• How May Esoteric Thinking and Traditions be Understood and Evaluated Philosophically?
    You had said there were "unique" features, so I was curious as to support for this uniqueness. — wonderer1

    As I said, this seems quite unique to me. I don't know whether I would be capable of it. There are other studies looking at long term effects in emotion regulation networks as well.
  • How May Esoteric Thinking and Traditions be Understood and Evaluated Philosophically?
    The article Buddha's Brain: Neuroplasticity and Meditation says, "When the framework of neuroplasticity is applied to meditation, we suggest that the mental training of meditation is fundamentally no different than other forms of skill acquisition that can induce plastic changes in the brain." — wonderer1

    Isn't that enough? The fact that thought can have similar effects to practical physical enaction is meaningful to me.
  • How May Esoteric Thinking and Traditions be Understood and Evaluated Philosophically?
    Ha! And possibly not. — Fooloso4

    Yes, that is the definition of possible. The question is, to what extent is knowledge instrumental in actualizing the possible? A savant card-counter could win a huge amount of money from a game of blackjack that would leave most people broke. That's why I never eliminate possibilities unnecessarily. You don't know what you don't know.

    Here's a nice quote from Thomas Hardy that illustrates a reversal of the materialistic prejudice through the clever usage of real and corporeal. It involves Mr. Melbury who is deeply animated by considerations of possibilities regarding his daughter's future, which would have been observable "Could the real have been beheld, instead of the corporeal merely."

    I love this locution. I'm going to start regarding the day to day world as the "corporeal"....
  • How May Esoteric Thinking and Traditions be Understood and Evaluated Philosophically?
    Does anything more follow from "is possible" than is possible? — Fooloso4

    Possibly.
  • How May Esoteric Thinking and Traditions be Understood and Evaluated Philosophically?
    If someone claims to have mathematical knowledge it can be demonstrated. Can the same be said of someone who claims to have mystical knowledge? — Fooloso4

    Are you suggesting that those are the only possible kinds of knowledge? "Mystical" could in one sense just mean "beyond our current understanding." In which case, the negative prejudice associated with the word is attributable to the critic. IMO there is knowledge appertaining to the possible transcendence of consciousness, especially in the case where expansion of knowledge could also be construed as expansion of consciousness. In which case, people who claim not to be able to understand something are telling the truth, and are simply not capable of (or interested in) experiencing the type of consciousness in question.
  • How May Esoteric Thinking and Traditions be Understood and Evaluated Philosophically?
    Many others have claimed to know something we do not. I am not inclined to believe them based on their reports of mystical experience. — Fooloso4

    Just as I have consistently argued for the existence of a spectrum of consciousness there is also evident a spectrum of knowledge (possibly there is a connection). Individuals with certain mental capacities are capable of grasping complex mathematical concepts far beyond the ken of most folks. Savants can have incredible mathematical (and other) skills, often with minimal formal training.

    Given the breadth and depth of human knowledge and experience, I don't find it in the least surprising that people of varying constitutions and varying experiences have a variety of different types of knowledge, or that some people have intuitions and awareness that some others do not share. In fact, it would be surprising if there were not such a variety. Brain scans of Buddhist monks exhibit a variety of unique features, including enhanced neuroplasticity.
  • "This sentence is false" - impossible premise
    This is probably hard to believe but I do not have the intuitions necessary to see the “mysteries” of some paradoxes. For example, the liar paradox “this sentence is false” simply appears meaningless to me and I do not enter the logic of: If 'This sentence is false.” is true, then since it is stating that the sentence is false, if it is actually true that would mean that it is false, and so on.
    Language conveys information and I can’t extract relevant information from this sentence, this is why I do not understand why people manage to reason logically with it.     — Skalidris

    I agree. That is what comes of attempting to abstract logical form from content. There is a formalization in set theory involving the set of sets that are not members of themselves (normal, versus abnormal sets). Essentially, this recognizes exactly the real language constraint that a claim be about something.
  • Metaphysics of Action: Everybody has a Philosophy
    I'm working on something new now, what I think of as the 'science of everyday life.' It concerns the ongoing undercurrent of the Cartesian and Positivist legacies in modern thought, and their mutual failure to either successfully accommodate or integrate. I do think there is a growing trend towards a naive scientism (because more and more people don't really understand the science of the modern world). And I think that scientism is also naively driven (at a more informed but still insufficiently critical level) by idealogues of more extreme forms of positivism (like Carnap). Of course positivism isn't, prima facie, scientism. But it can so very easily become that.
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    And in context of this thread, conflating the journey for the destination is exactly the problem with bias that theists and religious thinkers have. — Christoffer

