The thread has generated some rich discussions. I love that we can put things out here and be open to revising our thinking and, where necessary, tweak, or change our views. This is what philosophy is about.

BTW, this topic has made me think, "what do people consider overtly Christian? " — Count Timothy von Icarus

Great question. Given the immense variations and range of Christian traditions, I imagine you could argue almost anything in this space. There are Christian fascists, Christian socialists, Christian literalists, Christian radicals... What do they have in common? Not much of substance I would have thought. Can we really say that the message/teaching of Jesus in the various scriptures (assuming this can be clearly articulated) is shared by all or most traditions? And if you break down the tradition to some essential principles, does this reduce the Christian teaching to bland pap a.k.a. motherhood statements?

I understand what you are saying, but what other option is there? Using logic and reason won't work on everyone all of the time, but it must work on some people at least part of the time. Otherwise, no one would ever change their minds. One of the most useful things, in my experience, is to point out a contradiction or inconsistency in how people think. Even if they don't admit it at the time, that will get most people to reflect upon their beliefs and where their reasoning may have gone wrong. — GRWelsh

I used to think this and I don't entirely disagree. However, I suspect the value of sound reasoning plays a small role in people's beliefs and is of little importance to them. It's more about how ideas make them feel and the community they have around them - belonging and contentment. The question you always have to ask is what incentive is there for someone to change their worldview? Reason is pretty low on most people's priorities - but having reasons isn't - meaning, identity, community, belonging, a shared worldview with others - they are good reasons, regardless of the inherent reasoning.

You may be right. I suspect that frequently beliefs and values are emotionally or dispositional driven, which can change with time, opportunity or experience. In any direction. I've seen atheists become Catholics and Scientologists. I've seen Jews and Catholics become Buddhists and atheists. I've even seen a Jewish Buddhist become a Hare Krishna. A friend of mine from a Greek Orthodox background became a Baháʼí , then an atheist and finally a fanatical follower of Landmark and a deist. Beliefs are generally part of people's sense making and community attachment and there may be any number of reasons to revise this in a world as changeable or diverse as ours. Unless you live in Afghanistan... Or you are content and conservative.

And then there is a final subset of atheists and theists who have something interesting to say and who add something to the conversation. That's were I'd think we'd all aim to fall. — Hanover

Amen to that. :up:

It is not a matter of doubting our own existence, but of knowing what we are. the most immediate certainty is that there is thought, sensation, feeling, experience. It does not follow that there is any substantial entity thinking, sensing, feeling, experiencing, — Janus

Nice - that's what I was getting at.

I may be wrong but presumably @Mikie would apply this principle to atheists too for the same reasons.

Just that they shouldn’t be treated as special — IF, and this is very important and maybe I wasn’t clear about, you assume Christianity is indeed one religion among others.

That includes those who argue against the existence of God! I think this is being overlooked. They too are treating Christianity as special. — Mikie

Cool. I agree. Thanks for indulging me.

Don't hate me, but I'm not sure I fully get your position. I read the words and understand the sentences and I also understand that you are not hating on religion per say, but you seem to me making a fairly simple point. Are you saying that if you inherit religious beliefs from your culture and upbringing, you are not entitled to treat these as if they are philosophy arrived at through careful reflection, nor a set of beliefs and values which others should also take seriously?

[ I agree. They do arise from different sources. Many Christians believe in God but not Satan. The Baptist church I attended decades ago argued that Satan was an allegorical figure or personification of misfortune and poor moral decisions.

It's a terrible response because it should be obvious that one can believe that God exists, yet still have the free will to not follow, worship, obey, or trust God (e. g. Satan, Adam & Eve, Jonah, etc.) — GRWelsh

Terrible responses and inadequate reasoning are often part of the fundamentalist worldview, so I don't think you're going to get far with this kind of argument. The other response is likely to be - 'God has his reasons, which as mere humans we can't possibly understand. I have faith God has a plan.' This is the argument I have usually encountered when the faithful are faced with challenges.

What do they say? You can't reason a person out of ideas that weren't arrived at by reason.

I know that's not necessarily the case, but I do think it's why atheists bristle at being called evangelicals, especially when that term is most often used to describe a way of thinking entirely contrary to their way of thinking. — Hanover

Interesting. I'm an atheist and it seems clear to me that there are atheists - usually secular humanists - who are essentially apologists; preaching, evangelizing, proselytizing on behalf of godlessness and the superiority of secularism. Some of this seems an understandable reaction to fundamentalism. Even more understandable when you hear how many secular humanists were former evangelicals themselves.

So would you be more attracted to 'thinking is occurring (as a presupposition), therefore I probably am? — universeness

Good question. I guess I am ok with 'I think therefore I am' as a presupposition. I'm just exploring the notion that if Descartes can imagine a reality wherein an evil demon has created an illusion of a world around us, then why did he assume the thoughts he experienced were his or that they were thoughts? Could an evil demon not also broadcast thoughts into one's mind? Might we in fact be many people in one body, etc...

Many people experience thoughts as someone else's in their heads. This would be enough to doubt the 'I am.'

It's not a huge point with me but it's kind of interesting.

Pretty indicative of occurring, I should think. — Mww

No argument there, but Lichtenberg's point (which I must have made unclearly or I am not following you) was that he might have said instead thinking is occurring and not also the latter part therefore I am. This, as I wrote, has been questioned by some and I kind of get it. But it's not going to convince all.

Yep. Not sure why I am still here, in this increasingly superficial chatfest. I guess the mods haven't noticed me. — Banno

Well, I appreciate your responses here. You keep me on my toes and actually know your philosophy. Your statement that 'philosophy is difficult' seems entirely on the money. You've alerted me to Midgley, Austin, Nussbaum, Searle and others and included papers for us to read. I would have thought that is what this site is about. Expressing differences of opinion with other members is surely a reasonable thing on a philosophy site.

Interesting response, it sounds like you are determined to distort my account.

So, you didn’t say...
No. I already made this point. Both are assumed. — ItIsWhatItIs

That's right I didn't say it, I paraphrased the point which has been said by others. Let's look at the full quote together and the context.

Nietzsche also argued that there is an assumption being made that there is thinking and that I know what thinking is. — Tom Storm

You had added this as a point (about thinking being assumed) yourself after me as if it hadn't been said yet.

I was trying to reference what people have said about the cogito. You were hung up on a word.

Are you happy with the word assumption/presupposition or not? I'm very happy to hear an alternative word. I'd be even happier to hear what you think of the cogito, which seems not to have come up in all this.

But if you want to pass that's cool too.

I'd like to go this whole discussion without defining it.

You literally just said that both the thinker & the idea of thinking are assumed. — ItIsWhatItIs

I literally did not. I said I had described these as assumptions, as a concern some might have. I was in fact referencing Nietzsche. You may notice from the conversation that I have no particular commitments in this space. I am simply interested in the various responses to the cogito.

the next is or was: what do you mean by “assumption,”i.e., what makes something an “assumption” — ItIsWhatItIs

A you and I both know, an assumption is like a presupposition, or something which is taken as a given.

What do you think of the cogito as a foundation of indubitable knowledge?

I am not saying that I swing to a 'hardcore' idealism, but have a general leaning towards the nature of 'symbolic truths'. From my current reading, I see the history of Christian ideas being partly related to historical gender wars, and other political issues, especially in the way Christianity wiped out paganism. Of course, a literal paganism may be problematic as well, as opposed to a more symbolic approach, such as the way most writers on shamanism juxtapose imagination and the symbolic understanding of 'otherworlds'. — Jack Cummins

It seems to me that certain personalities are drawn to 'symbolic truths'. I like the idea of it but it has never worked for me. I can't think of any symbolic truths that have made an impact upon me in life. I seem to be immune for this form of conceptualization. Probably comes from having a working class, Calvinist upbringing (via the Baptist church).

Christianity didn't just wipe out paganisms, it also wiped out Christianity - forms of it that weren't seen as being in the service of the dominant account.

What is your attraction to the symbolic? Is it something about perceived truths which can't be expressed directly?

Here, I have to admit some underlying sympathy with idealism, but balanced against mythical narratives. — Jack Cummins

Why not? I find idealism in it's various forms and, such as I understand it, one of the more interesting aspects of philosophy.

Thanks. Very interesting.

:up:

There are a plethora of arguments given by Christians about Lucifer/Satan/the Devil and God which have no Biblical basis. Do they matter?

What can you say here about Satan and what God wants from us, based on actual Biblical scholarship?

A lot of what you are referring to might well come from popular culture and certain narrow fundamentalist interpretations of Christianity.

David Bentley Hart, a significant theological thinker, reminds us that Christianity has a strong universalist tradition - everyone is saved. (Book - That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation, published in 2019) Everyone eventually becomes reconciled with god - god is not a monster who would torture someone forever just for being a freethinker. The infinite love of a creator is at odds with fundamentalist accounts of hellfire, which Hart argues were likely not part of original Christian traditions.

However as Noam Chomsky says - if the God of the Old Testament were real - as written - then he is a devil - a genocidal, misogynist, abusive parent... And this is just god getting things done.

There are numerous examples in the Bible of beings knowing "that" God exists, yet not believing "in" God -- such as Satan and the rebellious angels, Adam and Eve, Cain, Jonah and Judas. — GRWelsh

No, it's not that they 'don't believe in god'. How could they not, they've seen him in action? Satan has a role as a tempter and adversary. Some others ignore god's commands. Judas makes it possible for Jesus to fulfil his sacrifice so there are traditions (Gnostics) that consider him special.

If we have freewill in this space then the only way this can really work, as far as I can tell, is to know god exists and choose not to follow him anyway. If we don't believe he exists, or we have never heard of him, then we are not making a free choice not to follow him. We are unable to follow him because we think he is fictional. What you beleive in is not generally a matter of choice - you either believe in something or you do not

If 'I' does not really exist then does dualism, determinism and no free will, then not follow?
I currently don't find any arguments for any of these 3 proposals, convincing, do you? — universeness

Well, the real question is probably if 'I' isn't there, then what is? And the answer to this is, fucked if I know. :wink: There are philosophical views which would consider you and I to be dissociated alters of the same eternal conscious mind. But as you might say, do we have sound evidential warrant to accept this?

I'm just interested in the various understandings regarding this foundational and hoary chestnut of philosophy - the cogito, that is.

My thinking happens within my brain and your brain functions separately/independently from mine.
What evidence currently exists to refute this? — universeness

This seems to be the case. But we are getting perilously close to a layperson's discussion on neuroscience and consciousness.

Are you convinced by the cogito as a foundation for certain knowledge that can withstand doubt and skepticism?

o. I already made this point. Both are assumed.
— Tom Storm
... & you’ve yet to define what disqualifies a thing from being “assumed” or an “assumption.” When I first asked you, this was your response...
It's not about what I think assumption means.
— Tom Storm
This may be one of the least philosophical things that I think that I’ve ever heard (no disrespect is meant here, truly). Of course what you think a word means within your argument is significant. If it’s meaningless to you, how am I ever to grasp your meaning?

The salient point is that there may not a straight forward 'I am' as the Cogito suggests. The experience of thought insertion leads some folk to doubt that they are a self and that their thinking may not be their own.
— Tom Storm

Saying & thinking a thing are two different things. In other words, just because something is vocalized doesn’t mean that it’s true. — ItIsWhatItIs

If you can't grasp my meaning there might be bigger problem here than you being concerned about what an assumption is.

In fact, it's hard to imagine you don't understand it since you used the same word in the same way as me when you wrote this:

So, the thinker is assumed but the idea of thinking isn’t? What makes it that the latter isn’t but the former is? — ItIsWhatItIs

What have I missed? You seemed to have grasped my point rather well for someone who doesn't understand how assumption was being used. And it remains curious that you missed me saying this:

there is an assumption being made that there is thinking and that I know what thinking is. — Tom Storm

So we seem to agree on this point and I don't think there's a serious quibble about words being used.

Do you have any thoughts about the actual point being made? I'll concede it's not especially interesting of itself.

Saying & thinking a thing are two different things. In other words, just because something is vocalized doesn’t mean that it’s true. — ItIsWhatItIs

Agree. But where did you get the idea that something is being presented as 'true'. And what's this about saying and thinking? We know that the cogito was an attempt to identify that which cannot be doubted by a person. The point I made was that thought events do not necessarily convince everyone that there is an "I" at the centre.

Even a cursory glance at Wikipedia's pedestrian entry on cogitio ergo sum lists philosophers who make similar arguments -

The objection, as presented by Georg Lichtenberg, is that rather than supposing an entity that is thinking, Descartes should have said: "thinking is occurring."

One critique of the dictum, first suggested by Pierre Gassendi, is that it presupposes that there is an "I" which must be doing the thinking. According to this line of criticism, the most that Descartes was entitled to say was that "thinking is occurring", not that "I am thinking".

What do I think about these arguments? They are interesting but I'm not sure. I'm here to understand the range of views.

Incidentally I've just been listening again to a (long!) online debate between Vervaeke and Kastrup. It's reasonably congenial, although Vervaeke throws up many objections to Kastrup's idealism. — Quixodian

I'll check it out.

— Does Reason Know what it is Missing? Stanley Fish, NY Times — Quixodian

I've often enjoyed Stanley Fish - he's provocative and witty.

Anyway, Vervaeke's main concern is 'awakening from the meaning crisis' - that Western culture is undergoing a crisis of meaning, which manifests in a huge number of ways, rooted in the 'scientistic' view that the Universe is basically devoid of meaning. — Quixodian

Indeed and this has been a preoccupation of 'public intellectuals' for decades, from Aleister Crowley to Alan Watts. Carl Jung ran a similar project.

Australian academic John Carroll wrote a vicious tirade against humanism back in 1993 - Humanism: The Wreck of Western Culture. His message was similar. It started me thinking about those themes.

I suspect there has been some kind of meaning crisis throughout human history. But since the project of modernism has been to foster independent thinking and living as a reaction against the inflexible strictures of religious orthodoxy and the bigotries this has generally entailed, it's no wonder that people today are spoiled for choice and many feel adrift. Certainty has gone and society seems atomized - I find this exciting, but many fear it.

So, in this thread I am interested in exploring and considering this in relation to the understanding of the Christian story. How was Christianity constructed and how may it be deconstructed, especially in relation to the quest of philosophy. — Jack Cummins

I guess you may be asking in essence how do the teachings of Jesus stack up against other ethical systems in philosophy. We don't really know what the historical figure (assuming he existed in some form) Yeshua taught, but we do have old books - translations of copies of translations of copies, written anonymously many years, decades after the events. I'm not sure any definitive conclusion is possible.

How do you see Christianity as part of philosophy (are you talking about cultural Christianity and the influences of Stoicism and neo-Platonist thinking) or are you being less ambitious? There are many types of Christianity today and doctrines and beliefs are a question of interpretation and personal preferences. How are you proposing anyone can get to what it all really means?

I've watched a few of his talks and lectures. Interesting material. I'm curious about transjectivity (transcending categories of subjective and objective through co-creation/relatedness). There seems to be a bit of a wave of this material about - an attempt at rebuilding a discourse on meaning from the wreckage of humanism/scientism/materialism towards transcendental matters. Is Vervaeke a Platonist? I forget. I'm not sufficiently immersed in any of the important literature to get all that much from these on line sages but Vervaeke is an improvement on fellow Canadian Jordan B Peterson, who (and I may be wrong here) often seems to attempt a similar project, a type of restorative transcendentalism.

Thanks.

Ok but I'm not understanding how this relates to arts the master distains. What is an example of such an art?

One half of the Hegelian view is that the servant learns about power through becoming accomplished in arts the master disdains. — Paine

Intriguing. What is learned about power through this? Can you expand a little?

So, the thinker is assumed but the idea of thinking isn’t? — ItIsWhatItIs

No. I already made this point. Both are assumed.

Doesn’t the fact that those people think that presuppose that they’ve already determined themselves as thinkers in contrast to others? If not, how could they think that they were getting thoughts from someone else, i.e., distinguish between a sender & a receiver mind (so to speak)? — ItIsWhatItIs

The salient point is that there may not a straight forward 'I am' as the Cogito suggests. The experience of thought insertion leads some folk to doubt that they are a self and that their thinking may not be their own.

Aren't there problems with the cogito? Assuming that there is an 'I' doing the thinking. And what exactly is it we know about thinking?
— Tom Storm

What makes something an “assumption,” according to you? — ItIsWhatItIs

It's not about what I think assumption means. The idea of thinking assumes there is a thinker - that's essentially what the cogito says, right? "I" being the thinker ('therefore I am'). Here's one issue; I have known many people who experience thoughts who are convinced those thoughts are coming from someone else. How do we determine that any thinking you experience is yours, that there is a you, an 'I am'? In relation to "I think therefore I am' Nietzsche also argued that there is an assumption being made that there is thinking and that I know what thinking is.

Interesting. I haven't seen a Nolan film I've much likened to be honest - I find them contrived, dreary and portentous. But I thought it was just me. Friends have seen 'Oppy' and really liked it.

Besides the cogito, what absolute knowledge do we have? — Cidat

Aren't there problems with the cogito? Assuming that there is an 'I' doing the thinking. And what exactly is it we know about thinking?

I worked for many years with people experiencing schizophrenia, many of whom have thoughts they can't explain and that they believe not to be their thoughts. Thought insertion is a fairly common phenomenon.

The target here is not you, but the notion that what language is for is "mapping" the world. We do far more than just that. As if a map were the same as a bushwalk. — Banno

Maybe that's my fault for the tentative title of my OP. I wasn't sure at the time how else to put my question, which I guess amounts to trying to understand a little of what philosophy has posited about the relationship language has to the world. I didn't have a map in mind, that was just the word I typed when I posed the question.

Cups, whether observed or not, are a part of our experience. Not knowing of "things" whether or not they are physical "in themselves" is really not an epistemic matter, but a semantic one: our talk about things and their attributes is relevant only within the context of human experience. To assert a metaphysics, whether materialist, physicalist, idealist or anti-realist of what is outside of human experience is to speak inaptly, and that is what I meant by "we don't know". — Janus

Nice. I was about to put up something along these lines myself - about the semantic nature of this discussion and the scope of the word 'reality'.

My tentative conclusion is that there is a reality available to humans which we seem to share and actions taken in it may have significant consequences (war, climate change, death, etc). But we are unable to step outside this reality, even if there are reasons to believe that it is contingent and partial. (can you improve on this frame?)

I think @Banno might ask us do we have any good reason to posit a reality outside of our experience? Even using the word reality is problematic. I suspect 'lifeworld' is better but if one is not a fan of phenomenology this too might be problematic.

I think idealism would have something to say about the reality of the cupboard too.

Have you heard any arguments for antirealism that you think are more persuasive than others?

What do you think, ↪Tom Storm? Is the cup still physical when unobserved? Does it still have a handle? — Banno

I take it as a given that the cup and handle still exist when we don't see them.

:up:

Interesting material. I have read a little George Lakoff who also talks about embodied cognition. It certainly resonates with me.

“...there is no real person whose embodiment plays no role in meaning, whose meaning is purely objective and defined by the external world, and whose language can fit the external world with no significant role played by mind, brain, or body. Because our conceptual systems grow out of our bodies, meaning is grounded in and through our bodies. Because a vast range of our concepts are metaphorical, meaning is not entirely literal and the classical correspondence theory of truth is false.”

― George Lakoff, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought

What do you consider to be the best 2 Murakami books?

The world our language does map onto is the cognitively, linguistically modeled intersubjectively shared world we refer to as "the everyday world" which includes everything we know, including science. — Janus

:up:

If we understand metaphysics to be confined by phenomenology, as Heidegger does, t — Janus

Can you just clarify what you mean by 'confined by' here?

if we think of metaphysics as dealing with the precognitive "world", then I think it is a fact that we have no ability to communicate successfully about metaphysics. — Janus

Hmmm...

Any talk or claim about the precognitive "world" is literally senseless. — Janus

I can see this.

So, we know what we mean when we say that the world we share is a physical world, because we all experience the tangibility and measurability of that world, the tangibility and measurability which just are the characteristics that our notion of physicality consists, and is grounded, in. It seems to me that we do not know what we mean if we claim that the everyday world is mental, because that is simply not a part of our basic common experience. — Janus

This seems to be a rich source for further exploration. I like that you describe the physical world as a grounding characteristic that has meaning to us but is not necessarily the truth about a reality 'outside' of this experience.

The idea we do not know what we mean if we claim that - the everyday world is mental, because that is simply not a part of our basic common experience - is interesting. Does this mean to you that we cannot effectively describe models of idealism because we have no way of doing so outside of, perhaps, some kind of mystical experience?