That is a very poignant interview with DBH and Curt Jaimungal. (He's had back surgery and is looking much thinner, I notice.) I have to respect his honesty.

But also recall that Schopenhauer quote I included a few days back:

In order to always have a secure compass in hand so as to find one's way in life, and to see life always in the correct light without going astray, nothing is more suitable than getting used to seeing the world as something like a penal colony. This view finds its...justification not only in my philosophy, but also in the wisdom of all times, namely, in Brahmanism, Buddhism, Empedocles, Pythagoras [...] Even in genuine and correctly understood Christianity, our existence is regarded as the result of a liability or a misstep. ... We will thus always keep our position in mind and regard every human, first and foremost, as a being that exists only on account of sinfulness, and who is life is an expiation of the offence committed through birth. Exactly this constitutes what Christianity calls the sinful nature of man. — Arthur Schopenhauer, quoted in Schopenhauer's Compass, Urs App

So the reason for the suffering of this world is that this is in its nature, and furthermore, we're only in it because of some primeval fault or flaw. So nobody is really innocent! If you were completely innocent, then you wouldn't have been born in the first place. That's the bad news! But according to the Christians, the good news is, that you really don't belong to this world.

I love DBH. I'd love to have a chat with him. I missed him here in Melbourne last year. He was at a conference I could have attended but didn't see.

So nobody is really innocent! If you were completely innocent, then you wouldn't have been born in the first place. That's the bad news! But according to the Christians, the good news is, that you really don't belong to this world. — Wayfarer

Ha! It's what I call the prefect excuse. I don't buy it, but I know it has helped many people to sleep at night.

Quine stabilized the world with his naturalism, ridding the equation of pesky semantics. You affirm the pesky semantics, but deny naturalism. Your idea of objectivity is certainly different from his. Or is it? — Astrophel

I deny Quine’s version of naturalism, but I affirm Joseph Rouse’s naturalism, which doesn’t force the normativity of scientific inquiry into the constraints of a sovereign view of physics.

No doubt, the "slightly different semantic sense" occurs from moment to moment, but does this really undo self persistence? How is it that I am the same person that I was a moment ago? Technically, you would say, I am not. But on the other hand, this belies the very concrete "sense" of my existence, which is not analytically reducible. — Astrophel

Aren't there times when ‘being the same’ matters and other times when ‘being different’ matters? The point is that it is not the question of persistent self-identity which is primary but why it is important and for what purposes. There is relative ongoing stability in purpose and mood, and this stitches together continually changing moments of sense. We don’t need an unchanging world, we need a world whose changes we can navigate coherently, with some sense of familiarity.

That sounds complicated and a lot like hard work. Is this exhausting to live by?

As a non-philosopher I find this hard to grasp or at least accept. Is it making too much out of too little change? — Tom Storm

Every moment we are conscious our perceptual system translates a constantly changing kaleidoscope of sensations into stable meanings, and the way we tend to think about language accomplishes the same thing by ignoring the fact that every use of a word involves a subtle reinvention of its meaning . So if we typically normalize and stabilize our world without effort , what advantage is there in noticing the underlying variations?

Whenever you suffer negative emotions, you are presented with an opportunity to examine your taken-for-granted assumptions about the world, assumptions which failed to prepare you to anticipate the changes in your world which triggered your anxiety, fear , anger or guilt. My point is that the kinds of thinking which assume a world composed of sold, unchanging physical object, principles or laws is a world of violent polarization, because arbitrary, violent change goes along with such assumptions That’s why fundamentalisms of all kinds are inherently cruel and unforgiving. The price you pay for a world of fixed and nailed down concepts is capricious oppositions and contradictions

By contrast, the incessantly changing universe I described in my earlier post is at the same time a flow of extraordinary self-intimacy and intricacy. Abandoning fixed truths, objects, concepts, laws and principles at the same time significantly reduces the perceived arbitrariness, violence and polarization of change, and allows for a more peaceful anticipation of what is to come.

Could you elucidate the bearing this has on the OP? For example how this might provide a basis for ethical normativity?