    So if I ignore the evidence of virtuous behaviours of a social group I dislike, that is confirmation bias. But if I ignore the evidence that a certain practice is socially accepted, but I still reject the practice and subsequently succeed in overturning it (such as racism) then that is not confirmation bias. Both those biases are contrary to fact. But one is productive. I don't see at all how theists conflate the journey for the destination and what that might have to do with bias.

    Specifically, in cases of purely objective knowledge, biases are as you describe them. However, in any case where the states of affairs confirming or disconfirming belief are themselves influenced by beliefs, the biases can just as easily be viewed as convictions. You presented initially what amounts to a positivistic argument for bias-elimination. But your positivistic argument only applies to scientific facts, of which the theism-atheism issue is not one. Hence your claim is normative (we ought to think in this way) and so itself exemplifies the kind of bias-as-conviction phenomenon that I am describing, and which you endorse eliminating.
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    I think you are applying too many vague definitions of biases within the context of this topic. — Christoffer

    Here I was thinking the same about you.

    Do you have any examples of concepts that benefit from biases? Or are the biases within those concepts only there as temporary necessities because we've yet to answer the concepts fully? — Christoffer

    The concept that we must put a man on the moon was a bias that flew in the face of current technology (so to speak). The resultant Saturn V project was a monument to the power of human creative thought resulting in countless technological innnovations.

    And rather focus on emotional influences than logic and rational reasoning. — Christoffer

    Who says that logic and rational reasoning are the sole measure of validity? Again, this is one of your own biases....

    towards further and further rigid structures until a solid form of conclusion emerges. — Christoffer
    the exploration of ideas require going from the abstract to the solid. — Christoffer
    exploratory journey from abstract chaos to solid order — Christoffer

    Again, these are all scientifically biased, with respect to the role that science plays in human existence. To claim that science provides (or can provide) an adequate framework for existence is, number one, not itself a scientific claim. For which reason such perspectives are usually criticized. Which was the original point, that your estimation is itself value-laden, hence typical of the very belief-structure that you reject.
  • Time travel to the past hypothetically possible?
    It is entirely quantum, not a classical copy. — noAxioms

    :up:
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    How can you or Deacon prove the instantiation of the teleonomic properties of the nature is related to human consciousness? And indeed how human consciousness is related to God, if God is something that you cannot define, but presume or deduce from the natural world? It sounds like a serious circular reasoning going on in your explanations. — Corvus

    All I did was provide some evidential bases for my perspective. You yourself are drawing the inferences to the point where they fail, because you are unfamiliar with the evidential bases, and are just using my cursory synopses, which don't purport to be exhaustive.

    I stated that human consciousness displays an evident spectrum both phylogenetically and ontogenetically. This is a statement of fact, entrenched in both developmental psychology and evolutionary biology and archaeology. So yes, it is a scientific fact. My hypothesis is congruent with known scientific facts. It is not itself a scientific fact.

    As to the Deacon, again, you aren't really familiar with the work so it isn't fair of you to form conclusions about it. Teleonomy doesn't prove panpsychism, but it could certainly be viewed to be congruent with such an hypothesis.
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    ↪Christoffer
    I understand your approach. However, as I said, you are generalizing both with respect to belief and bias and, in the human world, knowledge is not exclusively of the scientific kind. There are types of belief that cannot be reached through bias elimination; but which in fact function through bias-amplification (which could be described as the instantiation of value, which is one way that a bias could be described). Any creative human enterprise, for example, goes beyond materialistic-reductive facts to assemble complex fact-value syntheses. It is these artefacts which form the basis of human civilization. And, in fact, science itself is one such construct. Science was discovered through pre-scientific thought, after all.
  • Time travel to the past hypothetically possible?
    They have quantum teleporters, which means they actually have teleported a small object from here to there. — noAxioms

    Isn't quantum teleportation essentially just the transfer of information though?
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    Do you have argument for the natural world provides us a vast spectrum of consciousness? In what sense and evidence? — Corvus

    Well, you can start with human consciousness, which clearly evolves both phylogenetically and ontogenetically. Which therefore also links unproblematically (for me) with consciousness in other species. If you research the nature of consciousness in the natural world, you can read examples of how primitive colony organisms exhibit purposive behaviours (in The Global Brain, by Howard Bloom, for example). Indeed, you can even pursue the concept to the limits of the animate-inanimate boundary and discover how natural systems can be seen as instantiating teleonomic properties (Incomplete Nature, by Deacon). The spectrum of organic consciousness alone is sufficient warrant however.
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    ↪Corvus
    What I actually said that is that the natural world provides evidence of a vast spectrum of consciousnesses, of which there is no reason to suppose the human mind to be the apex. Therefore the concept of "god" seems a reasonable heuristic to me (i.e. the most highly evolved form of consciousness in existence).
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    If the natural world is ample evidence of God, then how do you explain the mindless, irrational and unpredictable natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes and floods which cause destructions and damages to innocent people? — Corvus

    Who says it is a god's role to intercede or interfere with the unfolding of events? That's a presupposition. A hurricane is just a weather feature that is endemic to the ecological health of our planet. I certainly don't assume that human preoccupations are necessarily universal values.
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    ↪Wayfarer
    Yes, I agree that a decent grounding in eastern culture is definitely key to breaking the shackles of certain western prejudices. My last observation would be that there tends to be a reactionary condemnation of the idea of god in the west because of the history of abuses by the churches. However every human institution is subject to corruption by man. We don't dispense with the ideas of justice and good governance just because criminals pay off judges and politicians. We recognize that the corrupt judges and politicians are not good exemplars of the ideals they purport to serve.
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    Adhering to what "is" negates belief — Christoffer

    I'm not so keen on your characterization of bias either. Perspective is essentially a form of bias. There can be healthy biases as well as unhealthy biases. In particular, if the belief in question is a factor in its own realization (which, lets face it, many, perhaps the most important beliefs, certainly are), then having a powerful bias can contribute to the success of the belief. Fake it until you make it. Belief systems are the fabric of our human reality.
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    adhering to how we function as an entity — Christoffer

    I didn't realize we had a choice in that? Oh wait, we do? Of course. That is the essence of belief.

    Of course, if you are saying that we haven't any choice in it, then it can't be a problem or a solution, can it?
  • Currently Reading
    I'm reading Robert Saplolsky's, "Determined - A Science of Life Without Free Will". I read some good reviews, but I'm finding the book extremely disappointing. — Relativist

    I came across an interesting observation recently, that asked, if everything is behaviourism, then what exactly is it the behaviourists are doing?
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    Ah ok. I'm not familiar with past discussions you two have had regarding belief systems. It sounds like an interesting topic for discussion. — wonderer1

    It isn't a past discussion though. His comment that I quoted constitutes as much. And the fact that there is such a need argues emphatically for the value of belief systems.
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    ↪wonderer1
    I'm saying he has supplied a normative belief system himself, which is exactly comparable to the type of normative beliefs systems he says we can do without. He has generically employed the term "belief system" and associated that with "strong bias". Beliefs may be prone to bias, but the fact that bias exists in no way invalidates belief in general. I take no issue with the comments directed to a very specific subset of religious practices, but the idea that we can dispense with "belief systems" isn't reasonable.
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    We need to focus on the natural drives towards compassion and empathy and work aligned with that and not against it. — Christoffer

    Isn't this in fact also a belief, purporting guidance?
  • Currently Reading
    The Book of Genesis by James D Tabor.

    Not only an attempt to translate as literally as possible but a system of notation to uncover the details and structure of the Hebrew text. It sounds great read aloud.     — Paine

    Interesting. I had to click a long way into the kindle preview before getting to see some of the text....
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    Does it mean that Democritus made up a word for atom for something he didn't know what he identified with or intuit about? In that case isn't the word atom vacuous?

