Yes, fear – conatus as ineluctable striving to overcome – escape from – fear (e.g. mortality ... manifest in burying our dead, etc). H. sapiens (aka "h. religiosus")¹ first, oldest, perennial escape plan – the quest for magical/symbolic "immortality" – is what we now call "religion" as such. — 180 Proof

Of course you are right! No one would ever argue against it, who understands this issue. But you have not taken the analytical step into the question begged, which is what is all the fuss about? This fuss is a structural feature of our existence, this death by a thousand cuts, say, IS the fuss, and to simply ignore it is entirely disingenuous to philosophy, for it is by parsecs THE most salient feature of our existence at the level of basic questions

Though I do sympathize, for the reading is daunting.

Yes, please. I am an enthusiastic gardener, but I lack the training and the tools. And yes, not this or that--though I don't begrudge their efforts; we get sucked in easily — ENOAH

Then why not go through it, the issue that is, as it is plainly put: Question that I asked Ludwig V: what if ethics were as apodictic (apriori, universally and necessarily true) as logic? Try to see how very weird this question is for it possesses nearly everything the issue deals with. For now I just leave it to you.

I believe no idea stands on its own, but emerges as a locus in the history of that idea. — ENOAH

Now you're talking. But as I see it, one has to withdraw from the arguments, and move into the world (professional philosophers are too busy to do this. I mean, to write a paper, one has to be in the conversation about what others say and have said, comparing, contrasting, aligning ideas. They are good at arguments, but generally not good at "the world," which is the original point. I like to say, I don't read Heidegger to understand Heidegger; I read Heidegger to understand the world. ANd he is VERY helpful in this. Phenomenology is the only to understand the world): You know that perception is an historical construct, even though it occurs without pause. This is evident in that one's own personal history provides that language learning from infancy, yet when we engage with this language, there is exactly this immediacy in the way a knowledge claim is affirmed in and by language. The object is entirely mediated in its apprehension. And, following Heidegger, this language itself, apart from one's personal history, has a history that goes back through the ages and evolves in historical movements (sound like Hegel? Of course). But make that move into the world (this is what Michel Henry argued with passion) and there we are in this "fleshy encounter" of a very direct apprehension that is NOT qualified by the interpretative values of language. Feel the grass, the pinch of the flesh, and engage the senses in "real time" and all arguments in abeyance. Think of Walt Whitman, the 19th century poet of the living experience. He writes:

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

Henry and even Nietzsche likely applauded Whitman (Nietzsche adored Emerson, too). The point is, creeds and schools in abeyance means an unmitigated, unconditioned apprehension of the pure phenomenon that stands before one in vivid presence, and THIS will not be gainsaid by the philosopher's insistence that all perception is interpretative and constituted by language. This leaf of grass pressed between my thumb and finger is simply undeniably THERE in all the energy of a live experience. And the more you allow yourself to engage the world like this, the more you see what metaphysics is really all about: Language implicitly there, attending the qualitative moment, stabilizing existence, and yet, what appears before one, the reduced phenomenon that is most emphatically NOT language. This is where metaphysics is revealed, for in the mundane perception, the "presence" of the world stands entirely "Other" than what the understanding has to "say".

You say the Eastern religio-philosophies have not made the significant move out of the habits of ordinariness, but serious meditation does not have any explicit ideational content. It is precisely a "liberation" from just this, and its telos is not to calm the mind and deal with the world more happily. Its telos is to literally leave the world, and by world I refer to the very historical construct you refer to. You sound a lot like Derrida when you say no idea stands out on its own. Derrida does what meditation does, two "yogas" and Derrida is the ultimate jnana yoga, thought discovering the delimitations of thought and IN this "apophatic" revelation, one has zazen, if you want to talk like this. And all schools are in abeyance.

but here, I'm wondering if I misunderstood. I would say, that this truth, not being a logical one, does not imagine, period. — ENOAH

You think like this because of this language prohibition when we talk about mysticism. I read once in a preface to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, that monks speak often about their experiences in meditation. One can talk about anything if the talk is simply reporting and describing and quantifying. Liberation in the mystical tradition does not preclude language, but understands that language itself is transcendental, and here consider what Wittgenstein had to say about logic: Logic shows us what it is, but cannot tell us what it is. The same is true for my cat: it appears, and I know this in the contexts of cats and my cat and the knowledge base this is informed by, but this contextually conceived knowing is itself radically indeterminate, that is, belongs to no subsuming context. You understand this, and you understand the idea metaphysics, but to make a further move, one has to leave the text, the thesis, and behold the world and KNOW the world cannot be possessed by language. One is at once possessed and dispossessed by language (that "by" is VERY tricky. After all, as I speak these words, there is an independence of the language, as if the language were doing the dispossessing. The "I" of me is conceived in the language that conceives, is it not. See my point? See how this very language I am deploying NOW as I write about language is somehow entirely independent of ME if the "I" of me is so completely indeterminate. Every time I try to find myself , I encounter the language "doing" looking. "I" am not accessible to language! But then, what is this "I"? This is discovered not by language but by value, in "the religious" dimension of our existence: the metaphysics of "I".

would give neither logical nor Ethical, for that matter, any consideration in regard to this truth. Good is an imposing construct. Logic belongs to it. As does Ethics. But to The Ultimate Truth that we are the being which breathes, not the becoming which thinks, the only "concern" is being. Religion is that sublime mechanism built into the imposing projections, a peek hole into being.

But this and that religion, like us in every endeavor, soon lost sight of that essence. And so we bicker instead of peek. — ENOAH

When one considers the Good, one has to escape the metaphysics of Plato, the idea or form of the good, but when the subject is broached, it is done IN language. This "peaking" you refer to will never escape language in this way, for one is not reduced to a babbling feral adult when one meditates or when one is in meditative thought. Language is the house of Being Heidegger said, and while there is a great deal more to it then what H, the strong intellectual who cared little for ethics and the nature of value talk, meant by this, he was most clearly correct to say that when we have an acknowledgement of the world AT ALL, we have this in language and Time. A simply profound analysis, Being and Time. All the French post-post modern "theological turn" philosopher I read are deeply schooled in Heidegger and Husserl. They don't "bicker" like paper writers saying what Husserl was "really saying". They stand apart from this scholarly arguing, mostly.

On truth: Please note the above on language.

I have to remind myself that language is not intrusive into the endeavor to realize fully what the world IS. Language is what brings one to that peak you talk about. An once there, language is suspended, explicitly, anyway, and one realizes one really doesn't know what language is at all, and Plato comes back to haunt one. And this is registered at the perceptual level, not merely as a thought.

Ok, I didn't misunderstand. Yes, "divinity" is caring; not about the projected becoming of mind and history; but in the being of "God and Its Creation" to put it "religiously." To put it philosophically, it is caring (about) being; or, being caring-being, rather than distracted-being, or becoming. — ENOAH

Just to remind, I think it is very important to steer clear of God the creator and the rest. I want to see the world as it stands there before my gaze, and have none of the explicit interpretative historical ideas rush in to claim it. This is the phenomenology of Husserl, or thereabouts. Husserl didn't understand ethics either.

To be more considerate, given the historical timeframe of the supernatural stories, and the sheer explosion of very complex human thought and belief emerging from written language, it makes complete and perfect sense that such people used language in the ways they did to come up with such explanations for 'why' things were/are the way they were, and/or 'will be'. — creativesoul

The Op asks, what is behind "such explanations"? "Behind" here is, of course, not a determinative matter. If it were, the human existence would be VERY different. Religion is about metaphysics, even though those etymological stories and crowd the issue with imagination. Clear the board of all that fabrication, and what is left? It is not nothing, but is the isolated condition itself, there to examined, not unlike that way a geologist well remove isolate quartz from granite or a psychiatrist will seek out more primary pathologies to explain behavior. Certain thing must be cleared away to discover what is there. Call this a scientist's reductive effort to research something. She may find plate tectonics, or childhood trauma, but to do this, a great deal has to be dismissed as incidental.

But here, the matter is metaphysics, and empirical (a category that has rather arbitrary boundaries) research will not do. Ethics is transcendental. One has to see this before moving into the argument all all. Seeking out causes is certainly important, but first one has to see clearly what one is trying to track down, and if analysis stays at the level of story telling in ancient texts, then analysis stays with cultural anthropology, or the literary classics (I took a course once called "The Bible as Literature"), or mythology. But this is just not interesting philosophically.

