please explain why you claim that a metaphysics of materialism is "anti-metaphysical" — 180 Proof

The term "metaphysical" refers to concepts or principles that transcend the physical or empirical realm and are typically associated with supernatural aspects of reality (bearing in mind that the Greek-derived 'metaphysical' is a synonym for the Latin-derived 'supernatural'). Metaphysics posits the reality of immaterial or non-physical factors that are not necessarily amenable to empirical observation or scientific investigation. Accordingly, philosophical materialism is considered anti-metaphysical because it rejects such principles. Materialists argue that all phenomena, including consciousness, mental states, and abstract concepts, can ultimately be explained in terms of physical processes and interactions between material entities and that that there is no need to invoke metaphysical explanations when accounting for the nature of reality.

why, particularly in philosophy, you prioritize 'arguments with non-propositional premises' — 180 Proof

I think this is based on the premise that a key characteristic of philosophy is insight. Insight provides an avenue of interpretation which may not be generally available to any and all observers; it is grounded in the judgements of meaning. Buddhologist Edward Conze refers to what he designates 'the perennial philosophy' (which he says includes aspects of classical Western and Eastern philosophhy) which holds (1) that as far as worth-while knowledge is concerned not all men are equal, but that there is a hierarchy of persons, some of whom, through what they are, can know much more than others; [2] that there is a hierarchy also of the levels of reality, some of which are more "real," because more exalted than others; and [3] that the wise have found a "wisdom" which is true even though it has no empirical basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct contact with actual reality--through the Prajñāpāramitā of the Buddhists, the logos of Parmenides, the sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, Hegel's Vernunft, and so on.'

I know you're likely to reject all the above, but as you asked.....

//ps - incidentally, you can see how profoundly non-politically-correct the traditionalist/perennialist attitude is. This surfaces in the link between the perennial school and fascism, e.g. Julian Evola in particular, although he was rather an extreme and eccentric example. But those who hold to the perennialist ideals are generally very ant-modernity - see Mark Sedgewick's book on them, Against All Modernity.

I was drawn to the perennial schools as a consequence of my overall philosophical orientation. I don't feel that sense of profound hostility to the modern world that they do, although I do understand the idea that modern culture is basically deranged in some fundamental way.//

The brain is an amazing thing. — Ludwig V

Would seem rather an awkward case for neural reductionism.

Spinoza’s work would have been considered by positivism as metaphysics which it plainly was.

@Christoffer - do you have any views on Spinoza’s philosophy?

So do you consider Spinoza with his counter-biased more geometrico, for instance, a "positivist"? — 180 Proof

The post I was commenting on had no discernable resemblance to Spinoza, nor any mention of him. And I said way back I reviewed the video and agree with his comments about questioning religion, but questioning religion does not amount to the declaration that 'all religion is false' (which incidentally is not something I think Spinoza would have agreed with.)

How do we know ChatGPT isn't conscious? — RogueAI

It's probably an unanswerable question, but, for me, it lacks some crucial elements that characterise other conscious beings, namely, embodiment and sensation. AI consists of a massive network of computers. Don't overlook the sheer processing power of current technology, comprising millions of chips, each of which contain billions of transistors, and the sophisticated algorithms which can process huge databases in such a way as to respond to input in apparently novel ways. But does it contain an element of sentience? In order to answer that, we would need to know what sentience is. And aside from observing it in the cases of live organisms, I don't know if science has an answer to that. Asking 'what is sentience' is not far removed from asking 'what is life' or 'what is mind', and I think while these can be modelled, and in that sense replicated, their essential nature remains elusive.

Yes but his acolytes in Congress may yet succeed in crashing the global economy and wrecking the Republic.

What I use the term "religion" for in this context is primarily in claims about reality, i.e in religious beliefs that have no supported claims either in facts or any logical framework. — Christoffer

Do you mean not subject to empirical validation, according to the standards of science?

The problem I have is that you're casting your net too wide when you denegrate anything that can be described as 'religious' in those terms. If you said 'fundamentalist' or 'dogmatic', then I might agree.

