conclusion. Your personal preference here ought to be irrelevant. — apokrisis

That’s because, in modern philosophy, ultimate truths can only be matters of preference. But I don’t regard that as a personal flaw on your part, it is simply the times we live in.

And you don't see your performative contradiction in again asserting that it is your ultimate truth we must believe in here?

It is not the existence of ultimate truths that I am questioning. It is about how we go about identifying them and then accepting whatever answer thus emerges.

It seems to me that whilst the representation is physical, the idea that is being transmitted is not physical, because it is totally separable from the physical form that the transmission takes. One could, after all, encode the same information in any number of languages, engrave it in stone, write it with pencil, etc. In each instance, the physical representation might be totally different, both in terms of linguistics and medium; but the information is the same.

How, then, could the information be physical? — Wayfarer

First, fascinating issue! Good OP.

I agree that it's indeed not easy to sell information as physical. I think that this information you ask about is synonymous with meaning. So we might ask whether meaning is physical.

I don't think it can be. I don't think we can define "meaning."

the sign is that ill-named thing, the only one, that escapes the instituting question of philosophy: ‘What is…?’ — Derrida

Meaning is. We can speculate about the emergence of meaning only from within the field of meaning. We can of course plausibly answer questions about the material aspect of the sign. But the sign is a sign only to the degree that it is also intelligible and participates in meaning. This intelligibility is what looks irreducible. It is like the optic nerve, which is a blind spot on the retina that makes the rest of the retina significant.

A last point: the physical as opposed to the non-physical is a distinction that exists "for" or "within" meaning. Meaning is prior to this distinction itself.

You may find this interesting:
http://blogs.helsinki.fi/nosp-2014/files/2014/04/2014-WHAT-AFTER-ALL-WAS-HEIDEGGER-ABOUT-HELSINKI.pdf

Here's part of the abstract and a line from the paper:

The premise is that Heidegger remained a phenomenologist from beginning to end and that
phenomenology is exclusively about meaning and its source. The essay presents Heidegger’s interpretation of the being (Sein) of things as their meaningful presence (Anwesen) and his tracing of such meaningful presence back to its source in the clearing, which is thrown-open or appropriated ex-sistence (das ereignete/geworfene Da-sein).

...
It follows, therefore, that the being of things is their intelligibility, their ἀλήθεια taken broadly. See, for example, Heidegger’s equation of Sein and intelligibility when he speaks of “the inquiry into the intelligibility of things [Sinn des Seienden], that is, the inquiry into being [Sein].”13 Or when he designates Sein as “the intelligibility [Sinn]” of phenomena.14 Or when he speaks of ontology as “the explicit theoretical question about the intelligibility [Sinn] of things.” — Sheehan

Instead, we just see that there are five asterixes. Or, on Gerson's usage, we mentally see the number five that is present in the asterixes. — Andrew M

Good point. We always find ourselves already within a meaningful, intelligible, information-rich environment. Afterwards we can imagine "pure sensory input," but this is an abstraction. Before we can participate in theoretical conversation, we've already had to learn the "know-how" of surviving in our culture. We train our bodies to move around furniture. We learn to chew without biting our tongue. We also receive language "like the law." So we start as theorists in this "water" that has often become invisible to us, precisely because we've learned to swim in it.

It is not the existence of ultimate truths that I am questioning. It is about how we go about identifying them and then accepting whatever answer thus emerges. — apokrisis

But the issue is, a pre-commitment to scientific methodology narrows the scope of the kinds of answers that will be considered. Anything that sounds vaguely ‘theistic’ - well that’s knocked right out of the park, before the conversation even starts (which is exactly what Harry Hindu wished to do, also). And that too is a function of the times. The decision has already been made as to what might constitute a scientific analysis, and what doesn’t. Entropy is in, telos is out.

Now, I understand why there is a need to dissociate science from the spiritual implications of Platonism. After all, Christian Platonism and Aristoteleanism are precisely what the Enliightenment sought to differentiate itself from. So admittance of Platonic ideas appears to to let ‘a divine foot in the door’, so to speak; it’s the thin end of the wedge, right? So I think that explains the reflexive hostility towards such ideas. Again, not particular to you - I’m sure the majority would agree, and I’m conscious that I am advocating a position which is contrarian. But again, it’s a question of motivation - my interest in philosophy is Platonic in the sense of it being an existential question, not a way of understanding life from the bioscience perspective. Not that there’s anything the matter with that, but it’s a different quest.

(Hey I saw Blade Runner 2049 last night. Fantastic film. These kinds of questions are central to it. ‘I’ve never killed anything that was born, not made’ ‘What difference does that make?’ ‘If you’re born, you have a soul’ ‘well, you’ve gotten by OK without one’.)

A materialist would say that the mind is made of the same stuff "out there".

An idealist would say that the world is made of the same stuff "in here".

Then aren't they both saying the same thing? — Harry Hindu

It does seem that both try to abolish a practically necessary distinction or at least to present it as an illusion. If I dream that I won the lottery, I can only spend that money in the dream. So as beings in the world there's a big difference between in-here and out-there. We might say that the out-there is "really" in-here since I have to cognize what's going on out there. On the other hand, we have excellent reasons for thinking that our brain being intact, well-fed by the blood stream, and attached to healthy sense organs makes the in-here possible. It's a Mobius strip.

Any theory that tries to cut or untie this Mobius strip is going to be an abstraction, a mere object of conversation. If we look at German idealism and Marx, we see that idealistic and materialistic theories tend to serve as "foundations" for visions of what humanity ought to be or "really" is. So such theories (seems to me) function as "middle men" or rationalizations for political preferences. That's reductive, but I generally think it's shrewd to look at the "fundamental pose" of a theorist. How does he want others to view themselves in terms of their place/purpose in the world? Where does this place him in the proposed, implicit hierarchy?

To be sure, there are abstract types who probably just relish the intellectual pleasure in playing "chess" with these ideas. They may pick this or that side for esthetic reasons in that regard, utterly detached from political considerations.

But the issue is, a pre-commitment to scientific methodology narrows the scope of the kinds of answers that will be considered. — Wayfarer

Is that the issue? Really?

Or is scientific reasoning (as Peirce carefully defines it) just remarkably effective at pruning away unnecessary speculation and unfounded belief? We stick with it because it actually works.

In the last 100 years, the advances in understanding absolutely everything have been just incredible. Granted popular understanding may also be 100 years behind that.

Anything that sounds vaguely ‘theistic’ - well that’s knocked right out of the park, before the conversation even starts. — Wayfarer

It's certainly a reasonable strategy. If someone is advancing a theory that is "not even wrong", reject it from the get-go on those grounds. Even if feelings might be hurt.

The decision has already been made as to what might constitute a scientific analysis, and what doesn’t. Entropy is in, telos is out. — Wayfarer

But there you are reacting to the atomistic, reductionist, mechanical, deterministic, etc, metaphysics of Newtonian mechanics. The hot news of 500 years ago.

Boltzmann's thermodynamic proof that atoms must exist - his equipartition argument that “if you can heat it, it has micro-structure” - was the last hurrah of classical mechanics really. So the existence of matter was proved as an informational necessity. Entropy came first, particles second. Many physicists of his time were outraged about the claim atoms were real and not fictions. It got heated, if not vicious.

He had a long-running dispute with the editor of the preeminent German physics journal of his day, who refused to let Boltzmann refer to atoms and molecules as anything other than convenient theoretical constructs. Only a couple of years after Boltzmann's death, Perrin's studies of colloidal suspensions (1908–1909), based on Einstein's theoretical studies of 1905, confirmed the values of Avogadro's number and Boltzmann's constant, and convinced the world that the tiny particles really exist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann

Then of course quantum mechanics came along and - among other things - showed that Boltzmann's constant of entropy, k, was derivative of Plank's constant h. Or rather, there was a fundamental duality of action and particle. Or better yet, missing information and material uncertainty.

So entropy physics or statistical mechanics was both the end of the old and the start of the new.

To quote Planck, "The logarithmic connection between entropy and probability was first stated by L. Boltzmann in his kinetic theory of gases."

So admittance of Platonic ideas appears to to let ‘a divine foot in the door’, so to speak; it’s the thin end of the wedge, right? — Wayfarer

Again, this is fair enough to the degree that invoking divine feet or supernatural/transcendent causes amounts to a claim that is "not even wrong". A belief must have counterfactual consequences to be justifiable.

If this is the position being taken, then it is a reflective hostility, not an unthinking one.

my interest in philosophy is Platonic in the sense of it being an existential question, — Wayfarer

Yes. I can see there is also the personal question of how to live one's life - now that the choice is being increasingly forced upon us by modern culture.

But my reply on that is to seek the answers at the social level where life actually has to be lived, not in metaphysics. And religions have tended to be pretty wise about how to actually function socially.

So religion can be a great guide on one score, a poor guide on the other. Your spiritual dimension may actually say something about how best to organise society, while failing in its claims regarding the world that is society's context.

Religion seeks some kind of absolute authority for its moral and aesthetic codes. It should chill out and leave that job to objective investigative techniques. It is enough if it works as social practice. The Good does not have to have Platonic existence to still be a pragmatic goal that we might have every reason to cherish.

