Yet as Wittgenstein himself protested again and again in the Tractatus, the propositions of natural science “have nothing to do with philosophy” (6.53); “Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences” (4.111); “It is not problems of natural science which have to be solved” (6.4312); “even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all”

A brilliant passage. But Witt, like Kant, in denying metaphysics any meaning, opened the door for positivism. You know, the only wheel that rolls. Positivistic approaches ignore anything that cannot be defined and justified clearly. An emasculation of "truth'!

see my notes under "Moral considerations" in In praise of Atheism for a discussion of Abraham. The Knight of Faith is immoral. — Banno

I read it. So I wonder if you would be willing to engage the issue. Let's say I understand all of the arguments, because I do, frankly. None of these capture's the essence of God. As with all ideas, its true nature is revealed only when the "material" basis of its meaning is discovered, and God the idea has a lot of baggage. The first question is this: What is the good? Two answers. There is good in the contingent way, like a good couch or a good knife. And there is the Good. This latter is the meta-good, and the concept in play is meta-value. It begins with Wittgenstein's Tractatus:

In the world everything
is as it is, and everything happens as it
does happen: in it no value exists—and if
it did exist, it would have no value.
If there is any value that does have
value, it must lie outside the whole sphere
of what happens and is the case

If you prefer not to go into this, I'm fine with that. But on the other hand, it IS the only way to approach the issue of God, of this I am sure.

Anyway, the issue begins with value. Do you agree with Wittgenstein?

How about.....derivative of the intuitive and cognitive foundation that belongs to us. If not, yours works. — Mww

I agree with both. I lean towards yours.

You're venturing into territory I'm at present not interested in. Not that it's wrong, it's just not my cup of tea. Let's just say I'm not in the mood. Thanks for sharing though. Good luck. — Agent Smith

No problem. It's my little obsession. If ever you do find the mood for this, you might want to check out Simon Critchley's Little, Almost Nothing. He explores the impact of ethical nihilism. :up:

Should we give up and just live our lives as best as we can or should we keep banging our heads against this now bloody wall that has claimed many, many victims? — Agent Smith

I ask, what is there, in the world, that makes us reach out and scream WTF? I think about concrete and steal raining down of Ukrainians, and there you are huddled together then in a moment, you arm is gone and there's screaming everywhere. Or the black plague. Can't even imagine the horrors of it. Not to get dramatic, but on the other hand, to, just for a moment, to get very dramatic, just so I know and I'm not just pretending to know by moving on directly into language and interpretation. How quickly we reduce the world to an abstraction, and everything then toes the line, and we're safe again.

As I see it, religion is found here, in the not turning away. Humans created a great deal that causes misery, but they didn't invent misery itself. This puts these affairs in the hands of the world and our throwness into it. It makes our struggles exceed the localized descriptions of circumstances that want to put it all into narrative. But narratives, and this is an important point in my thinking, cannot contain this.

Then things get metaphysical. Redemption is a metaphysical necessity.

-No you are confusing Philosophy of science(the study of how the methods of systematized epistemology work and the quality of the end product), with the rules of logic and principles science and philosophy must follow in order to achieve their goals, credible knowledge and valuable wisdom.
Those are two completely different things. — Nickolasgaspar

The issue I take has to do with your "same naturalistic principles". Philosophy is not naturalistic, if I take your meaning. the method? Well, I can only think of two. The most general is the scientific method, and this is in the nature of thought and experience itself.
The other method is that of pursuing presuppositions in accepted ideas. This is philosophy. But then, I do see that ALL inquiry in science is like this, and this is perhaps what you are saying. It is one thing to accept the "normal science", which is the same as my accepting my cat, all expectations confirmed over and over. It is another to ask questions about this: the question is common to all desire to know.
I obviously don't take issue with logic. That would be impossible. It is the thematic nature of the inquiry. Philosophy has a different mission, one that looks to presuppositional foundations of knowledge claims AS knowledge claims. Science is not interested in this; only in the specific knowledge claims of its field of interests.

That doesn't let her of the hook. Philosophers still need to take in to account the established knowledge and use it as their starting point, they also need to avoid unfounded principles (supernaturalism, idealism etc) in their interpretations and they need to check and include need data and feedbacks.
Their questions are different because their goals are different. Both ask questions about how the world works but Philosophy have an additional set of questions that include meaning and value.
Science stops before meaning and value because its job to produce knowledge. Philosophy has to take that knowledge from science and inform its frameworks on value and meaning.
This is how Philosophy can ensure that their frameworks convey wisdom. — Nickolasgaspar

Ah, but here you go astray. Take a second (or, a first?) look at idealism, or, as it is later taken up, phenomenology. Science has a wide readership and it produces great cell phones, but as a foundation for philosophy, it has little to say, and what it does have to say amounts to speculative science, merely. You are never going to get this tart to your dessert plate:all one can ever witness is the phenomenon. Wittgenstein knew this. Dennett knows this, they all know this.

-Why he should ever have done that? The first are phenomena studied by physics while the later is a biological phenomenon studied by Neuroscience. I didn't know Einstein had a second degree in Neuroscience!
If you are referring to Modern Philosophy talking about consciousness being fundamental(whatever that means), well some philosophers do talk about it, but that doesn't make a Philosophical idea.
That is pseudo philosophy because Cosmology and Neuroscience haven't been epistemically unified....yet at least.
We don't have observations that point to any links between those different phenomena. — Nickolasgaspar

The point about Einstein is that his was an empirical theory about motion, distance measurements, etc. An apriori theory of time and space is very different. It tries to describe the conditions in place that make such observations even possible. A bit like checking out what a telescope does prior to processing the data it gives us. Experience is not a mirror of nature, to borrow a phrase. How could it be this? Have you seen a brain?

I caught that "whatever that means." You need to get out more, I mean, read something else other than what Neil Tyson DeGrasse tells you to read. Me, I've taken lots of science, and I do understand it quite well. But I have also read lots of phenomenology. The latter is philosophy. An entirely different order of analysis.

Of course it can.I empirically can observe your thoughts, knowledge and beliefs.
We even have a technology that we can read complex conscious thoughts without the need from an individual to communicate them!...By just reading fMRI scans (2017).
https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/news/news-stories/2017/june/brain-decoding-complex-thoughts.html
Maybe you meant something else? — Nickolasgaspar

You jest, no? Seriously, is this what you think? If a child is drowning and the event produces ripples in the water, then by an examination of the ripples, I know what the child's drowning is all about?? What do you think an MRI is?

But when I say one cannot observe empirically the act of believing or knowing I mean to say that even in one's interior observations, where the belief arises and one can step back and one can step back and acknowledge this in an act of reflection, the knowing the belief is there is still bound to the indeterminacy of belief itself. It is like what Wittgenstein said about logic: it only "shows" itself, but one can never know what it is because it takes logic to observe at all, and this begs the question in the worst way. Belief cannot catch, slip in through the back door, as Hegel put it, sight of what it is to believe.

But even if were we unable to empirically investigate subjective states and we couldn't produce medicinal solutions for states like pain and depression and anxieties and child disorders, or diagnostics linked to pathology and physiology of brains, surgery protocols etc etc etc, the question would be,if a systematic,objective approach and method cannot touch this phenomenon..what can and how can we be sure for the objective takes of that "unknown" alternative method? — Nickolasgaspar

The question goes to what the knowing of anything is. You would have to show how anything out there gets in here (pointing to my head). Do this, and I will convert instantly to your side of this matter.

Well this is what we do in all aspects of our investigation. We make objective observations and we try to demonstrate Strong correlations between Causal mechanism and Effect by Describing and Verifying the Sufficient and Necessity role of that Link.
Of course all this is achieved by Objective Observations. All those observations are behind the thousands of papers found in Neurosciencenews.com describing how the brain achieve every different state and function.
I don't really understand where did you hear about the "impossibility" to observe and describe the causal role of brain functions to our Mind properties and how they allow us to have testable predictions and technical applications.
Do you also think the same for the "unobservable" process of Digestion, or Mitosis or Photosynthesis?? — Nickolasgaspar

Well, there is a lot of language in this, and it is all from science. You need, if you want to understand philosophy, to look elsewhere, other than a body of thinking that is self confirming. This would bring in questions. A physiologist reads about, witnesses the digestive system, say, microscopically as well, and with all the detail. Ask this scientist, how do you separate what you witness from the phenomena produced in your brain such that your thinking and intuitive impressions are not REALLY just about the hard wired problem solving mechanisms that deal with the affairs in general? How do you separate your knowing about what is before you from the conditions of knowing?

No one I have ever read has any issue with science. At all! They simply say that science is not the place to go if you want to talk about philosophical issues. It is not foundational, but is derivative of the intuitions we call the world. Look out on a starry night and what do you see? Why is there this finitude that prevents penetration into eternity? Isn't that the inside of your cranium you're experiencing? This is my question for materialists on this matter. Phenomenology has its own manner of thinking.

-OF course science has an essential role in all of them. Why do you think our morality has involved?
Where did Philosophy got its feedback? How do we know our place on the world(Common Ancestry, DNA, No biological Human races, not the center of the universe etc).
Science has informed us how to tell which of our superstitious beliefs are real and which existential claims are irrational to be believed because we don't have objective evidence.
You seem to ignore the role of science in Philosophy.
You can not have the one without the other.
Sure philosophy might help us define concepts and evaluate meaning and value, but without knowledge those would be empty evaluations. Philosophy is the intellectual endeavor of coming up with wise claims about our world. AGAIN without knowledge NO CLAIM can be considered as wise. — Nickolasgaspar

Philosophy observes the world of observations. It does not go beyond this, but into it. It is not that there are no reasonable knowledge claims in science, but rather that such claims themselves bear analysis. Look at it like Dewey or Rorty do: There is a volcano. An event. And my perception of the volcano is an event. I am "here" and the volcano is "there". Do I know there is a volcano? Of course. What does it mean to know, that is this relation that exists between me and that over there? Now wait....that is a different kind of question entirely. I have to remove my geologist's smock. This is an epistemic relation, not a causal one.
You should be able to see that this is a problem. For philosophy, it was THE problem for more than a hundred years, until many just decided to forget it. It will NEVER be resolved is empirical science. You can think as you please, ignore it as you please, but every philosopher knows this.

-That is a common misconception. BiG Bang cosmology was metaphysics before it was verified objectively and become science.
Continental drifting was metaphysic before it became a scientific theory.
EVERY single scientific hypothesis is philosophy before it is verified or rejected.
String theory is metaphysics.
Again Science is the second most important step in any philosophical inquiry.
Philosophy goes some steps further and tries to address Ethical and aesthetic and political questions, but that is impossible task without Epistemology and Knowledge.

So we should stop trying to separate those two and we should acknowledge as pseudo philosophy the inquiries that ignore scientific knowledge and Naturalistic principles...period.

The important distinction to be done is only between Epistemology and Metaphysics.
We should never mix those two and we should all be informed on what frameworks are in one group and what in the other. — Nickolasgaspar

The "pseudo" part of all this is just someone's desire to stick with familiar thinking because thinking outside of this is uncomfortable. A bit like putting one's head in the sand. to see things clearly, you have to learn to live with the world as it is: it is indeterminate not just historically (the Big Bang, and so on); it is indeterminate structurally! The trouble is, I don't think you know what this even means.

Well said in the first, my sentiments also, in the second. Although, the beginning might be in Descartes, Kant then being the standard by which all others in the class, are measured. — Mww

For me, after I read Kant, I felt I understood the foundations of philosophical issues. It occurred to me that there is simply no way AT ALL to escape some form of idealism. This is not to say at all I agree with the CPR. But I had never really understood that science was derivative, as Leo Strauss put it. Every empirical knowledge claim in this world is derivative of the intuitive and cognitive foundation that is set before us.

It is not the empirical analysis of things that we first encounter in the world. It is meaning, and analysis follows on this.

Why would you think that "it is something else"? Have you read/seen the Mahabharata? I recommend it, with subtitles of course. Opens up a new window on god(s). — Agent Smith

But religion is not about "god(s)" and the Mahabharata is extremely long and and where something symbolic and enlightening may be there (Hinduism in its basic concepts apart from the story telling are differently considered here), the narratives and the metaphysics tell me nothing at all, nearly, about the nature of religion.
For me, the way is clear: The essence of religion is discovered in a suspension of all that is merely incidental, the particulars of the given system of religious beliefs and practices that are of a cultural nature, and vary in content. I ask, what is it in the world that religion responds to that is not political and controlling, nor merely organizational or anything else. After all, remove, say, the politics, and religion remains. Remove the empirical science and religion remains, and what does not remain is the bulk of historical struggles of the entangled world.

But that is exactly what Kierkegaard says Abraham did. Despite all else telling him not to sacrifice Isaac, he follows through on his certainty - "standing before the world with the presumption of knowing".

Faith is believing despite the evidence. — Banno

But as you know with all serious thinkers, all ideas are presented in context. the ordinary, churchy faith of the many is something Kierkegaard rejected from the very core of his being. We are talking here about existential faith: an affirmation that has no content. It is a personal movement toward a qualitatively different kind of faith born out of wonder and realized in a "positing of spirit", to use his jargon, against all certainties of the world.

So it really is not about believing in the usual sense at all. Belief needs an object, and the church, Christendom (Kierkegaard's favorite pejorative) is ready to provide one, in the the ritual, the symbols and so on; K's faith is a radical departure from all this.

Oh, sure. So what is the more...?

Can you tell me? If not, don't ask me to tell you wheat the "greater" is in science. Let's just agree to a revert silence. — Banno

A revert silence? Look, it is your position that the scientist is comparable to the, say, religious disciple, and the comparative trappings of belief, test tubes to tabernacle, if you will, is your doing. If you make a claim like this (though I do suspect you are being evasively vague) then you have to follow through You talked about a subservience to a higher being and the rituals of the laboratory. If you don't like my interpretation, then by all means, disabuse me on this.

What?

The knight of faith does not doubt his understanding of god. He "standing before the world with the presumption of certainty." — Banno

The presumption of certainty in the denial of mundane certainties. Faith, the faith of Abraham that surpasses the principles of common morality and affirms in the qualitative leap beyond, is also a negation of the world's laws, culture, religious comforts. Mundane faith K denied most passionately.

Seems to me that there is a failure here to acknowledge the piety of the scientist, their subservience to a greater being. Take care not to be indulging in special pleading. — Banno

Okay, I take it back. "Greater being" is an interesting choice of words. If there is no "greatest" Being, then all that remains are the demigods of mundane living. Unless you think that the term mundane is unduly deflationary given the grandeur of science. Then I would ask what you mean by great, for in this lies something beyond the science as science, just as there is more to the hymnals, solemn music, symbols, etc., of practiced religion. Then question then clearly goes to this sense of greatness or grandeur, as I would put it. And this grandeur is not specific to the science at hand. It is not born out of the math and the data. Rather, it comes upon one in a moment of exaltation, which is just a synonym for grandeur, really, and there are others, but importantly it is a rising importance of something that really transcends the occasion itself.

I suggest that in this one really has touched upon the religious, and if this feeling of grandeur that has no object is given its analytic due, it is not unlike what I said about indeterminacy. It is a finite affirmation, and since all that is affirmed is indeterminate, it is a metaphysical affirmation. The one premise that is always unseen is that indeterminacy puts all of our affairs beyond the boundaries we set for them.

And if the argument is that it is not the case that all things are indeterminate in their final analysis, then it would be patently wrong. Simply because indeterminacy is self affirming, easily testable.

Science is, for many if not most scientists, a spiritual practice, a way of transcending their self by achieving an understanding of the world. The rituals of bottle washing and statistical analysis are part of a far bigger picture, they have a place within a great enterprise that has as it's goal the comprehension of reality itself. How is that not much the same as your circles in circles? — Banno

The "rituals of bottle washing"? And the liturgy of the lecture hall and the Eucharist examination? Heh, heh....I don't think so. If so, then everything is religion. Washing my dog. Ah, the soapy....baptism?

Did you know that the Krishna - avatar of Vishnu, the supreme god of the Hindu Trimurti - is less well known for his miracles than his cunning? Kinda blurs the boundary between supernatural powers and just plain and simple intelligence. — Agent Smith

Implying that the religious situation is no more than a realization of one's lack of cunning? But then, the term "supernatural" just gives religion a bad name, which it usually deserves. But the reality of religion lies outside of the cunning and the supernatural. It is something else.

But so much of religion is the opposite; the certainty of faith runs whole against what you set out here. Faith is "standing before the world with the presumption of knowing." — Banno

That is not Kierkegaardian faith, of course. But as the usual kind, Chomsky was asked about religion and his response was a good one. If you're just desperate and life is just wretched wherever you turn, I am not going to be giving you an argument about the foolishness of public religions.

But as a philosophical question of religion is not bound to incidentals. It wants to know what is it in the world that makes the world a "religious place" and I mean "religious" as a structural feature. We don't want a thing to be defined by its entanglements. Faith as a presumption of knowing, rather than as I have characterized it, would be a matter of objectifying metaphysics, taking strong impossible claims as if they were as true as geology. I have little patience for this kind of thing.

As a structural feature of our existence, I refer to the structure of knowledge relations, all of which are open. It is, I mean it should be, quite a thing to really understand this.

I take that to be self evident. Though I'm not particularly analytic. I'd say I'm 17th, 18th century phil + Chomsky and Tallis.

And a bit of Galen Strawson. But pure analytic phil, depending on the figures, doesn't satisfy me. — Manuel

Then there is only one way to go. Alas, it is not easy and most think it is prohibitively obscure, and they are right, frankly. But anything is better than Chomsky, Strawson, Quine, Ryle, Dennett and so on. Not that they don't have anything interesting to say, but to be taken as the principle insights for understanding philosophy is just missing the grand point of it all. I mean, if you like rigorous, well defined puzzle solving, then fine, but they will take no further than this.

I am talking about continental philosophy. Begins, if there is such a thing, with Kant.

The early stage of the theoretical process that include the applied principles and epistemology SHOULD be the same. So both methodologies should start from current epistemology, use the same naturalistic principles and through logic they should arrive to functional and meaningful frameworks. — Nickolasgaspar

With this, you will get a philosophy of science, but nothing more. True, all things start with inquiry, but then, philosophy asks very different questions. Einstein talked about time and space, e.g., but not as foundational conditions for consciousness. As to epistemology, science cannot touch this: one cannot observe empirically an act believing or knowing. The best one can do is analyze features of knowledge relationships, you know, S knows P, is justified in this, and P is true; but the rub is in this justification, for P can't be affirmed as true unless there is a line of justification that leads from P to S. Impossible to "observe" this line because P is entangled IN S's relationship to it.
Science simply has nothing to say about this, nor about ethics or aesthetics or reality or being and existence, and so on. What distinguishes philosophy is that the questions it addresses are structurally open, that is, even if you did have an answer, that answer would be contingent. But then, this is true for all knowledge claims whatsoever. All roads lead to philosophy.

I don’t see the difference.

Science seeks to understand nature, seeking naturalistic explanations. That’s natural philosophy. Yes, we’ve since given it another label — but ontologically it’s no different. — Xtrix

Philosophical ontology certainly is a question that seeks an explanation, but it does not do this through what one would call natural means. It is an apriori inquiry, about presuppositions of what natural sciences have to say.

Eh. I myself don’t take the conventional distinctions between religion, philosophy, and science very seriously— any more than I take historical epochs like the “middle ages” and “renaissance” seriously. They’re useful in everyday discussion, but when looking at it a little closer they aren’t at all as clear or as neat as one would like to think.

What’s called religion in many ways deals with the same questions as philosophy…and science. I think the knee jerk reaction to this is historical — the Catholic Church persecuting early astronomers, or creationists trying to get ID taught in schools, etc. There’s a fear that our sense of truth is undermined if science and “religion” aren’t separated — that one deals with facts and the other with faith, etc. I used to think the same, and in many instances still do— but with the acknowledgement that it’s not always so simple. — Xtrix

I do appreciate your belief in a kind of unified epistemology. You are right, there is an equal footing for all knowledge claims that ignores the divisional distinctions. This is called philosophy. Philosophy wants to understand, not this or that category, but all categories. Genetics and astronomy have very different thematic interests, but what they have in common is they both issue from the same kind of epistemic relations, which are observational; so what is it to observe? Philosophy asks not just basic questions, but the MOST basic question possible, and this demands a pulling away from observational claims to observation itself.
Religion is essentially a metaphysics of ethics and aesthetics. Take away the stories and the bad metaphysics, and this is what it comes down to.

That's fine. Where does one go? Depends on each person, I personally like descriptive generalization that make sense to me, that can help elucidate what I experience, obviously inadequately, but it's an approximation.

Others will deny that the self is a problem at all.

Some think science offers all answers.

Some become mystics. — Manuel

I think you have a point there about people and their diverging points of view. But then, what an individual experiences is not just a matter of choice and personality. We are what we read, and if all I read was analytic philosophy, all I would know is what Quine and his ilk have to say. My subjective inclinations are steered by the literature, and if you bring up the mysteries of philosophy, analytic philosophy is not going to be very welcoming since it has a positivist devotion to clarity. My issue with this kind of thing is simple: The world is anything but clear on these threshold matters of philosophy and to pretend it is is to look away from the world and retreat back into the comfort of the familiar. I don't think philosophy should be comfortable. The world is weird beyond measure when basic questions are taken up.

I think the topics I listed are a mystery and are studied (or discussed and elaborated) and we still debate them, with no resolution on the horizon.

Religion is very complex and I would probably say that it's even impoverished by the Western entanglement with Christianity, which, compared to other religions, is pretty boring. At least to me.

But existence can be looked at through many lenses, not limited to religion. — Manuel

What is the self, how can matter think, what is mind, what's the good, is there only one thing in the universe, do we have free will, etc. — Manuel

Religion looked at as complex and impoverished IS worse than boring; it is dangerous and trivializing, popular religions and their texts. But once the tedious "theology" and politics is removed, what is left is what you called a "study of mysteries." Not so much a "study" by science, and philosophy, in this neck of the woods anyway, is no more than speculative science, and mystery is simply unwelcome.

What is the self? you ask. A good question. Science has nothing to offer here and popular religions are too filled with bad metaphysics. Where does one go? Existence? Same.

Screw it, I'll go radical: In general the tradition of philosophy is to be the Mother of the sciences, but current philosophy is, by and large, the study of mysteries.

We still are debating a huge swath of traditional questions in which we have not managed to advance one iota. What is the self, how can matter think, what is mind, what's the good, is there only one thing in the universe, do we have free will, etc.

Sometimes we get lucky and manage to bring some of the classic philosophical questions into the arena of empirical research, and then we get a science. — Manuel

Except that much of familiar philosophy doesn't "study" mysteries; it ignores them. Religion presents a metaphysics that is, in most of its content, nonsense, and it loses its authority because of this. Then, in rejecting religion and its nonsense, we end up rejecting the entirety of foundational talk about what it is to be a person in the world. This is understandable since the "authentic" issues of religion are unclear in their meaning, and we do like things clear.

But to take this need for clarity to the threshold of inquiry, that is, existential mystery, is just perverse. This mystery is what we, well, "really are", given that what a thing really is, is defined by its final definition, after thought and questions have cleared the way. We are, at the deepest level of inquiry, completely mysterious to ourselves.

True— not now, anyway. But remember, science comes out of natural philosophy, and is not without its ontological foundations. Once we acknowledge that, clear demarcations begin to get blurred. — Xtrix

Depends on what you read. Go back to a time when the world was not cluttered with new categories, and one could observe without the presumption of knowing. Science did not so much "come out of natural philosophy" as it took what was "natural" and categorized it. What is left is religion: the narrative driven unobservable world that defies categorical thinking. It is the "openness" of our existence in all knowledge claims. The essence of religion, minus the narratives and the popular institutions, is just this openness; and the openness of ethics is front and center.

This depends on whether we want to define them as entirely different. I look at it as a spectrum. The difference between natural philosophy and science isn’t always clear.

Science rests — like everything else — on an ontology (namely, naturalism/materialism). Ontology is usually considered philosophy. The idea of “nature,” causality, time, and being all have philosophical underpinnings in science. — Xtrix

Ah yes, the ontology of knitting. I've heard of it. I have also heard the paradigmatic shift in the art of knitting and the deconstruction of knitting in a very revealing gender analysis. The term 'ontology' has been made into a catchphrase for any and all scholarly work. A little silly, but useful I suppose if you're giving things a close look.
But philosophy is not an empirical approach. It takes empirical approaches and theorizes about their presuppositions, and in this is apriori, like what Kant did with reason looking at judgment and thought and asking what has to be there in order for judgment to be possible.
Philosophy is the "science" of presuppositions.

Given the word philosophy is in the very title of this forum, it seems like a fairly straightforward question, "What is philosophy?"

The term itself, as we know, means "love of wisdom" from the Greek. But that doesn't help much until we know what "wisdom" means.

Interested in hearing various interpretations. — Xtrix

Only one definition survives: Philosophy is the examination of the the world at the level of the most basic questions. Science is, of course, NOT philosophy. It is pre-philosophical.

There is good here, now. That much we know. 'Good' is a malleable word. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Good is a contingent word: it depends on what it means given the context. But religious good is absolute. For this, one has to look at metaethics: You know, the GOOD! And this is not merely a fanciful idea.

Right there you've done an exposé of religious scams. All the religions of the world piggyback on fun things to do. The Trojan horse, my friend. Here's a gift for you! Wait a minute, what's the (malicious) payload? — Agent Smith

And when the you lie there annihilated by your own foolishness at the horse's feet, THEN the religious event has its grounding. It could have been Trojans, the plague, the Nazis, and on and on. One never settles for the incidentals if the question is a philosophical one.

Why does life need to have an end or purpose beyond life? How is that purpose known? How do you know it is a purpose that is discovered or given to us rather that one we make? — Fooloso4

But ten, this asks further, what is made and what is given? The line is hard to draw, granted, but certainly NOT all is made (notwithstanding Rorty). Our forward looking world's teleology is not absent of things truly given in the metaphysical sense, and not all metaphysics is nonsense.

It is rather that you want to look only at what religion looks like, not what it is at its core. Religion can be contextualized in many ways, but its power to rule a society's thoughts and feelings lies with its foundational claims and the indeterminacy found there. Human being lives within a deficit, not in politics nor in social cohesion or any other way you would observe it as taken up and entangled in our affair; but un all things. If you look for a material conditions, keep in mind that, as with philosophy, religion essentially is not about some vast corporate administrations that wield power and influence. Such are the things (basically, Kierkegaard's complaint) that corrupt it, and if THIS is what you think religion really is, then you are missing the mark of your OP. You have to move to another order of thinking.

Ask, the same question about God: what are the material conditions (and by this it is actualities that confront us prior to abstract thinking) that gave rise to this? Was Freud right? Yes, but Freud was a meta-psychologist. Not a philosopher.

That's half an answer. What is the other half? What is it that you have left, after you take the history, metaphysics, authority and all away? — Banno

You have reality. Religion is built into the real in the indeterminacy of our world. Indeterminacy here another name for metaphysics, but in this case, it is, if you will, warranted metaphysics, or, metaphysics that is "discovered" not invented, and by this I mean something really very simple and undebatable: All propositions have their truth value revealed to be indeterminate because there is nothing in the revealed world that steps forward to make a definitive claim, which is why philosophy has its insufferable persistence. Just ask any question you please, and follow through with inquiry and you end up where, as Hillary Putnam put it, where ideas run out.

So, the human condition is indeterminate on all fronts where knowledge stakes a claim. Our existence is entirely indeterminate in all of its affairs, and this deserves repeating, because it is rarely given its due, to, well, stand before all things and realize our familiar systems of explaining the world are without ground. It is standing before the world without the presumption of knowing; THIS is, I argue, the essence of religion. And there is nowhere this is experienced so deeply as in ethics.

Does the term "religion" refer to nothing? — Banno

Hard to believe this is so mystifying. Religion is clearly reducible to the "material" conditions that gave rise to it, that is, to what is IN the world that inspired or provoked all the story telling. One has to ask this question first. Otherwise, it would be like explaining a shoe with no understanding of the foot and what it does. Shoes would be disembodied narratives without this. And this is why religion is opaque: it is presented as disembodied narratives.
The question is, then, what is there, in the world, that is the foundation of religion, and minus the historical accounts, minus the specious metaphysics, minus the comfort of authority, and minus everything that is merely incidental. It is a reduction that is sought.

