I would like to interject my idea of peak experience. Peak experience is often thought of as the exceptional achievements of athletes, artists, actors, musicians, mystics and even thinkers. However – it is not just them; their extraordinary accomplishments are transmitted to us, the observer, and we join the experience. We cling to any and all peak experience because it is exhilarating. When we see Usain Bolt run; he infects us with his energy and perfection. My father was a big fan of Mario Lanza and I remember recordings of this powerful, beautiful voice lofting through the house when I was little. I have read poetry and prose that has made me cry. I have heard mystics talk like they were inside my head. I have observed myself in silence and it is like another world. Peak experience transports us to a special knowing. It is not one thing – it can be anything – many things – and nothing. I sense a peak experience now – for a nano-second between my breathes – there is something wonderful in my consciousness – I can feel it – but I have a hard time grabbing it – it is so fleeting. I project that we all have it. We all chase it. Why would we not? We listen to great music, theatre, sports and it is magnificent. I am grateful for my peak experiences – it is truly divine.

Imagine you're a particle in an empty space, but suddenly you realize, as you begin to focus, the space isn't so empty after all. The space develops further the more you observe it. It begins to take shape and eventually it becomes so clear that it surrounds you. This new dimension is different. As you glance back to remind yourself where you came from you see yourself for how you were. The more you focus on it, the clearer that becomes and, once again, this reality takes over and you become what you were: a particle in an empty space.

That's a technique to come out of the egocentricity into a higher consciousness, or an awareness of being that encompasses more than just the qualities of self.

I believe there's a deeper feeling to "peak achievement" that we are clinging on to, it's a sense of community and connection, a sense of relationship, so that we can temporarily leave ourselves into a broader dimension of consciousness that brings us even closer together.

Hypnosis may be able to prove the existence of the egocentricity we can be pulled out of.

I see that you're all talk. You and Agustino. You and Agustino might be satisfied with pushing over a straw man based on an uncharitable interpretation of what I've said, but that doesn't mean much, and does not make for a good debate.

I see that you're all talk. You and Agustino. — Sapientia

Okay, so how do we move from talk to action? You expect us to fly over and give you an amazing one-time only experience of God? >:O

Well, you could actually back up what you're claiming about my position and not disregard my subsequent attempts to clarify.

No, I'm not all talk; I'm all out of talk, because I'm faced with someone who's already decided what they think and will never, it seems, cease coming up with the same misunderstandings over and over, no matter how many times they are pointed out and corrected. The spirit of your replies do not at all seem to be given charitably, in honest "attempts to clarify", but rather seeking to defend the position you came into the discussion with at all costs and to the bitter end. That's my honest impression of you, in any case; take it or leave it; it's up to you, but it's not a game I can be bothered playing, that's for sure.

I'm not at all saying "we're just completely guessing"! Humans cannot be "empty zombies". I believe this because I intuit it, not because I have any purely rationally based empirical evidence to support it; I don't, and neither do you. — John

This struck me as an interesting position to take. I suppose I think of an intuition, philosophically, as a belief for which no reason comes readily to hand (if ever). As such, intuition is indispensable to get any thinking done at all. But I'm curious, because of the way you put things here, how you think of the epistemic value of intuition.

As you say, I think what is intuitively obvious to us, the self evident axioms upon which all rational thought is based, is "indispensable to get any thinking done at all", and we may have no 'pure' reasons to believe in them. When you ask about the "epistemic value of intuition" I wonder whether you have knowledge about empirical matters in mind. I don't believe intuition is always a good guide to understanding empirical phenomena. It may be, but must be corrected by observation, conjecture and experiments to verify or falsify those observations and conjectures.

The self-evident axioms of rational thought, the laws of the excluded middle and non-contradiction, for example, are relevant to the process of thought itself, to what is required so that thought be consistent and coherent. (Talking here, of course, about propositional thought, not about poetic thought).

The intuition that people are intentional beings is, I believe, without any empirical warrant. This is similar, in a way, to Hume's so-called problem of induction. We understand causation because we feel ourselves affecting, and being affected by, other bodies, not because we 'directly observe' it. Can we say this is an epistemic matter rather than an affective matter? If I am to convince you of any proposition by rational argument, I can only do so on the basis that what I want to convince you of is logically entailed by premises I know you will accept, or that it is demonstrated by empirical evidence I can present you with, that I know you will accept as valid evidence.

So the self-evidence of intentionality in myself and others, I say is like the self-evidence of causation at work in the world. I cannot show either to you as an empirical observable that will count as evidence to support belief in it. It is also not logically self-evident, as the axioms of rational thought are. So, I must appeal to your own experience, and say 'look at that experience', it is in light of that experience that these things are self-evident, and that provides the rational justification for believing in them. Also, nature would be incomprehensible to us without the idea of efficient causation (understood as the interaction of forces), just as human behavior would be incomprehensible to us without the idea of intentionality. So these two intuitions are indispensable for thought in those arenas, as the principle of non-contradiction and the excluded middle are indispensable in the sphere of pure logic.

Thanks, John! This is an excellent response. You tie together several things nicely here. I have loads to say about this, but I want to try to set my thoughts in order first.

The expected ordering of my thoughts is not coming along, so I'll just indicate a few of the things on my mind.

It seems to me there is a broad sense in which Hume and Kant give a similar explanation for what you here mark out as "self-evident," namely that it has its source in our own nature. Hume calls the principle of human nature that leads us from bare experience to cause and effect "Custom." For Kant, it's the transcendental aesthetic, yes? (Kant I have neglected.) At any rate, both, again broadly, say that we cannot help but think in such terms. We think the way we think because we do. (I'm sure that's a travesty of Kant, and welcome clarification while I continue to put off studying him.)

"Cannot help but" suggests that "self-evident" here may mean "cannot be doubted."

And yet: Quine was an anti-realist about meaning, and thus denied there was any "fact of the matter" about the correctness of a translation (among many other things). @andrewk, you'll no doubt recall, is an anti-realist about causation, so he neither affirms nor denies propositions such as "a caused b." The general form of the argument here is, as Michael Dummett explains, to deny the applicability of the law of the excluded middle to the questioned domain. That may seem a steep price to pay, but there's reason to think all of us are anti-realists about some domains. What we argue about is with regard to which domains we are willing to abandon the law of the excluded middle. Intuition will play its usual role here, though: if you can produce a proposition that the anti-realist feels compelled to consider either true or false, then he must abandon his abandonment and join you in realism about that domain.

That "feels compelled" there is odd. Compelled by what? Self-evident truth? Human nature? Custom?

I think often the sense of being compelled comes from linguistic habit. That by itself is not to say you are being steered away from or toward truth. I also think language is precisely what enables us to overcome the sense of compulsion, for good or ill.

Added: You yourself, John, espoused an anti-realism about the intentionality of the universe.

I think I can conceive of such an experience and might well have had it, but I just reach a different conclusion. And no, unlike some people, I certainly wouldn't call that - or any experience - "God". I don't lack the words to describe the kind of experience that I suspect you have in mind. One might use words like "profound", "wonder", "awe", "amazement ", "appreciation", and so on. I would also call it a fundamental feeling of gratitude, as you do, if that is what was felt. But I recognise that that's all it is, a feeling, and I do not jump to conclusions that are unwarranted. I do not make the unwarranted assumption that we've "been given" anything, if by that you mean what I think you mean. And it can't be reasonable to grant personhood to something like the world we live in - that's a simple category error and an example of anthropomorphism. — Sapientia

Seems like you and I agree on a lot and disagree on some. I'll tackle my "category error" here. Personification, or anthropomorphism if you like, is one way humans organize and understand the world. We project our internal experience out into the world as a metaphor for what we observe there. That's just one way we organize the world - we also come to believe that we are different from the outside world. We see the world as a place where one thing causes another. We think of the world as a lawful machine. If personification is a useful strategy for understanding the world, calling it a category error does not make it inappropriate. It can be reasonable to grant personhood to something like the world we live in.

I'm not trying to make a statement about psychological or cognitive mechanism. This is a philosophical discussion.

Okey-dokey then! I will most definitely leave it. It doesn't pass my quality control.

Well, what exactly are we talking about here? A metaphor or a category error? If it's just a metaphor, and is acknowledged to be nothing more than a metaphor, then I have no issue with it. Although I think that one should make that clear from the start. I don't want to be drawn into an absurd position like arguing that the world is not a stage because it isn't a raised platform in a theater. I'm not here for poetry.

Despite the "expected ordering" of your thoughts not "coming along", you've managed to present me with quite a bit to think about here; so I'll try to touch on some of it.

I think you're right that what is self-evident to us is governed by our natures. It seems inescapable that we must think that our natures are part of reality, and that they also constrain how we perceive and understand the real. We cannot demonstrate discursively how it is that our natures do this, though, because we live our natures and they remain hidden, discursively speaking, from us; we cannot get 'outside of' them in order to see what is 'really going on'.

So, our natures are as much noumenal to us as the ultimate nature of the world is. we cannot really say whether it is "custom" or "transcendental aesthetic", I would say. It is for these kind of reasons that I believe Kant's Transcendental Deduction is questionable; and of course it has been vigorously questioned, and rejected by many. It is by no means as self-evident as some say it is.