The choice can never be arbitrary, precisely because our attitudes, values and actions must always conditioned [...] — Joshs

Arbitrary doesn't imply 'unconditioned' so your point, sir, is a red herring / strawman. My point: a 'consistent relativist' forfeits all standards for deciding between competing or incommensurable truth-claims, ergo her preference is arbitrary.

As mentioned in an earlier comment, there is an unspoken convention that this is not something that can be considered in the secular context, as by definition, secular culture can't accomodate it. — Wayfarer

When the meta religious thinkers have absolutely no experience on the practical side of the religion, or exclude the secular aspect of the religion, it is doubtful the meta religious reasoning could arrive at the knowledge they supposed to arrive.

Aren't there times when ‘being the same’ matters other times when ‘being different’ matters? The point is that it is not the question of persistent self-identity which is primary but why it is important and for what purposes. There is relative ongoing stability in purpose and mood, and this stitches together continually changing moments of sense.
We don’t need an unchanging world, we need a world whose changes we can navigate coherently, with some sense of familiarity. — Joshs

Well said, I say. But foundational ethics is, alas, lost.

My point: a 'consistent relativist' forfeits all standards for deciding between competing or incommensurable truth-claims, ergo her preference is arbitrary. — 180 Proof

Speaking of strawperson arguments: The conditioned here IS NOT arbitrary. Nothing says it has to be this way, it just IS that way. This is entirely in line with a consistent relativist.

Well said, I say. But foundational ethics is, alas, lost. — Astrophel

One can only hope. Henry never struck me as an ethical foundationalist.

Arbitrary doesn't imply 'unconditioned' so your point, sir, is a red herring / strawman. My point: a 'consistent relativist' forfeits all standards for deciding between competing or incommensurable truth-claims, ergo her preference is arbitrary. — 180 Proof

There are always standards to be consulted in matters of competing arguments, but these standards get their intelligibility from within some discursive system, rather than being external to all systems. Paradigm shifts in the sciences are neither arbitrary nor do they take place under the control of some extra-discursive standard of correctness.

Objectivity' can mean different things. In the pragmatic context it just amounts to intersubjective agreement. In the realist context it is an acknowledgement of things having an existence of their own, independently of the human. If objectivity is independent of the human, and everything we experience and know is not, then we cannot fully know a purportedly independent existence even though our experience has obviously induced the idea of it in us.

The absolute idealist conception that objective existence just is what we experience seems inadequate. It certainly seems to be true that our experience itself is objectively real, meaning that we experience just what we experience, but even here we don't seem to have full access to just what it is that we experience. Unknowing seems to be as important as knowing in human life. That doesn't satisfy those who are addicted to finding certain — Janus

I don't approve of the term 'idealist' to explain a description of the world that understands that the perceptual act that receives "the world" must be an essential part of the description. Saying it is all idea simply does not describe the way things appear to us. Trees and fence posts are still "out there" and not me, al this is an imposition on me and I have to deal with it. The idea is that all this has to be understood as an event, because to perceive is an event, and time and space are conditions we bring into the event, though, and this is critical, we do not merely invent in the event. We struggle with, we grapple with, this world, this often overwhelming existence, and this can only be apprehended IN this world. All that ever appears to us is appearance, BUT: To speak of something as an "appearance OF" is where the difficulty begins. I think this "of" is a false attribution, a misleading physicalist metaphysics, for to affirm something like this, one would have leave experience. I don't think leaving experience can be made sense of; but then, I do think experience is far more than plain thinking can give us, the rigors of science, notwithstanding. For me, the physicalist metaphysics (some version of, philosophically, at the level of basic assumptions, when all perceiving systems are removed from this room, there is still a "room") simply ignores the glaringly obvious issue perception. Ever heard of a physicist beginning her theory with an account of the perceptual act itself?? Of course, this is ignored. This is why we have philosophy.

"Unknowing seems to be as important as knowing in human life." To me, this is more important than it might seem. Knowing is built out of unknowing, for to know cannot be understood as a stand alone event. One cannot know the boat is in the water if there is no "that which is not a boat" in the region of the concept where the knowing has its genesis. This kind of thing makes knowledge claims problematic, I mean the simple ones. As I see it, this is the among the death throes of naturalist thinking. But consider: if argument shows that language cannot do this, capture or pin an an "existing thing," then what IS it that we stand before when we stand before a world? For this is certainly not something exhaustible in the language in the analysis of language. It is Other, and here, I hold, that we have entered proper metaphysics (obviously standing on the shoulders of others). "The world" is metaphysics, there, in your face, so to speak, not something impossibly distant at all, whether Kantian or physicalist in its conception.

↪Joshs Could you elucidate the bearing this has on the OP? For example how this might provide a basis for ethical normativity? — Wayfarer

The awareness of the incessantly changing nature of experience is not a hinderance to, but the route of access into a robustly ethical involvement in the world. Dynamical changing life doesnt unfold as arbitrary disconnected moments but as a mesh of intertwined social practices. Currently, I’m enjoying that work of Hanne De Jaegher, who clarifies the relation between ethics and enactivism.

“Humanity is shorthand for humanity-partly-produced-by-nature and Nature shorthand for nature-humans-participate-in. Networks of biological processes interlace with regional practices in what Haraway (2016) calls sympoietic (“making-with”) webs.”

Sense-making is “the active adaptive engagement of an autonomous system with its environment in terms of the differential virtual implications for its ongoing form of life. [It is t]he basic, most general form of all cognitive and affective activity manifested experientially as a structure of caring” (Di Paolo et al. 2018, 332)…Whether we act or we perceive, whether we emote or we cognize, a structure of caring is at play in all forms of sense-making

Individuating systems in relation open the possibility of new metastable states to which they can transit. These transitions are not in themselves normative because they are open; they follow no “algorithm”. But they have or express values, the relation between current and potential states…to act ethically must involve forms of knowing (incorporated in practices of behaviour, emotion, and reflection) about values in configurations of becoming, i.e., about the good expressed not in the maintenance of a current configuration but in its future (and inevitable) transformation.”

“At its fundamental, engaged knowing requires a particular attitude to flourish, the attitude of letting-be; otherwise, it degrades. Limited knowing can either take the form of overdetermination, i.e., a knower who attempts to force the known into an obstinate epistemic frame, or it can take the form of underdetermination, i.e., disengagement, a “respect” for the known that forgoes any serious relation with it, letting-be degrading into letting-go. Both are fundamentally attitudes of not-caring, situations in which participation is thwarted, leading to epistemic injustices (Fricker 2007). Both can also be resisted or contested, making knowing an open arena for struggle. Engaged/engaging epistemology is both descriptive and prescriptive; it tells us what lies at the basis of a knowing relation, and it tells us also that there are better and worse ways of knowing. If a knowing relation is to flourish it should not be dominated by either end of the relation, which means inevitably that to engage in knowing is to engage in a mutual transformation, a co-becoming of knower and known.”

“ To care ethically is to be morally attuned to differences in becoming and to act in ways that cultivate, nurture, protect, and/ or repair configurations of becoming according to values. Caring for the sick and vulnerable is to help them revert a narrowing in their world. Caring for growth is to promote the value of openness and expansion in possibilities of becoming. Caring for the oppressed is to act so as to destroy patterns of blocking and neglect towards actors whose becoming is systematically thwarted.”(2021)

“While there is not one truth to how or what something is, the example shows that there are also not infinite ways in which we can know things. As Maclaren says, “[w]e can do injustices in the way we take things up”. In our knowing of things, we never fully know them. But the real problem is that we can “know” them quite wrongly.”

:up: :pray:

Ever heard of a physicist beginning her theory with an account of the perceptual act itself?? Of course, this is ignored. This is why we have philosophy. — Astrophel

Husserl noticed this, of course.

One can only hope. Henry never struck me as an ethical foundationalist. — Joshs

God is good. Though roughly put, this pretty much sets the apodictic ground for prima facie obligation.

God is good. — Astrophel

Which "God" do you mean?

Btw, is this "God" all-good (loving) and all-powerful (just)?

If, however, this "God" is not both all-good (loving) and all-powerful (just), then why call it "God"? And what makes it worthy of worship?

Lastly, how do we know these things?

I PRAY GOD TO RID ME OF GOD. (MEISTER ECKHART)

Thank you. Possibly needs a thread - it's a fairly subtle line of thought.

Lastly, how do we know these things? — 180 Proof

I have often wondered about this. The usual answer seems rooted in the definition of classical theism, which is considered rationally coherent - God as the source of all goodness, the ground of being, the essence of divine simplicity, or something along those lines. Still, I suppose you and I might question whether this transcends mere assertion and, if so, how it can be known.

Revealed religion used to be regarded as a source of knowledge. Prophecy was a part of that, as was ritual, symbolism, and sacred lore. It is believed that the prophets were visionaries, that they had insights that others did not, and that at least some of the recorded events documented in the texts (or originally passed down aurally) concerned actual historical events. From the perspective of modern culture, that tends to b deprecated or even disregarded. None of it is able to be validated by peer-review or empirical methodology and so it is generally relegated to myth, pure and simple. From which perspective, it can't be known, but only believed, which is pretty well where it stands. Most people here will simply regard any religious claim as 'belief without evidence' (with the implication that religious beliefs are examples of gullibility or wishful thinking.)

An exception might be the Vatican's annals concerning the attested miracles that have been documented in cases of beatification. As is well-known, recognition of a saint requires that at least two bona fide miracles are documented which can be attributed to the intervention of the candidate for beatification. A panel is then set up to examine these claims and to try and discredit the purported miracles as a form of QA (from whence the well-known office of the 'devil's advocate' originated.) As a result of these processes there is a body of several thousands of such cases documented over many hundreds of years, which is, at least, a data set!

A haemotologist and medical writer named Jacalyn Duffin became interested in this as a consequence of being called as an expert witness in one such case. An atheist, she was nevertheless intrigued by the data, saying:

Over hundreds of hours in the Vatican archives, I examined the files of more than 1,400 miracle investigations — at least one from every canonization between 1588 and 1999. A vast majority — 93 percent over all and 96 percent for the 20th century — were stories of recovery from illness or injury, detailing treatment and testimony from baffled physicians.

If a sick person recovers through prayer and without medicine, that’s nice, but not a miracle. She had to be sick or dying despite receiving the best of care. The church finds no incompatibility between scientific medicine and religious faith; for believers, medicine is just one more manifestation of God’s work on earth.

Perversely then, this ancient religious process, intended to celebrate exemplary lives, is hostage to the relativistic wisdom and temporal opinions of modern science. Physicians, as nonpartisan witnesses and unaligned third parties, are necessary to corroborate the claims of hopeful postulants. For that reason alone, illness stories top miracle claims. I never expected such reverse skepticism and emphasis on science within the church.

(You can read her story here, (NY Times gift link))

:up: Cool. As an atheist (by disposition) I remain intrigued by most things. I dislike closing doors. But I am also getting on in years, with limited time, set habits and a contented life, so I have bugger all reason to adjust my outlook on the basics. But the door is open.

You’ve generally struck me as open-doored :-)

the definition of classical theism, which is considered rationally coherent — Tom Storm

And yet it's only a "definition", not a publicly corroborating, sound argument that warrants believing "classical theism" is not just a (dogmatic) myth.

:pray:

But the door is open. — Tom Storm

As I see your position, after reading your thoughts here and there, you are indeed an open door, but a door in a closed room. How does one open a room?

And yet it's only a "definition", not a publicly corroborating, sound argument that warrants believing "classical theism" is not just a (dogmatic) myth. — 180 Proof

Public corroborating? Is this what delivers belief from dogmatism???

How does one open a room? — Astrophel

You're the expert. Tell me.

Non sequitur.

You're the expert. Tell me. — Tom Storm

I read, and so do you, only different books.
On religion, frankly, it would take a certain agreement on your part with what Michel Henry, my current muse, a "radical phenomenologist," says here:

Now, the systematic elucidation of appearing (not of things but of the way in which things offer themselves to us) presents us with what I would call the duplicity of appearing. This means that the mode of appearing, considered in itself, is twofold. On the one hand, there is the appearing that consists of a coming outside [venue au-dehors], of such a kind that here phenomenality is that of this “Outside”—which is also called the “world.”

Of course, the world here is the very familiar place of paying taxes, solving problems, socializing, working and so on. He calls this "outside" for obvious reasons. One stands apart from others, from things that are made objective and fit into a general scheme of habitual thinking. A world.
But,

On the other hand, there is a more original revelation that does not project outside of itself what it reveals, that does not divert toward anything external, anything other, anything different, whose phenomenality is not the visibility of any sort of “Outside,” of an ek-stasis. This original revelation reveals itself to itself, in other words, it is a self-revelation.

This would up front have to make some sense to you, just to stir toward further inquiry. Otherwise, just another lame bit of presumptuous philosophy. One might as well read the about the weather if this above makes no sense to you at all. (Though, I was surprised that you did agree with Joshs's thoughts about what constitutes the real. That was pretty out there. Maybe some of this does resonate with you.)

Something from the SEP entry on Michel Henry that resonates with me:

Contemporary Culture as Barbarism

If, for Henry, culture has always to be understood as “a culture of life”, ie, as the cultivation of subjective powers, then it includes art without being limited to it. Cultural praxis behaves what Henry designates as its “elaborate forms” (eg, art, religion, discursive knowledge) as well as everyday forms related to the satisfaction of basic needs. Both types of forms, however, fall under the ethical category of subjective self-growth and illustrate the bond between the living and absolute life. The inversion of culture in “barbarism” means that within a particular socio-historical context the need for subjective self-growth is no longer adequately met, and the tendency toward an occultation (i.e. obscuration) of the bond between the living and absolute life is reinforced. According to Henry, who echoes Husserl's analysis in Crisis , such an inversion takes place in contemporary culture, the dominating feature of which is the triumph of Galilean science and its technological developments (B xiv).

Insofar as it relates to objectification, the “Galilean principle” is directly opposed to Henry's philosophy of immanent affectivity. For Henry, science, including modern Galilean science, nevertheless remains a highly elaborated form of culture. Although “the joy of knowing is not always as innocent as it seems”, the line separating culture from “barbarism” is crossed when science is transformed into scientific ideology, i.e. when the Galilean principle is made into an ontological claim according to which ultimate reality is given only through the objectively measurable and quantifiable.

(Not that anyone would ever do such a thing.)

To me religions are procedures about worshipping a god; how to please it as well as you can. Religions comfort those who are suffering, not those who aren't suffering. I would think that suffering would be mentioned heavily in religious literature and thought. A lot of religions offer paths through suffering for people who're lost, with prayers and acts of kindness and forgiveness. I'm not religious, but if I was a gangster, I'd go with the Catholics. I could whack someone on Friday, go to confession on Saturday, receive Holy Communion on Sunday, and if someone whacked me on Monday, I'd go to Heaven. I could cause suffering, be forgiven, suffer myself, and finally receive the reward of Heaven. What a deal!

Though, I was surprised that you did agree with Joshs's thoughts about what constitutes the real. That was pretty out there. Maybe some of this does resonate with you.) — Astrophel

I have been particularly interested in @Joshs contributions and am often intrigued and/or sympathetic to the frames he brings here via post-structuralism and phenomenology. I have enjoyed bits of Evan Thompson's and Lee Braver's work.

But I have never pretended to be a philosopher or to have spent much time reading philosophy. In previous years philosophy didn’t capture my imagination. In the 1980's I read a lot of works available at the Theosophical Society, where I often hung out. I have no problem with Henry’s ‘duplicity of appearing’ as referenced. But I am not someone for whom the idea of god resonates. Whether that’s Paul Tillich’s ground of being or Alvin Plantinga’s theistic personalism.