Vervaeke argues that normativity doesn’t need to be imported from a cosmic telos or moral law.
It’s implicit in our very capacity for rational, self-corrective cognition.

Our “is” — our biological and cognitive architecture — already entails competencies that can be exercised well or badly. “Ought” simply names the direction of self-correction toward more adequate realization of those competences. — Wayfarer

Vervaeke’s view fits squarely within the German Idealist tradition, especially Hegel, with Kantian roots, in his understanding of autonomous reason, freedom as self-determined alignment with rational norms and internalized moral standards. It doesn’t seem partially compatible with the existentialist move to deconstruct the metaphysics of rational subjectivity inaugurated by Kierkegaard. For him, faith involves a personal “leap” beyond reason, sometimes even against ethical universals. Vervaeke’s insistence on autonomous rational standards contrasts with Kierkegaard’s focus on faith as transcending rationality. We are responsible for what matters and how it matter to us, but this isn’t a ‘rational’ responsibility.

The point that interests me is his refutation of the ‘is/ought’ distinction. He phrases it in terms of relevance realisation This revolves around discerning relevance - perceiving what features of a situation could be important in each moment. It puts questions of value, importance, significance and the sacred at the center of the ‘salience landscape’.

Why bring in ‘the sacred’? Where most cognitive scientists stop at mechanism — mapping functions, algorithms, and neural correlates — Vervaeke insists on situating cognition within the broader context of human condition: the experience of being a meaning-seeking, self-transcending animal prone to self-deception. His language of “salience landscapes,” “relevance realization,” and “ecologies of practice” attempts to harmonise descriptive science and philosophical anthropology.

"Ultimately your brain is not static, it is adaptive.
But it only adapts when its predictions are challenged.
And those challenges cannot come from within your own preferences.
They must come from participation.
From otherness."[/quote]

But he fails to point out that the baseline for most human interactions is hostility, or in the best case scenario, indifference. The move to individualism (that he criticizes) is actually a defense against the indifference and hostility of others, especially when it comes to religious/spiritual others.

I found embodied cognitive science, and later phenomenology, to be very helpful here, since they deal both with questions of how one should live and what is the case. — Joshs

Actually, it seems it was/is your general hopeful/positive disposition that is the most helpful factor for you.
The cognitive science and phenomenology are just tools in your particular case, while for someone else with a similar general hopeful/positive disposition, other tools might be relevant. (And I do so hate to use "tools" in this context ...)

Still, there are many like Vervaeke who grew up relying on a rigid belief system and found themselves in existential crisis when they abandoned that faith and had nothing to replace it with. The craving to replace one totalizing purpose with another is one explanation for the attraction of cults, and Verveake’s project does have some cult-like characteristics.

It can also explain the particular shape/structure of one's existential crisis. That is, an existential crisis is not the same for everyone who describes themselves as having an "existential crisis". For example, an existential crisis will look different for someone with a Christian background, as opposed to someone with a Hindu background; and their respective solutions to those crises are going to be shaped differently as well. (For example, one can recognize whether a self-described atheist has a Christian or a Hindu background, even without mentioning anything about them having such a background.)

↪Joshs The point that interests me is his refutation of the ‘is/ought’ distinction. He phrases it in terms of relevance realisation This revolves around discerning relevance - perceiving what features of a situation could be important in each moment. It puts questions of value, importance, significance and the sacred at the center of the ‘salience landscape’ — Wayfarer

I’m all for dissolving the is/ought distinction, and I agree that Vervaeke challenges this distinction as it relates to the fact/value separation. But I wouldn’t say he dissolves the binary in the radical way that poststructuralists do. Evan Thompson’s comments illustrate the limits of this attempt:

“Nyanaponika juxtaposed descriptive claims about the mind with statements about how one should shape the mind and life, according to the Buddhist path. The second kind of statements are ethical injunctions based on value judgments. In philosophical terms, they are normative claims rather than descriptive ones. Science pursues disinterested explanatory knowledge of the mind, whereas Buddhism also seeks to shape the mind according to certain norms and goals. But this juxtaposition of the descriptive and normative aspects of the Buddhist viewpoint hides a problem, one that still haunts the Buddhism-science dialogue today. On one hand, bare attention—the method of the supposed Buddhist mind science—is said to reveal how the mind truly is. It's said to reveal the truth of the Buddhist doctrine of “no-self” or “nonself”, that there is no abiding self or soul and that the “mind is nothing beyond its cognizing function.”

The no-self doctrine isn't presented as an antecedent normative framework that tells us what ought to happen as a result of practicing bare attention, namely, that we should no longer identify with the mind as the self. Rather, bare attention is presented as disclosing the antecedent truth that there is no self. Bare attention is likened to a scientific procedure or instrument for observing and establishing how things are. On the other hand, mindfulness meditation is a practice that shapes the mind according to certain goals and norms, such as making the mind calmer and less impulsive. Nyanaponika writes that “Bare Attention slows down, or even stops, the transition from thought to action,” and “the plasticity and receptivity of the mind will grow considerably.”

