One could argue: posture, practice, direction, communion are all questions: what posture, practice, etc., should be done, accepted, believed?

Well yes there is a role for the intellect in these refinements. But what I am alluding to is an interplay between the intellect and being, or self. The intellect alone cannot bridge the gap between the intellect/personality/ego and the essence of one’s being, or self. Or another way of describing this is that if one accepts that there is a divinity within one’s being, then the intellect/personality/ego is required to accommodate this and reach an interactive orientation (communion) with that divinity. Thus allowing that divinity to progressively play a greater role in the life of the person.

This is what I call the science of orientation*, this is a process of adapting aspects of self to become in alignment with that divinity. Rather like an astrolabe where the dials are turned, aligned with observations in the world, or the skies, to take an accurate reading.

These things can be done absent the intellect through prayer, or meditation. So in a very real sense faith and belief are not the product of thinking but rather prayer, or communion. Although the intellect can play a role for thinkers in this process. So yes philosophy is a useful practice for those who have an intellectual inquiry.

This gives epistemology the privileged place among the rest, because prior to anything that is accepted as true and important, there is the question of knowing this to be the case.

Again, I’m not denying this, but rather saying that this intellectual enquiry is not fundamental to the practice. In a real sense it doesn’t matter what God, or Cosmogony one follows (within reason), one takes one’s pick of the schools or religions available. Also there is not a requirement for the existence, or nature of God to be established. Truth is another matter, but can be accommodated through humility and a focus on the simple path to divinity within the self.

I mean, before one goes about being directed, one has to have a well grounded belief for doing so.

Yes, however this is often a calling, an insatiable need to find out, a sense of the divine. Belief doesn’t necessarily come before these other motivating factors. But yes for the novice it is advisable to join an established school, or broaden one’s reading as wide as possible. To go out into the world to live a rounded life within a community to ground the self. Although for some people these things all come naturally, intuitively. It is also not advisable for people with childhood trauma, psychological issues etc.

Faith in what?

We may be talking of different understandings of faith. For me I would substitute the word belief for faith here. Belief is more about the narrative one has developed and is an intellectual development. Whereas faith is not necessarily associated with any particular narrative, but is more a feeling, emotion, conviction.

But then there is Husserl, and the neoHusserlian strain of thought that is very active today.

This sounds interesting, I am not well read in academic philosophy, I would be interested to learn more in this direction.


*When I say the science of orientation, I am referring to the practice of the alignment of the person with the divine as practiced in different ways within the different religious and spiritual schools. This will eventually I expect become a scientific practice. Which it has already to an extent become within Hinduism in the yogic traditions.

What defensible core?

I would say reduced to the God in each of us, that essence of self or divinity/atman in each of us.

I see the distinction, I wasn’t thinking of lifestyle as a choice so much as a direction of travel that one had arrived at. That lifestyle, or practice that is adopted initially would develop into a way of life through an evolution.
The ways in which a person reaches these stages would be unique to each person, there would be epiphany, revelation, calling, questioning, exploration and choices. The evolution would progress through stages, of realisation, crisis and initiation. A path to be trodden.

There are due to their origins a number of schools(philosophies/religions) through which a believer/aspirant may come to their faith. Some more orthodox, some more devotional, some more meditation based. Some in which a deity is front and centre, others where any deity is barely defined.

Also their are people who explore a number of schools and then follow their own path and people who follow a path, unaware that they are, thinking perhaps that they have no faith, or interest in religious, or spiritual matters at all.

it, I think we should be thinking of faith as not merely a peculiarity of some people, but as about the foundations of whatever form life a human being pursues - however inchoate and unreflective.

Yes, for the religious, the aspirant, faith is the touchstone of their lives. For these people faith is with them all the time and becomes a connection through communion with their divinity, to their unique spiritual ideology. This is very much about lifestyle and practice(service), whereas beliefs are confined to the ideology, the narrative of the person and are more abstract. Also such faith does not need a defined object, a God, or reality in which they have that faith. Like humility it is about the person as a being, his/her posture, rather than part of a philosophical, or theological narrative.

