From a philosophical pragmatist's pov, atheism is merely an assertion that 'theistic concepts' are at best useless, and at worst socially pernicious. To talk about 'deficiencies' of this pov is to assume that life involves a 'purpose' or 'aim' beyond personal aspirations and harmonious relationships .But surely that constitutes another quasi-religious assumption.

Not another repeat of the Roosevelt quote ! ...and do you seriously think regurgitating adolescent religious criticisms constitutes 'an idea'?

Here's how your trolling /preaching twaddle operates.

1. You set yourself up as a missionary for militant 'anti established religionism'.
2. You superciliously accuse any religionist or non militant atheist of supporting the 'social evils' that can lurk in any human organization (including the gnostic club!).
3. Like any troll who feeds on the oxygen of an audience, you are driven to repeat versions of the same simplistic rubbish again and again.

Isn't about time you grew up and realized that the majority of the population, including you, have a psychological need for some belief system which transcends their understanding of 'self' ?The fact that your understanding of both 'self' and 'belief' tends to be stuck in the domain of 'folk psychology', with no appreciation of the systemic dynamics which operates in social relationships, implies you need to get off your ridiculous pedestal and continue your education.

Since I lean towards abiogenesis, and the view that 'ethics' amounts to 'folk psychology', I reject the 'need' issue.

I'm referring to academic believers (like Polkinghorne...nuclear physicist turned Anglican priest), who have argued that no 'prime mover' is needed to account for the physical universe, but is required to account for life, human 'reason' and 'ethics'.

A quick run down of my opinion, following on from some of the philosophy that happened after Descartes, would be that reason is about how we string words together. Your error, which you share with other rationalists, is to think that reason binds how things are; and that hence by reason alone you can deduce how things are. The poverty of that approach was set out long ago by Hume, Kant and others, but perhaps was best criticised during the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy. Few would take this sort of natural theology seriously now.

Absolutely spot on !

However, as an atheist who places most theological discussion in the 'word salad' category, I am surprised that nobody has come up the 'man in the image of God' theme as being the source of what we call 'reason' and 'ethics'. Obviously, there is a biological/neurological counter argument which ascribes these as epiphenomena of human behaviour, but instead of what could be that potential philosophical discussion, all I am seeing here is semantic jousting.

K not a philosopher ? In 1985 the UN Secretariat disagreed with you.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Krishnamurti+United+Nations&oq=Krishnamurti+United+Nations&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i59j69i61.10921j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Where the self is, love is not

'Two sides of the same coin' is correct. However it has implications for the naive realism we all use in everyday transactions in which we think of as 'subjects' observing 'seperate 'objects'. It implies the deeper understanding that a 'thing' like a 'fork' only has ontological status in terms of human functionality. Nor does that status imply 'persistence of structure' except in terms of human lifespans. In short, the social acquisition of the word 'fork' involves a uniquely human set of expectancies of experience, we use to plan our activities. But that species specific and culture specific view of 'an object' is also valid for any human concept, from 'rocks' to 'gods'!

So to say 'the observer is the observed' is to imply that the status of focus on 'an object' is inextricable from the perceptual set/needs of the culturally conditioned observer who contextually defines the nature of its 'objectivity'.
And that much is NOT mystical !

Now, in my opinion, the mysticism (for want of a better word) ensues when the individual begins to recognize their conditioning and their active and variable participation in defining 'the world' . This leads to the realization of 'an impermanent ' biased self' doing the 'observation', and hence the attempt to transcend it.

:cool: !

Systems theory is one paradigm suggested by 'neurophilosophers' to account for aspects of 'cognition' in terms of emergent nested structures within different levels of operational domain, ranging from neuronal networks to social networks. It is an alternative to reductionist paradigms in which 'causality' is central to 'explanation'.
Example of reference: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0065240716300416
It has secondary implications for the wider subject of 'philosophy of science' because its approach to cognition touches on 'active' versus 'passive' perception, and hence the nature of 'observation'.

There are no 'teachers' in understanding the nature of self. Only the experiences of others...fellow explorers, who have come to understand its ephemeral nature.

It (your committee) is not ready for the literature ! First it needs to observe its daily operations involving its internal squabbles. As one writer put it, it needs to 'wake up'.

