I think God is a young theory of the more adult 'base of operations' theory where there are people who can observe anywhere and calculate anything in the universe using super computational power. Perhaps creator manifest to computer. Do I think this exists? Yes - I believe in a safety net. However, the guardian of my spirit is another like you and me but with a higher ranking job.

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.

Thomas Nagel: Thoughts are Real.

I say the difference is analogous to the difference between the physical symbol and its meaning. 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.

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.

These personalities might be described as the dreams of the Sūkṣma Śarīra, as it travels the spheres. Brought to the west by the Theosophists.

https://theosophy.wiki/en/Linga-Sharira

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

As I discussed in the pomo thread, I have observed that there are a pair of common worldviews that suffer from this exact problem but in opposite ways, differentiated along the is-ought / fact-norm divide. One of them is scientism, which is what’s described above: it takes a cynical, relativist, and therefore ultimately nihilist view toward normative topics, and while it does much better on factual topics, it often goes a little too far into a kind of transcendentally materialist ontology and elitist authoritarian academics. The other is social constructivism, which takes a cynical, relativist, and therefore ultimately nihilist view toward factual topics, and while it does much better on normative topics, it often goes a little too far into a kind of transcendentally materialist teleology and populist authoritarian politics.

there was an hierarchy of the understanding, such that mathematical and scientific reason were said to be higher than (mere) sensory knowledge. — Wayfarer

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."

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

We basically agree, except that we might as well call it a language world. Yes, language is meaningful, but emphasizing 'language-independent meaning' just abandons the critical conversation for an epistemological apocalypse.

From my POV, we don't want to make the same mistake as ontological materialists and reify one aspect of the world with its words. (The world words. The word worlds.)

I find Sellars useful on this issue. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/
***
Antecedent to epistemology, Sellars’s treatment of semantics essentially constitutes a denial of what can be called a semantic given—the idea that some of our terms or concepts, independently of their occurrence in formal and material inferences, derive their meaning directly from confrontation with a particular (kind of) object or experience. Sellars is anti-foundationalist in his theories of concepts, knowledge, and truth.

Traditional epistemology assumed that knowledge is hierarchically structured. There must, it was believed, be some cognitive states in direct contact with reality that serve as a firm foundation on which the rest of our knowledge is built by various inferential methods.
***

Personally I think knowledge is hierarchically structured (if we like) in a different way, namely in the spectrum that runs from facts to interpretations.

'Potential' is 'real' in the sense that interpretations are 'fact candidates' that are neither true nor false but currently undecided. In other words, we live in a world not only of actualities but also of articulated ('meaningful') possibilities (which may oppose one another).

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.

Scholars can look at texts and write their own texts about those texts, responding to one another.

We can't look into those scholars' minds to see what they 'really think' behind the words. We have only their texts. Perhaps they have only their texts. They can't prove otherwise given certain assumptions about minds.

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

For me that framework is (to write it in a fancy way) Λόγος. Isn't it misleading to call it 'subjective'? If we are 'rational animals,' it's because we talk with one another and celebrate 'transpersonal' (objective) talk as disclosing the facts, be they facts about numbers, neutrons, or nothingness.

Private mental experiences get us nowhere, conceived as they are to make critical thinking about them impossible in principle. The critique of sense-data empiricism is also the critique of the 'Inner Light' (or the reverse if you like, as Locke discovers his sword is sharp on both sides.)

Other posters seem to imply that the 'space of reasons' is 'inter-subjective.' Personally, I think 'interpersonal' or 'social' is better.

If we care or at least pretend to care about justifying our assertions, then such justification is social (for others.)

Isn't it misleading to call it 'subjective'? — Yellow Horse

Yes! Key insight.

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.

But I emphatically agree, 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, so to speak.

