our tone has sometimes been, from my POV, too much on preachy / condescending side. I view us as doing something like science here. When you bash Wittgenstein (a primary influence on this thread), you sound a bit crankish (a bit envious-bitter maybe of the fame of the charismatic man .) And you speak of Russell thinking Wittgenstein was a fool, but that's contrary to the well known details of their story. I've read biographies of both. And this is not a matter of my sentimental attachment. If you recklessly speak contrary to the facts or tear down the 'mighty dead,' then that's a stumblingblock to your credibility. You ought to explain how all the other shrewd readers could be so silly as to get things so wrong. — plaque flag
The world is not just thought. Thought is merely something like its intelligible structure. — plaque flag
I see this as an opinion since you cannot prove it. I would suggest it's an unnecessary assumption,and that it's best not to make it. Cartesian doubt and all that. I feel it's best to start with verifiable facts and build on this foundation. — FrancisRay
But I'd say it's metaphorically nothing, unless that 'nothing' is supposed to point at the framework character of space and time. — plaque flag
Note that I'm not claiming to be a Buddhist. Instead I'm getting a more universal (perennial?) idea of transcendence in terms of detachment. The world becomes a spectacle. We get 'distance' on it. We find ourselves less 'immersed in the object.'
. As far as I can tell, there's not much more to be sought or had than the continual re-attainment of an always fragile state of grace or play. We always fall off the horse again, find ourselves petty and resentful, or just tormented by a health issue, or forced to deal with a dangerous situation where stress (tho never panic) is appropriate.
Do we agree on this ? Or do you find something that radically 'cures' life in what you call mysticism?
You speak of 'verifiable facts,' but it's hard to make sense of such a phrase in the light of the assumption that only thought exists. We can roughly identity thought here with signitive intention (empty or unfulfilled or unchecked hypothesis or picture of the world). Then a fulfilled intention is us going and looking at the situation. I see that there are two eggs in the fridge. Color, shape, the cool feeling of them in my hand, the crack sound as I smack them against a cast iron edge. — plaque flag
It cannot be explained by Western thinkers, so they believe metaphysics is incomprehensible. It is explained in the perennial philosophy and in a very simple way, but most philosophers don't think this solution is worth studying .It;s an area of philosophy left blank and marked 'Here be dragons', and this is considered a rational approach to philosophy. . . .. — FrancisRay
https://www.britannica.com/topic/positivismThe basic affirmations of positivism are (1) that all knowledge regarding matters of fact is based on the “positive” data of experience and (2) that beyond the realm of fact is that of pure logic and pure mathematics. Those two disciplines were already recognized by the 18th-century Scottish empiricist and skeptic David Hume as concerned merely with the “relations of ideas,” and, in a later phase of positivism, they were classified as purely formal sciences. On the negative and critical side, the positivists became noted for their repudiation of metaphysics—i.e., of speculation regarding the nature of reality that radically goes beyond any possible evidence that could either support or refute such “transcendent” knowledge claims. In its basic ideological posture, positivism is thus worldly, secular, antitheological, and antimetaphysical. Strict adherence to the testimony of observation and experience is the all-important imperative of positivism.
To me it seems you are underestimating Western philosophy. The greats have not feared to charge the edges of the map. — plaque flag
The basic affirmations of positivism are (1) that all knowledge regarding matters of fact is based on the “positive” data of experience and (2) that beyond the realm of fact is that of pure logic and pure mathematics. Those two disciplines were already recognized by the 18th-century Scottish empiricist and skeptic David Hume as concerned merely with the “relations of ideas,” and, in a later phase of positivism, they were classified as purely formal sciences. On the negative and critical side, the positivists became noted for their repudiation of metaphysics—i.e., of speculation regarding the nature of reality that radically goes beyond any possible evidence that could either support or refute such “transcendent” knowledge claims. In its basic ideological posture, positivism is thus worldly, secular, antitheological, and antimetaphysical. Strict adherence to the testimony of observation and experience is the all-important imperative of positivism.