“Man has no individual i. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small "i"s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, "i". And each time his i is different. just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion.”

:grin: ...a typical 'naive realist' response, breathtakingly ignorant of the literature !
Next time you notice that you are having an argument with 'yourself', or ponder a lucid dream , in which that 'you' has been operating quite happily in an 'illogical' scenario, you might get an inkling of what
the ephemeral 'self' is about.
I say 'might' of course because that belligerent member of your 'self committee' will bully the others into submission!

I've never thought of it as 'pleasurable'...more like the Camus character in 'The Outsider'.

...that's where the 'much of humanity' comes into play !:wink:

Why 'fascinating'? Its a truism that much of humanity tends to be herd-like in terms of following popular trends, fashions and seeking 'leaders' with simplified worldviews. It could all be merely expression of our innate tribalism and social tendencies we have in common with other primates.

There is only one purpose of the OP...to bait 'believers' with a religiously emotive word and in order to promote his version of iconoclasm. The turgid parasitic baiting of 'traditional religionists' is the only activity the author does on this and other forums.

"We all idol worship in some sense. If you can think analogically you will agree".

No I don't agree. I've watched your soapbox preacher video and I can see why you are attracted to it.
IThis is just another attempt to troll with your parasitic thesis by baiting believers with a facile assertion.

You almost have my sympathies being attacked from all sides !
Maybe you should have a lie down !

Sorry .Typing problems. No message

covariant quantum fields.

Alas no... the 12 year olds had great fun with premises like 'all US presidents have red hair'.
I use 'truth' in the pragmatist's sense of 'what works in terms of social agreement as to what is the case'.
BTW Your example of perceptual bias causing you to 'wrongly' extrapolate my capital letter usage, would for an intelligent reader , signally illustrate those dynamic set membership issues I have suggested above, which take place in communicative exchanges. But the phrase 'intelligent reader' is of course problematic in your case.

MESSAGE FROM 'THE CONTINENT'

I happen to have been teaching 'truth tables' last week to class of 12 year olds on an ITC course. (I'll send you the notes if you like).I use arbitrary premises, like yours to demonstrate the difference between 'truth' and 'validity', which highlights the difference between humans and machines.
The adage 'garbage in gives garbage out' is underlined in their notes..

In an adult group I belong to which includes university philosophers, we recently discussed the limits of classical logic in dealing with semantic drift in discussions.
Non binary logic, and adaptive state transition models were suggested as alternative frameworks

We continentals have moved on from games to game theory.

I'm bemused by the longevity of this 'logical claptrap' from so called 'proper philosophers' !

It's obvious to me that the compendium of behaviours and attitudes we associate with the word 'morality' is a function of the forces which govern interelationships vital to humans as a cooperative species. Our understanding of those relationship vectors may have 'objective' genetic correlates in terms of survival value, and 'subjective' social correlates in terms of idiosyncratic variation of 'moral behaviour' within and between groups and individuals on different occasions. It is totally pointless to argue for the predominance of either side of the subjective-objective dichotomy on the basis of 'value', as value, like that of 'currency' depends on the shifting contexts of usage.

Obviously, the investors in the ongoing language games about this (the 'proper philosophers' :razz: ) will be annoyed by interruptions to their recreatIonal activity. Let them carry on by all means,...after all, they can always consign dissenters like me into the 'improper philosophy' polar region !

I agree that what 'humans have in common' may be ostensibly more than physiology.
'Commonality' viewed from a nested systems pov, takes on semantic issues of different 'levels of discourse'. So refering to the Einstein scenario, at the neurological level we might consider 'structural uniqueness' as a factor. And at the social level, we might consider Einstein's patent office duties examining time keeping inventions as a factor. And then of course we have the scientific zeitgeist in which paradigms operate...etc. All these are possible contributory factors to the shift in the utility of the concept denoted by the word 'time', that shift being expressed by modifying words like 'local time'.
But at the end of the day, I suggest all those levels of discourse culminate in observational criteria (aka evidence) regarding the utility of the concept and 'observation' is basically a physiological act.

As an aside, my neurophilosophy thread discusses 'evidence' of brain functioning which might correlate 'paradigm dynamics' which might indicate further 'physiological reductionist' possibilities.