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'. 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. Get the irony? It's like locking yourself into a room and forgetting where the door is. 'What the Empiricist speaks of and describes as sense-knowledge is not exactly sense-knowledge, but sense-knowledge plus unconsciously introduced intellective ingredients, -- sense-knowledge in which he has made room for reason without recognizing it.' ~ Jacques Maritain. And mostly this appears as an implicit 'appeal to science' even though the matter is, as it were, pre-scientific.

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

I think, mainly, some strains of European philosophy, and that philosophy in the English-speaking world - analytic philosophy - is still ultimately grounded in scientific rationalism. Which is understandable - it's the attempt to retain the aspects of the Western tradition which are relevant to the natural sciences, while ring-fencing 'the supernatural'.

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

Terror in the God Shaped Hole

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

That's what hermeneutics is for. It takes into account the cultural and historical context of such texts. Plainly many of the ideas of ancient philosophy are archaic and embedded in various forms of mythological cosmology. And us moderns cannot 'un-see' what we've learned. 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'. So when Aristotle talks of 'contemplating the first principles', it's much nearer to a kind of visionary state than today's fragmented objectivism.

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].

https://satyagraha.wordpress.com/?s=aristotle

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

Right. Language is the easiest example, especially once it is grasped that meaning is public. Then one can recognize that language depends on the world.

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

I see why you say that, and I agree that it's not available to a sense-data empiricism that doesn't bother to account for its own possibility.

But, as we agree above, the framework is collective or social. If we abandon the 'myth of the given',
we can see why it makes sense to describe the world as all that is the case. That is to say that the world is fundamentally if not perfectly intelligible. We move in and as significance.

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

Maybe that shoe fits some 'analytic' philosophers, but consider this from Sellars.

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The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says.
****

Objectivity is not about (physical) objects. Instead statements about physical objects are prototypically objective, but then so are mathematical statements.

This might explain the 'ancient war.' What is more 'real'? Numbers or atoms? Since both physicists and mathematicians are celebrated for objectivity, the temptation is to find some non-linguistic object that explains this objectivity.

But such objects turn out to be epistemologically invisible, or at least more controversial (as interpretations) than the facts they are supposed to explain.

The Loy quote takes accurate aim at those who grow up secular and take it for granted. Philosophy is one kind of poisonous cure for our all too human tendency to sleepwalk.

That's what hermeneutics is for. — Wayfarer

I agree, and that too happens in an essentially public space of reasons.

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

That sounds like a description of philosophy to me. Sellars saw it that way too.

***
The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.
***

I like that Aristotle quote, too.

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

Sure, though I'd consider these dreams more symbols (as perhaps you also do.)

It's like locking yourself into a room and forgetting where the door is. — Wayfarer

Right. To recall the forgotten/inherited framing of the situation that we don't even think to question is perhaps more than anything else philosophy's task.

The secularity we presuppose must be "de-naturalized" in order to realize how unique and peculiar such a worldview is. — David Loy

Loy gets it, but I'm suggesting that philosophy also denaturalizes taken-for-granted concepts of consciousness, matter, reality.

This is what Carlyle called 'custom.'

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Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it; that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, what is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against Custom; an ever-renewed effort to transcend the sphere of blind Custom, and so become Transcendental?
*********************************************************************************************************************

Institutionalized revolution.

Thanks for being such a good interlocuter.

I have tackled the well-known Sellars paper a couple of times - the one associated with his 'myth of the given', although that's not the title - generally I liked what I could glean from it, but it requires serious study. Caryle is on the mark - the use of 'custom' in that context reminds me a little of what is called in Indian religions 'samskaras', 'habitual formations'.

statements about physical objects are prototypically objective, but then so are mathematical statements. — Yellow Horse

We need maths to work out *what* is objective, don't we? If you're presented with a large or ambiguous data set then mathematical analysis is often brought to bear on deciding its objective value.

The prototypically quantifiable objects are of course those of physics - well, they used to be, anyway. :wink:

Sure, though I'd consider these dreams more symbols (as perhaps you also do.)

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.

I suppose I should add that despite my meanderings in this thread, I have a clear rhetorical aim, which is basically to argue that 'what exists' and 'what is real' are not actually synonymous terms. To wit, 'what is real' far exceeds in scope what (merely) exists. The word 'Exist' is derived from a root meaning to 'be apart', where 'ex' = apart from or outside, and 'ist' = to stand or to be. Ex-ist then means to be a separable object, to be 'this thing' as distinct from 'that thing'. This applies to all the ordinary objects of perception - chairs, tables, stars, planets, and so on - everything which we would normally call 'a thing'.

Now to introduce a metaphysical perspective, specifically the nature of deity in the sense understood by classical metaphysics and theology. Whereas the things of perception are composed of parts and have a beginning and an end in time, 'God' is, according to classical theology, 'simple' - that is, not composed of parts- and 'eternal', that is, not beginning or ending in time.

Accordingly, 'God' does not exist ¹, being of a different nature to any perceptible existent. Theologians might say 'God' was superior to or beyond existence (for example Eiriugena's “nothingness through excellence” (nihil per excellentiam.)) I don't think this is a controversial statement either, when the terms are defined this way (and leaving aside whether you believe in God or not, although if you don't the discussion might be irrelevant or meaningless.)

Now consider intelligible objects, such as number. Obviously we all concur on what a number is, and mathematics is lawful; in other words, we can't just make up our own laws of numbers. But numbers don't exist in the same sense that objects of perception do; there is no object called 'seven'. You might point at the numeral, 7, but that is just a symbol. What we concur on is a number of objects, but the number cannot be said to exist independent of its apprehension, at least, not in the same way objects apparently do. In what realm or sphere do numbers exist? 'Where' are numbers? Surely in the intellectual realm, of which perception is an irreducible part. So numbers are not 'objective' in the same way that 'things' are; but they are nevertheless real. (This of course is denied by many modern philosophers precisely because of the axiom that only what exists is real; naturalism abjurs Platonism. )

Objects of perception - ordinary things - only exist, in this understanding, because they are instances (instantiations) of ideas or universals. Particulars are simply ephemeral instances of the eternal forms, but in themselves, they have no actual being. Their being is conferred by the fact that they conform to ('participate in') the idea. So existence is - and I think this is the sense it was intended by the Platonic and neo-Platonic schools - illusory or at least, not what it appears to be. Sensory objects of perception exist, but only in a transitory and imperfect way. 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.

'The One cannot itself be a being. If it were a being, it would have a particular nature, and so could not be universally productive. Because it is beyond being (epekeina tes ousias, a phrase from Plato's Republic 509b), it is also beyond thought, because thinking requires the determinations which belong to being: the division between subject and object, and the distinction of one thing from another.'

Wikipedia

The upshot is that most arguments about the 'existence of 'God'' are predicated on a misconception of the subject. 'The transcendent' is transcendent in relation to 'existence'; what transcends existence, doesn't itself exist, or rather, is beyond existence.

Now, do I believe any of this? I don't know if I do. But I think I'm beginning to understand something of it - enough to know that what is usually discussed about it is, shall we say, wide of the mark.

I agree with your sentiment. I am reluctant to comment on metaphysics in case I don't fully understand it's workings, but to me, it does seem to fit with the criticisms you raise. Furthermore, there seems to be an absence of a thorough understanding of what a being is, is doing and what is going on, in a wider sense, in the presence of beings in the world we find ourselves in. Or even the relevance and processes going on in the ecosystem as a whole.

I feel I should add the caveat, although I doubt you require it yourself, that I am not referring to the beings and processes understood by science, or an academic sense, but in a more esoteric sense.

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

In general I relate to this. At the same time, I would frame it in terms of language or Λόγος. There are patterns in the world. The 'same' river doesn't have the 'same' water, but rivers are still 'made' of water.

The 'One' is (for me) 'just' the old Λόγος, and the 'mind' that is supposed to gaze on form is itself another pattern in that Λόγος. It is a useful pattern, but upon close examination we see that the individual 'mind' is an 'effect' of language, an emanation of the 'One.'

Where we perhaps disagree is that I think you understand some of these patterns to exist independently of human beings. To me that's uncheckable and even hard to parse.

If one sees language, as I do, in terms of social conventions, then the Λόγος is completely incarnate. There is no river without water, and the dove can't fly in a vacuum.

On the God issue, I think it's helpful to clarify (however roughly) between a God that interferes in the
world and perhaps the afterworld and a philosopher's or mystic's God that involves gnosis, ecstasy, etc.

I don't personally believe in the first kind of God. The year 2020 is not helping, and humans tend to get lost in their fantasies.

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.

philosopher's or mystic's God — Yellow Horse

My philosopher's god would be philosophy itself, but it would be bad philosophy to call philosophy itself God, and I wouldn't abuse my god that way, so...

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.

Do you mean a mystic god is poetry, metaphor, etc? I may be misreading you. — Noble Dust

At first I meant that talk of the philosopher's god was poetry, but given the proposed primacy of Λόγος also expressed, yes: the mystic's god is poetry-in-progress.

The concept of the poet is one more poem here, as is the (self-referential here) concept of poetry.

Interesting. Do you connect Λόγος to the concept of "Kairos" at all?

My philosopher's god would be philosophy itself, — Pfhorrest

That's my philosopher's god too, more or less.

but it would be bad philosophy to call philosophy itself God, and I wouldn't abuse my god that way, so... — Pfhorrest

Maybe it's bad philosophy out proper context, but given that philosophers tend to accept as real only what they can justify philosophically (rationally), the metaphor isn't so bad.

The concept of the poet is one more poem here, as is the (self-referential here) concept of poetry. — Yellow Horse

Not sure what you mean.

Interesting. Do you connect Λόγος to the concept of "Kairos" at all? — Noble Dust

For me time in general is hugely tied up with Λόγος, given that language evolves while also 'remembering.'

As far as Kairos goes (I have seen the word used by other thinkers but haven't used it myself), what comes to mind is saying the right thing for that moment.

I am thinking of the temporal context: Individual words aren't really bearers of meaning, as far as I can tell. Only the total historical context determines meaning (inasmuch as it can be determined.)

More locally, I think of the way that meaning 'plays over' a sentence as we anticipate the completion of a thought. In musical terms, a certain pitch gets its meaning from its context.

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.

If one thinks of concepts as neither physical nor mental but rather as caught up in or rather as social conventions, then one has a kind of 'meaning field' that can't be reduced to something more elemental --- though philosophers love to try!

The 'space of reasons' is perhaps a better term, though this over-emphasizes epistemology perhaps while neglecting of other poetic effects (in particular, invention.)

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

I'm a poet but I'm having trouble with this. It's not poetic to say that subjects, egos, or minds, or poets are poems themselves. It's just clunky. So clearly you mean to use the metaphor differently? I don't know what it means that "they are interpretations of us having (in some ways) separate bodies".

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.

***

Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the potency of Names; which indeed are but one kind of such custom-woven, wonder-hiding Garments. Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work, and Demonology, we have now named Madness, and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting that still the new question comes upon us: What is Madness, what are Nerves?
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1051/1051-h/1051-h.htm#link2HCH0024

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

I very much agree. Owen Barfield's "Poetic Diction" is of the same vein.

Awesome. So I rescued my metaphor a little bit? (I'll check out Barfield.)

I also found one more passage that I was looking for (really digging Carlyle at the moment):

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Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, it should rather be, Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, of Thought. I said that Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment; and does not she? Metaphors are her stuff: examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognized as such, or no longer recognized; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colorless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language,—then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek for: is not your very Attention a Stretching-to? The difference lies here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own case) not without an apoplectic tendency.