Plus, I find it particularly strange that this sort of theory of man's creative powers is so often couched in terms of epistemic humility, since it is saying that all Goodness, Beauty, and Truth in the cosmos is the work of man's will—that man is essentially God, making things what they are, bestowing onto them their unity, goodness, purpose, and beauty. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, well I know it isn't a unique view but my position is that goodness, truth, and beauty are not transcendentals but are contingent products of culture and language. I don’t think we are God so much as we see the world in certain ways and create the frameworks that give gods their life.

And that's all? If one thing can come from nothing, why not anything more? Why just this one thing? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It was just a quip. But I would say that concepts like God, goodness, evil, and charity are human constructs—they arise from human experience and imagination rather than existing independently.

The notion that something can come from nothing is typically embraced by those invested in teleological arguments for transcendence.

Can man create something from nothing? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. The notion of beauty.

If you are not a materialist or a scientist, do you use any alternative term to describe your metaphysical worldview* — Gnomon

No. I guess I'm a kind of simple-minded pragmatist. I do not have any commitments to capital T truth and consider our grasp of reality to be a contingent product of culture and language.

There are no antirealists in foxholes.[/quote]

Yes, I think it was Simon Blackburn who said that the moment a philosopher of any stripe leaves his house, he's committed to realism. Pragmatically that's the world we know, whatever there might beyond human understanding. Personally, I have a limited capacity or interest in speculations - you have a much more intense curiosity and deeper reading than me.

What was your motivation for posting this topic : "I'm interested in conversations about more sophisticated and philosophical accounts of theism"? — Gnomon

This from the OP

It's often argued that atheists focus their critiques on simplistic or caricatured versions of God, especially the kind found in certain forms of American Protestantism, with its mawkish literalism and culture-war pontifications, often aligned with Trump. These "cartoon gods" seem all too easy to dismiss. The famous low hanging fruit.

In contrast, more nuanced conceptions of God, such as Paul Tillich’s idea of God as the "Ground of Being" or David Bentley Hart’s articulation of God as Being itself - represent attempts to have this conversation in metaphysical terms rather than anthropomorphic ones.

When God is described as the Ground of Being, this typically means that God is the fundamental reality or underlying source from which all things emerge. God is not seen as a being within the universe, but rather as the condition for existence itself. The implications of such a view are interesting. — Tom Storm

Your next statement and its formulation (like an apologist) is a reason I guessed you are riffing off the beliefs of your youth. You can't resist bagging materialists at most opportunities when there are so few, if any, on this site.

Does that notion offend your Immanentist sensibilities, as it does for 180? Does Quantum Physics contradict your Materialist worldview? — Gnomon

I am not a materialist. I find idealism intriguing. I have no expertise in quantum physics and I know most physicists remain committed to physicalism - what do they know that you and I don't? I couldn't say and it's not my area.

You list out objective criteria for determining morality: — Hanover

No, they are not objective criteria nor do i lay them out as my version. I'm saying that this is what generally happens in the pluralistic West.

These rules are not universal and it is not a universal truth that morality is to be found through reason. That's not even the rule within traditional theistic systems within the West (i.e. divine command theory). — Hanover

They are not rules and I do not say they are universal, but I do think they are practiced widely in the West. Possibly elsewhere, I have not made a survey.

And how do you know your moral basis is right (whether it be the Bible, your 10 point system, Utliltarianism, Kantianism, or whatever), you just do. This is where faith rears its ugly (or clarifying) head once again. — Hanover

I don't think so. Firstly, we don’t know what is right. There's no neutral, context-free standpoint from which to declare one moral system universally right.

We can probably start with a goal, something like reducing suffering. No need for faith in the religious sense although we'd acknowledge the religious values that run through Western thinking. We might have a view that certain systems work better for people than others, but again, that's the ongoing conversation humans have with each other.

Which provides a safer culture: Islamic theocracy or Western-style democracy? Which parts of democracy aren’t working? It's the conversation we have, and are having, and we can agree on goals we want and situations we want to avoid. None of this involves objectivity, it's more like a recipe made out of our shared judgements and hopes.

The question of moral realism is not whether we know for certain what every moral justification is, but it's whether there are absolute moral rules that we are seeking to discover. If the answer is that there is not, that it's just a matter of preference, then we are left asking why we can impose our idiosyncratic rules on others. If, though, you say there is an objective good, we can impose our assessement of what they are on others, recognizing we could be wrong in our assessment. However, to do this will require us to say that we assess morality based upon X because that basis is right, and if you don't use X, you are wrong. Once you've taken that step, you stepped outside of subjectivity and you've declared an absolute truth. — Hanover

In reflecting on your response, I would say that calling someone morally 'wrong' doesn’t require escaping subjectivity or appealing to some higher moral realm; it means staying grounded in our shared world, giving reasons, listening carefully, and trying to find common ground. We don’t need absolute foundations to act; we need commitment, dialogue, and the willingness to stand by our views while accepting they’re always open to challenge.

Then again, maybe that’s the Calvinist in you talking. — Jacques

:rofl:

if a book feels like self-mortification, — Jacques

More like self-overcoming. I tend to hold good art should challenge and offer new ways of seeing. But maybe I'm doing it wrong. I do most things wrong so that's ok.

In my opinion, the value of a novel lies in its ability to captivate me from the first page to the last—so compelling that I can’t put it down and regret how quickly the remaining pages dwindle. — Jacques

My favourite novels often weren’t enjoyable at first. They grew on me, and the initial struggle with the author transformed me as I persisted. I didn’t come away simply entertained, I came away enlarged. I remember fighting with George Eliot in Middlemarch and with Faulkner in As I Lay Dying. In the end, I got through, and the effort itself felt like an achievement. For me, reading great novels isn’t always about immediate pleasure; it’s more like climbing a mountain, demanding, sometimes punishing, but meaningful precisely because of the journey into unfamiliar territory and even the sacrifices required.

think that faith, if it is ever to count as a good thing, must be the willingness to start on a project, accepting the risk of failure, but willing to see it through to the end anyway — Ludwig V

Except that we know that some people achieve success despite all the odds and setbacks, just look at any list of entrepreneurs or Hollywood stars. This evidence of success, despite barriers and failures is why some people think it's worth taking chances. I'd argue that faith in something which cannot be demonstrated follows a very different trajectory.

Then upon what basis do you condemn their acts you find abhorrent? You have your preferences and they theirs. — Hanover

This is to the point - ↪Hanover wants a "basis" so he can "condemn their art you find abhorrent"; and that basis is all around us and includes our community of learning and language. — Banno

Am I bound by the consensus of the West, the US, the Southern US, my ethnicity, my religious heritage, my compound of similar thinkers? Can't it be that the entirety of my community could be wrong, yet I am right? — Hanover

Yes, to all of the above. That’s the condition we’ve always lived in. It seems to me morality emerges from a shifting balance of perspectives, shaped by history, culture, conversation, and imagination. There is no final foundation, only the ongoing work of negotiation, persuasion, and a hope for common ground. And yes, some cultures do lose this fragile balance though war or vested interests and anarchy results.

But I can already hear some asking but what does common ground matter if there's no objectivity? We are motivated by the desire to live with others without constant fear or conflict, to reduce suffering (our own and others), to be understood, to feel belonging, to imagine a world less cruel or arbitrary. Even without objectivity, these needs and aspirations don’t disappear. We don’t act because we’ve found final truths, but because we live among others, and must find ways to manage that fact.

It is wrong to murder.

Ice cream tastes good — Hanover

I don’t know if murder is wrong in any objective sense, beyond the fact that it's a proscribed activity under the law. And even, more generally, “killing” in itself isn’t necessarily wrong; I can easily imagine situations where it might be justified. But cultures that permit casual killing among the population tend to be unsafe and verge on anarchy.

But what about something more extreme, how about killing babies for sport? That seems like a clearer case. I’d have to say we would find broad, almost universal agreement that this is abhorrent. (Not that it stops countries at war from energetically mowing down children as part of the process.) So while I might hesitate to call it “objectively” wrong in a metaphysical sense, there is a strong intersubjective consensus. I’d say the prohibitions and values of my culture have been passed down to me, so I share in teh consensus that finds killing babies abhorrent.

But a consensus like this doesn’t rest on some timeless truth. It rests on who we’ve become as a species, it rests on shared stories, emotions, and histories that shape our moral imagination. It’s not that we know such an act is wrong in some final sense; it’s that we’ve learned not to be the kind of people who could consider it. (Again, unless you're in one of the many war-torn countries where such horrors are treated as routine.)

...disagreement can only take place against, and so presupposes, a background of agreement, instead of saying it presupposes objectivity. — Banno

Is what I wrote above an example of such a background of agreement or have I strayed too far?

That word - objective - again causes more confusion than clarity.

If ↪Jamal had only said that disagreement can only take place against, and so presupposes, a background of agreement, instead of saying it presupposes objectivity. — Banno

I can probably work with this. Language is such a bastard!

:up:

Disagreement doesn’t disprove objectivity; it presupposes it. — Jamal

I can see how this works and there's an intuitive appeal to it, after all, if people are disagreeing, they seem to be appealing to some shared standard, however vaguely defined. But I remain ambivalent.

Isn’t it also possible that disagreement just reflects a clash of preferences or worldviews, with no stable objectivity underneath? When I respond to your view here, am I really engaging in a rational pursuit of truth, or am I simply performing a kind of power move, attempting to universalise my own subjective stance?

Even the very structure of philosophical debate sometimes feels less like a search for objective truth and more like a struggle over whose lens on the world becomes dominant. In that case, disagreement doesn’t so much presuppose objectivity as it performs a social contest, perhaps masked, by the language of reason. Or something like this.

And yes, this implies that all discourse is problematic, ultimately lacking foundation. You raise the idea of intersubjective agreement or epistemic communities. But does that amount to a form of objectivism, or is it merely a cluster of like-minded individuals reinforcing a shared orthodoxy? After all, what counts as “evidence” or “sound reasoning” within such communities is often defined by the very group that claims to be rational. So are we talking about objective standards, or just mutual reinforcement dressed up as epistemic legitimacy?

Thanks. Now that we have established that my philosophical worldview is not a religious search for a "safe place" in heaven, let's consider what it actually is. And what it does not entail. — Gnomon

No. You’re jumping the gun. A ‘safe place’ just means whatever gives you comfort. I wouldn’t have thought heaven was a candidate here, why would you? I notice that you’re still seem to be riffing off the religion of your youth, which for whatever reason fails to support you in your sense making. That’s understandable and many do likewise. But that’s not my ‘path’, so given we don’t share suppositions, and the fact that I’m not a physicist or scientist, I don’t generally get into speculative cosmology.

But faith is basically always the same qua faith, it just may be self-deluded, or misplaced if the person or thing one has faith in is not reasonable or worthy. — Fire Ologist

That makes sense and I guess would match my understanding of it. If this is the case, how does one determine when a faith is appropriate?

Do you think faith only has to do with a lack of reason and knowledge? — Fire Ologist

From what I've read here, I think we probably need specific examples of faith in action in order to assess whether or not it is reasonable. If someone says they have faith that Trump will make America great again, as I’ve heard from several Christians, then I would doubt that faith is a reliable or useful path. If they say they have faith that Black people are inferior, which I have heard from white South African Protestants, then I would also consider that kind of faith to be mistaken.

As I’ve said before, if “faith” just means “trust,” then I’d prefer to use the word “trust” instead. And presumably if we have trust in something there are likely good reasons for this - eg medicine. For me, “faith” often implies belief without evidence, possibly without good reason, and perhaps even in the face of contrary evidence. But let's not return to this, since we'll probably just go around covering the same ground in a kind of endless regression. :wink:

Acceptance of truth on authority is something we do all the time, as in medicine, where we trust the authority of doctors, or in schools, where we trust the authority of teachers. In these cases the truth that we do not know ourselves but accept from others is a truth we could come to know ourselves if we went through the right training. In the case of divinely revealed truth, we can, ex hypothesi, never know it directly for ourselves (at least not in this life), but only on authority. The name we give to acceptance of truth on authority is “faith.” Faith is of truth; it is knowledge; it is knowledge derived from authority; it is rational. These features are present in the case of putting faith in what a doctor tells us about our health. What we know in this way is truth (it is truth about our health); it is knowledge (it is a coming to have what the doctor has, though not as the doctor has it); it is based on authority (it is based on the authority of the doctor); it is rational (it is rational to accept the authority of one’s doctor, ceteris paribus). Such knowledge is indirect. It goes to the truth through another. But it is knowledge. The difference is between knowing, say, that water is H2O because a chemist has told us and knowing that water is H2O because we have ourselves performed the experiments that prove it. The first is knowledge by faith, and the second is knowledge direct.
— Peter L. P. Simpson, Political Illiberalism, 108-9

Good stuff. — Fire Ologist

Do you think a follower’s faith in a guru is of the same nature as a patient’s trust in a doctor? And what if the roles were reversed; if the person were receiving medical advice from the guru and spiritual guidance from the doctor?

Logical. mathematical and empirical truths are "one for all", not so much metaphysical "truths". The point is if there are metaphysical truths, we don't and can't know what they are, or even if you want to say they could be known by "enlightened" individuals, it still remains that they cannot be demonstrated. — Janus

This seems right to me. I suppose some people might argue that there are intersubjective agreements about metaphysical truths, such as the existence of God or the idea that human beings have a soul.

Definitely you are correct there could be many good personal reasons we can't know about to erase an account. We cannot know for certain. — boethius

:up: No worries.

It's true that it could be a legitimate well thought out political act, so please elaborate if there are good reasons for the move; that you know first hand or then can speculate. — boethius

I didn’t say it was a thought-out political act. I said some people (for whatever reason) might want to erase their presence somewhere. I presented one such example I did not say that this is what happened, just that it was a possible explanation.

I have changed during these four years in the forum. But I don't regret any of my 6,291 posts. — javi2541997

But people are different, right? You don’t understand the move because you wouldn’t do this.

Why should we give the last word on this to neuroscience? — Banno

Because it makes us feel better about the argument. :wink:

Deleting the posts is an extreme option, indeed. Imagine everything you posted for years vanishing like the smoke in the air. — javi2541997

I have different view. Some people may experience a change in how they see the world and feel embarrassed or self-conscious about their past ideas. Sometimes we need to make radical or symbolic change in order to move on.

Ha! :grin:
That's the exact opposite of my childhood religious experience. — Gnomon

I'm glad to hear it. :up:

Rather I’m interested in the idea of a blended state, where a belief is seen as consisting of both cognition and feelings. — Banno

Very interesting. I can't say I have much to add to this, except that I've often thought people are drawn to beliefs that are emotionally satisfying. I recall Steven Pinker stating that we justify beliefs using reason, but we form them based on our affective relationships with the world.

intellectual honesty should disabuse one of the idea of "one truth for all" — Janus

From what I’ve seen, the experience is often all about ‘one truth for all' so how could we expect restraint? Intellectual honesty seems to me to be a separate project. Are we really expecting those touched by the divine to say, ‘I encountered a higher power and I know we are all one, but I’ll keep it in perspective because intellectually this is the right thing to do?'

The problem I see is when they conflate their interpretations with knowledge and make absolutist truth claims. In other words dogma, ideology and fundamentalism are the problems...thinking others should believe as they do. — Janus

I agree with you, but isn't it inherent to the experience that it feels like an encounter with truth and therefore natural, even inevitable, to conflate interpretation with knowledge that ought to be shared with the world? From their perspective, it's not dogma, it's clarity, even a form of compassion to share it.

But you seemed to imply that my somewhat positive worldview is based on Faith instead of Facts*1. Yet I rejected the "overarching narrative" of my childhood and constructed a philosophical worldview of my own from scratch. — Gnomon

No, I don't imply that, since I don't know whether you have a positive worldview or not. To me, it seems like you're working terribly hard to overcome a wounding experience in a fundamentalist religion. I'm not sure I would call that positive. Perhaps it's a determined effort to find somewhere safe?

I would make the claim that philosophy is concerned with the nature of being, rather than reality in the scientific or objective sense, which is nowadays such a vast subject that nobody can possibly know more than one or two aspects of it. And also that this is a philosophically meaningful distinction although not often mentioned in Anglo philosophy (while it's fundamental to Heidegger, as I understand it.) — Wayfarer

Ok. I think this makes sense, though I’m using the term ‘reality’ loosely here. Isn’t it the case that what you’re really talking about is some kind of ultimate concern, or a hierarchy of meaning within this understanding of being?

First of all, I specifically asked Tom Storm not to tell anybody about this. — T Clark

I’m indiscreet.

I wonder too if there's a general view that some disciplines, like physics and chemistry, are considered the “real” sciences, while others, like sociology or psychology, are dismissed as “soft sciences,” or even not science at all by some polemical voices.

I recall the philosopher Susan Haack having some interesting things to say about the so-called “scientific method.” In her view, the principles of good inquiry, like respect for evidence and critical reasoning, apply not just to natural sciences but also in fields like law and journalism. She argues that science is not one method, nor is it a fundamentally different way of thinking from other forms of disciplined inquiry.

Perhaps? Do the different realities share anything in common? Or are there as many realities as possible assertions? — Count Timothy von Icarus

What they might share, I guess, is us working hard to make sense. We do cherish our overarching models and unified field theories. But I’m not especially concerned by notions of infinite regress if that’s where we end up.

:up:

'm sorry if it came across that way. — Gnomon

No problem. We're just threshing things out.

But my current view does not predict anything for me, beyond this not-so-good-not-so-bad lifetime. — Gnomon

Fair enough.

But you seemed to imply that my somewhat positive worldview is based on Faith instead of Facts*1. — Gnomon

No. We all see what we want to see. The point of philosophy, as I see it, is to notice what we've overlooked. But how do we get there? That's rhetorical: no need for an answer.

FWIW, I'd suggest that you cut-back on your intake of Headline News. William Randall Hearst, magnate of the nation's largest media company, insightfully observed about the criteria for news publishing : "if it bleeds, it leads". Another version is "bad news sells". — Gnomon

You may not have intended it this way, but that comes across as both dismissive and tangential. I’m not generally a consumer of news, and this perspective is shaped by direct experience. My professional work brings me into daily contact with refugees, asylum seekers, survivors of abuse and trauma, former prisoners, the homeless, and those who are sick or dying. My father was in a Nazi camp during WW2 and some of my mother's family and friends starved to death in the Dutch hunger winter of 1944. My views are not based on some tabloid journalism of confected horror. I could take a cue from your tone and say back to you - why not get out into the real world and look around?

That said, I raised the point as a plausible interpretation of a world that appears deliberately built to produce suffering. I don't actually hold this view myself, but it's a useful counterpoint to those who see evidence of divine design in nature.

Our modern cultures are far safer from the ancient threats of tooth & claw, but now imperiled mostly by imaginary evils brought into your habitat by the Pandora's Box of high-tech news media. Maybe we all need a Pollyanna Umbrella defense-mechanism from pollution of the mind. — Gnomon

How is this relevant to my point? I'm said on here several times that I think this is the best time to be alive.

My argument is not so much against a commitment to materialism, but rather to any all-encompassing metaphysical system. It does seem to me that most people on the forum see one particular metaphysical system as right and all the rest as wrong. Do you disagree with that. — T Clark

Yes, that's hwo I read you as well. Agree.

Don't tell anyone else I said this, but I wonder if there are really no true ontological positions, only methodological ones. — T Clark

It's an intriguing idea.

My own tentative view is that we do not access reality directly, nor can we claim any definitive knowledge of what reality ultimately is. What we encounter instead are multiple realities, each intelligible through particular conceptual frameworks or perspectives. The pursuit of a single, foundational, unifying reality strikes me as superfluous in that it overlooks the plural and interpretive nature of our engagement with the world.

I would have thought "the limits of what we know how to investigate". — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, that's an improvement. I'm not attached to my wording. I quite like this as an approach and it seems to avoid scientism.

While they don’t yet have a mind, they do know things, they do have knowledge, how ever simple. — Punshhh

Indeed. Part of me believes that the animal is in a superior position to the human. They have what they need. They require no gadgets, no psychotherapies, no fictional narratives through which to interpret their existence. They act, they live, and that is enough. In contrast, we are burdened by self-consciousness- forever constructing and deconstructing meaning, seeking justification, and struggling to feel at home in the world and often being dreadful to all an sundry while we go about it.

reality is food, tools, homes, and people. Everything else we encounter can be seen as developing out of and connected with those basic elements. How can something be considered real if it doesn't affect our human lives? I think that's materialism of a sort and I think it represents a humanizing force in our thinking rather than an alienating one. — T Clark

One metaphysical position does not, can not, address all of reality. We need to use different ones in different situations. With electrons we talk about mass and velocity. With our brothers we talk about history and personality. — T Clark

I like what you say here. I believe it was the philosopher Simon Blackburn who said that even the idealist philosophy professor adopts realism the moment they leave home in the morning.

I'm not sure anyone on this site actually defends materialism as a full-blown worldview, though they may draw from some of its strands and influences. What seems more prevalent today is a commitment to methodological naturalism - the stance that scientific inquiry should proceed without invoking supernatural explanations - rather than metaphysical naturalism, which asserts that only natural, physical entities and processes exist. The former reflects a pragmatic stance, informed by an awareness of the limits of what can be known, the latter is a stronger ontological claim, one that is itself subject to philosophical scrutiny.

Therefore, something is going on here that smacks of Teleology*3 — Gnomon

Well that's your conclusion, not mine.

If pushed, and speaking from a human perspective, you might say the world appears designed and calibrated for dysfunction and suffering: children with cancer, mass starvation, natural disasters, a clusterfuck of disease and disorder wherever you look. Not to mention the defective psychology of humans. But I don't believe this theory either. Things may appear a certain way to us because we want to believe. We are sense-making creatures compelled to find or impose an overarching narrative on everything.