This suggests that the issue is also political. — plaque flag

Political and aesthetic.

Philosophy never made such promisses. — Wayfarer

I guess there is no Philosophy to make any such promises, only particular philosophies.

transcendence and Idealism rear their ugly heads — Joshs

that says a lot.

I can see that. It's yin and yang... to purloin an Eastern term. :wink:

transcendence and Idealism rear their ugly heads
— Joshs

that says a lot. — Wayfarer

I suspect that Joshs was using terminology like this in quotations.

Political and aesthetic. — Tom Storm

How about aesthetic because political ? I don't mean that one chooses because of one's politics. I mean that, because one has the choice (is not burnt for thoughtcrime), people choose differently. So we get lots of religions and atheisms, making it harder to believe in the transcendent, in the One True Religion.

:up: that's it I think. It's a veritable supermarket of isms and schisms.

I guess there is no Philosophy to make any such promises, only particular philosophies. — Tom Storm

We've been lost in the pluralitistic rubble since the infallible popes ? I was reading in C S Peirce though that the Catholic philosophers had enough wiggle room to disagree intensely on various details. Intellectuals had to be given some fun.

We've been lost in the pluralitistic rubble since the infallible popes ? — plaque flag

And of course, the contrapuntal argument is that in the Islamic world and (many other places) notions of transcendent certainty continue rule politics and culture like it's 1300 CE. Humans almost seem to have a certainty death wish.

transcendence and Idealism rear their ugly heads
— Joshs

that says a lot. — Wayfarer

I’ve been on a Deleuze jag lately.

I read the OP as Make Philosophy Great Again !
Was Yesterday always simpler, at least in retrospect, as we face a future that looks stranger and is always threatening to leave the ways of our youth completely behind ? I still remember phones with cords.


I don't think Marx is at all the last word, and he could be one of the earlier nostalgic sentimentalists even. (?)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007
The bourgeoisie...has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. ...Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

Humans almost seem to have a certainty death wish. — Tom Storm

:up:

Well put !

I’ve been on a Deleuze jag lately. — Joshs

None of those continentals - Deleuze, Badiou, Derrida, Lacan - have ever been part of my curriculum, and at this stage in life it's probably too late to begin. (I have discovered, however, a couple of secular critiques of naturalism from within English-speaking analytic philosophy, I'm going to make an effort to absorb them. Oh, and I am persisting with Evan Thompson's books.)

I read the OP as Make Philosophy Great Again ! — plaque flag

Definitely one possible reading, or Make Yesterday Today Again!

Yesterday being a kind of romantic Panglossian reconstruction. The notion of Golden Eras we have lost seems to haunt multiple subcultures these days, from mawkish Youtube comments on Elvis, to speculative historicisms by certain academics.

None of those continentals - Deleuze, Badiou, Derrida, Lacan - have ever been part of my curriculum, and at this stage in life it's probably too late to begin. (I have discovered, however, a couple of secular critiques of naturalism from within English-speaking analytic philosophy, I'm going to make an effort to absorb them. Oh, and I am persisting with Evan Thompson's books.) — Wayfarer

You may be interested in John Protevi’s attempt to bridge Thompson’s work with Deleuze.

DELEUZE, JONAS, AND THOMPSON TOWARD A NEW TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC AND A NEW QUESTION OF PANPSYCHISM

ABSTRACT

The essay examines the idea of “biological space and time” found in Evan Thompson‘s Mind in Life and Gilles Deleuze‘s Difference and Repetition. Tracking down this “new Transcendental Aesthetic” intersects new work done on panpsychism. Both Deleuze and Thompson can be fairly said to be biological panpsychists. That‘s what Mind in Life means: mind and life are co-extensive; life is a sufficient condition for mind. Deleuze is not just a biological panpsychist, however, so we‘ll have to confront full-fledged panpsychism. At the end of the essay we‘ll be able to pose the question whether or not we can supplement Thompson‘s Mind in Life position with a Mind in Process position and if so, what that supplement means both for his work and for panpsychism

http://www.protevi.com/john/NewTA.pdf

Yesterday being a kind of romantic Panglossian reconstruction. The notion of Golden Eras we have lost seems to haunt multiple subcultures these days, from mawkish Youtube comments on Elvis, to speculative historicisms by certain academics. — Tom Storm

I agree. It's that garden we were never actually in. Freedom and nihilism are two sides of one coin.

I find that most but few atheistic mindsets often lean towards a nihilistic way of life. Nothing matters, morality itself being man made can even equal that of scripture in its basic tenets however the higher forms of expression are alien to the atheist such as the creation of art or meaningful literature.

Even passion is found wanting to the atheist with only its lower facet in the form of lust being sought which often leads to nihilism’s opposite, hedonism.

At every opportunity they deny facts or do not wish to acknowledge them and forego the truth in doing so.

I see Hegel (and maybe edifying philosophy in general?) as right on the edge of Christianity and humanism.

