Is mathematics abstract? That makes it sound like it's all mental concepts instead of anything objective, but I don't think you're using 'abstract' in that way here. — noAxioms

The other point is that mathematics seems to be ‘true’ in a way that goes beyond the objective. We usually think of ‘objective’ as meaning something inherent in the object, or at least independent of our perception. But mathematics is often the means by which we define what’s objective in the first place—so in that sense, it seems to transcend the domain of the objective rather than just belong to it.

I’m not using ‘abstract’ to mean just 'mental' or 'subjective'—mathematical truths don’t seem to depend on individual minds. But it’s not clear that they’re part of the natural world either. That leaves a kind of philosophical gap: we trust mathematics to describe the real, but we’re not sure where mathematical truths themselves fit into our picture of reality.

These are by nature very hard arguments to adjuticate but I'm comfortable with the classical or Aristotelian understanding of them being transcendent truths - see this account of Aristotelian realism in mathematics, from which:

The scholastics, the Aristotelian Catholic philosophers of the Middle Ages, were so impressed with the mind’s grasp of necessary truths as to conclude that the intellect was immaterial and immortal. If today’s naturalists do not wish to agree with that, there is a challenge for them.

It would be nice if science worked that way, but it can't get around the fact we all exist in private worlds and other minds are essentially black boxes. — RogueAI

Empathy is a sure antidote to solipsism. True, you don't literally experience the other's mind, but it's as close as we can get. The idea that 'consciousness is mine alone' is really characteristic of the individualism of modernity. And a flaw, if I might say.

Generally physicalists oppose platonism due to the fact that it posits an irreducible non-physical reality.
I'll let wayfarer comment on that since I don't know Platonism enough to know what they assert. — noAxioms

It's actually a very simple idea: that natural numbers (and other such intelligible objects) are real, but not materially existent. Which, of course, is anathema to materialism, which must insist that anything that exists is matter (or matter-energy). You can say it in a sentence or two, but it is the subject of thousands of volumes of argument. (Incidentally I'm not any kind of authority on Platonic scholarship but I regard this salient point as a matter of common knowledge.)

Mathematics, logic and so on seem 'transcendental' with respect of the world (at least if we assume that the worlds are at least partly intelligible). — boundless

A safe assumption, seeing as how we've been able to successfully exploit those principles through the application of mathematics. (I'd say a bit more about 'conceptualism' but I don't think this is the thread for it.)

It depends what you call philosophy and what you call religion. Boethius (and many others in his time) certainly thought that philosophy could provide consolation. How would you classify his attempt? Ancient philosophers seem mostly to have been confident that philosophy can help us to cope with suffering. But since the scientific revolution, that project seems to have been more or less abandoned and so left to religion (where humanism would count as a religion). — Ludwig V

Very thoughtful observation. In the pre-modern world, philosophy and religion had a kind of common boundary, you might say, and quite a porous one, at that. I've sometimes thought that the role of philosophy is to 'drop you at the border', so to speak - after that, you're on your own! That, anyway, was very much the ethos of (neo)Platonism with its emphasis on contemplative illumination.

But this is where naturalism hems us in, so to speak. Insofar as we are simply another species, thrown up by the blind watchmaker, then the best we can do is one or another form of stoicism, soldiering on, coping, perhaps in the manner of Camus' Sisyphus ('It's hell, but lets keep smiling.') Or do whatever we can to ameliorate suffering and prolong life by whatever scientific means possible.

But all of the classical philosophies held to there being a higher truth, with philosophy being the manner of ascent to it. And in ascending to it, not simply ameliorate suffering, but to rise above it, to transcend it, to a realm of no-more-suffering.

I'm gloomily contemplating the idea that one of the underlying cultural problems around all of this was, in fact, created by Christian culture itself, in that the way it developed inadvertantly demolished the idea of the 'scala natura' and the idea of higher truth, that being deemed elitist and in contradiction of the universal salvation offered to all who would believe. In that way, it negates philosophy in favour of mere Christianity - leave your intellect at the door please. (Perhaps why Immanuel Kant, required to lead a formal procession of his students to Church on Sundays, would stop outside.)

