What do you think about the label demergent deism?

I feel it could be even worthless and a lost of time to me — javi2541997

Fair enough.

Okay, I agree, personal interest plays a big role.

But what do you do when someone confronts you with Christianity? At a party during small talk, or confronted by friends and family?

But probably you prefer the details of theory... — unenlightened

I wanted to create a position that could be respected in the philosophy of religion.

Meh, I even do not want to ask. This argument looks like empty for me because I am not religious. Probably this statement sounds quite disrespectful. — javi2541997

You may have already asked in the past in one form or another and found every answer lacking. But if you had never dealt with Christianity before? Given the spread alone, one might probably have to ask.

all that exists is one (inherently spaceless and timeless) consciousness — Paul Michael

I think one should take a closer look at Kastrup's arguments leading to this thesis. It is a bold thesis, and he alone bears the burden of proof.

But what could these arguments be? Kant starts with the transcendental aesthetics, which are supposed to show that space and time are rooted in the subject. Schopenhauer takes this argument and comes to the conclusion of a single eternal subject. Both the transcendental aesthetics and Schopenhauer conclusion are highly problematic and controversial.

George Berkeley argues in such a way as to bring Locke's primary qualities on the same ontological plane with the secondary ones. But even this is questionable.

Or does Kastrup have an entirely new approach?

He uses the analogy of dissociative identity disorder (DID) from psychology to express how the one consciousness localizes (dissociates) itself into seemingly many subjects. — Paul Michael

Has DID really found wide acceptance among experts? If not, his analogy is shaky in its explanatory power.

I generally ask, "What difference does it make?" — Tom Storm

That's also a good question. But I would put it in third place.

In the end, there is a lot of information and detail that actually contributes nothing to knowledge or to a life lived, it's just clever (or not) twaddle.

A key problem with these questions is that they can't be appleid the same by each person, so the results are not just highly variable but inconsistent. — Tom Storm

The questions I mention are probably more for one's own intellectual conscience and intellectual probity.

They help to be an educated person, even if it means not knowing much (Socratic), especially when asked in naiveté.

If there is no real death and no hell, then there would be nothing to care about.

If one believes in objective morality, that is, moral realism, then it is not entirely unlikely that bad and evil actions will have consequences in some "afterlife."

On the other hand, life is painful and death perhaps the absolute end, so it makes one wonder why one has never been told in one's life what it was all about.

Even the cynic and nihilist can never completely free himself from the concern of an afterlife and death as extinction.

@javi2541997
@kudos

I completely agree with what you are saying.

My point was probably that one also protects oneself emotionally against simplistic abstract monopolizing statements.

Examples:

Christian: Jesus is resurrected and is our only way to salvation. Faith saves.

Kantian: Spatiotemporal structures do not exist per se and whoever lies commits a serious moral offense.

Antinatalist: Life is not worth living, the bad outweighs the good and whoever brings a child into the world commits a crime. Feelings of pleasure are only the absence of feelings of displeasure.

The radical skeptic: You can never be sure if there is an outside world, there might be no reason whatsoever for our having the perceptual experiences we have, truths are always relative, no knowledge can be expressed with language.One can doubt the validity of the contradiction principle.

The misanthrope: All people are bad. Trees have more value than people. Animals are the better people. Mankind belongs to be exterminated.

The Radical Woke: It is shameful to be a white male, one should have deepest compassion for anybody who is not a white male, even if there is no direct suffering.

The climate alarmist: If the whole world doesn't change something radically now, the earth will very soon no longer be habitable.

And so on and so forth.

I think with the two questions I mention, you can quickly contextualize all of these positions and strongly weaken or "debunk" them and not be emotionally affected by them.

I know enough to know that your view is stupid. — Bartricks

I have outlined my actual view here:

The derivation of a morally binding ought?

Discussions like ours have been going on forever. I have tried to argue from a naturalistic approach:

The following quotes on the late medieval and early modern Jesuit theologian and philosopher Francisco Suárez (1548—1617) are instructive:

"One position is extreme naturalism or intellectualism, which Suárez attributes to Gregory of Rimini and several others (DL 2.6.3). On this view, no legislative act on God’s part is needed. Rather, natural law simply indicates what should be done or not done on the basis of what is intrinsically good or bad. Loss of life, for example, is bad: murdering King Duncan deprives him of life, and so Macbeth ought not to stab Duncan. On the extreme naturalism espoused by Gregory, Macbeth’s duty not to murder Duncan would obtain even if God had not given the Ten Commandments and even if God had not existed at all.

On the other side is an extreme voluntarism that says that natural law consists entirely in a command or prohibition coming from God’s will, a view that Suárez attributes to William of Ockham (DL 2.6.4). On this view, what one ought or ought not to do is wholly determined by God’s legislative acts and, furthermore, God’s legislative acts are unconstrained. That is, there is no act that is intrinsically bad such that God is compelled to prohibit it or even prevented from commanding it and no act that is intrinsically good such that God is compelled to command it. Had God commanded us to murder and steal, then doing so would have been obligatory and good.

Characteristically, Suárez charts a middle course. He first agrees with the extreme voluntarists that natural law is genuinely preceptive law, and argues that for a law to be genuine law and not just law in name it must be grounded in the legislative act of a superior (DL 2.6.5-10). The obligatory force of natural law comes from God’s will. Contra Gregory of Rimini, that obligation would not be present had God not legislated or not existed at all.

But then comes the crucial qualification that ends Suárez’s agreement with extreme voluntarism: “Second, I say that this will of God—that is, this prohibition or precept—is not the whole reason for the goodness and badness that is found in observing or transgressing the natural law, but that the natural law presupposes in the acts themselves a certain necessary fineness or wickedness and adjoins to these a special obligation of divine law” (DL 2.6.11). The extreme voluntarist thinks that God is free to command as he wishes, unconstrained by the natures of things. Suárez, on the other hand, thinks that God’s commands and prohibitions are constrained by natural goodness and badness. As befits a perfect being, God prohibits some actions precisely because they are evil. Suárez thinks it absurd to suggest that there are no actions such that they are too evil for God to command or even just to permit. To this extent, then, Suárez agrees with the naturalist; the obligations of natural law are rooted in natural goodness and badness." https://iep.utm.edu/suarez/#SH3i

2. Imperatives of reason have a single source: Reason — Bartricks

I dispute this premise because it seems to me to be ontologically ambiguous.

Here, the mundane reason of everyone can be meant (every human being is endowed with the faculty to reason) or already the divine reason (there is in principle only one reason, which does not belong to any human being). The former you consider absurd, because otherwise Hitler would have done nothing wrong. If the latter, you already presuppose what you want to prove.

But the former does not imply that Hitler did nothing wrong. It does not follow from it. Indeed, he acted against his moral reason, the principle of which is: to treat every human being at least also as an end in itself.

One can distinguish between purposive calculative reason and moral reason. Hitler only acted right with regard to his (immoral) purpose.

A moral imperative of reason must imply a pressure to act, it must be normative. How do you derive normativity?

Your view is stupid. — Bartricks

You still don't know my whole view. So you can't call it stupid. You still have a lot to learn about how to discuss philosophically in a dialogue.

Why are you talking about a faculty of reason? — Bartricks

Reason is, after all, a faculty.

Now, your view entails that Hitler did nothing wrong. — Bartricks

How so? You seem to be hypersensitive when asked specific questions to understand your moral philosophy. So far, I have not made my moral philosophy explicit in the least. Therefore, you cannot draw any conclusions about what I must think about Hitler's actions. You are twisting the discussion here.

So, to be clear, you are claiming the we, as individuals, are the source of the imperatives of reason? So 'Reason' is just another word for Bartricks, at least when I am using the term? — Bartricks

You definitely have a faculty of reason, even if sometimes, for example in sleep, you do not use it so that it lies dormant in potentiality, so to speak.

So, if I instruct myself to be cruel, then there is an imperative of reason enjoining me to be cruel? — Bartricks

I would not draw this conclusion and it does not necessarily follow from what I said before.

An imperative of reason must imply a pressure to act, it must be normative. How do you derive normativity? Does reason always imply morality in your theory?

Okay, now I understand your reasoning.

all imperatives of Reason have a single source — Bartricks

I would deny that. There is a multitude and plurality of sources. These are namely the many individual rational faculties of humans.

but first let's agree that Reason is a mind — Bartricks

Please state your full definition of reason and mind.

One problem with materialism is contained in Lenin's statement "that, with every great scientific discovery, the definition of materialism changes radically." (Zizek, Slavoj. Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism)

Francisco Suárez (1548—1617) would argue "that for a law to be genuine law and not just law in name it must be grounded in the legislative act of a superior[.]"

Thus, without Divine Command, there might be no true moral imperatives.

Suárez takes a middle path: "The extreme voluntarist thinks that God is free to command as he wishes, unconstrained by the natures of things. Suárez, on the other hand, thinks that God’s commands and prohibitions are constrained by natural goodness and badness. As befits a perfect being, God prohibits some actions precisely because they are evil. Suárez thinks it absurd to suggest that there are no actions such that they are too evil for God to command or even just to permit." https://iep.utm.edu/suarez/#SH3i

Moreover, an invalid leap could have been made from many human minds to a single divine one.

I do not see at least at first sight the valid logical jump from 1, 2 and 3 to 4 and 5. Because in 1, 2 and 3 also a mundane reason and a mundane mind could be meant. In 4 and 5, however, suddenly there is talk about a divine reason and a divine mind.

I think you would have to say that moral imperatives are imperatives of perfect reason in order to get to steps 4 and 5.

@Cobra

My post might be something for you, judging by your comment: I think it's not even a stretch to say God has already committed suicide.

@Corvus

Maybe my post is also interesting for you: You had started a discussion here, which might be covered in my post

Logic of Omnipotence and Suicide

Anyway, Prauss isn't advocating / critiquing Kantianism, so I don't see the relevance of his opinion. — 180 Proof

Not true. He criticizes Kant in the sense of making his ideas argumentatively tenable.

Prauss is presented in a book calledKantian Subjects Critical. Philosophy and Late Modernity by KARL AMERIKS

An important essay by him is also included in a collected volume on Kant's legacy: Gerold Prauss - The Problem of Time in Kant. In: Kant's Legacy: Essays in Honor of Lewis White Beck. Edited by Predrag Cicovacki

Prauss's main works contain a constant engagement with Kant's transcendental aesthetics, logic, and also ethics.

Karl Ameriks also says: "I will also indicate how those aspects are related to Prauss's work on Kant, and thus how they contribute to an epistemology that manages to be both genuinely Kantian and of contemporary significance" (Karl Ameriks - Current German epistemology: The significance of gerold prauss)

He is considered at least one of the most important Kant experts. But he goes beyond Kant. So he is not a Kantian in the traditional sense, but a transcendental idealist.

He recently received the Kant Prize in Oslo from the German Kant Society.

I consider Prauss to be the most important idealist at present. He combines Kant's pioneering insight into the fundamental spontaneity of subjectivity and Aristotle's forms or formal causation.
He always views consciousness as intentionality. In principle, Prauss starts from only two concepts: Point and Extension. From these two concepts, an impressive pantheistic-idealistic worldview is rigorously developed.
A point that extends itself first to temporality (A = extension within the point) then to spatiality (B = extension outside the point); a temporal point (A), therefore, that finally extends itself to three-dimensional space (B).

This, in short, is Prauss transcendental geometry, which structures all consciousness.

There is a transcendental-idealistic approach, by the already mentioned Gerold Prauss, who has similarities with Fichte, and who refrains from the traditional thing-in-itself, and there are only things apprehended in themselves as objective things.

Here is a small introduction to it:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/654753

Gerold Prauss has an interesting approach in this respect:

https://www.reddit.com/r/GermanIdealism/comments/ke93ks/gerold_prauss/

It must be a difference within a unity.

I believe William Lane Craig discusses your problem and offers a solution:

Should be in this essay:

https://ojs.uclouvain.be/index.php/theologica/article/download/58143/56353/

The transcendental idealist Gerold Prauss would say that transcendental idealism makes claims about both the world and us.

Transcendental idealism is not a claim about the world but about us. — Fooloso4

@180 Proof

The question would then be whether we are part of the world.
If so, a claim about us would be one also about the world.

If no, what does it mean if we are thought separately from the world.

By the way.

The philosopher of religion Paul Draper calls the view I present here demergent deism:

The view seems to be the opposite of emergent theism/deism, according to which the world evolves until it eventually becomes or produces God. Here, God devolves or transforms itself into the world. I see why you want to call it pandeism, but I think I will call it demergent deism.

I think you can call it that or nihilistic pandeism.

Yes, with regard to the world of appearances, that is, the empirical world.

I mean, however, the will in itself, outside of space and time. Schopenhauer regards this will as free, in the sense of unrestricted, but not in the sense of free of choice.

The concept of the Supreme Being, which I have presented, is different from that of Schopenhauer and the Neoplatonists.

Plotin's and Schopenhauer's One is an eternal timeless self-willing.

Plotinus and later Schopenhauer suggest that freedom of choice – what we would regard as freedom of will – is a characteristic of inferior entities. For them, ‘free’ is meant in the sense of unconstrained and "self-caused".

Mainländer sees it differently. The freedom of the Supreme Principle consists in the freedom of choice.
This Higher Principle can generate a will if needed, but it does not have to. At the "beginning" there is no will yet.

Here is an excellent essay where the neoclassical approach is also discussed in a nutshell.

You can read it online without having to log in:

https://www.academia.edu/20717983/The_Difficulty_with_Demarcating_Panentheism

As far as I can recall, the perspectivism is discussed most extensively in The Gay Science (or The Joyful Wisdom).

The God of theistic personalism is the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham and Moses.

The God of Classical theism is the Neoplatonic God, Plotinus' God, at least a variant of it.

There is definitely tension between these two models of God.

There is also a Neo-Classical God that approaches Theistic Personalism. Ryan Mullins makes a good case for this.

I have a feeling that Zeno's paradoxes eventually lead up to the debate between rationalism and empiricism because motion is impossible if, well, you think about it (mathematically that is) but motion is actual/possible if we observe it. — TheMadFool

Therefore Heraclitus has to take motion as an inexplicable axiom, against which nothing speaks. He would have to accept, as Nietzsche did in his spirit, any kind of movement as not graspable for our mind.
However, for his concept to be coherent, movement always needs a stationary contrast.

You need a non-changing background or counterpart in order to notice changes in a given object. — Apollodorus

Or a very very slow-changing background.

@Bartricks

Since the word "necessary" exists in normal language, you can use it and reinterpret it according to your theology. That is, you can weaken it in its meaning so that you have an unsubstantial "necessary".

With it you can also make differences in your theology, like necessary truths in contrast to contingent truths.

I know, in a strict sense everything is contingent according to your theology.

Moreover, the necessary truths I spoke of are such only in relation to humans, but not in relation to your God.

In relation to your God, everything is contingent. In relation to us, there are both necessary and non-necessary truths.

You agree with me there, don't you?

God is indeed the arbiter of truth. — Bartricks

I have always assumed that in your favor.

There are no necessary truths. And you don't know what one is anyway - no one does. 2 + 2 = 4 is true so long as God asserts it to be; thus it is not necessarily true, but just true. — Bartricks

But you will admit that it makes sense to make a distinction even within the framework set by your God between:

necessary truths like:

2 + 2 = 4 — Bartricks

and non-necessary empirical truths like "the universe is expanding".

My starting point is a pragmatically practical sense.

they are just true - in which case the necessity of those necessary truths still needs a truthmaker — Bartricks

Why? The necessity is obvious. The sentence 'a triangle is a space enclosed by three lines' is a truth that everyone who is not insane will consider necessary. It is enough for the truth maker to be recognized as true for the judgment to be considered necessary. As a definition of necessity I take that of Schopenhauer:

"For necessity has no other genuine and clear sense than the inevitability of the consequent when the ground is posited."

they are necessarily true, in which case you have not provided the truthmaker for the necessary truths either. — Bartricks

That would lead to an infinite regress.

In both cases, either way, your God sets the truth maker. And what God sets as necessary is necessary according to your philosophy. You would agree with me there, wouldn't you?

You will also see a difference between the sentences "All swans are white" and "The bachelor is an unmarried man". The first is not necessary. The distinction is legitimate, even if your god can turn it around at will.

Apart from everything, your God is an identity, right? The logical principle of identity must then be applied to God, right? The world is not God, so the theorem of contradiction can be applied here. If your God is not an entity with identity, then He is at most a relative nothing for us, but probably rather an absolute nothing.