Precisely. Hence those count as free choices. Essentially meaningless as far as Mother Nature is concerned. What matters to Her is that you are living the bounteous lifestyle of one of the planet’s most civilised nations.

My point being, that calculating the energy consumption doesn’t say anything meaningful about who they really are. Given that, as living beings, we all consume energy, then our carbon footprint will be roughly similar. But what about the consequences of our actions? The implications of what we do? They might have vastly different consequences.

The notion that everything about life can be understood in terms of ‘energy gradients’ is analogous to that. It is looking at the world, in roughly the same way that a physician looks at a patient. We might indeed be patients, at some point in our lives, but unless we’re chronically ill (God forbid) ‘being a patient’ doesn’t really define who we are.

But I agreed. How they self actualise - as philosopher or physicist - makes no real difference. So long as a developed nation level of entropy production is in place, how the entropy is spent is a free choice because it is a matter of indifference to Mother Nature. All they have to do is produce a typical Aussie share of degraded resources.

How they self actualise - as philosopher or physicist - makes no real difference. — apokrisis

My point is that it does, although the fact you can’t see it speaks volumes. ;-)

OK. What difference does it make - cosmically?

By observing life closely, we begin to understand it. The more we observe, the more skilled we become, and the more we understand. This is philosophy. — Rich

Sure. But I'd also say that we don't even have to look closely, even if that's advisable. Pain and pleasure will sculpt some kind of understanding in any case. I'd call that 'life' as much as 'philosophy.' For me philosophy would be something like the more abstract 'parts' of this accumulated understanding, which will usually include an understanding of understanding (this one, for instance.)

What difference does it make - cosmically? — apokrisis

That is such a large and open-ended question that I really ought not to respond.

But anyway....I recently heard an account of a Mahāyāna scripture, which says that at the moment of the Buddha's enlightenment, beings in the remotest regions of the Cosmos were suddenly able to see by the light that was cast.

You might say that it's clearly a mythological idea - but it does symbolically address the point.

From the perspective of Western philosophy - I refer again to the comment from Nagel that Plato's '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.' And that is an aspect of many traditional cosmologies. Such an understanding might be anachronistic from the viewpoint of modern physics - unless you're willing to read it symbolically. Then it might have allegorical meanings that don't necessarily conflict with the science. (And for that matter, there is an uncanny feature of ancient Indian cosmology, which is that it assumes a cyclic universe that expands and contracts across 'vast aeons of kalpas', which accommodates some of the kinds of ideas that are being entertained in current cosmology.)

In any case, in various esoteric cosmologies, there is the idea that the human is in some sense a recapitulation or epitome of the Cosmos ('Cosmic Man'.) So the meaning of self-realisation in some of these mythologies, is conveyed by the idea that the human is part of the way the Universe comes to understand itself (hence, 'Cosmic Consciousness').

As I say, these are ideas associated with esoteric traditions, with which I have only the most superficial acquaintance, through having studied Mircea Eliade and others of that ilk. But I suppose the underlying point is that according to these cosmologies, we are not simply cosmic flukes or accidental tourists that have been thrown up by the random shuffling of stardust; we have a kin relation to the underlying order (logos) of the Cosmos. By mis-identifying with the domain of sensory perception, we forget our real nature - and our awakening to that is a cosmic event, as it is integral to the whole process of cosmic evolution.

(I hope I don't regret writing this. :groan: )

we are not simply cosmic flukes or accidental tourists that have been thrown up by the random shuffling of stardust; we have a kin relation to the underlying order (logos) of the Cosmos. — Wayfarer

Well, yes. And what is that underlying order then? Are you denying that physics has found thermodynamics to be fundamental? So wouldn't we then understand ourselves as an expression of that cosmic logos? It should be no surprise to find our intelligence entrained to that most general of all projects?

You would have to argue it the other way round to give the answer you want. You would have to be an idealist who says that the cosmos is an expression of our consciousness. We are causing it to strive to be in our image.

But there is rather less evidence for that version of cosmology.

You're arguing from objectrive, or at least intersubjective, empirical investigation whereas Wayfarer is really arguing (despite what he might like to think) from subjective feeling.

When it comes to conviction regarding metaphysical or religious matters, I see nothing whatsover wrong with being convinced by my own subjective feelings, in fact when it comes down to it I believe we all inevitably are and should be, but I would never expect another to be convinced by my feeling, or argue that my subjective convictions carry any intersubjective weight.

I agree with Lonergan that the basis of objectivity really cannot consist in anything but authentic subjectivity; or as he formualtes it in his 'transcendental method', being "attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible".

So I might feel there is an intelligence underlying or immanent in the logos of thermodynamics or I might not, either way it really comes down to feeling after all.

You're arguing from objectrive, or at least intersubjective, empirical investigation whereas Wayfarer is really arguing (despite what he might like to think) from subjective feeling. — Janus

Well exactly. That is what I'm pointing out. I am basing my view on what we can definitely know by way of reasoned inquiry. Wayfarer would be doing something else.

But remember also - in being Peircean - my view does start with phenomenology. It does take subjectivity seriously. So it expects the Cosmos to be "mindlike" in some absolutely general fashion. If human consciousness is a natural phenomenon, then it's presence ought to be discernible even in the organisation of the cosmos itself. This is the speculative metaphysics of pan-semiosis.

So stressing the role of thermodynamics (or rather, infodynamics) is simply accepting that mind and cosmos are actually going have the same fundamental organisational principles.

Wayfarer has to demonise pan-semiosis or infodynamics to keep his own vague theistic paradigm going. He must manage to paint it as being the "other" to his mysticism - that other being Scientism. And so anytime I mention entropy, he pretends that that does not contain also the complementary notion of negentropy. Chaos and order go together. And the long run goal is a heat death equilbrium.

Utter peace, if you like. What comes after a frothy bit of excitement. :)

When it comes to conviction regarding metaphysical or religious matters, I see nothing whatsover wrong with being convinced by my own subjective feelings, in fact when it comes down to it I believe we all inevitably are and should be, but I would never expect another to be convinced by my feeling, or argue that my subjective convictions carry any intersubjective weight. — Janus

Well that is nonsense of course. And by your argument, I don't even now have to give either reasons or evidence for why I should feel that with such subjective conviction.

And given that you say what is private feeling is private feeling - it would carry no weight in terms of one mind speaking to another - I would expect you to withdraw into solipsistic silence on all epistemological matters. You have disqualified yourself from further debate by your own words.

Yet funnily enough, you won't. So I can only point out the inconsistencies I find in the position you claim to hold.

I agree with Lonergan that the basis of objectivity really cannot consist in anything but authentic subjectivity; or as he formualtes it in his transcendental method, being "attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible". — Janus

And so now you circle back to an epistemology based on being reasonable, particular and pragmatic. You arrive at the right answer, even having dismissed the epistemic grounds that I would give for that being the optimally "objective" approach.

Well that is nonsense of course. And by your argument, I don't even now have to give either reasons or evidence for why I should feel that with such subjective conviction.

And given that you say what is private feeling is private feeling - it would carry no weight in terms of one mind speaking to another - I would expect you to withdraw into solipsistic silence on all epistemological matters. You have disqualified from further debate by your own words.

Yet funnily enough, you won't. So I can only point out the inconsistencies I find in the position you claim to hold. — apokrisis

Well, what I am saying is that the subjective conviction should not be subjective in the bad sense, but should be resultant upon being "attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible", upon authentic subjectivity, that is. In other words following the authentic method of subjective inquiry will never result in universal inter-subjective agreement (and how horrifying if it did!), because everyone has different experiential feeling bases to begin with.

Also, there is nothing to preclude individuals discussing their respective experiences and influencing one another in authentic ways, even if the subject they converse about is beyond the ambit of precise inter-subjective corroboration. Think about the arts for a very obvious example.

So, the contradiction you thought you found in what I said was merely apparent. :razz:

So, the contradiction you thought you found in what I said was merely apparent. — Janus

You are still relying on the hypothesis that feeling is unanalysable and beyond reasoned communal inquiry. And that isn't a strong position given that we know that so much of our "feelings" to be socially constructed sign relations with pragmatic function.

You just said think about Art. And so you meant, think about Art as it is socially constructed in the modern Romantic condition. Get ready to feel awe, intrigue, momentousness, depth ... the sublime.

Now I agree that in the limit, our private experiences are unanalysable. My position has to be able to handle "the Hard Problem" of ineffable qualia. So in the end, there is some subjective limit to any community effort to objectify and analyse phenomenology.

And my answer there is that objectification runs out of steam where it runs into a lack of observable counterfactuals. So I can motivate a neurological account of hue discrimination up to the point where yellow is explained as a lack of blue, and red by a lack of green, but then if we try to ask why should red have the particular quality of being red, then there is no counterfactual to continue on.

The Hard Problem arises where we can't stand in some objective relation even to our own subjectivity. We can't even imagine a difference in terms of what we might feel or experience. And if we can't do that in terms of ourselves, then a wider communal view - the one that is optimised epistemically as the scientific method - can hardly do it either.

So I have an epistemology that accepts a limit to objectivity, but also identifies that limit clearly in the notion of the counterfactual observable - the possibility of something being other than what it is. And on those grounds, I reject your claim that our "feelings" are unanalysable in some generic fashion. They are in fact pretty damn easy to analyse using psychological science.

You say "what about Art?", as if that should be a conversation-ender. Well no. Art history tells us all about the social construction of Romanticism and its notion of the Sublime.

I never took my kids to church, but I certainly dragged them around enough art galleries to do my part in teaching them to master the appropriate cultural responses, just as my parents did with me. :)

C'mon. You're smart enough to understand the game. Romanticism is the new Theism. It demands that we look inside and find our ineffable essence, that spark of pure aesthetic response which is our soul. The social construction of that state of belief is an open book to any historian of the modern world. It's been analysed to death.

C'mon. You're smart enough to understand the game. Romanticism is the new Theism. It demands that we look inside and find our ineffable essence, that spark of pure aesthetic response which is our soul. The social construction of that state of belief is an open book to any historian of the modern world. It's been analysed to death. — apokrisis

I am not convinced that subjectrive feeling has been shown to be exhaustively socially constructed. Of course all subjective reactions are socially mediated. But even when it comes to romanticism; I don't accept that it is socially constructed as opposed to mediated. The subjective feeling of the sublime is simply a human affective possibility; which is well exampled in cultures other than our own wetsern culture. Same goes for theism; in its various forms it has been pretty much universally present across cultures; so the argument that it is culturally constructed cannot hold water.

I was brought up in a very plebian culture with little exposure to 'high' art, music and literature. I found it all by myself in my early teens and was immediately transported to a brave new world of feeling.

Are you denying that physics has found thermodynamics to be fundamental? — apokrisis

As we have discussed many times, physics currently has very large gaps in its accounts of the nature of the Universe. It is being held together and simultaneously driven apart by some unknown force. So it is plausible to argue that what we understand ‘matter’ to be, is not fundamental but only one aspect of a larger reality. At the very least, it says that either the laws themselves have large explanatory gaps, or that there are vast amounts of matter~energy of unknown types.

Within the context of known physics, the second law of thermodynamics is inexorable - but if physics is not comprehensive, then it doesn’t have the all-encompassing explanatory scope that is often attributed to it.

And what is that underlying order then? — apokrisis

We don’t know that. Science doesn’t explain that order, it simply discovers it and is able to make predictions on the basis of those regularities. But why that order exists is another matter altogether.

Historically, the ‘laws of nature’ were originally envisaged as ‘God’s handiwork’. But due to the development of Western philosophical and scientific culture and the rejection of religious philosophy, the laws were then felt to be self-explanatory and the universe somehow self-originating. But as Wittgenstein noted ‘people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable just as God and fate were treated in past ages’ (TLP 6.372).

I don’t think any spiritual movement sees it that way. But as I have explained to a number of sceptics, I don’t regard that as an argument for God; I remain agnostic on that question. But it is an argument for an awareness of the inherent limitations of scientific naturalism. Science is not omniscient (in other words, agnosticism extends in that direction, also).

Earlier in this thread a statement was made:

science does not have any comment on matters of quality, other than to say that no other approach can say anything meaningful on the matter either.

Bolds in the original. And that is a typical attitude in today’s scientific culture. It’s thrown the baby out with the bath water as far as I’m concerned.

I am not convinced that subjectrive feeling has been shown to be exhaustively socially constructed. — Janus

Good job I'm not arguing for exhaustion then. But any feeling given any kind of name is being socially constructed - even if that name is naming its supposed fundamental unnameability or ineffability. As when we call the Sublime.

And even failing symbolic reference, social construction can make use of indexical or iconic semiosis. It can hang a picture on a wall in a fashion that is meant to be approached via a search after signification.

If R.Mutt signs a urinal and puts it on show in a gallery as the "Fountain", it is pretty obvious that we are suppose to "feel something" - even if it might be so novel to us that we struggle to give it an exact name.

But even when it comes to romanticism; I don't accept that it is socially constructed as opposed to mediated. — Janus

How are the two different? When I say socially constructed, that doesn't mean there is no biological construction going on at a deeper level. Semiosis is the recognition of multiple levels of signification or mediation. It is a holistic approach like that.

So I think you are just trying to turn my position into a straw man when you know it is more complex than that.

Same goes for theism; in its various forms it has been pretty much universally present across cultures; so the argument that it is culturally constructed cannot hold water. — Janus

So if something is found across all cultures, it can't be constructed? How does that work?

If it is across all cultures - and not elsewhere - then surely that shows it is culturally fundamental, not that it is not cultural.

I found it all by myself in my early teens and was immediately transported to a brave new world of feeling. — Janus

Hmm. Immediately hey? Just went from whoah to go in a simple transcendent leap of consciousness with no process of enculturation.

Sounds like some convenient myth-making there.

As we have discussed many times, physics currently has very large gaps in its accounts of the nature of the Universe. — Wayfarer

But perhaps the bigger gaps lie in just how much science now knows compared to how much the general population understands?

So you keep saying the glass is 99% empty - and you might be judging that from only having seen the top 1% of a glass that is pretty damn full to the brim now.

If we know the history of the Cosmos in incredible detail back to around the first 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000001th of a second, is there still "a very large gap"?

It is being held together and simultaneously driven apart by some unknown force. — Wayfarer

What are you on about. Dark matter and dark energy are known to be two different things.

And that is a typical attitude in today’s scientific culture. It’s thrown the baby out with the bath water as far as I’m concerned. — Wayfarer

Alternatively, it is the approach that has done the most to dispel the air of mystery that has hung over existence.

I agree that Scientism deserves criticism. But in your constant attacks on that, you risk throwing out the baby with the bathwater yourself. You are rejecting the holistic metaphysics of a systems science approach to reality.

But any feeling given any kind of name is being socially constructed - even if that name is naming its supposed fundamental unnameability or ineffability. As when we call the Sublime. — apokrisis

The feeling is not socially constructed, though. It must already exist in order to be named, referred to and spoken about. As I said before human feelings are socially mediated, modified or mythologized. The reason I don't like the term 'socially constructed' is that it implies exhaustivity.

If it is across all cultures - and not elsewhere - then surely that shows it is culturally fundamental, not that it is not cultural. — apokrisis

If something is across all cultures, it shows that it is fundamental to culture, that culture depends on it, not that it depends on culture. Of course it depends on culture for its expression, but not for its existence as feeling.

Hmm. Immediately hey? Just went from whoah to go in a simple transcendent leap of consciousness with no process of enculturation.

Sounds like some convenient myth-making there. — apokrisis

I responded to forms I had previously not been familiar with immediately. Of course I had to be able to read, to know what a painting is, to know what music is; so if that is what you mean by "enculturation" then of course.

Surely you are not going to deny that romantic painting, literature and music present a range of human emotions that are universal, and represent one suite of possible responses to the human condition considered cross-culturally?

The sense of the sublime, the transcendent, the sacred, feelings of reverence, oceanic oneness, divine beauty and so on are all romantic responses. The sense of the ordinary, the mundane, feelings of indifference or neglect, separation, ugliness are its nihilistic counterparts. These are two universal possibilities of human feeling.

I see nothing whatsover wrong with being convinced by my own subjective feelings — Janus

The sense of the sublime, the transcendent, the sacred, feelings of reverence, oceanic oneness, divine beauty and so on are all romantic responses. The sense of the ordinary, the mundane, feelings of indifference or neglect, separation, ugliness are its nihilistic counterparts. — Janus

Again, I’m not saying that there is no biology to our feelings. Without neurobiology, there would be nothing to work with at all.

But neurobiologically, feelings are not basic in a sense that they are more fundamental than cognition or perception. The brain works holistically so an emotional response is an act of orientation, a preparation for action, some suitable form of arousal. The valuing is part of processing whatever is happening in the moment in a whole body and ecologically appropriate way.

So what I stress is your social construction of our emotions as an arbiter of cognition. It is not a completely wrong construction. It does feel like something - an aha! - when we make either a significant match or mismatch in cognition. There is a physiological orientation response that is what it is like to feel with sudden conviction that we have definitely got something right, or equally, that we have definitely just been caught out by something that was a surprise.

Yet still, the Romantic model - where our feelings know better and truer than our cognition - is a social construction. It dates back to at least Plato's charioteer analogy - the Greeks having separated off rationality or logos in the first place. Science would construct its own more convincing and evidence-backed view of what is really going on.

So I am responding to your first comment - "I see nothing whatsover wrong with being convinced by my own subjective feelings."

We know that the brain is pretty reliable when it comes to assessing the threats and opportunities of our environment. Millions of years of evolutionary fine-tuning will do that. But once humans became linguistic and cultural creatures, that biological apparatus got turned towards an assessment of a social world of ideas and attitudes and imaginings. And we know how we can talk ourselves into different view on any issue that will evoke quite opposite evaluations or subjective feelings.

With Trump, you could talk him up as some crazed demon that evokes disgust and aversion and fear. Or you could talk him up as a brave patriot willing to take on the dangerous elite and - just by listening to the way the situation is being socially constructed - start to feel the very opposite as your "trusted, deeply felt, gut reaction".

The same with Duchamp's urinal. Is it the wittiest, cleverest, work of art ever? Or is it a tawdry and mean-spirited joke with zero actual aesthetic merit? You should be able to take either set of words and begin to feel the warm approach or the cold withdrawal that is the dichotomous orientation response which your brain is set up for. It is the cognition that is the basis of the feeling here. The idea that we can bypass the cognition and drill down to discover our true and authentic emotional response to the urinal is a Romantic myth.

So in dealing with the world at an animal level, sure we trust our instinctive feelings. Evolution gives us good reason to take extra fright at anything wriggly and snake-like, or something small, leggy, scampery and spider-like. Just as it gives us good reason to think sugary foods are to be gorged upon anytime we are fortunate enough to encounter them.

But to judge philosophical positions on the basis of "subjective conviction" is obvious bad epistemology. Even if, in the end, feeling something is believable or unbelievable does wind up being a state of neurobiological assessment that includes a state of felt orientation, as that is simply how it works. We need to be left prepared with some clearly dichotomous resolution in terms of our action. We need to make up our minds whether we are approaching or avoiding the idea that is at the current centre of attention.

So I am not denying the reality of subjective emotional assessments. I am saying they are no more fundamentally reliable than the frameworks of cognition which they subserve. It's a package deal. You can feel great conviction - then discover you were completely wrong about the way you were construing the situation.

And then, the idea that subjective conviction is some kind of philosophical bedrock is itself a social construction. It is a way of understanding "feelings" that presumes the human mind can connect with a higher transcendent sphere of meaning. And science finds little evidence in favour of that ontology.

Sure, our neurobiology can be manipulated by mindset to evoke a generalised blissful oceanic feeling flooded with a sense of everything understood or connected with, the self depersonalised and immersed in a reality beyond it. Hell, there are drugs that can do that when you might be feeling shit about life.

But to then claim that evoked mental state is genuine or functional is a social construct. The reality is that we are just playing games with our neurobiological possibilities. And if we truly lose control over such games, that is when you get the messianic personality, the psychotic state, the depersonalised person. We kind of know when the social construction - as happens in an "appropriate way" in a church or art gallery - has become a neurobiological pathology.

And the funny thing is that these supernatural alternatives - either the unpatterned bliss of Nirvana or the frozen eternal perfection of Platonia do sound remarkably like a Heat Death cosmology. — apokrisis

It's a mischaracterisation.

...from the wrong view of decrease, these sentient beings derive three more wrong views. These three views and the view of decrease, like a net, are inseparable from each other. What are these three views? They are (1) the view of cessation, which means the ultimate end; (2) the view of extinction, which is equated to nirvāṇa; (3) the view that nirvāṇa is a void, which means that nirvāṇa is the ultimate quiet nothingness. Śāriputra, in this way these three views fetter, hold, and impress [sentient beings].

'Sutra of neither increase nor decrease'

You are rejecting the holistic metaphysics of a systems science approach to reality. — apokrisis

But this 'holistic metaphysics' only serves to emulate or simulate the processes of life and mind for the purposes of biological sciences, as a way of modelling. It approaches reality as a problem to be modelled, not as a first-person understanding of life and living. The reason that semiosis enters the picture is because the prior mechanistic model was seen to be hopelessly inadequate to the task of modelling the way life and mind work, as they're intrinsically language-like, rather than mechanistic. On that we're in agreement. But there's an existential point over and above that provided by the scientific approach - that is where we diverge, because it's seen to be religious. But, I maintain, philosophy has a religious aspect.

the Romantic model - where our feelings know better and truer than our cognition - is a social construction. — apokrisis

I think a better model is the one that Karen Armstrong created, along the lines of the difference between mythos and logos. The former is the allegorical, the mythological, the symbolic, whereas the latter is the quantifiable, what can be precisely mathematically modeled. The problem in Western culture is that this is completely misunderstood. As Joseph Campbell said, '“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions...are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.” That sure is writ large on this forum, but then it's only a microcosm of the greater culture.

'Sutra of neither increase nor decrease' — Wayfarer

So you seem to be mischaracterising the Heat Death?

...a Tathāgata’s dharma body is tranquil because it is a dharma free from duality and a dharma free from differentiation. Śāriputra, a Tathāgata’s dharma body never changes because it is a dharma of no destruction and a dharma of no action.

The Heat Death, as a final eternal state of being, would lack differentiation or duality. There would still be a state of being - a generalised state of "nothingness" that is the equilibration of all particular somethingnesses. But it would have become changeless and featureless. No destruction and no action.

Although to be more accurate, there would be a dim quantum fizzle of black-body radiation - virtual photons with wavelengths the size of the visible universe - being emitted by the cosmic event horizons. Which is about as ethereal a state of being as you could possibly expect from materialistic science. :)

It approaches reality as a problem to be modelled, not as a first-person understanding of life and living. — Wayfarer

OK. You make a sharp distinction between philosophy as a means to know about reality and philosophy as a means to know about the self.

But that hinges on the presumption that we aren't natural phenomena. Your division relies on there being that actual division. And I ask where is the convincing evidence? Once we start to ask the questions in a reasonable fashion, life and mind start to seem much less like supernatural phenomena.

So I take the view that the most reasonable hypothesis is that we are part of nature. Metaphysics can be unified under natural philosophy - which is holism and systems science in modern times.

I am happy for you to make an argument for a supernatural angle on life and mind. But why should I take seriously any theory that is "not even wrong" in being an explanation without observable consequences? What is reasonable about such an epistemology?

But, I maintain, philosophy has a religious aspect. — Wayfarer

I don't exclude religion or anything from either science or philosophy. A scientific approach is the one that doesn't rule out conjecture from the start. It only claims to constrain our belief by the end.

I think a better model is the one that Karen Armstrong created, along the lines of the difference between mythos and logos. The former is the allegorical, the mythological, the symbolic, whereas the latter is the quantifiable, what can be precisely mathematically modeled. — Wayfarer

Which is the one with the relation to the truth of reality, and which one is the construction of cultural identity?

And isn't the semiotic view that the two are related in a pragmatic fashion? We don't actually get to see reality as it is, only how it is useful for us to socially and psychologically construct it. But on the other hand, if there were no reality, then our mythologies would be really pointless.

The Heat Death, as a final eternal state of being, would lack differentiation or duality. — apokrisis

The point of the quote is that Nirvana is not a 'state of quiescent nothingness' (as to what it is, I don't think it has any analogy in science.)

We don't actually get to see reality as it is, only how it is useful for us to socially and psychologically construct it. — apokrisis

Well, there is another Buddhist notion that is relevant here, that of 'Yathābhūtaṃ' which is precisely 'seeing reality as it truly is'. But in this context, 'seeing as it truly is' has an implicitly ethical dimension, in that 'seeing truly' requires detachment from the passions and obscurations. 'The Buddha' (or 'the sage', more generally) sees things 'as they are', because she or he is disinterested, not attached, and is not subject to the obscurations.

Something like that was actually preserved in scientific method, except that in the context of early modern science it only applied to quantitative judgements - to what can be measured according to scientific method; there's no provision for the qualitative or the 'domain of values'. That is because Galileo adopted the Platonist attitude that while dianoia was indeed a type of 'higher knowledge' in that it is not subject to individual predilection, the 'domain of values' was then identified with the subjective realm, which made it to all intents a matter of individual conscience. And that has the effect of collapsing the Platonic distinction between real knowledge and mere belief or opinion (doxa or pistis) when it comes to ethical questions. (Hence the debate above about whether aesthetics and so on are really or only 'subjective').

A scientific approach is the one that doesn't rule out conjecture from the start. It only claims to constrain our belief by the end. — apokrisis

Which is fair enough, but again, is nowadays understood in purely third-person and empiricist terms. There's no lexicon or methodology for the domain of the qualitative. It's about what is effective in an instrumental or utilitarian sense.

You might say that we can develop whatever qualitative standards we like - but again that implicitly 'relativises' the question. And again that is very characteristic of the culture we're in, where the the third-person or public domain of scientific fact is opposed to the subjective domain of the qualitative. I'm trying to show that whilst that domain not objective, it's also not only or purely subjective, in the sense of 'pertaining only to oneself'.

But anyway - please don't interpret this as 'an attack'. It's a been a useful exchange of views as far as I am concerned because it is really obliging me to spell out what I am saying.

The point of the quote is that Nirvana is not a 'state of quiescent nothingness' (as to what it is, I don't think it has any analogy in science.) — Wayfarer

Well I quoted what it is not - not differentiated and yet still a state of being. And I would point out how that resembles the Western tradition of a substantial potential that tracks back to Anaximander's Apeiron and gets its thorough logical working out in Peirce's metaphysics of Vagueness.

And now physics itself has concrete models of vacuums being full of virtual particles that become manifest when relativistic constraints are applied. This kind of stuff can be calculated and observed these days.

So I stack up that against whatever woolly non-theory you might propose by way of a metaphysical orientation.

It's about what is effective in an instrumental or utilitarian sense. — Wayfarer

Well if you include social and cultural utility in that pragmatic equation, then yes. And why not?

The Peircean position is that scientific reasoning gives us the answer that a community of inquiry would agree to in the long run, if no needless barriers are put in its way. So the third person perspective is not the objectivity of naive realism. It is the collective view of a set of like-minded inquirers following the three logical steps of abduction, deduction and inductive confirmation.

So it is a method rooted in the purposes of those who have a reason to be interested.

And as such, it recognises the essentially socially-constructed nature of human knowledge. Thus it is obviously the right way to go about things if social and cultural utility are the highest intellectual goods. The collective mind collectively constructs itself through an open-ended process of reasoned inquiry.

What the individual thinks, standing alone, drops out of the picture as how could any isolated mind figure anything useful out if the mind itself is a collective social phenomenon?

That is why I say the Romantic model of man - the one that urges us to look inwards to our individual essence to find our transcendent connection to some "higher mind" - is a load of damaging guff. It gets in the way of understanding our true nature. It is a brake on the development of the higher state of socially-constructed consciousness that we need to get to.

So your argument is that Scientism blinds us to the higher issues. And my reply - from a natural philosophy stance - is that a higher self is what we humans have a social and cultural responsibility to invent. Science - being the reasoning method applied in best collective fashion - has to be the basis of any real advance on the very issues which you say matter the most.

It's a pity that whenever certain subjects are broached, your attitude becomes so hostile. But as I said, it was worthwhile trying to explain it, even to one who has no interest in understanding it.

t's a pity that whenever certain subjects are broached, your attitude becomes so hostile. — Wayfarer

But anyway - please don't interpret this as 'an attack'. It's a been a useful exchange of views as far as I am concerned because it is really obliging me to spell out what I am saying. — Wayfarer

Hostile? You know I don't take it personally. I'm just arguing for my point of view. I don't see you as attacking me either. You are making as strong a case for an argument as you can. And I enjoy your online presence much more than many others because of that. You do stand up for your view with an actual argument. So I might attack your case, but I don't think anything negative about you. :)

Nor Janus, when it comes to that. He also is one of the more reasonable people here.

Well, it was a response to:

That is why I say the Romantic model of man - the one that urges us to look inwards to our individual essence to find our transcendent connection to some "higher mind" - is a load of damaging guff. It gets in the way of understanding our true nature. — apokrisis

'load of damaging guff' did seem to me a hostile type of response. Wasn't it? There's also the fact that it's connected with the phrase 'understanding our true nature'. What you're saying 'our true nature' is, is a 'social construction' - whereas that is exactly what I am calling into question. 'True nature', in the Buddhist lexicon, has almost the opposite meaning.

Anyway - it's nothing to do with 'Romanticism'. In your personal schema, that is where you categorise (or pigeonhole) whatever Peircean Triadic Semiotics and model of scientific progress. can't accommodate.

And hey, I'm all for progress. I even went into bat for Steve Pinker's new book. But it's only one side of the story.

So your argument is that Scientism blinds us to the higher issues. And my reply - from a natural philosophy stance - is that a higher self is what we humans have a social and cultural responsibility to invent. Science - being the reasoning method applied in best collective fashion - has to be the basis of any real advance on the very issues which you say matter the most. — apokrisis

The problem is that there is a gap between the apparently-purposeless processes of evolution - which are, as we've established, simply a byproduct of entropy - with the purposes which homo faber is then enjoined to 'construct'. As these purposes not actually rooted in nature herself, they can only ever be fabricated or constructed. So what kind of resonance do they have with the cosmos at large?

From a discussion of Habermas' re-evaluation of the role of religion in the public square:

What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments. “Postmetaphysical thinking,” Habermas contends, “cannot cope on its own with the defeatism concerning reason which we encounter today both in the postmodern radicalization of the ‘dialectic of the Enlightenment’ and in the naturalism founded on a naïve faith in science.”

Postmodernism announces (loudly and often) that a supposedly neutral, objective rationality is always a construct informed by interests it neither acknowledges nor knows nor can know. Meanwhile science goes its merry way endlessly inventing and proliferating technological marvels without having the slightest idea of why. The “naive faith” Habermas criticizes is not a faith in what science can do — it can do anything — but a faith in science’s ability to provide reasons, aside from the reason of its own keeping on going, for doing it and for declining to do it in a particular direction because to do so would be wrong. 1

But neurobiologically, feelings are not basic in a sense that they are more fundamental than cognition or perception. — apokrisis

Phenomenologically considered, feeling is more basic than cognition or perception. The infant's world is a world of indeterminate feeling before it is a world of cognition and perception. Our knowing is a matter of feeling; how do we know that we know? As the Skeptics pointed out knowing can never be deductively validated. We know that we know when we experience ourselves knowing. I don't define knowledge as being necessarily correct; the notion of correctness is unhelpful.

We know in the sense of being familiar with things; that is the basis of knowing. We are familiar first; I know Catherine, let's say; that doesn't mean I cannot be wrong about her. When we know people we know how to relate to them, how to deal with them, in various ways. Knowing-how is the basis of all knowing-that. Common sense knowledge, phronesis or practical wisdom is knowing how to deal with the world insofar as we are interested in it. Scientific knowledge is, ideally at least, disinterested knowledge; knowing about the world for its own sake. We everywhere operate with fallible knowledge.

Yet still, the Romantic model - where our feelings know better and truer than our cognition - is a social construction. — apokrisis

Sure, but I don't argue for that. I say that, when it comes to metaphysical views or any viewpoint which cannot be rigorously inter-subjectively corroborated, we choose the ones we find most convincing, and that being convinced is really a matter of feeling.

Being intellectually honest is a matter of feeling; how do you know you are being intellectually honest in your preference for one view over another? You must be self-aware and examine your own desires; see if you are turning a blind eye to alternative views because you are emotionally invested in wanting some particular view to be the true one. The kind of "feeling" I am referring to is the desire for truth and intellectual honesty that enables you to see where you might be indulging in "confirmation bias".

The essence of any religion consists in loving God, however that God might be conceived. The experience of that love is the most enriching human experience possible, in my view. I believe that if you experience that love then you will necessarily have religious faith. Religious faith does not consist in objectivised claims or reifications, though.

Also when I say feeling is fundamental to human experience I mean that it is the calibre and kind of feeling that predominates in a human life that determines the happiness, the overall tenor, of that life

Note to self: I should stop being such a wuss. I need to acknowledge that if I push buttons then I am also subject to having it happen to me.

Everyone is welcome to "push my buttons" as much as they like. How else will I find out what I am protecting?

The essence of any religion consists in loving God, however that God might be conceived. — Janus

Well, Buddhism doesn’t see it in those terms.

I think the underlying tension owes a lot to the insistence by Protestantism on ‘salvation by faith alone’. That is one of the major motivation for the rejection of the ‘super-natural’. But that is another topic.

//ps// although I do agree that ‘feeling’ in the sense you have described it is often foundational in spirituality. That’s Schleiermacher main idea.