languages of art and of faith — J

I think also tools. If it is knowledge you're after, perhaps effective only after the philosophical prerequisites have been satisfied.

First, a clarification: The idea I’m referring to doesn’t denigrate poetry, or fiction, or prayer, or paying compliments, or any other non-discursive uses of language. Whether such uses represent anything “higher” than philosophical discourse is a separate question, though of course a related one, and interesting in its own right. Here I’m sticking to the discourses of rational inquiry. — J

Subject to the caveat that I am weighing in on the strength of structures I have stored in my memory up to this moment, and without delving deeper, 1. I understand and appreciate your clarification; 2. I tend to think that of the paths currently available to 'leading us to that door we have to open by other means', not only is it the highest, but perhaps the only such path which is essential if we want a decent chance at arriving at the door.

Thanks for clarifying

there is no single, coherent, agreed upon concept 'Christian' or teaching regarding Christianity. Odd as it may sound, Jesus was not a Christian. There is much in Christianity that I think he would not have approved of. The religion is the invention of Paul for the Gentiles and developed in ways that I think Paul would not have approved of through the influence of paganism. — Fooloso4

When we back up and stop 'playing', that's probably the healthier of starting points if we're willing to think in terms of assessing not just the principles of the founder, but those principles within the context of its postmortem promoters; i.e., those, like Paul who I suspect, really brought us, 'no Christianity without the ressurection; no salvation without Christ.

Fair enough. Then if the essence of Christianity is strict adherence to its rules, I suppose any claim to membership requires acceptance of the ressurection.

I suppose also that nothing in that precludes me from, like members, acting as though I were a Christian, just from claiming to be one; and from that small matter of my own ressurection, if membership is in fact the exclusive means.

In the end, I think the strings attached end up twisting and strangling the thing being promoted. But that is admittedly me

Philosophy is fit for purpose.
But if ever it claims to provide direct access to ultimate or eternal truths, it has engaged in a dysfunctional misrepresentation. Thankfully, most often it doesn't.

But in many cases outside the NT the spirit of the law seems elevated above the letter, and so Jesus is not unique in this. And this goes along with the claim of misunderstanding the Scriptures at John 5:39 — — Count Timothy von Icarus

What I find perplexing is that we all know this: scriptures are riddled with contradictions; and yet we toil, even the least fanatical and fundamentalist among us, at proving, at determining, etc., as if there is any word ever spoken or inscribed that we can say with unconditional certainty can withstand time as an eternal truth.

Not Descartes, and certainly not St. Paul, though both can still be venerated for their contributions, followed to edifying, even so called spiritually beneficial degrees.

Addendum: Its not fair Paul gets his stamped "must read as eternally true," and poor Descartes doesnt.

Are you still playing christianity if there is no ressurection?
If not, but you are still playing, why does the modification matter? Because you have no 'right' to modify the rules and still call it christianity? Under what authority but its own?
Is the essence of Christianity the salvation of the individual or the strict adherence to its rules?
If it's the former, then what if one rejected the resurrection and yet was saved?
Since we cant truly establish the ressurection outside of the claims of the game, hence, we question it;
Unless we can establish the necessity of belief in the ressurection outside of the claims, we ought to be open to questioning it.
I think if it's open for question, let me play christianity without the ressurection if playing that way is effective. There's nothing stopping me.
If the players association determines that only the classical version can be called christianity, let them. It's not trade marked.
Yes I can be a Christian and reject or find irelevant, the ressurection--as a historical fact.
And lest this seem offensive with the reference to 'playing,' I think one can not only play without need of the ressurection (ultimately a self-based 'goal,' providing us with the hope of the same, as if the goal in football were not actually the points, but by calling it a 'slice', the promise of a slice of pizza at the after party), but can play just as passionately and with all of one's might, garnering all of the same benefits both psycho-spiritual and socio-political.

The large majority of philosophers do not subscribe to the idea of most if not all of the concepts you mention, so this can't be the source of their reasoning at all. — Outlander

You are correct and I was hasty. I believe that notwithstanding most philosophers rejecting the issues I raised, they are still dragged by them. But I am not prepared to provide evidence currently. So, i will happily defer to your point.