Are you familiar with the early Buddhists texts and the account of the awakening of the Buddha? What 'wild assumptions' do you think are conveyed in those texts? For that matter, what issue are they addressing?
— Wayfarer

In light of what I wrote on Phaedo, you can deconstruct that in a similar manner. What are religious conclusions and what are conceptual explorations in pursuit of further perspectives? — Christoffer

A meaningful description of the teachings of Buddhism would not be feasible in a forum post such as this without many pages of text. Suffice to say that the aims of the Buddhist teaching are conceived in terms of liberation from the ongoing cycle of death and rebirth (saṃsāra) and realisation of the state of Nirvāṇa. The account of the Buddha's awakening, based on the oral tradition, preserves the record of this as the Buddha is said to have realised it. The realisation of this state is something that subsequent generations of Buddhists are understood to have re-traced and re-capitulated (which is why, for example, the term 'Buddha' is not limited to one individual, but designates a class of being.)

Buddhist cultures have incorporated traditional cosmological models, which are clearly empirically unsupportable in light of current science. But then, the Dalai Lama has acknowledged that "If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.” However he's also said “What science finds to be nonexistent we should all accept as nonexistent, but what science merely does not find is a completely different matter.”

So no, it's not positivism, as you can read above, it is acknowledging historical context, and through that, understand what is and what isn't philosophy. — Christoffer

Positivism was coined by the French scientist and philosopher, August Comte, who founded the disciplines we now refer to as the social sciences. He theorised that culture evolved through three stages, the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive, the final stage being the scientific, or positive, stage. So Comte's idea of positivism was historical, and you're assuming a similar framework. This is not 'bias' on my part, it is an empirical judgement based on the evidence.

You cannot form rational conclusions in religious arguments since they are bound to a specific pre-existing belief. Philosophy, even in ancient practices, aimed at mentally remove biases, even religious ones, in order to explore everything. This is why real philosophy survives time, while religious claims does not. — Christoffer

If you examine Platonist philosophy, it clearly comprises many elements which are more closely related to what we would now understand as religion than science. As Hadot says, and you agree, this involves critical reflection and self-awareness, and the other disciplines mentioned in that passage, but Hadot also says that this conception of philosophy as a way of life has been deprecated in modern times:

According to Hadot, one became an ancient Platonist, Aristotelian, or Stoic in a manner more comparable to the twenty-first century understanding of religious conversion, rather than the way an undergraduate or graduate student chooses to accept and promote, for example, the theoretical perspectives of Nietzsche, Badiou, Davidson, or Quine.... 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.”

You're a careful thinker and writer, and while I appreciate that, I think you're casting your net too wide. There are elements (I won't call them ideas) within religious culture that are indispensable to the human condition even acknowledging that whatever about them has been shown to be false by scientific methods ought to be revised or discarded.

At back of this debate are conceptions of reality. Does reality comprise physical objects determined by physical laws (that is, scientific materialism/physicalism)? Alternatives include various schools of idealism, dualism, panpsychism, and phenomenology - none of which are necessarily religious in nature. It is possible to argue the case without reference to religion, although rejection of physicalism might often suggest philosophical views that seem close to religion - too close for comfort, for a lot of people.

I stumped ChatGPT, finally. Asked it about the expression 'Cartesian anxiety'. No idea. Even told it which book it was from (The Embodied Mind, Varela et al.) Still no idea. I felt smug.

Gift article from NY Times - Microsoft Says New A.I. Shows Signs of Human Reasoning

A provocative paper from researchers at Microsoft claims A.I. technology shows the ability to understand the way people do. Critics say those scientists are kidding themselves.

Kudos for your honesty in saying that, and for your courage. Something I often reflect on is the tragedy of mistaken religiosity. It happens in every culture, any religion can become a tool of imprisonment as much as of liberation.

As to your question, ‘did they really believe?’ Belief and the desire to believe can be very dangerous, easily manipulated and exploited. But, as Alan Watts said, faith is not clinging, faith is the confidence to let go, the courage to know that you don’t know, and to find the truth in unknowing rather than clinging. None of which is against the spirit, so to speak, but might well be against many ideas of religion.

I used to ask, when an undergraduate, 'what happened to Capital-T Truth?' I meant, Truth as it is invoked in sermons and in soaring political rhetoric and which, it was assumed, science was always in the process of converging on. But I soon worked out that Capital T truth is a romantic notion. We live in a pluralistic culture, one in which the assertion of a capital-T truth is invariably met with 'according to whom?'

I think scientists, and people generally, are occupied with what is true in specific contexts and for particular ends - what works, what is a valid assumption and what is not. Truth is like the background of their activities, something which they are always seeking to approximate, but which may never be definitively proven except in respect of specifics. So - I think the upshot is that truth is valued very highly, but that reference to “The Truth” carries a lot of baggage (at least some of which you might have brought with you, pardon me for so saying.)

