I like Rohr but I am not sure what he means there. Guess I would need to read the full text.

As it happens, Rohr often rolls his eyes and says 'that's just religion' too.

“Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We often given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of "Christian" countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else-and often more so, I'm afraid.”

― Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater: Spirituality and the 12 Steps

Throughout history and across cultures many many nonbelievers have sacrificed their lives in order to protect their families / communities and/or to oppose various tyrannies. "Belief" in some "afterlife" – or any fact-free, faith-based story – in order to gain a "reward" (or punishment) isn't a necessary motivator and, IMO, more often than not, is only useful for deluding weak minds into throwing away their lives "in the name of (the cause)". Ethically, as a rule, martyrdom isn't an argument (& ends don't justify means – especially those means which undermine or negate their ends). Just my 2 shekels. :victory: — 180 Proof

I like your 2 shekels. For me the afterlife is all the life that takes place after mine is over.

If you don’t like to explore different ways of thinking, what is the point of doing philosophy? — Angelo Cannata

Well, I'm not sure about 'doing' philosophy. I don't do it. I read a little about it. But my interest is superficial.

People seem to take an interest in philosophy for a range of reasons. Often simply to find more sophisticated post hoc justifications for what they already belief. I also think a lot of people are attracted to philosophy to undertake a bit of a survey of what other (seemingly) crazy ideas there are available.

I have always thought that human knowledge was simply the best inferences we can make given our limitations and the perspectives available to us. We can apply some of our knowledge with prodigious results. But we seem unable to avoid wars, famines, environmental catastrophe and hideous internecine religious and political conflicts. We have just enough knowledge, it seems, to take us to the precipice.

Well, Christianity is known as a pretty big tent.

Kastrup's analytical idealism suggests that the ground of existence is experiential, rather than material, and that the universe is ultimately a single, universal mind. As discussed previously, there are convergences between that and schools of ancient Greek (nous in neoplatonism) and the Brahman of Vedanta (not to mention more recent schools of idealist philosophy). The model of the self as a "dissociated alter" originates from this. In this understanding, individuals are like "alters" (a term borrowed from dissociative identity disorder in psychology) of this larger consciousness. — Wayfarer

Nice summary of Kastrup.

The key point is that popular religion cannot traffic in high-falluting ideas of cosmic consciousness and the unitive vision. 'Believe and be saved' is much nearer the mark. — Wayfarer

This is a good point and wherever anyone says this I think, yep that's true. Unfortunately in reducing spirituality to such a simplistic or 'dumbed down' terms (the Magical Mr God) I wonder how useful/meaningful it is. It seems awfully easy to turn this into a tool of oppression and Calvinist-style retribution.

I'm while I'm coming around to the understanding that those who really do practice charity, empathy, self-control and agapē really may be 'saved' — Wayfarer

Which would include most secularists, I'd imagine. David Bentley Hart makes the point that universalism was central to the early Christian tradition. We are all 'saved', regardless.

I'm not sure what 'saved' means however, once you articulate this in more sophisticated spiritual terms. Liberated? Moksha? Any thoughts? Saved seems so binary and one suspects a more nuanced vocabulary is required.

Is it not the case that Camus and Nietzsche, start with nihilism, more or less as foundational - there is no inherent meaning, value or purpose - and then devise a response to this, which is essentially subjective or personal? Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this, but no matter what one does to rehabilitate the implications of nihilism, it remains in some way a nihilist project.

Can you say some more about how Deleuze, Derrida and Heidegger put consciousness into question alongside subjectivity and objectivity? Does this come out of their critique of the binary/emphasis of pluralities?

I think I'd make a pretty hard distinction between existentialism and nihilism.

Existentialism is the philosophical response to the necessity of nihilism: given how we've lived meaningful lives before, and given how things have progressed this world feels absurd: the absurd is always an encounter. And absurdism is different from existentialism in that absurdism is a little more specific -- Sartre was no absurdist, so far as I can tell.

