What is a "pre-rational investment" first off? — Terrapin Station

By 'investment' I'm trying to stress that we don't enter a discussion without prejudices. These prejudices might even be said to constitute our intellectual personalities. For instance, I'm an atheist. I don't think I'm an atheist for purely "logical" reasons. (Indeed I think the notion of a cold "pure" reason is itself a God surrogate.) Roughly speaking, I think we all have images of the virtuous person that are as unique as our fingerprints, though of course roughly similar so that friendly communication is possible. I stress the word image to suggest the non-rational component. For instance, I have an irreligious/impious inclination that precedes the arguments I might make to defend this position or to justify my refusal to bother defending this position. You might say that I have an image of the radically free spirit that (in retrospect) I have been dialectically clarifying for myself since I was a teenager. We are taught to embrace and project universal systems (to understand religion as science and/or one-size-fits-all morality), so that the leap directly to the realization of freedom is just too terrifying. So instead we (or rather those I'm imaging as my general type) go through a sequence of wider and freer systems (bigger cages) until the negation of the cage as such becomes thinkable (emotionally bearable). For me "spiritual" growth is as much an affair of training and developing the heart and guts (arguably the body too) as it is of merely finding and believing the correct propositions.

Taken all together, I find in it a clear trend of progress, even if that progress is not smooth or consistent. — tim wood

I agree. Of course I'm a big fan of Hegel, and I think he's roughly right. Of course technology now makes it possible for humanity to cut short its own development. I try to affirm that possibility, which is to say live happily without repressing my consciousness of that possibility. I suppose I see what I'd call higher states of consciousness as fragile blossoms that emerge from the soil of suffering and confusion. No soul, no blossom. No nightmarish past, no blessed "awakening" or transcendence. The confusion is that which is transcended. As Sartre wrote, we are our past in the mode of no longer being it, and we are our future in the mode of not (yet) being able to be it. History is the nightmare from which we strive to awaken, occasionally succeeding. For me this "awakening" has always been a process of dis-identification and/or demystification. For instance, most of us transcend our parents. We learn to see them as imperfect humans whose approval is not spiritually authoritative. Dad is demystified. The actual father is separated in our mind from the father archetype from which he derived his power over us. In the realm of love, similarly, we learn to separate the actual woman from the "anima" image that makes her so seductive. Oxytocin steps in so that (to some degree) a sexual friendship replaces the almost insane or manic first phase of "falling in love." In short, we "distill" the predicates. Plato and Blake come to mind. We don't escape or transcend the energy of the predicates, but we are liberated to some degree by "introjection" or projection in reverse.

Amen, and yet alas! It's a long road, and for many - maybe most - not a good trip. — tim wood

Ah, yes. I feel like one of the lucky ones. I suppose most of us have our comforts, but I hate the idea of being robbed of the knowledge of my own freedom. And yet the beautiful drama of God waking up from the nightmare of not being God can only repeat if all souls are marched through Lethe every so often and installed in new bodies. For me this is metaphorical, but metaphorical is good enough.

And it's just here organized religion deserves credit, that is, the concept of god many of us find untenable. At its best it preserves/instructs in, hope and wisdom. — tim wood

I agree that organized religion has its value. I might describe my own journey (which I understand to be a progress) in terms of a series of better interpretations of Christian ideas presented to me as a child. The texts and rituals are raw material. My irreligiousness is just another kind of religiousness. Of course Jesus himself was a religious rebel.

The reasonable relativist is conscious that basic pre-rational investments close or open the possibility of various intellectual/moral positions. — visit0r

I've read that sentence at least six or seven times now, but I can't any sort of grasp on what the heck it might be saying, exactly. — Terrapin Station

A simple example is that some people just will believe in God and others just will not. Occasionally we do shift our views suddenly, but as a general rule the dialectical clash of a theist and and atheist is not going to change the basic position of either. They are emotionally ("pre-rationally" or "irrationally" invested in being whatever they currently are. The theist has an orderly universe that makes sense and a foundation for his or her moral preferences. The atheist has either the radical freedom that comes with the death of god or the beauty/nobility of living without a "crutch."