So my objection is conflating two different things - tales of metaphysical origination and tales of healthy social practice. You don't need divine authority to back up intelligent moral arguments.

Religion seeks some kind of absolute authority for its moral and aesthetic codes. — apokrisis

Which is worshipping science is all about. Those who live in the bubble of science have no idea how little science offers. Practically nothing other than some technology and a constant stream of new stories about stuff it knows nothing about. Too much is made of gadgets and weapons. At the end they are pretty meaningless.

But how does one break out if the Bubble if "science" is all that is permitted? It is like the Dark Ages when religion when religion ruled (it once again rules in a different form). The only way to know something more, something that brings real meaning to life, is to search outside of science, in arts, sports, literature, ancient cultural traditions, and from this learn about life. Lots of benefits will come.

But how does one break out if the Bubble if "science" is all that is permitted? — Rich

But Rich, first you have to break into it. That's the hard part, eh? :)

Or is scientific reasoning (as Peirce carefully defines it) just remarkably effective at pruning away unnecessary speculation and unfounded belief? We stick with it because it actually works. — apokrisis

It.’works’ with respect to those things that are measurable, things about which we can make hypotheses and then test them. What you generally mean by ‘not even wrong’ is ‘not even scientific’, I think. Religious beliefs were never intended as an hypothesis in the scientific sense, the fact that they are so interpreted is one of the anomalies of European intellectual history. That is actually very clearly analysed by a secular scholar of religion, Karen Armstrong, in her book, Case for God.

Peirce was many things - a multifaceted man if ever there was one. Scientist, philosopher, and logician. I would never cast aspersions on his work, but I would also be careful to distinguish his contributions to scientific method from his idealist philosophy. That is never going to be a matter for science.

I can see there is also the personal question of how to live one's life - now that the choice is being increasingly forced upon us by modern culture.

But my reply on that is to seek the answers at the social level where life actually has to be lived, not in metaphysics. And religions have tended to be pretty wise about how to actually function socially. — apokrisis

Well and good, but we’re born alone, and we die alone. The ultimate questions have to be faced alone. So there is nothing the matter with what you’re saying, but it’s not sufficient, either.

And I’m not ‘conflating’ anything - there’s a lot we agree on, but nearly everything we don’t agree on, is basically the metaphysics. I actually remain agnostic as to whether there is a God - actually, I don’t believe there is a God - but as I keep saying, the difference between the world being the expression of timeless ideas, and it being the quickest possible route to maximum disorder, is, as you are fond of saying, ‘a difference that makes a difference’.

Religion seeks some kind of absolute authority for its moral and aesthetic codes. — apokrisis

It seeks a metaphysic of value.

It seeks a metaphysic of value. — Wayfarer

(Y)

In this transaction, a single item of information has been relayed by various means. — Wayfarer

It's interesting to me how - though I'm not quarrelling with the objective of your example - in a sense this is an oddly 'mechanical' example. All the other things the signallers did while apparently signalling have been excluded from the account to focus on this 'byte' of information. Ceteris paribus is running.

I am thinking of two other options: (a) the anarchic account, where the account-teller missed all the serious meanings of life, as expressed through the marvellous things happening to the sentry and sailors and flaggers and coders, which they turned away from momentarily to transmit this piece of information; (b) the truth-questioning account, where each signaller knows the information they are transmitting is a lie, but they know the systematizers at HQ believe their system can only transmit truth, that this is indeed in its very nature; instead the signallers have their own one-to-one secret systems to tell each others it's all bollocks.

:)

Well and good, but we’re born alone, and we die alone. The ultimate questions have to be faced alone. — Wayfarer

That's bleak. And nothing like I see it. Pretty much the opposite.

the difference between the world being the expression of timeless ideas, and it being the quickest possible route to maximum disorder, — Wayfarer

But it's both. And while preferences shouldn't dictate answers, I find the alternative - some state of confusion about a world that is divine yet mechanical - unappealing. It Is pleasant to see the entirety of existence as one organic form.

Is this the difference? How can you feel at home in the world if you think you have wound up in the wrong place, stuck in the mechanical realm of physical being when you believe true being is somewhere else?

No, it doesn't depend on it. Concrete particulars are instances, or instantions, of the principles. They depend on the principle, but the principle doesn't depend on them. — Wayfarer

And that is the Platonic view that Aristotle disputed. Per Aristotle, the abstract principle depends on the concrete particulars.

Were some other planet to form, and life to evolve on it, then they would eventually discover the law of the excluded middle. — Wayfarer

Yes they would, but only because the LEM presents in specific scenarios that they observe.

For example, an alien tosses a coin (or their alien equivalent) multiple times. That a specific coin toss lands either heads or not heads is seen to exhaust all the possible outcomes which, in abstract terms, just is the Law of the Excluded Middle.

How can you feel at home in the world if you think you have wound up in the wrong place, stuck in the mechanical realm of physical being when you believe true being is somewhere else? — apokrisis

The gnostics really did feel that mankind was exiled in an alien world and their gnosis was about finding their path out of that (often through harsh asceticism). I don't think that was the Platonist attitude (and it certainly wasn't the Christian Platonist attitude). But even so, there is a sense in Platonic philosophy of lack or deficiency in human existence - among them, that man alone is cursed with knowledge of his own mortality, where creatures enjoy blissful ignorance; also that knowledge is often uncertain, insofar as it pertains only to the objects of sense, which in themselves are transient and corruptible.

Plato was clearly concerned not only with the state of his soul, but also with his relation to the universe at the deepest level. Plato’s metaphysics was not intended to produce merely a detached understanding of reality. His motivation in philosophy was in part to achieve a kind of understanding that would connect him (and therefore every human being) to the whole of reality – intelligibly and if possible satisfyingly. He even seems to have suffered from a version of the more characteristically Judaeo-Christian conviction that we are all miserable sinners, and to have hoped for some form of redemption from philosophy. ...

The Platonic sense of the world is that its intelligibility and the development of beings to whom it is intelligible are nonaccidental; so our awareness and its expansion as part of the history of life and of our species are part of the natural evolution of the cosmos. — Thomas Nagel

Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament

I am thinking of two other options — mcdoodle

With all due respect, neither do much to help our Harbourmaster.

Per Aristotle, the abstract principle depends on the concrete particulars. — Andrew M

I don't think that's correct. I think his view was that forms could only be known through the form of concrete particulars, or that the universals could only be known in the form in which they took. But he was no nominalist, in fact nominalism wasn't thought of for millennia afterwards. So I don't think you can say that the form depends on the particular, it is surely the reverse - in hylomorphic dualism, things consist of form and matter. But still reading up on this.

I agree that each thing (a) to (d) do not have all the same properties, because they all look physically different, but they still all have the same property of pointing to the concept of "five-ness". This should clarify why only V is the correct answer to the question "what is the Roman numeral for five?", while all of them are correct answers to the question "What results from 2+3?".

By what principle of identity do you claim that these are the same concept? — Metaphysician UndercoverI will indeed use a principle of identity: If things have the exact same properties, then they are one and the same thing; and if not, then not. Two sticks may look identical, but are not one and the same because they have different x, y, z properties. What about the concept of 'triangle'? To me, its essential properties are 'surface' + 'three straight sides'; nothing else. What about for you? If your concept has the exact same essential properties as my concept, then they are one and the same. — Samuel Lacrampe

OK, so your principle of identity involves "exact same properties". How does the concept of "five-ness" which is in my mind, qualify as the same concept of "fiveness" which is in your mind, when they are described by these different properties ("in my mind" and "in your mind"). Clearly they don't have the exact same properties, and are therefore not the same concept.

You didn't 'refute' it, you're obfuscating the meaning of 'the same'! As I said, endless obfuscation. No further comment. — Wayfarer

Now that's a load of crap if I've ever seen one. I'm merely pointing out the difference between "similar" and "same", and you call this "obfuscating the meaning of 'the same'". Don't you know that logical process begins with the law of identity, and to say that something which is similar to X is the same as X, is to start with an unsound premise? So it is quite clear that your argument contains an unsound premise. So your argument is refuted on this basis.

Call it obfuscation all that you want, but I am only trying to establish a clear distinction between same and similar, whereas you entire argument relies on an ambiguity between these two. Your argument is nothing but equivocation at best.

Here's a challenge Wayfarer, if you haven't hit the ignore button on me. Reformulate your argument with the proper premise, a true premise, which respects the fact that similar information is transmitted by different media, rather than the same information. I'm interested to see where you can get with that.

his view was that forms could only be known through the form of concrete particulars, or that the universals could only be known in the form in which they took — Wayfarer

Wayfarer, just to prove I am taking your question seriously as well as riffing on it anarchically...

Here's a relevant bit of the Metaphysics, which perhaps helps, although the word 'prior' in the translation does make it more confusing than it needs to be! Obviously 'prior' is not about time in this quote.

...actuality is prior to potentiality in respect of generation and time.
But it is also prior in substantiality; (a) because things which are posterior in generation are prior in form and substantiality; e.g., adult is prior to child, and man to semen, because the one already possesses the form, but the other does not;and (b) because everything which is generated moves towards a principle, i.e. its end . For the object of a thing is its principle; and generation has as its object the end . And the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potentiality is acquired; for animals do not see in order that they may have sight, but have sight in order that they may see.Similarly men possess the art of building in order that they may build, and the power of speculation that they may speculate; they do not speculate in order that they may have the power of speculation—except those who are learning by practice; and they do not really speculate, but only in a limited sense, or about a subject about which they have no desire to speculate.

Further, matter exists potentially, because it may attain to the form; but when it exists actually, it is then in the form. The same applies in all other cases, including those where the end is motion — Metaphysics of Aristotle 1050a

Well and good, but we’re born alone, and we die alone. The ultimate questions have to be faced alone. So there is nothing the matter with what you’re saying, but it’s not sufficient, either. — Wayfarer

If these "ultimate questions have to be faced alone," then this "not sufficient, either" must be a personal matter. IMO, you tend to frame it as a social matter. You often gripe about the plague of individualism. But we die alone, as you say. Some of us (not me, really) face this "dying alone" in terms of a social project (world-fixing as life purpose), but this is optional. "Transcendence" of the world's "imperfections" is obviously a part of the spiritual tradition, as you well know.

You ignored my post, perhaps because it doesn't fit your frame of embattled theism (David) and towering, trendy materialism-scientism( Goliath). To be frank, it reminds me of the antinatalist or pessimist who frames the world in terms of depressed in-the-know people and happy dummies. Any particular entrapping frame (usually some oversimplified dualism) is probably going to open perpendicularly. The problem is the framing itself. We are swimming in meaning and value. This is just my view, but there's something like a scientism in your anti-scientism.

You say that religion isn't science, and yet you seem to resent religion's lack of "respectability" for the scientific method. It's as if you want to have your cake and eat it, too --that you're not happy with the "subjectivity" of religion. In that sense you (in my view) tend to present religion as a victim in some sense. But certainly religion transcends science subjectively. So it's just a matter of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's. If religion is not a set of propositions about public reality, then what has it to do with science at all?

Obviously 'prior' is not about time in this quote. — mcdoodle

Huh? Check the first line:

...actuality is prior to potentiality in respect of generation and time. — Metaphysics of Aristotle 1050a

Here's a relevant bit of the Metaphysics, which perhaps helps — mcdoodle

It does indeed. As I mentioned to AndrewM, I have a book out of the library on the relation of Aristotle and Plato and am about to get into that in more detail.

That last phrase about 'matter existing potentially' is key - I think it could be phrased thus, that matter is actualised by form. This is the 'prima materia' of Aristotelean hylomorphism, unless I'm mistaken.

Interestingly, there's a current piece of science news, about exactly this idea in relation to quantum physics. It takes the notion of 'potentia' in Aristotle and places it in this context:

In particular, “real” should not be restricted to “actual” objects or events in spacetime. Reality ought also be assigned to certain possibilities, or “potential” realities, that have not yet become “actual.” These potential realities do not exist in spacetime, but nevertheless are “ontological” — that is, real components of existence.

“This new ontological picture requires that we expand our concept of ‘what is real’ to include an extraspatiotemporal domain of quantum possibility,” write Ruth Kastner, Stuart Kauffman and Michael Epperson.

Considering potential things to be real is not exactly a new idea, as it was a central aspect of the philosophy of Aristotle, 24 centuries ago. An acorn has the potential to become a tree; a tree has the potential to become a wooden table. Even applying this idea to quantum physics isn’t new. Werner Heisenberg, the quantum pioneer famous for his uncertainty principle, considered his quantum math to describe potential outcomes of measurements of which one would become the actual result. The quantum concept of a “probability wave,” describing the likelihood of different possible outcomes of a measurement, was a quantitative version of Aristotle’s potential, Heisenberg wrote in his well-known 1958 book Physics and Philosophy. “It introduced something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality.”

Source

Real but not existent. The perplexity arises because in our world, only what is material is existent, there are no 'degrees of reality'.

You ignored my post, perhaps because it doesn't fit your frame of embattled theism (David) and towering, trendy materialism-scientism( Goliath). — t0m

Apologies - I had meant to get to it, but it's like playing chess against multiple opponents. And even now I ought to be doing something else.

I agree that it's indeed not easy to sell information as physical. I think that this information you ask about is synonymous with meaning. So we might ask whether meaning is physical.

I don't think it can be. I don't think we can define "meaning." — t0m

I do agree with that, but I think you're the only other contributor who has suggested that 'information' and 'meaning' are more or less synonymous in this context. I find that suggestion pregnant with, well, meaning. There is the trend towards saying, hey, maybe information is fundamental in the Universe - maybe it's not too much of a stretch to then say, hey, maybe meaning is fundamental - after all! (After having declared it entirely banished in the aftermath of the Copernican revolution.)

But I'm keeping clear of Derrida and Heidegger. I don't have time to study them in depth, and without studying them in depth, nothing much I say will be relevant.

f these "ultimate questions have to be faced alone," then this "not sufficient, either" must be a personal matter. IMO, you tend to frame it as a social matter. You often gripe about the plague of individualism. — t0m

Context: that was a response to this:

my reply on that is to seek the answers at the social level where life actually has to be lived, not in metaphysics. And religions have tended to be pretty wise about how to actually function socially. — apokrisis

I appreciate the value of 'community' - after all, Buddhists take refuge in the 'three jewels', Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and the Sangha is (literally) the monastic community but more broadly, the 'community of the wise'. But it is not sufficient simply to understand such truths purely through society and culture, they also have to be understood in one's own heart, mind and experience.

One of Plotinus' most famous aphorisms is that the spiritual quest is the 'flight of the alone, to the alone'. That's nearer what I meant.

The 'plague of individualism' is only that of nihil ultra ego, 'nothing beyond self'. When the individual is properly anchored both in truth and in the community of the wise, then that individual is indeed a worthy individual (near the original meaning of the 'arya' in Buddhism, which the Nazis were later to purloin for their depraved ends).

You say that religion isn't science, and yet you seem to resent religion's lack of "respectability" for the scientific method. It's as if you want to have your cake and eat it, too --that you're not happy with the "subjectivity" of religion. — t0m

'Religion' has many meanings, and some of the connotations of that word are unavoidably negative, even evil, when we consider the chequered history of religion in the world. No question. But what I'm trying to argue is that there are epistemological and metaphysical issues that have become intertwined with religion, in such a way that the social attitude towards religion - the desire NOT to believe - influences our very being. I think that is the meaning of 'unbelief' - it's not that you won't bow to the Pope - I certainly don't - but that there is a kind of pathological hatred of anything that can be construed as religious ('pathological' because the roots are not visible i.e. unconscious.)

Certainly, religious modes of knowledge are 'subjective' but only in the sense that they involve an understanding which must be first-person, i.e. they don't concern matters about which one CAN be objective; they don't concern objects at all, unless those objects are symbolic. Whereas science only concerns objects, and seeks explanations of everything in terms of objects and forces. But you see, to say this tends to provoke the reaction - ah, you're religious, you don't refer to science to sort out the wheat from the chaff - you're 'not even wrong'.

This predicament is not my invention. The 'religion and science' dialogue (or conflict) is a deep and, for now, permanent feature of the intellectual landscape. This goes back to the C P Snow lectures on 'The Two Cultures', and has been revived again more recently in the debates between Steve Pinker and Leon Wieseltier after Pinker's essay 'Science is not the Enemy of the Humanities'. Pinker in that essay gave a rousing account of why 'scientism' is not a bad thing, by showing how comprehensively he didn't understand the term.

If religion is not a set of propositions about public reality, then what has it to do with science at all? — t0m

'Public' is a key word here. It means 'third person', what can be exhibited in the 'public square'. Again, religious or spiritual truths are not 'public' in that sense, because they can only be understood in the first person. But they're not subjective in the sense of idiosyncratic, peculiar to myself - hence the role of the spiritual mentor or 'guru' in validating your integration of spiritual truths.

But it is not sufficient simply to understand such truths purely through society and culture, they also have to be understood in one's own heart, mind and experience. — Wayfarer

One of my favourite examples from the social psychology of "higher" emotions is accidie - what it feels like not to be able to believe with the heart. Monks in the middle ages were troubled that the fervour of their belief might be lacking. They might just be going through the motions during their day-long rounds of prayer and contemplation.

These days of course, you can be an Anglican and not have to worry. The outward forms are all that need to be preserved.

So anyway, I think you are completely wrong in burdening yourself with the extra requirement that one has to understand rational truths in some continually beatific and personally uplifting way. It is one of the myths of Romanticism.

Institutionalised religion exists by creating a disconnect between people and their local community. By de-socialising beliefs about origin tales and moral custom, the Church (whether it be Christian, Buddhist, whatever) creates the space in which it can insert itself in people's minds, hearts and experience. The Church gets to take over and run the show.

It is exactly the same as neoliberal globalisation and its exploitation of the romantic myth of the self-made individual. Every person is born an entrepreneur - your sorry standalone story of existence. We have to stand on our own two feet and make something of ourselves economically. When we die, there is only the money to mark our passing.

The name of the game has changed, but institutional religion is institutional religion. You break people apart from their socially-constituted being, their natural fabric of relations, and sign them up to an impossible ideal of self-actualisation which then turns them into puppets being manipulated by a system of interests far beyond their possible control.