I agree that 'nominalism' is an important issue in philosophy as it underpins all 'measurement', and as Protagoras said, 'Man is the measure of all things'.
However the article cited above has suspect implications for me as it is published in a journal which states it is editorially concerned with 'divine matters'.
I refer you to my thread on 'existence' in which I discuss 'thinging'.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5901/existence-is-relative-not-absolute

I refer you to my 'Existence is Relative' thread.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5901/existence-is-relative-not-absolute
I doubt whether introduction of the word 'real' contributes anything to the understanding of 'existence' once we have defined them both in terms of contextual usage. All we can say is that some 'things' imply physicality, and others do not. Pragmatists reject the 'reality debate' as futile.

Wearing my 'pragmatists hat', I can only interpret the phrase 'relative existence' from a contextual pov.Thus 'existence' is relative if the concept of 'the existent thing' is contextually useful to interlocutors.e.g. 'God exists' relative to believers.... 'Particles exist' as useful concepts relative to some aspects of physics experimentation...etc.
I Interpret the concept of 'absolute existence' as the negation of such contextual restraints about usage.

The ITALICS MINE tag is not a 'bellow' but a standard convention in academic correspondence when a quotation is modified by the citer. But being ignorant of the literature you would not know that.

On the basis of contemporary philosophical developments which transcend 'classical'logic', your 'argument' has been consigned it to the 'folk psychology/philosophy bin'.

To Rufoid.
'Rationality' is in the eye of the beholder unless put up for scrutiny, as you do, in which case 'consensus' operates.
So before 'the question' your rationality stands.
After 'the question' your methodology including your research techniques are open to the criticism you would obviously expect.

Your facile comment about 'misusing terms' is merely a bit of belligerent posturing to cover up either your indolence regarding keeping up with the literature, or an admission of a limited intellect.

From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on neurophilosophy.

Computational and cognitive neuroscience was delivering an alternative kinematics for cognition, one that provided no structural analogue for folk psychology’s propositional attitudes (e.g. statements about morality) or logic-like computations over propositional contents.

ITALICS MINE

If this is too difficult for you, let me know.

The rest of what you said was ignorant gibberish. Continental philosophy is where you belong! — Bartricks

:grin:
No The rest of what I said is over your head. 'Continental philosophy' is merely another pole of one of your dichotomy games. I doubt whether 'neurophilosophy' for example, which also questions 'logical thinking' can be be deemed to be 'continental' .

I'm not sure where you got the 'most' from. From a pragmatist pov, most dichotomies tend to be futile...this one in particular which refers back to the more basic one of 'realism-antirealism'. in fact the key issue in 'morality' is more usually 'relative vs absolute' which tends to involve religion.
My objection is that you tend to play logic games with shaky axioms. This may be traditional in 'analytic philosophy' but the latter has taken quite a few body blows in recent years which cumulatively devalue the applifation of traditional logic, based on fixed set membership, since it cannot handle dynamic state transitions in cognition.

Give some examples ?

I've just spotted this thread which seems to hinge on the straw man dichotomy of 'subjective-objective'. Straw man because all concepts are socially acquired.. a point particularly relevant to morality which involves relationship with others. The futility of the 'debate' is further underscored by the notion of 'self' being a social phenomenon.
Apologies to anybody who has already raised this in the multiple pages.

'Assignment of thinghood' refers to the human activity of 'naming' which is the first level,of any measurement. A recent example might be the concept of 'global warming' which prior to a few years ago did not 'exist' in the sense of being a recognizable 'significant event' in human consciousness.

Yes. I think we may be getting into aporia territory here (Derrida) in which every assertion evokes its negation. Aporia may indeed be the ultimate 'relativity'.

I think you are avoiding the notion that all 'concepts' are denoted by 'words' which are socially acquired.
Convergent consensus may be inevitable, but only to the extent that human language users have large parts of their physiology in common. Now, it may be, that an 'uncommon physiology' like the brain of Einstein, can deconstruct previously 'useful' concepts like 'time', thereby triggering a paradigm shift with its associated 'concept/language revision'. But there is no theoretical limit to such potential deconstruction , and hence 'reality' recedes further into the distance like the carrot on the end of the stick.

The only problem with that is that you are citing a mathematical model and maths taken as a metalanguage carries with it all the linguistic issues already covered, particularly nonrepresentation.