Physics is the question of what matter is. Metaphysics is the question of what exists (I would prefer, 'what is real'). People of a rational, scientific bent tend to think that the two are coextensive—that everything is physical. Many who think differently are inspired by religion to posit the existence of God and souls; Nagel affirms that he’s an atheist, but he also asserts that there’s an entirely different realm of non-physical stuff that exists—namely, mental stuff. The vast flow of perceptions, ideas, and emotions that arise in each human mind is something that, in his view, actually exists [is real] as something other than merely the electrical firings in the brain that gives rise to them—and exists [is real] as surely as [is] a brain, a chair, an atom, or a gamma ray.
In other words, even if it were possible to map out the exact pattern of brain waves that give rise to a person’s momentary complex of awareness, that mapping would only explain the physical correlate of these experiences, but it wouldn’t be them. A person doesn’t experience patterns, and her experiences are as irreducibly real as her brain waves are, and different from them.
These personalities might be described as the dreams of the Sūkṣma Śarīra, as it travels the spheres. Brought to the west by the Theosophists.This also speaks to me. 'Limited position' is good. We might also talk of finite personalities, blossoming in soils they did not choose, adapted to that soil, dreaming that what has been is necessarily what will be.
The phrase 'Everything is relative' is spoken emphatically by the very people for whom the atom or its elements are still the ultimate reality. Everything is relative, they say, but at the same time they declare as indubitable truth that the mind is nothing but a product of cerebral processes. This combination of gross objectivism and bottomless subjectivism represents a synthesis of logically irreconcilable, contradictory principles of thought, which is equally unfortunate from the point of view of philosophical consistency and from that ethical and cultural value. — Some Geezer
there was an hierarchy of the understanding, such that mathematical and scientific reason were said to be higher than (mere) sensory knowledge. — Wayfarer
We ourselves live in a meaning-world - even the declaration that the world has no meaning is dependent on that. It is from within that meaning-world that all judgements are made. — Wayfarer
Bearing in mind, 'substance' was 'ouisia' and 'mind' was 'nous' - much has been lost in translation, I think. — Wayfarer
But what this doesn't see is that the mind itself provides the framework within which every judgement about 'what exists' is meaningful. In other words, there is a subjective pole or element in the absence of which nothing exists whatever; you can't take away the observing intelligence and leave the world. — Wayfarer
Isn't it misleading to call it 'subjective'? — Yellow Horse
Like Kant, Hegel believed that we do not perceive the world or anything in it directly and that all our minds have access to is ideas of the world—images, perceptions, concepts. For Kant and Hegel, the only reality we know is a virtual reality. Hegel’s idealism differs from Kant’s in two ways. First, Hegel believed that the ideas we have of the world are social, which is to say that the ideas that we possess individually are utterly shaped by the ideas that other people possess. Our minds have been shaped by the thoughts of other people through the language we speak, the traditions and mores of our society, and the cultural and religious institutions of which we are a part.
We can thank more recent philosophy (improving on Kant?) for destroying sense-data empiricism as a serious option. Facts are primary (true sentences). Not 'sensations' of redness but statements. "The light is red." — Yellow Horse
The main problem with our usual understanding of secularity is that it is taken-for-granted, so we are not aware that it is a worldview. It is an ideology that pretends to be the everyday world we live in. Many assume that it is simply the way the world really is, once superstitious beliefs about it have been removed. Yet that is the secular view of secularity, its own self-understanding... The secularity we presuppose must be "de-naturalized" in order to realize how unique and peculiar such a worldview is. — David Loy
Bearing in mind, 'substance' was 'ouisia' and 'mind' was 'nous' - much has been lost in translation, I think.
— Wayfarer
Is this not itself significant? How could we check? We can't look into the private minds (long vanished) of those who first used the words philosophically. — Yellow Horse
7. 1. [1177a11] But if happiness [εὐδαιμονία] consists in activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be activity in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be the virtue of the best part of us. Whether then this be the Intellect [νοῦς], or whatever else it be that is thought to rule and lead us by nature, and to have cognizance of what is noble and divine, either as being itself also actually divine, or as being relatively the divinest part of us, it is the activity of this part of us in accordance with the virtue proper to it that will constitute perfect happiness; and it has been stated already* that this activity is the activity of contemplation [θεωρητική].
this framework is not individual. We're each instances of it but it is basically collective, 'what everyone knows' to be the case. We're embedded in a matrix of meaning — Wayfarer
But it's not 'objective' in that it's not discoverable by empiricism; it's transcendent, in the Kantian sense of 'shaping experience but not disclosed by experience'. — Wayfarer
It's just that analytic philosophy tends to dismiss it BECAUSE it's not objective, and then demand you 'prove' that it's something real. — Wayfarer
That's what hermeneutics is for. — Wayfarer
But my intuition is that the ancients sought a kind of synthetic vision of unity - an awareness of the Whole - which is actually the meaning of 'cosmos'. — Wayfarer
These personalities might be described as the dreams of the Sūkṣma Śarīra, as it travels the spheres. Brought to the west by the Theosophists. — Punshhh
It's like locking yourself into a room and forgetting where the door is. — Wayfarer
The secularity we presuppose must be "de-naturalized" in order to realize how unique and peculiar such a worldview is. — David Loy
statements about physical objects are prototypically objective, but then so are mathematical statements. — Yellow Horse
Yes, to the extent that in the embodiment of all experience symbols are to be found and known in that experience. My emphasis though is on being, philosophy acknowledges the presence of being, but leaves it 2 dimensional. Whereas in reality it is multidimensional and brings presence, to the feast. In these dreams there is a being, a fledgling entity, learning, growing, unfolding in the light, the soil, with its own sweet aroma.Sure, though I'd consider these dreams more symbols (as perhaps you also do.)
They are 'mortal' - perishable, imperfect, and transient. Whereas the archetypal forms subsist in the One and are apprehended by Nous: while they do not exist they provide the basis for all existing things by creating the pattern, the ratio, whereby particular things are formed (which is made explicit in Plotinus). They are real, above and beyond the existence of wordly things; but they don't actually exist. They don't need to exist; things do the hard work of existence. — Wayfarer
philosopher's or mystic's God — Yellow Horse
As far as the second kind goes, I have enjoyed and do enjoy my own version of it. To me it's going to be poetry, metaphor, myth, symbol, art. That's not necessarily a demotion, since human beings live and die for these things. — Yellow Horse
Do you mean a mystic god is poetry, metaphor, etc? I may be misreading you. — Noble Dust
My philosopher's god would be philosophy itself, — Pfhorrest
but it would be bad philosophy to call philosophy itself God, and I wouldn't abuse my god that way, so... — Pfhorrest
The concept of the poet is one more poem here, as is the (self-referential here) concept of poetry. — Yellow Horse
Interesting. Do you connect Λόγος to the concept of "Kairos" at all? — Noble Dust
Not sure what you mean. — Noble Dust
I mean that 'subjects' or 'egos' or 'minds' or 'poets' are themselves 'poems.' They are interpretations of us having (in some ways) separate bodies. — Yellow Horse
It's not poetic to say that subjects, egos, or minds, or poets are poems themselves. — Noble Dust
I will try to rescue the metaphor. The intelligibility or structure of mundane reality is dead poetry, or at least on its death bed.
Even 'poet' is a dead metaphor. — Yellow Horse
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.