Thanks to the scriptures we still know what we are supposed to be and how we are supposed to behave. It is a fantastic tool against the manipulative narrative of the ruling mafia. They handsomely benefit from growing depravity. We don't. — Tarskian

I missed this. I beg to differ: Scriptures are ancient thoughts about a time of very different social entanglements. It simply is not helpful today, and what is found that is helpful is helpful because it works, not because scriptures say it is right.

The ruling mafia? I like that. Scriptures, speaking generally, stand as a remedy that issues form a higher moral authority, one that will not be gainsaid. AND, this is exactly what the OP is all about: Scriptures are historical documents that lay claim to a higher moral authority and bring ALL of our "mafia" tendencies to heel, but it does this dogmatically, and this is no way to believe, meaning belief works according to justification: The case for a higher authority, an absolute authority, has to be argued philosophically. Not religiously, that is, not according anything so instantly assailable.

The trouble is, even philosophy has a hard time seeing what is there in the midst of our existence. All of our in-the-world experiences are inherently ethical because our being-in-the-world is value-saturated. There is caring in every glance and every thought, private, social, technical, rhetorical; and caring is the engine, if you will, that drives ethics. But caring itself is not the analytic bottom line, for it is dyadic: one cares ABOUT something' or monadic: caring and that which the caring is about are one and the same.

This is not meant to be confusing, just analytical. I care about whether is rains today because an outing is planned. But why is an outing important? It's a good time? What is the meaning of "good" in this locution? Fun, enjoyable, pleasurable; but these are just synonyms for good, I mean fun is inherently good.

The point? The argument is not complete in these few lines, but an essential idea is exposed. This has been a brief metaethical discussion that reveals something this "higher moral authority": it is about the Good. The Bad as well, of course. The argument moves forward to show how this analysis moves inevitably toward metaphysics, only, it is not going to be about ignoring justification just to keep us in line and rid us of our mafioso ways. It will be about a clear, justification for metaethical grounding of our ethics.

The case for a higher authority, an absolute authority, has to be argued philosophically. Not religiously, that is, not according anything so instantly assailable. — Constance

Well, Christianity is indeed collapsing. Ever more rapidly.

Christianity has indeed turned out to be assailable but certainly not easily or instantly. It took centuries until the French Revolution for its assailants to finally make a dent. The other religions are still doing fine. I think that it has become clear that it is not possible to dislodge them. It is not possible to convince a traditional Jew out of Judaism or a traditional Muslim out of Islam.

We just don't have time to figure out alternative solutions to religion. If you don't have something handy that works right now, and that already has a track history of success, then you are going to be too late to still make a difference. Life moves on. Life is also short. I cannot wait for a solution to fall out of the skies. In fact, it has already fallen out of the sky. So, why not just use it?

The argument moves forward to show how this analysis moves inevitably toward metaphysics, — Constance

Insightful! Everything--even value, thus, ethics--is "hiding" in the metaphysical. But where is the latter "hiding"?

I know not actually hiding.

Everything--even value, thus, ethics--is "hiding" in the metaphysical. But where is the latter "hiding"? — ENOAH

Maybe within grammar (Nietzsche).

[W]hat is meant by Religion ...? — I like sushi

By "religion" I mean 'official cultus' (i.e. collective ritual telling of ghost stories) that denies – symbolically escapes from – mortality.

Maybe within grammar (Nietzsche). — 180 Proof

I can get behind that.

I must have confused you. "Business" is what we can't leave. Assuming the hypothetical staring at the abyss of being is even possible (if anything, it's a micro-glimpse, not a stare; an aware-ing, not a vision), it's not so much a returning, as a being smothered (once again). — ENOAH

But one does leave it the more one brings questions to bear upon the world at the most basic level. It is an inevitability, for belief is not sustainable without justification and it is justification that the question assails. Someone tells me she is a doctor and a mother, and I have no issues with this. But then I read Derrida's Structure, Signs and Play and others and I begin to see that when one speaks, the assumptions in place about the knowledge claims implicit inn being a doctor cannot be verified. This is nothing at first, for such an insight really has no redeeming features; but in time, one realizes that one is living in a kind of dream world. Ask, does General Motors really exist? I can talk about it in many, many ways, but all this amounts to is reified talk and pragmatics. GM is a pragmatic "function" and ontologically vacuous, save its pragmatic ontology. But to understand being a doctor like this, to take the idea apart and look for its basic meanings, once done effectively, it makes, and it SHOULD make, the mundane world itself into a question. It is not turtles all the way down; it is questions all the way "around".

Not just originally, continously. We "pursue" being because we are being.

It's just that we "pursue" being; thereby, ignore that we are. — ENOAH

It does depend on what you mean by "that we are." This is a point of disagreement I have been laboring. You think like an Eleatic Parmenidean. But this is not conceivable. This is simply to say that to "pursue" refers to a basic structure of consciousness itself. Being cannot be extracted from becoming. All one calls being is in subjective time, and when something that IS appears before us, the stillness and the profundity does "appear" and there is an event and the agency of this event is a self, capable of implicitly grounding an experience such that there is someone "there" to experience.

And this is notwithstanding spiritual identity, whatever that is. Consider one of those near death experiencers who often say time stands still when there is no profusion to the brain and they leave their body. They no longer have the sense of their own identity, many relate, in this other world. Perhaps, I say; maybe more than just perhaps. But note, their experiences have a beginning and an end, and events come and go and are recorded in memory, and so forth. Their IS, let's allow, an encounter with Being-as-divinity. The point I would make is that THIS is time. It is senseless to talk about otherwise. Time actually standing still would be an absurdity, like two colors occupying the same space or two velocities at once. Logically, it makes no sense.

Though the latter may suffer from the misfortune of thinking they are two things. Both are "pathological," if by existential enlightenment, you are referring to the "pursuit" of being, thinking you will access being by such pursuit. It's the same for you and I, if either one of us denied the inherent contradiction/futility in a dialogue which intermittently (to wit: now) pointed out it's own futility.

While schizoid, as you say, or any other pathology recognized as such yields no functional benefits, not so for philosophy, though the latter seems futile. Philosophy, just as it is wilfully blind to the futility of its pursuits, is wilfully blind to its own actual role: to make sense/navigate the meaning making system. To order the Narratives in functional ways.

Philosophy gets us even to the essence of religion, that pursuit of and glimpse into the real truth outside of our Fictions. — ENOAH

You think of Being as a kind of finality. Perhaps. I argue that to think like this makes being vacuous, literally vacuous. Being requires agency. "No one" there implies no experience at all. The "no self" of the Prajnaparamita is an explicit no self, and has nothing to do with the constituting agency.

The schizoid condition I refer to puts aside the notion of pathology, at least in the familiar sense. It could be called a spiritual pathology, the Kierkegaardian pathology of spirit dialectically subsuming soul and body. This is the introduction of the question that interposes itself between the self and the affirmation. The "no self" intrudes into the, as Fink put it, "construct of acceptedness" we live and breathe in. We are always already existentially schizoid, for the division between acceptedness and the question is implicit in the paradigm of normalcy, just as, as they say, one does not become the Buddha, but rather realizes that one IS this, and has always been this. But without the reflective self, I am arguing, the Buddha vanishes into nothing. Again, to BE requires agency, metaphysical or mundane.

Ontology of the real self would exclude the ego/subject and therefore necessarily all signifiers, including but not limited to all words/thoughts/ideas. So called ontology of the so called Subject self, I, would yield much intriguing discussion, but I would recognize that we are analyzing the laws and mechanics of Mind. — ENOAH

