Dennett's materialism would be categorised as a form of nihilism, according to the Brahmajala Sutta, 'the Net of Views', which meticulously documents the 64 (magic number!) varieties of eternalist and nihilist views. It is the first and longest text of the Pali suttas. — Wayfarer
If we look closely at what exactly his faith consists of, it depends heavily on what he calls relevance realization, which is his answer to what he believes is a meaning crisis in today’s culture. I happen to think the meaning crisis pertains more to his personal journey than to a culture-wide phenomenon, and that his proselytizing on this topic has certain cult-like tendencies about it, but that’s a bit off-topic. — Joshs
I dont think either Varela and Thompson buy into Vervaeke’s realism, and Thompson’s subtle distancing from Vervaeke in the interview reflects this. Thompson derives from his empirical work a reverence for the mystical, a sense of wonder an awe towards the world. This wonder doesn’t require a belief in a real grounding for what exists, if the real is understood in Vervaeke’s sense of that which is beyond deception. Thompson’s focus is on what creatively emerges rather than on what is connected to a pre-existing foundation. — Joshs
…through the microscope of molecular biology, we get to witness the birth of agency, in the first macromolecules that have enough complexity to ‘do things.’ … There is something alien and vaguely repellent about the quasi-agency we discover at this level — all that purposive hustle and bustle, and yet there’s nobody home.” Then, after describing a marvelous bit of highly organized and seemingly meaningful biological activity, Dennett concludes:
Love it or hate it, phenomena like this exhibit the heart of the power of the Darwinian idea. An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe. — From Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, quoted by Steve Talbott on 'The Illusion of Randomness'
If you haven’t seen Vervaeke’s interview of Evan Thompson, I recommend it. — Joshs
I take Dennett as a textbook example of scientific materialism, which I think is impossible to reconcile with any 'sense of the sacred' — Wayfarer
I take Dennett as a textbook example of scientific materialism, which I think is impossible to reconcile with any 'sense of the sacred' (and which is perfectly consistent with his role as 'evangelical atheist'.)
…through the microscope of molecular biology, we get to witness the birth of agency, in the first macromolecules that have enough complexity to ‘do things.’ … There is something alien and vaguely repellent about the quasi-agency we discover at this level — all that purposive hustle and bustle, and yet there’s nobody home.” Then, after describing a marvelous bit of highly organized and seemingly meaningful biological activity, Dennett concludes:
Love it or hate it, phenomena like this exhibit the heart of the power of the Darwinian idea. An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe.
— From Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, quoted by Steve Talbott on 'The Illusion of Randomness' — Wayfarer
"...lots of simple agents having simple properties may be brought together, even in a haphazard way, to give rise to what appears to an observer as a purposeful and integrated whole"
It is our general contention indeed... that phenomenological descriptions of any kind can only be naturalized, in the sense of being integrated into the general framework of natural sciences, if they can be mathematized.”
“…manipulating Relevance Realization affords self-transcendence and wisdom and insight precisely because
Relevance Realization is the ability to make the connections that are at the core of meaning, those connections that are quintessentially being threatened by the Meaning crisis. That would mean if we get an understanding of the machinery of this (Synoptic Integration Construct of RR), we would have a way of generating new psycho-technologies, re-designing, reappropriating older psycho-technologies and coordinating them systematically in order to regenerate, [be] regenerative of these fraying connections. Relegitimate and afford the cultivation of wisdom, self-transcendence, connectedness to ourselves and to each other and to the world.
Would you say Thompson's view is compatible with a post-modern understanding of 'reality'. Do you think Thompson's views are in any way limited or 'skewed' by his Lindisfarne Association upbringing — Tom Storm
What is the Buddhist view about creating life? If they see life as just suffering and the ultimate goal is ending the cycle of suffering, death, birth - "extinction" - (as far as I understand), then wouldn't they be anti-natalist? — Apustimelogist
How rebirth takes place
There are two ways in which someone can take rebirth after death: rebirth under the sway of karma and destructive emotions and rebirth through the power of compassion and prayer. Regarding the first, due to ignorance negative and positive karma are created and their imprints remain on the consciousness. These are reactivated through craving and grasping, propelling us into the next life. We then take rebirth involuntarily in higher or lower realms. This is the way ordinary beings circle incessantly through existence like the turning of a wheel. Even under such circumstances ordinary beings can engage diligently with a positive aspiration in virtuous practices in their day-to-day lives. They familiarise themselves with virtue that at the time of death can be reactivated providing the means for them to take rebirth in a higher realm of existence. On the other hand, superior Bodhisattvas, who have attained the path of seeing, are not reborn through the force of their karma and destructive emotions, but due to the power of their compassion for sentient beings and based on their prayers to benefit others. They are able to choose their place and time of birth as well as their future parents. Such a rebirth, which is solely for the benefit of others, is rebirth through the force of compassion and prayer. — HH The Dalai Lama, 'Reincarnation'
God is where we find a relationship between sacredness and ultimacy. And like you said, I think that’s inherently relational. But I’m using that as a stand–in for whatever. My partner is sacred to me, because I have that connection. But I do not think – although there’s mysterious depths to her that I can never fully grasp – I do not think of her as Ultimate Reality. And so, I think we have notions, and they could be Tao, or Brahman, or Śūnyatā (vacuity), of ultimacy. And then, if we have sacred experiences of the ultimacy, that’s sort of the epitome of what I think you’re putting your finger on.
The cognitive revolution was based on the idea that humans are not stimulus–response machines, they’re meaning–making entities.
I cultivated a professional persona that compensates for that [shyness]. And I’m in this persona right now. So, as long as I’m in this persona, I’m well, but if you put me in a context where that persona is not appropriate, like a traditional party at somebody’s house, I become sort of indistinguishable from a potted plant.
If people come to my work and find a way to “rehome” – and I’m going to use that as a strong verb, rehome – in one of the legacy religions, great! I am not anti–religious.
Varela and Thompson have no interest in abandoning naturalism and the Darwinian framework that explains the genesis of organisms and human cognition. — Joshs
The irreducible unit of a dynamical system is the assembly as an agential , ‘subjective’ whole. — Joshs
I do a lot of work on kinds of knowing other than propositional knowing. And maybe at some point we can talk about that procedural, perspectival, participatory, and that cognition is embodied, embedded, enacted, extended. So the theory is actually pointing away from an over–intellectualised, over–individualised understanding of meaning, cognition, intelligence, rationale. The evidence is growing, the theoretical argument, the evidence is growing.
If you haven’t seen Vervaeke’s interview of Evan Thompson, I recommend it — Joshs
How does the above quote differ from this by Varela? — Joshs
Because Dennett’s quote references organic molecules, and Varela’s references ‘simple agents’. If ‘simple agents’ are e.g. cellular, then they’re already at a different ontological level to organic molecules. Dennett’s model is strictly reductionist with solely bottom-up causality. As soon as you take emergence into account, and the top-down causality associated with strong emergence (in Vervaeke’s terms), then it’s already radically different to the ‘flat ontology’ of reductionism (the thrust of the first 20 minutes of the Vervaeke keynote I listed to today.) — Wayfarer
Chemistry has been shown to reduce, in some sense, to physics, and this is clearly a Good Thing, the sort of thing we should try for more of.
Such progress invites the prospect of a parallel development in psychology. First we will answer the question "What do all believers-that-p have in common?" the first way, the "conceptual" way, and then see if we can go on to "reduce" the theory that emerges in our first answer to something else—neurophysiology most likely. Many theorists seem to take it for granted that some such reduction is both possible and desirable, and perhaps even inevitable, even while recent critics of reductionism, such as Putnam and Fodor, have warned us of the excesses of "classical" reductionist creeds. No one today hopes to conduct the psychology of the future in the vocabulary of the neurophysiologist, let alone that of the physicist, and principled ways of relaxing the classical "rules" of reduction have been pro-posed. The issue, then, is what kind of theoretical bonds can we expect—or ought we to hope—to find uniting psychological claims about beliefs, desires, and so forth with the claims of neurophysiologists, biologists, and other physical scientists?
We are going to have to talk about the ephemeral, swift, curious, metaphorical features of consciousness.
Many people say: "Some day, but not yet. This enterprise is all just premature." And others say: "Leave it to the philosophers (and look what a mess they make of it)." I want to suggest that it is not premature, that in fact there is no alternative but to start looking as hard as we can at consciousness first. If we don't look at consciousness and get clear about what the destination is, and instead try to work our way up by just thinking about how the brain is put together, we won't know where we are trying to get to from where we are and we will be hopelessly lost. This is commonly referred to as the defense of the top-down strategy, and in looking at Jaynes's book again this morning I find that in his introduction he has one of the clearest and most perspicuous defenses of the top-down approach that I have ever come across:
We can only know in the nervous system what we have known in behavior first. Even if we had a complete wiring diagram of the nervous system, we still would not be able to answer our basic question. Though we knew the connections of every tickling thread of every single axon and dendrite in every species that ever existed, together with all its neurotransmitters and how they varied in its billions of synapses of every brain that ever existed, we could still never—not ever—from a knowledge of the brain alone know if that brain contained a consciousness like our own. We first have to start from the stop, from some conception of what consciousness is, from what our own introspection is. (Jaynes, 1976, p. 18)
'Early' Buddhism certainly saw existence as a malaise, a woeful condition to be escaped by the renunciation of the world. However the 'new' Buddhism - — Wayfarer
I suspect Vervaeke sits with all those theorists and self-help folk who seek to offer a remedy for common anxiety. — Tom Storm
I think it is clear that Vervaeke is a Platonist, but his relationship with naturalism seems a bit complicated. Maybe it would be better to say that he wishes to redirect naturalism away from its anti-Platonist history. It may all come down to the question of how Plato and Vervaeke understand God and transcendence. At the very least I would say that Vervaeke is opposed to the standard, reductionist tropes of naturalism, such as materialism. What do you think? — Leontiskos
Related to this - I have the sense that the One of Plotinus *is not* a concept. I think arriving at an understanding of it requires a kind of cognitive transformation although that too is very difficult to fathom. — Wayfarer
In the pre-modern vision of things, the cosmos had been seen as an inherently purposive structure of diverse but integrally inseparable rational relations — for instance, the Aristotelian aitia, which are conventionally translated as “causes,” but which are nothing like the uniform material “causes” of the mechanistic philosophy. And so the natural order was seen as a reality already akin to intellect. Hence the mind, rather than an anomalous tenant of an alien universe, was instead the most concentrated and luminous expression of nature’s deepest essence. This is why it could pass with such wanton liberty through the “veil of Isis” and ever deeper into nature’s inner mysteries. — David Bentley Hart, The Illusionist
Plotinus follows Plato, and, indeed, Aristotle, in identifying being, τὸ ὄν, that which is, as form. As in Plato, sensible things exist just insofar as they have and display intelligible forms. The forms themselves, therefore, as that which is intelligible and in virtue of which sensible things are at all, are reality (οὐσία, ouisia). Sensible things thus are not reality itself and are not beings in the full and proper sense, but, in that they have some share of intelligibility, are images of true, intelligible reality. But Plotinus goes further than Plato and Aristotle in developing both Plato’s συνουσία, synousia, the togetherness of intellectual apprehension and intelligible reality, and Aristotle’s doctrines of pure form as one with the act of thinking and of intellect as one with the intelligible, into a far more thorough and explicit account of the coinciding, the unity-in-duality, of being-as-form and intellectual apprehension. — Eric D Perl, Thinking Being, p 119
Knowledge presupposes some kind of union, because in order to become the thing which is known we must possess it, we must be identical with the object we know. But this possession of the object is not a physical possession of it. It is a possession of the form of the object, of that principle which makes the object to be what it is. This is what Aristotle means when he says that the soul in a way becomes all things. Entitatively the knower and object known remain what they are. But intentionally (cognitively) the knower becomes the object of his knowledge as he possesses the form of the object. — Aquinas Online, Cognition in General
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