You could say that there was a hierarchy of truth. — Andrew4Handel

There is, but it’s very non-PC to say it. Because every vote is equal, we’re inclined to say that so are all opinions. Of course everyone has a right to their opinion, but no-one, as a wise elder once said, has a right to their own facts - and not everything is a matter of opinion. And truth is often not something easy to face. Sometimes the facing of a truth can take suffering and sacrifice, we’re dragged to it against our will and wants. That is where the lessons of religion are supposed to count.

Herewith Mueller Report

It should also be recalled that despite Trump trumpeting that Durham would unearth a massive scandal, in fact he scored one minor conviction and two acquittals. The rest is just harumphing. Any law enforcement worth their salt would have been suspicious of Trump 'Russia - are you listening?' - and his continual brown-nosing of Putin (whom he continues to defend to this day.)

Bring on the indictments, for God's sake.

Cicero wrote of the Eleusinian mysteries in his On the Laws:

For it appears to me that among the many exceptional and divine things your Athens has produced and contributed to human life, nothing is better than those mysteries. For by means of them we have transformed from a rough and savage way of life to the state of humanity, and have been civilized. Just as they are called initiations, so in actual fact we have learned from them the fundamentals of life, and have grasped the basis not only for living with joy but also for dying with a better hope.” — Ciceronianus

:pray: :clap: A splendid affirmation, thank you.

Great resource, thanks, that's another of those book I must get around to.

[Forbidden ideas] are different in different countries and in different ages; but wherever
you are, let it be known that you seriously hold a tabooed belief, and you may be
perfectly sure of being treated with a cruelty less brutal but more refined than hunting
you like a wolf. Thus the greatest intellectual benefactors of mankind have never dared,
and dare not now [in America, circa 1877], to utter the whole of their thought.
– Charles Sanders Pierce, “The Fixation of Belief,” Philosophical Writings, 20 — Fooloso4

cf what happened to Thomas Nagel.

So, on TPF, I'm just trying to understand what some serious thinkers on this forum are talking about. And why other posters react emotionally/politically to the foreign language of "woo". Other than immersing myself in mystical literature, do you have any suggestions? :smile: — Gnomon

The argot of mysticism has crept into the modern lexicon through various routes. Have a look at a NY Times opinion piece by David Brooks, The Neural Buddhists.

Then there's the mystical element in 'the new physics'. It is certainly true that there's a lot of third-rate content written about the subject but there's a serious core of ideas too (as your reference notes). I read Tao of Physics not long after it was published, and I still regard it. I know many of the mainstream commentators rubbish it, but Capra interviewed Heisenberg extensively for that book, and he does after all hold a doctorate in physics. I interpreted that book in part as the attempt to find an alternative to Aristotelian metaphysics. And I'm sure a lot of the discussion of 'consciousness' is influenced by Eastern philosophy - the Vedanta Society was established in New York in 1894 (see American Veda.) //Oh, and I've always found Paul Davies a congenial science communicator.//

As to the culture wars and woo - I'm often accused of that myself so whatever I say is going to annoy someone. My take is that there really is a battle going on between the materialist worldview and its opponents, but I think that hardcore materialism is loosing that battle. Science itself has become considerably 'greener' in the last few generations, partially because of the growing social consciousness of scientists and the awareness they have of the power science provides and partially because the philosophical model of materialism is seriously challenged by the emergence of new philosophical paradigms. To quote the article you linked to:

The result of all this [i.e. the observer problem], according to the mainstream Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics (although note, again, that there is no settled orthodoxy here), is that “the act of measurement actively constructs the reality that is measured.” In the words of Bohr’s colleague Pascual Jordan, “we ourselves produce the results of measurement.”

He goes on:

You can see the religious appeal here. If science has allegedly been the extended story of sidelining humanity as Freud famously thought – first from the centre of the universe (Copernicus), then from the centre of life (Darwin) and then from the centre of ourselves (Freud, of course) – quantum mechanics has done our pride a whole load of good by rediscovering the reality and significance of human subjectivity right at the deepest most intimate level of all creation. “We turned the world inside out”, Bohr tells Heisenberg in Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen. “Throughout history we keep finding ourselves displaced. We keep exiling ourselves to the periphery of things”:

“Until we come to beginning of the twentieth century, and we’re suddenly forced to rise from our knees again… here in Copenhagen…we discover that there is no precisely determinable objective universe. That the universe exists only as a series of approximations. Only within the limits determined by our relationship with it. Only through the understanding lodged inside the human head.”

(I found the film version of that play recently, with Heisenberg played by Daniel Craig, I think on Amazon Prime.)

Anyway - I'm rambling. But there's some grist for the mill.

Define what religious belief is? Is it a proven claim? A deduced conclusion? If something isn't proven or doesn't possess any internal logic, if it is based on wild assumptions, what is it? — Christoffer

Impossible. Can't be done. The term covers such a diverse range of cultural phenomena, that it has no single meaning. There are those who say that the word itself is an impediment. But one thing it's not, is a compendium of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles proposing a testable hypothesis.

Are you familar with Plato's dialogues? Socrates, as you're well aware, was sentenced to death for atheism, but the Phaedo, the dialogue taking place in the hours leading up to his execution, is one of the main sources for the defense of the immortality of the soul. Is that a religious dialogue, or is it not, by your lights?

Are you familiar with the early Buddhists texts and the account of the awakening of the Buddha? What 'wild assumptions' do you think are conveyed in those texts? For that matter, what issue are they addressing?

What's the praxis of philosophy? What is it that you actually do when doing philosophy? Is it just looking up in the night sky and have some ideas about reality? Is it just deciding some rules you like about how people should act against each other? This thread's main plot is essentially "what is philosophy?" So what is it? If it's not religion, not science, how do you define it? — Christoffer

I'll go with the approach articulated by scholar and historian of philosophy, Pierre Hadot.

According to Hadot, twentieth- and twenty-first-century academic philosophy has largely lost sight of its ancient origin in a set of spiritual practices that range from forms of dialogue, via species of meditative reflection, to theoretical contemplation. These philosophical practices, as well as the philosophical discourses the different ancient schools developed in conjunction with them, aimed primarily to form, rather than only to inform, the philosophical student. The goal of the ancient philosophies, Hadot argued, was to cultivate a specific, constant attitude toward existence, by way of the rational comprehension of the nature of humanity and its place in the cosmos. This cultivation required, specifically, that students learn to combat their passions and the illusory evaluative beliefs instilled by their passions, habits, and upbringing. ....

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 (PWL 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 (Nussbaum 1996, 353-4; Cooper 2010). Hadot’s use of the adjective “spiritual” (or sometimes “existential”) indeed aims to capture how these practices, like devotional practices in the religious traditions (6a), 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.” They also utilize rhetoric and imagination in order “to formulate the rule of life to ourselves in the most striking and concrete way” and aim to actively re-habituate bodily passions, impulses, and desires (as for instance, in Cynic or Stoic practices, abstinence is used to accustom followers to bear cold, heat, hunger, and other privations) (PWL 85). — IEP

The philosophical issue with modern science, in particular, is that it leaves no place for man as subject. Science relies on the fundamental techniques of objectification and quantification, and can only ever deal with man as object. It is embedded in a worldview that isn't aware that it's a worldview, but thinks of itself as being 'the way things are'. And there's no self-awareness in that.

It's not until very recently that philosophical scrutiny reached a point that we usually call scientific in quality. — Christoffer

Positivism, again.

being an initiate didn't make one a mystic — Ciceronianus

Mystic: Middle English: from Old French mystique, or via Latin from Greek mustikos, from mustēs ‘initiated person’ from muein ‘close the eyes or lips’, also ‘initiate’.

The Oxford Dictionary used to state that a mystic was 'one initiated into the [Greek] Mystery religions', although the definition has now been broadened.

What I meant by religion being biased is that all arguments in religion has a bias towards the specific religion they come from. They (through history) can create great philosophical questions and be highly intelligent deductions, but in the end, as soon as something can't be explained, they always conclude it with a connection to the religious fantasy that was preconceived of the argument ... My point is that bias and fallacies are common traits in religion because of how many arguments fail to go past the "because God" or "because of this religious text". When an argument doesn't rely on that, it doesn't matter if it's a religious thinker or if the concept is more continental in appearance. There are plenty of metaphorical arguments in religious writing that functions as solid philosophical ones, but as I said, they are then technically no longer religious arguments since they don't have a bias towards the beliefs of that religion and instead rely on rational reasoning without biases.... I don't draw the hard line as positivist in that sense of "guilt by association" against religion. What I'm focusing on is the existence of bias and fallacy within ideas, concepts and reasoning. — Christoffer

You assume that religions can only be based on acceptance of dogma, or belief in God, so any religious argument must be 'biased', because not grounded in reality, but only in belief. That as soon as a religious philosopher comes up with a solid argument, then it's no longer religious, but philosophical. You basically assert that religion can only be based on 'fantasy'. But that itself is bias!

Are you aware of the phenomena of religious experience, as distinct from 'mere belief', and of the role that mysticism played in Greek and later in European philosophy? That there are experiential dimensions of religious life, far beyond what is presented in religious dogma? Are you aware that Thomas Aquinas, for example, introduces his arguments with philosophical objections, and then painstakingly addresses those objections before setting out his point? That there are religions, such as Buddhism, that are not based on belief in God at all?

Up until arguably the 20th century, philosophical spirituality was a fundamental current within philosophy itself, very much part of, for example, German, British and American idealism. And as for the idea that philosophy itself comprises empirically demonstrable arguments grounded in facts that all rational observers must assent to - this is very much the kind of argument that positivism tried, and failed, to advocate. Positivism has nothing to do with 'guilt by association'. Positivism is 'a philosophical system recognizing only that which can be scientifically verified or which is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and therefore rejecting metaphysics and theism'. And that's pretty well what you're arguing.

Any other form of reasoning that includes biases and fallacies without a rigid framework to fight them, fails at philosophy and becomes emotional opinions, fantasies, guru gobbledygook etc. — Christoffer

What 'rigid framework' in particular? Which philosophers or schools of philosophy would you look towards that will produce this ideal, rational society where everyone acts rationally at all times, only taking into consideration the relevant facts and acting with perfect detachment?

The only part of you that you cannot lose, and still think of yourself as you (and, for that matter, still think), is your brain. — Patterner

Man with Tiny Brain Shocks Doctors

Correctional institutions are overpopulated due to the incorrect juristic notion that persons determine themselves to act, or not, by law. — quintillus

I think the juristic expection is simply that persons will observe the law. That doesn't constitute the sole determinative factor, only one of many.

‘Not having an audience applauding wildly’ would not amount to ‘suppression’. Could have been a one-on-one with some gruff senior male journalist. Although then Trump would decline to appear, he’ll only agree to situations he knows he can play.

So the CNN Trump town hall has come and gone. Most of the commentary in the 'liberal media' - that is everything other than Fox and its imitators - was that the event was a disaster, an opportunity for Trump to boost his profile and promote his lies.

CNN's Anderson Cooper came out in defense of the network, saying that the CNN audience, who would normally never tune in to Trump, need to know what he's saying and doing, and that it's no use living in a silo. Which is all fair and good - EXCEPT that the format of the event was such that it clearly amounted to pandering. The 'carefully-selected' audience cheered every word, even cheering the gratuitous insults directed at the woman who had just successfully sued him for $5 million. The hapless interviewer tried to 'hold Trump to account', which was as laughable as holding off machine gun fire with an umbrella, and the only time she got close to really landing a point he brushed her off as 'nasty' (audience applauds). So the result was a success for Trump, and did nothing to really expose him to any kind of honest interrogation or a critical media.

So I agree, it was badly judged, even if Cooper is right in saying that public awareness of Trump's malignant delusions is required.

I looked it up. The argument is known as the "Eternal Recurrence" and was proposed by various ancient philosophers including Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Heraclitus. The argument is based on the assumption that time is infinite and that the number of possible events that can occur in time is also infinite. If the universe is eternal, then it follows that every possible event will occur an infinite number of times. It was picked up by Nietszche. Where I had misunderstood it was to mean that, if all events are of finite duration, and the Universe is infinitely old, then everything that could occur would have already occurred, because no number of finite events could ever occupy an infinite expanse of time. But I'm not going to press the point!

Doesn't it stand to reason that, if the Universe was of infinite duration, and all events in the Universe are of finite duration, then all events would already have occurred? Isn't that deductively valid? (It also seems to map against the idea of the heat death of the universe, which is a hypothesis that the universe will evolve to a state of no thermodynamic free energy, and will therefore be unable to sustain processes that increase entropy.)

Not according to the cosmological model popularly known as the 'big bang'. According to that model the Universe emerged from the singularity approximately 13.8 billion years ago.

In an infinite duration, aren't all possible outcomes equally likely to occur? — Down The Rabbit Hole

In an infinite duration, and as all possible existents are of finite duration, then everything would have happened already.

Reasoning in religious ways is primarily based in biases. — Christoffer

Don't you think that might itself be rather a biased judgement?

The proposal you're suggesting is really like adopting the persona of the imagined 'Mr Spock' character from Star Trek, Spock, the Vulcan, possessed an enormous IQ and encylopedic knowledge, from a terrestrial point of view, but was often caught out by what we would now describe as his lack of EQ (although that term had yet to be invented,)

Reading your posts, you're basically coming from the perspective of Carnap and the Vienna Circle positivists, for whom anything connected to religion and metaphysics was nonsensical, and whose sole imperative was to put philosophy of a firm scientific footing. I don't necessarily want to go down the arduous road of trying to convince you otherwise, other than to suggest that positivism was, by the second half of the last century, regarded as a failed philosophical movement.

Yet even those philosophical pioneers [i.e. Plato and Aristotle] didn't make any claims of esoteric knowledge . . . did they? — Gnomon

Plato's writings make frequent references to Orphic myths and beliefs, such as the soul's immortality and the importance of leading a virtuous life to attain salvation. Some have argued that these references indicate that Plato was initiated into the Orphic mysteries, while others suggest that he may have simply been familiar with Orphic ideas through his study of ancient Greek philosophy and religion.

It is also worth noting that the Orphic tradition was one of many mystery religions that were practiced in ancient Greece, and Plato may have been influenced by other mystery traditions as well.

Appropriately, nobody knows for sure. But regardless there are esoteric elements in Plato, not least the tradition that his most important teachings were not committed to writing, but were transmitted from master to student directly. And neoplatonism, so-called, which was the later Platonic tradition, is one of the principle sources of esoteric philosophy in the Western cultural tradition.

many mystery seekers seem to be imagining and hoping for a loving & punishing Genesis type of Creator. — Gnomon

'Many mystery seekers' are dupes lead by con men. A lot of it is projection. If you know anything about psychoanalysis, you will know of transference, which occurs when a patient's unconscious feelings and desires are projected onto the therapist. You can imagine the scope for that happening in spiritual groups. But not all fall victim to that. There would be no fool's gold were there no gold, as the old saying has it.

I brought up the subject of esotericism in relationship to 'the transcendent'. The transcendent usually refers to a state or aspect of reality that surpasses the limits of ordinary physical existence, such as a dimension of reality that exists beyond the sensory world. In religious or philosophical contexts, the term 'transcendent' is used in relation to the deity or (in Buddhism) the state of being of a Buddha.

'Transcendental' by contrast is a philosophical term referring to something that is fundamental to the experience but which cannot be directly perceived or measured. In Kant, the term 'transcendental' is used to describe fundamental principles or categories of thought that are essential to experience, but are not themselves revealed in experience. Kant's philosophy of transcendental idealism holds that the mind actively constructs experience around such categories as time, space, and causality, that are necessary constituents of experience but which do not appear to us as elements within experience.

Both 'transcendent' and 'transcendental' imply a reality or being that is beyond or outside of ordinary experience or perception, although they differ in their specific applications and contexts. That is why the language of the transcendent is necessarily symbolic or allegorical (although it's also interesting to consider the sense in which the writings of German idealists were esoteric.)

One of the books I encountered in Buddhist Studies was called 'The Twlight Language' by Roderick Bucknell and Martin Stuart-Fox. The main idea of the book is to describe the esoteric language and imagery used in Buddhist texts and teachings, including the Pali Canon, Mahāyāna sutras, and Tantric teachings. It examines the use of symbols characteristic of Buddhism, such as the lotus, the mandala, and the chakra, in their role as catalysts for meditative awareness. It also demonstrates the skillful way in which Buddhism plays on words, uses double-meanings and other devices as 'skillful means' for conveying or provoking insights beyond the strictly empirical. This book provided an excellent compendium of the use of symbolic language to convey esoteric insights.

The Freemasons enjoyed a unique position. — Metaphysician Undercover

Bloody well deserved, considering what they accomplished with no electric power

I never took a shine to Steiner, I went through most of Gary Lachman's book on him but I couldn't relate to him. But that doesn't detract from the point.

If depth has an ultimate floor, then the floor must be something which is utterly simple, pure, and homogeneous. — Art48

The idea of looking within, is not looking into the fine structure of matter, but paying close attention to the nature of lived experience. You can zoom in as far as you like on the micro-circuitry of your television set, but you'll never find a story there.

Yeah I don't unreservedly like their compositions, but I'm making an effort to get familiar with them as it's a genre I very much like, and it doesn't have a wide audience base. Yeah, Snarky Puppy, definitely - my son went to see them in Milwaukee just the other day, said they were sensational. (Oh, and they're also a little reminiscent of Level 42, particularly their melodic sense.)

Are you sure esotericism is the word you want? Perhaps you want ineffable. — Banno

Aren't they two different facets of the same thing? The point being, the communication of the ineffable was part of the role of philosophy. Interesting fact: Plato was a mystic, as defined by textbooks: 'initiate of the Greek mystery religions' (probably one of the orphic cults). This is why, I believe, it was said that in addition to the written dialogues, there was an unwritten component, although some of it was to become spelled out in the later tradition. A large part of Platonic philosophy was the preparation of the student so as to be able to grasp what was being taught, and I'm not sure that could be understood in propositional terms. Very much as described in Pierre Hadot's 'philosophy as a way of life'. It is those qualitative aspects that have been mostly redacted out of modern interpretations of Plato and philosophy generally.

Which is layers upon layers of syncretic Greco-Roman mystery cults, gnostic ideas, and the appropriations of both Judaic understandings and Homeric literature to create the legendary Jesus. — schopenhauer1

More to the point in this context is that salvation is available to all who will believe. That is what is behind the notion of equality in the first place. In pre-Christian cultures society was rigidly stratified. One of the reasons gnosticism was suppressed was because of its alleged elitism. (But then, Calvin has the Doctrine of the Elect, the difference being that nothing can be done on the part of the believer to be counted as a member.)

I notice you have not presented any argument as to the benefits of esotericism... — Banno

I didn't start off wanting to argue for the role of esotericism so much as recognition of it as an often-unstated issue. The question was about the role of the transcendent. In plain language, there is no role, nothing to discuss (positivism, basically.)

In esoterica, there is the use and understanding of symbolism, by which things are communicated that can't simply be said in plain language. 'What are those things? Show them to me!' will come the plain language reply. To which the only answer is a shrug.

Case in point - the apocryphal origin story of Ch'an Buddhism. According to legend, the Buddha gave this teaching in silence during a gathering of his disciples. He simply held up a flower and gazed at it, without saying a word.

The Buddha's disciple Mahakashyapa, who was known for his deep understanding of the Dharma, was the only one who understood the meaning of the Buddha's gesture, which he communicated by smiling, while the others in the assembly tried to guess at doctrinal answers. The Buddha then acknowledged Mahakashyapa's realization with a subtle smile, indicating that he had transmitted his teaching to him directly, beyond words and concepts.

The Flower Sermon is considered to be a pivotal moment in the transmission of the Dharma from the Buddha to his disciples, and from one generation of Zen practitioners to the next. It represents the idea that true understanding cannot be conveyed through words or concepts alone, but must be realized through direct experience. The story of the Flower Sermon has been retold and celebrated in Zen Buddhism for centuries as a symbol of the ineffable nature of enlightenment.

That said, Ch'an has produced and maintains a vast canon of teachings and commentaries. The Ch'an 'ko-an', famously exemplified by 'the sound of one hand', literally means 'public case' or 'public document'. I don't think it's an all-or-nothing proposition - the role of discourse is valued in Buddhism, but so too the acknowledgement that the fulfilment of the teaching is beyond it.

It's central to modern democratic liberalism, that's for sure. Whatever wisdom the crowds can muster. A large part of which is the heritage of Christian belief.

No better illustration of the kind of prejudice I'm referring to. Esotericism is essential to philosophy proper, but it's culturally subversive and so, often concealed, as a hidden layer of meaning in the texts themselves.

The jacket copy of the book referred to above Philosophy Between the Lines:

Philosophical esotericism—the practice of communicating one’s unorthodox thoughts “between the lines”—was a common practice until the end of the eighteenth century. The famous Encyclopédie of Diderot, for instance, not only discusses this practice in over twenty different articles, but admits to employing it itself. The history of Western thought contains hundreds of such statements by major philosophers testifying to the use of esoteric writing in their own work or others’. Despite this long and well-documented history, however, esotericism is often dismissed today as a rare occurrence. But by ignoring esotericism, we risk cutting ourselves off from a full understanding of Western philosophical thought.

More than risk. It's fait accompli.

For those into jazz fusion - Fool Arcana, a new band! They won a contest in Italy in April 2021, right in the thick of COVID which kind of hampered their launch. But they are producing some excellent material in that genre - think Incognito, Matt Bianco, Brand New Heavies, Chick Corea. All great young players, led by 22-year-old singer-guitarist Cecilia Barra Caracciolo and 23-year-old bassist Riccardo Oliva (listen out for the Fender Rhodes solo. Incidentally the name is derived from the first Tarot card, symbolising spontaneity and creativity.)

...the ineffable demarcation... — Tom Storm

The demarcation is that the esoteric is identified with religion, and religion has a meaning that is culturally specific. So to venture into the esoteric is to push a lot of buttons - hence 'defensive materialism'. This is held by those not consciously advocating for scientific materialism per se, maybe not even knowing what it really is, but it is a kind of default, because the alternative is identified as being associated with religion - and that, we could never admit, because

It so often is more about buying that hundredth Rolls-Royce and fucking the underaged. — Banno

Splendid illustration, thank you.

Wayfarer would put transcendence in the prime position. The trouble there is saying anything truthful. Such arguments are in danger of becoming either mere ritual again, or nonsense. — Banno

I've just realised what the missing word is in nearly all these debates: it is esotericism. Here, I was going to say something about the content of esoteric philosophy, but really it will suffice just to call it out.

I just listened to a lecture on Lloyd Gerson's most recent book Platonism vs Naturalism: the Possibility of Philosophy. In passing, the lecturer mentions that in this book, Gerson deals with the more esoteric aspects of Platonic philosophy, which are often omitted from other sources. Whereas it is precisely those aspects that most interest me. (A book that @Fooloso4 has mentioned a few times comes to mind, Philosophy Between the Lines, although I haven't read it.)

I got interested in philosophy through my encounter with Eastern philosophy, which is often esoteric. ('Upaniṣad' is derived from the term for 'up close', i.e. they are teachings given directly from master to student. Not that I myself have actually been 'up close' but the kinds of ideas found in The Teachings of Ramana Maharishi, for example, are derived from those in the Upaniṣads.) Whereas esotericism is almost entirely walled off from 20th century English-speaking philosophy. If it can't be expressed in plain language, well then, not really a suitable subject for discussion - nonsense, in fact. (I suspect that the influence of Gilbert Ryle is writ large in all this although those other names you frequently mention like Austin and Davidson would be like-minded, I'm sure.)

Anyway, now at least I've come to recognise this - only took 10 years.

Except that it has been empirically falsified: Famous Experiment Dooms Alternative to Quantum Weirdness

My interpretation is that biosemiotics was born out of the discovery of language and signs as a metaphor for organism which replaced the mechanistic metaphors of Cartesianism (although biology still uses mechanistic metaphors.) The benefit of the semiotic approach is that it allows the use of concepts such as semantics, syntax and representation on a molecular level, rather than the awkward and ill-fitting motors and levers ideas of mechanism. And I agree that it is a language. It’s infinitely preferable to mechanism as metaphor because it embeds meaning at the very basis of life. (It also resonates strongly with mythological metaphors of ‘the word’, although most of its scientific advocates are uncomfortable with that association.)

Incidentally for you and others interested in the subject of biosemiotics, here’s an open-access paper A Short History of Biosemiotics, Marcelo Barbieri, and another article by the same author on DNA as a code, What is Information?

In Phaedo 72b-e, Socrates has Simmias agree that there is such a thing as Equality itself--something that is independent of any particular case of equality such as sticks or stones of equal length or size. We know this Form of Equality, because it comes into our minds every time we see instances of equal objects. However, Socrates points out, equal stones or equal sticks may look equal from one point of view and unequal from another. Nonetheless, we would never be tempted to suggest that Equality itself is unequal. Therefore, the sticks or stones that are equal cannot be the same thing as Equality, since they can sometimes be unequal, and Equality itself never can be. If the equal things are different from Equality and yet can bring Equality into our minds, they must somehow remind us of the Form of Equality. We are aware that the sticks or stones fall short of being perfectly equal, but to be aware that they fall short, we must already have an idea of what it means to be perfectly equal; that is, we must already know the Form of Equality.

Fair point. I got that book when it came out, having read his dialogues with Krishnamurti. I haven’t read Pas’ book yet beyond the first few pages but I thought it worth mentioning. (I also understand that Bohm supported pilot wave theory which is basically a realist theory.)

I suppose my boring non-Catholic, non-mystical Fundamentalist Protestant upbringing didn't prepare me for mystical experiences. — Gnomon

I had no prep, and at the time, and for many decades later, I never associated that experience with religion. I thought it was about the nature of reality.

"As we learn from the particle physicists, if we ascend to a higher level of abstraction, things that seem different on the surface suddenly appear as manifestations of a deeper unity". Could that "unity" be the same Monism that we are discussing in this thread? :smile: — Gnomon

100%. I think that's the thrust of the book I mentioned at the beginning of the thread (here). I'm endeavouring, once again, to read up on neoplatonism, which provides a metaphysical basis for these ideas, and which Heinrich Pas refers to.