Philosophy wants to know what things are at the most basic level of inquiry, and the narrative account is the first thing to go. What does it mean to be "thrown" into a world like this with this impossible ethical dimension? The being thrown into disease, and countless miseries, as well as the joys, blisses, and the countless delights? Ethics does not simply deal with such things; it IS these things, meaning none of this value dimension, then ethics simply vanishes. No bads and goods, to put it bluntly, then no ethics (or aesthetics). And as the OP says, religious is the foundational ethical/aesthetic indeterminacy of our existence.

I do not understand how that counts as being 'on the other hand'. Looks like a different way to say "what causes what", both of which refer to causality, which is what I started with. Occam's razor applies. — creativesoul

Right. What is IN the causal matrix of the world is not causality itself, but the world that is being observed. The qualitative matters of ethics and religion are not addressed if the essential meanings are not recognized. So ethical situations like returning an ax to its enraged owner bent on revenge have a great deal of content that has nothing to do with the "essence" of ethics. Metaethics asks, what IS it about this that makes it ethical AT ALL. What makes something ethical at the basic level? What is the "good" and the "bad" of ethics?

Presupposes a giver. Occam's razor applies. — creativesoul

Givenness refers to "being thrown" into a world that is foundationally indeterminate. How is it foundationally indeterminate takes one to the issue of language. Language deals with the world, but does not speak its presence, so to speak. Long and windy issue.

A mystery is behind the stories? Seems like those stories spell it all out fairly clearly. So, I see no mystery to speak of. The stories are mistaken, but clear enough to be clearly mistaken.

Value and ethics are embedded within stories. They grow with stories. They change with stories. So, to say that values and ethics are 'behind' the religious stories, as if they are somehow the basis underlying/grounding of all those stories seems suspect, eh? Cleary not all. Some. Sure. — creativesoul

It is not the story itself, but what gave rise to the story. Jump to the chase: Religion is all about our being thrown into a world to suffer and die. Because this world is foundationally indeterminate, this "throwness"
has no identifiable cause that can provide remedy. So understand what religion IS, we have to understand the very real presence in the world of value, a general term that designates a dimension of our existence which makes ethics possible. The issue takes thought deep into metaphysics.

Yes, that's exactly his argument. What is not clear is whether he thought of that as debunking metaphysics or legitimizing it (in some form)? (Throwing away the ladder once one has climbed up it.) I can't see that he might have intended to allow (or would have allowed), if he had known about it) a project like Husserl's or Heidegger's - both of whom abjured metaphysics (as traditionally understood.) — Ludwig V

Russell thought Witt was a mystic, because Witt thought, in a letter to a publisher, that the Tractatus had two parts, the part that is spoken and the part that is not, and it was the latter that was most important. Heidegger's lecture The Ontotheological Constitution of Metaphysics, What Is Metaphysics, and in Being and Time's Care as the Being of Dasein, and also in his The Word of Nietzsche's God Is Dead (I happen to be reading these now) shows that he does not cross that line into forbidden metaphysics, but stays always in the historical grounding of Hegelian ontology. "Ontotheology? Understanding Heidegger’s Destruktion of Metaphysics" by Iain Thomson works this out so well, and I should read it again. Husserl is another matter. His epoche is notoriously borderline, and the so called French theological turn is entirely grounded in Husserl, and I find Michel Henry and Jen Luc Marion to be the torch bearers of this phenomenology that takes what appears before us down to the wire, the pure phenomenon of the encounter. I think they have a very good point: though language is always already IN the manifestation of what is perceived, the "life" of experiencing the world is so vividly there, in the "pathos" (broadly conceived) of our existence, that the metaphysics of that which cannot be spoken stands emphatically clear. It is just insane to think away the reality of this world's engagement, and this has to do with the value in the raw encounter. The pure phenomenon cannot be dismissed as an interpretative indeteriminacy. Its determinacy is AS apodictic as logic. But then, when we speak, we are in this historical ontology. This sounds close to Wittgenstein, no?

I'm all for giving a central place in philosophy to human life. But classifying that as metaphysics is a bit of a stretch don't you think? — Ludwig V

But what is metaphysics? What does Witt mean when he says the world is mystical and ethics is transcendental? He was not talking about a surprasensory world. What would one classify as metaphysics? Heidegger was very down to earth.

It certainly would. Ethics as we know it would not exist. It would reduce to determinism. — Ludwig V

But you are talking about freedom. At its essence, religion is not about freedom. It is rather purely descriptive: What is there in the world that makes religion what it is? Talk about creative minds fictionalizing things to make the world more agreeable begs the question: More agreeable? Why is this needed? Then we encounter Schopenhauer very accurate descriptions of our world. Of course, he didn't really understand the world's ethics: Our ethics IS Ethics. This is the dramatic change. As if the gravitas of the Bible were to be affirmed, but minus most of the narrative content, including it metaphysics, and, of course, God: God the creator, God the almighty, God the all knowing, and so forth. All the things the Bible (and other such texts)we may find wise and true are wise and true because that is what they are.

This is where the OP is going. Observe ethics the way it is, and qualitatively, there hangs in the balance matters of profound importance, and here I say, see Schopenhauer. But see that ethics is also constituted by the "optimistic" side, a word chosen just to contrast Schop's infamous pessimism, as well. These are really deflationary terms, pessimism and optimism. One has to move into the language of poetry, from Baudelaire's amazing Flowers of Evil (Better than Schop) through to Emerson's Nature (In a bare common, I am glad to the brink of fear). In other words, to talk about this world's ethics, one has to talk about this world's value actualities (for these are what is in play in ethics, though often not so emphatically of vividly , and these are powerful; as powerful as burning living flesh and ecstatic visions of "holiness". We don't have language that can give such things their due place beyond "the Good" and "the Bad". These are simply their "own presupposition" entirely resistant to analysis (which is a major premise of the OP). AND: they issue from the world itself. One may be miserable because of condition she caused to be, but no "caused" misery to be there AT ALL.

That depends on what you mean by "grounded". You seem to be attributing some sort of coercive force to Being and that is the nightmare of a world without ethics or even value. — Ludwig V

Not to personify Being at all. The matter is simply descriptive. The ground of something is that from which it comes. The ethical imposition upon me not to strangle my neighbor and steal his money is traceable to the value in play, which is simply "there".

Yes, that is not just a prerequisite, but the "hypotheses" informing me suggests that the Truth being sought is necessarily "beyond" logic. That is why "we" have "placed it"/"found its place" outside of conventional philosophy and in, say, "religion." — ENOAH

And just to be clear, this kind of "truth" can be said to be about qualia, the phenomenologically pure color or sound, say. But qualia really doen't carry meaning. One cannot even imagine qualia, really, because the moment one acknowledges it, the quale is IN thought, language, context. Only value-quale "speaks" itself, apart from these. Pain is not analytically contextual even though it is contextualized all the time. A sprained wrist is worse than, has a biological counterpart, a social context, a political context, a history, and on and on. But the pain is stand alone. There is a reason Wittgenstein refued to talk about value. It issues "from the world itself". a very important, the most important feature of our existence. Religion is ALL about this.

And this "need" we have for truth to be objective and verifiable if not empirically then by "shared" experience is only applying the laws of the very framework that the "essence of religion" which I am positing (admittedly, also within that same framework) is a refuge from. — ENOAH

Yes, I conditionally agree. It's just that I think it's important to note that this framework is always already there, even when one is questioning it's limits. It is IN the questioning. To me this brings out the extraordinary nature of the affectivity of the essence of religion. Philosophers want to bring this down to the clarity of thought (positivists) or the disclosure possibilities of language (Heidegger). But few are willing to see that religion essentially IS the world because the world is indeterminate and it is in the ethical indeterminacy of the world, or our being-in-the-world, that insists on meta-redemption and meta-consummation. This may sound confusing, but it's not: Redemption is about being "thrown" into a world of suffering, the negative dimension of ethics; and consummation refers to the positive completion found in the incompleteness of desire.

Long story. Comes from reading Levinas, Husserl, Henry, and others. Phenomenology leads to only one place, which is the impossible (because value is OF the world and cannot be spoken) affirmation in its aesthetic/ethical dimension.

