Apologies, I mistook you for someone who might have an open mind. I’ll keep out of your way in future. — Wayfarer

Don't be afraid of my use of terms like 'woo woo BS.' I am open minded enough to allow any actually valid, rational, well reasoned, supported evidence you have for your claims. You are of course free to stop exchanging views with me anytime you choose, but I will remain available to you, should you find any 'better' evidence for your claims.

Or...

Philosophy is like a swamp. Swamps are for staying out of, in the first place, and for getting out of if you can in the second.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

[Chorus]
But I mean no harm, nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him. — a mother's son

Steven Pinker wrote a book on it….. — Wayfarer

Ehhhh……he’s a psychologist and a computationalist to boot, so not to be invited to the Cool Kids sandbox.

One is tempted by the analogue with a strange attractor, after ↪Count Timothy von Icarus, but even a strange attractor is rhythmic and predictable compared to the path of even a simple institution, or with the unpredictable events of a lifetime.

Take any pivotal life decision, be it moving to a distant city or committing to a partner or accepting a job offer. Everything changes, unpredictably, as a result of the decision. Because of this, while there may be a pretence of rationality, ultimately the decision is irrational. Not in the sense of going against reason, but in the sense of not being rationally justified. It is perhaps an act of hope, or desperation, or sometimes just whim.

And this not only applies to big choices, but to myriad small choices. Whether you have the cheese or the ham sandwich had best not be the subject of prolonged ratiocination.

Most of our choices are not rationally determined; and this is usually a good thing, lest we all become Hamlet

Yes, that is exactly the sort of analogy I have in mind. Attractors have been invoked as a more rigorous description of the mechanism of apparent "natural teleologies," in some cases.

Attractors can be found in complex systems filled with conscious agents. For example, businesses all make decisions about pricing separately, based on a rational assessment of their costs and profit margins, yet a general industry-wide inflation rate emerges as an attractor. Gradual changes in grammar and linguistic fluctuations have also been identified with attractors and spontaneous organization. What we choose to say and how we choose to say it is often something we focus on, an action with intentionality, and yet our individual choices are shaped by the larger dynamics of contemporary language. People simply don't talk the same way they did in 40 or 50 years ago, even the same individuals. Phrases come and go. Foot traffic also follows patterns of spontaneous self-organization.

Looking for market level attractors in the behaviors of a single firm or individual is simply looking in the wrong place. It's like trying to explain state change or turbulence by looking at a single molecule. You won't ever see the bigger picture looking at one individual, but the bigger picture is still shaping what the molecule does in a profound way.

I get that people find the "intelligent composite entities," thesis metaphysically dubious. It flies in the face of both our focus on the individual and tendencies towards reductionism. But, if the theory holds no water, why is it that models of higher level market data, models in international relations that treat the states as the deciding subject, etc. all are far more predictive of future observations than attempts to predict state behavior, future market prices, changes in consumption, etc. using analysis strictly of individuals? Why does the logic of an electoral system (e.g. winner take all, first past post) predict if it will produce a two party or multiparty system so well across cultures and times?

At least in IR, which I am most familiar with, psychological assessments of individual leaders are considered a dubious means of predicting state behavior, and are thought to be most relevant in autocracies, least relevant for liberal states. This is what you would expect in the "state as an emergent agent," thesis. You can't chart the path of an individual based on market attractors, but things like swings in regional housing prices, or surging structural unemployment in a given field, obviously shape individuals decisions to move to a given locale or which vocation they enter. When tons of GI's buy homes in suburbs due to incentives shaped by intentional government policy, that's individual life choices producing an output guided by an institutions explicit rationality.

Unfortunately, natural selection is the most well known complex systems process, and, for partly philosophical (and arguably dogmatic) reasons, it is drilled into students that natural selection does not involve final causes. Animals don't evolve because they want to. Evolution was supposed to be the great answer to questions of design and intentionality.

The problem with this view is that natural selection can be found everywhere, in all sorts of systems, and these systems often involve conscious agents. The creation of dog breeds is an example of natural selection, the enviornment shaping a species' genetic traits, that can only be explained in terms of the intentions of human agents. Likewise, when cultural norms effect how humans mate, we have agents' rational decisionmaking involved in selection.

There are arguments for natural selection in business survival, language, etc. All involved conscious entities and intentional decisions.

Wasn't really quoting him as a source, other than in an 'even Steve Pinker understands....' kind of way.

Your own words 'will become' in the context you use them, contradicts your 'time flows into the past' claim, 'will become' has not happened yet. The expansion of the universe allows for 'future' to exist as more 'distance' is created, which creates more 'time' or 'spacetime'. So the flow into the future is constant but can be experienced at different relative speeds, depending on observer reference frame (time dilation). — universeness

The expansion of the universe cannot be discussed in terms of "speed", or as you say "relative speed", because this is not considered to be a motion at all, or even the cause of any relative motion. If it were motion, then there would be motions faster than the speed of light, and that would contradict the premises employed in the detection of such "expansion". So it is incorrect to say that 'distance' is created. And physicists have no principles whereby they could explain or describe how spacetime could actual expand. "Expansion" is just a term they use to refer to what is unknown or confusing to them, as other terms like "dark energy" and "dark matter" are used in the same way, to refer to things which escape the predictive capacity of the hypothesis.

So it is your idea which is contradictory. And since you use reference to the unknown in your attempt to justify the real existence of the future, this just serves to demonstrate how faulty your premise is. You are claiming that it must be real because you can put a name to it like "spatial expansion".

And, you haven't shown how my words are contradictory. We can readily talk about non-existent things, your idea that things in the future must exist because we can talk about them is unfounded, and proven untrue through your own demonstration.

Yes, the end of the previous cycle, NO intentionality required. — universeness

So this is your real explanation? One cycle begins at the end of the previous cycle. How do you propose to determine the point which marks the beginning and end, when each point on the circle is the same as equidistance from the centre? That's why circular motion is said to be eternal. Your cyclical model really provides no reality for a beginning or end, just an assertion that the beginning of one cycle was the end of the previous cycle.

We could say the same thing about the present moment, the beginning of one moment is the end of another moment. There's nothing wrong with saying that. But unless we can determine a real boundary between moments, such statements are meaningless. As is your statement about the beginning and ending of cycles, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's absolutely meaningless.

No, the cause is the expansion of spacetime and it happens during every time unit. — universeness

There you go, reference to the unknown "expansion of spacetime", and your contradictory explanation of it, in your attempt to argue that something is known. The "expansion of spacetime", "dark energy", "dark matter" and such names, just refer to anomalies which are observed as an effect of the application of theory. Instead of recognizing that the observational data which is inconsistent with the applied hypothesis indicates that the applied hypothesis is incorrect, as a good scientist adhering to the principles of the scientific method ought to do, you simply give the anomalies names and pretend that these are real things that you can talk about.

How is that different from assigning the name "God", and pretending that God is a real thing we can talk about. Well, in your case there is a multitude of fictional things (gods) to talk about, one for each place the hypothesis fails, and each failing hypothesis, but in the case of theism, there is only one, "God".

And of course, you apply the fictional and meaningless "time unit". Until the real boundary to the proposed "unit" is demonstrated, this is meaningless nonsense in any ontology.

Philosophy is like a swamp. Swamps are for staying out of, in the first place, and for getting out of if you can in the second. — unenlightened

If you happen to stumble into the swamp, beware of the lurking alligator who has no desire to leave the swamp.

I have a strong intuition that you are unlikely to get very far trying to use reason to talk people out of a position they didn't arrive at through reason. — Tom Storm

Of course, I'm not saying that these mental tools are effective towards changing someone else's perspective and concepts, even though they are probably more effective than other forms of influences seen as they deconstruct and evaluate their perspectives and concepts without emotionally attacking them. But, these mental tools are effective when the entire group uses them. This is why I'm advocating for it being part of a cultural practice, something that is common practice, or at least common practice in situations that benefit from it. If society viewed it as common as a practice as a normal handshake between people, then deviances from it would be considered rude, especially in a sphere of debate.

So while being less observably effective against people that lack in this toolset, it is when all in a group uses it that it reaches its full potential.

You advocate your particular approach of reasoning because this is a fundamental value through which you already view life. Good for you and good luck trying to get others to agree. But are you essentially saying here: 'If everyone thought they way I do, the world would be better?' Don't most people think that, even the prodigiously irrational ones? — Tom Storm

It may sound like that since I used my own subjective perspective as an example, but that was merely to describe the experience of using it as well as the importance of calmness that it produces. The lowered stress levels in situations where people often get riled up and emotionally pressed (which usually also leads to further enforcing biases).

But this way of tackling reality in an internally distanced form is not just my own personal experience, it can be observed in many people. A sort of confirmation of this mental tool was when reading about Bertrand Russel's perspective on the matter. He advocates for a similar detachement and ability to spot biases, using a scientific approach to more areas and topics than just science:

None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error. The methods of increasing the degree of truth 18in our beliefs are well known; they consist in hearing all sides, trying to ascertain all the relevant facts, controlling our own bias by discussion with people who have the opposite bias, and cultivating a readiness to discard any hypothesis which has proved inadequate. These methods are practised in science, and have built up the body of scientific knowledge. Every man of science whose outlook is truly scientific is ready to admit that what passes for scientific knowledge at the moment is sure to require correction with the progress of discovery; nevertheless, it is near enough to the truth to serve for most practical purposes, though not for all. In science, where alone something approximating to genuine knowledge is to be found, men’s attitude is tentative and full of doubt. — Bertrand Russel

Trying to reeducate society along appropriate philosophical principles sounds totalitarian (I know that's not how you intended it) and is not going to happen, it's entering a speculative realm where I have little to contribute. :wink: — Tom Storm

But that is of course a valid point. How can society restructure itself without totalitarian powers pushing for such a change? Mostly a non-totalitarian change happens through collectively acknowledging a positive trait and way of life that then influence society and culture naturally and through the people's own will.

I think this is more a form cultural praxis that doesn't in itself hold any opinions or values. It's more of a toolset, a strategy of thinking, something that can be notably positive as a system in everyday use. People in a free society wouldn't just change into following this praxis on someone's demand or recommendation alone. People usually change into a new praxis because they recognize the value of it and then collectively raise children with this praxis as part of their culture. But they would only do so if it had a core positive value that is measurable.

I think that this system would benefit society and I hope that by showing the positive implications on the individual and society, people would want to use this mental toolset or mental strategy as part of everyday life. Not by forcefully reshaping culture, but by simply asking: do you see the benefit of this? Is this something you think would help you navigating the complexity of reality and society better? Is this something you think would benefit a group solving a problem or conceptualizing new ideas? Is this something you think would help mitigating and deescalating conflicts? If you think it might be so, it might be worth a try to use this way of thinking when conceptualizing, evaluating ideas, solving problems, debating topics, deescalating conflicts and forming strategies.

You use the metaphor of someone perusing a gallery at leisure, making calm, considered decisions. Trouble is, this is rarely what happens. Nor is is even ideally what happens. Organisations and individuals are embedded in a world in flux, were circumstances change spasmodically as often as smoothly, but also where the decision made changes the way things are. — Banno

I think the metaphor primarily is about being careful not to become an idea or concept. I.e we attach ourselves too heavily on what we believe, to a point where we are unable to defend the idea without defending our own identity, as well as when we defend our identity we start to defend the idea. Being a frozen rigid sculpture is the final form of our bias, unable to move, only to be easily examined by others. In a toxic debate, everyone is their own statue, some in groups against other groups, but no one is shifting, moving around, looking at each others ideas in different perspectives, we only see things two-dimensionally. Things can change, but nothing fundamentally changes if everyone is rock solid. Society can go through decades without change if no one starts to move around in that space examining all statues.

Take any pivotal life decision, be it moving to a distant city or committing to a partner or accepting a job offer. Everything changes, unpredictably, as a result of the decision. Because of this, while there may be a pretence of rationality, ultimately the decision is irrational. Not in the sense of going against reason, but in the sense of not being rationally justified. It is perhaps an act of hope, or desperation, or sometimes just whim.

And this not only applies to big choices, but to myriad small choices. Whether you have the cheese or the ham sandwich had best not be the subject of prolonged ratiocination.

Most of our choices are not rationally determined; and this is usually a good thing, lest we all become Hamlet. — Banno

It is primarily an approach to thinking when it is possible to be applied as well as something to fall back on when entering chaos. Careful people somewhat already takes a step back, they try to see the big picture and make informed decisions. But they do so without fully understanding how or why they do it, there's no framework for their internal process and it can lead to bias traps. Having a clearer strategy of the mind makes spotting biases easier. Imagine yourself in the gallery when making a pivotal life decision, you might be able to see an unintentional or unnoticed bias when making the choice to move to a new city. You are able to examine the reasons without falling into emotional reasoning since the reasons are there infront of you, not part of your identity. This detachement becomes a sort of inner interlocutor, you examine a statue, ask it questions and compare it to the others. In the pursuit of forming a grander overview and perspective of what the entire gallery is saying.

And of course, small choices doesn't have to be part of this. Mainly because this method focus on larger conceptualizations, ideas and knowledge. Smaller decisions mostly comes out of instinct and intuition that have roots in already established higher concepts.

Many of these instincts and intuitions are trained on the larger internalized concepts, which forms a framework around our identity. If we are constantly distancing ourselves from the concepts and ideas that are always in flux, we become better at changing our instincts and intuitions if they end up needing to be changed. Like, if your health requires you to stop eating too much cheese, people will still have problems changing these habit behaviors. By distancing yourself from how you value health versus eating cheese you might be able to restructure the instincts better and faster than trying by force, which often leads to people falling back on old habits (which in itself is a result of a certain bias).

In general, when and where you need to enter the gallery is a form of intuition in itself. The ability to know when the mental tool is needed is harder than using the tool itself. But a rule of thumb would be that whenever some concept or idea have conflicting parts and risks of destructive bias, training yourself not to initially fall into either of those conflicting parts and instead enter the gallery to review them as the first step in a thought process.

But essentially, this mental toolset is for the higher concepts, the complex ideas, values, ideologies, solutions to complex problems and most critically when approaching others who has conflicting ideas to yours. If you and the one you debate against are together moving around the gallery and examining each other's ideas and concepts, you are both acting as researchers evaluating each others concepts instead of getting stuck in defensive arguments based on each others biases. If you both are equally good at using this method, there won't be any real conflicts, fist fights or inabilities to reach a higher place of understanding. While both might not reach agreement, you both learn and increase a better understanding of not only the opposite idea, but also your own. It is beneficial for both in either way, as well as promoting a calmer way of dealing with conflicting ideas in society. Even being able to acknowledge each others emotional investment in each idea as being their own statues, leads to understanding the emotional aspect of an idea and how it affects each other's reasoning.

The full effect is in play if all participants follow the same mental strategy when existing in conflicting positions.

Then there are heuristics. ↪Jamal is somewhat dismissive of cutlery, but it does make eating easier, not to mention smoothing the social aspects of the table. It's usually not possible to see the bigger picture, to understand the furthest consequences of one's choices, and even when one does, as perhaps was the case with the beginning of the arms race, the problem can be intractable, or at the least appear so. Sometimes the best one can hope for is to be able to sort stuff out in the long run. So we rely on heuristics. — Banno

Cutlery doesn't remove the risk of messy eating, only that eating generally becomes less messy.

Any toolset cannot be the final best toolset. We don't know the final form of the best hammer, only that we have a pretty good concept of what a good hammer is after all iterations so far. The way I think of these mental tools is an extension of Bertrand Russel's ideas, without me even knowing so when I started thinking about them. It may be because his ideas influenced modern science, modern culture, and modern philosophy to the point that as being part of this culture I naturally use his ideas and built upon them.

I can only hope I add something valuable in doing so, something that further iterate on the mental tools he promoted.

↪Tom Storm pointed to the tension between wanting ethics to be taught while being suspicious of the impact of self reflection. Part of the trouble is, despite the pretence, we can not, do not, and ought not make all our decisions only after due ratiocination. — Banno

I think forming an instinct out of knowing when to use the method is key. In general, whenever something is at risk of negative bias, whenever an idea or concept is at risk of being destroyed by bias, it warrants entering the gallery. Like being able to almost feel that bias follows where I'm going, so I can tread lightly so as to not be turned to stone.

Ahhhh, ok, gotcha.

If it were motion, then there would be motions faster than the speed of light — Metaphysician Undercover

No, there would only be 'relative motions' which are faster than the speed of light, no actual 3d point in the universe is moving away from its adjacent points at faster than light speed. But the notional 'leading edge' of the expansion may be relatively moving away from a local, gravitationally bound, non-expanding galaxy like the milkyway, at faster that light speed.

"Expansion" is just a term they use to refer to what is unknown or confusing to them, as other terms like "dark energy" and "dark matter" are used in the same way, to refer to things which escape the predictive capacity of the hypothesis. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well there is the evidence from spectroscopy of redshift, there is the CMB (for expansion evidence) and there are the Hawking points suggested by Roger Penrose, which may provide evidence of an earlier Aeon.
I assume your preferred word for what is unknown or confusing to you is 'intentionality,' or perhaps even god and you believe that is more rational than expansion, dark energy and dark matter. :roll:

One cycle begins at the end of the previous cycle. How do you propose to determine the point which marks the beginning and end, when each point on the circle is the same as equidistance from the centre? That's why circular motion is said to be eternal. Your cyclical model really provides no reality for a beginning or end, just an assertion that the beginning of one cycle was the end of the previous cycle. — Metaphysician Undercover

What 'circle' are you imagineering? Chaos <------> Order, by-directional, time resets, the cycle could be an oscillation, no circular imagineering required. The state of 'singularity' can be the placeholder for the beginning and end, as it is in the current big bang model.

How is that different from assigning the name "God", and pretending that God is a real thing we can talk about. Well, in your case there is a multitude of fictional things (gods) to talk about, one for each place the hypothesis fails, and each failing hypothesis, but in the case of theism, there is only one, "God". — Metaphysician Undercover

You can choose to label the big bang singularity state, god or intentionality, if you choose to, but it's god as a mindless spark, no intentionality required.

If you happen to stumble into the swamp, beware of the lurking alligator who has no desire to leave the swamp. — Metaphysician Undercover

Don't forget the swamp people who live there and get filmed for their TV show called ....... no surprise ..... Swamp people:

I just felt that philosophy defined so generally or neutrally, and without the critical aspect (in the sense of social critique), was somewhat anemic. — Jamal

Dewey and other pragmatists (e.g. George Herbert Mead), proposed that philosophy should be applied to the resolution of social problems. I don't know if they engaged in "social critique" as you define it, though.

It's important to remind ourselves that strange attractors can be either a description, or a metaphor. SO, to take on your example, the market is not a strange attractor. Some of it's behaviour may be described using the mathematics of strange attractors; and the looping behaviour of a strange attractor may be a neat metaphor that helps us picture market behaviour. But the market is the market.

I was not able to follow your discussion of natural selection. Dog breeding is not an example of natural selection - quite the opposite. We are able to use selection to our own ends. But what was the point fo raising the topic?

That intentionality effects genetic selection. If dog breeding isn't natural selection than either humans are supernatural, magic, or all mutualism, parasitism, symbiosis, is not natural selection.

Terminology. I, and I think this is the standard view in biology, would differentiate between "selective breeding' and "natural selection", reserving the latter term for genetic change within a natural environment.

But I'm still not seeing a connection with the OP or the sideline on ratiocination.

But, these mental tools are effective when the entire group uses them. This is why I'm advocating for it being part of a cultural practice, something that is common practice, or at least common practice in situations that benefit from it. — Christoffer

I get that and while I don't disagree with the principles you outline - there is also the big problem that what you suggest is not going to happen and is effectively like suggesting if we all behaved like Gandhi (or insert idealised human being of your preference), there'd be world peace and love all about us. Which may well be true. But 'if' is a monumental hurdle. Anyway - no point going on about it as it's off topic. :wink:

So this is a thread about criticising religion. A ways back I started a thread on what religion was. I ended up with the notion that included ritual, transcendence and hope as central to the notion of religion.

Either that, or nothin'.

So given that, what is it that philosophy is supposed to be questioning?

One way of flipping things around is to notice that the heuristics of philosophy, the cutlery, might be considered as ritual. That seems the thrust of @Jamal's critique: that in invoking tools one is reducing philosophy to a religion.

@Wayfarer would put transcendence in the prime position. The trouble there is saying anything truthful. Such arguments are in danger of becoming either mere ritual again, or nonsense.

And Hope - I suppose that's what Pinker, and Timothy, is on about.

Wayfarer would put transcendence in the prime position. The trouble there is saying anything truthful. Such arguments are in danger of becoming either mere ritual again, or nonsense. — Banno

I see transcendence as central to religion,, and ritual, although prominent in many religious contexts, is not so in all, as I said earlier in this thread. As I also said earlier there is some ritual in nearly all aspects of human life. I think hope goes hand in hand with the notion of transcendence when it comes to religion.

You are correct. Although both terms are used, more so "natural selection," in terms of initial domestication, and "selective breeding," in terms of ongoing efforts. You see both in the self-domestication literature, even for humans. I like to think of "selective-breeding," as a subtype of natural selection guided by intelligent agents who are aware of how the breeding fulfills their goals, since humans are part of nature, if that makes sense? The division seems somewhat artificial. Archaic man didn't know a lot of things, but presumably they knew what they were doing when breeding docile animals to each other, even if the initial self-domestication happened without human intentionality. That children resemble parents seems to have been understood since the beginning of history.

To circle back, I don't think markets as a whole would be attractors, the attractors would show up in phenomena like general inflation or deflation rates. Individual prices are generally determined by individual vendors based on intentional analytical reflection about their business, but in a period of general inflation the behavior of most vendors is slowly attracted towards a common % increase in the price level across a given sector. The common behavior doesn't undercut the fact that individuals planning price changes are being very intentional. I haven't seen as much work making this claim for the phenomena of market equilibrium (harder to define quantitatively), but I assume someone has made that connection.

The point about the need to include institutional agency to explain social-historical phenomena is too far afield for this topic. I will make another thread about it when I have time and can dig out old sources so it doesn't seem like total speculation (or at least not just my own speculation lol).

Wayfarer would put transcendence in the prime position. The trouble there is saying anything truthful. Such arguments are in danger of becoming either mere ritual again, or nonsense. — Banno

I've just realised what the missing word is in nearly all these debates: it is esotericism. Here, I was going to say something about the content of esoteric philosophy, but really it will suffice just to call it out.

I just listened to a lecture on Lloyd Gerson's most recent book Platonism vs Naturalism: the Possibility of Philosophy. In passing, the lecturer mentions that in this book, Gerson deals with the more esoteric aspects of Platonic philosophy, which are often omitted from other sources. Whereas it is precisely those aspects that most interest me. (A book that @Fooloso4 has mentioned a few times comes to mind, Philosophy Between the Lines, although I haven't read it.)

I got interested in philosophy through my encounter with Eastern philosophy, which is often esoteric. ('Upaniṣad' is derived from the term for 'up close', i.e. they are teachings given directly from master to student. Not that I myself have actually been 'up close' but the kinds of ideas found in The Teachings of Ramana Maharishi, for example, are derived from those in the Upaniṣads.) Whereas esotericism is almost entirely walled off from 20th century English-speaking philosophy. If it can't be expressed in plain language, well then, not really a suitable subject for discussion - nonsense, in fact. (I suspect that the influence of Gilbert Ryle is writ large in all this although those other names you frequently mention like Austin and Davidson would be like-minded, I'm sure.)

Anyway, now at least I've come to recognise this - only took 10 years.

Interesting. Yes, the word esotericism was used in Theosophical groups I knew many years ago. People went off it, I suspect, because it became a synonym for the eccentric and off beat. I personally think that subjects like Gnosticism, neoplatonism, Sufi mysticism are less esoteric now than they were considered to be 30-40 years ago. But we also lost the counterculture and split off into a myriad of sub-cultures.

There's that quote from Baba Ram Dass, with which you may agree:

In mystical traditions, it is one's own readiness that makes experiences exoteric or esoteric. The secret isn't that you're not being told. The secret is that you're not able to hear.
- Baba Ram Dass

I think this quote (its sentiment being critical in the conversations we used to hold) crystallises how many might consider what is essentially the ineffable demarcation in this subject, between finding meaning and loosing yourself in meaninglessness. Or something like this.

Well, there are the obvious problems of esotericism, which we perhaps need not list. It's pretty much anathema to the Western Tradition.

But who wouldn't be the Hermit, leaving mundane concerns behind to seek illumination; then perchance to be Zarathustra, edifying the masses...

But that's not how things work. It so often is more about buying that hundredth Rolls-Royce and fucking the underaged.

...the ineffable demarcation... — Tom Storm

The demarcation is that the esoteric is identified with religion, and religion has a meaning that is culturally specific. So to venture into the esoteric is to push a lot of buttons - hence 'defensive materialism'. This is held by those not consciously advocating for scientific materialism per se, maybe not even knowing what it really is, but it is a kind of default, because the alternative is identified as being associated with religion - and that, we could never admit, because

It so often is more about buying that hundredth Rolls-Royce and fucking the underaged. — Banno

Splendid illustration, thank you.

The question we used to ask ourselves in this space is how do you tell the difference between the genuine esoteric (which is truthful) and that which leads to Rolls Royces and the underaged? Answer - there's no reliable way. It is instructive to see the extent to which materialism (the riches of consumer capitalism) seem to be valued by gurus and sages.

I knew folk involved in Siddha Yoga who used to have mystical experiences when Gurumayi came to town. Such visits were also breathless, orgiastic festivals of, 'She looked at me, she looked at me!' more in keeping with Beatlemania, including the requisite merchandising - books, videos, posters, t-shirts, etc. I found the entire thing decidedly shonky and the adherents ended up no happier, no less materialistic than before they decided they had penetrated the esoteric. But I guess this does not mean the is no esoteric to 'know'.

there's no reliable way. — Tom Storm

Well, to be sure, there is, by following the teachings and becoming enlightened—or not. That is, that the Guru fucks children does not in itself mean that their teaching is wrong - just that they themselves are immoral. And that's indicative of the whole shonky logic of the enterprise. Technically, they are closed off from criticism by statements that are neither verifiable nor falsifiable and hence immune to critique, but on top of that there is the additional layer of concealment inherent in there being an "inner circle" - you don't know what you are getting in to.

It's dishonest all the way down.

No better illustration of the kind of prejudice I'm referring to. Esotericism is essential to philosophy proper, but it's culturally subversive and so, often concealed, as a hidden layer of meaning in the texts themselves.

The jacket copy of the book referred to above Philosophy Between the Lines:

Philosophical esotericism—the practice of communicating one’s unorthodox thoughts “between the lines”—was a common practice until the end of the eighteenth century. The famous Encyclopédie of Diderot, for instance, not only discusses this practice in over twenty different articles, but admits to employing it itself. The history of Western thought contains hundreds of such statements by major philosophers testifying to the use of esoteric writing in their own work or others’. Despite this long and well-documented history, however, esotericism is often dismissed today as a rare occurrence. But by ignoring esotericism, we risk cutting ourselves off from a full understanding of Western philosophical thought.

More than risk. It's fait accompli.

Esotericism is essential to philosophy proper... — Wayfarer

"Philosophy proper" - the sort of philosophy done by true Scotsmen?

That it was practiced does not mean that it was good practice.

The secrets hidden by the inner circle of the Pythagoreans allegedly included the existence of irrational numbers, hidden for fear of undermining the theoretical basis of the Pythagorean world view, hidden to avoid critique.

The rejection of esotericism is not mere prejudice. Openness, exotericism, is central to a rational attitude.

It's central to modern democratic liberalism, that's for sure. Whatever wisdom the crowds can muster. A large part of which is the heritage of Christian belief.

Christian belief — Wayfarer

Which is layers upon layers of syncretic Greco-Roman mystery cults, gnostic ideas, and the appropriations (and taking out of context) of both Judaic understandings and Homeric literature to create the legendary Jesus.

I go further and argue that it is central to rationality. Rationality is a community enterprise, public and shared. Openness goes hand in hand with critique.

That this coincides with liberal values is a result of those values having been developed as rationality was being explicated, in the light of the flowering of scientific methods.

I notice you have not presented any argument as to the benefits of esotericism...

Again, that esotericism is done is a long way from that it ought be done.