Nihilism is something like solipsism, but in the ethical realm -- it's an extreme point that people diverge from in various ways, and few (if any) actually adopt it philosophically (though they may in practice). — Moliere

This is interesting. Existentialism comes in various forms, including Christian existentialism. But isn't existentialism of the secular variety built upon similar notions as nihilism? The absence of meaning. Nihilism holds that life, existence and reality itself are devoid of inherent meaning, purpose, or value. It rejects the notion of any objective significance or ultimate truth. Existentialism tends to identify same lack of meaning and then moves in to fill the void.

I would often consider myself to be a nihilist. But I don't tend to see this approach as one of destructive apathy, or assertive repudiation, rather a more cheerful springboard to make decisions about what choices you will make and what you will do. I would not consider myself to be an existentialist.

Camus is no moral nihilist, and is a deeply ethical thinker. — Moliere

I'm not arguing that Camus isn't an ethical thinker.

This all depends what you understand a nihilist to be. I don't think all versions of nihilism preclude morality. It rejects inherent meaning and morality.

Hence what I wrote:

Camus rejected the idea of inherent moral values or an objective meaning to life, but he didn't deny the possibility of creating subjective meaning and ethical principles. — Tom Storm

Non-dualism represents the absence of a distinction that seperates reality into subject-object, appearance-thing in itself, becoming-being, nothingness-somethingness, necessity-contingency etc. In short, binary distinctions created by our langauges and thoughts dissappear. — Sirius

Do they 'disappear' or is it the hope if we frame things this way?

I suspect we could do an entire thread just on this paragraph.

My understanding of the Vedanta is that there is no distinction between the individual self (atman) and the absolute reality (brahman). In Western terms I guess this is idealism. Everything is consciousness and we are all aspects/expressions of a 'great mind' - for want of a better term.

My somewhat crude question is, why should we care? Is this frame really just for people who enjoy 'wanking about oneness' or does it have a tangible use in daily living?

Interesting. Would you mind saying a little more about A? D resonates with me but I am not well read on this subject.

Does A equate with Metzinger's 'self-model theory of subjectivity'?

Interesting. I understood that Camus rejected the idea of inherent moral values or an objective meaning to life, but he didn't deny the possibility of creating subjective meaning and ethical principles. Isn't Camus project crudely one of accepting that life is inherently meaningless and irrational and despite this 'absurdity', individuals can gain a sense of meaning and value through acts of defiance and rebellion against the absurd. Morality might even be one such act.

Barry Humphries' two memoirs - More Please and My Life As Me.

The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth (RIP) — Jamal

How did you get on with it? It's an extraordinary book, I thought, but hard going in all its self-reflexive cleverness. It's like someone on the spectrum, with a gift for wordplay, has just let rip.

Curiously when I read TC Boyles' Water Music (the only one of his I like... really like) I was reminded of Barth. This is a ball tearer of a book (as they used to say in Aussie journalism).

I generally see the OP as an opportunity to make things interesting. I’m particularly interested in the ineffable at the moment.

Would you draw a connection between the notion of these 'unanalyzable concepts' and ineffable truths relating to states of higher consciousness?

Re-reading that, I am unsure it makes entire sense, or adequately captures what I'm thinking. Cest la v'ie lol. — AmadeusD

It makes sense and I have no great answer given that my view is that language begins as sounds we use to try to 'give voice' to the prelinguistic and to codify feelings. Once we get any deeper than this we are in a land of baroque Derridean self-reflexivity. I think.

All words are reductive, but concepts don't need to be. I think Bob is trying to ascertain the word-resistant concepts we all accept prior to language.
Comfort and discomfort probably fit here. — AmadeusD

Yes, I was thinking along these lines. I'm not certain these pre-linguistic concepts are 'word resistant' as such - are they not in a sense foundational for later vocabulary?

But I would go further and suggest that "absolute certainty" is a nonsense formed by concatenating two otherwise innocent words. — Banno

Yes, I hinted at this myself earlier.

I don't count "elevated experience and understanding' as being demonstrably more than a feeling. In other words I don't think we can know what the implications of such experiences might be. The guru thing might be helpful for some people, personally I dislike the smell of it. — Janus

Got ya. Fair point.

I see the psychologist Jon Haidt's notion of elevation as having a lot of support, and fitting well with my experience: — wonderer1

Interesting. New one for me but I guess I've felt this intuitively.

