:100:

I am well aware of this general idea, the problem is it is plainly false. I don't want to argue here and derails Bob Ross's fine thread, but in general such challenges to accepted theory are fun to consider when first entering philosophy, but are eventually solved. — Philosophim

This is not true that idealism has been 'solved' or refuted generally. There are quite a few people of scientific bent, of whom Bernardo Kastrup is one, who have made detailed arguments for philosophical idealism, which have not been refuted.

When discussing these matters, just be aware that your physicalist views are not supported by philosophical argument, but are simply expressions of your 'gut feel' as to what can and can't be true. Incredulity is not itself an argument.

The smooth stone will be carried along by the current, the jagged one will catch and snag — Fooloso4

The example you're giving takes 'the objective' as independently real - independently, that is, of any judgement or perception on our part, and imputes self-evidence to it. The basic argument remains: look, these stones are far older than our minds, how can you say they don't exist independently of our perception of them? They were around millions of years before anyone perceived them.

But idealism does not necessarily call the empirical reality of objects into question. It's not saying that the world is only 'in the mind' (although certainly Berkeley can be interpreted as saying that, which is why, in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant added a section distinguishing his philosophy from what he called the 'problematic idealism' of Berkeley.)

What idealism, analytic or transcendental, is drawing attention to, is that the mind creates the framework within which our judgements about the stone (or any object) are meaningful. Schopenhauer, for example, published an early book, On Vision and Colors, which is his analysis, based on the neuroscience of his day, of how the brain synthesises visual data to generate color cognition. The basic outlines of what he said have been abundantly confirmed by later science. Cognitive and evolutionary psychology have revealed that conscious perception, while subjectively appearing to exist as a steady continuum, is actually composed of a heirarchical matrix of interacting cellular transactions, commencing at the most basic level with the parasympathetic system which controls one’s respiration, digestion, and so on, up through various levels to culminate in that specifically human ability of rational thought (and beyond, although this is beyond the scope of current science and a matter of controversy.)

Consciousness plays the central role in co-ordinating these diverse activities so as to give rise to the sense of continuity which we call ‘ourselves’ and also the coherence and reality of the world of appearance. Yet it is important to realise that the naïve sense in which we understand ourselves and the objects of our perception to exist is dependent upon the constructive activities of our consciousness, most of which are unknown to us. We have no more knowledge of them than we do of cell division or of our hair growing or our food digesting.

When we perceive something - large, small, alive or inanimate, local or remote - there is a considerable amount of work involved in ‘creating’ the object from the raw material of perception. Your eyes receive the lightwaves reflected or emanated from it, your mind synthesises the image with regards to all of the other stimuli impacting your senses at that moment – acknowledging it or ignoring it depending on how busy you are; your memory will then compare it to other objects you have seen, from whence you will recall its name, and perhaps know something about it ('star', 'tree', 'frog', etc - this is the process of 'apperception').

And you will do all of this without you even noticing that you are doing it; it is largely unconscious.

In other words, your consciousness is not the passive recipient of sensory objects which exist irrespective of your perception of them. Instead, your consciousness is an active agent which constructs experiential reality - partially on the basis of sensory input, but also on the basis of a huge number of unconscious processes, including memories, intentions and cultural frameworks. This is how we arrive at what Schopenhauer designates as 'vorstellung', variously translated as 'representation' or 'idea'. And that is what reality consists of. It includes the object, but it is not in itself an object. As Schopenhauer says in the first paragraph of WWI, discerning this fact is the beginning of philosophical wisdom.

our perception relies on an internal categorization of reality and that to fully understand it we instead require imagination based on understanding scientific data. — Christoffer

Their remains no scientific account of which neural systems are able to generate the subjective unity of experience. See The Subjective Unity of Perception in a paper on the Neural Binding Problem. He notes that the problem posed by David Chalmers in his paper Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Concsiousness, remains 'intractable'.