How are these two ways of thinking about bare attention—as disinterested disclosure of how the mind truly is versus as shaping it according to a valued standard—supposed to be related? They seem to be in tension. To disclose something requires not changing it as you disclose it. To shape the mind is to change it. How can bare attention reveal the mind if it also changes it? Consider scientific observation compared to bare attention to one's own mental processes. Scientific observation, like meditation, is a practice and an acquired skill. You need to learn how to see through a microscope or a telescope. But these kinds of instruments are separate from the objects they provide access to, and they don't change them (except, perhaps, at the quantum scale).

Buddhist exceptionalists typically conflate the descriptive and normative aspects of Buddhist doctrines and meditation practices. For example, Sam Harris writes: “a person can embrace the Buddha's teaching, and even become a genuine Buddhist contemplative (and, one must presume, a buddha) without believing anything on insufficient evidence.” He thinks Buddhism is like science: “One starts with the hypothesis that using attention in the prescribed way (meditation), and engaging in or avoiding certain behaviors (ethics), will bear the promised result (wisdom and psychological well-being).” Harris makes it sound as if there is empirical, scientific evidence for the Buddha's normative teaching, including the ideal norm of buddhahood and the possibility of its attainment. I disagree. The concepts of nirvana (nirvana ) and awakening (bodhi ) aren't scientific concepts; they're soteriological ones. They aren't psychological constructs whose validity can be established through measurement. (Why I Am Not A Buddhist)

It’s my view that for the most part the “meaning crisis” is a case of too much freedom. For some, that freedom is crippling. — Tom Storm

I think it's not about "too much freedom" or freedom being "crippling". It's that the institutions that we are expected to trust and rely on don't care about us -- and yet we're supposed to pretend that they do. It's this latter part that seems to be modern. That the institutions that we are expected to trust and rely on don't care about us is nothing new; what seems to be new is the expectation of the pretense that they do care. This is what adds the insult to the injury, and this is a source of a crisis of meaning.

Freedom becomes crippling when acting on it cripples one. For example, one has the "freedom" not to have health insurance. But what kind of freedom is that?

It can also explain the particular shape/structure of one's existential crisis. That is, an existential crisis is not the same for everyone who describes themselves as having an "existential crisis". For example, an existential crisis will look different for someone with a Christian background, as opposed to someone with a Hindu background; and their respective solutions to those crises are going to be shaped differently as well. (For example, one can recognize whether a self-described atheist has a Christian or a Hindu background, even without mentioning anything about them having such a background.) — baker

Good points.

Freedom becomes crippling when acting on it cripples one. For example, one has the "freedom" not to have health insurance. But what kind of freedom is that? — baker

Again, different cultures have different attributes. Health care in Australia is mostly free and accessible to everyone. It’s not perfect, but the homeless and the middle class share doctors and hospitals.

What I see are people faced with a smorgasbord of choices: religious, political, and social, with almost no barriers to access because, for the most part, everything is permitted. That abundance of choice seems to make people freeze: what do I do in a world where culture is so varied? How do I focus my life when there’s a multiplicity of choices, faiths, and lifestyles all available to me? All potentially true or rewarding or superior.

The groups for whom this isn’t always a major problem tend to be hardworking, thrifty migrant communities that still have a dominant culture and a unified worldview. I know quite a few people from the Nepalese, Indian, Afghan, and Vietnamese communities. But their children sometimes come adrift because they don’t really know whether to accept proscribed tradition or embrace all the freedoms available to them.

When traditions speak of “higher knowledge,” the term “higher” need not imply rank or authority - something that seems to push a lot of buttons! - but rather a difference in mode, scope, or reflexive awareness. — Wayfarer

Sure, but the socio-economic structure of religion is still hierarchical, and it is all about rank and authority. Even if the people involved are all loathe to openly admit it.

However it has to be acknowledged that Buddhist (and in general, Indian) philosophy has a soteriological dimension (aimed at liberation or ‘salvation’), which is mainly absent in Western philosophy. And this is one of the reasons that any mention of ‘higher knowledge’ produces such a lot of pushback. ‘Ah, you mean religious’ And we all know that religious authority is something to be disdained. Why, it’s dogmatic!

On the contrary. I think the pushback is the natural reaction to test someone's claims to authority. Especially religious people seem to think that they can go forth into the world, make claims to authority, and the world then owes them submissiveness. Just like that. "I am king and you owe me!" Of course at least some people are going to be skeptical about this.

What I see are people faced with a smorgasbord of choices: religious, political, and social, with almost no barriers to access because, for the most part, everything is permitted. That abundance of choice seems to make people freeze: what do I do in a world where culture is so varied? How do I focus my life when there’s a multiplicity of choices, faiths, and lifestyles all available to me? All potentially true or rewarding or superior. — Tom Storm

I think what makes them freeze is that they still haven't realized that they don't actually have all that many choices, realistically.

For example, we have a constitutionally granted "freedom of religion". But this has no bearing on whether one will actually be accepted into a particular religious community, or whether one will be able to understand a particular religion; it also doesn't obligate the various religions to explains themselves to outsiders in a way those outsiders can understand. It doesn't obligate the state to force a religious community to accept a particular person. For all practical intents and purposes, "freedom of religion" is about such things as employers not being legally allowed to discriminate against (prospective) employees on religious grounds.

What is actually available to one in terms of "freedom of religion" is extremely limited; often, it's actually zero. And similarly with so many other things.

The multitude of options is illusory.

The multitude of options is illusory. — baker

I guess we disagree on this.

I wasn’t just talking about religion; also beliefs, lifestyles, and choices. I know so many people who drifted from socialism to Buddhism, to Hinduism, to cultural Christianity, to New Age, to hitchhiking, to fruit picking, to unemployment, to drug use, to university, to sexuality, to military service, to music, etc, etc, and none of these things provided any real satisfaction. They were always looking to see what else they could explore what other beliefs were open to them. In the modern world (here at least), in the absence of certainty and clear pathways of tradition everything is "open". Even for those less wealthy, the cities are full of poor country folk who left their towns to experiment with different lifestyles and options.

Now, am I saying that this is true for everyone? No. It is just a noticeable part of contemporary society and, in my view, a significant factor in unrest and anxiety.

Namely, a critical examination of a paradigm would require stepping out of that paradigm; but such stepping out would be in conflict with one's committment to said paradigm.
— baker

Yes, that's exactly how I put the question. And moreover, what needs to be done to "go beyond the boundaries," to see from the outside? Is it possible? — Astorre

I'm not sure why you're asking about this; in reference to what are you asking this?


The problem can be formalized in the emic-etic distinction:

Emic (/ˈiːmɪk/) and etic (/ˈɛtɪk/) refer to two kinds of field research done in anthropology, folkloristics, linguistics, and the social and behavioral sciences, and viewpoints obtained from them.[1]

The emic approach is an insider's perspective, which looks at the beliefs, values, and practices of a particular culture from the perspective of the people who live within it. This approach aims to understand the cultural meaning and significance of a particular behavior or practice, as it is understood by the people who engage in it.[2]

The etic approach is an outsider's perspective, which looks at a culture from the perspective of an outside observer or researcher. This approach tends to focus on the observable behaviors and practices of a culture, and aims to understand them in terms of their functional or evolutionary significance. The etic approach often involves the use of standardized measures and frameworks to compare different cultures and may involve the use of concepts and theories from other disciplines, such as psychology or sociology.[2]

The emic and etic approaches each have their own strengths and limitations, and each can be useful in understanding different aspects of culture and behavior. Some anthropologists argue that a combination of both approaches is necessary for a complete understanding of a culture, while others argue that one approach may be more appropriate depending on the specific research question being addressed.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emic_and_etic

Am I right to surmise that for you the history of Western philosophy since at least Descartes amounts to little more than a reshuffling of older theological concepts, and that you would not feel particularly intellectually or spiritually deprived if you had not been exposed to modern philosophy? — Joshs

A life without Big Heg and Dusty Dosto? Perish the thought! Plus, modern thought does many things well. Harry Frankfurt's notion of "second-order volitions" may not be very original, but it is advanced with exceptional clarity, which is something analytic philosophy has sometimes done much to improve. And of course, one needs a philosophy for one's own era. Plato could hardly speak to the nature of the modern state, consumerism, capitalism, and the educational system they foster the way Byung-Chul Han, C.S. Lewis, Mark Fisher, or Autumn Kern can.

It's important to note though that your first clause doesn't imply the second. Medieval philosophy certainly is dominated by the "reshuffling" (or refinement, or exploration, etc.) of older theological notions, as is late-antique thought, yet this can hardly be considered a deficit. Or at least it ought not be considered one. I know it is, because we live in an era where even the Oresteia, Aeneid, Commedia, or Troilus and Criseyde get written off as "fan fiction" due to insufficient novelty.

The problem, as I see it, (or at least one problem) is that modern thought has often tended to think that this pattern only affects antique and medieval philosophy. Its own dogmas become transparent (one being the prizing of multiplicity as a sort of proxy for freedom). Hence, the very long catalog of modern thinkers who dismiss the collected works of all past saints and sages, of East and West, as "twaddle" or some such, and then clear the ground to lay out their radical new rebuilding plan (or anti-plan). Well, when this has gone on for several centuries straight, one might suppose that the issue is not so much about what past thinkers have actually said, as about the tradition that keeps feeling to need to engage in such projects.

I probably agree with Taylor on transcendence and have made similar points myself. We mostly settle on beliefs because they are emotionally satisfying. — Tom Storm

Well, the bolded is really not Taylor's point. His main thrust is that the answer is not obvious in the way many people think it is, but not that philosophy necessarily devolves into a sort of emotivism. Also, the common notion that emotional motivations stand in opposition to, or beside rationality would be one of those assumptions vulnerable to deconstruction and genealogical investigation. For instance, in any tradition that has a place for the rational appetites, an answer might be "emotionally satisfying" precisely because it brings understanding (i.e., because it is true), and "all men by nature desire to know."

As usual you say a lot, and drop a lot of names, in your critical (and I would say one-dimensional) characterizations of modernity and modern thought, but you never say what you think the solution or alternative to the purportedly problematic nature of modernity is.

Most all religions not only address what the point of life is but also why one ought to live life ethically. I say it would be nice to address these same topics without all the religiosity traditionally implied. — javra

I agree with you. Religions give general, purportedly universally applicable, answers to these questions and others. The problem, as I see it, is as to how we could ever universally agree on any answer. The religions certainly don't agree except in regard to the most significant moral questions, and the answers they give condemning murder, rape, theft, and so on, can easily be understood to be the answers best suited to communal harmony and flourishing.

Though here posed as if mutually exclusive, they in fact are quite amiable to being readily converged: most anything out there can be warped for the sake of authoritarian purposes. — javra

Right, but I was referring more to the "spiritual" answers―the answers that posit a transcendent realm of value as distinct to the immanent pragmatic needs of communities. So Christianity, for example, might say that murder and the other sins are wrong because God says so, and Buddhism might say they are wrong because if you commit them your rebirth will not be favorable, whereas a secular ethics can simply say they are wrong because they are detrimental to both individuals and communal life.

And in today’s world, save for traditional religions, what else speaks to these same issues with any sort of authority (not specific to “authoritarian authority” but also applicable to things such as the authority of reason)? — javra

I don't see ethics as an authoritarian issue, because people are free to accept or reject authority, even if to reject it will entail punishment. I see the ethical sense to be a function of education and normal human compassion. The pragmatic ethics that evolves out of the need for communal stability, harmony and flourishing I see as being supported by practical reason. I also think that pure reason gives us no rationale for favoring one person over another―any favoring is driven by individual preference and agenda and is not supportable by pure reason. Some contextual favoring may be supported by practical reasoning, but nonetheless there can be no pure reason not to treat all human individuals as being equal before the law, and entitled to equal opportunity regarding education, medical treatment and so on.

That's what they were about, although the term 'existential dilemma' is very much a modern one. But they sought to situate humanity within the cosmic drama, either positively (orthodox Christianity) or negatively (gnosticism). That provided a reason for why we are as we are in terms other than physical causation.

I've always sought the cosmic dimension of philosophy, which is why I lean towards some form of religious spirituality. — Wayfarer

You frame it one way and I would frame it in another way. I would say religions sought to impose ideas about how humanity was situated within the cosmos. As you say they "provided a reason" instead of allowing individuals to work it out for themselves or to be informed by science. And that is why the predominant religions in the West opposed any finding of science which contradicted their central dogmas.

I have no problem with your "leaning towards some form of religious spirituality"―that may be right for you, but it doesn't follow that it's right for everyone. Your leaning is merely one of personal preference, just like the different leanings of others.

Well in Europe that's probably more the case than in the US. Most non-muslim Europeans are secular nowadays. — ChatteringMonkey

Not according to this site:

Europeans who consider themselves atheists are a small minority, except in France and in Sweden, where about 20 per cent say that they are atheists; a vast majority of all Europeans nominate themselves as religious persons.

:up: :up:

I asked this because I face this question daily, even in my everyday life. The point is that any assessment of a system you find yourself in from the inside is very difficult. I even have a rule – not to provide legal services to my relatives (even though I'm a lawyer myself). Why? Because it's incredibly difficult to distance yourself from your own reflections on a legal issue when it affects your own life. With ordinary clients, it's easier – you can simply be honest, presenting the picture as objectively as possible, and then leave the solution to them. I think I'm not alone in facing this problem.

Returning to the topic of the thread. For example, when we find ourselves in state X, is it possible to challenge its dominant approach to understanding reality, while essentially being an element of that state X? As you indicated above, it's possible (using the method of comparison with other states or history), but is it possible to purely compare, and are you capable of immersing yourself in a different paradigm just as purely?

This is the classic paradox of Crete in epistemology: "All Cretans are liars," said the Cretan. "Paradigm P is true and final," says the person fully formed by paradigm P. Any attempt to go beyond it will be perceived by system P as heresy, madness, or "you just haven't fully understood P."