    In the case of God, who personified with what object? There must had been an object or existence for personified. Would it be a fair inference?     — Corvus

    For me, "god" is an heuristic that I see no reason to forgo. The natural world provides ample, ample evidence of a huge spectrum of consciousnesses correlative with a spectrum of teleologies. For me to believe that human consciousness is the most complex that exists goes beyond mere hubris, it's just bad reasoning. Democritus' usage of the word atom is borne out by its role in civilization. There are more complex forms of consciousness than ours. Historically, we choose to call these gods. Then we try to yoke them to human purposes; which is where the problems begin.
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    But do we know what "God" is — Corvus

    Democritus did not know what an atom was, he just identified a general concept he was able to intuit using a word. The word god is fundamentally a personification, meaning it is like us, qua thinking thing. I think this is a pretty traditional philosophical gloss, Absolute Mind, etc. Whatever else that gets tacked onto that is just personal preference (or prejudice).
  • How Different Are Theism and Atheism as a Starting Point for Philosophy and Ethics?
    So, I am asking to what extent does the existence of 'God', or lack of existence have upon philosophical thinking. Inevitably, my question may involve what does the idea of 'God' signify in itself? — Jack Cummins

    I think this is the key question. Whether or not there is a singular being that is god or multiple beings that are gods is relevant insofar as we further assign purposes to such beings. Then the question becomes whether or not human purposes are likely to be relevant to them (i.e. would they even be interested in us). Conversely, if such beings do exist and are in some sense comparable to us (i.e. are typical or paradigmatic of consciousness) then their purposes would be of interest to us, insofar as they might represent a future course of evolution of human consciousness.

    For me, this is the area of potential understanding that atheists forgo. The history of religious dogmatism is a vile thing. But dispensing with the idea of god (the ultimate consciousness) because of the failings of a few fallible humans is throwing out one big baby with some very dirty bathwater.
  • Nietzsche is the Only Important Philosopher
    All of metaphysics is more or less inconsequential because irrespective of the constitution of the universe, as human beings we still need to address the question of how to interact with it — SatmBopd

    Perhaps you simply have not broadened your studies enough? This statement of yours can essentially be interpreted as a form of pragmatism. The Metaphysics of Pragmatism by Sydney Hook (a student and successor of Dewey) is a favourite of mine. All in all, if I had to pick one philosopher to idolize, better Dewey than Nietzsche....
  • Lost in transition – from our minds to an external world…
    The skeptic assumes and asserts that we do not have the means by which we can have knowledge of the external world and, therefore, we can not have knowledge of the external world. Surely there’s something wrong with that argument. — Thales

    Yes. Because "the external world" is at a bare minimum what is not us but matters to us. If the external world does not affect us then it does not matter to us. It can only matter to us to the extent that it does affect us. So even if our knowledge is only of our own affections, these affections are tested on a continuous basis. Such that our knowledge must be assumed really only to exist and advance consistent with external accuracy. That being one aspect of knowledge.
  • Metaphysics of Action: Everybody has a Philosophy
    Which is to say, an individual, will tend to discover and create opportunities to act in accordance with their principles or convictions, to the extent that he succeeds in explicitly formalizing (materializing) his meaning. Which is a philosophy of enaction. — Pantagruel

    This is the direction that I was actually hoping to explore before that unfortunate digression.

    I've since moved from Collingwood to Dilthey's hermeneutics. He believes that the process of en-symbolization (my term for creating symbols), the representation of the universal in the particular, cannot be a function of understanding merely, because it is a creative-imaginative act. Hence my recent comment on how the meaning of an original text overflows and is not captured by its analyses. This is also at the heart of the Davos debates of Heidegger and Cassirer. Dilthey's en-symbolization takes place in the context of the moral world, where an individual action can embody a universal principle (via moral choices). Which is the direction I see a philosophy of enaction taking.


    So what is this saying? The best solution will succeed in conveying its meaning most completely? Or that the meaning that is best able to convey itself is the best solution? Both. We are thinking these thoughts we are now because civilization is what it has been and because matter has evolved in a certain way up to this point.

    But only up to this point, the past. After this point, an event of en-symbolization has occurred (this event of en-symbolization is occurring, i.e. cogito ergo sum). This is true whether matter creates mind or mind creates matter because it is a synthesis anyway. Ideas get encapsulated. There would be no progress of thought if there was no continuity in the life of ideas. In fact, it is this very continuity in the life of ideas which is the device of self-creating agency, civilization. Complex ideas engender complex configurations.