Agreed. "Understand." But we are Truth (not propositional, but the one nondualistic truth) by being [It] by [being its] doing. — ENOAH

I think this is right, and not a bad way to put it, for truth, an epistemic term, and being, and ontological term, are two sides of the same thing. You know, you might find the brief discussion about Michel Henry very interesting. You seem to be predisposed to this as am I. On youtube titled Why Study Phenomenology and The Turn to Religion, an interview with Conor Cunningham. Only ten minutes long and one does have to ignore the bible references if this sort of thing is not to your taste. Henry is mostly mostly not a religious writer. He is a phenomenologist and can be difficult (The Manifestation of Essence is a doctoral thesis on Husserl and Descartes). But this interview is very good at exposing how religion is to be understood in light of the pure givenness of our "pathos" in the world. (See henry's "Barbarism" where he is accessible and gives well constructed thought to this elusive theme.)

Afterall, human Mind (like our concern about AI today) is a tool that got away from "us". — ENOAH

Interesting way to put it. One could say this about technology, a tool that got away from us. It took our perspective away from our living reality and gave us an objectification of the self in science's terminology. Nothing but bones and ash, Henry says. It presents the question as to whether this is something lost through the modernist culture that has forgotten, as Kierkegaard put it, that we exist.

I expect that's true. On another thread recently, someone remarked that he never read Aristotle; from the context, it seemed natural to infer that this was a deficiency. I thought it remarkable that someone would think that any philosopher who had not read Aristotle was deficient in some way. — Ludwig V

I suppose it depends on one's priorities and how technical the historical analysis is going to be. But then, one can pretty much grasp the ideas in Being and Time without that much Greek (though H would disagree. He though Greek and German as privileged. See his surprise when it was the American William Richardson's "Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought" that got it right: "Who is this guy? So many have gotten me wrong, but here is someone who has gotten me right-and he's an AMERICAN! How is that possible?")

Yes, his position was much more nuanced than many of his contemporaries. But he had very little, if anything, to say about it. We are left with the business about speech and silence, which is a blank sheet of paper on which we can write more or less what we wish to - and people do. — Ludwig V

He actually petitioned to go to the front lines of the war just to know what it was to face death. And his brothers committed suicide (all of them?) and Witt constantly thought of it. So there is this extraordinary dimension to this rigorous thinker. I think the difference between him and positivists, then and now, is summed up in his letter to a publisher in which he said the Tractatus has two parts, the first is what is said and the second is what is not said, and it is by far the second that is the most important. Otto Neurath added to "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" the idea that one must indeed be silent, but about nothing. This makes the difference clear. Russell called him a mystic.

He's certainly an impressive figure. But those accolades come and go. They said that about Russell at one time, and Wittgenstein. I'm not good at hero-worship. — Ludwig V

Well, the century has come and gone. The trouble is that philosophy is so split. If you lean continental, Heidegger will not be outdone, and postmodern French and German all work in within the ideas he laid down, agreeing or not. But anglo amercian philosophers no longer deal much with Kant and his legacy (esp the three H's, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger), and they don't want to be bothered with the Greek, German and French. But in the end, it will have to be admitted that once metaphysics is removed from philosophy, philosophy simply vanishes.

I'm not sure about apodicticity, so if you don't mind, I'll just talk about certainty.
That doubt is unresolvable, because it frames the issue in the wrong way. In the first place, as Wittgenstein argues (mostly in the early period) just as one cannot draw a picture of a picture, one cannot expect to explain in language what the relationship is between language and the world. As he would say, it "shows itself", just as a picture (once we have learned to interpret it) shows what it is a picture of.
But the big mistake is to think that the problem is about the relationship between language (as given, and our starting-point) and the world. Language arose in the world, from the world, to be of use in living in the world. Hence the only question is about the relationship between the world (as given, and our starting-point) and language, just as we assess a picture by comparing it to the world and not the world by comparing it to a picture. — Ludwig V

But this does not show the real problem posed by metaphsyics. Take the position of moral realism. Rejected for essentially the reason you mention: when one encounters the world first, logically first, that is, prior to, presupposed by, all that can be said, one encounters a body of language engagement possibilities, that is, what CAN be said, and this totality is finite, or historically finite, in that the world can only make sense when taken up in the "potentiality of possibilities" possessed by the historical framework that makes for meaningful utterances. So one is always already IN some historical framework (this for Heidegger was the essential ontology for dasein), bound to a particular finitude.

See, I agree with this. But I stand outside both Heidegger and anglo american views here. It is not science that has this privileged relation to the world, but the body of language possibilities that a given culture can yield. Science and its categories are part of this. If ethics is approached with this assumption determinatively in place, then ethics is thereby finitized. Is it?

Consider Wittgenstein's statement in the Tractatus that Ethics is transcendental. But he doesn't make this clear, perhaps purposely. Ethics is transcendental because the ethical good and bad issue from something that cannot be quantified. It is a quality of the world, and like logicality, one cannot get "behind" such a thing, only witness it. Take a lighted match and apply it to a finger and witness "the bad" that is the essence of the ethical rule against doing such a thing. Or the good of hagen Dazs, if this is to one's taste. Note that "taste" is not the issue. The attempt here is not show how all tastes and their variances are finally settled. The matter is value qua value, or, the ontology of value, the radical "other" of this good and bad that drives all ethics.

Another way to put this is to refer to earlier on in the Tractaus when he says the pointof the book is to draw a limit to the expressions of thought. What lies on the other side of language is nonsense, and what is on the other side of language? Metaphysics. But a very real and palpable metaphysics in the burned finger, the falling in love, the heartbreak, the joy, the despair, and so forth. These and the value that is pervasive in our existence, from vague interest to thrill and excitement, literally constitute ethical possibility.

Wittgenstein was a moral realist, though doesn't say this, as in his Lecture on Ethics. The good is the divine, he says in Value and Culture. He is right about this.

What makes those rules certain is that we keep them - nothing else. — Ludwig V

And they are useful. And this applies to ethical rules as well. Ethics is powered, if you will, by value, but entangled in culture, and culture evolves. If there is an telos to this, it is found in value, not in the language that would "speak it". Language doesn't do this.

In itself, however, language is neither true not false. It is the means by which we assert and ascertain what it true and what is false. The certainty that Descartes was after was to be found or lost in the use of language, not in language. — Ludwig V

The idea is that it is nonsense to even speak of a thing "in itself". It has to be kept in mind that everything Derrida wrote was, from an "in itself" pov, under erasure. No context, no meaning. As I see it, there is only one thing that is not nonsense at this level, and that is value-in-the-world, that is, the pain from this broken knee cap is does not issue from a construction of beliefs about pain, and the prohibition against bringing this into the world some from the pain itself, not as the pain is construed, interpreted. Pain qua pain makes sense even though the language that speaks it cannot speak the world, so to speak.
So I agree, there is no true or false outside of context (Structure, Sign and Play). But it is a very sticky matter simply because one has to bite this absurd bullet that says as I acknowledge my cat on the sofa, it is somehow existentially remote from possible understanding. There is this impossible distance between me and the cat that says I know, but I really don't know in the deeper ontology. This distance is about language and the world.

You can. But it is the first step into a swamp that sucks you in... But then, you are mired in it anyway, so perhaps it will help to point out that there are ladders that can get you out. You just need to ask the right questions. — Ludwig V

Phenomenology asks the right questions.

I deduced that. But it already palms off on me a model of thinking about thinking. — Ludwig V

That is not the way it works. Once the object is accepted as part of the structure of the cogito, one faces questions about the world and our relationship with it. Ontology is no longer parasitic on the discursive method of deriving objectivity from the thinking ego (as with Descartes appeal to God), but now the world stands before inquiry as it appears. Take a look at the way Henry puts it:

when I say 'I am happy' or more simply 'I am', that which turns out to
be 'aimed at' by my affirmation is possible only insofar as Being has
already appeared. Thus should not the true object of an inaugural
inquiry be the Being of the ego rather than the ego itself, or more
precisely, the Being in and by which the ego can rise to existence
and acquire its own Being? This is why the Cartesian beginning is
not at all 'radical',

This "being in" is the legacy of Heidegger, and means being in the world. In the world, that is, of everything you can imagine. Descartes was right to affirm that certainty about the world and its "beings" begins with the perceptual act which is inherently "thoughtful" but wrong to think this thoughtfulness that attends egoic awareness is the true "inaugural" place for ontological study. This "place" is the world, the touching, and feeling, and all of the physical and affective intimacy of our being here. There is IN this that which it is insane to doubt, and this is not a philosophical argument that lies at the beginning of all sound philosophy: it is the world itself. This is Husserl.

"Parent" and "child" are interdependent. Both are defined at the same time. This may be somewhat hidden here because of an accident of our language. "Certain" has two meanings, one psychological and one objective. The opposite of "certain" in the objective sense is "uncertain", which seems to have no psychological correlative; but it does exist, since we have "doubt". — Ludwig V

This appears to be an appeal to the binary nature of language, and of course, you take this to its fullest expression, you encounter Derrida and the "trace" that has in its nature nothing of the singularity we think it has in common references and conversation. To reason this way, one encounters an extraordinary and novel kind of doubt. All meaning is contextual, and it is context that generates particularity, and there is nothing that survives what amounts to a critique of propositional knowledge, and therefore knowledge. Of course, this is self refuting because the thesis itself is expressed in propositions; but regardless, take all this indeterminacy Derrida throws us into (even Heidegger's hermeneutics does not survive. I think H knew this, though. See Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics. I would have to read again), and now , face the world! Literally, observe, feel the fullness of the tactile
"presence" of the cup on the table, the smell of the coffee, and so on. It is not that Derrida is wrong, and I di think he is right, but rather, it becomes clear that when language is "put to rest" so to speak, and one engages with "originary" intent, there is something primordial that has been "forgotten" (Heidegger) that is now allowed to step forward.

This kind of thinking will not set well with most. It does take a certain predilection. But you call into question the post modern concern about language and this takes analysis into a very deep and fascinating rabbit hole. One can find down there things genuinely insightful that go far beyond anything the petty talk about atheism has to say.

"I doubt whether p" means "I don't know whether p is true or false", which implies "I know that p might be true or might be false", which implies "I know that p might be true". — Ludwig V

Consider that there is doubt that runs through the analyticity of this proposition. Mostly, as I pointed out, it is framed in language and analyticity itself is a language construction, and so one would have first establish that language itself is apodictically certain. In other words, even if the stream of implications seems valid, streaming itself can never counter the doubt inherent in implication itself. And speaking of validity, such a thing does not generate insight about the world. Only about itself, the tautological system of self referencing symbols.

The message must be getting drowned out. But you are missing out all the others who have tried. Hume, Russell, Husserl, Wittgenstein, and maybe others. — Ludwig V

Wittgenstein was not aligned with the positivism that so emphatically rejected metaphysics. He was different. A great admirer of Kierkegaard, he insisted that meaningful talk had no place in metaphysics because it would offend the most important part of our existence. He writes in Value and Culture: Divinity is what I call the Good. And would go no further. Also, he never read phenomenology beyond Kierkegaard. As to Russell, please no. He is the poster child for what went wrong with anglo american philosophy. Hume is useful. Kant, very useful. Heidegger, the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, perhaps ever.

As to "all things can be doubted", do you include "If P implies Q, and P, then Q"? — Ludwig V

Yes, as I said. One cannot doubt the apodicticity, but one can doubt the way language takes up the world. How is it that a term like 'certainty' could embody the actuality we encounter when we are "certain"? Logic cannot critique itself.

Not necessarily Buddhist meditation, nor Christian prayer. These were raised to point away from the direction of "imposition thinking." Not sure if OP intended the same, but I am coming from the angle that knowledge is superimposed, displacing truth.

Philosophy (also, theology, myth, dogma, ritual) no matter how clever or eloquent, is messing with superimposed knowledge.

"Authentic" practice (whatever that is, if I define it, I bring it into superimposed) I am proposing (which finds its source in religion) allows a (brief) turning away from superimposed knowledge and, presumably a glimpse at Truth.

Needs more, but defining it brings it into superimposed. It must be practiced in order to be accessed. — ENOAH

This would be a very different kind of truth that has to be set apart from propositional truth, and I don't think the matter is all that easy leave behind, and I say this because there is nothing really that cannot be said. After all, God could actually appear to me, and I could somehow be allowed to experience eternity and the gravitas of divinity, and there would be nothing at all stopping me from telling you about it, PROVIDING you have had the same kind of experience. Language was never about embodying actuality. Rather, it is essentially social, pragmatic, and depends entirely on shared experience.

Also, language is always there in the experience for us. We understand the world through language. Try to imagine a feral adult understanding anything outside of how to swing from a tree. No symbolic life to interpret the world. On the other hand, language becomes a "totality" and this is where your thoughts come in: In fact God has not imparted us with divine knowledge, and so we are left to the possibilities contained within our cultural delimitations and THIS is an imposition of finitude upon the infinite, you could say.

There are, I've read, Tibetan monks who can speak readily about things way outside of common understanding. They are, if you will, scientists, or no different, essentially, from scientists in that they observe and report.

I think a "superimposed knowledge" would be dogmatism, which is accepting without justification.

The Philosophy Forum is responsible for tripling my post. Not me.

That could be the beginning of a long argument, which, I guess, would be a trip through very familiar territory. For me, "Apprehended world" and "cogitata" are the dubious interpretations, not the everyday world. In my view, what Descartes missed was the elementary point that doubt implies the possibility of certainty; doubt would be meaningless without it. — Ludwig V

An odd thing to say. Perhaps you could go into this a bit. Cogitata a dubious interpretation? But it is not an interpretation, just a term that designates the the cogito's objects. And apprehended world, I wonder where your objection begins? And then "doubt would be meaningless without certainty": depends on what is meant by certainty. If this is familiar territory, then I can push just a bit. Take a logician's idea of apodictic certainty, as with something from symbolic logic like modus ponens which is intuitively coercive, but it still can be doubted. How? Because all that can be produced in a knowledge recognition is cast in language. Even as I call logic apodictically certain, I do so in the context of something that cannot be subjected to the same apodicticity, and this is the contingency of language. Language makes thought possible, and when it expresses a principle, like MP, it is not as if doing so discovers the nature of the intuition that is so strong. This is a pretty important insight about apodicticity and terms like certainty: one can ALWAYS doubt anything, because that which is posited is a language event and language is not apodictic. We cannot say what it is (Wittgenstein), because this presupposes language.

But while certainty implies doubt, for all things can be doubted, even logic, you would have to clarify how all doubt implies certainty.

Yes, those are the reasons I think that the concept is incoherent. Getting rid of traditional metaphysics is a lot harder than many people thought in the mid-20th century (and, indeed, earlier, back to the 17th century). I am skeptical about whether it is going to happen. — Ludwig V

Well, it has already been done, but this, of course, has not reached the ears of "people". Kierkegaard started it, then Nietzsche. Then came the phenomenologists, especially Heidegger. I am reading his Nietzsche now and other of his later works, and while one doesn't have to fall in line with everything, one has to admit traditional metaphysics is turned on its head. Especially take a look at his Onto Theological Constitution of Metaphysics and his The Word of Nietzsche: God Is Dead.

Heidegger will never replace religion for the general public, for this would take a lot of leisure time and a commitment to philosophy. Perhaps after AI has delivered us from drudgery, the world will see that phenomenology is the one true view.

That could be the beginning of a long argument, which, I guess, would be a trip through very familiar territory. For me, "Apprehended world" and "cogitata" are the dubious interpretations, not the everyday world. In my view, what Descartes missed was the elementary point that doubt implies the possibility of certainty; doubt would be meaningless without it. — Ludwig V

An odd thing to say. Perhaps you could go into this a bit. Cogitata a dubious interpretation? But it is not an interpretation, just a term that designates the the cogito's objects. And apprehended world, I wonder where your objection begins? And then "doubt would be meaningless without certainty": depends on what is meant by certainty. If this is familiar territory, then I can push just a bit. Take a logician's idea of apodictic certainty, as with something from symbolic logic like modus ponens which is intuitively coercive, but it still can be doubted. How? Because all that can be produced in a knowledge recognition is cast in language. Even as I call logic apodictically certain, I do so in the context of something that cannot be subjected to the same apodicticity, and this is the contingency of language. Language makes thought possible, and when it expresses a principle, like MP, it is not as if doing so discovers the nature of the intuition that is so strong. This is a pretty important insight about apodicticity and terms like certainty: one can ALWAYS doubt anything, because that which is posited is a language event and language is not apodictic. We cannot say what it is (Wittgenstein), because this presupposes language.

But while certainty implies doubt, for all things can be doubted, even logic, you would have to clarify how all doubt implies certainty.

Yes, those are the reasons I think that the concept is incoherent. Getting rid of traditional metaphysics is a lot harder than many people thought in the mid-20th century (and, indeed, earlier, back to the 17th century). I am skeptical about whether it is going to happen. — Ludwig V

Well, it has already been done, but this, of course, has not reached the ears of "people". Kierkegaard started it, then Nietzsche. Then came the phenomenologists, especially Heidegger. I am reading his Nietzsche now and other of his later works, and while one doesn't have to fall in line with everything, one has to admit traditional metaphysics is turned on its head. Especially take a look at his Onto Theological Constitution of Metaphysics and his The Word of Nietzsche: God Is Dead.

