Anyhow, I wouldn't say the "crisis of meaning" comes down to "too many choices," or "too much freedom," in the minds of critics at least, but rather something like: "all the myriad choices are bad, and I'd rather have fewer and good choices than an ever increasing menu of the inadequate," and "this is an ersatz freedom that simply amounts to freedom to become a bovine Last Man—when AI learns to mindlessly consume I'll have no purpose left," or something like that. To reduce it to anxiety over modernity is to ignore the strong positive thrust that often comes alongside it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

It’s my view that for the most part the “meaning crisis” is a case of too much freedom. For some, that freedom is crippling. It fits with my sense that we’re in a transition period where no single dominant worldview can readily function unless it’s imposed by authoritarian figures (MAGA?). But I might be wrong.

I’ve just rewatched Vervaeke’s opening lecture in his Meaning Crisis series. In his outlining of the problem, I don’t see anything he describes (increased cynicism, anger, futility, alienation, bullshit) that can’t be explained by capitalism and social media. Increasingly people live in bubbles of doubt, paranoia, and reactionary energy, so I can understand why some might struggle to find meaning, and why some academics believe there’s a meaning crisis that is more significant than our habitual questioning and despair. Within the current communication and technology frameworks, it’s easy for ambivalence to intensify into paranoia and extremism. The internet is a great place for doubts to be radicalised. The rest of us manage well enough with family, friends, work, hobbies, and planning for the future.

I’m not surprised to hear that Vervaeke comes from a fundamentalist background. Breaking away from that often leads people to try to build a system they can confidently believe in; one that preserves a sense of transcendence without the reductionism of fundamentalism.

I’m interested in your thoughts on this meaning crisis. Do you think that, if it exists, it’s because we’re in a transition period, still haunted by the old beliefs and struggling to adapt to new ways of understanding? What are projects like Vervaeke’s trying to accomplish? It feels to me like they’re trying to put the genie back in the bottle. But as someone who isn’t looking for his kind of answers, it’s perhaps easy for me to misread the material.

Most people are deeply immersed in meaning: love, relationships, work, friends, goals, children, hobbies, future planning, concern for the environment. We are filled with purpose, engagement and transformative experiences.
— Tom Storm

In which case, they will probably have no interest in this kind of discussion. — Wayfarer

And rightly so, I would have thought.

Do you think that full reflection is possible for a person who is inside a paradigm? — Astorre

Well, Vervaeke argues that there is a burgeoning obsession with people looking to find meaning outside of the paradigm, so the answer must be yes. But that doesn’t mean they are right. :wink:

The salient question is what makes an argument convincing to some and not to others? The answer may not be located in paradigms so much as shared beliefs and subcultures.

There’s so much dumb shit on here…..well, everywhere, actually. — Mww

And probably more dumb shit from me.

The traditional religions did address existential dilemmas, but then, they didn't arise in today's interconnected global world with all its diversities and the massive increase of scientific knowledge. The problem is, trying to retrieve or preserve the valuable insights that they arrived at. That's why I think a kind of interfaith approach is an essential part of the solution, something which Vervaeke does in his dialogues. — Wayfarer

Good. I would have to agree with much of this. But it sounds virtually impossible, these things can only happen gradually, not by design, I would think.

But overall, the crisis of modernity is a really difficult challenge to deal with. I don't feel as though I've dealt with it at all successfully, although at least I recognise that there is a challenge. — Wayfarer

There's two issues here; describing the problem and suggesting remedies.

I think you describe the problem well enough, but I find it hard to relate to as a concept, probably because I don’t perceive a lack of meaning in my own life, and I can’t speak for the West as a whole. To me, the West seems to be grappling more with pluralism than with a lack of meaning. No one knows who should be in charge anymore, and culture no longer rests on a set of shared values.

...since the Scientific Revolution, modern culture tends to see the world (or universe) in terms of a domain of objective forces which have no meaning or moral dimension, in which human life is kind of a fortuitous outcome of chance events. Prior to that, the Universe was imbued with symbolic and real meaning, in which the individual, no matter how lowly their station, was a participant. — Wayfarer

I know this is a prevailing narrative. I’m not certain that this is how the West actually sees reality. Figures for atheism around the world remain relatively low: Pew says 10% across 42 Western countries. Perhaps 24% self-describe as no religion. I don't think this suggests burgeoning nihilism.

