Overwhelmingly, the world appears to do much as advertised. — Banno

When I was briefly swept up in associated New Age ideas and Theosophy this fact bothered me greatly.

Appeals to the supernatural lack direct empirical exemplars; one cannot simply point to observable cases in support. Instead, such appeals often proceed obliquely, through critiques of the epistemological limits of science or argument from hallucination or the inadequacies of a materialist/naturalist ontology. The strategy tends to rely on undermining the dominant framework, entering through a kind of philosophical back door, if you'll pardon the clumsy metaphor.

Supose that someone claims to have achieved "self-transcendence". How could we check? — Banno

They'd be the ones charging money for intensives... (sorry, a cheap shot).

I'm sure I don't need to tell you that mental health is an extremely complex matter. I can't really provide any advice to you.

I constantly second-guess myself. — Truth Seeker

Do you know why this happens? Are you haunted by previous errors?

I often wish I had made different choices than the ones I made — Truth Seeker

What would be an example of this?

What is the best way to make choices? — Truth Seeker

I've never really given it much thought. I just make choices and go with them. Sometimes I regret a decision, but not often. I'm trying to understand what kinds of choices typically lead to regret. Is it things like having children, getting married, or deciding where to live? But day-to-day choices don’t seem to matter much, even if the outcome is disappointing. Maybe I just don’t make very important choices very often.

How would one assess whether to have an abortion or not? — Truth Seeker

Is this one you are mulling over, or a hypothetical?

Could be. I haven't been following closely. I'm no connoisseur of metaphysical models like some here. But I have to admit, I no longer really understand what this discussion is about. It seems to be drifting into a culture war of ill will, like so many other threads.

Would you be able to summarise what the two camps are arguing? I'm assuming there's two.

:up: Thanks Vera. Sorry you've gone from our lives.

Ever hear of Fred D'Agostino? D’Agostino’s take: Instead of asking, “What do we all believe?” we ask, “What kind of practice allows us to live together with our differences?” — Banno

Ah yes… and this is a good question for this forum where we can practice this in microcosm.

What matters would not be the abstract truth of a belief, but how that belief functions within a system (logic, science, discourse); gets used (for justification, prediction, coercion); survives confrontation (with evidence, argument, or rival beliefs) and integrates with shared methods of reasoning or inquiry. — Banno

Would this not mean that some people might practice compassion even whilst holding an ostensibly intolerant belief system? Ye shall know them by their works.

Interesting read, basically it's a Speculative Realist criticism of the problems of phenomenology. The real clincher is, does phenomenology ultimately end up resorting to idealism, at the end? — Bodhy

I’m no expert in this area but I’ve wondered if the idealism comparison was apt in some contexts.

I guess it would mean that his assumptions are less fully developed and his conclusion missing important information. But let’s leave it there.

I think the issue is methodological - not about what you believe but what you do with it. — Banno

Say some more on this.

It also seems to me that some are more preoccupied by certainty or absolutes than others.

I think it leads to a more robust questioning of science and reason than many of us would accept. I’m not convinced Lorenz aligns with enactivism and this approach would probably question the realism and evolutionary biology that underpins Lorenz’s work. But this isn’t my area.

To start, it’s important to realize that Lorenz wasn’t talking about perception alone, he was talking about our entire cognitive system - not just our eyes and ears and nose, but our brains and nerves, our thoughts, our consciousness, our emotions. — T Clark

I'm not pursuing the Lorenz connection, I'm focusing on enactivist accounts of co-creation. I read Lorenz a generation ago and have forgotten it.

I'm currently more interested in postmodern thought, phenomenology, and other non-essentialist accounts of experience. I’m also aware that you align with Collingwood’s view of metaphysics as a historical/conceptual framework and not true or false as such. Personally, I would argue that science is itself a form of metaphysics, or at the very least, it rests upon one: the assumption that the world is intelligible. And yes, science can perform some remarkable tricks. But the implication of @Joshs contribution asks us what exactly is it that is intelligible and what are we understanding?

Well, yes, I think that's right. I guess I see personal as an interpretive and assimilative process of the shared.

For the record, I wasn’t really arguing against Joshs point - only that it isn’t clear to me how it is relevant to this specific issue. — T Clark

No worries. I added a bit where I have tried to interpret the point as best I can. Pretty sure I have missed something.

The issue is whether it is possible to make a distinction between the organism's perception of its environment and its evolution with respect to its environment. Put differently, is perception the organism’s representation of a reality, or is it the enacting of a reality? In the first case, what is represented is presumed to be external to the perceiver. In the second case, the real is produced through the organism-environment interaction.
— Joshs

I still don’t get it. Let’s leave it at that. — T Clark

@Joshs would you mind having a go at explaining this further? This idea appeals to me, as it goes to the heart of what we think we are and I’d like a more educated formulation of it than the slight understanding I currently have.

I guess this asks us whether perception is simply a picture of an external world or a process that helps create reality through interaction. If perception just reflects the world, then reality exists independently of the organism; but if perception enacts reality, then the organism and environment co-create what is real. This distinction must have significant implications in how we understand knowledge, life, and what we dub 'reality' particularly academic subjects such as biology, psychology, and philosophy.

SO I don't think that philosophical differences are ultimately "explained" by psychology. I suspect you do? — Banno

Well, I guess it depends what that means. I do believe that people are the contingent products of circumstance. How far to push this?

My intuition is that we respond to all things through prelinguistic emotion and gradually fumble our way to articulate a response. This often consists of a post hoc rationalization of how we feel, (tempered by the influence of upbringing and culture, naturally). But over time, I think we establish a personal web of beliefs that makes many of our responses formulaic - in that they automatically match the presuppositions we have arrived at. Of course, some people are wildly inconsistent, while others are disciplined and rigid.

What is your account?

The view that autistic people lack theory of mind any more than anyone else presented with another creature different from themselves, is out of date. Simon Baron-Cohen did a lot of damage with this, and the experiments purported to show this lack of theory of mind have been robustly challenged. — bert1

Yes, BC is widley disliked in some psychology circles. Tony Attwood, who I am more familiar with also subscribes to ToM models.

A clever psychopath, by contrast, may have excellent cognitive empathy, but lack affective empathy. But I'm not an expert on psychopathy. — bert1

I think these distinctions are useful. Many of these psychopaths are CEOs and often work in persuasion-based businesses: politics, law, advertising, marketing, etc. You don’t need to drive around in a black van picking up co-ed hitchhikers to be a public menace.

And that is basically a liberal stance. As against the authoritarian stance, that one way or another we must force agreement. — Banno

Of course, there are many here who also take issue with liberalism so there's that. :wink:

We love our wives, our children, our family, our friends because to us they are beautiful and good. — GregW

Doesn't work for me. I love because I love. It's a feeling and nowhere does good or beautiful enter my conception. I would say love moves beyond such characteristics. Love transcends qualities.

Love is a part of desire as the lover is a part of the non-lover because the lover and the non-lover can both exist as a part of the same person. While the non-lover can desire many things such as wealth and power along with the beautiful and good, the lover desire only the beautiful and good. — GregW

I can't follow this. Can you summarise the point I'm lost in the lover-non-lover-lover-non-lover train.

Now, there is no shame in desiring and using power. The shame is in using power not well but badly. Everyone sees that power can be used for good or for evil, but the power of love can be used only for good. The power of love is not just the means of attainment but also of creativity, the creation of the beautiful and good. "The great and subtle power of love" lies first in the creation of the lover. It is love that turns the non-lover into the lover. — GregW

Why are you talking about power? What have I missed?

When love is described as a power, it generally means that the experience of love can make hardship and suffering bearable and inspire us to strive for things beyond ordinary ambition. In this way, love can clothe, soothe, and rebuild a broken and deprived being. Yet I suspect that naked ambition and jealousy can also provide a similar fillip toward transformative deeds.

Generally, when people hold foundational positions, they are like arrows pointing toward the place they want to arrive at. That’s as true of me as it is of anyone else. This is why I often say that our arguments are often built on top of our emotional preferences.

Kripke's account leads to forms of antirealism, with which I am not overly happy. So I'm not offering it as an absolute answer here - just as an example that shows the problem with Tim's attempt to equate not knowing something with not knowing anything. — Banno

Do you think such an approach is one that assumes theism and some of the philosophical scaffolding which supports it?

Glad that you are reading along. — Banno

Trying to, but I know as much about logic as I do about genetic engineering.

The case, for Tom Storm's edification, that corresponds to the notion "undecided" in denying LEM would not be: "I don't know the answer to 'idealism, psychophysical parallelism, god…,'" but rather "these positions are neither true, nor false." In some sense then, it isn't modest. It claims to know something about the truth value of the statement in question. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I was merely making a joke. I figured they are 'neither true nor false' would be the official line.
P ∨ ¬P and not ¬⊢ P ∨ ¬P. or something like that.

ok. Setting epistemology aside, I prefer ‘I don’t know’ to a lot of options people jump onto - idealism, psychophysical parallelism, god…

But if we instead allow a statement to have an undecided value, there is no contradiction and it does not follow that anything goes. — Banno

Interesting and simple. Could it be argued that this is avoidance of a kind?

Let me tell y'all about my god (who's still around, by the way). — alleybear

I'm not sure if you are being serious or satirical, but I'll assume you are serious. I'm curious what this God means to you?

It also overlaps with the idea of 'emotional intelligence' — Jack Cummins

Which is not an actual diagnosis or or clinical term and is primarily a pop-psychology label.

Sometimes, gushy emotionality can be mistaken for empathy, as in 'crocodile tears'. — Jack Cummins

Maybe, but really, we're not in a position to know whether people care about others or not. We can only judge by actions, not by sentiment or professed values. What do people actually do?

There are so many people who are self diagnosing themselves as autism and, lack of empathy may be part of this criteria. — Jack Cummins

Self-diagnosing neurodivergent conditions like ADHD or autism is common and probably a sign that people are seeking an explanation for why they feel like outsiders or experience social isolation. A sense of emotional bluntness, dissociation, or lack of empathy may not be pathological but rather a product of one’s environment or depression.

Also, the issue of empathy has become an important area in psychiatry, in relation to autism. Lack of empathy has become medicalised. — Jack Cummins

I think that’s a very different use to what people generally mean. In autism the view is that they don’t have what’s called a theory of mind. Many autistic people can feel deeply for the plight of others and may have a highly developed sense of social justice,

Lack of empathy is also sometimes called sociopathy. But I didn’t think this OP was about psychiatric definitions but more in the area of personal development and how we see ourselves in relation to others. Are you not trying to delineate the subject of caring for the welfare of other people. I think for most people we can probably set aside such words and look at how people treat each other, rather than labeling it empathy or sympathy. I wonder if it’s more an instinctive behaviour of a social species?

Is it leading to moral indifference and based on the philosophy of the objective idea of the importance of 'emotional detachment as an ethical ideal? What do you think about the ideas of sympathy, empathy and its relevance for life?. — Jack Cummins

They’re often just words, and people will attach different values to them based on a range of preferences. I’ve always found usage more interesting than the definition game. You might recall Paul Bloom’s 2016 book Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, wherein he describes empathy as prone to distortion, emotionally exhausting and often leading to poor decision-making. He also argues that it promotes tribalism, which seems relevant to where culture seems to be now. Bloom argues for 'compassion led by reason'.

I'm not sure where I land on this and I probably see most of it as a tangle of semantics and really the quesion is - Do we care about the welfare and happiness of others; even those who are not of our tribe and don't share our worldviews? (think Good Samaritan parable) And what does 'care' mean? For the most part, we seem to preference those who share our worldviews and codes of conduct. It's very easy to imagine we feel empathy from an armchair.

I mean can they experience love by loving themselves? — GregW

Well, in many cases, self-love may be more akin to narcissism, so probably not, especially if we understand love as a rich, selfless experience involving abnegation and sacrifice.

Interesting as always. Not sure I am convinced, however

Far be it from a philosopher to defend the soveriegnty of reason :yikes: — Wayfarer

Questioning the limitations of reason seems a legitimate function of philosophy. Kant seemed to think so. Poststructuralist thinkers also engage in this kind of critique. I know they aren’t everyone's bag, but they are philosophers nonetheless. Is doing this a performative contradiction? Not necessarily. Examining reason’s limits through reason itself is a kind of reflexive inquiry, not a total rejection.

that 'truth' presupposes (pre-cognitive pragmatics, or the enactive context, of) 'survival' ... to which reason at minimum is adapted (i.e. embodied = instantiated). — 180 Proof

Oh, that's nicely put. I find this very intriguing

What phenomenology uncovers is that reason is not merely derived from experience; it's already operative in how experience is constituted (which is what 'transcendental' meant for both Kant and Husserl.) — Wayfarer

Sure, but reason might be derived from experience through a particularly structured cognitive apparatus which has limitations. Isn’t that a point Kant makes? I’m no Kantian, but doesn’t Kant discuss transcendental illusions (systematic errors built into our reasoning) and emphasise that humans face clear limits in how reason can be used? His writing is dull beyond measure and impossible for me to follow properly.

A classic example is found in some religious thinking, that God is the first cause or a necessary being. Kant sees this as a mistake built into the way human reason works. Our reason naturally looks for ultimate answers, but it goes too far when it treats these ideas as if they were things we could actually know. Since we only gain knowledge through experience, and God is beyond all possible experience, we can't claim to know such things through reason alone.

Kant lists a series of such flaws in reasoning, which seem to be built into the structure of how we think.

There’s a short and interesting article on transcendental illusion here:

https://assets.cambridge.org/97805210/39727/excerpt/9780521039727_excerpt.pdf

The behavior of crocodiles, cockroaches, and even mammals reflect functional intelligence—what works pragmatically—but that’s not the same as rational insight, which is the ability to perceive and evaluate logical relations among ideas.

More to the point, if we reduce reason to adaptive success—if it’s “just what works” in evolutionary terms—then we undermine the normative authority of reason itself. After all, reason doesn’t just describe what we do—it tells us what we ought to believe, based on validity, coherence, and evidence. But if reason is just a tool of survival, why trust it in matters beyond basic survival? Why trust it to tell us the truth about consciousness, the universe, or even evolution itself? — Wayfarer

If there isn’t one already, we probably need a whole thread just on the status of reason. The argument made by Nagel seems to treat reason as something almost magical, something that exists outside of nature and therefore can't be a product of the natural world and its processes. But wouldn’t you have to demonstrate that logic and mathematics are not natural, constrained, and context-bound systems? Isn't it the view of phenomenology that reasoning is grounded in the structures of experience, in how the world appears to us through perception, intention, and context? This is highly specialised and beyond the expertise of most of us.

Science—and philosophy—both presuppose that the world is intelligible. Even raising the question of whether it should be assumes a rational order that allows the question to be posed in the first place. So rather than doubting intelligibility, the more pressing issue is: what kind of ontology can account for the fact that intelligibility is possible at all?

If physicalism treats intelligibility as an accidental byproduct of blind processes, then it risks undermining the rational basis of its own claims. This concern is related to what some have called the argument from reason (C.S. Lewis) or the evolutionary argument against naturalism (Alvin Plantinga): namely, that if our minds are solely the product of non-rational forces, we have little reason to trust their capacity for reason—including our belief in physicalism itself. — Wayfarer

All very interesting and well described. I notice you wrote "risks undermining" not "undermines" why isn't it a slam dunk? I thought it was your thesis that meaning can only exist if there is some form of guarantee for all meaning - a transcendent source. You often seem to maintain that there needs to be a higher-order purpose for any kind of purpose at all to be possible? But I may have this wrong.

The fact that we can ask questions or construct models doesn't guarantee that the world is inherently intelligible in the absolute sense. Our frameworks of understanding might simply reflect the cognitive and pragmatic structures we’ve evolved, not the deep structure of reality itself. Intelligibility might be a projection of mind rather than a property of being. So the salient question is not what ontology makes intelligibility possible, but whether our sense of intelligibility is anything more than an anthropocentric artifact. Can this even be answered?

This probably brings us to domains like mathematics, where some argue its famous uncanny effectiveness demonstrates a deeper connection to reality. But whether this points to a transcendent order or simply reflects the structures we project onto the world remains an open question. I also doubt we can answer this question right now.

And reason? Is it a conduit to something beyond the human, a reflection of objective order, or merely a contingent adaptation, evolved to navigate the constraints of our particular reality, and perhaps of only provisional use? Isn’t it the view of phenomenology that reasoning is grounded in the structures of lived experience, how the world shows up for us through perception, intention, and context? It’s a complex perspective and likely beyond the grasp of most of us without specialised training.

I don’t have the answers to any of this, but I remain a kind of doubting Thomas. I find it difficult to see why meaning must be grounded in necessity or guaranteed by something absolute. Could it be that humans are unrealistically impressed by reason, treating it as the highest or even only valid form of understanding? But reason is just one tool among many, and has limited use. It struggles with emotions, ambiguity, and subjective experiences. It's clear that no logical argument can fully capture grief, happiness, aesthetic appreciation, or empathy. I wonder if we overestimate its power, forgetting that perhaps it evolved for survival, not for solving metaphysical puzzles or guaranteeing truth.

Let me ask this. The career criminals and gang members that you say never experience love and, as a result, may not be able to give or receive it. Do they love themselves? — GregW

I don't know what you mean by "do they love themselves?" It's certainly not a topic that comes up. In my world the term, "love yourself" has a tinny, American, self-help book ring to it. But if you mean whether they respect themselves, take care of themselves, take pride, and hold their own survival and life in high regard, then I would say it’s a mix.

What did you mean by love as desire? I'm still unclear about that one.

Some good points I agree with. But I would question whether a less secular society is more virtuous. It's only been a brief period in history during which general public have had access to education, money and recreation in any meaningful way. In the past, people worked hard and long simply because they had no choice. They often died young, and small children were sent out to work in dreadful conditions.

I find it instructive to look at Hogarth’s 1751 etching Gin Lane, which reminds us that long before meth and fentanyl, parts of society were already being ruined by hard liquor. Even as the churches were full and vital. I'm not sure human nature changes much, regardless of which belief system predominates. Still, it has become fashionable to portray the present era as especially dire and in need of a nostalgia project, as seen in the work of popular podcasters like Jordan Peterson and John Vervaeke.

Can these injustices be remedied with greater compassion with humility in humanity? Are we going in the nonlinear reality where human singularity occurs or the default linear reality where history repeats itself? I’d love to hear your thoughts! — RadicalJoe

Milan Kundera said something like, 'You build a utopia and pretty soon you're going to need to build a small concentration camp.'

I'm not sure exactly what you are asking: can humans build a fair society? In practice, I don't think you can engineer anything along these lines as the process to get there will probably be one of warfare and come at extreme cost. Or to borrow another quote as Zizek often quips, 'The problem with the revolution is the morning after.'

Personally I focus less on big picture abstracts and more on what I do - Where does my money go? To what extent do I immerse myself in the untrammeled capitalism around me? That kind of thing.

Or maybe to put the question another way, why are there still people acting morally in societies that are largely secular, like say in parts of Europe today? Is it that we are still living in a world where the divine lingers on after the dead of God? Or maybe we have replaced the strictly divine with belief in something that serves a similar function, for instance the idea of 'never again' after the holocaust? — ChatteringMonkey

Or perhaps religion and theism don't have as much to do with morality as some think, and are primarily a justification for particular codes of conduct, some of which we might consider immoral today.

It’s not as if religions or theism doesn't commit egregious crimes against people, right?

Zizek (borrowing from Lacan) flips Dostoevsky’s quote to account for the poor moral behaviour of theists: “If God exists, everything is permitted." Presumably the idea is that there's not a crime going that hasn't been justified by theists as part of God's plan.

Or maybe to put the question another way, why are there still people acting morally in societies that are largely secular, like say in parts of Europe today? — ChatteringMonkey

Well, if you talk to some theists, they don’t think secular culture is moral. They see it as empty hedonism that promotes what they consider outrages, like gay marriage or expanded rights for women. What’s clear is that different moral systems or codes of conduct are at play simultaneously in the West, and they are unlikely to disappear. Humans are a social species, and living together requires shared norms. The idea that without belief in God humans will revert to killing and rape is clearly false. It's also evident that prisons are full of rapists and murderers who are theists. I can attest to this, having worked with prisoners and gang members, most of whom are believers.

I was involved with the 'New Age' movement for much of the 1980s, during which I engaged in a fair amount of guided meditation and similar practices. Many of the people I knew at the time believed they had experienced some form of transcendence. However, over the years, a number of them have come to question those experiences - while not necessarily becoming atheists, they’ve grown increasingly skeptical about it all. I'm not claiming any definitive knowledge here, but I'm struck by how easily people seem to fall into and out of and sometimes back into beliefs.

Sure. I’ve read about it in books. I have met gurus. I have heard people talk about it. It’s still outside my experience.

Reduced to the conceptual, it has very limited usefulness. The realisation of such a ‘ground’ is ecstatic, outside the conceptual or discursive intellect. — Wayfarer

And outside of my experince.

I’ve worked with a lot of career criminals and gang members, and I would say that some people never experience love and, as a result, may not be able to give or receive it.
— Tom Storm

I believe this is possible only if love is just a desire. In a poem, Aristophanes described the origin of Love:

".... Black-winged Night
Into the bosom of Erebus dark and deep
Laid a wind-born egg, and as the seasons rolled
Forth sprang Love, the long-for, shining, with
wings of gold."

The poem suggests that even in the darkest and deepest part of Erebus, we will find love. — GregW

I'm going by what I have seen. The excerpt doesn't speak to me.

Thsi form you -

I believe this is possible only if love is just a desire — GregW

If I read this correctly then i woudl have thought it was precisely the opposite. Love as desire is readily sought and found. I'm not sure I'd count this as love.

If you are referring to love as a deep concern for another’s good, their sacredness in relation to your own, then no.