Heidegger will never replace religion for the general public, for this would take a lot of leisure time and a commitment to philosophy. Perhaps after AI has delivered us from drudgery, the world will see that phenomenology is the one true view.

That was by way of a sardonic guess at how long it will take for religion to be eradicated from the world. Not the delving into what's been lurking under it. — Vera Mont

I understand, almost. I thought, well, the OP was about the logic of atheism, and the logic of something goes immediately to its presuppositions where the trouble always lies. It IS a fascinating exposition of theism's basic logic. But if you must be off, then farewell.

Best of luck in your remaining 20 years.

I hate to say it, but I would not be able to reject an accusation of "whataboutery" if I tried to change the subject to a general philosophical discussion about knowledge. My reaction may be conditioned by my view that much of epistemology has been thoroughly distorted by Cartesian scepticism and the belief that the only certainty is logical certainty; the latter of course, rules out all empirical knowledge out of hand. There is also a danger that if your interlocutor is not convinced by Descartes, your opportunity to persuade them on this specific issue will be lost. Faced with an argument about the existence of God, you try to prove that we don't know anything anyway. No, I don't think so.
Mind you, with a suitable interlocutor, I would be inclined to try to persuade them that the question of God's existence cannot be answered by purely empirical evidence. — Ludwig V

Stickier than that. Descartes made the mistake of positing the cogito as the only certainty. But an examination of what is there in the structure of the cogito shows that there never was a thinking agency that was a stand alone apart from the cogitatum. In other words, if the cogito demonstrates indubitability, then its object must have the same epistemic value. Descartes didn't see this. SO if you are put of by the doubt that his intrudes upon common sense in affirming the world in simple perception, you might reconsider. A careful examination of the cogito shows exactly the opposite: the apprehended world is just as indubitable as the conscious perceiving agent that affirms it. In an important way, there simply is no such thing as Cartesian skepticism, that is, until one makes the move toward interpretation. One does doubt in ordinary ways, and certainly one can doubt the science and everydayness that is constructed out of the cogitata, things present before us.

As to this "purely empirical evidence" I think you are right. But if one is going to take theism seriously at all, even if the interest is to refute it, the idea has to be delivered from all the traditional thinking that generates so much ado about nothing, like all of those omni's, and notions of the creator and the source of judgment, and so on. Most who take up this issue do not really care to ground their thinking in something substantive, but move directly on to arguing about contrived assumptions.

I argue that it is possible to be quite clear about God. Only one has to lose a great deal of historical metaphysics.

Yes, death – ritually denying, or wishing away, its finality (i.e. anti-anxiety terror management — 180 Proof

Now you're talking! Of course, the question remains untouched: what is all the fuss about? Now one has entered phase two of inquiry. Phase one is mundane.

Yes. I do accept that it means something to those who talk about it. My problem is that I don't really understand what that meaning is. Too often, it seems like a way of escaping awkward questions. — Ludwig V

The hard part is finding the most awkward questions one can imagine and ask about them seriously. Here is a hard question, the second hardest question I can think of: how is knowledge possible? When one goes deeply into this, there is the inevitable discovery that it si not, that is, not be any familiar assumptions about the world at the basic level. Knowledge is impossible unless there is a truly radical reconstrual of what knowing agency is. An epistemic agency is one that knows, and knowing can either be a thoroughly constituted matter (if you read this kind of thing, think of Hegel or Heidegger's historicity, or Kant's idealism), or it can be something that "mirrors nature" such that when I see a lamp, there is in the perceptual analysis something over there and not me. You know, this is the way it goes with epistemology: how much of what I witness is actually IN the constituted perception, and how much is beyond this, "over there" and this is a sticky wicket, for the moment one speaks one's speaking lies with the former.
How does this effect inquiry into atheism? Knowledge claims are about EVERYTHING, and so any respectable discussion about God and metaphysics will begin here and the foundational indeterminacy of knowledge and ethics.

Everybody has to die, but the distribution of suffering is quite uneven. But there was still that "why?" attached to the "just this", which renders your acceptance incomplete. — Vera Mont

The question so far has only bee about what theism if grounded upon. Distribution is a matter of justice and ethics in the entangled world of evolving affairs, and this is where my question will not go, simply because it is far too complicated: ethics in the world of factual affairs presupposes an understanding of what ethics is . That is, before one is confused about whether to steal the cash from the local store's register in order to pay one's rent, there is presupposed in this that very matter that it all matters, meaning, when one goes through the justificatory process weighing the pros and cons, there is the implcit assumption that what is in the balance really matters: no mattering, no ethical issue. The philosophical question then is, what is this mattering about? This mattering qua mattering that is "in the mix" of our worldly affairs. All ethical inquiries lead to this when taken to the foundation of the issue.

Where have I expressed any such repugnance? All thinking interests me. I reserve repugnance for exploitation and cruelty. — Vera Mont

No, I mean by repugnance just the intellectual rejection. Not a reference to the strong state of mind associated with disgusting things, though understanding that religious foolishness causes a great deal of trouble for others, and one perhaps would, even should, feel a bit more than simply disagreement. Not that important, though.

I can't wait to see what that's like. Literally: I have 20 years left on Earth, at maximum stretch. — Vera Mont

I do suspect the argument may not be framed in familiar ideas. Philosophy is questions, so here is a first question (and just to keep in mind, this is only the beginning. Proving objectively that theism, beneath all the bad thinking, has a dimension that is deeply profound and real, takes a process).

How is it that knowledge is possible? More precisely, how does anything at all get "in" a knowledge claim.

This is the beginning. One has to stay the course. Of course, you are free to "move right along" as you put it. It may not be a comfortable inquiry.

I gets interesting only when the smoke has cleared after the table has been duly cleared. To discover anything insightful about atheism, theism has to be made clear, and a lot of the clearing requires suspending a lot of what is standardly there, in the culture of believing. It really comes down to whether one is willing to do this, to be fed up with the culture and taking a purely philosophical view, and by philosophy I mean phenomenology: the taking the world to BE as it presents itself and no further, but no less than this. It requires a reduction that suspends all the familiar thinking.

It is said that the Buddha was the quintessential phenomenologist, because serious meditation is so radically reductive: the whole world of historical thinking arrested. Now, what is there, before your eyes? Atheism and its theism have to examined like this. E.g., God the creator? From whence comes this premise? Is it anywhere in the revealed presence or the given world? No. It was simply made up, to put it bluntly. There is a LOT that is made up in our general vocabulary about this matter. Hard to let go, but first, one has to see HOW to let go.

Oh, and "being thrown in a world" does not here imply that, heh, heh, someONE is doing the throwing. Just in case you are confused by this.

We're not born to suffer and die. We're not born for any reason at all. Life begets life, willy-nilly. The universe expands.
Humans would like to find a reason, a purpose, a great big invisible thingie that explains it all and makes us the one special jewel in the crown of creation. I don't subscribe to any of that. I don't believe in magic and don't need it. Being just is. We make the best and worst of it. — Vera Mont

No, no. You misconstrue the word "to": not born to suffer and die one, say, is born to be a dentist, and therefore strives to be one, is destined to be one. Here, the term is applied with complete acceptance of the arbitrary nature of our circumstances. Born to suffer and die means born INTO suffering and dying. Just this.

There is nothing magical about being born, suffering and dying that I can see at all. Look, if you want understand atheism (the OP) you need to understand theism, and to understand this, you have to move decisively away from things "theological" that carry significance already assumed and accepted. This is the way it is with getting to basic questions, making the move to dismiss all that obscures what is essentially there, and with the matter of God and all that attends this in theology, this means dismissing a great deal.

I do appreciate your repugnance for religious thinking, from the churchy trivialities to the thunderous pronouncements, but all I am trying to get across is that when God is, well, put to rest altogether, not a peep, then IN our existence in the world there remains a very important residuum, and here one's repugnance for standard religious things and beliefs has to be suspended as well, just because it prejudices thought. This residuum has to do with our being thrown into a world where we suffer. Period. You can embrace suffering, as Nietzsche did, OR, you can observe suffering for what it is, which is qualitatively very interesting. Not to put even the slightest tendentious interpretation on suffering, but just to make it clear as a bell, suffering is "inherently" repugnant.

So atheism is just a response to theism, and theism is constructed out of irresponsible thinking. Responsible thinking categorically removes these terms to see what is really there, in the world, that is behind it all. This is suffering. Now, one can move further along analytically, but this simple assumption has to be acknowledged.

If so, then why are religions not founded on public impersonal objective truths and are not daily practices (celebrations) of rigorous public error-correction? — 180 Proof

Forget about Abraham, Moses and any other historical accidents you can think of. The OP makes as a principal interest of inquiry just this "public impersonal" objectivity. Religions in their general beliefs and practices ARE quite public, public to a fault; but they are not conceived out of proper regard for justification, and this is due to the failure to find any justificatory basis for belief. Faith steps in, and faith takes the foundational indeterminacies religion is grounded in and affirms and insists dogmatically.

But beneath this dogmatic insistence (of whatever kind) there remains this foundational this ethical-epistemological-ontological indeterminacy, and this is, treading carefully along this line, a "solid fact" of our existence. But, it will be argued, all facts are contingent, and religion deals explicitly with metaphysics. This issue is at the heart of discovery, where inquiry BEGINS. Certainly NOT what cultures through the ages have thought rendered categories for.

And religion is necessarily not that. At its core it is refuge from that. Religion is turning attention away from our imposition thinking, our knowing, including, God forbid, our Philosophies, and returning it to Truth. — ENOAH

Just to be clear, you just said that religion is a return to truth away from knowing and thinking. This is qualifiedly right, I think. But it needs a lot more.

But at its core seek Truth, all else is talk. — ENOAH

But here, you may find yourself in agreement with Nietzsche: Perhaps truth is like a woman. Demeaning attitude toward women aside, he is essentially saying the truth conditions set down by logic and proper reasoning do not "speak" the world. The world has none of this rigidity, but is radically Other than this. Kierkegaard said something similar: rationalist philosophers (Hegel) have forgotten that we exist!

So it is not that you are wrong to say this, and I think Nietzsche is right here, too, but that truth needs to be understood very differently from what is generally understood in philosophy and its often steely devotion to logic.

I think Religion is the victim of prejudice. Its like hating hockey if the NHL has serious issues. That core seeking of Truth exists in many if not all religions. And cannot by definition exist in (Western) philosophy. — ENOAH

But I don't think religion's bad reputation among responsible thinking people is at all like hating hockey. The latter is not a thesis about what IS the case, asks you to believe nothing and therefore does not rankle those who are serious about this kind of thing. Religion is not entertainment, though it can be entertaining, distracting, and appear to be entertainment, as we see lately how most of those who go to church are really old people facing death and seeking company, and the entire occasion reduces to church luncheons and conversation.

This "core" is exactly what the OP attempts to discover. Nietzsche didn't understand this at all.

When religion is authentically practiced by an individual, they express that core. They loosen, if not abandon, attachment to ego, the Subject to which imposition thinking falsely attaches. And often, they spend a lot of time in meditation or deep prayer. In these states, they are either loosening attachment to imposition thinking all together, or at least, focusing on a single imposition thought, leaving much more "space" for the Truth to naturally become the focus of one's organic aware-ing. — ENOAH

But this contains the basis for error in religious thinking. When one "authentically practices" religion, have they, as you suggest, become nothing less than meditating Buddhists? If so, then this needs to be further understood: what is it about Buddhism's "enlightenment and liberation" that underscores and manifests this "core" so well? The error I have in mind is the way religion when authentically practiced carries one into the most foolish thinking, and in the attempt to uncover what religoin is in its essence, it is this kind of thing that is most immediately dismissed because most if no all of this religious culture is incidental and misleading people into thinking, say, religion is all about Jesus, the son of God. This kind of thing is off the table here.

I do not agree with that opinion. — Vera Mont

But consider: you don't think there is a basic problem with our existence that stands outside of, and prior to, the language and cultural institutions that rose up out of a response to this? Why are we born to suffer and die?

Yup. Ignorance of causality. — creativesoul

As in not knowing, say, disease to be caused by microbiology. Not so much about causality itself, but of what causes what. On the other hand, the question remains, what is there that is IN the causal matrix of the world? If it is asked, what is a force? a physicist can't help you. She can SHOW you, but really, force is quite invisible. All one can witness is movement, change, and one can quantify these in endless ways, but force itself is not an empirical concept. Nor is the basis for all this talk about theism and atheism. The world is simply there and all the religious thinking comes from it, but the world as such is simply given.

So "behind" all the churchy fetishes, in the world, there is its own givenness, and here we find the mystery of value and ethics. This is what is behind all those stories.

Is there a boundary between internal and external experience? How does one discern that boundary? And these very different kinds of experience transmit different kinds of information? Can you give a neurological explanation as how that works? — Vera Mont

Well, it was you who brought up "my internal experiences" so I was just moving forward with this. It was the denial of spirit and the acknowledging of internal experiences that gave me pause to think: Internal experiences are of a certain kind of "being," as you affirmed when you said the thinking, feeling, valuing, being amused, sad, and all the rest refer to internal experiences. What are external experiences things about vis a vis internal things? This would be the question that creates interest. It is not about neurology, for this is an external matter, meaning to find such a thing one goes to the same places one goes to find external things like fence posts, tin cans and other external things. Brains are external things, no? They are entirely unlike internal things like the above thinking and feeling and the rest. Qualitatively unlike each other, right? This is how I understand your "internal experiences" reply.

Sorry. I can make no sense of that paragraph. My best guess is something like: delving into the human psyche reveals that it differs from inanimate objects. That much, I have already stipulated as self-evident. If that difference between life and non-life is supposed to be a "spirit", I accept that as a metaphor, not as a physical entity. — Vera Mont

But you don't need a metaphor to simply describe what is there right before your eyes, so to speak. It does take a certain suspension of assumptions about what things are to allow them to stand on their own. I am simply saying, in a non reductive way, that feelings, thoughts, attitudes, moods and everything else you might include in your "internal experience" are qualitatively different from those posited as external. Just this. It isn't about life and non life, neurology, or really anything outside the manifest qualities themselves. Indeed, I thought this entirely without issue since I was arguing on the assumption you provided.

That's a widely held opinion. — Vera Mont

Opinion? Opinion about what? I mean, I am not clear what you are agreeing to.

I've been sidetracked and meaning to respond, but there's a lot there and I'm down with a virus at the moment. — Janus

Nothing but time. Get well soon!

My internal experience. — Vera Mont

This is a question about your reference to "spirit". So when you examine your internal experience, what you find is a kind of content that really doesn't conform to the standards of existence that are generally in mind when one dismisses this concept. What you find is an undeniable qualitative distinction between this internal world of moods, attitudes, thoughts, ambitions, fears, desires and on and on, and whatever external world descriptions you can think of.

Put it this way: when you say you don't think there is such a thing as spirit, you implicitly draw on some standard of what the world really is that rejects the positing of spirit, and so I am assuming this standard refers to what is not your internal experience, but in your external experience. But since the two, internal and external, are qualitatively so different, one is given to wonder why the internal should at all be subject to what the external standards have to say.

Without intelligent makers, there would be no couches or shoes.
Of course some matter is alive, while most matter is inanimate. But what's that to do gods? Zebras and lemurs don't worship anything, and they do all right in what's left of their environments. Human are story-tellers. It's not likely other animals make up stories.... though I sometimes wonder whether cats, dogs and apes star in their own imaginary movies that same way humans do. — Vera Mont

Couches and shoes are objects. The point really was to simply say that a human "world" when observed closely, as a scientist would observe, is found to be not a world of objects. An inquiry intent on discovery of the nature of what is "there" in one's "internal experience" will notw above all that this is nothing at all like the external counterpart of this world: the world of shoes, rocks, telephone polls, morning dew, etc.

Before there was worshipping, Gods, and all the trappings of these churchy fetishes (I like to call them), there was a basic problematic built into existence that gave rise to the worshipping and the rest. It is not psychological because psychology presupposes this fundamental problem. Fetishes are parasitic on a more basic phenomenon. Here, I am asking what this "original" problematic is. One has to move to another order of questions, those about the presuppositions of psychology, biology, and any other category of science. Why? Because the discovery of what spirit IS lies outside of these. After all, if one is going to dismiss spirit, it has to be made clear what the term even means apart from the mundane casual thinking. One has to inquire after it, so to speak.

I'm not really sure how that connects to the theist stories Vera was talking about. I doubt very many of them feature cars. — flannel jesus

Errrr, really? My question asked about what could be "behind" those old bible stories so easily dismissed, referring tosomething substantive to religious belief and practice that is logically prior to story telling, as, say, there was ethics prior to politics. You see? Children in burning cars was just a vivid example of what this could be. "Suffering" I did explicitly indicate was what I had in mind.

