Go re-read Daniel's dream and come back and tell us that it was entirely literal. — BitconnectCarlos

It was.

Daniel's dream was a metaphorical representation of what was going to happen.

Prove it, otherwise what you're saying is just an opinion, not a fact.

Read Genesis.

I have, many times.

So do the sun and the moon really bow down to Joseph? Or does the dream, perhaps, represent something?

So do the sun and the moon really bow down to Joseph? — BitconnectCarlos

If the literal interpretation of the Bible is correct, then yes, they have to. However, no one says that it is indeed correct. That's what I'm trying to settle with @Count Timothy von Icarus. I'm making a case for Christian literalism. He is trying to find flaws in the case that I'm making. You are welcome to join our discussion, but you kinda need to catch up and be "on the same page" as us, to use a metaphor.

You're strawmanning biblical/christian literalism. The plain meaning of the text sometimes indicates allegory or metaphor.

You're strawmanning biblical/christian literalism. — BitconnectCarlos

Prove that I'm strawmanning biblical/christian literalism, othewise what you're saying here is just an opinion, not a fact.

The plain meaning of the text sometimes indicates allegory or metaphor. — BitconnectCarlos

Again, that's an opinion, not a fact. Prove what you're saying, if you're so confident in your understanding of Christianity.

In my opinion, the best critic of representationalism moves in the direction of phenomenology, but I believe you reject that and activism as well.

No, I like a lot of work using enactivism and phenomenology, in part because they avoid notions like "all we know are our own concepts" and "words don't have reference, only sense (or sense IS their reference)." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Could have fooled me. Every point I have made that you have shot down comes directly from either the phenomenologies of Husserl (the reference of sense is to other senses), Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger or the enactivist work of Gallagher, Varela and Thompson. And you dismissed as wrong or unintelligible Astrophel’s reading of phenomenologist Michael Henry, whose work is closely tied to Husserl and enactivism. If you are a supporter of phenomenology or enactivism, it must be to a brand that I’m not familiar with. Perhaps a pre-Husserlian form of phenomenology?Hegel perhaps?

I want to point out is that this is not a mere copy. The brain takes input spread out spatially and temporary and condenses it into a simultaneity. Features which originally belonged to different times and different places in the world are perceived at the same time and in the same space. But this isn’t all the brain does. In tying disparate events together temporally and spatially, it can also construe patterns. It can perceive these events as related to each other, meaningfully similar on some basis or other and on the basis of which both events differ from a third. — Joshs

I'm considerably more sympathetic towards your argument than is the Count. I will just make some additional observations.

Isn't what you're referring to here the subjective unity of perception? This is how the mind 'creates' or 'constructs' (both words have problematical connotations) the unified experience of the world which is our lived world ('lebenswelt'). Something I often mention is that neuroscience has no account of which particular neural system or systems actually perform the magic of generating a unified world-picture from the disparate sensory and somatic sources inputs - and that's a quote from a paper on it:

What we do know is that there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene (Kaas and Collins 2003). That is, enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience.

This is, of course, the basis on which I argue that cognitive science lends support to idealism - that experienced reality is mind dependent (not mind-independent as realist philosophies would have it.)

This kind of insight is native to Buddhist philosophical psychology, abhidharma, and also to the Mind Only (Yogācāra) school. It's far too complicated a model to try and summarise in a forum post (ref), but suffice to say, there's a very good reason that Varela and Maturana draw extensively on abhidharma in their writings on embodied cognition.

The concept of accuracy limits us to thinking about knowledge of nature ( and morals) in terms of conformity to arbitrary properties and laws. But is this the way nature is in itself, or just a model that we have imposed on it? — Joshs

But then, I think what your musings lack, is an overall sense of purpose. Isn't this the factor which Heidegger addresses through his writings on 'care'? The point being, consideration of what matters to us, why it is important. And on not kidding ourselves (something I myself am prone to, regrettably.) 'Seeing things as they truly are' is not necessarily a matter for scientific analysis, because we're involved in life, we're part of what we are seeking to understand. And that's what religions seek to provide - a kind of moral polestar, an over-arching purpose or meaning, towards which these questions, or quests, are oriented. (But then, I am mindful of the postmodernist skepticism towards meta-narrative, which is also a factor here.)

