religion-in-general goes deeper than that, into the essence of human nature. It's not just intellectual assent to a list of specific "truths", "facts" or commandments. Instead, it's an emotional bond to a family or tribe or social group. The details differ from tribe to tribe, but the feeling of belonging is the same for all people of all places and all times. It's the same emotional connection that unites a family or football team, or military unit. And it may even be motivated by the same neurotransmitters (e.g. oxytocin) that bond a mother and her baby. — Gnomon
Transcendental ego, the self that is necessary in order for there to be a unified empirical self-consciousness. For Immanuel Kant, it synthesizes sensations according to the categories of the understanding. Nothing can be known of this self, because it is a condition, not an object, of knowledge. For Edmund Husserl, pure consciousness, for which everything that exists is an object, is the ground for the foundation and constitution of all meaning.
SourceThere is now overwhelming biological and behavioral evidence that the brain contains no stable, high-resolution, full field representation of a visual scene, even though that is what we subjectively experience (Martinez-Conde et al. 2008). The structure of the primate visual system has been mapped in detail (Kaas and Collins 2003) and there is no area that could encode this detailed information. The subjective experience is thus inconsistent with the neural circuitry. Closely related problems include change- (Simons and Rensink 2005) and inattentional-blindness (Mack 2003), and the subjective unity of perception arising from activity in many separate brain areas (Fries 2009; Engel and Singer 2001).
...There is a plausible functional story for the stable world illusion. First of all, we do have a (top-down) sense of the space around us that we cannot currently see, based on memory and other sense data—primarily hearing, touch, and smell. Also, since we are heavily visual, it is adaptive to use vision as broadly as possible. Our illusion of a full field, high resolution image depends on peripheral vision—to see this, just block part of your peripheral field with one hand. Immediately, you lose the illusion that you are seeing the blocked sector. When we also consider change blindness, a simple and plausible story emerges. Our visual system (somehow) relies on the fact that the periphery is very sensitive to change. As long as no change is detected it is safe to assume that nothing is significantly altered in the parts of the visual field not currently attended.
But this functional story tells nothing about the neural mechanisms that support this magic. What we do know is that there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene (Kaas and Collins 2003). That is, enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience. So, this version of the NBP really is a scientific mystery at this time.
Really? is it not so that the substance of most if not all Socratic dialogues starts with some form of "What is..."? Then Socrates butchers the proffered answer, not so much to show that the answer doesn't hold, but that the thing itself is not-so-easy to define? That is, they all start with definition. — tim wood
The obsession with beliefs misses what religion shares with other expressions of membership. Religion is continuous with politics and art. Life and action are primary. We bookish philosophers inherit the fantasy of justified systems of beliefs. What we don't like is our radical immersion in material circumstance and tacit knowledge that not only cannot be justified but also cannot even be made explicit. — jellyfish
I like Socrates, but he's only different from other gurus on the level of quality. He's not playing a different game altogether or refusing to play the game. [ ... ]
If knowledge of our own ignorance is the most important kind of knowledge, then somehow this wonderful humility ends up back on top. What a surprise... — jellyfish
So, (e.g. JCI) religions aren't in the theological & liturgical/pastoral businesses of trying to "justify" their "beliefs" in order to "authorize" the applications of said "beliefs" in practice? — 180 Proof
Mainly the latter. Of course this implies the former, but it is less important. Also I assume we are excluding dead religions like the ancient greek religions.Abilities? Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, faster than a speeding bullet. Those abilities? Or do you mean that at the maximum of ability, nothing beyond that can exist? — tim wood
Not sure I understand your question haha. To give my definition in other words, it is finding what conclusions can be inferred from divine revelations, which serve as the premises.By "scientific (rational) study of truth," do you mean putting the question to what you suppose is the truth to see if it is - or can be - truth? — tim wood
Upon reflection, I now think the term has two meanings. (1) is the subject matter itself, and (2) is the practice based on the theology, as per my first definition. E.g. Christianity is a religion, but also a christian is religious strictly if he practices the acts described in the theology.Religion: a set of behaviours. Based on? Entirely? Or does religion add to theology? — tim wood
This is the lesson of the Theatetus, to start with a definition is to be mislead by that definition. — Metaphysician Undercover
Swan Quoting me(?) out of context always scratches the wrong itch ... now I'm on the wet spot. :kiss: the latest profile pic, btw. — 180 Proof
The spiritual individual, the people, insofar as it is organized in itself, an organic whole, is what we call the State. This designation is ambiguous in that by “state” and “constitutional law” one usually means the simple political aspect, as distinct from religion, science, and art. But when we speak of the manifestation of the spiritual we understand the term “state” in a more comprehensive sense, similar to the term Reich (empire, realm). For us, then, a people is primarily a .spiritual individual. We do not emphasize the external aspects but concentrate on what has been called the spirit of a people. We mean its consciousness of itself, of its own truth, its own essence, the spiritual powers which live and rule in it. The universal which manifests itself in the State and is known in it – the form under which everything that is, is subsumed – is that which constitutes the culture of a nation. The definite content which receives this universal form and is contained in the concrete actuality of the state is the spirit of the people. The actual state is animated by this spirit in all its particular affairs, wars, institutions, etc.
This spiritual content is something definite, firm, solid, completely exempt from caprice, the particularities, the whims of individuality, of chance. That which is subject to the latter is not the nature of the people: it is like the dust playing over a city or a field, which does not essentially transform it. This spiritual content then constitutes the essence of the individual as well as that of the people. It is the holy bond that ties the men, the spirits together. It is one life in all, a grand object, a great purpose and content on which depend all individual happiness and all private decisions. The state does not exist for the citizens; on the contrary, one could say that the state is the end and they are its means. But the means-end relation is not fitting here. For the state is not the abstract confronting the citizens; they are parts of it, like members of an organic body, where no member is end and none is means. It is the realization of Freedom, of the absolute, final purpose, and exists for its own sake. All the value man has, all spiritual reality, he has only through the state. For his spiritual reality is the knowing presence to him of his own essence, of rationality, of its objective, immediate actuality present in and for him. Only thus is he truly a consciousness, only thus does he partake in morality, in the legal and moral life of the state. For the True is the unity of the universal and particular will. And the universal in the state is in its laws, its universal and rational provisions. The state is the divine Idea as it exists on earth. — Hegel
The first phase of the domination of the economy over social life brought into the definition of all human realization the obvious degradation of being into having. The present phase of total occupation of social life by the accumulated results of the economy leads to a generalized sliding of having into appearing, from which all actual “having” must draw its immediate prestige and its ultimate function. — Debord
in fact, I'd hope to spur us on to a more rigorous (i.e. logical-semantic or epistemological or even ontological) level than the usually pedestrian liturgical/mysterian apologia. Apparently, you, tim, are not interested in - capable of(?) - a more freethought (i.e. atheological) approach. — 180 Proof
Perhaps a different approach to the generic name "God" would be helpful. For Atheists, "god" refers to an empty set. But for Theists, "God" refers to a meaningful, but abstract concept, with associated feelings. For example, "United States" is not a concrete thing, but an abstraction that invokes positive feelings for some, and negative feelings for others.Actually, much closer to the ground, in that for certain words I wonder if any agreement, even provisional, on meaning is possible. On "God" for example, unless I've missed it, no one has pinned anything down. Yours is the empty name, mine the idea, some Anselm, and X. That's it for God. — tim wood
"God is an empty name"? is that the best you can do, 180?
Whatever "God" may be, it cannot be an empty name ... — tim wood
That is, that god, religion (theology), are all results of a more fundamental push. As results of pushes at different times and places for different reasons, all different and differing, it is therefore (on this idea) a mistake to look in these things for a sameness and consistency that isn't there. Instead, it would seem that understanding must go back behind to consider the primitive - or at least original, because imo the whole thing is recapitulated in the development of the individual - the bonfire, and the jaws that hover indistinctly in the shadows at the dark edges of it. — tim wood
The concept [of god-of-the-gaps], although not the exact wording, goes back to Henry Drummond, a 19th-century evangelist lecturer, from his Lowell Lectures on The Ascent of Man. He chastises those Christians who point to the things that science can not yet explain—"gaps which they will fill up with God"—and urges them to embrace all nature as God's, as the work of "an immanent God, which is the God of Evolution, is infinitely grander than the occasional wonder-worker, who is the God of an old theology.
Placebos work roughly a third(?) of the time and never treat underlying ailments just the symptoms. — 180 Proof
the placebo effect seems to be becoming stronger as time goes on. A 2015 study published in the journal Pain analyzed 84 clinical trials of pain medication conducted between 1990 and 2013 and found that in some cases the efficacy of placebo had grown sharply, narrowing the gap with the drugs’ effect from 27 percent on average to just 9 percent.
"... count as evidence ... in my book" I wrote: not an "argument" at all, merely an as far as I know aside. My use of 'placebo' is analogical not literal or scientific, which works fine - gets my point across - in the prevailing context of this thread. Let's agree to disagree on this point here and now, Wayf; maybe fodder for a later discussion / debate on some other thread. :victory:So simply asserting that they 'count as evidence for physicalism' does not constitute an argument. — Wayfarer
I have removed the term "religion" from the above definition of "faith" to avoid any circularity.that just means that faith is any belief about religious topics, which would then make religion defined in reference to faith circularly defined. — Pfhorrest
But if faith is always blind faith, and you should not go on faith alone and should also use reason, then why use faith at all and not just always use reason instead? The Thomists are not that bad at logic.The thing that distinguishes faithful belief from other belief is its independence of good reasons. Thomists may claim that you should strive also to have good reasons in addition to your faith, but that is just saying not to go on faith alone, as faith alone (without reason) is blind. Faith per se is thus exactly what they would call “blind faith”, and it is only in fortifying a belief with something besides faith that it becomes not blind. — Pfhorrest
For Atheists, "god" refers to an empty set. But for Theists, "God" refers to a meaningful, but abstract concept, with associated feelings. For example, "United States" is not a concrete thing, but an abstraction that invokes positive feelings for some, and negative feelings for others. — Gnomon
But I cannot give a concrete description, or claim that "G*D" is real and empirical. Instead, my "G*D" is a gap-filler in the same sense that scientists use "Dark Matter" and "Multiverse". — Gnomon
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