A soup of chemicals gathering together and magically/mystically deciding that they are going to have a barbecue with another soup of chemicals is pure mythology. It is conjured up literally out of thin air so that scientists can claim supremacy over "facts" and "truth" and tuck everything that we experience under the rug if illusion. — Rich

This is a complete misinterpretation of the scientific view of this subject. @apokrisis has pointed this out. In another post, he recommended "Life's Ratchet." The argument that life can arise out of inanimate matter without intervention by an intelligent actor seems more than plausible to me. Admittedly, I don't understand the subject enough to make the argument.

The argument that life can arise out of inanimate matter without intervention seems more than plausible to me. — T Clark

It's just a story. The story of how chemicals mysticaly began to think, imagine, feel, emote, and create, encouraged by Cosmic Goals and Thermodynamic Purpose. Pure mythology. A game of hide-and-seek which is a direct derivative of God and God's Natural Laws. It is a religion.

It's just a story. The story of how chemicals began to think, encouraged by Cosmic Goals and Thermodynamic Purpose. Pure mythology. A game of hide-and-seek which is a direct derivative of God and God's Natural Laws. It is a religion. — Rich

If that's true, then all knowledge, all concepts, are just stories. Which I actually believe. But that's a different discussion.

Philosophers should observe and understand not be caught up in story telling. That is what makes Daoism so interesting and practical. It is about the experience of life not the imagination of the mind.

That some scientists can make a living spinning stories had no practical value to me. Understanding how the body naturally heals does.

Philosophers should observe and understand not be caught up in story telling. That is what makes Daoism so interesting and practical. It is about the experience of life not the imagination of the mind.

That some scientists can make a living spinning stories had no practical value to me. Understanding how the body naturally heals does. — Rich

Philosophers tell stories as much as scientists do. Humans are story telling creatures. Everything we say is a story about what can't be spoken.

Philosophers tell stories as much as scientists do. Humans are story telling creatures. Everything we say is a story about what can't be spoken. — T Clark

Apparently this is what is happening. I am suggesting there is a difference between philosophy and fiction writing, not that humans don't get carried away with their imagination in all endeavors.

Developing the skill of observation (with all facilities) is a lifetime endeavor. Writing imaginative stories begins in grade school. It is a matter of desiring to understand, developing the skills, and having patience. The act of meditating for 5 minutes is all that is necessary to begin the development of a keen awareness of life and nature.

Developing the skill of observation (with all facilities) is a lifetime endeavor. Writing imaginative stories begins in grade school. It is a matter of desiring to understand, developing the skills, and having patience. The act of meditating for 5 minutes is all that is necessary to begin the development of a keen awareness of life and nature. — Rich

I would say that telling stories is a lifetime endeavor as much as developing the skills of observation. Expressing the results of those observations is a story. I'm guessing you and I are not going to resolve this. Again - it's metaphysics. The measure of metaphysics is not truth, it's usefulness.

So have you decided what you are defending? Is it correlationalism or panexperientialism?

I would say that telling stories is a lifetime endeavor as much as developing the skills of observation. — T Clark

There is a difference between developing an idea from pure imagination as troubadours do and understanding patterns in nature. It is the difference between writing about skilled sailors and being one. Writers have far more latitude in the tales they can spin. Sailors' have their lives in the game.

If some of us think of God as immanent in the world, does that mean that God is an emergent phenomenon from the "brute facts" of the universe? — T Clark

Good question. For me, we participate in or even are in our totality what might be called "God." We might even say "Christ," to stress our existence as incarnate concept of word. Dasein or "there-being" or human reality in its fullness is a self-interpreting entity or situation.

We try to trace everything in the causal network back to an origin. I don't see how we can avoid epistemic brute fact. What is current brute fact can perhaps always be assimilated in a larger or grander explanation, but I think this just shifts the role of brute fact to some other entity. Since I believe in something like (philosopher's) "matter" or thing-in-itself-ness (despite the absurdity of this from another perspective), I looks to me like "God" would be an emergent phenomenon. Or we can widen "God" to include all being as a single clump. Then God is a brute fact interpreting itself.

If that's true, then all knowledge, all concepts, are just stories. Which I actually believe. But that's a different discussion. — T Clark

I like this. Since I'm studying Heidegger at the moment, I'd add "know-how" to the stories. I suggest that theoretical knowledge is "stories," while "know-how" is more elusive. Know-how would be knowing how to ride a bike or knowing how to sing. Lots of this "knowledge" is "pre-theoretical." This is the kind of stuff that philosopher's tend to overlook, because there's not much they can do with it but point out its existence. Yet much of human reality is the performance of this know-how. (Note that the keyboard disappeared for me as I was typing these thoughts. The know-how of typing was an invisible background or support for the conscious task of putting these thoughts together.)

Then God is a brute fact interpreting itself. — t0m

This would be more or less Whitehead's viewpoint, only because he acknowledged the creative impulse that was undeniable. Ultimately, it must be incorporated in any metaphysics though sometimes neatly hidden away in some manufactured concept and/or phrase. The alternative is "Everything just happened" (the initial miracle) and then keeps happening (the ongoing, never-ending infinite miracles).

It's plausible that the worldy institutions of science are imperfect. It's also plausible that money is involved in this imperfection. But hating on science itself because individual humans or institutions are imperfect doesn't really make sense to me.

What physical science is attempting to do is to negate personal experiences, and turning it into some sort of illusion, purely to suit its own materialist biases. — Rich

I'm not a fan of scientism, of the scientific image of reality being adopted wholesale as a metaphysical image of reality. No particular image exhausts the real. They are simplifying maps for different purposes. That last sentence is itself one such map. It's a map that helps us deal with the cognitive dissonance of a collision of narratives.

Science exploded triumphantly, as I understand it, by moving from explanation to description. Galileo watched that chandelier sway and saw a mathematical pattern in its swaying. He didn't paste on a metaphysics. Things just do behave like that. We expect them to continue to behave like that. Going beyond descriptions of publicly observable patterns is metaphysics, not science. Or that's roughly how I see it. Certainly some scientists are "reductive" metaphysicians who would call personal experience an illusion. But I don't see how science itself can make such a claim. To speak of "illusions" is to become metaphysical.

This would be more or less Whitehead's viewpoint, only because he acknowledged the creative impulse that was undeniable. Ultimately, it must be incorporated in any metaphysics though sometimes neatly hidden away in some manufactured concept and/or phrase. The alternative is "Everything just happened" (the initial miracle) and then keeps happening (the ongoing, never-ending infinite miracles). — Rich

The "alternative" is not that much of an alternative. If God is a brute fact interpreting itself, then "everything just happened" and keeps happening. We can find order via this self-interpretation. We can tell stories about our origin and destination.

I will say that some acknowledge our intimate experience of creative evolution or being-there more than others. Some do perhaps sweep this under a rug. But in some cases this is simply because it's not relevant to their narrative.

It's plausible that the worldy institutions of science are imperfect. It's also plausible that money is involved in this imperfection. But hating on science itself because individual humans or institutions are imperfect doesn't really make sense to me. — t0m

It's not a minor or side issue. It, along with the collapse of the integrity of our financial institutions, are major social and political issues as money has taken precedence over the welfare of people. Is it a coincidence that the U.S. spends almost 40% more per capita than other countries for medicine (almost 20% of our GDP) yet produces the worse outcomes? And what have we with the new prescription opioid epidemic that is killing tens of thousands of people each year while pharmaceuticals go unpunished due to their control of academic and government institutions. This is not a benign issue.

To speak of "illusions" is to become metaphysical. — t0m

Yes. And scientists slyly hide under the umbrella of science as they broach into the metaphysics and ontology of life. In order for science to justify the billions spent on controlling the mind/body they must first reduce humans to a sack of chemicals. .

Out of curiosity: How do you generally feel about holistic systems like Hegel's, Schelling's, or Goethe's? Mostly organicism, naturaphiloshopie - the world as a macroanthropos.

I like this. Since I'm studying Heidegger at the moment, I'd add "know-how" to the stories. I suggest that theoretical knowledge is "stories," while "know-how" is more elusive. Know-how would be knowing how to ride a bike or knowing how to sing. Lots of this "knowledge" is "pre-theoretical." — t0m

Yes, you're right. I was overlooking know-how. I'm talking about words, concepts, ideas. Know-how under normal circumstances is not a story, but if I explain the skills to someone else, it is. And when I'm just learning a new skill, before it becomes unselfconscious, I tend to do a lot of explaining to myself. Those are stories too.

Absolutely. I was, of course, sure that you were aware of know-how. It's very Taoist, isn't it? This know-how? Mastery is making a process unconscious, automatic.

I think we're very much in agreement that theoretical knowledge (including the theoretical knowledge of non-theoretical knowledge) is all just stories. To the degree that philosophy is the science of science or the knowing of knowing itself, it's especially a story about storytelling, telling the story of self-interpreting story-telling "being-there" that is never finished naming itself. It's something like the self-consciousness of this story-telling. It's a cat chasing its own tail.

The concrete Real (of which we speak) is both the Real revealed by a discourse and Discourse revealing a real. And the Hegelian experience is related neither to the Real nor to Discourse taken separately, but to their indissoluble unity. And since it is itself a revealing Discourse, it is itself an aspect of the concrete Real which it describes. It therefore brings in nothing from outside, and the thought or the discourse which is born from it is not a reflection on the Real: the Real itself is what reflects itself or is reflected in the discourse or as thought. In particular, if the thought and the discourse of the Hegelian Scientist or the Wise Man are dialectical, it is only because they faithfully reflect the “dialectical movement” of the Real of which they are a part and which they experience adequately by giving themselves to it without any preconceived method. — Kojeve

In other words, any story about reality has to include the stories that "reality tells about itself," including this meta-story itself. Any theory of existence that leaves out "mind" or theory itself must be shallow or merely partial (however useful), since it doesn't even explain its own presence as explanation. Perhaps all meta-stories are more or less partial (and more or less useful.)

I also like the "wise man" as being a phenomenological descriptive poet. Language need not always be an argument in terms of the given. It perhaps more importantly reveals what in retrospect appears like fact. For instance, if Heidegger or the Tao much earlier points out "know-how," it's hard to deny the "truth" of this know-how. But by bringing it to mind can change the kinds of things that we bother to argue about. I'm especially interested in pointing out unnoticed structures or assumptions that force the contingent to look necessary, constraining the freedom of thought.

Out of curiosity: How do you generally feel about holistic systems like Hegel's, Schelling's, or Goethe's? Mostly organicism, naturaphiloshopie - the world as a macroanthropos. — Marty

For me, it is a move towards the correct organic causal logic, but then still mired in the ultimate goal of making religion and romanticism come out right. There is a desire to argue for an ultimately transcendental or supernatural response in answer to the apparent brute materialism and personal meaninglessness of Enlightenment physics.

So a tick for the analysis of general causal structure. But then a problem with an unwillingness to just go with the immanence, the naturalism, the self-contained organisational principle, that that causal structure is pointing directly at.

Yes. Mechanical reductionism deserves a good bashing. That is a big motivation for any holist or organicist.

But I trust to science to be clever enough to get to where it needs to go. If science is the one that has the biggest problem with reductionism, it is also in the best position to fix that.

And that isn't an anti-philosophical stance. It simply reflects the reality that science drives any progress in metaphysics these days.

Absolutely. I was, of course, sure that you were aware of know-how. It's very Taoist, isn't it? This know-how? Mastery is making a process unconscious, automatic. — t0m

Story telling is also very Taoist. It's how we bring the world, the 10,000 things, into existence.

I love the phrase "the 10,000 things." I remember reading somewhere years ago that there are about 20,000 words in the English language. That seems about right, that was 2,500 years ago. Plenty of time to double the number of words. I'm sure there are a lot more than 20,000 now.

Good point. That's also very Hegelian. The "Concept" is a self-othering little fellow. Making distinctions enriches our conceptual picture or story of reality. Reality thickens. Even if things in general are running down, there are uphill pockets (we ourselves). That's an interesting aspect of apo's theory. We are meaning-making backflows.

On the individual level too our vocabularies swell. To some degree this is the meaning of life for me. I just want to continue enriching my mind, weaving a more and more fascinating story. I want the backflow to pile up high, just because it feels good, perhaps. There's a love involved.

Good point. That's also very Hegelian. The "Concept" is a self-othering little fellow. Making distinctions enriches our conceptual picture or story of reality. Reality thickens. Even if things in general are running down, there are uphill pockets (we ourselves). That's an interesting aspect of apo's theory. We are meaning-making backflows. — t0m

I haven't read much philosophy. I must admit I've always looked down on Western philosophy in particular. So much emphasis on tedious distinctions. So many words - every philosopher seems to feel the need to rename things that have already been named 15 times by 15 other philosophers. Each philosophy breaks the world up into different pieces. So much pomposity and triviality.

One thing I've found on this forum is that there are smart people who use philosophies as tools. They keep them in their tool box and pull out the one they need when it's appropriate. They use them to figure things out rather than to justify their confused, unsupported musings. I put you in that class, along with apokrisis, fdrake, mysticmonist, timeline, and others. I was going to say that it makes me want to read more philosophy, but that's not really true. It makes me wish I wanted to read more philosophy. I view sloth as a virtue, not a deadly sin.

I really like this forum.

I put you in that class, along with apokrisis, fdrake, mysticmonist, timeline, and others. — T Clark

When I was in high school on the JV soccer team, some of us played the last part of the varsity season on that team after our season ended. We would run sprints in little groups as the coach (my biology teacher) called out "Strikers!", "Midfielders!" and so on until he got down to "Ev'body else!" and we would run.

All these years later and still just "and others" if even that. <sniff>

I haven't read much philosophy. I must admit I've always looked down on Western philosophy in particular. So much emphasis on tedious distinctions. So many words - every philosopher seems to feel the need to rename things that have already been named 15 times by 15 other philosophers. Each philosophy breaks the world up into different pieces. So much pomposity and triviality.

One thing I've found on this forum is that there are smart people who use philosophies as tools. They keep them in their tool box and pull out the one they need when it's appropriate. They use them to figure things out rather than to justify their confused, unsupported musings. I put you in that class, along with apokrisis, fdrake, mysticmonist, timeline, and others. I was going to say that it makes me want to read more philosophy, but that's not really true. It makes me wish I wanted to read more philosophy. I view sloth as a virtue, not a deadly sin. — T Clark

I actually understand. I don't think a person can love philosophy without also hating it. No one hates (bad) philosophy like a (good) philosopher. As I understand it, it's a quest to cut through the BS and the confusion. But bad versions of this quest only further muddy the water. I also resent the constant reinvention of the wheel, the barrage of neologisms. I tolerate this only when I think there's something new hidden behind this bad habit of presentation. Heidegger is a great example. I couldn't really love the guy till I found the short lecture The Concept of Time. The only new term in it was "Dasein" or "being there," and this was justified. The rest is understated and terse. It offers the gist. Then one becomes willing to wade through the massive Being and Time. Sartre did the same thing in Being and Nothingness. Sometimes I think this is just a way of hiding "groundlessness" in a pseudo-scientific framework. And maybe it's the game one feels forced to play to be respected.

I think it's mostly the usual intellectual vanity that fixates on jargon. I tend to be suspicious of one-jargon minds as still too green to stand on their own as the unique collision of the stories they've been told. The green mind must always lean on some respectable/famous justification for its own creations.

Your tool-box metaphor reminds me of pragmatism. It gets "behind" the tedious disputes by looking at what we are really trying to accomplish with such disputes. It unveils language as a tool. It is language that unveils language as a tool and is therefore a tool itself. Then we have existentialism, at its best, (along with religion and literature) describing what exactly it is that we want. One of the things we want is to figure out what we want.

Story telling is also very Taoist. It's how we bring the world, the 10,000 things, into existence. — T Clark

Not at all. It is a precise description of universal change that had lots of practical implications. The problem it's that in Western culture, because it is not practiced, because it is not understood, because it is characterized as poetry (I don't know how many times I had to sit through lectures given by academics who had no idea what Daoism was describing), it is treated as a story. People rather sit and read or watch as opposed to doing, experiencing, and understanding.

To understand the nature of nature and the nature of life one must experience and observe and with such knowledge one gains enormous practical skills about life. One doesn't learn how to navigate a sail boat by watching and reading about it though I know those who claim that it is all that is needed. Bookworm philosophy yields nothing but stories. Experiencing philosophy yields knowledge and skill. I don't watch sports, I play then and learn time in the process.

All these years later and still just "and others" if even that. <sniff> — Srap Tasmaner

Gilligan, the Skipper too, the millionaire and his wife, the movie star, and the rest, here on Gilligan's Isle.

Not at all. It is a precise description of universal change that had lots of practical implications. — Rich

That's not how I see it. To me, the Tao Te Ching is a joke. "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao." Then 80 verses of speaking about the Tao. Lao Tsu knew it was a joke. He knew about storytelling. He knew that the Tao Te Ching was storytelling.

So have you decided what you are defending? Is it correlationalism or panexperientialism? — apokrisis

Panexperientialism. So, are you going to address the last post? I'll repost it for you:

As odd and disconcerting as it seems to have mind being there like "turtles all the way down", your informational theory does not work without that concept. You exhort me to not think in nouns but "processes" and I agree and give you some details with Whitehead's ideas as a basis. But then, you don't like the idea of processes being experiential. But this is where your hidden dualism lies, because eventually one process is going to be experiential (i.e. mental events/ minds) and you will to have explain WHAT that is compared to the rest of the processes. Either the processes have an inner aspect, or it is all just "dead" interactions or purely-mapping (i.e.information transfer) if you want to try to be Peircean about it. Now, you are going to make a grand move to invoke DOWNWARD CAUSATION (read that with resounding echoes)- the core of emergentism, and the core of its failings when related to mind-body problem. Downward causation works in physical systems as the radical difference is not there. It is still using the language of math/physics/mapping. Instead now we have experientialness- a completely different phenomena that doesn't speak in quantities and maps, but qualities and first personhood. In other words, as I keep saying, you are getting an emergent phenomenon illegitimately from quantity to quality (what I call magical fiat). I don't think you mean to do this, but you are doing this. — schopenhauer1

That's not how I see it. To me, the Tao Te Ching is a joke. — T Clark

Oh course. You know nothing about it other than what you read. And you have no idea what you are reading. Daoism and all of philosophy for that matter is experiential. Arm chair philosophy is pretty useless. Without practical experience it is all storytelling.

It's OK. Most people rather watch sports than play it.

Oh course. You know nothing about it other than what you read. And you have no idea what you are reading. .....It's OK. Most people rather watch sports than play it. — Rich

Ah, smug snootyism, one of the most satisfying and least valuable philosophies.