These things by the aforementioned descriptors are but illusions too. Yet they drive men to madness, war, and on the opposite end provide comfort, purpose, and belonging. These things are regarded as substantial entities in and of themself, regardless if they be "facades" of biological workings or mere social constructs, — Outlander

It may be true that these things affect us; but I think your 'hint' that they might be facades is closer to the truth. While I realize you are not subscribing to that theory, I think, neither can it just be brushed away. Yes, we are permitted to recognize our differences from other animals because of these facades; but I think if we leap further and conclude that we are not animals because of these appearances, we are just being conceited.

Why is the idea that we are animals seemingly unpopular among philosophers? — NOS4A2

We are animals. It is unpopular because the minute we accept that we are animals, dualism, ego/spirit, anamnesis, eternal truths, heaven, hell, and immortality all vanish into the illusions that they are

You cannot see it of course. It is conceptual and functional — Corvus

Ok. Yah. Splice that sentence from our entire exchange, and you and I agree generally on what Mind is and how it's different from Body, though it emerges therefrom.

EDIT: if I am incapable of leaving well enough alone, which, to wit, I am incapable, then the potential locus of our divergence is I say that emergence which is conceptual and functional does not share one and the same claim to reality as the body--unless it is a Spirit, which you seem to be saying. While your position is not only reasonable, but seems to be conventional, even to those who claim to be rejecting duality, I just am convinced of a different conclusion, I.e. that it exists, is not body, but is not spirit either, is just the imagination having emerged into something we both utilize and are tricked by.

Your problem seems to stem from conflating mind and body at times, and then looking at mind and body separate entities as you go along — Corvus

I agree it appears that way. That’s because Mind requires Body as its infrastructure and response; there is a seeming grey area with an apparent overlap. But there is no overlap, the appearance is owing to the limitations of Mind in both discerning where one ends and tge other begins, and, insisting upon such discernment.

If you look at the mind as one of the organs of the body, then things get clearer. — Corvus

I'd like to. Please show me, where is that organ Mind?

Saying that they are the same sounds over simplification — Corvus

I recognize the empirical differences, by the same, to stick with the religious, I mean, we think our minds, aka souls, make us more valuable to nature/God. But I hypothesize that that is what alienates us from nature/god; in n/g eyes what makes as valuable is tge same as what makes a squirrel valuable, that we are living.

But at the same time you deny the existence of souls and spirits, and brush aside death as the final page of the chapter for the beings. — Corvus

I understand why the two seem to go hand in hand--God and spirit--but I do not see why it is necessary, or why, other than desire for immortality of a narrative the spirit is necessary

after life, — Corvus

Mind craves an afterlife because the mechanism of the subject creates the illusion of continuing. I think, harsh as it is a pill to swallow, the so called subject doesn't really exist, and as for we tge body, it dies and is reborn in tge incessant present. If we want to put it into religious terms, There's God's gift to us, the eternal present, life, our fall is ignoring life and opting for knowledge and our own world that we built with it.

knows, observes, feels, predicts and feels. — Corvus

Knows=mind constructing, and settling on what fits by triggering body to feel 'good' [about it]
Observes=the aware-ing body observes, attaching no words to the observation; mind constructs perceptions to layer over the observations
Feels=body feels, attaches no word to the feelings; mind constructs emotions using words to layer over the feelings
Predicts=mind constructing, and settling on what fits by triggering body to feel 'good;'

The body has a head, arms, feet and hands etc etc.  The mind can feel, know, observe, recall, predict, reason ... etc etc. — Corvus

curiosity — Corvus

The body is plainly real in every sense of the word real. You're offering that in your statement.