The advice is not to talk about such things, but to enact them - whereof one cannot speak, thereof one can do. — Banno

Ha! Yes. Apart from this place, I spend almost no time talking or reading about such matters and am almost entirely a creature of doing.

Perhaps the problem is not, not being able to find "absolute certainty", but the framing of these issues in terms of "absolute certainty". Garbage in, garbage out. — Banno

Could be. Certainty seems to be a kind of pragmatic continuum. I am certain Bob Hawke was a Labor Prime Minister in the 1980's. I am not certain if he was a good prime minister. That kind of thing. But as soon as we get to questions of gods or metaphysical extravagances such as 'enlightenment' or mystical experiences, certainty seems absent.

I believe that it is an altered state of consciousness that seems generally to carries with it a sense of elevated experience and understanding — Janus

That's intriguing. Especially the 'elevated experince and understanding' part of it. What would be an example of this? Are you thinking enlightenment... gurus and such?

I'm saying that someone who would aspire to be an alcoholic would be being a fool (and thus shouldn't want it). But wouldn't be doing anything immoral by being an alcoholic. — fdrake

Got ya.

But the trouble: ethics so elevated now has the status of being written in stone on a mountain top. It is, in its essence, non contingent, absolute, indefeasible. — Astrophel

Yes, I see the problem. Transcendent ethics almost seem to be an ethics of the gaps to me.

For me 'absolute knowledge' refers to knowledge which is true independent of any and all contexts. I don't believe such knowledge is possible, so I am not confusing ordinary knowledge, which is knowledge relative to contexts, with that.

If you cannot be certain what the probability of something being true is, then you would be operating with a mere belief to support your conclusion that your original belief was justified. An infinite regress ensues.

Absolute certainty is possible within contexts. I can be absolutely certain of what I am doing and experiencing right now. If I look outside and I see that it is raining, I can be absolutely certain that it is raining, or if I see a caterpillar climbing a tree, I can be absolutely certain that there is a caterpillar climbing that tree while I am seeing it. But all of such certainty is within the context of the collective representation we call "the world", it has no application beyond that. — Janus

I've also generally held that there is no absolute certainty. And no realm where certainty or truth lives (in the Platonic sense). But I sometimes wonder what is served by adding the word 'absolute'. Isn't certainty finally just a human word, an artifact of language use and convention which can mean various things depending on context?

There are things we can call true because to deny them would result in catastrophe - eating arsenic, jumping from a plane without a parachute, etc. Which unfortunately for my antifoundationalist tendencies suggests that truth (certainly in some instances) is not merely a product of human construction but is grounded in an objective reality that exists independently of our beliefs and perceptions.

On the positive side, having a definition of knowledge or truth is of almost no use in my day-to-day life, so there is that. All I need to know about truth exists in convention, usage or domains of intersubjective agreement.

Cool. I was just wondering which behaviors associated with 'alcoholism' you were referring to. It is possible to use alcohol habitually and at harmful levels but for there to be virtually no impact on your life or that of your family. A lot depends on your level of wealth and how you behave when intoxicated.

A person who wants to be an alcoholic behaves in a manner that intentionally sustains and potentiates their dependence on alcohol. — fdrake

I'm not sure what your intention is in saying a person 'who wants to be an alcoholic'. Do you mean this literally, or do you take it as the implication of their behavior? Many problem drinkers don't want to be this way and others don't even know they are problem drinkers. But I get your boarder point.

Yes. Alcoholism. — fdrake

That's an interesting one. What do you mean by alcoholism? Alcohol use disorder includes a broad range of behaviours.

Wise and witty. Thanks.

It's not really a case of anything. Intuitively, like 90% of people, I feel as if there are non-physical properties to my experience (and the world). I have never seen an adequate explanation of how many things are physical. I have no reason to commit to either, but I have plenty of reason to lean against physicalism, as it is. Its mild. Possibly insignificant. — AmadeusD

Ok. That's reasonable.

Who saysit is open ended? It might seem that way to you now, but who knows?
— Tom Storm

referred to two different ideas,
— Tom Storm

Oh, no you don't. Hehe. — AmadeusD

Oops, you're right. I misread my own comments. Apologies. But can't I say that something might seem open ended now but who knows, in time it might not be?

For sure. But my pressure, such as it was, was trying to get you to commit to this as it would require you to basically claim ignorance on everything. — AmadeusD

I do claim ignorance of many subjects - origin of the universe, idealism, gods, consciousness - 'I don't know' seems reasonable to me. Pretty sure no one on this site knows either.

But this;

Who says it is open ended?
— Tom Storm

but who knows?
— Tom Storm

Oh my guy, come on now. — AmadeusD

-referred to two different ideas, so shoving them together seems unfair.

Back to my question, however.

Is your position not a case of a fallacy from ignorance? It may not be, but it seems so. Are you not essentially saying, 'I can't explain consciousness via physicalism, so it must be non-physical.'? Are you a dualist?

non-physical (apart from concepts).
— Tom Storm

Seems like a plain contradiction to me ;) — AmadeusD

Fair enough.

It is said to be the etymological origin of the word 'sin'
— Wayfarer

Ah! Interesting, thanks for that Wayfarer. It is a pleasure to learn something new. :smile: — javi2541997

What Wayfarer also points to is that Christianity (like most faiths) can be made to argue anything at all - it's in the interpretation you choose which may have nothing to do with what the religion may in fact stand for or have originally intended. Many people torture themselves here on earth out of fear of the judgements of god and a self-created violation of holy order.

You're essentially asserting a no true scotsman here — AmadeusD

How so? I'm saying it could be more 'a woo of the gaps' situation, or a fallacy from ignorance, perhaps?

While this is obviously nominally true, It cannot be the case that an open-ended "well something is likely prove it wrong, sometime, somewhere, for some reason" is a valid argument, or defeater. It is self-effacing speculation. — AmadeusD

Who says it is open ended? It might seem that way to you now, but who knows? Actually I am open to the postion of mysterianism which argues we may never know. Open ended ignorance also seems possible.

Or can we - demonstrate - that certain things are almost certain, despite further discovery clearly being able to debunk that position? — AmadeusD

Well, it is the case that science provides reliable but tentative models which are regularly the subject of revision, so there's a sense in which we never arrive at absolute truth.

Otherwise, I don't think anyone saying they have a clue is being honest with themselves so i largely refrain from even speculating. — AmadeusD

I'd can't say either way, although I am skeptical that there is such a phenomenon as the non-physical (apart from concepts). 'Seems' like it isn't enough for me.

They are non-physical properties of experience, even if there is a correlated brain-state. This does not demonstrate that the experience is physical. — AmadeusD

But are you satisfied that it demonstrates the experience is non-physical? How would we demonstrate that conscious experience reflects a non-physical reality? Isn't it an inference based on a lack of data or knowledge?

That is, unless you take the entirety of phenomenal experience as an evolutionarily-required post-hoc sense-making program — AmadeusD

Perhaps that is the case. I have no idea, I'm not an expert on the nature of consciousness.

Anyway - all that aside - what is your explanation of consciousness? Are you a dualist, or more of an embodied cognition guy?

Qualia are experienced as non-physical. — AmadeusD

Is anything we experince non-physical? Can we demonstrate there is anything outside of brain states, physical processes? Asking for a friend.

Ok, but this is really missing the point. Saying "different things can be good or bad for different," people doesn't even require perspectivism, let alone the claim that "good" reduces to simply "I prefer." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Your example of heroin didn't make your point for you. That's all I am saying. There are a range of interpretations or perspectives available to us about this (and so many human behaviours) that I hasten to apply terms like good or bad or harmful or harmless to them.

Other than that I’m not really sure I’m arguing for anything in particular, just skeptical about what seems to me to be a reification of ‘good’.

On the broader question of relativism, what I wrote was that I am 'open to it' which is not the same as saying that I am an absolute relativist and that 'I prefer' is the only frame. I agree that some things can be demonstrated to be harmful to health or harmful to human flourishing.

My problem is that this doesn't necessarily imply any oughts or ought nots (other than pragmatically) and I have not heard a convincing argument addressing why we should consider a reification like 'the good' to be more than a pragmatic notion tied to how we achieve our goals.

