I think that "esoteric" is a concept that has historically covered a lot of ground, and has been subjected to a lot of abuse, both from within and without. No doubt there have been people who have manipulated esoterica for their own ends. And there are scientists who fake results. But as you point out, we are entering radically new territory and our understanding of the nature of understanding itself is evolving. I think there will always be those who view things as esoteric which others feel they can see clearly.

↪Pantagruel Seems to me the Jungle is already at harmony in its various gradations of life death growth and rot such that it thrives and new forms of life can even be found within such a teeming and toiling ecosystem. — Vaskane

:up:

Goodness is not normative: it is the property of having hypothetical or actual perfection. — Bob Ross

The property of being measured by any standard is always going to be subjective. You repeatedly use human artefacts as exemplars of goodness. Those are not even an objective cases to begin with; human intentionality is literally constitutive of what a car or a clock or a radio is. You say to imagine a wild jungle in complete disarray versus one that is in harmony. That is simply absurd. Natural systems are in a constant process of evolution and change, so there is never any criterion for preferring one configuration over another, let alone a perspective from which to apply it.

Good is irretrievably subjective and normative.

In a very real sense, the entire progress of human understanding can be seen as the development of knowledge from esotericity to exotericity. What is evident to the eyes can be deceiving. The evident reality of illusions is dispelled by the understanding of "esoteric" perceptual mechanisms. The primitive search for animistic spirits leads to the discovery of "esoteric" concepts like atomic structure. How long did humanity search for the esoteric atom? Millenia.

Neural networks function precisely by being able to detect and utilize connections which are not trivially evident, but hidden with the complex datasets that are the representations of things. Who is really to say how many "hidden" connections actually exist in the fabric of our reality? Does the fact that we have already discovered so many mean that we should stop looking? Or that we should look even harder?

What kind of people seek out esoteric knowledge? People who have questions that exoteric (accepted) knowledge does not answer. Esoteric traditions often involve learning detailed rites and detailed normative schemas, suggesting how we ought to react and respond, to live. Who is to say those are incorrect? Freemasonry exhorts values of charity and integrity. Even if the only value of esoteric knowledge is the subjective benefit conferred by the knowledge itself...isn't that enough?

The noumenon? It’s a critical concept: philosophers like Leibniz built systems around noumena, and Kant is diagnosing this disease. He also thinks he can’t just ignore it, because he regards it as an unavoidable product of the understanding. — Jamal

I guess my problem is I see this from the perspective of Fichte and self-founding conscious understanding - it looks like a fiat to declare an unknowable objectivity.

However, if it functions as a demand or a constraint, is this just the constraint of trying to attain a perspective of (per impossibile) pure objectivity? Then it is still a subjective act.

The noumenon is the concept of a purported thing beyond possible experience, and as such cannot be distorted.

That is to say, there is nothing there to be filtered or distorted. Simply to be an object of knowledge is for a thing to be known via the senses and understanding. If there is no possible disembodied, unperspectival way of apprehending a thing, then the idea of distortion has no meaning. — Jamal

Isn't this just a vacuous concept by definition then?

If upon transcendental contemplation we determine X,Y, and Z are the conditions for our knowledge, doesn't X,Y and Z become the lens upon which we view the noumenal and what we then actually perceive we refer to as the phenomenal?

I get that science will only concern itself with the phenomenal, but I don't see how you reject the suggestion that the phenomenal is a distortion of the noumenal. Isn't the phenomenal just the noumenal filtered through X,Y, and Z as you described it? — Hanover

This is kind of the problem that I am wrestling with too. Maybe Kant just lacked an awareness of the scope of application of scientific knowledge as it has subsequently ensconced itself in our world.

So, what do you think counts as esoteric knowledge then? Or can you give an example of what you would count as an esoteric tradition? — Janus

"intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest."

So while you may not agree that a difficult subject matter that is likely to be understood by only a small number of people counts as esoteric knowledge, it fits well with the definition. I believe Heisenberg thought that quantum theory was esoteric, in that it housed inner-mysteries, even for its initiates....

Knowledge will always retain a unique subjective element because it exists as known by a subject, and nothing in reality lives in a pure abstraction. The meaning of 2+2 might be invariant, but its meaningfulness will always be as unique as every situation of application is.