We begin with the self, the "I" that is conscious, the "I" that has thoughts. The "I" has thoughts about things external to the thoughts themselves, things that change with time, and these things are called phenomena. All the "I" knows for certain are phenomena - the colour red, a sharp pain, an acrid smell, a sour taste, a crackling noise. The "I" has thoughts about these individual phenomena, but more than that, the "I" combines these individual phenomena in various ways. The "I's" thoughts are about phenomena and various combinations of phenomena. — RussellA

Okay

The nature of relations is critical. My belief is that relations do ontologically exist in the mind (the Binding Problem). We call these combinations of phenomena "noumena". We think about particular combinations of phenomena and sometimes we give them a name. The combination of phenomena, the colour red, an acrid smell, a crackling noise we can name "fire", and this "fire" is a noumena. We can say that combinations of phenomena exist in a logical reality, in that noumena exist in a logical reality. A logical reality that exists in the mind. — RussellA

But this is confused; I mean, you cannot say, "We call these combinations of phenomena "noumena." What you say here about noumena really has to be more closely looked at. What do you mean "this fire is a noumenon"? When we say "fire" it is EXACTLY what noumena is not, for Kant is very explicit about this. If you disagree with Kant then say so. I know I do.

Noumena are combinations of phenomena. But a combination is a relation. As relations only ontological exist in the mind, noumena only ontologically exist in the mind. We can think about the noumena occupying a space, but such a space is only a logical space, nothing more than that. When thinking about space, as we are thinking about the relation between phenomena, we are thinking about a logical space. — RussellA

Logical space? Wittgenstein? You know, there is in Heidegger's B and T a kind of space that is utterly distinct: What is "close" is what is brought to mind. My glasses may be physically close, but as I ignore them to think about Chinese bar tenders in Beijing, the latter are much closer. Proximity by extended space is only ONE way to think about this, and only when it comes to mind, is this relevant. But in terms of your actual affairs, Kant's space is certainly NOT primordial.

But when you say things like noumena being combinations of phenomena, you have to explain yourself. Clearly you've stepped out of Kant, which is fine with me, but then you use his language and it sounds all wrong. What, in this idea, is a phenomenon? You will talk about combinations, but Kant's idea of a combination is the synthetic function of a concept. Without this there is no thought at all, and what lies before you is unspeakable, or, if you follow someone like Dennett (and Husserl and Heidegger and Derrida; all of them), what is there before you IS in its being there at all, conceptual. You cannot separate these. They are the essence of being an object.

One has to first admit this. Then one can go on to what Kierkegaard says about the collision between concepts and actualities: IN and through this conceptual apparatus, is disclosed the world's eternity. Both IN and OUT of time, for to think at all is to be in time, yet time is quantifying the world: the world is immediately grasped, in our daily living, in a kind of spatialized way. Not a continuity, but divided. Remove the divisions (a debatable concept) and eternity stands before you, subsuming all, of you will: the eternal present. Wittgenstein talked like this, a big fan of Kierkegaard, as was Heidegger.

Our finitude is created by time, the events that divide things. Dewey called this "consummatory". His Art as Experience is a very good read. He was a pragmatist, and he and Rorty made me a qualified pragmatist. Heidegger's Being and Time has pragmatism as a principle feature. It is through thinkers like this that one continues on with Kant, even as much as they depart from him. They are all, in one way or another, phenomenologists.

You sound like someone who who could think in this vein.

(FH Bradley's Regress argument). — RussellA

Phenomenology does not separate the relation from the "related". To do so leads one to affirming a thing apart from the relation, and that isolates the object beyond apprehension. THIS is Kant's noumena. Entirely metaphysical, in the bad sense of this word. This kind of thing is what gave rise to analytic philosophy's positivistic

The REAL question is, what is there in the world and its analysis as a world. The "beyondness" is there. This about separation is, however, very important: In the bond of relations we have the power to critique, second guess, put distance between us and the institutions that would claim us, so we don't simply go along, allowing our lives to be lived, if you will, in the third person. But this interposition of consciousness into the cycle of events that move forward so automatically, is MOST interesting. It is not simply a matter of declaring oneself independent, as with a political opposition, say; it is a partial termination of the institutions that flow through you, that define the meaning of our lives in culture and language. Here, we are thrust into something else entirely, not just an adjustment of thinking.

It comes to point, for many, that the foundational philosophical problem we face requires something revelatory for its resolution.

Vladimir Putin exists. Where p = Vladimir Putin, (∃x)(x=p)(∃x)(x=p)

Sherlock Holmes doesn't exist. Where s = Sherlock Holmes, (∀x)¬(x=s)(∀x)¬(x=s) = ¬(∃x)(x=s)¬(∃x)(x=s)

As I thought, in predicate logic, predication is only possible for existent things. You can't talk about particular nonexistent objects while you can about them as a class: — Agent Smith

I suppose the matter comes down to soundness and validity. We can talk about anything at all if we like, and if the logical form of what we say is in tact, no contradictions, then we can say the talk has logical validity, of course. But if the talk is just scrabbled eggs in the observed world, then it lack soundness. So if you say, "there is a man named Sherlock Holmes, and he does not exist, you are running a contradiction, saying he is and is not at once. But note the language: There IS a man named SH. What do we mean by this? This is ambiguous in the symbolic representation if by "is" what is meant is "exists". Once you disambiguate, and qualify "is" as fictional, speculative, imaginative or the like, then the logic doesn't produce an absurdity.
So, I can talk about particular nonexistent objects, as is done in the novels. But the context of what is "real" and not, itself is fictional; the standard is simply different.