The bodhisattva deserves to be released from the wheel of dharma -- that would be just. But they choose to show mercy on unenlightened beings by returning to help them. — J

There are two ways in which someone can take rebirth after death: rebirth under the sway of karma and destructive emotions and rebirth through the power of compassion and prayer. Regarding the first, due to ignorance negative and positive karma are created and their imprints remain on the consciousness. These are reactivated through craving and grasping, propelling us into the next life. We then take rebirth involuntarily in higher or lower realms. This is the way ordinary beings circle incessantly through existence like the turning of a wheel. Even under such circumstances ordinary beings can engage diligently with a positive aspiration in virtuous practices in their day-to-day lives. They familiarise themselves with virtue that at the time of death can be reactivated providing the means for them to take rebirth in a higher realm of existence. On the other hand, superior Bodhisattvas, who have attained the path of seeing, are not reborn through the force of their karma and destructive emotions, but due to the power of their compassion for sentient beings and based on their prayers to benefit others. They are able to choose their place and time of birth as well as their future parents. Such a rebirth, which is solely for the benefit of others, is rebirth through the force of compassion and prayer. — H H The Dalai Lama, How Rebirth Takes Place

As above you appear to agree that there is a reality, then I'm at a loss trying to understand just what your point is. Maybe you mean subjective or experiential reality? That we might call affective reality? These being the reality of how we feel about something? Which of course is not any part at all of the object experienced. If indeed we may say that we experience objects. Thus without some waypoints in the way of preliminary understandings, we sail into confusion. — tim wood

First, Donald Hoffman - his theory of cognition is given in his book The Case Against Reality: How Evolution hid the Truth from our Eyes. The post of mine you quoted was my description of the theory in that book. From the book description:

Do we see the world as it truly is? In The Case Against Reality, pioneering cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman says - No, we see what we need in order to survive. Our visual perceptions are not a window onto reality, Hoffman shows us, but instead are interfaces constructed by natural selection. The objects we see around us are not unlike the file icons on our computer desktops- while shaped like a small folder on our screens, the files themselves are made of a series of ones and zeros too complex for most of us to understand. In a similar way, Hoffman argues, evolution has shaped our perceptions into simplistic illusions to help us navigate the world around us.

I have the book but there are some aspects of it I don't understand. I was initally attracted to Hoffman's ideas because of their apparent convergence with the kinds of idealist philosophy that I'm drawn to. But I have doubts about the philosophical merits of Hoffman's argument in some respects (even if in agreement in others).

Whitehead, who taught at Harvard University from the 1920s, argued that science relies on a faith in the order of nature that can’t be justified by logic." Exactly so! Per Collingwood it is the absolute presupposition (AP) that nature is the creation of the Christian God and therefore perfect, and therefore a fit subject for scientific inquiry - which it was not for ancient science. But to say it cannot be justified by logic is at very best misleading, and on plain understanding, wrong. — tim wood

This is a large subject in its own right, but I wouldn’t interpret Whitehead’s or Collingwood’s positions as arguments for divine creation per se. Rather, both are pointing to a more subtle and important issue: that science rests on presuppositions—such as the uniformity and intelligibility of nature—that it cannot establish from within empirical method. Whitehead’s term for this is “faith in the order of nature,” and Collingwood, similarly, uses the idea of “absolute presuppositions”—not to promote theology, but to expose the philosophical scaffolding science quietly relies on.

In other words, their concern is with the limits of empiricism, not with the promotion of theism. That said, both thinkers were also historically conscious: they understood that the emergence of modern science was neither philosophically or culturally neutral, but shaped by a preceding worldview in which the cosmos was understood as rationally ordered—whether by divine decree or metaphysical structure. But in no way were they proposing any kind of 'God of the gaps' argument. It's rather that 'naturalism assumes nature', but when it then takes the further step of attempting to explain nature that it ventures (or blunders!) into the territory of metaphysics.

