Thus, the failing (obscurity) of the OP. — 180 Proof
Constance, religion long preceeds (by scores of millennia) philosophical reflections such as ethics and that's where its "essence" (foundation) lies – in facticity (e.g. exigency), not ideality (i.e. effable ineffability). — 180 Proof
Yeah well, the logical precedent happens to be manifest historically since the topic concerns a concrete, social institution and not a mere abstraction. :roll:It precedes reflections about ethics logically; historically who cares. — Constance
What "argument"? There is no "argument", just speculative observations which are either informed by anthropology, history, psychology, etc or they are not.This is anaprioriargument.
No we don't because Witty isn't the topic of this thread as per the OP. Folks shift the goal posts when they are confused by the obscurity of what they think they are talking about. As far as I'm concerned, Witty is a non sequitur you've introduced that further obscures the issue.But you have to ask why he took that position. — Constance
what if ethics were as apodictic (apriori, universally and necessarily true) as logic? — Astrophel
Well. That's what I'm saying. And Heidegger must be who I got it from. The so called experience (seems immediate but) is mediated by the language passed on (as it evolves) through history, input into each "unit" of Mind starting in infancy.You know that perception is an historical construct, even though it occurs without pause. This is evident in that one's own personal history provides that language learning from infancy, yet when we engage with this language, there is exactly this immediacy in the way a knowledge claim is affirmed in and by language. — Astrophel
What the hell! Yes. I thought Hegel had built that idea, yes. Mind is History. It moves through, not just language qua language, but a multiferous system of signifiers, operating in accordance with its own evolved laws mechanics dynamics. Logic for instance, a "grammar". As is ethicsAnd, following Heidegger, this language itself, apart from one's personal history, has a history that goes back through the ages and evolves in historical movements (sound like Hegel? Of course). — Astrophel
make that move into the world (this is what Michel Henry argued with passion) and there we are in this "fleshy encounter" of a very direct apprehension that is NOT qualified by the interpretative values of language. Feel the grass, the pinch of the flesh, — Astrophel
:clap: :up:an unmitigated, unconditioned apprehension of the pure phenomenon that stands before one in vivid presence, — Astrophel
Yeah well, the logical precedent happens to be manifest historically since the topic concerns a concrete, social institution and not a mere abstraction. — 180 Proof
What "argument"? There is no "argument", just speculative observations which are either informed by anthropology, history, psychology, etc or they are not. — 180 Proof
No we don't because Witty isn't the topic of this thread as per the OP. Folks shift the goal posts when they are confused by the obscurity of what they think they are talking about. As far as I'm concerned, Witty is a non sequitur you've introduced that further obscures the issue. — 180 Proof
I would view logic as apodictic in accordance with its own terms. Perhaps a priori, insofar as I would define a priori: a "truth" settled upon and input foundationally and universally, more or less. But not pre-existent nor always present; like a posteriori and phenomena, mediated (constructed and projected). I would not view logic as universally and necessarily true outside of its own construction. I would not impose our logic upon Nature, for e.g. If/when we [superficially] observe logic in nature, we are superimposing it. — ENOAH
As for ethics, same exact paragraph as above, mutatis mutandis. — ENOAH
From Upanisads to Analects to Sutras, Gospels, Torah and Prophets, Koran, and I would speculate much more, beyond the mythological, legalistic, and ritualistic, there is the consistent thread: surrender your ego (Mind's constructions/projections) to the Universal (God/Nature). That consistent thread, I say, is the essence.. — ENOAH
What the hell! Yes. I thought Hegel had built that idea, yes. Mind is History. It moves through, not just language qua language, but a multiferous system of signifiers, operating in accordance with its own evolved laws mechanics dynamics. Logic for instance, a "grammar". As is ethics — ENOAH
one cannot, say, even imagine an object being its own cause, to move all by itself, that is. — Constance
And I say, Language that constructs it. This is exactly where we diverge. I am not convinced logic is a "whatever" (attribute, principle, truth?) in Nature; only in Mind. But I remain radically open to any convincing out there. In here, I'm admittedly settled.language that discovers it, — Constance
this coercivity, of logic — Constance
I agree. And I clarify, logic, its function in human existence (history/mind) is undeniable. I say so what if it is part of the constructed? We must adhere to it to function. Then why deny its universality, pre-language, etc? Because it helps when navigating through the ocean of how things really are, to know you are on a ship. Abandon it? No way. Know what it is. Which again is how religion saves us even from logic. It shows us the ocean from the ship, though we are compelled, or at least best to remain aboard.doubt logic as it appears is disingenuous. — Constance
Our self is a living and breathing, caring, pragmatic, historical temporally structured existence that anticipates a future in a perpetual "not yet". — Constance
it is only trivially inviolable. Logic QUA logic is vacuous. — Constance
means you would count value as not something as universally and necessarily true outside of its own construction. But what is its construction? With logic, there is the coercivity in the intuition regardless of the aporia of the language, — Constance
in ethics, it is the pain of this sprained ankle. — Constance
