Which account of karma are you assessing?

Are the two paragraphs saying essentially the same thing? And if not, what could possibly be the practical significance for our daily lives of the difference between them? — Joshs

Could be. I was responding to the Daedalian poetry of the language in the second account which led me to quite forget what the content was intended to be. :wink:

Actually in my experience it is often Christians who don't click with AA because they find it to be like a cult and do not see Christ in the model. And yes, there are those who are secular who don't like it because they don't relate to god as an idea. They have no sensus divinitatis . I think the wording 'resistant to religion' is misleading. Why should someone who has no need for god/s have to play the theist game at AA? Eight of the twelve steps are related to god. It's god heavy over at AA. But all this is out of place in this thread. :wink:

Yes, I agree. Here is an example:

We agree that the cup is on the table
The only way we could agree that the cup is on the table is if there is a cup, and there is a table, and the cup is on the table.
There is a cup, and there is a table, and the cup is on the table.

Compare:
We agree that the cup is on the table
The only way we could agree that the cup is on the table is if something like Q can be an externality in relation to mind only to the extent that it have its own internality, a subsistence , a being into itself that can be clearly separated from what causes or influences it. A thing can persist as itself , and external to another thing, for so many milliseconds, for instance. This notion of how things exist in time rests on a particular kind of metaphysical thinking, or something like that.
hence... you get the point — Banno

This is gold.

I was embroidering the edge of @Pinprick's comment and using the word 'lofty' with cavalier imprecision.

Many recovery programs (AA) along with groups like Boy Scouts have references to a "higher power" or some idea of "god/God," though it is open to interpretation. At what point does it become coercive? — Paulm12

As someone who works in addiction and metal health services there are many people who find the theism of AA and NA counterproductive and unhelpful. God is also a barrier. They prefer SMART recovery models. I personally think whatever works is useful because it's better to be a nascent theist than a dead heroin user, right?

Interesting, very nice angle. Thank you. I'll mull over it. I think it is also interesting that 'hipsters' are so fond of banal but hand crafted, often impeccably made or carefully chosen items, from beer to boots. It's a quest for authenticity though more meaningful consumption and a kind of curation of ordinary life. But I take your point that art is lofty and craft seems quotidian.

It's trivial. — T Clark

You're right - it was a glib line.

It's a nicer motto than "God hates fags and commies" — Bitter Crank

I think that's being used by Brazil.

You're right, deism had some mission creep in the old Republic.

Maybe that is the subtext. A Christian might say that the foundational guarantee for all trust is Jesus. I'd question the possibility of a meaningful secular state when the instrument which lubricates its wheels is already complicit in religious privilege. Imagine the outcry if it were changed to In Allah We Trust. I wonder how many of the ferocious fundies and bigots for Jesus would defend this kind of religious freedom.

Thanks. Yep.

Tell me why.

Religious people do not want the state to interfere with their theology, organization, practice, rituals, and membership. — Bitter Crank

They seem to want the freedom to persecute others and have the right to inflict religious values on the wider community. It's hard to see how America has meaningful church and state separation when even the fucking currency has In God We Trust emblazoned upon it. Given the mighty dollar's importance to the prosperity gospel of much biblical literalism, this seems apropos.

A scientific instrumentalist will say that the mathematical model of an electron best describes and predicts the results of observation.

So a scientific realist will say that the Standard Model corresponds to the way the world is, whereas a scientific instrumentalist will just say that the Standard Models works. — Michael

Sounds like the instrumentalist is similar to a pragmatist - 'it works'. Isn't a scientific realist a philosophical naturalist and an instrumentalist a methodological naturalist? I struggle to see how a scientist can do much more than propose they have tentative or defeasible models based on the best available evidence right now. Can they really make immutable claims about reality?

In this discussion of what humans/science cannot directly access, we seem to be haunted by variations of Kant's noumena - the effing ineffable!

I think some counselling, social work and human services work will be hard to replace because people benefit greatly from interacting with another person. An algorithm is incomplete and does not provide 'presence'. Carl Rogers writes how being listened to and attended to by another human who shows empathy is critical to counselling or support work. Not sure how robotics will be able to fake this. A lot of work involves sitting in silence with people. It's the human presence that does much of the work, not the words.

Big subject and I am no expert. Microphone placement and recording clarity can also make or break such a performance (if it is not live). If live, acoustics matter greatly. But generally the musical score and the professionalism of the artists does the bulk of the work. The conductor might make some artistic choices (tempo, interpretation) but this contribution can be overstated. We generally don't hear individuals in a group unless they are soloists or off key. In the classical repertoire skill matters greatly because the music is often highly technical.

Got ya. :up:

In turn, objects of judgement, imagination, volition, and so on, including cognition and even (gasp) experience itself, then assume the guise of phenomena, at the expense of the notion of sensory “appearance” from which the term originated. — Mww

Sorry Mww, I'm not a philosopher (and probably shouldn't be here), but is this a critique of phenomenology?

Not where I’m coming from, but ok. — Mww

Where do you think it goes wrong?

They say that Van Gogh was not as accomplished a painter as Picasso, but I don't think we can say that he was an inferior artist. I suppose we might say that because Picasso had mastered the traditional artistic skills, he was more able to revolutionize art in the way he did. Things seemed to come easy for him; was that because of technical mastery?

Similarly, there have been many more technically able guitarists than Frank Zappa or Robert Fripp, but the music of, say, Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai leaves me cold. Could this be because Zappa and Fripp had other skills, not particularly involved in guitar technique, that they brought to bear on their guitar playing (harmonic awareness, note choices, etc., that they got from being composers and having a natural all-round musical knowledge and musicality)? Or do we in this case want to reach for the arty stuff to explain it: conceptual vision, emotional investment, or imagination? — Jamal

So much to unpack isn't there? I am indifferent to most works by Van Gogh and Picasso - but I would say Picasso has the greater imaginative power and seems to be more inspired (more of that later) owing to his prodigious and seemingly ceaseless diversity. The term technical mastery is just another way to say talent, isn't it? But that word sticks out in today's culture. Is 'talent' just the application of great skill, or is it more inspired? I hold to a more unjustifiable and romantic view of the arts and think of some artists as inspired in some way - and I can't really account for or explain this except in the subjective experience of the work. So it's useless to others.

I find Zappa's stuff to be glib and empty cleverness, but I agree with you about Steve Vai who I see as the acme of soulless masturbatory technique. I often cite Vai as an example of how technique means little. I tend to reach for arty stuff in my appreciation of music - I like qualities: imagination, surprise, emotion, flaws, vitality, intimacy, intensity. All pretty vague and personal.

Thanks. Yes I'm starting to understand the building blocks (no materialist pun intended).

This is particularly interesting:

formal logical structures, like mathematical operations and logical laws, are structures in the experience-of-the-world. They're neither private or subjective, nor external and objective - they transcend or at least straddle the subject-object distinction. So causality is neither in the world, nor in the mind, but in the experience-of-the-world. (This is the meaning of Quantum Baynsienism.) — Wayfarer

Maybe there needs to be a separate thread on speculative models of idealism. This is controversial material. Would you also place Jung's collective unconscious here? There seems to be soft and hard ways to describe this, some of which sound like Platonism to me.

The collective unconscious appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious. We can see this most clearly if we look at the heavenly constellations, whose originally chaotic forms are organized through the projection of images. This explains the influence of the stars as asserted by astrologers. These influences are nothing but unconscious instrospective perceptions of the collective unconscious.

- C.G. Jung The Structure of the Psyche Collected Works 8

(but then Wayfarer denied that of logical rules, which he still maintains are 'real'), something like 'exists outside of individual minds', but then idealism is in hot water requiring God already (usually reserved for the end of a conversation!) — Isaac

It's interesting. Under idealism something needs to hold all thought or 'reality' together for us to have regularities and be able to share our modest intersubjective experiences. The thesis seems to be that reality is fundamentally mental - not only in your mind alone, or my mind alone, but also (and here's the thing) in a transpersonal, spatially extended form of mind.

This seems to be an analogue to Plato's Realm of the Forms or Jung's collective unconscious - a repository full of content which transcends space and time. It's where maths lives, alongside the rules of logic and I'll guess, many idealists would argue without this realm and its contents there would be no order and human communication would be incoherent. It all sounds like transcendental arguments for god developed (via Kant) by Cornelius Van Til who argued that god is the precondition for logic, reason and morality. Anyway I think this is where the arrows point.

idealism vs materialism is not actually the same debate as realism vs non-realism. Idealism is not non-realist, but claims that the external material world has no intrinsic or inherent reality outside the experience of it. So it may be opposed to what you think is 'realist' but to declare that it is non-realist actually begs the question, that is, assumes what needs to be proven (that the external material world is inherently real and that the denial of this constitutes non-realism.)

I think the assumed version of realism behind that article is scientific realism. — Wayfarer

What a lovely string of words, it deftly encapsulates the sorts of wonderful discussions we have here. :pray:

'Doctor', to us. (Actually, he has two doctorates.) — Wayfarer

Of course.

Doctor! Doctor! Can't you see I'm burning, burning
Oh, Doctor! Doctor! Is this love I'm feeling?

Sorry...

Even given a consistent idealist ontology, that the fundamental constituents of knowledge are not objects but ideas and sensations, this doesn't mean that pain is not real, because it is experienced as real, and that experience is apodictic (cannot plausibly denied). — Wayfarer

I got that much already from Mr Kastrup. :wink:

Go Fuck Your Self (Ayn Rand)

In this type of philosophy, it is difficult to establish a temporal coherency, or a continuity of existence from one moment to the next in time. So process philosophers end up positing some sort of spiritual element which produces a relationship between one moment of time and the next, to account for the observed temporal continuity and apparent consistency of being as time passes. — Metaphysician Undercover

Goodness. Sounds messy and almost unachievable. But thanks for that.

What it does though is give us the principles required to understand the priority of the spiritual over the material. — Metaphysician Undercover

I hear you. But I guess it is saying there is no 'material', so there is only ideas or mind. In such a reality, is there a difference in how we develop a priority of ideas and how would we go about determining what is important for human beings?

Would you mind briefly explaining how to read W's statement:

Since everything lies open to view
there is nothing to explain.

Of course, there are external events which may make a big impact, such as when a parent dies or leaves the family. — Jack Cummins

Or developing a mental illness or an addiction. They can radically alter a person's character, personality and choices.

I think the hard part in all this is determining exactly what is meant by a qualitative notion such as 'the unique person they are'. I have friends I have known for almost 45 years. In some ways I can say they are the same unique people they were when kids. In other ways they are totally different. I actually don't think I can tell for certain, as my assessment is complicated by my seeing continual change over time, projecting my preconceptions on their actions and retro-fitting memories. We often see what we want to see.

having to face the reality of the spiritual world. — Metaphysician Undercover

Interesting. Does idealism in your view necessitate the reality of a spiritual world (as opposed to a reality where mentation is everything)? I can see how it might support some forms of spiritual belief, with suppositions and additional work - what kind of spiritual world does idealism establish as real?

Thanks.

The real challenge comes when trying to explain 'why'? And defining justly. How do these four words deal with abortion or capital punishment?

I think many people can separate what they like from what they respect. — T Clark

Good point and one some people forget - if they don't like it, it's because 'it ain't no good'. There are many things I admire that I want no part of because I don't enjoy them - most long form TV series - e.g., Breaking Bad, The Wire; most opera; Shakespeare plays; graphic novels; stand up comedy. I wonder if this is because I appreciate the craft, but don't respond emotionally to the art.

It's pretty rare, at least as far as my experience goes — Janus

Yep. Got ya.

Morning Ralph. Morning Sam.

, just highlighting that if one really seriously believed in the importance of preparing for an afterlife, then one would live a very different life — Janus

I'm not sure that is right. Plenty of people who believe in an afterlife manage to be shit heels and treat others abominably. Just as those who are atheists may be entirely about self-sacrifice and compassion. I am doubtful that this idea of afterlife necessarily inspires different behaviour in people but it does in some instances.

Interesting as well. I equivocate visceral with emotional. What is something visceral that doesn't hit you emotionally? — Noble Dust

I'm just reaching for words to convey some idea that it's more ineffable. You are probably right that visceral is the wrong word. Now the reason I say it isn't just about emotion is that I can listen to 100 pop songs and none will hit target. But a Waits song will. There is something about how it is done that is central to its impact. Maybe the 'how', the presentation is the emotion? Anyway apart from old school blues (Muddy Waters, Little Walter, etc) I generally don't listen to any music with voice, certainly no folk, rock or pop.

:up:

No offense, but I was looking for the thoughts of people who are familiar with this particular issue. — Tate

I am very familiar with the various reasons why people hold to this. I am also an atheist. I am asking why you have taken this view. If you wish not to discuss it, fine.

it is fitting to be sad to recognize that bothering to live is pointless. — Chisholm

Never understood why it needs to be 'sad'.

Since there can be no end external to one's entire life, since one's life includes all of one's ends, life as a whole cannot have a point — Chisholm

I've always taken the view that living life is the point. Making meaning. Why do we need a foundational guarantee for purpose?

Out of interest how do you arrive at a pointlessness of existence?