Ah, so we end our discussion in silence?

Might make tea.

I don't know if this is relevant, but don't you need a good reason to hold that the appearances may not be the same as the real thing?

Of course, the worry that the world as an illusion dates back to Plato (The Allegory of the Cave) and the Buddha (maya) and they had somewhat good reasons to doubt the authenticity of experience. Science too has more or less confirmed this in its own small way (the Orchid mantis & the Spider-tailed horned viper). Nevertheless, this is hard to explain, I feel these aren't adequate grounds for our suspicion that the world is, in some way, deceiving us.

Ah, so we end our discussion in silence? — Banno

:lol:

Might make tea. — Banno

Do! I'm in.

I read the article; nothing unfamiliar there nor anything which disagrees with anything I've said, as far as I can tell. If you think differently then please enlighten me.

What I thought was significant about it was, first, the way it shows that the Vienna Circle, and A J Ayer, completely misconstrued Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Second, the implicit religiosity * of Wittgenstein’s philosophical orientation, characterised by his adoption of Tolstoy’s adaptation of the Gospels. And finally how that accounts for his conviction that ‘ethics are transcendent’ along with those other aphorisms which indicate the transcendent source of ethics. As that essay states, none of these are the views of one who had renounced metaphysics, as the positivists claim. Rather his ‘silence’ is understandable as a kind of apophaticism which actually has a long pedigree in ‘traditional metaphysics’.

Thinking further about @Banno’s emphasis on the metaphysics of ‘doing’ - those schematic representations I provided earlier about the various levels of the hierarchy of being in the different traditions. The point is, all of those were indeed very much associated with cultures which embodied those understandings in social practices, religion, even in architecture (i.e. sacred architecture). In other words, they weren’t simply meaningless phrases but the distillation of the sacred principles of those cultures. It is (as Karen Armstrong says) modern Western culture which treats those terms as ‘propositional’ i.e. reduces them to verbal formulas and then declares them ‘meaningless’ - the same culture which has declared life and all who live it that ‘outcome of the accidental collocations of atoms’ (Russell, A Free Man’s Worship.)

——-

* Thomas Nagel says in his Secular Phillosophy and the Religious Temperament that Wittgenstein clearly had a religious attitude to life while not an adherent of any particular religion.

I agree with you about the Logical Positivists misconstrual of Wittgenstein's philosophy. He undoubtedly allowed for the mystical, but only as something about which absolutely nothing could be (propositionally) said.

The mystical, the religious, spirit is shown, for example, in the great cathedrals and buildings of other cultures, as well as in poetry, painting and music. Think of Bach as a paradigm example. But when you say

And finally how that accounts for his conviction that ‘ethics are transcendent’ along with those other aphorisms which indicate the transcendent source of ethics. — Wayfarer

when you talk about a "transcendent source" or "hierarchies of being" I think you are departing from Wittgenstein's ideas; and you are skating dangerously close to the kind of reification which he condemned as being "without sense".

That's my view, anyway, which you should be pretty familiar with by now.

Fair enough. Although it is the absence of the qualitative dimension that prevents there being any real basis for ethics, other than ‘what I think is right’ - as I think has been amply demonstrated by the earlier discussion about it.

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

I would add the importance of experience. In the Tractatus, rewards and punishment, and the happy man. In the Lecture on Ethics, certain feelings.

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

Just to add, and this is where he got it wrong, in the same way Kant got it wrong: it is not impossible of vacuously speculative to discuss metaphysics. This is way of positivism. Heidegger thought it is through poetry that we can give form to the "wonder" of the world, but this limits the possibility of revelatory description. to approach this kind of thing, Husserl's phenomenological reduction provides the method, which is not qualitatively different from meditation yoga.

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.) — Wayfarer

Not more scrupulous; emphatic. These philosophers drew a very distinct line not to be crossed, and left very little room to vaguery or intimations.

But this loss of analogical language is intriguing, in that it suggests that what it means to "fall" away from something foundational and profound (Heidegger talks like this, and Kierkegaard, but with a Christian bent) in our existence lies with a turn toward the categorical thinking brought on by secularism. "Analogical" relations? What are these? Seamless living in the world? My cat is like this. But then, so was the Buddha. It is the Question that intrudes in this natural complacency.

Husserl's phenomenological reduction provides the method, which is not qualitatively different from meditation yoga. — Constance

I'm interested in the link between Husserl and "meditation yoga." Can you say more about this?

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. — Constance

I don’t follow. Torture weekend is not as bad, in the mind of the torturer, relative to torture millennium in both quality and quantity, assuming the torturer feels that torture is bad to begin with.

I don’t follow. Torture weekend is not as bad, in the mind of the torturer, relative to torture millennium in both quality and quantity, assuming the torturer feels that torture is bad to begin with. — praxis

Put aside attitudes, dispositions and judgment in the mind of anyone. It is an argument about the presence of suffering as such. The utility illustration is only meant show that comparative utility has no bearing at all on the actuality.

Look at it like this: the color yellow is, I would argue along with almost anyone else, as such is "almost" without meaning. Certainly we are forced to admit that there is a difference between language and contexts and the ways these establish the possibility of making "sense", on the one hand, and the bare phenomenon, on the other. But the bare phenomenon taken AS "yellow" is already contextualized among possible sentential and logical forms, and so, to identify yellow as being yellow is always already a contingent matter. But consider an instance of pain. The same holds as for yellow (the qualia of yellow, if you like), but pain has, after analysis has cancelled out all contingencies, a residuum, which is, I argue, the essence of ethics: the metaethical good, bad.

If it is preferred, the matter here is about the qualia of pain and bliss (etc.), embedded, as all things, in contexts of contingency. Reduce the color yellow to its bare phenomenal presence and you have something radically different from a reduction of pain to its presence, which is evidenced by, say, that intensity you experience when your arm is twisted or ankle sprained.

I still don’t follow. Concepts are interdependent and are meaningless in isolation.

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. — Wayfarer

One thing I don't understand about Milbank's argument is whether Scotus's 'univocity' cancels St. Thomas arguing that God is simple in Question 3 of the Summa Theologica. There is a list of what cannot be said of him. The negatives are balanced against what can be said of him in the 'voice' of 'natural' being:

I answer that, The absolute simplicity of God may be shown in many ways. First from the previous articles of this question. For there is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since he is not a body; nor composition of form and matter; nor does His nature differ from his suppositum; nor his essence from his being; neither in Him is composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore it is clear that God in no way composite, but is altogether simple. Secondly, because every composite is posterior to its component parts, and is dependent upon them; but God is the first being, as has been shown above. Thirdly, because every composite has a cause, for things in themselves diverse cannot unite unless something causes them to unite. But God is uncaused, as has been shown above since he is the first efficient cause. — Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Q.3. Art7

Maintaining that God cannot be expressed as a being seems to remove him from the discussion of different 'modes' or levels of 'being' rather than provide the means for such. A better example of the 'univocal' may be Spinoza whose metaphysics does not allow agents of creation to loiter in the hallways.

Apologies to all if this point of theology does not belong to a discussion of the concept of religion.

in the same way Kant got it wrong: it is not impossible of vacuously speculative to discuss metaphysics. — Constance

That ought be an "or"? That metaphysical speculation is vacuous is not just an assertion, but is demonstrated. Pointing out that Heidegger or Husserl indulged does nothing but display their emptiness.

, ...

The "doing" is a form of life; it involves our experiences as well as our acts, and also the things we take as granted, those "hinge propositions" that cause such verbal constipation in other threads. SO yes, what you suggest is not surprising.

I'm interested in the link between Husserl and "meditation yoga." Can you say more about this? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Keep in mind, these are my thoughts about Husserl and others. I'm not just recalling text.

What is the phenomenological reduction? It is a suspension of the natural way we relate to the world, the everydayness, the science, and the implicit default interpretations that are always there in a given moment of conscious existence, in the effort to discover the "things themselves". This is not the Kantian thing in itself, impossibly remote, but is the intuited world that, if you follow Husserl, stands there before one as "pure phenomena". His is a "method" of achieving intuitive purity, the true philosophical calling.

It is, or it can be, a very strange business, even mystical. A normal way living is just these assumptions always in play. It is the basis for the familiarity we have with the world: it's language, thought, judgment that rules one's sense of normalcy, and these are not things that are simply there, like we think of plain objects being stable and inert. We conceive of the world in time, and this is a very important thing to get straight if one wants to understand anything existential philosophers have to say. Not that we live in time, as a physicist would put it. We ARE time. Time is the foundation of our existence. So Husserl's reduction, this turning away from normal naturalistic default understanding of the world, is a turning away from the temporal dynamic that constitutes our lived lives. Not ALL of what constitutes our lived lives, obviously, for that would turn one into James' infantile "blooming and buzzing". But it is an explicit cancelling of what is not there before one as a direct intuition of the world. For me, it is rediscovery of something profound, and I won't put too fine a point on that.

So what does this have to do with meditation? The reduction is a radical suspension of knowledge claims that, if you will, usually run our lives, and if successful, the reduction is a kind of lifting of a foggy illusion of the presumption of knowing. (If this reminds you of the Pseudo-Dionysius' Cloud of Unknowing, it does so with me as well. Think also of Meister Eckhart--God, deliver me from God!). But the goal is to bring one to a pure apprehension of the world at the intuitive level, and this is exactly what meditation is all about, if you ask me, only meditation is the reduction radicalized to its limit: the annihilation of the world. To sit and "reduce" the moment to nothing at all.

This is not something that sits well with philosophy, of course. But then, what is philosophy if not the personal encounter, intimate and palpable. If not this, then Rorty was right: might as well teach literature. But he was wrong.

That ought be an "or"? That metaphysical speculation is vacuous is not just an assertion, but is demonstrated. Pointing out that Heidegger or Husserl indulged does nothing but display their emptiness. — Banno

It is demonstrated on the premise that knowing the world is either an empirical knowing or an analytic knowing (putting aside Quine's attack on analyticity). But these are false categories. Look at it like this: there is nothing at all that is prohibitive of content in neither Wittgenstein nor Kant. These ideas of sensory intuition or states of affairs are, at the very basic level, arbitrary. What IS it for something to be empirical? This is an open concept. Kant's noumena is everywhere in all things. The phenomenon is, if you will, noumenally saturated. It simply can be no other way, for that would require a metaphysical restriction, which is nonsense.

But Wittgenstein does not hold that knowing the world is an empirical knowing.

I think this has been explained before.

Firstly, the atomic propositions of the tractatus need not be empirical. That is part of the Vienna Circle misreading @Wayfarer's article dismembers.

Secondly, by the time of the Investigations it is clear that whatever categories we might posit are arbitrary in that we might posit quite different categories if it suited our purpose. They are not about how the world is but about what we do in the world - we ought not look for their meaning but for their use.

What is the phenomenological reduction? It is a suspension of the natural way we relate to the world, — Constance

...and this cannot be done; hence the approach taken here will not work.

I still don’t follow. Concepts are interdependent and are meaningless in isolation. — praxis

Exactly! But that fire on your finger, is THAT a concept? It certainly can be taken up AS a concept, but it most certainly is not a concept, and therefore is stands before one as the world, and not an interpretation of the world, a concept.

Secondly, by the time of the Investigations it is clear that whatever categories we might posit are arbitrary in that we might posit quite different categories if it suited our purpose. They are not about how the world is but about what we do in the world - we ought not look for their meanign but for their use. — Banno

But the important point is that logical restraints have no hold on content. Atomic propositions being empirical or not begs the question: what is it for something to be empirical at all? What is logical restraint, anyway? The term "logic" is abstracted from judgment. The conditional structure is abstracted from time (if....then...is a forward looking concept). The point is, all categorical thinking is interpretative, and certainly not prohibitive of what can be present in the world. All of the glory of the divine presence could appear before us, and reason would not blink (said Hume). Reason is an empty vessel and what is empirical is about content.
As to the Investigations, I see no help in the matter of the concept of religion. It is not a question of language and how it works. It is about value and ethics, that is, metavalue and its correlative, metaethics. Religion is about the Good, as Witt said. The point I would make is that this has extraordinary implications.

..and this cannot be done; hence the approach taken here will not work. — Banno

What does it mean that it cannot be done? It is not a breaking of logical rules, and one cannot really argue against it. It is not an argument. It is a reductive method of discovery and a description of what unfolds. It takes, well, curiosity, motivation to explore the claim that intuitive insight can be made clearer.

It is, or it can be, a very strange business, even mystical. — Constance

Thanks for the explanation.

I read Husserl twenty years ago and your words gave my memory a good jog. I remember having a kind of semi-mystical experience at the university library while playing around with the epoche - making an attempt to bracket out all but immediate sense experience, coupled with an attempt to identify self and transcendental ego. (Again, it's been awhile...)

Later in life I became obsessed with mantric and zen meditation. Yes, the Cloud of Unknowing resonates here. That was an important book for me.


I've been an avid student of meditation for over 20 years: the obsession settled into a placid daily practice. And I have to say - after twenty years' experience - I don't see meditation as offering a link to nothingness. (I played around with notions of nothingness for a long time....) I see it as the ability to sustain near-sleep and near-dream states while maintaining full to partial conscious awareness.

If we can access the unconscious via dreams, we can access it via this sort of meditation.

What does it mean that it cannot be done? — Constance

The epoche can certainly be done. Banno likely has no experience with mindplay of this sort.

It can be done in a state of undisturbed solitude. And quickly vanishes when attention returns to its default.

So, to my view: doable, but unsustainable.

What is the phenomenological reduction? It is a suspension of the natural way we relate to the world, the everydayness, the science, and the implicit default interpretations that are always there in a given moment of conscious existence, in the effort to discover the "things themselves". — Constance

:clap: Hence the links that have been discerned between Pyrrho (ancient Skepticism), and Buddhism, which has emerged in the last couple of decades (e.g. see Everard Flintoff 'Pyrrho and India'). From this you can discern a 'family resemblance' between Husserl's ‘epoché’ and the Buddhist ‘śūnyatā, between the Skeptic 'ataraxia' (tranquility) and the Buddhist 'nirodha' (cessation) which connotes 'suspension of judgement'. e.g. from an OP on the Buddhist teaching on emptiness:

Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there's anything lying behind them. — Thanissaro Bhikkhu

where the resemblance can be clearly seen.

Religion is about the Good, as Witt said. — Constance

Also from a Buddhist source:

The Universe is, according to philosophers who base their beliefs on idealism, a place of the spirit. Other philosophers whose beliefs are based on a materialistic view, say that the Universe is composed of the matter we see in front of our eyes.

Buddhist philosophy takes a view which is neither idealistic nor materialistic; Buddhists do not believe that the Universe is composed of only matter. They believe that there is something else other than matter. But there is a difficulty here; if we use a concept like 'spirit' to describe that 'something else other than matter', people are prone to interpret Buddhism as some form of spiritualistic religion and think that Buddhists must therefore believe in the actual existence of spirit. So it becomes very important to understand the Buddhist view of the concept 'spirit'. I am careful to refer to spirit as a concept here because in fact Buddhism does not believe in the actual existence of spirit.

So what is this something else other than matter which exists in this Universe? If we think that there is a something which actually exists other than matter, our understanding will not be correct; nothing physical exists outside of matter....Some people explain the Universe as a universe based on matter. But there also exists something which we call value or meaning. A Universe consisting only of matter leaves no room for value or meaning in civilizations and cultures. Matter alone has no value. We can say that the Universe is constructed with matter, but we must also say that matter works for some purpose. So in our understanding of the Universe we should recognize the existence of something other than matter. We can call that something spirit, but if we do we should remember that in Buddhism, the word 'spirit' is a figurative expression for value or meaning. We do not say that spirit exists in reality; we use the concept only figuratively. — Nishijima Roshi, Three Philosophies, One Reality

Notice the convergence between 'matter alone has no value' and the aphoristic passage previously quoted from Wittgenstein 'If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so'.

A lurking issue with these comparisons is that in our minds skepticism is usually associated with a kind of common-sense realism which implicitly preferences sensory (i.e. empirical) experience, whereas the ancient skeptics and Buddhists were skeptical of the innate sense of reality that common-sense realism takes for granted.

A second difficulty is that Buddhism's aims were soteriological (i.e. concerned with salvation or liberation), but in our minds such philosophies must necessarily depend on the acceptance of dogma (which is what we equate with 'faith'). So here we're presented with something that seems paradoxically like a 'skeptical faith'.

I've been an avid student of meditation for over 20 years: the obsession settled into a placid daily practice. And I have to say - after twenty years' experience - I don't see meditation as offering a link to nothingness. (I played around with notions of nothingness for a long time....) I see it as the ability to sustain near-sleep and near-dream states while maintaining full to partial conscious awareness. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I practice stopping my breath. Genuinely interesting, for air hunger comes along and is very insistent. And I have to ignore this, tame it, and there is, beneath the breath, if you will, an extraordinary sense of the presence of, well, presence. I can see that our thoughts and attachments are not abstractions, but real energic forces. A thought is not an abstraction. It requires energy to think, that is, a production of interest, and it "covers" the world up. And what it covers, and this is where it gets impossibly weird, is the Real world, which we never see in our everydayness.
Yes, doable. But certainly not everyone's cup of tea.

I practice stopping my breath. — Constance

Never tried that. Sounds like a bold approach. "Air hunger" - that's got to focus the mind. :smile: