Should we give up and just live our lives as best as we can or should we keep banging our heads against this now bloody wall that has claimed many, many victims? — Agent Smith

I ask, what is there, in the world, that makes us reach out and scream WTF? I think about concrete and steal raining down of Ukrainians, and there you are huddled together then in a moment, you arm is gone and there's screaming everywhere. Or the black plague. Can't even imagine the horrors of it. Not to get dramatic, but on the other hand, to, just for a moment, to get very dramatic, just so I know and I'm not just pretending to know by moving on directly into language and interpretation. How quickly we reduce the world to an abstraction, and everything then toes the line, and we're safe again.

As I see it, religion is found here, in the not turning away. Humans created a great deal that causes misery, but they didn't invent misery itself. This puts these affairs in the hands of the world and our throwness into it. It makes our struggles exceed the localized descriptions of circumstances that want to put it all into narrative. But narratives, and this is an important point in my thinking, cannot contain this.

Then things get metaphysical. Redemption is a metaphysical necessity.

You're venturing into territory I'm at present not interested in. Not that it's wrong, it's just not my cup of tea. Let's just say I'm not in the mood. Thanks for sharing though. Good luck.

You're venturing into territory I'm at present not interested in. Not that it's wrong, it's just not my cup of tea. Let's just say I'm not in the mood. Thanks for sharing though. Good luck. — Agent Smith

No problem. It's my little obsession. If ever you do find the mood for this, you might want to check out Simon Critchley's Little, Almost Nothing. He explores the impact of ethical nihilism. :up:

Be mindful that the introduction of science was a reply to @Wayfarer's specific argument, found in the wheel he showed us. My point is not that science is a religion, but that it fits the criteria he produced.

..and then I read this:

But as you know with all serious thinkers, all ideas are presented in context. — Constance

:wink:

On the contrary. Faith is believing because of the evidence. — Haglund

See https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10177/knowledge-belief-and-faith-anthony-kenny/p1

You view would seem to be at odds with the church fathers.

However, scientific knowledge isn’t woven into a meaningful narrative that offers…

àn ultimate scientific explanation.
— Haglund — praxis

Ok, so we have ritual, transcendent hierarchies and longing. Would you add "an ultimate explanation" to that list? It somehow seems overkill.

I'm still sticking with "an ideology that relies on ultimate authority," which to my mind covers its essential nature.

This last post was only meant to address your question about why science does not count as a religion.

Has the screaming stoped?

It is apparent how different that set of circles is from the other. It's not a simplification so much as a different item.

SO this is a representation of your suggestion that some form of transcendental hierarchy is central to the concept of religion. I take it that the proposal that propositions in each circle include the propositions in the preceding one, a Venn diagram of truths. That's at odds with the notion, due in the main to Wittgenstein, that the really important stuff of ethics, aesthetics, of life, is non-propositional, the it is shown, not stated - something I thought you were down with.

So still, I remain uninspired by your concentric circles.

Ok, Fair response.

@Constance, see my notes under "Moral considerations" in In praise of Atheism for a discussion of Abraham. The Knight of Faith is immoral.

"an ideology that relies on ultimate authority," — praxis

We. might modify this to "an ideology that pretends to ultimate authority..."

"an ideology that relies on ultimate authority" — praxis

This definition excludes those for whom religion has become mere habit.

Ritualistic habit with no thought of ideology or ultimate authority.

That's at odds with the notion, due in the main to Wittgenstein, that the really important stuff of ethics, aesthetics, of life, is non-propositional, the it is shown, not stated - something I thought you were down with. — Banno

Makes you wonder why he bothered putting pen to paper.

Any thoughts on this? It is, after all, posted on the website of the British Wittgenstein Society.

Here's the article in situ.

Now, what do you find problematic, or curious, in it? It's a good article.

I found it an illuminating read.

As Ray Monk says in his superb biography Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (1990), “the anti-metaphysical stance that united them [was] the basis for a kind of manifesto which was published under the title The Scientific View of the World: The Vienna Circle.” Yet as Wittgenstein himself protested again and again in the Tractatus, the propositions of natural science “have nothing to do with philosophy” (6.53); “Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences” (4.111); “It is not problems of natural science which have to be solved” (6.4312); “even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all” (6.52); “There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical” (6.522). None of these sayings could possibly be interpreted as the views of a man who had renounced metaphysics.

So, we might re-draw your circles as disjointed, not concentric. One circle with science and other explicit statements, the other with god, ethics, aesthetic and other ineffable stuff...?

see my notes under "Moral considerations" in In praise of Atheism for a discussion of Abraham. The Knight of Faith is immoral. — Banno

I read it. So I wonder if you would be willing to engage the issue. Let's say I understand all of the arguments, because I do, frankly. None of these capture's the essence of God. As with all ideas, its true nature is revealed only when the "material" basis of its meaning is discovered, and God the idea has a lot of baggage. The first question is this: What is the good? Two answers. There is good in the contingent way, like a good couch or a good knife. And there is the Good. This latter is the meta-good, and the concept in play is meta-value. It begins with Wittgenstein's Tractatus:

In the world everything
is as it is, and everything happens as it
does happen: in it no value exists—and if
it did exist, it would have no value.
If there is any value that does have
value, it must lie outside the whole sphere
of what happens and is the case

If you prefer not to go into this, I'm fine with that. But on the other hand, it IS the only way to approach the issue of God, of this I am sure.

Anyway, the issue begins with value. Do you agree with Wittgenstein?

This definition excludes those for whom religion has become mere habit.

Ritualistic habit with no thought of ideology or ultimate authority. — ZzzoneiroCosm

In that case, it can still be an identity and have influence. People who don’t think for themselves and just go along with the tribe are the ideal followers, actually.

They’re not my intellectual property, and they’re not literal descriptions.

Yet as Wittgenstein himself protested again and again in the Tractatus, the propositions of natural science “have nothing to do with philosophy” (6.53); “Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences” (4.111); “It is not problems of natural science which have to be solved” (6.4312); “even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all”

A brilliant passage. But Witt, like Kant, in denying metaphysics any meaning, opened the door for positivism. You know, the only wheel that rolls. Positivistic approaches ignore anything that cannot be defined and justified clearly. An emasculation of "truth'!

Let's say I understand all of the arguments, because I do, frankly. — Constance

I'd noticed that. It's articulating our differences that is of interest.

I'd go back a few more years, to Moore's Principia, to trace the notion of the good. Moore identifies it, but I think fails to justify it. I suspect Wittgenstein to have been influenced by Moore in this regard. It would be interesting to take Wittgenstein's treatment of Moore's "here is a hand" and apply it to Moore's Good. There are interesting parallels.

But yes, I agree with Wittgenstein. Where are we going?

But Witt, like Kant, in denying metaphysics any meaning — Constance

I don’t think either of them did that though. More that they were scrupulous about the use of conceptual language for what is beyond its scope.

The distant cause of these problems was the loss of the use of analogical language and symbolic imagery. That in turn goes back to Duns Scotus ‘univocity of being’. It was that which foreclosed the possibility of there being expressions conveying different modes or levels of being.

(But I’m not going to be able to develop on that right now as it’s not the kind of dialogue that lends itself to tapping out characters on an iphone in a car park. But see this post.)

I don’t think either of them did that though. More that they were scrupulous about the use of conceptual language for what is beyond its scope. — Wayfarer

Kant rejected the possibility of doing traditional metaphysics.

Wittgenstein definitely thought that traditional metaphysics is "language on holiday". His "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" shows his attitude to metaphysics.

From the article on Wittgenstein in SEP:

"Having developed this analysis of world-thought-language, and relying on the one general form of the proposition, Wittgenstein can now assert that all meaningful propositions are of equal value. Subsequently, he ends the journey with the admonition concerning what can (or cannot) and what should (or should not) be said (7), leaving outside the realm of the sayable propositions of ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics."

Neither, in my view, would have said that metaphysical concerns have any meaning, in the sense of being of no significance to humans; rather I think both would agree that metaphysical claims can have no propositional sense. I've been saying this to you for years now, and you never seem to be willing to accept it.

Kant rejected the possibility of doing traditional metaphysics. — Janus

My friend, Kant is traditional metaphysics.

It's pertinent that those who emphasis Wittgenstein's rejection of metaphysical statements so often stop at the Tractatus. Yes, he showed that metaphysical statements are senseless, but then showed that metaphysics is more than just statements.

One can act in silence.

Wittgenstein did not put an end to metaphysics, so much as showed that it is better done in action than in philosophical speculation.

See PI §133.

I'd go back a few more years, to Moore's Principia, to trace the notion of the good. Moore identifies it, but I think fails to justify it. I suspect Wittgenstein to have been influenced by Moore in this regard. It would be interesting to take Wittgenstein's treatment of Moore's "here is a hand" and apply it to Moore's Good. There are interesting parallels.

But yes, I agree with Wittgenstein. Where are we going? — Banno

Sorry if this gets tedious for you. Part one, in brief: Moore went on about the good being a non natural property, and back then, they say, most philosopher's took this for granted. Times do change. But look closely. Contingent goods are easy, for they are everywhere in good violins and bad (not good) spectacles. Contingency is about explaining the good of something (or bad) with conditions that make a particular thing good or bad, and the world is made of contingent propositions; in Wittgenstein's "facts" or "states of affairs", in that great books of facts in his Lecture on Ethics, there is no value in the world, just as he says in the Tractatus. What he means is, as you say, Moore's "good".

I find this "good' and "bad" the only route I can think of to ground God, and the argument goes to the contingent and the absolute. There are no anthropomorphisms here, no straw person arguments that try to make metaphysics out of a human personality. We deal with actualities. There is a reason Wittgenstein took value seriously, just to swat it down as without meaning (just as Kant did with metaphysics): he denies value having value because such a thing is beyond speech, beyond the logical grid of possible meaningful propositions. But he did say in Culture and Value, "What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics."

And on this he was right. Take a contingent good, as in, this is a good knife. Contingency is about context. It is a good knife because it is sharp, balanced, comfortable, and so on. But this is, of course, not an absolute claim about the knife's goodness, and contexts are accidentals. The knife could be for Macbeth. Then all the goodness of the sharpness is gone; in fact, a sharp knife for Macbeth is a bad knife. This is a critical juncture in the argument. Contingency demands the possibility of a denial of the goodness or badness. Good pianos, running shoes can always be second guessed, by setting the goodness of the thing in a good-denying context, by "relativizing" the good in a different way. The good can always be reset in some alternative language game, if you will, in which it is not good.

But all of this contingency of explaining things in the world assumes there is nothing that is truly absolute, which was Wittgenstein's point--nothing "in the world," for the world is a logical place, and value has no logical identity. What does this mean? Moore's non natural property: put a flame to your finger and hold it there a few moments to get the point. Reduce the event by suspending all facts that might be descriptively present, like damaged flesh, c-fibers firing in the brain, and so on. Once all facts are removed, there is in this a residuum that is non factual (if you follow Witt, who follows Hume; debatable, though). It is the value. The argument here rests solely with this. This value AS SUCH cannot be second guessed, unlike the knife's sharpness-as-goodness that can be turned around instantly, this experience of the badness of the pain taken outside of any contextretains is badness. Impossible with contingencies in the world. There is no such meaning to a knife good in its sharpness free of context.

Value is absolute. Not value here or there, but the presence of value as such is absolute. Try an argument from utility: the philosopher's evil demon is up to no good, and insists you torture one child for the weekend, or a thousand other children will be tortured for a thousand years a far greater intensity. Utility says go for the weekend, but note: this decision does not diminish one whit the badness of the weekend affair. Clearly, and this is the point, there is NOTHING that can diminish this, which tells us we are in the presence of an absolute. There is no way possible, it is apodictically impossible, to relativize this badness away.

God is part two. But I have little confidence that you find part one compelling, so far. No one does at this point. It takes convincing, but keep in mind this is Wittgenstein's argument, essentially. The "bad" of the flame, the torture. or, speaking generally, suffering, is entirely without logical status for Witt because it cannot be be observed, and set against something else for a contingent bearing. All bads and good come to this. They are is "stand alone" no matter how they are caste and recaste.

problem. It's my little obsession. If ever you do find the mood for this, you might want to check out Simon Critchley's Little, Almost Nothing. He explores the impact of ethical nihilism — Constance

Thank you! :smile:

Kant rejected the possibility of doing traditional metaphysics.
— Janus

My friend, Kant is traditional metaphysics.

It's pertinent that those who emphasis Wittgenstein's rejection of metaphysical statements so often stop at the Tractatus. Yes, he showed that metaphysical statements are senseless, but then showed that metaphysics is more than just statements.

One can act in silence.

Wittgenstein did not put an end to metaphysics, so much as showed that it is better done in action than in philosophical speculation. — Banno

:fire: More!

What Banno said. also see the Philosophy Now article upthread.

You're not disagreeing with anything I said other than that Kant is traditional metaphysics; which is just plain wrong. Kant critiques the idea that any rationalist conception or empirical observation could tell us anything about anything real beyond human experience; that is about the nature of things per se; which is what traditional metaphysics and ontology purport to be able to reveal.


Perhaps give this a read: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-metaphysics/