Since ancient times, both Eastern and Western philosophies have prized detachment as a virtue. — Wayfarer

Like the ‘nothingness vs. no thingness’ divide which we’ve agreed upon in previous threads, “detachment” is a term which in at least the English language doesn’t find a readily interpretable meaning for the spiritual (or spiritual-like) contexts in which it is employed. In other words, it doesn’t translate well from its metaphysics-relative, intended meaning in Eastern languages.

I. for example, know of no Buddhist who advocates for the abolishment of compassion, this while upholding the ideal of we in English translate as “detachment” with the same breath. Compassion, in our English lexicon, however, can only be obtained via attachment: not only the occurrence of empathy (i.e., the sensing of what the other senses, something that one can hold for a disliked rival while in battle with them so as to best act and react to their actions) but also the occurrence of sympathy (i.e., earnest caring for what the other senses). Love of parents, children, romantic partners, the world at large, etc., is always a compassion for the X addressed. And, in common English understanding, this always then equates to an attachment toward that loved.

I believe that the full scope of “detachment” when explicitly expressed is “detachment from maya (illusion)”. And maya, to my awareness, in either Hindu or Buddhist schools of Indian philosophy is never that which is considered the core aspect of subjectivity: the atman in Hindu philosophy; the anatman in Buddhist philosophy. The latter constituting that which is nonillusory reality per se in an ultimate metaphysical analysis of things.

Thought I’d mention this given how common it is for westerners to associate “detachment” to utter unconcern, including relative to the welfare of other beings in general. In contrast to what many would think, and as you indirectly mention, detachment is not callousness. But, I think, rather the very opposite. Such that the Skeptic epoche and Stoic apatheia can make no sense, at least to me, in the absence of earnest compassion and its satisfaction with the conditions of not only oneself but of others which surround.

----

Ps. None of which is to say that objectivity does not matter or is else unimportant.

-----

Pps. Written as a footnote to what you were saying. Hopefully nothing significantly controversial about it.

Thought I’d mention this given how common it is for westerners to associate “detachment” to utter unconcern, including relative to the welfare of other beings in general. — javra

Excellent point! I have noticed in Mahāyāna Buddhism, there is a lovely expression, that emptiness and compassion are like the two wings of a bird - that realisation of emptiness leads to detachment, but that detachment without compassion (Karuṇā) is meaningless.

And of course, it is true that objectivity is vital, in many areas of life and many disciplines.

I have noticed in Mahāyāna Buddhism, there is a lovely expression, that emptiness and compassion are like the two wings of a bird - that realisation of emptiness leads to detachment, but that detachment without compassion (Karuṇā) is meaningless. — Wayfarer

Thanks for that!

scientific objectivity also excludes the qualitative dimension of existence — the reality of Being. This exclusion lies at the heart of the hard problem of consciousness, which is inextricably linked with the Cartesian divide. Scientific objectivity seeks to transcend the personal, but it does so at the cost of denying the reality of the subject¹⁰. — Wayfarer

I agree with nearly everything you're saying (very well!) in Part 3. I would slow down a bit for the above, however. Can we differentiate between "consciousness" as a possible object of scientific knowledge, and "consciousness" as a lived experience of a particular subject? I think we can. Good science can remain noncommittal about subjective experience while pursuing an understanding of the Hard Problem. Chalmers isn't saying that solving the Hard Problem will require an objective account of what it's like to be a subject. He only (!) asks that we discover what consciousness is, and why it necessarily arises in the way that it does, and no other. Must we insist that only an account of subjectivity itself will answer this? I'm willing to give science a lot more leeway here.

What's key is your phrase "denying the reality of the subject." Obviously that is not what I mean by remaining noncommittal! Good science can and should acknowledge the experience of subjectivity, perhaps bracketing the question of the nature of this experience, which would leave room not only for philosophical description, but even for an argument à la Churchland and Dennett that the experience is an illusion.

Answering by each part my reflections on this

there has been massive commentary over centuries of how the objective sciences rob the world of meaning. The point is, for all of its objective power, science also contains a fundamental lacuna, a gap or an absence, at its center. How, then, can we expect it reveal what is truly so? What kind of ‘truth’ are we left with, if we ourselves are not part of it? — Wayfarer

In what way are we not part of it? How is scientific objectivity any different from someone stating "that is a rock". Such statements share the same lack of meaning, but it's how we relate them which gives us hints of what is true to us.

Isn't the issue rather that people expect a truth to be "out there" and given to them in a packaging that also incorporates their emotional dimension.

Is this not just a matter of emotional evolution? That thousands of years of culture operating on the idea that an emotionally satisfying truth is "out there" and that we've ended up in a state in which we realize that it isn't.

Isn't it then up to us to evolve our emotional realm to effectively find an experience that is emotionally satisfying in relation to the cold facts that science have shown?

That the only thing that essentially happened in history is that we went from constructing fantasies about the stone having intrinsic meaning, some divine purpose, to concluding those fantasies to be false.

And that we now use science as a punching bag in order to blame it for removing the veil from our eyes.

Essentially, there are plenty of philosophies and even religions of the world which do not place us humans in arrogance over nature. Whose core ideas is about accepting ourselves to be a meaningless cog in the whole that is nature and the universe.

Science is closer to this kind of thinking than the monotheistic or pantheonic concepts of meaning. And I think the modern, non-religious person may need to study how they handled it.

Because I don't think it's a crisis of truth, but a crisis of emotional response to truth. We haven't evolved into viewing ourselves in the context of a purely scientific world view.

I also believe that there are less true atheists in the world than people think. I think that most people hold irrational beliefs even when saying they're non-believers.

We are basically unable to handle actual truth, because we've yet to live in a society where we all gather around such a construct and deal with the consequent emotions together, forming a social existence and culture in which the idea of meaning comes from us and our relation to truth, rather than something external informing us of what is.

Part 2

The Lebenswelt is where objectivity and subjectivity interact — it is the shared foundation that makes objective inquiry possible. Husserl, in effect, had realised anew the role of the scientist in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. — Wayfarer

While it is true that we are always required to experience the objective truths with our subjective mind, I'm not sure the definition of a scientist is this. Science communicators are usually closer to this bridge of explaining the truths of nature and the universe into a comprehensible subjective construct that we use to understand the world around us, but a scientist can also be the one who sift through raw data and mathematically discover something that does not have any interpretational properties. How one equation connects and intersect with another is not able to exist as a subjective experience, it is simply pure logic.