This is exactly the sort of approach that I would warn everybody to avoid. If we do philosophy like this we will become lost forever in a muddle of ideas and details. — FrancisRay
:up:But please don't think the sceptical rational approach is at fault in any way. It;s t he approach I take. I;m suggesting that this approach demands a study of mysticism, and that it this is avoided it is not a sceptical rational approach. — FrancisRay
this passage is typical of the hopelessness of western academic philosophy. It depends on the idea that metaphysics is incomprehensible,and we might as well just speculate wildly and in all sorts of complex ways and make life hell for students of the subject. — FrancisRay
But I can't back them up without presenting an argument and this means going back to the undecidability of metaphysical questions. . . — FrancisRay
It's not my approach that is backwards, it's the approach you think I'm taking. I'm just doing philosophy the usual way. A plausible theory must be proved in logic, not just wafted around as an idea. — FrancisRay
I should have made it clear that I think most of western philosophy is also a waste of time. Nobody claims to understand philosophy and it just just goes round and round in circles. In the perennial tradition people who don't understand the topic don't write about it. . . . — FrancisRay
This attitude looks arrogant and deluded to others, since most people think they know that philosophy cannot be understood and is like quantum mechanics, such that anyone who claims to understand it must be unable to understand it. — FrancisRay
We get distance by detachment, although oddly we also get closeness. But this detachment indicates an underlying truth, which is that there is nothing from which to become detached. It is all illusion, and when we see this we are finally and fully detached. The practice of detachment helps us to achieve it, but to fully achieve it requires enlightenment and an understanding of phenomena. — FrancisRay
I once spoke on the phone with George Spencer Brown, a colleague of Russell's, and asked him why Russell had been unable to see the meaning of Brown's book Laws of Form,, which is of vast importance in metaphysics.,despite praising it as presenting a valuable new calculus. He replied in a friendly and wistful tone, 'Ah, Bertie was a fool'. This does appear to be the explanation and it is my view also. — FrancisRay
The point for me though is that we cannot understand philosophy unless we can see the mistakes made by Russell and Wittgenstein that prevented then from doing so, and once we have done so they do appear rather foolish. If I make any bold remarks that look naive or deluded then you can always ask me to put my money where my mouth is and justify them. — FrancisRay
Aesthetically, the miracle is that the world exists. That what exists does exist.
....
This is the way I have travelled: Idealism singles men out from the world as unique, solipsism singles me alone out, and at last I see that I too belong with the rest of the world, and so on the one side nothing is left over, and on the other side, as unique, the world. In this way idealism leads to realism if it is strictly thought out.
Is belief a kind of experience?
Is thought a kind of experience?
All experience is world and does not need the subject. — Witt : Notebooks
That metaphysical questions are undecidable is also my view. As soon as we say anything like "reality is mind-dependent' or 'being is nothing but consciousnes' we have gone off-track.
Distinctions begin with consciousness. — Janus
they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. ...The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. ... The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind... — Hume
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta...there is in reality no duality between the "experiencing self" (jiva) and Brahman, the Ground of Being.
According to Ram-Prasad, "it" is not an object, but "the irreducible essence of being [as] subjectivity, rather than an objective self with the quality of consciousness."[122]
The jivatman or individual self is a mere reflection of singular Atman in a multitude of apparent individual bodies.[9] It is "not an individual subject of consciousness,"[120] but the same in each person and identical to the universal eternal Brahman,[128] a term used interchangeably with Atman.[129]
Atman is often translated as soul,[note 25] though the two concepts differ significantly, since "soul" includes mental activities, whereas "Atman" solely refers to detached witness-consciousness.
...there is in reality no duality between the "experiencing self" (jiva) and Brahman, the Ground of Being. — plaque flag
I interpret that to mean that consciousness is not separate from being, not that consciousness is being or that being is consciousness through and through. — Janus
It seems to me that to say distinctions begin with consciousness is to articulate a phenomenological observation based on reflection on a question: to wit 'how could there be a distinction without consciousness'? — Janus
I say it means that consciousness cannot stand or exist apart from being. — Janus
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