When scientists claim there is no god. When scientists claim they are understanding the nature of reality. — emancipate

Humanism can stand apart from religions without problems. — Tom Storm

I...let religion itself speak; I constitute myself only its listener and interpreter, not its prompter. Not to invent, but to discover, “to unveil existence,” has been my sole object; to see correctly, my sole endeavour. It is not I, but religion that worships man, although religion, or rather theology, denies this; it is not I, an insignificant individual, but religion itself that says: God is man, man is God; it is not I, but religion that denies the God who is not man, but only an ens rationis, – since it makes God become man, and then constitutes this God, not distinguished from man, having a human form, human feelings, and human thoughts, the object of its worship and veneration. I have only found the key to the cipher of the Christian religion, only extricated its true meaning from the web of contradictions and delusions called theology; – but in doing so I have certainly committed a sacrilege. If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism – at least in the sense of this work – is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature. — Feuerbach

He that claims less than he deserves is small-souled...For the great-souled man is justified in despising other people—his estimates are correct; but most proud men have no good ground for their pride...It is also characteristic of the great-souled man never to ask help from others, or only with reluctance, but to render aid willingly; and to be haughty towards men of position and fortune, but courteous towards those of moderate station...He must be open both in love and in hate, since concealment shows timidity; and care more for the truth than for what people will think; and speak and act openly, since as he despises other men he is outspoken and frank, except when speaking with ironical self-depreciation, as he does to common people...He does not bear a grudge, for it is not a mark of greatness of soul to recall things against people, especially the wrongs they have done you, but rather to overlook them...Such then being the Great-souled man, the corresponding character on the side of deficiency is the Small-souled man, and on that of excess the Vain man. — Aristotle

Illness, death, renunciation of enjoyment, restrictions on his own will, shall not touch him; the laws of nature and of society shall be abrogated in his favour; he shall once more really be the centre and core of creation—‘His Majesty the Baby’, as we once fancied ourselves. The child shall fulfil those wishful dreams of the parents which they never carried out—the boy shall become a great man and a hero in his father’s place, and the girl shall marry a prince as a tardy compensation for her mother. — Freud

Yeah, but that was Scarlett Johansen. What if it had been Gilbert Gottfried? — T Clark

Thanks for the link to the article by Hofstadter . I will read it tomorrow because I have just been so tired today. — Jack Cummins

Thanks from me, as well - a good read. — Banno

Rather than answers, I come across labyrinths, knots, crosses and spirals and, of course, gigantic question marks looming in front of me... — Jack Cummins

Herder began advancing three fundamental theses in this area:

Thought is essentially dependent on, and bounded in scope by, language—i.e., one can only think if one has a language, and one can only think what one can express linguistically.

Meanings or concepts are—not the sorts of things, in principle autonomous of language, with which much of the philosophical tradition has equated them, e.g., the referents involved (Augustine), Platonic forms, or subjective mental ideas à la Locke or Hume, but instead—usages of words.

Conceptualization is intimately bound up with (perceptual and affective) sensation. More precisely, Herder develops a quasi-empiricist theory of concepts that holds that sensation is the source and basis of all our concepts, but that we are able to achieve non-empirical concepts by means of metaphorical extensions from the empirical ones—so that all of our concepts ultimately depend on sensation in one way or another. — link

Herder’s theories of interpretation and translation both rest on a certain epoch-making insight of his: Whereas such eminent Enlightenment philosopher-historians as Hume and Voltaire had normally still held that, as Hume put it, “mankind are so much the same in all times and places that history informs us of nothing new or strange” (1748: section VIII, part I, 65), Herder discovered, or at least saw more clearly than anyone before him, that this was false, that peoples from different historical periods and cultures vary tremendously in their concepts, beliefs, values, (perceptual and affective) sensations, and so forth. He also recognized that similar, albeit usually less dramatic, variations occur even between individuals within a single period and culture.
...
It is an implication of his thesis that all thought is essentially dependent on and bounded by language that an interpreted subject’s language is in a certain sense bound to be a reliable indicator of the nature of his thought, so that the interpreter at least need not worry that the interpreted subject might be entertaining ineffable thoughts or thoughts whose character is systematically distorted by his expression of them in language. It is an implication of Herder’s thesis that meaning consists in word-usage that interpretation essentially and fundamentally requires pinning down an interpreted subject’s word-usages, and thereby his meanings. Finally, it is an implication of Herder’s quasi-empiricist thesis concerning concepts that an interpreter’s understanding of an interpreted subject’s concepts must include some sort of recapturing of their basis in the interpreted subject’s sensations. — link

