Significant that the original texts of Advaita were called the Upaniṣads. The term is derived from 'sitting near'. They were texts imparted from teacher to student, memorised by heart and repeated constantly. The systems of Indian philosophy are called 'darshana' which literally means 'seeing'. What is implied is that proximity to a teacher is important as to the means of transmission of the knowledge of the sacred texts. They are religious texts, conveying a radical philosophy. I'm interested in exploration of non-dualist principles, but the broader context needs to be taken into account. They may not be very effective as bare propositions in a forum context.

(I've been listening to some talks and debates from an Advaita teacher, Swami Sarvapriyananda of the Vedanta Society of New York. He has quite a large collection of lectures and is a very erudite fellow. His profile is to be found here.)

Hick's novel thesis that everyone is worshipping the same god comes across as flat-footed. — Leontiskos

He doesn’t say that at all. His thesis is that religions originate with ‘the encounter with the sacred’, which is then interpreted in divergent ways from the outset, according to the way in which it is expressed by the originator and the culture in which it is interpreted. So cultures conceive of ‘the sacred’ in vastly divergent ways. Whether there is one or more ‘sacreds’ is kind of a silly question, which is also the point.

Whilst l like John Hick's kantian distinction between appearance and ultimate reality. The problem is he relegates the truth claims of all world religions to the domain of appearance or mythological claims. — Sirius

Insofar as it’s a claim, perhaps it’s not the truth. The best words can do is point. And as far as philosophy is concerned it can only ‘take you to the border’ and drop you there. Then it's up to the individual.

I'll share an odd fact. I discovered Kant through T R V Murti's Central Philosophy of Buddhism. He makes extensive comparisons between Buddhist Madhyamaka and Kant's CPR (and also other idealists. A mid-last-century book, it's criticized by more recent scholars as excessively eurocentric.) But one of the comparisions Murti makes is between the 'two-truths' teaching of Madhyamaka and the Kantian distinction between phenomena and the noumenal. Conventional truth, samvritti, corresponds with the phenomenal realm, paramartha is ultimate truth, but at the same time, empty of own-being and beyond predication, as it were. Nāgārjuna (who authored the principle text) said he makes no claims and holds no thesis of his own. He has no absolute truth to proclaim and writes only as a kind of propadeutic. The analogy is, words are like a stick used to stoke the fire, but once the fire is ablaze, the stick is thrown in with it.

Maybe, the ultimate reality doesn't abide by the laws of logic. — Sirius

Not so much doesn't abide by, but overflows, because it is beyond coming and going or dying and being born. That is why it is the subject of a kind of negative dialectic, rather like apophatic theology (although not explicitly theistic in the case of Buddhism).

As far as pluralism is concerned, Buddhism was born and came of age in the pluralistic culture of ancient India. It was quite a different milieu to the Semetic, as there was a thriving culture and counter-culture of orthodox and heterodox philosophies and spiritual movements. There was a vigourous exchange of ideas between these many movements (at least up until the Mughal invasion.) As a consequence, dialectic reached a very high plane. It's been said that Vedanta and Madhamake each helped define the other because of that. Similarly with many other schools of Indian philosophy (technically 'darshana'.)

I know it's a contentious and contested area, but I came into the subject through comparative religion, so I tend to see through that prism. But I'm not going to go all in, it's simply a perspective that I find valuable, but that I understand others may not. (I've also read a some of Raimundo Pannikar who is likewise a comparitivist, but then, his mother was Indian and his father Spanish, so maybe he was naturally inclined towards syncetism. A lot of Jesuits tend to having that syncetistic, broad outlook, that was what made them such exemplary emmissaries in the Colonial era.)

What's your issue with his theory of mind? — Relativist

‘The Nature of Mind’ begins with the simple assertion that "men have minds", and Armstrong claims that modern science may be the best tool with which to investigate the nature of the mind. He says that it seems that scientific consensus is converging on an explanation of the mind in "purely physico-chemical terms". He acknowledges some disagreement on the matter, but says that dissent tends to be on primarily non-scientific grounds.

He and C C Smart (both Australian, as it happens) were what I regard as lumpen materialists. I think any such argument is susceptible to the criticism made in Chalmer's Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, in fact, I would bet that Armstrong (along with Dennett) was just the kind of philosopher Chalmers had in his sights.

If we start out with an a priori desire to seek out commonalities, then—lo and behold!—we will find commonalities, and we will come to the conclusion that the similarities are very great. If we start out with an a priori desire to seek out differences, then the opposite will occur. — Leontiskos

Quite! Your points are well-taken.

Unfortunately this genuine transcendent truth seems also to be ineffable, so we are left with a posited and theoretical alternative which can't even be described or assessed. — Tom Storm

I don't know if I agree. Yes, there is an ineffable truth, but within the specific domains of discourse which have grown up around that truth in it varying forms, there are ways of imparting it, ways of conveying it, and ways of understanding it. In Buddhist, Hindu and Christian religious orders, there are ways of assessing the progress, or lack of progress, of the aspirants. Those insights form the basis of many great and lasting works of sacred art and architecture.

We're in an historically unique moment where we have instantaneous access to these vast stores of information about any subject, but I wonder if that ease of access makes us jaded. Many of the teachings which can now be so easily accessed from the comfort of your study, were once upon a time nearly impossible to get. The Chinese monks whose pilgrimages were made at enormous peril across the ancient trade routes to India to bring back the precious Buddhist scrolls that formed Buddhism in China. Likewise the Nestorian Christians who were exiled to ancient China and composed the Gospels in Chinese using Buddhist idioms. Whereas now these texts are digitized and freely available at the click of a mouse.

As far as the absolute and the contingent are concerned, the 'unmade' or 'wisdom uncreate' has to all intents vanished from public discourse (at least since the decline of idealism in philosophy where it still had a foothold.) It has dissolved into the nihilism that Nietszche foresaw.

If we say that Trump voters and Bernie Sanders voters are really just different expressions of the same truth about politics, — Tom Storm

Only one of the two has expressly stated an intent to undermine the constitution, so it's a false equivalence. Anyway that belongs in another thread.

Well, would we agree that Hick has attempted to eclipse first-order religious claims? — Leontiskos

I don't think 'eclipse' them, as much as viewing them in a wider context. As I said, many will say here, and I've been presented with it many times, that all religions claim to be the sole custodians of truth, and as they all disagree with one another those are grounds for claiming they all cancel each other. How can they all be right, if they're making conflicting claims? From the perspective of analytical philosophy, not to say common sense, it seems clearly contradictory. I won't repeat the excerpt I copied from Hick's essay but I stil say that at least it provides a framework which makes sense of pluralism. And also, this is a philosophy forum, I'm not inclined towards quoting scriptures except insofar as they can be taken to make a philosophical point.

I could say that my view is that spiritual enlightenment or illumination are universal phenomena. The three philosophical traditions that I am at least slightly familiar with are Christian Platonism (my native tradition), Vedanta, and Mahāyāna Buddhism. Certainly, they all differ, but their distinctions can be seen as complementary rather than conflicting. The world is a global village nowadays and those who are secure in their faith need not feel threated by those of other persuasions.. And by viewing it that way, a case can be made for a kind of 'religious naturalism', in that the phenomena of spiritual illumination have cross-cultural characteristics, which indicate that there is something deeper than just culture in play.

I also want to add that a factor in all these debates about naturalism and the sacred, is the overwhelming influence of what I think of as 'the objective orientation'. I have an intuition that prior to modernity, we had a different kind of relationship with the world - as the world was understood as an expression of the Divine Will, so the relationship with it was 'I-thou' rather than today's assumed subject-object relation. But from the subject-object perspective, it is assumed that 'the sacred' is some kind of object, entity or thing, the addition of which to the objects and entities of naturalism makes no sense. And that is true - it doesn't!

Here, I'm reminded of Terry Eagleton's 2006 review of Dawkins' The God Delusion, which is what drew me to forums in the first place:

Dawkins holds that the existence or non-existence of God is a scientific hypothesis which is open to rational demonstration. Christianity teaches that to claim that there is a God must be reasonable, but that this is not at all the same thing as faith. Believing in God, whatever Dawkins might think, is not like concluding that aliens or the tooth fairy exist. God is not a celestial super-object or divine UFO, about whose existence we must remain agnostic until all the evidence is in. Theologians do not believe that he is either inside or outside the universe, as Dawkins thinks they do. His transcendence and invisibility are part of what he is, which is not the case with the Loch Ness monster. This is not to say that religious people believe in a black hole, because they also consider that God has revealed himself: not, as Dawkins thinks, in the guise of a cosmic manufacturer even smarter than Dawkins himself (the New Testament has next to nothing to say about God as Creator), but for Christians at least, in the form of a reviled and murdered political criminal. The Jews of the so-called Old Testament had faith in God, but this does not mean that after debating the matter at a number of international conferences they decided to endorse the scientific hypothesis that there existed a supreme architect of the universe – even though, as Genesis reveals, they were of this opinion. They had faith in God in the sense that I have faith in you. They may well have been mistaken in their view; but they were not mistaken because their scientific hypothesis was unsound.

Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects. — Terry Eagleton - Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching

I have a materialistic theory of consciousness that I believe provides a good in-road into explaining phenomenal consciousness. — Malcolm Lett

An explanation comprises explanans and explanandum. The explanandum is what it is that needs to be explained, and the explanans is that which provides the explanation. But then, any act of explanation, including the explanation of consciousness, is a conscious act. This means that consciousness is also a part of the explanans. When we articulate a theory or a model to explain consciousness, we are doing so using our conscious understanding, reasoning, and cognitive faculties.

This dual role of consciousness leads to a sort of circularity: we use consciousness (as part of explanans) to explain consciousness itself (the explanandum). It's akin to trying to illuminate a light bulb with its own light—it's both the source and the object of the inquiry.

Eliminative materialism doesn't address this problem. Instead, it ignores it, which is why Daniel Dennett's first book on the subject, Consciousness Explained, was parodied by many of his peers as Conciousness Ignored.

Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.” — Thomas Nagel, Review of From Bacteria to Bach and Back

I'm aware of Armstrong, that he is author of Materialist Theory of Mind, which has always been anathema to me.

Another noteworthy point on miracles, is that, given our understanding of nature (and how mystical it really is--e.g., quantum physics, general/special relativity, etc.), it isn't implausible that an extradimensional being (or one with representative faculties capable of representing not in time or space) may exist and still be a part of the natural processes of nature. — Bob Ross

'Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only what we know of nature' ~ Augustine.

as I understand it, something is metaphysical if it has some form of existence that is independent of physics. — Malcolm Lett

I see. Thanks for clearing that up.

This is the Cartesian thesis, that the mind exists in some other plane of existence beyond the physical. — Malcolm Lett

Descartes' form of dualism, in particular, does posit res cogitans, literally 'thinking thing'. I think it's a problematic concept, but I won't try to spell that out here. But suffice to say that Aristotelian metaphysics (and metaphysics originates from Aristotle's writing, although he did not devise the term, which was devised by a later editor) does not assume the body-mind division that Descartes does. Rather his was the duality of matter and form, a.k.a. hylomorphism, which is very different to Cartesian dualism, although that too would be a major digression.

But to return to Chalmers, I think to get a better idea of what he means, return to this key paragraph in his original Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness, to wit:

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience. — David Chalmers

So, I don't think that is referring to a 'metaphysical substance' of the kind you appear to be envisaging, although that is an easy inference to draw if you think of it in Cartesian terms. The key point Chalmers is making is about the first person nature of conscious experience - that experience is something that occurs to, is felt by, a subject. And no third-person, objective description can ever embody that.