All of the enumerated things mind can do are what we (mind) ascribes to itself as proof of its reality 'beyond' the physical body. But these are just functions being carried out by a system of stimulus and response. Just happens the functions have evolved to act in such a richly complex and sophisticated way, with a narrative form, mechanisms like the ones we call logic, grammar, reason, etc., that the body observing these functions and responding, triggers good feelings when tge system classifies itself as "real"

arrogance — Corvus

We are a conceited ape. The conceit is the illusion that our imaginations are special beyond their function (yes, that is impressive) but somehow as an eternal truth

Remember, just hypothetical.

Why is the emergent mind not real? What do you mean by "real" and "not real"? — Corvus

Very simplified:

Obviously speaking hypothetically from what I have gathered and without any authority nor claim thereto, that is exactly the point I am following in the OP. Not necessarily adhering to Merleau-Ponty's reasoning, I agree that we have gotten it all wrong. We have privileged the Mind (unique to humans), unwittingly giving it lofty designations like spirit and soul, imbuing it not just with reality, but a higher reality, eternity; relegating the flesh to a category shared with 'animals' as if we are superior to 'them', and worse, relegating it as the source of evil. Yet, prima facie, any animal born into this world has no 'cause' to question it's reality nor that of the natural Universe. Then why do we question reality? Because the 'we' doing the questioning is not our bodies, but this process of constructing and projecting (emerging out of our real imaginations--a thing we presumably share with primates, elephants, and sea mammals for e.g.) which has developed over generations, is transmitted with socialization, and has displaced our natures with--admittedly very functional--fictions. The subject, arising out of the need to unify the 'stories' arising from a single locus or embodiment, stands in for the body; but we have displaced the body with this mechanism. This 'illusion' though it has created another world, layered for humans, on top of the real one, has also caused much suffering, due primarily to the attachment to the world which is fictional, and ignorance about the one which is natural. A simplified solution is not to call for the extinguishing of mind, which would mean tge same for history, but a recognition that when we speak of I or Mind, we are referring to an excellent tool, our true nature remains that animal which God created/Nature evolved.

Therefore, body is you. Mind emerged from body — Corvus

Yes. I believe that too. Only the emergent mind is not real like the body is.

So you must be an atheist and materialist, is it correct? — Corvus

I consider myself religious; however, I suspect that unlike science which requires empirical or mathematical proof to support fact claims, religion has no business in facts or proof, but is rather, related to being [whatever it is God/Nature/Reality 'designed/evolved' us to be] and not knowing. Tree of Life, not of knowledge (of good and evil).

As a metaphorical recap of tge Hypothesis, think of cats and dogs, how we imagine them with personalities, dogs are loving and loyal, cats are aloof and selfish, and so on individually; but thats not what they are. Theyre dogs, dogging and cats catting, whatever it is tgeir bodies and species do. it's possible for us to see, though not easy, that the personalities are superimposed from our 'world' and that they're not real. But that's obviously what we are, our so called world, just a superimposition onto our bodies and our species. I think my point being we can't know what body is, but it's not that personality having imposed itself. Just like a dog is just dogging. A human is just is-ing. Our only access to the truth of what we are is not by proving it and knowing it--that's where the distraction lies; the one creating the illusion of duality--it is just being it, the human body.

Which brings us to MP and this OP.

You'd have to show how this could be possible. That's the problem. And it's far from trivial — Manuel

You are absolutely right. Admittedly, I'm still at the stage of working out hypotheses.
A problem, I suspect, is that we have become so sophisticated in our accumulation and methods, that if the Hypothesis were simply--mind consists of signifiers operating autonomously by an evolved law and dynamic, it would involve many disciplines over many decades to prove/disprove, with the likely conclusion that it is inconclusive.

You're points have been guiding. Many of which; I need to revisit.

I think we just don't know enough about the nature of matter in general to say conclusively if there is a difference in kind between our ideas and physics or not. — Manuel

Interesting. An admirable open pov, but if I needed that hurdle resolved to proceed, I'd say matter is matter, mind is Mind, and never the twain shall meet.

If your body has lost all the contents of your memory let us suppose, but it still functions biologically. Would you be able to know then, your body is you? — Corvus

That is exactly my point; there is no real "you" and "your" body is not "yours". The question dualists need to consider is why a human body wouldn't be itself without the constructions and projections we classify as a separate entity and call mind. Why is a lizard still a lizard without thought and language, but only humans have a soul? Sure, we claim that God prefers us and gave us a soul. But I think we've grown up enough to stop clinging to that.

I'd say that "concrete things", things that can be touched with our hands, are almost absent in the universe, especially if you consider how many things exists which we cannot touch, which is almost everything. — Manuel

You're definitely challenging my, beyond complacent, settlements, which is good.

But OK, please let me know what you think of this baby step. Even if so called concrete things turn out to be other than as they appear, perhaps also evasive, etc. Are they not yet, all of them together, bodies, trees, oceans, and rocks, something physics explores differently than it does the ideas which appear to shape our experiences and are not constructed out of matter. I get that we have dreamed that they might be, but if we are being fair, a thought might require matter to generate it, but once projected and gone, it is gone. Because it never really was.

Isn't body the precondition for being conscious? — Corvus

This I agree with. It's just that I go further than what is implied. I think Body is the only condition for being conscious. Mind are the projections which emerged/evolved and now operate out of that Consciousness, displacing the organic system of, more or less stimulus and response, with stimuli which have been so over produced (maybe kickstarted/driven by language), that an autonomous process takes place which we take to be our experience; assuming an agent/experienced, and from there, concluding a real and separate being (even those who insist they aren't dualistic yet speak of mind as if it has a reality distinct from the body's--forgive the non-technical language).

the very fact that it even points to something is already an activity the mind has — Manuel

Because there is no language accessible to precisely express the point, these metaphors might be helpful, although also tricky.

In my metaphor Mind doesn't point, it's the finger (body) which points. Mind isn't even the thing it is pointing to. Mind is the direction in which it is pointing. That is how mind is empty. And in that sense is the body 'more' real. The finger is more real than the direction in which it is pointing.

I suppose the question to ask would be, what are you attempting to prove or what would be advanced or made clearer by supposing that body and mind are so different? — Manuel

To answer that question, because the others require more focused attention, I'm trying to get at the fallacy we have trapped ourselves in because mind emerged, with 'unique' structures etc., which is, that it is the 'seat' of our being/reality/truth, at the expense of what is already a prima facie given. Not I think therefore I am, but rather it thinks therefore it exists...but what is it? Whereas body lives, therefore it is. The latter can at least be shared with the rest of the universe. It is this oddity, Mind, that only humans seem to have, and that has 'fooled' us 'narcissistically, into wanting it to be special, more real, the being within the being etc

Could it be because body is temporal? As we all know, bodies get old, die and becomes dust. Bodies don't last too long. — Corvus

I'd say, it is because of the structure of our "thinking" that we even "desire" eternity/immortality. Of course our bodies are "temporal" in their lived forms. That, to me, doesn't prohibit them from being our only "reality"

Bodies get old and die through time. Minds die too. But souls supposed to survive after death to be identified for what the being had done — Corvus

The first, I agree without reason to disagree; the second, I agree, with the qualifier that I go a step further and doubt that Mind ever lived in the first place; the third I have no reason to believe.

Why is the body not enough. I don't approach these things religiously (as in conventional religions), but even if I did, God created the natural universe, we created the spiritual to answer questions which from God's perspective we have no business asking. For so called Abrahamic religions, these questions are humans eating knowledge not life. For so called Vedic-Buddhist religions these questions are us consumed by the fruits of our works, rather than just doing our works because it is within our natures to do.

That sounds like souls / spirits are illusions. — Corvus

In my opinion, not just illusions (that's ultimately what I would call the spin which human mind superimposes onto reality) but 'soul/spirit' are misunderstandings: illusions within the illusion, about what the illusion might be.

