Well, it is more complicated.
The whole thing about two or three gathering as a congregation doesn't square with a lot of other stuff that has been said.
But there it is.

There are lots of different models for such a thing.
I am not sure it is an interesting line of pursuit without one.
Which begs a question...

Why does Kant separate the appearance into form and matter? Why does he suppose that the sensations cannot already be given to us ordered a certain way, and instead supposes that sensations are just give to us in a disordered way? It seems like an arbitrary distinction he makes in order to create the need for pure intuition and the Categories. — Kryneizov

Some of the reason why is Kant's endeavor to "save" causality from Hume who said that is an arbitrary scheme we apply to phenomena to make it into a story. As that idea applies to "sensation", Kant is accepting that criticism and having the matter both ways:

The organization of the encounter with "matter" requires an operation be set up on the side of the perceiver to process it. It is "formal" as a matter of agency. But there is a point of contact with the not formal that is "material". If one is to express the situation in that way, Kant is not the worse thing to happen to a person.

Another way to look at it is to compare with Aristotle's De Anima. How things get perceived in that scheme is that some element in the material things is a player in how the perceiver makes the encounter actual for them. The potential being is perceived actually. How that could happen is not explained but assumed because, heck, it seems to be what is happening.

I want to understand why metaphysics as a structural issue is incompatible with science as we practice it today, despite metaphysical statements arising within it? — Shawn

Science needs to own all of the premises it sets forth to test whether asserted connections are true or not. It is a function of experimentation.
The need to make that a condition of doing science is neither an acceptance or rejection of metaphysical speculation or expression. To make it to be so is onerous and feels like extra work.

Maybe one long term consequence of the insufficient testing problem is that the antibody factor that has suddenly come into view as the means to figure out exposure become technically something that can be figured out in ever shorter amounts of time.
Make it an app.

I suggest learning a little bit of Greek.
Aristotle repeats many words and phrases. When you see how the translators are arguing for how to understand those words, the world suddenly gets smaller.

I don't think deciding why people are addicted, as presented by your remark about stressors, will advance the methods to help them.
You want to separate every bodies' problem as the result of incorrect stuff they think. That sort of thing is surely involved.
But don't stand in a temple and tell others how it must be.

And, that seems to be a big issue in my view. To take two diametrically opposing things and then mix up their importance is an issue because, well... they are different in nature, no? — Shawn

There are ways to present them as "diametrically" different. There are ways to approach the differences as parts of various psychological frameworks. For myself, the value of any approach is ultimately phenomenological. Am I getting closer to what is going on?

Yeah, that's a hard one. But, a good start is realizing that one doesn't need them, even though they get fraught as needs in many cases, don't you think? — Shawn

Every addict already knows they don't "need" it. Every addict also knows they do. Finding the leverage point to apply a pry bar in the situation is about finding resources and potential for change.

I contest that there is a strict dichotomy here, a need is fundamentally different than a want. Wants are like superlatives stemming from a mis-characterization of a need in disguise. — Shawn

Yes they are different. There are good reasons why we make distinctions between them.
But accepting that doesn't necessarily move us closer to understanding your question about how needs get to be confused with desires.

Problems like substance abuse, for example, are not solved by saying things like: "Snap out of it, you don't need that cocaine."

If the freedom to practice religion is a fundamental right, doesn't that mean religion is still prevalent in the general populace? — TheMadFool

It does. The Establishment of Religion clause of the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution was not a stand against theological ideas or styles of life but the removal of an arbiter who decided which of those are okay or not.
The decision to make that rule a central principle of government was influenced by noting how all the wars of religion came from restricting those expressions and forms.
In that sense, the secular is more about avoiding bloody conflict on the basis of belief systems than anything else. A political riot act, if you will.

Yes, the need is prior to the "desire" for something but noticing that doesn't separate the two in an absolute fashion.
For the most part, we want what we need. The way they get mixed up with each other is important to learn about. The qualities don't care what box we put them in.

When you need or want things, it is not happening in a vacuum. If you say you need to eat you also want to eat. A distinction is made but it doesn't put the lack of food into an absolute category unless we are talking about starvation.
On a good day, the various responses to needing and wanting food are mixed up with other things. In that way, it is a relationship of relative factors and expectations balanced against other needs and desires.
On a bad day, you need to eat or die.
So, one can make different categories to assign the absence of food to correspond to different conditions or accept that we can only distinguish qualities of this kind in the most terrible set of circumstances. And the latter is an acceptance of a relativity that cannot be continued for the time being.

Maybe the way to approach it is to start with the relativity of absence.
Aristotle noted that people suffering from an illness experienced their needs and what they wanted differently from when they were healthy.
With each individual, the matter of what "healthy" involves elements "needed" by the organism as such and another element peculiar to a particular situation at a certain time.

From that point of view, separating needs from wants is inseparable from distinguishing any moment from another.

I found Blindness by José Saramago to be the most terrifying thing I have ever read.
Its perfect logic sticks to everything I wonder about.

The whole thing has been set up as a gamer's paradise, by gamers.
The paranoia regarding hidden agendas is quaint.
There is only the game and what one can do to make it less of a carnival of violence.

What is important or what is true? In an extremely short time, say between Bacon and the present, we have we overcome the evils that took our children and kept our live expectancy down to less than 45 years and kept our economies in extreme poverty and ignorance. — Athena

What is important for a person can be what is true. The culture wars are wrapped around that connection. Being a progressive is about embracing a better way to do things and developing a more just society. It also is about the connection between the personal and the political that is a the heart of the different iterations of "Christianity."

One of the interesting elements of Elaine Pagels' book about the Gnostic Gospels is that the demand for inclusion by the church was not just about all the bad things it produced. A vision of the universal seems to be a terrible thing in many ways. But sorting out what should be embraced or rejected on that basis is exactly what the connection between the personal and the political needs to struggle with.

The reflected consciousness, or consciousness in the second degree, is essentially a positional consciousness of self; a consciousness of the subject as object (the I of psychology). — charles ferraro

That is a reasonable conclusion to Sartre's reference to Kant. For me, it misses a certain quality of a phenomenal observation of the sort Descartes saw himself doing. That the "reflection" could happen at any time is something to notice before outlining what consciousness is. Sartre's observation does not negate the immediacy of self awareness as depicted by Descartes; it places the experience in a particular context.

What is obvious to me is the power of having special knowledge. This power is even greater if it is believed to be sacred knowledge. It becomes even greater when there is only one god, only one truth. Democracy is an imitation of the gods who argued with each other until they had a consensus on the best reasoning. None of those gods had absolute power and each one had his/her point of view. — Athena

I hear the connection you make between devices of power and the ideas that make that viable. But we all live our life's trying to make the best of what has been given to us to deal with. The history of Christianity is a strange combination of different impulses. I have no interest in justifying anything.

At the end of day, there is only you or I to say what is important.
And we will do that or not.

The "inwardness" element gets treated in different ways in Transcendence of the Ego.
One pivot point is Sartre emphasizing that Kant said the "I" could be attached to any experience but was not always done.
The phenomena of being an "I" is not given as a such but is collected after making a basket to hold what is found.

There were a number of testimonies that got labelled as "Gnostic" by the "Church Fathers."
The orthodoxy that shut out all but one view was not concerned by the differences it dispensed with.
That suggests the matter of forming the authorized view was only concerned with putting down anything that differed from it in any way.
That explanation does not require pitting one narrative against another. The demand to have only one story wiped out the other ones as part of enabling the growth of power in a secular world.

It is very annoying that you assert to be the speaker for
"Gnostic Christianity" when that is an idea only recently recovered from the mangled text of recorded time.
If it is the case that there are alternative ways to listen to accepted understandings of text read by many people, shouldn't you be starting there?
Nobody will care if you blow off their narratives only because you think something or the other. If you care about what some people think, then start caring.

It exists but is not a substance. In Spinoza speak, it is a mode of being that could stop at any time.

I have learned a lot here but I don't really belong,
When I have tried to contest matters in view of what most interests me, it is not interesting to others.
It is rare when people are not talking past each other, on this forum or in Life.

I would include Zhuangzi.
The limits of what can be said is discussed.
The thought is expressed in other places but is a cage match in Zhuangzi.

In the Homeric tales, gods acted in their self interest and outcomes of mortal affairs were often shaped by that dynamic.

The Republic wrestles with that view. It is not a complete answer to Thrasymachus' challenge but it does put some of the burden on the other side. To liken it to a system of universal judgement misses the margin of separation desired by Plato.

The passion of Socrates' brothers is the central voice of the dialogue.

Having to choose between something abstract and something less so may not be the pivot. One aspect of Taoism that speaks to this situation is that all of our narratives are just stories told while being present to something that is not a story. It is an observation of a circumstance. It is either true or not. If one accepts it as true, then it is a condition one is adapting to, not a desire or requirement that is being recognized as the highest thing.

As a turning point, accepting the condition is not the embrace of a replacement to what has been set aside. You start by doing without something that was always a part of the previous starts.

It sounds like a mystical statement but is simply an experiment that is begun or not. And if begun, easily abandoned.

The decision to fight or not can be a principle that applies to every situation. But if one approaches it as a matter of conditions, it becomes a matter of choice. One has to decide: Is this where I fight or not?

The "pacifism" of Gandhi is militaristic in regards to calling for passive acceptance at every turn. The method is the most important thing. The model calls for adherence to a method despite the suffering it requires of those who carry it forward.

I bring up the Non-Violence movement more as an example than a last word on anything. Each point of view takes place in the context of States deciding to go to war or not. But each point of view is part of decisions a person makes as a person in their own struggles.

The different paths intersect in many ways. But they are different paths.
That is all I got.

Because the relationship to who has the power is always specific to a particular situation.
Is there to be a unified theory where being an employee is the same thing as being a nation state?

I agree that kicking off a war that ends the planet is stupid and hopefully will not happen.

The right thing to do about that situation may not apply to all conflicts.

All of our choices stick to us like glue.
How can it not be both?

If I decide to fight, it won't be because I assured myself it was just.
I don't get to know beforehand.
I don't understand most of the things that are happening.
My decision tree cannot wait for everything to be understood.
But choices have to be made in difficult situations.
No set of Ethics will relieve one of that responsibility.

If you decide to fight, you will do that.

So has it always been.

War is a personal choice.
I agree with your opinion about it as an option in an ideal sense.
But it is your choice before it is anything else.

What I mean by that is that each struggle is peculiar to itself.
Some differences seem large in the mind but involve short distances in the world.
Other struggles involve complicated histories where the struggle is cast as generations fighting other generations.
I don't have a theory to embrace that makes sense of this broad expanse of what is happening and how the participants make it real for themselves.

Creating new alternatives as a peacemaker is tough job.
It may not work.
Some people I have met try stuff that may not work at all.
I try to be like them.

Well, I did say that I cannot make a "rational" argument for war.
The Aquinas argument for a "just" war is not helpful.
But everybody decides when to fight when they fight.

War may not be rational but the end of negotiation is not necessarily irrational.
We all have our limits to how much is a matter of a deal that could be struck versus accepting conditions that simply negate our lives.
It is important to differentiate between these conditions but doing so is not easy.
It is too central to our experience of being human to make a categorical judgement about.

remember you are free to wander away — csalisbury

This is a great challenge. To go back to the scene one would leave.

Well, there are so many "modern psychologies."
So many, in fact, that I have no idea what might be said by saying stuff about it.
I may as well treat my cut with the piece of bark that my grandfather swore would help.

I dunno. It sounds like you want some kind of control over the outcome.The fate narrative that runs through all of the instances cited is interesting but not self evident.
Most of the differences expressed between Agape and Eros concern supporting or opposing various ideas of the self.
It may be more efficient to just talk about that since so much is incumbent upon it.