As above you appear to agree that there is a reality, then I'm at a loss trying to understand just what your point is. Maybe you mean subjective or experiential reality? That we might call affective reality? These being the reality of how we feel about something? Which of course is not any part at all of the object experienced. — tim wood

Better, easier, simpler, more to the point for you to develop in a few well-crafted sentences of your own your own thinking. — tim wood

I think what this touches on—whether through Hoffman’s meta-cognitive theories, or through earlier thinkers like Whitehead—is a broader shift that's now underway in both philosophy and the cognitive sciences: a convergence around the idea that experience isn't just a passive reflection of an already-existent material world, but the active structuring of it. This is where cognitive science (especially its enactive and embodied cognitive science), phenomenology, and forms of idealism converge: not in denying the world, but in recognizing that the mind plays an indispensable role in how the world appears and makes sense to us. (I've tried to explore this in a bit more depth in The Mind Created World).

As for “existence is experienced”—it is precisely the experiential dimension of existence, 'reality as lived', that modern natural philosophy has tended to bracket out or exclude. That is the background of David Chalmers’ Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, and a key motivator of Hoffman’s book. That’s also why I brought in Pierre Hadot: the original conception of philosophy wasn’t theoretical but lived. We ourselves have to see the way the mind constructs our world. It may become an abstraction when we talk about it (theory) —but what it points to is something actually happening, moment by moment, in our own awareness (practise). A large part of philosophy is the cultivation of that awareness.

Accordingly, in classical philosophy, theoria and praxis weren’t opposed, but deeply connected. Theoria meant contemplative insight—the act of “seeing” reality—and praxis was the way of life that arose out of that seeing. So even talking about these things wasn’t 'just theory' in our modern sense, but part of a process of gaining and deepening insight.

As do I.

Incidentally, if you don't know Donald Hoffman is, here's a TED talk where he lays out his basic idea, Do We See Reality as it Is?

That's the debate between Aristotle and Plato in a nutshell: Plato has it that the ideas are real quite apart from any instance of them, Aristotle that they are only real as manifested in concrete particulars.

But such principles as the law of the excluded middle would presumably obtain in any world. That is what 'true in all possible worlds' means - although that is not highly regarded nowadays, because, as we've been seeing, we're prepared to entertain the idea of 'other universes' where such principles may not hold at all, But the question I have about that is, how could a world exist, if such principles didn't hold? In a sense, such principles are like constraints.

In any case, the specific point of the Eric Perl quote is to show that the idea of a 'separate realm' is not referring to a literal place. 'They are thus ‘separate’ in that they are not additional members of the world of sensible things, but are known by a different mode of awareness.’

But that would be true even if the world really existed in a mind independent way. — flannel jesus

If you were to see the world as it is, independently of any mind - what would you see?

Lame counter. Cockroaches are barely sentient let alone rational. H.Sapiens alone can bring this fact into rational reflection.

The principle exists in the NT, ‘as you sow’ - but in Christian doctrine I think it is defrayed by Christ’s atonement. But it’s a very deep question.

if evolution has shaped us to see reality in a particular way, that implies there was a reality there prior to evolution.

I mean, scientifically speaking, the history of life on earth starts a few billion years after earth came into being. If it's "consciousness all the way down", what does that say about those billions of years prior to life?

I accept that the way WE see reality wasn't "reality" back then (and arguably isn't "reality" right now either), but we still have sufficient evidence that "back then" was as real as right now. — flannel jesus

That's a really excellent question, and a topic that is near to my heart. I've debated it up hill and down dale for years, but I'll try and sketch out a quick response in the few moments I have now.