This shift in focus introduces a self-awareness that naturalism, in its strict adherence to objective fact, often neglects. — Wayfarer

I would say that the study of consciousness, in some form, bridge the two. It's filled with cold facts that informs a subjective interpretation about the very object that is interpreting. If anything, the study becomes self-aware, while still operating as a naturalist science.

This feedback loop can be jarring for many people. I've experienced it myself while studying the nature of prediction coding in relation to experience; how our brain operate and take action before our conscious awareness of it. Thinking deep about this, meditating on it, it effectively making me aware of that process happening can trigger an almost panic attack as my mind is trying to consciously focus on the process while its happening.

It becomes an object of study that at the same time is subjectively experiencing itself being studied. And that feedback loop gets consciously loud.

Part 3

However, in so doing, scientific objectivity also excludes the qualitative dimension of existence — the reality of Being. — Wayfarer

Is it though? Or is the objective truth and reality being attributed with a need for meaning to the point that we define objective truth by parameters that we shouldn't? That in the desperation for meaning by the lack of religious and spiritual explanations, rather than accepting scientific objectivity for what it is, we demand of it to give us meaning, to the point of blaming it for not being able to.

That when we learn that the stone does not have some given external divine purpose and meaning, we demand of the stone itself to give us meaning. Rather than just accepting the stone for what it is, and define our qualitive dimension of existence by the fact of simply existing with it and in our symbiosis with it as part of nature.

That the role of scientific objectivity has never been to give us meaning, it has never had that purpose in the first place. It has always been about the discovery of function and truth. How things operate, what is true beyond our subjectivity.

And that the unintentional consequence was that it proved our religion and spiritual concepts and ideas to be false and fantasies.

To put in perspective... if scientific objectivity, if scientific research arrived at a conclusion that aligned with religion and spiritualism, that there is a place after death, a meaning to the universe and our existence, and that we actually found it.

How would you then think of scientific objectivity in relation to meaning and our subjective qualitative dimension of existence?

And now, think of what science actually did and ask yourself if there's any difference? Did it not open up a new realm of meaning? That it showed us how false narratives in religion were constructed for other reasons and that the meaning we felt in society was built on lies and fiction, of ideas of power and control? In essence, the meaning we had was false, it was a lie. And scientific objective answers have opened a door for us to actually find true meaning, not by giving an answer to what it is, but by dismantling our ability to lie to ourselves, to form false narratives that give ourselves a delusional false meaning.

In essence, does scientific objectivity actually exclude us from the qualitative dimension of existence? Or is it freeing us up to truly find it?

While both aim to transcend personal biases and arrive at an understanding of what is truly so, philosophical detachment seeks its goal through the transcendence of the ego, rather than by bracketing out the subjective altogether — Wayfarer

Isn't this merely due to the fact that there were no actual modern forms of science that concluded the spiritual to be false, and so the inability to detach from the spiritual and religious, affected the way many philosophical inquiries were done?

Yet we also still had logic in philosophy, which do try to detach from the subjective, transforming a concept into a form of mathematical rigor.

Stoic philosophy, which is enjoying a cultural resurgence, is built on the foundation of apatheia — not mere indifference or callousness, but a state of calm equanimity that comes from freedom from irrational or extreme emotions (mood swings, in today’s language). The Stoics believed that apatheia was the essential quality of the sage, unperturbed by events and indifferent to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. ‘Detachment,’ said one ancient worthy, ‘is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.’

The famous Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a work that has been continuously in print since the advent of printing, exemplifies this philosophy. In it, Marcus Aurelius recommends avoiding indulgence in sensory pleasures, a form of ‘skilled action’ that frees us from the pangs and pleasures of existence. He claims that the only way we can be harmed by others is to allow emotionality to hold sway over us. Like other Stoics, Marcus Aurelius believed that an orderly and rational nature, or logos, permeates and guides the universe. Living in harmony with this logos, through rationality and temperance, allows one to rise above the individual inclinations of what might be deemed ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ as well as external circumstances such as fame and wealth. In cultivating these qualities, the Stoic sage enjoys equanimity and imperturbability in the midst of life’s troubles. — Wayfarer

I'd argue that stoicism is a form of desperate detachment out of fear of engagement. Rather than engaging in passion with the implications of something, in this topic, scientific objective truths, the fear of these answers dismantling a sense of meaning leads to a forced detachement in an attempt to subdue the emotions this realization of reality brings.

While I agree that the ability to not attach oneself to specific opinions is good, I'd rather argue for being able to hold conflicting ideas within one larger holistic construct without attaching it to ones identity as a person. The stoic approach is to subdue emotion because it risks infecting opinions with what is emotionally good or bad, but that's a failure of agency over emotion, not the emotions themselves.

If you are also arguing for the subjective experience and its symbiosis with scientific objectivity as a preferred state of being, then is stoicism really the answer or is it merely placing you in a position where you have no real subjective experience of scientific objectivity left, rather than actually having emotions out of the implications of scientific objective facts.

What I mean is that if your goal is to find how to live with a sense of meaning in a world built on scientific objectivity, then detachement from emotion is rather the opposite.

I would argue that objective science is no answer to meaning and it never has been; it is simply a statement of the natural state of nature and the universe. The byproduct of it all was that it showed religious and spiritual concepts to be false as their meaning was merely constructs made by humans into false senses of meanings. Science or objectivity isn't to blame for this, it was a mere consequence of where the questions led us.

Scientific objectivity didn't rob us of meaning, it never intended to give us such things in the first place. It just showed us that the meaning we believed in was false and the emotions that came out of that is like the message of someone's death. A great loss. But the solution isn't to subdue emotions, it's to embrace emotions. To find our feelings in front of that stone, to let our subjective self experience the beauty of it, regardless of how meaningless it is.

Scientific objectivity doesn't conflict with our subjective self. It was never in opposition to it in the first place. We lived in subjective relation to the concepts of religion and spirituality, but now we live in subjective relation to nature and the universe as it is. I'd wonder, what is really the difference other than a frame of reference?

What would 'immersing yourself' mean in practice? I interpret detachment more in line with what is taught in mindfulness-awareness training - that you are very much aware of the swirl of feelings, sensations and thoughts, without becoming carried into them or away by them. An analogy often given is the 'lotus effect' whereby water forms droplets on the leaf surface rather than the leaf becoming saturated by them. As quoted in the OP, ‘Detachment is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.’ — Wayfarer

Immersing involves a kind of openness or sensitivity toward the evolving felt senses of situations. We only run the danger of being ‘carried away’ or ‘owned’ by our feelings and thoughts when we reify them, isolate and unitize them into ‘this and only this’. We cut ourselves off from the meaningful whole context of feeling and thought when we do this. We should ‘detach’ ourselves from the detached concepts and feelings we get ourselves stuck in, in order to get the situation moving again. But there is no way to detach ourselves from the whole situation, since it is only from out of the actual context of situations that a notion like detachment gets its sense. The aim of a holistic grasp of our comportment toward the world that matters to us is to allow the whole to change , so as to allow new possibilities. Grasping the whole makes a change in it, just as all awareness changes what it surveys. We prevent the world from owning us so that we can allow ourselves to be transformed by it. There is no sovereign standpoint of peaceful serenity above the fray, any more than there can be a standpoint of knowledge that lies outside of our contingent involvements within the world.

Good science can remain noncommittal about subjective experience while pursuing an understanding of the Hard Problem. Chalmers isn't saying that solving the Hard Problem will require an objective account of what it's like to be a subject. He only (!) asks that we discover what consciousness is, and why it necessarily arises in the way that it does, and no other. Must we insist that only an account of subjectivity itself will answer this? I'm willing to give science a lot more leeway here. — J

This is kind of a mess. The very presuppositions making the hard problem a problem at all are all on display in Chalmer’s split between ‘inner’ experience and ‘objective’ science. So his attempts at a solution take the form of freezing in place this split and then trying to glue the two halves together in some fashion or other ( such as panpsychism). What is needed is not a solution but a dissolution. The first step is to stop thinking of consciousness as something ‘inside’ a subject and the world as outside. Consciousness is the processes of interaction by which both world and subject are revealed, and a science of consciousness which avoids being stuck on one side or other of the ‘Hard Problem’ needs to
be neither subjective nor objective but beyond this split. This is where enactivist approaches excel.

Zahavi, one proponent of enactivism, argues:

Chalmers's discussion of the hard problem has identified and labeled an aspect of consciousness that cannot be ignored. However, his way of defining and distinguishing the hard problem from the easy problems seems in many ways indebted to the very reductionism that he is out to oppose. If one thinks that cognition and intentionality is basically a matter of information processing and causal co-variation that could in principle just as well go on in a mindless computer–or to use Chalmers' own favored example, in an experienceless zombie–then one is left with the impression that all that is really distinctive about consciousness is its qualitative or phenomenal aspect. But this seems to suggest that with the exception of some evanescent qualia everything about consciousness including intentionality can be explained in reductive (computational or neural) terms; and in this case, epiphenomenalism threatens.

To put it differently, Chalmers's distinction between the hard and the easy problems of consciousness shares a common feature with many other recent analytical attempts to defend consciousness against the onslaught of reductionism: They all grant far too much to the other side. Reductionism has typically proceeded with a classical divide and rule strategy. There are basically two sides to consciousness: Intentionality and phenomenality. We don't currently know how to reduce the latter aspect, so let us separate the two sides, and concentrate on the first. If we then succeed in explaining intentionality reductively, the aspect of phenomenality cannot be all that significant. Many non-reductive materialists have uncritically adopted the very same strategy.

They have marginalized subjectivity by identifying it with epiphenomenal qualia and have then claimed that it is this aspect which eludes reductionism. But is this partition really acceptable, are we really dealing with two separate problems, or is experience and intentionality on the contrary intimately connected? Is it really possible to investigate intentionality properly without taking experience, the first-person perspective, semantics, etc., into account? And vice versa, is it possible to understand the nature of subjectivity and experience if we ignore intentionality. Or do we not then run the risk of reinstating a Cartesian subject-world dualism that ignores everything captured by the phrase “being-in-the-world”?

Wonderful post. Just had to comment. :)

there are plenty of philosophies and even religions of the world which do not place us humans in arrogance over nature. Whose core ideas is about accepting ourselves to be a meaningless cog in the whole that is nature and the universe. — Christoffer

For instance? The only example that stands out to me is Albert Camus.

Science communicators are usually closer to this bridge of explaining the truths of nature and the universe into a comprehensible subjective construct that we use to understand the world around us, but a scientist can also be the one who sift through raw data and mathematically discover something that does not have any interpretational properties. How one equation connects and intersect with another is not able to exist as a subjective experience, it is simply pure logic. — Christoffer

The 'comprehensive subjective construct' sounds much like Kuhn's use of 'paradigm', a framework of scientific practice that defines the accepted theories, methods, and assumptions within a given scientific community.

Scientists, I'm sure, and scientific instruments, sift massive amounts of raw data today - I mean, the amounts of data generated by the LHC and the James Webb are almost incomprehensibly enormous. But surely the aim is always to integrate the data with the hypothesis, or alternatively develop new hypotheses to account for any anomalous data. What would something 'without any interpretational properties' be, in that context? And what would it mean? The difference between 'data' and 'information' is precisely that the latter means something. So if you mean by that data which does not have interpretational properties, then how could that mean anything? Wouldn't it just be the white noise, meaningless data, that is to be sifted out?

if scientific objectivity, if scientific research arrived at a conclusion that aligned with religion and spiritualism, that there is a place after death, a meaning to the universe and our existence, and that we actually found it.

How would you then think of scientific objectivity in relation to meaning and our subjective qualitative dimension of existence? — Christoffer

You're not seeing the broader epistemological point at issue. Modern scientific method begins in exclusion, idealisation and abstraction. It is an intellectual and practical methodology for framing what kinds of questions are meaningful to explore and what to exclude, and what kinds of factors ought to be taken into account in framing and exploring them. As I explain in Section One, The Cartesian Division, central to that method is the division of res cogitans, mind, and extensa, matter, on the one side, and primary attributes of bodies on one side, opposed to the secondary attributes, on the other. That is a construct. It is not and could never be 'naturally occuring' or 'part of nature'. It is thoroughly grounded in the acknowledged and conscious separateness from nature on the part of the scientist.

