Interestingly, he points to Ockham and Scotus as the end of the classical metaphysical tradition and the birth of "subject/object" thinking — Count Timothy von Icarus

I've been singing the praises of this book, and the cogency of that argument. Like Perls, 'radical orthodoxy' also pins much of the issue on Scotus' 'univocity of being' (and I would add, on the loss of both the 'scala natura' and its 'degrees of being' and also the 'via negativa'.)

The worst feature of insanity is lack of insight. — unenlightened

:up: :clap: :100:

And to the rest of the post, also.

Some people seem to have holes to fill. — Tom Storm

And there are some holes that need fillin'! I should add, I've never tasted any opiate, save possibly if any used to be in Panadeine Forté. Nor cocaine. My dabbling was very much oriented around the possibility of higher states, or so I liked to think. Enthoegens, as mentioned, and cannabis, for which I retain an affection (perhaps unfortunately :yikes: )

Presumably Gerson thinks his lens is better than Heidegger's, and Heidegger would think his lens is better than Gerson's. — Leontiskos

My not-very-well-informed understanding is that Heidegger attempted a critique of classical metaphysics, saying that from Plato onwards, Parmenides was misrepresented or misunderstood. That this culminated in the decadent metaphysics of Western culture such that what is required was to go right back to the origin and really 'hear' what Parmenides had to say.

I certainly don't know if Gerson would agree at all with Heidegger's critique although he might have commented on it - he comments on very many philosophers in his books. I'm not aware. I've always been wary of Heidegger partially because of his reputation as being difficult and obscurantist, and also because of his association with Nazism, although there are certainly many things I have read about him that ring true to me.

An experienced guide lessens the risk. — Metaphysician Undercover

I never had one. In fact right up until the moment of my first experience with 'entheogens' (the polite name for hallucinogens) I swore I'd never do it. But, you know, impressionable teen.

The high point came many sessions later. Standing outside in a crisp but not cold dawn, marvelling at the exquisite beauty of young saplings and mossy rocks. Suddenly I had this sense of everything being imbued with life, of everything striving towards realisation of tree-ness and rock-ness in their own ways. It was definitely an experience of the sacred, a glimpse of something beautiful. And the thought was - why isn't life always like this? Why don't I see this, every moment?

Of course, I and many others realised you couldn't rely on artifice to really reach that kind of state with any kind of permanency (although there were also many who pursued it into addiction and destruction*.) But the accepted wisdom seemed to be, this is the state that can be actualised through meditative experience. That's why all those hippies hit the hash trail through Asia in the 1960's and 70's. Be Here Now, by Leary's sidekick, Richard Alpert, who became Ram Dass. Of course, sitting perfectly still in uncomfortable yoga postures for hours on end turns out to be nothing at all like an acid trip......

//

*Actually, I re-discovered the late great David Crosby in 2022, a few months before he died. Awesome songwriter. Anyway he said that the reason he got addicted to heroin, which damn near killed him, and did get him incarcerated at one point, was the attempt to re-create the experience of his first hit. He only really kicked the habit when he realised, many years later, and after many bad experiences, that it was never going to happen.

Yes, I remember, 'the man who stared at goats'.

While I agree that there are definitely 'doors of perception' that can be opened, they don't all lead upwards.

You're welcome. Also check out this youtube channel Evers Brothers Productions. Despite the somewhat annoying accent, has many very succinct and useful presentations on related topics.

The first book I read about - recall, this was 1969, the Summer of Love had just been brought to a ghastly end by the Manson Murders - was Timothy Leary's The Politics of Ecstacy. I re-visited it again years later, and it really doesn't hold up that well, neither does Leary's overall reputation. But it definitely had some flashes of genuine insight and some profound ideas.

As a baby-boomer, later in life I realised that the whole 60's thing had completely bypassed the next generations. It was like this window was briefly opened to a completely other dimension of existence/experience ('But first, are you experienced? Have you ever been experienced?'), but then closing again.

A great retro on many of the social issues:

Cults and Cosmic Consciousness, Camille Paglia

Also Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream, Jay Stevens - an excellent social history of LSD in American culture (circa late 1980's).

And if you never read them at the time, Theodore Roszak's The Making of a Counterculture and Where the Wasteland Ends (although they're a bit dated now.)

Well, sure. But I thought the OP might find it a resource, alongside Google and various other such resources. Not that members here may not have something to contribute but in my experience many of those requests go unanswered.

Why are intoxicants popular? Because they are a holiday from reality. I've found that cannabis makes the textures, colours and feelings of reality much more vivid. For instance I become more attuned to the subtleties of music. I still recall, 56 years later, the first moments of 'being high'. There was an excellent 1960's album playing (Super Session, for those who remember) and suddenly the high-hat came into crystalline focus. I could see the high-hat rythm, threaded perfectly through the tapestry of sounds.

Later in life I abandoned intoxicants generally - but not entirely. When I stayed in the US in 2022, there was a legal cannabis store nearby which sold edibles. Same old feeling. But I recognise the downsides. I know people who's maturity and development were adversely affected by cannabis, and I think it probably interfered with my own in some ways.

As regards LSD, I also had experiences with that in my youth - in fact, at the time it hadn't yet been made illegal. LSD can have massive downsides - bad trips and psychotic episodes are real dangers. But (and here I add I do not condone the taking of illegal substances) it also opens windows to dimensions of existence that will likely never otherwise be seen (although it's generally futile to try and explain it.)

Here's a never-quite-finished instrumental of mine, created in honor of Albert Hoffman, who first synthesised LSD in the 1940's, and who lived until aged 106 (good advertisement, I would have thought.) He had first-ever acid trip when he took a large dose of LSD in 1943 and then rode his bicycle through the streets of Basel.

]"an imperceptible difference. This exit from the identical into the same remains very slight, weighs nothing itself...". “It is not necessary to imagine the death of the sender or of the receiver, to put the shopping list in one's pocket, or even to raise the pen above the paper in order to interrupt oneself for a moment. The break intervenes from the moment that there is a mark, at once. It is iterability itself, ..passing between the re- of the repeated and the re- of the repeating, traversing and transforming repetition.”“Pure repetition, were it to change neither thing nor sign, carries with it an unlimited power of perversion and subversion. (Derrida) — Joshs

I must respectfully disagree with the passage from Derrida, which I find to be 'nonsense on stilts.' Identity, or what things are, is a fundamental constituent of rational thought and cognition. Even the simplest animals must identify kinds and types to navigate their environments.

In focusing on the abstraction involved in identifying kinds and likenesses, it's an overstatement to claim there are no kinds, repetitions, or likenesses in nature. These elements are plainly evident and essential; without any similarity or repetition, there would be only chaos.

To try and focus the issue with respect to Greek philosophy, the reason arithmetical knowledge was held in high esteem by the Greeks was because of its exactitude and apodicity:

Neoplatonic mathematics is governed by a fundamental distinction which is indeed inherent in Greek science in general, but is here most strongly formulated. According to this distinction, one branch of mathematics participates in the contemplation of that which is in no way subject to change, or to becoming and passing away. This branch contemplates that which is always such as it is and which alone is capable of being known: for that which is known in the act of knowing, being a communicable and teachable possession, must be something that is once and for all fixed. — Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra.

(Emphasis added.)

Arithmetical proofs are not contingent - they are, as it were, perfectly intelligible to reason. Whereas empirical truths, or sensory knowledge, was held to be of a lower order - because the senses may deceive, because things may not be as they appear. That is the sense in which arithmetical and logical knowledge is regarded as 'higher' or more trustworthy than sensory data. Ultimately, this was because arithmetical proofs and logical laws are nearer to 'the unconditioned' (hence the italicized phrase above). To put that in the context of traditional philosophy, generally, rational principles and universals are nearer to the One than are sensible particulars. That even survived until the 17th C:

In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist. At least part of what dictates a being’s reality, according to these philosophers, is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the more real it is. — 17th Century Theories of Substance, IEP

I think that is what has been lost to the mainstream of Western philosophy, due to the decline of Platonic realism and the ascendancy of nominalism and empiricism.

I think where abstraction and quantification becomes pernicious is precisely in draining the world of the fleeting qualities of immediacy, now-ness, presence- of being, in fact. That's what I think the sources you mention ultimately have in their sights, isn't it? But I think that, if only the respect for arithmetical and logical principles that traditional philosophy had are retained, but the aesthetic and ethical principles that animated it are abandoned, that's what leads to 'the reign of quantity'. Which is precisely the 'cultural impact of empiricism'. That's what culminates in eliminative materialism and the idea that mind is the product of physical principles. It is the hallmark of a secular age.

I think what has really gotten lost in modern philosophy of all schools, is any orientation towards the unconditioned. And how to talk about it without falling back into tired religious tropes or metaphysical dogma. There is nothing that maps against it in the current lexicon, and it's not generally discussed, and if it is, it's couched in the lumbering verbiage of a 'philosophical absolute' or something similar. This, I think, is one of the major underlying themes of Vervaeke's Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.

Try ChatGPT next time. I did it for you, this is what it returned:

Here are some recommendations that align with your interests in cultural criticism, critical theory, social analysis, and contemporary societal opinions:

1. **"The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer**
- A seminal work in critical theory that critiques the mass production of culture under capitalism.

2. **"Dialectic of Enlightenment" by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer**
- Another foundational text in critical theory that explores the relationship between enlightenment and totalitarianism.

3. **"One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society" by Herbert Marcuse**
- A critical analysis of contemporary capitalist societies and the ways in which they suppress individuality and critical thinking.

4. **"The Society of the Spectacle" by Guy Debord**
- A critical theory text that examines the pervasive role of media and images in contemporary society.

5. **"Living in the End Times" by Slavoj Žižek**
- In this book, Žižek addresses the global economic crisis, environmental issues, and political instability, offering a provocative analysis of contemporary society.

6. **"The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge" by Jean-François Lyotard**
- A key text in postmodern theory that explores the changing nature of knowledge in postmodern societies.

7. **"The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere" by Jürgen Habermas**
- A critical examination of the development of the public sphere and its implications for contemporary society.

8. **"Culture and Explosion" by Juri Lotman**
- A work by a prominent Russian semiotician that delves into the dynamics of cultural systems and their changes.

9. **"Can the Subaltern Speak?" by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak**
- A foundational text in postcolonial studies that questions the representation and agency of marginalized groups.

10. **"Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?" by Mark Fisher**
- A contemporary analysis of the pervasive influence of neoliberal capitalism on culture and society.

These books provide diverse perspectives and deep insights into the complexities of modern societies, influenced by both German and Russian thought, among other traditions.

We invented the concept of ‘same kind’ in order to count, but same kind doesn’t exist in nature. — Joshs

Flocks of birds, schools of fish, all comprise collections of ‘the same kind’. There are repetitions and patterns and instances of ‘the same kind’ in nature. How is that not so?

They had shoe salesmen in the Soviet Union? Why was I not informed? — BC

More likely, “shoe delivery commisars”, in all likelihood very inefficient at their job.

I have a favourite Soviet-era joke. You have to imagine it in the correct accent.

One day, after a very long time waiting, Ivan’s telephone is delivered and installed to his Moscow apartment. It’s not very active, and hardly ever rings, but at least he has it. One day it rings.

“Hello”, answers Ivan.

The voice at the other end is impassive. “We have information about the car you have ordered. It is due for delivery in 8 months, on Thursday, 8th September, in the morning.”

“Thank you, Comrade”, answers Ivan. “But I need to check something.”

He goes away. When he comes back, he says:

“Very good, but I ask a favour please. Could I pick it up in the afternoon? I have a plumber coming in the morning.”

Although I wish the author or one of the mods would correct the spulling in the title.

It’s a disgrace that Trump was welcomed back to Congress by his Republican lickspittles and toadies. They so easily forget how they were all cowering in basements and feared for their lives when his thugs stormed and ransacked the same building less than three years ago.

One thing that bothers me about the Ur-Platonism idea, apart from the specific issues being discussed, is that there have been centuries of thinkers who have self-identified with belonging or not belonging to particular groups and here comes this bloke telling you where you belong. — Paine

But is Gerson doing that? I see him as trying to identify the broad outlines of the implications of Platonism - not defined solely in terms of Plato’s dialogues, but by the many schools of thought that have identified as part of that ongoing tradition. That’s where he locates the ‘five antis’ that he says are in common to all of them. So he’s inclusive, not exclusive.

Philosophically, though, the point of difference I want to establish against evolutionary naturalism, is that such abstractions are not necessarily the product of evolution. While evolutionary naturalism provides a pretty comprehensive account of the development of cognitive capacities, it does not necessarily account for the nature of the abstract entities these capacities enable us to apprehend. The ability to cognize abstractions, such as mathematical truths, may be an evolved trait; however, the abstractions themselves are not products of evolution. Instead, they represent cases of exaptation, where a cognitive capacity evolved for one function is repurposed to engage with another: in this case, the realm of objective (or 'transjective') truths that transcend biological adaptation. (This is what I mean by 'transcending biology'.) It challenges the reductionist view that everything about us can be fully explained through the lens of biological adaptation. The argument relies on the inherent capacity of the human mind to grasp transjective truths uch as mathematical proofs and logical principles, which exist independently of our evolutionary history, but which are able to be discerned by h. sapiens. This approach does not appeal to religious revelation but instead emphasizes the autonomy of reason, so is in line with the approach of Greek rationalism. And there's nothing in it which relies on falsifying the empirical records of evolutionary history, but I think it corrects the reductionist tendencies which often result from 'popular Darwinism'.

:up: I don't know yet if I'm on board with everything Vervaeke says, but I'm learning a lot listening to him, especially how to map philosophical concepts against systems science.

recognition is the seed of generality, of universals; an essential aspect of cognitive apprehension of anything. Symbolic language of course enables this implicit recognition to be explicitly elaborated into the conception of universals. — Janus

Right. And it's a difference that makes a difference!

Mathematics only seems unreasonably effective because we don’t notice the sleight of hand we perform by forcing aspects of the world into idealized objects that persist identically and then apply mathematical calculations to these constructed idealities. — Joshs

I don't accept that, it's reductionist. I'm just as opposed to "scientism" as you are, but I don't buy this idea that mathematics and science is simply a projection or solely an invention. They're also discoveries, something uncovered or revealed about nature, which we are able to discern because of reason and mathematics.

John Vervaeke is completely on-board with the 4E approach - embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended by way of extra-cranial processes and structures. I am reading up on that and trying to understand it better. But he also advocates for a kind of modernised neoplatonism, and remains committed to natural science. He's not a post-modern theorist (although I'll look out for anything he might say about that.)

This we may call the phe­nomenal world or the self-world of the animal.

Totally get that. Umswelt and lebenswelt. I have learned about those concepts here on this forum. But none of that detracts from or undermines the reality of mathematics and the objects of reason. Those are also very much part of the lebenswelt of h. sapiens. But they're neither 'in the world' nor 'in the mind' but are characteristic of our experience-of-the-world, which is quite different to the experience-of-the-world of spiders, birds and bats (god bless 'em.)

when we replace one niche, paradigm, worldview for another, the old logical relations either become irrelevant or we change the sense of the concepts they refer to (Newtonian vs Relativistic). — Joshs

Totally on board with that, also. Still doesn't mean 'number is invented'.

From one of our earlier discussions of the matter:

I think all of our readings are by default modern. We cannot escape being modern. It is our cave.
— Fooloso4

Socrates says that the free prisoner would think that the world outside the cave was superior to the world he experienced in the cave ...
— Wayfarer

If you have escaped the cave then you would see things differently than us cave dwellers. I have not. I can only see things as I can from within the cave. — Fooloso4

They are the same for all who can count because that is the meaning of numeric unit, ‘same thing different time’. There is no experience in nature that conforms to ‘same thing different time’. In order to understand the empty, generic concept of ‘same thing different time’, one must start by noticing multiplicities, and then separating out particulars within such multiplicities. — Joshs

Which is a human ability, and one that is basic to the exercise of reason. As for being ‘no experience in nature that conforms to “the same thing at a different time”, surely these are occurring every instant. Breathing, tides, days - many basic constituents of existence happen in patterns which can be counted and measured. Humans have been counting seasons and moon-phases since the Stone Age. As soon as humans began to produce and gather then the requirement becomes imperative - no coincidence that the advent of writing, counting and calculation was mainly concerned with tallying harvests.

As for ‘ignoring and flattening the real world’ I interpret it differently. With the advent of science there is a tendency to believe that only what can be measured is real, as measurement is fundamental to science. That tendency indeed ignores and flattens the reality of lived experience. That lives on in the absurd arguments about 'qualia', a jargon term that designates 'qualities of experience', which are ignored under quantitative sciences. But there’s nothing inherent to mathematics that entails this. //It's the mistake of believing that only what can be quantified is real. It perhaps grew out of the Pythagorean-Platonic foundations of Western science, but it also depended on many other social and historical factors.//

As regards the contention that number is invented, this doesn’t account for the consilience between mathematics and nature, the subject of Eugene Wigner’s well-known essay The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences. By abstracting from the observable and measurable properties of objects and their relations, many things have been discovered that would be otherwise unknowable. Wigner can't explain it, but he also doesn't attempt to explain it away.

"Subjective idealisation" is the wrong term, that's why I referred to the newly-coined 'transjective', meaning 'transcending the distinction between subjective and objective, or referring to a property not of the subject or the environment but a relatedness co-created between them.'

Given that mathematical ability exists, then all kinds of imaginary systems can be invented. But the core elements are discovered not invented. This is what has impressed me about mathematical Platonism.

I.e. fallacy of reification / misplaced concereteness (which Nietzsche astutely points out is an inversion, or confusion, of effects & causes). — 180 Proof

I had the idea it is impossible to admire both Nietszche and Plato.

I admire Plato.

As for the 'fallacy of reification', that is precisely the misinterpretation of what the forms or ideas represent. To reify is to 'make a thing', but they're not things and they don't exist in time and space. But they are real as constituents of reason.

Is there such a thing as health? Of course there is. Can you see it? Of course not. This does not mean that the forms are occult entities floating ‘somewhere else’ in ‘another world,’ a ‘Platonic heaven.’ It simply says that the intelligible identities which are the reality, the whatness, of things are not themselves physical things to be perceived by the senses, but must be grasped by thought. If, taking any of these examples—say, justice, health, or strength—we ask, “How big is it? What color is it? How much does it weigh?” we are obviously asking the wrong kind of question. Forms are ideas, not in the sense of concepts or abstractions, but in that they are realities apprehended by thought rather than by sense. They are thus ‘separate’ in that they are not additional members of the world of sensible things, but are known by a different mode of awareness. But this does not mean that they are ‘located elsewhere,’ or that they are not, as Plato says, the very intelligible contents, the truth and reality of sensible things.

It is in this sense, too, that Plato’s references to the forms as ‘patterns’ or ‘paradigms’, of which instances are ‘images,’ must be understood. All too often, ‘paradigm’ is taken to mean ‘model to be copied.’ The following has been offered as an example of this meaning of παράδειγμα (parádeigma) in classical Greek: “[T]he architect of a temple requiring, say, twenty-four Corinthian capitals would have one made to his own specifications, then instruct his masons to produce twenty-three more just like it.” Such a model is itself one of the instances: when we have the original and the twenty-three copies, we have twenty-four capitals of the same kind. It is the interpretation of forms as paradigms in this sense that leads to the ‘third man argument’ by regarding the form as another instance and the remaining instances as ‘copies’ of the form. This interpretation of Plato’s ‘paradigmatism’ reflects a pictorial imagination of the forms as, so to speak, higher-order sensibles located in ‘another world,’ rather than as the very intelligible identities, the whatnesses, of sensible things.

But forms cannot be paradigms in this sense. Just as the intelligible ‘look’ that is common to many things of the same kind, a form, as we have seen, is not an additional thing of that kind. Likewise, it makes no sense to say that a body, a physical, sensible thing, is a copy, in the sense of a replica or duplicate, of an intelligible idea. Indeed, Plato expressly distinguishes between a copy and an image: “Would there be two things, that is, Cratylus and an image of Cratylus, if some God copied not only your color and shape, as painters do, but also … all the things you have — Eric D Perl Thinking Being, p31 ff

How is that a 'reification'? Reification, 'making a thing', is precisely what it isn't. That accusation is made by those who can't grasp the sense in which such ideas are transcendental.

But how can number and logic be aspects of the fabric of reality when what we think of today as number and logic were invented bit by bit over the course of cultural history? — Joshs

‘God created the integers’ ~ some philosopher.

It is sometimes said that the natural numbers are objectively real, but I don’t agree. I think they’re ‘transjectively’ real - the same for all who can count, but only perceptible to one capable of counting.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/transjective

Sorry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Letter

Plato himself gives us reason to doubt that he seriously held a theory of Forms. — Fooloso4

I think he provides the grounds to argue that, but I'm not persuaded. The heuristic I prefer is that forms or ideas don't exist - not because they're unreal, but because they are beyond existence (which is precisely what 'transcendent' means). We are blessed with the intellectual facility, nous, which is capable of grasping these forms (or perceiving rational principles) and which is what differentiates us from non-rational animals.

But the fact that there is nowadays great controversy over the nature of number (real or invented? Mental or existent?) only illustrates Plato's point. Here we have all the advantages that modern science has provided us, yet this question can't be decided!

Any man, whether greater or lesser who has written about the highest and first principles concerning nature, according to my argument, he has neither heard nor learned anything sound about the things he has written. — Fooloso4, quoting Plato 7th Letter

The Tao te Ching's warning comes to mind, 'he that speaks doesn't know'.

I found a crib of the section referred to:

Plato's explanation of why the deepest truths cannot be expressed in written form is famously abstruse. Before one attains the "thing which is cognizable and true" (gnōston te kai alēthes), one must have apprehended the "name," "account" (logos), "image," and "knowledge" (epistēmē). Name and account are approached through verbal description, while sense perception perceives the image. One attains knowledge only from the combination of verbal description and sense perception, and one must have knowledge before one can attain the object of knowledge (which Plato calls simply "the Fifth," name, account, image, and knowledge being "the Four"). The Fifth, moreover, differs from what is sensible and verbal expressions of it. Name and account provide the "quality" of a thing (to poion), but not its "essence" or "being" (to on). They are, moreover, akin to sense perceptions in that they are ever shifting and relative, not fixed. As a result, the student who attempts to understand the Fifth through name, account, image, and knowledge is confused; he seeks the essence, but always finds the quality intruding. Only certain kinds of student can scrutinize the Four, and even then the vision of the Fifth comes by a sudden flash.

Since this is how philosophy is conducted, no serious person would ever attempt to teach serious philosophic doctrines in a book or to the public at large.

My bolds

It was a major factor in making me realise my own Platonist (i.e. western) heritage.

In exploring John Vervaeke's conception of 'extended naturalism,' I am developing a theory that aligns with Platonism, proposing that what Platonism describes as universals are, in fact, universal cognitive structures. However, it is crucial to clarify that these universals are not merely constructs of the mind. Instead, they are the inevitable parameters of conscious experience and knowledge.

To avoid falling into the trap of conceptualism, which posits that universals exist only within the mind as concepts, I propose that universals such as the principles of logic and natural numbers have an ontological status that transcends individual cognitive processes. They are not mind-dependent in the sense that they do not rely on being conceived by any particular mind to exist. Instead, these universals are fundamental aspects of the fabric of reality that reason can discern and understand. As Bertrand Russell put it, 'universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts.'

This perspective suggests that universals have a kind of reality that is both independent of individual human minds and intimately connected to the rational structure of the universe. The principles of logic and natural numbers, for example, are not contingent upon human thought but are discoverable through the exercise of reason. In this way, they serve as the bedrock of our capacity for knowledge and conscious experience, guiding and constraining our understanding of the world.

In summary, by situating universals as universal cognitive structures that are inherent to the rational structure of reality, we can maintain a stance that acknowledges their actuality while recognizing that they can only be grasped through the exercise of reason. And I think that's consistent with where Vervaeke is going in this course I'm listening to.

The analogy that comes to mind is Buddhism's apoha logic: 'Apoha theory was proposed to provide an explanation for how, in the absence of objectively existent universals, we are able to form concepts and effectively use them to communicate and achieve practical ends. Dignāga defined apoha as a theory of classification based on exclusion. He said that a category such as 'cow' is arrived at not by the inclusion of all objects we would, based on some criteria, identify as cows, but by the exclusion of all objects we would identify as 'non-cows.' Concepts thus involve a double negation - the category of 'cow' is, in fact, the category of all 'not non-cows.' Since a negation or an absence cannot, according to the Buddhists, be objectively real (since absences are not caused and have no causal efficacy), this shows that concepts, though referring to a class of particulars, have no basis in reality.'

But then, this is the aspect of Buddhist philosophy that I have trouble accepting. There's a well-known analogy in the early Buddhist texts, the analogy of the chariot. It comprises a dialogue between one Ven Nagasena, a monk, and King Milinda (who has subsequently been identified as Meander, an actual Greco-Bactrian king). In short, Nagasena 'deconstructs' the chariot, showing it cannot be found in its various parts - the axle is not the chariot, the wheels, etc. Likewise, says Nagasena, I am nothing more than an aggregation of parts, if these parts are dispersed, then I would be no more (ref).

What this doesn't come to terms with, in my view, is the idea of the chariot. In that historical epoch, the possession of chariots was a major factor in military conquest. Empires rose and fell on the basis of such technologies. So while it's true to say that this or that particular chariot is nothing more than an assemblage of parts, it is also the instantiation of an idea, which is real over and above any particular. There are those who possess the idea, and those who don't.

In fact what I think undermines Buddhist nominalism (although this is a digression) is that the Buddha himself is a universal kind. That is why Buddhism uniquely believes that Buddhas are a class of being, even if at the same time each one is a particular individual. (I've tried that out on Buddhist forums and it didn't go down well.)

As I understand it from my research, Aristotle and Other Platonists is part of a series of books in which Gerson presents his thesis about the continuities between Plato and Aristotle, the others being From Plato to Platonism (published prior to the above) and Platonism and Naturalism: The Possiblity of Philosophy (published later). The final book in the sequence is in some ways a culmination of the series, and argues for the claim that Platonism *is* philosophy proper, and that it is in broad terms incompatible with naturalism.

(Gerson's books are addressed mainly to an academic audience, as they must be in a contested field such as this. There are details of disputes over interpretations going back centuries, often taking up pages of footnotes. I wish there were an edition for the general reader, as I can sense the outlines of Gerson's arguments, but the way they're written makes them very difficult for the non-specialist.)

Edward Feser has a useful blog entry on Gerson. He summarises the key themes like this:

In From Plato to Platonism, Gerson suggests that the common core of “Ur-Platonism” can be characterized in negative terms, as a conjunction of five “antis”: anti-materialism, anti-mechanism, anti-nominalism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. Together these elements make up a sixth “anti-,” namely anti-naturalism. Thinkers in the Ur-Platonist tradition spell out the implications of this conjunction of “antis” in ways that differ in several details, but certain common themes tend to emerge, such as the thesis that ultimate explanation requires positing a non-composite divine cause, the immateriality of the intellect, and the objectivity of morality. ...

In Aristotle and Other Platonists, Gerson proposed a positive characterization of the tradition, as comprising seven key themes: 1. The universe has a systematic unity; 2. This unity reflects an explanatory hierarchy and in particular a “top-down” approach to explanation (as opposed to the “bottom-up” approach of naturalism), especially in the two key respects that the simple is prior to the complex and the intelligible is prior to the sensible; 3. The divine constitutes an irreducible explanatory category, and is to be conceived of in personal terms (even if in some Ur-Platonist thinkers the personal aspect is highly attenuated); 4. The psychological also constitutes an irreducible explanatory category; 5. Persons are part of the hierarchy and their happiness consists in recovering a lost position within it, in a way that can be described as “becoming like God”; 6. Moral and aesthetic value is to be analyzed by reference to this metaphysical hierarchy; and 7. The epistemological order is contained with this metaphysical order. — Join the Ur-Platonist Alliance!

That resonates with me, as it mirrors the kind of philosophical spirituality that I've always pursued. Making the case in detail with reference to Plato's dialogues and other texts is hard labour, though.

Only when identity is understood as a derived modification of difference can the concept of union free itself from Platonic dogmatism and metaphysical presuppsitons. — Joshs

Where does that critique come from? What's the theory behind it?

I wonder how he distinguishes "These Gnostics, mostly heretic Christians" from the other varieties — Paine

I'm wary of trying to delve into the minutiae of doctrinal distinctions between Christians, neoplatonists and gnostics, although I'm sure there are many to be made. I'm attempting to stick to the broad contours of the issue. But for what it's worth, some of the entries I perused yesterday said that Plotinus had specific gnostic sects in mind and that while 'Plotinus raises objections to several core tenets of Gnosticism, although some of them might have come from misunderstandings' (Wiki entry on Neoplatonism and Gnosticism.) An interpretation of neoplatonism is central to Vervaeke's project, so far as this project is concerned, I'm being guided by that.

An arcane argument. The SEP entry on Plotinus, by Gerson, has it as follows:

With regard to Plotinus’ contemporaries, he was sufficiently exercised by the self-proclaimed Gnostics to write a separate treatise, II 9 (‘Against the Gnostics’) attacking their views. These Gnostics, mostly heretic Christians…were sufficiently close to Platonism, but, in Plotinus’ view, so profoundly perverse in their interpretation of it, that they merited special attention. The central mistake of Gnosticism, according to Plotinus, is in thinking that Soul is ‘fallen’ and is the source of cosmic evil. As we have seen, Plotinus, although he believes that matter is evil, vociferously denies that the physical world is evil. It is only the matter that underlies the images of the eternal world that is isolated from all intelligible reality. The Gnostics ignore the structure of Platonic metaphysics and, as a result, wrongly despise this world. For Plotinus, a hallmark of ignorance of metaphysics is arrogance, the arrogance of believing that the elite or chosen possess special knowledge of the world and of human destiny. The idea of a secret elect, alone destined for salvation – which was what the Gnostics declared themselves to be – was deeply at odds with Plotinus’ rational universalism.

I stand corrected.

If you google Plotinus on the Gnostics there’s a ton of material out there. As I understand it, the basic drift is that he wouldn’t countenance their claim that matter was evil. (The top hit is from a Wiki article which seems quite comprehensive and as always has links for further reading.)

You can find that book online - which is just as well, as it's out of print and very expensive in hard copy. It was one of the books mentioned in the video series this thread is about, which is how I found it.

Updates for this thread: I've belatedly started working through the lecture series for Awakening from the Meaning Crisis which was the origin of Vervaeke's online material.

The playlist can be found here. There's also a companion website here which contains, among other things, transcriptions of the series.

The lectures all contain bibliographies of the books mentioned. I stress again Vervaeke is first and foremost a cognitive scientist, and many of the books he references are from cognitive science and psychology. When he discusses mysticism, which he does, he has a way of framing it so that it makes sense from a cognitive science perspective. But he's also pretty well-versed in philosophy and the history of ideas. New Age dross, it ain't.

There's a lot of material - I've generally been listening while working out or driving, both of which I'm doing a fair amount of at the moment. But it does form a comprehensive curriculum.

:up:

There's a passage from David Bentley Hart which I've quoted a number of times recently:

In the pre-modern vision of things, the cosmos had been seen as an inherently purposive structure of diverse but integrally inseparable rational relations — for instance, the Aristotelian aitia, which are conventionally translated as “causes,” but which are nothing like the uniform material “causes” of the mechanistic philosophy. And so the natural order was seen as a reality already akin to intellect. Hence the mind, rather than an anomalous tenant of an alien universe, was instead the most concentrated and luminous expression of nature’s deepest essence. This is why it could pass with such wanton liberty through the “veil of Isis” and ever deeper into nature’s inner mysteries. — David Bentley Hart, The Illusionist

I'm exploring the idea that the reason the natural order was seen as 'akin to the intellect', is because the ancients and pre-moderns did not have the sense of separateness or 'otherness' to the Cosmos that we ourselves do. That in turn is because of a different conception of the nature of self. It's very hard to identify or articulate, because it's a foundational or intuitive sense of the natural order, our innnate intuitive sense of 'the way things are'. (I'm not claiming their sense is superior to ours in any scientific sense, as the ancients were not scientifically informed as we are, but that it is highly significant as an existential stance or way-of-being.)

See for example the beginning of the chapter on Plotinus in Eric Perl's 'Thinking Being':

Plotinus follows Plato, and, indeed, Aristotle, in identifying being, τὸ ὄν, that which is, as form. As in Plato, sensible things exist just insofar as they have and display intelligible forms. The forms themselves, therefore, as that which is intelligible and in virtue of which sensible things are at all, are reality (οὐσία, ouisia). Sensible things thus are not reality itself and are not beings in the full and proper sense, but, in that they have some share of intelligibility, are images of true, intelligible reality. But Plotinus goes further than Plato and Aristotle in developing both Plato’s συνουσία, synousia, the togetherness of intellectual apprehension and intelligible reality, and Aristotle’s doctrines of pure form as one with the act of thinking and of intellect as one with the intelligible, into a far more thorough and explicit account of the coinciding, the unity-in-duality, of being-as-form and intellectual apprehension. — Eric D Perl, Thinking Being, p 119

That sense is also preserved in Aquinas, in the 'union of the knower with the known', which characterises the apprehension of the forms of particulars:

Knowledge presupposes some kind of union, because in order to become the thing which is known we must possess it, we must be identical with the object we know. But this possession of the object is not a physical possession of it. It is a possession of the form of the object, of that principle which makes the object to be what it is. This is what Aristotle means when he says that the soul in a way becomes all things. Entitatively the knower and object known remain what they are. But intentionally (cognitively) the knower becomes the object of his knowledge as he possesses the form of the object. — Aquinas Online, Cognition in General

This theme of 'union' in some ways echoes the idea of union in many different schools of the perennial philosophy. This is what is lost in the transition to modernity, particularly with the advent of Cartesian dualism and the separateness of mind and matter.

Only to another subject ;-)

It has always struck me that the ability to treat I as me, as just another one of the things in the world, is the essence of consciousness. — T Clark

And it's always struck me that 'all the other things in this world' are objects of consciousness, whereas I am a subject of experience.

Hi Dan - welcome to thephilosophyforum. You might have a look at the help article on how to quote. Without those methods, the poster you are quoting will not be notified that he or she has been quoted and so will probably not respond.

Reminds me of the Lankavatara Sutra. It might implicitly reference the same sort of "unconscious.", no? — ENOAH

Very much. The Laṅkāvatāra is one of the central texts of Yogācāra. (See this entry.)

Which now makes me wonder if Buddhism accepts/rejects the concept of a sub(un)conscious. — Heracloitus

Not every school of Buddhism does, but the Yogācāra, one of the principle Mahāyāna schools, has a theory of the unconscious. See the Wikipedia entry on the ‘ālāyavijñana’ the ‘storehouse consciousness’ which is functionally similar to the unconscious.