Lack of desire for what? — T Clark

To understand the universe as it is, both with us and without us.

I never said I agreed with Protagoras, you did. — T Clark

Yes, it is only my description.

So, you agree with Protagoras: 'Man is the measure of all things.'
That view captures a certain kind of immediacy in our experience but exemplifies the lack of desire I was referring to. According to Protagoras, any further efforts to understand beyond those parameters is make-work or wankery.

The goal is not be be correct, it's to provide answers that will work in the real world. — T Clark

I propose the goal is to understand the world and ourselves in it. Being correct (or not) is an attribute of a proposition or a set of them. Understanding is finding out what is 'real' and wanting to understand more because of that experience. Being satisfied that a relativity separates absolute assumptions is a kind of cessation of desire. It is to say there is no ultimate coherence in this 'real' world and it is foolish to seek it out.

It is in that sense of the love in the word philosophy that I meant to have no problems. The eunuch does not sport pesky erections.

Rejecting the need for a "meta-framework" is intellectually liberating. — T Clark

Is that not making the struggle to understand risk free?

The Collingwood method of not framing assumptions as true or false is helpful toward a taxonomic orientation of various concepts and points of view but it doesn't give itself problems it cannot solve.

Is that not an 'absolute' assumption of some kind? Is that saying all problems are only results of some set of ideas being adopted and are not verifiable beyond the expression of them?

The topic prompted me to check out examples of assessing "EQ" and it seems peculiar to me that so many are based upon reporting on oneself through series of questions. A lot of those questions are of the 'when did you stop beating your wife' variety. If emotional intelligence is about perceiving emotions other people are having, it should me more like an archery contest where many arrows miss the mark.

As for the ones who make the best decisions because of the ability, the problem of comparison is like the kind discussed in the Art of War by Sun Tzu. The true masters of conflict are able to perceive and respond to what is happening so that fighting becomes unnecessary. The visible arts of strategy and persuasion are attempts to compensate for failures of insight and response. The highest skill is not visible.

It should be noted that the lines you quote from Kafka are half of aphorism #104, the last of the series titled Reflections On Sin, Pain, Hope, And The True Way. The first half of #104 reads:

"No one can say we are wanting in faith. The mere fact of our living is itself inexhaustible in its proof of faith."
"You call that a proof of faith? But one simply cannot not live."
"In that very 'simply cannot' lies the insane power of faith; in that denial it embodies itself." — translated by Willa and Edna Muir

Each of the aphorisms (as noted by the translators) "were carefully written and numbered by Kafka himself on separate pieces of paper." In the context of what one needs to read or not regarding a subject of philosophy, Kafka, in this case, was intent upon tying the aphorisms together and read with the others kept in view.

So the confidence that the world will "give itself to us" in #104 has to be seen with the ease and depths of our capacity for illusion and harm. Consider, for example, aphorisms #25 and #26:

25: Once we have granted accommodation to the Evil One he no longer demands we should believe him.

26: The afterthoughts with which you justify your accommodation of the Evil One are not yours but those of the Evil One.
The animal snatches the whip from its master and whips itself so as to become master, and does not know all this is only a fantasy caused by a new knot in the master's whiplash.

Whatever "doing philosophy" may be, texts that strive to be more than a list of self-sufficient explanations need to live together in a certain way to become what they are talking about. I suppose one could look at that element in a purely instrumental fashion but there is more to it than that.

I wonder how much stands up to philosophical scrutiny, especially the idea of the collective unconscious. — Jack Cummins

This is a great question but also makes me wonder if you want to have your cake and eat it too. The collective unconsciousness is presented as both a phenomena and an idea. Jung is not interested in tricking people about it. It is either one or another.

Jung is interesting. The architectural side is at odds with the willingness to hear about individual suffering. He did both. Something about the experience led him to something very different from others.
But that to me seems like a retreat from explanation. There is no bon mot. You should be unhappy.

I don't have a clear idea about what constitutes the "psychological." It seems like it is not only a set of explanations but a method for putting other problems in a context. So, the comparison of philosophical with religious experience seems to assume an underlying something to which both relate. There are a number of disciplines that attempt to understand things in that way. I am asserting you are taking some kind of stance like that to view philosophy and religion from a distance far enough away to see them apart. My experience of these activities has not been something where the different qualities announced themselves as what they are by simply appearing.

Your question of how one might do the work of another led me to think there is viewpoint prior to either by which to compare them. Is that a psychological point of view? Asking that means I have not gotten as far as asking what the differences are. There must be many. But what is the background of comparison?

In your asking about the difference between philosophy and religion, I have difficulty with taking either as a given circumscribed set of activities that may or may not overlap. Is there a way to separate them that is not already a choice?
When you say: "I am wondering about the way in which philosophy provides an alternative way of finding explanations and meanings", it sounds like religion had this job we can distinguish beyond the confines of choosing it or not over philosophy.
I would like to hear more about this job. It sounds more important than deciding who should get it.