The perennial philosophy as set out by Huxley has been a stable source of inspiration to me as a spiritual seeker.

A powerful inspiration for meditative practice.

But, sure, still plenty to wrestle with there in terms of knowledge or certainty.

I'm curious if you're familiar with Nikos Kazantzakis' Spiritual Exercises. Powerful stuff. I think you'd dig the vision, though possibly not the conclusion.

I've been rereading David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus too. Spiritual science fiction; a unique visionary odyssey...Free at Gutenberg.

That's how you shoot yourself in the foot, and why so many here don't take you seriously.

Such a self-deprecating remark as you make above is either a sample of false humility (which is offputting), or just a plain declaration of incompetence (which is also offputting). — baker

Amen! — 180 Proof

If in a discussion between A and B, A insists on the central significance of X while B insists that X be entirely excluded from the discussion as "not even a possibility" - there is literally nothing left for A and B to talk about.

To my view, Wayfarer was relating this simple fact.

:up:

I'll look into that Kazantzakis text you mention. My practice fell of a cliff a couple of years ago and haven't been able to restart it.

Kazantzakis — Wayfarer

Lots of fire in his spiritual vision - perfect for getting it fired up again.

Too far afield here and really a massive strawman. — Hanover

Ha! :wink: Not a strawman if you were arguing for divine command theory which is why I wrote this. Since you aren't, I can now say it doesn't apply to your argument and your rebuttal is fair enough (although what I said will apply to others here who often say there is no morality without a theistic basis).

I'm arguing moral realism, asserting an actual right and wrong beyond the opinion of humans. — Hanover

That's great. Keep arguing. I am happy to be convinced of moral realism. Where does morality live if not in the minds and choices of humans?

We're not just flittering randomly over time regarding what is good and evil, but are getting closer to the truth. — Hanover

Does this not sound suspiciously like a liberal talking social justice and identity politics? I'm fascinated that you are able to identify truth and say that we are moving closer to it. Great if 'true'. Could this not merely be a case that our preferred form of social order is currently privileging rights and pluralism, albeit only by the mutual agreement of a shared subjectivism held by those whose views we support?

... assured by naturalism that the Universe has no inherent meaning, that the idea that life has a reason for existing is an anachronistic throwback to an ignorant age.
— Wayfarer
This a true of nihilism and – once again ↪180 Proof – not (moral) "naturalism". :roll: — 180 Proof

I see the point, and will try and find time to read that SEP entry. But the form of naturalism I have in mind is that espoused by, for example, Bertrand Russell for much of his life - 'That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms...'

The other form that this takes is the typical deferral to Darwinism as a kind of catch-all explanation for everything about human nature: that 'we evolved' to have 'feelings of altruism' because of its supposed 'advantage' for natural selection. That is so widely assumed nowadays as to be almost beyond question, certainly by the great majority of those who register on this forum. It seems obvious to naturalise ethics this way.

My view is, certainly h. sapiens evolved just as the science has discovered - you can't argue with the empirically-established facts - but that once at the point of being language-using, meaning-seeking beings, then h. sapiens' capabilities are no longer circumscribed by natural selection alone. It is a factor, but at that point the species transcends its biological origins in some vital sense.; horizons of meaning become available that are not visible to other creatures. And that's why we're morally responsible in a way that animals cannot be. But of course, as evolution has now become in many respects a secular religion, then that distinction is unintelligible to great many people.

So, assuming moral truths are relative to society, the times, the culture, one's idiosyncratic upbringing and experiences, tell me why the rapist ought be judged wrong despite his view it is right? — Hanover

He's outnumbered. 'We' don't tolerate such things, nor do 'we' feel the need to justify every justification. On Certainty seems relevant here: "Giving grounds [must] come to an end sometime. But the end is not an ungrounded presupposition: it is an ungrounded way of acting. " While we bother to justify some claims and actions, the bottom of the system is mud, 'blind' habit. Eventually there's that's just the way we do things. (Or, better maybe, the doing of them.) Dreyfus is also good on this:

For both Heidegger and Wittgenstein, then, the source of the intelligibility of the world is the average public practices through which alone there can be any understanding at all. What is shared is not a conceptual scheme, i.e., not a belief system that can be made explicit and justified. Not that we share a belief system that is always implicit and arbitrary. That is just the Sartrean version of the same mistake. What we share is simply our average comportment. Once a practice has been explained by appealing to what one does, no more basic explanation is possible. As Wittgenstein puts it in On Certainty: "Giving grounds [must] come to an end sometime. But the end is not an ungrounded presupposition: it is an ungrounded way of acting.
...
This view is entirely antithetical to the philosophical ideal of total clarity and ultimate intelligibility. Philosophers seek an ultimate ground. When they discover there is none, even modern philosophers like Sartre and Derrida seem to think that they have fallen into an abyss -- that the lack of an ultimate ground has catastrophic consequences for human activity.
...
There is, however, something that average everyday intelligibility obscures, viz., that it is merely average everyday intelligibility. It takes for granted that the everyday for-the-sake-of-whichs and the equipment that serves them are based upon God's goodness, human nature, or at least solid good sense. This is what Heidegger called "the perhaps necessary appearance of foundation." One cannot help thinking that the right (healthy, civilized, rational, natural, etc.) way to sit, for example, is on chairs, at tables, etc., not on the floor. Our way seems to make intrinsic sense -- a sense not captured in saying, "This is what we in the West happen to do." What gets covered up in everyday understanding is not some deep intelligibility as the tradition has always held; it is that the ultimate "ground" of intelligibility is simply shared practices. There is no right interpretation. Average intelligibility is not inferior intelligibility; it simply obscures its own groundlessness. This is the last stage of the hermeneutics of suspicion. The only deep interpretation left is that there is no deep interpretation.

https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/404866/mod_resource/content/0/Hubert_L._Dreyfus_Being-in-the-World_A_Commentary_on_Heideggers_Being_and_Time%2C_Division_I.__1995.pdf

And if the truth is that some - many - terms are not definable in the way you suppose, you would pretend otherwise in order to retain your mythology? — Banno

It's a tough call. What should I do? Treat nonsense as philosophy or give up philosophy altogether.

These are the two choices that are available, oui?

It's easy to appeal to the repugnance of rape and murder as purported evidence for the universality of moral instincts. But many a moral question, maybe most of them, are much less dramatic.

People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species — or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children. So whatever tendencies we may have inherited leave ample room for variation; our choices will determine which end of the spectrum we approach. This is where ethical discourse comes in — not in explaining how we’re “built,” but in deliberating on our own future acts.Should I cheat on this test? Should I give this stranger a ride? Knowing how my selfish and altruistic feelings evolved doesn’t help me decide at all. Most, though not all, moral codes advise me to cultivate altruism. But since the human race has evolved to be capable of a wide range of both selfish and altruistic behavior, there is no reason to say that altruism is superior to selfishness in any biological sense. — Richard Polt, Anything but Human

Another point of agreement.

Please stop providing interesting quotes and links. I really wish to get through a newish book by Searle, but haven't progressed in three days. At least part of the blame for that is this thread.

Damit.

:rofl:

(I'm supposed to be working....)

Oh, I'm glad my discomfiture is so amusing for you.

Now bugger off while I read your New York Times article.

.

That is, today's understanding of morality is superior to 500 years ago. We're not just flittering randomly over time regarding what is good and evil, but are getting closer to the truth. — Hanover

Must the notion of better be understood in terms of proximity to a postulated 'truth' which I interpret as a perfected morality? This would be something like an End of History, whether or not the limit/ideal were ever obtained.

The contradiction is that we assured by naturalism that the Universe has no inherent meaning, that the idea that life has a reason for existing is an anachronistic throwback to an ignorant age. Whereas it was assumed by pre-modern philosophy that things exist for a reason and that the rational faculty is what enables us to grasp it. — Wayfarer

But it is an impoverished naturalism that is not replete with meaning. Not sure what "inherent meaning" would be implying since meaning is a function of percipients responding to signs, as I understand it. So meaning is contingent on percipients and the signs that they find meaning in, isn't it?

I don't know what "things exist for a reason" could even mean. Things exist and we find meanings in them. Are you suggesting that the existence of things has some absolute purpose? Of course we can kind of imagine that it does, but that imagining is ineluctably vague, since we cannot rightly say what that purpose could be. If we do say what that purpose is we will inevitably be wrong because we would be indulging in fundamentalism.

So if not an argument - if not an act of reason - then a feeling? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Why are those the only choices?

It's a form of life, with all the implications of that sanctum.

Or a lifeworld, Lebenswelt, as mentioned in @Wayfarer's article.

This?

Well, (1) is wrong, for starters...

For some background:

Nikos Kazantzakis (Greek: Νίκος Καζαντζάκης [ˈnikos kazanˈd͡zacis]; 2 March (OS 18 February) 1883[2] – 26 October 1957) was a Greek writer. Widely considered a giant of modern Greek literature, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times.[3]

Kazantzakis' novels included Zorba the Greek (published 1946 as Life and Times of Alexis Zorbas), Christ Recrucified (1948), Captain Michalis (1950, translated Freedom or Death), and The Last Temptation of Christ (1955). He also wrote plays, travel books, memoirs and philosophical essays such as The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises. His fame spread in the English-speaking world due to cinematic adaptations of Zorba the Greek (1964) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).

He translated also a number of notable works into Modern Greek, such as the Divine Comedy, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Origin of Species, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Wikipedia also notes:

While never claiming to be an atheist, his public questioning and critique of the most fundamental Christian values put him at odds with some in the Greek Orthodox church, and many of his critics.[16] Scholars theorize that Kazantzakis' difficult relationship with many members of the clergy, and the more religiously conservative literary critics, came from his questioning.

I haven't spent much time with that work as I've only just become aware of it, but it seems at the very least a considerable and profound work. But it is probably too big a piece of work to productively argue about here.

And since there are non-religious rituals, and religions that don't have specific rituals, ritual is not the essence of religion.

It shouldn't be surprising that after 5000 years of drastic change in world views, the word "religion" is hard to define. — frank

:roll: I never said rituals are necessarily religious. I said the motivations behind the ritual is what makes it religious or not. If there is no evidence that the ritual achieves what you intend, then the ritual is religious, ie. Washing your hands to prevent food poisoning vs. washing your hands to please a god.

If you are insisting on "achieving good" as the motivation, then there is evidence that certain rituals can make us feel good without being religious. The problem is that there is no evidence that it makes a god feel good, which makes the ritual religious. If there is no other reason for performing a ritual other than to make you feel good because the ritual has made you feel good in the past, then the ritual is not religious. It would be religious to perform the ritual to feel good without evidence that it does.

:up:

I describe myself as a non-ritualstic Jew. That doesn't mean my family won't gather for Passover Seder, but that has nothing to do with me thinking God will bless me for the event anymore than when your family might gather for your birthday. In truth, along with our matzoh, we color eggs on Passover, which isn't exact textbook haggadah. Is that ritual? — Hanover

What does it mean to be a "Jew" if not performing some ritual?

I was raised as a Christian and we celebrated Christmas. Now I'm an atheist. I still bring a tree into my home during the holiday season, but I don't do it to celebrate the birth of some man that claimed to be the son of a god. I do it because it is fun for me and my family. So it's not a religious ritual.

It's not religions that change over time. It is our motivations for performing the rituals that change over time. We can adopt religious rituals and make them into non-religious rituals by changing the motivations for performing them.

... cognitive dissonance ...just a subjective preference just means we've arrived at an interesting coping mechanism in order to navigate this godless world. — Hanover

First, silence does not occlude the cognitive dissonance between an appeal to a transcendent authority and disregard for the word of your chosen transcendent authority on the subject of rape when it goes against your own socially established moral norms.

Second, your own subjective preference for holding to a god in a godless world just means you've arrived at a not so interesting coping mechanism.

[Added]: If not a god then what is the source of transcendent morality? And how do we know what that morality is?

Well, (1) is wrong, for starters... — Banno

It's poetry. Open your heart. Read on.

But it is probably too big a piece of work to productively argue about here. — Wayfarer

This? — Banno

I don't think it would be fruitful to discuss the work on this forum. It's about the vision, about spiritual energy (the energy required to pursue spiritual objectives) and its sources. I think of it as essentially poetry with some philosophical intention.

Like John's Revelation, a literal reading is a fruitless approach.

It's a form of life — Banno

Awfully vague.

What form of life is it? Is it a form of life centered in an act of reason or in something else? If something else, what? If not a feeling, what?

You could say it's emotion and reason (and X and Y and Z) working hand in hand. But I don't think you want to say that.

What does it mean to be a "Jew" if not performing some ritual — Harry Hindu

You are a Jew if your mother was a Jew. Judaism is not even based upon your belief system.

"Religion" is not a term with an essence.

but I don't do it to celebrate the birth of some man that claimed to be the son of a god — Harry Hindu

Jesus never claims to be the son of God in the gospels. It's said of him (in Matthew, I think).

Jesus never claims to be the son of God in the gospels. It's said of him (in Matthew, I think). — frank

He gets close enough here:

“If you knew God’s gift, that is, who it is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink of water,’ then you would have asked him; and he would have given you living water.”

John 4:10

He may not think he's god, but he definitely thinks he's god's gift.

He may not think he's god, but he definitely thinks he's god's gift. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Yes, I guess so. He actually was pretty cool.

He actually was pretty cool. — frank

Yeah, a brilliant poet.

"Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together."

Does the term "religion" refer to nothing? — Banno

Hard to believe this is so mystifying. Religion is clearly reducible to the "material" conditions that gave rise to it, that is, to what is IN the world that inspired or provoked all the story telling. One has to ask this question first. Otherwise, it would be like explaining a shoe with no understanding of the foot and what it does. Shoes would be disembodied narratives without this. And this is why religion is opaque: it is presented as disembodied narratives.
The question is, then, what is there, in the world, that is the foundation of religion, and minus the historical accounts, minus the specious metaphysics, minus the comfort of authority, and minus everything that is merely incidental. It is a reduction that is sought.