A maximally great being exists. As you can see, Anselm is usimg existence as a predicate i.e. (∀x)(Mx→Ex)(∀x)(Mx→Ex) where Mx = x is a maximally great being and Ex = x exists. We can see where Anselm goofs up. All maximally great beings are existent things (IF x is maximally great being THEN x exists). The class of maximally great beings can be an empty set, but then the consequent claims there's a member in that set. — Agent Smith

On the other hand, whether or not this can be an empty set is still entirely at issue. The claim is the set cannot be empty since it is analytically true that the greatest possible being exists. Taken as logical construction only, the matter rests on the definitions: does existence have to be included in the GPB because what a GPB IS, is existence. It would not be the GPB if it did not exist, just as a body would not be a body without extension. This goes to essence or definition, which goes to the term "greatest". There is that notorious response by Gaunilo's greatest possible island. But greatness is a contingent term and is built out of the terms that apply: a great couch is not a great telescope. So then, what kind of greatness are we talking about when we are talking about God (capital 'G')? The standard omni this and omni that are just arbitrary. Being absolutely knowledgeable is just a vacuous extension of the way we talk about ourselves, e.g. And omnipotence begs the question: what good is this? Only one thing can fit this bill, and this is goodness: what is GOODNESS? Goodness is not arbitrary or question begging in the description of God.

Conclusion: It has to be understood that logic will only produce more logic. Existence is, well, existential, and this makes the appeal to the world. God's existence is reducible to the existence of what must exist, and it is not some guy sitting on a cloud. What must exist is goodness. The GPB of the world concept comes to this. A highly disputable proposition.

Notice how (∃)(Cx∧¬Ex)(∃)(Cx∧¬Ex) is self-contradictory (there exists a dog that does not exist). — Agent Smith

It would depend on how you take the existential quantifier, for 'existence' is ambiguous, but is treated as unambiguous in the symbolism. See how the entire equation is is problematized by this ambiguity. Existence can only be a predicate if it is possible for something not to exist; such is the case for all predicates: their opposites have to make sense. "The snow is white" makes sense only if it is possible for snow to be other than white. "Snow has a color" is not a predication, it is analytic, for it is impossible for snow not to have a color--apodictic that all things have a color; can't imagine a thing and no color in the same object. If you treat existence like color, then the predication is really a tautology, and "all dogs exist" is merely tautologically true. But if existence can be defined as synthetic (in Kant's terms) and some things do not exist (unicorns?) then "X exists" is a predication. But it depends.

Best I can do.

Kant said that a priori knowledge is "knowledge that is absolutely independent of all experience". I propose that such priori knowledge is innate within the brain, a product of over 4 billion years of evolution and is part of the physical "hardware" of the brain.

I am curious as to your belief as to the source of this a priori knowledge, this pure intuition of time and space intrinsic in our minds? — RussellA

Apriori knowledge at its source, is transcendental. Hence, transcendental idealism. We can observe it in its USE. But "purely transcendental use of categories therefore is in reality of no use at all, and has no definite or even, with regard to its form only, definable object."

Kant included causation within the category of pure understanding, an a priori pure intuition, where an effect requires a cause. Given causation as an a priori pure intuition, it follows that the observer must know without doubt that there has been a cause to the phenomenon, and this cause may be called a "noumenon". — RussellA

Not this. As an intuition, causality only applies to phenomenona. What causality IS in some noumenal sense, is unknown. One cannot speak as though noumena "causes" phenomena. It could be, he speculates, a preestablished harmony, or some other (as I recall. Haven't read CPR in a while). If you find he talks like this, it is because 'cause' is the only term he can think of that might describe the relationship?? But clearly, he does not mean we have in causality an understanding of anything noumenal. Such knowledge is impossible.

IE, I am not aware of any justification by Kant as to why a priori pure intuitions should of necessity correspond with the reality of the external world. This is the same problem found in Indirect Realism, in discovering the reality of the external world through internal representations. — RussellA

But one does not "discover" this reality if by reality you are talking about noumena. It is undiscoverable. Noumena is just an empty but necessary concept. You can read why he talks about it in the Transcendental Analytic.

There must be a distinction between the whole and its parts. When we observe something, we are observing a whole made up from a relationship between parts. As relations don't ontologically exist in the external world, as illustrated by FH Bradley, and relations do ontologically exist in the mind, as illustrated by the Binding problem, we can say that the parts of the object do exist in the external world, but the whole object, as a relation between its parts, can only exist in the mind as a concept. — RussellA

Yes, but the whole is the problem. A whole is only conceivable in relation to a part, just as up is only conceivable relative to down. Meanings are generated in opposition. Noumena are not "the whole". They are not a "they", which is just a manner of speaking. Impossible to imagine, since to think at all is to divide, relate, play against, etc.

I look at noumena very differently for Kant or you. I hold that the noumenal necessarily subsumes the phenomenon such that what I behold AS a phenomenon, like my cat on the couch, is, tail to ears, noumenal. There is no finitude, and the divisions are what they are, and they too are noumenal. Nothing at all can escape the what we see as eternal, noumenal, infinite. Take a single index of identity: time: how "old" is this hand? Given that ex nihilo nihil fit. Space and time, when pressed for basic meanings, are apodictically eternal. Take a given phenomenon, and it can be demonstrated that what you observe is reducible to eternity, that is, all the terms used in the totality of lexical possibilities, yield a foundational indeterminacy.

The parts we observe are assembled in the mind into concepts - a table is a table top plus table legs, a house is a roof plus walls plus windows, etc. But many mereological permutations are possible of the parts we observe within the external world - a table top plus table legs, my pen and the Eiffel Tower, etc. We sensibly choose and name those particular combinations that are beneficial to our evolutionary well-being and survival. — RussellA

I don't doubt that language is good for survival and reproduction.

It follows that if we think of noumena as objects in the external world consisting of a relationship between a set of parts, then it is true that noumena don't ontologically exist in the world, as relations don't ontologically exist in the external world, but only in the mind of the observer as a concept. — RussellA

I don't think of noumena as objects at all. I think of noumena as the indeterminacy inherent in all that is. And I think, to understand what this means takes a withdrawal from the thought itself.

IE, in my terms, it follows that our understanding of noumena as defined as objects in the external world must be transcendental in that objects in the external world don't ontologically exist. — RussellA

"Don't ontologically exist" is an odd phrase.

I wonder how amenable you would be to the following. A bit wordy I'm afraid:

I am far less interested in objects than I am in the self. After all, I am, in the recesses of my "interiority" a noumenal being. This transcendental ego is my self, and this has its analysis found in the examination of the generational ground of experience, right there, where the thought rises up and becomes manifest. You see, where a scientific approach would try to reconcile the brain and its observable features like the analysis of its biochemistry, the structure is neuronal systems, and the whole rest of this empirical field of study, phenomenological approach takes Kant more seriously: All that can be known is phenomena, and the brain is a phenomenon, a densely processed phenomenon . It is not as if there is no connection between the brain and experience; this is not denied or refuted. It is rather that THIS too, this connection, is a phenomenon, making the true generative source of experience still noumenal. We want very much to say brains produce consciousness, but this connection remains entirely alien to our grasp: We simply cannot infer from our phenomenological grasp of brain chemistry and so on, that this grasp IS the way things ARE "in themselves". That remains with metaphysics.

On the other hand, there we are observing the world and it is intuitively powerful, this presence of things and our engagement. It is not possible that I am not experiencing "reality" for what is real can only be a measure of the way reality is presented. I mean, this IS where we get the term 'reality' in the first place. We do not get reality out of an abstract analysis, or from a concept like material substance. It issues from the eating and the breathing and the full sense of existing in the world.

I ask myself this: how is it possible that I can experience the world as a world and not just the locality within a cranium? By any measure one can imagine, I should not be able to experience the (noumenal) world. One has to be very careful with this, because it is most tempting to see the apparatus in place, the lens of the eye, the light reflected and absorbed by the object, the tactile feel corresponding and it all fitting so neatly together, etc., and conclude: I am surely receiving the (noumenal) world indirectly. But one can never get around, in an empirical way, that the thick membrane of brain tissue simply has no epistemic access to the "outside". The lens of the eye quickly turns into clunky brain matter. Even the lens is, on analysis, this.

Only one impossible answer: we do in fact experience the (noumenal) world; and our experience is not localized to this grey physical mass. Consciousness is, after all, noumena. Nothing escapes this. Certainly not phenomena.

Sure, politics is just ethics recast. Ethics concerns our relation with others, as does politics. It is a misguided emphasis on individualism that misguides folk to libertarianism. Libertarianism is one symptom among many, indicative of the problem of individualism as ethics.

What is it you want? — Banno

Just wondering, really. Cooperation and individuality. Not an easy equation.

I understand this and agree. But perhaps one can also be dogmatic about not being dogmatic and end up sinking in a quicksand of mutually opposed world-views. — Tom Storm

I guess you are referring to one who is a kind of rebel without a cause, someone who will not compromise at all. I think this can be understood in two ways: One is the irrational nonconformist, the anarchist, and I see no hope for people like this. The burden of living is living with others, and this has a very insistent sense of obligation in it, ethics. The other sees with clarity that these obligations we have are entangled with history and hardened thinking and challenges these to the purpose of better understanding. Here, I find one rule: do no harm (Mill's famous rule). Everything that follows from this is at issue, but this I take as foundational.

I don't understand this sentence. — Tom Storm

I mean, irony is the stuff prose and poetry are made of. It is the essence of entertainment itself, and irony is in its essence opposition, the strain that is created in resistance. Meaning itself, it can be argued, as a play of language in which one thing is not another and in this tension, the singularity is born, is ironic.

This may seem far flung. But Kierkegaard wrote his doctoral thesis along these lines (a have read only parts myself. It is about Socrates and his incessant questioning of everything. The question pierces complacency, stirs the world up. Ironic tension permeates social discourse) and Rorty's Contingency, Irony and Solidarity talks like this. This latter is excellent.

Indeed. And it is the tension inherent in pluralism. It's very easy to have the semblance of order, stability and certainty if we are living in a theocracy. — Tom Storm

I quite agree.

My interest is in ethics, as prior to politics. Or better, as what politics ought be. — Banno

Ethics prior to politics? But all politics is, if you will, an ethics prior to itself as it's good standing rests with essential defensible moral grounding. I generally criticize libertarian thinking on the grounds that it encourages a division of wealth that isn't morally defensible.

No ethics, no politics. What, therefore, ethics do you have in mind?

Say some more. — Tom Storm

I speak of the dogmatic approach to living and thinking. Unquestioned rules and ideas. to me the question, that is, the resistance that is posed by the possibility of an opposition, this needs to be free. It most assuredly does cause trouble, but living in this "tension" of irony in which all things stand challenged and nothing sits too firmly, this is the essence of a free society.

No, I am talking about individualism, the social theory "favouring freedom of action for individuals over collective or state control". — Banno

You're talking about classical liberalism. Libertarians think like this, while also looking to ease restrictions on social values as well. Anyway, if this is what you object to, then more power to you. There is, on the other hand, the notorious "they", the ones who keep an Orwellian eye out for odd behavior, make sure we all toe the line, the omnipresent guards of the panopticon, that implicit standard of what is right and what is taboo that we all internalize.

I want to say I despise this kind of thing, but obviously, this needs to be qualified. This is the stuff arguments are made of.

Not speaking for Banno, but for me culture (for all its problems) is built out of cooperation and the overarching goal is to include as many stakeholders as possible. You can see that the significant problems of human existence - resource allocation, climate change, war, can only be successfully dealt with and remedied through cooperative ventures. If not, we are lost. — Tom Storm

In political terms, in global political, I most strongly agree. But in terms of the way we stand at the receiving end of a body of determinative thinking, no.