So what you're saying is tantamount to asking 'hey, what if the James Webb discovered Heaven out there amongst the stars? Wouldn't that change your attitude to science?' Your question is based on misconstruing the premise of the argument. You're looking through scientific method, not at it (which also applies to @Philosophim).

I'd argue that stoicism is a form of desperate detachment out of fear of engagement. — Christoffer

Not a credible criticism, based on any dispassionate reading of the texts.

I've experienced it myself while studying the nature of prediction coding in relation to experience; how our brain operate and take action before our conscious awareness of it. Thinking deep about this, meditating on it, it effectively making me aware of that process happening can trigger an almost panic attack as... — Christoffer

...it became evident that the self is a mental construct


---

We only run the danger of being ‘carried away’ or ‘owned’ by our feelings and thoughts when we reify them, isolate and unitize them into ‘this and only this’. We cut ourselves off from the meaningful whole context of feeling and thought when we do this. — Joshs

I don't think that conveys the sense of philosophical detachment that is implicit in the traditional sources, Stoic and others. I think they too had an intuitive sense of the sense in which 'the world' is a mental construct, and how the attachment to sense-pleasures, possessions and identity is inimical to peace of mind.

Agree with Zahavi.

There is no sovereign standpoint of peaceful serenity above the fray, any more than there can be a standpoint of knowledge that lies outside of our contingent involvements within the world. — Joshs

Discourse, as with a rich Persian carpet,
Can only be shown by extending it,
Spreading the beauteous figures and shapes,
Inviting speech offerings into it.

Back to the tavern, its drinks calling,
Where the inquisitive sit, pondering…
One and another says, “We’ve some questions, 
For we’ve all been born here without asking.”

The scroll writes itself, my wondering friends,
Having not any plan unto its ends,
In this life borrowed from death that it lends,
So we know not how the veil weaves and wends.

Life’s object must be mental happiness,
For thoughts are all we can think, feel, or sense;
Aim for this euphoric state of well-being,
For true paradise is a state of mind.

Hmm. Well, some things are conscious and some are not, unless you're a hardcore panpsychist. Understanding why this is the case seems perfectly legitimate to me.

Consciousness is the processes of interaction by which both world and subject are revealed — Joshs

Yes, but only to some beings. These processes do not occur for a grain of sand (again, leaving aside strong arguments for panpsychism). Chalmers wants to know why, as do I.

These processes do not occur for a grain of sand (again, leaving aside strong arguments for panpsychism). — J

They're my feelings, also. I'm learning a lot from the readings of the various postmodernist philosophers, but I don't share with them the distrust of the meta-narrative. I see life as being utterly embedded in one. (Note to self - dig out Huston Smith's essay in The Truth about the Truth, Walt Anderson.)

Run along now Banno. Enjoy your sandwiches.

...sandwiches... — Wayfarer

I prefer them to your waffles. :wink:

These processes do not occur for a grain of sand (again, leaving aside strong arguments for panpsychism).
— J

They're my feelings, also. I'm learning a lot from the readings of the various postmodernist philosophers, but I don't share with them the distrust of the meta-narrative. I see life as being utterly embedded in one. (Note to self - dig out Huston Smith's essay in The Truth about the Truth, Walt Anderson. — Wayfarer

Where do you think Thompson stands on this issue? He came out in The Blind Spot as opposed to postmodernism:

“Science denial on the right and so-called postmodernism on the left represent a second response. These movements reject science.

And yet, I don’t see him as embracing meta-narratives. If he could find a way to extend the principles of living self-organizing systems backwards to encompass the inorganic I think he would. John Protevi, in his paper DELEUZE, JONAS, AND THOMPSON: TOWARD A NEW TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC AND A NEW QUESTION OF PANPSYCHISM suggested a way this could be done.

Both Deleuze and Thompson / Jonas can be fairly said to be biological panpsychists. That’s pretty much what Mind in Life means: mind and life are co-extensive: life = autopoiesis and cognition = sense-making. Thus Mind in Life = autopoietic sense-making = control of action of organism in environment. Sense-making here is three-fold: 1) sensibility as openness to environment; 2) signification as positive or negative valence of environmental features relative to the subjective norms of the organism; 3) direction or orientation the organism adopts in response to l and 2.

Deleuze is not just a biological panpsychist, however, so we'll have to confront full-fledged panpsychism. At the end of the talk we'll be able to pose the question whether or not we can supplement Thompson's “Mind in Life position with a Mind in Process" position and if so, what that supplement means for panpsychism.

https://www.protevi.com/john/NewTA.pdf

Interesting and not something I'm familiar with. I've been reading Jonas' book of late, which I find overall amenable (not finished it.) I'm familiar with Evan Thompson's background, his father's book, which I also had in the dim distant past, and his recent Why I am Not a Buddhist. I've also listened to a couple of interviews with him. In the Why I am Not a Buddhist, he deprecated 'Buddhist modernism' and the claim that Buddhism is a 'science of mind', saying that it is and should be understood as a religious practice and culture. But in one interview about it, he said he's by no means hostile to Buddhism, in the way Bertrand Russell's Why I am Not a Christian was hostile to Christianity.

I'll try and find time to read that paper.

The 'metanarrative' I see life as embedded in, is what Buddhists call saṃsāra - the cycle of birth and death, extending back into an unknowably distant past. I think I'm on board with that. Concommitant to it is the promise of release from Saṃsāra, meaning going beyond it, not being entangled in it in future lives. Again, I'm tentatively open to that, although maybe not completely convinced or cognisant of its meaning, but the salient point is, I think 'enlightenment' (or the original term from which that was translated was 'bodhi') does indeed mean 'seeing things truly' or 'things as they really are'. We'll get to that in the next part!