That is what gets me here. You are arguing for the very poison that causes the problem. By situating meaning "deep inside the spiritual self", you are just letting yourself get conned by a highly materialistic system. Yesterday it was the Church. Today it is the consumer society.

Never give a sucker an even break, as they say.

But it is not sufficient simply to understand such truths purely through society and culture, they also have to be understood in one's own heart, mind and experience. — Wayfarer

I can't see how this says anything more than that truths, if they are to have any value, have to be understood (which includes the living of them); as opposed to merely having lip service paid to them.

This is obviously in reference to a very different kind of truth than the scientific and empirical kinds of truth, though; which cannot really be lived, even though it is obviously possible to organize one's lifestyle according to them. Such truths cannot touch life as it is lived in the primordial sense.

You are arguing for the very poison that causes the problem. — apokrisis

It's the way that you understand that is venomous.

Certainly, I would not defend 'the Church' and I am not talking about religious institutionalism. Baby and bathwater, again. But notice that anything that deviates from what you take to be the correct, scientific approach, is treated with scorn and opprobrium. You can't even discuss it without the spleen rising. My way or the highway, right?

You are arguing for the very poison that causes the problem. By situating meaning "deep inside the spiritual self", you are just letting yourself get conned by a highly materialistic system. — apokrisis

That's 'not even wrong' ;-)

This is obviously in reference to a very different kind of truth than the scientific and empirical kinds of truth, though; which cannot really be lived, even though it is obviously possible to organize one's lifestyle according to them. Such truths cannot touch life as it is lived in the primordial sense. — Janus

Of course! Just how I see it.

Monks in the middle ages were troubled that the fervour of their belief might be lacking. They might just be going through the motions during their day-long rounds of prayer and contemplation. — apokrisis

I am familiar with some of the writings on the Church fathers on this. It’s not ‘belief’ that’s lacking, but a heart-opening to the higher truth. You can believe all you like without having that. Acidie is one of the obstacles encountered in the spiritual life which is an obstruction or hindrance. I recall the customary advice for overcoming it is to set goals and work assiiduously on performing them - basically motivational psychology.

It would really be worth your time to look at the OP I mentioned by Karen Armstrong.

But notice that anything that deviates from what you take to be the correct, scientific approach, is treated with scorn and opprobrium. You can't even discuss it without the spleen rising. My way or the highway, right? — Wayfarer

Note how you turn a rational and science-backed analysis into venom and spleen. You are trying to read emotions into my words so as to explain their message in your own preferred terms.

If we are not communicating, it is because you are misreading me in a deep way. Sure, I use emotional language - an internet forum is that kind of place. I've also published the same basic argument in an academic journal as it happens. So horses for courses, as they say. And surely you have picked up my ironic use of emotion-talk.

I am always laughing when I speak of the "thermodynamic imperative". There may be a serious rational point that I'm making, but where is the fun in putting it dryly? And everyone complains about any use of more technical language anyway.

So I appreciate that this might seem to strike at you personally. It is indeed what makes us "persons" that I am talking about here. My position is that it is our pragmatic webs of social relations, not some supernatural guiding spirit that hides in the shadow of material being.

I actually find it unbelievable that you might believe that you were born alone, will die alone, and must discover any meaning to your existence alone. I never thought of you as that kind of nihilist. So yeah, I will call you out on that. Just as I will be very sorry if I learn that this is in fact how you see things. It is a very self-destructive point of view.

In return, if you want to consider my feelings, you could stop just labelling me as your ideal enemy, the reductionist materialist. The insult itself is water off a duck's back. But I'm somewhat irritated by the way you keep wheeling it out to prove that whatever I say has to be wrong because I'm a signed-up member of Scientism.

In return, if you want to consider my feelings, you could stop just labelling me as your ideal enemy, the reductionist materialist. — apokrisis

But you're not! I said yesterday, we have, I think, one disagreement - but it is a big one, and it's in metaphysics. Now that post you responded to this morning (my time) that was addressed to tOm. And if you read your response, it was pretty venomous, right? When you say:

It is one of the myths of Romanticism. — apokrisis

the Church (whether it be Christian, Buddhist, whatever) creates the space in which it can insert itself in people's minds, hearts and experience. The Church gets to take over and run the show. — apokrisis

You are arguing for the very poison that causes the problem. — apokrisis

So, you don't mean that what I am arguing for is a 'poisonous myth' and 'social parasitism'? Is that part what I'm not understanding or mis-reading? Perhaps you might clarify, then.

really I don't at all consider you an enemy- an adversary, yes, and a tough one. But these issues often push buttons.

I actually find it unbelievable that you might believe that you were born alone, will die alone, and must discover any meaning to your existence alone. I never thought of you as that kind of nihilist. — apokrisis

I am sorry if that struck you as nihilistic, it certainly wasn't the intention. It's more the understanding that 'the world', the web of culture and relationships, whilst crucial in a person's life, is also that which is lost at death. And also there is a 'consensus reality' that encloses one in its shared beliefs. All this is why the Buddha often referred to himself as 'the recluse, Gotama'. One has to realise truth for oneself, and in oneself, irrespective of what others' think or say. I'm not making any claims to have realised an exalted spiritual truth at all, I'm just pointing this out.

The spiritual quest is the quest to realise 'an identity which is not subject to death' (see Alan Watts' The Supreme Identity. That is nowadays spoken of as 'going to Heaven', but I think that is simply an allegorical concession to the popular imagination. This also goes for Plato, by the way - in the passages where he speaks of the philosopher as 'practising for death'. And also it's implicit in his whole theory of anamnesis. All of the Platonic dialogues presume the immortality of the soul. (Buddhists don't speak in those terms.) But, in the time since Plato, all of that was incorporated into theology, and then largely rejected - well, by secular culture, obviously.

I am trying to distinguish the epistemological and metaphysical aspects of Platonism, from the religious culture in which it became embodied - you could say, which hijacked it. Don't forget it was the Christians who closed down the Academy. Then they took many of the Platonists most profound ideas, and locked them in the Vatican vaults - 'you can only read these on our terms'. But anyway, that's another topic.

(MUST go an do this big household chore that I was supposed to have started an hour ago.)

So, you don't mean that what I am arguing for is a 'poisonous myth' and 'social parasitism'? — Wayfarer

Romanticism is certainly a mythology. And I agree it can be quite poisonous. At first it entertains, or even improves. But if taken seriously as a metaphysics ... well you mentioned Nazism first. As well as making the nihilist statements.

Then yes. Parasitism is your word. And not really technically correct as parasites are little critters sucking your blood, not corporations that own your soul. But I am happy to talk about institutional religion in the same terms as any other globalising entity that exerts an unhealthy degree of control over individual lives by decoupling that life from its natural local context.

How can it be sane to live your life according to actual abstractions? Surely you see the inherent madness in wishing you were already dead and at one with your maker, or better yet, never born?

So as I said, I am not against religion as a social institution. At the community level, belief can encode a highly functional way of life. That's the nice thing about a Chinese temple. They have room for everyone's gods, just like the way Roman's used to worship, or everyone use to worship, before corporate brain-washing religion came along and smashed all the rival "false idols".

It is just like Trump and his "respect the flag". We know it is abhorrent when the elite cement their power by removing the right of community expression by waving about some abstract symbol.

There can be perfectly healthy religion - to the degree it doesn't insist on the absoluteness of its metaphysical abstractions, and doesn't in turn achieve that domination by symbols by turning the individual inwards, setting themselves at war within their own "hearts". The place that reason can't then win.

See flag. Feel patriotic. It's called operant conditioning. Message transmitted. Thought short-circuited. Job done.

This is obviously in reference to a very different kind of truth than the scientific and empirical kinds of truth, though; which cannot really be lived, even though it is obviously possible to organize one's lifestyle according to them. Such truths cannot touch life as it is lived in the primordial sense. — Janus


Of course! Just how I see it. — Wayfarer

Right, so I would maintain a strict division between questions concerning information (as per the OP) and questions concerning life (in the transcendental lived sense). Information is always already divorced from life in the sense I understand religion to be concerned with. This means that metaphysical questions are likewise always already divorced from life in that sense; and thus I would say they can have nothing to do with religious faith at all.

So I see the attempt to speak about " forms of knowledge the ancients possessed that we have lost" as being mired in the inevitable difficulty that what we could be speaking about could be nothing other than the simple revelation of life itself that happens to the individual, that we, in our modern scientistic obsession with inter-subjective corroboration (in this case as applied to metaphysical ideas) have simply become generally blinded to. No knowledge of any inter-subjective character could fit that bill at all. The very subject of "lost knowledge" always seems to continually fall back into that category error.

"At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children."

Matthew 11:25

I would maintain a strict division between questions concerning information (as per the OP) and questions concerning life (in the transcendental lived sense). — Janus

Saith he, quoting scripture! As it happens this is a philosophy forum, the subject of the discussion is the incorporeal nature of ideas in the Platonic tradition.

Surely you see the inherent madness in wishing you were already dead and at one with your maker, or better yet, never born? — apokrisis

There is a lot to be gained by looking at your spectacles, instead of just through them, although I agree this is a very difficult thing to do.