experience "unmediated" and direct. It in fact makes it possible. This is not to your liking, — Constance

I agree but by disecting this. 1. Yes language does make "experience" possible. Because "experience" is a construction and projection of language. Being on the other hand happens in the present and there is nothing for experience to attach to, and 2. This is now to my liking. What is not to my liking is to think experience, or thinking for that matter, can exist before "language" broadly speaking, emerged.

thrownness," as when you are there minding your own business, when the lecture on Hegel or Kant you attended leaps to mind for no reason at all and it dawns on you that your/our existence really is a powerful mystery underneath all the ready-made knowledge claims. — Constance

That this happens is a demonstration that experience has no central experiencer (in the way we think) but is rather, an autonomous process of structures of language constructing and projecting.

Where the real "experiencer" kicks in is, the process uses its flesh as infrastructure, and as an actor in nature. Buried, displaced by all that philosophy holds dear in metaphysics and epistemology, analytical and liberal, is the real being doing its nature.

The first is that knowledge is impossible without radically redefining consciousness away from standard assumptions about the primacy of physicalism. — Constance

To clarify, the emphasis i place on the organic sounds like traditional physicalism. I understand. But it is qualified by three things
1. Mind though not ultimately real, is not of the physical--there is a qualified dualism.
2. The physical I refer to is not the one science or current physicalist philosophers do. Both are constructing their theories in language. I necessarily admit tge real body is unspeakable and unknowable. Anything I say is hypotheses.
3. Even more unknowable is any notion of a divine including that nature is divine, though I may remain passionately open to it, and ascribe it to a natural drive which has been displaced by religion, like bonding has been displaced by kinship, patriarchy, romance, Eros, parenting, etc


[quote="Constance;921849"]there is nothing to talk about unless one turns to idealism, and they most emphatically will not do this because of what is now two hundred years of Kantian philosophy, turned "continental" phenomenology, and an analytic complexity so demanding and counterintuitive they have just had it. They want science, as Russell said, to be the guiding light,[/quote]

And I share your grief. But offer a middle path between physicalism and idealism; qualified idealism. The so called ideal, embarrassingly turns out not to be the privileged reality. But it is a masterpiece nonetheless. Mind is what philosophers should study, it does operate in accordance with laws etc. But it is not "ontologically" anything. It is images coding the real body.

The most fascinating deals with value, — Constance

It is "valuable" to speak of and understand value. But where I respectfully diverge, is that value too, even qua "value" and not just its application, is no universal ppre-Mind "thing" in the universe, but a mechanism constructed by and projected by Mind.

Wittgenstein on Youtube — Constance

I will watch that, thank you!

He (Wittgenstein) was a deeply religious philosopher as he realized that this dimension of value in our existence is utterly transcendental and yet permeated our existence. — Constance

John Cottingham on Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Religion (pdf, 11 pages).

What he appears not to understand (and I welcome being disabused) is that the wretchedness of our existence is inherently redemptive! That is the "logic" if you will, of suffering requires apriori, redemption. — Constance

You are quite right that I will disabuse you here :). That is to say, within Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, especially Book 4, he discusses at length how one can seek redemption from suffering. For him, it was the life of the ascetic (akin to Buddhist hermitic monk) who denies his will-to-live. There is a soteriology, even if only the "saintly" can achieve, in Schopenhauer. It is intriguing, yet I don't buy it, so your accusations of Schop's non-existent soteriology is extremely off base, though it is more properly aimed at me ;). @Wayfarer and I have had many posts back-and-forth where we debate Schopenhauer's soteriology. That is to say, he embraces it (even if he probably has suggested improvements), where I see it as a metaphysical pipedream. That is to say, I admire Schop's unflinching analysis of the nature of striving, and the inherent suffering of dissatisfaction, but his solution (which is extremely REDEMPTIVE), I don't buy, unfortunately for us all.

Also, to not be ignored is Schopenhauer's "redemption-through-compassion". That is to say, asceticism is for the truly saintly, whereas access to compassion is available to more people, even though, this too is hard for many character-types to attain. Schopenhauer had a lowly view of the average human in terms of their ability to transcend the suffering. He thought only certain character-types as saintly enough to bypass our usual self-interest mode. And indeed, empirically, it is a classic case of "How do we know if we really do anything out of good will and not just tell ourselves this?" For those who truly have the capacity for selfless compassion/altruism/empathy, he thinks temporarily (not more permanently like the enlightened ascetic sage though), they can "deny the Will".

Isn't the problem here that later Witt had a different approach and framed morality in the context of language games? My understanding is that latter Wittgenstein holds that morality is not transcendent but is rather a product of contingent human practices. But I am no Witt expert. I think Joshs might come closest. — Tom Storm

There are two Wittgensteins: The one found as a kind of demigod for analytic philosophy because he drew a line, and as I have read, this line remains in place throughout his thinking, between the sayable, whether it be described as a logical layout of states of affairs vis a vis the world or language games, and the unsayabled, the the latter was by far the most important. You know, he once confessed a desire to becoming a priest.

Joshs' thoughts are always welcome.

I knew there was a reason Continental philosophy isn't taken seriously... — AmadeusD

Haabermas may be the best of them, because he's had to contend with the accurate retrospectives on his predecessors. — AmadeusD

Out of all the people to choose from in continental philosophy you choose Habermas? That mindset at least agrees with countries dominated by analytic philosophy being so socially degenerate. Analytic philosophy is irrelevant outside of its birthplace. By that metric it has less credence than Confucianism. And by another metric, Confucianism has given us something, analytics have done nothing.

It's pretty rich taking the "everyone is wrong but my club" line. — AmadeusD

That is exactly what you are doing.

Tinkering with language is all Continental's have left to give us. — AmadeusD

Jesus Christ. It is projection over more layers of projection. It is almost like a circus of dishonesty.

There are two Wittgensteins: — Constance

At least two. I have read the Monk biography.

You know, he once confessed a desire to becoming a priest. — Constance

So did Stalin.

(The latter actually made it to the seminary but was booted out)

4. Fourth, Wittgenstein did not see any value in intellectual proofs of God's existence or theological formulations in general. For Wittgenstein, religion was about changing one life, amending one ways, and helping others. Faith without works is dead as St James would say. Malcolm sees the same kind of thinking when Wittgenstein says "it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language game (OC 204.)"

Based on Malcolm's reading, I am not so sure if Wittgenstein would go so far in claiming anything transcendental. He did not believe we needed to explain religion with anything transcendental; that the world was a wonder and a miracle itself; that we need to look at ourselves in mirror and change our lives and help others, and not submit to the temptation to overly intellectualize religion.

But I would agree with you that for him it does permeate our lives and is woven in the very fabric of reality. As he says in Culture and Value:

"Life can educate one to a belief in God. And experiences too are what bring this about; but I don't mean visions and other forms of sense experience which show us the 'existence of this being', but e.g. suffering of various sorts. These neither show us God in the way a sense impression shows us an object, nor do they give rise to conjectures about him. Experiences, thoughts, - life can force this concept on us." — Richard B

I have Wittgenstein and the Metaphysics of Grace by Terrance W Klein which gives a similar account.

So Wittgenstein was, call it deeply spiritual (fair to say about a person who all but memorized Tolstoy's Gospel in Brief, adored Kierkegaard, in fact, the latter's "dark nights of inwardness" is something Wittgenstein's suicidal personality related to) and had contempt for philosophy that tried to impose itself on this sacred dimension of our existence, which is why there is precious little coming from him about religion. "The whole project of ‘philosophical theology’, he once remarked, struck him as ‘indecent’ (Drury, 1984, p. 90)." I am trying to show that something can be said, and it is not the violation of belief doubt brings, which is so easy, but rather, an affirmation. If ethics is about, as he says in Lecture on Ethics, an absolute, then lets take a look at what an "unspeakable" absolute is and speak about it.

What if ethics and aesthetics were apodictic in nature? Like logic, universal and necessary? This is what Wittgenstein is suggesting. The good is what I call divinity, he writes in Value and Culture.

Then what of the "the bad"? The OP puts this idea to the test. Wittgenstein is a moral absolutist or a moral realist. This can be discussed in an examination of the essence of religion.

, I don't buy, unfortunately for us all. — schopenhauer1

THIS is what the OP is about. There are things you that belong to opinion and things that are certain, putting aside the aporia that questions can heap upon a statement like this can bring up. What if ethics were grounded in the same apodicticity found in logic? Then opinion would yield to certainty.

Religion makes this claim about ethics when it talks about God. Here, we eliminate such fictions, and abide by only what is in the world and the presence of what is before inquiry. An apriori analysis of ethics shows, I argue, and fortunately for us all, that the redemptive and consummatory features of religion actually issue from existence itself with the apodicticity equal to that of logic. That is, one cannot even imagine the bad being good and the good being bad, taken as pure expressions: the meta-good and the meta-bad.

But isn't there something deficient about Wittgenstein's apodictic religion? After all, he was claimed as the emblem of the vociferously anti-religious Vienna Circle, and even if they were wrong in so doing, they were a highly intelligent group of individualis who found support for their views in his texts. On this forum, the last lines of the Tractatus are most often used as a kind of firewall against discussion of anything deemed religious. His religiosity can be discerned only with difficulty. As i understand it, his acolyte Elizabeth Anscombe and her husband both became committed Catholics. Were they prepared to make explicit what was only implicit in Wittgenstein's texts (I understand he was buried with Catholic funeral rites, but that this caused some disquiet amongst many of his associates.)

There is an ancient tradition of aphophaticism in Christianity, the acknowledgement of the deficiencies of speech and reason to reach out to the divine. But that tradition was still sacramental and sacerdotal, much was embodied in and conveyed by the liturgy, the rites and rituals, even the architecture. All of which was driven by the awareness of the imperfection of ordinary human nature, a.k.a. the fallen state. Only an exceptionally perceptive reader might be able to glean that from reading Wittgenstein.

So did Stalin. (the latter actually made it to the seminary but was booted out) — Tom Storm

Heh, heh, why Tom Storm, what are you suggesting? That Wittgenstein's spirituality was just as stuipidly conceived and corruptible by power...as Joseph Stalin??

Heh, heh, why Tom Storm, what are you suggesting? — Constance

I was simply making the throwaway point that contemplating the priesthood does not in itself mean much.

I was simply making the throwaway point that just because someone contemplates transcendence or the priesthood does not in itself mean much. — Tom Storm

Yes, I gathered as much. The priesthood is an institution, transcendence in the context of religion is the foundational indeterminacy of our existence. To contemplate the former is just mundane as I see it. A love of those churchy fetishes or some Freudian or Humean retreat from reality. The latter is an entirely different. This latter is Wittgenstein. Russell called him a mystic.

The priesthood is an institution, transcendence in the context of religion is the foundational indeterminacy of our existence. — Constance

The priesthood is an institution, not the religion?

But isn't there something deficient about Wittgenstein's apodictic religion? After all, he was claimed as the emblem of the vociferously anti-religious Vienna Circle, and even if they were wrong in so doing, they were a highly intelligent group of individualis who found support for their views in his texts. On this forum, the last lines of the Tractatus are most often used as a kind of firewall against discussion of anything deemed religious. His religiosity can be discerned only with difficulty. As i understand it, his acolyte Elizabeth Anscombe and her husband both became committed Catholics. Were they prepared to make explicit what was only implicit in Wittgenstein's texts (I understand he was buried with Catholic funeral rites, but that this caused some disquiet amongst many of his associates.) — Wayfarer

One's sees the same in Quine: "there’s mystery at the bottom of every question ultimately." When the priority is science and clarity at the level of basic questions, one finds Quine's indeterminacy staring back at you, and there is the abiding Kantian making way for faith through a kind of apophatic method of seeing where thought has its limitations. I have always had contempt for this kind of thinking, and I don't think Wittgenstein is right to dismiss ethics and value from meaningful philosophy, which I think addresses your thoughts. Analytic philosophers, at least in Quine's time, really did have that "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem" style of Fideism, and Witt has been said to be just like this. Here is a passage from Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion by John Cottingham:

.....for fides, like its Greek counterpart pistis, always connotes a stronger
volitional component than simple assent— some further element of trust and
commitment. As one moves towards extreme forms of fideism, such as that of Søren
Kierkegaard, the volitional element becomes stronger. ‘Faith does not need proof,’
asserted Kierkegaard, ‘indeed it must regard proof as its enemy’ (Kierkegaard 1941
[1846], p. 31).. And in a famous passage he observed: ‘Christianity is spirit, spirit is
inwardness, inwardness is subjectivity, subjectivity is essential passion."

He adored Kierkegaard. A family of suicides, Wittgenstein himself living on the edge. The more you objectify something, the more it loses its primordiality and philosophy kills religious primordiality if one takes it like Simon Critchley does where he says, philosophy begins in disappointment! BUT: what is disappointment? It is the question. The question, the "piety of thought: Intrudes into this primordiality and undoes the beliefs that are there, but only to bring one back with a more ponderous and justified interpretative pov. This is what Witt didn't see, both he and Kierkegaard. Certainly philosophy can cheapen the meaning of religion, but religion stays interpretatively naive without it. And interpretation is what allows us to make progress in understanding, an apophatic process delivering the bare givenness of the world, the latter being the positive foundation of religion (contra the indeterminacy, which is the entirely negative).

There is an ancient tradition of aphophaticism in Christianity, the acknowledgement of the deficiencies of speech and reason to reach out to the divine. But that tradition was still sacramental and sacerdotal, much was embodied in and conveyed by the liturgy, the rites and rituals, even the architecture. All of which was driven by the awareness of the imperfection of ordinary human nature, a.k.a. the fallen state. Only an exceptionally perceptive reader might be able to glean that from reading Wittgenstein. — Wayfarer

Well, it depends on what you are reading, He doesn't talk like a religious person at all in his serious writing (recall Kierkegaard's serious writing is a lot like this), but in the implications of wht he says, and in the letters and conversations and various other places, he makes it clear (again, the copy of Tolstoy's Gospel in Brief that he nearly memorized comes to mind) that he was a spiritual person, indeed, but philosophy just should mind its own business in this. As he says in Culture and Value, the good is what he calls divinity. I believe he tags this with, "that about sums it up." He won't talk about it, but I have read a few papers on his religious thinking, and that is as far as I will go, because I am far less interested in getting Wittgenstein right than I am in understanding the world and our existence. Wittgenstein I find very helpful in this.

The priesthood is an institution, not the religion? — praxis

A religious institution. What is an institution? Something instituted as an integral part of a culture. A formal way to say, regarding religious tradition, that ancient minds, most sincerely, made it up.

I have here a book, Wittgenstein and the Metaphysic of Grace by Terrance W Klein. I'll get back to you if I discover an insight into how his thinking accommodates or yields to or condemns religious practices and belief.

Ancient minds didn't contrive transcendence, right?

Wittgenstein I find very helpful in this. — Constance

Thank you. Myself, less so, although I'm always very interested in what you and the other contributors have to say on it.

Ancient minds didn't contrive transcendence, right? — praxis

Transcendence? How about let's start with the epistemic relation I have with this cat at my feet. Tell me how it is I know that there is a cat there in the same way, say, a scientist knows Saturn's rings are made of ice and dust.

There may have been other means of detection before probes were sent to Saturn, I don't know. In any case, the cat at your feet and the ice rings of Saturn are both known to the human mind in the form of sensory patterns. These patterns match our internal model of cat and ice rings. How is this relevant?

There may have been other means of detection before probes were sent to Saturn, I don't know. In any case, the cat at your feet and the ice rings of Saturn are both known to the human mind in the form of sensory patterns. These patterns match our internal model of cat and ice rings. How is this relevant? — praxis

Transcendence: that cat or any thing you might imagine is a transcendental object unless you can tell me how it is that that, whatever it is, gets into an actual knowledge claim. Sensory patterns? You mean my cat is sensory patterns?

One's sees the same in Quine: "there’s mystery at the bottom of every question ultimately." When the priority is science and clarity at the level of basic questions, one finds Quine's indeterminacy staring back at you, and there is the abiding Kantian making way for faith through a kind of apophatic method of seeing where thought has its limitations. I have always had contempt for this kind of thinking, and I don't think Wittgenstein is right to dismiss ethics and value from meaningful philosophy, which I think addresses your thoughts. Analytic philosophers, at least in Quine's time, really did have that "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem" style of Fideism, and Witt has been said to be just like this. — Constance

I have to say your position is a bit of a mystery. It seems you have a particular disdain for science, or dare I say jealousy of its status in modern life. Yet you are a bit annoyed of Wittgenstein's rather egalitarian attitude that religious needs no rationale foundation from philosophy or science, that it can stand on its own to freely be engaged in what matter a group of human so choose.

Sensory patterns? You mean my cat is sensory patterns? — Constance

I think you know what I mean. Can we skip the tedious part and get to your point?

I know you know what I mean. Can we skip the tedious part and get to your point? — praxis

Errr, not really. Tell you what, jump to the chase, skipping all the tedious parts, and just tell me how a knowledge claim is possible, then I can make the point. But note one important condition: there is nothing epistemic about causality. I mean, nothing at all. So if you are going to go through a process of external events, saying portions of the electromagnetic spectrum are absorbed by an object while others are reflected and these enter the eye, through the lens then to the optic nerve, and so on, and the like, just forget it. Such an explanation is lost the moment it begins.

This is not to say we do not perceive the world. Not at all. We obviously do. But by all familiar accounts, this is impossible.

One has to think about this; its simplicity is astounding. Keeps me up at night, really.

I have to say your position is a bit of a mystery. It seems you have a particular disdain for science, or dare I say jealousy of its status in modern life. Yet you are a bit annoyed of Wittgenstein's rather egalitarian attitude that religious needs no rationale foundation from philosophy or science, that it can stand on its own to freely be engaged in what matter a group of human so choose. — Richard B

I am a bit annoyed when lines like this are drawn. Things you cannot say and things you can. The finitude of science and everydayness, and the impossibility of metaphysics. Knowledge and faith.

One has to be aware than when we speak of the world, our categories are an imposition and the best we can do at the outset is describe it such that this imposition is reduced and the world is seen most primordially (a term lifted from Heidegger and Edith Stein to talk about something at the most basic level of identity). Wittgenstein's work draws lines at this level. As I see it, ethics and religion are metaphysically available for exposition. One has to look closely at ethics (and aesthetics) and ask, what are ethical injunctions "made of"? It is a phenomenological reductive look at the anatomy of an ethical problem.

It is not the egalitarianism that bothers me at all. It is that all religion popularly conceived moves one into a world of fantasy and bad metaphysics. It is (speaking here with a healthy respect for Eastern religio-philosophical "methods" and thinking) possible to make real progress in understanding the "meta-world" we actually live in.

Not disdain for science. Disdain for scientific metaphysics: talk about material substance, naturalism or physicalism, as if these were primordial concepts.

Disdain for scientific metaphysics: talk about material substance, naturalism or physicalism, as if these were primordial concepts. — Constance

Here, I see some agreement with scientific metaphysics, in particular on how this is manifested in the debate of determinism and freedom. That said, in your very first post you said:

"My thinking is this: Religion rises out of the radical ethical indeterminacy of our existence. This simply means that we are thrown into a world of ethical issues that, in the most basic analysis, are not resolvable. Yet they insist on resolution with the same apodicticity as logical coercivity. Meaning, just as one cannot but agree with something like modus ponens or the principle of identity in terms of the pure logicality of their intuitive insistence, so one cannot resist the moral insistence of moral redemption."

This smells of the odor of "determinism" from my humble nose. How does "freedom" and "logical coercively" exist where I can continue to feel human and not like the Mac I am typing on.

If I may step back into meta mode for a moment, I would like to point out that in the OP you promise to provide metaphysical satisfaction to the world, and despite my sincere attempts to feel this satisfaction I keep ending up in a thicket of obfuscating weeds and a Mick Jagger tune playing in my head.

It appears to be an empty promise.

I understand you to be quite upset at some opinions of mine.

By that metric it has less credence than Confucianism. And by another metric, Confucianism has given us something, analytics have done nothing. — Lionino

I can't think you're doing ought but trolling, If you aren't - i'll just leave you to it. Habermaas is placed as I've described.

That is exactly what you are doing. — Lionino

Err, no. But do go on...

Jesus Christ. It is projection over more layers of projection. It is almost like a circus of dishonesty. — Lionino

Ah, i see, just being you. No worries bud :) I don't understand you either.

Try this way of wording it. Inspired when I read something in Rorty (note, like always, not saying in any way a regurgitating of nor any orthodox representation of Rorty)

The "I think therefore I am," (Decartes) and the subsequent theories about the conditions and limitations on that "I," (Kant to Husserl and beyond) are both functional today, provided the "I" is the Subject of the sentences, and not the Body being.

Religion's "essence" without the obstruction of myth and ritual; is "twofold":

It is to call out the former, the "I" for what it is--not sinful; that came from myth and ritual, but Fictional, useful, but Fictional.

And its essence is to "reawaken" consciousness, the real body, to its real being, which cannot be known, as in the former; but yet, can be.

Truth is in present being; not in the I's comings and goings

It appears to be an empty promise. — praxis

"appears". In fairness, acknowledging the role Mick Jagger would have played on your perception during the moment you felt that way; if you step back, you'll see there are countless appearances you could've made. Why'd you project that one?