a religion of the people — Gnomon

'Animism' (ancestralism ... or daoism) seems the oldest, and really the only, "religion of the people" that's ever worked for any people. It seems to me all of the cultic-variations (i.e. "fallen" bastards) which have followed, including the vast majority of explicitly 'philosophical belief-systems' (e.g. idealisms, transcendencisms), have been, in one way or another, servants of empire (aka "civilization": missionary, scarcities-consecrating, zerosum-dominance hierarchies).

Non-literal, abstract, impersonal gods, like mystical / ecstatic practices, are just latter-day attempts at slipping out of the 'mind forg'd manacles' of the literal God of priests, preachers, imams, rabbis, gurus ... sovereigns (i.e. "Big Others") and returning – as Gnostics envision? – to an animist milieu or condition – 'the source' (however, only as (genuinely free) individuals, not as "the people").

@Tom Storm @Wayfarer @prothero @Janus

:clap: Thanks for this. Even though I don't agree philosophical practice is strictly binary, I find the case you make quite strong and convincing. The plumbing matters.

Jordan Peterson (of whom I am not a fan :up: ) puts it like this: "Atheists don't understand the God they reject." I used to hear this from religious friends too. — Tom Storm

Yeah, well, I keep encountering theists who don't understand the God they accept, that is, do not propose a cogent, self-consistent 'God-concept' they can talk about (i.e. defend) intelligibly without equivocating and special pleading. It's the theist's 'God-nonsense' – what she (or her tradition) says about God – I reject.

Baruch Spinoza, and his Pantheistic equation of God with Nature. — Gnomon

Of course there's no such "equation" ... :roll:

Spinoza's formula is Deus, sive natura and not 'natura deus est'. — 180 Proof

S is an acosmist (Maimon, Hegel) and not a pantheist (or pan-en-theist or pan-en-deist) or philosophical materialist. Anyway, to wit:

... But some people think the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus rests on the assumption that God is one and the same as ‘Nature’ understood as a mass of corporeal matter. This is a complete mistake. — Spinoza, from letter (73) to Henry Oldenburg

(Emphasis is mine.)

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/993976 :yawn:

:up:
:up:

No doubt, given most cogent, critical objections to "disembodied mind", "NDE", "OOBE", "reincarnation" – i.e. substance / body-mind dualism – raised in this thread (& others) remain unaddressed or unrefuted, I suspect @Sam26's upcoming book, in effect, will amount to special pleading that e.g. 'faces we see in clouds are actual faces which also can see us on the ground', etc :sparkle:

Scientists tend to not ask Why? questions. — Gnomon

Scientists interrogate nature and nature is not an intentional agent that conceives or answers to why questions. Rather they ask more general how questions from which they infer causal explanations and not intentions or purposes. The premodern approach of putting 'why questions' to nature had produced alchemy, not chemistry; astrology, not astromony; geocentricity, not heliocentricity; humors & demonic possession, not germ-theory of disease; Aristotlean teleology of motion, not Galilean-Newtonian-Einsteinian equivalence principle; etc for millennia. Across all modern sciences substantive, methodological and technical progress has accelerated exponentially due in large part to scientists overcoming their innate magical thinking and not wasting time asking inanimate objects and systems "why" they do what they do.

But philosophers have always wanted to know Why

This is a function of reflecting – examining their own thinking – on personal sensations, perceptions, beliefs and what the philosopher assumes she knows. Philosophy begins (and ends) with the philosopher interrogating herself, so asking "why" is often appropriate, even inescapable; and in this way – pointed out above – philosophical speculation (i.e. "Why, self?" is categorically different from scientific theorizing (i.e "How, nature?")

You're welcome, Gnomon. :smirk:

[Is] an imagined telos merely an anthropomorphic, indeed anthropocentric, projection? — Janus

I've always thought so: intentional agents make goals and the only intentional agents known to us are ourselves, mere humans. Am I missing something?

@Gnomon

Although my personal worldview has a role for a Transcendent First Cause or Tao, that is necessarily pre-natural — Gnomon

Okay, but then you contradict your "Transcendent" claim with this Anti-Transcendent (i.e. pure immanence) claim:

My G*D concept is basically Spinoza's deus sive natura ...

Actually reading Spinoza's work itself rather than just skimming a wiki article might help you to stop repeating more nonsense like this, sir.

