Academics, religious apologists, and don't forget philosophers. Isn't this a philosophy forum?? — Constance

Isn't the point of philosophy to examine the hell out of basic assumptions and our glib answers? Isn't it the case that some of the most obvious questions may well be pointless? Is it not also the case that sometimes the pragmatic response to philosophical questions is better than theoretical dead ends or infinities?

There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.”

― Richard Rorty

How do you know that the transcendent significance you identify is not merely something we/you put there?

What use is it to ask basic questions of our existence? — Constance

Not just basic questions. Specific questions which you have already stated are impossible to answer.

One is either engaged or one isn't. Hard to argue against indifference. Questions like Why are we born to suffer and die? have to be meaningful at the outset for understanding religion. — Constance

Whoa there, partner, you are rushing ahead. Did I ask about why we are born and suffer? No. Did I say I wasn't engaged? No. I'm simply expressing a different view to yours. Does it follow from this that I am therefore against all of philosophy? :wink:

Rorty again:

The purpose of philosophy is not to discover timeless truths, but rather to provide better ways of living and understanding.

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity" (1989)

I'm just trying to cut to the chase. Is there any merit in lingering in the mist and miasma of transcendence when we have practical responces we can actually use? You don't have to agree with me, but that's my take on this philosophical conundrum.

So back to my question -

But I am curious - what use do you derive from this:

there is no answer to epistemic crisis.
— Constance — Tom Storm

If there is no answer then what's next?

I guess I'm not as pessimistic as you seem to be. I don't think we are doomed, but who would know? I tend to think of 'last hopes' as wish fulfillment fantasies. In such situations, God becomes a kind of Marvel superhero who rescues us in the last 15 minutes of the story. These tropes - doom and saving - don't entirely resonate with me, but I understand their attractions, and of course, they've been a part of human storytelling for millennia.

None of what you say is new to me. My point is it need not worry us. Just act and reflect. We have more than enough to work with in order to talk meaningfully about morality. Leave transcendence to the academics and the religious apologists. :smile:

But I am curious - what use do you derive from this:

there is no answer to epistemic crisis. — Constance

If the situation is hopeless (as Casals said) we must take the next step.

You are invited at this point to consider G E Moore's way of addressing this: What does it mean for something to be "good"? Not a good couch or a good deal on a car, but good AS SUCH. And bad: what is the bad of a sprained ankle? Yes, we get sprains and have to deal with them, but what does it mean for something to hurt? — Constance

We can make even the simplest things complicated and impossible. It's one of the great human gifts.

I need not have a full account of 'good' or 'bad'. We can understand them in quotidian contexts without needing to contrive a thesis on the subjects. We already do and it works reasonably well. Abstractions like 'good' or even 'truth' vary with the context. In most usage, I don't need to have a full account of such terms to make robust use of them. That's all I am saying. And if the epistemic crisis is as thick a fog as you suggest, then better to say home.

* deleted pointless response

Nothing has changed among humans in 10,000 years. Even with religion. But if you look in the rubble of human history, it’s we who destroy each other, again and again. So the only hope for us has to come from outside. Nothing has changed with regard to that either. — Fire Ologist

Seems to me gods don't offer any more help than 'utopian' political systems. Whether we opt for the magic space wizard or the leader of the glorious revolution, we're probably fucked.

What makes you think gods comes from the outside? Are they not human creations, as fraught and manufactured as any ideology?

If morality is corrupt, it has the capacity to destroy society. If it has been around for long enough, it won't. Otherwise, it would have done that already. That is one reason why something that may look like a new morality tends to be the repackaging of an existing morality. For example, the morality that you can find in the books of Moses, at the beginning of the Bible, is the repackaging of something that was around long before Moses. That is the only safe way to do it. — Tarskian

I suspect our world-views are too far apart. There are lots of undemonstrated claims here.

What is corrupt morality? Can you provide an example?

The Bible borrows lots of stories, not just morality. If would help if you could demonstrate this process working over the past 1000 years, say, in order to illustrate this corruptive process in action?

For instance, I would maintain that the UN Declaration of Human Rights outlines a superior and more sophisticated set of moral principles than the Ten Commandments - of which only 6 pertain to morality and 2 or 3 of those are dubious at best.

The world is a "meta" problem, just sitting there staring back at you. — Constance

Only if you insist.

I'm not pretending that I have answers to old epistemological questions. I'm not even sure that they matter. But it's not hard to see how morality is pragmatic consequence of experience. Why confuse this with questions about how my knowledge of a lamp works? If we don't know the answer to this (and I suspect there are many healthy explanations already: scientific and philosophical) it would be a shame for an appeal to ignorance to lead us into accepting transcendence as the only explanation.

You seem to be hard wired to root out corruptions and inadequacies. I don't share this way of looking at things.

A wind turbine is not morality, the analogy would seem problematic. But I get the point.

Morality is a social conversation. What is or isn't corrupt will be part of that conversation. Not that 'corrupt' is a word which resonates with me in that context. I don't believe there is such a thing as perfect morality.

But your broader question is how do we know if morality is sound or helpful? Perhaps we don't. But I would say a moral system that executes gay people is worse than one which grants them equal rights. If this point requires debate, then I suggest a forum for haters to explore this further.

I don't believe we have access to absolute truth or perfection and that these are abstract human notions. The best we can do is minimise harm and suffering and promote the well-being of all conscious creatures. Which has been the trajectory of moral development over time. But obviously not everywhere.

I just wanted to point out why the results of that societal conversation will tend to be poor and increasingly corrupt. — Tarskian

Ok. I was just waiting to point out that morality probably has mundane origins.

I don't think the societal conversation has been increasingly poor or corrupt. But this might be down to the values one holds or how unhappy one is.

You seem to be jumping ahead of the story for reasons unclear to me. :wink:

All I am saying is people will have views and talk about 'oughts' and 'ought nots' as a by-product of human community life. The kind of processes or dynamic which might follow are not in scope - I'm simply describing the original impulse.

I don't follow. Sorry.

The OP introduces the idea that ethics is, in its foundational analytic, impossible. It is a transcendental term, and Wittgenstein knew this. How? Ask: What IS ethics? Not anything beyond the simplicity of the apriori "observation". This is to ask, What is the good and the bad in ethics? It is a metaethical question. — Constance

Is it really that difficult and elusive? We live together as community and this means holding values. It's impossible not to. Ethics emerges from the resulting conversation just as surely as poo comes from eating. We couldn't avoid the subject of morality even if we wanted to and the only magic or transcendence inherent in such moral conversations (that I can see) is there if we confuse morality with mysticism. :wink:

t would be hard to defend idealism in the face of science and quantum physics demonstrates duality, such as in particle as a particle and wave. It presents a less certain nature of causality. — Jack Cummins

Kastrup does a good job using science and quantum physics to argue for idealism. The most compelling arguments seem to be the case against what we used to think of as physicalism.

My issue with this is not really seeing why it matters. Even if idealism is true, it makes no difference to our experience or the choices we make. Which is how I feel about much spirituality and philosophy. We sometimes imagine that the arguments are revelatory, but really all they contribute is an evanescent sense of novelty.

The 'new age' movement did usher the ideas of interconnectedness. The romanticism of new age has died and may have been replaced by brokenness and isolation. — Jack Cummins

I was around for the New Age movement. I think much of it was a reaction to the brokenness and isolation of the 'me generation' and 'greed is good'. I think a part of culture has always been railing against perceived brokenness and isolation - right through the ages. Most people at the time, as they do now, considered pursuits like the New Age mainly for lost souls, crackpots, the drug addled and virtue signalers. I was one of them. :wink:

I am very sympathetic to the enormous difficulty of making sense of the often mysterious behavior of others. All I can tell you is that I’ve never met an immoral, evil, blameworthy or unjust person. It is not that I’ve never felt anger and the initial impulse to blame, but when I undergo the process of trying to make intelligible their motives I am always able to arrive at an explanation that allows me to avoid blame and the need for forgiveness. Furthermore, there is a fundamental philosophical basis for what I assert is the case that it is always possible to arrive at such a non-blameful explanation that can withstand the most robust tests in the real world. Having said that, I’m aware that my view is a fringe one. I only know of one other theorist who has come up with a similar perspective. I’m also aware that my view will be seen as dangerously naive. — Joshs

As a non-philosopher, I think it is important to explore this line of thinking - given the rather dreadful consequences of a blame culture we have observed over the centuries.

You say you have never met an immoral, evil or blameworthy person.

I largely agree with this. But my temptation to pass judgement remains strong within me. I have met many people who are extremely dangerous and who don't share my understanding of the world, and this difference in their axioms or their experience is often taken as a form of culpability. Most people follow strong codes and reasoning. I remember the critic Clive James talking about Rupert Murdoch some years ago. Everyone was hoeing into Murdoch as an 'unprincipled scoundrel' - James responded with a quip - 'I think Murdoch is a man of principles, I just think they are the wrong principles.' The question always seems to come back to what do we do with this word 'wrong'?

I wonder to what extent such a non-dualistic viewpoint offers a solution to the split between materialism and idealism, as well as between atheism and theism. — Jack Cummins

The problem with this idea is that there is no demonstration that idealism is true. Sure, there are various inferences one can follow (a la Bernardo Kastrup), but the arguments aren't overwhelmingly convincing.

Idealism doesn't imply theism. It might get one to a kind of Schopenhauerian Great Mind - some instinctive form of will, without metacognition or a plan. But this is a fair distance from a god as is generally understood. And I don't think god is a helpful word.

His general perspective is one of the idea of 'God' as consciousness itself and of interconnectedness. — Jack Cummins

We are all one and everything is oneness has been a New Age monistic mantra - coming out of the theosophy movement and 1970's counterculture. God as a precondition of reality (consciousness itself) of which we are all fragments is a good story. But how do we test it? I'm not a fan of personal experince anecdotes. I wonder if 'theism' (an impersonal mental construct or unifier of experience) might be an inadequate and misleading word to use to describe this model of reality.

There are also theistic variations of idealism, but I am assuming for the purpose of this discussion you were not heading there yet.

1. I'd say there are no moral facts as such, because the idea is a kind of category error. On the other hand I'd say there are human facts, facts about humans and human flourishing, which justify the most socially important moral injunctions. I mean, they are justified just because they are socially important.

2. I believe we all have some sense of the good, but that what various individuals believe is actually good is often distorted by inappropriate social conditioning which can only be remedied by determined self-examination.

3. Goodness or the Good doesn't exist as an object which is open to observation in the way phenomena are, obviously, so in that sense there is no objective good. But I believe there are objective facts about what leads to human flourishing and what works against it. — Janus

Hard to disagree with this. Well put.

Yes, because there is ultimately no rational reason for morality. In absence of an underlying non-rational spiritual reason, morality is simply nonsensical.

You can easily learn to extensively torture and mercilessly kill captives for the mafia. It is certainly a pragmatic choice because they pay you good money for doing that. If you can become an executioner for the official ruling mafia, and learn to enjoy your job, why not become one for an unofficial mafia? It even pays better. It has more perks and more fringe benefits. I don't see any "reason" not to do it. — Tarskian

Well, in fairness, people can also be part of the Catholic church and rape and abuse children with few consequences (unless you're caught by the secular legal system and sent to jail). Or in the case of Islam, follow a religion which was established by a pederast with a 9 year-old wife.

Behaving like a a mafia boss is pretty much a suitable account of how gods behave in Abrahamic religions. They bully, kill and torment anyone who doesn't follow orders. Sometimes they even commit genocide.

The problem with religions is that they provide no objective foundation for morality. All we have is people's interpretations and personal preferences about what they have determined any given account of a god considers to be good. Hence, even within the one religion, there is no agreement on morality, about abortion, the role of women, trans rights, capital punishment, stem cell research, homosexuality, euthanasia, killing in war, etc etc.

For me, personal morality includes the principle that guides me in my personal behavior and it’s very simple - to the extent possible, my actions will be in accordance with the guidance of my intrinsic nature, my heart if you will. — T Clark

I think it's probably the case that most of us just act and rarely think about morality. (But we might think about the law.) Morality is for academics and for conversations and for post-hoc justifications.

I think the intrinsic nature of many people leads them to harm others. They don't necessarily do this out of deliberate evil, it's the by-product of how they see the world.

Can you think of any moral discussion you've heard or participated in that was useful and if it was why was this?

They can never take for granted that they will avoid the need to morally blame and punish others if those values don’t include a means of understanding why other deviate from the normative expectations. — Joshs

But isn't there a great deal of pleasure and exhilaration derived from such judging and punishing? You might as well try to stop people from having sex.

The point of the O'Hagan piece is showcasing Assange's narcissism and incipient sociopathy. If accurate, this may have more significant implications than the payback of the vested interests we've witnessed so far. But as I say I haven't made a study of Assange and his place in media.

There's also the famous 28,000 word hatchet job by his putative biographer Sean O'Hagan - 2014, London Review of Books.

Well argued.

I don't want to die today or any day soon. But if it happens, I am ready. My affairs are in order. My death won't matter in the wider context of life on Earth. But I don't want to die and so if I did, my death would go against my plans and hopes. This would be bad. But I would be oblivious once dead, so there's that. It's a minor paradox.

Intervention sometimes takes the form of an errand. — Paine

Certainly. Or it's part of your job.

parenting has interfered with my most self-destructive tendencies. — Paine

Me too.

Those who have a strong stance on suicide almost necessarily have a strong stance on what happens when we die. — Leontiskos

I'm not so sure of this. In the suicide interventions I have conducted, many are theists. While they fear god's judgment in the afterlife, they still feel compelled to kill themselves. I think this subject is fairly nebulous. My sense is that people know they are going to continue to suffer here and will take their chances with a god or an afterlife later. The unknown fear is preferable to the known experience.

As a sideline, I worked as a contributor and feature writer for almost 20 years and I ghost wrote speeches and papers for various folk. I watched news and comment industry (print) eat itself and die around me as it raged against changing times and fading political literacy. I guess the term journalism is flexible.

I wonder if A will be alive this time next year. No doubt he now has a platform beyond even the dreams of Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

And everytime when someone makes an universal statement that ought to apply to everything, watch out! — ssu

Does this principle apply to this statement? :wink:

So, my sympathies are definitely much more Muslim nowadays. So, the problem is not necessarily Christianity but the lack of enthusiasm of the Christians. But then again, they completely mishandled the reformation too. — Tarskian

Thanks for the background. I thought as much. You're definitely interesting, even if we disagree about many things. I appreciate your generally good nature and politeness. Some folks get pretty abusive on here sometimes.

By the way, atheists really need to prove that they are not making use of omniscience for their impossibility claim that an omniscient entity does not exist. This burden is on them and not on us. — Tarskian

I’ve not met many atheists who would argue this. How would we know? Atheism is as botched and bungled as any religion in its range of strident and moderate advocates. I’ve met atheists who believe in ghosts, fairies and Bigfoot. Perhaps be a bit more cautious about your characterisation of atheists. I don’t consider all theists to be stupid rubes.

Out of interest, what type of believer are you? Muslim or Christian, or something less specific?

No. Of course journalism proper is hard to find these days, obscured as it is by all the corporate shills and entertainers. But some pretty serious commentators like Robertson and Varafakis consider A to be a legit journalist. I haven’t followed the case closely enough.

Do you consider him a journalist or a document dumper, with Wikileaks a mail box?

If someone is not interested in the issue, fine, but then his answer should still get mapped to the truth value unknown/maybe. — Tarskian

So you would have 'don't care' mapped to unknown?

:up:

I don't have a problem with suicide. If people experince life as so miserable that they would prefer to die (and this can come about through mental ill health, illness, trauma, old age, etc) I completely understand.

But what is sobering are the number of people I have met who have tried to kill themselves and failed or been 'talked around' and then have recovered from their despair, only to gain a different perspective on life and the problems they face. Generally those people are extremely thankful they did not succeed in killing themselves. This to me suggests that intervention is important.

There are many people who use threats of suicide and attempts to gain attention. There are others who are not thinking clearly and only contemplate suicide because they are not able to imagine better solutions to whatever issue they are dealing with. There are people who appear to have no alternative - extreme pain or trauma. There are some who are just overwhelmed and for whom suicide is an overreaction. And also those who see suicide as a kind of fitting punishment for their family. I have spent a lot of time as part of a suicide intervention team in my city over 20 years, so I have seen most types of self-harm presentations.

As someone with actual training in philosophy, what do you make of arguments?

Or do you think the supposed truths held by Marxists
— Tom Storm

Marxism has collapsed. Some religions are unsustainable. Nobody urges you to choose one of those. — Tarskian

That's irrelevant. The point is that Marxism has had way more power than the Taliban. The point is that this -

the Taliban unceremoniously deported NATO from Kabul airport, they achieved something that nobody else was able to do. Or do you think that you can do that too? — Tarskian

- might have been done by any number of fanatics (Castro, Hitler, Putin, whoever). And why ask me if I can do this? I am not an organisation. Nor do I belong to any organisation. Strange.

No, they can't. There is no justification for axioms. If an axiom can be justified, it is not a legitimate axiom.

Religion cannot demonstrate gods.
— Tom Storm

Math cannot demonstrate its axioms either. — Tarskian

The effectiveness of math can be demonstrated through its consistency and predictability. Religions by contrast are a mess of contradictory and conflicting beliefs, with no agreed upon goals or values - even within the single religion. It is unpredictable and inconsistent. To say religion is 'effective' in the way you are doing is to say that an atomic bomb is a good way to keep your lawn short.

But what about religion? You can't even demonstrate that religion (whichever one you pick) has anything to do with a gods. Even if a god or ten exist, there is no way of demonstrating which religion is true and reflects the will of that god.

What is there about religion that does not work? — Tarskian

We are talking about god and math. Religion is politics. Forget it. To call religion effective is an equivocation fallacy. It's not the same kind of demonstration of effectiveness as math. Math axioms can be shown to work. Religion cannot demonstrate gods. All it can do is what secular humanists or even communists might do - organize.

Religion also demonstrates its utility. The government fears us more than the result of its elections. So, the tool achieves its goal. — Tarskian

I would call that evidence of religion's disfunction. Biblically literalists, highjacked by corporate power - who are, incidentally, also scorned by vast numbers of members within the same religion are simply fearful of modernity and are retreating into strident accounts of their myths. This disorganized shambles is well understood. Even religious scholar and religious apologist, Karen Armstrong presents this hypothesis.

You see, when the Taliban unceremoniously deported NATO from Kabul airport, they achieved something that nobody else was able to do. Or do you think that you can do that too? — Tarskian

You make me laugh. We know that people can be galvanized by deception and undemonstrated beliefs. A crowd that believes something is just a crowd that believes something. Truth is a separate matter. Or do you think the supposed truths held by Marxists, Hare Krishna, Scientologists are all 'really' true because each of these groups has been effective in significant ways?

In that case, you will need to reject mathematics as it is staunchly foundationalist, i.e. axiomatic. Since science is not viable without math, you will also need to reject science. — Tarskian

Not so. We accept science and math because they work pragmatically, subject to contingent factors like communities of practice, culture and language. Science doesn't uncover reality, it gives us reliable and tentative models which are iterative and replaced when better models come forward. I suspect this process is never complete. Math can be understood in numerous ways including intuitionism, formalism, constructivism, Platonism, empiricism, not to mention postmodern accounts of math.

What you are doing, is comparing apples to oranges. — Tarskian

So your argument is that religion doesn't work and god can't be demonstrated, but we should believe it anyway because it is an orange and ideas like 'demonstration' are apples?

I'm not interested in an undergraduate debate about religion or gods. My point is that math demonstrates its utility, god can't even demonstrate it's existence. Hence faith. I don't think there's much point going on in this way. Take care.

There are three possibilities concerning the belief in God: true, false, indeterminate. Religion believes it is true. Atheism believes that it is false. Agnosticism is indeterminate. — Tarskian

From American Atheists website:

To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods.

It's important to understand how people use words.

I would call myself an agnostic atheist - A fairly common category these days. I can't know there is no god. I don't believe there is a god. Atheism is not necessarily a knowledge claim.

Now one might claim we can know there is no Zeus, Ganesh, Zoroaster or Jesus. But we can't know whether or not there is some unspecified theistic entity (whatever that might look like).

There is no knowledge without belief. Furthermore, at the foundationalist core of knowledge you always find necessarily unjustifiable beliefs. Rejecting the foundation of unjustifiable beliefs amounts to rejecting the entire edifice of knowledge. If you can't have faith, you cannot know either. — Tarskian

I'm not a foundationalist.

All this is a distraction. We still can't demonstrate that there are any gods. We can demonstrate that math works. We seem unable to get past this point.

Dunning-Kruger is about people who think that they know but in fact they don't. Since atheism requires omniscience while faith in God does not, doesn't Dunning-Kruger rather describe atheists and not religious people? — Tarskian

Omniscience? Straw man, there. As an atheist I put it: I do not belive the proposition that gods exist. I have heard no good reason to accept it and the idea of gods do not assist me to make sense of my experince. This is how many contemporary atheists view the subject. We do not say there is no god, that would be making a positive claim. For many, atheism is about belief not knowledge. But this entire 'gods or not gods' is a really boring debate. Let's not let a little thing like gods come between us. :wink: