Religion has to be "observed" for what it is, and this involves removing what is merely incidental, like the long robe ceremonies, the endless story telling, and on and on. These are the mere trappings of religion. But what IS it that is in the world that religion is about? This is the point. — Constance
I want to know the nature of something that is there to be observed, like natural condition is there for a natural scientist, PRIOR to it being taken up by cultures and their institutions and turned into an infinitely debatable construct. — Constance
If you already believe you have a firm grasp on what you consider the essence of religion, why did you ask? I happen to disagree, but I do not have an ethical case, only an anthropological and psychological theory. — Vera Mont
In Buddhist literature, there is a recognised phase of spiritual growth, "nibbida" (Pali) or "nirveda" (Sanskrit), often translated as "disgust," "disenchantment," or "turning away," denoting a turning point in spiritual growth where an individual becomes disillusioned with the vanity and suffering inherent in worldly existence — Wayfarer
I would appreciate if you refrained from telling me what I mean. I disagree that "the issue" of religion is ethical. In the wrong context, I have no wish to access it.It is not that you disagree, rather it is that you can't access the issue. — Constance
Condition A.) Involvement or presence of a sentient being and Condition B.) the possibility for that sentient being to be impacted by the action or inaction of another sentient being through no action or declared will and intent of their own (ie. against their own will or sans consideration/input).
It is incredibly broad and open-ended, yes. — Outlander
The point is this: if the world were simply as a scientist describes it to be, that is, an ethcailly neutral place of quantitative descriptions and systems of quantitative pragmatic categories, then there would be no religion for there would be ground for it. But this is not the world. Science cannot quantify ethics (notwithstanding Bentham's hedonic calculator, essentially a quantification calculator") because ethics is a qualitative issue. The world is not reducible to science's quantifications. The world is the source of all value, and because of this, the world presents the very possibility of ethics; therefore, the world IS an ethical "agency". It IS the transcendental source of ethics. — Constance
Do you have a definition or a simple description of the 'transcendent'? — Tom Storm
I do not see the thrownness itself as something determinate or indeterminate. You might bias it towards the indeterminate, but the thrownness itself doesn't create the indeterminacy. The determinate and the indeterminate jostle for position in the thrownness, but the thrownness is just there, it's the prior, the condition of existence itself. — Fire Ologist
So something human starts to look prior to the indeterminate. This creates circular reasoning. We use "our" existence to discern "radical ethical" of the "indeterminate." But if it is "our", it might automatically include the "ethical" - and existence itself might beget the indeterminate from "our" presence in existence. So I still have to wonder what was prior, what is the condition of existence at all that begat the "our" - the self-reflection in the thrownness that found radical ethical indeterminacy. — Fire Ologist
Both of them make a predicament out of action. Ethical indeterminacy undoes any sound ethical judgment of how to act. Impossibility undoes any commitment to taking action as well. — Fire Ologist
Where did THIS come from (and it is not a question of causality)? — Constance
But religion isn't a natural condition, nor did it exist "prior to it being taken up by cultures". It is part of our social system, the direct result of it, so to pluck it out of a culture and dissect it, probing for its "true nature" separated from the human flesh is absurd. If you want to examine religion outside of the social context, you ultimately find a primitive form of philosophy, a desire for understanding. — finarfin
My thinking is this: Religion rises out of the radical ethical indeterminacy of our existence. This simply means that we are thrown into a world of ethical issues that, in the most basic analysis, are not resolvable. Yet they insist on resolution with the same apodicticity as logical coercivity. Meaning, just as one cannot but agree with something like modus ponens or the principle of identity in terms of the pure logicality of their intuitive insistence, so one cannot resist the moral insistence of moral redemption. This latter is the essence of religion, and I further claim that in proving such a thing, I am giving the world and our existence in it exactly the metaphysical satisfaction is seeks. — Constance
We live in transcendence. We are this. I think one has to take the time to leave the text and realize that we are in this "place" that is alien to the language that we use to understand things. — Constance
Ask Wittgenstein how it is with value experiences. — Constance
6.41The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.
If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.
6.42 Hence also there can be no ethical propositions.
Propositions cannot express anything higher.
6.421It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one.) — Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The religious temperament is not common among analytic philosophers, but it is not absent. A number of prominent analytic philosophers are protestant, catholic, or jewish, and others, such as Wittgenstein and Rawls, clearly had a religious attitude to life without adhering to a particular religion. But I believe nothing of the kind is present in the makeup of Russell, Moore, Ryle, Austin, Carnap, Quine, Davidson, Strawson, or most of the current professoriate.
This denial of our mortality has a more basic analysis, for the question is begged, why bother with this issue at all? Fear of death assumes there is something fearful about death. — Constance
When we say "transcendence", don't we usually mean something metaphysical like 'X transcends, or is beyond, Y' (e.g. ineffable, inexplicable, unconditional, immaterial, disembodied, etc)? — 180 Proof
I usually can't tell from their posts what most members like Wayfarer or @Constance intelligibly mean by either of these terms. — 180 Proof
When you consider the transcendental, what frame do you find helpful? It strikes me that your form of idealism (as articulated in your article) has some commonalities with Husserl and phenomenology. — Tom Storm
With apologists it always comes down to "you must not understand" if you disagree with them and/or present arguments they can't cope with — Janus
'Apologists' being anyone who questions naive realism, right? — Wayfarer
:sweat: Yes, of course.That's because you are religiously blind, don't you know? :wink: — Janus
On the contrary, apologists are anyone who begs questions with mysteries rather than answering (reasoning) with public evidence and sound arguments in order to rationalize (i.e. make merely subjective excuses for) their "ideas" or "beliefs".Apologists' being anyone who questions naive realism, right? — Wayfarer
I agree with the relevance of the distinction of 'transcendent' and 'transcendental' noted above, but the latter is in some ways just as difficult to understand - it to is connected with the concept of the 'a priori' which also is a form of 'always already so'. — Wayfarer
This is inexorably connected with what is nowadays (usually dismissively) described as mysticism. But then Wittgenstein also said, not far from those other passages I quoted 'There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical'. — Wayfarer
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