The problem that leaves me with, is whether anyone knows anything at all. If all anyone has is opinions, then where is the lodestar?
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
I think the problem stems from seeing Plato and company through modern secular eyes, as skeptics, giving them more skeptical credit than they're due, when in fact it would be more appropriate to see them as religious preachers. — baker
In another thread about the importance of psychology, I stated that the examined life is of importance to Socrates in that it may lead to various terms that lead to a better life. Such terms can be called, "enlightened", "rational", "virtuous".
Yet, without context these terms are ambiguous in terms of living an examined life. If we to take what Socrates said as important to ourselves, then what does it mean to live an examined life, as surely it is to our benefit to do so? — Shawn
You remember the elephant parable.
The situation is complicated by modernity, by the proximity of all of the world's cultures and forms of knowledge rubbing shoulders in the Global Village. — Wayfarer
And besides that, there are scholarly and historical arguments for the idea of there being a higher knowledge that has generally been forgotten in the transition to modernity. — Wayfarer
The same pattern can be seen in religious preachers who love to point out how flawed and faulty man is, how flawed and faulty they are. And yet, somehow, despite all those flaws and faults, they were able to choose the right religion and figure out what The Truth is?? — baker
As I said, I don't deny that enlightenment in the sense of letting go of all egoistic concerns is possible, or that this would be a profoundly transformative state; what I deny is that achieving that state will let anyone see any absolute metaphysical truth. — Janus
Interesting. I have not read about enlightenment traditions for decades. Is it not meant to include an awakening or illumination simultaneously with ego diminution? If not, it would hardly seem to count as enlightenment. — Tom Storm
Is it not meant to include an awakening or illumination simultaneously with ego diminution? If not, it would hardly seem to count as enlightenment. — Tom Storm
I keep my ego in a leather pouch on my belt. — Tom Storm
I don't disagree with you - I am not in the enlightenment business - but a revelatory understanding of all which is true is part of the tradition - which is likely to be a myth.
I personally don't accept that anyone is free of ego. It's more how the ego is managed. Or stage managed... — Tom Storm
As the Wiki article goes on to note, the nature of the distinction between nous and "the processing of sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, which other animals can do" was and is a highly contested topic. — Valentinus
I think the problem stems from seeing Plato and company through modern secular eyes, as skeptics, giving them more skeptical credit than they're due, when in fact it would be more appropriate to see them as religious preachers. — baker
Don't you find it odd that people who supposedly were so skeptical about their own abilities to obtain proper knowledge, nevertheless had so much to say, with utter certainty, about gods and ideas and a number of other things? — baker
This doesn't answer the question. If there were some determinable truth about "life the universe and everything" which was directly and infallibly knowable when one reaches the requisite level of consciousness, then all the sages everywhere who had reached that level of consciousness would agree with one another as to that truth. But this is patently not the case. — Janus
The basic principle that we are aware of anything, not as it is in itself unobserved, but always and necessarily as it appears to beings with our particular cognitive equipment, was brilliantly stated by Aquinas when he said that ‘Things known are in the knower according to the mode of the knower’ (S.T., II/II, Q. 1, art. 2). And in the case of religious awareness, the mode of the knower differs significantly from religion to religion. And so my hypothesis is that the ultimate reality of which the religions speak, and which we refer to as God, is being differently conceived, and therefore differently experienced, and therefore differently responded to in historical forms of life within the different religious traditions.
What does this mean for the different, and often conflicting, belief-systems of the religions? It means that they are descriptions of different manifestations of the Ultimate; and as such they do not conflict with one another. They each arise from some immensely powerful moment or period of religious experience, notably the Buddha’s experience of enlightenment under the Bo tree at Bodh Gaya, Jesus’ sense of the presence of the heavenly Father, Muhammad’s experience of hearing the words that became the Qur’an, and also the experiences of Vedic sages, of Hebrew prophets, of Taoist sages. But these experiences are always formed in the terms available to that individual or community at that time and are then further elaborated within the resulting new religious movements. This process of elaboration is one of philosophical or theological construction. — John Hick, Who or What is God
To be free of ego and it's delusions would be to wake up. But the further claim is that the awakened sage knows the truth about life and death. I say that they may be convinced that they do, but that would only be on account of their lack of understanding of what knowledge consists in. — Janus
I do believe that, to the extent that one can be free from egoistic concerns, that that is the most profound transformation people may be capable of experiencing, because their whole orientation to life would necessarily become radically different than the ordinary. — Janus
Interesting. I have not read about enlightenment traditions for decades. — Tom Storm
'I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I do not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.' — Wayfarer
If you study comparative religion, as I did, there are discernable principles and commonalities. — Wayfarer
If indeed through this 'awakening' one realises an identity as beyond birth and death, then what could possibly exceed that? — Wayfarer
If it is a special state that facilitates paranormal knowledge, then there is a logical possibility that there would be some prescient knowledge of afterlife. — Apollodorus
I still don't understand why it's a distinction that is so hard to make. — Wayfarer
The passage you quote addresses a larger issue, which is the immortality of the soul, or what faculty of the soul lends immortality. But I don't think that is necessary to simply establish the distinction between reason and sensation, or to ground the claim that humans possess a faculty of reason which other creatures don't (although apparently this is a highly controversial claim nowadays.) — Wayfarer
intellectually we are bound, I believe, to recognize that they are still and always will be articles of faith, not of knowledge. — Janus
we must be working with very different notions of what constitutes knowledge — Janus
We have no reference cases for them, so to us they can only appear as statements of feeling or faith. That's my take on it. — Wayfarer
I agree with this; it may indeed be so; all I have been arguing is that we cannot know that it is. — Janus
What about the pre-Socratics? They were decidedly anti-mythos in seeking to replace mythos with logos and thereby marginalizing (or even in some cases eliminating?) "the gods". Philosophy begins with reasoning about (wonder at) phusis and cosmos as a departure from theogony – Thales, Pythagorus, Democritus, Parmenides et al. Not theo-centricity at all, but logo-centricity – even the Socratics down to the Neoplatonists and Stoics.I think it is essential to understand that philosophy in general has been theistic from its very beginnings in Ancient Greece until recently. — Apollodorus
We have no reference cases for them, so to us they can only appear as statements of feeling or faith. That's my take on it. — Wayfarer
There are, in various cultures, terms for higher knowledge - for example Jñāna, Abhijna, Prajñāpāramitā, Vidya (from Indian philosophy); gnosis, noesis (from Platonism). These conceptions have been obliterated in Western culture, which is why we can't recognise them. We have no reference cases for them, so to us they can only appear as statements of feeling or faith. That's my take on it. — Wayfarer
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