Yet "mechanics and "Mind" are themselves signifiers. As my prof once told me, you're never going to get that tart to your dessert plate. You cannot work within a field of meaning making and posit something outside this without having access to this "other field"; just as one cannot speak the nature of logic unless one can step outside and into a third pov from which one can observe; and this third pov itself, to be affirmed, requires yet another pov; ad infinitum. To posit something entirely outside of what is possible inside (ignoring the problems of sense making these two notions present) is what bad metaphysics is made of. One has left the phenomenon, the presence-in-the-world, to seek remedy in lands unseen!
Derrida, and this is Caputo's reading, exposes "real" metaphysics by showing how language's analysis puts radical distance between the word and the referent. An impossible distance, for the very reason anticipated by Kierkegaard: reason and "actuality" (in double inverted commas, of course) never cross streams, if you will, of their respective existences, and when this is understood, one finally sees that finitude has always been an imposition of language that really never "touched" the "life of the world" (Henry), and this is, or should be, a massive assault on common sense. BUT: you already know this. What you resist is what I will call the metaphysics of language: language is the structure of finitude itself, among language beings like us (dasein), but it is ALSO the medium of discovery, and agency, and thought, and revelation. Imagine a revelation without language: no backdrop against which the novelty of what is revealed to play against. No interest set against a predelineated set of conceptual values. No one there to receive the experience.

With all due humility and modesty, we are applying western analysis to the concept of no-self; not to the level of technical precision you might prefer, but still; despite phenomenology, mahayana is permeat. — ENOAH

This is something I rather emphatically argue against: My world is Thic Quan Duc's (sp?). The technical precision you refer to is in no way exclusive of the analytic I willingly apply, any more than it would be exclusive of physics or geology. Why? Because what we have here is not merely a system of logically connected terms. It is an openness unto the "truth" that is, as you are fond of reminding me, not conceptual. I have been disagreeing and agreeing with you the whole time. Yes, the world stands apart from the language identity assigned; no this "standing apart" is not free of language and signifiers, or rather it is and it is not. The whole affair is transcendental when issues like this come up. Everything is under erasure, so we try as best we can with the hermeneutically grounding of meanings. Note how Derrida's thesis itself is under erasure! The very term hermeneutics is under erasure. For me, things are made clear in the truly objective sense, this is the point. Eastern thinking is not so far from phenomenology. It is parsecs from anglo american philosophy, yes, but not phenomenology. These are very close disciplines. Meditation and Husserl's epoche are, I argue, simply the same thing, only meditation is the reduction radically executed. And argue this.

This is why post modern thinking is so notoriously obscure: They theorize in a world that dances around metaphysics, daring not to make a move too far, yet trying to make meaning there, at the threshold of sense making.

Hah, like an uncarved block, actionless action. That Heidegger! I have to imagine he knew more than he let on to, delivered it to his world in the most progressed language of the day. But that sounds like wisdom beyond logic. — ENOAH

Plainly put, one should read Being and Time. Just read it, then you will see. You will never think the same way again. You will, of course, disagree often, but you will realize that these disagreements are THE disagreements. He articulates the terms of disagreement soooo well.

Sorry, have to go. Ill finish later.

it is questions all the way "around". — Constance

Yes, I'm totally with you on everything preceding. It is a "dream world," which happens to be a label constructed by tgat very dream world, and so on. That too, all the way down. No access that way, to ultimate truth. So what to do with it? Abandon? No. No need. It's not in all respects a dysfunctional thing, quite the contrary. What to do? Tend to it. Tend to the business knowing that knowing is incessant "asking".

This is simply to say that to "pursue" refers to a basic structure of consciousness itself. Being cannot be extracted from becoming — Constance

Sorry. Not careful/skilled. It's exactly the point I too think I have been expressing. Of course being cannot be pursued; pursue is the very meat of becoming.

What I mean to say is just that. To know Being is what philosophy ultimately desires. But being cannot be known. It can only be.

The same, unironically, can be said of any organic activity. They can be discussed, represented in ways which justify belief because they serve ancillary functions, but they cannot be known truly for what they are.


I'm saying that about the whole human being. Knowledge is necessarily not truth because our truth is in our organic functioning, period.

We love our imaginations, they have enhanced our prosperity, but they are still just our imaginations.

Even our excitement about metaphysics, phenomenology, existentialism, etc., is just imagination excited about imagination.

Being requires agency. "No one" there implies no experience at all. — Constance

I think Agent desires agency and has structured that into the laws of reasoning

It is in the same way the Subject has been so structured by grammar, and from that logic, and general reasoning to the extent of common sense. No one would wonder when this body presses these buttons, triggered by autonomous movement of images in this body's image-ing organ, to produce signifiers which surfaced because they "won" the incessant lightening speed dialectical process to project the fittest, that it isn't I doing it.

But I submit, it is not. Do a simple tracing of the Signifier and find what is the natural root of I. If it's anything but the silent, thoughtless, body, unconcerned about protecting its identity because it has none, concerned only with perpetuating life, then it's part of the story, following an evolved--because fit--rule of grammar. It's out of the latter, grammar, that the soul or spirit Narratives arose. We did not create tge Subject to signify the soul.

We are always already existentially schizoid, for the division between acceptedness and the question is implicit in the paradigm of normalcy, just as, as they say, one does not become the Buddha, but rather realizes that one IS this, and has always been this. — Constance

Well, yes. I totally agree with you here. For me, what we have always been is Nature, rudely put by science, matter. Mind despises that. It is not fit for mind's prosperity to project such a construct, so it's outright denied by the melancholy poets/mystics of philosophy, metaphysics. But the silly truth is, I am this biological being. Why not praise God for that? Because we don't want what we already are, Living. We want knowledge.

Meditation and Husserl's epoche are, I argue, simply the same thing, only meditation is the reduction radically executed. — Constance

I agree; maybe you mean this, but my modification might be, meditation is an exercise of the body/epoche an exercise of the mind. H's epoche is arguably as close as one can get without turning away from tge intellect altogether.

A curious notion. What could it mean? — Constance

It could mean a blend of technology and our body in such a way where we're no longer human in it's true meaning, we might become entirely new species, changed not only in look but also mentally.

Yes, I'm totally with you on everything preceding. It is a "dream world," which happens to be a label constructed by tgat very dream world, and so on. That too, all the way down. No access that way, to ultimate truth. So what to do with it? Abandon? No. No need. It's not in all respects a dysfunctional thing, quite the contrary. What to do? Tend to it. Tend to the business knowing that knowing is incessant "asking". — ENOAH

And incessant answering. Pull as far away from this as possible, and questions become one question, that of being qua being. But to get here, this is the issue. For interpretation haunts inquiry, and interpretation is built into the temporality of our existence: I see a tree and tree memories rush in to make "seeing a tree" seeing a tree. But, and I refer to a prior post, this temporal structure shows memory to be holistically bound to presence and anticipation. To say "I saw" is itself a saying that will one day be recalled, and the recollection will not be of a "genuine past event" but of a holistic unity and this remains analytically clear ONLY in the positing of transcendence: One simply cannot talk of a condition or state of affairs "out" of the basic structure of subjective time. When you refer to a dream world, I think the best possible analysis ends here, with time. This is fundamental to Kant's Transcendental Deduction in his Critique. This deduction needs to be read over and over just to get the essential idea. I continue to go back to it. You might find an excerpt from the Deduction interesting, just to see how Kant's mind works and how his analytic of time moves along. He says some extraordinary things, full of penetrating insight. Consider that time is one moment occurring after the next and in order for the mind to grasp a whole thought, these moments must be linked together or "synthesized" into a unity. I see a cup, and the seeing it "as" a cup, there must be a unity of these temporal "moments" sequenced one after the other. Consciousness is this unity. In the Synthesis of the Recognition of a Concept, "If we were not conscious that what we think is the same as what we thought a moment before, all reproduction in the series of
representations would be useless." For it would simply be a jumble of unrelated "representations". Something must bind moments together to make them the unity that they are. "Cup" is a temporal unity of a sequence of moments. What is a self? It is the grand sythesizer of all experience: Without consciousness, the manifold of the representation would never, therefore, form a whole, since it would lack that unity which only consciousness can impart to it." This is Kant's rationalism.

Of course, Kant, as he explains all of this, is IN a perspective of finitude. His rigorous apriori arguments are themselves behind a veil of the medium of explanatory language. And this IS the most fascinating idea to me: Go the Kantian route, and "final determinate knowledge," call it, is hidden as a permanent and structural impossibility, for in the unity of the manifold of a consciousness of a cup on the table, there is no "getting behind" the unity itself, because one's own thinking issues from this unity. Hence the "transcendental" dimension of transcendental idealism. On the other hand, and this is the place where you and I step in, while this thinking may be well reasoned, once we understand that the entire analytic itself is transcendental as well, in its foundation, we then pull away sharply, for the epiphany puts the states of affairs of the world completely OTHER than what knowledge claims can produce, and this "otherness" is right before your eyes. We are thrown back to the original phenomenon that gave rise to all this philosophy in the first place. The transcendence that puts "truth" as you referred to it earlier, at an absolute distance from understanding (Kant), now is IN the intuitive grasp of the cup. Now one is the Buddha, that is, if one sees this with complete clarity, and the body of implicit knowledge claims that possess the world in ordinary perception are suspended, and no longer hold sway. This is liberation, and this is where phenomenology takes one, one who is, of course, inclined to be "taken" (thinking of the expression gelassenheit, again. This yielding to the world, away from the "totality" of egoic insistence), and if Buddhism's and Hinduism's very strong spiritual claims are right (as in the Abhidhamma, the Prajnaparamita, the Vedas, and so on), and I think they are qualifiedly right, then the world becomes Nietzsche's worst nightmare: This world itself becomes a reality of the radically Other, other than, that is, the world in "plain" sight.

Yes, a dream world. You sound like a Hindu, but it makes perfect sense in phenomenology. You might find Henry's statement of the basic working ideas useful. The Four Principles of Phenomenology (following Husserl):

Phenomenology rests on four principles which it explicitly claims as its foundations. The first—“so much appearance, so much being”—is borrowed from the Marburg School. Over against this ambiguous proposition, owing to the double signification of the term “appearance,” we prefer this strict wording: “so much appearing, so much being.”1 The second is the principle of principles. Formulated by Husserl himself in §24 of Ideen I, it sets forth intuition or, more precisely, “that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition”2 and thus for any particularly rational statement. In the third principle, the claim is so vehement that it clothes itself in the allure of an exhortation, even a cry: “zu den Sachen selbst!”[ (To the Thing itself!). The fourth principle was defined considerably later by Jean-Luc Marion in his work Reduction and Givenness, but its importance hits upon the entirety of phenomenological development as a hidden presupposition that is always already at work. It is formulated thus: “so much reduction, so much givenness.”3

It could mean a blend of technology and our body in such a way where we're no longer human in it's true meaning, we might become entirely new species, changed not only in look but also mentally. — SpaceDweller

I suspect it will not be a technology of synthetic materials, but organic. AI will master the human genome, and we will live in a brave new world. Only without Aldous Huxley's unfortunate Delta class. All Alphas! But this will lead to a new world of leisure time, and leisure time is freedom, and freedom opens basic questions, and the question of the self will loom large. We will all probably becomes Buddhists.

AI will master the human genome, and we will live in a brave new world. Only without Aldous Huxley's unfortunate Delta class. All Alphas! — Constance

Interestingly despite the brave new world being banned in the US some scientists are already proposing a solution to genetically modify us to withstand higher temperatures.

Pull as far away from this as possible, and questions become one question, that of being qua being. — Constance

Yes. The only question in which the answer transcends Mind.

But to get here, this is the issue — Constance

Yes. But you are here. You don't know it. Not for want of brilliant effort, but because it transcends knowing. You are-ing it; that's where you'll find it.

see a tree and tree memories rush in to make "seeing a tree" seeing a tree — Constance

Yes. Everything is that. Even the self, where memories of "I" flood in to make seeing me, "seeing me."

excerpt from the Deduction interesting, — Constance

Thank you. I intend to read Husserl for the first time beyond Anthologies and intros to Heidegger. And reread critique and being and time. Agree?

Consider that time is one moment occurring after the next and in order for the mind to grasp a whole thought, these moments must be linked together or "synthesized" into a unity. — Constance

Yes. I think that's exactly what happens--in the process, Mind--a synthesis of successive presents into a constructed unity. Two of the mechanisms having evolved to make that now functional linear, narrative form happen are the Subject (/object duality ie difference) and Time. Yes, constructed. Hence becoming. Being may be in some space/time universe. But being just is-ing, the movement of that time, if any, has no meaning.