I've been dipping into some of David Wong's work - he defends moral relativism, but frankly I lack the time or patience to get into this in depth.

Not sure. I guess courage, honesty, etc, are always relative to some criteria of value and a perspective. I think we all tend to imagine that our own take on this is correct. I had a chat with an American friend of my father who said that in his view Trump is one of the most courageous, virtuous men in America right now. Now our take on this will obviously be that this is absurd. But he made his case rationally. I just think his reasoning was bogus.

I mean I find that I don't want to associate too closely with those who seem to be cowardly, deceitful, inconsiderate, dishonest, unreliable, duplicitous, devious, self-serving and so on. — Janus

Oh, I get that. But isn't it interesting that from the perspective of many deceitful, dishonest and devious people, they are courageous and enlightened. And even their 'allies' (for want of a better word) will see courage where you and I might see self-serving. That's what I mean.

[

This seems to be an important question to me. I don't think it helps us at all to think of ethics as transcendental. I don't think ethics is transcendental except in its connection to aesthetics. Beauty is transcendental, and virtue ethics seems to connect virtues with what is generally attractive to humans. Courage is attractive, cowardice is not. Kindness is attractive, cruelty is not. Consideration of others is attractive, disregard of others is not, And so on. — Janus

That's interesting. I haven't thought of virtue ethics this way, but it makes sense. I often find myself using aesthetics as prism for viewing much of my experince.

On the other hand, we could ask why these things are attractive, and we might give pragmatic reasons for their attractiveness. The virtues promote social harmony and the vices (those that consist in behavior towards others at least) may lead to social discord. — Janus

Yes, and that seems like a reasonable next step. Thanks.

Do you subscribe to virtue ethics yourself?

Much of this would seem to be perspectival, 'virtue' perhaps being somewhat rubbery.

:up:

I am a little bewildered at how often I've heard versions of this in response to submissions that God either doesn't exist, or if It does, is beyond good and bad, right and wrong, (and all other dualisms arising only to a species like us who have constructed difference.) — ENOAH

I guess it is a vested interest of many religious views to imagine that only the right god/spiritual belief can provide morality. Of course religious folk, just like secular folk, have no access to an objective morality. Morality is always an act of either interpreting or creating what we believe to be right.

This was the point of the reference to the drug addict. Not that "heroin is an objective bad," but rather that someone whose drug problem has ruined their life can claim, with good warrant, "it was not good for me to begin doing drugs." — Count Timothy von Icarus

And the person for whom the drug has made it possible to continue living by making life bearable has a differnt perspective. I don't think its so easy to avoid from the perspectival nature of most matters.

There are some very good studies on the phenomenology of truth, the basic aspects of experience from which the notion emerges. Good metaphysical explanations of truth then need to explain this, to explain this adequately, which is easier said than done. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I have no metaphysical explanation of truth. Truth seems to be an abstraction and clearly means quite different things in different contexts.

I personally believe that every sin, lie or bad action has consequences — javi2541997

Why? What demonstration of this do you have? This sounds more like an odd compulsion.

That is what it is about... Suffering from the anxiety of being aware that I had done terrible things. How can I heal this? — javi2541997

There's nothing to heal. You have chosen to view it like this.

Because without God everything is permitted' as Dostovesky would say... Well, I would say: Without a spirit, everything is permitted. — javi2541997

But as Zizek points out, believers in god commit unspeakable atrocities in its name. Dostoevsky (if he wrote this) is wrong. It should be: 'If there is a god, then anything is permitted.'

Of course Dostoevsky didn't really put it like this, Sartre did in a paraphrase of Dostoevsky. In Dostoevsky the line closest is in The Brothers Karamazov a character asks: “But what will become of men then?” I asked him, “without God and immortal life? All things are permitted then, they can do what they like?”

If I lied to my parents is due to trying to flirt with a woman. Nature surpassed my innocent spirit. — javi2541997

I often found it useful to lie to my parents. It made life easier. I have no regrets and now they are dead. Game over. :wink:

An atheist background would affect me in the sense of denying the existence of a spirit. — javi2541997

What is spirit?

Remember too that some atheists believe in reincarnation, ghosts and other supernatural stories. Atheism is just about the god belief.