I think this "cynical" view of mind stands out (a little at least) on a philosophy forum because those who bother to argue either position with strangers are likely all invested (no matter their differences) in the notion of a single or universal truth which can and ought to be possessed. As rule, philosophers model themselves after scientists rather than novelists. They (often implicitly) make a claim on a shared "logical space." Their truth is not only theirs. I don't claim to completely escape this structure myself. But this is where I drag in Nietzsche's idea of "rank" and modify it a little bit, so that it's a little less hierarchical and more pluralistic. I think we can "let go" of the goal of inscribing the One Truth For All by living with the reduced goal of inscribing the "truth" of our own type. So the universal philosopher thinks of himself as a scientist, a universal metaphysician and the local philosopher develops "software" for others who happen to run a particular operating system --which is to say a community defined in terms of a set of "pre-rational investments." In practice (in my view) the healthy ego tends to feel that such pre-rational investments and their consequences are those of the "highest" type. But my reasonable relativist is well aware that just about everyone counts himself among the chosen or superior.

Finally, a conversation within such a community is "rational" or reasonable in terms of shared "normalizing" axioms or investments. An intellectual community might be defined in terms of an implicit and perhaps un-formalizable set of criteria for valid or warranted assertions. The criteria in this set are not "rational" in that they cannot be justified within the system of rational assertion that they make possible in the first place. Popper's notion of falsifiability, for instance, is a suggested criterion that cannot justify itself, which is not to say that it's not worth adopting as a demarcation of science from non-science. We might think of the realm of "rhetoric" or "abnormal discourse" as the sort of conversation that installs or edits these criteria. Rhetoric persuades us to adopt this or that notion of the trans-rhetorical (true philosophy as opposed to sophistry). For me that's philosophy at its most radical and exciting. I get my itch for normalized discourse scratched by my day job (which involves an almost ideally "normalized" discourse.)

By 'investment' I'm trying to stress that we don't enter a discussion without prejudices. These prejudices might even be said to constitute our intellectual personalities. For instance, I'm an atheist. I don't think I'm an atheist for purely "logical" reasons. — visit0r

Ah, I agree with that. "Pre-rational investment" didn't convey that for me, partially because "investment" suggests something more active than I'd say is warranted with the idea prejudices/biases.

With this: "We are taught to embrace and project universal systems (to understand religion as science and/or one-size-fits-all morality)," you don't mean that everyone is taught that, do you? I certainly wasn't taught that, for example.

A simple example is that some people just will believe in God and others just will not. Occasionally we do shift our views suddenly, but as a general rule the dialectical clash of a theist and and atheist is not going to change the basic position of either. They are emotionally ("pre-rationally" or "irrationally" invested in being whatever they currently are. The theist has an orderly universe that makes sense and a foundation for his or her moral preferences. The atheist has either the radical freedom that comes with the death of god or the beauty/nobility of living without a "crutch." — visit0r

I kind of agree with this (and your comments below it), but (a) as I noted in the other post, I think that "investment" is often not warranted for it, and (b) I don't think that there's always an emotional component to it. My take on it is that it's often simply a disposition of how the person's brain works so to speak. It's more like a bunch of trees. There are some shapes, some arrangements of branches, etc., that just won't work for some trees (at least without breaking branches and trying to regrow them with particular physical constraints in place--which still might not work). There's nothing emotional about that. However, I'd agree that there's an emotional component in some cases.

Re my atheism, for example, I'd say I'm an atheist for two reasons: (1) I wasn't raised an atheist--in fact, I was raised so that religion simply wasn't broached in any way, which effectively amounted to an experiment to see what would happen when someone learned close to nothing about religion until relatively late in life, and the upshot of the experiment was that (2) religous beliefs simply strike me as being completely absurd. Learning about them was akin to suddenly learning that a huge percentage of people believe that there are alien, repitilian shape shifters all around us, and we need to wear suits made of tinfoil at home to protect ourselves (whereupon I learn that lots of people do wear those suits at home).

I wouldn't say there's an emotional component to that for me. In fact, I'd prefer to believe that I somehow continue to exist after I die, that I'd go to some heaven, etc. The problem is that it's not possible for me to believe that, given my dispositions. It's just like if I could choose, I'd believe in all sorts of "supernatural" stuff. I'd love to believe that ghosts are real; I'd love to believe that all sorts of cryptids exist--including things like vampies, werewolves, etc.; I'd love to believe that we are regularly visited by aliens, etc., I'd love to believe that magic, including black magic, etc. is real.--all sorts of things like that, as I love the fantasy of that stuff, and I love the idea of it being real to an extent where I read a lot of supposedly non-fiction about it, I regularly visit sites that are supposedly haunted, etc. (Of course, I regularly engage in fiction about it, too.) I want that stuff to be real. It seems to me that the world would be that much more fun if that stuff were real. But that doesn't enable belief. By disposition, I'm a very hardcore skeptic, to a point where I even believe that a lot of scientific ideas that are considered pretty mainstream are really fantastical nonsense that people believe (just like many believe in ghosts, etc.). So if it were emotionally guided, I'd believe a lot of stuff that I do not. But I simply can't "make myself" believe something just because I want to.

I'd love to believe that we are regularly visited by aliens, etc., I'd love to believe that magic, including black magic, etc. is real.--all sorts of things like that, as I love the fantasy of that stuff, and I love the idea of it being real to an extent where I read a lot of supposedly non-fiction about it, I regularly visit sites that are supposedly haunted, etc. (Of course, I regularly engage in fiction about it, too.) I want that stuff to be real. It seems to me that the world would be that much more fun if that stuff were real. But that doesn't enable belief. By disposition, I'm a very hardcore skeptic, to a point where I even believe that a lot of scientific ideas that are considered pretty mainstream are really fantastical nonsense that people believe (just like many believe in ghosts, etc.). So if it were emotionally guided, I'd believe a lot of stuff that I do not. But I simply can't "make myself" believe something just because I want to. — Terrapin Station

I suppose I'd ask why you couldn't make yourself believe. According to my prejudice or theory, this is just your attachment to intellectual honesty overpowering your desire to find the spooky stuff to be real. In short, I think in terms of collisions of forces. Consciousness is a vector sum. I also can't make myself believe stuff that I'd like to believe. I'm attached to an image of myself as nobody's fool, not even my own. That's a partial explanation.

To be sure, all kinds of irony and comedy become possible as demystifying theories turn on themselves. If we are all enacting hero myths (rationalizing pre-rational investments or poses), then what kind of hero or pose can bear the self-demystification in pointing this out? The theorist of endless role-play is himself a role conscious of himself as such. He knows that on some level he's just fucking around, a child at play with the serious, solemn grown-up words. It's hard to codify the "gingerbread man" and/or the "laughter of the gods," but I tend to look for (rarely finding) a gleam in the eye of the other that is not quite immersed or trapped in the pose or the game of the moment.

I suppose I'd ask why you couldn't make yourself believe. According to my prejudice or theory, this is just your attachment to intellectual honesty overpowering your desire to find the spooky stuff to be real. In short, I think in terms of collisions of forces. Consciousness is a vector sum. I also can't make myself believe stuff that I'd like to believe. I'm attached to an image of myself as nobody's fool, not even my own. That's a partial explanation. — visit0r

I don't think I'm attached to the idea of "intellectual honesty" or anything like that. I just have certain dispositions that lead me to believe or not believe certain things. It's not anything I'm consciously doing (and I don't at all buy the notion of unconscious/subconscious minds).

It's not anything I'm consciously doing (and I don't at all buy the notion of unconscious/subconscious minds). — Terrapin Station

Where are your memories when you are not remembering them? To me it's pretty clear that we know far more than we can be conscious of at any particular moment.

I can't help but be a little skeptical about your disavowal of intellectual honest. I can relate to a certain irony about the virtue. It comes off a goofy if so-and-so praises himself in such terms. But would you really not be embarrassed to be accurately (in your own eyes) judged as a sloppy or dishonest thinker whose words do not deserve respect? I understand rejecting a externally imposed duty to be intellectually honest. But I view intellectual honest as another aspect of beauty and nobility, and I view beauty and nobility as what we just want to incarnate or be. I might speak of an internally imposed duty except that "internal" here stresses that I experience this urge as my true self so that "imposition" involve only what gets in the way of this incarnation project. For instance, a pious or sentimental proclamation of intellectual honesty seems (at least) emotionally dishonest in its sentimentality. Along the same lines a person might mock the authenticity project in order to authentically express his complexity/ambivalence.

We can reject every bearer of the "divine" or sacred predicates but perhaps not the allure of the predicates themselves. One form is rejected in the name of another.

With this: "We are taught to embrace and project universal systems (to understand religion as science and/or one-size-fits-all morality)," you don't mean that everyone is taught that, do you? I certainly wasn't taught that, for example. — Terrapin Station

I don't think we are taught this explicitly, but I do think we learn this by imitation. Science is explicitly objective and metaphysics and religion at least often project themselves as true-for-all and binding-for-all. Correct beliefs are correct independent of the believer. That's the usual idea. This is of course common sense itself in everyday life. But pretty soon ambiguous propositions about invisible deities like Jehova, Progress, Freedom make an appearance, so these kinds of propositions are often presented as valid for all.
Of course political discussions are almost universally about what "we" should do, as if all good people had the same interest. The "idiot" is the "irresponsible" "private person" who doesn't have sophisticated, solemn opinions about this We. That's one way I can make sense of "nihilist" or "relativist." If the nihilist shares that he's not interested in what "we" "should" think but only what he should think, then the non-nihilist is likely to translate this thoughtlessly into the assertion by the nihilist that nihilism ought to be embraced. This scarecrows the nihilist as an evangelist. The "universal" man doesn't have much use for merely first-person reports except as raw material to synthesize into objectivity, duty, and prohibition. (Maybe I'm exaggerating, but I'm trying to point at something that is easy to miss because it lurks in every background.)

Where are your memories when you are not remembering them? — visit0r

They're potentials for particular mental content. It seems to me that mentality would be akin to "precipitation states" on a mountain, say. The mountain doesn't always have flowing water or snowpack etc. on its surface. It only sometimes has that. When there is flowing water or snowpack on its surface, the exact form it takes, the exact way it flows, is largely determined by the structure of the mountain itself. But that structure of the mountain isn't a precipitation state when it hasn't rained or snowed.

But would you really not be embarrassed to be accurately (in your own eyes) judged as a sloppy or dishonest thinker whose words do not deserve respect? — visit0r

Doesn't matter to me. As it is, I am not of the impression that anyone on this board (or the previous board) particularly likes me or thinks that any of my contributions are of value. I just don't see that as my problem. ;-)

The only emotional commitment I have in the vein of what you're talking about is to enjoy myself, enjoy my life, and be myself--at least outside of what's necessary to make a living and remain unincarcerated, I'm not about to kowtow to how other people want me to be.

Re the second post, I've always been uncomfortable with normatives in that sense, and I grew up in a family where that was rather a norm (ironically, I suppose). As I mentioned, re religion, I had just about zero notion of religious beliefs until I was in my mid/later teens.

Not to oversimplify, isn't is basically "no truth, no meaning"? Seems like they work on that level. Relativistic nihilist, nihilistic relativist, either way is saying the same thing to me. Sorry if I'm coming off as a pedantic but I'm not an authority on this subject, not being omniscient.

You've exhumed a two-year-old thread. I direct you to posts by visit0r as being worth the read and your attention.