He prefers panpsychism: the theory that everything is physical (no metaphysical stuff needed), but that there's some new fundamental physics that we can't yet measure. — Malcolm Lett

'Chalmers characterizes his view as "naturalistic dualism": naturalistic because he believes mental states supervene "naturally" on physical systems (such as brains); dualist because he believes mental states are ontologically distinct from and not reducible to physical systems' (~wikipedia). But again, I don't believe this posits any kind of 'thinking substance' in a Cartesian sense. He writes about panpsychism, but I'm also aware he's discussed the 'combination problem' implicit in panpsychism, i.e. how can simple conscious units combine to create the unified subject that we experience as self.

In an elaborate way, he uses his p-zombie to conclude that panpsychism is correct. — Malcolm Lett

No, he does not. I still say you're misunderstanding the intent of his thought-experiment - or perhaps you're seeking to define it in such a way that it doesn't undermine the reductive materialism that you say you're proposing.

My interpretation of the issue is this. The fundamental puzzle of mind, is that it is never truly an object of cognition, in the way that physical objects are. Again, no metaphysical posit is required to prove that. Something nearer a perspectival shift is required: the reason the mind is not objectively graspable, is that it is the subject of experience, that to which or to whom experience occurs, that which cognises, sees and judges. But as Indian philosophy puts it, the eye can see another, but not itself; the hand can grasp another, but not itself. Again, no metaphysical posit required, but it does throw into relief the elusive nature of the subject and its intractibility to the objective sciences.

I get that. I don’t mean mechanical technology but advanced bioengineering. Although I don’t know if it’s relevant.

For example, in The Conscious Mind, Chalmers (1996), pg 96 "someone or something physically identical to me (or to any other conscious being), but lacking conscious experiences altogether". ...The two are stated as being identical a priori, independent of measurement. That form of p-zombie is the strictest kind, and its conceivability hinges on the conceivability of some form of metaphysics - ie: something outside of physics that has the conscious experience. This is th e dualism to which I am referring. — Malcolm Lett

I don't understand what you're getting at here. Let me try and re-phrase it. You're saying that in this example, there's a p-zombie truly indistinguishable from a human.

So, it reacts and speaks as would a human, but it is not really a subject of experience at all.

The p-zombie in this example is a physical thing - quite literally, a physical object, albeit one that is indistinguishable from a human subject. So how does that constitute 'something outside of physics that has the conscious experience'? How is it 'outside of physics'?

(Incidentally, I agree that a p-zombie indistinguishable from a human is hard to imagine, but then, if you had advanced enough robotic technology, it might not be inconceivable. I think the replicants in Blade Runner were biological beings, even if they were the result of bioengineering, so I don't think they'd be considered p-zombies.)

I have the feeling that we have very different ideas of what metaphysics, and what dualism, mean, but let's get to that after clearing the first point up.

However, if dualism is false, then I hold that anything with the same neural structures as humans (as empirically measured via today's technology) will experience phenomenal consciousness. — Malcolm Lett

Odd reasoning, it seems to me. There is only one form of being that has 'the same neural structures as humans', that is, humans. If one were able to artificially re-create human beings de novo - that is, from the elements of the periodic table, no DNA or genetic technology allowed! - then yes, you would have created a being that is a subject of experience, but whether it is either possible or ethically permissible are obviously enormous questions.

I can conceive of the possibility that dualism is true — Malcolm Lett

What form of dualism can you concieve of as possibly true? Hylomorphic? Cartesian? Some other variety? What do you think dualism means?

By the way, I put the question to ChatGPT which responded like so. The key phrase I took to be the following:

...the absence of subjective experience in the philosophical zombie suggests that consciousness entails something more than just physical or observable properties. This leads to the conclusion that consciousness has aspects that are not fully captured by physical explanations alone, implying a need for an expanded understanding that possibly includes non-physical dimensions. — ChatGPT

In other words, that it would appear conscious, without actually being conscious. Again,the thought-experiment purports to demonstrate an inherent shortcoming in objective description in respect of ascertaining the reality of subjective states.

why, thanks! Nice of you to say so. I'm afraid I'm rusted on to this forum :love: (I'll take in what you have to say and may come back with more later.)

This stems from _why_ he's using the analogy - which is to address the conceivability of phenomenal consciousness residing in something nonphysical. — Malcolm Lett

I don't think that's the point of Chalmer's thought-experiment.

Previously my view had been that you could catch a p-zombie out with a simple question, like 'what are you afraid of?' or 'what is the most embarrasing thing that ever happened to you?' or even 'how are you?' As the p-zombie has no inner states or feelings whatever, it could never be embarrased or fearful or answer how it is. So, 'gotcha!'

But then I realised that if it was realistic enough - and since I first starting thinking about the issue, ChatGPT has come along - it could fake an answer to those questions.

And that's what made me realise the point of the thought-experiment. Providing that the fake was totally convincing, it could be a very well-constructed mannequin or robot that says 'I fear this' or 'that would be embarrasing', 'I feel great' - and there would be no empirical way of knowing whether the entity was conscious or faking. So I take Chalmer's point to be that this is an inherent limitation of objective or empiricist philosophy - that whether the thing in front of you is real human being or a robot is impossible to discern, because the first-person nature of consciousness is impossible to discern empirically, as per his Hard Problem paper.

And if biological reductionism is somehow anathema (I don't know that it is, I'm assuming) perhaps it is redeemable with some fresh modifications. — ENOAH

Hey no problems, it's a discussion forum, we're here to kick ideas around.

I have an aversion to the kind of evolutionary naturalist accounts of mind advanced by Dennett and evolutionary materialism, that we're all just gene machines acting out a survival algorithm for unconscious biological drives. But then:

We too, in Reality, are beings driven by evolution to respond to triggers in various ways. What is real human consciousness? Aware-ing those processes, those triggers, drives, responses, organically. What is beyond that for humans, no less than for dogs, is what Mind, a system of evolved Signifiers, superimposes on those drives and responses.

