A quibble - This is not true. The Peter Principle was developed by Dr. Laurence Peter based on his empirical research. — T Clark

What is it about the world being an instantiation of the forms which must exist of necessity? For us to observe and discover the necessary is not to make the necessary empirical, it is just the way that we must experience the world. So yes, his research was empirical, but what he discovered was timeless. It would be like claiming that the first person that said, "On a plane, a circle consists of all points equidistant from a fixed point" invented a circle rather than discovered it! Or perhaps you'd like to say that 2+2 requires empirical proof because we came to number theory by counting our fingers? Wouldn't that be silly?

For your argument to work, God's omniscience must go out the window — TheMadFool

Again, knowing and doing are two separate things. A paralyzed Olympian knows how but can't do. A marginally competent god is the same way. Omniscience is not the problem with what I am saying, it is omnipotence. Can there be a constraint on god and it still be omnipotent? You'll find that people have historically argued that god can do anything logically possible. What I have done is suggest that the Peter Principle is a necessary logical constraint on god. Random Wiki on Omnipotence

Those that can do, those that can’t teach.

While not a universal principle in the same way as the Peter Principle, it is well known that that one can know the particulars and yet be unable to execute. This is intimated in the tension between “knowledge that” and “knowledge how”. In an uncritical view of god’s omniscience, one might simply accept that god’s omniscience includes all forms knowledge and of necessity, knowledge how includes the ability to execute that knowledge. Consider the person that knows how to add and when presented with all of the relevant figures still comes to the wrong sum. This person, engaged purely in intellectual endeavor, didn’t know something and is clearly not god. But now imagine that an invisible being, who knows both everything about strutting down a runway (knowledge that and knowledge how) and has the desire to do so, struts down the runway. In some abstract way, it is probably the best runway strutting anyone would be able to do, but no one saw it - indeed no one was capable of seeing. In this way, necessary features of god can preclude the meaningful manifestation of god’s knowledge. Though far afield, perhaps this accounts for “god the teacher” who provides instruction on how to make the world a better place. Remember, though, if knowledge how is actually not knowledge, and god is imbued with only knowledge that (acquaintance knowledge is taken for granted because god knows everyone), it may be that god’s incompetence has additional explanations.


In any event, given enough time (which an infinite god has surely had) god will reach god’s maximum level of competence and thereafter function at least at god’s lowest level of incompetence (which may or may not be the most god can get away with and keep the job). At this level of incompetence, god can be unable to do despite complete knowledge of what to do, how to do it, and the consequences of the incompetence god will manifest in attempting to do so. The Peter Principle does not preclude god functioning at the highest possible level of potency, it merely highlights that superlatives are of necessity ordinal and being number one (in spirit, character, or count) for god says nothing about god’s invariant competence.


P.S. Auto-correct on a phone is, I believe, anti-intellectual.

I hear you BC, the apocalypse is just round the corner. "BUT THIS TIME IT IS DIFFERENT!"

There are times where cynicism is warranted and there are times where we have had armed groups march on the capitol to be welcomed by the outgoing minority party. You can decide whether the alarm bells are ringing or we are just mishearing the sound of the close of day at the stock exchange.

But should this have been a law of a different sort granting a new form of civil remedy, I'm not sure it would be so surprising if the injunctive relief was denied. — Hanover

Picture a law giving a private right to any person to sue another for maintaining/opening a building in which another person practices Christianity where there is a statutory award (regardless of harm/damages) of no less than $10,000 plus costs/fees. Do you see the Supremes enjoining the state from allowing such cases to be prosecuted within the state courts pending the ruling on the Constitutionality of the law?

(2) statutory damages in an amount of not less than
$10,000 for each abortion that the defendant performed or induced
in violation of this subchapter, and for each abortion performed or
induced in violation of this subchapter that the defendant aided or
abetted; and
(3) costs and attorney's fees. — Fetal HeartBeat Law

Fetal Heart Beat Bill Text: TX SB8

The question then becomes one of immediate harm that would warrant injunctive relief. Abortion clinics may continue to operate in Texas, and they will no doubt be sued, but any judgment would be appealable on the basis of the Constitutional violation, meaning no actual judgment could be enforced prior to the Court eventually ruling. — Hanover

One would think, but then it wasn't. They punted because the "right" party wasn't named even though it is the state that enforces private rights of action. It is like the court now expects people to bring claims against a class of defendants in anticipation of the defendants maybe doing something. So far as I know, actions against a class of defendants are a non-starter. The only way to actually get the injunction is potentially to play whack a mole with actual people who have brought suit (the "plaintiff") and hope that the Supremes will still decide the case even after the plaintiff drops the suit and alleges mootness.

Perhaps the early death rattle of the republic. The court is packed, the Senate unresponsive to the majority, and a temporary allocation of power to those who see the end written on the wall. The only avenues left are delay, procedural frustration, rallying the base, and driving the opposition to non-participation (due to hopelessness, numbness, or short attention span).