Herder proposes (prominently in This Too a Philosophy of History, for instance) that the way to bridge radical mental difference when interpreting is through Einfühlung, “feeling one’s way in”. This proposal has often been thought (for example, by Friedrich Meinecke) to mean that the interpreter should perform some sort of psychological self-projection onto texts. However, that is not Herder’s main idea here—for making it so would amount to advocating just the sort of distorting assimilation of the thought in a text to one’s own that he is above all concerned to avoid. As can be seen from This Too a Philosophy of History, what he mainly has in mind is instead an arduous process of historical-philological inquiry. .... (4) It also implies (This Too a Philosophy of History again shows) that hostility in an interpreter toward the people whom he interprets will generally distort his interpretation, and should therefore be avoided. (Herder is equally opposed to excessive identification with them for the same reason.) (5) Finally, it also implies that the interpreter should strive to develop his grasp of linguistic usage, contextual facts, and relevant sensations to the point where it achieves something like the same immediacy and automaticness that it had for a text’s original author and audience when they understood the text in light of such factors (so that it acquires for him, as it had for them, the phenomenology more of a feeling than a cognition).

In addition, Herder insists (for example, in the Critical Forests) on a principle of holism in interpretation. — link

Hegel discusses human culture as the “world of self-alienated spirit”. The idea seems to be that humans in society not only interact, but that they collectively create relatively enduring cultural products (repeatable stories, stageable dramas, and so forth) within which members of that society can recognise patterns of their own communal life as so reflected. We might find intelligible the metaphor that such products “hold up a mirror to society” within which “the society can regard itself”, without thinking we are thereby committed to some supra-individual unitary mind achieving self-consciousness. Furthermore, such cultural products themselves provide conditions allowing individuals to adopt particular cognitive attitudes by appropriating their resources. Thus, for example, the capacity to adopt the type of objective viewpoint demanded by Kantian morality (discussed in the final section of Spirit)—the capacity to see things, as it were, from a detached or universal point of view—might be enabled by engaging with spirit’s “alienations” such as the myths and rituals of a religion professing a universal scope. — SEP

Revisionists, on the other hand, tend to see Hegel as furthering the Kantian critique into the very coherence of a conception of an in-itself reality that is beyond the limits of our theoretical (but not practical) cognition. Rather than understand absolute knowing as the achievement of some ultimate God’s-eye view of everything, the philosophical analogue to the connection with God sought in religion, post-Kantian revisionists see it as the accession to a mode of self-critical thought that has finally abandoned all non-questionable mythical givens, and which will only countenance reason-giving argument as justification. — SEP

We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction. — Nuerath

I must confess that I do not know what Nietzsche means by noble spirits. — Fooloso4

all of these life lessons are different, and yet they all reveal different aspects of a fundamental set of truths. — Pantagruel

"being a man" has come to mean this to me:
To be a person who conscientiously respects and cares for himself, and those whom he loves, while living as self-sufficiently as circumstances allow and always with courage & humor ... — 180 Proof

I like your idea of concepts as 'dried up metaphors', although it would probably offend some. I do think that some are people, including philosophers, are inclined to miss seeing that they areonly constructed models, which are only representations of 'truth'. — Jack Cummins

Name calling of 'relativism' ... has been the traditional way of spitting on the work of dead philosophers — magritte

logic and science has made small inroads into marshaled academia to the point where relativism is becoming progressive and even cool. — magritte

Does 'form of life' imply 'relativism'? Unfortunately, not quite. — magritte

In the aphorism Nietzsche talks about "nobler spirits and tastes" and "open[ing] the ears of those whose ears are related to ours". I don't think ours is an age of nobler spirits and tastes. Wittgenstein talks about how he is at odds with the spirit of the age. It is not a matter of cracking the code but of a sympathetic attunement, of kindred spirits. And since kindred spirits are so few, they write in such a way so as to address those spirits while keeping others out. — Fooloso4

Texts take on a meaning of their own. But when Nietzsche and Wittgenstein talk about being understood they mean according to their own understanding. — Fooloso4

I was attempting to put Wittgenstein in some context but I realize a lot of people find him profound and almost Zen. He is just too minimalist for me — Gregory

Everything emanates from the "centre" of the cosmic circle or sphere and returns by ascending back to it. Hence the terminology of "heart". The "heart" (innermost self) of man is identical to the "heart" of God. Hence Christian and Platonic mystics use similar language. — Apollodorus

If there was no essential identity between the two, there could be no "return" or "reunion". — Apollodorus

Simply put, the Universal Intelligence abides in itself, proceeds out of itself in creation and reverts back into itself. Or interiorisation of consciousness. — Apollodorus

But these are just intellectual or theoretical concepts. — Apollodorus

I am speaking of a paper flower for the buttonholes of the gentlemen who frequent the ball of masked life, the kitchen of grace, white cousins lithe or fat. — Tzara

in my opinion a return to a simpler, more intuitive and less "rational" terminology would be indicated. — Apollodorus

And it is experienced when the mind is "suspended" or still, in the same way we cannot see the bottom of a lake unless the water is clear and still. — Apollodorus

Most of the time people focus on the link between scepticism and the east but scepticism also is linked to (pre-socratic) Greek philosophy; Pyrrho is linked to democritan philosophy through Metrodorus of Chios and Anaxarchus of Abdera. — Ying

I am non the wiser. — Bartricks

The Ancient Greek philosopher Pyrrho accompanied Alexander the Great in his eastern campaigns, spending about 18 months in India. Pyrrho subsequently returned to Greece and founded Pyrrhonism, a philosophy with substantial similarities with Buddhism. The Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtius explained that Pyrrho's equanimity and detachment from the world were acquired in India.[120] Pyrrho was directly influenced by Buddhism in developing his philosophy, which is based on Pyrrho's interpretation of the Buddhist three marks of existence.[121] According to Edward Conze, Pyrrhonism can be compared to Buddhist philosophy, especially the Indian Madhyamika school.[122] The Pyrrhonists' goal of ataraxia (the state of being untroubled) is a soteriological goal similar to nirvana. The Pyrrhonists promoted suspending judgm ient (epoché) about dogma (beliefs about non-evident matters) as the way to reach ataraxia. This is similar to the Buddha's refusal to answer certain metaphysical questions which he saw as non-conductive to the path of Buddhist practice and Nagarjuna's "relinquishing of all views (drsti)". Adrian Kuzminski argues for direct influence between these two systems of thought. In Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism[123] According to Kuzminski, both philosophies argue against assenting to any dogmatic assertions about an ultimate metaphysical reality behind our sense impressions as a tactic to reach tranquility and both also make use of logical arguments against other philosophies in order to expose their contradictions.[123] — link

Me: plumbing isn't baking. — Bartricks

Schopenhauer held a profound respect for Indian philosophy;[96] although he loved Hindu texts, he was more interested in Buddhism,[97] which he came to regard as the best religion.[94] However, his studies on Hindu and Buddhist texts were constrained by the lack of adequate literature,[98] and the latter were mostly restricted to Early Buddhism. He also claimed that he formulated most of his ideas independently,[91] and only later realized the similarities with Buddhism.[99] — link

So, it would seem that a mind that has been “suspended” in supramental states of consciousness would be unable to communicate that experience to either itself or other minds. This is why mystics tend to use symbolic language and describe mystic experience in terms of “light”, “bliss”, “love”, etc. that can only vaguely hint at the actual experience without describing it. — Apollodorus

Why? Could you explain? — baker

Address the OP for christ's sake and use your own words and not quotes. — Bartricks

To put out a manifesto you must want: ABC
to fulminate against 1, 2, 3
to fly into a rage and sharpen your wings to conquer and disseminate little abcs and big abcs, to
sign, shout, swear, to organize prose into a form of absolute and irrefutable evidence, to prove
your non plus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life just as the latest-appearance of
some whore proves the essence of God. His existence was previously proved by the
accordion, the landscape, the wheedling word. To impose your ABC is a natural thing—
hence deplorable. Everybody does it in the form of crystalbluffmadonna, monetary system,
pharmaceutical product, or a bare leg advertising the ardent sterile spring. The love of
novelty is the cross of sympathy, demonstrates a naive je m'enfoutisme, it is a transitory,
positive sign without a cause. — Tzara

That is an oversimplification which upon analysis turns out to be false — Metaphysician Undercover

Well here again that dont apply
But I’ve gotta use words when I talk to you. — Eliot

I am pretty comfortable with tentative working models based on the best evidence we have for now. — Tom Storm

I think Leibniz was engaged in the practice when he postulated infinitesimals. . — jgill

accept original sin, hope for grace — csalisbury

There's a violence and anger in any moral dialectic, no matter how far you zoom out. They're bad because they think they're good (and i'm good because I know I"m bad), fed through the dialectic machine, can spiral out into infinity (I'm a severely wounded veteran of that spiral.) — csalisbury

I personally like to think of philosophy in a broad manner. This makes me include novelists and musicians as providing provocative philosophical material — Manuel

Wittgenstein will put his arguments in weird arrangments to make them appear more profound than they perhaps are — Gregory