What is the distinction for you bereeen 'meaning as such' of a theory and its practical or metaphysical interpretation?

'Knowing what you don't know' is a crucial aspect of philosophy, and then philosophical theology points towards 'the unknowable', which underlies all experience. Very few people will get that idea, but it's no less true on that account. — Wayfarer

Understanding the limits of your own knowledge, and prescribing what are the limits of all knowledge are two very different acts.

OI thought you were a critic of scientism, or is that only when Apokrisis says something you don't like? — Wayfarer

I am a critic of scientism, and I do find apo to be a 'scientist' on account of his rejection of religious thought; and his position that philosophy must be based solely on science. And this despite his protestations that his philosophy is non-reductionistic. And I don't agree with what seems to be Dennett's eliminative physicalism for the same reasons (with the caveat that I have not actually read any of his works). But Dennett is not by any means representative of all materialist thought. For example Michel Henry produce a "material phenomenology". I don't want to characterize philosophical thought in simplistic ways. I have no doubt that even Dennett is a complex and subtle thinker, and I certainly would not want to characterize his ideas as incoherent. I have no doubt they are coherent enough given their starting presuppositions; and that is all you can ask of a thinker. It doesn't mean that you will share their starting assumptions.

so why be so confident that science can 'explain' the mystery of consciousness? Don't you think it is just amazingly hubristic? — Wayfarer

I prefer to keep an open mind as to whether science can explain consciousness. But it also depends on what you mean by "explains consciousness". Science may be able to explain the world in terms of material process, but there will always be more to explain; and no explanation will ever answer that silly old question "Why is there something rather than nothing". ( I like that question if it taken to represent the feeling of mystery; but remember the southern hemisphere held that feeling of mystery for Europeans before it was explored).

of which Dennett is the undoubted doyen, but which is widespread all throughout current Western philosophy. — Wayfarer

I think philosophy is broader and deeper than you want to characterize it as being. I celebrate the fact that we have phenomenological, idealist and materialist thinkers, and all I ask of any of them is that they give good reasons for claiming whatever they do, and that what they do claim is consistent both with itself and with my own experience and with what I understand general human experience; in its broadest possible scope, to be).

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Meaning as such is simply whatever a theory claims; as distinct from whatever might be claimed about a theory's practical or metaphysical significance(s).

I celebrate the fact that we have phenomenological, idealist and materialist thinkers — Janus

I don't think philosophical materialism is something to be celebrated. Technology and science, and the marvellous inventions, medicines, means of transport, and the countless other amazing advances are to be celebrated, for sure. But scientific materialism is actually anti-humanistic, it reduces humans to 'gene carriers' or 'selfish robots'. Those people will sometimes call themselves 'humanist philosophers', but the actual humanists were those like Erasmus, Pico Della Mirandola, and Ficino - they're worlds, civilizations, apart from the likes of Dennett.

You may be familiar with the history of architectures of cognition within the cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind. Going back about 5 decades, the first models described semantic networks consisting of nodes depicting concepts and their extensions and attributes. This system functioned via a formal logic, and was said to be a neat instantiation of associationistic philosophy. The philosopher of mind Jerry Fodor was a vociferous advocate of this approach.
It was consistent with 1st generation cognitive psychological metaphors of the mind as information processor operating on incoming data. You could also call this the 'mind in a vat' approach, given the way it ignored emotions and the body in the determination of meaning.
There have been philosophical changes since then in how meaning and the mind are conceived, and these changes are reflected in new subpersonal architectures.
1st generation cognitivism was criticized as too Cartesian, too dualistic an approach. The new congitivism is embodied, meaning it recognizes that the mind doesn't just process passively given data from a world, but actively interacts to co-create meaning. The whole body is considered to participate holistically in what it means to be a mind, and this includes affect as an indissociable part of meaning making.
Embodied approaches also jettison formal logic in favor
of parallel distributed connnectionist architectures, as well as dynamical systems approaches. This gets rid of the homonculus, the little man who interprets the results of processing, in favor of the dynamically relational self-organizing activity of myriad bits of dumb elements.
Notice what this developmental trajectory has involved. It is simultaneously a shift from one philosophical stance to another, and the replacement of one form of materialist reductionism by another.
If you want to claim Dennett's embrace of this newer architecture as anti-humanist, at least appreciate a couple of things. Fransisco Varela wrote a series of papers proposing a naturalizing of phenomenology. He drew upon a careful reading of Huserl to create his model, and the response from Dan Zahavi, one of the foremost phenomenological writers today was positive overall, asserting that such naturalistic attempts hcould inform phenomenological theory, and vice versatile. Merleau-Ponty no doubt would also endorse such attempts, being simultaneously an empiricist and a phenomenologist.
And Richard Rorty, who is hardly a materialist, wrote a complimentary review of Dennett's 'Explaining Consciousness", complimenting it along with the work of Andy Clark for helping to get philosophy past objectivist dualism.
So maybe your beef with Dennet has less to do with his naturalism and more to do with your rejection of philosophies that claim to dissolve the subject object split , and argue that the hard problem is only a problem If you buy into those dualisms, as Nagel, Searle, Fodor and others do.

