Knowledge is usually defined as true belief with sufficient evidence. So knowledge is an objectification of belief. — Pantagruel

Isn't the use of "true" here presuming what you ask to find? If knowledge is validated by something other than belief, how could it be the "objectification of belief?"

I believe you are referring to verse 5.
I read the passage to say that the bellows are not exhausted in the way speech can be by continuing without end.
"Nature" may be presented in the verse but it should be seen in the context of other statements made in the verse. As one translation has it:

Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs., the sage is ruthless,
and treats the people as straw dogs.
Is not the space between heaven and earth like a bellows?
It is empty without being exhausted:
The more it works the more comes out.
Much speech leads inevitably to silence.
Better to hold fast to the void.

Translated by D.C. Lau

Not sure what "by itself" means. Thinking is an activity, and philosophy is a certain kind of thinking -- at least that's how I think of it. If there's no value and no result in doing so, then why do it? — Xtrix

You brought up the idea that some of this activity of thinking was not important to being an active and effective agent in the life we are alive in. I thought I was talking about your distinctions, not mine.

"Where's the beef?" What has all this reading and philosophizing accomplished? What is it doing for you or others? That's not totally fair, of course, but I insist it's worth asking. — Xtrix

The "philosophizing" is not something that has a result or value by itself. For my part, I am not sure at any point whether a particular expression of it concerns what concerns the direct relation to one's life you are talking about.

On the other hand, the same uncertainty makes me unsure of separating it from my agency as a kind of navigation where one can say this ship went here and another went there. The desire to make it one thing or another is one of the issues being discussed in philosophy.

Good post.

Seeking to be the one who acts is also keeping an eye out for who is doing that amongst the people you live amongst. Being visible expands what one can observe. Much of philosophical discourse is entangled with different takes of what is possible and what possibility could mean. It is like anything else, if it is a clue to what you want to find then it is worthy, if it is a distraction, then it is not.

More easily gestured at than explained, of course.

Please cite your favorite version.
There are other references in other books but I am not going there now.

I do not dismiss the notion that Kierkegaard's experience provides a background for better understanding of what he writes about but it doesn't explain the concept of the Single Individual, presented here and elsewhere, by itself.
To relegate this view of parenting as only the product of abuse is to dismiss any reason to engage with Kierkegaard as a thinker.

I think it is a misunderstanding of Kierkegaard's intention to read being 'present but not present' before a child's inward reserve to mean the same thing as a "hands off" style of parenting that only notices the child's experience when bad things happen.

The key element is found in what cannot be delegated:
" the task is very difficult, and one cannot exempt oneself by employing a nursemaid or by buying a walker."
One has to engage with their own struggle in this regard to have any relationship to what is happening in another by themselves. We can help each other but we can't do certain things for each other.

As N said, every philosophy is a kind of specious autobiography. — ernest meyer

Specious? I have read a number of places where N said the philosophical is autobiographical. I don't recall where that element was said to be all it meant. N judged philosophical views by their fruits according to what he valued.

I think there is a similarity but hallucinogenics are a kind of visa rather than a citizenship in one's existence. My encounter with them was long ago and far away.

The loss came from not being able to talk about it as a loss when it was happening. That idea had not been minted yet. — Valentinus


I don't understand. — T Clark

The need to call out and name virtues is related to wanting to continue receiving the benefit of what had been nurtured previously without need of names. We use names for other purposes and that is okay. So much so that naming un-naming is also good. But that beneficial practice is not being made equal to what did not need a name at the beginning.

I did read and enjoy several books by Carlos Castaneda in my youth, although I never saw the experiences described as relevant to my life. — T Clark

A little peyote goes a long way....

I believe the discussion of time you are referring to in The Concept of Anxiety begins in the third chapter (section IV 355). It begins with:

Man, then, is synthesis of psyche and body, but is also a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal. That has often been stated. I do not object to it at all, for it is my joy and dearest occupation to ponder over that which is quite simple.
As for the latter synthesis, it is immediately striking that it is formed differently from the former. In the former, the two factors are psyche and body, and spirit is the third, yet in such a way that one can speak of a synthesis only when spirit is posited. The latter synthesis has only two factors, the temporal and the eternal. Where is the third factor? And if there is no third factor, there really is no synthesis, for a synthesis that is a contradiction cannot be completed without a third factor, because the fact that the synthesis is a contradiction asserts that it is not. What, then, is the temporal? — Translated by Reidar Thomte

The remainder of chapter 3 builds from his explanation of the temporal in order to separate expectations of fate from freedom and the consciousness of sin. I would summarize that portion if I could. But, even if I was more able, the summary could only be understood by some one who traveled the distance by themselves. So, with the caveat of how the sentence could be wildly misunderstood out of context, I will pluck the following out of section (IV 374):

However, to explain how my religious existence comes into relation with and expresses itself in my outward existence, that is the task."
(Same translator as cited above)

The next chapter, Number Four, is titled: "Anxiety of Sin or Anxiety as the Consequence of Sin in the Single Individual." The chapter includes the distinction between good and evil and it how that relates to the possibility for freedom. Kierkegaard also introduces his view of the demonic as a result of that relationship. The problem of "inclosing reserve" is that it is a necessary condition of any single individual acting as themselves but is also a source of suffering and personal existential peril. To answer your question about a "model of the good parent", I will rip another bit of text out of context. It comes with that bitter quality of understatement Kierkegaard uses when very pissed off about something:

However, the tormentor of inclosing reserve may also relate himself selfishly to his own inclosing reserve. About this I could write a whole book, although I have not been, according to the custom and the established convention among the observers of our day, in Paris and London, as if by such visits one could learn something great, more than chatter and the wisdom of traveling salesmen. If an observer will only pay attention to himself, he will have enough with five men, five women, and ten children for the discovery of all possible states of the human soul. What I have to say could indeed have significance, especially for everyone who deals with children or has any relation to them. It is of infinite importance that the child be elevated by the conception of lofty inclosing reserve and saved from the misunderstood types. In an outward respect, it is easy to determine when the moment arrives that one dares let a the child walk alone; in a spiritual respect, it is not so easy. In a spiritual respect, the task is very difficult, and one cannot exempt oneself by employing a nursemaid or by buying a walker. The art is that of constantly being present, and yet not being present, so that the child may be allowed to develop himself, and at the same time one has a clear view of the development. The art is to leave the child to himself in the very highest degree and on the greatest possible scale, and to express this apparent relinquishing in such a way that, unnoticed, one is aware of everything. If only one is willing, time for this can very well be found, even though one is a royal officeholder. If one is willing, one can do all things.
And the father or the educator who has done everything else for the child entrusted to him, but has failed to prevent him from becoming closed up in his reserve, has at all time incurred a great liability. — Same translation as above, starts within section (IV 393)

Different philosophies have different psychologies. And vice-versa.
Maybe the question won't sort out what you want it to.

I read this differently than you and Possibility.
The need to exclaim virtues is neither an effort to replace the natural with conventional virtues nor a conflict within families made necessary by dire circumstances. The loss came from not being able to talk about it as a loss when it was happening. That idea had not been minted yet.

It seems to me it is just defined, not explained. That's exactly my issue. — Eugen

Sure, you have made yourself clear. That is why you have drawn the interest you have. Not too many people are calling out for a careful reading of Spinoza these days.

Something you have not demonstrated in these interchanges so far is to start from what you are hearing from other people and go from there. That foreign place you can barely imagine. That is the beginning of conversation, not reporting why you cannot leave your bunker.

Take your time.
I don't take your conclusions as the last word on what might happen if challenged.

Hmmn. T Clark opened this up with a specific alignment to being on board with scientific models as part of the good thing.
If you got something to say about that, what better place?

Your reply missed an important observation by Willow of Darkness:

"Whether it is caused by a conscious entity or a non-conscious entity, qualia is explained for Spinoza. Qualia is of both body and mind in either. The combination problem makes no sense, since mind and body are never being combined. Both are always there in parallel."

Good idea. I will try to respond to your observation.
On the other hand, you don't seem interested in the "mystic
versus science point of view that I have been discussing. Does that sort of thing fall outside of your areas of concern?

I am not interested in generating definitions for the "supernatural" If that is what the "religious" means for you, then my challenge to compare the scientific/math narrative to the one you are attentive to in Tao Te Ching needs a different set of references.

I will just say: they are different, and go from there.

By talking so much about models, I wanted to propose that reference to the "mystical" is always connected to a view of what it is not. That "ordinary" realm is often gestured at as something that doesn't have to explain itself. The given quality of that is a reasonable starting place where ordinary life doesn't include a lot of people walking on water or people really being able to know what will happen next. That approach is very different from the "natural" being sought through what Jung describes as the physical/biological model of evolution.

Some have complained that Jung's account of some experiences are "supernatural" departures of the scientific production of models within which he also participates. I don't care about that. He is the one who set up the differences as possibilities for different outcomes. But such a set up makes talking about a creator a sticky wicket. A "religious" understanding of what comes about is not connected to one of the central ideas of how beings come about. Weak beer if you want your creation narratives attempt to connect what you have learned about the creation to each other.

Yes. My understanding is that you're right. I was talking about philosophical Taoism. I don't know much about religious Taoism. What I've heard makes it sound like Biblical fundamentalism - taking words that are meant to be metaphorical as literal truth. — T Clark

I don't think there is a simple way to separate the philosophical from the religious when dealing with texts that would venture to address reality as itself. You find there is no inconsistency between the rational models developed through science and math with the ineffable element you personally encounter in Tao Te Ching. But that element cannot be expressed in the scientific terms you do not wish to abandon. Lao Tzu calls to for us to observe the element through doing some things and not doing others. The view seems to have its own "reasons."

Now that could mean something like Pascal saying: "The heart has reasons that reason does not know." I am pretty sure that is a religious register you are not interested in. But the two ways of approaching experience are standing side by side. Will one kind of model become the ground for the other or will they follow parallel lines for all of eternity? Looked at that way, it is both a philosophical and religious problem at the same time. The limit to what can be explained is a key element to both enterprises. It looks like the camel has got his nose under your tent and could go for his own plate of meat and potatoes.

The matter of parallel models is something I blundered about on Jack Cummins post upon Jung's understanding of God. The realm of humans and their religion is set side by side with the Physical. The only place they touch is where the function of instincts in the Animal Kingdom enters a new dynamic that allows them to change in ways they didn't before. That moment is the one most in need of explanation. Was it an accident? Was it Michelangelo's God zapping Adam with static electricity? It seems to me that if Jung is successful in uncovering the truth about our development through symbols, he should be able to ask new questions about this hand off.

I think you are saying that I am over simplifying mysticism. You're not the only one to make that comment. I think you're right. I'm struggling to defend my vision of mysticism against the skepticism of "rational" thinkers. If we let the occult in, it's hard to defend. Maybe the solution is to find another word. instead of mysticism. How about T Clarkism. Valentinusism. Or maybe stop using the word altogether. I think that may be the correct solution. — T Clark

I wasn't challenging your way of describing mysticism nor objecting to your desire to see it separately from the occult that is not real in your mind. I think everyone who considers the matter has to make that distinction. One way you expressed it is: "taking words that are meant to be metaphorical as literal truth."
Well, it is in the context of metaphor where different interpretations take place. I don't think you should stop using the word altogether. If all our interpretations are just reflections of what we think by ourselves, the sense of sharing a text will be lost. It is in that sense that I said that we cannot cast out those who we even violently disagree with as living on a different planet.

I like W.S. Merwin for this:

The Hosts

You asked what
were the names of those two
old people who lived under the big tree
and gods in disguise visited them though they were poor

they offered the best they had to eat
and opened the oldest wine in the house
the gods went on pouring out pouring out wine
and then promised that it would flow till the ends of their lives

when the shining guests were out of sight he turned to her
by the table and said
this bottle has been in the cave all the time
we have been together

It is a wooden toad. When one draws the rod seen on the left along the spiky spine, it makes a sound much like some toads do.

I understand the distinction you are drawing between magic and "real" mysticism. But the criteria is not as straightforward as the thought of separating the superstitious from the phenomena we establish as separate from our experience by definition.

In Taoism, for example, the ineffable is related to our experience and that speaks to your preference for "meat and potatoes." But the Tao is also said to be the means to setting up everything on both sides of the gate separating our lives from whatever makes it possible. That encouraged a religious interpretation that was expressed in various ideas of immortality, some of them that are very "occult."

While I don't understand the text in that particular "religious" way, I remember Romulus is related to Remus, suckling from the same mother.

I figure communicating with the dead should count as a mystical process. There are shamanistic practices from many different traditions that involve being a "medium" for the conversation.

There are many different forms of divination, from oracular pronouncements from "speakers" in contact with the gods to systems of interpretation like Tarot or the I Ching.

What some people shun as superstition is a valid practice for others.

I forgot to include the perennial use of Ad hominems.

Well the consistency does require a relationship to scientific peer review. I didn't mean to say that any given law had a direct relationship to a social contract. It is just that nobody would care to legislate without it.

Is Eugen a bot? — 180 Proof


I don't think so? Combination of (1) English is second language (2) isn't used to arguing on forums (3) isn't used to Spinoza (4) is coming at this from a distant vantage point seem to explain it to me. It seems Eugen's also responding to prompts in context and reasoning with analogies, both of which are hard for bots. — fdrake

He is working a plurimum interrogationum while riding the merry-go-round of a circulus in probando. He may not be a bot but he is hermetically sealed.

One element that has not been mentioned as yet in this discussion of The Concept of Anxiety is how the "single individual" is the one who has to face the prospect of the "eternal." The limit to psychology often mentioned in the book is directly related to the "inward reserve" needed to be the one who can make a choice.

The "generational" inheritance of sin described at the beginning is related to a model of the good parent who helps their child deal with this element. The book is a manual of religious education along with whatever else it may be.

The belief that the law must conform to an "assumed standard" of some kind, and isn't the law if it does not, ignores the law; it doesn't explain it. It leads to a fundamental ignorance of the nature of the law and its operation. — Ciceronianus the White

What about something like environmental law? It is always a reflection of an "assumed standard" or set of models that gets hashed out by scientific peer review. Beyond the particular acts of regulation and remediation, the "assumed standard" is a social contract to be a steward of the environment rather than merely living as a rapacious generation with no thought of any life afterwards.

What is experienced by an individual organism is the result of a condition happening to all organisms. It is exquisitely "materialistic" in many ways. — Valentinus


I think that's you looking at it through the prism of modernity. As I said to T Clark, in practice Taoism is allied with nostrums, potions, and all manner of magic spells, it's about as far from materialism as you could imagine. — Wayfarer

I have been thinking about your comment since you made it and wanted to give a better response than I did before.

The way that Taoism became a religion did build upon magic and potions. There are many references to what separates the living and the dead that are not given the attention that earlier readers were concerned with.

The references to nature as being one reality for all was not an empirical basis for observation by itself. That language was borrowed later to make practical models. It was not a starting place like Aristotle was for different sciences.

The conversation about what can be talked about is interesting. From that perspective, the account we have been given is an account of disagreements, similar to Plato's dialogues.

Nadler's essay is interesting. I think he is on to something by realizing Spinoza is looking further than the propositions that deal specifically with attributes of mind and body considered as separate realms to talk about experience.

But the reference to Chalmers was disappointing. Nadler assumes Chalmers is objecting to a reduction as a philosophical statement when Chalmers' actual essay talks about what he, as a scientist, cannot reduce to a set of functions. I complained about this earlier in the thread. The hard problem has a gooey center.

All that to the side, Nadler is not on board with your framing Spinoza to be explaining whether "conscious" minds come from "unconscious" sources as you reduced the topic to:

"Just to be clear on what I am claiming: the greater complexity of the
human body does not causally explain consciousness in the mind. This
would violate the causal and explanatory separation that exists between
the attributes of Thought and Extension in Spinoza's parallelism; no
mode of Thought can be causally affected by a mode of Extension, and
no state or property of a mode of Thought has its causal explanation in
a state or property of a mode of Extension. 'The modes of each attribute
have God for their cause only insofar as he is considered under the
attribute of which they are modes, and not insofar as he is considered
under any other attribute' (IIP6). Rather, what I am claiming is that for
Spinoza, human consciousness just is the greater complexity of the
human body as this is manifested under the attribute of Thought."

The relational structure here can be simplified to a linear hierarchy, sure - but I think it is more accurately dimensional, and that rendering it as a linear structure misses something of the quality and functionality of the Tao. — Possibility

In so far as Verse 17 concerns what a society does, it seems like it has to assume that different people have different roles. The farmer farms, the tradespeople provide goods, healers heal, warriors fight, and managers manage, etcetera. In addition, this society had a strong connection to their ancestors and respect for their elders. In calling for less need for structured intention, the intention of these people in their different roles is still underway. I take the point that "linear" ranking is being criticized as being unnecessary on many levels but it doesn't seem to me that it dissolves all structures.

This is similar to the uncertainty I expressed earlier concerning intentions in Verse 15.

With little but observable manner to base any understanding on - this manner appearing passive, murky, and unidentifiable - people were more inclined to trust their own accomplishments, and with this success as evidence, they relied on their own limited certainty. — Possibility

That observation is an interesting dynamic involved with what might have changed a "working" arrangement to a less functional one. On the other hand, the awareness of what was lost in the "original" structure is presented as an ad hoc solution to what has been lost. There are attempts to correct the attempts at correction. However that might be framed, it is not simply invoking the return of a commonly received value.

There's no substitute for actually doing the work. — fdrake

Yes.
I thought I already had done a lot of work but you, 108, and Willow of Darkness keep reminding me of aspects I had not considered. I keep having to start all over again.

You are the one who put actually reading Spinoza outside of your possible ranges of experience.

Is that a response to my response?

I have to admit I don't have enough patience and philosophical language to read Spinoza, so I'm asking simple questions and I'm looking for simple answers. — Eugen

If that is the case, why involve Spinoza at all? You have built a room that you have said you can never enter. What relevance can anything that happens in the room be for you?
You ask for an interpretation made by somebody you listened to somewhere to be disproved. How could one interpretation being more valid than another matter if you place yourself outside of the discussion by a conscious choice?
You speak of Spinoza being a "panpsychist" as a "generally" accepted point of view. As a matter of academic review, that is not the case. You don't cite the references that gave you this impression. That means you are arguing upon a basis of authority but without even saying what that authority is.

You clearly have an idea that you want to understand better. Perhaps you should find another way to bring it forward where you can own all the terms.

Nietzsche didn't oppose the ascetic ideal itself but said it is not sufficient for our life. Nor is it the only source of meaning.

In the Genealogy of Morals, he says:

All honor to the ascetic ideal insofar it is honest! so long as it believes in itself and does not play tricks on us! But I do not like all these coquettish bedbugs with their insatiable ambition to smell out the infinite, until at last the infinite smells of bedbugs; I do not like these whited sepulchers who imitate life; I do not like these weary played-out people who wrap themselves in wisdom and look "objective"; I do not like these agitators dressed up as heroes who wear the magic cap of ideals on their straw heads; I do not like these ambitious artists who like to pose as ascetics and priest but who are at bottom only tragic buffoons; and I also do not like these latest speculators in idealism, the anti-Semites who today roll their eyes in a Christian-Aryan-bourgeois manner and exhaust one's patience by trying to rouse up all the horned-beast elements in the people by a brazen abuse of the cheapest of all agitator's tricks, moral attitudinizing (that no kind of swindle fails to succeed in Germany today is connected with the undeniable and palpable stagnation of the German spirit; and the cause of that I seek in a too exclusive diet of newspapers, politics, beer, and Wagnerian music, together with the presupposition of such a diet: first, national constriction and vanity, the strong but narrow principle "Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles," and then the paralysis agitans of modern ideas. — Translated by Walter Kaufman, 3rd essay, section 26

Go on, Friedrich, tell us how you really feel.