It’s well known that people who would say they’re part of one political party, right or left, are generally very skeptical of information and motives of the “other guys.” — Mikie

In Australia, this is generally much less visible than the USA. I say 'generally' because there are some cases - a Murdoch-owned (natch!) media outlet that propogates climate-change denial and what nowadays is called 'conservativism'. There are outbreaks of neo-nazism and white supremacy here and there (particularly in Melbourne, for some reason) and there was some serious civil strife over COVID lockdowns. But overall, Australian society is far less polarized than American in this regard. Politics is comparatively genteel with a few outliers at each end of the spectrum, but overall with at least a modicum of civility. Seems a lot more polarised in the disunited states.

I don’t know if the above two posts reflect awareness of the specific problem regarding raising the debt limit. Due to a quirk of the American political system, Congress has to approve raising the amount that Treasury can borrow to pay for costs already incurred. It has nothing directly to do with spending proposals for the future or even with the budget. It is only concerned with paying for costs already incurred. If the debt limit is not raised, the American Government may not be able to meet its obligations - make payroll for the military, pay pensions, make interest payments on its already-massive debts - it’s a huge list. And if that happens, it’s going to be everyone’s problem, because it will cause an extremely severe stock market crash and huge economic downturn, possibly on the scale of the Great Depression or even greater. ‘Financial apocalypse’ is a term often used. It is the threat of this happening, that one party - one side of politics, not ‘all politicians’ - is using as a threat to force the Government to accept enormous spending cuts. And that is an illegitimate political tactic - before the ‘tea party republicans’ came along in 2011-12, no side in American politics had ever contemplated such a tactic. But the extreme right of the GOP have normalised it (God help us all). Hopefully sanity will prevail, but it’s getting very close to drop-dead time.

Hope you don't mind me chipping in here. My aim is not to persuade, but (hopefully) clarify.

What is real is what exists, and does not need to be perceived to exist. — Philosophim

This is the crux of the issue. Realism presumes 'the world' (or object of perception) to be real, irrespective of whether it is perceived or not. Idealism, on the other hand, takes issue with this apparently-obvious fact. George Berkeley, for example, said explicitly 'esse est percipe' - to be is to be perceived. His argument is nevertheless categorised as empiricist, because it is based on the observation that the existence of physical objects cannot be proven independently of, or outside of, the perception of them (where 'perception' includes seeing, touching, instrumental analysis, etc). He maintained that we only have direct access to our own perceptions and cannot perceive anything beyond those - that when we see the object, our seeing of it consists in 'the experience of the object'. It is therefore unwarranted to assume the existence of material objects outside perception.

It is well known that many people think Berkeley's philosophy absurd. There is an historical anecdote featuring the famous writer, Samuel Johnson:

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that everything in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, "I refute it thus!"

This is now immortalised as the 'argumentum ad lapidem', meaning 'argument from the stone', and is said to be fallacious, on the grounds that kicking a stone does not actually address the theory. It rather asserts a conclusion incompatible with the theory and then demonstrates the conclusion without discussing the real claims of the argument. After all, the stone and the sensation of striking your foot against it are, likewise, perceptions and impressions of color, hardness, time and place, and the like. In this sense, Berkeley's argument is not too distant in spirit from Descartes' argument that in all of our perceptions, we might be mislead by an evil daemon. (Updated and annotated translations of Berkeley can be found here - and one thing you will learn if you look at them, is that Berkeley was no slouch when it came to dealing with objections to his philosophy. He was a very clever polemicist.)

So - the point I'm getting at is that the instinctive sense that the object is real whether or not anyone perceives it, is precisely the point at issue in idealist arguments - hard as that may be to accept.

'Trans rights' are a political correctness minefield in today's culture. A story in the Sydney Morning Herald being a case in point - the Oxford Union, a 200 year old debating society which has hosted many illustrious and controversial speakers, is being pilloried for inviting a professor who has been identified as hostile to trans rights.

[Kathleen] Stock – described recently as a “mild-mannered and eminently sensible middle-aged lesbian” – resigned as a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex in 2021 following what she described as “bullying and harassment” in response to her views on gender identification and transgender rights. The controversy revolved around her belief that a person’s self-declared gender identity does not outweigh their biological sex, “particularly when it comes to law and policy”.

In April, the Oxford University LGBTQ+ society called for Stock’s invitation to speak [at the Union] to be rescinded, claiming she was “transphobic and trans-exclusionary”. It also accused Oxford Union of disregarding the welfare of the society’s members under the guise of free speech.

Earlier this month, Oxford’s student union passed a motion to cut financial ties with the Oxford Union. Seventy-eight per cent of those present voted in favour, preventing the Oxford Union from having a stall at the freshers’ fair, causing a reduction in membership that will likely put a strain on the debating organisation’s finances. It is the first time such action has been taken.

Several Oxford colleges including St Edmund Hall, Mansfield, St Anne’s and St Hilda’s have also passed motions condemning the talk, calling for Stock’s invite “to be rescinded in support of the trans community.”

Christ Church, one of the wealthiest colleges, described Stock as a “notorious transphobe” and said that if she spoke the union would be “complicit and responsible in spreading transphobic rhetoric”

So - say what you like about gender constructs.......

(on second thoughts, better not :yikes: )

I wonder if Kevin McCarthy caves, whether he will loose his job over it. After all, part of the devil's bargain he had to sign to win the Speaker's gavel was to agree that he could be tossed out by a single vote. It hasn't attracted any comment that I've noticed, but you'd have to think it was a possibility.

No! This is where 'the unknown knower' comes into the picture. 'The eye can't see itself, the hand can't grasp itself', which is an aphorism from Vedanta. What it means is that we can't see the subjective faculties which synthesise the 'subjective unity of experience' because we're never outside of it, so it's not objectively known to us. (Hence also the tortuous and painstaking analysis required by the Critique of Pure Reason.)

//with that I'll bow out for now, don't want to hog @Bob Ross's thread.//

A stone carried along in a river will either continue on downstream or get stuck if it bumps up against some other object or objects depending on its shape. — Fooloso4

And which stone would that be? 'Oh, it doesn't matter - any stone.' But 'any stone' is an abstraction - and abstraction is still dependent on the matrix of conceptual thought.

I certainly see the 'constructionist' logic in your last paragraph. — Tom Storm

Constructivism (I've learned) is an approach in science and philosophy that emphasizes the role of the mind in the construction of knowledge and the interpretation of data - hence the name! I don't think it is synonymous with idealism and so I'm not sure if 'idealism' is really what I'm arguing for - although I do notice that Kastrup has published articles in Constructivist Foundations.

So a starlight, for example, from distant galaxies (or the CMB) that predates by millions (or billions) of years the human species – it's capability of "mind" – is not a "meaningful idea" or a "real" (mind-invariant) referent? — 180 Proof

No, it's not. It's not anything, until it is cognised. It's not non-existent, but it's also not existent - it has a kind of latent or unmanifest reality. There's a subjective element in all cognition which synthesises and contextualises the stimuli we're receiving - starlight included - and combines it into the world. That activity is what gives rise to the subjective unity of experience - which is 'the world'. That is the sense in which nothing is ultimately mind-independent, although for practical purposes, it can be treated as if it is. Hence as I said - mind-independence is a methodological assumption, not a metaphysical axiom. In actual fact, reality is not something we're outside of, or apart from - it has an inextricable subjective foundation, which we're not consciously aware of - transcendental in the Kantian sense.

This is why I asked about the "something" that has always been capable of observing. — Fooloso4

We can form no meaningful idea of what exists in the absence of the order that the mind brings to reality.

Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxies—but all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation. This is the way the early universe was before the emergence of life—and the way the present universe is outside the view of any observer. — Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order

In order for Kastrup's assertion to qualify for a theory of reality it must explain how animals like us, capable of experiencing, came to be in a universe like ours full of things to be experienced. — Fooloso4

There is an implicit endorsement of scientific realism in this. Analytic idealism is not a realist philosophy in that sense.

There is no "aha!" point or moment in time that can be pointed at, and then it can be said "here it is!". There is no magical combination or point in evolutionary progression that consciousness suddenly appears, resides, or has emerged as we know it. — creativesoul

I wonder if that ‘aha’ point is the appearance of the very first living organism.

6371 At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.

6.372 So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.

And they both are right and wrong. But the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear terminus, whereas the modern system makes it appear as though everything were explained. — TLP

I notice in modern discourse that even the notion of laws is called into question. This goes back to the discussion about the erosion of the idea of an animating cosmic purpose.

Interesting how nature, once 'the created', is now imbued with the power of creating itself.

When Trump returns to the Oval office the buck will stop at his desk. He will actually do something. How refreshing that will be. — Varnaj42

Now we see your true colors.

Yes well the problem is that people seldom agree on which facts are correct. — Varnaj42

You may not disagree, but the fact of human-induced climate change is proven beyond reasonable doubt, regardless of how you feel about it.

We are living in a threat of global communism and we can't find anything better to do than to argue about climate change. — Varnaj42

Yes so perhaps you can find something more constructive to say rather than waste further time denying the science.

The science is very clear - increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, plainly correlated to emissions caused by human activities, are unmistakeably linked to increasing global temperatures. It is very clear and simple. There might be scientists who want to dispute that, but scientists were employed by the tobacco industry to cast doubt over the link to lung cancer (see Merchants of Doubt). It's the same kind of scenario with climate-change denial, there are many vested interests who want to deny it.

We just don't happen to think it is the fault of human beings. — Varnaj42

'Everyone has a right to their own opinion, but not to their own facts' ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

I’ll stick with the free version for now. I find myself using it all the time. I can see the day, and it’s not far off, where it becomes embedded in your audio-visual life-space, helping with all kinds of information - recipes, tips, exercise plans, life plans, motivational talks. I think an alternative title to ‘artificial intelligence’ might be ‘augmented intelligence’ - using it to augment your own capacities in various ways.

(Seems to me that one of the big players who’s completely failed to catch this train, is Amazon. I’ve been using Alexa devices for about eighteen months, and they’re pretty lame - glorified alarm clocks, as someone said. Whereas ChatGPT, with speech recognition, is more or less what I think Bezos set out to do when he created Alexa. So far, he’s failed miserably, as far as I can see.)

You'll find them here.

In terms of science, I think that science proper is the acquiring of how entities relate to each other and not what they fundamentally are — Bob Ross

:up: Agree. I am also a Kastrup reader. Overall, as I'm opposed like him to reductive materialism, I'm generally in agreement with him. My criticism of his philosophy is perhaps an over-reliance on metaphors - the 'dissociated alter' and 'the dashboard' to name a couple. At the same time, I think he's an important voice. He is building up an impressive bibliography and does an excellent job in many debates and forums.

My overall philosophical orientation is to emphasise the primacy of experience and that knowledge is a constructive and synthesising activity, which absorbs experiences and perceptions and synthesises them into the gestalt of subjective experience. Empiricists likewise stress the primacy of experience - Berkeley was an empirical idealist - but I adopt the Kantian principle of there being innate categories and functionalities of the mind which are not simply given but which the mind brings to experience.

Forms || Outside Time/Space — schopenhauer1

'Prior to' - ontologically prior. Not 'outside' as in 'located somewhere else'.

If the nature of reality is essentially experiential does this mean that prior to experiential animals there was no reality or is this a teleological claim or has there always been something that is capable of experiencing?....I would say that the physical world is represented. It is not the thing itself, but both what is represented and experience are of something.

Is the assumption that there is something that is experienced and something that is represented mistaken? — Fooloso4

Hope you don't mind my chipping in. What's at issue here, is the sense in which the physical world has an inherent reality outside our experience, knowledge and perception of it. From a realist point of view, that it exists independently of us is so obvious as to seem hardly worth stating. But consider the role of the observing mind in arriving at this understanding.

The problem with your argument is that it assumes you can get outside your understanding of the world to see it as it truly is, without any observer. Then you imagine on the one side, your representation, and on the other, the object being represented. What that neglects is the role of the observing intelligence in synthesising experience to form a whole - a gestalt, in fact - which is then the subject of your judgement. Absent that synthesising capability, there is nothing to pass judgement about. So you can't literally get outside your representation. You can't in any sense imagine a world from no viewpoint. Perspective is essential, and perspective is what the observer brings.

You might object (as did Einstein) 'surely the moon continues to exist when there is nobody to perceive it'. Bishop Berkeley, and Bernardo Kastrup, get around this difficulty by positing God and a Mind-At-Large, respectively, which ensures the continuous existence of the moon, even the absence of observers. However I have a rather more radical view than that (and here part company with Kastrup.) It is that all we know of existence — whether of a specific thing, or the Universe at large — is the product of our cognitive and intellectual capacity, the activity of the powerful hominid forebrain which sets us apart from other species. All that processing power generates our world, and that’s what ‘empirical reality’ consists of. After all, the definition of ‘empirical’ is ‘based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience.’ So, asking of the Universe ‘How does it exist outside of, or apart from, our observation or experience of it?’ is an unanswerable question. It's not as if it really ceases to exist when not observed, or really comes into existence when it is observed. To exist is to be 'inside' this relational subject-object dynamic¹.

Because of scientific realism, we assume that the world exists independently of your or any mind. But that's only true as a methodological assumption, not as a metaphysical axiom. This is something that has become increasingly evident in 20th century science and philosophy, mainly as a consequence of the observer problem in physics. Science has had to acknowledge the role of the observer, whether via the 'Copenhagen interpretation' or in Wheeler's 'participatory universe' model or in QBism. (Kastrup addresses all this, by the way, he is thoroughly conversant with modern physics and was employed at CERN at some point.)

I suspect that is probably a controversial analysis, but that's my take on it.

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1. 'By and large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "non-existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one'. ~ the Buddha, Kaccāyanagotta Sutta

When something is said to be material a common meaning is, as 180 Proof outlined above, that it is observable (or detectable in some way), and when something is said to be immaterial there are two common meanings: either that it doesn't exist or is unimportant, or that it exists in some way other than the material. — Janus

The point is that our rational grasp of things is constructed around abstractions, which are fundamental to language and therefore the basic operations of predication (is, is not, less than, same as, and so on.) None of those abstractions are materially existent but they're intrinsic to our ability to reason. That is one of the reasons that reason is unique to h. sapiens. We kind of straddle two worlds, the world of sensable objects, and the world of thought, from which we are able to envision and then realise possibilities - which is the ability that has provided the technology that we're using to mediate this discussion. Hence Wigner's 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics'.

I don't know what it could mean to say that logic and maths transcend physical reality. Would it mean that they would still exist, even if nothing else existed? — Janus

It would mean that at least some of the primitive terms of both of those would be the same in all possible worlds, that if intelligent life evolved elsewhere, it would still be obliged to recognise the law the excluded middle and the notion of 'equals', for instance. I think they precede existence, in the sense that they are associate with or constitutive of the natural order, from which life evolves in the first place.

Then why bother asking? It's a serious example. 'Money', would be another. Especially now that all money is electronic. It exists only by fiat, as a set of agreements, has no material existence.

Is there an example of an immaterial 'something' we can point to uncontroversially? — Tom Storm

Interest rates.

I enjoyed how 'Wayfarer' engaged 'ChatGPT' (presumably GPT-4) to elaborate on this intricate connection. — Pierre-Normand

Thanks! Actually as far as I know, it’s still ChatGPT - I’m signing in via OpenAI although whether the engine is the same as GPT-4, I know not. Also appreciate the ref to Haugeland.

If you ask ChatGPT, it will not go and check against Sartre's corpus. — Banno

Whereas if you use Google’s forthcoming Bard, it will. Check out this presentation on it.

I’m looking forward to being able to converse with Siri - let’s imagine you’re interacting via Siri - with these kinds of questions.

‘Siri, can you provide some examples of the texts where Jean Paul Sartre said that?’

I agree, but it is still an active detachement even for the sage. — Christoffer

Indeed. 'Being' is a verb. ;-)

Some philosophical questions I put to ChatGPT 20.05.23

Q: Where would one encounter the expression about things that are 'always already the case'?

ChatGPT: The expression "always already the case" is often encountered in philosophical and theoretical discussions, particularly in the realms of phenomenology, existentialism, and post-structuralism. While it doesn't have a specific origin or a single author, it has been explored by various thinkers.

One notable instance of this expression can be found in the works of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre used the phrase "always already" to describe the idea that certain aspects of our existence, such as our facticity (our given circumstances and conditions) and our fundamental freedom, are inherent and preexisting. He argued that these aspects of our being are not products of our conscious choices but are thrust upon us, shaping our existence.

Additionally, the concept of "always already the case" can be related to the philosophical notion of "being-in-the-world" (Dasein) put forth by Martin Heidegger. Heidegger emphasized the idea that our existence is always already embedded in a specific context, a world that precedes our individual consciousness. According to Heidegger, we are thrown into a world with preexisting meanings, values, and structures that shape our understanding of ourselves and our experiences.

Furthermore, the expression is frequently encountered in post-structuralist and postmodern thought, particularly in the works of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. These thinkers emphasized the ways in which power structures, historical contexts, and language itself shape our understanding of reality. The notion of "always already the case" points to the idea that our perspectives and interpretations are influenced by preexisting discourses and systems of meaning.

Overall, the expression "always already the case" reflects the philosophical inquiry into the preexisting conditions, contexts, and structures that shape our existence and understanding of reality. It is encountered in discussions surrounding existentialism, phenomenology, post-structuralism, and postmodernism.

Q: Would it be feasible to link the notion of what is 'always already the case' to the realm of the a priori?

ChatGPT: Yes, it is feasible to link the notion of what is "always already the case" to the realm of the a priori. The concept of the a priori refers to knowledge or propositions that are independent of experience or empirical evidence, based on reasoning alone. These are considered necessary truths that can be known prior to any particular experience.

When we consider what is "always already the case," we are essentially referring to certain aspects of existence or reality that are assumed to be fundamental and unchanging. These aspects are often seen as transcending individual experiences and are considered to be universally applicable. In this sense, they can be thought of as a priori conditions or truths.

For example, Kant argued that certain synthetic a priori elements are necessary to make sense of our experience of the world. These are not derived from experience but are inherent in our cognitive faculties. They are considered "always already the case" because they are universal and apply to all individuals.

In a similar vein, the notion of what is "always already the case" can be related to the a prioristructures of understanding discussed by phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl. Husserl argued that our experience of the world is shaped by certain preexisting structures of intentionality and consciousness, which he referred to as "transcendental subjectivity." These structures are considered a priori because they are not derived from individual experiences but are assumed to be inherent in consciousness.

Therefore, by linking the notion of what is "always already the case" to the realm of the a priori, we can explore the underlying and universal conditions that shape our understanding and experiences of reality. Both concepts involve aspects that are considered fundamental, necessary, and independent of empirical evidence or particular experiences.

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I think this actually addresses a gap I'm aware of in Kantian philosophy. The concept of the a priori sounds so dry and so much an artefact of logic, but linking to that sense of the 'always already' provides a phenomenological and existential dimension that it is lacking.

I'm not sure there is a "classical tradition", a religious life seem to be mostly very subjective even if practices as an institution looks collective. — Christoffer

There’s a term that is distinct from both the subjective and objective, and that it transcendent(al). The detachment of the sage in philosophy has a different quality to the detachment of the scientist because it is concerned with more than what is simply quantifiable. But of course in secular culture, everything is viewed through what Charles Taylor calls ‘the immanent frame’ which brackets out consideration of the transcendent(al).

have found most religious people to be far more fundamentalists than they even seem to be aware of themselves — Christoffer

There are fundamentalists in areas other than religion.

But that is one of the points at issue, although I’m not in a position to pursue it right at the moment.

Marx said that after turning Hegel on his head. I won’t argue the case beyond noting dissent.

And as such, a product of culture and society. But sure, it wasn’t institutional. Not sure what the point was here. — Jamal

The point is that it’s not a product of culture and society. It preceded them, as did the axial age religions generally.

Actually I guess ‘confirmation bias’ would often be very difficult to expose and often effective as an accusation. See this case of.a biased investigator accusing juries of bias.

I agree that Meta’s logic is sometimes baffling :lol:

I still think a presupposition or an axiom is different to a bias. I suppose you could say that a strongly held but unexamined belief might constitute a bias. And that there are ‘cultural biases’ that are held by many people who take them as ‘the way things are’. Some will characterize religious attitudes like that but I think the same can be said of scientific materialism.

The main problem with our usual understanding of secularity is that it is taken-for-granted, so we are not aware that it is a worldview. It is an ideology that pretends to be the everyday world we live in. Most of us assume that it is simply the way the world really is, once superstitious beliefs about it have been removed. — David Loy

The Enlightenment era not only categorically rejected all Religious doctrines, it also rejected all philosophical beliefs that "go beyond" actual/factual descriptions of the world based on the five senses (meta-physics). — Gnomon

Much of the fault lies with the ‘rule of fear’ of the Churches and disgust with the religious wars and power struggles.

Then, not long ago, I came to a realization that may seem like it would worsen my depression at first glance, but was actually a complete game changer for me… I don’t matter. — AWill

Good realization.

One of the sayings that helped free me up was ‘My life has been a series of crises, most of which have never occurred.’

I think bias has more of a connotation of being unconscious, subjective or held on emotive grounds. Different to axioms which by definition are open to scrutiny.

An update from The Hill - discussions have been paused.

The 'Freedom Caucus' (read: MAGA Extremist) faction is still insisting that it won't sign the limit increase until it's extortion demands are met. Not discussing their demands is categorised as the White House 'being unreasonable'.

McCarthy has warned that negotiators must come to an agreement on at least the broad parameters of a deal by this weekend if a bill is to have any chance of moving through both the House and Senate by June 1, the earliest date when the Treasury Department has warned of a default.

Politico reports that Biden is resisting invoking the 14th Amendment to bypass the vote, saying it is not a slam-dunk and would lead to complex negotations and legal cases.

I know! Ain't he amazing! Tommy Emmanuel put a comment on one of his latest, 'keep up the great work'. The attention to detail is fantastic - all these little flourishes from the original recording that he captures.

If we are talking about the energy of the body kickstarting at the formation in an egg and the energy flowing away after death as heat, then I would never call that by anything other than what it is, energy, and energy is not a soul. — Christoffer

We come into the world with proclivities, tendencies, traits, character, talents, and so on. These are all characteristics of living beings that are not reducible to physical forces. (One of the motifs from Buddhism, which is said to eschew the idea of soul, is that each individual is actually a 'mind-stream' (citta santāna) that manifests from life to life - a process, not an entity.)

I agree that using the term ‘soul’ carries religious connotations and that it’s not an especially useful term. But I don’t agree, on those grounds, that it is a meaningless term, or connotes an obsolete or supestitious idea.

It is like when evangelists move their goal posts of what the definition of God is every time a scientific discovery shows that their previous beliefs are clearly wrong — Christoffer

That is typical of fundamentalism, not so much of the classical tradition.

If so, what you’ve got here is a truism, since institutions are social reality. — Jamal

I understand that marxism will generally depict religious ideas as being product of culture and society. But consider Buddhism, if you can call Buddhism a religion. It is certainly a social institution now, but it originated as a renunciate movement, deliberately outside social convention.