Quite so. I keep coming back here.

You've written rather a lot, and unfortunately I don't have time for more than a short response. However, i think the salient point is that I don't think that aesthetic and religious beliefs are understandable as being able to be inter-subjectively assessed in terms of "correctness', as empirical beliefs are, and it was your apparent assertion that they are to be understood as such that I was responding to. Now, I have given my reasons for thinking that they are not; perhaps you could now offer your reasons for thinking they are.

You've written rather a lot, and unfortunately I don't have time for more than a short response. However, i think the salient point is that I don't think that aesthetic and religious beliefs are understandable as being able to be inter-subjectively assessed in terms of "correctness', as empirical beliefs are, and it was your apparent assertion that they are to be understood as such that I was responding to. Now, I have given my reasons for thinking that they are not; perhaps you could now offer your reasons for thinking they are. — Janus

Your short replies are wonderfully open-ended prompts. Though so far, in such few turns, they do more to stimulate my thinking than to give me a clear idea what you mean.

Are you saying that I have apparently asserted that "aesthetic and religious beliefs are understandable as being able to be inter-subjectively assessed in terms of "correctness', as empirical beliefs are"? I'm not sure what such a claim means, so I suppose I can't tell whether I've asserted it.

Perhaps one way of splitting the difference is this way: You have interpreted some of my speech as if it were equivalent to assertions you're inclined to reject. But I'm not sure what assertions you're indicating. It seems to me that our habits of speech in this region of discourse are so different that we should spend more time lining up our terms before we rush into agreeing and disagreeing.

If you've given any reasons for thinking that religious and aesthetic beliefs are not "understandable as being able to be inter-subjectively assessed in terms of "correctness', as empirical beliefs are", then I have not caught wind of those reasons. It seems to me you have yet to clear up the meaning of the claim, and I'm not sure what in your comments counts as a reason to support that claim.

Perhaps you'd like to try again when you have more time for the task. So far, all I understand is that you make a distinction between what you call empirical beliefs on the one hand, and what you call religious beliefs and aesthetic judgments on the other; and you seem to think that something called "correctness" has some role in our traffic with empirical beliefs, but no role in our traffic with religious beliefs and aesthetic judgments.

Is that a correct paraphrase? If not, I hope you'll correct it for me. Is there even such a thing as correctness and incorrectness in understanding each other's discourse? If there is such a thing as correctness in paraphrasing your account, tell me: Is your account an empirical belief, or are other people's beliefs about your account empirical beliefs? I suppose something like that must be the case, on your account, if you say correctness only pertains to empirical beliefs.

Are you saying that I have apparently asserted that "aesthetic and religious beliefs are understandable as being able to be inter-subjectively assessed in terms of "correctness', as empirical beliefs are"? I'm not sure what such a claim means, so I suppose I can't tell whether I've asserted it. — Cabbage Farmer

Thanks for calling upon me to think some more. At the moment I will only attempt to deal with this snippet, as time is still in short supply.

Here for our mutual refreshment is the seminal exchange:

The skeptic acknowledges that the appearance of his own faith, his own belief, his own expectations are not evidence of the correctness of his opinion. — Cabbage Farmer


A philosopher may also come to understand faith and belief as being entirely outside the context of "correctness of opinion". — Janus

I take your sentence here to at least imply if not to state outright that the skeptic acknowledges that opinions should be understood in a context where they will be either correct or incorrect (and this regardless of what the holder of an opinion may believe about the correctness or incorrectness of her held opinion).

I also take you to be here identifying your standpoint with that of the skeptic.

Now I say that it only really makes sense to speak about the correctness or incorrectness of opinions (beliefs or judgements or what-have-you) in contexts where their correctness or incorrectness may be (at least in principle) checked and precisely inter-subjectively corroborated. And I am saying that this is not possible when it comes to aesthetic, ethical or religious opinions/ beliefs and that thus it does not really make sense to speak of those species in terms of correctness/incorrectness. Of course itt does make sense to speak of ordinary empirical, scientific, logical and mathematical opinions in terms of correctness/ incorrectness; I acknowledge that.

On the basis of this I also don't think it makes sense to speak of most of philosophy in terms of correctness/incorrectness. Different philosophies present us with different possible ways of considering the world. I agree with Hegel in seeing the history of thought as a dialectic; wherein it would be inapt to speak of past philosophies as being correct or incorrect. To do so would be to import the methodologies of science and/or mathematics into a context where they do not belong; in short, it would be to commit one's thinking to an ideology of scientism.

I agree. From my point of view, you just described what I'd call an image of the virtue. Can one "rationally" demonstrate that such an image is "true"? Or does such an image structure and make possible discourse in the first place? More concretely: I love Popper. Is his theory of science as self-consciously falsifiable itself falsifiable? I don't think so. It is the "irrational" foundation of the rational. The criterion cannot justify itself. The greatest "crime" is the foundation of the law itself, metaphorically speaking. But this use of "crime" as a metaphor is not meant to suggest that it is bad to lay foundations. We have no choice. I'm just trying to point at deep structures that are easily taken for granted. They are the water we swim in, mostly invisible.

Quite so. I keep coming back here. — Banno

Me too! I can't tell if it's for any reason in particular, or just because it's an old habit I haven't managed to shake. It took a long while, but the longer I keep at it, the more I seem to sense there's a sort of valuable purpose buried in the heart of the practice. Was it that purpose calling me to philosophy the whole time? It was only a few years ago I began to feel awake to it. And now that I've been playing the same song with my ear grounded in that drone, it seems my practice, feeble as it is, becomes attuned to its purpose.

Or is that just a soothing illusion I wear like a blanket while my beard turns grey?

I agree. — t0m

It is the "irrational" foundation of the rational. — t0m

Goals, at the very highest level, are irrational - I think we are agreeing on that. Rationality has to serve irrationality, Irrationality stops the recursive buck from being passed further - that's how I see it.

Goals, at the very highest level, are irrational - I think we are agreeing on that. Rationality has to serve irrationality, Irrationality stops the recursive buck from being passed further - that's how I see it. — Jake Tarragon

Yes, we agree. So I was just pointing originally at the kind of conversation that can shape or influence the "irrational" foundation or institution of a particular notion of rationality. It has to be "rhetoric" or "sophistry" or "abnormal discourse," precisely because it challenges a particular "institution" of the rational or a particular "understanding of being," where this "understanding of being" is the taken-for-granted framework through which entities are "pre-interpreted."

It is a "nonsense" ('crime') that can become the very definition of sense (new 'law').

There is indeed, but please let's not consider 'fitness' in Darwinian terms, and instead contemplate the fact that philosophy qua philosophy is not concerned with the propagation of the genome, but the understanding of lived existence as a plight - something quite out-of-scope for Darwinism. — Wayfarer

The abstract logic of reproduction and survival doesn't inform us about the particular motives and impulses that drive each animal, or the particular purposes and reasons that guide the intentional action of each rational agent. Each of us lives and acts in his own peculiar way as the creature he happens to be, thanks in part to biological and cultural inheritance. Natural selection sorts us all out in its own way in its own time. The other animals haven't heard the news, and none of us is compelled to weave his feeble grasp of it into the fabric of his principles of action.

An animal that is more fit than others to be survived in one range of circumstances, may be less fit than others to be survived in another range of circumstances.

A way of acting that is more fit than others to achieve one range of purposes in one range of circumstances, may be less fit to achieve the same purposes in other circumstances, less fit to achieve other purposes in the same circumstances, and less fit to achieve other purposes in other circumstances.

A way of engaging in philosophical conversation is a way of acting. For what range of purposes do we engage in such conversations? In what range of circumstances do we seek to achieve those purposes?


I suppose fitness in philosophical discourse is a special form of discursive fitness. Likewise, fitness in running, weightlifting, fighting, and dancing are special forms of physical fitness.

When they fight by boxer's rules, the boxer is more likely to defeat the mixed martial artist. When they fight by MMA rules, the mixed martial artist is more likely to defeat the boxer. But the MMA fighter is better prepared than the boxer for a street fight or for hand-to-hand combat in a war zone.

Academic philosophers nowadays tend to train like boxers. They don't train to prepare for discourse outside their own circles, where the arbitrary constraints they place on the art of philosophical discourse don't apply.

I think the primary need of any philosophy nowadays is to provide a remedy for what philosopher Richard Bernstein referred to as our 'Cartesian anxiety': — Wayfarer

Is that passage from Bernstein's "Objectivism and Relativism"?

I agree that the longing described in the passage sounds like the symptom of an illness in need of a remedy. It seems reasonable to say provision of the remedy for that sort of illness is a principal task of philosophy in our time, but I'm not sure it's essential to philosophy in all times.

Cartesian anxiety, as characterized in that passage, is just one species of ontological anxiety. In whatever flavor it happens to afflict us, ontological anxiety gives rise to a sort of hope that the anxiety will be cured by a corresponding ontological certainty. It won't cure the illness to shift hope from one object to another, from "science" to "metaphysics", from "evidence" to "revelation". Cure the thing at its root: Relieve the anxiety without any appeal to vain hope or bad faith.

There is no need for ontological certainty. There is no hope of ontological certainty. There is nothing to fear from uncertainty.

Ontology is no cure for ontological anxiety.

Instead, I recommend the remedy of learning to follow appearances in peace and quiet, along with moderation in diet, exercise, meditation, sleep, work, and company.

Because it illustrates the sense in which Dennett critiques philosophy of mind from an instinctive and unreflectively naturalist position. And what is 'a naturalist position'? Well, it assumes 'the subject in the world;' here, the intelligent subject, there, the object of analysis, be that some stellar object, or some form of nematode worm - or 'mind', the purported ghostly ethereal stuff of idealist philosophy! — Wayfarer

I agree that reflection on one's own position is a crucial feature of good philosophical practice.

I'm not sure on what grounds you suggest that Dennett and all other naturalists have arrived at their positions unreflectively. Must one agree with the idealist before we count him as having reflected on his own point of view?

What I'm saying is that treating the mind as an object, is a consequence of taking Descartes' philosophy as something that it never was, namely, a scientific hypothesis. It's more like an economic model, a conceptual way of carving up the elements of experience. Interpreted literally, it is no less absurd than creation mythology. But that massive misconception has now become foundational to the 'scientific worldview' as exemplified by the likes of Dennett. — Wayfarer

Do you suggest that being a naturalist or "treating mind as an object" can only follow from having some sort of take on Cartesianism? Can't one arrive at any of the relevant positions without ever having read Descartes? Do you suggest the only path to naturalism is through a misreading of Descartes? Did Lucretius read Descartes? Did ancient atheists read Descartes? Must we interpret the philosophy of Bacon and Gassendi primarily in light of Cartesianism?

It seems to me Descartes' status in the history of Western ideas is exaggerated by his detractors no less than by his admirers. You seem to be upping the ante considerably by assuming that "the scientific worldview" could never be formulated except as a rejection of a misinterpreted Cartesianism. That assumption seems farfetched.


I've only skimmed some surfaces of Dennett and Descartes, and prefer to make myself accountable for my own thoughts and leave scholarly exegesis to others. Of course the skimming I've done leaves traces.

I'm inclined to agree that Descartes' conception of the "thinking thing" is more like a geometrical axiom or inference, than like a scientific conjecture aimed at accounting for results of empirical investigation. I like to say the Cartesian ego plays a role in Cartesian epistemology analogous to the role of the "point" in Euclidean geometry and the role of the "origin" in Cartesian geometry. To all appearances, no such thing as an "extensionless point" exists, but it's a useful concept in a useful system of measurement. Although Cartesian doubt succumbs to ontological anxiety by placing too much faith in the cogito and in a traditional conception of deity, it comes close to locating a point of maximum indubitability from the first-person point of view. I don't think we owe our grasp on this point to Descartes. It seems available in the work of Gassendi and Sextus, and what Descartes adds to it is arguably little more than pretentious bias and confusion.

I'm inclined to agree that Dennett plays fast and loose with metaphors, and often seems to get jumbled in his own elbow room. Perhaps that rhetorical tendency helps inform us about his conception of antiphilosophy. On the other hand, that tendency reminds me of Plato's use of myths and "likely stories", and I'm not sure Dennett would count Plato as an antiphilosopher. Perhaps we agree that Dennett's interest in clear and rigorous philosophical discourse runs out as soon as he finds a way to fill in gaps in his argument with intuition pumps designed to plant pictures and jog heads. It seems an unwarranted double standard, to approve of such imaginative spirit-shaking tactics when they're employed by Zen Buddhists, but to disapprove of the same tactics when they're employed by eliminative materialists.

In reality, 'mind' is never an object of cognition. Many people seem to regard this as a radical claim, but I think it is an obvious fact. [...] — Wayfarer

What do you mean when you say "nobody knows what the mind is"? I might say in kind, "Nobody knows what anything is". All we get is glimpses that we may piece together in various ways, carefully or recklessly, thoughtfully or impulsively. The thought that minds are especially mysterious seems to follow from the assumption that we're somehow in possession of perfect knowledge of the true nature of things on the basis of exteroception; and the assumption that each of us is somehow blind to his own mental activity because he has no sensory image of his own mental activity. Both these assumptions strike me as extremely unwarranted and confused.

To all appearances, we acquire knowledge about the world noninferentially on the basis of introspection, no less than we acquire knowledge about the world noninferentially on the basis of exteroception. Introspective and exteroceptive awareness are two sources of empirical evidence and two bases of empirical judgment. According to our nature, we coordinate sights with sights, sights with sounds, and exteroception with proprioception, interoception, and introspection. The prima facie synthesis that comes to each of us whether he wants it or not, may be extended by rigorous empirical investigation and by modest accounts of the results of investigation in keeping with the balance of appearances, in the manner of Gassendi. Or that natural synthesis may be extended any way you please, jumbled by carelessness and leniency, distorted by fantasies and legends, bloated by hopes and fears.

In this respect you seem to resemble the behaviorist, who also speaks as if introspective awareness is not a reliable source of empirical beliefs, and asks us to artificially halt the synthesis of empirical objects outside the boundaries of introspection to suit his theoretical ambitions.

They are phenomena as far as they are the subject of study of 'those who talk of religious experience'. So a scholar of comparative religion might talk of them 'as phenomena', but their real significance might only be disclosed in the first person. So locating them among phenomena is the very same naturalising tendency. — Wayfarer

Do you follow Dennett in his talk of "heterophenomenology"?

Reports of a phenomenon are not the same as the phenomenon they report. I call the "sense of an unseen source of order" you mention a sort of mystical experience. Such experiences are themselves phenomena for each of us who has experiences of this sort. By speaking about them, we bring these particular phenomena to the attention of others. This way of informing other minds about circumstantially private experiences indicates the public character of subjectivity.

Each of us enjoys privileged access to public facts. Our nature affords us some privacy with respect to this privilege, but that privacy may be infringed in various ways. Sometimes casual observers can tell what we're thinking, feeling, or intending, even while we try to disguise the fact. Neurologists extend and refine the reach of observation of mental facts from the third-person point of view. It's not clear what sort of limits there may be along this line of empirical investigation, though it seems reasonable to expect a great deal of progress is forthcoming.

Even if the circumstantial privacy of "the subject" is one day annihilated, it seems each of us shall retain a privileged point of view: not only on himself, but on the whole world that appears to him in experience. Each one of us has a unique point of view in the world, no matter whether anyone else is positioned to read his mind at one time or another.

Often because they don't have skin in the game; it doesn't really mean anything to them. — Wayfarer

I'm not sure how this is a response to the sentence you cited. To me it seems the reason conflicting metaphysicians don't have a definitive criterion to settle their dispute is that there is no such criterion, which is the point I was making.

I strongly disagree that the conversation and its outcome "don't mean anything" to the materialists. If that's the drift of your statement here, I suppose it's another sign of the strength and passion of the prejudice that disposes you to wage eternal war against the materialist whose prejudice opposes yours, when instead you might seek to keep peace and nurture agreements in pursuit of common interest for the sake of all humanity and all sentient beings.

@Banno A portion of your reply has been posted on The Philosophy Forum Facebook page. Congratulations and Thank you for your contribution!

Cheers.

. It won't cure the illness to shift hope from one object to another, from "science" to "metaphysics", from "evidence" to "revelation". Cure the thing at its root: Relieve the anxiety without any appeal to vain hope or bad faith. — Cabbage Farmer

Is all hope vain, and all faith bad?

Recall that the 'root of Cartesian anxiety' is the 'feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us.' A great deal of what is written on these forums revolves around that question, overtly or covertly. But we are often told that the best we can hope for from science are fallibilistic hypotheses - theories that will stand until the relentless march of science knocks them over. To be honest, I believe the solution to this anxiety has to be found in a spiritual philosophy, one in which life really does have a purpose, and the fulfilment of that purpose really has meaning. But this being a philosophy forum, I leave open what that might be.

I suppose it's another sign of the strength and passion of the prejudice that disposes you to wage eternal war against the materialist whose prejudice opposes yours, when instead you might seek to keep peace and nurture agreements in pursuit of common interest for the sake of all humanity and all sentient beings. — Cabbage Farmer

It's not 'war', it's a discussion forum. My belief is that scientific materialism is a parasitic outgrowth within Western philosophy, the mainstream of which is not materialist at all, but essentially Platonist and Aristotelian. It's an historical thesis, for which I attribute major responsibility to the mainstream religions. Religion was defined and understood in such a way by religious authority, so as to provoke the rejection of it since the time of the European Enlightenment. As a consequence the 'object of veneration' has shifted from the divine, to the cosmos itself - 'Cosmos is all there is', as Carl Sagan said. That is why science has occupied the role formerly assigned to religion, as 'arbiter of truth', a guide to what educated people ought to believe. But science must always proceed in terms of quantitative analysis and doesn't provide a basis for qualities, a 'domain of value'. That is why, for example, values nowadays are almost always understood through the prism of Darwinism, i.e. as being in service to survival. There is no objective good, beyond the pragmatic and utilitarian. Whereas, in the original tradition of philosophy, the contemplation of the good, which could only be achieved through self-knowledge and rational introspection, was a true good, a real good, in service of nothing else (leaving aside the 'soteriological goods' of the religious traditions).

Reports of a phenomenon are not the same as the phenomenon they report. I call the "sense of an unseen source of order" you mention a sort of mystical experience. Such experiences are themselves phenomena for each of us who has experiences of this sort. — Cabbage Farmer

Recall that the root of 'phenomenon' is 'appearances'. A mystical experience often doesn't entail any difference to the nature of what appears, only to it's meaning; 'seeing things in a new light'. Sometimes they are accompanied by phenomena, but sometimes not (I suppose, from the Aristotelian viewpoint, phenomena might be accidental to them, rather than essential! Not that Aristotle had much affinity with mysticism, this was one of his main differences with his teacher.)

What do you mean when you say "nobody knows what the mind is"? I might say in kind, "Nobody knows what anything is". — Cabbage Farmer

And I would completely agree with you! The problem is, we all feel that we do.

I'm not sure on what grounds you suggest that Dennett and all other naturalists have arrived at their positions unreflectively. — Cabbage Farmer

When I first studied philosophy formally, I was struck by the importance of the legend of Socrates' encounter with the Oracle of Delphi: 'Man, know thyself' ( "gnothi seauton"). That sense is almost entirely absent from naturalism; whether you have it, or not, is a private matter, nothing to do with naturalism as such. That's one meaning.

When I say naturalism 'assumes the subject in the world', what I'm referring to is methodological naturalism, which 'assumes nature'; it has a realist background or weltanschauung. 'Of course', you might say, 'how can you not?' Well, I think that pre-modern and non-Western modes of being really do question the domain of sensory experience in a way that us moderns would find very difficult to imagine. After all, according to Max Weber, one of the hallmarks of modernity is the 'disenchantment of the world', whereas for....well, for everyone else... the world is a 'great enchanted garden'. It's more than simply a technicality. The world (or Universe) was a living presence, it was, as it were, animate, whereas for us, it's dead matter, in which we've fetched up as a kind of accident (what was Hawking's charming expression? 'Chemical scum'. Now there's disenchantment for you. ;-) )

(I've discovered that there is an entire movement called 'counter enlightenment', by the way. Names include Isiah Berlin, and Adorno and Horkheimer. I've not delved too far into it, but they do explore similar themes, although the latter are Marxist and hence bound to materialism. But I have an affinity with many of the ideas in Horkheimer's Eclipse of Reason.

Your questions and comments are always so well-written and carefully thought out, it takes a long time to respond, and I have to go and attend to matters domestic, but I hope that's grist for the mill.)

That is why, for example, values nowadays are almost always understood through the prism of Darwinism, i.e. as being in service to survival. There is no objective good, beyond the pragmatic and utilitarian. — Wayfarer

If I may interject, I think 'almost always' really just applies to a few radical philosophers and scientists. As I see it, we need only look at political speeches and popular culture to get a sense of dominant values.

Cartesian anxiety, as characterized in that passage, is just one species of ontological anxiety. In whatever flavor it happens to afflict us, ontological anxiety gives rise to a sort of hope that the anxiety will be cured by a corresponding ontological certainty. It won't cure the illness to shift hope from one object to another, from "science" to "metaphysics", from "evidence" to "revelation". Cure the thing at its root: Relieve the anxiety without any appeal to vain hope or bad faith. — Cabbage Farmer

Well said. Though I speculate that different approaches work for different people. I relate to the above, but it's so rarely embraced that maybe it just doesn't feel right for most to embrace a certain groundlessness.

By speaking about them, we bring these particular phenomena to the attention of others. This way of informing other minds about circumstantially private experiences indicates the public character of subjectivity. — Cabbage Farmer

Right, but some attempts to share phenomona fail. I think there are limits to the publicness of subjectivity, especially in the individual leaps of insight that perhaps never become public --or not until a different individual shares the 'same' insight an a public finally ready for it.

To all appearances, we acquire knowledge about the world noninferentially on the basis of introspection, no less than we acquire knowledge about the world noninferentially on the basis of exteroception. Introspective and exteroceptive awareness are two sources of empirical evidence and two bases of empirical judgment. According to our nature, we coordinate sights with sights, sights with sounds, and exteroception with proprioception, interoception, and introspection. The prima facie synthesis that comes to each of us whether he wants it or not, may be extended by rigorous empirical investigation and by modest accounts of the results of investigation in keeping with the balance of appearances, in the manner of Gassendi. Or that natural synthesis may be extended any way you please, jumbled by carelessness and leniency, distorted by fantasies and legends, bloated by hopes and fears. — Cabbage Farmer

Great paragraph. You make me want to look into Gassendi.

If you've given any reasons for thinking that religious and aesthetic beliefs are not "understandable as being able to be inter-subjectively assessed in terms of "correctness', as empirical beliefs are", then I have not caught wind of those reasons. It seems to me you have yet to clear up the meaning of the claim, and I'm not sure what in your comments counts as a reason to support that claim. — Cabbage Farmer

If I can jump in on a theme I like, I propose that certain spiritual/aesthetic beliefs revolutionize the very notion of correctness. The idea that 'being objective' or 'making correct statements' is or should be the dominant understanding of virtue can understood as merely contingent. For a long time now I've loved this portrait of Christ by Nietzsche:

This faith does not formulate itself—it simply lives, and so guards itself against formulae. To be sure, the accident of environment, of educational background gives prominence to concepts of a certain sort: in primitive Christianity one finds only concepts of a Judaeo-Semitic character (—that of eating and drinking at the last supper belongs to this category—an idea which, like everything else Jewish, has been badly mauled by the church). But let us be careful not to see in all this anything more than symbolical language, semantics[6] an opportunity to speak in parables. It is only on the theory that no work is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all. Set down among Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of Sankhya,[7] and among Chinese he would have employed those of Lao-tse[8]—and in neither case would it have made any difference to him.—With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call Jesus a “free spirit”[9]—he cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth,[10] whatever is established killeth. The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. He speaks only of inner things: “life” or “truth” or “light” is his word for the innermost—in his sight everything else, the whole of reality, all nature, even language, has significance only as sign, as allegory. — N

I reach for phrases to describe this position like a 'negative theology of feeling.'

Then there's the wicked "Irony" described by Hegel in his lectures on fine art:

...[M]oreover this virtuosity of an ironical artistic life apprehends itself as a divine creative genius for which anything and everything is only an unsubstantial creature, to which the creator, knowing himself to be disengaged and free from everything, is not bound, because he is just as able to destroy it as to create it. In that case, he who has reached this standpoint of divine genius looks down from his high rank on all other men, for they are pronounced dull and limited, inasmuch as law, morals, etc., still count for them as fixed, essential, and obligatory. — H

Both perspectives seem to involve a distance from any mere proposition, and these are 'spiritual' positions. While correctness must matter in practical affairs, 'spiritual' propositions (the 'highest' kind) can only be 'the word that killeth' or 'ironic' respectively.