... reveals itself not by supernatural means but through the self organizing processes of nature ... The seeming striving against entropy, chaos, the void, the deep for novelty, organization, complexity, experience and creative advance. — prothero

I.e. yinyang of the eternal Dao

How could a self-organizing system emerge from a random Bang in the dark? — Gnomon

Is that what really happened, sir? How do you (we) scientifically know this?

I understand that you might think a lot of religion is "magical thinking". I wondered if you felt the same about concepts like truth, justice, beauty, etc)? I hope not. — prothero

Well, of course, that depends on the contexts in which, or how, (any) concepts are used.

It is in such beliefs (or faith) that we find meaning? — prothero

Just as toddlers "find meaning" in (naming, talking to) stuffed animals – magical thinking.

I have to apologize for asking questions that upset you. — Gnomon

Your questions don't "upset" anyone, sir, they are often just vacuous questions or even ludicrously uninformed, and yet condescending (i.e. defensive). You're just not a serious and conspicuously lack intellectual integrity. I challenge you (like this) when I'm bored, Gnomon, knowing you're too insecure to respond directly to challenge me in kind, and so I can keep attention on your woo-of-the-gaps clowning (e.g. hiding behing poor old Whitehead's skirts). You don't "upset" anyone here on TPF (get over yourself!), I suspect many of us on here are even mildly amused by your uninformed bloviating. :smirk:

Historically, the "God" question has both pro & con  Metaphysical  arguments*4. Do you find any of them convincing?

Fwiw (not that you'll intelligibly respond), I'm quite partial to both Epicurean and Spinozist "metaphysical arguments" FOR "God". I'm also "convinced" by arguments AGAINST "God" by such contemporary philosophers as Rebecca Goldstein, Victor Stenger, André Comte-Sponville, Theodore Drange, Michael Martin, Kai Nielsen & J.L. Schellenberg to name a few.

If 'divinity' is real, why believe in it (e.g. mother, gravity & numbers are real)?

Or if (we) believe in it, why also need 'divinity' to (seem) real?

On this forum, some basic familiarity with Quantum Reality ... why our contingent world exists — Gnomon

:sweat: Oh please ...

It is with sadness that every so often I spend a few hours on the internet, reading or listening to the mountain of stupidities dressed up with the word 'quantum'. Quantum medicine; holistic quantum theories of every kind, mental quantum spiritualism – and so on, and on, in an almost unbelievable parade of quantum nonsense. — Carlo Rovelli, Hegoland, pp. 159-60

Does Quantum Physics contradict your Materialist worldview? — Gnomon

Of course not. :roll:

I am not a materialist. I find idealism intriguing — Tom Storm

Like Spinoza, neither am I.

There are no antirealists in foxholes.

Perhaps due to childhood religious "wounding" ... — Gnomon

More pathetic projection. :roll:

That the universe (i.e. timespece) "began" is no more certain or determined than "the edge" of the Earth. Again, bad physics –> pseudo-philosophy (–> woo) e.g. "creationism" disguised as programmer-of-the-gaps metafoolery. :sparkle:

:up: :up:

- I don't[can't] reply to ↪180 Proof's saracastic, supercillious & science-based diatribes against the philosophical[superstitious] concept of Transcendence. — Gnomon

Poor Gnomon, so scared of big bad Reason. :smirk:

It is extreme, and inconsiderate to members who have engaged in good faith, as it makes a nonsense of threads when one side of a dialogue is removed. I am surprised it is allowed; I would suggest that in general it should not be allowed, as it somewhat undermines the value of the site as an archive record.

Members need the ability to delete the odd post they might make in haste or anger, but to delete one's entire contribution is to destroy not just one's own work, but the full meaning of the contributions of one's interlocutors. And that is a deliberate destructive and malicious act. — unenlightened

I complete agree. :100:

NB: Fwiw, I've been away from TPF involuntarily (due to a severe medical emergency) since early May, about 6 weeks, and as I recover I'll gradually resume participating as before. This is not the place so I will post more on my situation elsewhere as soon as I'm up to it. These last weeks the prospect of leaving behind years of discussions and interactions on these fora has reminded me that sooner or later this will be the case unless I self-delete my entire post history which is unimagineable to me at the moment.

@Amity

, I realized that some kind of First Cause (pre-big-bang) or G*D was logically necessary to make sense of our contingent world, evolving toward some unknown Destination. — Gnomon

Maybe, but certainly not physically necessary for modeling the universe (i.e. physus) and its development (re: cosmogeny).

Also, how does "some unknown Destination" in any way "make sense" of a spacetime that, based on the best current scientific cosmology, is more likely to be unbounded – without beginning or ending like a sphere, torus, klein bottle, möbius loop, fractal series or any of countless nonlinear geometries – than not unbounded (given such scientific speculations as e.g. Penrose's Conformal Cyclical Cosmology or Hartle-Hawkin's No Boundary Proposal or Rovelli's Relational Quantum Mechanics)? :chin:

I agree the universe (seems) ontologically contingent but that in no way entails that it had a "beginning" or will "end", only that it is always possible for it to change – develop – including in unpredictable and incomprehensible ways.

Likewise, my worldview is similar to Whitehead's open-ended "Process" toward some tantalizing ultimate unknown goal.

Occult teleology (i.e woo-of-the-gaps).

it's all information, all the way down

And this tell us (explains) what exactly? :roll:

The divine presents the possibility for actualization and satisfaction for each occasion of experience (actual occasion or event) but the divine acts through persuasion not coercion. [ ... ] Perhaps artists, musicians and writers [and scientists] are closer to the divine than priests and preachers [and politricksters]. — prothero

A Tolkienesque 'theodicy' (re: mission of the Istari). :sparkle:

The only form I can think of which might be more sophisticated is the thought of the mystics and their extreme forays into the abstruse and their stronger emphasis on the via negativa and apophatic theology ala the Divine Nothingness of Jon Scotus Eriugena — Bodhy

For me, an even more "sophisticated" conception is the natura naturans of Spinoza's unmanifest substance (i.e. Deus, sive natura) that is consistent – imho has strong affinities – with both sub specie aeternitatis acosmism and sub specie durationis pandeism (à la Eriugena).

My own tentative view is that we do not access reality directly, nor can we claim any definitive knowledge of what reality ultimately is. What we encounter instead are multiple realities, each intelligible through particular conceptual frameworks or perspectives. The pursuit of a single, foundational, unifying reality strikes me as superfluous in that it overlooks the plural and interpretive nature of our engagement with the world.
— Tom Storm

You have summarized the fundamentals of my personal metaphysics. — T Clark

:100: :up:

After Virtue somehow lead me to Philippa Foot's Natural Goodness for which I'll always be grateful.

If no free choices exist, what becomes of notions of free v. unfree choices? They're rendered nonsensical. — tim wood

I didn't claim an "absolute ... "unfree choices". In effect, IME, our "notions" are enabled – instantiated – by our practices (e.g. "choices', habits, etc), and not the other way around as you suggest.

:up: :up:

Can our choices ever be free from determinants, constraints and consequences [spacetime+localiy]? — Truth Seeker

No. One's "choices" can be – often are – "free from" one's awareness or volition (or awareness / volition of others). The more one is unaware of the causal / consequential path(s) of one's own "choice" the more one is unware that that "choice" is not, in fact, "free from determinants, constraints and consequences" (like e.g. flying in dreams).

IMO, I've never seen the remotest evidence the QM/QT has anytying whatsoever do to with classical-scale (local) agency. Bad physics / science –> pseudo philosophy –> dumbs down too many TPF thread topics like this lately.

Why didn't Mishima volunteer as a Kamikazi pilot?

I imagine Japan of the time of WW2 as culturally medieval [pre-modern] in character, the romantic culture of Arthurian legend that concerned itself only with the aristocracy. 'Might is right'; 'death before dishonour'; there are only masters and slaves and only masters have any value. It is a culture of trial by ordeal, where cruelty is not only functional but an aristocratic virtue. I can see how those of the land of Don Quixote, might find an affinity with such a culture, but WW1 I think largely destroyed the vestiges of it in British culture. It turned out that machine-guns have no romance and do not distinguish between gentlemen and peasants. — unenlightened

:100:

Got to roll me
Got to roll me
Got to roll me
Got to roll me
(oh, yeah)
Got to roll me ...
Keep on rollin'
Got to roll me
Keep on rollin' ...

"Tumbling Dice" (3:45)
Exile on Main Street, 1972
Jagger-Richards
The Rolling Stones

I noticed the Sean Carroll quote: "there is no life after death". And I must agree, except [nonsense]. So, a particular form-pattern could in principle be reconstituted, just as computers can copy & paste data. I wouldn't organize my life around the expectation of a better life in the hereafter (bird in hand . . .). But it's a possibility that philosophers could argue endlessly about. — Gnomon

This might be so for "philosophers" ignorant of Conservation Laws¹ (modern physics > Noether's theorem²). You're right, Gnomon, not hang your tinfoil hat on "form-pattern ... reconstituted" à la miraculously un-scrambling eggs, perpetual motion woo-woo, etc. Sean Carroll is right, of course, insofar as complete dissolution of a dynamic system – death – in effect, randomizes the system-pattern (i.e. information processes) as per maximum entropy.³

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_law [1] (re: information is not conserved)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_theorem [2]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory) [3]

All of reality is merely reified abstractions. — T Clark

???

In your own view, what are The Forms, which Plato alluded to? — Shawn

Like animist / mystical "true names", it seems to me that Platonic Forms – essences, universals – are merely reified abstractions (and therefore a mistaken theory of reference).

Welcome to TPF.

Nayef Al-Rodhan is new to me but his proposal of "Neuro-Techno-Philosophy" very much reminds me of transhumanism. For context, here's a 2024 article from Philosophy Now:

https://philosophynow.org/issues/160/A_Philosophical_History_of_Transhumanism

And on these fora, here are three discussions in which I and quite a few others had participated in back in 2021:

What is your opinion of Transhumanism?

Transhumanism: Treating death as a problem (with British philosopher David Pearce)

Transhumanist theodicy

As usual, 180 alcohol content responds to my philosophical arguments --- in favor of a Cosmic Cause (hidden hand) for the contingent universe we living & thinking beings inhabit --- with ad hominem political attacks : e.g. liberal (logical) inference bad vs conservative (physical) evidence good. I assume he is appalled at the worldwide popularity of the God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob, who frequently punished his chosen people with mass death and deportation. 180 may also have had a bad experience with pedophile priests or knuckle-rapping nuns. — Gnomon

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Like Trump, your fatuous accusations are confessions, Gnomon – I must've struck a raw nerve (i.e. truth hurts! :sweat:) with my last post ...

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/984104 :up:

Note --- We read the same science books, but interpret their philosophical implications differently. — Gnomon

Except that your interpretations consist in appeals to ignorance fallacies, as quite a few members have exhaustively pointed out over the years, and my interpretations do not.

NB: Philosophy says, in effect, 'here, we don't know (yet)' and thereby rigorously makes explicit the (current) limits of reason and knowledge whereas in contrast sophistry / theology / pseudo-science deludes itself with woo-of-the-gaps fairytales (e.g. "Enformer", "transcendental programmer", "intelligent designer", etc) which purport to explain (i.e. resolve fundamental mysteries) yet do not explain anything.

:up:

:up: :up:

Re: fwiw, contextualizing America's 'polarization' – no doubt a disputable guess (2021) ...

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/504611

i.e. ethics / moral norms (e.g. OP's "developmental stages" :roll:) are not the drivers or causes of contemporary 'extremism'.

:up:

I think leftists are in the preconventional stage of morality, and MAGA are in the conventional stage. — Brendan Golledge

As a libertarian leftist and negative consequentialist, I find reductionist – simplistic – statements like yours, Brendan, meaningless (ahistorical). The last century or so of 'political' events and conflicts amply shows that, especially for most citizens, governing ideologies are not determined by – not consistently derived from – ethical principles (or practices), even though the domains (can) overlap. Of course, any concrete, real world counter-examples would lend some credibility to the OP.

Addendum to
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/983428

Even if "the universe is a quantum computer", this does not necessitate it was programmed (or is programmable) or that it has a Babbage-Lovelace/Von Neumann/Turing-like architecture. Clearly, there isn't any evidence of a "transcendent programmer" or explanatory function for one.

Btw, I recommend Programming the Universe by Seth Lloyd (2006); also Stephen Wolfram's work on complexity / computation, David Deutsch's work on MWI quantum computing and Carlo Rovelli's work on RQM.

:smirk:

Okay. Again, you've got nothing but ...

So you cannot answer the question?

What does "real" even mean with respect to a "wave in quantum physics"?

Also, more significantly, what existential or epistemological difference do the ontological interpretations of "quantum physics" make to classical beings classically living in a classical world (re: locality¹)?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_locality [1]