Does Vervaeke's view romanticise pre-modern culture? Wasn’t it an era of imposed hierarchies, powerlessness, and widespread pain and brutality? Was it really qualitatively better? Was it not spiritually bereft in other equally detrimental ways?

Did the Scientific Revolution strip the world of meaning? Could it not be said that it freed humans from superstition and arbitrary authority, allowing us to explore reality, exercise agency, and create purpose through reason, creativity, and shared endeavour?

Does it follow that we've become decadent and hollow and lacking in connective spiritual values? Is there something inherently wrong with our time? I couldn’t tell you. Maybe that’s why I struggle to get on board.

I do think that our old problems are more urgent because the impact of technology is so powerful today. But this isn't a new problem, just a new power.

We live in a strangely fragmented lifeworld. On the one hand, abstract constructions of our own imagination--such as money, "mere" facts, and mathematical models--are treated by us as important objective facts. On the other hand, our understanding of the concrete realities of meaning and value in which our daily lives are actually embedded--love, significance, purpose, wonder--are treated as arbitrary and optional subjective beliefs. This is because, to us, only quantitative and instrumentally useful things are considered to be accessible to the domain of knowledge. Our lifeworld is designed to dis-integrate knowledge from belief, facts from meanings, immanence from transcendence, quality from quantity, and "mere" reality from the mystery of being. This book explores two questions: why should we, and how can we, reintegrate being, knowing, and believing? — Wayfarer

I don’t think this passage resonates. Most people are deeply immersed in meaning: love, relationships, work, friends, goals, children, hobbies, future planning, concern for the environment. We are filled with purpose, engagement and transformative experiences.

Can you give me two concrete examples of how dis-integrated knowledge is causing problems.

What are your takes on usefulness and uselessness? should one be pursued more than the other? I mean, lets consider for a moment that i am a god and i tell you that i can give you a choice to make the world as efficient in any and/or every area, wether it is artificial (man-made) or natural doesnt matter, you can make it work as efficiently as you want. What areas would you make more efficient? less? — Oppida

One issue for me is: what constitutes useful and useless, and how do we determine which is which? So isn’t our initial problem how we determine our values?

I consider myself a pragmatist. Usefulness is the primary standard by which I judge knowledge, truth, beliefs, and actions. I see the primary question that philosophy has to answer as not what is true, but what do I do next? What do I do now? — T Clark

I think I am in full agreement - in as much as I understand usefulness.

AI has had an obvious impact on efficiency in a lot of areas on life, and there are clearly ethical questions involved, but my main concern was (i think) and existentialist one. Say that, for instance, we humans are suddenly, magically implented with infinite knowledge; we are now omnipotent and omnisapient. What the hell would we be doing? there has to be a certain limit for our current brains to break trough, otherwise we'd get bored and simply go insane or at least thats what i -in a VERY summed up way- think of practicality, that it has to be present in some level. — Oppida

This seems a bit muddled to me. What would we do if we were omnipotent and omniscient? How would we know if we were not either? This strikes me as one of those inherently unanswerable questions.

AI is one thing; is the possibility that humans might have infinite knowledge, another? What exactly is infinite knowledge, and what would it look like for humans to have it? Do you mean having direct access to it through something like AI? There are likely inherent limits to human cognition—not so much in terms of acquiring knowledge or information, but in the conceptual frameworks we can grasp and the structures of epistemology we can operate within. Certain ways of understanding reality may appear profoundly alien at first, potentially requiring a generation or more to fully assimilate and integrate into our collective thinking.

So many of the debates here, especially those about the hard problem, actually revolve around this very point. It seems clear as crystal to me. — Wayfarer

Fair enough. What do you think is going on for those who don't see this?

the sense that the world is basically meaningless. — Wayfarer

Do you think this is a direct belief, or more of a practical outcome of other beliefs, a kind of implicit assumption?

But I don’t think it’s a matter of becoming ‘Muslims or quakers’ or members of a movement. Anything of value in any religion, is only because it points to some reality which is more than just a matter of belief or personal conviction. — Wayfarer

Yes, that’s kind of what I was trying to convey. But wouldn’t the meaning crisis, strictly speaking, be resolved if everyone became, say, a Muslim? I’m not claiming that this particular manifestation of faith is inherently valuable, but the reality is that the issues Vervaeke highlights: meaning, relevance realization, transcendent purpose, insight practices, enchantment, ritual, and awakening of attention, would all be addressed.

Hegel's ideas accrued a lot of fame overtime, but what exactly can we make of such a complex and multi-dimensional proposition? For me, to really get this, i would have to break it down word-for-word and ask a ton of questions, even for this very small section. — ProtagoranSocratist

I’ve tried to read philosophy many times over the years, but whether it’s Nietzsche or Plato, I’ve never been able to make much sense of it or find it absorbing. Not everyone is suited to philosophy, and I’d say I’m one of those people. I’m here mainly to get a sense of what I’ve missed and to see what others think by putting forward questions that are sometimes naive and occasionally insolent. My framework is simple-minded curiosity, leaning toward modern secularism and perhaps a kind of unflinching instrumentalism. I have no problem being a creature of my times. :wink:

I started out writing this OP as a kind of valedictory, as it is really one of the main themes I’ve been exploring through all these conversations. I’m nonplussed that it was received with such hostility when I think it is pretty well established theme in the history of ideas. I’m also getting tired of having the same arguments about the same things with the same people. It becomes a bit of a hamster wheel. — Wayfarer

I’d be disappointed if you left. As you know, I greatly value your contributions. My pushback wasn’t meant to be hostile, and I apologise if that’s how it came across.

One interesting thing about this site is that we rarely see anyone change their mind about fundamental questions of meaning. It happens, but it’s rare. I wonder if that tells us something about the nature of human sense-making?

While I haven’t read them, I’ve watched quite a bit of Vervaeke and McGilchrist. I still hold some skepticism about the nature of the problem they describe, though their proposed solutions may well be useful. We could probably “save the world” and restore a shared sense of purpose if everyone became Muslims, Sikhs, or Quakers; the method matters less than achieving widespread adherence.

Ive had this question lately, why does happiness feel "good"? — Oppida

Hmm. Glad to see “good” in quotes. Some people feel happy doing bad things to others; why does that feel “good”? Or is it simply that when people have their needs met (whatever those needs are), there’s a satisfying emotional payoff?

I’m not usually a hell in a handbasket type, but I guess I’m not sure we have the wherewithal to do this. In a sense I guess we need the kind of gumption that comes with commitment to a coherent cultural vision which may no longer be available to us. I think we’re perfectly capable of driving this bus off the cliff. — T Clark

Fair points and and this is probably right.

Perhaps we will become victims of the too much meaning crisis...

it’s about the underlying ontology of modernity — the way the scientific worldview, as inherited from Galileo and Descartes, implicitly defines reality as value-free and mindless. Once meaning is exiled from the fabric of being, everything else — from consumerism to the instrumentalisation of knowledge — follows naturally. — Wayfarer

This is the nub of it.

I’m not convinced that consumerism or the instrumentalisation of knowledge wouldn’t still be dominant even if the West had remained committed to Christianity.

So the crisis isn’t a call to religion, but a call to re-examine the metaphysical assumptions we’ve inherited. Science remains indispensable, but it cannot by itself tell us what anything means. One can retain plenty of respect for science while recognising that fact, which is built into the very foundations of the method. — Wayfarer

I’m still not sure that the problem is correctly defined, but perhaps a proposed solution would help clarify my understanding. What would be an example of a solution in this context?

I hear you. I think one of the glitches in all this is that once a problem is identified and agreed upon, people bring their worldviews to it as solutions. Christians appeal to the Gospels for guidance. Marxists call for a worker’s revolution. Postmodernists favor anti-foundationalist approaches. I think what Vervaeke is trying to do is find the Esperanto of philosophy: a shared worldview that we can all participate in to address our problems collectively.

But the key point is, to overcome or transcend that sense of the Universe being fundamentally meaningless and life as a kind of fluke set of circumstances - even knowing what we know about the Cosmos, which is vastly more, and vastly different, to what our forbears could have known. — Wayfarer

I’m not convinced that the idea that the world is meaningless is really the problem we face. One can hardly accuse MAGA of this, or China. Surely it is the wrong kind of meaning that ends up causing harm. The hardwired notion that God gave us dominion over the Earth and its animals seems to have something to do with our environmental issues.

Look, we’ve had about 150 years of genuine secularism in the West (and the journey began before that), but to imagine that thousands of years of theism and religious values are not also responsible for our presuppositions and our current predicament seems distorted.

it seems to me, at least, that for very long periods of time, in pre-history at least, that almost nothing happened that is remotely comparable to the crises facing current culture. — Wayfarer

Isn’t this simply a factor of population growth and the successes and failures of technology and capitalism? We were always flawed; it’s just that our present technology and population size makes those flaws more dangerous.

It is about the way in which our collective culture has engendered that sense of meaningless, alienation and anomie, which I think is unarguably a characteristic of globalised Western culture. — Wayfarer

Is there a significant non-Western culture that doesn’t have any of the problems we face, so we can see how it is done?

The task now, as John Vervaeke spells it out in his Awakening from the Meaning Crisis is to rediscover a living integration of science, meaning, and wisdom—to awaken from or see through the divisions that underlie the meaning crisis. — Wayfarer

Or do we need to use the freedoms of Western culture to find better ways of living, grounded in more pragmatic approaches to survival?

I’d be interested in hearing what some specific solutions might be and how they could help. Clearly, belief in God isn’t an obvious solution, given that so much of capitalism and colonisation stemmed from Christian culture.

The world is converging on a series of overlapping crises, political, economic, existential and environmental. If you can't see that, then I won't try and persuade you otherwise. — Wayfarer

When has the world not appeared to be in some kind of crisis? That's the point, surely. You are talking about a Meaning Crisis and I've asked a few questions about this, that's all.

Hi - haven't see you around for a bit.

You often seem to come back to this. And a very popular idea right now. Not to say this is wrong but I have some inchoate reactions. By the way, Australian academic John Carroll was arguing similarly in his engaging polemic, Humanism: The Wreck of Western Culture back in 1993.

I am unconvinced that there is a “meaning crisis.” Most eras when viewed from a certain perspective are in crisis. Many of the supposed symptoms of TMC, I believe, reflect a complex transition to greater freedom: we are no longer constrained by monocultural expectations around race, work, gender, or faith, and we now face a multiplicity of options, which for many translates into uncertainty.

Personally, I would rather be alive now than in almost any other period in history. Can we point to a time before modernity when the worldview was coherent and therefore life was better for most human beings? Clearly, in many places and subcultures there is a push to turn back the clock and re-enchant the world, attempting to restore older certainties. This, I would argue, is where the instincts of MAGA and thinkers like Vervaeke converge. Different in approach and scale of ambition, both seem driven by a fear of contemporary freedoms and multiple meanings.

Another way of describing uncertainty is to call it choice.

Now, if we’re talking about environmental destruction and many of the ills of modernity, how much of this can be more accurately attributed to the form of capitalism and corporate control under which we live? And can it be demonstrated that, if God hadn’t “died,” capitalism would have been kind and beneficial to all?

I guess I’m wondering about a couple of things. First, there’s a problem of attribution: that whatever is wrong with the modern era is blamed on a lack of shared meaning or shared metaphysical agreement (for many this just means god). Second, there’s the assumption that before we “took the wrong fork in the road,” everything was fine and that if only we hadn’t taken it, we would never have ended up in this mess.

Thoughts?

Regarding the above, please show me where I'm mis-reading you. — ucarr

You've taken my simple point and jazzed it up and perhaps provided motivations I don't hold.

a) self-referential higher orders entertains a belief that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions; b) constraints with outcomes not strictly predictable or inevitable are to be preferred to hard determinism; c) higher orders of things should be shunned in favor of minimalism whenever logically possible; d) given an apparent lack of sufficient knowledge and expertise, overthinking should be constrained. — ucarr

I’d put it this way: I’m not concerned with discovering some final or objective truth about reality. The idea that such a truth lies hidden, waiting to be uncovered, depends on a representational view of knowledge I find unconvincing. My position isn’t based on logic or simplicity, but on the sense that our ways of thinking and speaking are practical tools for getting by, not exact reflections of the world. Speculative metaphysics adds nothing to that. I simply go on treating the world and my experiences as real, because that’s the only way any of us can make sense of it and act within it.

:up: :up:

This is the Flying Spaghetti Monster (fsb) argument, it goes;
Because there are no actual fsb’s out there I would need to see evidence of their existence before I take them seriously.
If there is a God, you need to provide evidence, or you could be claiming any of an infinite number of fanciful claims, like the fsb.

Where it falls down is it confines belief to the contents of human imagination. But God is implicitly defined as something outside the confines of human imagination. So it doesn’t fit into the category we are being confined to. The argument fails to address the issue in question, by insisting that God must fit into the category of human imagination and that that confined imagined entity must be demonstrated to exist to be taken seriously. — Punshhh

That's a neat summary of how David Bentley Hart might put it. I disagree with this, I’m not making the argument you think I am.

I'm talking about whether I know something or not and would say this applies to non-supernatural claims as well, so we can set aside that dangerous spaghetti monster comparison.

My point is about belief versus knowledge. For a secular example: while I believe that Oswald actually shot JFK, I don’t know that he did.

But I confess I also don’t know whether or not Marduk defeated the chaos dragon Tiamat, as described in the Enuma Elish.
You are familiar with these arguments presumably? This is a strawman. — Punshhh

I studied comparative religion for a time, but my point is salient: the world is full of claims about which we have inadequate or no knowledge. All we can do is believe or not to believe: whether it's the existence of Bigfoot or Muhammad splitting the moon in two. :wink:

I’m toward the deistic agnosticism end of the spectrum. — Punshhh

That's interesting. Why deism?

These days (to the chagrin of some traditionalists) the category is usually described as agnostic atheist. I don’t believe in God (that’s the belief part). Do I know there’s no God? Of course not (knowledge). But I confess I also don’t know whether or not Marduk defeated the chaos dragon Tiamat, as described in the Enuma Elish.

So, you're not asserting God or something definite, but something indefinite, as a metaphysical justification? — Astorre

I think the placehodler 'God' does many different conceptual jobs for people depending on their orientation and values. It’s such a slippery notion it’s virtually unintelligible. Which is why I tend to prefer the apophatic approach. Negative theology. Say nothing. :wink:

My current position is that people don’t have access to a capital T Truth or to reality in itself (a God surrogate). I think some of our beliefs work subject to certain conditions and some don't. I suppose I'm a simple minded pragmatist, the justification for a belief lies in its practical consequences, in how well it helps us navigate experience, solve problems, and maintain community coherence. Neither atheism nor god is necessary for this.

But beyond this, almost no one here has any real expertise in theoretical physics or philosophy to answer the big questions. Hubris seems to be the lubricant of choice.

There are any number of middle-aged, male monomaniacs in philosophy circles with no real expertise, but an unshakable belief that they’re uncovering reality and answering questions no one else can. Misunderstood geniuses. This must be a common type of human being, which is how George Eliot so magnificently satirised that style of person in her character Mr Casaubon in Middlemarch.

Ask questions of whom?
And yes, they are insolent: because being of lower status, one isn't supposed to ask questions, at all. — baker

No.

1) Lower-status people = unemployed, homeless, First Nations, gig workers — ask tough questions of their bosses, or of police, or other authorities, local government workers, welfare workers, etc.

Insolent = rude — e.g., “Hey, you fuckin' pig, why don’t you do some real work instead of bothering us? You're a fuckin' dog!” (Food delivery guy on a bicycle to policeman.)

There you go: they harass. — baker

I’m not sure why you write “there you go" as if you believe that you are indirectly 'proving soemthing. Say what you mean.

Where's the atheistic narrative detailing the possibility of human consciousness knowing empirically first hand true randomness. Perception and analysis assume a very highly ordered ecology wherein the question of the possibility of instantiating true randomness is unanswered.

Atheism, to preclude cosmic consciousness, must embrace cosmic randomness. Can it uncouple itself from order? How could it do so and maintain its purpose to learn the truth? — ucarr

Perhaps I misunderstand you, I'm interested in your idea of atheism; does it need tweaking? Apologies if I have you wrong. Some of what you write indicates you are only talking about rationalist forms of atheism.

I am an atheist. All atheism means is to have no belief in gods. Theism simply hasn't captured my imagination. There’s no need for alternative cosmologies, I’m not seeking to replace one source of meaning with another. I'm not interested in trying to adapt Thomistic rationalism to 'demonstrate' a state of godlessness. More of that later.

There are atheists who believe in the supernatural; ghosts, clairvoyance, etc. Some may be idealists. Some others (the ones best known because they’re the loudest) might be the Dawkins-style scientistic thinkers. But the only thing they have in common is the lack of belief in gods.

I’ve often said that theism is a bit like a sexual preference, for some it's possibly innate and separate from reasoning. We can’t help what we’re attracted to. And of course, culture and upbringing add a strong incentive to the beliefs we chose. We then use reasoning as a post hoc justification to try to demonstrate the superiority of our “lifestyle choice.”

I don't think humans have access to reality as it is in itself, the best we do is generate provisional narratives that, to a greater or lesser extent, help us to make interventions in the world. These stories tend to be subject to revision and never arrive at absolute truth. I also hold that my experience of the world does not have need for most metanarratives; I am a fan of uncertainty. I am also a fan of minimalism and think that people overcook things and want certainty and dominion where knowledge is absent and where they have no expertise.

Does the atheist, on principle, always shun the leap of faith? (If not, then rationalist atheism has no discrete separation from theism.) — ucarr

Isn’t this a commonly offered conclusion about atheism (often expressed by the better American fundamentalists)?

Trust is one of those words with multiple meanings shaped by different contexts. Trusting a plane to fly safely is different from trusting a relative with your life savings, which in turn differs from trusting the promise of a prisoner sharing your cell. In the end, we might reduce the concept to something like predictability and confidence based upon a set of odds.

Good point and maybe my quesion was the problem. I guess I was asking it they believe that morality has a transcendent source.

Again, a well written thoughtful account.

When I harm another, I don’t merely break a social convention; I diminish the field of meaning that connects us. The “realness” of ethics lies in that experiential invariance: wherever sentient beings coexist, the possibilities of care and harm appear as objectively distinct modalities of relation. — Truth Seeker

I see the attraction of this, but aren't there some presuppositions at work?

Some hypotheticals.

If you harm someone, the field of meaning that connects us may also be affected and enlarged, though perhaps not in the way you are advocating. Why do you privilege one and not the other? What makes it less intrinsically useful or 'better' to be loved as opposed to feared?

Not to mention that giving people what they want or crave may be harmful, even if the granting of it is experienced as positive. In this relational approach, how do we determine when our behaviour towards others is good, since the reaction, even an enhanced relationship with the other, may not provide the correct answer?

It may also frequently be the case that doing good for others, caring for them (as in parenting and making choices for children or aging parents), is experienced as mistrust or as a violation of personal autonomy. So, caring does not necessarily lead to a harmonious connection or a positive interactions and may be viewed as 'evil' by the person being cared for.

We discover it the way we discover gravity - by noticing what happens when we ignore it. — Truth Seeker

So I remain skeptical that we discover it this way since gravity is predictable and behaviour is not.

Small steps, not grand schemes — Banno

Yes, I think that’s the way ahead in so many avenues. We still have to live and get on, even in imperfect circumstances.

I’m acutely weary of theory and theorists - seems to me it’s a great place to hide. But at some point useful ideas do become elongated strategic programs and it’s easy to get caught up.

Fair enough. Thanks for the chat, I appreciate your rigorous approach.

That’s not my understanding of pragmatism. Pragmatism doesn’t imply that moral concern must stop at the boundaries of one’s immediate community; it grounds moral solidarity in the capacity to extend sympathy and imagination beyond our familiar circles. In fact, some pragmatists like Rorty (a neopragmatist and an eccentric thinker, sure) would say that the task is to steadily expand our notion of solidarity.

The problem I have here is that no one actually believes such a thing. No one says, "Oh they are butchering babies and raping women over in Xylonia, but that's not a problem at all because harm isn't really evil." — Leontiskos

Sure, but people do use emotive language to describe atrocities, that’s true. And it is not intrinsic to pragmatism to describe actions like this as 'not a problem at all'. Rather, we can say about such acts that people are expressing a deep-seated human reaction to horror and a commitment to moral solidarity. Such acts are precisely what we do not want to see in the kind of society we hope to inhabit. The rubric 'evil' need not be employed.

A democratic, lowest-common denominator approach does not favor human rights, especially insofar as human rights would be extended to minorities. — Leontiskos

Interesting. Certainly seems an accurate refection of populism.

The problem with these sorts of arguments is that they amount to the following: <If we cannot know the truth with certainty, then we should try to know the truth in a less certain way. Therefore we don't need the concept of truth at all>. The "therefore" is non sequitur. Just because one wants to approximate X rather than perfectly identify X, it in no way follows that one can do away with the notion of X altogether. Approximating X requires a notion of X.

This so-called "pragmatic approach to morality" is just a variant of that form of reasoning. In this case the point can be seen by recognizing that forms of negative utilitarianism (such as the reduction of harm) are no less committed to moral truths than any other theory. One who wishes to reduce harm is committed to the truth that harm is morally evil, and this is true regardless of what they end up meaning by 'harm'. — Leontiskos

Yes, I think this reasoning has some merit, although I find terms like 'morally evil' too close to a classical religious language I don’t use, I’d probably prefer cruelty or unjustifiable harm. I guess my response your point would be that in my understanding when a pragmatist tries to reduce harm, they're not appealing to an objective fact that harm is 'evil', they're expressing a shared sense that cruelty and suffering are things society wants to avoid. So moral claims, for a pragmatist, come from our communal values and practices, not from some deeper metaphysical truth.

Which is where yoru criticism below might come in; does this lead to a banal morality? It's a fair criticism, but I'm not sure the inference is accurate.

What is at stake in (classically) liberal thinking is not a special "pragmatism" or an abandonment of moral realism, but rather a democratic, lowest-common denominator approach to morality and politics. The principle is not that moral truth is abandoned, but rather that only the moral truths that the vast majority of the population agrees with are to be enshrined publicly. — Leontiskos

Interesting. What is the substantive difference between a lowest-common denominator approach to morality and a legitimate approach; can you provide an example to give me a better notion of what you have in mind? Would the 10 commandments be an example of lowest common denominator approach (an accessible framework for the masses)?

I and my quasi-Marxian critical theory buddies will question the diagnosis, saying that depression is a rational response to conditions of alienation and atomisation, made to seem normal by ideologies like the work ethic, the performance society, and so on---and then link all that back to social and economic relations. — Jamal

I’d probably agree with this too. Of course, given that we can’t change society short of a revolution (and then there’s the question of what to do the morning after, as Žižek might ask), you're right that we probably can’t do much more than offer people pills and talk therapy: the pragmatic responses (but not solutions) to being stuck in a traumatic world we can’t alter. I guess it's a harm reduction approach. Perhaps theism is just the other side of the pills and talk therapy coin.

If only Peterson really strove to re-enchant the world. — Pierre-Normand

Who knows what he's been trying to do? I think he might be a misunderstood atheist with a poor capcity to explain himself.

While Rorty's idea of replacing ideals of truth and objectivity with ideals of solidarity didn't lack merit — Pierre-Normand

I quite like it.

(Rorty had a good rejoinder against charges of relativism, though.) — Pierre-Normand

Indeed and it's easy to get him wrong, I suspect. As I understand him, Rorty argued that he was never sayign that “anything goes.” He accepts that we lack absolute, universal foundations, but he insisted we can still distinguish better from worse beliefs within our communities and conversations.

My position right now is maybe something like a negatively teleological virtue ethics. I'm here to criticize ideas that seek to frustrate the telos of human flourishing, as I believe Bob's do, even if I don't have my own settled conception of what that human flourishing is. — Jamal

This would seem to be a tricky place to occupy, and I sympathise.

And settling on a conception of human flourishing is something I suspect is impossible in what I regard as a broken and chaotic human world. — Jamal

:fire:

And one might argue that they matter all the more in broken and chaotic circumstances. How else do we wrest some control or peace?

MacIntyre is right that modernity has produced people who, when they talk about ethics, don't know what they're talking about---and since I don't exclude myself from that, I have to be careful---and Adorno is right that while we might be able to see the sources of our norms and values, we cannot in our present circumstances find rational justification for them, such is the lack of access to a coherent socially embedded tradition. — Jamal

Interesting. Does anyone know how to talk about ethics? Might not a redeemable form of post-modernism be the answer? I often think we are in a transition period. In our thinking, we seem done with modernity. There are powerful nostalgia projects everywhere, seeking to get us back to a golden era before things went astray. It’s why we now have folk as diverse as Jordan Peterson and John Vervaeke flogging retro solutions to our problems, generally talking about the need to re-enchant the world. And every second new philosopher seems to be a Thomist.

The need to give voice to suffering is the condition of all truth. — Jamal

I watched an Australian interview with Nick Cave yesterday; he said that to be human is to suffer. Not an original take, sure, but one can't disagree (or help qualifying with "some suffer much more than others". Antinatalism lacks ambition. The most obvious antidote to this would be to blow up the world, destroy all life, and prevent all future suffering. Why is this not postulated as a heroic solution to all our problems?

In lieu of this, might it not be that we need a pragmatic approach to morality, given we are unable to get to truth or even agree upon axioms? Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good? I would take it as a given that anything human is going to be limited, imperfect, tentative, regardless of the era. Could we not build an ethical system acknowledging this, and put aside notions of perfection and flawless reasoning, focusing instead on what works to reduce harm? Just don't ask me how. :wink:

Anyhow, if seeing gender dysphoria as a pathology amounts to "denying someone's identity," wouldn't this mean that sex actually is deeply essential to identity in precisely the way essentialist claim? I suppose this would go along with the sentiment that even if a treatment for gender dysphoria existed it would not be desirable, or that it should be removed from the DSM. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not a gender theorist. Here’s my formulation (and I’ll let you have the last word, since this isn’t a productive conversation, much as I’ve enjoyed it). Trans people exist and seem to have existed across cultures and throughout history. Empirical evidence consistently shows that their mental health deteriorates when they are forced to live contrary to their gender identity. And they are more likely to thrive if they are able to transition. The most ethical and pragmatic response, then, is to accept people as they identify. In most cases doing so doesn't undermine society and it greatly improves individual wellbeing and social inclusion.

You don't think parents who see gender dysphoria as a mental illness as being capable of truly or fully loving their children? Would this apply to something like autism too? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, many of them do. Maybe I could tweak my wording.

But the proposition was that a stranger like Bob Ross would deny the identity of people he’s never met on the basis that they have a 'perversion' he doesn't understand. That's not parenting and I don’t think that counts as loving.

Note also that abuse is frequently perpetrated by people who say things like, “I’m doing this because I love you.” Having worked in the area of domestic violence I've heard this many times.

So I see Compassionism not as an ungrounded belief but as the minimal metaphysical condition for an intelligible world: if meaning is possible, some form of care must already be operative. The Ouroboros image you mention captures this beautifully - yes, suffering and healing seem entwined, but the loop only closes through response, not indifference. Without compassion, the circle breaks into chaos. — Truth Seeker

Thanks for your thoughtful response. Food for thought. I’ve generally held that my response to life is more of an aesthetic, emotivist one. I avoid systems and diligent rationality. The problem with this is that you mostly remove yourself from the discourse. What I have is how I feel about things; intuition and hardly a robust basis with which to convince others.

Despite this I find myself arguing with other members who seem to think they have an objective basis for their beliefs. Do you see yourself as a moral realist of a sort?

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
You must make your choice.
Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. — Colo Millz

My response to Lewis was always that he missed the 4th option: myth.

But I appreciate your response. Maybe we can talk about other things some time.

Really? This seems to me one of hte most potent and obvious oddities of humanity. There are plenty of people whos lifestyles I think are damaging (to themselves/those around them or society at large) and I think it s perverse that they defend their life style (funnily enough, plenty of gender theory types run along these lines - I don't suggest that being interested in gender causes one to be immoral, but I do think immoral people tend to be drawn to the more liberal communities abouts). That says absolutely nothing, whatsoever, about how i feel about them as a human. — AmadeusD

I can kind of see your point. But I guess I would hold that if someone is gay, this is a more significant part of their identity, and of a quite differnt nature, than the drug consumption of someone who uses. And I would consider neither of them a perversion. I don't think I would compare the two things. Denying someone’s drug use doesn’t seem to me to be the same thing as denying their homosexuality. Is homosexuality damaging to themselves or society at large? I wouldn't have thought so. Drug use? Not always, but often.

Interesting response, thanks. But I'm still not sure why Christianity was convincing to you.

To attempt a more sophisticated answer to your original question about "Christian context", I think where I live (in the US) right now what we seem to be witnessing is the elimination of classical liberalism as a viable politics any more, and so what we are left with is the battleground between the two other ideologies, conservatism and leftism. Biden, for example, governed from the left. — Colo Millz

I'm not sure “left” and “right” have much meaning these days in politics. Isn’t what we’re living in really corporatism, with huge companies and their owners siphoning up the wealth of the land? I thought Biden was a centrist. Trump isn’t a conservative; he may be an authoritarian, right-wing statist, but he doesn’t seem interested in conserving many traditions. Australia, where I am, is still a liberal and generally progressive country, although we currently have a Labor government that’s somewhat to the right. I don’t think most voters have much understanding or interest in liberalism or of left–right politics; it’s seems to be driven by emotion and how they belvie a party or candidate will affect them financially.

Wow, you cover a lot of eclectic views there.

The trans thing I am much less clear about - I am not particularly a fan of trans women playing rugby with the girls, for example, I don't think that's fair. — Colo Millz

I don’t support all trans activist demands. But I think the issues of sports, prisons, and toilets are relatively minor and are matters we can negotiate and develop procedural responses to.

I have some fairly strong conservative leanings. For me the story of the Bible and the kerygma of the "Christ event" is one of the most extraordinary, unexpected, exciting things to ever exist in history. — Colo Millz

Why do you choose to believe this story over Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism's extraordinary stories?