Signifiers become the almost exclusive triggers for organic responses, like feelings and movement; empty, fleeting images stored in memory, autonomously constructing Fiction in ways evolved over dozens of millennia, and still evolving, and displacing Reality; usurping sensation, displacing it with perception, feelings with emotions, and image-ing with ideas. — ENOAH

is a pretty far-out post, really. There ways of interpreting it, but I think, here, you're kind of extrapolating the idea of biological evolution beyond its proper domain.

You can look at mind as the manifestation of brain-consciousness. Or you can look at mind as the correlate of the products of the "sciences of the spirit" (Geistwissenschaften). — Pantagruel

That is an area in which German culture has an advantage of the Anglo-american. There is no equivalent term in English.

Plenty of other places seem plenty in favor of critical thinking. — Count Timothy von Icarus

One of the characteristic views of today's atheism is that all faith is blind faith, that faith can only ever amount to 'belief without evidence'. There might be a recognition as faith is important to some, then respect is accorded to it on the basis of freedom of conscience, but that is implicitly relativising, reducing its grounds to the purely personal or subjective. And furthermore that secular culture has no criteria for discriminating between the truth value of, say, Scientology, and the Orthodox Church.

But many great figures in religious history wrestle mightily with doubt. I remember reading that Mother Teresa, a favourite target of Christopher Hitchens, was tormented by the possibility that her faith might be in vain. There are many other examples to be found. Not every religious believer is a complacent fundamentalist.

While Hick is far and away more coherent than anything that is occurring in this thread, I would still argue that he represents little more than an academic fad in philosophy of religion. A little over a decade ago I took a graduate seminar on interreligious dialogue, and even at that time Hick was already but a footnote in the history of that field. When we did the historical overview each student was assigned one or two figures to research and present on, and I was assigned Hick along with Paul Knitter.

Thomas Nagel's The Last Word includes no chapter on religion proper, but if it did Hick would be the subject of that chapter. — Leontiskos

Well, glad to have come across someone who actually knows who John Hick is. (And Paul Knitter.) But I don't necessarily agree that he's guilty of the kind of relativism that Nagel critiques. I would have thought in our pluralistic world that a philosophical framework which allows for many divergent perspectives would be something of value. Many here regularly say that, as all religions claim to have the absolute truth, and they all disagree with one another, then in effect that cancels out the entire subject matter (not in those exact words, but it's a frequently-expressed sentiment.) I rather like the expansive view of John Hick (and Huston Smith and Karen Armstrong, to mention a couple of other names.)

That's not to say I subscribe to the kind of 'many paths up the mountain' approach, either. I think there are genuine and profound distinctions to be made between different religious philosophies. But then, there are also genuine and profound distinctions between different cultures, but they're still human cultures. But, we're called upon at some point to make a decision as to which we belong in, I guess.

Naturalism best explains it as law realism: there is order, because there are laws of nature that necessitate it; and laws of nature are relations between universals. — Relativist

Interesting you mention universals, they are not spoken of much in most contemporary discourse about naturalism. What's your view of their role?

Is there some problem we need to solve with this information that is fruitful somehow beyond the questioning? — Metaphyzik

There is a subject, philosophy of mind. I believe you referred to David Chalmer's homepage the other day, that's his main subject matter.

We too, in Reality, are beings driven by evolution to respond to triggers in various ways. — ENOAH

Isn't that 'biological reductionism'?

The element that is generally absent in many of these discussions is the element of cognitive transformation that characterises the kinds of insights being discussed. Instances can be cited from the earliest strata of philosophy, one being the prose-poem of Parmenides, which encompasses a mystical element from the beginning:

The introductory section of Parmenides’ philosophical poem begins, “The mares that carry me as far as my spirit [θυμὸς] aspires escorted me …” (B 1.1– 2). He then describes his chariot-ride to “the gates of night and day,” (B 1.11) the opening of these gates by Justice, his passage though them, and his reception by a Goddess, perhaps Justice herself. The introduction concludes with her telling him, “It is needful that you learn all things [πάντα], whether the untrembling heart of well-rounded truth or the opinions of mortals in which is no true belief” (B 1.28–30). From the outset, then, we are engaged with the urgent drive of the inmost center of the self, the θυμὸς, toward its parmenides 13 uttermost desire, the apprehension of being as a whole, “all things.”2 Since the rest of the poem is presented as the speech of the Goddess, this grasp of the whole is received as a gift, a revelation from the divine. — Eric D Perl, Thinking Being

In other texts, the reference to the 'gates of day and night' are interpreted as a clear reference to non-dualism. In any case, as is often stated, Parmenides is recognised as one of the sources of Western philosophy generally and of metaphysics in particular.

'I can't understand this' or 'it doesn't make sense to me' or 'I don't see how that is possible', don't constitute arguments.

The proper demand is: show me evidence (facts) that can't be explained by naturalism. — Relativist

As already stated, naturalism assumes an order of nature, without which it wouldn't be able to get started. But it doesn't explain the order of nature - nor does it need to. For all practical purposes, it doesn't really make any difference. Natural theology is able to rationally argue that the fact of the order is itself an indication of a prior intelligence, through arguments such as the cosmological anthropic principle. The fact that such arguments may be inconclusive or beyond adjutication does not make them irrational.

At the time of reading his writing I did think his perspective would be a foundation for belief in reincarnation, even though I am unsure if Sheldrake would go that far. — Jack Cummins

See this interview.

His theory of morphic resonance posits that there is a kind of collective memory accessible to individuals, which can manifest as memories that seem to come from past lives. This theory sits at the intersection of science and spirituality, suggesting that phenomena often attributed to reincarnation could instead be understood through a shared, collective memory framework.

Sheldrake's approach allows for the acknowledgment and acceptance of memories of past lives without necessitating belief in reincarnation as the migration of a soul or person from one body to another across lifetimes. Instead, it suggests that individuals might "tune into" memories from the collective past, which could explain why some people have vivid, detailed recollections that seem to be from lives they never lived.

