You could explain what it would mean for something to be non-analysable, and how that would be distinct from it being poorly analysed or nonsensical. — Reformed Nihilist
where the circularity is hidden by referring to 'you' and 'it' as though they are different, while at the same time demanding that they not be different.Wouldn't you want to change it to whatever you preferred, and then leave it that way
So whether you agree with this or not, it indicates a general form of radical necessary circularity that frustrates the attempt at analysis. This is what my needlessly complex framing was intended to demonstrate about your
Wouldn't you want to change it to whatever you preferred, and then leave it that way
where the circularity is hidden by referring to 'you' and 'it' as though they are different, while at the same time demanding that they not be different. — unenlightened
My position is that this radical circularity applies to any analysis of the analyser, that is to say to all psychology, and to all analysis of interiority and consciousness. This is not an appeal to irrationality, to nonsense, or to despair. It is simply to say that the understanding of the psyche must proceed otherwise than the understanding of the world at large. — unenlightened
Having said that, using terminology like "spirutuality" has connotations, and historically those connotations include a "something else" that is not just different than the body, but different from everything we know, and the reason we even seem to have this conception is that we never used to know just how much the brain/body did in terms of our perceptions and sense of self. Have a look at some of the links in my earlier discussion in this thread, if you haven't. It is very compelling stuff regarding the brain being the source of stuff that used to cause philosophers of the mind all kinds of problems. — Reformed Nihilist
Even if I accepted that theories of truth are un-analyzable, (which I don't, because, among other things, you clearly are offering an analysis of theories of truth in your first paragraph), then how do you then get from there to "the understanding of the psyche must proceed otherwise than the understanding of the world at large". — Reformed Nihilist
The truth isn't un-analysable. If we say that the truth is the condition of a statement, then there's nothing wrong with that statement also being true. — Reformed Nihilist
I really feel that these describe pretty much all of the outcomes of these types of discussions. Is that your experience too? — Reformed Nihilist
The essential distinction is between following and finding your own way, I believe.I'm suggesting that the way that the word is commonly used today, in the "I'm spiritual, but not religious" sort of way, ends up not being as distinct and separate from religion as the utterer is intending. I'm saying that it's analogous to saying "he's not fat, he's full bodied". When you dig into the claim, you find that it's essentially the same thing, just without a connotation that the speaker doesn't like. So although I have them, my point here isn't to make judgments about the value of engaging in spirituality or religion, but just to clarify what, or even if, there is a meaningful distinction between the traditional, religious use of "spiritual" and the more modern, ostensibly secular meaning. — Reformed Nihilist
I'm suggesting that the way that the word is commonly used today, in the "I'm spiritual, but not religious" sort of way, ends up not being as distinct and separate from religion as the utterer is intending. I'm saying that it's analogous to saying "he's not fat, he's full bodied". When you dig into the claim, you find that it's essentially the same thing, just without a connotation that the speaker doesn't like. So although I have them, my point here isn't to make judgments about the value of engaging in spirituality or religion, but just to clarify what, or even if, there is a meaningful distinction between the traditional, religious use of "spiritual" and the more modern, ostensibly secular meaning. I hope that clarifies, because the quoted post seems to characterize me as grinding an axe or intentionally blindfolding myself to an area of inquiry. — Reformed Nihilist
Here I don't agree with your argument, 'the reason we even seem to have this conception...' You're placing yourself in the Dennett/Dawkins argument here, that you the scientific sympathiser somehow know better about the origins of spiritual feelings - or 'conceptions' - than people who believe in the spiritual; and that spiritual knowing is in some way in competition with scientific knowing, so then as scientific knowing becomes supposedly more 'successful', so spiritual knowing should accept its comparative failure. — mcdoodle
The essential distinction is between following and finding your own way, I believe.
This is a meaningful distinction because a major issue with religion is in its power to influence, and unfortunately power seems to corrupt pretty reliably.
A critique of finding your own way might be that doesn't have the power to unite people in common values and purpose. — praxis
Are you sure you aren't just making a commentary on people who claim to be spiritual but not religious (Because I agree that would be an accurate description of them). — Reformed Nihilist
But what I think your posts convey is that you're cautiously open-minded towards the possibility of there being 'spiritual truths' but that in effect they are so hard to distinguish from religious dogmas that you can't accept them on those grounds. — Wayfarer
I find truth without any categoricals works for me. That shouldn't matter though, as I'm not so much trying to determine the value of spiritualism as a practice, but more probing the coherence of the idea when separated from religious presuppositions. — Reformed Nihilist
Actually, a wikipedia entry that is nearer the mark is that on higher consciousness. — Wayfarer
(and that's a line with a citation).It embraces the idea of an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality — Wikipedia
Are there similarly good reasons for conceiving of spirituality this way? If so, please elaborate. — Reformed Nihilist
So, a bit of meta- psychological pontification.
Folks have always had, and continue to have, a folk psychology, otherwise known as a 'theory of mind'. Such theories are culturally informed by religion, philosophy romantic tradition, notions of gender identity and so on. My psychological theory affects how I experience others and how I behave with them. I treat you all so badly because my theory of mind tells me you are are all as horrible and pathetic as I am, however well you hide it.
Now even without the benefit of a university course, everyone here has a notion of what Freudian is what behaviourism is and so on. It may be vague, but it enters the psyche along with all that advertising and propaganda some to be dismissed, and some absorbed. So it is not to be wondered at that the techniques of the shrinks not only enter into the schemes of advertisers and politicians but also into the interactions of philosophers in discussion forums. I started with an advert, because it is paradigmatic, but it is only a simplistic and transparent example of what has become a way of life, a pervasive form of our culture.
There is a knot here; put very simply the theory of psyche is part of the psyche. It is as if the fundamental particles of physics changed their properties according to which laws of physics they decided to adopt. Psychologists have changed the way we think, the way we see, our whole culture, and in doing so, they give rise to a new psyche which needs a new theory. Fashion in psychology mirrors the fashion of youth that always has to be different to that of the previous generation. Today one talks of neural plasticity, and it is neural plasticity that makes this talk possible. — unenlightened
Which simply reaffirms the point that I was making - that your reason for rejecting 'spirituality' is that it is too near religion.I'll just restate in that context that there seems to be an attempt to talk about something that is separate and distinct from religion, while still including all the foundational suppositions of religion. — Reformed Nihilist
The hand cannot grasp itself, but it can grasp another hand. The eye cannot see itself, but it can see another eye. It implies that 'the act of grasping' and 'the act of seeing' relies on a relationship of 'otherness' - the eye can see, and the hand grasp, something other to itself, whether that is a hand or an eye. But it can't see itself or grasp itself. This is an analogy for what is required in understanding the nature of being, as being (and incidentally, we are called 'beings') is never an object of perception. This is from the Upanisads, the canonical reference is here.Even the notion that the eye can't see itself seems to willfully ignore the existence of mirrors. — Reformed Nihilist
I feel like you're trying to go for a "the eye cannot see itself" idea here, but if the thing (or one of the things) that the psyche does is makes conceptual models, then why can't it make one of itself? I'm still missing a step or two here.
And also still fuzzy on how the psyche relates to the previously described spirituality. Does the other thread give insight into that? I haven't had time to dig into that yet. — Reformed Nihilist
Which simply reaffirms the point that I was making - that your reason for rejecting 'spirituality' is that it is too near religion. — Wayfarer
Regarding the quotation 'alleged immaterial reality' - this could be understood as 'the attempt to depict something which is exceedingly hard to perceive, by those who don't perceive it, and therefore doubt it's reality.' — Wayfarer
Perhaps that is where I'm finding the discussion particularly difficult, that you want me to dispel the fuzziness, and I cannot. The eye can see an image of the eye, we know we have eyes and see things, but the more one analyses vision, into wavelengths of reflected light, light-sensitive cells, electrical impulses, and computation, the more one loses any understanding that we see the world at all; either there must be a homunculus watching a screen in our heads, or there is just a buzzing of brain cells with nobody there at all. In this case it is clear that vision emerges from all this brain-science and optics, but isn't there at all in the constituents, so the analysis inevitably misses its target, which does not mean that it isn't valuable to understand the components, but does mean that one cannot resolve vision into direct, or indirect realism or idealism, or irrealism, at least, not by analysis. — unenlightened
You frame the conception to fit the job. I just don't see what job is best suited to the framing you're proposing. — Reformed Nihilist
Education, social cohesion, politics, personal relations. We turn the analytical gaze onto the material, and we come up with all this amazing stuff, transport, communication devices, new etc etc. We turn it on ourselves and we come up with what? Increasing mental illness increasing stress and unhappiness, poorer education, less stable societies, more isolation. And these latter are all fuzzy things to the extent that they can be denied, so I won't be trying to convince you if you see things differently. — unenlightened
But I see it so - I see a crisis of developing material control, and loss of personal control, and the proliferation of self-help coaching counselling therapeutic nonsense is symptomatic of the same depersonalising scientistic view with added advertising woo. If the job is machines, precision and no fluff; if the job is people, something very different is required. — unenlightened
...there is way more evidence regarding how things like identity, personality and perception work than there was in the past, and some of it accounts for things that were previously accounted for by what was called a soul or spirit. So I don't know if you're saying the evidence is wrong, or that there's something else that takes precedence over the evidence or that there is a different way of looking at the evidence. — Reformed Nihilist
What makes you think that this is specifically is the result of a materialist worldview? — Reformed Nihilist
I don't see modern advances in work on 'identity' and 'personality', though. What sort of thing do you mean? Could you be specific? — mcdoodle
I would tend to cite the arts - painting, sculpture, drama, novels and poetry - as influencing how I feel about identity and personality, which is not exactly 'evidence' in the way you're speaking of it. That's why I lean towards spirituality as having something to say to me, because the aesthetic has something to say to me, and for me to express through it, and the realms of understanding seem to be akin. Daniel Kahneman, for instance, has keen insights into how we think, but there aren't many of him per generation, compared to the insightful creative writers, and he does come to a sort of limit in his puzzlement over why we are the way we are. (But I've been a fiction writer, perhaps that's just my bias, I don't know) — mcdoodle
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Here's what I'm getting out of this: You enjoy art. You enjoy spirituality (whatever that means to you), and you anjoy the work of Daniel Kahneman. You see value in all of these things. If that's what you're saying, then good on you. I just don't see how that's relevant to what I'm saying. — Reformed Nihilist
The case for personality is easy to make. People have traumatic brain injuries and their personalities change. Which part of the brain is predictive of what sort of personality change will occur. That's something that happens, and makes a pretty strong case for the brain being the sole seat of personality. — Reformed Nihilist
I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.. — Tintern Abbey
All I'm telling you is how I weigh different considerations, in what I see as a contrast to how you weigh different things. You're not seeing it as relevant because you weigh things in a different way, which you regard as self-evident (just as I do mine!) and you're puzzled that I wouldn't accord the same weight as you do to different considerations. That's my take on that, anyway. I think you are having the same difficulty with un, because you have a sort of instinctively-scientific manner of speaking. I don't mean I and un have the same views, we are quite different, but in this respect the issues are the same. — mcdoodle
Modern blindsight and Anton-Baninski syndrome are (a) still mysteries - why does a person invent such a story? and (b) not clear guides, at least not to me, about anything but the specific problems themselves. — mcdoodle
But I see when you move on to identity more clearly what you mean. Here though your argument seems more to be against subjectivity than against spirituality. — mcdoodle
Perhaps it would be plainer if I just quoted Wordsworth, as a for-instance, of the sort of spirituality I'm groping to say I embrace:: — mcdoodle
So to you, spiritual is synonymous with profound? If so, why not use that term instead of one laden with metaphysical baggage (same question I asked un)?
I feel like I'm getting jumped on for saying "whatever you call spirituality is wrong and bad, because I don't like whatever it is you like", and I'm saying no such thing. — Reformed Nihilist
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