This analysis was phenomenological, historical, experimental, mathematical, sociological, and clinical all at the same time. Scientists reason like this. You're just inventing easily refutable bogeymen. — fdrake
You actually don't show a lot of interest in that subject, or knowledge of it. — Wayfarer
Does anyone who disagrees with you? — Isaac
IETPPierre Hadot, classical philosopher and historian of philosophy, is best known for his conception of ancient philosophy as a bios or way of life (manière de vivre). His work has been widely influential in classical studies and on thinkers, including Michel Foucault. According to Hadot, twentieth- and twenty-first-century academic philosophy has largely lost sight of its ancient origin in a set of spiritual practices that range from forms of dialogue, via species of meditative reflection, to theoretical contemplation. These philosophical practices, as well as the philosophical discourses the different ancient schools developed in conjunction with them, aimed primarily to form, rather than only to inform, the philosophical student. The goal of the ancient philosophies, Hadot argued, was to cultivate a specific, constant attitude toward existence, by way of the rational comprehension of the nature of humanity and its place in the cosmos. ....
For Hadot, the means for the philosophical student to achieve the “complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things” epitomized by the Sage were a series of spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the student’s larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things.
If consciousness is a necessary type, it has no counterfactual. In this situation we have no context to claim a juxtaposition of the presence or absence of consciousness. This consciousness would be necessary and couldn't be any sort of account of instances which come in and out of being. — TheWillowOfDarkness
A consciousness which is not any instance of first person experience, but some notion of a necessary type which makes our experiences possible. — TheWillowOfDarkness
I think this is an interesting kind of... inverse, maybe?... of my view on supernaturalism. The way I would define "natural", everything is necessarily natural, so the very concept of anything supernatural is simply incoherent. — Pfhorrest
I think Swan's observation pertains to the realm of "human nature", which is indeed very much a topic discussed in philosophy. — god must be atheist
I'm not really addressing what social scientists do — Wayfarer
I'm talking about a specific claim, which is reductionism in philosophy, — Wayfarer
I regard science as 'reductionist' insofar as it reduces the scope of discourse exclusively to the objective domain. — Wayfarer
Like, I don't deny *any* of the facts of evolution or cosmology or any of the other sciences - to me, the question is about meaning and interpretation. — Wayfarer
(you) question the notion that mind is a product of evolutionary biology. — Wayfarer
and besides most people are inclined to think that 'the transcendent' is a byword for nonsense — Wayfarer
Maybe. Human nature, definitely. Human failings as causes of philosophical error seems like an unproductive irrelevance to me. — bert1
"mental states supervene on neural states" — fdrake
I gave you an example of non-reductionist scientific work, bridging neuroscience, evolution, sociology and clinical psychology (and explaining/gesturing towards why it was non reductionist). It analysed first person reports, states of feeling and their patterns; how patterns between these different ontological registers intermingle (brain hormones + feelings + socialisation); and a clinical upshot of this. Science need not be reductionist, and need not generate reductionist worldviews. — fdrake
Errors by humans are part of human nature, and so are subjective human experiences. We can discuss both under the auspices of philosophy. You forcefully expressed that you are opposed to have them as topics of discussion. Twice you expressed that. Why? — god must be atheist
You say that some errors lead to unporductive irrelevances to you. To me it appears very much like you only declare them irrelevant because you are uncomfortable with the fear that they may be true. So you attempt to throw them out. But that's not very philosophical of you... it is a psychological effect you are displaying. — god must be atheist
On the one hand I agree with you, but I think that these two distinctions make sense:
(1) Natural/artificial, or natural/made by persons, which is self-explanatory
and
(2) Natural/supernatural, where "supernatural" is simply denoting unusual, perhaps very rare and difficult-to-experience phenomena that we presently have no plausible natural explanation for. So "supernatural" would be relative to common, educated (mostly scientific) epistemological beliefs, and by its nature, it would be more dubious than natural phenomena until better-confirmed. — Terrapin Station
You seem to state that reductionism un-asks, or renders always already unintelligible questions in general which are relevant fo their studied topics; and with that I agree entirely. But I can agree entirely with you here because you're painting with far too broad a brush. — fdrake
We thus find that the Darwinian theory, even when carried out to its extreme logical conclusion, not only does not oppose, but lends a decided support to, a belief in the spiritual nature of man. It shows us how man's body may have been developed from that of a lower animal form under the law of natural selection; but it also teaches us that we possess intellectual and moral faculties which could not have been so developed, but must have had another origin; and for this origin we can only find an adequate cause in the unseen universe of Spirit. — Wallace
It's not a byword for nonsense; transcendence - when juxtaposed or contrasted with immanence, elevated above it - is a machine for making nonsense. — fdrake
On the one hand you want to reserve an isolated realm for your philosophical speculation; rendering it out of the reach of science. On the other, you want to project the impact of your speculation back into the scientific domains! — fdrake
Errors by humans are part of human nature, and so are subjective human experiences. We can discuss both under the auspices of philosophy. You forcefully expressed that you are opposed to have them as topics of discussion. Twice you expressed that. Why?
— god must be atheist
Because this is a philosophy forum, and I'm a cunt. And I don't want people to keep pointing out that I'm a cunt when I'm trying to discuss philosophy. I come here to get away from my cuntishness, not have it shitted into my face by a high pressure rectum. — bert1
The accepted wisdom is: a species of hominid. Which immediately locates human life within the horizons of biology; basically treats humans as no different in kind to animals and implicitly endorses a form of utilitarian ethos i.e. everything in service to the goal of propagation of the genome. — Wayfarer
In the enlightened world, mythology has permeated the sphere of the profane. Existence, thoroughly cleansed of demons and their conceptual descendants, takes on, in its gleaming naturalness, the numinous character which former ages attributed to demons. Justified in the guise of brutal facts as something eternally immune to intervention, the social injustice from which those facts arise is as sacrosanct today as the medicine man once was under the protection of his gods. Not only is domination paid for with the estrangement of human beings from the dominated objects, but the relationships of human beings, including the relationship of individuals to themselves, have themselves been bewitched by the objectification of mind. — Dialectic of Enlightenment
In the enlightened world, mythology has permeated the sphere of the profane. Existence, thoroughly cleansed of demons and their conceptual descendants, takes on, in its gleaming naturalness, the numinous character which former ages attributed to demons. Justified in the guise of brutal facts as something eternally immune to intervention, the social injustice from which those facts arise is as sacrosanct today as the medicine man once was under the protection of his gods. Not only is domination paid for with the estrangement of human beings from the dominated objects, but the relationships of human beings, including the relationship of individuals to themselves, have themselves been bewitched by the objectification of mind. — Dialectic of Enlightenment
You're speaking like the classification of humans as a hominid is an arbitrary one. As if the grouping of organisms into families is not evidence based. — fdrake
You're targeting a relatively small part of the picture; science; when you should be picking on what makes us instrumentalise the world; education, politics. — fdrake
The idea inherent in all idealistic metaphysics–that the world is in some sense a product of the mind–is thus turned into its opposite: the mind is a product of the world, of the processes of nature. Hence, according to popular Darwinism, nature does not need philosophy to speak for her: nature, a powerful and venerable deity, is ruler rather than ruled. Darwinism ultimately comes to the aid of rebellious nature in undermining any doctrine, theological or philosophical, that regards nature itself as expressing a truth that reason must try to recognize. The equating of reason with nature, by which reason is debased and raw nature exalted, is a typical fallacy of the era of rationalization. Instrumentalized subjective reason either eulogizes nature as pure vitality or disparages it as brute force, instead of treating it as a text to be interpreted by philosophy that, if rightly read, will unfold a tale of infinite suffering. Without committing the fallacy of equating nature and reason, mankind must try to reconcile the two.
In traditional theology and metaphysics, the natural was largely conceived as the evil, and the spiritual or supernatural as the good. In popular Darwinism, the good is the well-adapted, and the value of that to which the organism adapts itself is unquestioned or is measured only in terms of further adaptation. However, being well adapted to one’s surroundings is tantamount to being capable of coping successfully with them, of mastering the forces that beset one. Thus the theoretical denial of the spirit’s antagonism to nature–even as implied in the doctrine of interrelation between the various forms of organic life, including man–frequently amounts in practice to subscribing to the principle of man’s continuous and thoroughgoing domination of nature. Regarding reason as a natural organ does not divest it of the trend to domination or invest it with greater potentialities for reconciliation. On the contrary, the abdication of the spirit in popular Darwinism entails the rejection of any elements of the mind that transcend the function of adaptation and consequently are not instruments of self-preservation. Reason disavows its own primacy and professes to be a mere servant of natural selection. On the surface, this new empirical reason seems more humble toward nature than the reason of the metaphysical tradition. Actually, however, it is arrogant, practical mind riding roughshod over the ‘useless spiritual,’ and dismissing any view of nature in which the latter is taken to be more than a stimulus to human activity. The effects of this view are not confined to modern philosophy. — The Eclipse of Reason
Of course it's evidence-based. That is not at issue, nor why I made a point of it. — Wayfarer
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