This idea finds a parallel in Buddhist teachings on rebirth, where continuity from one life to the next is not that of an individual, but rather a stream of consciousness (citta-santana) conditioned by karma. In Buddhism, there is no static self or soul that transmigrates, but a causal matrix of mental and physical conditions forms as a being, due to actions and intentions set in motion in previous lives.

I recall an article about how geometry began in Egypt - obviously the construction of the Pyramids required advanced geometry but well before that it was used to allocate plots of farming land on the Nile delta. It will be recalled that this floods every year and the boundaries are erased, so every year the plots have to be allocated anew along the sides of the river-banks, which required sophisticated reckoning. The origins of arithmetic were likewise associated with the Babylonian-Sumerian culture - the ‘cradle of civilisation’ - for reckoning cattle numbers and storage of crops. You can see how arithmetic generally would be associated with ownership, building, cultivation of crops and conversely how it would not be of much relevance to hunter-gatherer cultures.

What is my purpose? Where do I ultimately come from? Why do bad things sometimes happen? What is justice, or love for that matter? Can naturalism explain these questions in a satisfying way? — NotAristotle

From the naturalistic viewpoint, the answers are to be sought in terms of evolutionary development, a pragmatic philosophy and a utilitarian outlook. Justice and love are the adaptations of social hominids. And so on. Combined with democratic liberalism, there's nothing inherently wrong with it, but whether it is all there is to life is an open question. (And at least, in democratic liberal cultures, one which we're free to pursue.)

A useful essay by John Hick. He was an English philosopher of religion, notable for his commitment to religious pluralism. Rather a dense academic work, but then, it is a philosophy forum! - Who or What is God?

The basic principle that we are aware of anything, not as it is in itself unobserved, but always and necessarily as it appears to beings with our particular cognitive equipment, was brilliantly stated by Aquinas when he said that ‘Things known are in the knower according to the mode of the knower’ (S.T., II/II, Q. 1, art. 2). And in the case of religious awareness, the mode of the knower differs significantly from religion to religion. And so my hypothesis is that the ultimate reality of which the religions speak, and which we refer to as God, is being differently conceived, and therefore differently experienced, and therefore differently responded to, in historical forms of life within the different religious traditions.

What does this mean for the different, and often conflicting, belief-systems of the religions? It means that they are descriptions of different manifestations of the Ultimate; and as such they do not conflict with one another. They each arise from some immensely powerful moment or period of religious experience, notably the Buddha’s experience of enlightenment under the Bo tree at Bodh Gaya, Jesus’ sense of the presence of the heavenly Father, Muhammad’s experience of hearing the words that became the Qur’an, and also the experiences of Vedic sages, of Hebrew prophets, of Taoist sages. But these experiences are always formed in the terms available to that individual or community at that time and are then further elaborated within the resulting new religious movements. — John Hick

another layer of explanation that this theory would require. — Lionino

I think the confusion revolves around the equivocation of the term 'object' in 'mathematical object'. Numbers are not actually objects in any sense but the allegorical. There is no object '2'. What there is, is the act of counting which is denoted by the symbol '2'.

Step back a little. You may recall an allegory that dates back to the 19th century, about how a two-dimensional surface of water would perceive a three-dimensional cone. Absent any idea of a third dimension, the surface could only ever perceive the cone in terms of concentric circles //and ellipses//. Then there'd be this big conceptual problem as to how all these circles are related. You could write an equation, presumably, that described the progression of circles, but you still wouldn't be seeing what they represent.

I think there's something analogous to that operating in this argument. The cone analogy is a metaphor for the limitations inherent in empiricist understanding (akin to pistis or doxa in Plato's terms), which cannot by itself grasp the sense in which mathematical knowledge is 'higher'. There is no higher! There's only the flatland of empirical reality mediated by physical senses. Just as the two-dimensional surface perceives only the cross-sections of a cone, without a conception of the three-dimensional object itself, empirical observation alone cannot fully comprehend the abstract realities that Platonists argue transcend physical particulars. This analogy underscores the empiricist critique of Platonism, suggesting that notions of 'higher' or 'abstract' truths, such as mathematical entities, are outside the domain of of empirical verification and as such cannot be explained in those terms.

And the diagram you provide illustrates the problem, as it's two-dimensional. I think that what happens in reality, is that rational inference (including counting) operates on a different level, but in concert with, sensory cognition (per Kant). Whereas the diagram seeks to treat them in the same way, that is, as objects, and then asks how they're related. It's a category problem, which ultimately originates in the 'flattening' of ontology that occurs with the transition to the modern world-view (hence the relevance of the 'flatland' argument.) Hence, it's a metaphysical problem, but as the proponents of empiricism are averse to metaphysics, they of course will not be able to acknowledge that.

The problem is still how that faculty works to understand mathematical truths. It seems no one has given a satisfactory explanation. — Lionino

Mathematics is what explains. We don't need to explain arithmetical primitives, they are what provides the basis of explanation. Trying to explain mathematics by reducing those faculties to the sensory is the source of the problem.

The overwhelming majority of scientists will agree that it is matter that will explain things like entanglement and local gravity — Lionino

So, if there are anomolies in the movement of galaxies, they can only be due to matter, even if it is of a kind we have no knowledge of. Because, what else is there?

I don't believe that 'mind' can be reduced to psychology, because it is at the core of human existence. So, in the light of cognitive science and neuroscience, how, and what do you see as the overriding and outstanding issues of the philosophy of mind in the twentieth first century? Is there any essential debate beyond the scope of psychology? — Jack Cummins

The brutal fact of the matter, Jack, is that as far as mainstream science and academic philosophy is concerned, 'mind is what brain does'. In the mainstream, it is viewed squarely through the perspectives of neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and pyschology, and those who dissent are invariably characterised as fringe or new-age - the author you cite would doubtlessly be described as such by a lot of people.

Surveys in academic philosophy, as Banno frequently points out, show only a very small percentage of respondents support or advocate for philosophical idealism (from memory, less than 2%.) The majority, presumably, operate under a paradigm such as reductive or non-reductive physicalism or something of the kind.

There is a US University department, the Division of Perceptual Studies at University of Virginia, founded by past-life memories researcher Ian Stevenson, which is devoted to paranormal psychology. You'll find their published books on philosophy of mind and paranormal psychology here. There's also a thriving industry of books and videos devoted to these ideas, they're certainly not bereft of an audience, but most universities won't go near them.

As far as 'mind fields' are concerned, I think Rupert Sheldrake is one source, although his ideas extend beyond philosophy of mind per se. He is often derided as a crackpot - Steve Pinker and others say he's a pseudo-scientist - but he at least has a seat at the table, so to speak. His website is at sheldrake.org. This video interview also seems relevant.

A question I ponder is, if there are fields other than electromagnetic fields - the existence of which is clearly demonstrable - how would they be detected? By what instruments? Sheldrake's 'morphic fields' are related to earlier ideas of morphogenetic fields which have fallen out of favour, but were regarded as part of the mainstream at the time. One analogy I think makes kind of sense is the body/mind as being more like a receiver or transmitter of consciousness rather than the originator of it. But of course that leaves a lot of open questions. (It is one of the ideas discussed by Sheldrake in the video cited above.)

I am hoping that I am not raising a stale and overtired area of thinking, especially in relation to the mind-body relationship, as well as between idealism and physicalism — Jack Cummins

Afraid so, but don't let that stop you.

Couldn’t a logicist also be a nominalist? — Lionino

That is one very deep and dense OP. I'll acknowledge that I'm not a mathematician and that many of the concepts you're discussing are beyond me. I think, of the above, what makes sense to me is intuitionism.

I've become interested in the topic because of the argument that numbers are real but not material, which is an embarrasment to most typical forms of contemporary naturalism, which is dogmatically physicalist. For example:

What is Benacerraf's problem? Perhaps the main problem for mathematical platonism, or lower-case platonism in general, is, if numbers are causally inert objects, how could it be that we have any knowledge of them, given we don't interact with them at all? — Lionino

It's not a problem for platonism, but a problem for naturalistic or empiricist accounts of knowledge. The question is, how can we know numbers, if they are purely intelligible in nature?

There's another article on this topic, The Indispensability Argument in the Philosophy of Mathematics which also leads with Benecareff. It starts:

In his seminal 1973 paper, “Mathematical Truth,” Paul Benacerraf presented a problem facing all accounts of mathematical truth and knowledge. Standard readings of mathematical claims entail the existence of mathematical objects. But, our best epistemic theories seem to deny that knowledge of mathematical objects is possible.

So, what are these 'best epistemic theories' and why do they seem to deny such knowledge? Why, it's because:

Mathematical objects are in many ways unlike ordinary physical objects such as trees and cars. We learn about ordinary objects, at least in part, by using our senses. It is not obvious that we learn about mathematical objects this way.

Doesn't that simply amount to problem for empiricism, i.e. the view that knowledge is attained mainly through sense-perception? So if mathematical knowledge is hard to square with empiricism, then so much the worse for it, I would have thought, considering how 'indispensable' it actually is for science itself.

It goes on:

(Rationalist) philosophers claim that we have a special, non-sensory capacity for understanding mathematical truths, a rational insight arising from pure thought. But, the rationalist’s claims appear incompatible with an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies.

So instead of questioning why it is we can understand numbers, how about interrogating the claim that we are, in fact, 'physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies?' Or is that such an important principle in our 'best epistemic theories' that it has to be saved at all costs? That seems the point of the sophistry of the 'indispensability argument'.

So perhaps the 'crisis' is actually a manifestation of a problem at the foundations of naturalism itself, but it's kind of an 'emperor's new mind' type of scenario where nobody wants to admit it. Philosophical dualism and mathematical platonism have no such difficulties. But as it is, and as your cited SEP article on Platonism in Philosophy of Mathematics says,

Mathematical platonism has considerable philosophical significance. If the view is true, it will put great pressure on the physicalist idea that reality is exhausted by the physical. For platonism entails that reality extends far beyond the physical world and includes objects that aren’t part of the causal and spatiotemporal order studied by the physical sciences.[1] Mathematical platonism, if true, will also put great pressure on many naturalistic theories of knowledge. For there is little doubt that we possess mathematical knowledge. The truth of mathematical platonism would therefore establish that we have knowledge of abstract (and thus causally inefficacious) objects. This would be an important discovery, which many naturalistic theories of knowledge would struggle to accommodate.

Oh, and as for the question I quoted - from my limited understanding, Frege, who had quite a bit to say about that, believed in the reality of abstract objects, which nominalism explicitly does not. See Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge (public domain.)

Oh, I think I understand now: you are saying that, because you don’t think the examples which you have readily available are legitimate sources (or are problematic), that you can’t give any example of a phenomena that requires supernaturalism to account for it, correct? — Bob Ross

Yes, that's generally what I was getting at. Added to that, the difficulty involved in vaidating or falsifying accounts of anything so-called 'supernatural' in a controlled environment.

Are you saying that miracles require a form of supernaturalism to account sufficiently for them? — Bob Ross

:chin: Isn't that what you asked for?

is there anything which seems to demand we posit, conceptually, something supernatural? — Bob Ross

I would have thought that 'miracle cures due to prayers' would fit that bill rather nicely. The account I linked to was from a medical scientist, Jacalyn Duffin, who was called to give evidence at an ecclesiastical tribunal. This tribunal was tasked with discerning whether a case of permanent remission from a usually-fatal form of leukemia could be attributed to the prayers of one Marie-Marguerite d’Youville, the founder of the Order of Sisters of Charity of Montreal and a candidate for canonization.

Duffin, who says she is atheist, and is an historian of medicine as well as a haemotologist, had her interest sufficiently piqued by the case to research and write several books on such cases.

You may be aware that the saying 'the devil's advocate' originated with such ecclesiastical enquiries. The role of the devil's advocate was to aggressively question the evidence of miracles to establish whether they had a natural explanation. Indeed, Duffin notes in the article that she 'never expected such reverse scepticism and emphasis on science within the Church', saying that the majority of such enquiries result in dismissing the purported miracles and declaring natural causes instead.

So, anyway, the reason that came to mind, is that one of Duffin's books discusses '1400 miracles from six continents and spanning four centuries. Overwhelmingly the miracles cited in canonizations between 1588 and 1999 are healings, and the majority entail medical care and physician testimony.' I'm not saying that you or anyone should draw any conclusions from that, but so far as empirical evidence is concerned, that at least constitutes a respectable data set, and one which does have bearing on the question.

As far as Rupert Sheldrake is concerned, if you're not familiar with him, it's a long story to tell. He's routinely described as a maverick scientist (or 'crackpot theorist') for his initial research in something he designated 'morphic resonance', the tendency of nature to form habits. His initial book was fiercely denounced, with the then-editor of Nature saying it was a candidate for burning. He is, however, an actual scientist, a plant biologist, and claims to have evidence in support. He also has written on telepathic effects, such as the 'sense of being stared at' and 'dogs who know when their owners are about to come home', for which there is no physical explanation. He's a frequent guest on discussion panels nowadays, alongside contemporary philosophers and public intellectuals. Again not saying you or anyone should believe what he says, but it's worth noting in the context. You can find more information at https://www.sheldrake.org/.

are natural laws part of nature?

Yes. — Bob Ross

The philosophical arguments are more subtle. Academics like Nancy Cartwright (see No God, No Laws) have critically addressed the problematic nature of referring to observed natural regularities as 'laws', by asking in what sense they can be considered laws at all if not decreed or enforced by an authority. Her critique underscores a broader skepticism about the metaphysical foundations of scientific laws, suggesting they are better understood as descriptions of consistent patterns or behaviors in nature rather than prescriptive rules imposed upon it. It also throws into relief whether the status of scientific laws is itself a scientific question; arguably, it is not. The consideration of the nature of these laws belongs more in the realm of metaphysics and philosophy, where the focus shifts from empirical validation to conceptual analysis. Whereas, naturalism tends to simply assume these laws, but itself has no explanation for them.

In practice, 'naturalism' often amounts to a kind of demarcation between 'rational science' and 'superstitious religion' (a.k.a. 'woo'), but it's also part of the debate between physicalism and idealism in philosophy.

Trump Criminal Trial Is Set for April 15 as His Attempt at Delay Fails

Donald J. Trump is all but certain to become the first former American president to stand trial on criminal charges after a judge on Monday denied his effort to delay the proceeding and confirmed it would begin next month.

The trial, in which Mr. Trump will be accused of orchestrating the cover-up of a simmering sex scandal surrounding his 2016 presidential campaign, had originally been scheduled to start this week. But the judge, Juan M. Merchan, had pushed the start date to April 15 to allow Mr. Trump’s lawyers to review newly disclosed documents from a related federal investigation.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers had pushed for an even longer delay of 90 days and sought to have the case thrown out altogether. But in an hourlong hearing Monday, Justice Merchan slammed their arguments, rejecting them all.

But how would you find out? In the absence of that kind of data, what criteria can be selected?

What do you mean? — Bob Ross

Go back a few steps - you asked:

it isn’t demanding a proof, per se, of God’s existence: it is demanding an example, at a bare minimum, of a phenomena (i.e, an appearance: event) which cannot be explained more parsimoniously with naturalism — Bob Ross

To which I responded:

Well, given the tendency to reject every account that is found in the world’s religious literature of such events, then probably not — Wayfarer

because accounts of Biblical miracles, and miraculous events described in other religious literature, might constitute the kinds of examples you're referring to, but as a rule these are not considered, because they're not replicable and generally not considered credible by any modern standards. So what examples are being referred to? Where to look for the data?

As it happens, there is one large body of records collected concerning allegedly supernatural events, which are the investigations of miracles attributed to those being considered for canonization as saints by the Catholic Church. These alleged interventions are the subject of rigorous examination - see Pondering Miracles.

Aside from those, I mentioned Rupert Sheldrake's research in telepathic cognition, which is considered supernatural by some, in that it seems to require that there is a non-physical medium through which perceptions and thoughts are transmitted.

Both these appeal to empirical data. The following argument is philosophical.

For intents of this OP, naturalism is the view that everything in reality is a part of the processes of nature; and supernaturalism is the view that some things transcend those processes of nature. — Bob Ross

In order to declare that everything is 'a part of the processes of nature' we need to understand where the boundary lies between what is natural and what might be supernatural. I simply pointed out that even the metaphysical status of natural laws is itself contested: are natural laws part of nature? It seems obvious, but it is contested by philosophers, and it is a question that itself not scientific, but philosophical.

Furthermore, where in nature do your examples of inductive and deductive logic exist? As far as I can tell, they are purely internal to acts of reasoned inference, they're internal to thought. Science never tires of telling us that nature is blind and acts without reason, save material causation; so can reason itself explained in terms of 'natural laws'?

Before Abraham was, I am." — If Jesus Never Called Himself God, How Did He Become One?

Not ego speaking. The ‘I Am’ is the ‘I AM’ of Exodus - the ‘I am’ of the Cosmos. That is something imparted by the Advaita guru Ramana Maharishi. Not orthodox doctrine, but :ok:

But why would there never be a physical accounting of consciousness? — Metaphyzik

That is the subject of David Chalmer’s 1996, paper, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, which has triggered a lot of debate. The gist of the argument is that no physical explanation can account for the nature of subjective experience which is by definition first-person, although you’d have to read the paper for the details of the argument.

But the general drift of the Blind Spot argument is against physicalism, which is the belief that everything can be reduced to physics. Hempel’s dilemma is that physics is subject to constant revision, so what we think of as physical, or non-physical, now, might be completely different in 10 or 100 years.

Facing up to the problem of consciousness can be found here https://consc.net/papers/facing.pdf

The original article this thread was based on can be found here

https://aeon.co/essays/the-blind-spot-of-science-is-the-neglect-of-lived-experience

Can you image the scientific best guess reality 100 years from now? — Metaphyzik

The article this thread is from distinguishes science per se from physicalism:

the claim that there’s nothing but physical reality is either false or empty. If ‘physical reality’ means reality as physics describes it, then the assertion that only physical phenomena exist is false. Why? Because physical science – including biology and computational neuroscience – doesn’t include an account of consciousness. This is not to say that consciousness is something unnatural or supernatural. The point is that physical science doesn’t include an account of experience; but we know that experience exists, so the claim that the only things that exist are what physical science tells us is false. On the other hand, if ‘physical reality’ means reality according to some future and complete physics, then the claim that there is nothing else but physical reality is empty, because we have no idea what such a future physics will look like, especially in relation to consciousness.

This problem is known as Hempel’s dilemma, named after the illustrious philosopher of science Carl Gustav Hempel (1905-97). Faced with this quandary, some philosophers argue that we should define ‘physical’ such that it rules out radical emergentism (that life and the mind are emergent from but irreducible to physical reality) and panpsychism (that mind is fundamental and exists everywhere, including at the microphysical level). This move would give physicalism a definite content, but at the cost of trying to legislate in advance what ‘physical’ can mean, instead of leaving its meaning to be determined by physics.

My observation was simply the resemblance between that passage from the Republic, which talks of ‘honours’ that the ‘cave-dwellers’ receive for ‘whoever discerns the passing shadows most keenly, and is best at remembering which of them usually comes first or last, which are simultaneous, and on that basis is best able to predict what is going to happen next.’ It seems an apt analogy for particle physics, as nobody really knows if there is an underlying reality, or if so what it comprises. Recall Neils Bohr’s often-quoted aphorism, ‘physics concerns not nature herself, but what we can say about nature’.

At this time, as is well-known, there are challenging fundamental conundrums about the standard model of physics and other matters. All I’m saying is, maybe that is because physics itself is not after all fundamental. But as everything is defined in terms of matter (or matter-energy) then the question is ‘what else could it be’? I would guess there are dissident theorists (and probably some pretty far-out ideas) about that, and I’m not trying to prove the point. I feign no hypothesis - just idle musing.

Would you be okay with accepting a world of consequences without being able to find out what they will be? — Paine

Good question. I suppose it’s analogous to compatibilism in some ways.

I don't think that one needs to limit themselves to what is scientifically peered reviewed or easily replicable. However, every example I have heard seems, to me, to be better explained naturalistically. — Bob Ross

But how would you find out? In the absence of that kind of data, what criteria can be selected? Recall the original point of Popper’s falsifiability was to differentiate empirical claims from other kinds, although it’s now wrongly taken to imply a kind of verificationism. Popper, as it happens, held to a form of dualism, in that he believed in a ‘third realm’ that contains the products of the human mind that, once created, lead an existence independent of their creators. This includes theories, scientific knowledge, mathematical constructs, cultural artifacts, and works of art. According to Popper, World 3 objects can influence both the physical world (World 1) and the mental world (World 2), yet they are not reducible to either. So whether that is a form of naturalism is debatable - and the reason it’s debatable is because the concept of naturalism is constantly changing.

As far as theism and atheism is concerned, the traditional divide formed between naturalistic science, which seeks explanations purely in terms of natural laws, and non-physicalist or metaphysical philosophies which are often but not always associated with religion (another very hard term to define!) But surely, in effect, naturalism leans towards explanations in terms of what have been known as natural laws - but then, there’s a whole other issue there, in philosophy of science, as to whether there are ‘natural laws’ and what that means (per Nancy Cartwright ‘How the Laws of Physics Lie’). And that debate, again, is not itself subject to a naturalist explanation, as it’s ’theory about theory’.

it isn’t demanding a proof, per se, of God’s existence: it is demanding an example, at a bare minimum, of a phenomena (i.e, an appearance: event) which cannot be explained more parsimoniously with naturalism (over supernaturalism)---in other words: is there anything which seems to demand we posit, conceptually, something supernatural? That’s the question. — Bob Ross

Well, given the tendency to reject every account that is found in the world’s religious literature of such events, then probably not. None of those accounts appear in peer-reviewed scientific literature and are probably impossible to replicate (heck, plain old psychological studies are pretty hard to replicate.) So, given all that, you’re probably on pretty safe ground.

I’ve been reviewing a bit of Rupert Sheldrake’s material again. He claims to have evidence of psychic phenomena that call naturalism into question, at least insofar as they’re paranormal. The phenomena he speaks of are fairly quotidian in nature - dogs who know when their owners are about to come home, the sense of being stared at, and so on. He is, of course, characterised as a maverick or crank by a lot of people, but he persists, in his quiet way, and claims to have significant evidence. The argument then turns into one about whether he does present evidence.

And then, suppose he does come to understand that he's bad at reasoning - what then? If he still cares about the truth, but he has come to accept that his tools for discovering or filtering truths are compromised, what should he do? — flannel jesus

I don’t think that would be terribly difficult in a controlled situation - like science, or architecture or engineering. You would find out you were wrong by having your predictions disconfirmed or flaws in your designs or projects (although there are those who are notoriously bad at recognising their own flaws. Like Trevor Milton who started an e-lorry company based on lies and was jailed as a result.)

But it’s a lot more slippery when it comes to moral judgements and ethical decisions, as the criteria are not necessarily objective (I say not necessarily, because if those judgements and decisions cause harm or calamity, those are objective consequences.) But it’s possible to skate through life being wrong about any number of such things, and if there is no karma-upance in a future existence, then - so what?

:ok: