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
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 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
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. — T Clark
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. — T Clark
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
If that's true, then all knowledge, all concepts, are just stories. Which I actually believe. But that's a different discussion. — T Clark
Then God is a brute fact interpreting itself. — t0m
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
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
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
To speak of "illusions" is to become metaphysical. — t0m
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
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
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
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
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 put you in that class, along with apokrisis, fdrake, mysticmonist, timeline, and others. — T Clark
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
Story telling is also very Taoist. It's how we bring the world, the 10,000 things, into existence. — T Clark
All these years later and still just "and others" if even that. <sniff> — Srap Tasmaner
Not at all. It is a precise description of universal change that had lots of practical implications. — Rich
So have you decided what you are defending? Is it correlationalism or panexperientialism? — apokrisis
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
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