God in his truth is therefore no bare ideal generated by imagination; on the contrary, he puts himself into the very heart of the finitude and external contingency of existence, and yet knows himself there as a divine subject who remains infinite in himself and makes this infinity explicit to himself.

What this means to me is that we are God, completely incarnate, down here in finitude and mortality, but transcending this [ partially ] through language and a triumph over petty narcissism. Spirit (Geist) is timebinding software, a flame that burns brighter and brighter as it leaps from melting candle to melting candle.

I agree with that. We are indeed god made flesh (wet-hardware) driven by spirit, or software as you call it.

Our comprehension ability of God depends on our willingness to understand its nature and everything that is manifest in this green earth.

Our emotions, our ability to feel and to express this emotion, this raw experience is what makes me human. Us wanting to make sense of it somehow leads only to a questioning mind which only ceases when we realise that some of our questions cannot by answered by reason alone or even science which aims to probe the very fabric of reality itself, always falling short in its noble endeavour by the simple fact that our comprehension can never transcend it even for want of trying.

We are indeed god made flesh (wet-hardware) driven by spirit, or software as you call it. — invicta

Wet hardware. That sounds good ! We could also say wetware or fleshware. I also like softwhere, because it's hard to localize spirit (which is 'just' mostly temporal patterns in nature, confusing our static prejudices, our demand that gods be statues, that gods be distant and other....)

Exactly. God is indeed everywhere! Just as consciousness becomes delocalised by the movement of the wetware so does the spirits interaction with its environment, always being presented with a changing landscape giving vision its reason for existence.

a questioning mind which only ceases when we realise that some of our questions cannot by answered by reason alone — invicta

To me there are no answers but those which are reasonable --- and even those are tentative. We can always stop at a myth that feels good, but I consider that an abandonment of the philosophical project. To me it's a retreat back into theology, which does tolerate and even embrace Revelation without justification.

Philosophy of course arising from the biggest myth creators to ever exist. The Greeks, for want of rational explanation ditched the Gods in favour of truth.

Exactly. God is indeed everywhere! Just as consciousness becomes delocalised by the movement of the wetware so does the spirits interaction with its environment always being presented with a changing landscape giving vision its reason for existence. — invicta

:up:
I'd just add that for me consciousness is best understood as the being of the world for various discursive selves. I try to avoid dualism.

Philosophy of course arising from the biggest myth creators to ever exist. The Greeks for want of rational explanation to brute questions the Gods themselves had to be ditched in favour of truth itself harsh or comforting that it may turn out to be. — invicta

I agree that philosophy begins as myth. Popper and Kojeve both see it as a secondorder tradition of criticizing and synthesizing myths. Mythmaking becomes dynamic, accumulative, timebinding. Reality and our understanding of it and of ourselves becomes more and more complex. I see no upper boundary. We have to play things out and see what happens.

Thanks, very interesting!

For anyone interested, Joscha Bach (to my delight, but without mentioning Hegel) uses the concepts of spirit and operatingsystems together in regard to biology. The whole interview is great, but the part mentioned above is tagged 'metalearning.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM

softwhere(?) — plaque flag

In the head (so obvious I couldn't resist) :wink:

My last comment regarding taking seriously cases like Chopra, might sound as a criticism towards you.
This was not my intention at all, Manuel.

I understand your concern and it is honest. Only that I am against trying to "warn" people about the views and actions of any person, if these don't actually harm people, and esp. if they benefit them.

As for the scientists who are against people like Kastrup, Chopra, etc., spreading around criticism against them, and trying to ridicule them, when they could just ignore them, are themselves blameworthy for their harcore materialism, when they mislead people, e.g. when they assert that even mind and consciousness are material things --without being able to prove it--, that people are just bodies and so on. This does actually much more harm to humanity than the unconventional theories and practices of persons whose purpose is trying to find truths about things that conventional science can't, independently of whether they succeed or not. These people are at least in the right path, contrarily to conventional Science, which actually has no path at all to follow regarding these subjects.

I'm sure you see my point, even if you disagree. :smile:

I find that most but few atheistic mindsets often lean towards a nihilistic way of life. Nothing matters, morality itself being man made can even equal that of scripture in its basic tenets however the higher forms of expression are alien to the atheist such as the creation of art or meaningful literature. — invicta

The atheists I've encountered are often insufferable moralists, hectoring people about what is right and wrong, based on secular values, such as Sam Harris' 'wellness of conscious creatures' stick from The Moral Landscape. I have yet to meet an atheist who can commit to nihilism or will deny moral behaviour in practice. They are generally way too bound up in encultured values and beliefs. The only true nihilists I've known are dead. Suicide.

some of our questions cannot by answered by reason alone or even science which aims to probe the very fabric of reality itself, always falling short in its noble endeavour by the simple fact that our comprehension can never transcend it even for want of trying. — invicta

I think this is fair.

God is indeed everywhere! — invicta

If "everywhere", then nowhere. Btw, which "god" are you talking about?

The only true nihilists I've known are dead. Suicide. — Tom Storm

:up: