The 'rules' are just structures in the way we talk. Before we develop a complex tradition of studying the ways we talk (like trying to clarify what 'truth' means) we have already been using words like 'truth' successfully enough in ordinary contexts. This is the post hoc.

You mention 'imaginary things' which takes for granted what might be called a vague ontology. You also use the word 'exist.' It's not as if these words have clear, uncontested referents. Nor does 'referent' have some clear, uncontested referent. We simply charge ahead, shooting our ambiguous mouths off, taking a certain intelligibility utterly for granted. We can focus a critical 'eye' on some words only by using other words uncritically. This is why it's a matter of making explicit what's mostly automatic and unnoticed (inexplicit).

On the normative aspect, I'd look at which side of the road people drive on in this or that nation. Which side is contingent, but it's an important norm. With language it's not just a matter of being inoffensive but of being understood at all. Green ideas sleep furiously.

As far as W's ontology goes, I'd say some kind of social ontology. Not Platonism and not anything that starts with a ghost in the machine (reification of 'I' usage.)

To be a self, according to Hegel, involves self-consciousness. And this is not something that an individual can possess independently of others. Instead, self-consciousness depends on our having a sense of ourselves as individuals as distinct from others, which in turn depends on our interacting with other people (i.e., recognizing other people and being recognized by them)
...
Hegel’s universal spirit is sometimes used as an example of “ontological holism”—i.e., the claim that social entities are fundamental, independent, or autonomous entities, as opposed to being derived from individuals or non-social entities (Taylor 1975, Rosen 1984).
...
As an alternative to ‘compact’ or ‘agreement,’ the legal theorist Samuel Pufendorf, in De Officio Hominis et Civis of 1673, uses the term ‘convention’ as the basis for law and language. He argues that conventions do not need be explicitly formed or agreed to. Instead, we can have tacit conventions—i.e., conventions that we may not even be aware we have. — Blue Book thread

The details are endlessly debatable, but the gist is naked ('nothing is hidden'), if we are willing to let go of certain prejudices (misleading inherited metaphors for cognition.)

Sure, the rules of language are stated post hoc.

In order for a rule to be made explicit, it must first be. That is, they cannot be explicated unless there is something to be explicated. Hence, there are rules for language use.

The rules of language are not binding in the way the rules of physics are; they are normative. — Banno

:up:

it seems likely to me that an essential aspect of any mystical viewpoint is connected to it having some kind of "healing' aspect, even though this may remain as subjective. — Jack Cummins

:up:

I completely agree. I think the only thing that's generally resented or feared about mysticism is its perceived tendency to invade others' 'spiritual'-intellectual process with a certain arrogance. For me rationality is fundamentally ethical. It's an attitude toward others that manifests itself in embracing one's own fallibility, making a case for bold claims, listening to objections and adjusting one's fallible position in the light of such objections, and so on. I don't think we can perfectly articulate what it means to be rational (or good or ...). We do our best, and it's a big part of the Conversation.

If a mystic or student of mystics is satisfied or comforted by certain statements, they won't be interfered with in a free society. It's only when they bring their claims to market and impose them as truths-for-all that they'll encounter resistance.

Here's a blend of Popper/Kojeve that might be helpful. The primary act is the generation of a theory-myth. Imagine a pre-rational tradition where people simply bring a variety of such myths to market so that others may adopt them, because humans typically want their myths to become your myths to satisfy a desire for spiritual recognition. Now imagine the birth of a 'rational' tradition where it's not simply a matter of choosing myths according to which one feels best but rather of discussing them, locating contradictions and ambiguities, editing them, and combining them. In this light the rational tradition is dynamic, open-ended and conversational, whereas the mystical tradition is static & oracular (the Sage is understood to be complete, infallible, in direct possession of 'It.') One the beautiful ideas in Hegel (maybe the beautiful idea) is that all individual, mortal philosophers participate in a larger Conversation which is the self-consciousness of the species. They pick up the conversation, move it forward, and die as mortals must. But their lives are sanctified or lit up by participation in something greater than them. 'Know thyself' until 'nothing human is alien to me,' with the implication being that the self which is known is the universal or shared self.

Perhaps the subjective, personal healing element made it easier to express their ideas in poetry sometimes, rather than as in the more abstract, rational form of philosophical arguments. — Jack Cummins

Exactly. Even 'rational' philosophy depends on metaphors and analogies, so it's a matter of degree and style. I read Sartre as a prose-poet who finds words for strange aspects of experience. He uses terms like 'being' and 'nothingness' but this 'white mythology' is still poetic inasmuch as it articulates 'how it is' or how it feels to be (a certain kind of) human.

That is probably where those who see it from a religious perspective, or some kind of spiritual vision, usually believe that we can find some way of seeing and becoming part of the flow of the universe. — Jack Cummins

In a 1927 letter to Sigmund Freud, Romain Rolland coined the phrase "oceanic feeling" to refer to "a sensation of ‘eternity’", a feeling of "being one with the external world as a whole", inspired by the example of Ramakrishna, among other mystics.[1][2] According to Rolland, this feeling is the source of all the religious energy that permeates in various religious systems, and one may justifiably call oneself religious on the basis of this oceanic feeling alone, even if one renounces every belief and every illusion.[3] — link

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_feeling

Some thinkers have simply made this feeling the essence. I've had some peak experiences that involved the generation/appreciation of metaphor/myth (along the lines of Christian mysticism) but, as much as the metaphor adds to & expresses the experience, the feeling is the main thing.

Perhaps music is the best language for the mystic (perhaps great musicians are 'mystics.')

Take a determinate proposition - say, a recipe or a formula, which communicates a specific piece of information. This proposition can be represented in any one of a number of languages, and in any one of a number of media. For instance, it could be written in various languages, or encoded in binary and digitized, or written on a piece of paper. In all of those cases, the physical form of the representation is different, but the information remains the same. Ergo, the idea itself is not physical, only the representation is physical. — Wayfarer

I think this is just a good analysis of the everyday notion of meaning. 'It's raining outside.' 'Little drops of water are falling from the sky.' We have the skill to judge these the same (same enough). To me this is a mere starting point. But yes it would be awkward or just absurd to call meaning 'physical.'

That is an ability that is logically prior (not temporally, but logically prior) to any science. — Wayfarer

I think an actual, historically evolved language is necessary, as well as a 'material' organization that keeps people fed, specializes labor, including intellectual labor. This is an element that Kojeve accounts for in his notion of the sage....that the sage cannot arrive until the culture that makes him possible develops historically in a world of work and war. I think we can naturalize or partially deflate the secular sage until 'he' is just state-of-the-art philosophy that has not actually reached the goal but it always catching up with the actual. The owl arrives at dusk. Reality runs ahead of our grasp of it, since our cognition intervenes and changes it.

That they’re not reducible or explainable in other terms; that they’re the terminus of explanation. — Wayfarer

OK, but you've just ignored or neglected my points about language.

.

In this thread, as opposed to that thread, we don't want people to value themselves, because we have discovered that the valuation of people - others or self - is violent. — unenlightened

Excellent reply and I pretty much agree. I do think it's hard though to avoid the unequal valuation of people.

However, individuals argue about this and, most are also wishing to find the ultimate truths on an objective level, so it is a complex web. — Jack Cummins

I do wonder whether it's exactly ultimate truths that we're seeking or rather a role for ourselves in this mess of a world. Who should I be? How should I be? A person might decide that certain questions are either not answerable or not after all the questions that matter to them. The goal for me is to be often (as often as is ethical/decent) in a state of creative play. A big part of this play, I must admit, is clarifying a vision of existence, trying to find grand truths, however fuzzy, and finding better and better words for them. A good analogy is worth paragraphs of abstractions.

This sounds like you want to sell the idea that esoteric knowledge isn't something one acquires via rational inquiry - the clarifications of definitions, the rigorous application of logic - and that there's another route to it which either bypasses rationality or might even violate its core principles. — TheMadFool

To 'naturalize' esotericism would be to take it as myths and metaphors. To the degree that cognition is intrinsically metaphorical and that metaphor does the heavy lifting in the works of the great philosophers, there's no sharp boundary between the esoteric and the rational. The vague boundary is more a matter of a second-order willingness to assimilate critics' objections. Consider that Witt wants to show the fly the way our of the bottle, which is like Plato showing fools the way out of the cave. The core principles of rationality (in my view) don't exclude myths and metaphor but only an anti-social refusal to recognize and respond to criticism.

but "that's real jazz" is equivalent to "that's true jazz" which was the point I wanted to make.

That said, both a proposition and a jazz performance can be considered true insofar as they 'hit the mark'. — Janus

:up:

Thanks!

The suggestion is that one can be a good person (or a bad person) but that a good person does not worry about making sure everyone knows how good they are. But someone who thinks this knows for themselves that they are even better for the fact that they 'don’t waste time to prove it'.

They pride themselves on their humility. — unenlightened

Yes. It's very hard to escape this structure. Is it possible to decide what is a gift (valuable knowledge, freely offered) and what is self-praise? Probably it's a mix, which is not all bad. We want people (I think) to value themselves as those who bring gifts to the tribe. But we can question the value of their gifts, and we can question the motives and judgment of those who question such gifts, and so on.

How do you respond to this point? (from the Blue Book thread.)

Frege ridiculed the formalist conception of mathematics by saying that the formalists confused the unimportant thing, the sign, with the important, the meaning. Surely, one wishes to say, mathematics does not treat of dashes on a bit of paper. Frege's ideas could be expressed thus: the propositions of mathematics, if they were just complexes of dashes, would be dead and utterly uninteresting, whereas they obviously have a kind of life. And the same, of course, could be said of any propositions: Without a sense, or without the thought, a proposition would be an utterly dead and trivial thing. And further it seems clear that no adding of inorganic signs can make the proposition live. And the conclusion which one draws from this is that what must be added to the dead signs in order to make a live proposition is something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs.

But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we have to say that it is its use.
If the meaning of the sign (roughly, that which is of importance about the sign) is an image built up in our minds when we see or hear the sign, then first let us adopt the method we just described of replacing this mental image by some outward object seen, e.g. a painted or modelled image. Then why should the written sign plus this painted image be alive if the written sign alone was dead? -- In fact, as soon as you think of replacing the mental image by, say, a painted one, and as soon as the image thereby loses its occult character, it ceased to seem to impart any life to the sentence at all. (It was in fact just the occult character of the mental process which you needed for your purposes.)

The mistake we are liable to make could be expressed thus: We are looking for the use of a sign, but we look for it as though it were an object co-existing with the sign. (One of reasons for this mistake is again that we are looking for a "thing corresponding to a substantive.")

The sign (the sentence) gets its significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs. Roughly: understanding a sentence means understanding a language.

As a part of the system of language, one may say, the sentence has life. But one is tempted to imagine that which gives the sentence life as something in an occult sphere, accompanying the sentence. But whatever accompanied it would for us just be another sign. — Witt

I'm inclined to accept Platonic realism - that numbers, concepts, ideas, are real in their own right, not because someone thinks them, and not because they can be explained in terms of neurological activities. — Wayfarer

As you know, smart people have held that view. What does 'real in their own right' mean exactly?

What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?

The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.

But if you say: "How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?" then I say: "How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?"
— W

There's no way to anchor something like 'pure meaning' except in more signs and actions in the world.

We naturally assume that the basis of reality are fundamental particles. But what if the actual bases are ideas? A vastly different vista opens up. — Wayfarer

Just to be clear, I am much more in the 'ideas' camp than in the 'particles' camp. To me the foundation, to the degree that we want to call it that, since it hovers over an abyss in some sense, is practical life and ordinary language. IMV, 'Particles' and 'ideas' are both idealizations, good for some things and bad for others. 'Ideas' are truer to life as we know it, which is great, but proponents tend to flee from our
and their embodiment, projecting an exactitude and permanence on concepts that they don't have. Plato might have tried to stretch insights about geometric idealization too far.

Of course I'm with you on opening vistas, very much! But perhaps you'll agree that ideas-as-basis is anything but new and well-criticized (which doesn't mean we can't criticize the criticism.)
But even the philosophy I like is largely from the 1970s or before. (I'm a 20th century guy it seems.)

The light dove, in free flight cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels, could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space. — Kant

Signifieds without signifiers-in-a-shared-lifeworld are doves flapping their wings in a vacuum.

I don't mean to be disparaging of sages but I find it rather implausible that there could be knowledge that only a select few can get a handle on. Of course, the fact that I find mathematics near impossible to comprehend works against me is not lost on me. Maybe there is such a thing as knowledge that only a few chosen ones can fully understand. — TheMadFool

Earlier in the thread, I suggested that (naturalized) inner circles are actually common. You mention math, a good example, but even in philosophy there's conceptual progress. We take it for granted even that scholars that specialize in a thinker's works are likely to have more insight than beginners. I'm not denying exceptions. Strong philosophers can make a case that an entire tradition of interpretation was or is on the wrong track. So perhaps the real issue is the concept of rationality, the 'gentleman's agreement' that we justify our claims and assimilate criticism. Esotericism is associated, rightly or wrongly, with personal authority. The sage is sometimes cast as having a different kind of access than others to evidence or truths.

I wonder how the Socratic Paradox (I know that I know nothing) fits into all this? — TheMadFool

... I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either.

Great reference. In some ways that's the way of the anti-sage. Socrates is a complex figure. He's an anti-philosopher and philosopher at the same time. In the same way Jesus was a great critic of religion and the center of one.

You say that 'reality' fails as a concept. I can see that it is abstract, but are you dismissing the the term at all. — Jack Cummins

I'm just suggesting that the concept of the 'totality' (all of the reality) is problematic. I'm not saying that we can't or shouldn't use it but that perhaps in a certain argument that its misleading.

In general I don't think words have much useful meaning independent of context. Metaphorically words are like the notes that only become music when strung together in a human situation.

However, I do think that the idea of reality works to encompass our experience and basis of knowledge. — Jack Cummins

:up:

I agree. We can use 'reality' is many useful and illuminating ways. Recall that the point was raised in a particular context, namely the limits of explanation. Does it make sense to explain everything? For instance, if we say that God created the world and therefore explains the world, then the world is not everything and does not include God. To explain everything is to explain God and world. In other words, why God? More can and has been said on this. What are explanations? What do we mean by why? What do we mean by everything?

ruth be told, the sage sets himself apart from the rest only because his values don't coincide with the values of the general population. In other words, esoteric "knowledge" is a misconception/misnomer if it's understood as a deeper more truthful account of reality requiring genius and perseverance to wrap our heads around. — TheMadFool

Nice point. This fits in with the idea that esoteric statements are (serious) 'poetry' expressing worldviews and self-concepts. The sage is often unworldy, not a seeker of riches, a seeker instead of a simple life that leaves him free to think, to contemplate and compose this esoteric 'poetry,' to share it with others, edit it with others.

I've bumped into John Wisdom for the first time in an anthology of analytic philosophy. Good stuff! Online texts are sparse, but...

The whole difficulty [in philosophy] arises like difficulty in a neurotic; the forces are conflicting but nearly equal. The philosopher remains in a state of confused tension unless he makes the [therapeutic] effort necessary to bring them all out by speaking of them and to make them fight it out by speaking of them together. It isn’t that people can’t resolve philosophical difficulties but that they won’t. In philosophy it is not a matter of making sure that one has got hold of the right theory but of making sure that one has got hold of them all. Like psychoanalysis it is not a matter of selecting from all our inclinations some which are right, but of bringing them all to light by mentioning them and in this process creating some which are right for this individual in these circumstances.
...
… oscillation in deciding between philosophical doctrines goes hopelessly on until one gives up suppressing conflicting voices and lets them all speak their fill. Only then we can modify and reconcile them. — link

https://iep.utm.edu/wisdom/

I'll put this beside some W quotes.

Courage, not cleverness; not even inspiration, is the grain of mustard that grows up to be a great tree.

It is not by recognizing the want of courage in someone else that you acquire courage yourself..

You can't be reluctant to give up your lie and still tell the truth.

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

The philosopher strives to find the liberating word, that is, the word that finally permits us to grasp what up to now has intangibly weighed down upon our consciousness. — W

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

I think our common-sense selves know this. We see others trapped in loops, which makes us worry about whether we are trapped on our own little loops (and we probably always are.) Perhaps it's a matter of finding bigger and better loops to be trapped in, stretching the transparent bottle (now a soap bubble?) in which we fly.

Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality — What's Wrong with Ockham? - Joshua Hothschild.

Consider this (more from Hof):

“Why do babies not remember events that happen to them?” ... I do have a hunch, and I will here speculate on the basis of that hunch....it has to do with the relentless, lifelong process of chunking — taking “small” concepts and putting them together into bigger and bigger ones, thus recursively building up a giant repertoire of concepts in the mind. How, then, might chunking provide the clue to these riddles? Well, babies’ concepts are simply too small. They have no way of framing entire events whatsoever in terms of their novice concepts. It is as if babies were looking at life through a randomly drifting keyhole, and at each moment could make out only the most local aspects of scenes before them. It would be hopeless to try to figure out how a whole room is organized, for instance, given just a keyhole view, even a randomly drifting keyhole view. — H

http://worrydream.com/refs/Hofstadter%20%20Analogy%20as%20the%20Core%20of%20Cognition.pdf

Yes real as opposed to phony, Equivalent to true as opposed to false. — Janus

Right. But, roughly, a proposition and a jazz performance aren't false in the same way. 'True' and 'false' seem to me just as flexible as 'real.' For me the take-home is something like: there's no substitute for (linguistic) skill. It's like reacting to the total context when driving.

Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. — What's Wrong with Ockham? - Joshua Hothschild.

I think concepts/analogies work just as well.

But they're also not only 'in the mind' because they are the same for all who think. — Wayfarer

To me this leads into social ontology, the manner of being of 'public' entities like meanings. My view on this is predictably Wittgensteinian (and Feuerbachian.) The shared 'meaning field' is embodied in our social habits. There's the dancer and the dance. Meaning is a dance we dance together as individual dancers with our own mortal bodies that have to be trained into the dance and eventually leave, perhaps having changed it a little bit.

Most here will advocate nominallism. — Wayfarer

I'm guessing you'll find mostly (something like) conceptualism. If one rejects the idea that 'exist' has a single, clear meaning, the problem changes or even vanishes. For me it doesn't vanish because we can keep clarifying the big picture without ever getting perfectly clear.

So particulars are not intelligible objects of knowledge, because of their temporality. They're only real insofar as the exemplify ('participate in') some form (or idea). It's the idea that is real, the particular is simply a better or worse facsimile. — Wayfarer

We might think of a species (form) as compared to organisms of that species (particulars). Roughly we talk in terms categories/concepts. 'A dog tried to bite me on the way here.' It was a particular dog, but we can only speak (and perhaps remember and dream) of the concept or bundle of concepts. We can call either the species or the organism 'real,' but it's not clear how this matters apart from other concerns. Feuerbach talked about the difference between bread, which I can eat, and the form or idea of bread, which I can't. A hungry man will call the unnameable particular bread real.

To sensuous consciousness, all words are names – nomina propria. They are quite indifferent as far as sensuous consciousness is concerned; they are all signs by which it can achieve its aims in the shortest possible way. Here, language is irrelevant. The reality of sensuous and particular being is a truth that carries the seal of our blood. ...To sensuous consciousness it is precisely language that is unreal, nothing. How can it regard itself, therefore, as refuted if it is pointed out that a particular entity cannot be expressed in language? Sensuous consciousness sees precisely in this a refutation of language but not a refutation of sensuous certainty. — Feuerbach

But I don't reject concepts, despite F's portrait. Instead, I like H's view.

In my case, the shift is to suggest that every concept we have is essentially nothing but a tightly packaged bundle of analogies, and to suggest that all we do when we think is to move fluidly from concept to concept — in other words, to leap from one analogy-bundle to another — and to suggest, lastly, that such concept-to-concept leaps are themselves made via analogical connection, to boot.
...
The more we live, the larger our repertoire of concepts becomes, which allows us to gobble up ever larger coherent stretches of life in single mental chunks. As we start seeing life’s patterns on higher and higher levels, the lower levels nearly vanish from our perception. This effectively means that seconds, once so salient to our baby selves, nearly vanish from sight, and then minutes go the way of seconds, and soon so do hours, and then days, and then weeks... “Boy, this year sure went by fast!” is so tempting to say because each year is perceived in terms of chunks at a higher, grander, larger level than any year preceding it, and therefore each passing year contains fewer top-level chunks than any year preceding it, and so, psychologically, each year seems sparser than any of its predecessors. — link

http://worrydream.com/refs/Hofstadter%20%20Analogy%20as%20the%20Core%20of%20Cognition.pdf

It's the unchangeable reality of what truly is, which is discerned by reason. That is essential to understanding the origin of the forms in my view. — Wayfarer

That squares with what I know as a non-specialist in this area. In general, philosophy and science chase the eternal, seek to articulate the permanent structure of either the world or the human perception of the world. Some might say 'the real is that which resists.' Others retort that 'the real is that which persists.' Then 'real' is also (explicitly) honorific. 'Now this is real philosophy.'

I thought I'd share this passage on Plato's Forms to see what you (and others) make of it.

...there is a central role that the Forms play in the Phaedo and Republic which does concern me here. True knowledge or exact science cannot have as its object sensible things. ...Reasoning in geometry cannot be founded on what we can see and measure, since measurements cannot distinguish between those lines commensurable with a given one and those which are not. More generally, as Whitehead was later on to put it, nature has ragged edges. The terms in which we describe it in exact science don’t literally apply. Then what is exact science about? What are the grounds for calling the theorems of geometry true, for example? Neugebauer, in his discussion of this situation in [1969], suggests with an almost charming innocence that the Greeks simply introduced axiom systems in which the phenomena were idealized and then based truth on provability from the axioms. A wonderful idea! But, unfortunately, not one available to the Greeks in fourth century BC: it was to be more than twenty-three centuries before the idea of a formal axiomatic theory would be invented. For example, Frege did not even understand it: for him, as for the Greeks, axioms have to be true. But what are they true of ? What are, to use Plato’s terms, the corresponding objects? In Metaphysics I vi 2-3, Aristotle traces the motivation for Plato’s doctrine to the influence of Heraclitus’ view that “the whole sensible world is always in a state of flux”. We might take from Neugebauer the suggestion that they are true of an ‘idealization’ of the phenomena. But I think that if we try to spell out what this means, we are led to the view, which I think was essentially Plato’s, that they are true of a certain structure which the phenomena in question roughly exemplify, but which, once grasped, we are capable of reasoning about independently of the phenomena which, in the causal sense, gave rise to it. The theorems of geometry are not literally true of sensible things: indeed, they do not even literally apply to them. No sensible figure can be a point or a line segment or a surface or solid in the sense of geometry. Yet the assumptions made in geometric proofs are also not arbitrary; something provides traction for them. We have the idea of a point, a line segment, a surface, whatever, which we can, by a process of analysis or, as Plato called it, dialectic, come to understand purely rationally, stripped free of its empirical source. I believe that it is this which provided motivation for Plato’s reference to Forms and against which attempts to understand his so-called ‘doctrine of Forms’ should be measured. I believe also that this conception of autonomous reason in the aid of natural science was Plato’s great contribution. — Tait

https://home.uchicago.edu/~wwtx/plato.pdf

(in some cases, it's less clear - a moralist's approach on inner circles, well thought-out: https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/) — csalisbury

Very relevant text.

Let Inner Rings be unavoidable and even an innocent feature of life, though certainly not a beautiful one: but what of our longing to enter them, our anguish when we are excluded, and the kind of pleasure we feel when we get in?

I have no right to make assumptions about the degree to which any of you may already be compromised. I must not assume that you have ever first neglected, and finally shaken off, friends whom you really loved and who might have lasted you a lifetime, in order to court the friendship of those who appeared to you more important, more esoteric. I must not ask whether you have derived actual pleasure from the loneliness and humiliation of the outsiders after you, yourself were in: whether you have talked to fellow members of the Ring in the presence of outsiders simply in order that the outsiders might envy; whether the means whereby, in your days of probation, you propitiated the Inner Ring, were always wholly admirable.
....
Your little musical group limits its numbers because the rooms they meet in are only so big. But your genuine Inner Ring exists for exclusion. There’d be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence.
...

And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it. — CS Lewis

Isn't authenticity a quiet theme here? How does one distinguish between spontaneous friendship (which is bound to be selective, I think) and the bad kind of Inner Ring? As with most if not all of life, it's mixed, ambiguous, though some cases might be relatively obvious.

On a personal level: am I being a snob? am I being desperate? I was in the underground music scene years ago and some bands got more attendance and respect than others. If you had a new band and wanted attention, your best bet was to play a show with a popular band. This was 'underground' music, so it was as much about quality and mystique as anything else. A band could have lots of the wrong kind of fans and not be respected. The 'cool kids' (actually adults in late 20s or early 30s) could not be exactly defined (just as people can argue about which famous philosophers deserve their fame) but the idea of cool and the pursuit of it (whatever slippery names it was given) was central. Unsurprisingly, what these musicians talked about was other musicians. In my circle, MC5 was cool (and I still think they fucking rock). It's been easy for me to see intellectual talk as related. On forums you have anonymous/underground philosophers talking about their 'MC5.' It's an endless process, striving to be authentic in some sense, striving against self-flattering biases, against the sadism that wants to create and humiliate outsiders for no good reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oeyt9wNYhnQ

I think the 'ideal of the Sage' is one who has transcended fallible human nature. Philosophically speaking, the point of dualism is that the human is in some essential respect an instance of a universal intelligence which has taken birth in human form and then forgotten their real nature (hence anamnesis, 'un-forgetting). So the 'sage' awakens to his/her 'true nature' beyond the viscissitudes of physical existence. (That is even implicit in the NT - 'It is not I that live, but Christ liveth in me'Gal. 2:20) This is the substance of Alan Watts' book The Supreme Identity. — Wayfarer

I think some version of the sage is dear to every philosopher. Not I but Reason thru me. Not I but Science thru me. The sub-sage self is a distortion in the lens, or some impurity in the lamp oil. Roughly I think the theory of reincarnation is metaphorically true. I think unforgetting is metaphorically true. IMV, as an individual comes to maturity, certain metaphors or stories make sense in a new way. I think anamnesis is something like waking up to a sense of connection with the dead and those not yet born, to being embedded in the conversation, to be made mostly of the same inherited fragments, comforted by perennial parables.

I think this gets it more or less right.

Unlike sense experience, thought is essentially communicable. Thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual. It is the activity of spirit, to which Hegel famously referred in the Phenomenology as “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’” Pure spirit is nothing but this thinking activity, in which the individual thinker participates without himself (or herself) being the principal thinking agent. ... Individual thinking subjects, while able to participate in the life of spirit, do not cease in doing so to exist as corporeally distinct entities who remain part of nature, and are thus not pure spirit. — link

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/

The stumbling block for some will be: thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual. The tempting performative contradiction will be that 'this is not rational, this is not allowed, one has to justify claims, make correct inferences.' Exactly. 'True' thought has a validity beyond the individual. One has to join the conversation. Then there's the anti-Cartesian point that language is not private and a private language does not make sense. I think Wittgenstein's later stuff is a naturalization of this otherwise spooky point.

Anyway, to me the perfect sage is like pure spirit or a signified without the need of a signifier and a system. I can't make sense of it. I don't see the need for it.

Yeah, when I think of naturalized esotericism, I tend to think of artistic movements. That sort of thing feels inevitable, and natural to me. Of course there will be the temptation for those, in a circle, to use their privileged space in the circle for esteem, sex etc - but, that's part of it, it's hard to find fault there. — csalisbury

Right, and we might think if Nietzsche, the philosopher-artist , who spoke of 'rank' and the 'pathos of distance.' The great philosopher is a creator, an exalted 'liar,' a strong poet who brings new metaphors that cool down and harden into common-sense literality. We can think of the art-poetry of philosophy, adjacent to art manifestos. If cognition if metaphorical and metaphors are the core content of philosophy, then it's perhaps only the openness of the conversation that sets it apart. There's no guru in control. There's a clash of metaphors. There's an ethic of giving reasons, making a case, assimilating or neutralizing objections. 'Logic is a gentleman's agreement,' and rationality (seems to me) is fundamentally ethical-social, a respect for the other and the self, the other as the self in some sense.

We are not in a position to know if any sage really 'has it' as we don't know what 'it' is and presumably, following the logic of higher consciousness, the ordinary person probably also lacks the capacity to see higher truth when it appears, so how do we know if teaching is right? How can we judge them by their works if judgment is down to us? I can't even tell if my mechanic is being straight with me... — Tom Storm

Agreed. At least with the mechanic you can see if your car starts. I suppose a person could get high on the aura of a guru and their 'car starts' in that sense (because they believe, through their projection), so that's why I like the 'works whether or not you believe in it' criterion of science/technology.

I think cience is inherently predictive (repeatability being such a key part of the scientific method) but accidentally in service of control. 'Contingent' might be better than 'accidental.' But in any case, I think it's true science has tended to be in service of control. — csalisbury

Almost dinner time, but I'm intrigued by this.

I don't put all sage-types on the same level. I've checked some of them out. Anyone who gets famous just by talking has some kind of skill and insight. But I just cannot project some kind of 'trans-human' status on another human being. Obviously some people are generally wiser or or more virtuous or more skilled than others, but it's an uncertain continuum. We're all still fallible, vulnerable humans.

Creationism and intellgent design are both instances of religious fundamentalism. They're as far from esoterica as you can get. The Copenhagen Interpretation of physics - now there's the esoteric in modern culture. — Wayfarer

I didn't have any particular theory in mind and I'm not trying to link you to creationism.

To what degree are esoteric statements functioning as quasi-scientific hypotheses, crossing into the turf of science?

What's the relationship between the esoteric, the metaphysical, and the scientific?

Sure. Of course there are those 'sages' who carefully orchestrate for others to testify on their behalf. Perhaps the origins of marketing. — Tom Storm

That's the clever way to do it! I googled Osho last night out of curiosity and saw the front page of the website. I find it nauseating, such blatant commercialization. The 'idealistic' or 'ascetic' or 'esoteric' part of me is gut-level against the hype and the open hand that fishes for dollars. Intuitively I expect it to be a gift, an overflow. Something modest that downplays the mere vessel of a universal insight. But I think we already have that here and there in mainstream philosophy. You just need a library card.

The figure who I choose as a kind of archetype of the Sage is Socrates. — Tom Storm

I relate to this, especially if Socrates is thought of as a critical, playful mind who faces death nobly.

The philosophical Sage, in all the ancient discourses, is characterized by a constant inner state of happiness or serenity. This has been achieved through minimizing his bodily and other needs, and thus attaining to the most complete independence (autarcheia) vis-à-vis external things. The Sage is for this reason capable of maintaining virtuous resolve and clarity of judgment in the face of the most overwhelming threats, from natural catastrophes to “the fury of citizens who ordain evil . . . [or] the face of a threatening tyrant”

To me this seems like a point-at-infinity, an impossible ideal to strive toward. The image reminds me of a god or of God, a serene and benevolent transcendent intelligence. Christ and Socrates, both put to death, both symbolic for many of a kind of perfection.

I haven't studied Teilhard, but I'd probably agree with you. I have enjoyed some sophisticated theology at times.

So either way, whether the esoteric is real or not, someone who seems to be asking to be recognized for being in alliance with the esoteric is probably not worth listening to, — csalisbury

I think there's a naturalized esotericism that's defensible (like an inner circle that gets some metaphor as a metaphor, or an inner circle that gets be bop.) But this stuff is all around us. So I think the issue is the intersection of esotericism and science, where esoteric statements try to rival science, where creation myths are taken as something like (quasi-)scientific hypotheses. As far as science goes, I pretty much boil it down to prediction and control. These are things that even non-experts can judge (at Quine's 'periphery.') No grand metaphysics need be attached as far as I can see. Do the tools work for everyone, whether one expects them to or not? (Esoteric statements might work very well within the inner circle by keeping up group morale, for instance, but this would involve expecting them to work, 'believing in' them.)

If there's such a thing as a 'true' sage, I imagine he'd show, not say — csalisbury

Same here.

Grasping hold of the truth remains out of our reach. While philosophers tend to focus on reason and dismiss the power of imagination, it is what art, religion, and philosophy have in common. It is why philosophers from Plato to Wittgenstein talk of philosophy as poetry, poiesis, the making of images. — Fooloso4

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(I'm enthusiastically agreeing.)

:up:
I agree that it mostly fails as a concept. That being the case, maybe a 'total' explanation also fails as a concept?

like to read these kinds of books, but I don't necessarily agree with all the ideas. — Jack Cummins

Same here. I've actually ordered the paperback version of Lange's History of Materialism and just last night The Garden of Epicurus by Anatole France. I love the 'lost' perspectives. As you say, it's not about agreement but just exploring what other ages found acceptable and interesting. (& picking books that only tell us what we want to hear is of course a questionable strategy. )

I'm pretty sure Francis Bacon wasn't talking about actual bibliophagy... :rofl: — Ying

I wish someone had told me that before I chewed up my copy of his essays.




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