For example, federal courts enjoy the power to enjoin individuals tasked with enforcing laws, not the laws themselves. California v. Texas, 593 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (slip op., at 8). And it is unclear whether the named defendants in this lawsuit can or will seek to enforce the Texas law against the applicants in a manner that might permit our intervention. Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U. S. 398, 409 (2013) (“threatened injury must be certainly impending” (citation omitted)). The State has represented that neither it nor its executive employees possess the authority to enforce the Texas law either directly or indirectly. Nor is it clear whether, under existing precedent, this Court can issue an injunction against state judges asked to decide a lawsuit under Texas’s law. See Ex parte Young, 209 U. S.123, 163 (1908). Finally, the sole private-citizen respondent before us has filed an affidavit stating that he has no present intention to enforce the law. — Unsigned Opinion

Unsigned Order

So the state hands some private citizen its stick with which to beat other private citizens and then claims that is not using the stick and so cannot be enjoined. And the Supremes say that they cannot enjoin the mechanism by which the stick is used, even though the state is actually the entity responsible for the functioning of the stick (courts entering judgment and then using governmental process to enforce such judgment). This is procedural due process run amok and spitting in the face of substantive due process. Everyone sees that the outcome is unconstitutional (state interference with protected right without using a narrowly tailored policy to achieve a compelling governmental purpose), but they will just look the other way until such time as the proper procedure is used. It is almost like having to name Rumpelstiltskin to save your baby.


For those keeping score at home, by way of quick reading. Personal jurisdiction is the Court's ability to bind parties to a litigation to the authority of the court and make them do whatever the court orders. What this unsigned order seems to suggest is that where the court cannot make the defendants do what the plaintiffs ask, there is a lack of personal jurisdiction.

Yes law, but no, not always things that can be solved with money. There is, perhaps, a difference between conversations in which you want people to do certain things as compared to conversations where you want people to "believe" certain things (though presumably a change of beliefs will have some manifestation in behavior). Having rules of discourse in intellectual communities might be fine because it doesn't matter if people walk away with unchanged minds. Having rules of discourse when something must be done simply frustrates the doing. Xltrix's suggestion tries to bridge the two, but makes it seem like those that need to get something done can simply walk away if the first two steps go unresolved.

Understanding the person you are trying to get to do what you want doesn't dissolve the conflict or lead to immediate cooperation, but it may prove a useful tool in getting them to do what you want. The problem, so far as I see it, is one of efficacy - do the rules more often get what you want? If not, they don't sound very good even if they otherwise satisfy our aesthetic sense of how discourse should proceed.

My experience in mediating disputes between parties has taught me one thing. People only benefit from mediation and consensus building if they both agree to participate fully as honest interlocutors. And it's often when you arrive at the question of values that you start to hit the rocks. — Tom Storm

I was actually going to mention negotiation/mediation, but figured it might be too far afield. Often in a negotiation (shuttle diplomacy style), you can get two parties to agree on what to do for profoundly different reasons. If for instance the agreement is about money, you can calculate/justify the figure in all sorts of ways. If the goal is to agree on the number, you hack it up as necessary to make each side feel like the number reflects their values/interests regardless of what the other side believes that the number represents. In such circumstances, the two sides “understanding” each other and their reasons for accepting a deal would likely preclude a deal. (E.g where one party wants attorney’s fees, the other doesn’t want to give them, but each values the underlying dispute differently and the asymmetry of value is greater than the fees in dispute)

And just to be clear, I'm all for bad faith arguments, tactically employed. I want to win in reality, not 'be the most rational'. — StreetlightX

I knew there was a reason I liked you.

Why?

I think there exists a hidden consensus about these questions. — Xtrix

I appreciate the sentiment, but reject the premise. People actually do have different ideas about “the good” or “justice” or the proper relation between state and citizen. While in some circumstances there is sufficient commonality of culture that disagreements can be resolved by appeal to straight thinking and common purpose, in general there is sufficient diversity of interest that spending time looking for consensus on big issues simply diverts from agreement on the particular issue at hand.

In any event, I wonder what circumstance you envision where your axioms would add to the discussion. Outside of a relatively small group of participants who may be interested in making a shared decision, the process seems likes it will overwhelm the actual reason for the discourse. If it is purely about two individuals having a chat on some topic that is sufficiently complex that it warrants a three step process of establishing common beliefs/meanings, fully stating each person’s position and having the other repeat it to their satisfaction, and then mutually agreeing upon the problem and solution, there may be some context in which your proposed process is more efficient than some other process.

Can you provide a few examples of conversations that would have been improved by this process? Additionally, please provide some indication of how improvement is being assessed - from who’s perspective, by what criteria, etc.

"Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned." ~Ibn Sina, d. 1037 CE

But if a philosophical argument reaches the conclusion that "there is no reality", that alone is sufficient to reject the argument.
— Banno — 180 Proof

I’ve never understood you two with your seeming commitment to practicality while at the same time being committed to the law of non-contradiction. Some dialethia may be true and some may be useful (especially as an epistemological stance when evidence supports two contrary positions). Why reject them out of hand just because some long since dead people insisted it must be so? (See paraconsistent logics. SEP on Paraconsistent Logics)

Or is the point of doing philosophy to say "Ennui Elucidator" instead of "bored speaker"? — Banno

Or maybe the name is about a particular sense of “boredom” that is more about the lack of joie de vivre brought on by existential angst than momentary lack of amusement and “speaking” that is more about explaining why it is gone rather than description of a mode of communication.

Besides, I was concerned that anomie aardvark was taken.

@Banno

But really, philosophy is a conversation with jargon that hopefully facilitates more efficient communication. I can’t possibly ask you a 15 word question devoid of “big words” that would elicit the types of answers I am hoping for. Even with the big words, it is easy enough for us to understand them differently. And even if I hand wave at various contextualizing paragraphs, it is easy to be distracted by the limiting particulars and miss the larger idea I am trying to point to.

So you tell me how your game goes. I try to share information in reasonably sized exchanges limited to a few themes, find some commonality in language, and take some intellectual satisfaction. Either I am super bad at that or we are playing a different game.

Are you asking a question or calling me names? — Banno

Probably calling you names. Ordinary language philosophy is amusing when it is and not when it isn’t.

My hope is that the quote and linked article provides some context.

What has primacy is dependent on what one is doing. — Banno

That's one view; that all that is, is phenomena, and that these phenomena, without cause, have certain limits. The alternate is to suppose that there may well be a cause, but that what that cause is, is unknowable. — Banno

My question relates to these quotes. You use the word "phenomena" in much the way that I thought I was using the word.

And I didn't think that invoking mereological nihilism in response to this quote was such a stretch.

It's were he criticises the notion of simples he had developed in the Tractatus. — Banno

From another random chat:

Eliminativism is often associated with Peter Unger (1979), who (previously) defended the thesis of mereological nihilism. Nihilism is the view that there are there are no composite objects (i.e., objects with proper parts); there are only mereological simples (i.e., objects with no proper parts). The nihilist thus denies the existence of statues, ships, humans, and all other macroscopic material objects. On this view, there are only atoms in the void. Since the nihilist denies the existence of statues in general, he will deny the existence of the particular statue, David. Hence, he will reject the very first premise of the original argument for coincident objects. He will also reject the second premise of that argument, since he will deny the existence of the relevant lump. (Terminological note: Unger called himself a ‘nihilist’, but his use of the term differed slightly from current usage—see van Inwagen 1990, p. 73.)

The nihilist makes two main claims, one negative and one positive. Both claims can be challenged. Let us begin with the negative thesis that there are no composite objects and no statues in particular. The most common reaction to this claim is an incredulous stare. For many, the existence of composite objects is a Moorean fact, more certain than any premise that could be used to argue against it. The nihilist may reply by pointing out that there is a sense in which statues do exist. In our original case, for example, the nihilist will say that, strictly speaking, there is no statue, but there are some simples arranged statuewise. Those simples jointly occupy a statue-shaped region of space, jointly resemble the biblical king David, and jointly sit on some simples arranged tablewise. So, loosely speaking, we can say that there is a statue of David on the table. Similarly for all talk of statues, ships, and other composite objects—wherever commonsense says that there is a composite object belonging to the kind K, the nihilist will say that there are some simples arranged K-wise and so, loosely speaking, a K. (For more details on this paraphrasing strategy, see van Inwagen 1990, chapter 10. For worries, see O’Leary-Hawthorne and Michael 1996, Uzquiano 2004b, and McGrath 2005.) This brings us to the nihilist’s positive thesis that there are material simples. This claim can also be challenged (see Sider 1993, Zimmerman 1996, and Schaffer 2003). It was once thought that chemical atoms were fundamental particles, until the discovery of protons and neutrons. And it was thought that protons and neutrons were mereological simples, until the discovery of quarks. One might think it is possible for this process goes on without limit, in which case our world would be gunky (i.e., it would have no simples as proper parts). The problem is that this possibility is inconsistent with nihilism, which seems to imply that a material world must contain material simples. — SEP on Material Constitution

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/material-constitution/#Eli

You know much and I little, so it is hard for me to know when I need to elaborate. Without a thousand contextualizing words, how do I ask you for your views on whether you are making a positive claim with respect to metaphysics (e.g. that something exists) and what sorts of "things" are eligible for existence on your view? I see your reference to the idea that primacy is contextual, but context hardly feels like the sort of grounding alluded to in metaphysical claims.

Is there more to the word than phenomena? I say yes. You? — Banno

If "phenomena" is descriptive of our experience and there is "more", I am trying to understand the limits, on your view, of what that more might be.

Random quotes...

The matter is not so simple, however. It is possible, and not uncommon, for concepts of a certain kind to be exemplified, but for it to be the case that, nevertheless, entities answering directly to those concepts are not included in the most economical statement of one’s ontology. This is reductionism, and it can operate in either of two ways, namely either analytical reductionism or what one might call de facto or ‘nothing but’ reductionism. In the present case, it would conform to the analytical option if the concept of substance could be analysed in terms of properties or events (e.g., ‘to be a substance =df to be a collection of properties bound together in way W’). But one might still hold that, though the concept of substance is not precisely analysable and is indispensable, substances in fact are nothing but collections of properties. This latter is the de facto option. So the existence of substances does not show that the concept is important from a philosophical perspective, or, if it has some significance, whether this is just as a necessary part of our conceptual scheme, or as an ineliminable feature of reality itself. — SEP on Substance

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/#HowSubsDistThinOtheCate

Remind me, Banno, did you ever address mereological nihilism or process metaphysics? I can't recall if you think "thingness" is necessarily object based and so noumenon and phenomenon abstract onto nouns and verbs or if you permit for phenomenon to be the ontic primitive.

So you are saying that I’m being misleading by using the English word “religion” in a way that would do injustice to a culture that died 1,000 years prior to the modern English language which has been around now for about 500 years?

I am not quite so dismissive. Banno, for instance, knows what rhetorical devices are and he isn’t naively employing them. And the bashing of religion to the glory of science isn’t confined to one generation or another, but dignified restraint is certainly on the wane.

Why should we speak of it in religious terms? Why not in ethical terms? — Banno

I vaguely feel like that was the question I was trying to pose in my OP, but with a little less normative flair. I was trying to explore if there was something valuable in doing so rather than dictating how other people should use language.

Regardless, I will offer up a few reasons. The first - it is historically consistent. Until fairly recently, religion as the locus of issues of ultimate concern in the Western tradition is pretty unobjectionable. Where we came from, why we are here, what we should do, where we are going, etc. All of those areas relate to the human condition and people have a desire to answer them even without god. So when it is time for people to get together and make sense of them, calling the occasion religious is an authentic use of language.

The second - using a symbol invokes all other contexts in which the symbol was used. So there is a certain richness (and extended dimensions) to religious conversations that are not found in ethical conversations. Being able to make easy reference to a long tradition of thought allows an efficiency and facility of language that is not otherwise available.

The third - commitment. Ethical conversations strike as intellectual - ideas to be bandied about without asserting that something is actually good (cf axiology). For better or worse, religion is known for its commitment to an idea as a lived motivating principal for conduct and life. Here in the US, it is of such significance that it even gets special legal protection (however watered down such protections have become). By invoking religion, people understand that what is said is important.

The fourth - intergenerational conversation. By engaging in meaning making as a communal project, the current participants in the conversation join in with those that came before and those that will come after. It isn’t just about what you as an individual think in private judgment of everyone else, but rather a joint effort of disparate people.


There are more (and they will likely increasingly tend towards a particular religious perspective), but let’s see if any of those strike as a reason that works for you.

Again, my point was not so much to say why I think we should, but to suggest that within the context of philosophical language, it may be the best fit.

And yet when we try to talk of religion we hear how science gives us keyboards and religion gives us the Taliban. Being aware that everything has its good and bad doesn’t mean that otherwise intelligent people won’t dramaticize in order to make it clear that they don’t like something.

Ennui Elucidator when you define religion as a "language community", to what do you refer? Perhaps that people within a given religion have a common semantic reference, a common set of meanings for the language that they use, fully understood only within the sect? — Michael Zwingli

This is a muddled idea that I’m unsure how to clean up. We’ve got some agents (with undefined capacities outside of the ability to “mean” or perhaps “intend” coupled with apprehension). While I could try for something bigger with “community” in the long run, for this purpose perhaps it can mean something like “agents with regular contacts that engage in cooperative/coordinated behavior.” (Though I recognize in advance that language can be shared by enemies.) Language is a bit harder, but it probably can be something like “the proffering, acceptance, and interpretation of symbols.” Throwing it all together, I’d come up with a language community is a group of people that uses symbols in a way supportive of their cooperative/coordinated behavior. What is not essential on my definition is that people fully understand anything (whether in the group or outside of it). It is more about the general use of symbols in a way that tends towards the group’s continued use of those symbols.

I apologize if that is too mushy. Lots of big ideas and I don’t necessarily want to fully explore them.

Perhaps strangely to some, I myself am an atheist who yet considers religion to be of great importance to the human experience, for precisely the reason noted above, the innate value of meaningful ritual. In a world of people who claim to be "spiritual but not religious" ( as absurd a statement as has ever been made), I define myself as "religious but not spiritual". I simply think that the future will ultimately prove to demand non-theistic religion. — Michael Zwingli

I am glad to find a sympathetic ear. Ritual is an easy aspect of religion to identify, but I can’t join you in seeing it as the most important part of religion. In part, the reason I am interested in religion is in response to the notion of alienation and the continued isolation of the individual. It is as if we had to go through things like existentialism where we rejected dictated meaning to find the freedom to give meaning to that which was previously imposed. Man is a social beast, after all, and so it may have been a fool’s errand to expect man to define himself against the world rather than to carve himself out from within it.

Without delving too far into my own circumstance, suffice it to say that I too frequently see people engaged in ritual devoid of personal meaning to them, badly espousing what other people told them it is supposed to mean, yet clinging to it like a life raft. It is as if they think that performing an act will by magic turn the moment from the profane to the holy - the meaningless to the meaningful. What I believe that they fail to understand is that the ritual is the fodder by which people join in community to share (and thereby transform) our individual experiences of the world.

Shooting the scientists alive today would be like closing the doors after the cows are out, no? Perhaps you think it was the Taliban that invented the extraction and processing of oil.

Technology/science provides tools, but not all tools needed to be provided. One might even spend some time considering whether the alleged purpose of science (some magical description of the world devoid of responsibility for what comes) is even a worthwhile human endeavor. The proof of science’s adequacy is in the destruction of the world before and the recreation of the world as we wish it (efficacious meddling, if you will). The proof of science’s worth is not nearly so simple. Selecting the parts of science that you cheer as emblematic of the worth of the endeavor and ignoring the rest is suspect reasoning at best.

Religion is not logic, for instance, even if logic can be put to use in furtherance of religion. The same is true of art, or science, or playing sports. There is lots of stuff not usefully described as religion or religious in virtually any context in which you might discuss it (just the same as there is lots of stuff that people do that is not usefully described as “human endeavor” at the end of each sentence). However, to the extent we are focused on the impact such stuff has on issues of ultimate concern (meaning), speaking of it as it relates to religion might be very useful. For instance, if a scientist is doing science because she feels that it is her best response to her obligation to heal the world and we are discussing her motivation, why wouldn’t we speak of if in religious terms? The lack of focus on “why” or any similar issue which invokes meaning should be a pretty reliable indication that talking about religion is probably unhelpful.

Like two ships passing in the night. Our context is such that despite our willingness to play the game, we lack sufficient commonality to get off the ground. You don’t know me, so it isn’t unexpected that I am less well understood than if you did. It is mildly amusing that you’d take from this conversation that I believe language to be codified or believe that it should be codified. I even felt a bit like I was waving a flag yelling “Meaning is use, so how should we use this word and is there even a good reason to do so?”

Regarding Nietzsche, I posted the quote because you suggested that I misapplied the idea that god is dead. I simply wanted to highlight that the changing role of god in society (rather than the idea of god or the god object) was the target of the claim that god is dead. The trappings of religion survive the change of orientation, and it is for us to decide what to do with them. It may be, however, that even religion will survive the movement away from god and instead of the churches being the tomb (the place where the remnants of the god orientation reside), they will be the house for the community that comes after.

And yet science brings about climate change. So maybe it is people are shitty and you pick the narrative for why they are shitty that advances your agenda. Causation is a story we tell ourselves to account for experience and that story is judged good or bad according to our criteria. Different contexts lend themselves to different criteria, but capitalism (or other evolved systems of aggregation, manipulation, and distribution of resources) takes far more credit for your keyboard than science.

If science was merely an observational endeavor, I’d throw in the towel and concede the point of descriptive language verses something else, but what about the whole “experimental” bit of the experimental sciences? Do you really believe (or at least argue) that scientists don’t try to prove their theories by changing the world? Or at least change their pocketbooks? I find the idea that “science is this and religion is that” to be cherry picking. Not because I care if religion is somehow found lacking as a useful concept, but because science isn’t some disembodied process immune from the failings of the people that do it.

And without belaboring the science debate in this thread, the actual workings of science seem to favor reworking the facts until your theory is confirmed and waving away outliers or other inconvenient bits of the world for further study/dismissal. Paradigm shifts are hard fought in science not necessarily because of the method, but because of the people that employ it.

Saying that religion and science are both ideology is no more controversial than pointing out that both are inventions of people within the limited abilities of people. That doesn’t mean they are equivalent or even equally good in areas of importance, but simply that identifying a topic as ideology is not necessarily relevant to every exchange.

In any event, if all religion is to you is the Taliban, we clearly aren’t going anywhere. There are similar views of science that permit people to be equally as dismissive. The thing is, whether someone comes espousing the merits of their religion or their scientific world order, if they posses superior technology/techniques and the willingness to do harm, their ideology sounds remarkably alike.

It's undead. Like "spiritual, buy not religious" – animated, but not alive. — 180 Proof

You are right, of course. We are in a culture that can't help but keep fighting the dead god as if it lives. And in some ways, it isn't just the undead god our culture fights, but the shadows and memories, as if these feeble things constitute some vital force that can reanimate god before our very eyes.

From devout belief (onward and then back) to make believe ... which Žizek calls "the sublime object of ideology". — 180 Proof

But you can't go trotting out Zizek as if I have any idea what he is talking about. The transcendent (or the negated impotence of human experience) is not the only sort of thing that matters nor is the relation of the finite to the infinite inherently the aim of communal meaning creation. A language community engaged in meaning making does not have to hint at the "divine" through the acknowledged limitations of the group. I guess if you are talking about the reality of religious talk in our culture (that religion is inherently about god), perhaps you are right. We will act as if our structures approximate (or at least aim towards) that which we pretend is sublime. The way you put it sounds less like absurdism and more like power brokers engaged in petty lip service to control the masses.





This is really more for Banno regarding the apparent criticism of religion as ideology.


Language is representational and, to the extent it is not the thing represented, it is inherently inaccurate/distortive/etc. So if the discussion is about a language community, it is of necessity about a community that has distorted the "thing in itself" or whatever phrase you wish to use for "the state of affairs" (i.e. that metaphysical stuff which I don't talk about). I'm not sure in what way physics (despite Banno's very functional keyboard, mouse, and keyboard) is any less ideology than some other discourse or how religion is especially ideology for this purpose. I also question why a religion cannot be as mindful of the difference between perception/thought, language/symbol, and metaphysics as any other language community.

Yes, talk in one way and you get a bridge. But talk in another and you get a reason to build it. Judging a language by its ability to build bridges seems misguided at best, but also emblematic of the issues I am trying to get to. Engineering is how we name conversations about bridge building. Tennis is how we name the conversations about hitting a yellow ball over a net with a racquet. There are professional tennis players, professional commentators, and people picking up the racquet for the first time - yet we describe them equally within the tennis bucket. What do we call it when people join in community to make meaning? Politics? Ethics? Is a parent speaking to their child about sharing because we want our friends to feel good an ethicist? Are they doing ethics? Is that what we mean in philosophy when we talk about ethics? Maybe they are doing axiology?

And what do you make of democratic lay lead religious groups? Who is doing the fleecing?

Language is a game, so why not have fun?

But really, the post started off with a discussion of religion, language, and meaning, so I'm not sure how it is a criticism that that is the subject of my post. You've chosen to participate, so I assumed that you were interested in the conversation. (Banno, for his part, was dragged in and I asked him to pretend as if.) I'm totally happy to entertain other sorts of conversations about religion, but I was trying to have this one.

I can't promise you this is the best translation, but here you go...

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: "I am looking for God! I am looking for God!"
As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him, then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.

"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and again regarded his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time has not come yet. The tremendous event is still on its way, still travelling - it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the distant stars - and yet they have done it themselves."

It has been further related that on that same day the madman entered divers churches and there sang a requiem. Led out and quietened, he is said to have retorted each time: "what are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchres of God?" — The Gay Science aphorism 125

And here we are - the modern men who turned away from god and left its corpse for the grave diggers. No longer do we deny the deed, but we have also failed to become god ourselves. The ubermensch is yet for tomorrow.

Let it be said that I am not looking for god, rather I am trying to build a lantern.

That is an interesting pragmatic take on the discussion - that religion is such a loaded concept that applying it to the secular context would break the peace between sects. It is also a good historical reminder of why religion was moved from the communal to the personal, so that disparate religions could co-exist in public space in increasingly diverse populations in Europe (even it was just Christian diversity). There is a lot here from a sociological/political perspective, especially as "liberalism" spreads to populations that have truly diverse religions and/or traditional liberal countries have an inflow of diverse populations. Religion as primary and necessarily in the public sphere carries a certain danger.

It reminds me a bit of the particularism debate, i.e. if no religion has special access to knowledge/wisdom/etc., why pick one religion over another? To the extent that the scope of most religious theory is universal, it feels almost disingenuous to suggest that we can really move between religions in response to our aesthetic sensibilities. Perhaps it is a bit of a different take on the idea that all religions share the same ultimate substance, but just express it differently (a theory which I happen to reject), so we should be tolerant of others' religion.

This idea seems important to you. You already know I disagree with your choices. But I will ask you, what does it mean? — Tom Storm

Not sure what you are asking here. What is spirituality if not religious? Besides saying, “Spirituality is not religious,” what is it that spirituality includes that is not within religion or that is of necessity included within religion that makes it exclude spirituality?

The point I am making is that gods and religions continue to have a hold on much human behaviour, choices, politics, culture and wars, regardless of what a few academics think. — Tom Storm

I’m not sure where you think there is any disagreement on this point. But since this is a philosophy forum, I am talking to people putatively engaged in philosophical analysis, not fundamentalists engaged in something else. I cannot, and do not, account for why people believe what they believe or accept in the face of what I believe to be compelling evidence/argument to the contrary.

Regarding the difference in culture between us, it will certainly color our experience of the issue. You’ll go on holiday while I go on vacation and claim that your holidays are secular, I suspect, despite the obviously religious language describing your experience. I won’t speak for you, but the typical secular Christian going on about how secular they and their community are without considering the perspective of a religious out group to the experience provides special sorts of challenges in having them recognize why there is “secular Christianity” rather than secular anything else and what that means for what a society looks like. But again, that is a sociological matter rather than a philosophical one.

I’m confused by this. The theme is pretty expressly that “religion” is the proper term to describe a language community engaged in meaning creation regarding issues of ultimate concern. I was additionally suggesting that there is a philosophical push to understanding religion in that way given the communal nature of meaning creation and how individuals (as individuals) seem incapable of creating meaning devoid of community.

It may be that you disagree with any or all of that paragraph, but I’m not sure how much clearer I can be without just being repetitive. My hope was to explore the topic through use of borderline cases where people include/lack certain sorts of traits typically understood as being religious and finding out whether there is a philosophical value in understanding a borderline case one way or the other. In particular, I wanted to see where religion is without theism so far as people on this board are concerned.

Given that posts go the way the go, there is some meandering going on, but such is the way of things.

As for avoiding issues of ultimate concern, I’m not sure how you figure that. I don’t actually care about Christianity, but to the extent that I do, it is typically around modern liberal Christian theologians that are existential in orientation, essentially atheistic, and uncommitted (or outright hostile to) the historical Jesus or other historical basis for Christianity (i.e. that the value of Christianity is independent of any particular historical claim). Suffice it to say, the only thing such people care about in the religious context are areas of ultimate concern (with whatever convoluted subject-subject rhetoric they have invented in the wake of Buber).

So yes, historically Christianity has sucked. But they aren’t the only religion in the world or the one that I intend to spend time discussing. It is sort of like discussing the Russians when discussing communism - flies in the ointment of utopia.

Only privately? — Prishon

You could do so publicly, but then Banno would think you missed the joke.

If meaning is use, then the meaning of your life is what you do. — Banno

Indeed.

It's for folk who want a prefabricated answer, one that avoids having to be critical or think for oneself. — Banno

So let’s say I did this with the comment animating the exchange…

“ ...electronics provided one of the most satisfying answers to that engineering query.”

Does your re-contextualized comment sound like something you’d find compelling? Why is it that in matters of “ultimate concern” religion can’t be shorthand for most problems (a heuristic, if you will) while individuals tailor it to their unique circumstance as warranted? Like, “thousands of years of smart people have done a bunch of thinking and this is where things stand on the topic, so it is probably instructive in your case.” If there can be expertise in any other field, why not on issues of meaning? In the same way that fiat currency is just a social convention regarding monetary value (the meaning of slips of paper cut just so and dyed the right way), how is it that there is no social convention regarding meaning to which others might have better information than the individual in a vacuum of expressions of meaning?

I am not arguing that meaning for all people is the same, but that if meaning exists at all, it must be on the communal level (where individuals do with it what they will). So where is it that we give content to meaning besides communal practice regarding such? And why isn’t that communal practice religion?

I imagine we agree on a variety of things, but don’t you think it a bit odd to divorce “spirit” from “spirituality” in a conversation where I am investigating what use some philosophy people might have for religion without god?

Here is Wiki’s take…

Modern usages tend to refer to a subjective experience of a sacred dimension and the "deepest values and meanings by which people live", often in a context separate from organized religious institutions. This may involve belief in a supernatural realm beyond the ordinarily observable world, personal growth, a quest for an ultimate or sacred meaning, religious experience, or an encounter with one's own "inner dimension." — “Wiki on Spirituality”

So we’ve got people who are happy to do “spirituality” without animation/breath/soul but not religion without god. I wonder what is covered by “disorganized religious institutions” and if that constitutes religion in some way. I would point to my earlier posts and suggest that it is a pretty obvious extension that any communal spiritual activity is inherently religious and calling it non-religious is reactionary rather than descriptive.

Regarding current trends in celebration, I’m not sure what trends you are following. I’m curious if you have statistics showing that people with no religious affiliation have celebrations for death rituals as a rising trend or that people with religious affiliation are converting from mourning rituals to celebration rituals as a trend. I know that some people these days are dancing the dead off into heaven (or having “coming home” parties), but assuming for a moment that the focus of our conversation is on non-religious/secular culture, I’d love to see any sort of “movement” or “trend” that can be accounted for as other than individual fits and spurts.

As for god being dead, whence god? In any “serious” conversation in contemporary philosophy, can you point me to where god is actually alive? Not as an object of study, but as an animating principal for the substance of the conversation. Nietzsche is dead, too, so whatever he meant, he long ago lost claim to how that phrase is employed.

I get the temptation to jettison religion, but isn’t there more than just Islam and Christianity? Like if we go into a department of comparative religions and strip away the West and near East, do we still have a subject matter? Is that element of culture that is the subject of study simply an artifact to be assigned to the dust bins of history as no longer relevant to any contemporary human behavior?

The idea of “spiritual” is really a major problem. It is the biggest bunch of non-sense one can imagine wrapped in a bit of anti-establishmentarianism. Besides the nonsense on its face (transcendence thrown in with some bad metaphysics), it is clearly culturally received conditioning that is not an independent invention (or experience) of the person espousing spirituality. Furthermore, what do the humanists do?

Someone is born, you want to celebrate. Someone dies, you want to mourn. Not because either event necessitates such a reaction, but because that is what we have been acculturated to do. You can’t go to someone’s memorial and say that you are doing math or psychology or counseling. You can’t claim that your activity is something else. And you surely aren’t celebrating (unless that is your thing - feel free to celebrate if someone dies). You are mourning and the space in which we have historically discussed mourning ritual is religious, not secular. Yes, some people have sterilized mourning and try to speak of it devoid of a particular sect’s perspective, but the source they go to is categorically religious practice. Just the other day I heard that some non-Jewish person was having a shiva for their non-Jewish family member because the person was non-religious but preferred the shiva format to their wake upbringing. It wasn’t as if they opened their book on “Being and Time” and suddenly knew how to solicit and receive community attention for their grieving.

There is an entire sub forum here with regards to the philosophy of religion and it feels more like an antiquities department mixed with a touch of world religion debate and god (typically the Christian god or the god of the philosophers) football. Once we get past the fact that Christianity sucks in popular imagination and Islam is terrifying, have we fully exhausted the field of what is to be said on religion?

Religion historically occupied the field for huge swaths of human conduct. When people go on about justice, rights, etc., and make an appeal to universal values outside of religion, are they any less universalists than the “religious” folk that claim that their god’s agenda applies to all human’s in all circumstances? And besides thumbing your nose at Christianity, what is the actual difference between saying, “God says be nice” and “Secular values say be nice?” Or that children should be taught one or the other?

I imagine that philosophy has something to say about whether the death of religious education and the rise of secular Maoist education share intellectual space. It isn’t as if the political theorists that advocated such positions were ignorant of what they were up to - replacing god with state and creating communal religious practice around state instead of god.

I am not asking the question from a sociological perspective (wherein I think the question of religion is not so readily dismissed as non-useful), but a philosophical one. The same sort of philosophical perspective that decides that metaphysics is now a waste of time and ontology is where it is at or that semiotics doesn’t belong in a discussion among serious philosophers. That is to say, do the methods of philosophy and the paradigms typically discussed include “religion” going forward? And if they do, what do you all think that looks like and what constitutes “religion” for your purpose?

If god is dead and religion is god talk, I don’t see where we are going.

The same as the point of calling it religious 200 years ago, no? What is the point of calling anything anything?

My use is hardly here or there, it is how the word is used at large. Why I think it adds something to the conversation is because it makes it clear that those people aren’t doing math, science, or calisthenics and that the context of the behavior is most usefully placed along with other religious behavior.

Why are my personal motivations instructive? Do we typically ask literature teachers why they call something literature or musicians why they call something music? We call things by certain words when we have communally decided that there is something useful about doing so, even if we can’t articulate all of the uses or completely account for all of the marginal cases.

One might say that existential meaning is what we orient to while symbols are what we use to convey meaning. Symbols (or words) do not merely refer (i.e. point) - they can (and often) do something.

So yes, we can mean different things by the symbols we employ, but it isn’t equivocation to treat what meaning we convey with symbols as the same sort of thing that we mean by orienting (or living, if you prefer).

Nothing so fancy, Banno. I had hoped my allusion to the gordian knot and alternatives to untying would amuse you.

My suggestion is no more or less than my original post. If I am using a defensible sense of “religion” and it proves useful in our descriptions, should we apply it to contemporary situations where the word is not typically used? Do we lose something by calling humanists a religion? Do we gain something by it? Do we gain something by sticking communal meaning making into the religion bucket? If not a religion, what do we call a group of people engaged in meaning making regarding areas of ultimate concern?

Picture this - a group of people stand around a dead body and engage in pre-established pattens of behavior regarding mourning and disposing of the body. Without hearing a word or seeing their iconography, do we err in suspecting we are witness to a religious act? If it isn’t religious, what should we call it? And if we pick something narrow (like death rites), what larger bucket do similar sorts of lifecycle rites fit in?

On the one hand, this matter is likely of little philosophical interest to you, on the other, you may enjoy (or at least let me enjoy) the conversation about it if you pretend like it is worthy of your attention.

Far too big a knot to try to untie. — Banno

Come now, Banno. Surely Alexander can provide some inspiration and a deft word or two will be the knot’s undoing.

Is it at least a pretty knot? There is more to the aesthetics of an argument than its ability to be readily scrutinized with analytical philosophy.

Although there are good reasons to abandon religion (or at least stop taking about stuff in a religious context), aren’t there some good reasons to go on using the word “religion” where it is accurately and efficiently communicates something of substance? Dismissing the idea with “language is what language does” is sometimes insightful, but maybe in this case we can at least pretend that there is something of value to be had.

As a historical matter, what community discussed these things besides religious communities? Even in philosophy, I would venture that much of the conversation was had in expressly religious contexts until fairly recently.