    Ideas exist to convey messages. Ideas are a conduit. Between disparate perspectives.

    Understanding, for Dilthey, is to grasp something's unique individuality, and this is tied to one's own unique moral agency and responsibilities.
  • Paradigm shifts in philosophy
    It's a common misapprehension. Many folk think Gettier "broke" a central idea in philosophy, but as so often, the situation was much more complicated. :wink: — Banno
    :ok:
  • Lost in transition – from our minds to an external world…
    ↪Corvus
    Exactly.
  • Currently Reading
    I was the same. Glad I went for it. — Jamal

    :up:

    Hermeneutics and the Study of History
    Wilhelm Dilthey

    I cannot highly enough recommend Collingwood's Speculum Mentis to anyone interested in the philosophy of the concrete mind. It exemplifies how an original text is not reducible to a synopsis.
  • Lost in transition – from our minds to an external world…
    As it happens I just finished a book that explicitly addresses these questions. The picture it paints conforms in great detail to the one I've been formulating for a few decades. In a nutshell, the concrete basis of our entire concept of objectivity can only arise from the mind's awareness of its own facticity: cogito ergo sum. Consequently:

    the external world , whose origin growth and structure we have been, throughout this book, investigating, is the Mirror of the Mind and the Map of Knowledge in one...In an immediate and direct way, the mind can never know itself it can only know itself through the mediation of an external world, know that what it sees in the external world is its own reflection. (Collingwood, Speculum Mentis)

    For anyone who shares similar intuitions about the nature of reality, I cannot highly enough recommend this short book.
  • Lost in transition – from our minds to an external world…
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up:
  • Lost in transition – from our minds to an external world…
    Before we evolved to the point of being able to perceive and reason, we received sensory input and nourishment from that same physical outside; we responded to it, interacted with it, injected waste products into it, manipulated and altered it. — Vera Mont

    Stating it thus for me identifies the organism-environment system as the basic unit of comprehension and explication.
  • Is Philosophy still Relevant?
    What are the dimensions of these phenomenons? Surely you don't mean length and width and depth, which is the typical meaning of dimesnion. — Lionino

    I'm concerned that you frequently fall back on very simplistic definitions. Any experiment takes place in a "phase space" whose "dimensions" correspond to aspects of the thing being studied and controlled. So a dimension is simply an identifiable aspect of a thing. The energy level of an electron shell of an atom of a particular element is one dimension of that thing.

    As to the larger question, I'll again supply a quote: any object considered in abstraction from a mind which knows it is neither material nor mental, but an illusion, a false abstraction. (SM).

    It's incontrovertible, undeniable, that scientific experiment explicitly requires the selective abstraction of a limited subset of the aspects of the reality being studied. It's not debatable, that is how it works, literally. In fact, because reality necessarily overflows this idealized characterization, it is often necessary to employ statistical methods to determine whether results which demonstrate variability (due to the possible influence of unknown factors) fall within defined ranges of accuracy.

    So what is being studied is an amalgam, a synthesis of the mental and the material. Whatever the material might be in complete abstraction from the mental is a matter of pure speculation, since it will never be known in that way. That is all that this is saying. Which is why science ultimately has to accede to philosophy. Science is only one aspect of a more holistic reality, human existence. The study of the nature of which is philosophy.
  • Is Philosophy still Relevant?
    I welcome all challenges to my ideas — 180 Proof

    Do you though? "Prove me wrong" is a declaration of fixity of belief. It is entirely up to you to challenge your own beliefs. Ironically you yourself have elected to turn this into an ad hominem about yourself.

    I stated my position clearly and within the framework of the OP. I have no idea what your position is because you don't state a positive position, only a negative one: prove me wrong. Not surprising, given your post history. Almost fourteen thousand posts and not a single discussion to your credit. You're nothing but a troll.
  • Is Philosophy still Relevant?
    ↪180 Proof
    I characterized a perspective on the nature of scientific knowledge and its relation to philosophical knowledge, which was the explicit theme of the OP. It's a perspective with which you are very evidently well familiar. I think of all the juvenile memes I've ever seen, "prove me wrong" is probably the most juvenile. I'm not here to challenge your beliefs. Challenge your own beliefs.

    Thanks for letting your true colours shine through so very brightly.
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