I referred to metaphysics. This is about the lack of fixity our ideas have at the basic level. — Constance

Ya think?

How do you know without knowing what "the basic level" includes?

Ideas' meanings are derived from the contexts in which they are found. But contexts are determinative or finite. "The world" possesses in its meaning "that which is not contextual" I am arguing. — Constance

Assertion, not argument.

...This is the metaphysical ground of ethics, where ethics, and therefore religion, acquires its foundation. — Constance

As if all religion is existentially dependent upon a fairly recent philosophical practice we've named metaphysics?

Nah.

The narrative account in question refers to the religious narrative that is the stuff that sermons are made out of, and all the bad metaphysics. Not about narrative as such. — Constance

Bullshit.

The narrative in question was all narrative.

The assertion "Philosophy wants to know what things are at the most basic level of inquiry" is attributing wants to things that are incapable of forming/having them. I'd charge anthropomorphism; however, humans are not the only creatures capable of wanting things.

Philosophy is something that is practiced. Practices are not the sort of things that 'want to know' anything. Practitioners are.
— creativesoul

"Attributing wants to things"? A bit left fieldish. — Constance

Still having problems with spatiotemporal locations I see.

No, it's right there on everyone's screen!

We move through life never questioning these engagements in a culture, and as a result, we never realize our "true" nature. — Astrophel

That's not true.

You are close when you say "It may refer to the fact that no one chooses the socioeconomic circumstances they are born into." Right. But when one does choose, she is already IN a lifestyle, a language, a body of meaningful institutions. This is one's throwness. — Astrophel

Right?

They don't get to choose so it makes no sense whatsoever to say otherwise...

Geez.

If you're attempting to equate ethics with "being thrown into disease, and countless miseries, as well as the joys, blisses, and the countless delights" then I'll have to walk. That makes no sense whatsoever.
— creativesoul

Just ask, what IS ethics? This is not to ask Kant's question, or MIll's, but it is a question of ontology; not what should one do, but what is the very nature of the ethical and therefore religious imposition. So, if you take no interest in such a thing, then you probably should, as you say, walk. — Constance

Who needs goalposts anyway?

Ethics is not equivalent to spinoffs and extrapolations from/of Heiddy's thought.

Nah. It did not begin by thinking about thinking practices as subject matters in their own right. — creativesoul

But metaphysics is not about thinking practices. These are hermeneutic. No, religion is about the dimension of our existence called value. Religion is about metavalue, metaethics, metaaesthetics. This is what Heidegger did not understand.

How do you know without knowing what "the basic level" includes? — creativesoul

One discovers the basic level through inquiry. Heidy found there to be no single primordiality (as with the Christian God), but rather, a complex ontology of equiprimordiality, and if the matter were about language, then I would agree. But religion is not grounded in this.

Assertion, not argument. — creativesoul

True. I am referring the argument at hand, though. Here is what I wrote in response to Janus just now:

Janus wrote:

For me 'God' signifies nothing beyond the highest feelings and principles that humans aspire to. Unconditional love, unwavering steadfastness, indomitable bravery and so on.

I responded:

Perhaps there is something to this, in fact, I would say there is, but this still remains distant from the affirmation of divinity. It is the same kind of thinking that gave rise to those pesky "omni this and that" that engendered so much empty metaphysical theology. In order for the "highest feelings" to be liberated from finitude, so to speak, feelings have to examined for "properties" that can do this. I recall Moore's analysis of ethics and "the Good" in which he called this a non natural property. Curious the way this goes, for it requires an examination of the finite and accessible occasion of the good. That is, an ethical or aesthetic example. What makes this apple's taste "good" to me? But first, because it is good to me, it becomes a possible object of some ethical problematic. If it were not in any way good to me, and this may include my concern for others for whom the apple is good, then there can be no basis for an ethical complaint regarding it. The point is, it is this mysterious goodness that is among the various other properties, the sweetness, the texture, the complex taste features, etc., that makes the apple ethically viable.
But back to the good. Why mysterious? And why did Wittgenstein call value transcendental? To me, this is a fascinating question, for note as one enjoys the apple, and all of the empirical predications are analytically exhausted, there is this residual good. What IS it? One cannot observe it, and this raises eyebrows as to whether is "exists" at all. It is invisible, as odd as this may sound. But take a stronger example, much stronger, like falling in love and being ecstatic or your "unconditional love." Here the residual good (as I will call it) still cannot be empirically identified (it is not, after all, an empirical property) yet "it" dominates entirely the analysis of this love (or happiness. Love is happiness with an attachment).
Think of the other dimension of ethics and aesthetics, the Bad. Not observable, yet apply the thumb screws and the bad is now this overwhelming presence.
There is a reason Wittgenstein in his great book of facts has nothing of ethics in it (see his Lecture on Ethics). The good and the bad are transcendental, but one more thing has to be made clear: The good and the bad are apodictic, or apriori, if you like: universal and necessary in what they are; non contingent.

As if all religion is existentially dependent upon a fairly recent philosophical practice we've named metaphysics? — creativesoul

No. Metaethics is discovered IN the analysis of mundane ethics. Ethics has its grounding in the value dimension of our existence. This is an apriori argument about the structure of experience. It has nothing to do with how recently the argument and the language came into being.

Bullshit.

The narrative in question was all narrative. — creativesoul

No, you are mistaken.

And a nervy thing to say entirely without warrant. When I say religion has to be delivered from traditional narratives, it is simply to say that popular religions are constructed out of a lot of assumptions that are unsustainable on face value. Religion generally calls upon faith rather than justified belief. The idea here is that faith has driven religion into absurd reasoning. This can be overcome by phenomenological analysis.

That's not true. — creativesoul

Hmmm. Cryptically succinct.

They don't get to choose so it makes no sense whatsoever to say otherwise... — creativesoul

No, no, my good friend. You are being invited to think a bit. When you raise your awareness to philosophical thought, you find you are always already (a Heidy term) IN a culture, a language, a "potentiality of possiblities" (Heidy yet again). In this, you have been making decisions all your life. But I cannot, for example, decide how to dress for a formal dinner in Indonesia.

Who needs goalposts anyway?

Ethics is not equivalent to spinoffs and extrapolations from/of Heiddy's thought. — creativesoul

The matter here is not about goalposts, though. This is the trouble with not reading closely. This is a descriptive argument. It is not about making things fair or just.
:cool: Have a nice, day creativesoul. I find your conversation....too vacant.

Philosophy wants to know what things are at the most basic level of inquiry, and the narrative account is the first thing to go. — Astrophel

How do you know without knowing what "the basic level" includes?
— creativesoul

One discovers the basic level through inquiry. — Constance

Do you have a list of things found at the most basic level of inquiry?

Religion is about metaphysics...
— Astrophel

Nah. It did not begin by thinking about thinking practices as subject matters in their own right. — creativesoul

Nah. It did not begin by thinking about thinking practices as subject matters in their own right.
— creativesoul

But metaphysics is not about thinking practices. — Constance

Red herring.

Some religion was before all such practices began. Not all religion is/was about thinking practices. Metaphysics IS a thinking practice. Some religion was before metaphysics.

...religion is about the dimension of our existence called value. Religion is about metavalue, metaethics, metaaesthetics. — Constance

Metaethics is discovered IN the analysis of mundane ethics. — Constance

Religion is about metavalue, metaethics, metaaesthetics. — Constance

It follows that religion is about that which is discovered IN the analysis of mundane ethics. That's not true either. Religion was around long before we began doing that sort of analysis.

I see this thread has once again gone entirely off the rails into territory it neither should be covering, or makes for sensible exchanges.

*sigh*. The more philosophy i do outside of this forum the less appealing smart-sounding, but un(der)regulated discussion becomes.

"States of people's minds" suggests that you are either a relativist or a subjectivist. Or have I misunderstood? I do agree, however, that the binary classification between objective and subjective is most unhelpful when applied to ethics. — Ludwig V

As best i can bring myself to adopt a label, its emotivism.

There is something of a battle going on at the moment between belief and knowledge as the appropriate category. The (mistaken) idea that the difference between belief and knowledge means that saying one believes in God implies some sort of uncertainty, so people who strongly believe in God want to claim to know, while people who don't believe in God (or don't believe that belief in God can be rationally justified) cannot possibly concede that. It's very confusing. — Ludwig V

There is nothing coherent about claiming a belief and not knowledge unless you also claim the thing cannot be known - that would relegate the position, though. I don't see any problem there, myself. You may not be able to apply a certain framework to the claim, but I "believe" there's a Yule log in my fridge, it's because I have sufficient reason to believe so. That is, on the personal level, knowledge. If someone is claiming 'knowledge' having had no experiences that would actually indicate to the person the thing they believe - they are just being dishonest or are deluded. I actively discount those scenarios because I don't think we're taking about those people..

As best i can bring myself to adopt a label, its emotivism. — AmadeusD

I always resist labels. They are supposed to be shorthand for complex views, but in practice they enable people to pigeon-hole where they have arguments prepared. It saves thought, which is almost always a bad thing. The objective/subjective distinction is another example of the same kind.

There is nothing coherent about claiming a belief and not knowledge unless you also claim the thing cannot be known — AmadeusD

That seems paradoxical. But if one believes on faith, especially in the case of religious belief, one may well believe that what one believes cannot be known, on the assumption that knowledge requires evidence and proof.

I think that "believe" has special connotations that get neglected in philosophical discussion, and perhaps in ordinary discourse as well. It can be used to declare trust or confidence in something. This is particularly prominent in religious discourse. If one believes on faith, it is not really appropriate to claim knowledge (because, perhaps, one also acknowledges that rational proof is not available).

But this is incompatible with the widespread idea that belief implies one is not certain (and knowledge implies one is certain). I'm happy to assert that that is not the case, but I doubt if anyone will pay any attention.

But I would say that a belief must be capable of being true and most people think that religious doctrines are true or false.

I would say that a belief must be capable of being true and most people think that religious doctrines are true or false. — Ludwig V

I haven't been contributing to this thread, but I'd like to pitch in here. The question is the criterion by which one decides what is true?

Plainly if the question is an empirical one, then the criteria can be provided accordingly - if I believe that 'ice melts at 0 degrees celsius' then it's not hard to validate or falsify such a claim. And there is a massive network of interlocking facts which can be validated according to those criteria, or according to valid inferences based on them. That is, of course, the nowadays massive body of facts established by the empirical sciences.

Religious doctrines are not empirical as a matter of definition (even though many religious texts contain purportedly first-person accounts of real experiences.) So the question becomes, how to ascertain their likely truth or falsity? The fallback for a lot of people is, if they're not empirically verifiable, then they are a matter of opinion, or perhaps of individual conviction. But both are in some important sense subjective, or, one is tempted to say, merely subjective. As distinct from the vast domain of facts which are verifiable 'in the public square', so to speak. Objective facts, in other words.

You may not be able to apply a certain framework to the claim, but I "believe" there's a Yule log in my fridge, it's because I have sufficient reason to believe so. That is, on the personal level, knowledge. — AmadeusD

The difficult point about religious doctrines, in particular, is that they generally demand certainly qualities of character. There are things that 'only the wise can see'. And why? because you have to be wise to see them! One can be worldly-wise - 'Oh, they're all like that when they start out. Just wait a while and see what they think after a couple of years!' And that comes in many varieties. But religious insight, and also philosophical understanding, which are related, if not quite the same, requires something else - a quality of character.

Here is a statement from a highly-regarded Catholic philosopher, Joseph Pieper, with whom I have only passing familiarity:

Our minds do not—contrary to many views currently popular—create truth. Rather, they conform to the truth of things given in creation. And such conformity is possible only as the moral virtues become deeply embedded in our character, a slow and halting process. We have "lost the awareness of the close bond that links the knowing of truth to the condition of purity.” That is, in order to know the truth we must become persons of a certain sort. The full transformation of character that we need will, in fact, finally require the virtues of faith, hope, and love. And this transformation will not necessarily—perhaps not often—be experienced by us as easy or painless. Hence the transformation of self that we must—by God’s grace—undergo “perhaps resembles passing through something akin to dying.”

Myself, I'm not Catholic, but this nevertheless rings true , at least to me (source).

Here is a statement from a highly-regarded Catholic philosopher, Joseph Pieper, with whom I have only passing familiarity:

Our minds do not—contrary to many views currently popular—create truth. Rather, they conform to the truth of things given in creation. And such conformity is possible only as the moral virtues become deeply embedded in our character, a slow and halting process. We have "lost the awareness of the close bond that links the knowing of truth to the condition of purity.” — Wayfarer

I think this is ultimately why I am an atheist and you are some type of 'believer'. I think what we call reality (human thought and perspectives) are contingent artefacts (products of social construction and language) which more or less work pragmatically, and none of our experiences are 'true' in any transcendent sense. Truth is not about accurately representing reality but rather about what works within a particular context or discourse. God (or any analogue of god) lacks coherence or substance from where I sit, but is understandably used by many to fill the big hole of ignorance and fear most of us hold, not just about death, but also the fear that human life is essentially pointless. I think this is the joke whose punchline most people spend their lives resisting.

I know this is pretty much anathema for you - the height, perhaps, of post-enlightenment drivel - but I always find such perspectives exhilarating and unavoidably built into my experience of life.

Your pitch in is welcome, indeed. But you must have expected to encounter disagreement - you've been involved here for quite a while.

The difficult point about religious doctrines, in particular, is that they generally demand certainly qualities of character. — Wayfarer

I'm happy to agree that religious beliefs, on the whole, are not empirical - although Christ's Resurrection is often claimed (isn't it?) to be a historical (empirical) fact. But the idea that believing them requires certain qualities of character looks like an empirical claim to me.
I don't have any proper empirical evidence, but anecdotally, I've found all sorts of people hold religious beliefs and not all of them are particularly virtuous in any conventional sense. Scandals occur in amongst religious believers as well, you know.

Your quotation doesn't seem to deal with religious doctrines specifically, but with truth in general. There is a good deal of philosophical discussion of epistemological virtues and there is much to be said for that idea. However, I'm not aware of any specific arguments that everybody needs a radical transformation of character in order to know anything.

I'm not aware of purity as a moral virtue. Could you define it?

I do hope that isn't a version of the old argument that atheists are wicked. I thought we had got way beyond that.