I would enjoy it... if it were about an individual casting off a burden they didn't need.

But that's closer to the angtheist's (or religious dogmatist) demand to wipe anything which is not them out of existence-- yes, burn the book you've not read and wipe all ideas from the world because it simply could not contain any wisdom or be helpful to anyone. Then there won't be those pesky people who are different than you.

The anecdote goes against its (at least by your reading) own point. To be at ease with one beliefs is not destroy what you do not need (and is deeply important to others), but to know that you do not need it, so you do not feel compelled to "enforce" your ease upon others. The person truly at ease with their outlook wouldn't have been threatened by the book. They would have kept it for those to whom it might be important.

The correct argument though, for our world is just one of many possible ones. We are just lucky it's the we live in rather than one of the countless possblities without us.

That our world works the way it does is a feature of itself, not "universal rules of constraint" which sit outside of it. Our world is a lucky accident.

Far from being "optimistic" speculation, we know this to be true for else we fall into the incoherence of defining the world based on logic rather than what exists. Else we assume that because we have seen the world work one way (the "universal"), that it must necessarily do so.

It's classical materialism's error of concreteness repeated--an assumption there is one "equation" ("the universal") which predicts whatever we might encounter in the world.

This part just didn't make much sense to me. You and I might look for evidence of consciousness in regard to a third party. In that case, the evidence we gather would not generally be considered to be consciousness itself. — Mongrel

It's not about looking for evidence. Evidence itself is the point of contention. What exactly is evidence? The term specifies something specific: a particular kind of thing, a showing of the world or logic, such that we can say: "Yes. That claim is accurate. We know something about the world or logic." Evidence is observation, seeing, hearing, touching, thinking, reasoning.

For any instance of evidence to be, something must be demonstrated, must be shown in thought or perception, and understood. All instances of evidence are experience. The only coherent position is that evidence is consciousness itself-- the states of consciousness which are the respective instances of evidence. If there is evidence (the world or an idea shown), then there is a conscious state.

The notion that it's all just stories, lingual categories, or otherwise entirely subjective cannot account for the predictive nature of universals, and the conformity to them, witnessed in nature. — Wosret

It can actually, where the subjective is the objective, rather than caused or constrained by it. Predications work because, in the future, there is an existing state which expresses the meaning incorrectly cited as a "universal constraint." Gravity is not a universal cause or constraint upon existing states.

Rather, it is an expression which is given by many individual states. If the world works differently, if there is a change in states, then gravity we known no longer be expressed and our theories won't predict what happens.

The subjective does not conform to universals, it constitutes the expression of universals in the world--Gravity is only expressed so long as they're a states which express that meaning.

Philosophy is not the absence of wisdom, it's the presence of wisdom. Thought and understanding which has been attained. Wisdom is gained precisely when there is no longer that particular piece of wisdom to attained (though it is never ending, for there is always more to learn)-- the shift, for example, from understanding the world to be meaningless to understanding there is immanent "spiritual meaning" (whether that of the world or a transcendent being).

The notion that wisdom is an absence which is to be obtained is a ritual and belief. A powerful sense that we are going to make ourselves better. Just think some philosophy, at some point, were're going to be great again-- it's like Trump's slogan. Say where going to make ourselves great again, and we get the sense as if it is happening, even though we aren't doing or learning anything.

Frequently, it becomes a substitute for wisdom. People partake in the absence like it's the "mystical" which is always revelatory-- just ask "why" at every moment and you'll be the wise.

It gives nothing at all. If we were to dismiss the immanent "spiritual meaning" by asking "why" whenever the topic came up, we would never gain that wisdom (indeed, you've probably encountered nihilists who make exactly that argument). Wisdom is obtained not in asking why, but rather when we understand the truth.

My posts do not proclaim "not seeing" is the only thing we can hope for. Indeed, I outright argued that opposite: that seeing is perfectly possible, that the there is immanent "spiritual meaning" and that we may understanding this. You responded to this by suggesting my proposal didn't have any meaning. As if it was impossible for us to recognise immanent "spiritual meaning" because the world can just never have this.

When I speak of your nihilism, I really mean it. I argue there is immanent "spiritual meaning" to the world, that it matters, that ethics apply to it, that it is worthwhile, that it expresses an immanent meaning which is not defined by the existence of any state. What do say? That I'm speaking nonsense. There's no way this could be true because the world just doesn't express that sort or meaning.

Supposedly, I'm meant to say: "The world is meaningless. It has no immanent "spiritual meaning." To be wise I'm meant to have a nihilistic hole in my soul which I need to resolve. And you call this notion that the world doesn't matter wisdom. How exactly it wise for me to deny the immanent "spiritual meaning" of the world and become "troubled?"

This is what is so egregious about your argument. Not that you would argue for meaning through the transcendent, but that you equate any recognition of immanent "spiritual meaning" with denying it is an immanent expression of the world.

You proclaim anyone must reject the meaning of the world, have a hole to fill, if the are to understand truth and to be wise. To a point where you cannot even see when other understand immanent "spiritual meaning" through a different means, one which understands that immanent "spiritual meaning" in expression of the world.

Like the dogmatic preacher, you proclaim the world is worthless and needs the transcendent being to save it-- "Believe in God or else you do not understand the truth. You are not wise. Everything you say is meaningless. You will be doomed to burn in the Hell of a world which doesn't matter. " You set fear of worthlessness amongst the flock.

The person who is content with their life, who understand it has an immanent "spiritual meaning," is suddenly confronted with the accusation they've failed to understanding the truth, that they have no wisdom, that they are meaningless. You seed doubt to create the hole they must use your particular beliefs, rituals and practices to fill.

Rather than respecting realisation of "spiritual meaning," you dogmatically advocate everyone must understand it like you or else be pedalling meaningless nonsense. Malicious in intent? Maybe not, like many dogmatic preacher, you think you are saving people from a horrible fate. Terrible in effect? Most certainly, for you make the demand people must consider the world worthless just so they can experience the wonder of being saved by the transcendent. You trying to create the "hole" in the soul of anyone who listens.

Because you would have everyone be "troubled," just so they could be rescued by the transcendent.

I say that the world is meaningful, that it is immanent with "spiritual meaning," and you proclaim my argument is meaningless. You say that I'm wrong to suggest there is "spiritual meaning" immanent in the world and that whatever I say isn't worth listening to.

For anyone who does recognise the "spiritual meaning" meaning immanent in the world, you proclaim they are arguing nihilism while trying to insist them ought to be nihilists themselves (i.e. say the world is without meaning and then fill the gap with the transcendent).

"Purpose" in these contexts functions as a difference to ourselves. Supposedly, it exists above us and resolves our inherent inadequacy. To put it into context of the discussion around us. It is a form of "univocity" Wayfarer speaks about in their recent post.

I am reading a book on the transition to modernity, which points out that the ancient 'sacramental universe' was undermined by John Duns Scotus' 'univocity' (i.e. that God is the same kind of being as other beings). — Wayfarer

The doctrine of "purpose" treats God as a being just like ours. No doubt it poses God as transcendent, but God is still thought of as like us, a Being sitting out somewhere, forever beyond our world.

Rather than being understood in as immanent to our world, the "spiritual meaning" is given over God, a realm considered to have nothing to do with out own. There might be no meaning immanent to our world, but that's alright, for there is the Being of God of immanent meaning.

Purpose is the fiction told by those who do not recognise the immanent meaning of the world. It approximates that recognition, giving them the sense things matter. As such it functions to create a life with a sense of worth (and that's great), but it is founded on an underlying nihilism.

According to Carnap, these metaphysical theories don't even count as a theory, because they are simply poetic metaphorical fictions. — darthbarracuda

Given that metaphysics are fictions, I'd say that Hegel, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant would agree that they don't even count theories to one degree or another. The section of Hegel you quoted alludes to this. What is has less to do with existing states than Nothing? Even the void of space is something.

Carnap is right about metaphysics having nothing to do with the world, but the rationalists in question agree with him about that. While all of them, except Spinoza, misapply the metaphysical fictions they talk as if they talk about the world in some way, they are aware what they are speaking of is not a mere state of existence. Here Carnap is making the mistake of suggesting fictions must mean the same as existing states. As if a metaphysical truth requires empirical properties to mean anything. Carnap is making a category error.

In an effort to tackle the misapplication of metaphysics to the world (which Hegel, Schopenhauer, Leibniz, and Kant do to a degree), he's erroneously concluded the fictions of metaphysics are meaningless.

That's actually pretty good example of what I mean. You press Nihilism into to every philosophical context. I give an argument about the falsehood of Nihilism, you insist my argument must be meaningless.

Nihilism. I couldn't possibly be saying anything meaningful because that's not found of this world. You insist the only wisdom in this context is to think the world is meaningless and have the transcendent save it.

If someone doesn't think the world has a hole, if they are not "troubled," then anything the say is meaningless. They (supposedly) don't grasp what matters and lack any philosophical insight.

My posts don't mean anything? To the Nihilist maybe....

Nope. Nietszche is still seeking the beyond. Nihilism is still there for him, to be overcome by power and greatness. He pines for God even as he destroys him.

Camus gets bit closer. However, heroic act of self-knowledge is treated as the consolation prize to the inescapable futility of life. Still, the world is considered futile and inadequate, our act of knowledge is to know we are meaningless and their is nothing we can do about it-- nihilism still governs.

I'm talking about where nihilism is wholly rejected. The position where world is neither futile nor inadequate, where the world means in-itself. Where the transcendent is not required to save us because we were never meaningless in the first place.

Spinoza is probably the first name that came to mind. But lots of people understand this way, some interested in philosophy and some not. My point is not about any particular philosophy or author per se, but rather about how you limit philosophical wisdom to the context of soothing nihilism, rather than allowing it to positions which point out nihilism was never true in the first place. You would have say "Nihilism is true," just so people are "troubled" and can find the wisdom of the rescuing God.

If you are content to ignore all context, for sure. I mean where is classical liberalism if it does not care for how society treats people? Is it one-nation conservatism to think society is mean to treat people under the law? What about the provision of services? Is thinking society ought to provide people with healthcare a conservative policy that doesn't fit with classical liberalism? What about considering the government ought to have some role in maintain social economic equilibrium?

Is the classical liberal vision of society one where their are no standards or expectations on society? And if that is the case, how is it any use as a political philosophy?

If we were to indulge in name-calling, I'd get you for one nation conservatism too. Along with a whole host of contradictions and/or political irrelevance.

Far more than you suspect, I think.

Slotting people matters because every individual is someone who occupies a place. Classical liberalism appeals to a fictional everyman which has nothing to do with any person place in society. It's is a myth. People believe they are not someone with place, but they always are. As an understanding of people in society, classical ignores them entirely.

So the problem isn't a question of punching up or down. The issue is classical liberalism imagines a fantasy land which is never reflective of people's lives. I would go as far to say it has almost no emancipatory power or potential at all.

Even the victories it is supposed to have won were actually made on the grounds of putting people in a social place-- all the different people are equal under the law, all the different people have freedom of movement, etc.,etc. It worked by slotting different people in to places.

To exist, by definition, means to be different. I am not you. You are not me. If society is to work for all of us, then it must provide an work for these differences. Difference is exactly what we cannot remove if we are foster human potential. It is to take out the people or understanding of people society is supposed to be providing for and protecting. Our instinct must not be to place people (i.e. difference) apart from society, but to place them within it, treated as they ought to be.

Many would consider them part of the conservative team, yes. I'm not so sure I would call them conservative so readily because it doesn't fit their position so much. Classical liberals, since they tend to envision society as a question of free individuals interacting, share a certain distance from the social context in a manner similar to some conservatives-- if we just give everyone some basic freedoms, society will sort itself out and we won't have to think or describe too much about it.

Marxist don't share this approach. Marxism actually one of the first instances of modern identity politics, where description of how society impacts people of particular identities becomes paramount. Their (part) rejection of identity politics tends not to be on the grounds it doesn't make sense (as with the classical liberal), but rather on a misattributed blame for the rise of neo-liberalism. Supposedly, identity politics (unless it's Marxism of course) has splintered society and got everyone so worried about trivial things that it can't effectively oppose neo-libealism. Meanwhile the neo-liberals are laughing all the way to the bank with how they've developed an economic culture where the involvement of government or socially concern economic policy is considered poisonous, to a point where even some Marxists are more worried about attacking proponents of identity politics than dealing with the economy.

Classical liberalism is sometimes economically conservative too. It's only progressive and emancipatory at certain points when it's demanded (e.g. socialism, workers rights, Marxism, economic polices which focus on building society). In the modern neo-liberal economic environment, it's also part of the politics which is doing nothing on economics. Classical liberals aren't confronting central conservatism on economics either.

The disregard for classical liberalism goes to its understanding of the individual as without reference to identity. Out of post-moderism, the Left is describing many issues which the classic liberal dismisses or even considers contrary to principle to recognise. All too frequently, it outright suggests we ought to ignore issues (sometimes they are even economic) because all that matters is the universal identity of economic freedom. The classical liberal is considered "conservative" because they do not accept the distinctions of identity which allow the description of many social issues.

In a certain sense, for sure. But being troubled is not the same as asking a question or understanding something. To be troubled in this way is not merely have an interest in philosophy or ask philosophical questions. Anyone can do that.

It is to feel a deep pain or longing to be something beyond oneself, to have a purpose which is more than just one's own existence. A search for the idea that saves the world from meaninglessness. In the past, these ideas (God, miracles, final cause, purpose) occupied a prominent place in how we understood the world and metaphysics. Knowledge that the world wasn't saved from its nihilism was considered impossible. God was necessary.

In modernity, this has changed. The shift of knowledge to the world, and away from what is supposedly beyond it, has undone the necessity of God. Now this "saving" God is understood as impossible. There is no being saved from the world. Logically, there must no God and we are stuck with the world as it exists.

The "troubled" no longer have an answer and, more importantly, philosophy precludes one. Not because gods, magic or the afterlife are impossible, but rather because it now recognises something outside our world cannot act upon us or save us. It recognises this saving God is just a fiction It promise is nothing more than a story we tell ourselves to feel better-- akin to consumerism, scientism, modernism, utopianism, fad diets, etc.,etc. While there is no doubt it works for many, makes their lives better, fills the troubling hole, someone paying attention can't help it works by telling the falsehood one's live is given by that which is not their life. Such fictions can no longer work for such people unless their willing to participate in doublethink or are content to know they are pretending.

It's realisation which is more destructive to belief in God than any empirical proof or ethical question. It removes the promise of God. Now not even God can save us, for our lives can only ever be are own. We are alone. No-one is there to ride in and save us. Nihilism prevails (or so it is thought).

But Nihilism only prevails because people are still looking to the beyond. They're still using the nihilistic approach which views the world as inherently inadequate. The hole is only there because they are unwilling to say: "The world is and the world means, in-itself." A trait shared with all the other fictions (e.g. consumerism, scientism, modernism, utopianism, fad diets, etc., etc.) of final cause or purpose which have come to dominate modernity.

One might say that we can be rather bad at learning how the world matters, so we often approximate with fictions that simultaneous confirm our worst fears (Nihilism) but also promise everything we want (Meaning), without undoing our own ignorance how the world means.

So no doubt people who recognises pointlessness are not "troubled" by philosophical questions in the way you suggest, but that's sort of the point. They've abandoned the nihilism which requires the fix you propose. Yet, seemingly, you would say these people a philosophically ignorant because they no longer look to the "beyond."

And this is the problem with your approach. You treat some of the philosophically wisest people, those who understands the world matters, who know that the horrors of the world are no excuse to say it doesn't matter, as if they are ignorant. All because they dare to overcome Nihilism and do not require the transcendent fiction to understand the world matters.

I'd say it run deeper than just right-wing conservatives defending it. Classical liberalism is understood to be incapable of dealing with many issues important to the modern Left, for it fails to describe and deal with how the social environment impacts on the individual.

In many contexts it would not be amiss to say that the classical liberal is a conservative and is targeted for failing to consider important issues.

That literature, drama and art is actually a manifestation of the understanding the world is purposeful. People are driven to explore it because they think they do have purpose. Pointlessness is so painful to many because they think they must be otherwise to make sense.

For anyone who recognises pointlessness, it is, well, pointless. It has no impact on their lives and holds no consequences. They go about their lives, meaning and all, without being haunted by existential dread because they aren't empty without purpose.

Modernity has moved the insight of the pointless world into the popular, but alas it has not, at least for many, granted the insight of the world without a point. Instead of recognising the world without a point (life and meaning), they've maintained nihilism of the transcendental and think it's all meaningless unless it's given a purpose.

I'd say the point of such "purpose" is precisely that it is beyond the world. A meaning that goes unaffected by the flux in the world. The idea or value can point to even if another doesn't hold it or the world contradicts it.

If that's is true, one can say: "and you purpose is X" even if someone disagrees or is otherwise. "God's plan" is probably the most obvious example. Anything terrible is turned from the pain of an injustice to something that's meant to happen. Or to use a more modernist example: "Technology will give us utopia we deserve." where terrible events of the world are hidden beneath the manifest destiny of a world which transcends suffering. "Purpose" is a fiction we use to enact power over the world, particularly our discourses.

Not really. The transcendental is maintained all over the place within modernity. People are frequently against the insight that there is "no why" and an absence of final causation.

Final causation has merely been turned over to other values, a transcendence of scientism, progress and consumerism. It's just been shorn of older traditions and values (e.g. religion, God). The desire for transcendence, the notion our lives are worthless and need to be rescued, remains all over the place. Indeed, it drives the nihilistic outlook because it can't locate meaning or any guiding principle within ourselves.

Reason actually is instumentalised within the transcendent; the means by which humans are saved form their (supposedly) inherent ignominy.

In taking the following position Kant doesn't.

Yes and no. Reality is actually given to us, according to Kant, it's just filtered by the forms of understanding. So the filter is constructed, not reality, though the filter then becomes reality for us." — "Thorongil

He's still treating as if the is an "unfiltered" reality out there we can never access. What we filter is still mistakenly understood as a "flawed picture" rather than understanding of the world wider than ourselves. More critically, he still treats the "unknown" as if it is outside our filter. But this cannot be true . Since any unknown state if in relation to us, it must be within the filter, be something we might know.

The filter must be reality. Everything must have an understandable form regardless of whether anyone knows about it-- that's why there is an unknown state. There can be no reality to know beyond how things might be filtered to experience.

Far from moot, that's the very equivocation with states of consciousness I'm criticising. The separation between states means that not all them are actual experience, despite them always being experiential (having meaning in experience).

Everything is not experiential (an actual experience) in the sense Whitehead talks about. Nature is, to reference Prothero's thread, bifurcated all the way down (and up, and around, and throughout). Experiences are not the things they are experiences of. Every object (including each instance of experience) is it's own state distinct from everything else. Bifurcation of nature is not contrary to relations, process and becoming, but rather how they are all expressed. Everything is its own thing, yet also in relation with everything else and always becoming.

I'm not talking about hedonism or egoism (there are strong arguments both are functionally incoherent as ethical systems) at all. Someone is not acting or immoral/moral because the experience pain/pleasure. Rather, these are feelings which occur in responding to the world around us.

The immoral/moral world is not immoral/moral because it painful/pleasurable. It's painful/pleasurable because it's immoral/moral. A question not of what is morally sought after or how ethics are justified, but how we are affected.

A masochist does not necessarily need think they need to be punished. Some might, the ethical victory of delivering oneself just punishment is certainly ethical pleasurable. But others just happen to feel pleasure at certain instances of pain. That is beautiful enough on it's own to give to some people ethical pleasure.

I'm not much of a fan of Whitehead. His process philosophy is too vague and consciousness centric. It dismisses the presence of many concrete states under the guise of accounting for the endless becoming of the world.

For me, he does not give enough respect to subjectivity. He makes individual's into sums relations when they ought to be understood on their own terms. Matter/energy is not cumulative as much as it is cumulative. Any state is as much distinct as it the result of sum of it's past, present or future relations.

I might say the election is an instance of subjectivity interacting, but I would mean in the sense of a state of the world, with a meaning in experience, interacting with other states of the world. The presence of consciousness or otherwise is not important. Objectivity, for me, is any actual occasion, any state of the world (and so of subjectivity too), whether it "interacts" (appears in? causes?) experiences or not.

I'm at least half the materialist Whitehead opposed. More or less, I stick becoming of the world and the reality of consciousness with discrete material states. Becoming is not opposed to the discrete, but rather extends it into, more or less, infinity-- the range of possible discrete states is basically endless. Rather than being a measure of what is actual, becoming is a a measure of what might be at any given moment.

Ethical pain/pleasure. It's its own state.

The hurt/joy we experience upon encountering a world which as it ought not/ought to be.

I'm saying, in the case of the masochist, what you are calling "bodily pain" does not involve "ethical pain." Their body might hurt, but they do not expeirnce the ethical pain (which is just as much of the physical) that many other people would. Rather, they feel ethical joy at being subjected to this "bodily pain."

In this context, there is no standard of "normal" reaction or otherwise. Each person just feels what they feel. Whether we call this a psychological reaction or physical reaction doesn't matter. There is a bodily pain and ethical joy, and both a response/presence of a mind and body.

Indeed... but Dennett clearly isn't just doing that, for he also talks about the presence of our experiences. "Illusion" is clearly trying to get at something else than just the existence of experiences. So is Dennett just talking about the existence of our experiences? Clearly not. Rather, he is talking about how we understand our experiences, what we think about consciousness more so than the experiences themselves. If the "illusion" is not our experiences but what we frequently think of them (that they exist outside of the world), then Dennett's position makes more sense, compliments Searle's and is correct-- that experiences exist outside the world is an "illusion," a case where we've been fooled by our own system of understanding.

That's actually a pretty good description the mistake everyone is making.

If we know about consciousness, then our tool is not flawed, at least for this instance. We know, perfectly, that the experiences of ourselves and others exists. Rather than being flawed and fooled, we are perfect and know.

We do not have flawed tools insofar as this context goes. Just becasue we can be fooled doesn't mean we are. And for anything we know, by definition, we are not fooled.

I know... but he also insists people have experiences. The "illusion" he's talking about is really the notion of consciousness in a separate realm, rather than denying experiences are real. Dennett is trying to point out what stinks so bad about our approach consciousness.

He just doesn't quite have the words to clearly state what he's going for, particularly with respect to the substance dualists who are only interested in reading "illusion" and forming the conclusion anything he says about consciousness must therefore be wrong.

I'm throwing out the distinction. Any "mental" pain involves a body that hurts, a body that responses to the environment. When the body hurts, "mental" anguish is frequently a result, sometimes even the majority of the pain (think of the distress and fear of seeing oneself injured).

Trying to box them into one or the other doesn't work and drags us away from describing what is important: the particular instance of a person in pain and what that entails. Instead of viewing each instance of pain as it's own thing (e.g. the pain of being hit, the ethical pain of being hit, etc.,etc.), as we should, we end up trying to prescribe what people can feel and ignoring what they do.

Only if you are equating the (physical/mental) pain/joy of ethics with that of a an act which injures or puts force upon the body.

In the case of the maschoist, this is not true. The pain of the forces on the body is something ethically joyful, not painful. Their body might hurt under force, but's that's actually good (ethically joyful) to them.

Of those list positions Searle would probably be the closest. Thought Dennett is close too, if you pay attention not what he’s talking about rather than dismissing his thought as brute reductionism (which various interested parties tend to do, unfortunately).

The major aspect people have to get right is treating consciousness as a state of the world. Substance dualism and its spawn (including forms of reductionism )undermine our understanding of consciousness by denying it place in the world.

“The Hard Problem” is the idea it doesn’t make sense for consciousness to exist. Under it no description is good enough because consciousness is not seen to be a state of the world which is caused or causes other states of the world. Rather, it is thought to be of a separate realm which has nothing to do with what’s going on in the world. In understanding consciousness,the chief hurdle to overcome is thinking it of as something other than state of the world we may (and frequently do) know.

I’d go as far as to say it requires direct realism to understand. Since experiences don’t have a empirical manifestation per se (observed states are only correlated to know states of conscious rather than being them), we can only rely on brute presentation within experience. If I am to know the person that’s sitting in front of me is conscious, I cannot to so through the body alone. Action of their body(gestures, language) might indicate they are having experiences, by it takes my knowledge of their existing consciousness to consider that. Without that brute awareness that consciousness exists, I would just see a body moving; philosophical zombies all over again.

I must have direct knowledge of existing experiences within my experience.

In the sense you would most probably use interact, probably sort of yes and no. You would probably use interact to mean something along the lines of “experienced by someone or be involved in a causal reaction,” which doesn’t really capture what I’m talking about.

What does it mean to interact? Does it mean to experience or cause something? Does it mean to merely think about form (we, for example, have never causal or phenomenologically interacted with the living dinosaur whose bones we’ve dug up) Does it merely mean to express a form? People never seem to be quite sure. Sometimes the idealist seems to be saying we need to be there cause the existence of objects. Other times they merely seem to be saying things must have a form (be meaningful in experience). Still other times they seem to put our experience as causal, but leave open the possibility there is something without experiential form (e.g. Kant).

The subjective/objective split involves the last approach. Supposedly, there are the things we interact with, the subjective, and then there is this other realm (usually consider “unspoiled” by the scourge of human experience) which is outside interaction and relationship to us— all those perfect, definite things which are beyond our knowledge and lives, which have no relation to us… yet we are meant to respect as providing the most profound insights into our being. “Objective knowledge,” to the exclusion of the subjective, is considered the highest and only proper from when dealing with enquiry into the world.

Even Kant, whose turn to the subjective is motivated by this very nonsense (how could such an “objective” ever be knowledge of our lives? It can’t have anything to do with them), still treats the “objective” with a certain reverence. The noumenon is still sitting out there, a most profound instance of knowledge, just always beyond our reach— a knowledge which is unknowable, yet someone manages to still count as knowledge.

This “mystery” has attracted every party interested in obfuscating subjectivity since. In discussing knowledge of the world, Kant is cited for showing how we can’t know anything significant because we only have access to our puny experiences. As if knowing about our world and the things that interact with it was somehow a problem with respect to knowing about our life. Kant’s turn against “objectivity” in human knowledge has ended up supporting because it talks as though human experience is deficient for knowledge.

Where Kant went wrong was failing to reform our understanding of the objective. In falling to eliminate it as a realm distinct from the subjective, he left the beacon of “objectivity” burning brightly. Instead of calling out the noumenon as nonsensical full stop (i.e. not just that it cannot be known by us, but that it cannot be anything to know), he left sitting above us, a thing we could supposedly aim, wishing we could get beyond out inherently untrustworthy experiences.

When I say the subjective is objective, I’m collapsing the subjective/objective split which drives the starry-eyed staring at the mysterious noumenon. Not only cannot we not know noumenon, but there is nothing to know in the noumenon. All knowledge of the world is of our experiences. The only objective knowledge is of the subjective. When we have experiences, we don’t just “only know our experiences,” we know the world (subjectivities) as they are. Our experiences are the means of knowledge rather than always being an inadequate attempt to grasp what is forever beyond us.

Not only do we "know" objects though subjectivity, but objects only have significance in subjectivity. Any object is in relation with all others, no matter how distance, and is but one finite state with meaning in subjectivity. It's not only subjective all the way down, but every subjectivity is objective-- states of the world which are unaffected by going unnoticed or disagreed with.

To interact is to be something related to occasions of the experience of objects. Subjectivity is objectivity. It is to exist, whether known by someone or not.

I'd say the opposite is true: the maschoist feels pleasure upon harming themselves. There's nothing abstract about. It's a physical response of their body.

Our tendency to equate our ethics with pleasure and pain with ethics is really tied to the ethical/unethical world is joyful/hurts. Sometimes to the point where pain of the body hurts less than seeing a world destroyed by immorality. Self interest and desires are themselves a manifestation of pleasure/pain and impossible to avoid in holding an ethical consciousness. To suggest other is to pose someone can care about ethics without feeling a sense of justice/injustice.

So in my philosophy, there are definitely wives, numbers, hats, red, and moons. But none of those things are simply or purely self-existent, i.e. existing in their own terms independently of the act of cognition (or rather the manner of their existence independent of our cognition of them is perfectly unknowable to us, which is also orthodox Kant). — Wayfarer

Things "independent of cognition" aren't posed to be outside of the meaning of experience though. The direct realist takes orthodox Kant and extends it out into the world: all those independent things are (partly) as we experience them. Rather than arguing things live without what the are to us, the suggestion is that things which are to us live independent of our existence. Instead of wiping out the relevance of subjectivity to the world, it's extending it, saying the things we encounter may and are frequently without us. For an object to be, it needs to be an thing which may be recognised by a subject. What it needs is a meaning in experiential terms, whether or not someone actually exists experiencing it at any time. Independence from existence of experiences, but not the meaning of experiences.

In this respect, the Kantians are all to focused on the empirical world. Supposedly, if it doesn't presently appear in experience (i.e. someone is observing asset of existence), then it doesn't have experiential meaning. The Kantian misses that experiential meaning extends beyond the mere existence of states.

No they aren't, John. We have those words for exactly this situation: pointing out something which is not an existing state, something the passage of time has no role in defining.

Your argument is misapplying the propositional to God in this instance: supposedly God is a "mystery" and "beyond" all knowledge because there must "be" something, an ethic, a face, a voice, a thought, a meaning to God which we never pin down, so it may always be there to help us out. In the approach you are taking, God is meant to "be" something, outside out world, yet still of the realm which has profound impact upon the world. It's "magical thinking"-- Oh, how wonderful it would be if the infinite impacted upon are world: the things we loved could live forever. Our wondrous fictions (i.e. the infinite meaning of an idea) would be literal. The sea could be parted even when it was impossible. In the face of horrors of the finite world, there would always be something to fix it. Power we cannot understand always sitting by us, rescuing us from any loss and death of a finite world.

But there's a problem. There's a reason it cannot be understood in terms of our lives: it does nothing in our world, rescues no-one, does not exist in any form. The promises of the infinite is nothing but our wishful thinking. In our minds, we can mix the infinite and the finite together, to posit the latter as the former: life which never ends and, has no possibility of ending. The ultimate comfort, life even when death is obvious.

We stare down the face of Death-- "You are just impossible because life is infinite."-- and consider the end to be logically impossible.

"Do not worry, for we will see our loved ones again. It's necessary."

Transformative? No doubt. If you believe it, it removes death. Whether we are being literal or metaphorical, one has a belief which removes fear, grief and pain over the losses of the finite world. Such emotions become unnecessary because their is no problem. Death is just a illusion. We really live infinitely in God. No-one ever really dies.

It's a mirage though. In our efforts to escape our fears and pains, we've tricked ourselves into thinking we are of the infinite. Death is not an illusion. And God cannot save us for, being infinite, God has no power to define the finite.

It's in the section I quoted:

On the other hand, taken as a whole, the universe does seem to point beyond itself. Whatever could possibly undergird the existence of the universe, including your existence, Gentle Reader, is one aspect of what “god” refers to. Second, that Whatever cannot itself need the universe in order to exist itself. Third, if the Whatever is, then the universe and all that is part of it is a creation. — Whalon'

God is supposedly the thing which undergirds existence.

Those who say they do not believe in God often give lack of evidence for their unbelief. This is a confusion of knowledge and faith . It is also an error of logic — absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There cannot be any empirical evidence of the existence of God, for God does not exist. — Whalon'

Here he's still treating like the presence of absence of evidence has something to do with God. Supposedly, the atheists are wrong for citing the absence of evidence for God as a reason to say God doesn't exist. Whalon is still thinking of God as an existing state here because otherwise the atheist arguments wouldn't have any bearing on the case.

Logically, the atheist's would be correct (the absence of evidence for an evidential claim - the existing God) and Whalon would agree, for they were talking about, the super being zipping around the universe is shown absent by evidence (for the world we've encountered at least). Then Whalon would go on to (correctly) point out these correctly given atheist arguments had no impact on the God he was talking about.

What we take for granted as “real” is a construct of our brain, senses and nervous system. Beyond the discoveries of gestalt psychology that show clearly that our “picture” of reality is easily distorted, there are the longer-term observations of philosophers of knowledge, the epistemologists. Perhaps the most interesting ability of our mind is to grasp that it is generated by the brain, like a magnetic field results from an electric current passing through a piece of iron. The mind is no more the brain than the field is the iron, though the one depends upon the other. Yet we can, with some effort, also fold again on our selves to catch our minds in the act of thinking. Perceiving the illusion of time passing is one example. Believing that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, or that because something happens regularly, it will always happen that way, are other patterns that we can catch our minds doing. — Whalon

This is also about empirical states. Here he talks about when we get fooled about the existing world by our brains and desires. In God, we are not talking about whether we have missed information about existing states. God is outside of such changes, illusions and surprises.

What we call god (all human languages have a word for it) is something we infer from the fact of existence. — Whalon

This is true. The problem is we tend to literalise it. We infer meaning with respect to existing states around us constantly, but we have a tendency to equivocate those infinite with states themselves.

Life is perhaps the biggest one. Power is another one. We infer the infinite meaning of are action (death, life, domination, rescue, creation) and assume it must mean an infinite existing state, particularly in the context of what we desire. Super beings who give us are lives and are immortal in one sense or another. Most often we begin by suggesting these infinite as existing because that's how we encounter the meanings-- in how we act and are acted upon by the world. Pantheons. Spirits. Magic rituals. Miracles.

Then, when someone starts paying attention to the logic of God, we tend to wind this back to a presence which is not of this world. The hidden realm which never manifests to us but nevertheless causes us and allows our existence. We get the "invisible God" who acts without acting because we still think of God in terms a presence in the world, even though we've begun to realise this doesn't make sense. We detach God from our world, but not from existence.

Eventually, we get to a point where we realise God is not of our world but, more importantly, that any world is not of God. We may infer the infinite from existence, but the infinite is never of existence, even as an "undergrid." Indeed, the infinite has nothing do to the presence of existing-- states are define solely in themselves rather than by some outside force.

Whalon is caught in between the last two understandings of God. On the one hand he realises God cannot be part of existence, but on the other he is still stuck thinking of God in terms of existence, for else "faith" (in the "God is true sense" ) would be irrelevant.

If Whalon were to fully commit to the argument God did not exist, he would be making an atheistic one. His belief would be reduced to nothing more than a tradition which gave him understanding of the infinite. While I suspect he might not be too bothered the general idea of tradition rather than existing state (the whole more than one path to the "infinite" ), it gets a bit prickly in the context of individual belief because people usually take up or hold a belief (not just theistic ones either; science promises knowledge and control of the world, atheism promises a world with out many of those abhorrent supermen running around in the sky, etc.,etc.) because of something they've been promised.

To assert all those promises were not really true (existing) takes a lot, particularly when undoes the attractiveness of the tradition-- "God will rescue you from Hell" or "God will cure your illness" is a certain type of compelling argument one cannot make by saying: "This is my tradition and my way of grasping the eternal." It basically secular in fact: "Well, this is my way but there are others you may find." "Faith" is reduced to nothing more than a finite tradition, something great, fun, soothing, exciting or wise for the individual, but nothing more profound and grandiose.

Apologies, I transposed letters.

For sure, that's my problem with your argument. You still treat God as "something," as a force of the "beyond."

You say: "We don't know. We can't know. It's a mystery. We don't if God is so or not." as if God were something that might or might not be, as if God were an entity given in terms of itself.

We should know better than to make that mistake.

Not in our world, for sure. But both yourself and Walhon still treat God as it is something which might or might not be, a presence to "believe" in some realm higher than our own, acting as a force to define our world.

On the other hand, taken as a whole, the universe does seem to point beyond itself. Whatever could possibly undergird the existence of the universe, including your existence, Gentle Reader, is one aspect of what “god” refers to. Second, that Whatever cannot itself need the universe in order to exist itself. Third, if the Whatever is, then the universe and all that is part of it is a creation. — Walhon

Walhon is treating God as an existing being, just not of our universe. In the "beyond" (whatever there might be), there is God and the presence of this God is supposedly the force which creates our universe. Here God is a super-being zipping about, building our universe out of its nothing. All Walhon has done is placed the super being prior to our universe rather than within it. For him God exists-- just not in our universe.

The result is Walhon is all too meek about God.

Fourth, the universe has its own existence, created (if it be so) with its own terms and relations, its own reality and ways of being. It unfolds in a certain “direction” we call time, and there is some predictability to that unfolding, though we only understand it very partially.

Call this the logic of divine being. Now, this is no proof for God. But it does set up the terms within which conversation about God should take place. One of the issues raised by recent popular atheist and deist books by, among others, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchins is that they all seem content to disprove the existence of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Whether or not there are super-beings zipping about, and there might be, none could ever be considered divine. — Walhon

He doesn't realise it, but here Walhon has stated "proof" of God. All the aspects of the forth point are necessary logical truths. We can't have existence without its own terms. We can't have time without direction and change. We can't have knowledge of everything because each instance of knowledge is only one small part. Divine logic is undoubtable. No "faith" in God is required. The divine logic remains true no matter how much it is denied. It cannot be subject to the question "might/or might not" for it is eternal and necessary. Anyone who understands that God is not of the empirical realm (whether of our universe or the "beyond" ) knows God is true.

Exactly, so called "universals" do not exist, but they are true.

Wayfarer still treats God as an existing being, like the fundamentalist theist or atheist he admonishes, only free of the feature of existing in our realm. For him, God is still treated like an existing force, only present in some higher plane, rather than a feature of our one.

The characteristic of the eternal, of God, of the universal, is that it doesn't exist. It's not in the empirical realm. The "eternal atom," as Wayfarer talks about, cannot pass out of existence because it was never there in the first place. That which is "imperishable" is not found within existence, but in meaning and significance. It's not a basis of transient matter, but an expression of it (meaning of a state of transient matter) and outside it (eternal).