I'm familiar with Evan Thompson's background, his father's book, which I also had in the dim distant past, and his recent Why I am Not a Buddhist. I've also listened to a couple of interviews with him. In the Why I am Not a Buddhist, he deprecated 'Buddhist modernism' and the claim that Buddhism is a 'science of mind', saying that it is and should be understood as a religious practice and culture. But in one interview about it, he said he's by no means hostile to Buddhism, in the way Bertrand Russell's Why I am Not a Christian was hostile to Christianity. — Wayfarer

Thompson seems to have struggled his whole life with how to unite Western philosophy, empirical science and Buddhist insights in a way that doesn’t lead to the domination of any one of these traditions over the others. It’s clear that what he has been steadfast about from the beginning of his career is that Buddhist insights concerning conscious awareness are an indispensable complement to philosophical and empirical approaches. But he wants to treat these insights as neither methodologically scientific nor as necessarily tied to specific ethical or religious commitments. This is why he can do science but not privilege scientific approaches to truth over non-scientific ones, and why he can depend on Buddhist knowledge but not consider himself a Buddhist.

:up:

Stoic philosophy, which is enjoying a cultural resurgence, is built on the foundation of apatheia — not mere indifference or callousness, but a state of calm equanimity that comes from freedom from irrational or extreme emotions (mood swings, in today’s language). The Stoics believed that apatheia was the essential quality of the sage, unperturbed by events and indifferent to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. ‘Detachment,’ said one ancient worthy, ‘is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.’

Indeed, and ataraxia is the first 'medicine' Lady Philosophy gives to Boethius in the Consolation, although this is preparatory to the Ascent. Even if detachment is not the end goal, it and nipsis (watchfulness, the "guarding of the intellect/heart") are often seen as prerequisites for hesychasm (stillness), henosis, fanaa, and illumination/gnosis.

Indeed. Which is a perfect segue to

Part IV: Detachment East…

Interestingly, the Stoic concept of the Logos bears a striking resemblance to the Chinese notion of the Tao, the Way. Both represent a fundamental principle of order and harmony underlying and animating both Nature and the Cosmos. Just as the Stoics believed that living in accordance with the Logos brings freedom and equanimity, so too does the Tao emphasize flowing with the natural order of things, free from attachment to personal desires or rigid expectations.

While the Tao is often associated with Daoism, its influence also extends into Ch’an (Chinese) and Zen (Japanese) Buddhism, where detachment takes on a uniquely contemplative and meditative dimension. Zen emphasizes direct experience and letting go of conceptual thought to grasp reality as it truly is — which in Buddhist terminology is called yathābhūtaṃ.

Accordingly, an invocation of serene detachment is made in the famous Zen poem Hsin Hsin Min, from the Third Patriarch of Zen, the first stanza of which reads:

The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for, or against, anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind¹¹.

This principle of detachment goes back to the earliest Buddhist texts, where ‘philosophical views and opinions’ are described as ‘writhings and thickets of views’, and virtue obtains in the relinquishing of views. And, since the first step on the Eightfold Path is samma ditthi, ‘right view’, it turns out that ‘right view’ is no view, in the sense of not holding to opinions or arguing for philosophical positions. The Buddha denies holding views about questions normally considered essential to philosophy, such as whether the Universe is eternal or infinite, or not, or whether the soul is the same or different to the body. In this dialogue from the early Buddhist texts, the questioner asks:

“Does Master Gotama have any position at all?”

“A ‘position,’ Vaccha, is something that the Buddha has done away with.”¹²

This is an expression of the understanding of emptiness, śūnyatā, often mis-translated as ‘the void’, but in reality, again resonant with the phenomenological epochē, the suspension of judgement:

Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there’s anything lying behind them.

This mode is called emptiness because it’s empty of the presuppositions we usually add to experience to make sense of it: the stories and world-views we fashion to explain who we are and to define the world we live in. Although these stories and views have their uses, the Buddha found that some of the more abstract questions they raise — of our true identity and the reality of the world outside — pull attention away from a direct experience of how events influence one another in the immediate present. So they get in the way when we try to understand…¹³

The point of this, and the element that Buddhism and phenomenology have in common, is paying close attention to — or having mindful awareness of— the qualities and attributes of experience and sensation as they arise and fall away. It is having the clarity of awareness to see each moment of experience as it is. Buddhist meditation is a way of amplfying or magnifying that close attention to the nature of lived existence, moment by moment. It is insight into that process which deconstructs the habitual sense of oneself. This is not by any means a simple or trivial undertaking, and indeed in Buddhist cultures, is the basis of an entire way-of-being, emphasising the virtue of renounciation and compassion as the way to detachment from purely personal concerns.

…and West

The supreme value of detachment was often the subject of the sermons of the famed Meister Eckhart. A medieval monastic and mystic, Eckhart is a seminal figure in the history of spiritual philosophy, who challenged prevailing norms — to the point where towards the end of his life, he was accused of heresy — but whose insights have been prized by generations of seekers since his day. His reflections on detachment (Gelassenheit) reveal a profound understanding of transcendence and freedom from ego, resonating across spiritual traditions.

Now you may ask what this detachment is that is so noble in itself. You should know that true detachment is nothing else but a mind that stands unmoved by all accidents of joy or sorrow, honour, shame or disgrace, as a mountain of lead stands unmoved by a breath of wind. …

You should know that the outer man can be active while the inner man is completely free of this activity and unmoved … Here is an analogy: a door swings open and shuts on its hinge. I would compare the outer woodwork of the door to the outer man and the hinge to the inner man. When the door opens and shuts, the boards move back and forth but the hinge stays in the same place and is never moved thereby. It is the same in this case if you understand it rightly.

Now I ask: What is the object of pure detachment? My answer is that the object of pure detachment is neither this nor that. It rests on absolutely nothing and I will tell you why: pure detachment rests on the highest and he is at his highest, in whom God can work all His will … And so, if the heart is ready to receive the highest, it must rest on absolutely nothing…¹³

Conclusion

It’s important to re-state that nothing in the above should be taken to deprecate the scientific method, which has proven extraordinarily powerful in ways that our pre-modern forbears could not have even imagined. But, as the saying has it, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’, and there’s an important sense in which an over-reliance on objectivity enables us to sidestep many larger questions about the nature and meaning of our own existence. Objective judgement, you might say, has a shadow side.

Science was born out of the quest for Truth, capital T, yet the fascination with its powers and potentialities can sometimes obscure larger questions of meaning. Philosophical detachment, the wellspring of scientific objectivity, offers a more expansive perspective — one that embraces our existence as living beings, inextricably connected to the world we seek to understand. By marrying the rigor of objectivity with the wisdom of detachment, we may find a more holistic way to see ‘things as they truly are,’ enriching both our knowledge and our humanity.

---------
11. The Great Way (retrieved 14th Jan 2025)
12. Aggi-Vachagotta Sutta MN72
13. What is Emptiness?Bhikkhu Thanissaro
14. Meister Eckhardt: On Detachment

Can we differentiate between "consciousness" as a possible object of scientific knowledge, and "consciousness" as a lived experience of a particular subject? I think we can. — J

It is not the business of science to study the lived experience of subjects. That is the province of phenomenology, leaving aside the question of whether it delivers coherently and usefully on that. The epoche in phenomenology (bracketing the question of the existence of an external world) is the methodological counterpart to science's bracketing of questions about subjective experience. Those questions simply aren't relevant to the practice of the natural sciences.

I agree with most of what you say there, except for your characterization of the Stoics. I have been interested in and read the main works of the Stoics for years and I see their basic philosophy as being very simple—worry about what you can change and learn not to worry about what you cannot change. It is a philosophy of the inevitable, it posits no afterlife or immortality for us (just as the Epicureans do not) and rather counsels personal acceptance of mortality and all its attendant rigors as the way to peace of mind.

This tension between the objective stance and the role of the knowing subject raises profound questions about the real nature of existence — questions that go beyond the purview of science and into the domain of philosophy. ... — Wayfarer

Subjectivity is the principle which relies on one's own perception and reasoning for the knowledge of the world in understanding. In subjective mind, what appears in perception and sensation are most important things in knowledge.

Objectivity is the principle which relies on their imagination and faith on what other folks supposed to have discovered for their knowledge and understanding of the world. Most of the objective knowledge comes from the books, media and the words of mouths from other folks.

The point is that they need to work together, but subjectivity precedes objectivity.

For instance? The only example that stands out to me is Albert Camus. — Wayfarer

Buddhist traditions, Shinto tradition, American Native traditions. After some searching there's also stuff like Neo-Druidism, Animism.

For philosophy, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, in some forms Rousseau as well.

The primary thing is something that I touched upon in another thread:

There's no culture around non-religious existential meditation and people have no standard framework to even begin such things. That's why people end up in either surrendering to the easy choice of religious belief, or they wallow in materialism and simple pleasures, postponing their existential introspection. But in my opinion, it's just a matter of society slowly maturing into a new paradigm of dealing with existentialism. This type of non-religious meditation on existence is for the most part extremely new in historical terms — Christoffer

Primarily that we struggle with these things because there's no really good attempts to form a cultural movement for such thinking and structuring of society. We have basically let the free market replace it all with materialism, rather than engaging with existentialism honestly and with a purpose. If the existentialists brought up the questions and examined the nihilism post-religion, there's now time for a practical solution that formulate a practice for non-religious people. It's like people are unable to think about how contemplation, meditation, guidance and similar practices essentially have no belief system at their core, but we've surrendered all such questions to religious practice, while attempting to medicate it away for any non-religious who suffers. It's either follow religion or you're on your own, which is a root cause for much existential suffering today.

But surely the aim is always to integrate the data with the hypothesis, or alternatively develop new hypotheses to account for any anomalous data. What would something 'without any interpretational properties' be, in that context? And what would it mean? The difference between 'data' and 'information' is precisely that the latter means something. So if you mean by that data which does not have interpretational properties, then how could that mean anything? Wouldn't it just be the white noise, meaningless data, that is to be sifted out? — Wayfarer

In mathematics, a solution to a long held mathematical problem is at its core not really up for interpretation or a subjective experience. The logic derives from how it intertwines with the problem and its implications for other mathematical equations. The subjective meaning of it becomes somewhat illusive, how do you subjectively experience a math problem or solution? Some mathematicians so versed in thinking about these things experience some solutions and define them as "beautiful", even though there's no actual interpretational difference between a non-mathematician and them viewing the thing. That meaning for them of being "beautiful" is also not relevant in order to explain or define the equation, so while there's a subjective experience, it's not required to engage with the information/data of the specific equation.

And many things in science has their hypothesis derive from something other than subjective interpretation. One conclusion from a set of experiments becomes a new hypothesis out of the logic it implies rather than a subjective mind interpreting it. Or we have AIs structuring and looking for patterns looking for a context we aren't yet aware of.

In essence, much of science aims to reduce as much subjective interpretations as possible. While much is of course needed in order to do actual research, I do think that what most people read and hear about when engaging with scientific literature, is a scientific communicator who's job it is to transfer the complexity of a field and making it understandable for common people or people in power. Their job is basically to subjectively interpret science into understandable concepts, into a form of storytelling.

But returning to the the mathematician finding an equation "beautiful", I think that kind of subjective reaction is close to what I'm talking about. That a scientific objective fact, a pure logic without any actual emotional values built into it, still manage to give a sense of "beauty", due to its elegance in the mind of the mathematician. It's a meaning derived from and out of a cold fact, that is for that mathematician just as emotionally valid as a meaning attached through religion. It's hinting at how there's a possibility of finding a meaning in the meaningless, without fully having to surrender to the absurd.

You're not grasping the broader epistemological point at the heart of the issue. Modern scientific method begins in exclusion, idealisation and abstraction. It is an intellectual and practical methodology for framing what kinds of questions are meaningful to explore and what to exclude, and what kinds of factors ought to be taken into account in framing and exploring them. As I explain in Section One, The Cartesian Division, central to that method is the division of res cogitans, mind, and extensa, matter, on the one side, and primary attributes of bodies on one side, opposed to the secondary attributes, on the other. That is a construct. It is not and could never be 'naturally occuring' or 'part of nature'. It is thoroughly grounded in the acknowledged and concscious separateness from nature on the part of the scientist.

So what you're saying is tantamount to asking 'hey, what if the James Webb discovered Heaven out there amongst the stars? Wouldn't that change your attitude to science?' Your question is based on misconstruing the premise of the argument. You're looking through scientific method, not at it (which also applies to — Wayfarer

You excluded the second part of it:

And now, think of what science actually did and ask yourself if there's any difference? Did it not open up a new realm of meaning? That it showed us how false narratives in religion were constructed for other reasons and that the meaning we felt in society was built on lies and fiction, of ideas of power and control? In essence, the meaning we had was false, it was a lie. And scientific objective answers have opened a door for us to actually find true meaning, not by giving an answer to what it is, but by dismantling our ability to lie to ourselves, to form false narratives that give ourselves a delusional false meaning.

In essence, does scientific objectivity actually exclude us from the qualitative dimension of existence? Or is it freeing us up to truly find it? — Christoffer

My point was that science can't provide meaning, because it was never meant to do or have that purpose. It primarily began within the hall of religion, argued out of faith, but it, by the nature of the method, began dismantling religious belief and the meaning people previously found there.

And so it removed our blindfold and put the demand on us to find meaning. That's where our subjective experience comes in. If science had proven the premises stated by religion, it would have confirmed that there was a meaning beyond this realm, but it didn't and instead society formed a culture around science in opposition to religion. Science in opposition to meaning. It became a scapegoat and responsible for robbing society of meaning, even though it was never there to provide it or had any intention to do so.

Fundamentally, if the question is how scientific objectivity never accounts for the qualitative experience of the subjective and risk throwing people into nihilism, I'd argue that it frames scientific objectivity in a relation to that experience that it did not have to begin with. The reason for nihilism and the loss of meaning comes out of the same type of inability to think about something like a complex immoral act, not just scientific objectivity.

A complex immoral act exist within the subjective interpretation of our existence already, and is presenting a dilemma to our morality. It produces similar nihilistic experiences of a lacking meaning, even without relating to scientific objectivity. It's about uncertainty, not our relation to objective truth.

It's not the relation between scientific objectivity and how it describes the world, and our subjective experience that produces this lack of meaning, it's the basic relation between a lack of answers and our need for answers. It's just that the consequences of scientific objectivity has been the largest historical introduction of lacking answers on the existential level.

This argument is two-part on your end, because on one side you're dealing with the question of science's inability to find meaning for us and the other is how to essentially cope with that.

But science never had the purpose of finding meaning for us and deconstruction of our subjective need for meaning has more to do with our lack of ability to formulate a meaning within the realm of these objective facts. That doesn't mean it's about scientific objectivity itself, it's only about our relation to uncertainty in the wake of a previous certainty rendered false.

The issue is that I'm not sure all parts of your argument follow each other. First, you have an argument for how the subjective experience is distinctly different from scientific objectivity, which I don't think anyone would disagree on. That our experience of the stone is not the stone itself.

But how does that relate to our struggle with a lack of meaning when that lack of meaning isn't due to scientific objectivity, but rather the consequence of society learning religion was false?

Our sense of lack of meaning is related to a similar emotional reactions of being betrayed. Like a friend we trusted turning out having used our trust for their own gain. And we feel anger against the one who revealed this fact to us. And now we're trying to find our place in the new order of things.

And that's where I argue for dismantling religion away from beliefs, gods, spiritualism and discern practices that does not require belief to be good and mentally healthy for us; focusing on accepting existence for what it is and find a sense of meaning in that meaninglessness. Not to accept the absurd, but to be able to honestly look into the universe and nature and accept it for what it is, to find it meaningful as it is, in that objective nature. Not to demand more meaning than it is capable of. A harmony with nature and the universe without suppressing emotions or trying to manipulate our own perspective in order to cope.

Not a credible criticism, based on any dispassionate reading of the texts. — Wayfarer

It's generally speaking, condensed down. The suppression of emotions becomes an inauthentic living, opposite to Heidegger. It's generally an alienating view in which the self detach itself, suppress itself thinking that gives harmony. But everyone feels a form of harmony through ignoring certain peaks of emotions and distancing. But it's a false sensation as the authentic experience of our emotions and engagement with the world, nature and the universe is suppressed.

And the reason it has a surging today is because it aligns with societal values of detachement. It's being used by influencers and crypto bros and people like that to justify ignoring any consequences of their behavior. And its focus on individualism aligns with the ideals of the self-made man, forming his own destiny, gaining his own wealth. The surge is because of the fundamental surge in a focus on the ego. Laissez-faire stoic ideology basically. I don't see people actually engaging with stoicism for real, it's part of their 12 steps to success strategies.

So why is stoicism your answer to solving the lack of meaning? Or giving us the ability to see beyond the subjective? Is stoicism needed in order to see past emotion or is a true, deep and authentic understanding of ones emotion equally or even more suited to experience beyond the subjective?

The mathematician knows his feeling of the equation being beautiful isn't defining the reality of it. He knows where the line is drawn between his experience and the objective. Is your argument focused on them who are unable to discern where this line is drawn? I'd say that's merely a confusion in the wake of religion dying, not an authentic existence in harmony with objective reality.

In the end, it seems to be about coping rather than harmony.

..it became evident that the self is a mental construct — Wayfarer

Yes, the self is a construct. But I would go further and argue that our mental construct is just a byproduct and emergent factor of a biological entity. We aren't even in control of this construct, we are just given an emotional experience that we are, an illusion that isn't even experienced by an acting will, the illusion and the one experiencing it is one and the same. But that's a whole other topic.

worry about what you can change and learn not to worry about what you cannot change. It is a philosophy of the inevitable, it posits no afterlife or immortality for us (just as the Epicureans do not) and rather counsels personal acceptance of mortality and all its attendant rigors as the way to peace of mind. — Janus

I see no difference between that and many self help strategies. Which is what I think is a problem with stoicism. It's easily adopted as methods for coping with a meaningless existence, but the detachement behaves like denial. I'd rather live in authentic emotion, in honest harmony with nature and people around me; constantly learning knowledge to distinguish my irrational emotions from my rational ones.

What point is there to detachment if there's no emotion to experience the resulting tranquility? There is no peak without a valley.

I see more stoics eventually falling into existential crisis than those who gain knowledgeable reflection to guide emotion.

A stoic approach is good for helping others as it is a good behavior for giving knowledge, but for the self it is suppressing an honesty towards existence. Emotion is part of our very being, but its the inability to understand and channel emotion properly that is the problem, not that we feel.

The idea of not worrying about what you cannot change also ends up being ignorant for fixing issues of the world. It's easy to end up in a state of not caring. Emotions about what feels like cannot be changed is often a drive into innovation that do change.

The stoic approach becomes a passive setback. In terms of the world today, many adopted stoicism in face of climate change as a way to basically live by that quote; most of climate change feels like you cannot change, so don't worry about it, it is inevitable.

In my opinion, there are better ways to find harmony and balance with existence that doesn't rely on such forms of detachement, and which is better for the self and humanity at large.

In a timely manner to what I wrote, this thing popped up. While as a non-believer I don't ascribe to the religious and spiritual undertones, it speaks towards the other things I've touched upon; the need for a sense of harmony with everything that is objectively outside of us, and that the solution is for our subject to find this harmony, not to suppress ourselves into merely becoming an objective object that fades into the background.

It is not the business of science to study the lived experience of subjects. That is the province of phenomenology, leaving aside the question of whether it delivers coherently and usefully on that. The epoche in phenomenology (bracketing the question of the existence of an external world) is the methodological counterpart to science's bracketing of questions about subjective experience. Those questions simply aren't relevant to the practice of the natural sciences. — Janus

This seems a little too conclusive to me, but it basically affirms what I was suggesting about separating the two senses of "consciousness." I just think we have to be careful about putting limits on what science can or can't do. There's a natural tendency to regard "science" as meaning "everything we know now, which is all there is to know." A moment's reflection shows how wrong this must be; why would we imagine we have reached the End of Science? Or that we have the conceptual equipment to declare what science must be? So I'm willing to keep an open mind on whether both 21st-century science and phenomenology may one day be shown as antiquated descriptions of a much deeper understanding of reality -- one which, in 25th-century (e.g.) terminology, is understood to be scientific.

Science was born out of the quest for Truth, capital T…. — Wayfarer

Being more versed in the classics, what do you think an example, the chronological forerunner, of the modern(-ish) principle of induction would be, which says there can be no empirical discovery of capital T truth?

And given that “the quest for” is very far from “a determination of”, with respect to capital T truth…..I think it better said that science was born out of the incessant yet never entirely sufficient, not so much the comprehension of Nature, but comprehension of the human being’s relation to it.
————-

Conclusion — Wayfarer

As expected, well done. From this particular armchair, comes from it: the more the attempt to eliminate the explicit duality of human intelligence, the more the immersion in it. From which follows the general justification, detachment from objectivity doesn’t work.

Oh. And…please, pass the syrup?

Science was born out of the quest for Truth, capital T, — Wayfarer

What does "capital T truth" mean? I hear that phrase a lot but I never know what it means.

...Meister Eckhart. A medieval monastic and mystic — Wayfarer

FYI, Eckhart was a Dominican, not a monastic. The monastics mostly hated the new mendicant Orders. In fact he was a scholastic who served two terms at the University of Paris as a magister—the first to do so since Aquinas. He is one example of the confluence of mysticism and scholasticism.

What point is there to detachment if there's no emotion to experience the resulting tranquility? There is no peak without a valley. — Christoffer

What do you mean "no emotion to experience the resulting tranquility"? Who says there is no emotion for the Stoic? For example, say you love nature, and you enjoy nothing more than immersing yourself in its beauties. Say it's a peak experience for you—where is the valley (meaning downside not actual valley) in that?

The idea of not worrying about what you cannot change also ends up being ignorant for fixing issues of the world. It's easy to end up in a state of not caring. Emotions about what feels like cannot be changed is often a drive into innovation that do change. — Christoffer

The Stoic advocates learning to let go of concern over those things which cannot be changed. Things like death, illness, loss of loved ones. It doesn't mean you won't feel fear, pain or sorrow—it means that you accept those emotions as inevitable too—we cannot change how we feel, but perhaps we can let go of tendencies to excessively indulge such emotions out of addictive feelings of self-pity.

As to social change, why should I not work to better my circumstances and the circumstances of others if that is what interest me? On the other hand, what would be the point of working towards something I know is impossible to achieve?

You are misunderstanding and misrepresenting the Stoic message. I doubt you have read much of the works of the Stoics.

This seems a little too conclusive to me, but it basically affirms what I was suggesting about separating the two senses of "consciousness." I just think we have to be careful about putting limits on what science can or can't do. There's a natural tendency to regard "science" as meaning "everything we know now, which is all there is to know." A moment's reflection shows how wrong this must be; why would we imagine we have reached the End of Science? Or that we have the conceptual equipment to declare what science must be? So I'm willing to keep an open mind on whether both 21st-century science and phenomenology may one day be shown as antiquated descriptions of a much deeper understanding of reality -- one which, in 25th-century (e.g.) terminology, is understood to be scientific. — J

I don't know what led you to think I was suggesting that we have reached the "end of Science". We know what science consists in as it is practiced. It basically consists in observing, examining and analyzing what our senses reveal to us of the world. It is inherently a "third person" endeavour. Subjective experience cannot be the subject of science because it is not an observable entity or process.

Phenomenology attempts to deal rigorously with subjective experience. Whether it can achieve that is arguable. I'm not ruling it out. The real point at issue for @Wayfarer is the possibility of "direct knowledge" or intellectual intuition. Is it possible to have such knowledge of reality? Obviously, he believes it is possible, and that some humans have achieved such enlightenment. The problem is that if it is possible, you would have no way of knowing that unless you had achieved it yourself.

And even then, how could you rule out the possibility of self-delusion? What kind if argument could possibly show that such knowledge is possible, in fact not merely possible, but real for some? It could not be an argument based on empirical evidence, and it could not be a purely logical argument either. What other kind of argument is there? Personal conviction cannot be intersubjectively justificatory for anything.

I'm not ruling out the possibility of a "much deeper understanding of reality", but I have no idea what it could look like, and if it were not based on empirical evidence or logic, then what else could it be based on? In any case it would not be science as we now understand science. People who think like Wayfarer believe that such an understanding existed more in the past than it does today, but they would not call it science, unless by 'science' is intended something like the original meaning of simply 'knowing'.