But if you mean some kind of anima or spirit in the real world — Vera Mont

Not that. To talk about such a thing would imply one understands what existence "really is," meaning, you can't go on about how spirit is not the case if there is no existing basis for what is the case, and this is impossible: existence as such doesn't have an identity one can talk about. If you say there is no spirit, loosely construed, in the real world, I would ask, what is it that you refer to when the matter of thoughts and feelings and intuitions arises? If one is curious or envious, say, this surely is outside of the category of being a couch or a shoe. This is purely a descriptive matter: things and not at all like state of mind.

Like what? — flannel jesus

Like screaming children in burning cars. Suffering, that is. That is not a story.

I'm a full-blown unbeliever in any and all of the theist stories, and I will not wimp out with the "maybe there is a supernatural something somewhere" agnostic line. — Vera Mont

A good strong position. I hold the same view regarding such stories. But isn't there something "behind" the stories that a person cannot wimp out on even if she tried?

In greater force given it seems to me that philosophy and those who participate in it seem rather plentiful in their appetites' for the cannibalizations of themselves as well as those around them........
Is philosophy self-deception? Is it merely to shield our greater sensibilities from how things are or, more likely, regardless of what they are for the selfish endeavors of our own pragmatic benefit? To ignore blissfully the egoist reasons we hold to the philosophies we do? — substantivalism

I will grant that academic philosophy is self serving. I am thinking about what Heidegger said in his Nietzsche III:

Unequivocal rejection of all philosophy
is an attitude that always deserves respect, for it contains more of
philosophy than it itself knows. Mere toying with philosophical
thoughts, which keeps to the periphery right from the start because of
various sorts of reservations, all mere play for purposes of intellectual
entertainment or refreshment, is despicable: it does not know what is
at stake on a thinker's path of thought

But then, it does beg the question: "At stake"? Is there something actually at stake, or is it just repetition pretending to be meaningful?

And certainly, academic in the humanities: do they never tire the endless analyses, of analyses, or, well, prior analyses. I've written papers just like this. Papers from Hamlet to Hemmingway, just looking for that nuance of interpretation overlooked.

And I recall Critchley putting philosophy in the most enlightening position by undercutting all values and hope by showing how unsustainable hope is under analysis. Philosophy, he says, "begins with disappointment." Not a shield, but a shield against all shields, baring the world's horrors with no relief. I mean, have you read Schopenhauer's infamous descriptions?

The more recent taboo on life affirming metaphysics is to blame, really. Philosophy is pointless existential masochism without metaphysics. Empty spinning of wheels.

I don't ask this merely in the sense of a negative reading of self-deception nor an admission of some childish thought process we have all had in times past regarding anything but ourselves. Such as those of non-religious fevers who decry the religious of dogmatic irrationalism but they themselves retain similar looking ad hoc rationalist intuitions of bare content. In a similar way their arise the eliminative materialists whose philosophy either borders on mere tautology or outright rejection of what allows for them to investigate these subject matters in the first place. The religious and mystics who try their best to bolster their own philosophical foundations with the vaguest impressions of the unknown. — substantivalism

Those impressions are vague ONLY if they are received this way.

However, even those assumptions (or meta-beliefs) of the pyrrhonians or the falsificationists could be carved away and in their own time found lacking. Further, even those who espouse these doctrines may not live up to their namesake and many would gladly even abandon them momentarily despite their intuitiveness for the pleasure of other philosophical desserts. — substantivalism

This is an analytic reduction of "meta" from beliefs to beliefs about beliefs, and thus you have the long and winding road of back and forth. But there is in the post modern "taboo ontology" of real metaphysics. The Hindus love the movie The Matrix: "Is that air you are breathing?" The world of naming is not as vacuous as they want to say, but language should understood as essentially institutional (Is General Motors "real"?) and pragmatic, i.e., forward looking. That is a long story, but it does suggest why it is so difficult to escape physics in a move toward metaphysics: the pragmatic structure of our existence is learned since infancy.

"See! It is dead and not one facet of it remains! From here on out it will haunt me no longer!" — substantivalism

You sound a bit like Rorty. But Rorty didn't understand the metavalue of the world. Put in Kant's terms, noumena are supposed to be beyond reach, but on what basis is there a delimitation to the ultimate? Nonsense, if you can't talk about it, you certainly can't limit it. Only solution is, everything is noumenal. Of course, you could take Russell's pov and call Kant mere fantasy, but this is what you get when logicians declare the bottom line for philosophy. Emasculating positivism.

participating in a sort of dialectic, that will form a novel understanding based on the other, previous ones, even if just small tweaks. — schopenhauer1

On the other hand, while one may observe the world IN a particular dialectic setting, one can "face" a world of actualities that transcend this. An exhaustive philosophical account of my standing witness to this cup on the table reveals an impossible presence that is not reducible .

l

For Heidegger, overcoming metaphysics doesn't mean leaving it behind. Like Derrida, he recognizes that it is a matter of revealing what is left unsaid by metaphysics. Metaphysics is ontotheology, the twin features of the ontic, in the form of beings, and the theological, in the guise of the Being of beings, the manner of disclosure of beings as a whole. What metaphysics conceals is the establishment (and re-establishment) of the grounding of Beings as a whole in the uncanniness of the displacing transit of temporality. As long as there are beings there will
be metaphysics. — Joshs

I understand this, mostly, having just read The Onto-Theological Constitution of Metaphysics and Iain Thompson's essay on this to help me out. But no, I was thinking the way Heidegger described this "place" of the "suprasensory" as the object of Nietzsche's intended target of his God Is Dead episode in The Gay Science. Not what is called "Heidegger's Nietzsche" that claims Nietzsche to be a metaphysician despite his insistence to the contrary.

I can very much respect this point of view in certain respects - especially when it comes to interpretations such as those of Social Darwinism. Nevertheless, I could present the case that the metaphorical bouncer at the bar is the constraints of objective reality itself, such that that life with is most conformant to objective reality (else least deviates from its requirements) will remain present to the world. But I'm not sure if this very abstract way of thinking about evolution is a worthwhile avenue to here investigate - especially since it makes use of the notion of an objective world which, on its own, can be a very slippery thing to identify. Yet tentatively granting this, it will be true that the possibilities of what can be will be qualitatively indeterminant, but this only in so far as these myriad possibilities nonetheless yet sufficiently conform to objectivity. Hence, as one physiological example, why there has never been an animal with binocular vision whose eyes are vertically (rather than horizontally) aligned: such positioning would be contrary to the objective world's constraint of needing to optimally detect stimuli against the horizon (best short example I could currently think up). — javra

Constraints on reality itself is an interesting thought. I imagine genetic research will one day be able to determine if DNA and its molecular combinatory possibilities has such a limit. I imagine AI will one day be able to say whether or not a binoculared animal would be possible, that is, whether it is conceivable that there be a genetic counterpart to the physical idea of being binocular. I can't see why not, though this would be something only occurring in an environment that allowed for such a thing to manifest, that is, once the series of genetic accidents leads to a generational tendency, and this tendency is further encouraged by the survival advantages it produces, sure; why not? AI could do this is a lab in some future world in which the human genome is mastered and surpassed?

Just a bit of musing, but I think the matter would have to be framed not in terms of actual familiar environmental conditions we that evolution deals with in trying understand our own evolved constitution, but in terms of what is molecularly possible for the self replicating DNA. This, I suspect, has no limits, though this would be for a geneticist to say.

Very true. I nevertheless yet find natural selection to be very intertwined with much of the human phenotype, behavioral as well as physiological. As an undergraduate I did some independent research (with human participants) regarding the evolutionary history of human non-verbal communication via facial expressions. Specifically, back then there was a prevalent notion among ethologists and cognitive scientists alike that the human smile evolved from out of the primate fear-grimace (in short, we smile so as to show fear and thereby appease those we smile to, taking away presumptions of aggression, and thereby reinforcing friendships). The experiments I conduced gave good reason to support the conclusion that our human smile evolved from the primate play-face (in short, an exposing of weapons (for primates these being teeth and esp. canines) in playful mock-aggression—basically, this with the intent of expressing “I’ve got you’re back” when done not as a laugh but as a sincere smile). The details will not be of much use here (though I relish them), but the issue remains: either way, our human smile (and, for that matter, all our basic and universally recognizable human facial expressions) evolved from lesser primate facial expressions, and together with the expressions so too the emotions thereby expressed. Although this does not play into human’s far superior magnitudes of cognition, it does illustrate just how intimately many a defining feature of being human is associated with our biological past from which we’ve evolved as a species. Hard to think of a more prototypically cordial human image than that of a smiling face. — javra

Or that of a tortured face, on the noncordial side of it. Weird to keep in mind that our conception of what the "smile" was way back before it evolved into what it is now is an interpretative imposition produced by our current phase or order of evolvement. One way that confounds this conversation about evolution is to see that whatever we say, we ourselves are doing so from a position of endowed evolved features, which will move on as the geologic ages do (unless, as I suspect will happen, AI takes the steering wheel away from evolution and replaces it with genetic engineering. Talk about everything changing!). Our very thinking about things has no privileged pov on access to "objective" statements about what is the case in the world. Not that the smile did not undergo its transformation as you are convinced it did, or that this is not a good theory. It is deeper than this. Thinking itself and the meanings of things is IN the evolved hard wiring, so being right and being a good theory simply issues from this. Odd to say this, perhaps, but to think the idea of evolution rigorously, following through, leads only to one place, which is a radical relativity and hermeneutics.

But that aside, I think the face is a window to the soul. Truly and no kidding. But this is not a ridiculous religious idea learned in catechism. It comes out of a proper analysis of our existence. Long story, though. I think of that smile, and I am led to joy, pleasure, eustasy, bliss, and all the rest, behind it. I think overt features are incidental. One has to drop the physicalism and make the move toward the psyche, and its evolution.

Habermas himself called the process "transcendental-pragmatic." — J

Doing a bit of reading. Ill get back to you.

I remember hearing a lecture by Rorty (early 2000's) He said something like - 'If life has a meaning it is to make things better for our descendants.' How would he provide justification? I tend to think that Rorty, despite the Irony and anti-metaphysics, was essentially a romantic figure. — Tom Storm

Never a romantic in, say, the transcendentalist (Emerson, et al) or Wordsworthian (Ode to Intimation of Immortality) way, for these are, in their own way, metaphysicians, not simply dwelling on the joy an rapture of the world, but elevating this to a higher order of existence, the suprasensory world. But he did move to teaching literature, later on, and yes, he was certainly no cold impassionate detached intellect (not like he wasn't trying, though). My thoughts on the matter are tough to say. Rorty and the pragmatists are right, I think, the "forward looking" view of our existence. But I have rather radical views on ethics: value is "given" (shown to us, as Wittgenstein put it) but its nature is transcendental. I am Rorty's opposite, really: loosely speaking, he says nothing is metaphysical. I say everything is metaphysical!

Read the response. You may find some ground of agreement.

Do you understand the role that natural selection plays in evolution, and that natural selection is not random? — wonderer1

Not entirely, no. But I would suggest an apriori argument, and as such has nothing to do with the nuances of evolutionary thinking, in the same way a philosophical critique of science has nothing to do with any particular science. Simply put, prior to ANY talk about how evolution is explained, there is the foundational concept in place, which is the random mutation of genes. Even if traits are produced and the survival of which is determined by nonrandom conditions, like the attractiveness of food or a sexual feature leading to overt behavior of choosing, comparing, and so on, this nonrandomness itself has its basis in randomness. Non randomness occurs within the more basic assumption of random events. At root what is determinative is the nature of traits themselves, and natural selection has nothing to do with these possibilities. An inquiry into the nature of human affectivity is not informed by the way generational groups' genetic and manifest features survive or disappear. They in fact DO survive and disappear, but this says nothing about what it is.

That all evolution is in essence entirely accidental is a mischaracterization of evolution via natural selection. In short, NS is the favoring of certain varieties of lifeforms by natural constraints—such that this metaphorical favoring by Nature is itself not a matter of chance. The following is a more longwinded but robust explanation that to me amounts to the same:

Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charles Darwin popularised the term "natural selection", contrasting it with artificial selection, which is intentional, whereas natural selection is not.

Variation of traits, both genotypic and phenotypic, exists within all populations of organisms. However, some traits are more likely to facilitate survival and reproductive success. Thus, these traits are passed onto the next generation. These traits can also become more common within a population if the environment that favours these traits remain fixed. If new traits become more favored due to changes in a specific niche, microevolution occurs. If new traits become more favored due to changes in the broader environment, macroevolution occurs. Sometimes, new species can arise especially if these new traits are radically different from the traits possessed by their predecessors.

The likelihood of these traits being 'selected' and passed down are determined by many factors. Some are likely to be passed down because they adapt well to their environments. Others are passed down because these traits are actively preferred by mating partners, which is known as sexual selection. Female bodies also prefer traits that confer the lowest cost to their reproductive health, which is known as fecundity selection. — javra

I do see the sense of this, of course. But my comment brought to light the "qualitative features of our existence": it seems right to say that genotypical "errors" that produce phenotypical features are affected by the actual behavior these features encourage and produce. If a gene, accidently modified in the process of meiosis, for, say, stronger muscles, is present in an offspring, and this exceeds the abilities of competitors in survival and reproduction, then the intentional acts of this organism will allow for this trait to dominate, and a new gene pool will arise, and on and on. So yes, it is not as if intent, will, even "choosing" and the like are absent from an analysis the evolutionary process simply because genotypical accidents or errors produce phenotypical tendencies.

But this is not what I want to consider. Evolution dos not determine what it is that stands as a possibility for a manifest characteristic. It is like the bouncer at a bar, say, that denies admittance for some while denying others. The principle of acceptance or denial certainly is determinative, but, if you can stand the analogy, who comes forward seeking admittance is not at all determined at the front gate. Those possibilities are qualitatively indeterminate. So when evolutionists (and all reasonable people are. The point here steps beyond science) attempt to talk about what a human being is, they have nothing to say about the basic givenness that "made it past" the gate bouncer. Our ability to reason, feel, understand, experience the world in all its qualitative richness is a matter for analysis entirely beyond the reach of evolution in a qualitative analysis.

I don't have philosophical background but you've concisely summarized a reaction I had to Rorty which I assumed might have been my lack of philosophical sophistication. How do you imagine Rorty might respond to this frame of his ideas? Surely it was put to him as it seems an obvious critique. — Tom Storm

Rorty, and I don't want to just throw names at you, so I won't, mostly, is postmodern, and this follows the critique of "modern" thinking that says it is not just the replacement of an old idea with a new, more reasonable one that will accomplish our philosophical search for a foundational theory. Rather, it is a flat out rejection of "the place" where these foundational ideas have their existence: metaphysics (in case you are interested, a great look at this comes from Heidegger's The Word of Nietzsche; God Is Dead, where he calls N a metaphysician because "will to power", he claims, is just a continuation of the "place" of metaphysics). To see the post modern move, think of metaphysics as a completely empty concept! As meaningless as 'ummgablgdt'. Just nothing at all. It is not only God and Christian platonism that goes down the drain, but the possibility itself of making sense of the context in which these occur. A really strong position, beyond Hume's atheism (or his ambiguity on the matter). Rorty said truth is propositional, and didn't believe in any metaphysics AT ALL. But consider how his thinking goes, and if you take the time to look at its simplicity, it is, well, a little more than just curious. Keep in mind that his favorite philosophers are Dewey, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, and that makes him....complicated. So truth belongs to propositions, but does this commit him to the rational structure of thought, like Kant, as the bottom line for understanding things at the basic level? No. For Rorty there IS no bottom line. Not turtles all the way down, for there is no sense at all in "down".

He once presented the epistemological question, how does anything out there get in here? The more you think about something like this, the more you go a bit mad philosophically. We are all "scientists" and physicalists in our default orientation in the world, because of public education. Rorty was simply making clear that this model demonstrates nothing of the way knowledge claims, the foundational presupposition of everything! I may know there is a fence post over there, but one thing I do not know is how this knowledge is possible. An odd insight, to say the least, given how busy we are circulating through knowledge assumptions in our everydayness of affairs. Causality has NOTHING about it that is epistemic.

So you get an idea of Rorty's epistemology. He doesn't have a meta-epistemology, you might say. He is not a meta-physicalist or a meta-anything. What about values, or "value"? He agrees that "cruelty is the worse one can do." But there are no metaphysical basics for this. Just ideas, that "are made, not discovered." Hume was not aware of the post modern philosophy that rose out of the 20th century's analytic and phenomenological lines of thinking. So he couldn't really understand what Rorty is on about. Hume never read Heidegger. How could he?