At the very centre, God knows everything and experiences everything for all time all at once forever.

My little thread of awareness, and your little thread of awareness are just temporarily oblivious fragments of the whole.

Trying to escape is creating the fear, and everyone here is kindly helping you to feed your fear. As God you have created the isolation and the other to love, but you are trying to frustrate yourself, because you have become confused. Turn around and embrace what you are running from.

how can we know that the external world "really is" as we see and hear and feel it to be? The indirect realist argues that we can't know this, because the quality of our experiences is determined not just by the external stimulus but also by our eyes and brain. — Michael

How can we know, therefore, that we "really" have eyes and brain? How can we know that we cannot know? How can we know that the telephone "really" works the way you claim it works? How does an indirect realist escape from global epistemological scepticism? A direct realist is naive to think that shit smells, but somehow, an indirect realist knows everything about everything.

I think the distinction between self and other is pretty fundamental — prothero

A direct link of causal efficacy is necessary, but that is a different proposition than direct naive realism. — prothero

How can you speak of causal efficacy, a mysterious connective substance for sure, when you cannot see or touch a tree?

When the dog sees the rabbit, and gives chase, there is not a great deal of consideration of self, nor of causality going on. One does not say the dog's brain sees an image of a rabbit or that the dogs legs run after it — particularly, the dog or its legs cannot be running after a perception in its brain. No, the dog is running after the rabbit, that it has seen, not in its mind or its brain, but in the field, because that's where the rabbit is.

perception is a process that occurs in the brain not in the external world. — prothero

The phrase "external world" implies a separate "internal world" in which presumably "perception" happens, as distinct from "seeing" which happens in the external world when for example, the dog sees the rabbit. Indirect realists are happiest talking about seeing and most unhappy talking about touching, for reasons that are probably fairly obvious.

But the problem with this dual world that indirect realism seems to require is that bodies, sense-organs and' most of all, brains, are part of the external world that they have no direct contact with.

Is there a point to this? Is there not elementary neuroscience and psychology first in modern philosophy? — Alexander Hine

I think the question reduces to one of identity. Those who Identify as mind will be indirect realists, whereas those who identify as body will be direct realists. Direct realists are joined to the world by their skin and all their senses, and indirect realists are separated from the world by their skull and all their senses. Neuroscience will never find the person in the neurones or the 'correct' identification.

Our senses (body and mind) filter, organize and present information (data) from the external enviroment in a way that is advantageous (usually) for our survival. Do our senses give us an entirely complete picture of the external environment, it would seem quite clearly not; we don't see UV or Infrared, we do not hear frequencies above or below certain limits. So our picture of the world including the way we color it is a representation of reality, not a complete picture of all or nature. — prothero

Is this your argument? I can't see everything, so I can't see anything. If you have a picture of the world, how do you see it? Indirectly?

The onus is on direct realists to explain, if only broadly and superficially, how direct realism is supposed to work. Thoughts? — frank

But you already know how it works, I see with my eyes and touch with my skin and hear with my ears. The onus is on the indirect realist to explain what this interface could possibly be that is neither me nor the world. The only candidate so far is 'image', and that is obviously nonsense. when I touch a tree, what is between me and the tree? Nothing, I say, what do you say?

but why ought a person keep surviving? By noting that life either survives or dies, you have not thereby made any moral claims at all. — Bob Ross

Again, if you are going to claim that peoples’ wants are absolutely to be removed from the equation in terms of morals, then you must be able to ground objectively the choice to keep surviving. — Bob Ross

No, I haven't made any moral claims, and no one has to choose to keep surviving. But if one should choose not to keep surviving, there is no more choice and no more obligation. There is an inequality between living and dying. And out of this inequality comes necessity and from necessity comes obligation. If you want to die, don't be bothering me about morality, because I am concerned with living, I'm not interested in dying.

I am a direct realist, and I do not have a tree in my head. Some people say that I have an image of a tree on the retina of my eye, but if that is true, I certainly cannot see it, because I am busy looking at the tree.

they acknowledge that their view is a representation of the world-as-it-is. — L'éléphant

One sees sign posts to particularly fine views, and sometimes there is a plaque with sight-lines indicating various features. A view is not a representation; a photo or a painting is a representation of a view. It is quite easy to tell the difference between a real view and a representation of a view, by trying to walk around to the back of it or better still through it.

If the view is of a valley with a fine village with an old pub in it, and you can walk down the hill to the pub and enter and order a beer and drink the beer, then the view was not a representation, whereas if you just get a squashed nose and the taste of paint, it was a representation. I hope this helps.

No, it is not true that every human being wants a home, but I would grant, to your point, that the vast majority do — Bob Ross

Not the point at all. What people want is absolutely to be removed from the equation. Animals take shelter from the storm, or the predator, or the heat or cold, or they die. No recourse to subjective wants explains how a yeast cell absorbs sugar and excretes alcohol. that's just how they work, and this is how humans work, - they shelter or they die. they arrange the environment just as rabbits do or birds do We don't have to invoke the subjective world of these animals at all, any more than we have to invoke the subjective world of a yeast cell.

Life does what is necessary to survive, or it dies. but if it dies, it is no longer life. Therefore life does what is necessary to survive. And human life is no exception. We need to control our environment or we die. And those that are homeless must make a shelter from cardboard and plastic waste as best they can.

the “need” for buildings is subjective ( — Bob Ross

Have you ever been homeless? It might change your mind.

I am still failing to see how your idea of a “better house” is ultimately objective — Bob Ross

"Ultimately objective" is a curious term. I wonder how it it works?

An organism exists in relation to an environment. It can only exist within certain environmental parameters to which it is tolerant, and conditions outside these parameters are lethal. So for example the antarctic is only survivable to humans with ongoing input of food, energy, materials, and shelter brought in from elsewhere. These are facts, no? The full details are complex, but most birds need to nest, and so do humans, even if their nest is a mobile or temporary one.

There is no necessity for there to be humans, or any life whatsoever, of course, but as a matter of fact there is life, and life has a necessary relation to its environment. Most of the planet is not survivable to humans without some constructed shelter. So what do you mean by saying it is subjective? shall I go into detail about how a clean water supply and waste disposal maintain the home as an optimised healthy environment along with thermostatically controlled air conditioning? Subjectively, you might prefer 60F, while I like 72F, but there is no liking to boil or freeze.

Fish like water, and philosophers like neat divisions, but what is called 'subjective' is a certain minor variability in human-environment relations, the major part of which is biological necessity. This is why global warming is so important to humans. We are very fragile.

I don't think Nietzsche liked dwarves much. I doubt his real views would be put into the mouth of a dwarf. Thing is, though we look down both the roads, no one ever goes down them. Whichever way we look, it is always from the the archway of this moment, and we never stray from it. The image works better without the dwarf's commentary, which is why he is a dwarf. The image is static, there is no coming or going except in the diseased imagination of the dwarf. That is his function in the story, to point out the wrong way to think the wrong conclusion to draw..

Your analogy is fundamentally conceding, as far as I can tell, that there are no objective moral judgments but, nevertheless, if we all subjectively want to build a building (or most of us do) then there is a procedure we can take to pragmatically achieve that goal (in the most cogent means possible). Thusly, to me, your view (or analogy at the least) seems to hold that morals are ultimately contingent on wills (i.e., subjects) and that there are objective better ways to achieve those goals; but, importantly, I don’t think you are claiming there are objective morals themselves at all. — Bob Ross

I want to be a bit more realist than that. We do need buildings, and architects and all those ancillary workers i mentioned are the experts on these things. Different climates, different buildings; different geology, different standards; different population densities... etc. But none of this makes architecture 'subjective', merely complex.

Clearly, things ain't what they ought to be, otherwise we wouldn't need to talk about the way they ought to be. In the same way, if I already had an adequate house, I wouldn't be wanting plans for another. But granting that things are not as they ought to be, already allows that they could really be better; and here's the plan...

The more we are honest, the more we can trust each other, and the easier it is to to cooperate. I don't think this is subjective, I think this is the way it is - just as a wall will stay up longer the more vertical it is.

What then is the objective? — Hanover

'Flourishing'. The objective is coexistence with the environment, the health of which can be measured by its resilience, complexity, stability and so on. The question of an individual building is sufficiently complex to allow of differing judgements, but that doesn't make such judgements subjective. One would have to balance the potential boost to trust of folk coming together for various purposes, against the ecological cost of such mass movements and the deprivation of that portion of wilderness and so on.

http://environment-ecology.com/deep-ecology/63-deep-ecology.html

Try this analogy.

An architect draws up plans for a building that does not exist. The plans are general instructions (commands) for the construction of the building. To complain to the architect that the building does not exist would be foolish; what matters is, if and when the instructions are followed, will the building stand, or collapse? And if it stands, will it provide whatever requirements for shelter and comfort were envisioned?

One would like to answer these questions before expending a deal of effort on building, and so one has recourse to engineers' calculations and planning departments and building regulations and materials specifications and health and safety rules etc. Society and individuals learn from experiments, mistakes and successes what sorts of buildings work. All this accumulated knowledge and wisdom helps a good architect produce plans that are realistic. But it takes a team of builders to produce a real building.

This is a really fascinating thread. Thanks to @Pierre-Normand for the experiments.
It occurs to me though that what we have here is a demonstration that thought is mechanical, and that Descartes was wrong. Thinking is not aware. Philosophers and scientists alike rather tend to promote their own business as the centre and summit of human awareness.

Unecarte says 'I piss therefore I am; I look out the window, therefore I am; I breakfast, therefore I am.'

One can be aware of one's thoughts, and this is not the same as being able to refer to one's thoughts, or being able to think about one's thoughts.

Nazis are people too.

And Nazism had considerable popularity in Europe and the US, along with their own variants of Fascism. The roots are deep in the Colonial attitudes of racial superiority that still run as an undercurrent through all our cultures. Therefore, send not to ask at whom the finger wags, it wags at thee. It would be pleasant to distance ourselves from all that horror, but such indulgence is dangerous.

By all means look for the nazi in Heidegger, but look closer to home also. Do you also worship power?

Yeah... Only Obama wouldn't send lethal aid to Ukraine, Trump gets in, and the first Javelins go off to help their fight against Russian separatists. — Isaac

It's boring when sarcasm is the whole argument. It becomes an irritating straw man. I'm saying that Putin saw Trump rightly as a disrupter of American society in the same way he saw Boris and Brexit as disrupters of UK society. That there turn out to be downsides to that for him does not make my argument or Putin's tactics foolish.

but the whole 'president-installed-by-foreign-evil-dictator-to-do-secret-bidding-says-spy' is just your run-of-the-mill, bona fide goings on. You'd have to be some kind of 'extremist' no doubt to not believe such a plausible story. — Isaac

The conspiracy I heard about wasn't that, but 'Psychopath leader secretly supports election of easily manipulated Narcissist Fantasist as leader of enemy power to undermine from within. Manages to sow enough confusion and dissent to be able to invade neighbouring country unopposed.'


Trump winning was a bonus, but just the campaign served to promote internal conflict. The conspiracy to spread conspiracy theories amongst the enemy has indeed been universally successful and exploits the very principles of freedom to undermine it. But the idea that Trump has the smarts or the principles to be a proper agent of anything but his own fantasy image is ridiculous.

Yes, it wasn't my intention to suggest that enlightenment was easy. Rather to bring out the contrast between the enchantment of talk, and the disenchantment of disciplined silence. But You're probably right to disabuse the reader of any romantic notions.

In the story towards enlightenment it seems dis-enchantment is a necessary intermediate step, because it's a dis-spell meant to sent an enchanted one on a quest or path which will unfold the original enchantment — Moliere

Not really, the way I'm telling it. Which is that 'disenchanted' is the identification of the 'gritty realist' who stalks the boards explaining to us primitives how our beliefs keep us detached from reality. Instead of examining their own beliefs – 'Life has no meaning' as a meaningful fact. It is a step off the path, rather than a step on it, like Bunyan's Slough of Despond. But everything one reads about a real enlightenment suggests that there is no path. One requires a disciplined intention to strip oneself of unnecessary baggage, but the step out of oneself is a single step, not a journey; a step that one cannot take oneself, but that is given by grace, or comes as a sudden insight, unexpectedly when the ground has been prepared.

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My existence led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow

[Refrain]
Ah, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now — Bob Dylan

The attainment of youth, you see, is the real cure. One dies every day and thus remains Forever Young.

I don't think the world needs to be saved, — frank

I mean your faith is cute, but unappealing, whichever way you express it. The system that you ask us to have faith in is rather a meat grinder, as @Isaac details above.

A summary. I propose/suppose:—

1. Enchantment. The magician, or the enchantress, tells you that you are Mummy's special little boy, or God's beloved creation, or a terrible sinner, or whatever, brave or cowardly, smart or stupid, rich or poor, a Roman or a Jew. You believe.

2. Disenchantment. The magician, or the enchantress, tells you that you that The Enlightenment has happened and you no longer believe anything except the truth. You believe.

3. Enlightenment. There is no you, no belief, no enchantress or magician, and no enlightenment, and yet there is sleeping and waking and eating. The narrative has stopped.

Have a little faith in the system, man. — frank

That, sir, is a very third rate religion you're espousing, I'm afraid. Not because it has proven false, for religion does not deal in fact, but because it entirely lacks ambition.

The discussion is re-framed so as to move on. — Banno

And also is not reframed, and does not move on.

You do for your own posts, and you should exercise the capability more often. — Changeling

I do that a lot; I'm glad you approve.

[def]Inherited wealth = inherited power= the establishment.[/def]

Another hint is that establishment figures don't try to arrange coups. — frank

That's like saying that policemen do not commit crimes. Dangerous falsehood. Hitler came to power democratically and then established his dictatorship. Likewise any revolutionary government comes to power in a coup and immediately becomes established or is overthrown by a counter coup by the disestablished establishment. Trump is a corrupt member of the establishment, seeking to exploit the establishment and resentment of the establishment in equal measure and with no loyalty to either.

My understanding of Kant's antinomies is that they aren't mere undecidable alternatives, but necessary contradictions. Cue for example the singularity of the beginning of time giving rise to "how did it begin?" which presupposes a time before time. And likewise, the idea of 'beyond space' that supposes both a finitude of space and the space beyond it. Limits of thought, therefore. One cannot think outside the box of spacetime. One has to invent 'another space' — Riemann space or Hilbert space, or some such.

Trump, his Republican supporters... are all entrenched part of "the establishment".
— Fooloso4

No, I don't think so. — frank

I think so. Rather in the same way that a corrupt policeman is still a member of the police.

Aren't they all busy messing up their own country's housing situation? — Vera Mont

We have quality billionaires who can multi-task, ripping folks off in more than one place at a time.

My friend convinced me Canada intends to kill off its homeless and poverty-stricken citizens through neglect to make room for its current and impending foreign residents and working-class native citizens. — Bug Biro

If you need a conspiracy theory, a better one is that the wealthy are few and maintain their dominance by means of divide and rule. by keeping poor citizens in conflict with poor immigrants, they prevent the poor from making common cause and - say - voting for decent affordable housing for all, something that is not beyond the wit of an Amazonian tribe, and should be uncontroversial to the point of not worth talking about somewhere like Canada.

Maybe people are increasingly escaping the spell of ideology—it’s just that there seems to be nothing they can do about it. — Jamal

Because without the magic, there is only the bald monkey? 'The naked ape does not (any more) proclaim his naked-apeitude, he throws his shit about.'

Disenchantment seems to be done in one of two ways, though. This looks like the other way:–

Bankei, a Zen teacher, was giving a talk to a gathering of students interested in learning from his wisdom.

In the midst of the talk, a follower of another teacher arrived and expressed their doubtsabout Bankei’s authority in comparison to their own teacher. The individual interrupted Bankei and began speaking proudly of the impressive feats of their own teacher…

”The founder of our sect can stand on one side of the river, hold a brush in his hand, and write calligraphy on a scroll on the other side of the river. He has many miraculous powers.”

He then asked Bankei, ”Can you perform such miracles?”

Bankei gently replied, ”These are impressive tricks, but that is not the manner of Zen. My miracle is that when I feel hungry I eat, and when I feel thirsty I drink.”

Whereas the naked ape eats when not hungry, and lies awake when tied.

Yeah, no, not me, not you, fair enough. But you posit self and spell. I am asking about the ontology.

Let's say a spell is made of words, or maybe possibly a picture, some communication – I assume that; you can correct me. What is a self made of? My inclination is to say that a self is a narrative self — also made of words, images associations, identifications'.

A tiger doesn't proclaim his tigritude, he pounces. — Wole Soyinka

By which I understand that my unenlightenment is a proclamation, whereas the tiger's tigritude is his pounce. Just as the enlightenment was/is a mass proclamation, and not an act (of what? Compassion?).

Here's another proclamation:

We have all been processed on Procrustean beds. At least some of us have managed to hate what they have made of us. Inevitably we see the other as the reflection of the occasion of our own self-division. The others have become installed in our hearts, and we call them ourselves. Each person, not being himself either to himself or the other, just as the other is not himself to himself or to us, in being another for another neither recognizes himself in the other, nor the other in himself. Hence being at least a double absence, haunted by the ghost of his own murdered self, no wonder modern man is addicted to other persons, and the more addicted, the less satisfied, the more lonely. — R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience/The Bird of Paradise

So I posit two somethings: a self and a spell. — Moliere

What would you say is this 'self'? Is that I that posits?

I'm not sure I follow. Religion and nationalism clearly exist in the world, so why would they be necessarily supernatural in any respect? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do they? What are they made of? You see I think they are things that exist in the mind. And as soon as we stop thinking about and talking about and identifying with a nation, it ceases to exist.

maybe someone will find it interesting. — Jamal

I did. Nice pulling together of many threads within the thread.

Your fear, your anger, or your love can be invoked, or evoked, as can mine, by the feeble power of a troll, for example, who, impotent in the world, works a little mischief by way of self assertion. Multiply by millions, and there is the war. The war is not something different, or outside the mind.

Speaking of trolls... Water into wine is difficult, but water into blood...

As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood" — Enoch Powell

(quoting Virgil)

Now blood is certainly a magical substance. According to tradition, one spills it to assert and preserve its purity, Here the noble invokes it to rouse the rabble to a cause that still obsesses them, and is still being used to sway them to vote for Brexit, and perhaps soon to abandon the human rights act.

I think we can make claims about ourselves without invoking powers or spells. — Moliere

There is, in the Christian context, no reason to assume that anything supernatural occurs in the Bible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There are at this moment, soldiers in trenches in Ukraine trying to kill and being killed without invoking powers or spells, and without assuming anything supernatural occurs. For what are they killing and dying? We do not know and cannot ask in general, and I invoke them here only to show that a claim of nationality, or of religious or cultural tradition, has more power (word in thread title) over the secular such as your good selves than you seem to think. Whatever explanation you might put forward, it will not do to rely on avowed nonsense as a motive force, because that would be irrational, wouldn't it?

And from the enlightenment comes the white man, conquerer of the world and civiliser of Johnny Foreigner with his kilts and scarification and dreadful table manners. I don't know if it worked the same with the plaid, but the tradition with Aran knitting was that each village had its own pattern so that bodies washed up further along the coast could be identified. So I heard.

I visited Culloden in my youth and found it a very haunted place. There were several large mounds with my name on the stone.

Those interested should read Black skin white masks. It might even be worth a thread. It's a difficult book, but goes right into the way the white man having destroyed the indigenous culture then sentimentalises it and tries to preserve it, while the remaining natives try desperately to adapt, giving rise to a second inverted conflict, rather like the way Cecil Sharpe and other aristocrats tried to preserve the English folk traditions in music, while the peasants moved on to Music-hall and other travesties. Hence an ongoing conflict between the 'traditionalists' and those dreadful innovators who dare to use electric instruments. See Bob Dylan, and the infamous cry of 'Judas', for example.

can we repudiate the enlightenment? — Moliere

I can claim to be unenlightened at least, but I have to live in a post enlightenment world, being no angel.

If we are magic, and we're still around to say, then the dis-enchantment must be some kind of an illusion. — Moliere

I think that's right. We speak a nihilist language of moral subjectivity and subjectivity eliminationism. But this self negation must obviously fail. I am determined not to be, therefore I am. The Nazis failed and the capitalists will fail because when the Monopoly is complete, the money game is over, but the world remains.

One feels on all sides these limits of objective science We are still talking about the workings of brains more that 2000 years dead. There can be no logical or scientific explanation for that. There is meaning that communicates across millennia , and to deny it is to affirm it. There is value, and we discover the cost of denying it.

Any minute now I'm going to be talking about not living on bread alone, and rich men not getting into heaven. We are still waiting for the double blind trials on these...

"People are stupid.", says @Banno

I think we have been stupefied, not by conspiracy, but by the veneration of blindness in the name of objectivity, and we have been selling our souls for a mess of pottage. And all of this has been down to the failure of Western philosophy to defend the good.

That already answers my question, then, about whether the self is a spell -- no! The self is already there, as is an interpretation too. There's a lot already going on before we can say, here's a distortion of an interpretation. — Moliere

Yeah, but no, but... one is not born with the right interpretation, or any interpretation, one is indoctrinated with here and now, already haunted by 'once upon a time'. In other words, magic is what we are made of, – magic is subjectivity itself, and the repudiation of it is the repudiation of humanity itself in the name of "rational control", alias "total war". The scientist has thrown himself out of the bath with the bathwater, and has become Death.

And if that doesn't convince everyone to repudiate the enlightenment then nothing else I can think of will.

It's not personal, that's the point. It was Oppenheimer who quoted the Bhagavad-Gita in 1945. "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

You were taught to worship Shiva. — frank

Speak for yourself Frank; everyone already knows I'm insane!