I hear you. I think we probably need to take a more deflationary or minimalist view of the subject. Rather than trying to talk about The Supernatural - what is it specifically in terms of a particular claim made? We can investigate specific instances, such as life after death, theism, fairies, the soul, etc. I would need to take an evidentialist approach to these kinds of claims.

I think this is an entirely fair question. And of course, the only available answer must be that humans can gain 'higher awareness' though certain contemplative practices. They might also argue that reasoning can demonstrate catastrophic gaps in the naturalistic worldview - e.g., idealism, the evolutionary argument against naturalism, arguments for mathematical Platonism, etc.

I'm not convinced, but where else can you go with this?

Bloom quotes Hegel noticing that Shakespeare's characters overhear themselves and for that reason change. — plaque flag

It's a cool observation. Next stop: metacognition.

For Hegel, we 'are' God. Theology itself is God. [ God is 'just' incarnate theology, etc. ] — plaque flag

Which means what exactly? That we invent concepts and that's enough to be getting on with? Is the metaphor the thing itself? Does by this account Shakespeare's play become Hamlet? (I'm not referencing Bloom's Invention of the Human, unless you insist). :wink:

Out of interest can you site a reference for Hegel actually employing the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model?

Whereas, the general consensus on this forum is that any claims of religious revelation or accounts of the divine arising from religious or mystical traditions generally should be disregarded as valid sources of knowledge and/or information and should be put to one side. Would you agree with that? — Wayfarer

No. I think there are plenty of folk here who don't hold to naturalism. Even moderators. :wink: I personally don't have reason to accept any accounts/claims that come through mystical traditions, but I would need to investigate specific instances.

But it has to be said that a supernatural realm or entity (whatever that even means) can't just be asserted with no demonstration or at least an example. Doesn't seem to be a useful starting point. To use the OP's analogy - how can you translate a language until you know it is a language?

Perhaps if the OP has said - let's suppose for the sake of argument that X exists... that might have been more fruitful beginning. It would be useful to have a specific example.

Would you apply that same thinking to hell or to other religion's versions of paradise and hell? Zoroastrian? Islamic?

The better question might be do we have any good reasons to speculate that there is a heaven?

Amongst religious people I know, it has often been the subject of speculation whether there is sex in heaven, or whether we have genitals or not. Can I take a piss under my favourite lemon tree in paradise? Many religious folk (Muslims are notorious for versions of this) hold to childlike accounts of heaven as a ceaseless, vulgar, Las Vegas-style party in the sky, where there is always a show (Elvis is there, of course) and you can eat and do what you want... for free.

But it seams reasonable to think - if we speculate about this notion from a more 'spiritual' and less crassly materialistic perspective - that there would be some kind of transformation when you enter heaven - as a spirit self, the orientations, beliefs and appetites of a physical self would be gone and replaced by something wholly incomprehensible to us 'down here'.

If something helps us to interpret experiences of the divine/supernatural, then it helps us to understand the divine/supernatural. This is to say that if something helps us to interpret something that we experience, then it helps us to understand that thing. For example, we can conceptualise this as translating language. People can speak to us in any language they want, but we cannot understand them unless we can interpret what they are saying in a way that we can understand it. This works the same for divine/supernatural experiences. To understand such a thing, we must be able to interpret it. Therefore, if anything can help us to interpret such an experience, then it, in turn, helps to understand that experience. — ClayG

I have no knowledge of Hegel but your introductory presuppositions seem problematic.

You seem to begin with an assumption there is a supernatural or divine. How did you arrive at this?

Would the first step not be describing what a supernatural account is and why it would require such interpretive steps (Hegel as medium)? Perhaps I have you wrong but the analogy with a foreign language seems limited since when we hear a foreign language, we know it is a language and we can still understand some things. We also have a demonstration of a language being used. The supernatural, as far as we are aware, provides no such demonstration and might be said to consist of silence, which some people fill with claims or speculations.

