I mostly agree, but the boundary is blurry.

Is the hard problem of consciousness nonsense? I tend to think that 'qualia' is a broken concept, a useless beetle in an unopenable box. Yet value arguably lives in that space as feeling. What is the goodness in a good cup of coffee? Maybe a silly question...

Perhaps you downplay the importance of showing/invention in philosophy. Concept creation seems as important as arguments in terms of such concepts. Then something like philosophy has to decide what belongs to art, to science, to mysticism, etc. It's within a particular type of conversation that we discuss the norms of conversation explicitly, or something like that.

'Why is there something rather than nothing?' is not an empirical question. It might just be a lyrical expression of wonder, like a wolf's howling at the moon... — jas0n

That's a nice line.

Thanks!

Probably best to understand me as a skeptical moderate...or a practical skeptic. I believe there's some kind of 'real world' out there in some never quite finally specifiable way. What is a body really and finally? — jas0n

Indeed. I tend towards anti-foundational skepticism to use a rather grand term for my mostly quotidian outlook. I often find what Joshs writes absolutely fascinating but I don't really have a way to make use of such notions in life. Perhaps it seems overly academic to me.

Like a lot of people here, I generally hold that people come from a perspective that makes sense to them. The important question is how committed are they to reflecting on their presuppositions and how can this best be done?

As guide, he doesn’t want to dissuade you from these claims , only to invite you to see if you can experience a mobile flow of change underneath your claims, not invalidating them but embellishing them in such a way that what you previously took to be simple, solid and self-identical now shows itself as harboring within itself a vibrant flow of change. Either you see this added downtime within the laws and facts or you don’t. If you don’t , your view is still valid and useful from the relativist’s perspective. — Joshs

How do you see the average person taking on greater philosophical nuances and self-reflection? We live in a world of great dogmatic divisions - big question - is there are approach which less educated folk can employ to enlarge their perspectives?

Indeed. I tend towards anti-foundational skepticism to use a rather grand term for my mostly quotidian outlook. I often find what Joshs writes absolutely fascinating but I don't really have a way to make use of such notions in life. Perhaps it seems overly academic to me. — Tom Storm

Our apparently shared general outlook allows us to enjoy lots of wild perspectives while keeping the rent paid. A few academics somehow manage to pay their rent precisely by forgetting they have feet, which actually sounds like a nice gig if one can get it.

I learned quite a bit from Rorty. He kept one foot on the ground and knew how to reel in the 'pomo' style that may be more off-putting than its content. But this content still tends to neglect the way it endangers itself. Derrida's style is grandiose/frustrating, but there's often an honesty about his dependence on the system of concepts he criticizes. Some notion of reality and truth , however vague and elusive, has to remain 'legible' or one is just Tristan Tzara.( I love Tzara, and maybe there's some kind of profound ironic mysticism to be had there, and maybe this plays an important role in one's life. )

To put out a manifesto you must want: ABC to fulminate against 1, 2, 3 to fly into a rage and sharpen your wings to conquer and disseminate little abcs and big abcs, to sign, shout, swear, to organize prose into a form of absolute and irrefutable evidence, to prove your non plus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life just as the latest-appearance of some whore proves the essence of God. His existence was previously proved by the accordion, the landscape, the wheedling word. To impose your ABC is a natural thing— hence deplorable. Everybody does it in the form of crystalbluffmadonna, monetary system, pharmaceutical product, or a bare leg advertising the ardent sterile spring. The love of novelty is the cross of sympathy, demonstrates a naive je m'enfoutisme, it is a transitory, positive sign without a cause.
...
I write a manifesto and I want nothing, yet I say certain things, and in principle I am against manifestoes, as I am also against principles (half-pints to measure the moral value of every phrase too too convenient; approximation was invented by the impressionists). I write this manifesto to show that people can perform contrary actions together while taking one fresh gulp of air; I am against action; for continuous contradiction, for affirmation too, I am neither for nor against and I do not explain because I hate common sense. — Tzara

How do you see the average person taking on greater philosophical nuances and self-reflection? We live in a world of great dogmatic divisions - big question - is there are approach which less educated — Tom Storm

Gene Gendlin’s Focusing offers a pretty cool way to learn to tap into the generating process.

Gene Gendlin’s Focusing offers a pretty cool way to learn to tap into the generating process. — Joshs

Thanks, I will mull over this. I am slightly familiar with his work and with Focusing.

-"I'd like to talk about a central metaphysical idea, which has been called 'consciousness' and 'transcendental ego' and 'pure witness.' This is not the self-image or personality or empirical ego. The ruling metaphor here is the eye which can see everything but itself."
-Well it may be a central metaphysical idea but it has zero ties to Philosophy or connections to any verified knowledge claim.
We can fill pages of discussion on that topic but nothing originates from real knowledge and none of what it will be said can ever leave the metaphysical realm. This is a text book example of pseudo philosophy.

So....not a fan of abstract reasoning, huh? Science is the best way to do philosophy kinda guy?

You must be aware that our primary interests reside in what we don’t know, right? How can science inform as to what we don’t know, if we don’t ask of it questions it alone can answer? Science tells, it doesn’t ask, so....where do the questions come from?

Must be something above/beyond/outside science, that causes it to do the one thing it does.

Metaphysics is that philosophy that causes science to tell us what we want to know, which makes explicit metaphysics is the only way to do science. Except for sheer accident, no science is ever done, that isn’t first thought.

Embrace, and thereby revel in, your humanity, man!!!!!

-So....not a fan of abstract reasoning, huh?"
-No problem with abstract reasoning as long as the concepts are defined and they are real.

-"Science is the best way to do philosophy kinda guy?"
-Science is the second fundamental step in any Philosophical endeavor...so I don't know what is your point exactly. You can not do science without philosophy and you can can only do bad philosophy without science or epistemology as your foundation.

-"You must be aware that our primary interests reside in what we don’t know, right? "
-Correct and comforting our existential and epistemic anxieties is also part of our primary interests, so we need to be careful about our presumptions and our unfalsifiable conclusions.
There is no problem in being interested in what we don't know or easy our anxieties with unfalsifiable answers.....the issue is when people believe that these tactics qualify as philosophy!

-"How can science inform as to what we don’t know, if we don’t ask of it questions it alone can answer, Science tells, it doesn’t ask, so....where do the questions come from??"
-Science, previously known as Natural Philosophy, uses the same theoretical toolkit with any other Philosophical category. Science is Philosophy(part of philosophy) on superior standards of reasoning and with a set of methodologies able to expand the available body of evidence...

The issue here is not Science vs Philosophy but Philosophy vs Pseudo Philosophy on really bad abstract reasoning. I am not here to argue in favor of knowledge but in favor of wisdom. Claims that do not provide any wisdom or expand our understanding aren't Philosophical By definition.
Philosophy is the struggle to understand the world through wise claims founded on what we already know, not to make up answers on arbitrary presumptions that we can not evaluate.

-"Must be something above/beyond/outside science, that causes it to do the one thing it does."
-what causes it to do the one thing it does?? I don't get what you are implying.


-"Metaphysics is that philosophy that causes science to tell us what we want to know, which makes explicit metaphysics is the only way to do science"
-Again the issue is not with metaphysics but with pseudo philosophy parading as such.

-". Except for sheer accident, no science is ever done, that isn’t first thought."
-Actually you are wrong...all philosophy is triggered by observations and data first...but again as I pointed out, Natural Philosophy(science) is a philosophical category that can go further than just from wisdom and produce credible knowledge. This new knowledge can feed our philosophy and produce further wise claims about our world.

So again the issue here is not which approach is the best. Science and Philosophy are necessary to each other.
Without knowledge(science) philosophy could never know if its conclusions were wise while without philosophy science would never know what our data mean.

So the issue is with pseudo philosophy pretending to be philosophy.

......a central metaphysical idea......may be a central metaphysical idea but it has zero ties to Philosophy..... — Nickolasgaspar

Again the issue is not with metaphysics but with pseudo philosophy parading as such. — Nickolasgaspar

These two assertions do not have the same truth value.

A central metaphysical idea must only and always have ties to philosophy, and whether or not it is judged by a second party as proper philosophy or pseudo-philosophy, is predicated solely on the exposition its internal construction to which the second party has no access whatsoever. That which is deemed pseudo-philosophy may be merely proper philosophy misunderstood.
————

How can science inform as to what we don’t know, if we don’t ask of it questions it alone can answer"
-Science.....uses the same theoretical toolkit with any other Philosophical category. — Nickolasgaspar

No, it actually does not. Empirical science uses validation from experience, whereas some categories of philosophy are not amendable to any experience, therefore cannot use that toolkit for its validation. As that famous Enlightenment adage goes, “....though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience....”.

Of course, this presupposes a mutual understanding and tacit agreement of what knowledge is, the relative validity of its possible variations, and how any of it accrues in the human intellect.
————

-". Except for sheer accident, no science is ever done, that isn’t first thought."
-Actually you are wrong...all philosophy is triggered by observations and data first — Nickolasgaspar

Be that as it may, the doing of is not the same as triggered by. Observation and extant knowledge merely serve as occasion for the doing, and that only conditionally. Consider, as well, that philosophy which has for its validation no observation or data whatsoever, re: moral philosophy. I shall trust you not to mistake merely objective behaviorism for the subjective metaphysical principles of moral constitution.
————-

Without knowledge(science) philosophy could never know if its conclusions were wise while without philosophy science would never know what our data mean. — Nickolasgaspar

Now THAT I like. I might say...... without empirical knowledge theoretical philosophy would never know if its conclusions were justified, specifically logic and mathematics, but that’s a hair that doesn’t need splitting. In the interest of technical precision, maybe, but, I get your point nonetheless.

These two assertions do not have the same truth value. — Mww

Last time I checked this was a philosophy forum, not a truth forum. How is this red herring useful?
By default, unfalsifiable claims have an unknown truth value.

-"A central metaphysical idea must only and always have ties to philosophy, and whether or not it is judged by a second party as proper philosophy or pseudo-philosophy, is predicated solely on the exposition its internal construction to which the second party has no access whatsoever. That which is deemed pseudo-philosophy may be merely proper philosophy misunderstood."
-Metaphysical Ideas don't automatically qualify as philosophical just because people accept them as central. That is a fallacy. Philosophical frameworks need to meet specific standards and follow a specific method which includes epistemology. The demarcation of philosophy is based on objective criteria.

No, it actually does not. Empirical science uses validation from experience, whereas some categories of philosophy are not amendable to any experience, therefore cannot use that toolkit for its validation. As that famous Enlightenment adage goes, “....though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience.... — Mww

- you missed an important word in my point.
I was referring to the theoretical part of science, not the methodological part. Science like philosophy provides theoretical frameworks(scientific hypothesis, theories, interpretations). The methodological(empirical) part is there to provide additional evidence for our theoretical work.

Be that as it may, the doing of is not the same as triggered by. Observation and extant knowledge merely serve as occasion for the doing, and that only conditionally. Consider, as well, that philosophy which has for its validation no observation or data whatsoever, re: moral philosophy. I shall trust you not to mistake merely objective behaviorism for the subjective metaphysical principles of moral constitution. — Mww

-again .... observation and interaction are followed by philosophical pondering. One can't reflect on nothing/zero stimuli. Data and Information are needed in order to come up with wise conclusions. This is why "wisdom" comes with experience...and Philosophy is all about wisdom.

Behaviourism is irrelevant and morality isn't based on "subjective metaphysical principles". Morality is an evolutionary trait that increases the well being and survival of populations.
Secular morality is Necessary and Sufficient to explain why Situational ethics and well being allow us to come up with objective moral evaluations....but this is an other topic.

Now THAT I like. I might say...... without empirical knowledge theoretical philosophy would never know if its conclusions were justified, specifically logic and mathematics, but that’s a hair that doesn’t need splitting. In the interest of technical precision, maybe, but, I get your point nonetheless — Mww

-finally we agree on something. Science is nothing more than philosophy with the addition of a set of empirical methodologies. No need to split hair indeed.....BUT there was a really good reason why science was forced to split from Academic Philosophy.
The good thing about science is that it doesn't allow questionable principles to pollute our metaphysics and epistemology. Science subscribes to Methodological Naturalism and uses its principles as an acknowledgement of our epistemic and methodological limitations.
Academic philosophy , on the other hand, allow all kind of principles to pollute our syllogisms rendering most of the produced work pseudo philosophical.
Unfalsifiable principles are equally useless as doing philosophy without any observations to reflect upon.

How do you see the average person taking on greater philosophical nuances and self-reflection? We live in a world of great dogmatic divisions - big question - is there are approach which less educated folk can employ to enlarge their perspectives? — Tom Storm

Why should the average person "take on greater philosophical nuances and self-reflection"?
Why should the less educated folk "enlarge their perspectives"?

Seriously, can you answer that?

And is it even possible to answer that without sounding like yet another patronizing bourgeois?

Seriously, can you answer that?

And is it even possible to answer that without sounding like yet another patronizing bourgeois? — baker

Of course. Not everyone is a bitter cynic :wink: The question was to Joshs, who provided an answer which was not a patronizing bourgeois response. People are committed to growing and learning, Baker - even people from poor working class backgrounds like me. Or do you advocate a culture of low expectations for people from disadvantaged origins?

You didn't answer my question.
I want to see how you answer it.

I think you missed it.

We can fill pages of discussion on that topic but nothing originates from real knowledge and none of what it will be said can ever leave the metaphysical realm. This is a text book example of pseudo philosophy. — Nickolasgaspar

FYI, You can highlight text and then push the quote button so that the quoted person is notified and the quote appears more readably in a bubble.

We could probably also fill pages with 'meaningless' discussion about all the failed (self-destroying) attempts to sharply separate meaningful from meaningless statements. I suspect your own concept of the 'metaphysical realm' belongs in this same realm by your own standards, and that you've just not recognized that yet. In any case, I challenge you to articulate the distinction so that your articulation is not itself on the wrong side of the line. Note that Popper was shrewd enough to offer his demarcation as a convention...not as itself a piece of science. The quote below sketches where I think you are more or less coming from?

The logical positivists' initial stance was that a statement is "cognitively meaningful" in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content only if some finite procedure conclusively determines its truth. By this verifiability principle, only statements verifiable either by their analyticity or by empiricism were cognitively meaningful. Metaphysics, ontology, as well as much of ethics failed this criterion, and so were found cognitively meaningless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism#:~:text=Cognitive%20meaningfulness,-Verification&text=The%20logical%20positivists'%20initial%20stance,procedure%20conclusively%20determines%20its%20truth.

The issue here is not Science vs Philosophy but Philosophy vs Pseudo Philosophy on really bad abstract reasoning. I am not here to argue in favor of knowledge but in favor of wisdom. Claims that do not provide any wisdom or expand our understanding aren't Philosophical By definition.
Philosophy is the struggle to understand the world through wise claims founded on what we already know, not to make up answers on arbitrary presumptions that we can not evaluate. — Nickolasgaspar

I suggest you start your own thread on this issue (should have said this in my previous reply.)

Or please try to address the topic of this thread.

I am referring to metaphysical claims and discussions that have zero ties to established knowledge. I am not dismissing Metaphysical syllogism that originate from verified knowledge claims m speculating on what they imply for reality based on known rules that govern our world.
Those are two different things.

I suspect your own concept of the 'metaphysical realm' belongs in this same realm by your own standards, and that you've just not recognized that yet. — jas0n

-My metaphysics do not belong in realms. They are limited by Methodological Naturalism and that makes them meaningful because they can be evaluated or even if they are not falsifiable(yet) they do not need unknown realms to be assumed.

I suggest you start your own thread on this issue (should have said this in my previous reply.)
Or please try to address the topic of this thread. — jas0n

-I might do that but that is irrelevant to my remark. My short point wasn't to start a different topic inside yours. My intention was to point out that those ideas are not Philosophy.
Those are just declarations or unfounded statements that lack objective foundations. Without solid foundations(epistemology) we can not go much further from that starting point!

How can you enrich this conversation without any data...just with faith based claims!?
Philosophy, as I said before, is an exercise in frustration not the pursuit of happiness.
Concepts like the "Transcendental Ego" appear to be more of a product of a death denying ideology (orphaned by facts) than a legit philosophical topic that could allow us to arrive to wise statements about our ontology.

Without knowledge you can never be sure of how wise your conclusions are...and without wise conclusions(or questions) we don't have Philosophy!
i.e. The statement "use the window to exit your apartment" might be wise if the door is locked and you have misplaced your keys, but it can be a really idiotic suggestion if you ignore the floor of the apartment!!!
Again you can not produce wise claims without using knowledge as your foundation.
You can not call "philosophy" ideas that are set on shaky metaphysical assumptions and untestable (not necessary proven) principles.

My intention was to point out that those ideas are not Philosophy. — Nickolasgaspar

I'm afraid that your eccentric use of 'philosophy' is anything but authoritative. You can do what so many have done before and try to impose a narrowing of the concept, but you don't get it for free. Capitalizing the word is rhetorically questionable (suggestive of mysticism, idolatry, etc.) It's just a word, a thing people do, not the name of the divine. Another poster likes to capitalize 'reason,' and sure enough personification followed, turns out she's a Lady.

How can you enrich this conversation without any data...just with faith based claims!? — Nickolasgaspar

Have you not realized that I'm analyzing and criticizing the concept ? The real work is done not by repeating well-known mantras that fit on bumper stickers but down in the weeds with the details. So far I'm just picking up a garden variety scientism in your posts. I say that as an old atheist who thinks that even the 'self' and 'consciousness' are inventions, pieces of technology, culture not nature.

If you haven't looked into Popper, I encourage you to look into my other thread. Observation statements are philosophically nontrivial. Sellars also sees in his own way what Popper calls the swamp on which our knowledge is built.

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.

...
The observational/theoretical vocabulary distinction, thus conceived, was taken to have ontological implications. We are committed to the existence of the given, for that is what ties thought to reality. Theories, however, are merely tools to enable us to explain observation-level empirical generalizations. Presumably, some empirical generalizations may be first derived with the help of a theory, but they are subject to more direct investigation and corroboration, so the theory is not essential to it. Thus, there is no ontological commitment to any entities that theories postulate; they can be viewed as convenient fictions, devices of calculation.

Sellars thinks that this instrumentalist picture gets almost everything wrong. In his view the observation vocabulary/theoretical vocabulary distinction is merely methodological and is, moreover, highly malleable; it therefore possesses no particular ontological force. There is no given, so it can play no semantic role. Meanings are functional roles in language usage, and nothing in principle prevents a term that might originally have arisen as part of a theory from acquiring a role in observation reports. The well-trained physicist “just sees” an alpha-particle track in a cloud chamber as directly and non-inferentially as the well-trained child just sees a dog. Furthermore, what is observable depends on the techniques and instruments employed, and these are often loaded with theoretical baggage. “Pure” observation uncontaminated by theory is outside our reach.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/#ScieReal

Concepts like the "Transcendental Ego" appear to be more of a product of a death denying ideology (orphaned by facts) than a legit philosophical topic that could allow us to arrive to wise statements about our ontology. — Nickolasgaspar

Now you are saying something, theorizing, and I think you are on to something. The 'pure witness' is a version of eternity. It is what is always there. It is like 'God' in that it makes experience possible. The mystical version offers spiritual comfort in the obvious way. 'You are really a deathless universal awareness.' The metaphysical version is part of a machinery that conquers time, allows us to discuss the form of all possible experience, provide the space where pure-exact language-independent and culture-independent meanings live, safe from the ravages of time and relativism. Kant and Husserl didn't want to only be talking only about nerdy European white dudes in this or that era. They needed the very essence of what it meant to be human and rational. And so it seems do you, with your implicitly universal notion of 'Philosophy.' As Marx might tell Stirner and that kid in the The Sixth Sense might tell Bruce Willis... the ego is a spook ! The ghostbuster is a ghost...

None of us can even imagine a state where basic awareness is not, because we would still be aware of the imagining. Even in dreams we are aware.

Imagination is a form of awareness (quiet assumption), so imagining the absence of awareness is a manifestation of awareness. Seems like an elaboration of hazy grammar, not an illumination of the interior. No mention of being out cold, not yet born, or dead.

Moreover, these traditions maintain, there are not two different types of awareness, enlightened versus ignorant. There is only awareness. And this awareness, exactly and precisely as it is, without correction or modification at all, is itself Spirit, since there is nowhere Spirit is not. The instructions, then, are to recognize awareness, recognize the Witness, recognize the Self, and abide as that. Any attempt to get awareness is totally beside the point. 'But I still don't see Spirit!' 'You are aware of your not seeing Spirit, and that awareness is itself Spirit.'"

https://www.integralworld.net/meditation.html

Clearly the goal is a recognition of Spirit. At the same time, this would just be more awareness, which is never enlightened or ignorant but just itself. Trying to 'see' or 'get' this awareness/Spirit is 'totally beside the point.' But the point of the text is obviously to help one 'see' or 'get' it...in the right way (try to not try so hard). The recognition is mediated conceptually. Since Spirit was always already there, it was never really the target. The myth/story of Spirit grasping itself is self-fulfilling, self-describing. The consumer/participant enjoys an identification with completed or self-grasping Spirit. But isn't my interpretation a further elaboration or self-grasping of Spirit? The game can be continued, surely. Was bare/pure awareness ever interesting in itself? An object eternal only through its vacuity? Or was it always about possession and hierarchy?

[deleted: sarcasm]

A wonder that generations of mystics lack your insight Jason. Your work is obviously cut out. — Wayfarer

If you think it's an unworthy example, say so. Show me the good stuff. But if you think it's a good text, then you should be defending it with more than sarcasm. I'm not even anti-mystical, and I don't resent when mystics also write/think (William Blake is great.)

The 'pure witness' concept, which seems to be tied up with Heidegger's 'Being' and the hard problem of consciousness, is complex. I don't pretend to have figured it out. But the particular text critiqued is a disaster.

A nice piece of Blake, showing a kind of fusion of the mystic and the metaphysical/philosophical.

Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed & govern’d their Passion or have No Passions, but because they have Cultivated their Understandings. The Treasures of Heaven are not Negations of Passion but Realities of Intellect, from which all the Passions Emanate Uncurbed in their Eternal Glory. The Fool shall not enter into heaven let him be ever so Holy. Holiness is not The Price of Enterance into Heaven. Those who are cast out are All Those who, having no Passions of their own because No Intellect, Have spent their lives in Curbing & Governing other People’s by the Various arts of Poverty & Cruelty of all kinds. Wo, Wo, Wo to you Hypocrites. Even Murder, the Courts of Justice, more merciful than the Church, are compell’d to allow is not done in Passion, but in Cool Blooded design & Intention.

The Modern Chruch Crucifies Christ with the head Downwards.

The Last Judgment is an Overwhelming of Bad Art & Science. Mental Things are alone Real; what is call’d Corporeal, Nobody Knows of its Dwelling Place: it is in Fallacy & its Existence an Imposture. Where is the Existence Out of Mind or Thought? Where is it but in the Mind of a Fool? Some People flatter themselves that there will be No Last Judgment & that Bad Art will be adopted & mixed with Good Art, that Error or Experiment will make a Part of Truth, & they Boast that it is its Foundation; these People flatter themselves. I will not Flatter them. Error is Created; Truth is Eternal. Error or Creation will be Burned up, & then & not till Then, Truth or Eternity will appear. It is Burnt up the Moment Men cease to behold it. I assert for My self that I do not behold the Outward Creation & that to me it is hindrance & not Action; it is as the Dirt upon my feet, No part of Me. ‘What’, it will be Question’d, ‘When the sun rises do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?’ O no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.’ I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight. I look through it & not with it.
— Blake

But there's so much more to it than is conveyed in that abstraction. — Wayfarer

I'd say what really matters, to me and maybe everyone, is feeling, feeling, feeling. Some philosophers have suggested that concept doesn't grab the absolute, that maybe art is better. And some religious thinkers have put feeling first. In my opinion, that's the cleanest route. Let it be called 'feeling.' Or, if it's ineffable, don't even start to argue for it.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
From Leibniz, Lessing, Fichte, Jacobi and the Romantic school, Schleiermacher had imbibed a profound and mystical view of the inner depths of the human personality.
...
While ....we cannot ...attain the idea of the supreme unity of thought and being by either cognition or volition, we can find it in our own personality, in immediate self-consciousness or feeling.
...
At various periods of his life Schleiermacher used different terms to represent the character and relation of religious feeling. In his earlier days he called it a feeling or intuition of the universe, consciousness of the unity of reason and nature, of the infinite and the eternal within the finite and the temporal. In later life he described it as the feeling of absolute dependence, or, as meaning the same thing, the consciousness of being in relation to God.[7] In his Addresses on Religion (1799), he wrote:[38]

Religion is the outcome neither of the fear of death, nor of the fear of God. It answers a deep need in man. It is neither a metaphysic, nor a morality, but above all and essentially an intuition and a feeling. ... Dogmas are not, properly speaking, part of religion: rather it is that they are derived from it. Religion is the miracle of direct relationship with the infinite; and dogmas are the reflection of this miracle. Similarly belief in God, and in personal immortality, are not necessarily a part of religion; one can conceive of a religion without God, and it would be pure contemplation of the universe; the desire for personal immortality seems rather to show a lack of religion, since religion assumes a desire to lose oneself in the infinite, rather than to preserve one's own finite self.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Schleiermacher

I notice that the source materials is from or about Ken Wilber. Personally I think in the transpersonal philosophy space, Bernardo Kastrup is superior. — Wayfarer

I bumped into the term 'pure witness' in a Wilbur book, and I realized that Husserl and Kant maybe had similar starting points. I'd put Wittgenstein, Hegel, Feuerbach, Foucault, Heidegger, Norman O. Brown, Derrida, ... in the 'transpersonal philosophy space.' Philosophy pretty much just is transpersonal, if one takes something like a universal reason as a binding norm and tries to articulate the structure/truth of a shared world/reality.

I've glanced at Kastrup. He's sophisticated. I still think 'mental' breaks down without its other. But I respect any metaphysics that at least tries to give an account of our sharing in whatever this talk is and the world that it's about is...You and I agree that any good account has to account for itself too.

I'm afraid that your eccentric use of 'philosophy' is anything but authoritative. — jas0n

There is nothing eccentric about the use of the philosophy.
Philosophy is defined by its etymology (Love of wisdom).
The philosophical method is defined by Aristotle.
1. epistemology
2. Physika
3. Meta physika
4. Aesthetics
5.Ethics
6.Politics
From the moment someone chooses to ignore the first two steps he no longer "practices" Philosophy.
He is making speculations based on his personal goals and emotional needs.
This is known as religion or magical thinking.
Again you can not get wisdom from claims that aren't based on knowledge or verified principles.(i.e. Naturalistic).

You can do what so many have done before and try to impose a narrowing of the concept, but you don't get it for free. — jas0n

- Of course I can! This is what Natural Philosophy did and watch the result....a 500+ years of epistemic run away success while pseudo philosophy still struggles with unanswerable idealistic or supernatural questions.
Again Philosophy has a goal set by its etymology and the need it was created to address...our need to understand the world through wisdom....not to make a world that we would love to be real.

-"Capitalizing the word is rhetorically questionable (suggestive of mysticism, idolatry, etc.) "
-I only demand a meaningful use of the method for the production of frameworks that have real intellectual value, like this method was intended to do . Philosophy was not invented for us to pretend to know things we don't and can't prove. Its one thing to produce questions and an other to poison the well or beg the question.....Again we already have such tools , its called religion.

It's just a word, a thing people do, not the name of the divine. Another poster likes to capitalize 'reason,' and sure enough personification followed, turns out she's a Lady. — jas0n

-Words have meanings and descriptive powers. By the etymology of the word and the definition of what is wise we can see that NOT all things people do qualify as "philosophy".
Reason or better Logic is an essential tool for wisdom to be possible.

Distorting words doesn't affect what we value. Knowledge wisdom, truth are essential values for our claims. When a claim doesn't tick those values...then they are not philosophical.
You can call them philosophical all you want but that doesn't really make them.