What should be done is to say which are properties unique to bodies and how these properties cannot be mental in any way. Then you could have an argument. — Manuel

That is excellent. Granted that the mental (for humans) 'uses' matter/energy (whatever it's called, currently) to 'generate'. But, simply put, that which is generated--Signifiers--is not matter/energy. To classify it objectively is the challenge, given it is really classifying itself. But the mental is more like the direction in which a finger is pointing (rather than the finger, or what it is pointing to (unless it happens to be pointing to another direction--which is often the case)); so as opposed to the body (including the nervous system, synapses etc.; including mood, sensation, drives--all presumably material processes) the mental is empty, a 'thing' totally other, yet not real in the way we prima facie receive the material, I.e., the body, as real.

I realize that my loose terminology may need tightening. I can see you've been doing that. Hopefully, you can read my question for what it is really asking, rather than what it might accidentally appear to be asking, given terms (mis)used.

Or you can make the terminological choice of putting things this way, which is fine. — Manuel

Isn't that inescapably the case? Some adopted by convention for various reasons, including, as you say, proof; some fringe applications of the terminology, and not adopted. That is a mammoth question, I know. My point brings me back to what is the body? Not a thing to best access with knowledge, but rather the thing we are [isolated from knowledge].

But when we go on to speak of non-linguistic thought, here we are really lost and have been for thousands of years. — Manuel

Perhaps it is our own definitions creating obstacles to further "discovery." Take non linguistic thought. I might argue that even the seemingly nonlinguistic, is linguistics, if the latter has as its common feature a Signifier/Signified, ie. 'meaning-construction' function. What nonlinguistic thought is not yet, primarily about meaning?

But souls? How do you prove souls exist? — Corvus

I don't think souls/spirit are real distinct beings. We apply those terms to the nonphysical, 'mental' processes which ultimately cause/include the illusion of being, although they are actually fleeting and empty processes.

Ok. And applying the rules of this game (not meant to be disparaging, Im a participant), your points are likely, in the end (I still haven't considered them, looked at the authors you suggested. Narrowing the scope of respective and mutual understanding, with the hope of aligning the two will allow for a more 'accurate' review, anyway), convincing.

But, in case from your p.o.v., I'm not being clear. It is likely my understanding and my expression are misaligned. I will resort to metaphorical illustrations which I acknowledge are not valid arguments (I don't view my exercise as an attempt to promote an argument so much as to broaden my understanding of a hypothesis).

Think of the human on that hypothetical day before we first developed a mind that would start inquiring into the matters here. What did she think she was? Either, nothing, she didn't think (my preference); or, the body allegedly thinking. I think our inquiries--that is, our desire to know, and the corresponding illusions that we can know, and that there is something to know, outside of our constructing it--are only there because they are part of the constructing that started take place the day after that hypothetical human thought nothing of her being; just was her being.

Unless you are suggesting that the same organism, prehistorically, was born with those queries 'genetically' built in. But, that is what I am skeptical of. We weren't born into a reality with questions or answers. We, uniquely, make them, and they are other than the reality we were born into.

From very simple perceptual mental state of the simple living animals to more complex mental states of the social animals, and then highly complicated and sophisticated mental states of humans, — Corvus

I would only consider the third to be mind (a thing unique to humans). The first two, shared with animals, forms organic consciousness and provides the organic infrastructure for human mind. Within the latter you might find stages/states but we just make those up as part of the processes of its operating.

we don't know what a body is — Manuel

Yes. That's in line with 'my' point. [because knowing is make-believe]. We cannot know what body is We can only be the body is-ing.

But I still need to give due consideration to your specific counter points.

Mind is playing the same music while it keeps us on hold.

I really like your points, and they deserve deeper consideration. But, I think your (?) earlier question applies: where does body stop and mind begin?

(Kindly allow for extreme looseness in use of terms)

The stuff you rightfully point out, as it relates to mind and my allegations about fiction, is describing the real infrastructure. Sophisticated animals like birds and humans have imaging 'organs' which function on representation. That is still a reality in the real world.

At some vague length of time, that real natural process evolved into an autonomously moving system, with its own laws etc., not just admittedly already mediated sensation, but sensensatiin displaced by a working world, a system of triggers and responses, by nature empty fiction; though displacing everything, including primitive sensations and feelings.

Anyway, that was an impatient reply. Your points are deserving of a few reads and more thought. Thanks

Even so, I don't follow what you are saying about mind or self being more fictional than body. — Manuel

In fairness, it is more complicated than can be explained by someone with my skill level with language. This is necessarily over simplified and one-dimensional. And yet, I'll deliver it complicated.

I am understanding virtually everything uniquely experienced by humans to be only experienced in the first place because over millenia (generationally transmitted) our once simply organic sense 'organ', imagination, overproduced and the images 'intended' to be used for conditioning responses, e.g. a roar means run, evolved, eventually into language, and out of that, or around the same time, human Mind. The triggered feelings and actions, and effects on the body and nature are real; but the coding, Mind, and the so called experiences, really just empty structures having evolved into the linear form, Narrative, requiring a Subject, a dialectic, the illusion of truth, for what is just a structure, belief, one of the neverending settlements of dialectic, these are what I call fiction--maybe exagerratedly out of an overzealousness about the understanding (not invented, found in/ constructed out of everything heading its way)--the point is this. Reality, the feelings and actions, the sensations unfiltered, and drives, including bonding, are not [meant to be: meaning is exactly what is constructed, hence the brackets] experienced that way, fictionally, in linear narrative form attaching to the Subject. The body, Reality, is not in knowing, the becoming narrative, a fiction, but in being [the] body.

I don't quite see how mind could be "more fictional" than body. — Manuel

On the (admittedly weak; but ultimately, all we've got) prima facie presumption (which has been mistakenly rejected) that what we sense is a real world.

I would submit that it is our constructions which have seduced us into thinking our senses cannot deliver reality. We are not born with any 'reasons' to doubt that they do. It is our perceptions which displace/distort our senses; our emotions which d/d our feelings; our ideas which d/d our [intuitive] imaginations, etc

asking am I my body is problematic. — Manuel

Not if this "mind" you assume to be distinct, is distinct, and does exist, but not in the real world. Rather, it exists as fleeting images which have developed over millenia into such complexity, and which has such an effect on reality through its 'host' bodies, that it has (been) included (itself) into this category, "reality" which paradoxically, it makes.

"I" am not my body; because "I", like reality, is a constructed mechanism in that autonomous process of the imagination.

But [my] body, alone, is real; my mind is a Fictional layer occupying the space where my body's natural aware-ing "is".

1. Are mental and soul different? How are they different?
2. What do you mean by "we think of as real"? What is real? — Corvus

From my pespective:
1. They are the same, there is no real duality. We have used soul and spirit to identify that which we have misperceived to be a being distinct from the body.

2. If there is such a category as Real, then, I'm referring to ultimate, unqualified, unconditioned "reality." Without getting into science or religion, if I were born into this world, with the concept of ultimately real, it is prima facie apparent that the physical universe is real. I cannot go into further reductions, like cells or atoms, space, time, or gravity, for e.g., because these bring me outside that prima facie Reality, and into conditions which are ultimately just made up and believed.

The reason for our pursuit for Reality beyond the prim facie stems from the seduction of such make-believe, the world which has displaced the prima facie, only for humans, with its imagined constructions and projections.

I'm suggesting in response to Merleau-Ponty and the OP (an open wondering, more accurately) that both can be 'factual.'
1. there is no mind body dualism, there is only the body including the so called mental, and
2. That

I am my mind and my body is intrinsically different from me. — Kurt Keefner

. Because #2 is an illusion. The make-believe constructed and projected over/as history, moves on its own, with its own laws and mechanics. It has displaced our organic and [really] Real consciousness so that experience (our day to day "reality") has replaced nature, but ultimately it is empty projections of the imagination and not "what we think of as" ultimately Real.

Even when you look at the naked face of Mona Lisa with your very own eyes — punos

Yes, the very subject of my analogy. We cannot know the external universe through our minds. We can only be the so called external universe as our bodies.

I'm not done sculpting — punos

I would consider myself fortunate if I happen to be there to see it; but I note, magnificent as I'm sure tge sculpture will be, it will be a sculpture.