As Hanover just mentioned on the Kant thread:

If we concede there are conditions for our knowledge and our knowledge is subject to those conditions and if those conditions are peculiar to the perceiver, how is our knowledge of anything objective?

I concur completely with this assessment. Knowledge always exists exactly to the extent that it is enacted...by someone.

Esoteric knowledge is usually claimed to be knowledge by revelation or enlightenment, and hence.
by implication, to be infallible. — Janus

I don't see any evidence that those extreme forms of esotericism are what is in question here. However I can see this degenerating into a mishmash of historical and critical terminologies and I don't see the benefit of that. Most people would consider loop-quantum gravity to be an esoteric topic. Its very complexity renders it inaccessible. What is esoteric for some is not necessarily for others. Which may be the point.

I don't believe that many people actually have "deep personal commitments", but even if they do, they are just that, personal, subjective, and they are beliefs, and hence don't count as knowledge in the intersubjective sense. — Janus

Again, I don't see where you are qualified to make that judgement for anyone but yourself. You claim to be capable of acting in the absence of a deep commitment, fine, I accept that. I think that most people care, and that care about what they do is indicative of values, in other words, beliefs. Propositional knowledge is just "facts." The most important decisions in life are value-laden. Some of the most stirring events in human history involve people acting in a counter-factual way, symbolically, based on belief. Bottom line, you can't turn ethics into propositional knowledge. You can express it propositionally, but you can't found or reduce it on propositions.

But firstly, I don't believe any intuitive (or propositional for that matter) knowledge is infallible, or context-independent, and secondly such "knowledge" is by its very nature personal, subjective. — Janus

I don't recall where esoteric knowledge became infallibly divine revelation in this discussion. That's a straw man by me, and not reflective of how I view intuitive knowledge.

I don't see many Christians living up to Christ's ethical teachings — Janus

Just because people claim to believe something doesn't mean that reflects their true beliefs about the nature of reality. When people commit to action they do so based on whatever that deep personal commitment is. That isn't circularity. Action is an index of belief. Many people might have problems in enunciating those beliefs, that's true. Which is itself good evidence that there is more to belief than propositionality.

Afficionados of esoterica generally don't want to admit that, though — Janus

Believers in intuitive knowledge don't agree with your definition of knowledge. Correct. Propositional knowledge is a latecomer. Long, long before anyone ever had the notion that there was propositional knowledge people knew things. Every day people make decisions based on intuition and in the absence of adequate evidence. That's the nature of life. Propositional knowledge is inadequate.

That most people probably just pay lip service in the actual living of their lives to their basic assumptions about the nature of reality is a telling point. — Janus

I don't see any evidence anywhere that this is the case. I accept your avowal that this is true of yourself, but what evidence do you have that people betray their own fundamental understandings as a matter of course?

Scientists "make" working or methodological assumptions which themselves presuppose "metaphysical" commitments — 180 Proof

The degree to which any given scientist may believe in the provisionality or scope of said metaphysical commitments of course can vary. Which is why science can find itself in its metaphysically exaggerated form as scientism. The danger of course being people who lean in this direction without acknowledging that they are so doing. Which is why I hold that our metaphysical beliefs underpin the way we actually live our lives.

But that is the knowing of acquaintance, familiarity, not the kind of propositional knowing I had in mind when I asked the question. — Janus

It is the knowing of things that by their nature or current status resist propositional knowledge. The fact that you reject this kind of knowledge in favour of propositional is perhaps the problem. Since that's the gist of the OP I'll just reiterate my response.

It seems more accurate to say that science makes pragmatic, that is methodologically determined, assumptions — Janus

It is a commonly held view that science makes metaphysical presuppositions. I personally believe that our metaphysical presuppositions underly our basic orientation with respect to reality, and that everyone has them, whether they are aware of what they are or not.

Metaphysical assumptions of science

Doesn’t any viewpoint or theory implicitly lead us in certain directions and prove useful in the sense that it organizes our world in some fashion? What does it mean to ask if a metaphysics is ‘accurate’ in its depiction of the real? Can’t different metaphysical systems be ‘accurate’ in very different ways? — Joshs

I don't know if metaphysics is so much of a system as it is a question. Science makes metaphysical assumptions, within which it does its thing. The assertion that those particular assumptions constitute the answer to the totality of the metaphysical question is where the issue arises. Does scientific information do justice to the totality of of what it means to be a thinking, caring, acting human being in a universe that both yields to and supports and memorializes our thoughts and deeds? There are a variety of competing paradigms in civilization, religion, science, art, history, philosophy. Each of which can try to lay claim to being the ultimate metaphysical truth. It would seem to be a synthesis. Is any of these disposable?