Uncontaminated by human reason. In that sense, they are matters of pure, unadulterated blind faith. It's uncompromising fideism, it is the complete sacrifice of reason. And as stupid as that may sound, that is exactly the sort of blind faith that I have in my own two feet. I don't need to think how to walk, I just walk. I trust my feet and my brain enough to do that on auto-pilot, it is strictly a-rational, as you call it. — Arcane Sandwich

That's an interesting analogy. On what basis do I trust my own feet? Is it because they are yet to let me down, because they have proved to be, barring the rarest exceptions, competent? If so, would that be rational, but in the inductive, not the deductive, sense?

Hume says we have no reason to believe the Sun will rise tomorrow. I take that to mean that just because it has always, during the whole of human experience, risen and just because our science tells us it should continue to work for billions of years, that does not entail that there is any logical necessity in its rising. There seems to be a distinction in human affairs between practical and "pure" rationality.

Hume says we have no reason to believe the Sun will rise tomorrow. — Janus

It's the good ol' Problem of Induction.

Yep, that's the one...

I want to point out is that this is not a mere copy. The brain takes input spread out spatially and temporary and condenses it into a simultaneity. Features which originally belonged to different times and different places in the world are perceived at the same time and in the same space. But this isn’t all the brain does. In tying disparate events together temporally and spatially, it can also construe patterns. It can perceive these events as related to each other, meaningfully similar on some basis or other and on the basis of which both events differ from a third.
— Joshs

I'm considerably more sympathetic towards your argument than is the Count. I will just make some additional observations.

Isn't what you're referring to here the subjective unity of perception? This is how the mind 'creates' or 'constructs' (both words have problematical connotations) the unified experience of the world which is our lived world ('lebenswelt'). Something I often mention is that neuroscience has no account of which particular neural system or systems actually perform the magic of generating a unified world-picture from the disparate sensory and somatic sources inputs - and that's a quote from a paper on it:

What we do know is that there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene (Kaas and Collins 2003). That is, enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience.

This is, of course, the basis on which I argue that cognitive science lends support to idealism - that experienced reality is mind dependent (not mind-independent as realist philosophies would have it.) — Wayfarer

I should mention that what I had in mind with that quote was not neuroscience but Husserl’s phenomenological analyses of perception. The fact that it could be taken for an empirical account shows how closely aligned contemporary empirical approaches to perception are to Husserl, up to a point. Husserl would say that where empirical accounts fall short is in remaining within what he calls the natural attitude, assuming an objectively causal ground for intentional processes. In this connection, you may be interested in the role that Husserl’s notion of the noema plays with regard to the subjective intentional constitution of objectivity. The noema gets to the heart of the process of idealization. Derrida describes it this way:

Within consciousness, in general there is an agency which does not really belong to it. This is the difficult but decisive theme of the non-real (reell) inclusion of the noema. Noema, which is the objectivity of the object, the meaning and the “as such” of the thing for consciousness, is neither the determined thing itself in its untamed existence (whose appearing the noema precisely is), nor is it a properly subjective moment, a “really” subjective moment, since it is indubitably given as an object for consciousness. It is neither of the world nor of consciousness, but it is the world or something of the world for consciousness. Doubtless it can rightfully be laid bare only on the basis of intentional consciousness, but it does not borrow from intentional consciousness what metaphorically we might call, by avoiding the real-ization of consciousness, its “material.” This real nonappurtenance to any region at all, even to the archi-region, this anarchy of the noema is the root and very possibility of objectivity and of meaning. This irregionality of the noema, the opening to the “as such” of Being and to the determination of the totality of regions in general, cannot be described, stricto sensu and simply, on the basis of a determined regional structure.

The concept of accuracy limits us to thinking about knowledge of nature ( and morals) in terms of conformity to arbitrary properties and laws. But is this the way nature is in itself, or just a model that we have imposed on it?
— Joshs

But then, I think what your musings lack, is an overall sense of purpose. Isn't this the factor which Heidegger addresses through his writings on 'care'? The point being, consideration of what matters to us, why it is important. And on not kidding ourselves (something I myself am prone to, regrettably.) 'Seeing things as they truly are' is not necessarily a matter for scientific analysis, because we're involved in life, we're part of what we are seeking to understand. And that's what religions seek to provide - a kind of moral polestar, an over-arching purpose or meaning, towards which these questions, or quests, are oriented. (But then, I am mindful of the postmodernist skepticism towards meta-narrative, which is also a factor here.) — Wayfarer

For Husserl, purpose is bound up with the anticipatory nature of intentional acts. A striving to know further along a a trajectory of sense projects itself forward into all acts of constitution. Husserl says “… the style, so to speak, of "what is to come" is prefigured through what has just past”. Both he and Heidegger critique the goal of scientific accuracy as a symptom of the elevation of an idiosyncratic method ( logic-mathemarical idealization) to the status of ultimate ground, which conceals its basis in more fundamental processes of self-world relations. While for Husserl, these primordial relations are processes of striving for knowledge, for Heidegger Being-in-the -world as care is a holistic being-in-relevance. But Care is not the same thing as living for a purpose. It is a living for the mattering of what Dasein is thrown into, how beings disclose themselves.

Everything depends on there being again a beginning of philosophy wherein philosophy is itself this beginning so that be-ing itself sways as origin. Only in this way the power of beings and their pursuit, and along with it every purpose-oriented calculation, will be shattered… Throwing-oneself-free unto enownment is preparedness for the sway of truth to place itself in mastery, and prior to all “truths”, that is, prior to all “goals”, “purposes” and “usefulnesses” to decide beings unto the ownhood of be-ing.

↪Arcane Sandwich
Yep, that's the one... — Janus

So here's my question, generally speaking. How is "blind faith" not an adequate response to the Problem of Induction?

For Husserl, purpose is bound up with the anticipatory nature of intentional acts. — Joshs

Not what I had in mind. More a sense of purpose, not anticipatory processing. I'm not talking of scientific accuracy, either, but existential angst, which is presumably what both religion and existential philosophies seek to ameliorate.

How is "blind faith" not an adequate response to the Problem of Induction? — Arcane Sandwich

Because philosophers are concerned with 'how can we know?' And, as causal relations seem utterly fundamental to scientific principles, then the suggestion that they ought to be simply accepted on blind faith is not an acceptable response. It was the substance of Kant's famous 'answer to Hume' but that is far afield of this OP.

For Husserl, purpose is bound up with the anticipatory nature of intentional acts.
— Joshs

Not what I had in mind. More a sense of purpose, not anticipatory processing. I'm not talking of scientific accuracy, either, but existential angst, which is presumably what both religion and existential philosophies seek to ameliorate — Wayfarer

Which is one reason Heidegger is not an existenrialist. For him, authentic angst is not something to be ameliorated, since it is the wellspring of transcendence and becoming.

“He who is resolute knows no fear, but understands the possibility of Angst as the mood that does not hinder and confuse him. Angst frees him from "null" possibilities and lets him become free for authentic ones.”

“The fundamental possibilities of Da-sein, which is always my own, show themselves in Angst as they are, undistorted by innerworldly beings to which Da-sein, initially and for the most part, clings.”

This is, of course, the basis on which I argue that cognitive science lends support to idealism - that experienced reality is mind dependent (not mind-independent as realist philosophies would have it.)

.

I recall you saying you read Perl's "Thinking Being," but I forget exactly what you thought about it. I think Perl does a good job explaining the phenomenological side of ancient and scholastic thought (where terms like "intentionality" come from), and the idea that "if being is to mean anything, it must be that which is given to thought." There is a sense in which Plato, Plotinus, St. Augustine, Eriugena, St. Maximus and Hegel are all "idealists," or even Aristotle, St. Thomas, and Dante, but I think they offer a path around some of the questionable conclusions of a lot of modern idealism, which opened it to the attacks of Moore, Russell, etc.

Actually, I think idealism (and not particularly of the sort I am favorable too) is back in a lot of ways, it's just that people don't like the lable, and equivocate on it because it is in such disrepute. Claims like "different cultures/language communities live in essentially different worlds and different things are true for them," have a sort of idealist ring too. Epistemic idealism seems almost mainstream. "All we know/experience is the mind, but yes there is some undescribable, dark noumenal ocean out there (at least probably) that the light of intellect can never penetrate. At best it can "see" it apophatically, from where the light stops."

Whereas, from the older camp you get principles along the lines of:

(1) the world of space and time does not itself exist in space and time: it exists in Intellect (the Empyrean, pure
conscious being); (2) matter, in medieval hylomorphism, is not something "material”: it is a principle of unintelligibility, of alienation from consciousness; (3) all finite form, that is, all creation, is a self-qualification of Intellect or Being, and only exists insofar as it participates in it; (4) Creator and creation are not two, since the latter has no existence independent of the former; but of course creator and creation are not the same; and (5) God, as the ultimate subject of all experience, cannot be an object of experience: to know God is to know oneself as God, or (if the expression seems troubling) as one “with” God or “in” God.

Which is not to convince anyone of these principles, but rather to suggest that later idealisms have often run into issues around the the trickiness of "the mind/brain creates or constructs the world," and "the Moon didn't exist until someone was there to see it," as well as some of the issues of merely epistemic idealism, precisely because God, the Absolute, the One/Good, the Prime Mover, Brahman, etc. is displaced, either as fiction or as one being among many (the univocity of being). So you no longer have a One, but a Many—intellects plural, and not Intellect. And since our intellects are finite, mutable, and passible, then what is dependent on them, which is everything, is mutable. Which creates problems of the sort Heraclitus' Logos or Anaxagoras' Nous get thrown in as ad hoc solutions for.

I guess it's the difference between "the world is Intellect," and "the world is my intellect," or "our plurality of intellects."

No, the cause of suffering can be found within oneself, in the form of the constant desire (trishna, thirst, clinging) - to be or to become, to possess and to retain, to cling to the transitory and ephemeral as if they were lasting and satisfying, when by their very nature, they are not. That of course is a very deep and difficult thing to penetrate, as the desire to be and to become is engrained in us by the entire history of biological existence. It nevertheless is the 'cause of sorrow' as the Buddha teaches it, radical though that might be (and it is radical). — Wayfarer

This is, of course, brilliant.

Philosophers chasing after propositional truth (logos) is patently absurd. It begs the question, Why do it (for it is assumed one does it for a reason)? No one wants this. The summum bonum is not a "defensible thesis."

So here's my question, generally speaking. How is "blind faith" not an adequate response to the Problem of Induction? — Arcane Sandwich

We see regularities in nature everywhere. We have a coherent and vast body of scientific knowledge that tells us there is not any reason to think the Sun will suddenly cease working. The Sun has always risen throughout at least human recorded history, and we have good scientific reasons to believe it was shining long before life on Earth arose. So, I would not call our confidence in the Sun continuing to rise "blind faith". For me, blind faith is belief in something without any empirical evidence or logical justification at all.

Philosophers chasing after propositional truth (logos) is patently absurd. It begs the question, Why do it (for it is assumed one does it for a reason)? No one wants this. The summum bonum is not a "defensible thesis." — Astrophel

Are you not proposing something? And do you not need some justification that can be intersubjectively assessed in an (hopefully) unbiased way? Let's say for the sake of argument that spiritual insight, even enlightenment, is possible—what one sees is not explainable, not propositional, and yet ironically it is always couched in those terms, and people fall for it because they are gullible and wishful.

If altered states of consciousness were explainable, we would have all long been convinced. So, your epiphany may convince you of something, but it provides absolutely no justification for anyone else to believe anything. If they do believe you it is because you are charismatic, or because they feel they can trust you or they believe you are an authority, and so on. If you could perform miracles that might give them more solid reason to believe what you say.

I recall you saying you read Perl's "Thinking Being," but I forget exactly what you thought about it — Count Timothy von Icarus

Very impressed with it, particularly the early chapters - the chapter on Plato is indispensable. It corrects the almost universal misconceptions around the nature of the Forms, showing that they are more like what we would today understand as intellectual principles, than the kinds of 'ghostly images' that most people seem to take them for. I'm still assimilating the remainder.

There is a sense in which Plato, Plotinus, St. Augustine, Eriugena, St. Maximus and Hegel are all "idealists," or even Aristotle, St. Thomas, and Dante, but I think they offer a path around some of the questionable conclusions of a lot of modern idealism — Count Timothy von Icarus

I said to @Leontiskos recently that it's said that Aquinas was a realist, not an idealist, but his realism is very different from today's. Why? Because the contemporary criterion of objectivity that underlies modern realism —the mind-independent object —would have been foreign to him. Aquinas' epistemology was based on assimilation, where the knower and known are united in an intellectual act:

The Aristotelian-Thomistic account... sidesteps indirect realism/phenomenalism that has plagued philosophy since Descartes. It claims that we directly know reality because we are formally one with it. Our cognitive powers are enformed by the very same forms as their objects [which are] the means by which we know extra-mental objects. We know things by receiving the forms of them in an immaterial way, and this reception is the fulfillment, not the destruction, of the knowing powers — Cognition in Aquinas

But by the time Kant arrives on the scene, the idea of the "mind-independent object of sense perception"—the modern criterion of objectivity—had taken hold, courtesy of the empiricists. Which is what Kant (and before him Bishop Berkeley, in a different way) was reacting against. I see that as the main motivation for what we now call idealism, and why we can retrospectively call Plato an idealist, even though it’s plainly an anachronism as the term itself was not devised until the early modern period.

Whereas for Aquinas', the notion of "mind-independence" in that modern sense would have seemed alien. And that's where "idealism" as the opposite of materialism originates - with the modern era and the "Cartesian divide". That phrase in the quoted passage "we directly know reality because we are formally one with it" is crucial. Notice the resonance with Hindu nondualism, although in many other respects they diverge (although nevertheless I noticed recently that one of Raimundo Pannikar's three doctorates was on a comparitive study of Aquinas and Adi Sankara.) It represents what Vervaeke calls "participatory knowing", which is very different to propositional knowledge.

Philosophers chasing after propositional truth (logos) is patently absurd. — Astrophel

Thank you, although whatever brilliance is there is of course the Buddha's. But apropos that particular point, it might be of interest to note that the great sage of Mahāyāna Buddhism, Nāgārjuna, maintained always that he had no thesis of his own, and that his only purpose was to show the contradictions inherent in the theses that were proposed by others.

Philosophers chasing after propositional truth (logos) is patently absurd. — Astrophel

Such as the above "propositional truth" you're "chasing" (Gorgias laughs).

:smirk:

No, the cause of suffering can be found within oneself, in the form of the constant desire (trishna, thirst, clinging) - to be or to become, to possess and to retain, to cling to the transitory and ephemeral as if they were lasting and satisfying, when by their very nature, they are not. That of course is a very deep and difficult thing to penetrate, as the desire to be and to become is engrained in us by the entire history of biological existence. It nevertheless is the 'cause of sorrow' as the Buddha teaches it, radical though that might be (and it is radical).
— Wayfarer

This is, of course, brilliant — Astrophel

Do you think it’s compatible with the thoughts of Michel Henry below?

The movement of life is …the force of a drive. What it wants is …the satisfaction of the drive, which is what life desires as a self and as a part of itself, as its self- transformation through its self-expansion, as a truth that is its own flesh and the substance of its joy, and which is the Impression. The entirety of life, from beginning to end, is perverted and its sense lost when one does not see that it is always the force of feeling that throws life into living-toward. And what it lives-toward is always life as well. It is the intensification and the growth of its power and pathos to the point of excess. (Material Phenomenology)

Philosophers chasing after propositional truth (logos) is patently absurd. It begs the question, Why do it (for it is assumed one does it for a reason)? No one wants this. The summum bonum is not a "defensible thesis."

Yes, we might agree to "all men by nature desire to know," or that the first principle of science and philosophy is wonder, without assenting to "all men by nature want to achieve validation and assertibility criteria for the set of all true propositions." :rofl:

But if "to know" just is nothing but "affirming a 'true' proposition based on proper assertibility criteria," that's all it could mean. This is what happens when the first principle of philosophy is taken to be skepticism, the summmun bonum becomes "overcoming skepticism 'with certainty,'" where certainty is defined in such a way as to make it impossible.



I'll chime in that Henry's passage strikes me as entirely agreeable, depending on how it is read. My only concern would be: "is "drive" and "force of feeling" just the drives and desires of the appetites and passions? Just sentiment?

This is always a tough question, because in modern thought the idea that all desire purely either sentiment or appetite is strong (Hume assumes it) yet not universal. I was just discussing this with J re the word "desirable." To say something is "desirable" can be taken to mean merely that people desire it, or it is often taken to mean that it is what is truly best, most choiceworthy, regardless of whether people currently desire it. It's a tough distinction.

It's at the very least aesthetically relevant, as it makes much older poetry very lame on the later understanding. As C.S. Lewis puts it:

The importance of all this for our own purpose is that nearly every reference to Reason in the old poets will be in some measure misread if we have in mind only ' the power by which man deduces one proposition from another'. One of the most moving passages in Guillaume de Lorris' part of the Romance of the Rose (5813 sq.) is that where Reason, Reason the beautiful, a gracious lady,a humbled goddess, deigns to plead with the lover as a celestial mistress, a rival to his earthly love. This is frigid if Reason were only what Johnson made her. You cannot turn a calculating machine into a goddess. But Raison la bele is 'no such cold thing'. She is not even Wordsworth's personified Duty; not even-though this brings us nearer-the personified virtue of Aristotle's ode, ' for whose virgin beauty men will die.' She is intelligentia obumbrata, the shadow of angelic nature in man. So again in Shakespeare's Lucrece we need to know fully who the 'spotted princess' (719-28) is: Tarquin' s Reason, rightful sovereign of his soul, nowmaculate.

Many references to Reason in Paradise Lost need the same gloss. It is true that we still have in our modern use of ' reasonable' a survival of the old sense, for when we complain that a selfish man is unreasonable we do not mean that he is guilty of a non sequitur or an undistributed middle. But it is far too humdrum and jejune to recall much of the old association

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/956012

Nietzsche is more interesting because he leaves the desires of reason but has no proper authority of it. We might suppose here that there is a good answer to this in the way the tyranny of a strong appetite can make man miserable, e.g. the sex addict, the alcoholic, the person who cares only for fame, etc. Whereas, how often does the search for what is "truly best," lead us to ruin.

However, in his brilliant commentary on Hamlet in the Birth, Nietzsche suggests a sort of misery that comes from precisely this pursuit. Hamlet isn't so much paralyzed by doubt, as finds action humiliating. Wouldn't he be better served by doing what Hume recommends in the Enquiry and setting side such concerns to play billiards and enjoy good food?

Yet, I can't help the underlying assumption here is that there cannot be anything for the seeker to know. St. Augustine and St. Anselm's "believe that you may understand," seems perhaps appropriate here. After all, the drive to what is truly best only suggests despair if despair is what appears "truly best." Does it ever? The same is for total withdrawal into skepticism and an inability to accept any duty.

There is a reason why Evagrius Ponticus and St. John the Ascetic make acedia, despair/sloth, one of the 7/8 Deadly Sins. I believe Evagrius has it as the most powerful demon apt to torment the monk next to pride/vainglory.

Because the contemporary criterion of objectivity that underlies modern realism —the mind-independent object —would have been foreign to him. Aquinas' epistemology was based on assimilation, where the knower and known are united in an intellectual act:

Right, there is no need for any sort of sui generis "construction" of intelligibility because, if things are to be anything at all, they must be intelligible. Hence, language games, theories, the brain, etc. are not the ground of intelligibility, but Being itself.

Aristotle, and so St. Thomas, aren't naive realists, since Aristotle has sensation as being "of" the interaction of the sense organ, the object sensed, and the transmission of form in the ambient environment (Aquinas' "intentions in the medium," virtual perceptions existing even if not perceived because causes "contain" their effects and are made "causes" only through effects). But since everything is act to the extent it is anything at all, this is not to miss any "thing in itself."

I agree 100% that an implicit, pernicious dualism infects much modern thought, even ostensible "monisms." John Deely suggests semiotics is the key bridge across this divide, but then the Sausser inspired semiotics of the 20th century only seems to make the problem more acute, so I am not sure the general idea is a panacea so much as the assumptions underlying the earlier Doctrina Signorum semiotics.

Are you not proposing something? And do you not need some justification that can be intersubjectively assessed in an (hopefully) unbiased way? Let's say for the sake of argument that spiritual insight, even enlightenment, is possible—what one sees is not explainable, not propositional, and yet ironically it is always couched in those terms, and people fall for it because they are gullible and wishful.

If altered states of consciousness were explainable, we would have all long been convinced. So, your epiphany may convince you of something, but it provides absolutely no justification for anyone else to believe anything. If they do believe you it is because you are charismatic, or because they feel they can trust you or they believe you are an authority, and so on. If you could perform miracles that might give them more solid reason to believe what you say. — Janus

Not about spiritual insight. And not an epiphany in the sense of something hiding in the discourse discovered as a surprise in the calculus. As with all philosophical problems, I argue, this matter is discovered in the simplicity of the world's manifest meanings. A proposition as such has no value, and this is true of anything I can imagine, a knowledge claim, an empirical fact or an analytical construction. States of affairs considered apart from the actuality of their conception sit there in an impossible abstract space. Never been witnessed, really, because to witness IS an actuality. I am reminded of Dewey's pragmatic analytic of experience: cognition and aesthetics are only divided in the pragmatic dealing with the world, but this makes for a "vulgar" (borrowing a Heideggerian word) ontology (certainly not vulgar in the everyday use). (See the way Heidegger talks about time in section 64 and onward of BT. I am leaning a bit on him here.)

NOT that the world has none of this divisional labor in its existence. I mean, that would be impossible to conceive; but rather that at the level of basic questions, we have to keep the foundational structures as they appear, and the essential "event" of an experience is a unity.

So my point is that in all the talk about truth, justification and knowledge, the foundational analytic goes missing; that truth apart from the aesthetic (or the affective or the pathos of engagement) that is, conceived in, say a mere propositional equation or as discursive complexities, belies the actuality in the world. It ignores affective meaning! And affectivity is the wellspring all meaning.

Such as the above "propositional truth" you're "chasing" (Gorgias laughs). — 180 Proof

It is not an argument that says there is no such thing as propositional truth. The insight here asks, what IS a proposition? Look at it like this: there the prof is running through a logical proof on the board, and one is examining the way this makes sense. One can understand the tautological and contradictory relations in play in a very disinterested way, but the act of being engaged in the exercise is interesting to you, and being interested is the most salient feature of the engagement. Now ask, does logic have this free floating existence that yields truth independently of the interest of subjective engagement? Easy to consider, really, for what if there is NO such independence even imaginable? For logic cannot be conceived apart from the experience in which it is conceived. Now we turn to experience, and we find a full bodied actuality of engagement and the entire analytic of human existence, the prior knowledge of logic going into the affair, the concern, the anticipation, the opennes to what is there, the possibility of failure, and on and on.

This is the point. Propositions can never to removed from the existence in which they are discovered in the "first" place. .

My theory about Nietzsche is that he had an Ontology as well as a Theology (an "Onto-Theology", to say it in Hegelian terms).

Ontologically, Nietzsche was a monist realist, like Spinoza.

Theologically, Nietzsche believed in Dionysus, unlike Spinoza.

Prove that I'm strawmanning biblical/christian literalism, othewise what you're saying here is just an opinion, not a fact. — Arcane Sandwich

Biblical literalism is the approach to interpreting the Bible that takes the text at its most apparent, straightforward meaning. As stated, sometimes the most apparent, straightforward meaning of the text is that e.g. a dream sequence is metaphoric.