You might find Henry's — Constance

Right, and Henry. Which I assume is either not a Husserl phenomenologist or has radically modified it?

What I mean to say is just that. To know Being is what philosophy ultimately desires. But being cannot be known. It can only be. — ENOAH

Being is elusive to the understanding because it is not an object that can receive predication. The copula 'is' is for saying things like The moon is in orbit around the earth, or What is an iguana? Being is ubiquitous in language and every proposition has it, implicitly or explicitly. Say Give me that book! and the 'is' is all over this. Me is the I that IS; the book IS; "give" implies things that 'are' in one way or another.

So Being is given to us in language first. Try to step outside of language to affirm being and you head for nonsense. On the other hand, it is, I hold, wrong to say being cannot be known, just as it is wrong to say metaphysics cannot be known. Note that when you say being cannot be known, you and positing being, so this is either nonsense or it's not. Nonsense because the "nothing" of non predication ( no "X is Y" in the analytic of the proposition) being posited cannot be made sense of, just like "gbischitz": nothing meaningful being said and entirely out of meaningful contexts other than references to letters and sounds.

Essentially what Heidegger and Wittgenstein and many others think. So one is already in hot water with "being cannot be known." What is it that cannot be known?

But if one is like me, Being is quite predicable, for this simply means one can say things about it and there are contexts of meaningful talk. Being is an intuition, I'll call it. And leave it at that. Not just a mathematical abstract terminus, or a set of all things, abstractly conceived. And it can stand much analysis, but if Being is an intuition, this analysis would have to be done. This is Jean Luc Marion and others. Being is a concept and an intuition, and all intuitions are conceptually constructed, that is, one can say, " by this I mean..." and words follow, even if those words become enigmatic and interesting. To me, this is where philosophy does its most interesting work: it "leads" us to hidden possibilities that are disclosed in language AND its non language counterparts, like being in love or spraining your ankle. I could not speak of the essence of religion and talk about how a sprained ankle is front and center of religious meaning without the symbolic connections language makes possible. I could not speak at all of anything with out "that which conceives" and in the case of being, Being is not pulled down to mundanity in this. In fact, it is "pulled up" through the language that makes it what it IS.

Note that language itself is the very Being in question.

Note that language itself is the very Being in question. — Constance

I have my doubts here. Heidegger and Husserl parted ways because Heidegger hyper-focused in on hermeneutical form of phenomenology. Husserl was still reaching for the unreachable (and stated as much). The task is endless.

I have my doubts here. Heidegger and Husserl parted ways because Heidegger hyper-focused in on hermeneutical form of phenomenology. Husserl was still reaching for the unreachable (and stated as much). The task is endless. — I like sushi

I am saying no to this. The task was ended long ago with the Buddhists and the Hindus, but this jumps to the chase. Heidegger seems to defend the Hegelian "theology" when he says "Metaphysics is the truth of the totality of beings" and the totality of beings is what the historical period says it is. Being is the answer to the question What are beings AS beings? and this refers us to the historical framework.
And right, Husserl was reaching for the unreachable, but then, take the Cartesian/Husserlian position and and put aside the historical analysis: Here I am, not a Cartesian cogitom because a disembodied cogito makes no sense at all, but standing in a world that is "know" in the standing there. A cogito must be ABOUT something. Thought is never "just thought" and this is the Husserlian insight, intentionality.

But THE most important part of this is very simple, Buddhist, even: As I stand and face this tree, it cannot be doubted that I face a being! I can doubt everything about the being because the historical basis of language is contingent, but facing a being possesses in its "thereness" something only a fool would deny. HERE is where hermeneutics reaches its own termination.

I do not understand what you are saying, and therefore cannot agree with it.

I am not keen on religious doctrines posing as a philosophy of consciousness, nor am I inclined to side with mysticism as anything other than a pacifier of sorts (albeit somewhat essential in its role on mental stability).

The path to woo woo is the way. The destination of woo woo is delusion/madness.

The whole of the linguistic turn sent people running down roads that many have yet to return from. Husserl saw this and pointed it out. Heidegger - I believe - made the journey back ten times harder.

just like "gbischitz": nothing meaningful being said and entirely out of meaningful contexts — Constance

Yah, but gbischitz has now been assigned "signifier of nonsense."

But really. Signifier only of the inherent meaninglessness of all signifiers until meaning has been assigned.

Being too shares that origin. Inherently meaningless. That I know is ultimately what you are saying. It is implied that in uttering being, I have already accepted that my utterance is only as good as how far I can throw it; and, I can't ever throw it outside of Mind's reaches.

And yet, I use the tool to point at the moon, knowing it's not the moon, but the finger.

I am not keen on religious doctrines posing as a philosophy of consciousness, nor am I inclined to side with mysticism as anything other than a pacifier of sorts — I like sushi

While I understand one must always discriminate, may I ask, what has locked you in so seemingly tight such that you have fettered your discretion to pursue truth openly. Is your strict adherence to reason not prescribed by the very thing adhered to?ɓ

I have no idea what your question is asking if I am brutally honest. Plain speech and less fluff would be nice.

[R]eligious doctrines posing as a philosophy of consciousness ... mysticism as anything other than a pacifier of sorts (albeit somewhat essential in its role on mental stability). The path to woo woo is the way. The destination of woo woo is delusion/madness. — I like sushi

:up: :up:

Apologies. You're right.

Do you reject religion and mysticism because they do not adhere strictly to reason?

If not that, then why do you reject religious or mystical "contributions" about consciousness outright (which is what you seem to be saying about the former, while relegating the latter to a pacifier, which I read as a useful fiction)?

If so, then why do you think these (religion/mysticism) cannot be sources about consciousness? What is it about reason (assuming that is where you place your trust) that makes it the only path to understanding consciousness?

What if the best way to "access" consciousness is not the understanding but, like hunger and arousal, by "feeling-doing-being"? What if mysticism--admittedly, some hypothetical particular form--provided the methodology for such access? Would you deny it because it takes a path other than reason?

While I'm not denying the usefulness of reason, is it not possible that on some matters, reason can only go so far before it reaches a bridge which reason cannot cross?ĺ guess, I was suggesting--poorly--that there might be "truths" notwithstanding all of the self serving myth, ritual and dogma. It would be an absurd irony if our strict adherence to reason, rather like a dogma, forever barred us from making headway on the very topic which continues to baffle us.

Since we seem to have gone very far with reason--across the universe and down to subparticles--why is it we cannot understand consciousness? Is it possible that the latter requires some alternative methods of pursuit?

I am not keen on religious doctrines posing as a philosophy of consciousness, nor am I inclined to side with mysticism as anything other than a pacifier of sorts (albeit somewhat essential in its role on mental stability). — I like sushi

Since there is no rational reason for the existence of life itself, the absence of a pacifier may very well turn into a problem. Life can be full of suffering. When the going gets tough, why do you even try to continue? In order to perpetuate something that rationally does not make sense to begin with?

Rationality suggests that the answer is existential nihilism.

Surviving does not make sense while having children is simply cruel.

Without at least some spirituality that manages to transcend the nihilism of rationality, the rationalist cannot compete in the cutthroat environment of biological life. He simply won't find the motivation to do so. Hence, the rationalist needs lots of painkillers and other opioids to sedate his unsatisfied need for a reason to keep going, until he finally decides to put an end to his suffering by overdosing.

Without at least some spirituality that manages to transcend the nihilism of rationality, the rationalist cannot compete in the cutthroat environment of biological life — Tarskian

Good enough. But why is the most we can credit religion with is its opioid effect; to sedate us in the face of our inevitable suffering.

In its essence, like philosophy, religion is metaphysics first. Its goal is to answer the same big questions. I do not think any one serious about truth, is being "reasonable" by wilfully blinding themselves to the potential light which this essence may shed, in spite of the layers and layers of BS it may be burried under.

And anyway, as for pacifier, the same can be said about philosophical attempts to alleviate human suffering, from will to power, to communism, to transcendental subjectivity, to living in good faith. None of these approaches are apodictic. Not unlike mystical hypotheses, they're genuine attempts at addressing our condition.

And anyway, as for pacifier, the same can be said about philosophical attempts to alleviate human suffering, from will to power, to communism, to transcendental subjectivity, to living in good faith. None of these approaches are apodictic. — ENOAH

Generational survival goes quite fast because life is rather short. We don't have time to figure out if something else is going to work than what worked for our parents. Seriously, if the solution does not work right away, the damage will be done already.

Nowadays, we have entire populations that refuse to have children and that increasingly even prefer to hedonistically overdose on all kinds of poisons. The antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication are not going to manage either, to indeterminately keep them in the rat race of life.

This epidemic of murderous rationality is highly contagious. People are much more likely to succumb if other people in their environment have succumbed already. Nihilism is highly infectious. It is like a virus. That is why social media such as Youtube and Tiktok strictly forbid videos on self-deletion. You can't even use the term. The vocabulary is simply banned.

The only strategy that people have time for, is to absorb whatever spiritual belief that worked for their parents, and then hope for the best. Otherwise, it is probably game over.

So, the approach does not need to be apodictic. It just needs to convince people away from -- in terms of rationality -- the meaninglessness of life. In other words, it does not need to be perfect. It just needs to be good enough.

Sorry, no. I agree with you. It is a useful pacifier.

I'm just saying religion at essence is more

Do you reject religion and mysticism because they do not adhere strictly to reason? — ENOAH

I do not 'reject' them, just view them within their own jurisdiction.

If not that, then why do you reject religious or mystical "contributions" about consciousness outright (which is what you seem to be saying about the former, while relegating the latter to a pacifier, which I read as a useful fiction)? — ENOAH

I do not 'outright' as all experiences have something to contribute to concepts of human consciousness. I just emphasize that one should probably not hold to vague mystical concepts when trying to understand things with any reasonable kind of precision.

What if the best way to "access" consciousness is not the understanding but, like hunger and arousal, by "feeling-doing-being"? What if mysticism--admittedly, some hypothetical particular form--provided the methodology for such access? Would you deny it because it takes a path other than reason? — ENOAH

I am a little confused by what you are saying when you say 'reason'. Husserl does this, but he certainly has to use reason to do so (as do we all?).

Blind grappling for naught is just that.

While I'm not denying the usefulness of reason, is it not possible that on some matters, reason can only go so far before it reaches a bridge which reason cannot cross?ĺ guess, I was suggesting--poorly--that there might be "truths" notwithstanding all of the self serving myth, ritual and dogma. It would be an absurd irony if our strict adherence to reason, rather like a dogma, forever barred us from making headway on the very topic which continues to baffle us. — ENOAH

That makes no sense. If you are in the habit of making no sense that it is of no sense. Obviously?

Since we seem to have gone very far with reason--across the universe and down to subparticles--why is it we cannot understand consciousness? Is it possible that the latter requires some alternative methods of pursuit? — ENOAH

I think you are almost certainly using the term 'reason' to mean anything scientific here? Or so it seems? That may be the disjoint.

Since there is no rational reason for the existence of life itself, the absence of a pacifier may very well turn into a problem. Life can be full of suffering. When the going gets tough, why do you even try to continue? In order to perpetuate something that rationally does not make sense to begin with? — Tarskian

I think I need to understand the use of 'rational' here too. If you are not being 'rational' then what are you being? Can you say anything worth listening to without articulating it rationally? If you choose aesthetic means to communicate you do so because it is rationally appropriate (if not it fails).

Surviving does not make sense while having children is simply cruel. — Tarskian

There is a whole other thread where you can argue that. Not here. Needless to say I disagree and fully understand the AN argumentation.

I'm just saying religion at essence is more — ENOAH

I am still struggling to figure out 'essence' here. I am intrigued by the origins of religion, would that be relevant here?