Therefore, Hegel’s dialectical model can help us understand experiences of the divine/supernatural. — ClayG

Perhaps what you would need to do is take an example of a specific supernatural claim and apply this dialectic to it? Demonstrate it in action. I'm not even sure if thesis-antithesis-synthesis are pure Hegel or not. I think this was Fichte.

I see a need to clarify what I mean by the general label for topics related to enigmas like Consciousness. — Gnomon

I don't think you do. It's my point that needs clarification. Like most people, I have no expertise in consciousness and only a passing interest. And the subject is a hotbed of controversy and incomplete understanding. Why would I attempt to acquire an account of it with those limitations? Ditto quantum physics. I am more than comfortable staying away. And I wish more people with no expertise would also stay away from such matters.

As to the more general use of the term 'incomplete understanding'. I take the view that humans are storytellers and build tentative accounts of 'truth' that are useful (or not) for certain purposes. I do not think we arrive at absolute truth. What we tend to do is inherit and choose accounts that, in our judgement, are useful to us.

Consciousness" as an "Illusory phenomenon" sounds like an interesting topic for another thread. Unless you want to pursue it in this one. Are illusions physical or meta-physical? — Gnomon

See above also. But I was just referencing how Dennett's account is often understood.

Putting it differently, the traditional approach is to treat past, present and future as having separate contents and the. line them up in a sequence. We could instead glom them onto each other and say that we have freed ourselves of linear time by making these three contents (past, present, future) simultaneous. But that is not what Heidegger is doing. He is letting the future lead the show. The future isn’t the not-yet , but a kind of scaffolding into which the present emerges. The having-been is already shaped and defined by how this scaffolding produces the present, so that is why Heidegger says the past comes to us via the future. — Joshs

Interesting and vivid description. Can we 'un-linear' ourselves in practice? What does an account like this mean for day-to-day living and how can it be utilised in human thought?

Indeed.

With Pascal’s wager, it seems better to act as though God exists, praying daily, attending church, etc. Even if God does not exist, you lose less than if He does exist, but you act as though He doesn’t. — Katiee

The wager is a pretty shallow and ineffective idea. For a start, what if Allah is real and you are praying to Yahweh? Or what if Brahma is god but you're banking on Jesus? Or what if Yahweh subscribes to Presbyterian sectarianism and thinks Catholicism is condemnable heresy and you are posing as a Catholic?

It's hard to see how insincere praying can work out for the phoney who thinks with gods (and who is to say there's only one deity?) that you can fake it until you make it. If god is omniscient are they not likely to see through your posturing and regard you as a contemptible putz?

Got ya.

The character in the books you refer to may be homophobic. But what reason do you have for believing that an old book which says a thing is correct? A better account of Scripture might be that such stories are reflections of human yearning and prejudice.

“I treasure the Bible. I live in it and work on it all the time. But it is not the word of God. It’s the tribal story of a particular people, and the best thing about that story is that the story keeps growing and evolving.”

— John Shelby Spong

Aesthetics is a matter of taste. If someone finds Christianity and the idea of God beautiful, I have no argument with them believing. You seem to find life mostly ugly, I don't; I find it mostly beautiful, so we are coming at this from different ends of the stick. Finding life ugly can actually be a motivation for religious faith. The lesson here is that not everyone does, or should, see things just the way you or I do. It's not really a matter of argument at all in my view. — Janus

Nicely constructed.

I would have thought the first things to ask yourself and to really drill down upon are some more basic questions:

1. What reason do I have to believe Christianity is anything more than a myth written by anonymous sources (gospels) which were copies of copies of translations of copies, many decades after the supposed events?

2. Why do I use certain reasons to justify my belief in Christianity when these can be equality applied to Islam, or many other religions to justify them? How did I dismiss those other religions but not my own?

One of my favourite Christian writers is Bishop John Shelbey Spong (an Episcopalian) who was pretty ruthless towards some of the more appalling practices and presuppositions of Christians.

Perhaps the most telling witness against the claim of accurate history for the Bible comes when we read the earliest narrative of the crucifixion found in Mark's gospel and discover that it is not based on eyewitness testimony at all.

John Shelby Spong

The Bible has lost every major battle it has ever fought. The Bible was quoted to defend slavery and the bible lost. The Bible was quoted to keep women silent, and the Bible lost. And the Bible is being quoted to deny homosexuals their equal rights, and the Bible will lose.
John Shelby Spong

:lol:

As with the question of Being, he strives to keep the questioning going. I suspect that if asked what he believes he would deflect and say that what is important is not his beliefs but thinking. — Fooloso4

I am unable to discern what Heidegger thinks about god from those references.

As the most being-like, God is the first cause and the last goal of all beings. God is represented as the most being-like of beings, and so God essentially occurs out of beyng. Nevertheless, God is not primordially linked to beyng; because beyng occurs essentially not as cause and never as ground. — Joshs

I can't tell if this is describing god as extant or god as the idea is understood.

Ha! What would philosophers do with their free time, if "metaphysical speculation" was not permitted by the truth censors? :smile: — Gnomon

I hear you. I guess I'm saying I am the truth censor in my own life.

Yes, that's a good clarification.

The one I saw on a t-Shirt.

Goodness. :worry:

I'm not from the philosophy world but are there not various ways to dissolve the 'hard problem' - from Thomas Metzinger to some forms of phenomenology or idealism? Why are you not an idealist? BTW I'm a partial mysterian, in as much as I don't know if this subject will ever be resolved. The only reason I have an interest in the mind body relationship is that it is used endlessly by folk to demonstrate the 'truth' of spirit and souls. I have no reason to think that the world (whatever this is) is understandable to humans, except as metaphor and via tentative models.

Sorry, It wasn't meant to be personal. — Gnomon

No need to apologize - I don't take things personally. I was just correcting your take on my point.

I apologize, if my finger-pointing at Atheist & Theist apologists sounded offensive to you personally. Typically, I find your posts to be a calm port in a stormy sea of opinions :cool: — Gnomon

No problem I didn't take you as being finger pointing. You always seem reasonable towards other's views. :up:

It is indeed "interesting" that both sides in the "fear of nihilism" vs "fear of religion" contentions make similar "self-contradictory" arguments. — Gnomon

I'm not sure they are self-contradictory. They are just the same argument coming from opposite directions and demonstrate that we can't use either version as anything more than anecdote.

One of my issues with the evolutionary argument against naturalism is that I accept that human's don't have access to ultimate truth. I see no reason to think there is ultimate truth. Such truth that we have access too is either a value we hold, or something we can use to make sense of our environment (or both). We do acquire usable, demonstrated knowledge that allows us to survive. That in itself is a pretty good test of a quotidian truth value.

After all these years, the origin of meta-physical Consciousness in a physical world remains a mystery. — Gnomon

I agree that there is no certainty about this. But I don't believe this gives us permission to fill the gap with metaphysical speculation. We don't know. I'm not even sure we have the right questions about this subject yet. We have an incomplete understanding. Yet I am sympathetic to the idea that consciousness is a kind of illusory phenomenon. But I would never argue that this is the case until we know more.

Is it your view that H is deliberately using difficult language for obfuscatory purposes or that he just happens to use difficult wording because that's how he thought? It certainly seems to make it hard for others to get a read of him.

Your implication of nefarious motives — Gnomon

I also don't think I made the point that it is nefarious. Can you explain why this might be seen as nefarious?

:up: Nicely worded too.

Dolphins can't walk, moths can't help themselves from flying into lightbulbs, which is often suicidal, etc. — Manuel

I've often though this latter one was a good metaphor for humans and the urge to find meaning through religions. :razz:

It could be the case that we are so constituted that we can... — Manuel

Ok, but for me it seems impossible to determine when this 'could be' becomes an 'is'.

tribalism fuels hatred which fuels politics which fuels tribalism which fuels hatred . . . ad nauseum, ad infinitum. — Arne

It may not be such a breathless whirlwind. Tribalism becomes politics and politics can fuel hatred - especially when kerosene is poured over flames of resentment by media corporations who benefit from perpetuating conflicts, like Murdoch.

Guilt by association may be emotionally persuasive, but it's not a good logical argument. Your implication of nefarious motives for the Christian rejection of an Atheist article of faith (based on "Fear of Religion" motives?) may be correct. But what if the Christian thinkers are also correct to see Mind from Mindless as a logical paradox? — Gnomon

Huh? I think you are projecting. I'm not intending to make a logical argument by raising this. I am making what I think is an interesting observation that an atheist philosopher would use the language and arguments of Christian apologetics. As far as I know, this has not been said about Nagel here before. You'll note, I also said they were 'cool arguments'.

'Mind from Mindlessness' as I also suggested, could be a thread here for further discussion.

It is a poor author that makes a living bashing faith be it of any denomination. — invicta

It is a poor author who makes a living fleecing multitudes with supernatural snake-oil of any kind.

The context is Nagel's observation about how the idea of any kind of consonance between mind and world is strenuously resisted, as a consequence of it seeming to be too near to religion. — Wayfarer

I did get that point, but from what I've seen, there is also the case of those strenuously resisting free-thought, for fear of it being too near to dangerous nihilism. There may still be great courage involved in holding that life has no inherent purpose, that we are here for a brief flash, then gone forever. There seems to be a comprehensive mechanism described in Terror Management Theory to deal with this elemental fear of meaninglessness and annihilation.

He says that the idea that the mind evolved as a consequence of mindless physical forces is self-contradictory and that there must be a teleological explanation for the existence of conscious beings. — Wayfarer

Yeah, well these, like Nagel's other arguments seem to be right out of the Christian apologist's playbook ('atheism is self-refuting', etc), in seeking to address atheism and the fear of nihilism. (And yes, I know N isn't a Christian and a nominal atheist) I have heard hours of this stuff over the years and it is ususally put in the sort of language Nagel uses here - especially if they are influenced by Van Til or Plantinga. They are cool arguments, I agree, but I don't find them convincing. My favourite is the one about the logical absolutes proving the perfect mind of god essentially as guarantor of intelligibility. 'God' of course can be understood as old language for 'higher consciousness'.

Maybe we need a thread on the evolutionary argument against naturalism if you haven't done one yet. There must be one here already... I've probably written in it.

I am talking about something much deeper--namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself. I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. — Thomas Nagel

The problem with this not especially useful observation from Nagel is there is an equal and commonly held fear of atheism which can be expressed in exactly the same way as Nagel talks about the fear of religion.

Having worked in palliative and end of life care, I have seen many religious and formerly religious folk die. It is quite astonishing how many Christians confess to their fear of atheism in the same terms Nagel uses but in reverse. Their faith often dies before they do. One former priest I knew, Vincent, put it along these lines -

"A lot of us in faith roles are haunted by the idea that we are wrong, that there actually is no god. That we have been selling people a lie and leading them on. We are terrified that the atheists are right. We are taught to avoid or pity atheists, but they seem to have a better account of suffering and morality and are generally better educated than believers and more tolerant about human behaviour and more charitable towards others. There is little evidence that there's order on our planet or any special meaning for humans, but we fight against this thought and hope our faith will protect us from doubt and from our true feelings."

In this vein there is even a busy organisation, The Clergy Project which supports large groups of clergy all over the world who have lost their faith and have embraced their worst fear - that atheism provides a more reasonable approach than theism. They never wanted a world like that. They were often unprepared for this, but can't help what they believe.

Could be. I personally don't have anything against Heidegger as a thinker (how could I?) and what I have read does sound intriguing. I simply don't have the time, capacity and background experience to acquire a useful reading of him. But I would say the same about Kant or Derrida and many more in my case. I am here mostly to understand to the best of my ability what the key concerns and themes are.

Very interesting perspective.

It's a very broad view that takes it that there is only one kind of stuff - physical stuff, and it incorporates everything: history, literature, stars, ideas - everything is physical. This goes to show how baffling the nature of the physical is. — Manuel

Can you briefly comment on how real naturalism understands logical absolutes and math and how do we understand an idea as physical?

Most of all, I'm a card carrying "mysterian", who believes that there are many aspects of the world and ourselves that we simply cannot know in principle, — Manuel

How do you determine whether something can in principle not be known?

Take musical sages: maybe there are jazz sages, classical sages, heavy metal sages, punk sages...maybe sagehood is a specialized business...who knows? :nerd: — Janus

I want to meet a sage sage.

Seriously though, no one's seeing is perfect...or maybe only the sage's. — Janus

Raises an interesting question. Assuming we can identify who is deserving of the appellation 'sage' what kind of taste (aesthetic preferences) do sages have? What if the Dalai Lama (say) prefers the films of Michael Bay to those of Stanley Kubrick? What if good taste is an exclusive purview of the profane...

You dislike both but can you perceive the quality in Shakespeare? I can, and I don't particularly like his works either, in the sense that I have no desire to read them. — Janus

Ha! Shakespeare is more nuanced and 'deeper' more skill.

For me Beethoven is the greater composer, both in terms of harmonic inventiveness and "depth", but I can't give you any argument for that beyond mere assertion. — Janus

Agree on both points.

I think it's just a matter of seeing. As an analogy, where is our ability to recognize pattern located? Every leaf of a particular species of tree is different and yet the same; where is that difference and sameness located? The question seems meaningless. — Janus

Whenever people say a question is meaningless I suspect it is redolent... gravid with meaning. :razz:

Perhaps the best things in life just cannot be explained...to be explicable is to be pedestrian. — Janus

How then do we determine which are the best things? :wink:

Is there a connection between temporality and the Nazisms? — Fooloso4

I think this was located in Arbeit macht frei.

What is beauty? Who can say? Must all things of an aesthetic character be beautiful? It seems not. I don't think it has anything to do with platonic forms. — Janus

It may not. But I suspect if we are going to say there is a standard of beauty then where is this located? How is this standard to be understood, except as an 'immutable form' or something culturally located?

It was Kant who pointed out that when we deem something to possess aesthetic value, we take ourselves to be talking about something universal. and not to be merely talking about personal liking. — Janus

And in my conversations with people this is often how they consider their judgements. As somehow objective and true.

Shakespeare just is better than Mills and Boon, — Janus

I dislike and avoid both. But I know what you are saying.

You are essentially talking about sophistication and layering. But not all great art is complex or nuanced.

I think aesthetic vale is real, — Janus

I think a lot of people believe this. I am uncertain. I don't know how we would justify this but maybe we can.

I personally think that to judge something as aesthetically valuable is a bit like pragmatic accounts of truth - subject to certain purposes. If you are going to appeal to middle-aged English professors (for instance) Shakespeare is better than Dan Brown. If you are appealing to my mum (now dead) Brown is better.

But how do we determine whether Mozart is a better composer than Beethoven? When works are nuanced and complex it's a more complex conundrum.

Deserves it's own thread.

The trick with aesthetics is to get it off the ground you have to, in some sense, be talking about more than what you individually like. — Moliere

I think that's a useful observation. I guess if we set standards of 'good' and 'bad' aesthetics, we probably need something like Platonic forms, right? Or else aesthetics is untied to anything but cultural and personal values, which are transitory. As a reluctant anti-foundationalist, I gravitate to the latter.