And I say, Language that constructs it. This is exactly where we diverge. I am not convinced logic is a "whatever" (attribute, principle, truth?) in Nature; only in Mind. But I remain radically open to any convincing out there. In here, I'm admittedly settled. — ENOAH
Then you'd say the same of the Self, it is coercive as he'll. Yet I doubt it's occurrence in the universe anywhere outside of the evolution/emergence of mind, as History, structured by Language. — ENOAH
I agree. And I clarify, logic, its function in human existence (history/mind) is undeniable. I say so what if it is part of the constructed? We must adhere to it to function. Then why deny its universality, pre-language, etc? Because it helps when navigating through the ocean of how things really are, to know you are on a ship. Abandon it? No way. Know what it is. Which again is how religion saves us even from logic. It shows us the ocean from the ship, though we are compelled, or at least best to remain aboard. — ENOAH
I agree with every word, and yet here's how I think we still differ. For me our real self, is not a self, reacts to feelings, sensations, drives. Among those drives is bonding, a drive so powerful which at any level of analysis reveals how not individual our organic so called self is. That real self is caring. But as for pragmatic, Historically/Temporally structured, perpetually becoming, you describe; like logic, that "Self" me/I, is just another mechanism constructed by History as a fit way to move that temporal narrative becoming along. It works to have a mechanism within the system of signifiers, to signify the body it is occupying and affecting. — ENOAH
Unless I am misunderstanding the use "Ethics" in some specific way, with Ethics, it is the binary feeling pleasant/not pleasant; there is the coercivity in the intuition regardless of the aporia of the language.
But, let me put it in my terms. At the organic root of ethics, as in all things, is thd binary feeling, or the on not on of bliss. But the construction of ethics is, also like everything else, a dialectical process of competing constructions. The most functional is projected into our world/history. — ENOAH
I'd say the pain of the sprained ankle is one "event", immediate, present and organic. The ethics is constructed seemingly
immediately, but nevertheless constructed. — ENOAH
THIS is where Henry comes in and the essence of religion becomes clear, for while I can see how powerful this idea of the hermeneutic delimitations of thought and understanding is, I am IN a world that is in NO way interpretatively distant. — Constance
Aha, rightNow one can see why this reduction is used to give religion its meaning that was lost in the modernist critique — Constance
Yes, yes. The tragedy of the (uniquely) human condition, resolved not by the ideas of, but by the precise practice of tge essence of religion. By, as SK intuited, but I am adjusting, resigning yourself to the infinite impossibility of possessing the real world as a Subject, yet knowing enough that the objective is only a representation and also, can never possess it--and yet taking the leap anyway; for me, the leap into being. It cannot be an intellectual pursuit because that utilizes and constructs knowledge; it must be a leap of silent faith that for that timeless moment you will face being, your organic self, when you land.And this is where we stand in the world as enlightened beings, very aware that our language cannot possess the "givenness" of the world, yet there it stands before one, the world of beingS, the chairs and tables and interests and things and moods and anything that is "said" being now "under erasure". — Constance
NiceIt is a matter of understanding in the rarest sense, in the occurrent seeing and being here, that we are not "here" at all. — Constance
Let's get this one out first. I get the sentiment. We just have to plow through. I'm learning that. Your info is invaluable, if I haven't made that clear.(I don't like the condescension of preaching or even advising) — Constance
logic into the discussion is simply provide an unproblematic model for what certainty is. No more than this. — Constance
treat ethics as something that is as variable as belief systems, as customs and "taste". — Constance
YES. This is what I've been wondering in the inverse. Despite history and its fleeting and empty moments, Being is consistently present.There is no history. There never has been. — Constance
Yes you are entirely correct. What I meant was the analysis; this takes place instantly; this is the Dialectic. The pain is the only reality, the thereness which transcends dialectic. But as you know, instantly and ineluctably, we are flooding the being-natural-aware-ing-pain-ing with dialectic. "My ankle hurts. Why did I leap for that Frisbee? Should I be on morphine?" Simplified but you get the picture. These re-present the thereness (of) pain-ing with meaning about pain. Not real, real.Why not allow the world to be what it is? There is nothing in the pain of a sprained ankle that is dialectical. One is not comparing nor is the event historical in any way. It has a "thereness" that transcends analysis. — Constance
Aha! Right. I'm doing to ethics the very thing I'm defending religion from. Right, the essence.this is dismissed in the reduced analysis, for we want to know what the essence of ethics is, not the many "states of affairs" we find ourselves in. — Constance
The essence of religion Is to pursue, or at least know, the Truth that there is a being, and a species of being, for which you are an agent, a tool, and more so, a fiduciary who must apply the highest good faith in carrying out such a duty. You are not a thing in itself which can exploit that being, though you think you can and in the process construct suffering. — ENOAH
there is nothing at all epistemic about causality. — Constance
existential indeterminacy. This is an foundational epistemological, and therefore, ontological, problem. — Constance
What if it only appears to us as a linear process x-->y, because whatever "happened" to x and to y was immediately post constructed as x-->y and re-presented that way by Mind to "the" aware-ing ans assimilated in that form as "knowledge". But in "actuality" it was always just xy? — ENOAH
how does one get around the "post construction" of anything which is acknowledged at all, even and especially "just xy" — Constance
It COULD be that x and y are in some metaphysical, non relational simultaneity — Constance
There being something "there" at all is prior to anything one could say about its relations with other things, but then, to talk about its thereness begs the epistemic question, how does "it" get into judgment at all? — Constance
Foolish to doubt the "thereness" of the sight and feel of the cat — Constance
By remaining present. By being. By not being-knowing-and-becoming. — ENOAH
But, yes, we are flooded, our brains, with images of becoming and it is hard, arguably impossible, to escape. — ENOAH
But in the spirit of this particular discussion, though we may be trapped by our condition, if anything provides a window, an opportunity for a glimpse, it is the essence of religion, which I (presumably not alone) am positing as attending, not to the self, and the weaved narratives it appears in; but, rather to being; first, by being its unfettered, unencumbered reality; second, upon returning, as one ineluctably does (instantly), to the self; then, by attending to the welfare of the body, the species, and the nature we share with all others. Not to desire more; not to settle complacently for less. And, not to entertain the inevitable desires of the self, flooding the brain with reasons to go way beyond the welfare of reality (I.e. the body, species, nature). — ENOAH
Very possibly I am not understanding something technical in your question. But it gets into judgement, 1. Because that is what Mind is, a knowing system; meaning is its "aim/product," 2. It happens autonomously. Like vision does to begin with (I.e. pre'consciousness') etc. For a hypothetical human never born into an age of humans with Mind, I.e. History, an apple comes into its line of vision (randomly, or because it is foraging) and it truly sees this aspect of its nature as, whatever, food; and it, whatever, eats it. For Mind, "judgement"--apple, ruit, healthy, red, green, large, ripe, crunch, squirt, sweet, etc etc etc--floods our brain autonomously, just as pre historically, the drive to eat might alone, have flooded the brain of the human organism, and yet, no less autonomously. — ENOAH
the agency of the "I" of my encounter with the world, even when matters turn profoundly insightful and deeply felt, is going to be constituted by the interpretative language education that gave me my "presence" out of infancy. — Constance
Yes!serious meditation reduces the world to its essential or "pure" phenomena — Constance
does this language and the "totality" of my educational grounding which prior to the "sublime experience of presence" determined my thinking, discover "something else" revealed as one approaches the ground zero, if you will, of the famous nunc stans. — Constance
this terrible burden of philosophy that interferes with what I believe is the very simple (if difficult to achieve) revelation. But then, it is philosophy that requires us to speak what it is that this is about — Constance
then, it is philosophy that requires us to speak what it is that this is about — Constance
As I see it, one has to be clear about this mysterious threshold, and this requires a careful dissection of the structure of experience-in-the-world, the average everydayness. — Constance
But terms like unfettered and unencumbered reality are philosophically problematic. Experientially, perhaps not, though this will have its limits, and will be vaguely understood at best, not unlike the term religion, all mountains, so they say, arrive at the same peak, meaning what one believes doesn't matter, for faith itself liberates one from the constraints of everydayness. — Constance
In perception, there is no looking up to confirm. The image is itself its own being. One cannot look away from it to discover the Other. All there is or has ever been available to experience is experience. — Constance
The absolute stillness of "being" is conceived by Plato as the changeless form that this world is an inferior manifestation of — Constance
an actual event such that one discovers in the flux of one's existence a presence relative to the busy, what Heidegger calls "the they" self, — Constance
But this does not change the "becoming structure" of experience. — Constance
. I can still conscious activity, but I cannot still the construction of the moment itself. This would not be the "no self" of the Buddhists; it would be are duction to literal nothingness. — Constance
Brains and everything else are discovered IN consciousness. — Constance
We are connected in consciousness, in an occult intimacy that only phenomenology can discover. Science will never understand this. — Constance
I think this would be true if there were two selves. There is only the organic aware-ing being. There is no knowing, no meaning, nothing but aware-ing the present is-ings. View that aware-ing as unfettered reality; being unencumbered by the projections of becoming. We were so obviously once an animal like that. Our [what I've been calling] brain was fed images to trigger conditioned responses. Now our brain us flood with stories. And tge organism aware-ings the "I" in tge stories as itself. Neither the "I" nor the stories are anything. They're empty nothing. So no one is in the fettered state needing to get out. The body just needs to aware-ing its organic being so that tge stories follow a--ironically just as fictional--path which is more functional to the Body and the species.this is not available to one who is IN the "fettered" state — Constance
With respect. That expresses a lingering in the very thing that "metaphysical" aware-ing you're implying. That thing--yes, call it language (Human Mind)--from which the sublime presence is, we agree, a "reprieve", but actually, simply, a turning inward, into silence, asks the question, and you, with respect, "let it" (its all autonomous anyway), but "here" in presence, where reality is being (what it is-ing which we call being), there are no questions, no discovery.
The instant "you" discover the "experience" of sublime presence, it has ceased being aware-ing-ed. And organic attention is once again flooded by made up images from memory and reprocessed for "the world" by the imagination; all in lightning speed and incessantly. — ENOAH
Ok. Yes. And yet, that's what I think I mean to say. So, I need to understand the problem. First, this so called unencumbered reality is like everything, the wording is a stab at a target, and I am not a well trained fencer. In itself is implied, its failure. But that can be said of everything, all wording, to obviously varying degrees. But none is immune. But I know you mean beyond that. So does this help. When speaking of reality; not only do I have no business qualifying it with conditions like unencumbered, but I have no business period. What I reiterate is I do not and cannot know reality; I can only know the seasoned version. I can only be reality; which is that (not that "I" already am) that already is. — ENOAH
Yes, I totally get that. There might even be a melancholy to it. But that's because Mind moves egotistically. The system "desires" manifestation of its constructions (because the organic infrastructure upon which it drives is structured to fire images to the aware-ing part of the organism for conditioned responses. So "it" that is, experience and the Subject to which it attaches, "want" to extend into the being itself. It's not an illusion it's a process of evolution wherein a thing thrives by growing. So "you" which constructs meaning, knowledge, want to extend that fiction into being itself. But being is being, not knowing. And not just into being, "you" want knowledge to extend beyond being but into an imagined eternity; and so Mind evolves to construct itself in History as spirit. And being a functional construction, it sticks — ENOAH
That is sublime. I'd adjust my own take to it by saying "the world" is just the images constructed by mind and flooding organic consciousness. Plato, afterall, laid that foundation regardless of the given locus in the history of evolving interpretations. No skin off his back. — ENOAH
Ok, but the "event" only in the context of the essence of religion, i.e., to save us from our "selves" remind us we are all one, all of us, not even, just humans.
In the rest of "thought", it is in my opinion, though thought of as Philosophy of Mind,
the heart of metaphysics, explains, therefore "negates" epistemology, and, since Ethics is the offspring of the two...etc.
However, the Heideggerian process you described, and, maybe, on a strictly intellectual level, Husserl's bracketing (though I am a novice at both Hs, not for lack of sweat squinting, and tears), is close enough to what I'm proposing. Zazen just happens to be almost bang on, if properly practiced. Soto. Rinzai is probably a close second. I say just happened because I made the connection after witnessing tge hypothesis that Western philosophy built.
I note that, in my opinion, for both Hs as for Zazen, and Koans; the "reward" that sublime experience of presence you called it (it is utterly uncallable, so that feels right, why not) is extremely momentary. It's "hope" or "promise" from a "religious", but I submit, Hs perspective, is to "jolt" you so that you're on to the truth. And, as you instantly and inevitably return to the Narratives, maybe yours will be restructured autonomously to follow a path more functional for the Host organism, and its species and planet. — ENOAH
This nothing: Eternity in time and space is familiar, and this is not simply quantitative: when one reaches out to these eternities, one is confronted with an existential impossibility that is not reducible to an abstraction, though we are mostly familiar with this kind of reduction and so familiarity, once again, trivializes something pretty amazing. Now think of eternity, not in space or time, but in the existing things around you and see how this familiar intuitive anomaly of perception trailing off into eternity, now throws the world into question, rendering indeterminate not merely space and time, but everything, every breath taken. — Constance
the presence is registered in a language context and the significance of this is contextual as well. — Constance
provided I understandd the "gap" in the hammering and this correctly, I ask,Call this openness eternity — Constance
close the gap made by language that separates the ordinary world from the esoteric: — Constance
phenomenology laid some potent Foundations.all thinking is categorical, and thus what is apprehended is implicitly categorical — Constance
this "singularity" (which is, of course, itself a boundaried word) "works". — Constance
we say is "Being as an absolute" itself cannot escape the world in which it is discovered for this would be ony "bad metaphysics," the kind of metaphysics that exceeds what is there in the world to posit. Being is, after all, a word, conceived in the time matrix of phenomenal being, and to call something Being "outside" of this makes no sense. — Constance
I agree this is SK's, and understand why it may be yours, though we seem only to diverge here. But I see the self as a mechanism which has gone far out of hand; and if I could melt into humanity and lose myself, that I suspect would be the highest, though unattainable, state of reality while in the world.The self is elevated, profoundly reified, and acknowledged as the very source of the divinity objectified by popular religion. None of this is undone. But one's finitude is understood as infinite. This is a way to understand Kierkegaard's knight of faith. — Constance
That's right, I agree. Inevitably Mind's autonomous process is still flooding the brain and triggering the body with its constructions. — ENOAH
But they aren't one with the organism, they are images stored in memory and moving by an evolved law which flesh only provides the perfect hardware for. Once the data is input, it has evolved to function. But the data, though existent and functional, is not Real like the flesh is real. And the flesh is the real consciousness; it's organic aware-ing. Even a plant has it when it grows toward the light, or it's roots search for water. But Mind is just data making us feel by projecting stories. The stories are not real. An apple is what it is; not what we perceive when Mind constructs and projects "A is for Apple". — ENOAH
It's a physical exercise, but it's easy to stay stuck in Mind with advice like watch your breath, or worse, count them. I believe one must hone in on that breathing is. Not I am or my breaths: just breathing [organism breathing]. There are no fireworks; nor eureka I'm sure. It's more like Kierkegaard's knight of faith. To the world you are still just a clerk, if you have masterfully glimpsed being, by momentarily being. To yourself you remain a clerk, but you now "realize" something "true" outside of the constructed truths. — ENOAH
If you're saying the organ brain only exists as a construct projected, and that the thing brain in itself may be vastly different, I accept that possibility, but think it's far more likely our organic senses are not tricking us. There are objects and bodies in the world around us. We could sense them as they are so called in themselves. But Mind floods sensation with images and churns out perception. So now we can't help but see the seasoned version. We aren't outright seeing an alien world, but compared to apes, it's alien enough. — ENOAH
But the giveness or presence of these constructions still IS presence — Constance
The error is in the interpretation of these constructions, not in there being there at all. — Constance
Such constructions constitute the world in its everydayness. — Constance
This is what makes truth possible, not what makes truth, truth, but is essential for truth. — Constance
OTOH, Christian metaphysics doesn't have to be tied to churchy narratives. — Constance
am not trying to be argumentative, but something "outside" of constructed truths is hard to imagine — Constance
I observe it and it is there, but I cannot say how this is made possible given the standard physicalist model of the world — Constance
I think, psychoanalysis has gotten pretty close. I think science could Crack a lot of the code. And phenomenology, as did Plato, laid a strong foundation. But I think what none of those can do is know what reality is, or truth. They can only construct it, just as I too, am only constructing. Phenomenology, from Kant to Husserl does, I agree, ironically (?) also express this essence of religion; it points to the fact that there is Truth "hidden behind" the knowledge. — ENOAH
I think this would be true if there were two selves. There is only the organic aware-ing being. There is no knowing, no meaning, nothing but aware-ing the present is-ings. View that aware-ing as unfettered reality; being unencumbered by the projections of becoming. We were so obviously once an animal like that. Our [what I've been calling] brain was fed images to trigger conditioned responses. Now our brain us flood with stories. And tge organism aware-ings the "I" in tge stories as itself. Neither the "I" nor the stories are anything. They're empty nothing. So no one is in the fettered state needing to get out. The body just needs to aware-ing its organic being so that tge stories follow a--ironically just as fictional--path which is more functional to the Body and the species. — ENOAH
and the phenomenal IS the noumenal. They are only interpretatively distinct, — Constance
Epistemology and ontology are the same thing in two words — Constance
term 'existing' — Constance
John Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics is very good on examining this idea. — Constance
So bound to the "tranquilization" of the "they" of inauthentic existence, as Heidegger will later put it, one never rises up to even ask basic questions — Constance
"seeing" is not a brain function. Seeing is the act of consciousness awareness. — Constance
phenomenologically, there are meanings in play — Constance
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