My theism requires a creator. That's it. With it comes the power to create. From it, derives purpose, meaning, and a basis for morality missing in secular humanism. You cannot have an absolute morality without something anchoring it beyond human reason, which means murder is wrong unless I think it's not. It also establishes humanity as holy, sacred, and separated from all else. — Hanover

But that just sounds like a magic spell - it seems to be declaring that purpose, sacredness and objective morality exist because god exists. Presto! Can you explain how you know that a god makes this possible? Isn't it simply the case that theists formulate a subjective morality based on what they think a god wants? The personal preferences of theists seem to be the foundation of god-based morality. Hence the broad range and incompatible moral views theists hold, even within the one religion.

Your claim that absolute morality can only exist if there is a guarantee of that absolute morality is reasonable to a point, but it doesn't seem tied to anything substantive. Isn't it like saying absolute morality exists if there is absolute morality? I'm not clear how you have demonstrated 1) That there is a god 2) How you know that god is the foundation of morality. 3) How you or anyone knows what this god's morality consists of.

I'm sure your account of god is more subtle and philosophical than anthropomorphic and personal, but I wonder how you know anything about this 'entity' that can be used to guide any practices or choices made in life.

How do you feel about Kastrup's most extraordinary claim, that humans and all conscious creatures are dissociated alters of mind-at-large?

I initially thought that the need for a mind-at-large made Kastrup similar to Berkeley, for whom all consciousness exists in the mind of God. Like Berkeley, Kastrup requires some way to explain object permanence and refute solipsism. Kastrup explains the differences in his blog (August 13, 2015).

My formulation of idealism differs from Berkeley's subjective idealism in at least two points: (a) I argue for a single subject, explaining the apparent multiplicity of subjects as a top-down dissociative process. Berkeley never addressed this issue directly, implicitly assuming many subjects; and (b) I argue that the cognition of the non-dissociated aspect of mind-at-large ('God' in Berkeley's formulation) is not human-like, so it experiences the world in a manner incommensurable with human perception (details in this essay). In Berkeley's formulation, God perceives the world just as we do.

Mind-at-large is critical to Kastrup's position. I wonder how we can arrive at a reasonable belief that this entity is all there is and that we are all expressions of it?

Data is not built, it is the raw material. What is built is interpretation, what the data means - that is the difference between data and information. — Wayfarer

But wouldn't it be naive to think we have access to data that is unmediated or raw? Or are you saying that the raw material is like noumena - there is something there but we don't see it as it is.

If data is built by us from our perspective, then doesn't this come from 'inside' us - our cognitive apparatus, our values, our language?

But the answer I was looking for was: you can’t find it, because it’s not there. The perspective is always outside. — Wayfarer

Outside? I thought perspective came from inside us.

So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

Dramatic language. I don't disagree but what does this leave us with? Obviously the best we can do is develop tentative, fallibilistic accounts and theories that often work in the world pragmatically. I don't think this says we can use philosophy or spirituality to transcend the perspectival trap we appear to be in, or is this your proposed way out of the bottle?

where, in the objective data, is ‘the perspective’? — Wayfarer

I'd flip that, perhaps - where in the perspective is the objective data? Answer: who can say?

It's all in the perspective - the view from somewhere.

If you posit special significance for humanity, you're not concerning yourself with truth. You're just lying to yourself for some pragmatic reason. — Hanover

That's more like it. I hope this turns into a fruitful discussion. :wink:

I think it's very important to challenge all theistic claims Tom. YES! it does remotely matter. — universeness

I was saying whatever the story is meant to mean doesn't remotely matter.

I just asked my friend (a Catholic Priest) to explain the Trinity to me. After he stopped laughing he said that all three are dimensions of God which provide us with different levels of spirituality. Jesus provides redemption and everlasting life and a model of sacrifice; the holy spirit allows us to relate to God's message and communicates it to us; and God is the ineffable creator from which all emanates - including intelligibility, the true, good and beautiful.

Needless to say I am not a customer for any of this god business but I like to get the accounts people offer me as straight as I can. There are of course numerous accounts of the Trinity... this is just one of them.

@universeness Here you go, Comrade. :wink:

So that passage quoted from Magee, which I have no argument with, puts paid to Kastrup's notion of mind at large, and even to Schopenhauer's notion of "noumena as will", since "will' is a human category. — Janus

I would say that Kastrup would argue that Magee does not go far enough. For Kastrup all that is is mentation and for him mind at large is necessary because it allows - as Kastrup says 'for my car to remain extant in my garage when I go inside.' Mind at large allows for object permanence. I think in this way Kastrup is closer to Bishop Berkeley. Abstract from Kastrup's The Universe in Consciousness, 2018

I propose an idealist ontology that makes sense of reality in a more parsimonious and empirically rigorous manner than mainstream physicalism, bottom-up panpsychism, and cosmopsychism. The proposed ontology also offers more explanatory power than these three alternatives, in that it does not fall prey to the hard problem of consciousness, the combination problem, or the decombination problem, respectively. It can be summarized as follows: there is only cosmic consciousness. We, as well as all other living organisms, are but dissociated alters of cosmic consciousness, surrounded by its thoughts. The inanimate world we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of these thoughts. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other dissociated alters.

I tired to read books in Kindle form. I can't. Any articles I read I also ususally have to print out first. I have to have books - the feel, the smell, the technology of pages is part of the process of reading for me. Screens just don't hold my attention.

My surprise and puzzlement is about the continued interest in the illusion of imperative oughts among people who spend their lives studying morality - moral philosophers. — Mark S

Oh I see. Surely there must be several reasons. One being the attraction so many minds have for certainty and truth. Surely that quest has often created a type of blindness.

But that's not his hypothesis (or he's being disingenous). Kastrup's hypothesis is idealism. Idealism claims that this is all the dream of a cosmic mind/god. Mutations, entanglement, physics, the universe, the Big Bang, etc., none of it is real. It's all just elements of the dream. — RogueAI

Does he use this dream metaphor, I must have missed this?

To be fair he doesn't say 'it is not real' he says it is not what we think it is. All reality is mind and those mutations, the universe, entanglement, etc - are aspects of how mind presents itself when viewed through the dissociative divide - through our perspective as 'alters' of Mind-at-Large. It's an elaborate narrative and you'd need to read his detailed account to make better sense of it. At this point I don't have enough interest to do this.

Nice. Thank you.

This is nonsense. Of course you know what it's like to be you. If physicalists have to make this sort of move to salvage their position, they've lost. It's not convincing to anyone. — RogueAI

I didn't say this as a physicalist but as someone trying to make sense of 'what it's like to be.' Maybe you can explain what it means as I am unable to access an experience that coherently matches the statement.

Fair assessment. How do you respond to the claim that science is founded on a metaphysical position - that reality can be understood? Or do you view science as being less totalising than this claim and more tentative in its approach?

1) the continued philosophical interest in, and too common assumption of, “imperative oughts” that do not seem to exist and

2) the apparent lack of philosophical interest in universal moralities based on conditional oughts such as Morality as Cooperation Strategies.

Can anyone explain it? — Mark S

Yes. People aren't much interested in morality as a subject, but they're happy to hold unexamined 'oughts' which can be used to judge others. Morality functions as a series of prejudices and biases.

Sure. My answer was just a modest response to this:

There is no sensible meaningful answer to it. — creativesoul

Which I think overstates the case, for reasons I have spelt out. But it was a small point. And you're right the qualia debate is banal. Personally I have no idea what it's like to be me let alone you, or a fucking bat!

We all seem to enjoy thrashing out these issues, maybe by way of diversion. I don't see any profoundly important moral battle going on between metaphysical materialism and spiritualism in modernity.

The only form of materialism I find ethically and spiritually compromising is the kind of materialism that consists in attachment to excessive material profit, wealth and status, and I think that exists equally among people of all kinds of metaphysical persuasions. — Janus

:100: :up:

In any case, I don't think one's metaphysical views have any bearing on one's spiritual practice; on one's ability to realize equanimity, non-attachment, peace of mind or whatever you want to call it.

Whether you believe in an afterlife, in resurrection, rebirth or reincarnation or you don't believe in any afterlife at all is irrelevant. I find it most plausible to think that people are simply attracted to systems that accord with their personal views. — Janus

Again. :up: Nicely put.

Not relevant to my point. As I said,

What is it like? This is a question that elicits a rich source of experiential data from people, the answers are meaningful, but the question probably doesn't elicit specific, verifiable data. — Tom Storm

For instance, if you were involved in counselling or supporting people to recover from trauma (as I am) or a series of other similar activities, then the question 'what is it like' can be of immense significance in assisting people to navigate their experiences and identity.

Does that question even have an answer? It seems clear to me that it does not! Watching a sunset is not like anything. To quite the contrary, each viewing is different. One could watch the sun set as many times as one likes, and each time it will be different. — creativesoul

But each time it will involve (at the very least) watching and a sun. I agree that each experience is somewhat different, but so is each time we take a piss or eat a curry. But in each instance, there are elements that clearly distinguish taking a piss from eating a curry (unless there is beer involved). What is it like? This is a question that elicits a rich source of experiential data from people, the answers are meaningful, but the question probably doesn't elicit specific, verifiable data.

Do you have a link for that? — RogueAI

I spent a lot of time on his blog a while ago trying to nail down the story he is presenting to us.

I'm not sure I have the precise reference, but this is a start -

https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2012/07/meaningful-evolution.html

It does look like he is trying to have his cake and eat it, but maybe that's how it appears when someone builds a comprehensive account. It's human cognition that puts time and space into it. Natural selection is a process we have interpreted, based on our cognitive apparatus, and our understanding of consciousness, which we have interpreted as physicalism. I understand Kastrup sees evolution as an account of consciousness evolving and changing (our conceptual frame) over aeons.

Why should even "inanimate" matter not appear as striving, if it is fundamentally energetic? But a blind, striving will cannot explain how it is that we all see the same things in the world around us, unless the will generates real structures that are continually being formed and broken down by real forces. But this would just be a physicalist view, not an idealist one. — Janus

Well, I can only answer that here we are trying to project human understanding, our cognitive apparatus upon a highly complex account that requires a lot of text to describe. Since I am not Kastrup, I can only suggest reading him. I don't think you are right about it being a physicalist view - the entire point is it looks like physicalism to us but is mind when viewed from a particular perspective - us. I see no reason why consciousness, if that's all there is (as even the Hindu's believe) would not also appear to us as inanimate objects.

s it aware of us and does it have a plan for us. It all seems too nebulous and far out to me to be taken seriously as anything more than a wishful fantasy. There is only one more wishful step up to a Giod that cares about us. — Janus

These are the very same questions Kastrup poses and I don't think he has answered them. He'd be the first to say that his ontology raises matters for which he has no current account. I am not deep enough into him to respond fluently on this.

I think Mind at Large is a small 'g' god surrogate and occupies a similar foundational space and is the guarantor of being. It doesn't have a plan, however, since it has no metacognition. The idea is there is only mind and from this, all being emanates in various forms - creatures and objects. Object permanence comes via Mind at Large.

Another significant problem I have with the idea is that there is a huge body of consistent and coherent scientific evidence that tells us there we many cosmological events long before there were any minds. In order to accept the view that mind is fundamental I would need to discount all that evidence. — Janus

I don't think so. The issue here is that Kastrup would agree that conscious creatures emerged 'later' and the cosmological events or the 'reality' we have detected which predate life, like consciousness, is simply what mind looks like when viewed from a different perspective. We know it as 'physical'. In other words, inanimate objects and process are all aspects of consciousness, so there is no contradiction inherent in a notion of pre-life.

I'm a physicalist but I am open to 'steel manning' the idealist position as well as I can and trying to understand the model as best as I can.

My understanding of the narrative Kastrup presents is that all we know and can detect is consciousness as seen through a different perspective (across a dissociative divide). At the heart of this there is a Mind at Large - striving, instinctive, and not metacognitive. Conscious creatures emerged as dissociated alters from this great mind and have evolved. So evolution for Kastrup is a real thing, but it isn't physical - it manifests as physical to us and leaves its fossils and detritus, much as we have memories about our own past.

So we need to accept quite a narrative for all this to make sense to us. And critical to this idealist position it seems is Mind at Large or cosmic consciousness which provides the foundation for this account.

The question we can ask of this scenario is why did a great mind splinter off and develop dissociated alters over time (as we understand time) is consciousness engaged in an act of getting to know itself? What is the significance of our metacognition in this narrative?

Maybe I'm not concentrating properly, but I'm struggling to understand what this thread is about. Is it clarifying who incels are and if they are something we should be concerned about? Is it about men and women? Dating advice? Where we should allocate our compassion? All of the above? From what I have heard of incels, I am reasonably comfortable to write them off - the way I would virulent racists or any other vile bigotry. No doubt everyone has their reasons, no doubt there's a perspectival, George Lakoff-style way to understand their conceptual framing and contextualize their value systems, etc. But I find it hard to give a fuck.

:up:

Thanks. Thoughtful response. :up:

Go for it! — Jamal

I don't know enough about the subject to make that case.

Have you ever heard of someone correcting an injustice just because it was pointed out to them that what they were doing was immoral? I haven't. — Jacques

That's mostly true. You do see this is some alcohol and drug recovery programs, where people go around and apologize and even make amends for the wrongs they have done to people they know. I've also known a few people to gain insight into their actions over time and try to correct behaviors they now realize to be wrong.

What is the use of someone knowing what he ought to do if he is not willing to do it. — Jacques

Sounds like a working definition of morality. :wink:

"Man always remembers only nine of God's commandments, except the commandment he is about to transgress" — Jacques

Yes. But what is even more odd is that Christians when asked to name the commandments rarely remember more than 3. Not to mention the fact that of the 10 commandments, there's really only 4 that pertain to morality in any real sense. The rest are all worship and dogma related.

The OP need not comprehensively describe or define incels, since it’s a pretty well-known subculture notorious for its abusive and sometimes violent misogyny. It’s probably wise to look into it rather than throwing around accusations of wokeness. Even just a quick look at Wikipedia would work: — Jamal

The extent of my knowledge of the subject is Wiki and until this thread the only proto-incel I could think of was Nietzsche (sorry). I don't think they make an appearance in any of the worlds I inhabit. I guess the question I have is, should I be worried about this - it's not like we're short of resentful subcultures already.

Yes. I find it very satisfying to listen to.

Maybe this is because most philosophy is bad philosophy. — Jamal

Nice idea for a thread...

Although many people are convinced otherwise, I do not believe that moral systems and teachings are indispensable for the existence of society (except for children, as I said before). I see them as rather ineffective and annoying, and sometimes even harmful (especially in strict religious systems), and therefore, I reject them. — Jacques

I tend to agree. I think most people just intuit what they ought and ought not to do based upon their own presuppositions. I'm not sure moral systems have much impact and even amongst the religious, a set of moral teachings is interpreted subjectively and variably, even within one religious tradition. Matters like law and order, climate change, and resource allocation will be decided (or not) by other mechanisms, even if the vestigial traces of moral systems flicker off and on during debates.

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. — Wayfarer

This is a very rich and fascinating subject to me. It seems to me that phenomenology appreciates this approach. There's a salient quote by Dan Zahavi:

Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned.

I certainly see the 'constructionist' logic in your last paragraph. It's hard or impossible to imagine how we could separate our perception, cognition, experience and metaphysical presumptions from what we generally think of as an experience of reality.

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. — Wayfarer

Well, I guess 'laws' does imply a 'lawgiver' in the crudest traditions of anthropomorphising. And 'laws of logic' are certainly seized upon constantly by zealous apologists (like William Lane Craig) who need a magic man, himself without apparent explanation, to explain reality. No one with an apophatic theology draws attention to 'laws' this way.

Death gives us something to do. Because it's a full-time job looking the other way.

- Martin Amis

That sounds interesting. Creationist cultures do seem to have a crudity about them which suggest creation is ours for the fucking... if you'll forgive the vulgarity.