The only McCarthy book I have really liked is Suttree - which I adore. I found BM forced and mannered. But I recognize I am an anomaly...

That shouldn't be so abnormal a concept. Why is it to you? — Outlander

I'm not saying it is abnormal. I just don't think that way. My favorite books are celebrations of language and ideas and are aesthetically pleasing to me. No tome has 'improved' me. Perhaps deep down there are incremental renovations to my psyche that this or that book has contributed to, but nothing sticks out. However I can think of some non-fiction books that have abraded me - Nemesis on Hitler and In the Court of the Red Tsar on Stalin.

Come on, give us a little more than that. Why are you a better or different person, at least, how has your mind or perspective on the world around you progressed or at least changed based on what you've read? — Outlander

Interesting. I can't think of a single book that has changed me like this. The notion of being a better person or progressing in some way seems very quaint to me. Is this how you judge books?

Sounds like a good contender

corporate speak is the death of originality — Rob J Kennedy

I suspect it's more than that. It's a sublimation for transcendental categories via management theory, as if 'true management' is an equivalent to philosophy's ancient quest for 'the good'. Having sat through management theory workshops with corporations, government departments, banks and for purpose organisations, what comes across is an appetite for endless system building worthy of Scholasticism.

Sure I do. But they haven’t seriously shifted any paradigms. Or, they haven’t shifted any serious paradigms. While they may have advanced this or that line of thought, they haven’t altered thought itself. — Mww

Fair enough. I wonder are there any generally agreed upon key indicters for when a paradigm has shifted? @Joshs?

How is my position objectionable? — Gregory

I guess one could say that centuries of philosophy have yet to demonstrate that Platonism and transcendence are true. But I'll concede as faith based positions they have a perennial appeal (no pun intended).

@Banno is not a logical positivist and I recall him criticizing scientism on numerous occasions. Seems to me he is simply arguing for a more careful approach to philosophy, to be more scrupulous with one's assumptions and the use of language.

I heard recently Richard Dawking saying "we dont know how consciousness arises but we are working on it". Isn't the brain enough? — Gregory

It's Richard Dawkins. And I don't recall anyone here bringing him up as a philosopher, despite what the media in their confusions might do for clicks and confected outrage. He may be correct on this. I doubt many on this site are qualified to know.

I think the debate between those who would hold to transcendental entities and those who do not is one that seems vital and worth pursuing. I don't believe that humans have access to any other realm and not being a theoretical physicist or significant intellectual with documented work behind me in neuroscience or philosophy (like most here), I will simply sit back and watch the endless debate between the self-educated and untheorized play out.

Ehhhh….sorry, man, but I have such little interest in the soft sciences. — Mww

That's fine, I am just curious. So you don't see Derrida or Deluze, say, as philosophers. Maybe I should have said post-modernism.

Incidentally - where would you put post-structuralism in all this? Footnotes to Kant?

I have seen this reply:
The problem is that transcendental arguments only work if you grant intelligibility on the front end because a transcendental argument is an argument for the necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of experience. But this presents a problem for him [the pressup], if he doesn’t grant intelligibility he can’t reason transcendentally but if he grants intelligibility he grants autonomous reasoning which is an implicit denial of his conception of the Christian worldview. — Lionino

I've heard variations of this too. A question for you. If God grants intelligibility and autonomous reasoning is possible, doesn't this just allow for the Christian notion of free will? I have heard one presup deal with this problem with - 'God is the necessary condition of intelligibility and guarantees reason on earth, but he allows humans to use reason for good or ill, via freewill.'

Transcendental arguments might get someone to arrive at the god hypothesis, but getting to 'Jesus died for our sins' was always going to be an additional leap. There are also Muslim apologists who use presuppositional apologetics to 'prove' Islam.

A related argument used by some preups is the evolutionary argument against naturalism.

The conclusion of the evolutionary argument against naturalism is that if our cognitive faculties are a product of naturalistic evolution, there is no inherent guarantee that our beliefs are true. Natural selection may have shaped our cognitive abilities in a way that prioritizes survival and reproduction over the accurate perception of reality. (note Donald Hoffman makes the same argument to support his version of idealism)

Alvin Plantinga, a leading exponent of the argument, suggests that if naturalism is true, it undermines its own validity. If our cognitive faculties are not reliable in providing true beliefs, then the naturalist's confidence in the truth of naturalism itself becomes suspect, as it relies on those very cognitive faculties. In other words, we need a transcendental source for truth.

Me too. Wish I could get the first 30 years back — Rob J Kennedy

I find it hard to trust those who haven’t wasted their youth. I wish I could have pissed about forever but I was forced into a real job.

“Real youth is that which exerts itself in forging ahead to an adult future, not that which lives confined with accommodating resignation in the limits assigned to it” — Rob J Kennedy

I find her syntax somewhat tortured (perhaps the translation) I tried to read her in the 1980’s but found her largely incomprehensible.

What do you like about her ideas?

I have a friend who works for one of the biggest tech companies in the world. And, they want to know what his essence is. He tells me they have regular meeting about how him and his staff feel about themselves and the company. Are they asking if the essence of the company is alligning to the essence of the employee? He thinks they are. This companies mission statment is, the essence of the company. And employees are expected to not just agree with it, but to own the same essence to correctly align themselves to their priorities. — Rob J Kennedy

Most big companies do a variation of this which often used to be called a 'values alignment'. Corporate culture and management theory regularly spins a kind of quasi religious cult-like ethos. The expectation is that employees will and should be be dedicated to the company's mission, vision and values in an almost transcendental way. I say fuck them. But many employees in my experience fall for it and I guess they might have a big salary as additional motivation.

The puzzle that strikes me is why he thinks his approach might change the mind of an atheist. — Ludwig V

I've met a few people who were converted by this approach, so I suspect it works on some and for a while it was a refreshing change from Aquinas' five ways arguments and the like. Most start with a variation of Kant's transcendental argument for god. If you see a skilful practitioner in full flight, they are fun to watch. But like any skill, some are terrible at it and resort to a kind of bullying. I can see how they might get to a god, but getting to Jesus is much harder.

Alex Malpass is a public figure and philosopher who has dealt with presups several times — Lionino

:up: Yes, Malpass is good on this.

Maybe I do not have the right tools yet. A possibility, that mind has yet to be measured and weighed. But I wonder, could it be because these things are not there – there is no individuated thing being me, in me, or in mind, that one would distinguish from the brain that is seeking something distinct? I was satisfied when I saw my eyeball seeing that there is body. Why do I still not confirm the shape of the soul such as "I' when it is I seeking this soul? — Fire Ologist

These are all fairly standard questions/observations which occur to many at some point in their lives. My question is a respectful, so what? What are you hoping to find and how does this nebulous introspection differ to smoking weed and postulating infinities?

As humans we can generate endless, different types of questions and be struck by the ineffable. Who are we really? What is mind? No doubt there are endless ways in which such enquiries can be posited and answered. Are you looking for an answer that will change how you see yourself and how you live?

The strategy is undoubtedly ingenious, but doesn't offer the sceptics and unbelievers much incentive to engage. Why do you like them? — Ludwig V

Mainly because, as you say, they're ingenious. Quite a stunt to take reason (the skeptic's prized tool against 'superstition') and use the very possibility of rationality as proof for god. But they can also be monotonous and repetitive.

I was surprised to discover when I first ventured into this on-line world, that many people seem to be dead serious about the arguments. — Ludwig V

Me too.

(I can never decide whether God should be a he, a she, a s/he or an it.) — Ludwig V

:up: In light of recent fashion, I think, 'they/them.'

My favourite apologists are the currently burgeoning presuppositionalists, who bypass empiricism completely (via the transcendental argument and Cornelius Van Til).

But we should remember Laplace's famous reply I had no need of that hypothesis. — Ludwig V

This was generally my position. God fails to assist me in any sense making, primarily because theism has scant explanatory power. Tackling the various proofs/arguments are just for sport.

:up: Thanks.

There is a list of more detailed issues, all well known in Christian theology, none of which have what I would call a solution. In alphabetical order, divinity/humanity of Jesus, original sin, redemption through sacrifice or scapegoating, transubstantiation, trinity, — Ludwig V

Indeed. I have never understood why a god would ruin his weekend (the crucifixion) and (as per the old quip) sacrifice himself to himself to save us from himself because of a rule he made himself?

The very idea of invisible god/s who can only be known through old books and human testimony seems incoherant. I think the religious term for this is ineffable. :wink:

The facts it discloses are registered and understood by beings - by human beings.’ But we don’t notice that, because of the ostensibly objective and observer-independent nature of scientific observation. We think that these facts are entirely observer-independent, which in one sense is true, but in a deeper, philosophical sense is not. — Wayfarer

I get the point and it interests me. Reality is constructed for us via an intersubjective human experience. This seems to me to be a similar point Nietzsche makes when he argues that truth is always interpreted through the lens of individual perspectives. He takes it further and says that there is no objective or universal truth that stands independently of human interpretation. While you would accept the possibility of something approaching a Platonic realm. Nietzsche also subdivides perspective into both cultural and individual blindspots. His somewhat brutal visual approach to this struck me as apropos.

It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We behold all things through the human head and cannot cut off this head; while the question nonetheless remains what of the world would still be there if one had cut it off.

- Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

it amuses and surprises me when people think an obedient servant to corporate power, a conservative like Biden is significantly of the left. Just goes to show how muddled political thinking can be.

So, I am asking to what extent does the existence of 'God', or lack of existence have upon philosophical thinking. — Jack Cummins

The problem is how this might play out cannot be separated from how such beliefs may be held. It depends entirely upon what kind of theist or what kind of atheist one is. Many people in either camp are completely ill-equipped for any kind of critical refection, let alone a philosophical discussion. The critical issue associated with any position is how it is applied.

Problem is people focus on Dawkins etc, which distracts us. Remember atheism may just be a lack of belief in gods, but embrace any manner of 'supernatural' positions such as idealism, reincarnation and astrology. I've known many such atheists. And there are theists whose notion of god is so removed from anything personal and knowable that they are virtually atheists and are skeptical of any supernatural ideas.

Understand. Thanks.

Indeed. That is a salient question. I often ask something similar when I hear the old 'both parties/leaders are equally shit' trope. Things are rarely equally bad. I practice harm minimisation in politics. Clearly some options are far worse than others, even if the less worse is still fundamentally flawed.

Kant's is an epistemological, not an ontological, idealism. — Janus

Looks like it to me. I assume you mean that Kant's project is concerned with the nature and source of knowledge, and emphasizes the role of the mind (structures of human cognition) in shaping our understanding of the world. Kant is not (as far as I can tell) arguing that reality is dependent upon mind as Berkeley would hold it - 'immaterialism'. I have not read Kant on Berkeley but I am assuming this would be instructive.

I hear the Existentialists are mighty fond of him, too. — Joshs

What are your thoughts on the existentialist reading of Nietzsche? Is this illustrative of his fecundity, or is it a partial misreading in your assessment?

I have deleted my earlier, less than generous response.

You are doing your best and there's no real merit in my debating your presuppositions here. Go well.

I will leave you with this. The Ubermensch, as I understand it, transcends all foundational thinking and values. FN, though a shy, respectful and sensitive person in life, was like a one man demolition crew in print.

I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.

― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

:up:

But I do know that the concept of God is incoherent — Ludwig V

Have you got a breif sketch of why you might argue this? I take a similar position, but I am curious how others see this.

If anything, violent video games might provide an outlet, an occupation of otherwise idle time. Take away violent video games and idle hands my find worse things to do in our shit world. — Nils Loc

Indeed. Which is why some also say sport is a sublimation for aggression.

Hence George Orwell's famous observation:

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.

I am aware that evolution works by killing off the majority of life that is not most highly adapted. — Brendan Golledge

No, that's not my argument. I said nothing about evolution. I said that god/s built a creation largely dependent upon cruelty and predation.

It is mostly Christians who are concerned with "Do I envy?" "Am I lusting after my neighbor's wife?" for their own sake, rather than as a part of an external moral system. — Brendan Golledge

No. Islam does this. Sikhs too. Bahai. Parsi, Jews. How many other religions do you know well?

From arguments such as these (many of which I worked out as an atheist), I realized that Christianity already said many of the things that I came up with by myself. — Brendan Golledge

I suspect that you come from a Christian culture, so it would be a challenge for you to differentiate your ideas from notions already formed by encultured Christianity. This is something which effects all of us born into a culture shaped by centuries of a specific worldview.

I think you have to choose one of these 3 options:
1. There is an ultimate beginning
2. Existence is infinitely old with no beginning
3. The causality of existence is circular (like maybe somebody will go back in a time machine to create the big bang) — Brendan Golledge

Actually there's a 4th option which I go with. We don't know. There's no imperative to choose a placeholder explanation we can't demonstrate.

They are speculation that I find interesting and meaningful, but they are in the end, speculation. — Brendan Golledge

Sure. Speculate away. :wink:

Granted that some lack the ability, but again, that's no reason to reject the reality of the conditions under which the sky is seen as blue. — jkop

I’m not a philosopher, so I make no claims about what is real. It’s common sense to believe what we observe is real but anything common sense is worth questioning. I tend to hold that it doesn’t matter either way, since almost all of us behave as realists the moment we engage with what we know as the external world. Even the idealists.

Yet being insignificant in physics is not a failure in being real in biology where colours are significant. Hence colour realism. — jkop

But I don't think this helps us much. Colour isn't real in biology either. The colours we 'know' are created by our biology. Other animals see different colours, less or more than humans. Or none. If this realism, it is not external to human experince.

Plato: "You're stuck in the cave! You're busy dealing with the shadow of the forms. True knowledge is in the world of ideas."
Aristotle: [Your answer] — dani

Get out of my light.

But it is frustrating to me that most secular people do not take morals as seriously as Christians do. — Brendan Golledge

I would say secular thinkers are often way more obsessed with morality than Christians. Partly because Christians often think morality is simply doing god's will, so no deliberations required. Whereas secular people often focus on justifications of morality outside of any magic man (god). Hence the multitude of secular moral systems philosophy has spawned and keeps generating.

Here's one problem as I see it. Religious people actually have no grounding for morality. All they express is personal preferences. Subjective interpretations of god's will. Which explains why on any given moral matter, Christians (since you raised them) are utterly inconsistent and divergent. If what god wanted was truly clear then there would be no debate about euthanasia, stem cell research, abortion, capital punishment, gay rights, trans rights, the role of women, war, etc, etc. Religious folk make personal subjective choices on what they think their version of god would want us to do.

You express statements which are just claims - to be an ubermensch I think you may need to do some purging of such romantic claims as:

Christianity is the religion most concerned with the heart. — Brendan Golledge

A creator God, as-such, seems to innately require omnipotence (there are also other arguments for this too), so I don't how claiming that God is omnipotent is an arbitrary claim. — Brendan Golledge

I don't think it's arbitrary, I said it was just a claim. If there are gods (how do we know there is just one), how do we know they or it are/is omnipotent? We can't just accept the claims of classical theism at face value. Would an ubermensch take cues from traditional theology?

So, looking at nature ought to be a good way of inferring the nature of God. — Brendan Golledge

That's just a claim. But if I did this I would infer from nature that the god who made it is an evil and cruel monster. Imagine creating an entire ecosystem where the suffering and death of most animals and insects is built into the model. Animals eat each other alive in order to live. An omnipotent god could have created any kind of self-sustaining realm it wanted, so why settle on one where predation, suffering and eating the living flesh of other blameless creatures is a prevailing reality?

So, I share with the Christians their concern for proper orientation of the heart, and share with secular people a great respect for science. — Brendan Golledge

Which Christians do this exactly and how do you demonstrate this? I am secular. I think of science as a reliable tool that furnishes tentative answers which are often subject to revision. It does not make proclamations about truth.

How exactly does one go about finding the 'proper orientation of the heart?' This romantic notion is pretty opaque to begin with. What does it actually mean? 'Proper' and 'heart' in this sentence can be defined in a multitude of potentially contradictory ways.

I think the main point of the Ubermensch is to be able to generate one's own values — Brendan Golledge

And I would have thought jettisoning all the ghosts of magic men, goblins, spirits and the supernatural is where that might start. You're not generating your own values if you consciously start with tradition.

I do not share with Christians faith that any particular text or teaching was directly inspired by God. — Brendan Golledge

Fair enough.

I notice that you didn't mention anything in my post at all until I got to God. I wonder if you are just caught up on the word "God" instead of the actual content of what I'm saying. — Brendan Golledge

Fair comment.

God seems foundational to your OP and it stuck me as the most interesting part of what you said.

I answered this in my original post:

Right now I think that if God were truly omnipotent and omniscient, then he made the universe exactly how he likes it, and that the universe does not need further tinkering. — Brendan Golledge

This doesn't resemble an answer to me, it is a claim heaped upon other claims. I was trying to unpack why you might have arrived here. It's so Christian, which is unexpected and obedient to convention. A surprise, given this is discussion about an ubermensch - someone who transcends such foundational games.

I think deism is likely true, due to first-mover arguments. — Brendan Golledge

Deism seems to be a fairly pointless belief. If a god or gods made the world and fucked off and don't care about us, what is the point? Is all we know about some kind of gods is an inference derived from the hoary old argument from contingency, then we really have nothing to go on and no real reason to care. We also have no way of knowing what this deserter god thinks about morality.

Even if there were a creator being, you also have no way of knowing what this being's relationship to morality is. Is this being the foundation of morality, or does this being reside separately to morality? We simply can't say.

If many people could be convinced of these moral frameworks, then they could build a community around that. — Brendan Golledge

We can build a moral system and community around any number of moral systems. The issue is finding agreement. But morality seems to arise out of a historical process and is a changing conversation over time, I doubt it can be imposed over us all based on some fresh reasoning.

So, I believe that everything that positively exists is pleasing to God, and I try to see it. — Brendan Golledge

You seem to know an awful lot about an anonymous deistic god who fucked off and has no contact with people. Where does this come from? How did you rule out that this creator isn't evil (in human terms) a monstrous being who made a world that seems to produce suffering and hatred?

:cool:

The natural sciences are observational-experimental methods, force-multiplied by mathematical techniques, for the manifest purpose of publicly correcting "common sense" experiences (e.g. folk psychologies, customary intuitions (i.e. stereotypes, clichés, X-of-the-gaps stories, etc), cognitive biases, institutional (dogmatic) superstitions, etc) in order to testably explain aspects of the natural world and ourselves. — 180 Proof

With the right woman, that kind of gorgeous language will get you laid around here. Better than any sonnet….

The authors propose an alternative vision- scientific knowledge is a self-correcting narrative made from the world and our experience of it evolving together. To finally "see" the Blind Spot is to awaken from a delusion of absolute knowledge and to see how reality and experience intertwine.

Sounds very interesting. I've read some essays by Thompson and Varela and seen a few lectures. I've been particularly struck by how humans co-create reality together. I suspect this approach might disestablish notions of God and the transcendent, along with notions of absolute reality held by some scientific positions.

:up: Nice quote and thank you. Is there an essay, perhaps, on this you can think of that might be readable to a layperson?

I'm trying to understand the creative parameters, the innovation in this process of 'bringing forth' or 'productive seeing'. He makes it sound as if ordinary life could be riddled with innovation and originality.

:up:

The definition, as with most words used in a philosophical manner is always the stumbling point. When I say essence, I mean it from a poetic sence. — Rob J Kennedy

There's an important use of essentialism in philosophy and critical theory discourse.

From Wikipedia:

Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity.[1] In early Western thought, Plato's idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an "idea" or "form". In Categories, Aristotle similarly proposed that all objects have a substance that, as George Lakoff put it, "make the thing what it is, and without which it would be not that kind of thing".[2] The contrary view—non-essentialism—denies the need to posit such an "essence".

An example of this idea being parsed is in gender identity discourse. Is gender a case of essentialism or is it performative (e.g. Judith Butler)... that kind of thing.