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

Into the files. ☺️

Actually, if you think about it, this 'using the concept of spirit only figuratively' is not a million miles from Aquinas' analogical language.

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. — Paine

Note the inclusion of the indefinite article 'a'. I think when you use that, you're already including 'God' in a set - the set of possible deities, or whatever. This is addressed by Paul Tillich - if God is being qua being, then He cannot be a being. See Pierre Whalon God does not Exist, also What is the Ground of Being? (I think by a blogger called 'metacrock'.)

Religion as longing. Why not? — Banno

Religion includes dark moments of excruciating longing - anguish - comeocomeemanuelings - and also rich moments of (let me play it safe) near-near-perfect fulfillment.

Longings are painful so the anguished and staff have invented a cure for longing: dogma. Ideology calms* but invites sterility. Like Yoda notes of the future, 'god', the word, is always in motion; resists the proposition-stasis; always points to futurity; to dys- or to utopia** contingent on how devilish is Its mood. (Allow me the proper It.)

Rich moments of near-near-perfect fulfillment must be lived to be entertained. It's not sensical to moot this point. Either one has had rich moments of near-near-perfect spiritual fulfillment - or by the same token dark moments of excruciating spiritual longing - or one has not. The second are wise not to take the word of the first. The word 'god' wants to be known, not rumored of.

The word 'god' will be absurd until a person sees how it can be fruitfully used.

As to the concept of religion: the intellectual approach will never reach the heart of it. Every little buddha has to leave the ivory tower.




*Anxiety is at the heart of religious experience. That's the Buddha kissing pa and ma so long. Think of the discovery of religion: how the child sets out alone.

**LET YOUR WILL SAY THE SUPERMAN SHALL BE THE MEANING OF THE EARTH!

And this is responsive to why you aren't a mereological nihilist how? Facts are socially constructed whether about social relations or relations of atoms. The states of affairs, however, are what "is" independent of society. The question is to what extent the states of affairs are primitive (only the whole exists, e.g. atoms) or composite (wholes can have parts, e.g. people). If you believe that the states of affair are composite, I am saying that you are already acknowledging that the relationships of parts to one another cause things to exist or not. The question is why you privilege certain sorts of relations (things that are closer like people) over others (things that are further like countries) especially when you are likely to call things very far away from one another existent (like planets and solar systems). — Ennui Elucidator

I don't understand the incessant need to put labels on people and their ideas. I find the ideas or the definitions much more interesting than the labels or terms we use to identify them.

Facts, as you seem to be using the term, are like knowledge and beliefs. There are states-of-affairs and then our knowledge and beliefs of such states-of-affairs. Facts, as such, are not socially constructed. They are acquired through observation and reason of a single individual using their own senses and brain. Sharing, discussing, and debating of the observations and conclusions reached comes afterwards, and those conclusions that a single person reaches that are useful to other individuals become prevalent like the spreading of individual genes that provide a benefit to the entire population over what the pre-existing gene pool provides.

Is it a fact that the states of affairs are what is independent of society? Was that something that was socially constructed? Do I simply have to disagree with you for it to not be a fact? A social construction is an agreement between two or more individuals, not a disagreement between two or more individuals.

As an example, there is a state-of-affairs of objects orbiting the planet Jupiter. This was not known until Galileo pointed his telescope at Jupiter and observed, over several nights, little "stars" moving around Jupiter. Galileo performed these experiments in secret. He reached the conclusion that there were objects orbiting Jupiter before he published his work and shared it with anyone else. So, was it a fact that objects orbited Jupiter once Galileo reached his conclusion privately, or only when the rest of the world agreed with him?

That is because you are not understanding metaphysical in the way that I am using it. It is something that is true of the states of affairs independent of how we think about them. Perhaps "ontic" would sit better with you? — Ennui Elucidator

I still don't understand how you are using the term, or its relevance. Maybe we should just stick with "states-of-affairs". I agree that there are states-of-affairs that exist independently of how we think about them. I'm a realist. I also think that how we think about things is also a state-of-affairs. That is to say that minds and what they do are just as much a part of, and exist in a causal relation with, the rest of the world. Another way of saying it is that our thoughts about things are just as natural as the things themselves.

You don't seem to appreciate what a definition is - it is inherently emblematic of intersubjective agreement, i.e. not objective (existent independent of minds). — Ennui Elucidator

Oh no. It's the complete opposite. I sincerely appreciate definitions. Definitions are something that I am constantly requesting of others so that I may understand the terms they are using. As I said before, the definitions are more interesting than the terms being used, and my point that you are replying to was that definitions that are not influenced by the need to control or dehumanize others, like some religious fundamentalists and politically biased people do, are the more useful (objective) definitions.

This is exactly the problem that the "anchor" in polythetic approaches is intended to address. The problem with Banno's post is that he plays fast and lose with words. He references a word ("religion") which is discussed in conceptual terms, highlights an approach which is intended to incorporate essentialism into a non-essentialist analysis of concepts, and then asks whether there is an essence to it. (It doesn't help that he vacillates between "concepts" and "definitions".) — Ennui Elucidator

Hehe, yes, well Banno does like his word-games. But that is the difference between he and I in that I don't see language as a game. I see it as a means of sharing individual "facts" (knowledge and beliefs).

: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 'emptiness — Wayfarer

I have read, and pondered, the Prajnaparamita, and, of course, one can easily see why thinking like this is all but absent from our culture and thinking. It calls for the annihilation of the world, if taken to its conclusion. And clearly, I'm not talking about the physicist's world. "There is no world, only worlds," and whatever that which is the ground of all things may "be" it certainly does not good to call it substance or energyat the level of basic questions. These terms are fine for science, and we all use them all the time. As I see it, śūnyatā is the term that, while it cannot be explained positively, it can be gotten to around the back door, so to speak. I've listened to lectures and read a scattering of commentaries about this, and the best I can think of to indirectly account for it is Husserl and his ilk. For Buddhism is a "way of liberation" at its core, not a metaphysics, which, as I see it, is its great virtue.

I cannot well access scholarly work in Buddhism or Hinduism; I'm too embedded in other things. But then, I do believe all roads lead to śūnyatā. To me, this is an annihilation of the world and time. Time is the doing of things and the interest that motivates this, the anticipation, the assumed goal and its cultural generative sources issuing forth the doing and the doing of thinking and feeling. This is Kierkegaard (minus the Christian obsession). This is K's analysis of the concept of original sin, this cultural transfixity.

These ideas about time, the world and annihilation are radical, and I know have no place in the thoughts of normal thinking.

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'. — Wayfarer

Yes, I should have read down for this. Soteriological, eh? Never heard of this term, but I guess I knew there had to one for this. I should have read Suzuki, but instead, I stuck with Allan Watts for the popular read.
On dogma, K's book's full title is Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin. Not well received by the church. He was a true threshold personality, though. Couldn't actually become a knight of faith himself, such is the trouble with having a genius mind--too entertaining.

Actually, if you think about it, this 'using the concept of spirit only figuratively' is not a million miles from Aquinas' analogical language. — Wayfarer

As I see it, one needs to take the matter all the way to Derrida, which is not a happy thought for people, because he is deliberately obscure. But what makes him so important is his arguments that show that language is, in its nature, not metaphysically groundable at all. Rorty like Derrida for this. One cannot never escape the "regionalism" of a language use, is the way I think of it, borrowing from Heidegger who borrowed form Husserl, and this means that when I say, there is my cat, the term cat is not AT ALL a definite designation. It is a kind of context of terms, all related to cats that are not the term cat but "gather" in cat regional thought and relevance and out of this emerges, there is my cat, which is itself certainly definite enough in the usage, but the philosophical analysis yields no definiteness at all. It is, as I think of it, a diffuse meaning, spread out in a web of interference, no single referent of which is itself singular.

This is, I think close, and right. Caputo examines Derrida's thinking in terms of apophatic theology/philosophy: It puts language as, as I see this, a self annihilating position. Deconstruction is self deconstructing as the deconstructive analysis has no exceptions. This is Derrida's version of hermeneutics: radical. Language, to put it in a familiar way, never "touches" the world, for reference is impossible in the familiar way this is thought of. Reference is a "spread out" in language "regions" in which the difference of the interplay expresses as singularity in speech and thought and writing.

So, our language is not in an analogical relation to God's, if God is conceived as being anything at all, because all of our terms are in their nature, at the level of basic analysis, diffuse and in regional "play". And we are, as Caputo cites Eckhart, finally "free of God", that is, God the concept, the idolatry of know ing. Apophatically liberated.

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

It is the ultimate control, watching air hunger rise, then calming it down, but it insists, but there are moments when the massive energy of thought and feeling fall away.

Buddhism is a "way of liberation" at its core, not a metaphysics, which, as I see it, is its great virtue. — Constance

According to the instruction manual, Right View (twelve link chain of dependent origination, karma, rebirth, etc.) is doggedly claimed to be essential to liberation.

According to the instruction manual, Right View (twelve link chain of dependent origination, karma, rebirth, etc.) is doggedly claimed to be essential to liberation. — praxis

Right view is a method, and has to do with what is not liberation. As I see it, the matter is simple, but the language we fit to it, and the contextualization of it in our habits to schematize and endlessly "understand" what it leads to distortions.

It is hard to conceive that language itself is a utility. The four noble truths, Hindu metaphysics, and all we can think of is a just there as a "method" of grasping the world, a utility that serves one end: the security of well being. So what is well being? One can only discover this, and if the Hindus are right, and I am sure they have to be, then well being is off the charts.

Language is delimiting, pulls things down to its own terms. Finitude itself, it could be argued, is language.

Language is delimiting, pulls things down to its own terms. — Constance

There are more things than there are words! The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao! The named are things that are critical to our well-being and I mean those things that are both harmful and/or beneficial; that which is neither, our minds ignore for a good reason in my humble opinion viz. to nip information overload in the bud. We've evolved to sense only mates, prey and predators and anything else that gets caught in this sensory net, being the right size in a manner of speaking.

The four noble truths, Hindu metaphysics, and all we can think of is a just there as a "method" of grasping the world, a utility that serves one end: the security of well being. — Constance

There are non-religious approaches to that end. I think the utility is in binding tribes, which can offer well-being, but if well-being were essential then I think religions would be better at the task. There is no reason they couldn’t be better at it.

The point in the article about analogical language does point to something that is not 'univocal' in Aquinas' language. And Aquinas' statement that there is no difference between 'His essence from His being', does not permit predicating His existence as we do with any other thing.

But noting that God is the efficient cause is for Aquinas a given 'natural' function such as Aristotle saw was necessary to explain the realm of becoming. That seems 'univocal' in its purpose.

All this to say that one must convince oneself of one's religion; kid yourself into it, so to speak.

I have read, and pondered, the Prajnaparamita, and, of course, one can easily see why thinking like this is all but absent from our culture and thinking. It calls for the annihilation of the world, if taken to its conclusion. — Constance

Actually, Buddhism of all schools stridently rejects the charge that it is nihilistic. It is a charge that was frequently made by its Brahmin opponents and was also characteristic of the early European intepretations of Buddhism. It's not 'annihilation of the world' but a clear insight into clinging to the apparent reality of sensations and concepts as inherently real. It's a subtle skill, and exceedinly hard to master - I don't claim to have mastered it in the least.

The point I tried to make, which I'm afraid has not come across, are the convergences between that characteristically Buddhist discipline of 'choiceless awareness' of the contents of consciousness and the idea of 'bracketing' that is found in phenomenology. That has been the subject of considerable commentary i.e. in the 'embodied cognition' movement.

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. — Nishijima Roshi, Three Philosophies, One Reality

The universe is not merely matter; matter means nothing, can be nothing, unless it takes form. Meaning is inherent within form. How could there be form without meaning?

Language, to put it in a familiar way, never "touches" the world, for reference is impossible in the familiar way this is thought of. — Constance

How can you deny that words can refer to things perceived? We don't perceive the world; it is the idea of the unconditioned totality of possibly perceived things. So it is not merely words which don't "touch" the world.

Meaning is inherent within form. How could there be form without meaning? — Janus

Hence the appeal of hylomorphic dualism, although that's worlds away from what Nishijima means. Although I think you mentioned you have To Meet the Real Dragon, didn't you? Still think it a great book.

I do have it, have read it, and found it very interesting as I recall (it was about ten years ago I read it, I think).

My response was not a critique of Nishijima, but to the incoherence of the idea of meaningless matter; I mean people often imagine matter that way, but really meaningless matter, formless matter, is impossible.

I think the idea behind 'meaningless matter' is simply that matter (apparently) can be fully accounted for in terms of physical laws, which act with no intentionality or end in mind. It is an expression characteristic of philosophical materialism. Hylomorphic dualism harks back to Aristotle which does not have those assumptions.

Wouldn't the lawful behavior of matter already make it meaningful, though?

The universe is not merely matter; matter means nothing, can be nothing, unless it takes form. Meaning is inherent within form. How could there be form without meaning? — Janus

How can there be matter without form? There is no meaning without beings for whom things have meaning. Meaning is not inherent in form. Things can mean different things to different people. It is a matter of what we ascribe meaning to.

All this to say that one must convince oneself of one's religion; kid yourself into it, so to speak. — Banno

Not sure where the above fits in.

I'll just say if you're honestly aiming at a deeper understanding of religious notions and practices, anxiety is the key.

So you can follow Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling et al) to Freud (The Future of an Illusion et al) to Rollo May (The Meaning of Anxiety and Man's Search for Himself), Erich Fromm (Escape from Freedom et al) and Karen Horney (who links neurosis and the pursuit of glory (self-apotheosis, the nearest god to thee) in Neurosis and Human Growth).

Anxiety is the heart of it.

Anxiety facing the loss of the mother-father-womb archetype*, god as substitute for mother-father-womb. Anxiety as source of the heinous doctrine of original sin. Anxiety as anguish or spiritual suffering, god as the (imaginary? - it's unknown) healing friend. Increased anxiety in light of the infamous Death (murther! murther!) of God. Ritual, and sheepish conformity, as antidote for anxiety. Meditation as the result of and as antidote for anxiety.

To my view, without anxiety there could be no religion.


*It's no joke losing an archetype.
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The only conceivable antidote (thus saith the lord!) for universal anxiety? The Brotherhood of Man.* Whether heaven, houri or Utopia. Religion lets us dream, grounds our dreams, justifies hours spent dreaming of god and goodness. In our dreams of god and goodness - as in an hour of prayer or meditation** - we escape (soon to return) from our anxieties.




*Our Christmas vision.

**Meditation can decrease anxiety permanently. It's a gradual thing as brain wave patterns shift. There's a neuroscience behind that last sentence, it's Googlable.

Ok, so we have ritual, transcendent hierarchies and longing. — Banno

The notion of ritual is much criticized in some religions.

For example, in Buddhism, there is the cocept of silabbata-paramasa, usually translated as 'attachment to (grasping at) rites and rituals'. It is considered a fetter, an obstacle to spiritual advancement.

Rites don't purify the heart; skillful actions do: AN 10.176
Rituals alone can't take one beyond aging and death: Sn 5.3
Rites and protective charms should be avoided by lay followers: AN 5.175
The best protection comes not from rituals but from generous, moral, and wise actions: Khp 5
Water ablutions cannot wash away one's past bad kamma: Thig 12.1

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/index-subject.html#r

So either ritual cannot be part of what makes something a religion, or Buddhism isn't a religion.

There are more things than there are words! The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao! The named are things that are critical to our well-being and I mean those things that are both harmful and/or beneficial; that which is neither, our minds ignore for a good reason in my humble opinion viz. to nip information overload in the bud. We've evolved to sense only mates, prey and predators and anything else that gets caught in this sensory net, being the right size in a manner of speaking. — Agent Smith

Perfectly right. I never argue with what is supported by observation and logic, and if religion were the kind of thing that could be handled in this way, I would defer to readily.
But it's not. Evolution and its ideas and theories taken as a given. We have to understand that evolution is not a theory about what is. It is a theory about how it got here and has nothing to say about the qualitative conditions of our existence. That the hand has an opposable thumb is entirely an "accident". There is no "principle of evolution" in the world moving things forward.

Does it make sense to say one knows how things seem? Isn't it just that they seem? Any ratiocination is excessive. — Banno

Not if by "seem" one means 'pretend'.

Some people don't doubt their perceptual processes, but they doubt that other people and things are honest; they assume that they pretend, are treacherous, that they make themselves seem one thing, when they are actually something else.

So to "know what something seems" is to see through its pretense, its treachery.

There are non-religious approaches to that end. I think the utility is in binding tribes, which can offer well-being, but if well-being were essential then I think religions would be better at the task. There is no reason they couldn’t be better at it. — praxis

But religions have that dimension of the radical unknown, the metaphysics. I can think of many ways cultures take of the world and systems of thought as a utility, true, but religion is a "utility" or perhaps a complex heuristic (a provisional dealing with) that has as its object no object at all, and the constructed object, its rites and symbols, are these weird, threshold institutions that deal with this foundational position of our indeterminacy in all things. This is why philosophers like Quine and Wittgenstein would not dismiss religion. It's a metaphysical necessity, because the world is, beneath all of our affairs, indeterminate, especially indeterminate in value and ethics (Oh why are we born to suffer and die? is not an vacuous metaphysics).

There is no "principle of evolution" in the world moving things forward. — Constance

Now that humankind has appeared on the scene we can begin to evolve more consciously. Certainly this can be done on the individual level: this forum is evidence of a will to psychical evolution. It may be a Morlock-Eloiesque evolution, but it always is. We found an okay body so now we can start to upgrade our brains and imaginations, wordskills and emotional life. On to homo misteriosus.

What is the ape to man? A laughingstock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the superman. — Zarathustra

We've evolved to sense only mates, prey and predators and anything else that gets caught in this sensory net, being the right size in a manner of speaking. — Agent Smith

It seems to me that we evolved to sense the passage of time - of cause and effect - so that we may learn to predict when and where predators, prey and mates will be. It also seems to me survival is the perfect catalyst to learn more about the environment we live in and that we may migrate to (like space) to improve our chances at surviving in any environment. Natural seems to favor those species that can adapt to any environment.

Evolution and its ideas and theories taken as a given. We have to understand that evolution is not a theory about what is. It is a theory about how it got here and has nothing to say about the qualitative conditions of our existence. That the hand has an opposable thumb is entirely an "accident". There is no "principle of evolution" in the world moving things forward. — Constance

No. Evolution is happening now. As long as environments with organisms change, there will be selective pressures to adapt in some way to those changes. For things to happen by accident implies that there was a goal or purpose in things being a certain way that somehow wasn't - as if the universe has a goal or purpose as existing without the existence of opposable thumbs, yet it still happened anyway. It also implies that you know how the universe was suppose to be (without the existence of opposable thumbs) yet they exist despite how you know it was suppose to be. Nothing happens by accident. What happens now is dependent on what has happened before.

Does it make sense to say one knows how things seem? Isn't it just that they seem? Any ratiocination is excessive. — Banno

If you're using language to report that things seem, then you've already engaged in some kind of ratiocination. How language seems to the individual seems to include how that it is just more than scribbles on a page or sounds in the air - that they can be used - but only after careful ratiocination.

So the candidates for an anchor that seem most promising are ritual, transcendent hierarchies and longing.

The question which for me is central to the thread is now why science does not count as a religion, given these anchors. — Banno

Scientism does.
What usually passes for/as science is actually scientism anyway.

Depends on how you define religion.