The key point I make is that all judgements about the age of the universe, including all of the scientific evidence (which I fully accept) is interpreted by us. And that act of intepretation is mind-dependent. So, sure, we know prior to h.sapiens that the earth exist for 4 billion years odd, and a pretty good account of evolutionary development. But there is always an implicit perspective in that understanding, namely, that of yours and mine and humans generally. We don't really see it as it would be without any perspective whatever, becuase without any perspective, there would be no time or space which provides the framework within which all such knowledge is meaningful.

So there are two levels: first, there's the empirical facts, disclosed by science, which are inter-subjectively verifiable. But there's also a sense in which that is disclosed and understood by us in terms of the framework of understanding that we bring to the picture. But we generally don't take that into account, because science generally brackets out the observer, so as to arrive at what is considered to be the view from nowhere, which it takes to be synonymous with how things truly are. But it's not.

This goes back to Kant, of course, but it's an understanding that has also penetrated many schools of modern philosophy and even cognitive science. See The Blind Spot of Science for a more detailed account (Aeon essay).

If mathematical (and other types of) abastract concepts and truths abide in a separate realm from the physical world and the mental world (including our culture), how can we know them? How the realms 'interact'? — boundless

The problem is that 'realm' is a metaphorical or allegorical description. It is not some place or ghostly ethereal realm. Here's a book called Thinking Being: Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition, by Eric Perl, which lays out the meaning of the Platonic 'ideas', with a chapter on 'the meaning of separation, from which this is excerpted:

Forms...are radically distinct, and in that sense ‘apart,’ in that they are not themselves sensible things. With our eyes we can see large things, but not largeness itself; healthy things, but not health itself. The latter, in each case, is an idea, an intelligible content, something to be apprehended by thought rather than sense, a ‘look’ not for the eyes but for the mind. This is precisely the point Plato is making when he characterizes forms as the reality of all things. “Have you ever seen any of these with your eyes?—In no way … Or by any other sense, through the body, have you grasped them? I am speaking about all things such as largeness, health, strength, and, in one word, the reality [οὐσίας, ouisia] of all other things, what each thing is” (Phd. 65d4–e1). Is there such a thing as health? Of course there is. Can you see it? Of course not. This does not mean that the forms are occult entities floating ‘somewhere else’ in ‘another world,’ a ‘Platonic heaven.’ It simply says that the intelligible identities which are the reality, the whatness, of things are not themselves physical things to be perceived by the senses, but must be grasped by reason. If, taking any of these examples—say, justice, health, or strength—we ask, “How big is it? What color is it? How much does it weigh?” we are obviously asking the wrong kind of question. Forms are ideas, not in the sense of concepts or abstractions, but in that they are realities apprehended by thought rather than by sense. They are thus‘separate’in that they are not additional members of the world of sensible things, but are known by a different mode of awareness. But this does not mean that they are ‘located elsewhere'... — Eric D Perl, Thinking Being, p28

The same general idea applies to all kinds of 'intelligible objects': they don't exist as objects in the phenomenal domain, but are more like principles.

Sure, Isn't the concept of karma precisely intended to reconcile the apparently random distribution of good and evil into the mora/ethical order? It may succeed psychologically, but does it stand up philosophically? — Ludwig V

Karma is really a kind of watershed between Eastern and Semitic religions. It must entail one or another kind of reincarnation or rebirth, if karma is to have consequences beyond this existence (and if it doesn’t then it’s a very shallow idea). I’ve discussed it many times on this forum, and I get Western culture is averse to the idea of karma and rebirth, it’s culturally taboo. But I remain open to it. I will add, though, that I despise the popular idea that karma is used to explain or rationalise misfortune or imply blame or retributive justice. It is only ever beneficial as what Kant would have described as a ‘regulative principle’, something to guide one’s own actions.

My own would be that which is left on stage when the actors have left, that in being provides the ground/basis/opportunity for perception/judgment/experience. — tim wood

How does that sit against Donald Hoffman's 'conscious realism', and his claim that we don't see reality as it is, but only as evolution has shaped us to see it? It seems to me that from such a perspective nothing could be ventured as to 'what is left on stage', as 'the stage' is constructed by the actors. Indeed Hoffman says that reality is conscious agents 'all the way down'.

Which is to say an entirely subjective admixture of judgment and perception, — tim wood

Not in the least. You ask 'what is reality', my answer is intended to convey that it has to be meaningful as a lived reality, not as an abstraction or theory. Philosophy as 'love of wisdom' as a quality of being, not as a theoretical abstraction.

without benefit of Kant's practical reason (as I understand that). — tim wood

On the contrary:

Despite its apparent absence from modern academic philosophy, the notion that one might turn to philosophy in pursuit of inner illumination and transformation, similar to that found the church and the lodge, was taken for granted in Kant’s milieu and formed a key part of the reception of his philosophy. ...

The decisive distinguishing feature of Western philosophical spirituality is that it does not regard the truth as something to which the subject has access by right, universally, simply by virtue of the kind of cognitive being that the human subject is. Rather, it views the truth as something to which the subject may accede only through some act of inner self-transformation, some act of attending to the self with a view to determining its present incapacity, thence to transform it into the kind of self that is spiritually qualified to accede to a truth that is by definition not open to the unqualified subject. .... — Spirituality and Philosophy in Kant's Ciritque of Pure Reason, Ian Hunter

My private hobgoblin in this kind of discussion is to establish some kind of ground, at least, for the terminology: in this case for "reality." What, exactly (for present purpose), do you say reality is? — tim wood

I completely understand your concern. My off-the-cuff answer is that reality is lived. That response is more in keeping with European philosophy, and also with religious philosophies. You can create and call into doubt all kinds of complicated theories but existence has a visceral, felt quality that is before or prior to all such verbal rationalisations. How this relates to philosophical idealism, is that idealism doesn't ultimately comprise a 'theory about mind' but a recognition of the sense in which the mind constructs the reality in which we live (that's the part that Hoffman gets right). But in philosophy, this requires insight into that process. Buddhism is also grounded in that kind of insight.

What with the total dominance and pervasiveness of science and scientific technologies in life today, it is natural to presume that scientifically-based reasoning is as it were the arbiter of reality. But science by its very nature leaves something out, which is the subjective, visceral sense of lived reality. That's what existentialism and phenomenology is about. So whatever truth is to be sought, it has to be sought in that context. Pierre Hadot is an exemplar:

Pierre Hadot, classical philosopher and historian of philosophy, is best known for his conception of ancient philosophy as a bios or way of life (manière de vivre). ....According to Hadot, twentieth- and twenty-first-century academic philosophy has largely lost sight of its ancient origin in a set of spiritual practices that range from forms of dialogue, via species of meditative reflection, to theoretical contemplation. These philosophical practices, as well as the philosophical discourses the different ancient schools developed in conjunction with them, aimed primarily to form, rather than only to inform, the philosophical student. The goal of the ancient philosophies, Hadot argued, was to cultivate a specific, constant attitude toward existence, by way of the rational comprehension of the nature of humanity and its place in the cosmos. This cultivation required, specifically, that students learn to combat their passions and the illusory evaluative beliefs instilled by their passions, habits, and upbringing. — IEP

I'm not claiming by any stretch to have mastered or to be able to demonstrate these qualities but I believe this is the direction in which the answer lies.

I've always found this point quite strange because from what I see, people reason "badly" and get things wrong literally all the time, including scientists and academics. — Apustimelogist

Well, probably unlike most, I put some stock in spiritual insight. The archetypal sage - whom is most likely not an actual person - has the ability to see 'how things truly are', which exceeds the scope of mere objectivity. Again from the entry on Pierre Hadot:

The philosophical Sage, in all the ancient discourses, is characterized by a constant inner state of happiness or serenity. This has been achieved through minimizing his bodily and other needs, and thus attaining to the most complete independence (autarcheia) vis-à-vis external things. The Sage is for this reason capable of maintaining virtuous resolve and clarity of judgment in the face of the most overwhelming threats, from natural catastrophes to “the fury of citizens who ordain evil . . . [or] the face of a threatening tyrant”. In the different ancient schools, these characteristics differentiating the Sage from nonphilosophers mean that this figure “tends to become very close to God or the gods,” as conceived by the philosophers. The Epicurean gods, like the God of Aristotle, Hadot notes, are characterized by their perfect serenity and exemption from all troubles and dangers. Epicurus calls the Sage the friend of the gods, and the gods friends of the Sages. Aristotle equates the contemplation of the wise man with the self-contemplation of the unmoved mover.

As an advocate for idealist philosophy, I hoped that Hoffman would provide grist for that particular mill. I've purchased and read parts of his The Case Against Reality, listened to quite a few interviews, and discussed his ideas here on philosophyforum.

Hoffman's idea is that evolutionary development favours adaptive fitness over perception of reality as it is. We have evolved to see the world in a way that helps us to navigate it successfully enough to survive and propagate. He then develops his theory of conscious realism, which is the idea that what we see are icons or visual representations

How can our senses be useful—how can they keep us alive—if they don’t tell us the truth about objective reality? A metaphor can help our intuitions. Suppose you’re writing an email, and the icon for its file is blue, rectangular, and in the center of your desktop. Does this mean that the file itself is blue, rectangular, and in the center of your computer? Of course not. The color of the icon is not the color of the file. Files have no color. The shape and position of the icon are not the true shape and position of the file. In fact, the language of shape, position, and color cannot describe computer files.

The purpose of a desktop interface is not to show you the “truth” of the computer—where “truth,” in this metaphor, refers to circuits, voltages, and layers of software. Rather, the purpose of an interface is to hide the “truth” and to show simple graphics that help you perform useful tasks such as crafting emails and editing photos. If you had to toggle voltages to craft an email, your friends would never hear from you. That is what evolution has done. It has endowed us with senses that hide the truth and display the simple icons we need to survive long enough to raise offspring. — Hoffman, Donald D. (2019). The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes (Function). Kindle Edition.

I think there is some truth in that, indeed I argue something very similar in the OP Mind-Created World. But the problem I have with it is the implicit presumption that reason is also something that can be understood in terms of visual perception. As many reviewers have noted, if the argument applies to reason and mathematical logic as well as visual perception, then how is Hoffman's book not also an illusory artefact of the selfish gene?

In fact, an interesting comparison can be made between Hoffman's argument, and arguments from (among others) Alvin Plantinga, Thomas Nagel, and C S Lewis. These philosophers all propose various forms of 'the argument from reason', which says that, were reason to be understandable purely in naturalistic terms, as an adaptation to the environment, then how could we have confidence in reason? Of course, that is a very deep question - rather too deep to be addressed in terms of cognitive science, I would have thought.

In short, I think Hoffman's idea of 'truth' (as in 'the truth that is hidden from our eyes by evolution') is philosophically naive. Later in the book, he talks a lot about mathematical models which purport to demonstrate the veracity of his central argument, which culminates in the idea that reality comprises solely conscious agents. Again, an idea I'm sympathetic to - think Liebnizian monads -but the meaning of that claim is left open. The maths seems to be aimed at creating the image (ironically) of scientific versimilitude, as if any theory is not justified by mathematical models will lack credibility.

That's my two bobs, granted, I haven't finished the entire book, I like Hoffman's persona and am probably more open to his kind of argument than anyone who holds to physicalism, but those aspects of his project give me pause.

David Hoffman — tim wood

Donald Hoffman. His book.

Looks like Dutton (opposition leader) has lost his seat! If so I would think it likely that his political career is over. Won’t be missed, by me, anyway.

Yeah they're calling it already. Damn it'll be an early night.

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice?

Choices made a long time ago. Also known as karma.

Yes, according to Chat:

There’s no officially recognized or widely used clinical term specifically for a phobia of vote-counting. However, one could coin a neologism using Greek or Latin roots, as is common in naming phobias. For example:

“Psēphophobia” – from the Greek psēphos (ψῆφος), meaning pebble (which the ancient Greeks used to cast votes), plus -phobia (fear).
This could be loosely translated as “fear of voting or vote-counting.”

There's always a fire hydrant of Trump news stories, but this one is major: a judge has struck down his executive order aimed at punishing the law firm Perkins Coie. It was a scathing judgement, saying the order was unconstitutional on many fronts.

“No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit targeting a prominent law firm with adverse actions,” U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell wrote in a scathing 102-page opinion. The case, she said, “presents an unprecedented attack” on the importance of independent lawyers.

Perkins Coie was the firm associated with the lawyer who commissioned what became the scandalous and salacious Steele Report, that hit the airwaves just before the 2016 election. Trump has always been utterly furious about it - with some justification, I might add. Regardless, trying to effectively shutter the firm (and after the lawyer in question has long since left) was definitely overkill (as usual).

It is going to be followed by a US 60 Minutes feature about Trump's war on the legal profession.

Right! Most election nights, I've been with family and friends, pizza, drinks, and much conversation, till about midnight. Tonight, though, it will be just me and my dear other. The last few elections the general outcome, if not the detailed results, has been evident by around 9:00 pm. There are panels of talking heads on all the major TV channels with lots of commentary and analysis. As I said, more interesting the regular entertainment. (Also, it might be mentioned, unless there are major upsets, it's not going to be a change of government, so not a real watershed type of election.)

You do wonder when what the media is euphemistically describing as Trump’s radical downsizing of Federal agencies and departments will be seen for what it really is: a full-scale attack on the Federal Government from inside the White House. And also, whether the US will ever be able to recover.

As if one isn’t enough ;-)

Jung’s view seems quite realistic to me, although I suppose if you think life ought to be free of suffering then it probably wouldn’t.

In Jungian psychology, voluntary suffering refers to the conscious acceptance of life’s inevitable pain as a means of psychological growth and individuation. Rather than repressing or avoiding suffering, Jung believed that facing it willingly—especially the suffering that arises from inner conflict—leads to greater integration of the self. This process often involves confronting the shadow, enduring existential uncertainty, and embracing responsibility for one’s own psychic development. In this sense, suffering becomes meaningful when it is accepted as a necessary passage toward wholeness.

People finally accepted uncountable further unknown planets. Why is this one so different? — noAxioms

Surely you can understand how unknown planets and unknown universes are on a different ontological plane? The universe being ‘the totality of what exists’. I’m open to Penrose’s idea of the cyclical universe, but really only because it harmonises with my sympathies for Indian mythology, which has always taught that. But the idea of ‘universes, plural’ in any other sense, I think is completely meaningless - as it’s obviously not an empirical hypothesis, in the sense of not being able to be refuted empirically, so it must be metaphysical, but without any connection to what the term was devised to mean.

Surely one of the issues that animates this—and many other—conversations about religion is the disconnect between religious and mythological imagery and the reality of today’s culture. For much of its history, Christianity addressed a largely illiterate population in agrarian or tribal settings. Images of sheep, sacrifice, ploughing, sowing, and reaping resonated deeply with those cultures in a way they cannot for modern industrial society, where primary produce appears shrink-wrapped on refrigerated shelves.

The philosophical question, then, is whether these narratives still contain anything existentially real and relevant—something that speaks to the human condition even if the language has become foreign. This is complicated by the fact that Christianity, as a universal religion, must speak to all people and cannot be elitist. It must present its insights through parables and imagery accessible to the widest possible audience. Yet in doing so, it risks being misunderstood—or ignored—by those who no longer share the cultural frame that once made these symbols intuitive.

This creates a crisis of semantic translatability. The ancient symbols still carry meaning, but it is often obscured or misread outside the world that gave them shape. Joseph Campbell pointed to this when he said modern people need a new mythology—one that speaks to the realities of space exploration, ecological fragility, and inner psychological complexity, rather than tribal cohesion or agricultural renewal. Much of the appeal of interstellar sci-fi may stem from a sublimated longing for heaven. This helps explain the often-noted parallels between Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and the Star Wars narrative—though, admittedly, Star Wars is abundant in spectacle and obviously fictional.

Some theologians and thinkers today are re-framing religious symbols in existential, psychological, or ecological terms. But the challenge is immense, because myth is not just an idea—it is a way of seeing. It shapes how we perceive the world, ourselves, and what we value. Authentic spirituality doesn’t simply affirm; it confronts—it speaks to our deepest fears as well as our hopes. And there are always good reasons to resist that.

A great deal of the heat surrounding contemporary debates about religion arises from the misinterpretation of mythological language. The myths were never meant to be taken as literal reportage; they are symbolic maps of meaning. But when the symbolic is flattened into the literal—or dismissed as mere fantasy—the real depth of what myth once conveyed is lost.

Relevant essay from a few years back, The Strange Persistence of Guilt, Wilfred McCay, The Hedgehog Review. Long read but I found it very insightful.

The Sydney Morning Herald came out with an endorsement for Labor today. It was hardly ringing, saying that Albanese was a small-target, cautious politician with limited vision. But it also said Dutton had run a terrible campaign and gave the electorate no reason to think he’s an alternative PM. Also noted that Labor has a more talented Cabinet with three or four possible successors to Albanese but that Dutton has none. If as I expect the Coalition looses, I wonder if Duttton would stay on (personally doubt it, but can’t see who might step into the breach.)

Didn’t notice it. But then, Albo gave him more or less a red-carpet welcome when he was released// having also worked very hard for it// it would have been churlish of him not to have reciprocated.

One thing I've said before, is that it's bad that exploring the option of nuclear energy became a partisan political issue. I don't believe Australia should go all in on nuclear like the Coaltion was pursuing - and for blatantly political ends - but there's a lot happening in that technology, and Australia ought to invest more in building expertise and keeping abreast of developments. I've been watching with interest the role that Big Tech has been playing in the US to develop nuclear power sources for data centres. Australia needs to keep up with those developments, rather than writing nuclear power off as a bad option.

True. Fined for not turning up.

I don't want to say anything about 'foregone conclusion' but it seems awfully like Labor will win another term. I don't think they've been stellar by any means but they're the least worst option.

We received electoral commission mail with fines for my adult son for not voting, for a few years after he moved to the US. He eventually had to fill in something like a statutory declaration to the effect he was permanently re-located before he was taken off the rolls. It's taken pretty serioiusly.

Are you nervous? — javi2541997

Not at all. Election Nights are better than regular programming :smile:

I notice you don't have a solution yourself to say the fine tuning problem, perhaps waving it away as being somehow necessary, but without saying how it is necessary. — noAxioms

Might it not be along the lines that necessary truths don’t have further explanation? The epistemological buck has to stop somewhere. (I'm not at all referring to the crude idea of so-called 'brute facts'. )

One way I've thought about the anthropic principle is simply to observe that it puts paid to the argument that the origin of life is a consequence of the fortuitous combination of elements, the 'warm little pond' theory of abiogenesis. And that's because the causal sequence that gave rise to those circumstances can be traced back past the formation of the planet, to the stellar transformations that gave rise to those complex elements, which in turn can be traced back to some specific characteristics of matter-energy that seem to have existed from the earliest moments of the cosmos. It is perfectly understandable that theologically-inclined philosophers will regard that as evidence for a higher intelligence, although I don't personally hold to that, and also that this will of course be contested by atheists. But I think the argument that there might be uncountable further unknown universes doesn't amount to saying anything whatever. We'll never know. Ironic that anti-theological philosophers use this blatantly metaphysical argument to argue against religious metaphysics.