Thanks, plenty of food for thought there.

The whole body is considered to participate holistically in what it means to be a mind, and this includes affect as an indissociable part of meaning making. — Joshs

Right - I read up on embodied cognition and it makes a lot of sense to me.

A side note - Varela and Maturana's book drew on abhidharma, which is the philosophical psychology of Buddhism. The basic constituents of being in abhidharma are called (confusingly) 'dharmas', which are sometimes mis-translated as 'atoms', but are really moments or constituents of experience. In abhidharma analysis, every momentary element of experience arises and passes away practically instantaneously in accordance with the '12 links of dependent origination'. You can see how that lends itself to a kind of systems-style of thinking, and as I'm a longtime student of Buddhism, it makes perfect sense to me. (Incidentally, do you know that before his untimely death, Varela ordained in a Tibetan order, and was also one of the principles of Mind and Life, which is an organisation aimed at facilitating discussion between Tibetan Buddhism and scientists?)

maybe your beef with Dennet has less to do with his naturalism and more to do with your rejection of philosophies that claim to dissolve the subject object split , and argue that the hard problem is only a problem If you buy into those dualisms, as Nagel, Searle, Fodor and others do. — Joshs

Well, speaking of 'dissolving dualisms' - that is a subject that another aspect of Buddhism has some lessons on, in the form of non-dualism. Non-dualism is an elusive or even esoteric philosohy and is really kind of mysticism based on the overcoming of the perception of there being a separate 'me and mine' around which one's life and thought is centred. It's not really an intellectual philosophy, in the contemporary meaning of the word, and is generally associated with religious or spiritual philosophies in Eastern culture, although somewhat different from ecclesiastical religion, being based more on spiritual practice and personal culture. There are some touch-points between Asian non-dualist philosophies and Western philosophy (e.g. here) but it's strictly speaking a pretty alternative and counter-cultural movement.

No, my beef with Dennett is that his philosophical materialism seems plainly false and also pernicious.

Thomas Nagel, I like and respect. I have read The Last Word and Mind and Cosmos, and I'm meaning to get around to The View from Nowhere.

I don't think philosophical materialism is something to be celebrated. Technology and science, and the marvellous inventions, medicines, means of transport, and the countless other amazing advances are to be celebrated, for sure. But scientific materialism is actually anti-humanistic, it reduces humans to 'gene carriers' or 'selfish robots'. Those people will sometimes call themselves 'humanist philosophers', but the actual humanists were those like Erasmus, Pico Della Mirandola, and Ficino - they're worlds, civilizations, apart from the likes of Dennett. — Wayfarer

I didn't say I celebrate scientific materialism, though, but the diversity of philosophical standpoints. As I have said many times, and as you should well know by now, I am not a materialist, at least not in the caricatured sense that you have been reacting against. Dennett might make hyperbolic statements such as "moist robots", but I have no doubt that is just for rhetorical effect; I can't see why you are apparently so incensed about it.

To say that humans are "gene carriers" is to express a particular perspective and the characterization is accurate enough within that context; and does not imply that they are "selfish robots" but actually implies the opposite; that their imperative is towards the species and not towards themselves.

A person is a "humanist" if she or he manifests a humane disposition; actions count more than words; and by all accounts Dennett is a very nice, humane man.

Speaking of Eastern Nondualism, the concept ‘form is emptiness, emptiness is form’ from the Heart Sutra keeps coming to mind in this topic.

I will counter, "See, the logico-mathematical formulations of physics represent a conceptual language so generic as to mask the different ways in which the physicists in that room are understanding the meaning of the supposedly universal concepts of their science ". — Joshs

Beautiful. Exactly. Pure math is also a good example. No one has to know what is being talked about --not as long as the standards of what constitutes productivity are fixed. Normal discourses are cozy. There's the 'guilt' or 'risk' of personality in abnormal discourse. It's uncanny. Someone might actually believe you and act on that belief. It's safer inside the lab coat, being lived by the one.

From this I form the heretical conclusion that such philosophical conceptualizations are in fact more precise than logic-mathematical empirical ones. — Joshs

Interesting perspective. I agree, where 'precision' is understood in an eccentric but important sense. After all, philosophy 'places' the quantitative precision. It lands it in the total context.

Sure, that's a very famous aphorism. Heart Sutra is one of the quintessential sources of non-dualism in the Eastern tradition. But the philosophical background is very different to the Western cultural debate about 'mind and matter'. Buddhism re-frames the whole question, but there were physicalists around in the Buddha's day (see the other thread on the Carvakas). From the Buddhist viewpoint, physicalists are categorised as nihilistic.

" the actual humanists were those like Erasmus, Pico Della Mirandola, and Ficino - they're worlds, civilizations, apart from the likes of Dennett."
They're also worlds and civilizations apart from the likes of Darwin, Nietzsche, James, Dewey and Freud, whose influence one can clearly see in Dennett'a ideas. I am fine with leaving Dennett out of the discussion and instead using Nietzsche and Darwin as proxies, because most of what's important to me in philosophy depends on their overturning of prior philosophical assumptions. I'm trying to get to the bottom of what you're objecting to in Dennett. Is it something he has in common with these other thinkers or something idiosyncratic to his writing?
I dont particularly care for Dennett's style. He likes he language of a machine, and I think for that reason he often doesn't do justice to the implications of his thought. Take the idea of the subpersonal space of mind, or the elements of an organism, as a bunch of meaningless bits in interaction. Well, they can't be purely meaningless, because you don't get something from nothing.( Dennett wants to argue that you get the illusion of a central self out of no self, and he's right about that). They are in fact , increments of change or otherness. With just this minor tweek of Dennett's language, you arrive at a point of overlap with phenomenology. After all , the thrownness of Heidegger's DaSein isn't the moment to moment disclosure of rich content dripping with prepackaged humanistic profundity. It's just shifting perspectical aspects, unfolding bits of experiencing whose ongoing
temporalizing forms the changing senses of meaning.
If humans are just carriers of memes and self-rearranging bits of insignificant stuff to Dennett, this content that makes its way through a person's life has its power in its transformative potential for persons. For Nietzsche, too, human values have no moral profundity, but are meanings attached to drives with no teleological directness.

I'm trying to get to the bottom of what you're objecting to in Dennett. Is it something he has in common with these other thinkers or something idiosyncratic to his writing? — Joshs

No, it's because he's the best-known representative of scientific materialism applied to philosophy of mind. So he's representative of the overall position of scientific materialism, which I say is obviously and radically mistaken. Read the quotations again I provided in this post - 'so preposterous as to verge on the deranged.'

I am fine with leaving Dennett out of the discussion and instead using Nietzsche and Darwin as proxies, because most of what's important to me in philosophy depends on their overturning of prior philosophical assumptions. — Joshs

Well, I think Nietzsche is over-rated, but then he's something of a sacred cow in Western culture, which is ironic in the extreme. Darwin was not a philosopher at all, but a scientist. But as it happens, his theory came along just when Europe was throwing off the shackles of ecclesiastical dogma, and so evolutionary biology became something like a secular religion - not in content, but in its place in overall culture, as being the guide to what educated people ought to think. That became the basis of neo-darwinian materialism, of which Dennett and others are vociferous advocates, and of which Thomas Nagel has become a critic (somewhat reluctantly, one suspects, but someone has to do it).

As for 'overturning of prior philosophical assumptions' - us moderns think the world was born yesterday. That everyone who lived before the last century were intellectually blighted and believed that thunder was the gods being angry. So overturning everything they thought was true is the meaning of progress.

ON that note, there's a quote about a well-known economist, E F Schumacher (author of Small is Beautiful) who became a philosopher and ultimately converted to Catholicism. He gave a radio lecture to the BBC, in which he said:

The first great leap was made when man moved from Stage One of primitive religiosity to Stage Two of scientific realism. This is the stage modern man tends to be at. Then some people become dissatisfied with scientific realism, perceiving its deficiencies, and realize that there is something beyond fact and science. Such people progress to a higher plane of development which he called Stage Three. The problem was that Stage One and Stage Three looked exactly the same to those in Stage Two. Consequently, those in Stage Three are seen as having had some sort of relapse into childish nonsense. Only those in Stage Three, who have been through Stage Two, can understand the difference between Stage One and Stage Three.

You see, Dennett and his ilk believe that anything 'religious' is ancient, bronze-aged superstition, best understood in terms of adaptive necessity, the doings of the selfish gene. But there is a dimension that they don't see. I think it's embodied in the various kinds of post-secular spiritual movements which are flourishing throughout Western culture. Actually that is starting to become manifest in some of the new approaches to 'systems theory' inspired by the likes of Varela and others. But it's hardly apparent in mainstream Western academic philosophy as such, which is basically materialist in orientation (although that's not to say that there aren't many dissenting voices in the academy, of which Nagel is one.)

If you think Nietzsche is over-rated, then you also think Freud, James, Heidegger, Derrida, Rorty, Foucault and Merleau-Ponty are over-rated, because they had deep respect for his work and saw it as a pivotal foundation for their own. That means not only Dennett's materialism, but Heidegger(as I understand him) and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological projects, social constructionism, post-structuralist and deconstructive thought, and Rorty's linguistic pragmatism are not going to be to your liking, You strike me as an existentialist in the Kierkegaardian vein. You have a lot of company. Much of the arts community identifies with that era of thought. It is probably the dominant intellectual culture in academia By contrast, the post-Nietzschean community is a far smaller one. Reading these writers from your perspective, they are going to appear wrong-headed. From my perspective, they've made a leap into territory that's not yet visible to you.

I dont understand how one separates 'whatever a theory claims' from 'whatever might be claimed about a theory's practical or metaphysical significance(s).'
I mean, don't we understand something like a theory in the context of our totality of other undersatndings, such that we bring this background to bear as a whole implicitly in determining what we mean when we think about a theory? If this is the case, isnt a person's understanding of the claims of physics as such already framed via a personal metatheoretic perspective that brings into play a myriad of other cultural presuppositions? And if those metatheoretic understandings are to an extent unique to individuals, then it would follow that it is impossible to tease out something called a theory's 'claims as such' from this larger whole.

f you think Nietzsche is over-rated, then you also think Freud, James, Heidegger, Derrida, Rorty, Foucault and Merleau-Ponty are over-rated, because they had deep respect for his work and saw it as a pivotal foundation for their own. — Joshs

I'm actually pretty anti-modern. I have studied Freud at undergraduate level, read something of the others.

From my perspective, they've made a leap into territory that's not yet visible to you. — Joshs

Tnankyou, and I return the compliment. Kierkegaard, I also haven't read - so much to read - but the title of his 'concluding unscientific postscript' makes me want to like him.

Sure, we make inferences about the cause by examining the effect, that's exactly what I said. — Metaphysician Undercover

Perfect, then you finally agree with me for what I've been saying for months now - that effects inform us of the cause.

What I said is that we cannot "measure" the cause by examining the effect. The detective and prosecutor make a judgement which is not based on measurement of the cause. If it were a measurement of the cause, we wouldn't need a trial, a judge, nor jury, we could just refer to the measurement to see if the person measured up as guilty or not guilty. — Metaphysician Undercover

So we aren't measuring someone's guilt or innocence (the cause) based on the evidence left behind (the effect)? Just like how scientists use other scientists to check their results in order to minimize subjective mistakes, prosecutors take the evidence to multiple people (the judge and jury) and show the causal connection between the evidence and someone's guilt or innocence.

Can we make the way a word functions in the world totally explicit? I don't think so. At best you can sharpen the meaning as much as possible for a particular purpose within a local conversation, it seems to me.

In general, knowing what 'physical' means is (IMV) a dimly understood knowing-how to get along with others in the world. Perhaps every use of 'physical' is unique, albeit with a family resemblance. Just because we have this fixed sequence of letters from a fixed alphabet P H Y S I C A L doesn't, in my view, indicate that the 'meaning' has the same kind of quasi-mathematical static, definite presence as the mark. The foundation of our making sense of things seems to lie mostly in darkness. — ff0

So then the words, "physical" and "non-physical" don't refer to any real state of affairs outside of one's own skull. That seems to support what I've been saying. Thanks.

Yes the possibility of consciousness being mysterious does disturb a lot of people. — Wayfarer

Mysteries are evidence of our ignorance.

Wasn't it Socrates - you know, that Greek dude that you "philosophers" like to quote so much - that said:
"There is only one good - knowledge, and one evil - ignorance."

It seems to me that the possibility of consciousness being explained as something not-so-special and non-eternal is disturbing to a lot of people.

Are there things that exist right now that are physical that science hasn't yet explained? — Harry Hindu


Of course. For example, maybe the most notable and dramatic instance these days is the acceleration of the recession-rate of the more distant galaxies. But a lot of other things too, of course, such as the observed system of particles, etc.

...because physics isn't completed, and probably never will be.

For that matter, ball-lightning hasn't been given an explanation satisfactory to all who study it.

Michael Ossiopff — Michael Ossipoff

Thank you, Michael, for answering the question that needed to be answered so that this discussion can finally move toward it's conclusion.

IF "physical" is defined as what science has explained.

THEN what is "non-physical" is what science hasn't explained.

Then how can there be "physical" stuff that science hasn't yet explained? How is it that the mind, and it's relationship with the world, isn't just one of those "physical" things that science hasn't yet explained?

ON that note, there's a quote about a well-known economist, E F Schumacher (author of Small is Beautiful) who became a philosopher and ultimately converted to Catholicism. He gave a radio lecture to the BBC, in which he said:

The first great leap was made when man moved from Stage One of primitive religiosity to Stage Two of scientific realism. This is the stage modern man tends to be at. Then some people become dissatisfied with scientific realism, perceiving its deficiencies, and realize that there is something beyond fact and science. Such people progress to a higher plane of development which he called Stage Three. The problem was that Stage One and Stage Three looked exactly the same to those in Stage Two. Consequently, those in Stage Three are seen as having had some sort of relapse into childish nonsense. Only those in Stage Three, who have been through Stage Two, can understand the difference between Stage One and Stage Three — Wayfarer

So nice for Schumacher that he has "progressed" to a higher plane of development, which the poor, recalcitrant scientific materialists are powerless to understand. Just more of that humility inherent in the religious, eh? So much better than the "arrogance" espoused by the "New Atheists."

So we aren't measuring someone's guilt or innocence (the cause) based on the evidence left behind (the effect)? — Harry Hindu

No, we may measure the evidence (the effect), and make certain inferences concerning the cause, and then we make a judgement concerning the person's guilt or innocence. It is important to recognize that these are inferences, because "inference" implies that certain principles, premises are applied for a logical proceeding.

So we have first our measurement, by which we apply certain measurement practises. Then we apply specific premises, such as conditionals (if... then ...), and make some conclusions to assist our judgement. It is important to recognize that these logical proceedings, with the application of such premises, are not measurement practises.

Also, you should recognize that these logical proceedings, which apply premises, and rules of logic to produce conclusions employ non-physical principles. A measurement may be carried out by comparing two physical things, but logical process employs non-physical principles. So we only judge the cause from the effect through the application of non-physical principles.

Trans-rational isn’t necessarily religious, in fact it may necessarily be non-religious.

Sure, that's a very famous aphorism. Heart Sutra is one of the quintessential sources of non-dualism in the Eastern tradition. But the philosophical background is very different to the Western cultural debate about 'mind and matter'. — Wayfarer

And therefore lacks the power to dissolve the disparity between mind and matter?

IF "physical" is defined as what science has explained.

THEN what is "non-physical" is what science hasn't explained.

Then how can there be "physical" stuff that science hasn't yet explained? How is it that the mind, and it's relationship with the world, isn't just one of those "physical" things that science hasn't yet explained? — Harry Hindu

You’re concluding rhetorical question relies on a circular argument, as far as I can currently see.

Just as can be the case with any other stance regarding, basically, philosophy of mind—idealisms (in plural since these can take many forms), Cartesian substance dualism, pluralism, and (my now personal favorite) dual-aspect neutral monism—so too can physicalism be a circular argument in search of some justification for not merely being a “because I say/believe/will so” argument.

Hence: P1) because I/we/they so assert, everything discoverable by science is physical (even though science might have no clue as to what it is; e.g. dark matter and dark energy (maybe over 90% of the known universe and of what we ourselves consist of as physical beings, this in the colloquial sense of physical); P2) because I/we/they so assert, everything shall be discovered by science at some future point in time (including all aspects of being and its becoming involved in consciousness); C) therefore, everything is physical (this due to the cause of me/us/them so saying it is—as explicitly affirmed in the two former premises).

