The problem that leaves me with, is whether anyone knows anything at all. — Wayfarer
If all anyone has is opinions, then where is the lodestar? — Wayfarer
I also had the idea that opinion, doxa, concerned mainly the sensible realm whereas knowledge, noesis, concerned the realm of the ideas. Am I mistaken in so thinking? — Wayfarer
We live in the visible realm. Questions about how we ought to live are about the visible realm. — Fooloso4
If they're true, they're no longer simply opinion. — Wayfarer
Socrates
If a man knew the way to Larisa, or any other place you please, and walked there and led others, would he not give right and good guidance?
Meno
Certainly.
Socrates
Well, and a person who had a right opinion as to which was the way, but had never been there and did not really know, might give right guidance, might he not?
Meno
Certainly.
Socrates
And so long, I presume, as he has right opinion about that which the other man really knows, he will be just as good a guide—if he thinks the truth instead of knowing it—as the man who has the knowledge.
Meno
Just as good.(Meno 97a-b).
so long, I presume, as he has right opinion about that which the other man really knows, he will be just as good a guide—if he thinks the truth instead of knowing it—as the man who has the knowledge.
The Buddha: "Sariputta, do you take it on conviction that the faculty of conviction, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation? Do you take it on conviction that the faculty of persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation?"
"Lord, it's not that I take it on conviction in the Blessed One that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation. Those who have not known, seen, penetrated, realized, or attained it by means of discernment would have to take it on conviction in others that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation, whereas those who have known, seen, penetrated, realized, & attained it by means of discernment would have no doubt or uncertainty — Pubbakotthaka Sutta
Not only that, but if all opinion, including opinion about opinion, is to be perpetually doubted, questioned, and inquired into, no criteria are available on which to do that, and all results or conclusions are to be doubted, questioned, looked into, and dismissed as "opinion", then is there any point in pursuing this supposedly "examined life" or are we on the road (or shortcut) to a situation where we need to be examined by others? — Apollodorus
Those opinions that seems most likely to be true. — Fooloso4
If they're true, they're no longer simply opinion. — Wayfarer
To exclude "entire domains of being" which do not explain anything sufficiently enough to provide reliable, unique, predictions is methodological discernment (i.e. defeasible reasoning) and not "reductionism". The (scientific) naturalist seeks to explain the explicable nuggets she extracts from steaming piles of the inexplicable.Modern naturalism tends to reductionism, because it will only admit that for which there is an actual or possible scientific explanation, thereby shutting out entire domains of being. — Wayfarer
Whereas the ideas were originally acquired in a former state of existence, and are recovered by anamnesis (un-forgetting) ... Which is why Platonism is a rationalist philosophy. — Wayfarer
How would you, for instance, distinguish that claim from positivism? — Wayfarer
Do a priori truths inhere in the visible realm? — Wayfarer
Moral principles? If so, where? — Wayfarer
h. sapiens evolved — Wayfarer
Those who have not known, seen, penetrated, realized, or attained it by means of discernment would have to take it on conviction in others that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation, whereas those who have known, seen, penetrated, realized, & attained it by means of discernment would have no doubt or uncertainty — Pubbakotthaka Sutta
Their being true is not a matter of opinion, but our believing that they are true is. In other words we cannot know with certainty what is true. Socrates' lesson is to learn to live with knowing that you do not know. — Janus
The (scientific) naturalist seeks to explain the explicable nuggets she extracts from steaming piles of the inexplicable. — 180 Proof
For Hadot, famously, 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 (PWL 84). Hadot acknowledges his use of the term “spiritual exercises” may create anxieties, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion than typically done (Nussbaum 1996, 353-4; Cooper 2010). Hadot’s use of the adjective “spiritual” (or sometimes “existential”) indeed aims to capture how these practices, like devotional practices in the religious traditions (6a), are aimed at generating and reactivating a constant way of living and perceiving in prokopta, despite the distractions, temptations, and difficulties of life. For this reason, they call upon far more than “reason alone.” They also utilize rhetoric and imagination in order “to formulate the rule of life to ourselves in the most striking and concrete way” and aim to actively re-habituate bodily passions, impulses, and desires (as for instance, in Cynic or Stoic practices, abstinence is used to accustom followers to bear cold, heat, hunger, and other privations) (PWL 85). These practices were used in the ancient schools in the context of specific forms of interpersonal relationships: for example, the relationship between the student and a master, whose role it was to guide and assist the student in the examination of conscience, in identification and rectification of erroneous judgments and bad actions, and in the conduct of dialectical exchanges on established themes. — Askesis of Desire
Does not sound very rational to me. — Fooloso4
You have moved far beyond Socrates and the examined life. — Fooloso4
Secular culture, as far as I'm concerned, is a great achievement, but it's place is basically to provide a framework within which one is free to practice any religion or none; It's not actually anti-religious, which is nevertheless how it's interpreted by a lot of people. — Wayfarer
So all these debates, whenever I pop up with these kinds of ideas, notice how immediately it gets characterised as a religious apologist trying to convert the pragmatic-scientific. That is simply the cultural dynamics that I'm seeking to explain, the background to the 'secularism vs faith' debate. Secular culture, as far as I'm concerned, is a great achievement, but it's place is basically to provide a framework within which one is free to practice any religion or none; It's not actually anti-religious, which is nevertheless how it's interpreted by a lot of people. (Like, there's a movement in Australia to remove the question of religion from the Census, which is typical of 'crusading secularism'.) — Wayfarer
But you certainly do seem to be making such claims. — Janus
The "perennial philosophy" is in this context defined as a doctrine which holds [1] that as far as worthwhile knowledge is concerned not all men are equal, but that there is a hierarchy of persons, some of whom, through what they are, can know much more than others; [2] that there is a hierarchy also of the levels of reality, some of which are more "real," because more exalted than others; and [3] that the wise men of old have found a "wisdom" which is true, although it has no "empirical" basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct contact with actual reality--through the Prajñāpāramitā of the Buddhists, the logos of Parmenides, the sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, Hegel's Vernunft, and so on; and [4] that true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents. — Edward Conze, Buddhist Philosophy and it’s European Parallels
they should expect some pushback. — Janus
Well then, why is your "religious experience" relevant in public discussions of philosophy or natural science? As far as I'm concerned "religious experience" independent of (though not necessarily without or uninformed by) "prescribed dogmas" is mysticism. Why not be silent about that which one cannot speak of intelligibly, rationally or objectively? Why eff 'the ineffable' so promiscuously, sir?Emphasis on ‘religious experience’, instead of just accepting the prescribed dogmas. That’s what I’m trying to work towards. — Wayfarer
:100:Secular culture, as far as I'm concerned, is a great achievement, but it's place is basically to provide a framework within which one is free to practice any religion or none; It's not actually anti-religious, which is nevertheless how it's interpreted by a lot of people. — Wayfarer
:up:And I hope you can see that i am genuinely trying to be as honest and forthcoming as I can be.
Lloyd Rees — Wayfarer
you meant Lord Rees — Janus
It is the right not to practice a religion that is, not everywhere but in certain quarters, under threat due to religious indoctrination — Janus
How could such sages disagree if they were able to directly see the truth in a way that is independent of their cultural biases? — Janus
even if you were not deluding yourself, how could you convince anyone of the truth of your claimed knowledge without it being that they shared the same insight? — Janus
In the Aristotelian scheme, nous is the basic understanding or awareness that allows human beings to think rationally. For Aristotle, this was distinct from the processing of sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, which other animals can do1. This therefore connects discussion of nous to discussion of how the human mind sets definitions in a consistent and communicable way, and whether people must be born with some innate potential to understand the same universal categories in the same logical ways2. Deriving from this it was also sometimes argued, especially in classical and medieval philosophy, that the individual nous must require help of a spiritual and divine type3. By this type of account, it came to be argued that the human understanding (nous) somehow stems from this cosmic nous, which is however not just a recipient of order, but a creator of it.
Platonism, ancient philosophy generally, existed in a master-student relationship. The teacher passed down understanding of principles many of which can't be written down, or for which the written texts are simply digests or mnemonics. So they provided a structure around the 'steaming piles', they had a 'topography', if you like. — Wayfarer
I think it is essential to understand that philosophy in general has been theistic from its very beginnings in Ancient Greece until recently. — Apollodorus
Although Strauss accepted the utility of religious belief, there is some question about his religious views. On one hand he was openly disdainful of atheism and disapproved of contemporary dogmatic disbelief, which he considered intemperate and irrational. On the other hand, like Thomas Aquinas, he felt that revelation must be subject to examination by reason. At the end of The City and Man, Strauss invites us to "be open to ... the question quid sit deus ["What is God?"]", and Edward Feser writes that:
Strauss was not himself an orthodox believer, neither was he a convinced atheist. Since whether or not to accept a purported divine revelation is itself one of the "permanent" questions, orthodoxy must always remain an option equally as defensible as unbelief.
I don't agree with the use of that word 'theistic' in this context. — Wayfarer
"For that which acts is always superior to that which is affected, and the first principle to the matter.[Actual knowledge is identical with its object; but potential knowledge is prior in time in the individual but not prior even in time in general] ; and it is not the case that it sometimes thinks and at other times not. In separation it is just what it is, and this alone is immortal and eternal. (But we do not remember because this is unaffected whereas the passive intellect is perishable, and without this thinks nothing." — Aristotle, De Anima, 430a18, translated by D.W Hamlyn
To the thinking soul images serve as sense-perceptions (aisthemata). And when it asserts or denies good or bad, it avoids or pursues it. Hence the soul never thinks without an image. — ibid, 431a8
With these set of conditions being put forth as an explanation of our experience, "divine illumination" seems to be the only light bulb around. — Valentinus
Would not that man do this most perfectly who approaches each thing, so far as possible, with the reason alone, not introducing sight into his reasoning nor dragging in any of the other senses along with his thinking, but who employs pure, absolute reason in his attempt to search out the pure, absolute essence of things, and who removes himself, so far as possible, from eyes and ears, and, in a word, from his whole body, because he feels that its companionship disturbs the soul and hinders it from attaining truth and wisdom? Is not this the man, Simmias, if anyone, to attain to the knowledge of reality?”
“That is true as true can be, Socrates,” said Simmias (65e-66a)
“Now we have also been saying for a long time, have we not, that, when the soul makes use of the body for any inquiry, either through seeing or hearing or any of the other senses—for inquiry through the body means inquiry through the senses,—then it is dragged by the body to things which never remain the same, and it wanders about and is confused and dizzy like a drunken man because it lays hold upon such things?”
“Certainly.”
“But when the soul inquires alone by itself, it departs into the realm of the pure, the everlasting, the immortal and the changeless, and being akin to these it dwells always with them whenever it is by itself and is not hindered, and it has rest from its wanderings and remains always the same and unchanging with the changeless, since it is in communion therewith. And this state of the soul is called wisdom. Is it not so?”
“Socrates,” said he, “what you say is perfectly right and true” (Phaedo 79c-d)
I am very familiar with your view of Plato due to your constant repetition of the interpretation. — Valentinus
Divine illumination played a prominent part in ancient Greek philosophy, in the later Greek commentary tradition, in neo-Platonism, and in medieval Islamic philosophy.
This [the Sun], then, you must understand that I meant by the offspring of the Good which the Good begot to stand in a proportion with itself: as the Good is in the intelligible region to reason and the objects of reason, so is this [the Sun] in the visible world to vision and the objects of vision …” (Rep 508b - c ).
Note the bolded part.Those who have not known, seen, penetrated, realized, or attained it by means of discernment would have to take it on conviction in others that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation, whereas those who have known, seen, penetrated, realized, & attained it by means of discernment would have no doubt or uncertainty
— Pubbakotthaka Sutta
This passage shows the author chasing a mirage, "a 'difference' that makes no difference". What could having no doubt or uncertainty be other than conviction? — Janus
Plato's dialogues provide plenty of pointers as to what an examined life may amount to in practice. The problem seems to stem from some people's insistence that everything is worthless or at least questionable opinion, and that "Socrates knows nothing" and "Plato says nothing". — Apollodorus
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