That you class Jordan Peterson and Deepak Chopra in the same neighborhood of competency, is frightening. — Aryamoy Mitra

Those who are "fans" won't be swayed anyway. Likewise for Peterson's following. — Xtrix

Those who are "fans" won't be swayed anyway. Likewise for Peterson's following.
— Xtrix — Xtrix

I'm not a follower of his, only someone who is familiar with his doctrines.

Those who are "fans" won't be swayed anyway. Likewise for Peterson's following.
— Xtrix

What did Tom say about what Dick said about Harry?

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.
...
The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man. For everyone (besides the errors common to human nature in general) has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled; or the like. So that the spirit of man (according as it is meted out to different individuals) is in fact a thing variable and full of perturbation, and governed as it were by chance. — Bacon

We shouldn't seek to devolve into an infinite regress of quotations.

No question. And think of this - if humans didn't have innate empathy we wouldn't have been able to rear children. Empathy is the gateway to a veritable cosmos of moral considerations. — Tom Storm

Precisely so! How could ubermensch have raised untamenches?

But look at human history since the enlightenment project began.... is there a relationship between this and widespread apathy, the failure of democratic institutions, increased tribalism, the crumbling of social order? You can certainly make a case for this. I'm not a fan of identify politics but I read an interesting piece (can't remember where) that they are the product of our dying Christian tradition rather than the oft referenced post-modern Marxism. Food for thought. — Tom Storm

You over-dramatize, surely. When has there not been apathy, tribalism and democratic blundering? Undemocratic blundering - back in the old days! Things are better now than they were - despite everything. Maybe it's that everything is suddenly everywhere by virtue of the internet. That's a big change I don't think we were quite prepared for. I do believe the omnipresent availability of knowledge will prove ultimately beneficial, but it's only during the course of my lifetime we've gone from private citizens reading newspapers, to every one and where online all the time.

Those who are "fans" won't be swayed anyway. Likewise for Peterson's following.
— Xtrix

I'll keep posting as long as you continue not to see the point.

I guess that'll be a while, given you're a Peterson devotee. So be it. :yawn:

I'm a critic of his, if anything.

I wouldn't care so much if they had anything useful to say, though. — Xtrix

I'm a critic of his, if anything — Aryamoy Mitra

Good for you!

I wonder if we could get away from JP.

At the risk of bringing this back to Nietzsche, I find myself drawn to this quote:

We have no organ at all for knowledge, for truth: we know (or believe or imagine) precisely as much as may be useful in the interest of the human herd, the species: and even what is here called usefulness is in the end only a belief, something imagined and perhaps precisely that most fatal piece of stupidity by which we shall one day perish.

We have no organ at all for knowledge, for truth: we know (or believe or imagine) precisely as much as may be useful in the interest of the human herd, the species: and even what is here called usefulness is in the end only a belief, something imagined and perhaps precisely that most fatal piece of stupidity by which we shall one day perish. — Tom Storm

I don't know if that was actually devised by Nietzsche, but it definitely appears characteristic of him. As you'll know, most of Beyond Good and Evil's opening paragraphs were dedicated to repudiating the motives of Western Philosophers as being expedient, and indeed cowardly (since they were, at least in part, unwilling to justify why truths were preferable to untruths - a property he termed the Will to Truth). It's a key insight, since it sheds light on what we're best at - believing and acting exactly as we need to in order to achieve sustenance, before convincing ourselves that we're aiming at a higher ideal.

:up:

At the risk of bringing this back to Nietzsche, I find myself drawn to this quote: — Tom Storm

At something like the opposite end of utlility, or as the outmost perversion of utility:

The reading from the vantage of a distant star of the capital letters of our earthly life, would perchance lead to the conclusion that the earth was the especially ascetic planet, a den of discontented, arrogant, and repulsive creatures, who never got rid of a deep disgust of themselves, of the world, of all life, and did themselves as much hurt as possible out of pleasure in hurting—presumably their one and only pleasure. ...For an ascetic life is a self-contradiction: here rules resentment without parallel, the resentment of an insatiate instinct and ambition, that would be master, not over some element in life, but over life itself, over life's deepest, strongest, innermost conditions; here is an attempt made to utilise power to dam the sources of power; here does the green eye of jealousy turn even against physiological well-being, especially against the expression of such well-being, beauty, joy; while a sense of pleasure is experienced and sought in abortion, in decay, in pain, in misfortune, in ugliness, in voluntary punishment, in the exercising, flagellation, and sacrifice of the self. All this is in the highest degree paradoxical: we are here confronted with a rift that wills itself to be a rift, which enjoys itself in this very suffering, and even becomes more and more certain of itself, more and more triumphant, in proportion as its own presupposition, physiological vitality, decreases....

Granted that such an incarnate will for contradiction and unnaturalness is induced to philosophise; on what will it vent its pet caprice? On that which has been felt with the greatest certainty to be true, to be real; it will look for error in those very places where the life instinct fixes truth with the greatest positiveness. It will, for instance, after the example of the ascetics of the Vedanta Philosophy, reduce matter to an illusion, and similarly treat pain, multiplicity, the whole logical contrast of "Subject" and "Object"—errors, nothing but errors! To renounce the belief in one's own ego, to deny to one's self one's own "reality"—what a triumph! and here already we have a much higher kind of triumph, which is not merely a triumph over the senses, over the palpable, but an infliction of violence and cruelty on reason; and this ecstasy culminates in the ascetic self-contempt, the ascetic scorn of one's own reason making this decree: there is a domain of truth and of life, but reason is specially excluded therefrom.. .. By the bye, even in the Kantian idea of "the intellegible character of things" there remains a trace of that schism, so dear to the heart of the ascetic, that schism which likes to turn reason against reason; in fact, "intelligible character" means in Kant a kind of quality in things of which the intellect comprehends this much, that for it, the intellect, it is absolutely incomprehensible. After all, let us, in our character of knowers, not be ungrateful towards such determined reversals of the ordinary perspectives and values, with which the mind had for too long raged against itself with an apparently futile sacrilege! In the same way the very seeing of another vista, the very wishing to see another vista, is no little training and preparation of the intellect for its eternal "Objectivity"—objectivity being understood not as "contemplation without interest" (for that is inconceivable and non-sensical), but as the ability to have the pros and cons in one's power and to switch them on and off, so as to get to know how to utilise, for the advancement of knowledge, the difference in the perspective and in the emotional interpretations. — Nietzsche

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52319/52319-h/52319-h.htm

Some may note that Nietzsche himself manifests some of reason's self-mutilation. As he notes elsewhere, his atheistic critical thinking is a late stage of asceticism.

We have no organ at all for knowledge, for truth: we know (or believe or imagine) precisely as much as may be useful in the interest of the human herd, the species: and even what is here called usefulness is in the end only a belief, something imagined and perhaps precisely that most fatal piece of stupidity by which we shall one day perish. — Tom Storm

What I never understand with Nietzsche is how the negation of all philosophy can itself be included with philosophy.

Dennett’s solution to the ‘mystery’ of consciousness is to pick physicalism, but in doing this he stays within the subject vs object, inner vs outer binary.

Phenomenology doesn't force us to choose between these two but instead puts them together in a much more radical way than the mere cobbling of ‘inner feeling’ and ‘outer things’. — Joshs

Naturalism is the study of 'what you see out the window'. Phenomenology is the study of 'you looking out the window'.

What I never understand with Nietzsche is how the negation of all philosophy can itself be included with philosophy. — Wayfarer

It always makes me smile when people say in earnest piety: there is no truth.

Naturalism is the study of 'what you see out the window'. Phenomenology is the study of 'you looking out the window'. — Wayfarer

Do the windows have to be in the same building?

:snicker: the point I was trying to make, is that naturalism "brackets out" the subject and generally adopts a realist stance; phenomenology is concerned with understanding 'the experience of seeing'.

Of course and I'm sorry. I often think there is no point being and adult if you can't be childish.

I'm not someone who generally trusts their phenomenological impressions. How to you stop your conscious self from providing an 'enhanced' experience of seeing/hearing/doing narrative?

Could it be argued that some forms of meditation are a kind of phenomenology?

Only if it's properly disciplined. It's very easy for 'meditation' to just go off on its own tangents. But, yes, there is a definite parallel between Husserl's 'epoche' (suspension of judgement) and Buddhist mindfulness practices. Actually there's a link that goes right back to the ancient Greeks - Pyrrho of Elis is believed to have travelled to Gandhara (now Kandahar in Afghanistan) and conversed with Buddhist monks, from whence he returned with the teaching of 'Pyrrhonian Scepticism', which has been written about in various academic papers and books (e.g. https://g.co/kgs/WhvVeL).

Interesting. I've just been talking to a mate of mine who is a Catholic priest about the Franciscan friar Richard Rohr and Christian contemplation. I started reading Thomas Merton but somehow got distracted.

I like Rohr. I got his book Falling Upwards. We had Merton’s Seven Story Mountain in the house when I was growing up. Merton was a highly charismatic individual. (You know there’s a conspiracy theory around that he didn’t die by accidental electrocution but was taken out by a CIA hit squad because of his anti-war activism.)

I've got 2,594 of Rohr's daily "Meditations" in my email inbox. I used to read them all the time, but then life got in the way so I started saving them every day with the promise to myself that I would start catching up after I retired. It's time I start! No excuses now. I've also got "Things Hidden" and "Falling Upward" on my book shelf, as yet unread. Anyway, I'm no Christian (except in the Universal Pantheist sense), but I like him and his angle on things. Interesting to see him mentioned here.

Thanks James. Yes, I was intrigued by Rohr and note he is 78. My friend met him in the US 10 years ago and 'hung out' for a bit. I am interested in any connection between contemplation and community activism.

There is a daily email he sends out called Meditations. It is really short and I have no excuse for not granting 3 minutes a day to read it, but that's me. You might want to sign up for it: Center for Action and Contemplation <Meditationsatcacdotorg>

:up:

Although I wanted to make the point about the idea of ‘suspension of judgement’ being not the same thing as ‘unbelief’.

Although I wanted to make the point about the idea of ‘suspension of judgement’ being not the same thing as ‘unbelief’. — Wayfarer

Is this the same as 'I don't know'?

Naturalism is the study of 'what you see out the window'. Phenomenology is the study of 'you looking out the window'. — Wayfarer

It's not what it's the 'study of' which differentiates naturalism in this context. I could read Tarot cards and would be quite accurate in saying that what I'm studying is the future. My methods of doing so, however, make it highly questionable that I will ever accumulate a corpus of information about the future.

What differentiates naturalism (and appeals to those who - perhaps excessively - idolise it), is that the corpus of information it yields about it's object of study is readily shared, without (by and large), the person holding that information having very much impact on it. If an engineer says a car works, it probably works no less for me than it does for you.

Phenomenology may well study 'you looking out of the window', but what consigns it to the lesser status it suffers is not that, it's the fact that the corpus of information is derives from that study is completely ephemeral, having no anchor of 'fit-to-world' to hold it.

It's a constant diversion of the woo-merchants to start by saying "science doesn't account for X", and end by promoting their own version of woo which has X as it's subject matter. But an investigation's having X as a subject matter does not in any way entail that that investigation will yield any useful information about X.

What I never understand with Nietzsche is how the negation of all philosophy can itself be included with philosophy. — Wayfarer

Perhaps the same way that some Christians say that theirs is not a religion, but the truth.

What differentiates naturalism (and appeals to those who - perhaps excessively - idolise it), is that the corpus of information it yields about it's object of study is readily shared, without (by and large), the person holding that information having very much impact on it. If an engineer says a car works, it probably works no less for me than it does for you. — Isaac

Not the point at issue. Nobody disputes that modern engineering is a marvellous thing, but it’s applicability to the problems of philosophy is another matter.

Phenomenology may well study 'you looking out of the window', but what consigns it to the lesser status it suffers is not that, it's the fact that the corpus of information is derives from that study is completely ephemeral, having no anchor of 'fit-to-world' to hold it. — Isaac

Not sure how you can study yourself looking out the window unless it means reflecting on your subjective experience of your experience (sorry for the gratuitous repetition). Introspection, I guess. No doubt there are subtitles that render my understanding barbaric and unformed as far as those in the know are concerned.

There's a long tradition of doing this in a range of ways so I can't dismiss it. I do wonder how one does phenomenology with any kind of rigour and if anyone can provide an example of a benefit it provides in more specific terms.