Karen Armstrong, Metaphysical Mistake

The insights of classical philosophy are not accessible to the common man, the hoi polloi, who are offered salvation on the basis of faith alone. That would appear to be in conflict with Christianity except that, a Christian would say, by the practice of charity and selflessness, those same depths can be realised even by the not-particularly-educated. But when belief becomes the defense of creedal orthodoxy in defense of polemic, then it's another matter. Religious practice is, or ought to be, 'a science of the self'.

Ghost in the Shell... — Christoffer

Is actually a gloss on Gilbert Ryle's Ghost in the Machine, which in turn was based on his critique of Cartesian dualism. Descartes philosophical model has the unfortunate implication of reifying the mind as a kind of 'spiritual substance' or thinking thing. It is very different from the hylomorphic dualism of Aristotle. And no, don't agree that the insights of the Phaedo are merely superseded or obsolete, although plainly they need to be interpreted. That is what hermeneutics is for.

:up: :up:

So I'd say, that even from a purely scientific perspective, Spinoza's rationalist approach has more practical use and function than positivism. — Christoffer

Rationalism and positivism are both scientific tools, they are complimentary imo.
The fork and knife together are better for eating most meals, compared to using the fork alone or the knife alone. The main problems arise when folks insist that proposals arrived at via such as theology, metaphysics, personal intuition, or personal introspection, are fact or highly probable.
I think that is the basis of philosophical objections to religious claims, yes?

I've been sort of following some of the debates in this thread. On the one hand I agree with @Wayfarer's and @Metaphysician Undercover's criticisms of @Christoffer's individualistic, idealist, and ahistorical arguments for unbiased thinking--which is revealed to be quite biased itself (not to say that it's a bad bias, necessarily). On the other hand I heartily agree with @Banno's criticism of @Wayfarer's support for esotericism and denigration of philosophy's democratic openness. I’m also slightly vexed by @Wayfarer’s use of secular humanist Horkheimer as a weapon in his battle against secular humanism, although it’s fair to do so.

I was going to write a grand summary at this point but I’ve got nothing.

. Because there's a faulty logic in claiming there to be good biases and bad biases when such claims are values that essentially requires a detachment from bias in the first place in order to reach a claim of what is good or bad. — Christoffer

As I explained, it was your premise that biases are bad, undesirable, or whatever words you used in your anti-bias rhetoric. From this premise I produce the logic to demonstrate that if some biases are bad, then some must also be good. If the logic was faulty, you'd be able to show why, instead of just repeatedly asserting that it is faulty. In reality, it is only the premise which you insist on, that biases are not desirable, which potentially makes the argument unsound.

Which means that the argument fails by its own logic and becomes circular reasoning. You claim there to be good and bad biases, but to reach those values you need to be unbiased and in doing so you are doing what I'm talking about, unbiased reasoning. — Christoffer

I already explained why what you propose is impossible.

Bias is neutral, there are no good or bad values. In human reasoning and cognition it is merely a description of how the we gravitate towards something based on our emotions or paths of least resistance in our thought processes. — Christoffer

You are being inconsistent. If you take an anti-bias position, as you do, then you imply that biases are bad. If biases were neutral, then there would be no need for an anti-bias position. However, your description of how we "gravitate toward something", along with the premise that the actions produced from such a gravitation may be judged as good or bad, produces the valid conclusion that biases may be judged as good or bad.

es, biases are natural, but they are not good or bad as you claim since such values are arbitrary. And if we are talking about knowledge biases, yes, everyone has biases and therefor it is the purpose of unbiased methods of reasoning to improve our ability to reach conclusions and truths that are objective or broad rather than the subjective truths of our stupid minds. Without methods like this we are simply just spitting out opinions that cannot be foundations for concepts that function in a broader context and society, they just become like any twitter thread: a long line of irrelevant noise biased towards each individual subject's beliefs. — Christoffer

So, just like some opinions may be judged as good, and some judged as bad, because they influence behaviour in this way, the same can be said for biases. The word "bias" being used to describe how we "gravitate", and such gravitation may be be judged as good or bad.

Philosophy focuses on unbiased reasoning in order to sometimes reach a praxis that we use in society. — Christoffer

Unbiased reasoning is impossible. I explained that to you already, and I think Mww did too. You are ignoring this very important fact. Premises are biases, and we cannot reason without premises. Notice the prefix, "pre" in the word "premise". The premise is what we enter the reasoning process with, as a preexisting assumption, a "prejudice". A skeptic might subject the premise to analysis, and a reasoning process, to judge for soundness, but that reasoning process would itself require premises, which would need the same skeptical treatment, and this would create the appearance of infinite regress. Since it is impossible to proceed through an infinity of premises for skeptical analysis, we must conclude that all reasoning is biased, due to the biased nature of the premises.

The goal of philosophy is to reduce bias in reasoning and arguments. — Christoffer

This is clearly wrong. Such a goal is logically impossible to obtain, therefore it is irrational to hold it as a goal. Any attempt to obtain what is demonstrably impossible, is an irrational attempt. When a proposed goal is known to be impossible, we need to dismiss it as a goal, and adopt something which is possible, as our goal.

Explain what this universal method of assessing biases is, because so far you are just saying that we need to arrive at good and bad biases, but what exactly is the process you propose? How do we arrive at such conclusions? How do you reach them? If you say that we cannot do anything without bias, then how do we reach an understanding of what are good and bad biases? It's just circular. — Christoffer

The method is logic itself. We use logic to assess biases. You need to allow a separation, in principle between the form (logical process) and the content (beliefs which constitute biases). With this separation we have in principle, i.e. in theory, a pure unbiased process, logic. However, such a pure unbiased process would be absolutely useless because it would not be applied, and application requires content. But inherent within the content is bias. You might talk about some pie-in-the-sky conclusions which are totally free of bias, but those would just be meaningless symbols with no content. If we give meaning to the symbols (content), then we add bias to the system.

No, I'm saying that biases are neutral forms of gravitation towards certain things... — Christoffer

This is where you show your inconsistency. You are speaking anti-bias, yet claiming biases are neutral. If you really believed that biases are neutral, then you'd need to jump over the fence to my position, and drop your anti-biased approach, because anti-bias would be unfounded. If biases are neutral, then you have no reason to be anti-bias, and your anti-bias attitude is irrational.

However, since you describe biases as a form of "gravitation", which implies an inclination to act, it is really the case that biases, according to this description are not neutral at all. These acts of gravitation can be judge as good or bad, and so the inclination toward them, produced by the biases, can also be judged in that way.

This is your inconsistency. You assert "biases are neutral", yet you describe them as something which can be judged for goodness or badness. If they are inclinations toward action, "gravitation", they can be judged in that way, therefore they are not neutral.

It's the process of arguing with bias that is bad, not that there are bad biases. — Christoffer

Your misunderstanding is clear here. You do not acknowledge the reality that it is impossible to argue without bias, that would be a content-free argument which is not an argument at all. Once you recognize this, as a fact, then you'll move on to see that a logically valid argument can still be bad, if it involves bad premises, and the bad premises are derived from bad biases. This is referred to as "unsound"

Bias is a natural and neutral manipulation of the ability to reason outside of your own beliefs. — Christoffer

This is an expression of your failure to separate the reasoning process (form) from the subject matter (content) being argued. If a person adheres to the proper reasoning process, bias does not manipulate the ability to reason. However, biases will influence the conclusion because the same bias which goes into the content of the premises will be reflected in the conclusions.

How do you arrive at good? You just claim us to arrive at that without explaining how we arrive at that? It's basically like saying, "once we have the concept of good acts, we can then form principles of morality that we can follow", and then argue about some ideals that still requires the "good" to be defined. You still don't seem to see that this argument is faulty, that it is a circular argument in which you describe a system that relies on axioms that needs to be argued for and proven absolute, before you propose how to use them. You are only describing how to use them... whenever we arrive at having such axioms. — Christoffer

There is no circular argument here, "good" is definable, and as such, that definition will provide a grounding, a base or foundation. That I have not defined it is irrelevant to my argument. There is no need to define it until you accept the reality that it has a purpose, and needs to be defined.

The important point here, is that it is possible to define "good", therefore it is possible to judge biases on the basis of this definition. To reason meaningfully without bias is impossible. So you need to drop your goal, as impossible, and I've proposed a replacement, a goal which is possible. The reason why your position is impossible, is because you approach from a bad bias, the idea that philosophy is anti-bias. It's an irrational position, which is not a true representation of philosophy, so I can say that it is bad, as false.

Prove the soul's existence. — Christoffer

You need to read some of the material I mentioned, or others. It's a lot of reading. Here's the simple form of the argument though. There's two basic premises. 1) A living body exists as an organized body. 2) When a body comes into existence it necessarily is the thing which it is, and it is not something else. Do you see that the necessity of 2) requires a cause? That a thing is the thing which it is, and not something else, requires a cause of the thing being the thing which it is. Without that cause there is no "thing", which is an ordered structure, only disordered randomness.

And the cause of a thing necessarily pre-exists, temporally, the material being of the thing. In the case of 1), the organized living body, the cause of it being the thing which it is, is the soul. Notice that the soul is necessarily non-bodily, or non-material, as necessarily prior to the being of the body. You can rebut by saying that there is no need to label that cause as "soul", but what's the point? We still need to recognize the reality of that cause, so taking its name away is not going to be helpful.

That is an extremely simplified rendition of an understanding of the soul, but if you show an attempt to understand, I will expound for you, if you have questions.

A photon is a real thing. It is measurable as both a wave and a particle in experiments like the wave function collapse in the double slit experiment. — Christoffer

This is wrong. A photon is not measurable as a wave. Hence the so-called wave function collapse whenever a measurement is attempted. This is analogous to the argument for the soul above. The particle, photon, or electron, is the ordered "thing", the body with material existence. Its existence, through wave function collapse, requires a cause. Without that cause there is no thing, and without the soul there is no living body.

Wouldn’t that be bias in its conventional sense? Or perhaps, if not conventional, then psychological? — Mww

I'd say that's akin to basic confirmation bias, but your previous post described bias pretty well. In the simplest form, a bias is simply a statistical pull towards a preferred state. It can be aesthetical in that I prefer red wine because of taste and therefor I would argue that red wine is better than other forms of drinks. And it can be larger in that I am afraid of the implications of nothing after death so I seek comfort in anything that says there's something after death and because of it I start to defend religious claims of the afterlife.

It is part of normal human cognition and probably normal for any type of physical system as well, purely in statistical terms. But it doesn't have an intrinsic value of good and bad, it is a neutral phenomena. And because it affects all as a natural thing, we need to fight this natural instinct just as we have cultivated other cultural behaviors that took us from an animal state to a societal state. Just as any other instinct that we humans have as animals, we should fine-tune our behavior to be everyday vigilant of how bias affects us and our thinking. Just as we don't shit on the floor, hit someone who stands in our way and do not speak our deepest minds in every conversation, I think people should form a new cultural behavior in being aware of biases. Just being more aware could change how we process new information and interact during conflicts.

That may be true, and you would fare none the worse for it. But you’re forced to admit the possibility of those that do not hold such fear. Makes sense, doesn’t it, that if there is no knowledge, empirical knowledge that is, of something, then how can it be known as sufficient to cause fear? With so much being unknown, just seems quite wasteful to fear it all, so why bother deciding which is worth fearing and which isn’t, when all of it is equally unknown?

Besides, if it be granted knowledge is experience, then to fear the unknown is to fear an experience never had. I’ve been both remorseful and quite happy regarding experiences I’ve never had, but I’d categorically deny being afraid of them. — Mww

I don't think we can change the fear of the unknown as a state since it doesn't really relate to an awareness of the concept, but rather a psychological state of our human condition. It is part of our fight or flight mechanisms, we fear the darkness as we don't know the dangers within. This, as so many other things in our psychology has shaped even our higher levels of thinking. So I've never met anyone who's truly unafraid of the unknown, it is part of our basic psyche.

I get what you’re aiming for, but I submit there is no escape from oneself. There is, not the detachment from, but only the relaxing of, one mental space in order to favor the other, and the space being called upon is determined by the certainty required.

I’ll admit though, that this kind of rationality makes explicit the intrinsic duality of human nature. If one doesn’t accede to such duality, then he’s welcome to philosophize under conditions where it isn’t necessarily the case. — Mww

Yes, we cannot split our brain in physical two, the duality cannot be real, only simulated. But I position it to be such a simulated space. Just like you can run a virtual operating system within the operating system on a computer in order to run tests that are dangerous for the main system, we can reject inhabiting a concept or idea until it has been tested in this simulated or virtual space. Just like Einstein's Gedanken labs we mentally distance ourselves and evaluate rather than trying to inhabit the space.

What are foundational premisses? You will know that foundationalism in physics is a contested issue, due to the many conundrums and imponderables thrown up by quantum mechanics. Foundationalism in mathematics was likewise called into question by Godel. Rudolf Carnap said 'In science there are no 'depths'; there is surface everywhere.' The tendency in 20th century philosophy has been to avoid foundational claims altogether which are typically regarded as the province of metaphysics and idealist philosophy. — Wayfarer

I think you are making semantical connections where there are none. Foundational premisses in this context simply means the foundation of the argument for the conclusion, not an "ism", just the basic structure of an argument. And my point was that rationalism in a comparison to positivism, does not need empirical observation as a requirement for the argument's premisses, but rather that the premisses have a logic in its reasoning.

It is commonplace to disregard all religious texts as dogma from the start. But in the Western philosophical tradition, much of what was great in pre-modern philosophy had been absorbed (or appopriated) by theology, and so has been rejected because of this association. And I would contend that these are the sources of foundational insights, at the origin of metaphysics. — Wayfarer

And this is what I've said as well, just that it is vital to understand such insights as exploratory and not deductive claims about reality. We can have profound insight into the human condition, without there needing to be a scientific realm to it, as long as the claims doesn't conclude as objective facts about reality. We can speak of "soul" as exploratory concepts, but if anyone claims the soul to be a real thing, they have a burden of proof to such a claim and if that proof is simply a religious belief, it is not philosophy anymore, but evangelism.

However, scientific objectivity does not do justice to this idea, as within it there is no room for the subject of experience. — Wayfarer

Yes, there is, as long as that experience is discussed exploratory and not as objective claims that otherwise require scientific evidence. But even so, as I pointed out in rationalism vs positivism, you can still use critical thinking and logic when exploring topics of experience to find inductive arguments which isn't really possible in positivism due to its requirement of factual observations.

Most other traditions prize practice above creedal orthodoxy: Buddhists, Hindus, Confucians, Jews and Muslims would say religion is something you do — Karen Armstrong, Metaphysical Mistake

If I return to what I wrote in the other thread about "if science will replace religion", it is what I mentioned there that the "do" is an important part that many atheists ignore as an important realm of religion. My position there was that there should be more effort to include the practices of rituals and traditions without incorporating the fantasies of religious belief. That "rituals" and "traditions" are not religious in themselves, but functions as acts that are important for our well being. Rituals, for instance, can be anything repeatable that doesn't need to have an obvious practical reason in everyday life.

Non-religious calligraphy is an example of something that does not require any religious aspect, but still functions as a ritual that can have a massive impact on our mental well-being.

We can "do" without the belief, and I'm a big promoter of such practices as part of everyday life as help ground the mind, lower stress and have the ability to produce a spiritual experience without the belief in the supernatural.

The insights of classical philosophy are not accessible to the common man, the hoi polloi, who are offered salvation on the basis of faith alone. That would appear to be in conflict with Christianity except that, a Christian would say, by the practice of charity and selflessness, those same depths can be realised even by the not-particularly-educated. But when belief becomes the defense of creedal orthodoxy in defense of polemic, then it's another matter. Religious practice is, or ought to be, 'a science of the self'. — Wayfarer

Yes, I agree. The problem is that there's no separation of the institution and the practice for most religious people. Since there's no clear focus on "the science of the self", the religious beliefs promoted by religious institutions become the norm and center rather than the self. Even if someone has the goal of converting to a religion on the basis of self-exploration, they are soon blasted with the "truths" of the institution and learns that they will never be able to reach their wanted goal if they don't accept the fantasy first. Basically, accept the belief dogma, or else never get salvation.

It is basically this that I think needs to change in society, there has to be a place for people wanting to explore the self without being conformed to group think, but religion in society is basically all institutionalized. Even independent spiritualists conform to a group of similar-minded inventing their own religious beliefs rather than exploring the self.

It is to a point so prevalent that I'm thinking it might be impossible to be in such a state without conforming to an institutional religious belief bias. And because of this I'd argue that a true science of the self requires a non-religious approach of self-exploration. In what form is hard to say, but as a personal experience, my exploration of my own self is a journey to understand my own psychology, my own inner workings. I have found that a purely rational and scientific exploration of my self to possess a sense of spiritual sensations without me adhering to any belief systems, institutional dogmas or fantasy, but purely out of a sense of journey to pure understanding my own biological entity and exploration of the experience of being one.

And no, don't agree that the insights of the Phaedo are merely superseded or obsolete — Wayfarer

It is not what I'm saying either, only that the arguments used rely on outdated understanding of the physical world and that the arguments need to be updated to the updated physics we have today, because they are a foundational part of that dialogue. We can't ignore that the claims about the physical world are false by what we know today in physics.

Rationalism and positivism are both scientific tools, they are complimentary imo.
The fork and knife together are better for eating most meals, compared to using the fork alone or the knife alone. — universeness

Rationalism and Positivism are two approaches in which positivism requires only that which can be observed and measured in such ways, which excludes things like theoretical physics. The problem with positivism is that science is just as much about precise prediction as it is about verifying through tests. Positivism is actually quite bad at science in that regard since almost all scientific methods rely on predictions that are later tested if possible. A positivist would have a hard time accepting Einstein's equations before anything was verified and they would likely oppose quantum mechanics, even when we have invented technology that relies on observations that haven't been verified as theories yet.

The main problems arise when folks insist that proposals arrived at via such as theology, metaphysics, personal intuition, or personal introspection, are fact or highly probably.
I think that is the basis of philosophical objections to religious claims, yes? — universeness

And yes, it is basically what I've been argued for, summarizing it as philosophy's purpose being about reducing or removing bias from reasoning. Because bias is a mental lean or gravitation towards a belief that has no actual support and then use that belief as the foundation for a truth claim. Because philosophy doesn't just function as a tool against religious belief claims, it functions against any claim that has a biased belief built into it. And even when it is exploratory it is used to focus our thinking past our basic messy minds through removing our subjective influences, i.e our biases.

individualistic, idealist, and ahistorical arguments for unbiased thinking--which is revealed to be quite biased itself (not to say that it's a bad bias, necessarily). — Jamal

I'd like to hear in what way it is biased? There's been many and long arguments between different points of views so I'd like to hear how you arrive at that summery.

As I explained, it was your premise that biases are bad, undesirable, or whatever words you used in your anti-bias rhetoric. From this premise I produce the logic to demonstrate that if some biases are bad, then some must also be good. If the logic was faulty, you'd be able to show why, instead of just repeatedly asserting that it is faulty. In reality, it is only the premise which you insist on, that biases are not desirable, which potentially makes the argument unsound. — Metaphysician Undercover

There's a difference between saying that biases are bad for rational and critical thinking, and saying there are "good and bad biases". So you form a counter-argument based on a misunderstanding of what I wrote, which means the counter-argument becomes misaligned in the discussion.

You need to demonstrate examples of good biases and how you deductively arrive at valuing them as good. Otherwise you are begging the question.

I already explained why what you propose is impossible. — Metaphysician Undercover

What are you talking about? I pointed out that your argument requires you to unbiasedly show what is a good bias and what is a bad bias in order to conclude that nothing can be argued without bias.

I pointed out that you break your own logic by saying that nothing can be argued without bias and then explains how we need an unbiased system to know what is good or bad. It is a never ending circular argument.

You are being inconsistent. If you take an anti-bias position, as you do, then you imply that biases are bad. If biases were neutral, then there would be no need for an anti-bias position. However, your description of how we "gravitate toward something", along with the premise that the actions produced from such a gravitation may be judged as good or bad, produces the valid conclusion that biases may be judged as good or bad. — Metaphysician Undercover

Are you saying there are no neutral things that we can sense is of negative to us? Death is neutral, but we sense it as negative. Nature is neutral, can it be negative towards you?

Bias is neutral because it is a natural phenomena. This neutral phenomena makes it problematic for us to conduct critical thinking as our basic psychology works against us. Another thing that is a neutral phenomena is our sexuality, but our society isn't built for the type of sexuality that exist in nature. We don't go around and have sex with everything around us. We are able to suppress and behave outside of these biological systems in order to function better in society.

The same goes for bias, it is a psychological phenomena related to how we process reality, it is part of the fight or flight system to summarize our perception and cognition in order to act adaptively faster than what would happen if we were to process each moment by that specific moments summery of information around us. It is neutral.

If I describe how bias is bad for critical thinking then you need to understand what that means. The neutral phenomena of bias makes it hard for our mind to process complex concepts without conforming to presupposed groupings of information. This is the psychology of bias. The bias itself is neutral, the effect it has on critical thinking is bad.

Which is why I say that philosophy's purpose is to remove bias or reduce bias as much as possible when we attempt critical thinking to solve a problem or construct a new concept. Because if we ignore it we will only be able to construct new ideas that are influenced by prejudice in the premisses for the conclusion of that idea.

So, just like some opinions may be judged as good, and some judged as bad, because they influence behaviour in this way, the same can be said for biases. The word "bias" being used to describe how we "gravitate", and such gravitation may be be judged as good or bad. — Metaphysician Undercover

The problem with your argument is still how you judge what is good or bad in the first place. How do you judge it? You need to explain that because it is at the core of your argument.

Unbiased reasoning is impossible. I explained that to you already, and I think Mww did too. You are ignoring this very important fact. Premises are biases, and we cannot reason without premises. Notice the prefix, "pre" in the word "premise". The premise is what we enter the reasoning process with, as a preexisting assumption, a "prejudice". A skeptic might subject the premise to analysis, and a reasoning process, to judge for soundness, but that reasoning process would itself require premises, which would need the same skeptical treatment, and this would create the appearance of infinite regress. Since it is impossible to proceed through an infinity of premises for skeptical analysis, we must conclude that all reasoning is biased, due to the biased nature of the premises. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not impossible, it is called critical thinking. Mww didn't say that either, if you read our discussion we are more in agreement than I think you interpreted.

What you are doing here is a false dichotomy. Unbiased thinking does not turn off the natural bias in human psychology, it is a process of reducing bias. To remove bias from an argument is to spot the bias you have when conducting critical thinking so you can remove it from the argument. That process is not "being able to think without bias". When I describe a mental process of unbiased thinking I'm describing the process of spotting biases and detach them from the line of thought required to form a concept or idea. It has never been about transcending to a place of non-bias, it has always been about mental tools and methods for being aware of bias and actively excluding them from the argument that is being constructed.

This is clearly wrong. Such a goal is logically impossible to obtain, therefore it is irrational to hold it as a goal. Any attempt to obtain what is demonstrably impossible, is an irrational attempt. When a proposed goal is known to be impossible, we need to dismiss it as a goal, and adopt something which is possible, as our goal. — Metaphysician Undercover

Only if you adhere to false dichotomy about this. You are proposing a black & white error in reasoning by saying this is clearly wrong because you don't seem to understand the concept of unbiased reasoning and summarize it as trying to remove bias completely rather than it being a tool to spot and suppress bias. That you interpret me saying "reduce bias" with "remove bias" shows this false dichotomy in play here.

The method is logic itself. We use logic to assess biases. You need to allow a separation, in principle between the form (logical process) and the content (beliefs which constitute biases). With this separation we have in principle, i.e. in theory, a pure unbiased process, logic. However, such a pure unbiased process would be absolutely useless because it would not be applied, and application requires content. But inherent within the content is bias. You might talk about some pie-in-the-sky conclusions which are totally free of bias, but those would just be meaningless symbols with no content. If we give meaning to the symbols (content), then we add bias to the system. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are not showing how you can evaluate what is a good and bad bias. You are basically describing my own theory of duality in mind for critical thinking, just in other form. So you are basically saying that we need critical thinking, which is unbiased in form, in order to evaluate what is a good or a bad bias? You describe a separation in which one part is evaluating the other through logic, which is the same as what I describe when talking about mentally stepping back and observing the automatic self at a distance, spotting its behavior of biases and categorizing them as blockages of the concept being formed.

This is why I find what you write confusing, because you counter-argue what I write, but then enforce the same notion of critical thinking that I'm already talking about.

This is where you show your inconsistency. You are speaking anti-bias, yet claiming biases are neutral. If you really believed that biases are neutral, then you'd need to jump over the fence to my position, and drop your anti-biased approach, because anti-bias would be unfounded. If biases are neutral, then you have no reason to be anti-bias, and your anti-bias attitude is irrational. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, it is you who either doesn't read what I write carefully or misunderstand me so much that you form the false dichotomy that makes you argue against me based on that misunderstanding. I don't have to jump over the fence to anywhere because I've been consistent in what I write, you have just misinterpret it.

However, since you describe biases as a form of "gravitation", which implies an inclination to act, it is really the case that biases, according to this description are not neutral at all. These acts of gravitation can be judge as good or bad, and so the inclination toward them, produced by the biases, can also be judged in that way. — Metaphysician Undercover

Gravity is neutral, how do you interpret gravity as "an inclination to act"? I mean gravitation in its literal sense. But you attribute gravitation to acts of good and bad, I really don't understand how you reason in this? It's basically a wild misinterpretation of what I write and then you form a large concept around that misinterpretation before saying I'm wrong.

You need to start with understanding what I write before counter-arguing, otherwise you will just tumble down in a rabbit hole of confusion. Read what I wrote again:

biases are neutral forms of gravitation towards certain things — Christoffer

Carefully. Biases... are a neutral form (a neutral psychological process that is a part of how our mind works) of gravitation (like gravity in standard physics, pulling) towards certain things (the belief that our mind filter certain information through).

This is your inconsistency. You assert "biases are neutral", yet you describe them as something which can be judged for goodness or badness. If they are inclinations toward action, "gravitation", they can be judged in that way, therefore they are not neutral. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again,

Bias is a neutral process.

The negative effect that bias has on critical thinking makes bias bad for reaching valid conclusions.

I'm not the one who attribute biases to be either good or bad, that is you:

Philosophy is concerned with distinguishing good biases from bad, such that the good can be cultured. And, it may be argued that other disciplines like science and religion deal with culturing biases. Whether such biases are bad or good is a judgement for philosophy to make. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then you describe gravitating as an action, when its use in its literal sense as gravity. It is not an act, it is an event.

So, you are wildly misinterpreting what I write and form large objections out of this misinterpretation.

Your misunderstanding is clear here. You do not acknowledge the reality that it is impossible to argue without bias — Metaphysician Undercover

False dichotomy again. Unbiased thinking is not removal of bias it is spotting bias and reduction of bias when forming an argument or concept.

It's the process of arguing with bias that is bad, not that there are bad biases. — Christoffer

To explain again, the process of arguing with bias is bad, not that there are values attributed to different biases, that is once again your stance as per the quote earlier. In critical thinking, a vital part is unbiased reasoning, this is the process of spotting what biases that appear in your reasoning so that you can tackle them. It is not to be able to reason free of bias. "Unbiased" is a clearly defined term that exists, it isn't made up here by me.

Critical thinking is the analysis of available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments in order to form a judgement by the application of rational, skeptical, and unbiased analyses and evaluation.

This is an expression of your failure to separate the reasoning process (form) from the subject matter (content) being argued. If a person adheres to the proper reasoning process, bias does not manipulate the ability to reason. However, biases will influence the conclusion because the same bias which goes into the content of the premises will be reflected in the conclusions. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, it's a failure of understanding my writing on your part. To once again explain my own writing in detail:

"Bias is a natural and neutral manipulation of the ability to reason outside of your own beliefs."

Bias is a neutral psychological phenomena that is manipulating our ability to reason outside our beliefs, because "beliefs" in this psychological definition is describing whatever group of current information that is helping us speeding up our cognition in order to process reality around us based on pre-programmed prediction models through past information. I'm talking about psychology here, how our minds work and what bias means in our thought process. Because of this process we have a constant process of bias being a filter in front of new information, a filter that distorts our ability to produce new concepts that aren't influenced by our own prejudices. These psychological prejudices have the function of enabling us to act fast and not get stuck in cognitive loops whenever we try to do any type of basic task or problem solving in everyday life.

This manipulation and suppression of our ability to reason outside of these cognitive faster lanes of thinking requires us to find methods of suppressing this internal process in order to reason more objectively.

If you don't understand what I'm talking about here, then its no wonder you misinterpret everything I write.

There is no circular argument here, "good" is definable, and as such, that definition will provide a grounding, a base or foundation. That I have not defined it is irrelevant to my argument. There is no need to define it until you accept the reality that it has a purpose, and needs to be defined. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are talking about a universalized good and bad since you position them as foundational, so of course you have to define it. You position there to be a definable good, you propose it to be an axiom that will function as a foundation for all further reasoning. That is a high claim to make and requires you to provide an example.

Can you provide ANY example that functions as such an axiom of foundation?

The important point here, is that it is possible to define "good", therefore it is possible to judge biases on the basis of this definition. — Metaphysician Undercover

Demonstrate it, quote something or whatever, I want to see an example of this since it is over and over the core of what you write. Since you position such a strong "you are wrong" against me I want you to demonstrate that I am wrong by showing an example of forming such an axiomatic value of a bias.

You need to read some of the material I mentioned, or others. It's a lot of reading. Here's the simple form of the argument though. There's two basic premises. 1) A living body exists as an organized body. 2) When a body comes into existence it necessarily is the thing which it is, and it is not something else. Do you see that the necessity of 2) requires a cause? That a thing is the thing which it is, and not something else, requires a cause of the thing being the thing which it is. Without that cause there is no "thing", which is an ordered structure, only disordered randomness.

And the cause of a thing necessarily pre-exists, temporally, the material being of the thing. In the case of 1), the organized living body, the cause of it being the thing which it is, is the soul. Notice that the soul is necessarily non-bodily, or non-material, as necessarily prior to the being of the body. You can rebut by saying that there is no need to label that cause as "soul", but what's the point? We still need to recognize the reality of that cause, so taking its name away is not going to be helpful.

That is an extremely simplified rendition of an understanding of the soul, but if you show an attempt to understand, I will expound for you, if you have questions. — Metaphysician Undercover

1) A living body exists as an organized body. 2) When a body comes into existence it necessarily is the thing which it is, and it is not something else. Do you see that the necessity of 2) requires a cause? That a thing is the thing which it is, and not something else, requires a cause of the thing being the thing which it is. Without that cause there is no "thing", which is an ordered structure, only disordered randomness. — Metaphysician Undercover

How is this not just biology? Animals have sex, biology produce a body, the nature of the body is the result of evolutionary changes to form that body. The reason the body is what it is, is due to the genetical information guiding the cellular formation based on previous evolutionary guidance in relation to the environment of past lineage of that species.

These premises have nothing to do with how a body becomes. It is perfectly explainable through biology and physics.

So then:

And the cause of a thing necessarily pre-exists, temporally, the material being of the thing. In the case of 1), the organized living body, the cause of it being the thing which it is, is the soul. Notice that the soul is necessarily non-bodily, or non-material, as necessarily prior to the being of the body. You can rebut by saying that there is no need to label that cause as "soul", but what's the point? We still need to recognize the reality of that cause, so taking its name away is not going to be helpful.

That is an extremely simplified rendition of an understanding of the soul, but if you show an attempt to understand, I will expound for you, if you have questions. — Metaphysician Undercover

The reason matter forms into the body is because of energy (primarily from the sun) forming into matter through the natural ecosystem. At the stage initial state of impregnation, the matter that is consumed by the mother forms the matter of the child during the growth process, after birth the same process continues but in the child's own form consuming matter.

You boil down to a conclusion that has nothing to do with the premises. Neither of them can be deductively formed into "the cause of it being the thing which it is, is the soul." That is a perfect example of you using your conclusion in the same form as "because God". It is biased to a belief in a soul, there is no evidence of a soul in this argument you propose.

The cause you are talking about is an invention that precedes the arguments and its premises. You ignore biology and talks about some abstract cause that has nothing to do with the actual formation of a body or consciousness.

You are also not explaining the soul in any common understanding of it. It is neither explained in psychological terms or biological. It is basically the first cause argument that always ends in "because God."

Let's break down the premises

Premise 1: This premise asserts that a living organism is a structured and organized entity. It implies that there is an inherent order and arrangement in a living body.

This is either just intelligent design or just an obvious observation of the state of a physical thing.

Premise 2: When a body comes into existence, it necessarily is the thing which it is, and it is not something else.
This premise suggests that when a body comes into being, it takes on a specific identity and nature. It cannot be something different from what it is.

This formation is biology based on genetics and the environment, basically nature and nurture. It cannot be something other than forming from that, it is also just an obvious observation.

Conclusion: The necessity of premise 2 requires a cause.
Claiming that the fact that a body has a specific identity and nature requires a cause. In other words, there must be something that determines and brings about the body's specific form and characteristics.

And this is basically nature, biology, genetics, evolution etc. Nothing in this cause has any connection to "soul". It is basically ignoring what we know about biology and physics, applying a cause that is supernatural in the form of something external to reality, neither proven or supported by the premises of this argument.

This argument is biased to a belief in the soul. It is presupposing a soul before making an argument for it. There is no connection between the conclusion that the "cause" is a soul and the premises and there's no connection between "cause" and soul other than just saying that it is.

So no, you haven't proven the existence of a soul. You have proven there to be a cause of a body's existence, which is not a soul. You have not proven why that existence isn't the result of biological and physics causes.

This is wrong. A photon is not measurable as a wave. Hence the so-called wave function collapse whenever a measurement is attempted. This is analogous to the argument for the soul above. The particle, photon, or electron, is the ordered "thing", the body with material existence. Its existence, through wave function collapse, requires a cause. Without that cause there is no thing, and without the soul there is no living body. — Metaphysician Undercover

You apparently have no knowledge in physics. The wave function collapse occurs due to the photon being affected by itself producing a collapse in different realities down to a single outcome, depending on schools of interpretation in quantum physics. The cause that you mention is itself, demonstrated by the experiment and it is not analogous to your broken argument for the soul. A photon is a boson particle that is a real thing, if you don't believe this, just travel to CERN and speak with people who actually knows these things.

It is stuff like this that informs me why you are so deeply confused by what I write. Your mind seem to wonder all over the place and you have no insight into how broken your arguments are in their logic.

Rationalism and Positivism are two approaches in which positivism requires only that which can be observed and measured in such ways, which excludes things like theoretical physics. The problem with positivism is that science is just as much about precise prediction as it is about verifying through tests. Positivism is actually quite bad at science in that regard since almost all scientific methods rely on predictions that are later tested if possible. A positivist would have a hard time accepting Einstein's equations before anything was verified and they would likely oppose quantum mechanics, even when we have invented technology that relies on observations that haven't been verified as theories yet. — Christoffer

I have agreed with the vast majority of what you have typed on this thread, but I think you are harsh on 'positivism.' Without it, Einstein's theory of relativity would be declared fact. Big bang theory would be declared fact, and this would perhaps mean science would not continuously challenge and scrutinise both. No theory in science is ever declared fact, because of stances such as positivism.
You yourself keep suggesting that empirical testing/evidence, is the final arbiter.
To me that's what positivism asserts as well, it stands as a good, much needed guardian against accepting anything on faith alone. Sometimes there is little choice but to accept something on faith, but positivism dictates that you should remain reluctant to do so, and I think that's a wise stance to take.
Even the fundamentalist Arab muslims like the advice of"trust in god but tie up your camel"

Hadith on Reliance: Trust in Allah, but tie your camel
By Abu Amina Elias / November 17, 2012
Anas ibn Malik reported: A man said, “O Messenger of Allah, should I tie my camel and trust in Allah, or should I leave her untied and trust in Allah?” The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Tie her and trust in Allah.”

…..this kind of rationality makes explicit the intrinsic duality of human nature.
— Mww

Yes, we cannot split our brain in physical two, the duality cannot be real, only simulated. — Christoffer

Sure. It’s an explanatory device, and nothing more. That we’re capable of such speculations, though, that’s the wonder of it all, methinks.

We can speak of "soul" as exploratory concepts, but if anyone claims the soul to be a real thing, they have a burden of proof to such a claim and if that proof is simply a religious belief, it is not philosophy anymore, but evangelism. — Christoffer

I believe in the reality of the soul, but language is misleading. To claim that the soul is a real thing, is already to misunderstand the subject of the discussion, because there is no such thing in the empirical sense. But then, neither does the mind exist objectively. (One of the unfortunate implications of Descartes' dualism is mind as 'res cogitans', 'thinking thing', which is an oxymoron.)

We can infer that others have minds, but the mind is never an objective reality for us. We only ever know the mind in the first person, in its role as the capacity for experience, thought and reason; even then, it is not known, but what knows (ref.) But what it is that thinks, experiences and reasons is not an empirical question (and indeed that is 'the hard problem' from the perspective of the objective sciences).

The Greek term for soul was 'psyche' which is, of course, preserved in modern English, in the term 'psychology' as well as in general use as another name for mind. There is an unresolvable debate over whether psychology really is a scientific discipline due to the intractable nature of mind from an objective point of view.

So for mine, 'soul' refers to 'the totality of the being' - synonymous to 'mind' in the larger sense that includes the unconscious and subconscious domains. It is more than simply the body although we're clearly embodied minds (and whether there is or can be a disembodied mind is perhaps nearer to the actual question.) But it's also far more than the conscious mind, the aspect of our own mind that we are able to articulate. So by the 'totality of the being', I mean, taking into account all of our history, our talents, inclinations, proclivities, and destiny. That is what I take 'soul' to denote, and I do believe that it is real.

We can't ignore that the claims about the physical world are false by what we know today in physics. — Christoffer

Of course. I understand that this is part of what is required by the art of philosophical hermeneutic, re-interpreting an ancient text in light of subsequent advances in scientific understanding.

Most other traditions prize practice above creedal orthodoxy: Buddhists, Hindus, Confucians, Jews and Muslims would say religion is something you do
— Karen Armstrong, Metaphysical Mistake — Christoffer

Perhaps an aside but, IME as a born, raised and educated ex-Catholic, the distinction between orthodoxy and Ms. Armstrong's emphasis on orthopraxy lacks much of a difference in so far as in the main, ceteris paribus, religious practices and religious beliefs are strongly correlated.