So, "what cannot be doubted" for us, cannot logically, obviously, be assumed to be what is real in itself. But then on the other hand, the problem with this idea is that the only idea we have of what "real in itself' might even mean is derived from how we think the meaning of "real for us".

I'm not very familiar with Quine; but I wonder whether anti-realists such as he and andrewk are intending their antirealism to apply to the 'for us' or the 'in itself'. Kant was a Transcendental Idealist; would this be the same as being a Transcendental Antirealist?

If the antirealist is "compelled" to be a realist about some domain on account of the truth or falsity of some proposition being self-evident to them, I think that is only proper, because I believe the compulsion is a logical one of honoring our intellectual commitments by remaining consistent with them. This seems to again, evoke the principle of non-contradiction; my avowed beliefs should not contradict one another, because that would be dishonest and lead to intellectual chaos and confusion; and, if universally practiced, the break down of all intersubjective discourse.

You yourself, John, espoused an anti-realism about the intentionality of the universe. — Srap Tasmaner

Perhaps I shouldn't respond to this, Srap, until I am sure of which statement I made that you are referring to. Thanks for conversing. :)

.

The question is really as to whether nature is merely a brute existence or if intentionality (telos) is behind its workings. Empirically speaking we simply don't know, and I don't believe we ever can know by means of purely rational or empirical enquiry. There doesn't seem to be any imaginable way we could know by those means. — John

That's the bit I had in mind. If you take the additional step of linking the truth of a statement to a conception of what could count as evidence for it, then your statement here would be a textbook antirealism about the intentionality of the universe, i.e., a denial that the law of the excluded middle applies here, so that you do not feel compelled to consider such statements true or false. Since people generally have a revulsion to messing with the "laws of thought," it's more likely you intended only to claim that whether there is a fact of the matter or not-- and the assumption is usually that there is-- we cannot know it. (But then what are you saying?) Anyway, you've got options here. I don't have a horse in this race.

I'm no expert on alternative logics, but there are lots of ways to tinker. For the stuff I'm interested in, there can be motivated restrictions of the application of the law of the excluded middle, but the law of contradiction stays put, and I can't imagine what could be gained by ditching that under any non-literary circumstances.

I'm going to pass on commenting on the rest of what you say here, interesting thought it is. I've already spent more time at this altitude than I consider healthy! I'm going to head back to earth.

Thanks for the exchange, John.

The moment you relate your emotional experience to another it feels like the difference between a person falling asleep in the dark to sudoku and falling asleep on a beach. You can literally choose to escape back further into egocentricity - the "self" - or let yourself be moved further by the force that collectively pulls everything together. How, if objective reality is physical, does it exist so differently subjectively? The same state of reality feels so differently at one moment than it does at another. We attribute pain coming from a specific part of the brain, when the pain is fundamentally existing as a conscious experience. From that we externalize a reality, when in actuality you never left subjective awareness. Not that I'm saying independent reality doesn't exist, but what does exist is different dimensions of awareness, one of the dimensions being a reality in which you envision yourself relative to other objects in a space.

If you take the additional step of linking the truth of a statement to a conception of what could count as evidence for it, then your statement here would be a textbook antirealism about the intentionality of the universe — Srap Tasmaner

OK, but remember that I think the only possible intersubjective evidence for intentionality, human or otherwise, consists in its explanatory indispensability. And the same goes for causality.

On the other hand the subjective evidence for intentionality, human and otherwise, and causality, is individual experience; we may be utterly convinced by the evidence of our own experience. But our experience can never qualify as overwhelmingly convincing evidence for another person.

Not that I'm saying independent reality doesn't exist, but what does exist is different dimensions of awareness, one of the dimensions being a reality in which you envision yourself relative to other objects in a space. — stonedthoughtsofnature

This is what I had mentioned previously, where I said these 'dimensions' can collide - that is an awareness - but the conditions are very unique, almost as difficult as the conditions required for a star to be born because cognitively one required an awareness or consciousness of reality as it is, not as we imagine it to be, only possible when one freely chooses to transcend the collective consciousness (socially speaking). They thus become conscious of the collective to become a part of it and when they meet another of the same frame of mind, the dimensions can 'collide'. But the right conditions, so you need to be careful whether you are merely projecting the idea that you have emotionally connected or whether you actually have because empathy kindles our conscience and is the source our ability to sense-experience the external world authentically rather than imaginatively. This is the same for when you say God is the centre of your psyche, because then you become God and that is yet another ego-projection. Rather, it is through God that you can understand reality and God is love.

I like the way you think, by the way. It is very similar to me, albeit mine is a bit more rationally applied. Perhaps because I am drug and alcohol free... :-O

They thus become conscious of the collective that when they meet another of the same frame of mind, the dimensions can 'collide' just as particles collide with another to fuse and form a star. — TimeLine

Perhaps because I am drug and alcohol free... :-O — TimeLine

Okay I understand, but you certainly are smoking something. What are you smoking? :s >:O

Science identifies statements that are grounded upon logical possibility alone and places them in the appropriate container. That is not the same thing as ignoring everything outside the scope of methodological naturalism and yet you'll find that the overwhelming majority of religious beliefs find themselves in that container. There are some very strange bedfellows there as well...

Freedom and empathy enables one to transcend the illusions of subjective self-interest that we project to the external world. We decide reality as it subjectively appears to us so the actual activity of this experience is merely the cognition between the relationship of objects.

Space and time are its pure forms, sensation in general, its matter — Kant, A43/B60

There is no substance to this experience because the uniformity of space and time is not merely the materially causal relationships between things; it involves an understanding of the metaphysical expressions dependent on intuitions because consciousness and by extension people are not mere things and therefore can transcend the material. So two people who have gone beyond this propensity attain the necessary cognitive conditions to form a dialectic that expose these illusions; they can 'see' the phenomenon of one another.

That condition itself, the ability to be free from the illusions caused by this subjective self-interest, is only possible through love (conscience/empathy/moral consciousness). Love is intuitive rather than logical, it involves a 'leap of faith' so to speak just as one has faith in God. God is perfection, the perfect Good, the representation of grace and love that as we seek God through this faith or intuition, we seek this perfection that we of course will never reach, but the process of reaching out to God - to love God - enables the clarity that subjective self-interest blinds us from, thus God is love.


I am not smoking anything. You are just a snotty little boy.

authentically — TimeLine

At least you didn't repeat this again. Thank God.

Now I don't know what to make of the illogical mess you have in there. So freedom (whose freedom, what freedom?) and empathy (towards whom?) enables you (how?) to transcend (move beyond) the illusion of subjective self-interest (so is there some objective self-interest too?) that we PROJECT to the external world (so apparently this self-interest is both subjective and projected to the external world).

We decide reality as it subjectively appears to us so the actual activity of this experience is merely the cognition between the relationship of objects. — TimeLine

We decide reality as it subjectively appears to us? Really? The actual activity (what activity?) of this experience (what experience, the experience of deciding reality? And what the hell does that mean?) is merely the cognition between the relationship of objects. Right, so I guess this cognition is situation BETWEEN a RELATIONSHIP of objects. I don't have a fucking clue where between a relationship of objects is situated.

So space and time are "its" (I don't know what the hell this refers to) pure forms, while sensation is its matter (in what sense? matter as in content I guess?).

This is all so messy, unclear, and incoherent that I can't but agree with you, because you're not saying anything. I cannot distinguish anything there that I could even disagree with in the first place. It's like a word salad.

I am not smoking anything. You are just a snotty little boy. — TimeLine

I am seriously tired of you. I think I need to now ignore your posts.

I am seriously tired of you. I think I need to now ignore your posts. — TimeLine

I can't believe you're a trained lawyer and yet your statements are so darn incoherent (and repetitive, and beating around the bush, etc.) ... You should really make some effort to clarify what exactly is your message, what you're trying to say, what it means, etc. before making a post. It would help in your interactions. Don't just put together a bunch of "advanced sounding" words, and call that deep philosophy.

I am not a lawyer. And, it is not incoherent. You are merely projecting your own religious illusions by attempting to falsify what I say as it does not align with what you believe.

I am not a lawyer. — TimeLine

No, but you were trained as one, at least per your own previous admissions on the forums.

You are merely projecting your own religious illusions by attempting to falsify what I say as it does not align with what you believe. — TimeLine

Look. Just look at this sentence for God's sake. So I'm projecting some RELIGIOUS illusions by attempting to falsify what you say (how am I falsifying it, and how can falsifying something project religious illusions, and why for fucks sake religious and not political, sexual or of another nature?) because it doesn't align with what I believe.

So tell me. Being a trained lawyer you should be capable to answer these questions in no uncertain and vague terms:

• What are these religious illusions that I'm projecting?
• How is attempting to falsify something a projection of illusions?
• Where have I attempted to falsify what you said and how? (as far as I'm concerned you haven't said anything - it's a word salad, as I said).
• What do I believe and how do you know that it doesn't align with these beliefs?
• List the beliefs that I hold that are contrary to what you think you've said.

I am not a trained lawyer.

I am not a trained lawyer. — TimeLine

Were you trained as a lawyer? Did you attend law school?

Were you trained as a lawyer? — Agustino

As I said, I am not a trained lawyer.