Is mathematics metaphysics now too? — Lionino

Well, certainly the Pythagoreans went in that direction. Mathematics is definitely a very powerful thing, as things go.

Valid, no metaphysics can make a married man a bachelor. — Lionino

Which would have no sense or meaning were there not extant men, both married and unmarried. So yes, logic is unconstrained by metaphysics, just so long as it is meaningless.

You don’t think the history of metaphysics has to do with the changing ways we think about the sense of meaning of what is real? In other words, isn’t metaphysics more about sense than reality? For instance, if one can claim that the change in physics from Newton to Heisenberg is a change in metaphsical presuppositions, then this involves a subtle transformation in the sense of meaning of terms like mass and energy, rather than whether mass and energy are real. — Joshs

I guess we are asking whether metaphysics is better characterized by the theory, or what the theory is about. Like we assume any viewpoint has metaphysical presuppositions, but then the validity of those presuppositions is ultimately borne out...in a metaphysical sense. In other words, a metaphysical theory is consequential. So if your metaphysical theory is the substantially dual, and metaphysics exists as a theory in your head, material metaphysics is completely completely disconnected from the noumenal metaphysics, then you are left with idealism.

Which doesn't seem to be the case. Rather (and intuitively) having a theory about the nature of reality (if it is accurate) ought to prove useful in some way, or lead in some direction. So I'd say metaphysics is about the relationship between our understanding of reality and reality. And if reality impinges on understanding, then understanding must in some sense impinge on reality. Either there is a connection and a contact - which has to then be mutual - or there is not. People ask metaphysical questions in order to effect fundamental reorientations, not so much of what specifically they do, but the way in which they do things. If I come to believe in the transcendence of the spirit, perhaps I change the way I perceive, think, and act.

But that is an article on epistemology and modality, not metaphysics and modality. There are myriad considerations and presuppositions involved in relating epistemology to metaphysics. But the most salient is that metaphysics is about what is real. I don't consider modal statements to be in themselves fundamentally real, only symptomatic of features of what is real. Anyway, you continue to discuss what might be possible in a thread concerning the nature of metaphysics. I'll continue to focus on what is real.

It's pretty straightforward. Human beings exist and are not merely logical. Therefore logic does not subsume metaphysics. Logic does not in any way supersede, condition, or determine existence; rather the reverse. As an epistemological construct, maybe logic is fundamental; probably not. But this is about metaphysics.

Again, this venn diagram subsuming everything within logic isn't accurate.

Modal metaphysics concerns the metaphysical underpinning of our modal statements. These are statements about what is possible or what is necessarily so.

Metaphysics underpins modal logic. Which, if you had to venn it, would make metaphysics the containing set. Which is logical.

We can focus our language down to highly objective degrees, where it becomes particularly well defined and hence useful for scientists studying the natural world. But to the extent we do so, we necessarily lose another essential aspect of words, namely, their ability to have multiple meanings depending on how we use them.

Great answer. In fact, we don't just lose the complexity of words, we lose touch with the complex-totality of the reality upon which words are based. Esoterica are one way we have of preserving the ineffable that for the moment exceeds our grasp. Perhaps until such time as deeper understanding and experience cloaks them in more familiar garb.

Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments
Theodor W. Adorno & Max Horkheimer

Gray Lensman (Lensman #4)
by E.E. "Doc" Smith

Jonathan Black, in 'The Secret History of the World' makes reference to the idea of subjectivity and objectivity spoken of by Julian Jaynes in 'The Bicameral Mind: The Origins of Consciousness'. Jaynes spoke of how at one stage of consciousness the division between the inner and outer was not clear, with so much being projected onto gods or God. This is very different from the state of present consciousness, in which the psychological dimension is understood and it is important for considering the nature of concrete thinking in which the differentiation of the inner and outer aspects are extremely blurred. — Jack Cummins

I guess I am assuming that nature of concrete thinking is related to thinking about the nature of the concrete. I recall discussing Jaynes' theory with my Chaucer professor at an end of term gathering at his home in Rosedale in 1988. I do know it involves the hypothesis that the hemispheres of the brain were not fully integrated thousands of years ago, so that communications between them were perceived as messages which might have been interpreted as coming from gods.

Hmm. I just looked up structural realism, and it is the exact opposite of a concept I've been in the process of describing in another thread concerning the nature of the concrete. So I suppose that is my whole problem, I don't understand your fundamental assumption. Scientifically, it seems to boil down to what I said describing the actual nature of reality in a way that contradicts your descriptions.

I guess that even the idea of concrete thinking has varying meanings and associations. — Jack Cummins

Yes it does. Think of the relationship between the word (concept) concrete and actual concrete. Concrete is what it does, it is its function. It is solid, it binds together. But actual concrete is a complex amalgam of diverse formulae, including contaminants. What is actually concrete (i.e. what exemplifies the concept) is actual concrete, including all of its apparently contingent features, adulterants, contaminants. Reality overflows our attempts to encapsulate it. Concrete is what fuses the disparate. What is identical cannot be (therefore does not need to be) more fused than it already is. This is how Collingwood differentiates the abstract unity of a set (a unity of abstractly identical entities) versus the concrete unity of a world, a unity of unique, discrete identities.

A world or a universe can only have one physics. It can hardly be assumed that different laws of nature prevail in the microcosm described by quantum physics than in the mesocosm or macrocosm, for which classical physics is responsible. — Wolfgang

How is this a valid assumption? The hypothesized unified force shattered into the four fundamental forces, resulting in the stratification of effects between the quantum and the cosmic, owing to the different scales at which different forces predominate. There is an apparent phase transition between the quantum and the classical which is not well understood. Also, it is invalid to conclude that it makes no sense to apply quantum mechanics to the classical world. There are natural macroscopic processes that function through quantum effects. The transistor utilizes quantum properties. One could argue that the modern era is an expression of quantum-aware ontology.

Practically speaking, no one would ever utter the phrase "this sentence is false". What they might do is assert "I am telling you the truth". Which, if you do not believe them, translates into "this sentence is false." This would maintain the integrity of the logical form (the meaning of the sentence would contradict its sense), and remove the apparent paradox (by way of the assumed premise that people actually say things for a reason).

I am inclined to think that concrete thinking is the problem, especially in why people hold onto dogmas, of both religion and science. — Jack Cummins

I think you are using concrete in a different sense than me though. Being concrete refers to the complete, complex totality which is the now. Any particularization of which is really an abstraction (a dogmatic one, as you note). So from the perspective with which I use the term concrete (the total-synthetic now), dogmatic thought is the opposite of concrete. It is the abstract denying its own abstract nature and pretending to concrete existence (i.e. to be the only comprehensive explanatory scheme).

In some ways, Hegel may be esoteric, but going beyond the basics of spiritual understanding. Also, in that sense, Nietszche can be seen as esoteric, in the sense of going beyond conventional understanding. It may be that ideas of the 'esoteric' are too boxed into the categories of the challenge between religion and science as a black and white area of philosophical thinking, missing some blindspots, which may go outside of the conventions of metaphysics, into a more fluid picture of ideas. — Jack Cummins

I think the notion of esotericity and its meaning (as discussed) is a crucial factor. I also commented on the various aspects of skills and capabilities both in acquiring and expressing understanding. The question is, is esotericity just a function of the difficulty of plumbing those depths, both of knowledge and action, the demonstrated conviction of the belief in the truth of one's knowledge? This is a good summary of a central question for me.

I also wonder about the ideas of Hegel on 'spirit' here. His understanding is not simply about the 'supernatural' as separate from the nature of experience itself, but as imminent in the evolution of consciousness on a collective and personal basis. It may be that mysticism itself was a problem because it tried to separate the nature of experience and reason as though they were different categories of knowledge and understanding — Jack Cummins

I'm thinking about revisiting Hegel, in light of my recent readings which highlighted Collingwood's emphasis on the immanence of the concrete universal in the concrete mind, attuned as it is to the fullness the actual (the totality of what is occurring at any given time) versus the bits and pieces of reality that we comprehend using our powers of abstraction and categorization.

I do believe that consciousness is already and constantly enmeshed in a reality that is, perhaps, unimaginably more complex that what is compassed by our representations of it (as Hamlet said to Horatio). Which is why I endorse and embrace a philosophy of enaction, assuming that our actual capabilities will always precede and engender our further understanding. As Descartes notes, the will is much wider in its range and compass than the understanding....

Supervenience is indicative of a dependence of a higher order entity on its constituent components. Strong emergence, on the other hand, is defined precisely in terms of non-reducibility (the whole is more than the sum of its parts). So, for example, if a man was able to build a neural computer, and transfer his consciousness to that computer, his consciousness would definitively be strongly emergent and not supervenient. This would also be an example of downward causation.

Here is a paper about meditation causing structural changes in the brain, for example.

To argue that our consciousness is highly emergent you must show that the features of our consciousness are supervenient over the underlying complex structure of neurons. — Ypan1944

Doesn't the strength of emergence tend to contra-indicate supervenience.

b) the supervenience of sentience and reason is so strong that minor changes in brain tissue can radically alter practice of sentience and reason. — ucarr

Conversely, the brain is also damage tolerant and in some cases is able to rewire itself to compensate for damage. So perhaps there is both supervenience and some form of strong emergence?

What facts or metaphysical truths can it guarantee? If you think there are such facts or truths, how does it guarantee them? — Janus

Perhaps the challenge is knowing in the face of uncertainty, in other words, belief. For me, the notion of spirituality aligns precisely with the noumenon-phenomenon (mind-body) problem and is to that extent "de-mystified", although it is still mysterious. Yes, we can have some certainties of the material world, which are in a sense trivial. These form the framework of our human existence, the stage whereupon we live our lives. And those human truths are not so easily acquired or proven. And of course, when human knowledge has reached a high level of sophistication, we begin to discover that the so-called simple truths of the material world are not themselves straightforward, when we finally reach the horizons of the quantum and the cosmic.

In the human body, muscles work in opposing pairs. And the ultimate strength of any muscle is always limited by the weakness of its antagonist partner. I conceive the mind (spirit) matter dyad to be like that. Indeed, all knowledge. Hence the power of dialectic.

Such understanding ranges from the comprehension of the babblings of children to Hamlet or the Critique of Pure Reason. From stones and marble, musical notes, gestures, words and letters, from actions, economic decrees and constitutions, the same human spirit addresses us and demands interpretation. (Dilthey, The Rise of Hermeneutics)

You may or may not know "the truth of your own experiences" whatever that might mean. Assuming for the sake of argument that you do know, the point is that you are the only one, so such knowledge can never be intersubjectively corroborated. — Janus

If I don't have certainty of my own experience I can't very well have certainty about anything else, since anything else will always be an aspect of that experience.

As far as being "reliably trained," you oversimplify. Not everyone can be reliably trained, it requires at least some aptitude. Conversely, for people with the appropriate aptitude, the contention is that they are being educated with spiritual knowledge, whose broadened awareness is the practical result. Knowledge of the human spirit evolves right along with civilization. Some people even think that is what civilization is. Hegel, to name one. As well as the hordes who have tried to follow in his footsteps.

I think it is fairly clear what is determinate knowledge and what is not. — Janus

Sure, things that are trivially true are usually trivially evident. But some things are not trivially evident. And to people who lack the ability to comprehend the basis of organic chemistry, for example, there is a whole lot of determinate knowledge that is not clear. So if you are talking about an ideal knower, who is equally well-informed (and equally capable) in all areas, then maybe it is clear. But if there are such knowers, they are less rather than more common. Agreeing in theory as to what constitutes knowledge, and agreeing in practice as to the details of knowledge are not at all the same thing. For the bulk of human history, knowing how to throw a stone accurately in the terrestrial gravity field was far more important than knowing that the interior angles of a triangle sum to 180 degrees.

Only basic empirical observations and mathematical and logical truths are known to be true. — Janus

I assume that you are classifying privileged internal mental states as empirical observations then, since I know and experience the truth of my own experiences.

they do not yield determinate knowledge of anything, unlike empirical investigations and logic/ mathematics. — Janus

Ok. A lot of people place a lot of stock in logic, mathematics, and science. Let's take string theory. It looks all highly scientific, is based on a lot of advanced math. It's an hypothesis. Is it "determinate knowledge"? Maybe. It's a complex hypothesis about the nature of reality. Same thing for dark matter and dark energy cosmology. Bunch of unknowns.

There are things which are trivially evident, and there are things which are harder to grasp. Exactly where that line gets drawn that you call "determinate knowledge" is a function of innate ability, expertise, and experience.