It is, as with the Buddhists and the Hindus and Meister Eckhart and Dionysius the Areopogite and other spiritualists and mystics, an apophatic method: delivering thought, well, from itself. then realizing you had all the questions wrong. Not the answers, but the questions.

Quite, but not just the questions, also posture, practice, direction, communion.

Faith is a broad brush phrase in this kind of discussion and needs to be teased out.

Religious faith is an inevitable consequence of one’s approach to, or questioning of our origin, creation, purpose. If one is to make any progress beyond, “I/we don’t know”. Science and philosophy can’t help us. Other than in describing the world and how it works and helping us to order and refine our thoughts.

There is faith in God, faith in redemption, faith in society and human interaction. Faith in oneself, faith in truth. Faith as a tool used in mysticism, or by the ascetic.

Forgive me, I have a satirical bent. I would engage more, but I don’t have the breadth of reading in philosophy, or in Western philosophy. I come from the perspective of eastern philosophy, or Theosophy.

For me empiricism includes the contents of mind, so is regarded as universal. I don’t have the divide between idealism and positivism(I’m not sure if this is even the right word) and find it a means, or excuse, for argument, rather than anything else.

I know, I guess they are a broken force now. They may have disintegrated as a coherent force. They might be holding on to the remaining hostages as some kind of get out clause.

The whole situation is inconceivably horrific and intractable. We need the one person who can stop this to act. But for some reason he won’t.

I looked up the word poon in the urban dictionary. I guess you don’t mince your words.

I doubt it would slow down the ethnic cleansing at all and Netanyahu would claim the credit for getting them released. The reality is that Israel can’t stop here, they’ve passed the point of no return. They will only now feel secure when every Palestinian is removed from Israel and they have surrounded themselves with heavily armed buffer zones.

The only alternative is the intervention of a large scale international peace keeping force. But the international community is not stepping forward.

Two days ago during a White House press briefing, Trump showed a video of a what he described as a mass grave in South Africa. There were hundreds of white crosses with a group of people standing by the graves in grief apparently. He then claimed it was a genocide against white people.

The video and the claims about it being a mass grave is a conspiracy theory propagated by the far right in the US and in other countries.

In reality, it was a protest following the murder of a white couple, the crosses were symbolic, there were no graves and the people there were the protesters. Trump is broadcasting false conspiracy theories from the White House.

some.

Well, what would you think if you had stadiums of Israelis yelling "kill the Palestinian," led by major politicians?
— BitconnectCarlos

“BitconnectCarlos, they already do that!”

ssu

They have literally done that today, at the wailing wall rather than a stadium. It’s being broadcast on the world media. They’re dancing and chanting with Ben-Gvir egging them on. Fully aware that they’re committing a genocide on their neighbours.

It’s a reminder that human nature includes the potential for groups to kill and Iradicate other groups and feel morally justified in doing so. So it is incumbent upon world leaders to call it out where it happens and prevent it. There is one person, one world leader, alone who can stop this in one day and he is noticeably silent on the issue.

Yes, reality could be very simple and yet we don’t know it. We could be staring it in the face and still not have a clue. Maybe we know it, but not with our mind, but rather with our body, being.

It’s interesting to consider how much we don’t know, while seeming to know a lot. Indeed what we do know is tiny compared to what we don’t. But it’s easy to remain blind to what we don’t know and just accept what we do know as what there is, or even all there is.

I’m not sure that Apustimelogist doesn’t understand transcendental idealism. But rather he’s continually testing it from a positivist standpoint. But I don’t think that gap can necessarily be bridged. Because the positivist says I can measure, test, observe, recognise, describe etc the world we are in and if there is anything else to it, show it to me so I can measure it? If you can’t, then why should I accept that it is there at all?
Also that I have all the understanding etc that I need to do my thinking already in the world I am experiencing already. So all this philosophising about the logic of considering idealism is just a thought experiment, a tongue twister, nothing more.

So I don’t think this is an exercise in getting someone to understand the other’s point of view, necessarily. They may well understand it well enough already, but rather an exercise in explaining away the gap which needs bridging between the two opposing views. To build so many bridges that the gap is imperceptible any more, or that the gap is nothing more than a wrinkle in a whole and that there isn’t really a gap.

I like thought experiments and your mountain experiment works well for me. Another way of seeing it is from the standpoint of life as a whole, rather than the mountain, as one unit, all life as one being.

So all life is one entity, or being and in the world we find ourselves in, this being is budded, or cloned into millions of parts, or sub-beings. Which we see as all the living organisms on the planet. Each sub-being experiences the world differently depending on which part, or portion of the being they are. So an ant, experiences the world differently to a bat for example.

Now this being might be the origin of both those sub-beings and all that they experience, indeed the world might be a facet of that being which is experienced as a physical world of experiences through a process of becoming. A process of becoming a mind, which then experiences the world that it is budded into.

The world these sub-beings experience isn’t an externally existing world of physical objects, external to the greater being, but a product, or projection of that being, experienced differently by the different classes of sub-being. Mind and the world mind experiences, may be two sides of the one coin of being a being and all part of the one being. Time and extension(space and material), are produced from and by the being.


This thought experiment opens a bridge to understand how the physical world may be a “projection” of mind, and not external, while appearing to be.

Not at all. Just remember that it was South Africa that made the case against Israel of genocide against the Palestinians. That is why there's this large effort to tarnish the image of South Africa.

Yes, but this whole conspiracy has been cooked up because the oppressed people in an apartheid state are now in charge. Fuelled by people sympathetic to an other apartheid state.

They claim a genocide (falsely), while denying the other genocide, which is actually happening before our eyes.

It’s interesting that the irony is lost in this pivot to a genocide in South Africa. The only other country in the world, apart from Israel which was an apartheid state. It demonstrates what a poisonous practice it is.

have you apologized for spreading blood libels yet?

I am reminded of the story which went around the world within a few hours, in outrage, of 40 beheaded babies.

I see now, so anyone who doesn’t apologise for criticising Israel is an anti semite and of course, you are not critical of Israel committing genocide on a people they regard as animals.

I want a government that does not prefer any one race. Double standards, unfortunately, exist.

So you condemn the Israeli government then?

Now that the genocide is in full flow and there is an acute crisis in which 14,000 babies could die in the next 48 hours*. Will Donald Trump act, or turn his back on them. Again he has been warned, he will not be able to claim he did not know about it. As there is an intense international effort underway today to get the required aid into Gaza. It is sitting on the border and Tom Fletcher is making every effort to get the trucks in today.

*according to the UN aid chief, Tom Fletcher.

Sachs's points in summary:
- Trump pursues the right policy on Israel and Ukraine, namely peace.
- Trump's approach is effective.
- If successful, this could end 30 years of aggressive US(-Israeli) foreign policy, which would be historic.

What? If Trump want’s to stop these two wars all he has to do is freeze military aid to Isreal and threaten Putin with serious action on blocking oil and bank transactions and increasing military aid to Ukraine. He could end both wars in one day if he did that.

I spent an evening in a hotel room in Athens during the Greek financial crisis. While trying to find something to watch on the TV, I found a Channel devoted to proposing the virtues of wine for cats. There were bottles of wine with a picture of a cat on the label and they showed it being fed to cats in a bowl.

It will be interesting to see if Trump is ok with this amount of blood on his hands. I doubt he expected that he would have to play a role in two genocidal wars when he decided to run again.

Now is the time act, let’s see if Trump will act to prevent a genocide when he has been given full warning. If he fails to act, he will have blood on his hands.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-15/un-aid-chief-urges-security-council-to-prevent-genocide-in-gaza/105293790

Now is the time act, let’s see if Trump will act to prevent a genocide when he has been given full warning. If he fails to act, he will have blood on his hands.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-15/un-aid-chief-urges-security-council-to-prevent-genocide-in-gaza/105293790

Still we will continue to ask the question, what is real? With good reason and what is real will continue to slap us in the face, or stare back at us in the mirror.

Retired police officer arrested over ‘thought crime’ tweet

You parroting gutter press again. Won’t you ever learn.

Not according to Kant, and I have some sympathy with his way of seeing things. In my interpretation of what he said, time is something we bring to the world.

I also have some sympathy with this, but I suppose I lend more weight to ideas that the external world is more external than that and has an existence apart from our minds. Although I don’t see an either/or dichotomy here. Both things could be so and our reduction to either/or, where this happens, as a limited interpretation.

Subjective time is a substance:

You seem to have smuggled in the concept of substance here. Does substance describe a thing, something that has objective existence? Or is substance a substance of mind, or intellect, or something immaterial?

2 By substance, I mean something that exists and has a set of properties.

Does something exist if it is an invention of thought?

What do you think of Bertrand Russell's views on time:

That’s someone trying to formulate a logical language that explains things about time. The problem with logic is it can be difficult to relate it to things outside the mind. Our mind was born into a place with time (and space) therefore time was a priori to mind. So our mind and its contents are a peculiarity, a product of, time (and space) and other aspects of that existence. To make any progress outside of our mind we must find a metric independent of mind. Hence science and we know what science has found out about this existence.

Hollywood has gone to crap.

Hollywood went to crap 30, or 40 years ago. This is just the icing on the cake.

I said developments. Also there are actions, like the U.S. military ceasing it’s delivery of promised arms to Ukraine as a bargaining chip in negotiating a deal(the minerals deal).

The action of conducting secret negotiations with Russia concerning European land, interests and security from which European representatives where excluded.

Apart from what Trump has said. He has single-handedly put the commitments and trust in the NATO alliance at risk of collapse. His actions have destroyed a hard won commitment to it’s values.

It doesn’t take a lot to destroy trust and once destroyed those who have lost it move on. Knowing that it takes time and commitment to restore it.

Straw man then, as I wasn’t talking about what some politicians said.

And some things change and some things don’t.

I was talking about developments. Developments are more concrete than words from individuals. They are changes in status agreed on by large numbers of people. A status which had become outdated and strained. It probably only needed a nudge to bring it about.

Your whole argument that European countries are lazy and just expect the US to carry the can all the time is false. It was a legacy of the post war settlement.

That conclusion is rather premature.

My conclusion is based on two ruptures of conditions in the status of EU member states. Ruptures which cannot be reversed as the conditions which were broken were historic understandings adopted during a process of providing stability following the turmoil of the WW2. And the world has now moved on.
Firstly, the understanding the US would play a senior/caretaking role in providing this stability. Trump has clearly broken this commitment.
Secondly that European countries, primarily Germany would not re-arm following WW2 and would rely on the NATO alliance for security. Again Trump has clearly broken this commitment and Germany is now re-arming.

Both these genies cannot be put back in the bottle whatever happens in the US following Trump’s last term in office.

Also that political instability in the US and the rise of Trump has weakened the NATO alliance and brought into question it’s existence and commitments to article 5. Enabling Putin to conclude that NATO won’t respond to the invasion of Ukraine and may fracture and become divided. While the U.S. will become consumed by internal instability.

That Putin’s hold on power was becoming weak and the distraction of war was needed. To galvanise his hold on power and create the myth that he was a strong leader and necessary to protect the integrity of Russia.

He found an ally in Trump who admired his authoritarian status and would give legitimacy to Putin’s anti European rhetoric.

So in a very real sense this whole geopolitical crisis is a joint venture between Trump and Putin. Even while Trump might not be cognisant of the fact.

Europe has now been weaned off the U.S. teat. It won’t be going back in this generation. Although the U.S. will play a brotherly role.
The Ukraine war is not over, there could be many twists and turns.

There is now an opportunity for Europe to collaborate with Ukraine in low cost battlefield defence technology. Leaving the U.S. behind with its over priced stock.

It’s one step closer to his Nobel Peace prize. Now all he has to do is give Russia “a good deal” and it’s over the line.

And meanwhile, we can see up to 2 million people on our TV, if we are lucky enough to have access to an impartial news channel, starve to death (in Gaza) before our eyes. Care of Donald Trump.
So much winning.

You don’t reform the constitution while a despotic populist is in power. We learnt that in the U.K. with Boris Johnson.
In his attempts to strong arm the EU over Brexit, he prorogued parliament and sent a government representative to lie to the Queen. The intention was to shut out parliament while he acted under executive powers. Fortunately the Supreme Court was able to stop him.