This, as presented, is then a circular argument (where the conclusion is implicitly upheld in the premises) that does not demonstrate any stance to be true at expense of any other stance being erroneous.

He wasn't being condescending, so I wouldn't condescend on his behalf. The point he makes is valid, and one which I have been trying to explain ever since joining forums, mostly in vain.

I dont understand how one separates 'whatever a theory claims' from 'whatever might be claimed about a theory's practical or metaphysical significance(s).'
I mean, don't we understand something like a theory in the context of our totality of other undersatndings, such that we bring this background to bear as a whole implicitly in determining what we mean when we think about a theory? If this is the case, isnt a person's understanding of the claims of physics as such already framed via a personal metatheoretic perspective that brings into play a myriad of other cultural presuppositions? And if those metatheoretic understandings are to an extent unique to individuals, then it would follow that it is impossible to tease out something called a theory's 'claims as such' from this larger whole. — Joshs

What you say here about the implicit background of pre-critical assumptions against which our understandings of everything are framed is really stating the obvious, and so I obviously would agree with it. But from that it does not follow that there is no distinction between what a theory asserts, and what is asserted about the theory's significance for human life in various contexts; whether ethical, practical, aesthetic, or whatever. We can clearly state what any theory asserts, just as we can clearly state potentially infinitely many ideas; the logical conclusion of what you seem to be saying would be that there is no real difference between any of our ideas, simply because they are all framed against the same background of assumptions. It seems to me that to say that would be to think simplistically and support an absurdity.

Sure, that's a very famous aphorism. Heart Sutra is one of the quintessential sources of non-dualism in the Eastern tradition. But the philosophical background is very different to the Western cultural debate about 'mind and matter'.
— Wayfarer

And therefore lacks the power to dissolve the disparity between mind and matter? — praxis

I think Buddhist philosophy can indeed overcome many of the dichotomies and dualities in Western philosophy, but it's not that easy a matter to apply it. In some ways it requires learning to be less 'Western' in regards to some things, one of which is the 'religion v science' dichotomy which is writ large in many of the debates here.

But to answer your question, I think Buddhism certainly can dissolve that duality, but that it's not guaranteed to do so. Right now in Western Buddhist movements, there's a split emerging between so-called 'secular Buddhism' (clustered around scholar-practitioner Stephen Bachelor) and other Buddhists of various stripes who maintain a traditionalist view. The fault line is belief in the reality of re-birth which is depicted by secular Buddhism as something which was absorbed by Buddhism from the surrounding culture but is not intrinsic to the Buddha's teaching. The 'traditionalists' disagree. I don't think this forum is the place for that debate but I attribute it to the effect of secularisation on the tradition - indeed Bachelor's recent book is called 'Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist'. (He has a non-secular counterpart by the name of David Brazier, whose riposte to Bachelor was titled 'Buddhism is a Religion: You can Believe It.')

Trans-rational isn’t necessarily religious, in fact it may necessarily be non-religious. — praxis

Interesting observation! One thing I remember reading when I first encountered Advaita (decades ago now) was that the Indian sages tended to make fun of conventional religion. Believers were often depicted in very unflattering terms as dupes or made fun of in various ways. The sage was depicted as utterly unbound by convention, whether religious or social, a tendency which became especially evident in Tantric traditions (of which I have little knowledge) and also in Taoism (where the Taoist sage was often a vagabond or beggar, unlike the upright and uptight Confucian scholar).

My (provisional) understanding is (1) that religious rules, rituals and symbols are of the nature of the 'vehicle', not the destination. And (2) there is an important and forgotten distinction between believers (pistics), on the one hand, and the spiritually mature (gnostics, small-g) on the other. Due to the vagaries of history, I think Western religion got over-taken by believers, at the expense of the real sages, who were often persecuted as heretics. (It's a fine line.)

But my main interest in the context of Western philosophy is the history of ideas, and how it was that materialism became predominant in the Western tradition.

Wasn't it Socrates - you know, that Greek dude that you "philosophers" like to quote so much - that said:

"There is only one good - knowledge, and one evil - ignorance." — Harry Hindu

He might have said that, but that doesn't mean the explanation is going to be what we now understand as a scientific one, for reasons that I won't begin to try to explain to you.

one of which is the 'religion v science' dichotomy which is writ large in many of the debates here. — Wayfarer

Yes, and no one here writes it larger than you do, it seems to me.

Why thank you. I do my best.