A pointless comment. — Janus

That's exactly what someone who was teased by their sister as a child would say.

Funny thing is it was I used to tease my sister (and my mother and brother) ...she was, and still is, somewhat of a "goodie two-shoes", and Mum and bro weren't much looser.

Given his "fundamental question", maybe Constance has not considered (e.g.) Spinoza's conatus. — 180 Proof

:up: That indeed seems quite likely.

I know what you are saying, but it feels too metaphysical too fast, or epistemological, asking “Is it possible for thought and its concepts to understand the world as the world?”. We no longer need the content, such as the “the essence of religion”, to continue the conversation this inquiry might become. — Fire Ologist

To discover the essence of religion, one has to be torn away from default mundane relations with the world. I mean, the world we experience every day. The metaphysics of it has to be treated not as a thesis, but as an encounter with the world, something we don't do in our culture. Curious to ask if we ever did, particularly in ancient cultures where knowledge assumptions were so few compared to this modern and post modern "disillusionment" so common.

The epistemological problem is the same as the problem in ontology (the idea I am pushing here is that of a value-in-being). These are two sides of the same event. It is not as if the world in question reveals itself "outside" of the epistemic encounter, and indeed, it is the encounter that "makes" the world what it is. Not to say there is nothing out there that is not me, but rather to say that what IS before me is the phenomenon, and nothing else, and to behold the phenomenon is in the beholding the beheld object. It is impossible remove affirmations in ontology from those of epistemology.

So we encounter lamps and desks and chairs, and we also encounter feelings, this whole affectivity of our existence. This latter needs to be understood for what it is apart from the "tranquilized" life of passive assumptions. As Wayfarer said, it seems this move is easier for some, harder for others, but no doubt, it is not just cogitating on a thesis. It is revelatory. The metaphysical move you mention as being a bit too quickly affirmed, is first thought out, but the "movement" (as Kierkegaard put it, though he had trouble with this, he admits) is revelatory, and quite fast...that is, immediate. It is essentially aesthetic (keeping in mind the way Wittgenstein conflated the two, ethics and aesthetics. Both are value-driven. Religion, aesthetics and ethics are all about the same thing).

But it feels like we could easily head into a digression away from statements like “the world IS religious.”. Perfectly good questions but, we now need never talk about religion. — Fire Ologist

Or perhaps religious talk has to arise after the most fundamental insight is achieved. Take theodicy, a theological conundrum, but based on the premise that God is the greatest, loosely speaking, and created the world. Now we no longer think like this, as we are up to our eyebrows in faith in evidentially grounded belief. This is the virtue of this phenomenological approach to religion as it frees metaphysics from arbitrary concepts that generate the omni this and omni that and the creator of all things. All of this is dismissed. But we do have this: good and evil, and the metaphysics in which these are revealed, remembering that metaphysics is no longer the suprasensory other world, but is this world, and their "properties" spelled out before us is often vivid and powerful, referring to the burns, abrasions and the rest of the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to, as well as love and beauty and bliss. We know we ar "thrown into" this world. Being thrown is a term referring to what happens when one makes this move out of mundanity and sees there is no foundation beneath one's feet, for the myths are gone. The theology is gone. Gone is everything, when inquiry turns to religion.

Metaphysics is now a responsible term.

The same indeterminacy of our existence could also be said to have given birth to science. (I see this is why Nietzsche could say academic science could lie as much as religion could). — Fire Ologist

Yes. Reason itself cannot be conceived, for that would take reason. Where IS this beginning that is so mysterious? Here is a word from Eugene Fink from his Sixth Meditation:

The preliminariness and indeterminateness of the
indications we gave regarding inquiry back to world-constitution
arose from our wanting to be careful that from the outset we not
encumber or even conceal genuine philosophical comprehension
in the phenomenological sense, viz., constitutive understanding, by
a preset "characterization.

When one gets to this, well, call it, hallowed ground of first apprehensions, one is nowhere in a very real way. Science has be denuded. Nietzsche puts it like this in Human, all too Human:

The shaper of language was not so modest as to think that he was only giving
things labels; rather, he imagined that he was expressing the highest knowledge of
things with words; and in fact, language is the first stage of scientific effort. Here, too,
it is the belief in found truth from which the mightiest sources of strength have flowed.
Very belatedly (only now) is it dawning on men that in their belief in language they
have propagated a monstrous error.

I get what he is talking about, though most emphatically deny his naturalistic bottom line. He didn't understand ethics or religion essentially. Our ethics IS ethics. Why? Because of the absoluteness of value. (I can't remember if I talked about this here). I think N was just too constantly ill to know anything else but the will to power and overcoming.

Science and religion are equally concept making, indeterminacy regulators. It’s why they always wrestle for the same space with the “why” the how, the what, the whether. — Fire Ologist

I agree. Science should understand that it is just not to be mistaken for metaphysics, which is what so many do these days.

We fill this indeteminacy with laws.l. They could be rational, scientific laws. Be it ethical or not, or only ethical, or scientific or not, or only scientific, it’s all still mixed with the indeterminate.

I can’t argue what I see in where this is going, but I can describe it. — Fire Ologist

Christians are find of saying God is love, but take the step prescribed here, and they will see that love is a terribly burdened word, overused and trivialized. They have to do what Heidegger did, which is to replace vocabulary so as to talk about things anew. Language literally makes discovery possible (" the house of being"), yet it also creates the terms of its own obfuscation. Where this is going is to a dropping of terms that privilege clarity of meaning (the analytic school's obsession), in favor of a truly descriptive vocabulary at the basic level. This is phenomenology, what I think will be the final religion.

What it means, adds to this world, moves it”self” (the existence IS me), ahead of the world, in to the world, like being thrown. We throw our”selves” into this world. — Fire Ologist

You sound a bit like Heidegger: We do not live in time. We ARE time. And the basic furniture of the world is not material things in space and time, but events, forward looking. Hence, Being and Time. Our most authentic existence is our freedom, as free as an unmade future.

But only then, after by some means being thrown to throw our selves back might we start to look for what this becomes, such as a vision of indeterminacy, be it radical ethical, or rational, or ethical first, or rational with ethical color first…etc.

So I’ve lost your point again about religion qua religion. Something making use of the word “essence” about “religion.”

Or does the overlap between scientific objectification (the rational, yielding speech itself). like ethical objectification (yielding religion) show I’m at least standing in the same vicinity as you? — Fire Ologist

Religion qua religion, that is religion that is set apart from all that religious culture and theology, which entangles affairs in so many things that have nothing to do with religion, like long shiny robes and choirs of angels and lent and Easter and Passover, and on and on. What happens when one wants to be free of the culture to see what is there that is real beneath it all, like asking a politician what she really stands for apart from all the posturing asking, is there a real person behind this endless rhetorical blather?

Anyway, religion is metaphysics. Period. Metaethics, to be precise, a pursuit of "the good" and "the bad" in an effort to escape mere contingency of all we talk about. Hard to say briefly, but perhaps you have read Stanley Fish's Is There a Test in this Class? Language does not pin to any fixed contexts, so meanings are all variable, depending on what one is talking about. The search or the essence of religion is a search for something that is BOTH noncontingent and Real. Something that has the apodicticity of logic, but issues from existence, not the apriority of the mere form of thought, apriori, as Kant put it.
We find this in the value dimension of our existence. We can talk about this if you like.

An error in consciousness, it has been said. — Wayfarer

But it shows that concepts are not empty things. They are palpable errors. As I see it, when we talk about the world, we are using categories of understanding. These are concepts, so when I see a dog, the particular dog in front of me is known because I have this schematic in my head about dogs in general, the universal that subsumes the particular. Hegel said THIS dominates the understanding, and you can see his point. Language is not about particulars, so seeing anything at all is grasped by the universal. But the universal to particular relation makes the dog a dog, and without it, well, this is impossible to "say". The point would be that when Buddhists and Hindus meditate, the reason why this is so hard to fully realize is because one is not merely shutting up. One is trying to break this powerful bond that creates an understanding of something. This destroys familiarity itself!

I think 'general' is a better, less loaded, and less potentially misleading term than 'universal'. For example, a dog is considered to be an instance of a species, an example of a specific kind within a genus. Of course, each dog is a specific or particular example of a species. This is all 'types and tokens' thinking, which is central to the human understanding of the world.

The language of particulars and generalities changes depending on whether we are considering types or tokens; for example, relative to a particular dog 'species' is a general term, whereas relative to a particular species, genus is a general term, and so on. There would seem to be nothing universal about it, the terms change their references depending on whether we are thinking in terms of tokens or types.

So, the point is that the central idea is contextuality, not universality, categories based on family resemblances, on recognition of patterns of form and configuration, not on essences.

But it shows that concepts are not empty things. They are palpable errors. As I see it, when we talk about the world, we are using categories of understanding. These are concepts, so when I see a dog, the particular dog in front of me is known because I have this schematic in my head about dogs in general, the universal that subsumes the particular. — Constance

I think there are two rather divergent themes in play here. First you referenced the ‘rope-snake’ illusion, attributed to Sankara (although really common currency for all the schools of Indian philosophy). The thrust of that is that we impute attributes to things because of mistaken attachment to them, imputing a value to them they don’t really possess, due to avidya/ignorance. That is the ‘error in consciousness’ in that context. It is comparable in some respects to the Christian ‘original sin’, with the caveat that the Indian conception is more cognitive (corruption of the understanding) than volitional (corruption of the will.) In Indian systems of philosophy ( ‘darshana’) this condition of avidya/ignorance is primeval, i.e. beginningless in time (whereas in Christianity it is assigned to the mythology of the Fall.) It is that condition of avidya/ignorance from which mokṣa (liberation) is to be sought over aeons of life-times.

But when you talk of ‘categories of the understanding’, I take that to be a reference to universals. Universals are not much stressed in Vedanta (and denied altogether in formal Buddhist logic, although it is upheld in other schools such as Mimamsa and Nyaya. A useful resource on universals in Western philosophy is an essay by Jacques Maritain.) But I don’t see the role of universals as necessarily inimical to awakening in the sense the Buddhists or Hindus understand it.

//please forgive the pedantic tone of the above, it’s a subject I studied at university//

But is that really the case? I spent much of my young life associated with the New Age movement as it was called back in the 1980's. Most of my friends were idealsits and Theosophists and Buddhists and Hindus and Jungians and Gnostics and Sufi mystics, etc. Quantum physics was seen as proof of idealism, etc. So metaphysics was very much the flavour of the day. I also grew up with Jung, the archetypes and collective unconscious, so I was not exactly immured in 20th century scientism or common sense. — Tom Storm

But, I am arguing, none of this is metaphysics, any more than attending church and listening to sermons about the the resurrection, the ascension, and taking the sacraments. This is talk about metaphysics. I claim something far more interesting and difficult, which is acknowledging that the everyday world really is the setting for metaphysics, metaethics, metavalue. Kant famously drew the line between phenomenon and noumenon. I am saying it is all noumenal.

What is the justification for this? It begins with argument at the basic level. For example: how is knowledge possible? Answer: it is not. Or, what does it mean that the value dimension of our existence is absolute, that is, it cannot be contradicted in its nature? Such questions challenge all assumptions of our existence.

But aren't these questions a bit naff? I don't know about yours, but my cat exists. I know this because if I don't feed him he give me hell. I subscribe somewhat to Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of language as being an arbitrary set of signs and signifiers that we use to point to things in the world. General Motors is the collective noun for a company. — Tom Storm

Naff? Well, try not to be put off by this too much, and perhaps allow yourself the indulgence of looking past facile judgment. I mean, if you have read Saussure, then you have to follow through on to Derrida, and grasp his notion of the trace. No space to discuss this, but look, no one is saying your cat doesn't exist. It was Saussure who noted that difference is the principle of language, and so when you see your cat, and experience the singularity of it being there, the language that is implicit in the identification never affords this singularity; rather, the cat is received as a "trace" of the many cat related ideas that rise to the occasion that produce the singularity. And so here, one can say taht the analysis of the knowledge relation with the cat reveals that you are not grasping one thing. Language doesn't do this. Language gives one "regions" of possibilities out of which one thought emerges. It is truly a fascinating account, and contributes significantly to understanding the idea here about metaphysics: Metaphysics never was IN the language act that speaks something.

See the above: how is knowledge possible? Well, it isn't. YET, there is no question I see the cat. And so knowledge is simply a fact. Quite the problem to solve. Only one solution I see: The terms of object intimation (the cat) must exceed the idea of locality. It simply cannot be that that cat over there is independent and localized as normal perception tells us.

I claim something far more interesting and difficult, which is acknowledging that the everyday world really is — Constance

Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s what my confrères would have argued. The quotidian is metaphysics. I would have thought metaphysics is unavoidable even if some think their version is ‘real life’ while the metaphysical foundations of others are flights of fancy.

Quite the problem to solve. Only one solution I see: The terms of object intimation (the cat) must exceed the idea of locality. It simply cannot be that that cat over there is independent and localized as normal perception tells us. — Constance

Hmm, the bigger question right now is why won’t my cat eat his usual brand? The metaphysics involved won’t reach help us here.

See the above: how is knowledge possible? Well, it isn't. YET, there is no question I see the cat. And so knowledge is simply a fact. Quite the problem to solve. Only one solution I see: The terms of object intimation (the cat) must exceed the idea of locality. It simply cannot be that that cat over there is independent and localized as normal perception tells us. — Constance

‘Reality’ is what most of us chase these days instead of gods. We create models that allow us to do things in the world and eventually these models are displaced by new ones. Do we ever arrive at ultimate knowledge?

What does your very interesting model of metaphysics here provide you with? Is it just a speculative approach that deconstructs the status quo, or can you build things with it?

Whatever is real does not require faith. — Thus Spoke 180 Proof

@Constance @Wayfarer

I've referred to the Eastern Gatehouse Sutta before. It's a dialogue between the Buddha and Sariputta (who is the figure in the dialogues associated with wisdom teachings.) The relevant passage is as follows:

"Sariputta, do you take it on conviction that the faculty of conviction, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation? Do you take it on conviction that the faculty of persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation?"

"Lord, it's not that I take it on conviction in the Blessed One that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation. Those who have not known, seen, penetrated, realized, or attained it by means of discernment would have to take it on conviction in others that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation; whereas those who have known, seen, penetrated, realized, & attained it by means of discernment would have no doubt or uncertainty that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation.....

('The Deathless' is a synonym for Nibbana.) Sariputta says "It's not that *I* take it on conviction" - presumably because he has 'known, seen, penetrated, realised and attained it'. Whereas those who have not known, seen, etc, would have to take it on conviction.

So, in this framework, faith has a role, but it's not the deciding factor, which is a hard-won insight (and the requirements of the Buddhist monastic orders are known to be exacting.) It is nearer to a form of gnosticism, in fact there's a Pali/Sanskrit word 'Jñāna' which is from the common Indo-Eruopean root jn- or gn- associated with 'higher knowledge'. But the overall point is that of a kind of 'saving insight' - in the early Buddhist texts this is stated again and again, in almost every thread, to be insight into the chain of dependent origination which is the causal factor that causes repeated birth in saṃsāra (whether in this life or in future lives). But faith is still indispensable, as one has to have the conviction that there is a purpose to undertaking the arduous path of discipleship.

So, as for 'whatever is real does not require faith', from the Buddhist perspective, it is quite true, with the caveat that us putthajjana (untrained worldlings) do not comprehend or see what is real as we're basically unprepared and corrupted by attachment to the sensory data.

But then look at advanced scientific knowledge. That also requires extensive training and preparation, fluency in mathematical and statistical techniques, a grasp of theory, and also exposure to very specific kinds of experience that can only be replicated under highly specific conditions. In many regards, lay readers like ourselves have to 'take it on faith' that the hypotheses and observations are valid as we're often not able to validate those in the first person.

Traditional Western philosophy had a similar attitude:

For Hadot...the means for the philosophical student to achieve the “complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things” epitomized by the Sage were a series of spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the student’s larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things (Philosophy as a Way of Life 84). Hadot acknowledges his use of the term “spiritual exercises” may create anxieties, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion than typically done. Hadot’s use of the adjective “spiritual” (or sometimes “existential”) indeed aims to capture how these practices, like devotional practices in the religious traditions are aimed at generating and reactivating a constant way of living and perceiving in prokopta, despite the distractions, temptations, and difficulties of life. For this reason, they call upon far more than “reason alone.” — Pierre Hadot, IEP

It's not enough to say that any and all of us have an innate insight into or grasp of the nature of reality by default, so to speak. Otherwise what would be the need of philosophy or science or any other kind of training?

It simply cannot be that that cat over there is independent and localized as normal perception tells us. — Constance

Maybe it's Schrodinger's :-)

'What did you do to the cat, Erwin? It looks half dead!' ~ Ms Schrodinger.

Thanks for making my point. :smirk:

You did ask me to comment, and I tried to respond in good faith, although I ought to know by now what to expect from you.

I did not ask for a comment and yet I thanked you for it anyway.

I presented an argument in response to your gnomic aphorism. If you think it 'makes your point', what is that point, and how did I help make it?

I'd say we care because (or if) it is our nature to care. There is not some anterior reason that leads us to think we should care. We are instinctively attached to our lives and want to preserve them, just as animals are. — Janus

I have no doubt that this is true. How does one respond to the question , what is caring? as an ontological matter? What is value-in-being? And what is the real standard for talking about things existing? Consider the pale metaphysics of, say, material substance and how this stands vis a vis, oh, the late stages of beubonic plague and the deep suffering it involves: which one is the stronger basis for what exists? Suffering is presence-in-the-world, while material substance altogether lacks presence, yet the latter rules modern ontology. Patently absurd. No, the real belongs to value, greater or lesser, it is the very foundation of meaning.

I'm not sure what your "this" refers to here. Care is central to everything we do, even for those who don't seem to care about anything much. — Janus

I agree. The point is, what IS it? It has this radically weak ontology in tradition and in popular thought. This is due to, I argue, the rise of technology and the attending dismissal primordial meanings in our culture. God was, to remind, not this absurd first cause, etc. God was redemption and consummation of value in our exdistence.

It is not an intrinsic part of the world (although Heidegger would say it is, but he uses "world" to refer to the specific human world of dasein); the point is the world does not care about humanity, no matter how much humanity might care about the world (not much it seems given the state of the environment). — Janus

The world has to be first defined. Heidegger did not have an ethics, or, did not discuss ethics, much to the alarm of Levinas, Henry and others. Hence their endless complaining. But for H metaphysics (ask Josh __ about this) is the ontotheological structure of a culture, and this is clearly lacking a metaethics. Like Nietzsche, H didn't understand ethics at all. He wasn't equipped, perhaps. But he did deny, with N, the "suprasensory place" of God, not just God.
But one has to look closely at what the "world" does: The world is the source for value-in-the-world. It "gives" us our afflictions as a possibility for ethics to exist at all., The "preference" for "the good" iin the world is NOT a fabrication, like the various institutions that are so easily assailable. The world "makes" these preferences. This is a point I would emphasize.

↪Constance I think 'general' is a better, less loaded, and less potentially misleading term than 'universal'. For example, a dog is considered to be an instance of a species, an example of a specific kind within a genus. Of course, each dog is a specific or particular example of a species. This is all 'types and tokens' thinking, which is central to the human understanding of the world.

The language changes depending on whether we are considering types of tokens; relative to a particular dog 'species' is a general term, whereas relative to a particular species, genus is a general term, and so on. There would seem to be nothing universal about it, the terms change their references depending on whether we are thinking in terms of tokens or types.

So, the point is that the central idea is contextuality, not universality, categories based on family resemblances, on recognition of patterns of form and configuration, not on essences. — Janus

But go a step further into Kant, where Hegel got it. The universal is part of the structure of language's logic. I say "look there!" But "there" is where exactly? Because the term is used in any and all contexts of location and itself as a spatial index is just a generality. Yes, of course, there means there, under the table. But language doesn't do this. Context does this, and context dealsj ust with more language that has just this universality in their meaning.

Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s what my confrères would have argued. The quotidian is metaphysics. I would have thought metaphysics is unavoidable even if some think their version is ‘real life’ while the metaphysical foundations of others are flights of fancy. — Tom Storm

But then, all this is standing on the outside looking in. Why does one read philosophy? Is it to understand all that your confrères were talking about? What Davidson or Quine were talking about? Or is it to understand the world? I think one has to have one's passions really involved in the pursuit of truth, for truth is not simply, as Rorty put it, something propositions have. Truth lies IN the passion itself, otherwise it is just an abstraction. One has to care about one's finitude in the midst of radical indeterminacy, because our existence is essentially ethically and aesthetically founded on caring. We ARE caring, and caring seeks consummation. Such a thing is generally confined to the usual matters, the owning of things and basic enjoyments. But philosophy takes one thoughtfully where religion once could only go.

I suppose in order to see this, one has to be interested in the first place. I mean prior to sitting down with a text, is it the thrill of combative argument that drives one? Is it like reading a novel, a good narrative? Or is one simply insistent on getting as deeply as possible into understanding this impossible world we are thrown into?

I stopped caring about what my confrères were talking about long ago. I find it useful now, but I don't think about philosophy so I can talk about how Nietzsche was taken up by Heidegger, or how Platonism influenced Christianity, and so on. These are just intellectual indulgences.

Maybe it's Schrodinger's — Wayfarer

Something weird going in quantum mechanics. But the weirdest thing I can imagine lies in the simplicity of the epistemic impossibility of there being a cat at all. This is not to say there is no cat, certainly not. It is to say that the HOW of knowing there is a cat is impossible to discover. Epistemology is impossible, unless a new paradigm of discovery is admitted, for causality in a physicalist paradigm is just flat out wrong. The trouble with quantum mechanics, and this is not a technical observation, is that it may be that the only way understand things like quantum entanglement is through the phenomenology of our existence that studies the imposition of the conditions of perceptual possiblity: the "out there" of physics is woefully inadequate. The failure to observe the epistemic connectivity between us and the world is bound up with the failure to see quantum entanglement.

Half dead cats? Adorable.

Given his "fundamental question", maybe Constance has not considered (e.g.) Spinoza's conatus. — 180 Proof

Not quite there. It is more fundamental than this. The value dimension of our existence is something that cannot be further reduced to more talk about metaphysical tendencies, direction, energy, or "impetus" or anything else. It is entirely irreducible, that pain in my ankle and this amazingly delicious hagen Dasz. Of course, facts are facts entangled and singularity is lost in the richness of the world. But this does not alter the nature of the value-presence, which is most evident in the the strongest and most unambiguous expressions, like having your head in a vice.

Why does one read philosophy? — Constance

There are multiple reasons. One might be to have an encounter with the unfamiliar - to see what's out there and find out what others think. Another might be to find post hoc justification for views arrived at emotionally. The latter seems most common in the discussions I've had with others.

I stopped caring about what my confrères were talking about long ago. — Constance

Who said anything about caring what others think? I simply remarked that my confrères had held a similar view to yours about metaphysics, so it's not such an unusual position.

One has to care about one's finitude in the midst of radical indeterminacy, because our existence is essentially ethically and aesthetically founded on caring. We ARE caring, and caring seeks consummation. Such a thing is generally confined to the usual matters, the owning of things and basic enjoyments. But philosophy takes one thoughtfully where religion once could only go. — Constance

Your wording seems a complicated way of saying something simple and fairly commonplace - that philosophy has the capacity to lead individuals to deeper contemplation and understanding, surpassing the traditional realm that religion once solely occupied. Perhaps yours is a quest for foundational justification for compassion.

Suffering is presence-in-the-world, while material substance altogether lacks presence, yet the latter rules modern ontology. Patently absurd. No, the real belongs to value, greater or lesser, it is the very foundation of meaning. — Constance

You are speaking of physical pain, the sufferings of the flesh, no? How is that not the suffering that goes with material being?

I agree. The point is, what IS it? — Constance

Of course there would not be pain without awareness of it. We live to some extent at least, conscious lives. It is very difficult to consciously eliminate intense physical pain from consciousness; we need physical intervention to achieve that. We need analgesics and anesthetics to eliminate pain.

Why do we care? We care because we wish to avoid suffering and experience happiness, joy. We also want our lives to be interesting, and perhaps for some, creative. Above all we wish to be comfortable and confident being ourselves.

The world has to be first defined. — Constance

I'd say "the world" means different things in different contexts or modes. In the empirical mode it means the physical world. In the mode of consciousness, it means all that we are aware of, all that we feel, our sense of self and so on. In the larger emotional or spiritual mode, it means something like a heightened sense of being connected with everything and an uplifting sense of reverence for life itself.

We cannot rationally combine different contexts into a comprehensive "master context" (which would amount to a total lack of context), that could unify all our experience and understanding. That is a folly, a delusive dream, born of intellectual hubris, I would say. It is important to know our limits; we cannot be omniscient.

We can see that myths of omniscience, godhood, grow up around charismatic spiritual figures like Jesus and Gotama, but this only leads to empty dogmatism. The human spirit constantly evolves and we need to find ourselves, become ourselves, in the modern context, not in looking back to the ancients, focusing on and bemoaning what we mistakenly imagine has been lost.

But go a step further into Kant, where Hegel got it. The universal is part of the structure of language's logic. — Constance

For me it seems a step backwards. "Universal" denotes that which applies in all contexts, and I don't believe there is any such thing, Hegel's absolutism was not a step further than Kant.

My thinking is this: Religion rises out of the radical ethical indeterminacy of our existence. This simply means that we are thrown into a world of ethical issues that, in the most basic analysis, are not resolvable. Yet they insist on resolution with the same apodicticity as logical coercivity. Meaning, just as one cannot but agree with something like modus ponens or the principle of identity in terms of the pure logicality of their intuitive insistence, so one cannot resist the moral insistence of moral redemption. This latter is the essence of religion, and I further claim that in proving such a thing, I am giving the world and our existence in it exactly the metaphysical satisfaction is seeks. — Constance

I see this differently only because I don't see religion as myopically as it's being portrayed here through a very modern religion/state/science separation. That separation isn't inherent, but it's idiosyncratic to modern Western democracy.

You will necessarily consider the government the steward of the rules, science the steward of knowledge, and religion the steward of ethics and meaning if that's the system you've decreed, but that isn't where society began. It's where it happens to be now, but only in some parts of the world.

That is, some turned to religion not only for reasons to do with death, truth, or meaning, but because they wanted to know what to do if their neighbor's ox gored theirs, what sorts of foods were safe to eat, and when they should have celebrations and when they should be solemn. They also wanted to know why the sun rose and fell and why the animals did as they did, and so they came up with all sorts of explanations.

But this conversation isn't about all this. It's about why you folks think people still cling to religion when science and government has prevailed and from there the psychoanalysis follows. It must be, you assume, because the world is scary, uncertain, and otherwise amoral.

Religion is an all encompassing worldview, just as is scientism. It can reach as far into the realms of science as much as science can reach into the realms of religion. The question is where to draw the line, but I do think the quest for meaning is as inherent a human drive as is the quest for knowledge. While science can tell us why the world does as it does, it can't tell how to live in it. That's why I'd suggest religion perseveres in an otherwise scientific world. It simply provides answers science does not.

That's why I'd suggest religion perseveres in an otherwise scientific world. It simply provides answers science does not. — Hanover

I would have thought virtually anything can provide us with answers. We have too many of those. Humans will always find a way to derive answers from stories, whether it’s evolution or Jane Austin. Whether or not this is sound philosophical practice is irrelevant to those who seek and find.

But I suspect when you say ‘answers’ you are referring to something more? Truth perhaps? Wisdom?

Anyway, having worked in palliative care, often with theists who are dying, by far the most common explanation offered to explain the importance of their faith is that it provides comfort. They claim to be less afraid , not just of death but also in the ‘knowledge’ that their suffering is not in vain. If comfort or meaning is what you’re looking for, it’ll probably be much harder to find this in science.

I’m not convinced any of us really know why we believe certain stories and not others. I suspect the answer is in cultural and psychological factors. We may think we can point to the intellectual superiority of certain frames or the meaning generated by others, but who knows?

Your wording seems a complicated way of saying something simple and fairly commonplace - that philosophy has the capacity to lead individuals to deeper contemplation and understanding, surpassing the traditional realm that religion once solely occupied. Perhaps yours is a quest for foundational justification for compassion. — Tom Storm

Yes! But hold on with that word justification. The process of the affirmation is discursive, but the evidence, in the end, is ontologically revelatory. Ontology is a sticky word, meaning it is, as with all philosophical foundational words, inherently metaphysically indeterminate. When one talks about THIS kind of ontological inquiry, one is already in religious analysis. i would put the case like this: Imagine that the ten commandment were true. It's just a supposition, and so you can't just dismiss because one can so easily. That would miss the point. So let's say its all true, as true as physics, but more so. And what is now simply an assumption, an axiom of existential standing, is a proper premise for justification. In the light of this, how does this change the way one understands the world?

Here the question goes not to the gravitas of its commandments, but to the gravitas of what stands behind them, for something like "honor thy mother and father" is still, in itself, just a bit of ethical normativity. God is now the foundational ontological justification, and by definition, if you will, there is no gainsaying God. It is at least as strong as, say, modus ponens or the principle of identity, in rational coercivity. You know, no choice. Even Dostoyevsky's Underground Man would have to bow low. The difference here is, this apodicticity, or necessity, is existential! How would this change the world? So we drop the ten commandments, and we drop God, for the supposition served its purpose, and now what is left is the, heh, heh, "the power and the glory". I really shouldn't use such a phrase because of its connotative bs, but I'll keep it. Because what I am trying to reveal is, IF this argument for the essence of religion I have been trying to defend, is right, and I am sure it is, then we live in just this kind of world. One does not go to ancient texts for justification. It is "written" in the analysis of our existence.

How so? I say, all we need to do is observe the world's ethical and aesthetic dimension. Look closely, that is, analytically. What is the nature of this dimension? This is the question. It is not a question of the way it is historically taken up in the reification of traditions, because all of this is just a bad attempt, bad metaphysics, since it was not conceived responsibly with an eye exclusively on the what is in-the-world. This here is just good science. Just not empirical science.

You are speaking of physical pain, the sufferings of the flesh, no? How is that not the suffering that goes with material being? — Janus

We put the plain ontology of "stuff" out of relevance, but we keep the term "material" if you like, simply because it can be used to indicate the actualities in the world, the "material basis" of ethics and religion is excatly to the point. But as a metaphysical thesis that posits the most basic thinking in ontology, material being it is most misleading, for even at best, it is just a functional place holder for general references. At worst, it is entirely vacuous, for one can never witness "material being" since being is not A being. There is no one thing, but is meant as the eternal substratum of all beings. (But it is not as if there is nothing to this nothing. No name dropping here, but this once: the matter of the nothing of metaphysics and its anxiety is covered in a fascinating discussion by Kierkegaard and Heidegger.)

No, I prefer to keep with reality. What is THERE, evident to our sight, and makes the strongest claim to the Real? I'd say a death by a thousand cuts qualifies, or being in love, or Hagen Dasz, a close second.

Of course there would not be pain without awareness of it. We live to some extent at least, conscious lives. It is very difficult to consciously eliminate intense physical pain from consciousness; we need physical intervention to achieve that. We need analgesics and anesthetics to eliminate pain.

Why do we care? We care because we wish to avoid suffering and experience happiness, joy. We also want our lives to be interesting, and perhaps for some, creative. Above all we wish to be comfortable and confident being ourselves. — Janus

But now you have to take the next analytic step, which is into ontology. I am asking about the ontology of value-in being. It is not so weird as it may sound. Here I am, the observer with my senses and reason in full and clear apprehension, and there is this "presence" emanating from my sprained ankle. One asks, what is this? Of course, if this were an empirical question, one would have context ready to hand for classification, but we are not asking that kind of question. This is a metaphysical question and the classification takes us into far less solid analytical territory, at least at first.

And if this were simply a question of what analytic philosophers call qualia, then it would be a vacuous, for who cares about "being appeared to redly" and the like? Red as a pure phenomenon is unspeakable presence or "givenness". Value, the broad sense of "pathos" in the world. But sprained ankles and the like are not vacuous at all. Indeed, it classifies as THE most salient feature of our existence, and of existence in any context.

It is a perspective that does require a rather unusual intuitve move, I think, I have observed: One has to understand that by dismissing materialism or physicalism, we also dismiss the idea of the metaphysics of locality. It is one thing to say there is a mountain over there, a tree at the base, and I am here, and so on. But one of the most striking features of taking this normal kind of referencing and raising it to the status of metaphysics is this localization is inserted into the question of being. But being is not A being. It is not here and there, but rather here and there are "in" being. The importance of this lies in ontological prioritizing, for science deals with beingS, and this significantly undermines the importance if importance, if you will, for something being important is conceived as a localized affair, and this has led to the absurd analytic view that a thing being important is "there, in that locality called a human being," and therefore of no consequence outside of contexts of, say, anthropology, biology or psychology. The idea here is that this view undermines our existence AS it exists. We are, in the most basic way to put, existence itself, not a localized thing.

We cannot rationally combine different contexts into a comprehensive "master context" (which would amount to a total lack of context), that could unify all our experience and understanding. That is a folly, a delusive dream, born of intellectual hubris, I would say. It is important to know our limits; we cannot be omniscient. — Janus

If all there were, were contextuality of meanings in a finite setting, then I would agree. But this is not the world. Consider that it is not the scientist's hubris that gave us physics. It is the scientific method (or, the hypothetical deductive method of Popper and the pragmatists, if you like) and what does this tell us, I mean, loosely speaking? Observe and think, only here, we have withdrawn from empirical categories because the question is not an empirical one. Nor is it about the analyticity of logic. It is about the analyticity of existence.

What is religion all about? It is about an analytic of existence that gives a foundation for ethics that has the certainty of logical apodicticity. This I would emphasize is what is all about. I should underline it because it is a pretty good way to put it. There.

We can see that myths of omniscience, godhood, grow up around charismatic spiritual figures like Jesus and Gotama, but this only leads to empty dogmatism. The human spirit constantly evolves and we need to find ourselves, become ourselves, in the modern context, not in looking back to the ancients, focusing on and bemoaning what we mistakenly imagine has been lost. — Janus

Well, forget about al this. You and I are responsible thinking people, not mindless dogmatists (though I am sure Gautama Siddhartha was on to something very much to the point here). Not at all intersted in ancient thinking, though the ancients themselves are quite interesting.

For me it seems a step backwards. "Universal" denotes that which applies in all contexts, and I don't believe there is any such thing, Hegel's absolutism was not a step further than Kant. — Janus

Well, one has to look at the language and how it makes knowledge possible. It is not that Hegel was right in all he said. But somethings make some sense. I have before me the full being of a coffee cup. Yet I know my knowing this is through the general, the historicity of coffee cups, cups in general, drinking vessels and on and on. The apprehension of THIS coffee cup is through this language that understands things, not through any direct apprehension of the object. The only thing that is directly apprehended is value-in-the-world, and this is of course received in language like everythign else, but , if you will, pain and joy "speak" which is why Wittgenstein refused to talk about it. Speaking ruins, vitiates the world of importance-in-things.

in the world, the "material basis" of ethics and religion is excatly to the point. But as a metaphysical thesis that posits the most basic thinking in ontology, material being it is most misleading, for even at best, it is just a functional place holder for general references. At worst, it is entirely vacuous, for one can never witness "material being" since being is not A being. — Constance

We know material being, we live it. So, I don't think it is necessary to witness it, in some way analogous to how one witnesses events, or material beings of the various kinds. We don't know any other kind of being than material being, although of course we can think immaterial being as its dialectical opposite.

I don't deny that the idea of transcendence has moment for we humans; it is an inevitable feature in the movement of thought, just as zero, infinity, and imaginary and irrational numbers are in mathematics. Of course, the indeterminable cannot be determined, but it features prominently as an absence, a mystery, the unknowable, in our thinking. It has apophatic value, in other words.

No, I prefer to keep with reality. What is THERE, evident to our sight, and makes the strongest claim to the Real? I'd say a death by a thousand cuts qualifies, or being in love, or Hagen Dasz, a close second. — Constance

I agree, we live predominantly in our sensations, feelings and emotions, they are what is most vivid, most real, for us; without them life would be as good as nothing.

This is a metaphysical question and the classification takes us into far less solid analytical territory, at least at first. — Constance

I'd say it is more a phenomenological question than a metaphysical. Well, at least it is if taking "metaphysical" in its traditional sense.

But being is not A being. It is not here and there, but rather here and there are "in" being. — Constance

Right, there are a limitless number of possible heres and theres, none of them absolute, all of them relative to context.

We are, in the most basic way to put, existence itself, not a localized thing. — Constance

I agree, and that is why I have argued recently in another thread that experience or perception is not "in the head'.

Observe and think, only here, we have withdrawn from empirical categories because the question is not an empirical one. Nor is it about the analyticity of logic. It is about the analyticity of existence. — Constance

Sure, analyticity in the existential or phenomenological, not the logical, sense.

Not at all intersted in ancient thinking, though the ancients themselves are quite interesting. — Constance

I agree with Hegel that all the historical movements of thought are important, but I also believe we cannot go back. I agree with Gadamer that we cannot even be sure what the ancients philosophers meant. This is the problem of anachronism, and to imagine ourselves as returning to think like Plato or Aristotle, is anachronistic. Which is not to say that we cannot find interest there, but we will always interpret that interest as moderns.

Yet I know my knowing this is through the general, the historicity of coffee cups, cups in general, drinking vessels and on and on. The apprehension of THIS coffee cup is through this language that understands things, not through any direct apprehension of the object. — Constance

I disagree here. I think we do directly apprehend objects. Further thinking about that will of course include what you said, though. I see no reason to think that animals don't also apprehend objects, but I see good reason to think that they don't think about it in general terms as we do. We do that because symbolic language allows us to abstract generalities from particular experiences.


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